It was hard to bear, feeling conscious, as she did, that at least three-fourths of her motives had been purely unselfish, and only now did Philippa allow to herself that a certain love of adventure – a touch of the reckless impulsiveness and defiance of conventionality which Maida Lermont, though vaguely, had been conscious of in her young cousin – only now did it dawn upon the girl that these less worthy incentives had gone far to make up the remaining balance.
“I have never meant to be wild or headstrong,” she said to herself. “I have always thought I was almost too practical and unimpulsive. I planned all this so carefully and even cautiously. I never dreamt of papa and mamma taking it up so severely; I don’t think they ever have been really angry with me before in my life. And after all,” with a touch of half-humorous defiance, as she dashed away the tears which she dared not indulge in, for fear of her sister’s discovering them, “after all, I do not know what Evelyn would have done without me. I am perfectly certain she would not have got on so well; most assuredly she would not have looked as she has done!”
For Philippa’s rule over her sister had been a very stringent one. Mrs Marmaduke Headfort was not allowed to overtire herself by walking too far or driving too long, by sitting up too late, or spasmodically getting up too early, all of which vagaries she was addicted to when her own mistress. Her tonic was never forgotten, nor her stated hours of resting curtailed. In consequence of all these precautions, Evelyn looked and felt wonderfully invigorated. The credit of this was attributed by her well-pleased hosts, and in part by herself, to the bracing air of Wyverston, and Philippa was too unselfish and generous to feel annoyed at this, though she secretly hugged herself with satisfaction as to what she knew had been her own share in this good state of things.
“I don’t think mamma can be so vexed with me when I tell her about it,” she thought. “She does know that Evelyn is not fit to take care of herself.”
There was really, for the moment, no crumpled rose-leaf in young Mrs Headfort’s path. To her facile nature, in spite of her capacity for “fussing,” it came easy to accept things as she found them. Long before the first week was at an end she had got used to the anomalous position in which her sister, and, to a certain extent through her sister, she herself were placed. Beyond this, she even allowed herself the gratification of claiming Philippa’s admiration for her strong-minded behaviour.
“I really think I have managed beautifully,” she said. “I have not worried about you at all, Phil, and I have determined not to be homesick for Bonny and Vanda, though,” with a sudden realisation of what she owed to her sister, “I’m quite sure my good spirits are principally owing to your being here.”
And Philippa felt rewarded.
By this time Miss Raynsworth had begun to breathe more freely. No further contretemps had as yet occurred. She had been most careful to keep out of the way of the guests in the house, more especially the two Greshams, for, after hearing from Evelyn of her conversation on the night of her arrival with the elder of the cousins, she could no longer deceive herself as to his identity with the handsome, silent man whose personality had somehow impressed her at Dorriford, and she was even more afraid of coming across him than of again meeting Solomon’s master.
To poor Solomon himself she had more than once been obliged to be positively cruel, for whenever she caught sight of his tan-coloured person she was seized with terror lest her other travelling companion should be near at hand. In those days it is to be feared that the dachshund’s belief in the stability of woman’s friendship received some severe shocks. One afternoon in particular he happened to run against Miss Raynsworth in one of the back passages not far from Mrs Shepton’s room, and the girl, thinking herself for once safe from dangerous observation, stooped down and patted him affectionately. No sooner had she done so than she bitterly regretted it, for coming towards her, but a few paces off, she descried his master’s familiar figure. The dog by this time was in a state of frantic delight; at all costs she must get rid of him.
“Down, down,” she said, in a cruelly repressive tone, which poor Solomon would have understood even without the stern “Come here, sir,” from Michael Gresham which followed; and as she hurried along the passage she could not resist glancing back over her shoulder in pity for her four-footed admirer. Mr Gresham was not to be seen – what had become of him? – but Solomon was sitting on the mat outside the housekeeper’s room, looking profoundly miserable and feeling doubly deserted – by his master as well as by his friend. For Michael had shut the door in the dog’s face.
“Poor old boy,” thought Philippa. “I wonder why he has settled himself there.”
For she knew that Mrs Shepton was not specially addicted to dogs. She liked them, she said, in “their proper place;” in other words, when they were entirely out of her sight and with no opportunity of jumping on sofas, eating rugs, or going to sleep on her best eiderdown quilts.
Chapter Ten
“Merle-in-the-Wold.”
Miss Raynsworth would have been considerably surprised had she known the reason of Solomon’s encampment in his present quarters.
“I have left my dog outside,” his master was at that moment saying to the housekeeper, “so I hope you’ll be pleased with me, ‘Mrs Shepton, ma’am!’” using the rather absurd title which had clung to his old friend since the days when she had been his nurse.
Mrs Shepton smiled indulgently. “Now, Master Michael, what would any one think to hear you still speaking to me like that?” she said, forgetting that her own way of addressing the young man was now equally inappropriate, “and I don’t like you to think that I would be unkind to a poor dumb creature, especially one you are fond of. Dogs are all very well in their proper place! But when it comes to finding one in a young gentleman’s bed with its head on the pillow and the clothes tucked under its shin, as I have seen you have Toby many and many a time in the old days at Allerton – well, no, I can’t say but what that was going too far.”
Michael Gresham laughed.
“I remember,” he said, “especially once when Bernie and I stole one of old Aunt Serena’s caps – a nightcap I suppose it must have been – and tied it neatly on to Toby’s head with the frills sticking out beautifully all round.”
“I don’t remember Master Bernard ever doing anything of the kind,” said Mrs Shepton, with a marked accent on the name. “If there was ever any mischief afoot, it wasn’t often it had to be laid at his door.”
“Not often, perhaps,” said Michael, “though I wouldn’t say never. If there was a scrape to be got into, it was, I allow, pretty sure to be I who found myself in it. But we stuck to each other very faithfully in those days. Poor old Bernie!” and he gave a little sigh. “After all, it isn’t his fault if all the plums have fallen to his share, and I’m sure I don’t grudge them to him, though I would not object to a few for myself sometimes.”
A shade of distress crossed Mrs Shepton’s face.
“They will come, my dear,” she said, affectionately patting the young man’s hand. “Never fear; they will come, all in good time, and none the less sweet that you have had to wait for them, and work for them too.”
“Oh, bless you, don’t think I mind the working,” he said, lightly. “Life would be unbearable without it. Don’t think I was grumbling, Mrs Shepton, ma’am, but,” and he rose to his feet, as an unmistakable sound of scratching and whining on the other side of the door made itself heard, “some one is grumbling, and that’s Solomon. May I let him in?”
“Of course, dearie; I’ll let him in myself. No,” as the young man was moving towards the door, “let me do it; I should like him to see I was friendly.”
In another moment Solomon was inside, pawing and jumping on the housekeeper, who did her best to hide any sign of apprehension for her black silk skirt. “You see he is fond of me,” she said, with a touch of rather tremulous triumph in her tone.
“Moderately so,” Mr Gresham replied, eyeing the pair with considerable amusement, “but not as fond of you as he is of a young person who travelled down in our carriage the other day – third class – I always come third, you know. By-the-by, I wanted to ask you about her. She is Mrs Marmaduke Headfort’s maid, I believe.” Mrs Shepton looked considerably surprised.
“Yes, sir?” she said, interrogatively.
“Now, don’t be stupid,” said Michael, with some irritation. “You know very well I’m not likely to begin gossiping! But there is something unusual about this girl, and I cannot help feeling sorry for her. I had meant to speak of her to you before. What do you think of her?”
The housekeeper’s brow had cleared, but now a look of perplexity came over her face.
“To tell you the truth, Master Michael, I really don’t know,” she said. “I wouldn’t say as much to any one but yourself, and I would not for worlds betray her confidence – ”
“Has she given you her confidence, then?” interrupted the young man.
“She has and she hasn’t! She has allowed that there is something about her present position that she cannot explain, and as far as things here go she has put herself in my hands, saying how inexperienced she is, and begging me to advise her if I see it necessary. But beyond that, I know no more than you do. Perhaps,” – with a touch of curiosity – “not as much, if you entered into conversation with her on the journey?” Michael laughed slightly.
“Oh, dear, no,” he said, “she would have snubbed me at once if I had said anything but the merest commonplace – and even that was only brought about by Solomon’s making such friends with her, which threw her a little off her dignity once or twice. She is a lady, nurse, I am perfectly certain of it, and that is why I am so sorry for her. The impression she made upon me,” he continued, slowly, “was that she is acting a part.” Mrs Shepton looked rather startled.
“I don’t like you to say that, Master Michael,” she replied, quickly. “I have felt from the first that I could trust her – and now that I know her better, and she has, as it were, thrown herself upon me, I couldn’t bear to go back from doing so.”
“You misunderstand me,” said Mr Gresham, with some annoyance. “Do you suppose I think she’s a burglar in disguise? People are forced into seeming what they are not sometimes, by no fault of their own.” Almost her own words to Philippa! The housekeeper in her turn hastened to exonerate herself.
“I took up your words wrongly,” she said. “I think I feel just as you do, Master Michael, about the poor girl. I am doing all I can to be a friend to her.”
“I’m very glad of that,” said Michael, heartily. “That was just what I had in my mind – to ask you to be good to her.”
He spoke with his usual perfect simplicity, and as his old friend glanced at him she said to herself: “Just the same kind heart as always! Well, if others don’t, there’s one that does you justice, and that’s your old nurse, my dear.”
Aloud she said nothing in reply to his last words, and Michael, too, sat silent. He was stroking Solomon’s soft back half absently, and pondering something in his mind, which the sight of his dachshund had recalled to his memory. Should he, or should he not say anything to Mrs Shepton of the curiously similar way in which both mistress and maid had alluded to a former “Solomon of their own.”
“Have you seen anything of Mrs Marmaduke?” he said at last, tentatively.
“Miss Christine brought her in here for a few minutes yesterday,” answered Mrs Shepton. “Of course I had seen her before, several times, but not to speak to. She is a sweet-looking young lady, very, and so devoted to her little children. I am very pleased, indeed, that the family seems to be taking to her so much; Miss Headfort has quite cheered up over it.”
The tone of her words decided Michael to say no more. He could scarcely have related the little incident without a suggestion of something not altogether to the young wife’s advantage, though in what way he himself would have been utterly at a loss to define. And the faintest suggestion of such a kind would have been most unfair to young Mrs Headfort, for if her maid had a secret – a secret of which she herself even was cognisant, it would be most unjustifiable to lay to the young lady’s account any supposition of underhand dealing or subterfuge.
“I think she is – Mrs Marmaduke, I mean – a nice little woman, and certainly very pretty. I should not say she was particularly clever, but I daresay that doesn’t matter much in a woman if her looks are all right,” he said, with a slight superciliousness not lost on his hearer.
“Now, Master Michael, I am not going to have you beginning in that way,” she said, remonstratingly. “If a young lady is pretty, that’s no reason why she shouldn’t have other gifts as well. You would not like me to say Mr Gresham had nothing but his good looks?”
Again there was just a shade of bitterness in the young man’s voice as he replied:
“Nobody could say such a thing of Bernard. He has got – well, what is there he hasn’t got?”
Michael’s old nurse seemed rather nonplussed.
“It was a stupid remark of mine, Master Michael,” she answered. “And I daresay it will make it no better if I say that whatever Mr Bernard has, and is, there are some ways in which I could never feel that he comes up to you.”
“Mrs Shepton, ma’am, you’re a silly old woman. I must be going. If I stay much longer you will be persuading me that my features are the most regular you have ever seen.”
“Nay, nay, my dear. I know what I mean, though I can’t put it in words. ‘All is not gold that glitters,’” she added, sententiously.
The proverb seemed scarcely relevant, but Michael understood the feeling that suggested the quotation, and there was affection as well as amusement in the smile with which he looked back at his old friend, as, followed by Solomon, he left the room.
The elder Mr Gresham had that day been the subject of discussion in another quarter as well. He had been almost from the first very gracious to Evelyn, and this naturally pleased her the more as she gradually came to see that Mr Gresham did not always give himself much trouble about those with whom he might be thrown in contact. The attractiveness of his appearance and the invariable gentleness of his manner had in themselves an undoubted charm, which often made his coldness and indifference the more irritating to those who could not flatter themselves that they had aroused in him the slightest interest in their persons or their conversation.
“I do wish you could see him, Phil,” Evelyn was saying to her sister at the very time that Mr Michael Gresham was paying his visit to Mrs Shepton. “He is really so charming. Felicia and Christine tell me they have never seen him make friends so quickly, and I think they are very pleased at it. Every one thinks so much of his opinion.”
“Then it is no wonder if he is a little spoilt,” said Philippa.
“But I don’t think he is spoilt,” returned Evelyn, eagerly. “He is so gentle and considerate, such a contrast to his cousin – I never saw such a ‘brusque’ man as he is; and if it is affectation, he has no right to be affected! He is so ugly, and of course his position is different in every way.”
“Then it is no wonder if he is a little spoilt,” said Philippa.
“But I don’t think he is spoilt,” returned Evelyn, eagerly. “He is so gentle and considerate, such a contrast to his cousin – I never saw such a ‘brusque’ man as he is; and if it is affectation, he has no right to be affected! He is so ugly, and of course his position is different in every way.”
“I should scarcely think he was really affected,” said Philippa; “he is just rather rough. But certainly,” she went on, “the elder cousin is quite unusually good-looking.”
Evelyn gave a little laugh.
“What is amusing you?” said Philippa, rather sharply.
“Oh, nothing,” said Evelyn.
“When people answer ‘nothing’ in that way, it always means something,” said Philippa, sententiously. “You laughed at what I said, and I want to know why?”
“I didn’t – at least, not exactly. I was only thinking – now don’t be cross – how absurd it is! You admiring Mr Gresham, allowing, at any rate, that he made some impression upon you – for you are very critical, you know, Philippa – and he on his side entertaining me, whenever he can get round to the subject with his appreciation of your beauty and charms.”
Philippa reddened, and not altogether with gratification.
“That sort of thing is very common, Evelyn; I don’t like it. Besides which, it is incredible that the man should remember me so distinctly. We only met for one afternoon, and what chiefly impressed me about him was his unusual dearth of conversation. It forced me to talk, I remember – you know the hateful feeling of being tête-à-tête with any one, and we were tête-à-tête for some little time, in dead silence. No, Evelyn, he has found out one of your weak points, you unsuspicious little goose, not your weakest, but he couldn’t praise up Bonny and Vanda, as he has never seen them. You shouldn’t be so open to flattery.”
“But, indeed, it isn’t flattery,” said Evelyn; “he would be incapable of anything so coarse, and you should have a higher opinion of my taste and perception too. All he says is in the very nicest way, really showing that he saw you to be – well, something out of the common, which you certainly are.”
“All the same,” said Philippa, “I wish you would leave off talking about me while you are here, at all. It is very unwise.”
“I don’t think so,” said Evelyn. “When I’m talking about you to Mr Gresham, I feel quite comfortable! I quite forget about you being here, and think of you as if you were at home. Of course,” looking a little ashamed of herself, “I have said once or twice: ‘How I do wish she were here!’ thinking of you as your proper self, you know.”
Philippa looked very grave. She did not like the idea of any such prevarication on her sister’s part, and was on the point of saying so, till a moment’s reflection reminded her that she had scarcely a right to do so. So she contented herself with remarking quietly that in future she begged her sister to avoid all mention of her name.
“I cannot promise anything of the kind,” said Evelyn. “Mr Gresham has got interested in you now, and I am – ” She stopped short.
“Well, what?” asked Philippa.
Evelyn blushed a little.
“Interested in his interest, I suppose,” she admitted, with a little laugh. “I cannot help wondering,” she went on, “when or where, or how, you and he may meet again. I am sure you would have so much in common,” and it did not require much flight of imagination on the younger sister’s part to see whither Evelyn’s thoughts were tending.
She was both touched and annoyed, the practical effect of this conversation being to make her wish more devoutly than ever that their time at Wyverston were over. Other feelings were strongly influencing her in this wish. For utterly unreasonable as she knew it to be, she was conscious of a curious resentment against Michael Gresham, whom she had not been able to avoid meeting – thanks generally to Solomon now and then, either on the moor or nearer home, for tacitly accepting her present personality, even while in a sense grateful to him for doing so. For that he had guessed some part of her secret, guessed, at least, that she had a secret, she felt perfectly sure, and the consciousness of this irritated her and reacted in curiously contradictory and capricious ways.
Fortunately, as she told herself, though here, too, her inconsistency came in, she had never come across the elder of the two cousins. Evelyn’s dissertations made her doubly careful as regarded him, yet she had a worrying curiosity to see him again, if only she could do so, herself unseen. And but for an additional reason for precaution which reached her a day or two later through her sister, she might have been tempted to some more or less reckless step for the gratification of this same curiosity, absurd and contemptible though she called it to herself.
This new danger lay in the discovery of the fact that should fate lead to the two Greshams laying their heads together about “Miss Raynsworth,” her identity with Michael’s fellow-traveller would be by no means unlikely to suggest itself.
Evelyn was full of her last piece of interesting information concerning Mr Bernard Gresham when she came up to bed a night or two after the conversation already recorded.
“Philippa,” she exclaimed, as soon as they were safely shut in for the night, “I have found out ever so much more about my charming Mr Gresham. His home is in Nethershire – a place called Merle-in-the-Wold – isn’t that a fascinating name? I am sure I have heard of it before. Didn’t you speak of it, by-the-by? I said to him I was sure I had heard it mentioned quite lately, as such a lovely part of the country.”
“Oh, Evelyn,” said Philippa, aghast, “do be careful. Yes, no doubt I spoke of it. I passed that way on my return from Dorriford. But what might not come of it, if you had mentioned me in connection with it?” “Nothing,” says Evelyn, sensibly enough. “He knows my sister was at Dorriford, there is no secret about that, and he probably knows that you would pass Merle-in-the-Wold on your way to Marlby. You are getting morbid and stupid, Phil, about being found out. And no one heard what we were talking about, except – oh, Mr Gresham has all but asked us to pay him a visit, I, of course, as your chaperon, though he would have a married sister and her husband there, too. Phil,” clasping her hands, “we must go. It would be too lovely – we two together.”
“And what about a maid?” said Philippa, grimly.
“Oh, I don’t exactly know; I must plan something when we go home. I am sure I could think of some arrangement if I had a little time. I almost think I will send away the under-nurse – she is a stupid little thing, and though her wages are small, Dorcas says her appetite is enormous. I could get a nice young maid, who would not object to help a little with the children, for a few pounds a year more. I am sure Duke would not mind, and very likely her eating less would make up the difference. You see, I shall have to be planning all about a house in a very few months now, Phil. And if the old people here really take us up, Duke will be so delighted that he will agree to anything.”
She was chattering on, when a word in her former speech recurred to Philippa.
“Wait a moment, Evey,” she said. “You did not finish what you were saying before. You said no one heard what you and Mr Gresham were talking about, ‘except?’ Except whom – one of the Headforts?”
“No – what does it matter? I was only going to say except that stupid Michael Gresham – he was staring at a book, as far as I remember. I don’t suppose he did hear what we were saying. And, do listen, Phil – don’t you see, as I was saying, once Duke has the position – almost, one may say, the recognised position of heir, there will be things that we must do, out of respect for the family even, like my having a – ”
But the latter part of Evelyn’s speech had conveyed little meaning to her sister’s brain, so startled was she by the careless announcement that if any one had overheard what Evelyn and Mr Gresham had been talking about, it had been his cousin.
Had he done so, or had he not? Who could say? And what possibility was there of discovering the facts of the case?
Philippa trembled as she realised the consequences of Michael Gresham’s having taken in the whole bearings of her sister’s chatter. No special power of discernment would be required, nothing but the simplest, most everyday faculty on his part of putting two and two together, to satisfy him as to the identity of Mrs Marmaduke Headfort’s sister and the girl he had travelled with. And her trepidation was by no means selfish; she forgot about the disagreeables which would certainly ensue to herself if the strange little plot were to be disclosed, in realising the injurious effect it would certainly have upon Evelyn and her belongings.
“Oh, Evey!” she began, impulsively, but checked herself before saying more. What right had she to blame Evelyn, whose words would have been perfectly harmless but for her own unnecessary communication to Michael Gresham in the train? Still more, what could be less expedient than now, when the mischief was done, to startle and alarm her sister, and effectually destroy her ease and unconstraint during the few days they must still pass at Wyverston?
“No,” she decided in her own mind. “I must think it over by myself, and I must face it by myself. I have got Evelyn into the danger, and I must get her out of it at all costs. No one must ever be able to blame her in the least.”
But, oh! if she could but think that Michael had not caught the sense of Evelyn’s words – Evelyn called him “stupid;” but that he certainly could not be in the real sense of the word, for she had heard, even in the servants’-hall, allusions to the position he had gained for himself in his profession, but “unobservant?” Could she hope that his perceptions were not very keen? Many clever men were dull and slow in ordinary life, and by all accounts he did not shine in society. But even this flattering unction failed her as she recalled the keen, “interested” expression of his somewhat deep-set eyes, and the half-sarcastic, half-humorous lines of the whole physiognomy that first morning of meeting him in the wood – the unlucky morning when she had forgotten her spectacles, and in the exhilaration of the fresh air and novel surroundings had been far less on her guard than she now was.
All this train of thought passed through her mind far more rapidly than it takes to describe the process, so rapidly that she had made up her mind to silence as regarded Evelyn, before her sister had fully taken in the scant attention which Philippa was bestowing on her words.
“Philippa,” she exclaimed, at last catching sight of the girl’s grave face, “what are you thinking about? You are always very good at cheering me up when I am in low spirits, but I must say that when I am feeling bright and hopeful, and with good reason, you are not very sympathising. Don’t you care to hear about my plans?”
“Of course I do,” said Philippa, compelling herself to speak lightly, “but we have oceans of time before us to talk over everything in, and you have not too much time for a good night; it is getting very late, and if we go on talking you will never get to sleep.”
Evelyn was well-trained by this time; she made but faint resistance to her sister’s ultimatum.
Of the two it was certainly Philippa who found the greater difficulty in getting to sleep that night, and long before the dawn broke, she was wide awake again, revolving in her own mind the whole tormenting question of what to do, and how to do it.
“Or, after all,” said she to herself, “might it not be safer to leave things alone, and do nothing?”