CHAPTER V

W E never heard that you were coming—not a word,” said Rosa.

“Not a word,” echoed Priscilla. “We have enjoyed permission from Mr. Dunning to walk in the park and to pluck the wild flowers and blackberries and things like that. That was why we came to-day.”

“Let me see; isn’t it a bit too early for blackberries?” said he.

“Yes; but not for primroses,” said Rosa.

“Nor for lunch,” said he. “Did I dream that I heard one of you—if not both—say that this house should be called Starvation Hall?”

They both laughed.

“Not exactly,” said Priscilla.

“Well, words to that effect,” he cried. “Anyhow, whether you did or not, you’ll never say it again. Here comes Mrs. Pearce—of course you know Mrs. Pearce. I needn’t introduce her to you.”

“Oh, we all know Mrs. Pearce,” cried Rosa, as the caretaker entered, bearing a tray and a smell of a grill.

“Then she can introduce you to me,” said he.

Mrs. Pearce, red of face and opulent of bust, stood for a moment as one amazed, looking from the young women to the young man.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pearce,” cried Rosa.

“Good morning, Miss Rosa—Miss Caffyn,” said the woman, nearly dropping the tray in her attempt to drop a curtsey—the curtsey of the charity school girl to a member of the Rector’s family.

“Good morning,” said Priscilla.

“Good morning, Miss Wadhurst.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Pearce,” said the man, as she laid down her tray on the table. “Do you think you could add to your favours by hunting out a couple more plates and knives and forks, and, above all, glasses? I quite forgot to tell you that I had sent out invitations to lunch. My first guests have arrived.”

“Please do not trouble; bread and cheese for us,” cried Priscilla.

“What about that plover’s egg that you were trifling with—oh, I see you have laid it quietly back on the dish,” he remarked, with an ingratiating smile in the direction of Rosa.

“I’m afraid,” murmured Mrs. Pearce—“I’m afraid that—that——”

She was looking in the direction of the covered dish on the tray.

“I’m not,” cried he. He lifted off the cover and displayed the twin halves of a chicken beautifully grilled. “She’s afraid that there isn’t enough to go round!” He pointed to the dish. “Gloriana! as if I could eat all that off my own bat! Do hurry about those plates—and, above all, don’t forget the glasses. Can you guess what the name of this hock is?” he added, turning to Rosa.

“It’s Liebfraumilch, and you were not asleep after all,” cried the girl, rosy and smiling.

“Not after all, but just before,” he said reassuringly, placing chairs at the table also with a good deal of assurance. But he was not so engrossed by the occupation as to fail to see the glances exchanged between the girls—glances of doubt, shot through with the enquiry, “Should we?”

“What a day it is turning out, and the morning looked so fine,” said he, not gloomily, but cheerfully. “Won’t you sit down? The spatchcock’s all right, only it takes offence if it isn’t eaten at once.”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” said Rosa boldly to her friend. The man turned his head away to enable her to do so—a movement that displayed tact and not tactics.

“You are extremely kind, Mr. Wingfield,” said Priscilla very formally. “I don’t suppose that we are quite in line with the precepts of the book of etiquette; and, besides, we have no business to deprive you of your lunch and——”

“And sleep,” murmured Rosa.

That finished the formally-worded apology. Before their triolet of laughter had passed away they were all seated at the table, and Mrs. Pearce had brought in the requisite crockery and cutlery. She did not forget the glasses. She beamed confidently upon the girls as if she was endeavouring to assure them that she was a mother herself, and that she would be at hand in case she should hear screams.

He showed some dexterity in carving his spatchcock. They kept their eyes on him, with a protest ready if he should leave nothing for himself; but they had no need of such vigilance, and their protest was uncalled for. He was quite fair to them and to himself, and witnessing his tact once more they became still more at their ease.

“The day doesn’t seem quite so hopeless now as it did a quarter of an hour ago,” he remarked, when they had all praised the cooking of Mrs. Pearce. “Nothing seems the same when a chap has done himself well in the eating and drinking line—especially the drinking. I don’t wonder that crimes are committed when people haven’t enough to eat.”

“I wonder if having too little to eat or too much to drink is most responsible,” said Priscilla.

“Meaning that it’s about time I opened that bottle?” said he. “Now, I can’t think that either of you is under the influence of a temperance lecturer; but if you are, you’ll drink all the same to my homecoming.”

“Delighted, I’m sure,” cried Rosa. “There’s no nicer thing to drink than Liebfraumilch, when it’s of the right year.”

“I was under the impression,” said he, scrutinizing the bottom of the cork, “that taking the bad years with the good, a chap has a better chance with Liebfraumilch than anything in that line.”

“I got it all from a catalogue—I have a good memory,” confessed Priscilla. “I hope it’s true.”

“A wine merchant’s catalogue? Gospel—absolute gospel,” said he solemnly.

He poured out half a glass and became more solemn still while he examined it in breathless silence. He held it up to the light, and the girls saw that it was a pale flame smouldering in the glass. He gave it a shake and it became a glorious topaz.

“A very fair colour indeed,” said he on the completion of these mysteries, and the girls breathed again. “Yes, I don’t know who laid it down, but I know who’ll take it up, and every time it will be with a hope that his grandsire’s halo is as good a colour. The occasion is an extremely interesting one, and the wine is almost equal to the occasion. If not, we are. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with feelings of etcetera, etcetera, that I bring to your notice the toast of the young heir now come into his inheritance. Long may he reign—I mean long may it rain, when it was the means of bringing so charming a company round his table, and so say all of us; with a—I’m extremely obliged to you, and I’ll respond later on.”

He had the aspect and the manner of a merry boy. About him there was a complete absence of self-consciousness. He treated the girls in the spirit of comradeship, and Priscilla at least felt that he must have been possessed of a certain gift of intuition to perceive that this spirit and no other was the one that was appropriate to the occasion; and moreover that he must have had other gifts that enabled him to perceive that they were the very girls to appreciate such a form of unconventional courtesy. He was in no way breezy or free-and-easy in his manner. He made fun like a schoolboy, never forcing the note; and these young women knew that he was perfectly natural from the ease with which they remained natural and with no oppression of self-consciousness in his company, in spite of the fact that the situation was not merely unconventional, but within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, to indiscreetness, as indiscreetness would be defined by the district visitor or her relative, Mrs. Grundy.

These young women, who found themselves taking lunch and drinking wine—actually hock of a brand that was habitually highly spoken of in the catalogues—at the invitation and in the house of a young man to whom they had never been presented, were beginning to feel as if they had been acquainted with him all their life, and they made an extremely good meal. The plovers’ eggs vanished when the spatchcock had been despatched, and the cream cheese and lettuce were still occupying them when Mrs. Pearce came from the kitchen to find out if all was well, and if she should serve the coffee in the library or in the drawing-room.

“Oh, the drawing-room by all means,” cried Mr. Wingfield; and when she disappeared he whispered, “The good creature has just been to the drawing-room to take off the covers, I’m sure, and she would never forgive us if we didn’t go to see how careful she has been of everything. The only thing about it is that I couldn’t find my way from here to the drawing-room.”

“You may depend on us,” said Rosa.

“I may? Then I place myself unreservedly in your hands,” said he. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You shall show me through the house and tell me the story of all the rooms—who was killed in which, and where the celebrated duel was fought—you may, by the aid of a reasonable amount of imagination, still see the marks of the bullets in the wainscot.”

“I never heard anything of that,” said Rosa. “A duel? When did it happen?”

“What, do you mean to say that there’s no room in this house where the celebrated duel was fought?” cried he. “And you can assure me that there’s no picture of an old reprobate who went in the county by the name of Butcher Wingfield—or was it old Black Jack Wingfield—maybe Five-bottle Wingfield?”

“I really can’t tell. All that I can say is that I never heard of any of them,” said Rosa.

“This is a nice thing to confront a chap who has just entered into possession of an old house and, as he hoped, a lot of ready-made ancestors,” said he mournfully. “Not one of them with any of the regulation tokens of the old and crusted ancestor about him! But you’ll at least show me the room that Nell Gwyn slept in—or was it the Young Pretender?—you’ll show me his initials, Y. P., that he carved on the eighteenth century panelling of the Priest’s Room with the sliding panel—you know?”

“Oh, yes, I know,” laughed Priscilla. “And the ghost of Lady Barbara that appears to the stranger who has been inadvertently put to sleep in the Blue Room, and the old chest where the bones were found, and the tiny pink shoes with genuine Liberty buckles.”

“You give me hope—the ghost of a hope—I mean the hope of a ghost. I expected half a dozen at least; but one sees, on reflection, that that would be unreasonable. I’ll be content with one if you throw the tiny shoes into the bargain.”

“I’m afraid that you’ll have to be contented with comfort and a surveyor’s certificate,” said Priscilla.

“What I am thinking is, who will give us a certificate that we have been reasonably engaged when we return home,” remarked Rosa, when they were rising from the table—he did not offer them cigarettes.

“Do you really think it possible that your people will be uneasy?” said he, with some concern in his voice. “It’s still raining. Will they not be certain that you took shelter somewhere? If there’s any doubt, I’ll send a message by my motor.”

“You have brought a motor, and yet you looked for ghosts and things?” said Priscilla.

“I came from Barwellstone in it this morning. A nice run. I tried a railway guide for trains, and found that with luck I could do the journey in eight hours.”

“And you did it in twenty minutes by motor?”

“Twenty-five, in addition to three hours. It’s just ninety-two miles. So this is the drawing-room? Very nice, I’m sure.”

They had walked across the hall and had passed through a very fine mahogany door into another big square room, with exquisite plaster decorations on the walls and ceiling and mantelpieces, of which there were two. The eighteenth century furniture was mahogany and upholstered in faded red damask. The chairs were all uncovered, though the curtains remained tied up in such a way as caused each to reproduce with extraordinary clearness the figure of Mrs. Pearce. The transparent cabinets all round the room were filled with specimens of the art of Josiah Wedgwood—blue and green and buff and black—beautiful things.

“This is the Wedgwood drawing-room,” said Priscilla. “It is considered one of the most perfect things of its kind in the country.”

“Why the Wedgwood room? Was there a Mr. Wedgwood who planned it?” asked the owner.

“There was a Mr. Wedgwood who supplied the china,” said Priscilla.

“Local—a local man, I suppose—Framsby, or is it Southam?”

“Oh, no, Wedgwood was not a local man by any means,” replied Priscilla, wondering in what circles this young man had spent the earlier years of his life that he had never heard of Wedgwood.

“Anyhow, it’s quite nice to look at; and here comes the coffee,” said he. “It’s a queer room—gives even an ignorant chap like me a feeling that it’s all right—furnished throughout, and not on the hire-purchase system.”

Then he drank his coffee and looked about him, and then at his visitors—first at one and then at the other. They were standing together at one of the oval windows looking out upon a flagged terrace with a balustrade and piers and great stone vases of classical design.

“A really nice room,” he said, as if he were summing up the result of his survey of the young women. “I think, you know, that I make its acquaintance in rather happy circumstances,” he added. “I hope I may consider that you have left cards on me so that I may ask you to dinner or something. I went into the dining-room the first thing, and then down to the cellar. I don’t think that the dining-room looks so finished as this room. I felt a bit uneasy, you know, to see all those frames with hand-painted ancestors grinning down at me. They seemed to be winking at one another and whispering, ‘Lord, what a mug!’ I didn’t feel at all at home among them—pretty bounders they were to make their remarks—silk coats and satin embroidered waistcoats and powdered hair worn long! Bounders to a man! I felt a bit lonely among them, and that’s why I told the woman I should have my plate laid in the library. I didn’t want any of their cheek. I was thinking what a rather dismal homecoming it was for me—not a soul to say a word of welcome to a chap. I felt a bit down on my luck, and I suppose that’s why I fell into that doze. Only five minutes I could have slept, and when I opened my eyes—I give you my word I had a feeling—that halfwaking feeling, you know—that it was the ghosts of two of the nicest of my ancestors come back to say a word of encouragement to me to make up for the bad manners of those satin-upholstered ones. I do hate the kind of chap that gets painted in fancy dress!”

The notion of the Georgian portraits being in fancy dress sent the young women into a peal of laughter; and then he laughed too.

“That’s like coming home,” he said a minute later. “That’s what I looked for, and if I didn’t feel grateful to you both——”

“Grateful to the rain, the thunder and lightning,” suggested Rosa.

“All right, thunder and lightning and rain and all the rest. I’ll have a greater respect for them in the future; but all the same the gratitude will go to you. You have turned a failure into a success, and no other girls would have been able to do so much. They would have giggled and gone the moment they caught sight of me. Yes, I’m grateful.”

“And we are glad,” said Priscilla, gently. “And we’re quite sorry that the rain is over so that we have no excuse for—for—oh, yes, trespassing on your hospitality.”

“But you have only shown me one of the rooms, and there are about forty others, I believe. Think of me getting lost in a rabbit warren of bedrooms and dressing-rooms and still rooms and sparkling! Wouldn’t it be on your conscience if you heard of that happening?”

“Our conscience—Mr. Wingfield takes it for granted that we have only one conscience between us,” said Priscilla.

“And perhaps he thinks that he’s generous,” said Rosa.

They did it very nicely, he thought. They were really very charming—not a bit like any other girls he had ever met.

“You don’t need a conscience, I’ll bet,” he said. “What do you ever do to keep it up to its work?”

“If we stay here another five minutes it will be working overtime,” laughed Priscilla. “Good-bye, Mr. Wingfield, and receive our thanks for shelter, and a—a—most unusual afternoon.”

“Good-bye. You have done a particularly good turn to a chap to-day, and don’t you forget it. I’ll go to the door with you.”

He walked with them to the pillared porch and said another good-bye in a different key.

They heard him close the hall door, and they knew that he would have to go to a window of the dining-room if he wished to watch them departing on the carriage drive.

They wondered—each of them on her own account—if he had hurried to that particular window.

“He is not so silly as he promised to be the first five minutes we came upon him,” said Rosa, when they were approaching the entrance gates.

“Not nearly. As a matter of fact I found him entertaining.”

“Not intellectually.”

“Perhaps not. I’m not sure that I am entertained by intellectual entertainment. He is a man in the clay stage. I’m not sure that that isn’t the most interesting—it certainly is the most natural. He might be anything that a woman might choose to make him.”

“Of course we’ll tell them at home what happened,” said Rosa, after a long pause.

“Why should we not? We would do well to be an hour or two in advance of Mrs. Pearce,” said Priscilla.

They got upon the road, and were forced to pay attention to its condition of muddiness rather than to the delight of breathing the sweet scents of the rain-drenched hedges on each side. They parted at the cross-roads, and only at that moment remembered that they had left their primroses in the porch.

Rosa went in the direction of the town, and Priscilla set her face toward the slope of the Down in front of her. Before she had gone for more than half a mile on her way to the farm, she saw a man approaching her—a middle-aged man in a black coat and leggings rather the worse for wear. He held up his hand to her while they were still far apart.

“Something has happened,” she said. “It cannot be that he became uneasy at my absence.” Then they met. “What is it, father?” she asked quickly.

“Dead—he is dead—the man is dead!” he said in a low voice.

“Dead—Marcus Blaydon—dead—are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” he replied.

“Thank God!” she said, speaking her words as though she were breathing a sigh of great relief.

And so she was; she was speaking of her husband.