The Case of Richard Meynell Part 19

"And what did they tell me that lie for?" she repeated, in a tone half perplexed, half resentful. Then she turned peremptorily to Barron.

"Shut the door!"

Half an hour later Barron emerged into the road, from the cottage. He walked like a man bewildered. All that was evil in him rejoiced; all that was good sorrowed. He felt that G.o.d had arisen, and scattered his enemies; he also felt a genuine horror and awe in the presence of human frailty.

All night long he lay awake, pondering how to deal with the story which had been told him; how to clear up its confusions and implications; to find some firm foothold in the mad medley of the woman's talk--some reasonable scheme of time and place. Much of what she had told him had been frankly incoherent; and to press her had only made confusion worse.

He was tolerably certain that she was suffering from some obscure brain trouble. The effort of talking to him had clearly exhausted her; but he had not been able to refrain from making her talk. At the end of the half hour he had advised her--in some alarm at her ghastly look--to see a doctor. But the suggestion had made her angry, and he had let it drop.

In the morning news was brought to him from Broad's cottage that John Broad's mother, Mrs. Richard Sabin, who had arrived from America only forty-eight hours before, had died suddenly in the night. The bursting of an unsuspected aneurism in the brain was, according to the doctor called in, the cause of death.

BOOK II

HESTER

"Light as the flying seed-b.a.l.l.s is their play The silly maids!"

"Who see in mould the rose unfold, The soul through blood and tears."

CHAPTER VII

"I cannot get this skirt to hang as Lady Edith's did," said Sarah Fox-Wilton discontentedly.

"Spend twenty guineas on it, my dear, as Lady Edith did on hers, and it'll be all right," said a mocking voice.

Sarah frowned. She went on pinning and adjusting a serge skirt in the making, which hung on the dummy before her. "Oh, we all know what _you_ would like to spend on your dress, Hester!" she said angrily, but indistinctly, as her mouth was full of pins.

"Because really nice frocks are not to be had any other way," said Hester coolly. "You pay for them--and you get them. But as for supposing you can copy Lady Edith's frocks for nothing, why, of course you can't, and you don't!"

"If I had ever so much money," said Sarah severely, "I shouldn't think it _right_ to spend what Lady Edith does on her dress."

"Oh, wouldn't you!" said Hester with a laugh and a yawn. "Just give _me_ the chance--that's all!" Then she turned her head--"Lulu!--you mustn't eat any more toffy!"--and she flung out a mischievous hand and captured a box that was lying on the table, before a girl, who was sitting near it with a book, could abstract from it another square of toffy.

"Give it me!" said Lulu, springing up, and making for her a.s.sailant.

Hester laughingly resisted, and they wrestled for the box a little, till Hester suddenly let it go.

"Take it then--and good luck to you! I wouldn't spoil my teeth and my complexion as you do--not for tons of sweets. Hullo!"--the speaker sprang up--"the rain's over, and it's quite a decent evening. I shall go out for a run and take Roddy."

"Then I shall have to come too," said Sarah, getting up from her knees, and pulling down her sleeves. "I don't want to at all, but mamma says you are not to go out alone."

Hester flushed. "Do you think I can't escape you all--if I want to? Of course I can. What geese you are! None of you will ever prevent me from doing what I want to do. It really would save such a lot of time and trouble if you would get that into your heads."

"Where do you mean to go?" said Sarah stolidly, without taking any notice of her remark. "Because if you'll go to the village, I can get some binding I want."

"I have no intention whatever of going out for your convenience, thank you!" said Hester, laughing angrily. "I am going into the garden, and you can come or not as you please." She opened the French window as she spoke and stepped out.

"Has mamma heard from that Paris woman yet?" asked Lulu, looking after Hester, who was now standing on the lawn playing with a terrier-puppy she had lately brought home as a gift from a neighbouring farmer--much to Lady Fox-Wilton's annoyance. Hester had an absurd way of making friends with the most unsuitable people, and they generally gave her things.

"The Rector expected to hear to-day."

"I don't believe she'll go," said Lulu, beginning again on the toffy. She was a heavily made girl of twenty, with sleepy eyes and a dull complexion. She took little exercise, was inordinately fond of sweet things, helped her mother a little in the housekeeping, and was intimately acquainted with all the gossip of the village. So was Sarah; but her tongue was sharper than Lulu's, and her brain quicker. She was therefore the unpopular sister; while for Lulu her acquaintances felt rather a contemptuous indulgence. Sarah had had various love affairs, which had come to nothing, and was regarded as "disappointed" in the village. Lulu was not interested in young men, and had never yet been observed to take any trouble to capture one. So long as she was allowed sufficient sixpenny novels to read, and enough sweet things to eat, she was good-humoured enough, and could do kind things on occasion for her friends. Sarah was rarely known to do kind things; but as her woman friends were much more afraid of her than of Lulu, she was in general treated with much more consideration.

Still it could not be said that Lady Fox-Wilton was to be regarded as blessed in either of her two elder daughters. And her sons were quite frankly a trouble to her. The eldest, Sarah's junior by a year and a half, had just left Oxford suddenly and ignominiously, without a degree, and was for the most part loafing at home. The youngest, a boy of fifteen, was supposed to be delicate, and had been removed from school by his mother on that account. He too was at home, and a tutor who lodged in the village was understood to be preparing him for the Civil Service. He was a pettish and spiteful lad, and between him and Hester existed perpetual feud.

But indeed Hester was at war with each member of the family in turn; sometimes with all of them together. And it had been so from her earliest childhood. They all felt instinctively that she despised them and the slow, lethargic temperament which was in most of them an inheritance from a father cast in one of the typical moulds of British Philistinism. There was some insurmountable difference between her and them. In the first place, her beauty set her apart from the rest; and, beside her, Sarah's sharp profile, and round apple-red cheeks, or Lulu's clumsiness, made, as both girls were secretly aware, an even worse impression than they need have made. And in the next, there were in her strains of romantic, egotistic ability to which nothing in them corresponded. She could play, she could draw--brilliantly, spontaneously--up to a certain point, when neither Sarah nor Lulu could stumble through a "piece," or produce anything capable of giving the smallest satisfaction to their drawing-master. She could chatter, on occasion, so that a room full of people instinctively listened. And she had read voraciously, especially poetry, where they were content with picture-papers and the mildest of novels. Hester brought nothing to perfection; but there could be no question that in every aspect of life she was constantly making, in comparison with her family, a das.h.i.+ng or dazzling effect all the more striking because of the unattractive _milieu_ out of which it sprang.

The presence of Lady Fox-Wilton, in particular, was needed to show these contrasts at their sharpest.

As Hester still raced about the lawn, with the dog, that lady came round the corner of the house, with a shawl over her head, and beckoned to the girl at play. Hester carelessly looked round.

"What do you want, mamma!"

"Come here. I want to speak to you."

Hester ran across the lawn in wide curves, playing with the dog, and arrived laughing and breathless beside the newcomer. Edith Fox-Wilton was a small, withered woman, in a widow's cap, who more than looked her age, which was not far from fifty. She had been pretty in youth, and her blue eyes were still appealing, especially when she smiled. But she did not smile often, and she had the expression of one perpetually protesting against all the agencies--this-worldly or other-worldly--which had the control of her existence. Her weak fretfulness depressed all the vitalities near her; only Hester resisted.

At the moment, however, her look was not so much fretful as excited. Her thin cheeks were much redder than usual; she constantly looked round as though expecting or dreading some interruption; and in a hand which shook she held a just opened letter.

"What is the matter, mamma?" asked Hester, a sharp challenging note in her gay voice. "You look as though something had happened."

"Nothing has happened," said Lady Fox-Wilton hastily. "And I wish you wouldn't romp with the puppy in that way, Hester. He's always doing some damage to the flowers. I'm going out, and I wished to give you a message from the Rector."

"Is that from Uncle Richard?" said Hester, glancing carelessly at the letter.

Lady Fox-Wilton crushed it in her hand.

"I told you it was. Why do you ask unnecessary questions? The Rector has heard from the lady in Paris and he wants you to go as soon as possible.

Either he or Aunt Alice will take you over. We have had the best possible recommendations. You will enjoy it very much. They can get you the best lessons in Paris, they say. They know everybody."

"H'm--" said Hester, reflectively. Then she looked at the speaker. "Do you know, mamma, that I happen to be eighteen this week?"

"Don't be silly, Hester! Of course I know!"

"Well, you see, it's rather important. Am I or am I not obliged to do what you and Mr. Meynell want me to do? I believe I'm not obliged.

Anyway, I don't quite see how you're going to make me do it, if I don't want to."