Part 9 (1/2)

Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.

”You see, dear Mrs. French,” she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice, and with many glances at the door, ”the trouble is that Daphne is never satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good enough for Daphne!”

The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.

”It's the ceilings, isn't it?” murmured Elsie French, glancing at the heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing and felicitous.

”It's everything!” Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.

”I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence is too amazing!”

”She does know so much,” said Elsie French reflectively. ”Doesn't she?”

”Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person, whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up. But I believe in liking what you _do_ like, and not being bullied into what you don't like.”

”I suppose if one studies these things----” Elsie French began timidly.

”What's the good of studying!” cried Lady Barnes; ”one has one's own taste, or one hasn't.”

Confronted with this form of the Absolute, Elsie French looked perplexed; especially as her own artistic sympathies were mainly with Daphne. The situation was certainly awkward. At the time of the Barnes's financial crash, and Sir Edward Barnes's death, Heston Park, which belonged to Lady Barnes, was all that remained to her and her son. A park of a hundred acres and a few cottages went with the house; but there was no estate to support it, and it had to be let, to provide an income for the widow and the boy. Much of the expensive furniture had been sold before letting, but enough remained to satisfy the wants of a not very exacting tenant.

Lady Barnes had then departed to weep in exile on a pittance of about seven hundred a year. But with the marriage of her son to Miss Floyd and her millions, the mother's thoughts had turned fondly back to Heston Park. It was too big for her, of course; but the young people clearly must redeem it, and settle there. And Daphne had been quite amenable.

The photographs charmed her. The house, she said, was evidently in a pure style, and it would be a delight to make it habitable again. The tenant, however, had a lease, and refused to turn out until at last Daphne had frankly bribed him to go. And now, after three years of married life, during which the young couple had rented various ”places,”

besides their house in London and a villa at Tunis, Heston Park had been vacated, Daphne and Roger had descended upon it as Lady Barnes's tenants at a high rent, intent upon its restoration; and Roger's mother had been invited to their councils.

Hence, indeed, these tears. When Daphne first stepped inside the ancestral mansion of the Trescoes--such had been Lady Barnes's maiden name--she had received a severe shock. The outside, the sh.e.l.l of the house--delightful! But inside!--heavens! what taste, what decoration--what ruin of a beautiful thing! Half the old mantelpieces gone, the ceilings spoiled, the decorations ”busy,” pretentious, overdone, and nothing left to console her but an ugly row of bad Lelys and worse Highmores--the most despicable collection of family portraits she had ever set eyes upon!

Roger had looked unhappy. ”It was father and mother did it,” he admitted penitently. ”But after all, Daphne, you know they _are_ Trescoes!”--this with a defensive and protecting glance at the Lelys.

Daphne was sorry for it. Her mouth tightened, and certain lines appeared about it which already prophesied what the years would make of the young face. Yet it was a pretty mouth--the mouth, above all, of one with no doubts at all as to her place and rights in the world. Lady Barnes had p.r.o.nounced it ”common” in her secret thoughts before she had known its owner six weeks. But the adjective had never yet escaped the ”bulwark of the teeth.” Outwardly the mother and daughter-in-law were still on good terms. It was indeed but a week since the son and his wife had arrived--with their baby girl--at Heston Park, after a summer of yachting and fis.h.i.+ng in Norway; since Lady Barnes had journeyed thither from London to meet them; and Mr. and Mrs. French had accepted an urgent invitation from Roger, quite sufficiently backed by Daphne, to stay for a few days with Mr. French's old pupil, before the reopening of Eton.

During that time there had been no open quarrels of any kind; but Elsie French was a sensitive creature, and she had been increasingly aware of friction and annoyance behind the scenes. And now here was Lady Barnes let loose! and Daphne might appear at any moment, before she could be re-caged.

”She puts you down so!” cried that lady, making gestures with the paper-knife she had just been employing on the pages of a Mudie book.

”If I tell her that something or other--it doesn't matter what--cost at least a great deal of money, she has a way of smiling at you that is positively insulting! She doesn't trouble to argue; she begins to laugh, and raises her eyebrows. I--I always feel as if she had struck me in the face! I know I oughtn't to speak like this; I hadn't meant to do it, especially to a country-woman of hers, as you are.”

”Am I?” said Elsie, in a puzzled voice.

Lady Barnes opened her eyes in astonishment.

”I meant”--the explanation was hurried--”I thought--Mrs. Barnes was a South American? Her mother was Spanish, of course; you see it in Daphne.”

”Yes; in her wonderful eyes,” said Mrs. French warmly; ”and her grace--isn't she graceful! My husband says she moves like a sea-wave.

She has given her eyes to the child.”

”Ah! and other things too, I'm afraid!” cried Lady Barnes, carried away.

”But here is the baby.”

For the sounds of a childish voice were heard echoing in the domed hall outside. Small feet came pattering, and the drawing-room door was burst open by Roger Barnes, holding a little girl of nearly two and a half by the hand.