Part 13 (1/2)
Beatrice is Mrs. Miller's eldest daughter, and she is twenty. Guy is only eleven months older, and Edwin is a year younger--they are both at Oxford; next comes Geraldine, who is still in the school-room, but who is hoping to come out next Easter; then Ernest and Charley, the Eton boys; and lastly, Teddy and Ralph, who are at a famous preparatory school, whence they hope, in process of time, to be drafted on to Eton, following in the footsteps of their elder brothers.
Of all this large family it is Beatrice, the eldest daughter, who causes her mother the most anxiety. Beatrice is like her mother--a plain but clever-looking girl, with the dark swart features and colouring of the Esterworths, who are not a handsome race. Added to which, she inherits her father's short and somewhat stumpy figure. Such a personal appearance in itself is enough to cause uneasiness to any mother who is anxious for her daughter's future; but when these advantages of looks are rendered still more peculiar by the fact that her hair had to be shaved off some years ago when she had scarlet fever, and that it has never grown again properly, but is worn short and loose about her face like a boy's, with its black tresses tumbling into her eyes every time she looks down--and when, added to this, Mrs. Miller also discovered to her mortification that Beatrice possessed a will of her own, and so decided a method of expressing her opinions and convictions, that she was not likely to be easily moulded to her own views, you will, perhaps, understand the extent of the difficulties with which she has to deal.
For, of course, so clever and so managing a woman as Mrs. Miller has not allowed her daughter to grow up to the age of twenty without making the most careful and judiciously-laid schemes for her ultimate disposal. That Beatrice is to marry is a matter of course, and Mrs. Miller has well determined that the marriage is to be a good one, and that her daughter is to strengthen her father's position in Meadows.h.i.+re by a union with one or other of its leading families. Now, when Mrs. Miller came to pa.s.s the marriageable men of Meadows.h.i.+re under review, there was no such eligible bachelor amongst them all as Sir John Kynaston, of Kynaston Hall.
It was on him, therefore, that her hopes with regard to Beatrice were fixed. Fortune hitherto had seemed to smile favourably upon her. Beatrice had had one season in town, during which she had met Sir John frequently, and he had, contrary to his usual custom, asked her to dance several times when he had met her at b.a.l.l.s. Mrs. Miller said to herself that Sir John, not being a very young man, did not set much store upon mere personal beauty; that he probably valued mental qualities in a woman more highly than the transient glitter of beauty; and that Beatrice's good sense and sharp, shrewd conversation had evidently made a favourable impression upon him.
She never was more mistaken in her life. True, Sir John did like Miss Miller, he found her unconventional and amusing; but his only object in distinguis.h.i.+ng her by his attentions had been to pay a necessary compliment to the new M.P.'s daughter, a duty which he would have fulfilled equally had she been stupid as well as plain: moreover, as we have seen, few men were so intensely sensitive to beauty in a woman as was Sir John Kynaston. Mrs. Miller, however, was full of hopes concerning him. To do her justice, she was not exactly vulgarly ambitious for her daughter; she liked Sir John personally, and had a high respect for his character, and she considered that Beatrice's high spirit and self-willed disposition would be most desirably moderated and kept in check by a husband so much older than herself. Lady Kynaston, moreover, was one of her best and dearest friends, and was her beau-ideal of all that a clever and refined lady should be. The match, in every respect, would have been a very acceptable one to her. Whether or no Miss Beatrice shared her mother's views on her behalf remains to be seen.
The mother and daughter are settling together the preliminaries of a week's festivities which Mrs. Miller has decided shall be held at Shadonake this winter. The house is to be filled, and there are to be a series of dinner parties, culminating in a ball.
”The Bayleys, the Westons, the Foresters, and two daughters, I suppose,”
reads Mrs. Miller, aloud, from the list in her hand, ”Any more for the second dinner-party, Beatrice?”
”Are you not going to ask the Daintrees, of Sutton, mother?”
”Oh, dear me, another parson, Beatrice! I really don't think we can; I have got three already. They shall have a card for the ball.”
”You will ask that handsome girl who lives with them, won't you?”
”Not the slightest occasion for doing so,” replied her mother, shortly.
Beatrice lifted her eyebrows.
”Why, she is the best-looking woman in all Meadows.h.i.+re; we cannot leave her out.”
”I know nothing about her, not even her name; she is some kind of poor relation, I believe--acts as the children's governess. We have too many women as it is. No, I certainly shall not ask her. Go on to the next, Beatrice.”
”But, mother, she is so very handsome! Surely you might include her.”
”Dear me, Beatrice, what a stupid girl you are! What is the good of asking handsome girls to cut you out in your own house? I should have thought you would have had the sense to see that for yourself,” said Mrs.
Miller, impatiently.
”I think you are horribly unjust, mamma,” says Miss Beatrice, energetically; ”and it is downright unkind to leave her out because she is handsome--as if I cared.”
”How can I ask her if I do not know her name?” said her mother, irritably, with just that amount of dread of her daughter's rising temper to make her anxious to conciliate her. ”If you like to find out who she is and all about her----”
”Yes, I will find out,” said Beatrice, quietly; ”give me the note, I will keep it back for the present.”
”Now, for goodness sake, go on, child, and don't waste any more time. Who are coming from town to stay in the house?”
”Well, there will be Lady Kynaston, I suppose.”
”Yes. She won't come till the end of the week. I have heard from her; she will try and get down in time for the ball.”
”Then there will be the Macpherson girls and Helen Romer. And, as a matter of course, Captain Kynaston must be asked?”
”Yes. What a fool that woman is to advertise her feelings so openly that one is obliged to ask her attendant swain to follow her wherever she goes!”
”On the contrary, I think her remarkably clever; she gets what she wants, and the cleverest of us can do no more. It is a well-known fact to all Helen's acquaintances that not to ask Captain Kynaston to meet her would be deliberately to insult her--she expects it as her right.”