Part 1 (2/2)
”I asked where mother was. Do you know, Ada?”
Ada, a pretty, fair girl of fifteen, fresh as a rose, trim as a daisy, without an imperfection of any kind in her looks or in her dress, said, ”Father wanted her, I believe;” while Salome, half satisfied, turned to her eldest brother Raymond.
”Is anything the matter, Ray?”
”I am sure I don't know,” he answered carelessly. ”There's something the matter with this soup--it's beastly.”
”Raymond!” Ada exclaimed reprovingly, ”pray, don't be so rude,” as Raymond pushed away his plate, and, pulling another towards him, attacked some cutlets with tomatoes.
”The cooking is fifty times better at old Birch's,” the young Etonian growled. ”I can't think how mother can put up with that lazy Mrs.
Porson.”
”I say,” said Reginald, ”don't grumble at your bread and b.u.t.ter because it is not just to your mind.”
”Shut up, will you,” said Raymond, ”and don't be cheeky.”
And now the two little boys of eight and nine began to chime in with eager inquiries as to whether Raymond would help them with their tableaux, which were to be got up for their double birthday on the 1st of August. For Carl and Hans were both born on the same day of the month, Hans always affirming that he came to keep Carl's first birthday.
”Tableaux at this time of year; what folly! I shall be gone off in Strangway's yacht by then, you little duffer.”
”I'll help you,” Reginald said. ”We'll have the tableaux Black Prince, Joan of Arc, and Mother Hubbard, if mother will lend us the finery, and Sal will advise us what to do.”
”Oh, mother says we may have the tableaux. She says Shakespeare acted out of doors. We want to have them in the house by the lake, as a surprise, and bring in the lake,” exclaimed Carl. ”If Thursday is a day like to-day, it will be jolly. And, Ada, you said you'd write the invitations, didn't you?--the Holmes, and the De Brettes, and the Carruthers, Ada.”
Ada, thus appealed to, smiled, and said, ”We'll see.”
”I have got some pink paper,” Carl vociferated. ”Nurse gave it to me.
She bought it at her nephew's shop in Fairchester. It is just fit for invitations.”
”Oh no; that would be fearfully vulgar!” said Ada. ”Pink paper!”
Poor Carl was extinguished, and began to eat his rice-pudding in large mouthfuls.
All this time Miss Barnes had not spoken, and Salome watched her face anxiously. Yet she dared not question her, though she felt convinced Miss Barnes knew more than any of them about their mother's non-appearance and their father's unusual return from Fairchester in Mr.
Stone's carriage. Mr. Stone was the doctor; and though Salome tried to persuade herself Mr. Stone's carriage had probably been at her father's office, and perhaps having a patient to see out in their direction, Mr.
Wilton had accepted the offer of a drive homewards, and that Mr. Stone being a doctor had nothing to do with it, she was but half satisfied with her own self-deception.
The dining-room at Maplestone Court was like all the other rooms--a room suggestive of _home_ and comfort. The three large windows, to-day thrown wide open, looked out on the lawn, and beyond to quiet meadows and copses skirted in the far distance by a range of hills, seen through the haze of the summer day blue and indistinct. Within, there were some fine pictures; and the wide dining-table was decorated with flowers--for of flowers there were plenty at Maplestone. If banished from the front of the house, they had their revenge in the dear old-fas.h.i.+oned kitchen-garden--a garden where beds for cutting were filled with every coloured geranium and verbena and calceolaria; a garden which seemed an enclosure of sweets and perfumes, where the wall-fruit hung in peerless beauty, and a large green-house, of the type of past days, was the shelter of a vine so luxuriant in its growth and so marvellous in its produce, that Maplestone grapes continually carried off the prize at the flower and fruit shows of the neighbourhood.
The children gathered round that pretty table--which, in spite of Raymond's dissatisfaction, was always well supplied with all that could please the taste--were singularly ignorant of whence all their good things came. They had all been born at Maplestone. They took it and all its comforts as a matter of course. Till Raymond went to Eton they had none of them concerned themselves much about what others had or had not. Raymond, the eldest son, had been the most indulged, the least contradicted, and had an enormous idea of his own importance.
He was very handsome, but by no means clever. He had no higher aim than to lounge through life with as little trouble to himself as possible; and now, at seventeen, when asked if he meant to turn his mind to any profession, he would say, ”Oh, I may sc.r.a.pe through the militia, and get a commission; but I don't bother about it.”
A naturally selfish disposition, he was altogether unconscious of it. He had spent a great deal of money at Eton; he had wasted a great deal of time. He cared nothing about Latin and Greek, still less about Euclid.
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