Hathercourt

“They have such nice faces.”

“And what I know of the family is not to their advantage,” pursued Mr Cheviott, without noticing the interruption. “None of the Withenden people speak cordially of them, or indeed seem to know anything about them.”

“And you call that to their disadvantage, Laurence!” exclaimed Alys – “you who have so often said what a set of snobs the Withenden people are. Of course it is very easy to see why the Westerns are disliked; they won’t be patronised by the county people, and they are too refined for the Withenden set, and so they keep to themselves, and the girls’ beauty makes everybody jealous of them.”

She looked up in her brother’s face triumphantly, feeling that she had the best of it, and so, too, in his heart, felt Mr Cheviott. But he could not afford to own himself vanquished, and took refuge in being aggrieved.

“Very well, Alys,” he said, coldly, “I cannot argue with you; you will be of age in three years, and then you can choose your own friends, but while you are under my guardianship, I can but direct you to the best of my judgment, however you may dislike it.”

Alys’s eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Laurence, don’t speak to me like that; I am so unlucky to-day. I did not – indeed I did not mean to vex you; I should never want to go against your wishes —never, not if I live to be a hundred instead of twenty-one. Laurence, do forgive me!”

And Laurence smiled and “forgave,” though wishing she were convinced as well as submissive, for somewhere down in the secret recesses of his consciousness, there lurked a misgiving which shrank from boldly facing daylight as to whether his arguments had altogether succeeded in convincing himself.

“I am very sorry to hear of Basil Brooke being so ill,” he said by way of changing the conversation.

“Is that one of Mrs Brabazon’s nephews?”

“Yes, the elder; they have come to Paris to try some new doctor, but it is no use. I thought so when he first got ill; and now what his aunt says shows it is true. Poor fellow!”

“Have you known him long? I don’t think I ever heard you speak of him before,” said Alys.

“He was more a friend of Arthur’s than mine; they were in the same regiment. But here we are at Mrs Feston’s.”

On the whole, Alys enjoyed these few last days in Paris much more than the weeks which had preceded them. She was touched by her brother’s evident anxiety that she should do so. Never had she known him more indulgent and considerate, but yet he was less cheerful than usual – at times unmistakably anxious and uneasy. There came no more letters from Captain Beverley, but Alys was not sorry.

“It was something in that letter of Arthur’s that annoyed Laurence so the other day,” she thought to herself; “and fond as I am of Arthur, I couldn’t let him or any one come between Laurence and me.”

And she was not quite sure if she felt pleased or the reverse when her brother told her that, in all probability Captain Beverley would be their guest almost as soon as they reached Romary.

“You haven’t written to tell him when we are going home, have you, Alys?”

Alys looked up from her letter to Miss Winstanley in surprise at the inquiry.

“I?” she said; “oh dear, no. I leave all that to you of course. I have not answered Arthur’s letter at all; there seems to have been so much to do this last day or two.”

Her brother seemed pleased and yet not pleased.

“It is just as well. I don’t think I shall tell him either. We’ll take him by surprise – drive over to see him in his bachelor quarters at the farm-house the day after we get home, eh?”

“Oh, yes, do,” exclaimed Alys, eagerly. “We’ll say we have come to luncheon! What fun it will be; for Arthur has about as much notion of housekeeping as the man in the moon, and he will look so foolish if he has to tell us he has nothing in the house but eggs!”

“You don’t suppose he has been living on nothing but eggs all this time, do you?”

“He may have had a chop now and then for a change,” observed Alys; “but from what he said in his letter, I don’t fancy he has had to depend much on himself. He seems to have been a great deal with his friends at the Rectory.”

There was intention in the allusion. Alys stole a look at her brother’s face to see if the effect was what she half anticipated. Yes; the amusement had all died put of his expression, to be replaced by annoyance and anxiety. Alys’s conscience smote her for trying experiments at the cost of her brother’s equanimity.

“Poor Laurence!” she reflected. “I wish he would not worry himself so much about other people’s affairs. Arthur is quite able to take care of himself. But evidently it is about him and the Westerns that Laurence is in such a state of mind. I really do wonder why he should care so much.”

And the next morning the Cheviotts left Paris.

Chapter Eight

Plans

“Se’l sol mi splende, non curo la luna.”

    Italian Proverb.

“Man proposes, but the weather interposes,” is a travesty of the well-known old saying, which few people would dispute the truth of. Directly the delay in the Cheviotts’ return home was traceable to other agencies, but indirectly the weather was at the bottom of it after all. The journey to London was accomplished without let or hindrance by the way; the let and the hindrance met the brother and sister on their arrival at Miss Winstanley’s house, where they were to spend the night, in the shape of a letter for one thing, and of a bad sore throat of their hostess for another. And all that was wrong was the fault of the weather! Miss Winstanley had caught cold through getting her feet wet the Sunday before, when the morning had promised well and turned out a base deceiver by noon; and the letter was from the housekeeper at Romary, written in abject distress at the prospect of her master and mistress’s return home sooner than she had expected them. More than distress, indeed; the letter closed an absolute entreaty that they would not come for ten days or so. It was “a terrible upset with the pipes,” she wrote, that was the cause of her difficulty – an upset caused by a complete overhauling of these mysterious modern inventions of household torture, the necessity for which had been revealed by some days of unusually heavy rains, by which “the pipes” had been tested and found wanting, and the Withenden plumbers being no exception to their class, long celebrated as the most civil and procrastinating of “work-people,” had already exceeded by several days the date at which the business was to have been concluded.

“Pipes is things as can’t be hurried,” wrote Mrs Golding, pathetically, “and, as everybody knows, it’s easy getting work-people into a house to getting them out again; but what with the pipes and the men, the house is in that state I cannot take upon myself to say what my feelings would be for you and Miss Alys to see it.”

Now Mrs Golding was an excellent servant; she had been Alys’s nurse, and though her grammar was far from irreproachable, and her general appearance not more than respectable and old-fashioned, she was thoroughly well qualified for the somewhat onerous post to which, on her master’s accession to Romary, he had at once promoted her. But she had two faults – she had feelings and she had nerves.

The letter came at breakfast-time. Alys and her brother were by themselves, Miss Winstanley’s sore throat preventing her coming down as early as usual. Mr Cheviott read it, and tossed it across the table to his sister.

“So provoking!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Alys, “it is tiresome just when you were so particularly anxious to go home. But I see no help for it; when nurse takes to her ‘feelings,’ what can we do? No doubt the house is in a terrible mess, and if we persisted in going down at once, I really believe she would have a fit. If we wait a few days, as she suggests, you may trust her to have everything ready for us; and indeed, Laurence, I was thinking just before nurse’s letter came that it seemed hardly kind of me to go away when aunt is ill and all alone. She will be able to come with us to Romary in a week, she says, if we can wait till then.”

Mr Cheviott did not at once answer.

“It is unlucky,” he said at last; “but, as far as I am concerned, I must not put off going home, and Mrs Golding’s feelings must just make the best of it. But you had better stay here a week or so, Alys, I see that, so you can tell my aunt so.”

“Thank you,” said Alys; “but I wish you could stay too.”

But “No, it is really impossible,” was her brother’s reply, and soon after he went out.

Alys did not see him again till about an hour before dinner-time.

“Is my aunt up yet?” he inquired, as he came in, and even in the tone with which he uttered the two or three words she could perceive a cheerfulness which had not been his in the morning.

“No,” she replied, “but she says she will come into the drawing-room after dinner. She is much better.”

“Ah, well, then, if I am not to see her till after dinner, you must tell her from me that I have taken the liberty of inviting a friend to dinner in her name. Fancy, Alys, almost the first person I ran against this morning was Arthur. He only came up to town yesterday for a few days to settle something about this new farm-house that his head’s running upon – so lucky we met!”

“Yes, very. I shall be so glad to see him,” said Alys, heartily. “But what a pity, Laurence, that you have to go just as he has come. It would have been so nice for all of us to go home together.”

Mr Cheviott hesitated.

“I am not, after all, perfectly certain that I shall go down to Romary quite so soon as I said. Part – in fact, the chief part – of my business was with Arthur, and if he stays in town a few days too, we may all go down to Romary together, as you wish.”

“That’s very nice of you, Laurence. I really think my training is beginning to do you good. Aunt, of course, will be delighted to see Arthur, but I will go and tell her about it now.”

She was leaving the room when her brother called her back. “Remember,” he said, “I haven’t promised,” but Alys laughed and shook her head, and ran off.