Nell, of Shorne Mills Part 63

"To-morrow you will have escaped the piano and violin, Tommy's squeals and the yowling of the cats, the manifold charms of Beaumont Buildings, and the picturesque cabbages of the costers' barrows, Miss Lorton. I wonder whether you will ever come back?"

"Why, of course," said Nell, smiling. "d.i.c.k is not going to spend the remainder of his life at Anglemere. Oh, yes; we shall be back almost before you have missed us, Mr. Falconer."

"Think so?" he said, smiling, too, but with a strange look in his eyes, and a tremulous quiver of the thin and too-red lips. "Then you will have to be back in a very few minutes after the cab has left the door. No; somehow I fancy that Beaumont Buildings is seeing the last of you. Tommy must share my dread, for he howled with more than his accustomed vehemence when he said 'Good-by' just now."

"That was because you said I ought not to kiss him, because he was so dirty," said Nell. "Poor little Tommy! Yes, I think he'll miss me!"

"It's not improbable," he said, in his ironical way. "I wish I were seven years old, with a smudgy face and a perpetual sniff. Who knows!

You might have some pity to spare for me."

Nell laughed with the unconscious heartlessness of the woman who does not suspect that the man she is laughing at loves her better than life itself.

"Oh, I hope you will miss us, too," she said. "But you will be freer to get on with your work. I'm afraid d.i.c.k--and I, too!--have often interrupted you and interfered with your composing. You must set at the cantata while we are away, and have it finished for us to hear when we come back. And, Mr. Falconer, you will take care of yourself, won't you?

You are so careless, you know--about going out in the rain and at night without an umbrella or overcoat. I heard you coughing last night."

"Did you?" he said. "I hope I didn't keep you awake! I kept my head under the bedclothes as much as I could! Yes, I'll take care, though I don't think it matters very much."

Nell looked up at him, startled and rather shocked.

"Why do you say that?" she said reproachfully. "Do you think that d.i.c.k--and I--wouldn't be sorry if you were ill?"

"Yes," he said, smiling gravely, "you would be sorry. So you would be if Tommy got the measles, or the black cat opposite were to slip off the tiles and break its neck, or Giles came home sober enough one night to kill his wife. There! I've hurt you! I didn't mean to! It's sheer cussedness on my part, and I'm an ill-conditioned cur to say a word."

Then suddenly the smile vanished, and his misery showed itself in his dark eyes. "Ah! can't you see what your going means to me--can't you see?" He caught his emotion by the throat and checked it. "That--that I shall miss you--and d.i.c.k; that I shan't have any one to come to with my cantata and my cough. There's d.i.c.k calling, and good-by. I--I shall be out at a music lesson when you start to-morrow."

He held her hand for a moment or two, half raised it slowly, but, with a wistful smile and a tightening of his lips, let it fall.

He was not out when they drove away next morning, but his door was closed, and he watched them from behind the ragged curtains drawn closely over the grimy window. Then, when the cab had rattled away, he went out on the landing and found Tommy seated on the stairs, bewailing his desertion, with his two chubby, sooty fists kneading his swollen eyes.

"Come inside, Tommy," he said. "Let us mingle our tears together. You ungrateful young sweep, how dare you cry! She kissed you!"

Nell, of the tender heart, had grown somewhat fond of Beaumont Buildings, and she sighed rather wistfully as she looked back at it, and thought of the humble friends who would, she knew, miss her; but her spirits rose as the train left the tops of the houses and carried d.i.c.k and her into the fresh air of the great Hampshire downs.

"It seems years, ages, since I saw the country!" she exclaimed. "d.i.c.k, do you see those sheep? They are white! Think of it! Think of the grimy ones in the parks! Couldn't we have a Society for Washing the Poor London Sheep, d.i.c.k? And look at that farmhouse! Oh, d.i.c.k, it isn't Devonshire and--and Shorne Mills, but it is the country at last!"

"All right; keep your hair on, young woman," said d.i.c.k, looking out of the window in a patronizing fashion. "This is all very well; but wait until you get to Anglemere. Then you can shout and carry on if you like. Old Bardsley--nice old chap when he steps off his perch--says it is one of the most delightful 'seats' in England; as if it were a kind of armchair! Lucky beggar, this young lord! Nell, I've a kind of feeling that I ought to have been the heldest son of an hearl, but that I was changed in the cradle, don't you know. I should advise you not to stick your head too far out of the window, or one of these tunnels will knock it off. A brainless sister I can bear with, but one without any head at all would be rather too much."

He was pretty jubilant himself, though, boylike, he tried to play the cynic; and when the ramshackle fly drove through the picturesque village, and they came in sight of a huge palace of a house which gleamed redly through the trees of an English park, and the flyman, pointing with his whip, informed them that it was Anglemere, d.i.c.k emitted a whistle of surprise and admiration.

"I say, that is something like! What signifies the Maltbys' and the other places we know, after that?"

But Nell's eyes, after a glance at the great house, were fixed upon the lodge at which the fly had stopped.

"Oh, d.i.c.k, how pretty!" she exclaimed, her beautiful face radiant with delight as she gazed at the ivy-covered little house with its latticed windows and Gothic porch.

A young girl--the village slavey d.i.c.k had engaged--stood under the porch to welcome them, and demurely conducted Nell over the lodge.

They scrambled through a hasty meal, and d.i.c.k invited Nell--with a touch of importance and dignity which made her smile, to "come up and see the house."

They walked up a magnificent avenue, and stood for a moment or two looking upon one of the finest specimens of Gothic domestic architecture in England.

"Fine, isn't it?" said d.i.c.k, with bated breath. "Like a picture in a Christmas number, eh, Nell? See the carving along the front, and the terrace? And there's the peac.o.c.k, there, perched behind that stone lion.

Fancy such a place as this belonging to you, your very own. Yes, Lord Angleford's a lucky chap!"

They went up the stone steps to the terrace steps, up which Queen Bess had ascended with stately stride, and, crossing the terrace, into the hall.

The staircase, broad enough for a coach and four, had sheets of brown holland hanging from it, and the pictures, statuary, cabinets, and figures in armor were swathed in protecting covers; but enough was visible of the magnificence, the antiquity of the grand old hall to impress Nell.

Some men were at work, whitewashing and decorating, and they stopped their splashing to permit Nell and d.i.c.k to go upstairs; and one or two of them touched their hats respectfully to the pretty young lady and her brother.

The corridors were wide and newly decorated, and lined with priceless pictures which Nell longed to linger over; but d.i.c.k led her on from one room to another; from suites in which the antique furniture had been suffered to remain to others furnished with modern luxury.

As they went downstairs again they were met by a dignified old lady who introduced herself as the housekeeper; and who, upon being informed that d.i.c.k was "the gentleman from Bardsley & Bardsley," graciously conducted them over the state apartments. Most of us know Anglemere, either from having visited it, or from the innumerable photographs of it, but Nell had not seen any pictorial representation of it, and its glories broke upon her with all the force of freshness. In silent wonder she followed the stately dame as she led them from one magnificent room to another, remarking with a pleasant kind of condescension:

"This is the great drawing-room. Designed by Onigo Jones. Pictures by Watteau. Queen Elizabeth sat in that chair near the antique mantelpiece of lapis-lazuli; this chair is never moved. This, the adjoining room, is the ballroom. Pictures by Bouchier; notice the painted ceiling, the finest in Europe, and costing over twenty thousand pounds. The next room is the royal antechamber, so called because James II. used it for writing letters while visiting Anglemere. We now pa.s.s into the banquet hall. Carved oak by Grinling Gibbings. You will remark the lifesized figures along the dado. It was here that Charles I., the Martyr, dined with his consort, Henrietta. That buffet, large as it is, will not hold the service of gold plate. That painted window's said to be the oldest of any, not ecclesiastic, in Europe. It is priceless. The pictures round the room are by Van Dyck and Carlo Dolci. The one over the mantelpiece is a portrait of the seventh Earl of Angleford."

Nell looked up at it. She was half confused by the splendors of the place and her efforts to follow the descriptions and explanations of the stately housekeeper; but as she raised her eyes to the portrait she was conscious of a sensation of surprise. For in some vague way the portrait reminded her of Drake. The pictured Angleford wore a ruff, and was habited in satin and armor, but the face----

"Come on! What are you staring at?" said d.i.c.k, impatiently; and she followed the cicerone into another room, and listened to the monotonous voice repeating the well-learned lesson.

"We have here the library, the famous Angleford library. There are twenty thousand volumes, many of them unique. They are often consulted by savants--with the permission of the earl. Many of them are priceless.

That portrait is Lord Bacon," et cetera, et cetera.

"Let us go," whispered Nell, in d.i.c.k's ear. "The greatness of the house of Angleford is getting on my nerves! I--I can't help thinking of Beaumont Buildings! It is too great a contrast!"

"Shut up!" retorted d.i.c.k, who was intensely interested.

Nell went through the remainder of the inspection with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. What right had any one man to such luxury, to such splendor, while others were born to penury and suffering?

While she was asking herself this question, the housekeeper had led them to the picture gallery, the gallery which artists came from all corners of the world to visit.

"Portraits of the earls of Angleford," she said, waving a black-clad, condescending arm.

"Is the portrait of the present Earl of Angleford here?" asked d.i.c.k, with not unnatural interest.

"No, sir. The present earl is not here. You see, it was not thought that he would be the earl. That is the late earl. Would you like to see the stables? If so, I will call the head coachman----"

But they had seen enough for one day, and, almost in silence, walked back to the lodge.

"I wonder whether Lord Angleford knows, realizes, how big a man he is?"

said d.i.c.k, as he smoked his last pipe that night in the sitting room of the lodge. "We've seen the house, but we haven't seen the park or the estates or the farms, which extend for miles around. Fancy owning all this, and a t.i.tle, a name, which every boy and girl learns about when they read their English history!"

"I decline to fancy to realize anything more," said Nell, with a laugh.

"That old woman's voice rings in my ears, and I feel as if I were intoxicated with, overwhelmed by, the grandeur of the Anglefords. I am going to bed now, d.i.c.k. To bed in a house in the country, with the scent of the flowers stealing in at the windows! Oh, think of it! and think of--Beaumont Buildings! d.i.c.k, would it be possible to obtain the post of lodgekeeper to Anglemere House? I envy the meanest laborer on the estate. Next to being the earl himself, I think I would like to be keeper of one of the lodges, or--or chief of the laundry!"

She went up to her room--a room in which the ceiling was "covered" to the shape of the thatched roof.

She was brushing the long tresses of soft, fluffy black hair which Drake had loved to kiss, when she heard the sound of a horse trotting up the avenue.