Lettice

“I am very sorry. I didn’t mean it. That’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s true,” said Arthur penitently.

“And I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean what it sounded like,” said Lettice. “I know it has been worse for you than for any of us,” she went on, looking up in Arthur’s face with her tearful eyes.

Lettice was one of the few people in the world who seldom show to greater advantage than when in tears. Her eyes were not so fine as Nina’s and Arthur’s soft brown ones; they were grey – good, sensible, “well-opened” eyes, but in a general way with a want of depth and tenderness in them. And this want the tears supplied. Her recent sorrow, too, had, as it were, etherealised and softened her whole face and its expression, whose real beauty was often marred by a certain hardness which seemed to render square and angular the outlines intended by nature to be curved and graceful. The thought struck Nina as her glance fell upon her.

“How very sweet and lovely Lettice looks just at this moment.”

And the thought, though not in quite the same form, struck another person who just at that moment entered the room.

He had never seen her before.

“What a lovely girl! Can that be Lettice? I have always heard that Nina was the beauty, but this girl is too dark to be Nina,” were the reflections that rushed through his mind in far less time than it takes to tell them. And in a moment his ideas were confirmed, for another girl, whose face had been completely hidden, turned at the slight sound of his approach, and by her exceedingly fair hair and complexion he recognised the Nina who had been described to him. But his eyes turned quickly from her to her sister.

“I beg your pardon a thousand times,” he said, his own face colouring a little as he spoke.

“I rang, but as no one answered, and as the front door was open, I ventured to come in. You know who I am,” – for all the three young people had started to their feet, too surprised as yet to find their voices. “I am Godfrey – Godfrey Auriol, your cousin, I hope I may call myself.”

By this time Lettice and the others had recovered their wits. Lettice came a step or two forward and held out her hand.

“Our cousin,” she repeated; “yes, certainly, Mr Auriol, we should be very sorry not to count you our cousin – you who are, I may say, our only relation;” and at these words an expression crossed her face which Godfrey saw but did not understand. But it was gone before it had time to settle there, or to spoil the first pleasing impression which he had received.

“I was so grieved,” he went on, while he shook hands with them all, “so very grieved that I could not be in time; that it was utterly impossible for me to come over in time for – ” He stopped short, but they all knew what he meant.

Lettice’s lips quivered.

“I wish you could have come,” she said softly, and again the expression that so embellished it stole over her face. “Indeed, that was really the only reason for your coming so far at all; you will not find much to see to, I think,” and she smiled a little, so that Mr Auriol felt puzzled. Her tone was too gentle for him to suspect any assertion of independence to be intended. “But we all knew you could not help it,” she added.

“You are always very busy, are you not?” said Nina, speaking for the first time.

“Pretty well,” said Godfrey, smiling. “I lost no time on the journey, and I was very glad to get off a day sooner than I had expected. I came straight here from the station, trusting to you to tell me what hotel I had better go to.”

“You came straight from the station? Then you’ve had nothing to eat. How thoughtless of us!” exclaimed Lettice, and, looking round, she saw that Nina had already disappeared.

“There is an hotel close by,” said Arthur. “I’ll go round with you if you like, as soon as you’ve had some dinner.”

“Thank you,” said Mr Auriol. “I’m very sorry to give you so much trouble, but I wanted to look you up at once. I can only stay so very short a time: I must be back in England within the week.”

“How can you talk of giving us trouble?” said Arthur; “it is you who are giving yourself a great deal for us;” and he glanced at Lettice as if to hint to her that she should endorse his speech. But she said nothing; only later in the evening, when their visitor was just about leaving, she said to him in a quiet but somewhat studied voice —

“I hope you will be able to see something of the neighbourhood while you are here. There are so many pretty excursions, and in a week one can do a good deal. Arthur himself has not seen much; he has only been three weeks with us all the months we have been here. And he would enjoy going about with you.”

Godfrey Auriol was not deficient in perception, still less in quick resolution when he saw occasion for it. He hesitated, but for half a second only, before he replied.

“Yes,” he said calmly, “it would be very pleasant were it feasible. But you know, Miss Morison, it is not for pleasure I have come all this way. There is a great deal of business to be seen to, and for some of it I must have your attention, though I would gladly spare you all trouble if I could. At what hour to-morrow may I come? It is no use putting off what has to be done, however painful.”

Lettice’s colour rose high – all over her face; she felt the mortification doubly, since it was in the presence of her younger sister and brother. But she did her best not to show what she felt, and to any one not knowing her well, her emotion might have passed for what was only natural and almost seemly under the circumstances. And even in the tone of her voice as she answered, it required a nice and skilled observer to detect the latent armour of resistance in which she was determined to clothe herself. Unfortunately for her, her three companions, the two younger ones thanks to their intimate knowledge of her peculiarities, the third by dint of unusual and cultivated power of discrimination, which she herself had raised to suspicion, were not deceived by her words, in themselves perfectly unexceptionable.

“At any hour you like,” she said. “Of course it is best that we should know all about our money, though I really do know already all that is practically necessary. But these kind of formalities must be gone through, I suppose. So I can be ready at any hour you like. Will ten o’clock do?”

“Perfectly, if it will suit you all?” said Mr Auriol, glancing inquiringly at Nina and Arthur. “I shall want you all three. The two little ones, of course, it would be absurd to talk to on such matters; but you three are much in the same position. You are all minors. Besides, it is not only about money matters I want to speak to you.”

These last two or three sentences were bitter pills for Lettice to swallow. Arthur and Nina had the consideration not to look at her. Once she opened her lips as if about to speak, but thought better of it and said nothing.

“I can put all that right at the proper time,” she reflected. “No use beginning about it now. But it is really too absurd, Nina and Arthur counted on a par with me!”

And it did seem so very absurd that she felt she could afford to smile at it, and with this consideration her calm returned. So that her brother and sister, and even Mr Auriol himself, were surprised, and somewhat impressed, by the perfectly unruffled tone in which she said pleasantly —

“Very well, then; to-morrow morning at ten o’clock we shall all be ready.”

“She must be extremely sweet-tempered,” thought Godfrey, when Arthur, having shown him to his hotel, had left him alone for the night.

“I am afraid I was rather rough to her. Her little assumption of independence was really only touching, poor child,” he went on to reflect, little dreaming, deluded man, of what was before him! “And Nina is very pretty and very attractive – I don’t wonder at Dexter – though she is not to be compared with Lettice for real beauty of feature and expression.”

Few words passed between the sisters after their guest had left them. When Arthur came in he found Lettice sitting alone. Nina had gone to bed, and she too was tired and meant to follow her at once.

“And don’t you like him?” Arthur could not help saying, as he kissed his sister for good night.

“Like him – whom?” said Lettice, as if awaking from a brown study. “Mr Auriol? Oh yes, I like him very well. He is much what I expected;” and Arthur said no more.

Notwithstanding his long journey of the preceding days, Mr Auriol was awake and up betimes the following morning. It was several years since he had been out of his own country, and the sights and sounds about him struck him almost as freshly as if he saw and heard them for the first time. The early morning sunshine was softer and less monotonous than the midday effulgence which Lettice had complained of, and seemed to add vividness without glare to every detail of the picturesque scene on which his windows looked out. For it was market-day at Esparto, and the border-land town was a meeting-place for the denizens of many widely varying districts.

There were the country people from the near neighbourhood. The women, plain-looking save for their brilliant eyes, weather-beaten and prematurely aged through hard work and exposure, their brown leather-like skin showing harder and browner from the contrast with the light-coloured silk kerchiefs skilfully knotted round their heads, yet as a rule seemingly contented and cheerful enough as they chattered and chaffered round the great ancient fountain, the centre of the “Place.” The men, far less numerous and far less energetic, handsome fellows many of them, though less so than the gaudily attired Spanish mountaineers lured to Esparto by the work sometimes to be had there in plenty, while yet looking as if labour or exertion of any kind was completely beneath their lordly selves. And here and there, recognisable at once by those acquainted with their peculiar type, Basques, descendants of that mysterious race whose origin and language have so long puzzled the learned in such subjects. Nor were there wanting specimens of still more remote nationalities. Two or three negro servants were bargaining and purchasing for their masters; and some little fair-haired English children, who had coaxed their maids to get up extra early before it was hot, to see the fun and bustle in the market-place; while a Russian nurse, gorgeous in scarlet and gold embroidery, indolently surveyed the scene from a balcony opposite.

It was picturesque in the extreme, and amusing. But after a while, staring out of the window being a diversion he most rarely indulged in, Mr Auriol tired of it, and after his modest breakfast of coffee and a roll, finding it was barely nine o’clock, he strolled out for a walk, though his ideas were of the vaguest as to what direction he should take.

“I have nearly an hour before they will expect me at the Villa Martine,” he said to himself. “I have no wish to rub Mistress Lettice the wrong way by turning up too soon. It strikes me she would look upon that as almost worse than being too late. Where shall I go?”

He was turning the corner of the street, or Place, rather, as he asked himself this question, and before he had time to answer it he almost knocked against a young man who was hurrying in his direction.

“Pardon,” was on the lips of both, when both exchanged it for a more friendly greeting.

“Dexter!” – “Auriol!” they respectively exclaimed, and then the new-comer added —

“I was just going to the hotel to ask if you had come, or were coming. Arthur Morison told me some days ago that you were expected. I met him accidentally.”

“They did not expect me till to-day, and I came yesterday, so there has not been time for them to tell you. You see them sometimes, do you not?”

“You mean, do I visit them? Scarcely. I used to go there sometimes before Mrs Morison got so very ill. She was always kindness and cordiality itself to me. You know I had got to know the second Miss Morison very well a year ago in England, when she was staying with some neighbours of ours.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Mr Auriol. But he spoke absently.

“And it is all that horrid family feud. When they – at least I don’t know why I should say ‘they;’ I believe it is only Lettice – found out my connections, the difference was most marked, though before then they had been quite friendly, and I had hoped to introduce them and my sister to each other. Those sorts of things are really too bad, carrying them down to the younger generation.”

Godfrey bent his head in acquiescence, but did not speak.

“Do you,” Philip went on again after a moment’s pause, and with some little embarrassment – “do you think her as pretty as you had been told?”

“Far more so. ‘Pretty!’ – pretty is not at all the word for her. I think her distinctly beautiful,” Mr Auriol replied, with a sort of burst of enthusiasm which somehow seemed rather to disconcert Philip.