Old Mr. Tredgold

“Do I get into scrapes?” cried Stella, tossing her young head. “Oh, I knew there would be some fun when I saw the midge coming along the drive! Tell me what scrapes I have got into. I hope it is a very bad one to-day to make your hair stand on end.”

“My dear, you know a great deal better than we can tell you what things people are saying,” said Miss Mildmay. “I did not mean to blurt it out the first thing as Jane Shanks has done. It is scarcely civil, I feel—perhaps you would yourself have been moved to give us some explanation which would have satisfied our minds—and to Katherine it is scarcely polite.”

“Oh, please do not mind being polite to me!” cried Katherine, who was in a white heat of resentment and indignation, her hands trembling as she threw down her work. And Stella, that little thing, was completely at her ease! “If there is anything to be said I take my full share with Stella, whatever it may be.” And then there was a little pause, for tea was brought in with a footman’s instinct for the most dramatic moment. Tea singularly changed the face of affairs. Gossip may be exchanged over the teacups; but to come fully prepared for mortal combat, and in the midst of it to be served by your antagonist with a cup of tea, is terribly embarrassing. Katherine, being excited and innocent, would have left it there with its fragrance rising fruitlessly in the midst of the fury melting the assailants’ hearts; but Stella, guilty and clever, saw her advantage. Before she said anything more she sprang up from her chair and took the place which was generally Katherine’s before the little shining table. Mr. Tredgold’s tea was naturally the very best that could be got for money, and had a fragrance which was delightful; and there were muffins in a beautiful little covered silver dish, though October is early in the season for muffins. “I’ll give you some tea first,” cried the girl, “and then you can come down upon me as much as you please.”

And it was so nice after the damp drive, after the jolting of the midge, in the dull and dreary afternoon! It was more than female virtue was equal to, to refuse that deceiving cup. Miss Mildmay said faintly: “None for me, please. I am going on to the–” But before she had ended this assertion she found herself, she knew not how, with a cup in her hand.

“Oh, Stella, my love,” cried Mrs. Shanks, “what tea yours is! And oh, how much sweeter you look, and how much better it is, instead of putting yourself in the way of a set of silly young officers, to sit there smiling at your old friends and pouring out the tea!”

Miss Mildmay gave a little gasp, and made a motion to put down the cup again, but she was not equal to the effort.

“Oh, it is the officers you object to!” cried Stella. “If it was curates perhaps you would like them better. I love the officers! they are so nice and big and silly. To be sure, curates are silly also, but they are not so easy and nice about it.”

Miss Mildmay’s gasp this time was almost like a choke. “Believe me,” she said, “it would be much better to keep clear of young men. You girls now are almost as bad as the American girls, that go about with them everywhere—worse, indeed, for it is permitted there, and it is not permitted here.”

“That makes it all the nicer,” cried Stella; “it’s delightful because it’s wrong. I wonder why the American girls do it when all the fun is gone out of it!”

“Depend upon it,” said Miss Mildmay, “it’s better to have nothing at all to do with young men.”

“But then what is to become of the world?” said the culprit gravely.

“Stella!” cried Katherine.

“It is quite true. The world would come to an end—there would be no more–”

“Stella, Stella!”

“I think you are quite right in what you said, Jane Shanks,” said Miss Mildmay. “It is a case that can’t be passed over. It is–”

“I never said anything of the sort,” cried Mrs. Shanks, alarmed. “I said we must know what Stella had to say for herself–”

“And so you shall,” said Stella, with a toss of her saucy head. “I have as much as ever you like to say for myself. There is nothing I won’t say. Some more muffin, Mrs. Shanks—one little other piece. It is so good, and the first of the season. But this is not enough toasted. Look after the tea, Katherine, while I toast this piece for Miss Mildmay. It is much nicer when it is toasted for you at a nice clear fire.”

“Not any more for me,” cried Miss Mildmay decisively, putting down her cup and pushing away her chair.

“You cannot refuse it when I have toasted it expressly for you. It is just as I know you like it, golden brown and hot! Why, here is another carriage! Take it, take it, dear Miss Mildmay, before some one else comes in. Who can be coming, Kate—this wet day?”

They all looked out eagerly, speechless, at the pair of smoking horses and dark green landau which passed close to the great window in the rain. Miss Mildmay took the muffin mechanically, scarcely knowing what she did, and a great consternation fell upon them all. The midge outside, frightened, drew away clumsily from the door, and the ladies, both assailed and assailants, gazed into each other’s eyes with a shock almost too much for speech.

“Oh, heavens,” breathed Mrs. Shanks, “do you see who it is, you unfortunate children? It is Lady Jane herself—and how are you going to stand up, you little Stella, before Lady Jane?”

“Let her come,” said Stella defiant, yet with a hot flush on her cheeks.

And, indeed, so it happened. Lady Jane did not pause to shake out her skirts, which were always short enough for all circumstances. Almost before the footman, who preceded her with awe, could open the door decorously, she pushed him aside with her own hand to quicken his movements, Lady Jane herself marched squarely into the expectant room.

CHAPTER IX

Lady Jane walked into the room squarely, with her short skirts and her close jacket. She looked as if she were quite ready to walk back the four miles of muddy road between her house and the Cliff. And so indeed she was, though she had no intention of doing so to-day. She came in, pushing aside the footman, as I have said, who was very much frightened of Lady Jane. When she saw the dark figures of Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay sitting against the large light of the window, she uttered a suppressed sound of discontent. It might be translated by an “Oh,” or it might be translated, as we so often do as the symbol of a sound, by a “Humph.” At all events, it was a sound which expressed annoyance. “You here!” it seemed to say; but Lady Jane afterwards shook hands with them very civilly, it need not be said. For the two old cats were very respectable members of society, and not to be badly treated even by Lady Jane.

“That was your funny little carriage, I suppose,” she said, when she had seated herself, “stopping the way.”

“Was it stopping the way?” cried Mrs. Shanks, “the midge? I am astonished at Mr. Perkins. We always give him the most careful instructions; but if he had found one of the servants to gossip with, he is a man who forgets everything one may say.”

“I can’t undertake what his motives were, but he was in the way, blocking up the doors,” said Lady Jane; “all the more astonishing to my men and my horses, as they were brought out, much against their will, on the full understanding that nobody else would be out on such a day.”

“It is a long way to Steephill,” said Miss Mildmay, “so that we could not possibly have known Lady Jane’s intentions, could we, Jane Shanks? or else we might have taken care not to get into her way.”

“Oh, the public roads are free to every one,” said Lady Jane, dismissing the subject. “What rainy weather we have had, to be sure! Of course you are all interested in that bazaar; if it goes on like this you will have no one, not a soul to buy; and all the expense of the decorations and so forth on our hands.”

“Oh, the officers will come over from Newport,” said Miss Mildmay; “anything is better than nothing. Whatever has a show of amusement will attract the officers, and that will make the young ladies happy, so that it will not be thrown away.”

“What a Christian you are!” said Lady Jane. “You mean it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. I have several cousins in the garrison, but I don’t think I should care so much for their amusement as all that.”

“Was there ever a place,” said Mrs. Shanks, with a certain tone of humble admiration, which grated dreadfully upon her companion, “in which you had not a number of cousins, Lady Jane? They say the Scotch are the great people for having relatives everywhere, and my poor husband was a Scotchman; but I’m sure he had not half so many as you.”

Lady Jane answered curtly with a nod of her head and went on. “The rain is spoiling everything,” she said. “The men, of course, go out in spite of it when they can, but they have no pleasure in their work, and to have a shooting party on one’s hands in bad weather is a hard task. They look at you as if it were your fault, as if you could order good weather as easily as you can order luncheon for them at the cover side.”

“Dear me, that is not at all fair, is it, Ruth Mildmay? In my poor husband’s lifetime, when we used to take a shooting regularly, I always said to his friends, ‘Now, don’t look reproachfully at me if it’s bad weather. We can’t guarantee the weather. You ought to get so many brace if you have good luck. We’ll answer for that.’”

“You were a bold woman,” said Lady Jane; “so many brace without knowing if they could fire a gun or not! That’s a rash promise. Sir John is not so bold as that, I can tell you. He says, ‘There’s a bird or two about if you can hit ’em.’ Katherine, you may as well let me see those things of yours for my stall. It will amuse me a little this wet day.”

“They are all upstairs, Lady Jane.”

“Well, I’ll go upstairs. Oh, don’t let me take you away from your visitors. Stella, you can come with me and show them; not that I suppose you know anything about them.”

“Not the least in the world,” said Stella very clearly. Her face, so delicately tinted usually, and at present paler than ordinary, was crimson, and her attitude one of battle. She could propitiate and play with the old cats, but she dare not either cajole or defy Lady Jane.

“Then Katherine can come, and I can enjoy the pleasure of conversation with you after. Shall I find you still here,” said Lady Jane, holding out her hand graciously to the other ladies, “when I come downstairs again?”

“Oh, we must be going–”

Mrs. Shanks was interrupted by Miss Mildmay’s precise tones. “Probably you will find me here, Lady Jane; and I am sure it will be a mutual pleasure to continue the conversation which–”

“Then I needn’t say good-bye,” said the great lady calmly, taking Katherine by the arm and pushing the girl before her. Stella stood with her shoulders against the mantel-piece, very red, watching them as they disappeared. She gave the others an angry look of appeal as the door closed upon the more important visitor.

“Oh, I wish you’d take me away with you in the midge!” she cried.

“Ah, Stella,” cried Mrs. Shanks, shaking her head, “the times I have heard you making your fun of the midge! But in a time of trouble one finds out who are one’s real friends.”

Miss Mildmay was softened too, but she was not yet disposed to give in. She had not been able to eat that special muffin which Stella had re-toasted for her. Lady Jane, in declining tea curtly with a wave of her hands, had made the tea-drinkers uncomfortable, and especially had arrested the eating of muffins, which it is difficult to consume with dignity unless you have the sympathy of your audience. It was cold now, quite cold and unappetizing. It lay in its little plate with the air of a thing rejected. And Miss Mildmay felt it was not consistent with her position to ask even for half a cup of hot tea.

“It has to be seen,” she said stiffly, “what friends will respond to the appeal; everybody is not at the disposal of the erring person when and how she pleases. I must draw a line–”

“What do you say I have done, then?” cried Stella, flushing with lively wrath. “Do you think I went out in that boat on purpose to be drowned or catch my death? Do you think I wanted to be ill and sea-sick and make an exhibition of myself before two men? Do you think I wanted them to see me ill? Goodness!” cried Stella, overcome at once by the recollection and the image, “could you like a man—especially if he was by way of admiring you, and talking nonsense to you and all that—to see you ill at sea? If you can believe that you can believe anything, and there is no more for me to say.”

The force of this argument was such that Miss Mildmay was quite startled out of her usual composure and reserve. She stared at Stella for a moment with wide-opened eyes.

“I did not think of that,” she said in a tone of sudden conviction. “There is truth in what you say—certainly there is truth in what you say.”