Part 9 (1/2)
”What a charming girl!” she said to her host, a very great person.
”I believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old Lady Anne Hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's,” he responded. ”The girl has been educated at her expense. Yes, it's a pretty thing. I only hope it won't become a blue-stocking.”
”I must positively know her,” said the lady. ”She interests me.”
”You make me jealous,” returned the great person, with playful gallantry.
Lady Agatha had been a peeress in her own right since she had attained the tender age of two years. Her father and mother had died too early for her to miss them, and she had shown from her childhood a capacity to think for herself, which nurses and governesses and all such persons looked on as absolutely shocking. She had had a guardian, a soft, woolly, comfortable gentleman whose will she had brushed aside and replaced by her own from the time she was eight years old. Legally, she was not of age till twenty-one; in reality, she was of age at fifteen or thereabouts. She consulted Colonel St. John, her guardian, about her affairs, as an act of grace, because she was so fond of him and wouldn't hurt his feelings for anything; but she made no secret of the fact that at twenty-one she was going to be absolutely her own mistress.
”You are your own mistress now,” Colonel St. John said once, a little ruefully. ”You never do what I wish--you make me do what _you_ wish.
Don't go too fast, Agatha, my dear. At twenty-one one is not wiser than old people, though one may feel so.”
But he knew that he was talking to empty air. She was so eager to lay hold on life. And she was equipped for it--there was no doubt of that.
Mr. Grainger, of Grainger, Ellison and Wells, who had had charge of the business of the estate from time immemorial, whose trade it was to be cautious, was cheerful over the Colonel's misgivings.
”You wouldn't feel anxious if she was a lad,” he said. ”I'd set her against nine hundred and ninety lads out of a thousand for sound common-sense. She won't do anything foolish. Take my word for it, she won't do anything foolish.”
She did not do anything foolish. She took her own way about some things against Colonel St. John, and even against Mr. Grainger, but she turned out to be right in the end. She had a good many people dependent in one way or another upon her for their well-being, and she insisted on coming face to face with these--on dealing with them without an intermediary.
And she made no mistakes. She could see through s.h.i.+fty dishonesty as well as if she had had three times her years and a wide knowledge of the seamy side of human nature. She had always been an outdoor girl, and now she displayed a knowledgeable interest in her own Home Farm and in the affairs of her tenants.
She used to say that the days were not long enough for all she had to do. Certainly, she contrived to cram into them three times as much pleasure, business, and philanthropy as her neighbours.
She had an idea of the obligations of her position as lady of the soil which made poor Colonel St. John gasp when she talked about it. There was so much to be done for the people--churches to be built, or chapels, if they preferred them, and school-houses, industries to be fostered--so much encouragement to be given to honest endeavour. Her idea was that the land should afford all the people wished for. She was going to stop the terrible drifting of the people into the towns. Their lives were to be made gayer. There should be entertainments. The farmers' wives and daughters were to make b.u.t.ter and cheese like their forbears, to grow fruit and vegetables, to rear poultry and sell eggs; but they were not, therefore, to lead a life of narrow toil. They were to be rewarded for their skill and industry. The fruit of their labours was to make life sweeter and pleasanter for them. There were to be libraries and reading-rooms, debating clubs, social gatherings.
”Stuff and nonsense!” Colonel St. John said, with his cotton-wool eyebrows puffed out. ”She'll dip the estate, and then she'll be coming to ask us to pull her out. Worse, she'll only make them discontented.”
”She'll come out all right,” Mr. Grainger said, rubbing his hands softly together. ”If she blunders, she'll learn wisdom from the experiment.
You'll see she'll come out all right, Colonel. The only thing that troubles me is that she may have no time to get married. We don't want her to be a spinster, hey? I confess I should like to see the succession a.s.sured.”
It was this notable young lady who came in not so long after to Queen's College, where a distinguished woman of letters was giving a series of lectures on ”The Poetry of the Sixteenth Century.” Her entrance created somewhat of a flutter. She was as tall as Mary Gray, but much more opulently built. She had short, curling, dark hair, irregular features, and violet eyes--not a bit handsome, but big and bonny and lovesome. Her dress fluttered even these students. It was of purple velvet, with a great stole of sables, and her sable m.u.f.f had a big bunch of real violets, which brought an odour of the quickening and burgeoning earth.
She sat by the Lady Princ.i.p.al, and afterwards had tea with the students.
She asked especially for an introduction to Mary Gray, and then she insisted on driving her as far as the Mall in her motor-car, which she drove herself, while the chauffeur sat with folded arms behind. On the way she talked poetry and politics with the same fervour she brought to all her pursuits.
”It has been borne in on me,” she said vehemently, ”that in working among my own people as I have been doing I have been only tinkering at things, just tinkering. One has to go to the root of the matter, to abolish unjust laws, to replace them by good ones. Supposing I made my estate, as I hope to make it, a Utopia, still there would be hundreds of estates where the people would be in misery. It ought not to be left to our good will to do things. We should be compelled to do them.”
Mary watched the flas.h.i.+ng eyes with the greatest admiration. She felt that Lady Agatha was a glorious creature, for whom she could do anything. The hero-wors.h.i.+p which is latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. Lady Agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile.
She had made a disciple. To make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. Like most women, she was a thorough propagandist.
As she swept up to the gate of Lady Anne's house, the old lady herself was standing just within it. She had come in from driving her little pony phaeton, which she liked to drive herself. She had a little wild, bright-eyed mountain pony, which would eat sugar and apples from her hands, and was as much of a pet as a dog.
”Well, Mary,” she said, ”introduce me. How do you do, Lady Agatha? I know you by sight already. Won't you come inside and have some tea? I'm very glad my Chloe didn't meet that uncanny monster of yours. I have something to do to get her past the trams, I can tell you, much less the motorcars.”
”You shouldn't go out alone,” Mary said, with tender concern. ”Her little pony is very wild, Lady Agatha, and she won't take the carriage, unless she goes visiting.”
”You want to make me out an old woman,” Lady Anne said, ”and I shall never be that. Come along in, Lady Agatha. I've been hearing about you.
What do you mean by making my tenants discontented? They're very well as they are. We shall have to form a league against you, we indolent ones.”