A Crooked Path Part 10

"Exactly. She will never be quite up to her dear mother's mark. Few step-mothers and daughters get on as we do, and I am sure you would look after poor Fred's boys as if they were your own."

"So would Katherine. Of that you may be sure, my dear."

"Oh yes; she is very fond of them, especially Charlie. I do not think she is really just to Cecil."

"Real justice is rare," returned Mrs. Liddell, calmly. "There is a note for you, Ada, on the chimney-piece; it came just after you went out."

"Why, it is from Mrs. Burnett!"--pouncing on it and tearing it open.

"What shall I do?" she almost screamed as she read it. "I am afraid I shall never get there in time. What o'clock is it?--my watch is never right. Half-past twelve, and luncheon is at half-past one. Oh, I must manage it! Read that, dear.--Jane! Jane! bring me some hot water immediately, and come help me to dress.--What is the cab fare to Park Terrace? Eighteenpence?--it can't be so much. Just lend me a s.h.i.+lling; you can take it out of the ten pounds you are to pay me next week." And she flew out of the room.

"Mrs. Liddell sat down with a sigh, and read the note which caused this excitement:

"DEAR MRS. LIDDELL,--Do help me in a dilemma! We have a box for Miss St. Germaine's benefit matinee to-morrow, and Lady Alice Mordaunt wants to come with f.a.n.n.y and Bea. You know she is not out yet. Now I am engaged to go with Florence to Lady McLean's garden party at Twickenham.

So may I _depend_ on you to come and chaperon them? If it were my own girls only, they could go with Ormonde or any one. But Lady Alice is to be escorted to our house by that incarnation of propriety, Mr.

Errington; so they must have a chaperon. I therefore depend on you.

Luncheon at 1.30. Do not fail. Ever yours affectionately.

E. BURNETT."

Mrs. Liddell folded up the epistle and placed it in its envelope; then she sat musing. How cruel it would be to break this b.u.t.terfly on the wheel of bitter circ.u.mstance! It would be irrational, she thought, "to expect the strength that could submit to and endure the inevitable from _her_. She will at once suffer more and less than my Katie. Small exterior things will sting Ada and make her miserable. As long as Katherine's heart is satisfied all else can be borne; but _her_ conditions are more difficult. Heigho! for material ills there is nothing so intolerable as debt." She rose and went to her room with the vague intention of doing some of the hundred and one things which needed doing, one more than another, as was usual in her busy life, but somehow the uncertainty and anxiety oppressing her heart made her incapable of continued action; she was always breaking off to think--and the more she thought, the more uneasy she grew. If she had worked out the thin vein of invention and observation which gained her her humble literary success, one source of income was gone--a source on which she had reckoned too surely. Then she had not antic.i.p.ated that her daughter-in-law would be so expensive an inmate. Self-denial was a thing incomprehensible to her. As long as she took care of her clothes, and refrained from buying the very expensive garments her soul longed for, she considered herself most exemplary. As for the smaller savings of omnibus and cabs not absolutely needful, she rarely thought of such matters, or, if she did, it made her frightfully cross, and urged her to many spiteful and contemptuous remarks on girls who have the strength of a horse, and do not care what horrid places they tramp through: so that she never was able to lighten the household burdens by a farthing beyond the very small amount she had originally agreed to contribute toward them.

Her mother-in-law's meditations were interrupted by the young widow skurrying in in desperate haste. "Jane has gone for a cab," she exclaimed; "have you that s.h.i.+lling?"

"Here; you had better have eighteenpence, in case--"

"Oh yes, I had better; and do I look nice?"

"Very nice indeed. I think you are looking so much better than you did last year--"

"That is because I go out a little; I delight in the theatre. Now I must be off. There is the cab--oh! a horrid four-wheeler. Good-by, dear."

Mrs. Burnett was the wife of a civilian high up in the Indian service, and was herself a woman of good family. She had come home in the previous winter in order to introduce her eldest daughter to society, and accidentally meeting Mrs. Frederic Liddell, whom she had known in India, was graciously pleased to patronize her. She had taken a handsome furnished house near Hyde Park, and kept it freely open during the season. Admission to such an establishment was a sort of "open sesame"

to heaven for the little widow. She loved, she adored Mrs. Burnett and her dear charming girls, to say nothing of two half-grown sons, "the most delightful boys!" She was really fond of them for the time, and it was this touch of temporary sincerity that gave her the unconscious power to hold the hearts of Mrs. Burnett and her daughters.

She was quite the pet of the family, and always at their beck and call.

To keep this position she strained every means; she even denied herself an occasional pair of gloves in order to tip the stately man-servant who opened the door and opened her umbrella occasionally for her.

She found the whole party a.s.sembled in the dining-room, and her entrance was hailed with acclamations.

"I had just begun to tremble lest you should not come," cried Mrs.

Burnett, stretching out her hand, but not rising from her seat at the head of the table.

"I only had your note half an hour ago," said Mrs. Liddell, with pardonable inaccuracy, feeling her spirits rise in the delightful atmosphere, flower-scented, and stirred by the laughter and joyous chatter of the "goodlie companie."

A long table set forth with all the paraphernalia of an excellent luncheon was surrounded by a merry party, the girls in charming summer toilettes, and as many men as women. Men, too, in the freshest possible attire, all "on pleasure bent."

"Do you know us all?" asked Mrs. Burnett, looking round. "Yes, I think all but Lady Alice Mordaunt and Mr. Kirby."

"I have never had the pleasure of meeting Lady Alice Mordaunt before"--with a graceful little courtesy--"but Mr. Kirby, though _he_ has forgotten me, I remember meeting him at Rumchuddar, when I first went out to my poor dear papa. Perhaps you remember _him_--Captain Dunbar, at----?" Thus said Mrs. Liddell, as she glided into her seat between one of the Burnetts and a tall, big, shapeless-looking man with red hair, small sharp eyes, a yellow-ochreish complexion, and craggy temples, who had risen courteously to make room for her.

"G.o.d bless my soul!" he exclaimed, turning red--a dull deep red. "I remember perfectly--that is, I don't remember _you_; I remember your father. I'm sure I do not know how I could have forgotten you," with a shy, admiring glance.

"Nor I either," cried Colonel Ormonde, who sat opposite. "Though Mrs.

Liddell does not seem to remember _me_."

"Why, I only saw you yesterday, and I am sure I bowed to you as I came in." So saying, Mrs. Liddell lifted her head with a sweet caressing smile to the eldest of the Burnett boys, who himself brought her some pigeon pie; and from that moment she devoted herself to her new acquaintance, utterly regardless of the hitherto tenderly cultivated Colonel.

Kirby, a newly arrived Indian magistrate, was not given to conversation, but he was a.s.siduous in attending to his fair neighbor's wants, and seemed to like listening to her lively remarks.

Colonel Ormonde glanced at them from time to time; he was amazed and indignant that Mrs. Liddell could attend to any one save himself. He was rather unfortunately placed between Miss Burnett, whose attention was taken up by Sir Ralph Brereton, a marriageable baronet, who sat on her other side, and Lady Alice Mordaunt, a timid, colorless, but graceful girl, still in the school-room, who scarcely spoke at all, and if she did, always to her right-hand neighbor, a stately-looking man with grave dark eyes, which saved him from being plain, and a clear colorless brown complexion. He said very little, but his voice, though rather cold, was pleasant and refined, conveying the impression that he was accustomed to be heard with attention. He too was very attentive to Lady Alice, but in a kind, fatherly way, as if she were a helpless creature under his care.

"I believe we are quite an Indian party," said Mrs. Burnett, looking down the table. "Of course my children are Indian by inheritance; then there are Mr. Kirby and Mr. Errington"--nodding to the dark man next Lady Alice--"and Colonel Ormonde."

"I am not Indian, you know; I was only quartered in India for a few years," returned Ormonde, contradictiously.

"And I was only a visitor for one season's tiger-shooting," said Brereton.

"And I do not want to go," cried Tom Burnett; "I want to be an attache."

"Oh yes; you speak so many languages!" said his younger sister.

"I certainly do not consider myself an old Indian," said the man addressed as Errington, "though I have visited it more than once."

"You an Indian!" cried Ormonde. "Why, you have just started as an English country gentleman. We are to have Errington for a comrade on the bench and in the field down in Clays.h.i.+re. His father has bought Garston Hall--quite close to Melford, Lady Alice. But I suppose you know all about it."

"Yes," said Lady Alice, in a tone which might be affirmation or interrogation. "There are such pretty walks in Garston Woods!"

"Errington was born with a silver spoon in his mouth," returned Ormonde.

"Garston dwarfs Castleford, I can tell you. It was a good deal out of repair--the Hall I mean?"

"It is. We do not expect to get it into thorough repair till winter.

Then I hope, Mrs. Burnett, you will honor us by a visit," said Errington.

"With the greatest pleasure," exclaimed the hostess.

"And oh, Mr. Errington, do give a ball!" cried f.a.n.n.y, the second daughter.

"I fear that is beyond my powers. I do not think I ever danced in my life."

"Are you to be of the party on board Lord Melford's yacht?" asked Ormonde, speaking to Lady Alice.

"Oh no. I am to stay with Aunt Harriet at the Rectory all the summer."

"Ah, that is too bad. You'd like sailing about, I dare say?"

"Oh, yachting must be the most delightful thing in the world," cried Mrs. Liddell, from her place opposite. "If I were you I should coax my father to let me go."