Volume I Part 28 (1/2)
”I don't believe she ever said such things. Who told you so?” said George, stiffening, his arm dropping from her waist.
Letty tossed her head.
”Never mind! I _ought_ to know, and it doesn't really matter how I know.
She _did_ say them.”
”Yes, it does matter,” said George, quickly, walking away to the other side of the room. ”Letty! if you would only send away that woman Grier, you can't think how much happier we should both be.”
Letty stood still, opening her blue eyes wide.
”You want me--to get rid--of Grier,” she said, ”my own particular pet maid? And why--please?”
George had the courage to stick to his point, and the result was a heated and angry scene--their first real quarrel--which ended in Letty's rus.h.i.+ng upstairs in tears, and declaring she would go _no_where. _He_ might go to Castle Luton, if he pleased; she was far too agitated and exhausted to face a houseful of strangers.
The inevitable reconciliation, with its usual accompaniments of headache and eau de cologne, took time, and they only just completed their preparations and caught their appointed train.
Meanwhile the storm of the day had taken all savour from Letty's expectations, and made George feel the whole business an effort and a weariness. Letty sat pale and silent in her corner, devoured with regrets that she had not put on a thicker veil to hide the ravages of the morning; while George turned over the pages of a political biography, and could not prevent his mind from falling back again and again into dark places of dread and depression.
”You are my earliest guests,” said Mrs. Allison, as she placed a chair for Letty beside herself, on the lawn at Castle Luton. ”Except, indeed, that Lady Maxwell and her little boy are here somewhere, roaming about.
But none of our other friends could get down till later. I am glad we shall have a little quiet time before they come.”
”Lady Maxwell!” said Letty. ”I had no idea they were coming. Oh, what a lovely day! and how beautiful it all is!” she cried, as she sat down and looked round her. The colour came back into her cheeks. She forgot her determination to keep her veil down, and raised it eagerly.
Mrs. Allison smiled.
”We never look so well as in May--the river is so full, and the swans are so white. Ah! I see Edgar has already taken Sir George to make friends with them.”
And Letty, looking across the broad green lawn, saw the flash of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g river and a cl.u.s.ter of white swans, beside which stood her husband and a young man in a serge suit, who was feeding the swans with bread--Lord Ancoats, no doubt, the happy owner of all this splendour. To the left of their figures rose a stone bridge with a high, carved parapet, and beyond the river she saw green hills and woods against a radiant sky. Then, to her right was this wonderful yellowish pile of the old house. She began to admire and exclaim about it with a great energy and effusion, trying hard to say the correct and cultivated thing, and, in fact, repeating with a good deal of exactness what she had heard said of it by others.
Her hostess listened to her praises with a gentle smile. Gentleness, indeed, a rather sad gentleness, was the characteristic of Mrs. Allison.
It seemed to make an atmosphere about her--her delicate blanched head and soft face, her small figure, her plain black dress, her hands in their white ruffles. Her friends called it saintliness. At any rate, it set her apart, giving her a peculiar ethereal dignity which made her formidable in society to many persons who were not liable to shyness. Letty from the beginning had felt her formidable.
Yet nothing could be kinder or simpler than her manner. In response to Letty's enthusiasms she let herself be drawn at once into speaking of her own love for the house, and on to pointing out its features.
”I am always telling these things to newcomers,” she said, smiling. ”And I am not clever enough to make variations. But I don't mind, somehow, how often I go through it. You see, this front is Tudor, and the south front is a hundred years later, and both of them, they say, are the finest of their kind. Isn't it wonderful that two men, a hundred years apart, should each have left such a n.o.ble thing behind him. One inspired the other. And then we--we poor moderns come after, and must cherish what they left us as we best can. It's a great responsibility, don't you think? to live in a beautiful house.”
”I'm afraid I don't know much about it,” said Letty, laughing; ”we live in such a very ugly one.”
Mrs. Allison looked sympathetic.
”Oh! but then, ugly ones have character; or they are pretty inside, or the people one loves have lived in them. That would make any place a House Beautiful. Aren't you near Perth?”
”Yes; and I am afraid you'll think me _dreadfully_ discontented,”
said Letty, with one of her little laughing airs; ”but there really isn't anything to make up in our barrack of a place. It's like a blackened brick set up on end at the top of a hill. And then the villages are so hideous.”
”Ah! I know that coal-country,” said Mrs. Allison, gravely--”and I know the people. Have you made friends with them yet?”
”We were only there for our honeymoon. George says that next month the whole place will be out on strike. So just now they hate us--they will hardly look at us in the street. But, of course, we shall give away things at Christmas.”