Emily Fox-Seton

Chapter 14

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Lady Walderhurst remained in town a week, and Jane Cupp remained with

her, in the house in Berkeley Square, which threw open its doors to

receive them on their arrival quite as if they had never left it. The

servants' hall brightened temporarily in its hope that livelier doings

might begin to stir the establishment, but Jane Cupp was able to inform

inquirers that the visit was only to be a brief one.

"We are going back to Palstrey next Monday," she explained. "My lady

prefers the country, and she is very fond of Palstrey; and no wonder. It

doesn't seem at all likely she'll come to stay in London until his

lordship gets back."

"We hear," said the head housemaid, "that her ladyship is very kind to

Captain Osborn and his wife, and that Mrs. Osborn's in a delicate state

of health."

"We hear they don't," put in the tallest footman. "And who wonders. If

she was an angel, there's just a chance that she may give Captain Osborn

a wipe in the eye, though she is in her thirties."

"It's not for _us_," said Jane, stiffly, "to discuss thirties or forties

or fifties either, which are no business of ours. There's one gentleman,

and him a marquis, as chose her over the heads of two beauties in their

teens, at least."

Lady Maria was just on the point of leaving South Audley Street to make

some visits in the North, but she came and lunched with Emily, and was

in great form.

She had her own opinion of a number of matters, some of which she

discussed, some of which she kept to herself. She lifted her gold

lorgnette and looked Emily well over.

"Upon my word, Emily," she said, "I am proud of you. You are one of my

successes. Your looks are actually improving. There's something rather

etherealised about your face to-day. I quite agree with Walderhurst in

all the sentimental things he says about you."

She said this last partly because she liked Emily and knew it would

please her to hear that her husband went to the length of dwelling on

her charms in his conversation with other people, partly because it

entertained her to see the large creature's eyelids flutter and a big

blush sweep her cheek.

"He really was in great luck when he discovered you," her ladyship went

on briskly. "As for that, I was in luck myself. Suppose you had been a

girl who could not have been left. As Walderhurst is short of female

relatives, it would have fallen to me to decently dry-nurse you. And

there would have been the complications arising from a girl being baby

enough to want to dance about to places, and married enough to feel

herself entitled to defy her chaperone; she couldn't have been trusted

to chaperone herself. As it is, Walderhurst, can go where duty calls,

etc., and I can make my visits and run about, and you, dear thing, are

quite happy at Palstrey playing Lady Bountiful and helping the little

half-breed woman to expect her baby. I daresay you sit and make dolly

shirts and christening robes hand in hand."

"We enjoy it all very much," Emily answered, adding imploringly, "please

don't call her a little half-breed woman. She's such a dear little

thing, Lady Maria."

"There's a certain kind of early Victorian saintliness about you, Emily

Walderhurst, which makes my joy," she said. "You remind me of Lady

Castlewood, Helen Pendennis, and Amelia Sedley, with the spitefulness

and priggishness and catty ways left out. You are as nice as Thackeray

_thought_ they were, poor mistaken man. I am not going to suffuse you

with blushes by explaining to you that there is what my nephew would

call a jolly good reason why, if you were not an early Victorian and

improved Thackerayian saint, you would not be best pleased at finding

yourself called upon to assist at this interesting occasion. Another

kind of woman would probably feel like a cat towards the little Osborn.

But even the mere reason itself, as a reason, has not once risen in your

benign and pellucid mind. You have a pellucid mind, Emily; I should be

rather proud of the word if I had invented it myself to describe you.

But I didn't. It was Walderhurst. You have actually wakened up the man's

intellects, such as they are."

She evidently had a number of opinions of the Osborns. She liked neither

of them, but it was Captain Osborn she especially _dis_liked.

"He is really an underbred person," she explained, "and he hasn't the

sharpness to know that is the reason Walderhurst detests him. He had

vulgar, cheap sort of affairs, and nearly got into the kind of trouble

people don't forgive. What a fool a creature in his position is to

offend the taste of the man he may inherit from, and who, if he were not

antagonistic to him, would regard him as a sort of duty. It wasn't his

immorality particularly. Nobody is either moral or immoral in these

days, but penniless persons must be decent. It's all a matter of taste

and manners. I haven't any morals myself, my dear, but I have beautiful

manners. A woman can have the kind of manners which keep her from

breaking the Commandments. As to the Commandments, they are awfully easy

things _not_ to break. Who wants to break them, good Lord! Thou shall do

no murder. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit, etc. Thou shalt

not bear false witness. That's simply gossip and lying, and they are bad

manners. If you have good manners, you _don't_."

She chatted on in her pungent little worldly, good-humoured way through

the making of a very excellent lunch. After which she settled her smart

bonnet with clever touches, kissed Emily on both cheeks, and getting

into her brougham rolled off smiling and nodding.

Emily stood at the drawing-room window and watched her equipage roll

round the square and into Charles Street, and then turned away into the

big, stately empty room, sighing without intending to do so while she

smiled herself.

"She's so witty and so amusing," she said; "but one would no more think

of _telling_ her anything than one would think of catching a butterfly

and holding it while one made it listen. She would be so _bored_ if she

was confided in."

Which was most true. Never in her life had her ladyship allowed herself

the indiscretion of appearing a person in whom confidences might be

reposed. She had always had confidences enough of her own to take care

of, without sharing those of other people.

On the first visit Lady Walderhurst made to The Kennel Farm the morning

after her return to Palstrey, when Alec Osborn helped her from her

carriage, he was not elated by the fact that he had never seen her look

so beautifully alive and blooming during his knowledge of her. There was

a fine rose on her cheek, and her eyes were large and happily illumined.

"How well you look!" broke from him with an involuntariness he was

alarmed to realise as almost spiteful. The words were an actual

exclamation which he had not meant to utter, and Emily Walderhurst even

started a trifle and looked at him with a moment's question.

"I have been riding," he replied. "I told you I meant to know Faustine

thoroughly before I let you mount her. She is ready for you now. Can you

take your first lesson to-morrow?"

Hester was in the drawing-room. She was lying on a sofa before an open

window and looking rather haggard and miserable. She had, in fact, just

had a curious talk with Alec which had ended in something like a scene.

As Hester's health grew more frail, her temper became more fierce, and

of late there had been times when a certain savagery, concealed with

difficulty in her husband's moods, affected her horribly.

This morning she felt a new character in Emily's manner. She was timid

and shy, and a little awkward. Her child-like openness of speech and

humour seemed obscured. She had less to say than usual, and at the same

time there was a suggestion of restless unease about her. Hester Osborn,

after a few minutes, began to have an odd feeling that the woman's eyes

held a question or a desire in them.

"It is beautiful to come back to the country," she said. "When I get

into the carriage at the station and drive through the sweet air, I

always feel as if I were beginning to live again, and as if in London I

had not been quite alive. It seemed so _heavenly_ in the rose garden at

Palstrey to-day, to walk about among those thousands of blooming lovely

things breathing scent and nodding their heavy, darling heads."

"The roads are in a beautiful condition for riding," Hester said, "and

Alec says that Faustine is perfect. You ought to begin to-morrow

morning. Shall you?"

She spoke the words somewhat slowly, and her face did not look happy.

But, then, it never was a really happy face. The days of her youth had

been too full of the ironies of disappointment.

Emily's hands were full of roses, both hands, and Hester saw both hands

and roses tremble. She turned round slowly and came towards her. She

looked nervous, awkward, abashed, and as if for that moment she was a

big girl of sixteen appealing to her and overwhelmed with queer

feelings, and yet the depths of her eyes held a kind of trembling,

ecstatic light. She came and stood before her, holding the trembling

roses as if she had been called up for confession.

"I--I mustn't," she half whispered. The corners of her lips drooped and

quivered, and her voice was so low that Hester could scarcely hear it.

But she started and half sat up.

"I mustn't," she repeated, low and shakily. "I had--reason.--I went to

town to see--somebody. I saw Sir Samuel Brent, and he told me I must

not. He is quite sure."

She tried to calm herself and smile. But the smile quivered and ended in

a pathetic contortion of her face. In the hope of gaining decent

self-control, she bent down to pick up the dropped roses. Before she had

picked up two, she let all the rest fall, and sank kneeling among them,

her face in her hands.

"Oh, Hester, Hester!" she panted, with sweet, stupid unconciousness of

the other woman's heaving chest and glaring eyes. "It has come to me

too, actually, after all."

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