Rest Harrow: A Comedy of Resolution Part 25

Mrs. John thought that was too casual. "You mustn't treat her like a dancing man," she told him. "I shall call on her, and you can tell her I'm coming. We'll do the thing in form."

All this had been done, and the call returned. Sanchia's still serenity, seen through the rosy mist of her momentary confusion, pleased Mrs. John.

The invitation was made and accepted in parting.

"Do come. We shan't have many people, you know; but I won't let you be dull. And Bill will be there, of course--and you rather like Bill--and a queer old Aunt of ours who knows everybody. So I hope you won't mind."

"I'm sure I shan't," Sanchia said, and then they shook hands.

Bill Chevenix, who had been present, waved himself away from the doorstep.

"By-by, my dear," he said. "You've done bravely by me. Isn't she splendid?"

"I like her," said Mrs. John. "But she's rather unapproachable."

Bill chuckled. "That's her little way. She don't kiss easily."

Mrs. John said that he ought to know.

The party was anything but dull. Lady Maria dined with seven other people, the best that could be mustered on short notice--and Sanchia came in at ten o'clock, when the drawing-room was full. She came with an elderly friend, a Mrs. Quantock, whose acquaintance she had made in an omnibus, and renewed at the British Museum. Mrs. Quantock was an auth.o.r.ess by profession, a poetess by temperament. Her emotions, not always under control, consorted oddly with her broad and placid face. She knew Lady Maria Wenman, and it was she who actually performed the introduction, Mrs.

John being fast at her stair-head.

"I particularly want you to know my dear friend--Miss Sanchia Percival-- Lady Maria Wenman. A great heart, Lady Maria, in a frame of steel."

"Oh, indeed," said Lady Maria. Then, "Come and sit with me, my dear; I've heard about you. But I hope you've left your steels at home."

"If I had a trumpet," said good Mrs. Quantock, "instead of a penny whistle, all the world should hear what I think of Sanchia."

"Then it's a very good thing you haven't," said Lady Maria. "The less young ladies are trumpeted in public the better!"

Sanchia, during this interchange, had stood smiling and self-possessed; but she was a little fluttered, and looked none the worse for that.

Without a word she obeyed the twinkling and puckered old lady, sat by her on the sofa and awaited, her hands folded in her lap, what might be in store for her. She liked the looks of Lady Maria, and had no disrelish for her sharp tongue, nor fear of what might fall to her share when Mrs.

Quantock took herself off. She liked the little, deep-set, dark grey eyes, the beaked nose, like the prow of a trireme, and the drawn-in mouth, which seemed to be victim of the astringencies it was driven to utter. And then she liked the signs of race, the disregard of opinion, the keen look which lit on a man or woman and saw him negligible and left him in the road. She had herself an artist's eye for style, and saw in Lady Maria the grand manner. The praise or blame of such as she would be worth having; awaiting either, she felt herself braced. She could envisage the past, collect it, display it in her lap without fear. "Here's my life's work, so far as it has gone. Now beat me, if you will; I'm not afraid of honest blows." She knew there would be no sham outcries from this high-looking old dame.

Lady Maria Wenman was rich, imperious, whimsical, and afraid only of boredom. By birth a daughter of Lord Starcross, by fate the widow of a judge, she was strongly of opinion that she could do as she pleased. It was not so clear to her that other people could also; but the reason of that was that other people, not immediately about her, were not themselves clear. She once said of a prime minister, "My dear, he seemed to me a very good sort of man"; and that was her att.i.tude all the world over towards those not connected with her by blood or the affections. Marks of race she had, but not pride of it. She was her own fountain of honour, and were you omnibus-tout or commander-in-chief, if she liked you you were in being, if not, you didn't exist. One consequence of this was that she hated n.o.body, and was offended at nothing. The vices or crimes of a non-existent world were mere shadows, naturally; those of her circle of cognizance she had a way, very much her own, of accounting for. A trick of hers, which had become inveterate, was to explain states of being by phrases. These not only explained, they seemed to condone; and to her there's no doubt, they accounted for everything. Mr. William Chevenix, aware of her foible, did not scruple to turn it to his ends when putting before her Sanchia's case.

"You see, Aunt, one rather admires her loyalty to the chap. He was precious miserable, and she pitied him. Well, we know what comes of that, don't we? It turns to liking, and grat.i.tude, and all those swimmy feelings; and then they swim together, all in a flux, eh? And there you are." To which, when Lady Maria had nodded her head of kindly vulture sagely, and mused aloud, "I see; an unfortunate attachment. Very common, I believe, and quite sad," he knew that he had scored a point. When she had added, "We must do what we can, of course; I'll see her; I've n.o.body with me just now," he presumed that he had won the rubber.

Apart from the comfortable _cliche_ in which she was seen enfolded, Sanchia pleased the eye. Her father, in league with her throughout, had "stood" her a frock, the cunningest that Madame Freluche could supply, and would have added pearls for her hair and neck if she had not tenderly refused them. She took his counsels in the general--that she was to show them what was what, "for the honour of the Percival girls"--and her own for the particular; would have no ornaments at all. By an entirely right instinct she chose to wear black. It set her off as dazzlingly fair, as more delicate than she was. Her eyes, from her pale brows and faintly tinted cheeks, gleamed intensely, burningly blue. Her strength appeared in her shut lips and firm chin--subtle, and, as Mrs. Quantock said, like that of steel wire.

She did not talk much, but what she said was simple and direct. She seemed to be reticent about herself, not by any means from shame, but because her acts and intentions appeared too obvious to be worth rehearsing. Once or twice her laugh, low and musical, showed that she relished a joke. Lady Maria occasionally made jokes. Here was a girl who understood them.

To the old gentlewoman, who never beat about bushes, but mostly walked through them, Sanchia's bluntness made immediate appeal. Her reply, for instance, to the enquiry, What had induced her to go on with the affair, was a counter-question. "What else could I do?" she had asked, with pencilled brows arched. "I thought it made no difference. I wanted to, you see. What you do is nothing compared with what you want to do."

"Then why do it, my dear?" said Lady Maria. Sanchia did not blink the answer, "Nevile wanted me. He was very unhappy."

"Well," said the old woman, "what is he now?" This time Sanchia did not reply.

Lady Maria drew her lips in until her mouth looked like a dimple in her face. "Oho! That's it, is it? He's neglected you, and now you don't care?"

"I care for some things very much," said Sanchia. "I want to please Papa, and Vicky, my sister, you know--and I think I want to put myself right with the world. But--"

"But you don't care two pins about him?"

Sanchia shook her head sadly. Her brows were arched to her hair. "No," she said, "I don't care one pin."

Lady Maria was no fool. She saw exactly what was going to happen, and no reason why she should not declare it. She had formed already a high enough opinion of Sanchia--which is to say no more than that she liked her--to be sure that it would not influence her conduct. "I'll tell you what the end of this will be," she said. "You'll have him on the floor, kissing your toes. He'll be mad to have you--and you'll marry him. Then he'll be your slave for life. And they tell me that's the happiest state a woman can live in. I have some reason for believing it. I and the judge got along admirably, though the poor man might have bored me to extinction. Oh, you'll do very well. But don't make him jealous."

Sanchia considered this. "I don't think he would be jealous," she decided; "but we are rather premature, aren't we?" And then she related, as if they were an anecdote, the circ.u.mstances of her departure from Wanless.

Lady Maria listened carefully, nodding a dispa.s.sionate head at details which would have raised Philippa's hair, and depilated Mrs. Percival. "I think he's a human being, if you'll allow me to say so," was the conclusion she came to. "It was no affair of the gardener's that I can see; and to be battered in your own drive by your own servant, even you must allow to be provoking."

"Oh," Sanchia a.s.sured her, "I didn't at all mind his being vexed. But he accused me of--all sorts of things."

"Of course he did, my dear," cried Lady Maria. "He was in a towering rage.

How was he to know that you hadn't egged on the gardener?"

"By what he knew of me already," said Sanchia with spirit. Lady Maria twinkled; but her scrutiny was keen. "I don't think you have explained the gardener," she told her. Sanchia blushed.

"He's a boy," was her suggestion: but Lady Maria's comment on that was, "And a bruiser it seems."

Sanchia smiled gently. "Poor Struan! He was very difficult. He made me furiously angry. What he did was outrageous. But I am sure he is a genius."

"What!" cried her ladyship. "A genius at gardening? or at thrashing gentlemen?"

Sanchia said simply, "It's extraordinary what he can do with plants. He's certainly a genius there. He's like a plant himself. He never goes to bed, but walks about the garden all night, talking to them."

"Like a burglar," said Lady Maria. "Pray, what does he talk to them about?

Growing?"

"Sometimes, I think. I don't know what he says to them. But he talks about all sorts of things."

"You, for instance?" Lady Maria asked, suddenly; and Sanchia blushed again, and presently looked at Lady Maria. "He's always nice to me," she said, mildly.

"I think," her ladyship resumed, "I think I like to think of him best in prison;" and then washed him out of her memory as she faced more serious topics.

"It will be much better for you to come to me," she told Sanchia. "I'm an old woman, and an old tyrant, I daresay, but I'm somebody, you know. And I'm pretty lonely, and happen to want company just now. It will be good that you have a foothold to your name when your Nevile Ingram comes after you. I shall bring him to reason quicker than most people, I don't doubt.

Your quarrel is absurd; you can't afford to quarrel with your bread and cheese. You've your father, you'll say; but my answer is that it's not very decent to live upon your father when you've got yourself kicked out of his house. I quite see your point of view, mind you. These things will happen, and in theory you're perfectly in the right. It's your practice that won't do. All for love and the world well lost--very fine indeed. But so long as we're in the world, you see, we _can't_ lose it. There it is.

Now you've had your kisses, and can afford to settle down; but you must do it in the world's way if you want peace and quietness; and I'm very ready to help you. Really, I don't see anything better for you--short of your own home."

"I shall never go there again," Sanchia told her, directly.

"Very right, my dear," said the old lady. "Then you had better come to me."

Sanchia said, "I should like that," and Lady Maria, taking her by the chin, patted her cheek.

"And so should I, my dear," she said--and the thing was as good as settled.

Mrs. John, released from her stair-head, came up presently; Bill Chevenix was with her. "Dear Aunt Wenman," she said, "I haven't had a word with you since you came; but I'm sure you've been happy."

"Miss Sanchia and I have been swearing eternal friendship," said Lady Maria.