Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

'She 's every one's niece, I think,' replied Jane.

'Rather rough luck on Miss Sherard,' said Peter.

'It's a fact, though,' Jane went on. 'Really and truly, Aunt Mary, each of her relations married about ten times, and then the next generation married each other. And they send problems to the puzzle column of newspapers to find out how they are related to each other. Kitty's father is his own great-grandmother, or something complicated of that sort!'

'It must give one an immense respect for oneself,' said Peter, 'to discover such a relationship. One would always be taking care of oneself, and not allowing one's feet to get wet, and thinking what one owed to one's position, and whether one were being treated with respect.'

'There are fillets of beef coming, and ducks,' interpolated Miss Abingdon. 'I let you know this, Peter, as Jane seems to have erased our only menu. What will Sir Nigel have, do you think?' she went on. 'I don't think he is at all well; he was reading his Bible in bed, and I 'm not sure that we ought not to send for some of his people.'

'Poor Toffy never had any people,' said Peter. 'They were all just as unlucky as he is, and most of them died violent deaths when they were young; and one of them, I know, founded some sort of queer religion, so perhaps Toffy takes after him in his Biblical researches.'

At this moment Sir Nigel Christopherson walked into the room looking as white as any ghost.

'Toffy, you lunatic!' said Peter, 'why can't you lie still?'

Sir Nigel apologized for being late and declined to have anything brought back for him.

'How are the Amalekites and Hittites and Girgashites?' said Peter, making room for his friend at the table.

'I don't like the Bible joked about,' said Miss Abingdon severely.

'Toffy should have been a parson,' said Peter; 'even at Eton he was always wondering why Cain was afraid that all men should kill him when he had only a father and mother and perhaps two or three little brothers and sisters in the world. And he used to fret himself into a fever wondering if the sun really stood still in Ajalon and what Selah meant in the Psalms.'

'I think,' said Miss Abingdon, 'that such discussions are best left for Sundays.'

'We will go on with our dance-list,' said Jane; 'Mrs. Wrottesley can let us have several rooms at the vicarage, or, if the worst comes to the worst, we might have tents in the garden.'

'The canon is always so good-natured!' said Miss Abingdon, who believed that a man's house belonged to himself, and whose mind always reverted with a sense of peaceful orthodoxy to thoughts of the vicar. She decided mentally that he must not be asked to receive any of the guests for the Bowshott ball, believing that visitors must always be more or less disturbing to a host. She accepted as part of her gentle creed that a man's writing-table must never be disturbed, that his dinner must never be kept waiting, and that his special armchair must not be appropriated by any one else. Canon Wrottesley always read the morning paper before any other person in the house had seen it, and then imparted pieces of intelligence to his relations with a certain air of self-congratulation, as though conveying news which could only possibly be known to himself; and it was in this way that Miss Abingdon loved to have the items of interest retailed to her with instructive comments upon politics.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Wrottesley had a theory, which she never asked nor expected any one to share with her, that most men's mental development ceased at the age of twelve years. She had watched five sons grow up with, in their young boyhood, the hardly concealed conviction that each one of them was destined to be a genius, and that each one would make his mark in the world. But her sons, as they attained to the fatal age of twelve years, seemed predestined to disappoint their mother's hopes. Most of the men whom she knew, and whom her sons brought to the house, were delightful boys, whatever their ages might be. She liked them, but she wished sometimes that it were possible to meet a man with a mature mind. The male interest, she determined, after giving much study to the subject, centred almost too exclusively round playing with a ball. She had heard men extolled as grand cricketers and magnificent putters with an enthusiasm which could hardly have been greater if they had saved their country or had died for a cause. And she admitted to herself that the mind of a woman was deficient when she failed to do justice to these performances.

Her reflections on these and kindred subjects this morning had been induced by hearing of the determination of Canon Wrottesley to light the rubbish-heap in the garden. The rubbish-heap had grown high and Canon Wrottesley had determined to put a match to it. Mrs. Wrottesley had been married too long not to know that whatever at the moment engaged her husband's mind required an audience. Her sons also had expected her to watch and applaud them did they in infancy so much as jump a small ditch, and she knew that it was the maternal duty, and admitted, also, that it was the maternal pleasure to watch and applaud until such time as the several wives of her five sons should take her place.

The whole of the vicarage household was in requisition as soon as their reverend master had conceived the happy notion of firing the canonical rubbish-heap in the far corner of the kitchen garden. Canon Wrottesley engaged the attention of every one with a frank belief in his own powers as an organiser. He found himself almost regretting that he could not make the matter an occasion for a little gathering of friends. He loved society, especially ladies' society, and he purposely kept various small objects about his own room, which—to use his own expression—might make a little bit of fun. There was a mask half concealed behind a screen, which, if it did not provoke a start and a scream from some fair visitor, had attention drawn to it by the playful question, 'Who is that behind you?' There was a funny pair of spectacles on the mantelshelf, which Canon Wrottesley would playfully place upon his handsome nose, and to small visitors he would accompany the action by a frolicsome 'wowf-wowf.' He loved juvenile parties when he could wear a coloured paper cap on his head or tie a paper apron round his waist, and probably his canonry had come to him through what he himself called his social gifts rather than by his reputation as a minister of religion. Perhaps he was at his best at a christening party; he had won much affection from his parishioners by his felicitous remarks upon these occasions. When the gravity of the christening of the infant was over Canon Wrottesley always deliberately relaxed. He chaffed the proud father, told the mother that the baby was the finest in the parish, and wanted to know whose health he was to drink where every one appeared so blooming.

'Now, mamma,' the canon said busily, 'let us have plenty of nice dry wood to start the blaze, and then you must come down to the field and watch us put a match to the pile. Cyprian, my boy, where are the old newspapers kept? Fetch them, like a good son, and then you shall carry a little camp-stool down for mamma to sit upon. Now my coat,'—this to his butler—'and, Cyprian, tell Mary to find papa's old gloves.'

Mrs. Wrottesley left her morning's work to go to the meadow, and Canon Wrottesley looked down the road once or twice to see if by a happy chance some friend or neighbour might be passing to whom he could proclaim his boyish jaunt. The 'Well I never, sir,' even of a rural parishioner did in some sort minister to his vanity. An audience was a necessity to him. He regretted that his cloth forbade him to indulge in private theatricals, but he encouraged Shakespearean readings and often 'dressed up to please the children.' Sometimes of an evening he would perform upon the piano, indulging in a series of broken chords which he called improvisation, and upon these occasions he felt that he was a kind and thoughtful master when he set the drawing-room door open so that the servants might hear; and as his servants thought so too it was all eminently satisfactory.

This morning, the beauty of the weather having inspired him to the part of a schoolboy, he avoided a gate and leaped a small fence into the meadow, and he waged boyish fun upon grave-faced Cyprian, who longed to be fishing. He greeted his two gardeners with an air of holiday, and, having waved his stick to them, he called out some hearty remarks about the weather.

Alas! when the corner of the meadow was reached it was found that the rubbish-heap had already been fired, and nothing of it was left but the smouldering ashes. The canon wondered why people could not leave things alone, and was inclined to blame mamma. She surely might have known how much he enjoyed this sort of thing, and have asked the gardeners to leave it to him.

His boyishness, however, could hardly be repressed this morning; and, speaking to his fourteen-year-old son as though his age might be five or six summers, he clapped him on the back and bade him 'Never mind; we will go for a merry jaunt to the ruins instead, and have a regular big affair, and you shall boil a kettle, and we 'll have tea.—What do you say, mamma?' Mrs. Wrottesley replied with the enthusiasm that was expected of her, and the canon, with a 'here we are, and here we go' sort of jollity, conducted her indoors to write notes of invitation to friends to join the picnic. The canon dictated the notes himself, and generally finished with a playful word or two suitable to each recipient; when he failed at first to hit off the perfectly happy phrase Mrs. Wrottesley had to write the note over again.

Foiled of his morning's occupation the canon walked up to Bowshott himself with Mrs. Ogilvie's card of invitation. Mrs. Ogilvie frankly and without a moment's hesitation refused to be one of the party; a picnic was in her eyes one of those barbarous, not to say indecorous things which she classed with bathing in the open sea or trying on a hat in a shop. Why should one sit on the ground and eat indifferent food out of one's lap? Mrs. Ogilvie was too sorry, but it was impossible; she had friends coming, or letters to write, or something—at any rate she was quite sure she was engaged. Mrs. Ogilvie's manner always became doubly polite and charming when she ignored the customary formalities of society or purposely travestied them. No one could infringe social conventions with more perfect good manners. Peter would go, of course, she said. Peter enjoyed eating luncheon in snatches while he hopped about and waited on people; but Mrs. Ogilvie preferred her meals at home.

The canon was disappointed; he loved getting the right people together, and he knew that Mrs. Ogilvie's rare appearance in the neighbourhood always made her a centre of interest at a party. He protested playfully against her decision until a certain lifting of Mrs. Ogilvie's eyebrows made his desire for her presence sound importunate, and put an end to his hospitable pleadings.

'A charming woman,' protested the canon to himself as he walked down the long avenue of Spanish chestnuts. 'A charming woman,' he repeated, for one part of Canon Wrottesley always felt snubbed when he had been talking to Mrs. Ogilvie, while the part of him called the man of the world recognized something in her which this country neighbourhood could not produce. His boyishness was quenched for a moment, but it revived at the sight of Peter riding up to the gates of the park. An invitation to the proposed merry-making was given to Peter, who was ever so much obliged, but thought Canon Wrottesley had forgotten that the 24th was the day of the races.

The Sedgwick Races, although perhaps not important from a sportsman's point of view, were attended by many visitors, and had been so long established and so generally approved by every one in the county that they had come to have a certain local status. They were patronized by clergy and laity alike, to whom the occasion was a sort of yearly picnic. The racecourse itself was not large, but its surroundings were in every way attractive. The short moorland grass made excellent going for the horses, and a wood of beech trees, quite close to the modest grand stand, had by right of prescription been tacitly assigned to various county families who brought their lunches and teas there, and whose long trestle tables, numbered and allotted by the stewards of the course, were a favourite meeting-place for the whole neighbourhood. Canon Wrottesley could hardly pardon himself for having forgotten the date of such a notable occasion, and, alluding to himself as a 'winged messenger,' he hastened to pay a number of morning calls such as he enjoyed, and to cancel his invitation for a picnic in favour of lunch or tea at the racecourse. Peter said that he was going to drive the coach over, and hoped that Canon Wrottesley would perch there when he felt so disposed, and that his mother, not being inclined to spend the whole day at Sedgwick, would join them at tea-time. Miss Abingdon and Jane were going to be kind enough to take her place and act as hostesses at lunch.

Canon Wrottesley felt that he could not do better than see Miss Abingdon in person and explain the change of plans, and he arrived, in his friendly way, just as she and some guests who were staying with her were going in to luncheon.

Miss Abingdon occasionally reminded herself that she had not met the vicar until long after his marriage, and she still more frequently assured herself that her feeling for him was one of pure admiration untouched by sentiment such as would have been foolish at her age, and at any age would have been wrong. But there were times like the present—when the canon came in, unasked, in a friendly way, and hung up his clerical hat in the hall—which, without going so far as to give the matter a personal bearing, made it easy for Miss Abingdon to understand why women married. She ordered another place to be laid, and asked him to say grace almost with a feeling of proprietorship; and she ordered up the particular brand of claret which the canon had more than once assured her would be all the better for being drunk.

Jane came in presently from her morning ride, handsome and charming in a dark habit and a bowler hat; and Toffy appeared looking white and thin, and protesting that he was perfectly well; and Kitty Sherard came in late, as usual, and hoped that something had been kept hot for her.

Kitty Sherard was a decorative young woman, with a face like one of Greuze's pictures and a passion for wearing rose-colour. Her father was that rather famous personage, Lord Sherard, one of the last of the dandies, and probably one of the few men in England in the present day who had fought a duel. He was still thought irresistible by women, and perhaps the only sincere love of his life was that for his daughter Kitty, to whom he told his most risqué stories, and whom he found better company than any one else in the world.

Miss Sherard was in a wilful mood this morning—a mood which, let it be said at once, was one to which she was often subject, but it had been more than usually apparent in her for the last few days. She began by hoping, in the politest way, after she had sat about five minutes at the luncheon-table, that Miss Abingdon did not mind the window being opened, although it was a well-known fact that Miss Abingdon held the old-fashioned theory that only the furniture should enjoy fresh air, and that windows should be opened when rooms were unoccupied. So many people rose to do Miss Sherard's bidding that Miss Abingdon, of course, found it quite hopeless to try to assert herself. Kitty, further, had a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork, after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though she had finished some aldermanic feast. She accepted a glass of Miss Abingdon's very special claret and never even touched it; and later, in one of the pauses of her elaborate trifling at luncheon, she told a funny story which made every one laugh, and caused even Canon Wrottesley to attempt to conceal the fact that he saw the point of the story.

The worst of it was that Toffy encouraged her in everything she said and did. These two had met in London this year, and had stayed at the same house for Ascot, and it must be admitted by a faithful historian that in her own particular wilful and provoking way Kitty had flirted outrageously with Toffy. To-day she offered to cut up his food for him because his right hand was still in a sling; and when Miss Abingdon suggested, with deliberate emphasis in her voice, that a footman should do it for him, Kitty pretended that the wounded man could not possibly feed himself, and gave him pineapple to eat on the end of her fork.

When she sat in the veranda drinking coffee after lunch, she showed Canon Wrottesley how to blow wedding-rings with the smoke of her own favourite cigarettes; and she talked to him as though his early youth might have been spent in a racing stable, and with the air of one expert to another.

'I hear,' said Canon Wrottesley, when Miss Sherard had begun to play a left-handed game of croquet with the crippled young man, 'that Sir Nigel is going to ride at the Sedgwick Races. I was a fearless horseman myself at one time, so I cannot quarrel with him for his decision, but I only hope that his hand will be healed by the 24th.'

'He has a good mount,' said Peter, 'and I don't think it is much good trying to persuade Toffy not to ride.'

'Kitty Sherard says she has laid the whole of her fortune on him,' said Jane, 'so let 's hope that will bring him luck.'

'I believe,' said the canon, in a manner distinctly beatific towards the subject of his remarks, 'that I enjoy that little race-meeting at Sedgwick as much as anything in the year. We must all have our little outings once in a way.'

There is no doubt that the canon took his little outings, as often as he could get them, with a healthy, boyish pleasure.

On the day of the races, for reasons no doubt known to himself but hidden from the rest of the world, the vicar masqueraded in the character of a patriarch. His characters were frequently inconsistent with his circumstances; often his boyishness would obtrude itself quite unexpectedly at board meetings or on the parish council, while at other times the mantle of the seer or prophet descended upon him on the most inauspicious occasions. Had Mrs. Wrottesley spoken her mind, which she never did, she might have thrown light upon the subject, but she was not a convincing woman at the best of times. All her life she had kept inviolate the woman's secret whether or not her husband was a disappointment to her. No one knew from his wife if the little god of a somewhat small and feminine community had feet of clay or no.

Arrived at the very delightful beech wood which formed a pleasant place of encampment for tea-parties, Canon Wrottesley could only smile absently at the picnic-baskets, and appear wrapped in thought when addressed; he might have been mentally preparing his next Sunday's sermon. Miss Abingdon thought that he was doing so and respected him for it; she even tried to attune her mind to his, and endeavoured to see vanity of vanities in this informal gathering of friends.

'We do not think enough of serious things,' she said.

The inhabitants of Sedgwick put on sporting airs and curiously cut overcoats on two days in each year. The weather for the occasion is nearly always cloudless, and the townsfolk have begun to think that either they are very clever in arranging the date of their local function, or that the clerk of the weather is deeply interested in Sedgwick Races.

On this particular day the sun flickered as usual through the clean leaves and boughs of the beech wood, doing its best to lend an air of picturesqueness to lobster salads and aspics, and shone brilliantly on servants, with their coats off, unpacking hampers at rows of long tables, and on people busily engaged in the inartistic business of eating.

In the paddock there was an unusual number of horses being led round and round in a ring, and some well-known bookies—not often seen at the little provincial meeting—were present with their raucous cries and their money-bags.

Kitty Sherard carried a pair of field-glasses on a long strap, and consulted from time to time a little gold-bound pocket-book in which she added up figures with a business-like air. She believed in Ormiston, which Sir Nigel Christopherson was riding, and she had something on Lamplighter as well. She knew every bookmaker on the course by sight, and had as much knowledge of the field as any one in the ring. And she looked exactly like some very beautiful child, and carried a parasol of rose-coloured chiffon beneath which her complexion and eyes appeared to great advantage. She smiled whether winning or losing, and ate a tiny luncheon with an epicurean air.

At four o'clock in the afternoon it is an accepted custom at Sedgwick Races for every one to have tea before the last event, and then horses are put to in coaches and carriages, and those who have attended the meeting whether for business or pleasure drive back to their own homes, or go slowly downhill in a long string to the little railway station where, for two days at least in the year, the local station-master is a person of importance.

Mrs. Ogilvie arrived at the racecourse, as she had promised to do, about tea-time. She hardly ever cared to watch the races; but she stood amongst her friends for a while in the pleasant shade of the wood, and looked on at the little gathering with that air of detached and hardly concealed weariness which she always felt on such occasions. She congratulated Peter, who had won a rather closely finished race earlier in the day; but her voice betrayed little interest in the event, and an onlooker might have been surprised at the almost distant way in which she spoke to him. She was sumptuously dressed, as usual, and wore her clothes with extravagant carelessness. She found herself at tea-time sitting next Canon Wrottesley, whose patriarchal mood seemed to her unnecessarily affected, and she requested him to ask Miss Sherard to come and speak to her. 'Kitty amuses me,' she said, with one of her characteristic shrugs, 'and most people are so dull, are they not?'

Canon Wrottesley felt that mixed sensation which association with Mrs. Ogilvie always gave him—a feeling of resentment combined with a desire to please. He rather hastily let the mantle of the seer drop from him, and said, 'I wish our little party were not so much dispersed. Mr. Lawrence from Frisby brought two charming friends with him, and they much hoped to have been here to meet you. Falconer is their name—Sir John and Lady Falconer. He has just been made Minister at Buenos Ayres, as I dare say you know, and he told me they once had the pleasure of meeting you in Spain, years and years ago.'