IT was in the beginning of the shooting-season, when birds were still plentiful and the best of the sportsmen visitors were come or coming, that Letitia was one evening startled by hearing of the arrival of a gentleman, who was one more than the number expected. Such a thing had been known before; for John’s invitations were sometimes a little vague, and he occasionally made a mistake; but it was particularly annoying on this occasion, because Mrs. Parke had not been at home for tea, and, therefore, was not at hand to place the unexpected guest.
“The only thing I could do, ma’am, in the circumstances,” said the butler, “was to refer to Miss Hill, and she said the gentleman must have her room; so I put him in Miss Hill’s room.”
“You were quite right, Saunders, since Miss Hill was so kind; and I daresay it will be all right. But you have not told me who the gentleman was.”
The butler made a little pause—a respectable family servant never forgets that every family has its secrets. He coughed discreetly behind his hand. “I did not ask the gentleman’s name, ma’am—Miss Hill seemed to know him very well.”
“Miss Hill—knew him very well!” Astonishment and a certain consternation came into Letitia’s face. But she recollected herself, perceiving Saunders’ look of extreme discretion, which is always an alarming thing. “I have no doubt it is all right,” she said, with great self-possession, “and you have done exactly what you ought to have done in referring to Miss Hill—send up someone to my room with a cup of good tea. One never gets tea one can drink out of one’s own house.”
Mrs. Parke repeated to herself, “Someone Mary knows,” under her breath. She was momentarily disturbed. Could it be a piece of presumption on Mary’s part bringing in someone she knew? But this was so incredible that Letitia dismissed the idea, laying it all upon the broad shoulders of John. “He must have made a mistake again,” she said to herself. She was late, everyone had gone to dress for dinner, and the mistress of the house only lingered for a moment in the drawing-room to see that all was in order, to give a little pull to the curtains, and a little push to the chairs such as the mistress of the house always finds necessary when she is expecting guests, breaking the air of inevitable primness which the best of servants are apt to have. She looked round to see that all was right, and then she went upstairs to her room to dress. Mary was standing on the stairs at the end of the corridor which led to the nursery, evidently waiting for her. “Oh, can I speak a word, Letitia?” she said.
“I don’t see how you can,” said Mrs. Parke, “for I am late, and you know the Witheringhams are coming. I cannot keep them waiting. But come into my room, if you like, while I dress.”
Mary was not coming to dinner on that evening: so that she had no need to dress. She looked pale and anxious standing in the doorway at the end of the nursery passage in her old grey gown. “But I must speak to you alone—not before your maid,” she said.
“Some naughtiness, I suppose,” said Letitia with a little sigh of despairing impatience. “Really, you are too particular. But it must wait till to-morrow, my dear—I have only time to slip on my dress.”
“But oh, Letitia——”
“For goodness sake don’t bother me to death when you know the Witheringhams are coming,” Mrs. Parke said. And she went into her room, leaving her friend standing outside. Letitia did not close the door, but left it possible for Mary to follow her, if the communication was so very urgent. But this Miss Hill did not do. She hesitated a moment, wrung her hands, and then disappeared like a ghost within the narrow portals of the nursery passage. Had Letitia only known the words that were on her lips, had Mary been less frightened, less terrified at the sound of her own voice. But it could not have made much difference after all—the shock would have been perhaps less great—but to do away with it altogether was not in any one’s power.
Letitia dressed in great haste. She had only time to swallow the cup of tea which she had ordered—to put on her new velvet with the point lace and diamonds—a rivière, but nothing much to speak of, which Frogmore had sent her on the birth of the heir—and to pull on one of her gloves, when a sound of carriage wheels in the avenue made her hurry downstairs to be in her place before the Witheringhams arrived. The Witheringhams had never dined at Greenpark before. They were very fine people indeed, the oldest family in the county, though he was only a baron, so rich that they did not know what to do with their money. They lived a great deal abroad, and it so happened that Letitia had never before been able to offer her hospitality to these distinguished persons who were so little in need of a dinner. For the first time it had “suited” to-night, and to have been a moment late, or to have anything out of order, would have been a sin which Letitia, such a model of social propriety as she was, would not have forgiven herself. Happily, she was not only in the drawing-room herself, but two or three of the élite of her guests had come down in good time and stood about like black statues in that irreproachable tenue which specially distinguishes Englishmen. It was a moment indescribable when Letitia placed Lady Witheringham in the easiest chair, and sitting down near her, with the warmest cordiality mingled with respect, made the discovery that this great lady’s diamonds were really after all not as good as her own. She did not betray the consciousness, but it gave her a secret exhilaration. She felt that she approached her guests upon nearer terms.
“It is a pleasure we have wished for so long, dear Lady Witheringham,” she said, “to see you in our own house.”
“We are a great deal away,” said the old lady. “Witheringham can’t stand the winter in England—and to tell the truth when we are at home we are not fond of new people, neither he nor I.”
“I hope,” said Letitia, “that we can scarcely be considered new people now. After nearly seven years—”
She saw her mistake immediately, but Lady Witheringham only smiled. “My husband,” she said, with a slight emphasis, “knew the first Lord Frogmore. He got his title for something or other—services to the government.” Here the old lady laughed, as if there could be nothing more ridiculous than acquiring a peerage in this way. “But I have heard,” she said, after a pause, “that your own family was quite respectable.”
Letitia was not proud of her family, and liked to bring it forward as little as possible, but a natural sentiment still existed in her bosom, which was touched by this remark. “Oh, indeed, I hope so,” she cried, with a slight movement of irritation, which she was not able to conceal.
“I mean, of course, in point of antiquity,” said Lady Witheringham, “in other respects we’re all in the hands of Providence. Nothing, you know, can secure morals, or those sort of things—and less in an old family than in others, I sometimes think—Dear me,” she added, raising a double eyeglass, and looking at the other end of the room with curiosity, “what have we here?”
Letitia looked up, following Lady Witheringham’s glance. I may truly say that if Mrs. Parke were to live for a hundred years she would never forget the spectacle that now presented itself to her eyes. The drawing-room at Greenpark was a long room, opening from an ante-room with large folding doors. In the middle of this ample opening stood a figure in a velvet coat the worse for wear, with a huge beard, long hair and a general air of savagery. He was a little scared apparently by the sight of so many people, and by the looks directed towards him, and stood with a certain hesitation, looking with a half-bold, half-alarmed air at the circle of ladies near the fire. Letitia sprang to her feet, and caught John by the arm. “Go and see who it is? go and send him away,” she said; but even as she spoke her voice went out in a kind of hollow whisper. Oh, heaven and earth! that this should happen to-night.
Everybody was looking towards the same point, and John much surprised, but not daunted, was walking towards this strange intruder, when he seemed to catch sight of Letitia standing thunderstruck by her own hearth. If she had kept her seat and thus kept partially out of sight, things might not have turned out so badly; but everything went against her to-night. The stranger saw her and came forward with a lurch and a shout. “Hallo, Tisch!” he cried. His voice was like a clap of thunder, and shook the pictures on the walls. His big step made the whole house thrill and creak. He caught her in his arms in the middle of all the astonished ladies and gentlemen, and gave her a resounding smack that might have been heard half a mile off. “How are you?” he said, “my lass. I’m as glad to see ye as if ye were the winner in a tip-top race. I began to think I’d been wrong directed and this wasn’t my sister’s house after all.”
The thoughts that passed through Letitia’s mind in the moment of that embrace were too many and too swift to be put on paper. She tore herself out of the huge arms which held her up like an infant, jumping on the floor in a momentary paroxysm of passion, in which if she could she would have killed the inopportune visitor. But even while she did so a whole discussion, argument and counter argument flashed through her mind. She would have liked to have killed him: but he was here, and the butler was at the door announcing that dinner was served, and Lady Witheringham was certainly surveying this big brute, this horrible savage as Letitia called him in her heart—through those double eyeglasses. It was necessary that the mistress of the house should quench every sentiment and keep up appearances. She said, “Ralph!” with a little shriek in which some of her excitement got out. “Gracious goodness!” said Letitia, “I thought you were in Africa. How could you give me such a start without a word of warning. John, it’s Ralph——” She paused a moment, and the desperate emergency put words into her mouth. “He has been after—big game—till he looks like a lion out of the woods himself,” she cried, with another little shriek—this time of laughter. There was a wildness in it which half betrayed her, but she recovered herself with a little stamp of her foot. “John,” she said, “dinner is waiting—don’t let us keep everything back for this little family scene.” She seized her brother by the hand while her guests filed off decorously, almost wounding him with the sharp pressure of her finger nails. “Don’t come to dinner,” she whispered; “Mary Hill’s in the house.”
Ralph gave another great laugh. “As if I didn’t know that,” he said; “but I’m coming to dinner. I want to see you in all your grandeur, Tisch.”
She had to take old Lord Witheringham’s arm while the brute was talking, and to smile into the old gentleman’s face and to sweep past the stranger, leaving him to follow or not as he pleased. Her heart was beating wildly with fury and dismay. “Don’t you think, Lord Witheringham, it is a bad thing when young men go off into the desert—after big game—and grow into savages?” she said. She laughed to blow off some of the excitement, but there was a glare which nobody could have believed possible in her dull eyes.
“That depends very much,” said Lord Witheringham, oracularly. He would not commit himself. “Sometimes it is the best thing a young man can do—sometimes it is not so fortunate.” Letitia, who expected every moment to have a denial thundering over her shoulder about this big game, and who knew very well that her brother Ralph had not gone away for hunting, as the men did among whom she passed her life, but for very different reasons and to very different regions, was very glad to hurry along at the end of the procession listening to what went on behind, hoping against hope that Ralph might do what she suggested; that he might go in search of Mary, and not appear at all among people who so plainly did not want him. She thought for some time with a great relief that this was what had happened. But when she had taken her place in the dining-room between Lord Witheringham on one side and young Lord George Hitherways on the other, that place to which she had looked forward to with so much pride and pleasure, she saw by the little commotion among the detached men who came in last, the men who had no ladies to take care of, that there was no such relief for her. Ralph was in the midst of them conspicuous in his velvet coat. He pushed them about a little so as to get nearer to his sister. “I beg your pardon if I’m taking your place, but I have not seen my sister for ten years,” she heard him saying in his big voice; and when all the guests were settled as near as possible in their right places, lo, there he was planted next to Mrs. Kington, within three of herself. Letitia grew pale when she saw that her brother was so near—then thanked her stars that at least, since it must be, he was within reach where she herself could do what was possible to subdue him. Oh that Mary had but been there! Oh, that Mary had but said that word of warning which she had been so anxious to give. Why did not the fool speak? What did it matter whether the maid was present or not? Three words only were needed—“Ralph is here,” and then she would have known what to do.
Letitia had looked forward to that dinner as her greatest triumph. She meant to have been so brilliant and entertaining that Lord Witheringham, who liked to have amusing young women to talk to him, might have been filled with admiration: but how can you be witty and brilliant when you are straining your ears to hear what somebody else is saying? The conversation flagged in spite of all she could do. Lord Witheringham devoted himself to his dinner with a look of supreme gravity. She herself sat, violently loathing her food, but swallowing it in sheer desperation, feeling every idea that had been in her head desert her. In fact poor Letitia was never brilliant in conversation, but this she did not know.
Meanwhile Mrs. Kington was amusing herself very much, and young Lord George did nothing but laugh and listen to the backwoodsman. “Tell me about the big game,” the lady had said in a little mellifluous voice. “I shoot myself, and my husband has made the most famous bags. He was in Africa too. Pray tell me about the big game. Did you go in for lions or elephants or what was it? It is so interesting to meet with a man fresh from the desert.”
“You are very kind to say so, my lady,” said Ralph, “but it’s all nonsense about big game. That’s only Tisch’s fun. She knows very well I had something quite different in my mind. I’ve had a shot at a kangaroo or a dog, and I’m sorry to say I’ve hit a black fellow more than once by mistake. Perhaps that’s what she calls big game. Well, it is if you come to that, and deuced serious game, too. You may shoot as many tigers as you like, and get a reward for it, as I’ve heard; but if you shoot a black fellow, he’s no use even for his skin; and if it’s known, you get the Government upon your shoulders just the same as if he was a Christian.”
“That is hard,” said Mrs. Kington, in her pretty voice. “I suppose you mean negroes, Mr. ——” She stopped and looked at Letitia with that delightful impertinence of the higher orders which is one of the finest flowers of civilization. “Do you know,” she whispered to Lord George, yet not so low but that Letitia could hear, “John Parke married so much out of our set that I don’t know what was her name.”
“My name is Ravelstone, and I don’t care who knows it,” said Ralph. “We are not very particular about names in the bush. Sometimes you may live for years with a fellow at the same station and never know more than some nick-name that’s been given him. They used to call me——”
“Your name is as old as any in Yorkshire, Ralph,” said Letitia, arresting the revelation. “Dear Lady Witheringham was just saying so. Do you know what she said? That you knew the first Lord Frogmore, Lord Witheringham. We won’t let John hear, but I know what she meant. She meant that the Parkes were nobody to speak of; but I am happy to say Lady Witheringham was quite acquainted with my family. We have never had a title. What is the good of a mushroom title, that dates only from this century?”
“I entirely agree with you, Mrs. Parke,” Lord Witheringham said.
“What is the use,” cried Letitia, “of putting on a gloss of nobility when you have the substance before; and what is the use of plastering over a name that means nothing with titles? For my part I think there’s nothing like real antiquity—a family that has lived in the same place and owned the same ground from the beginning of time.”
“Mrs. Parke, I admire every word you say. Such just feeling is very uncommon,” Lord Witheringham said.
“Lord, Tisch, how do you run on! How father would have stared if he had heard you. A title for us!—oh, by Jove?” cried Ralph. His roar shook the table. Oh, if some one would kill him—poison him—put him out of Letitia’s sight!