'Madam, the guests are come, supper served up,
My young lady asked for!'—Romeo and Juliet.
A garden-party, Mrs. William Egremont decided, would be the best mode of testifying her approbation of her sister-in-law, and introducing the newcomers to the neighbourhood. So the invitations were sent forth for an early day of the coming week.
From how many points of view was Mrs. William Egremont's garden-party regarded, and how different! There was Basil, to whom it meant wearing his velvet suit and eating as many ices as mother would allow. To Blanche, it was an occasion for triumph on the tennis ground for herself, and for hopes for her pupil; and Ursula herself looked forward to it and practised for it like a knight for his first encounter in the lists, her sole care being to distinguish herself with her racket. To her mother, it was an ordeal, where she trusted not to be a mortification to her husband and his family; while to the hostess, it was a not unwelcome occasion of exercising honest diplomacy and tact, not without a sense of magnanimity. To May, it was a bore to be endured with dutiful philosophy; to her good-natured father an occasion for hospitality, where he trusted that his brother would appear, and appear to advantage, and was ready even to bribe him thereto with that wonderful claret that Alwyn had always envied, and declared to be wasted on a parson. And Mark, perhaps he viewed the occasion with different eyes from any one else. At any rate, even the denizens of Bridgefield mustered there with as many minds as Scott ascribes to the combatants of Bannockburn, and there were probably as many other circles of feeling more or less intersecting one another among the more distant guests, most of them, however, with the same feeling of curiosity as to what this newly-discovered wife and daughter of Alwyn Egremont might be like.
Externally, in her rich black silk, trimmed with point lace, and her little straw-coloured bonnet with its tuft of feathery grass and blue cornflower, she was so charming that her daughter danced round her, crying, 'O mammy, mammy, if they could but see you at home'—then, at a look: 'Well then—Aunt Ursel, and Miss Mary, and Mr. Dutton!'
Nuttie was very much pleased with her own pretty tennis dress; but she had no personal vanity for herself, only for her mother. The knowledge that she was no beauty was no grievance to her youthful spirits; but when her father surveyed them in the hall, she looked for his verdict for her mother as if their relations were reversed.
'Ha! Well, you certainly are a pretty creature, Edda,' he said graciously. 'You'll pass muster! You want nothing but style. And, hang it! you'll do just as well without it, if the Canoness will only do you justice. Faces like that weren't given for nothing.'
She blushed incarnadine and accepted one of his kisses with a pleasure, at which Nuttie wondered, her motherly affection prompting her to murmur in his ear—
'And Ursula?'
'She'll not cut you out; but she is Egremont enough to do very fairly. Going already?'
'If you would come with us,' she said wistfully, to the horror of Nuttie, who was burning to be at the beginning of all the matches.
'I? oh no! I promised old Will to look in, but that won't be till late in the day, or I shall have to go handing all the dowagers into the dining-room to tea.'
'Then I think we had better go on. They asked us to come early, so as to see people arrive and know who they are.'
They was a useful pronoun to Alice, who felt it a liberty to call her grand-looking sister-in-law, Jane—was too well-bred to term her Mrs. William.
The mother and daughter crossed the gardens, Nuttie chattering all the way about the tennis tactics she had picked up from Blanche, while her mother answered her somewhat mechanically, wondering, as her eye fell on the square squat gray church tower, what had become of the earnest devotion to church work and intellectual pursuits that used to characterise the girl. True, always both mother and daughter had hitherto kept up their church-going, and even their Sunday-school habits, nor had any hindrance come in their way, Mr. Egremont apparently acquiescing in what he never shared. But these things seemed, in Ursula's mind, to have sunk out of the proportion they held at Bridgefield, no longer to be the spirit of a life, but mere Sunday duties and occupations.
Was this wicked world getting a hold of the poor child? Which was duty? which was the world? This was the thought that perplexed Alice, too simple as yet to perceive that Ursula's former absorption had been in the interests that surrounded her and her companions, exactly as they were at present, and that the real being had yet to work itself out.
For herself, Alice did not think at all. She was rejoicing in her restored husband, and his evident affection. Her duty towards him was in her eyes plain. She saw, of course, that he had no religion, but she accepted the fact like that of bad weather; she loved him, and she loved her daughter; she said her prayers with all her heart for them, she hoped, and she did her best, without trying to go below the surface.
There was the Rectory gate wide open. There was Basil rushing up to greet his dear Aunt Alice, there were all the windows and doors of the Rectory open, and the nearer slopes covered with chairs and seats of all dimensions, some under trees, some umbelliferous, and glowing Afghan rugs, or spotted skins spread for those who preferred the ground. There was Blanche flitting about wild with excitement, and pouncing on Nuttie to admire her outfit, and reiterate instructions; there were the two younger girls altering the position of chairs according to their mother's directions; there were actually two guests—not very alarming ones, only the curate and his wife, both rather gaunt, bony people. He was button-holing the Canon, and she was trying to do the same by the Canoness about some parish casualty. The Canon hoped to escape in the welcome to his sister-in-law and niece, but he was immediately secured again, while his wife found it requisite to hurry off else where, leaving Mrs. Edwards to tell her story to Mrs. Egremont. In point of fact, Alice really liked the good lady, was quite at ease with her, and felt parish concerns a natural element, so that she gave full heed and attention to the cruelty of Mrs. Parkins' depriving Betsy Butter (with an old father and mother to support) of her family washing, on the ground of a missing pocket handkerchief, the which Mrs. Edwards believed to have been abstracted by the favourite pickle of Miss Blanche's class, if only a confession could be elicited from him when undefended by his furious mother. Mrs. Egremont was listening with actual interest and sympathy to the history of Betsy Butter's struggles, and was inquiring the way to her cottage, when she was called off to be introduced to the arrivals who were beginning to flood the lawn. She presently saw May, who had just come down, walking up and down with Mrs. Edwards, evidently hearing the story of the handkerchief. She thought it had been Nuttie for a moment. There was a general resemblance between the cousins that made them be mistaken for one another several times in the course of the day, since their dresses, though not alike, were of the same make and style.
Thus it was that as Nuttie was sitting on the grass in earnest contemplation of Blanche's play, a hand was familiarly laid on her shoulder, and a voice said, 'I haven't seen that horrid girl yet!'
After so many introductions, Nuttie had little idea whom she knew, or whom she did not know. She looked up and saw a small person in light blue, with the delicate features, transparent skin, and blue eyes that accompany yellow hair, with an indescribable glitter of mirth and joyousness about the whole creature, as if she were part and parcel of the sunbeam in which she stood.
'What horrid girl?' said Nuttie.
'The interloper, the newly-discovered savage, come to upset—Ah!'—with a little shriek—'It isn't May! I beg your pardon.'
'I'm May's cousin,' said Nuttie, 'Ursula Egremont.'
'Oh, oh!' and therewith the fact burst on both girls at once. They stood still a moment in dismay, then the stranger went into a fit of laughter. 'Oh, I beg your pardon! I can't help it! It is so funny!'
Nuttie was almost infected, though somewhat hurt. 'Who said I was horrid?' she asked.
'Nobody! Nobody but me—Annaple Ruthven—and they'll all tell you, May and all, that I'm always putting my foot in it. And I never meant that you were horrid—you yourself—you know—only—'
'Only nobody wanted us here,' said Nuttie; 'but we could not help it.'
'Of course not. It was shocking, just my way. Please forgive me!' and she looked most pleading. Nuttie held out her hand with something about 'No one could mind;' and therewith Annaple cried, 'Oh, if you don't mind, we can have our laugh out!' and the rippling laughter did set Nuttie off at once. The peal was not over when May herself was upon them demanding what was the joke.
'Oh, there she is! The real May! Why,' said Annaple, kissing her, 'only think here I've been and gone and thought this was you, and inquired about—What was it?—the awful monster—the chimera dire—that Mark had routed up—'
'No; you didn't say that,' said Nuttie, half provoked.
'Never mind what I said. Don't repeat it. I only wish myself and every one else to forget it. Now it is swept to the winds by a good wholesome giggling. But what business have you two to be so inconveniently alike? You are as bad as the twin Leslies!'
'There's an old foremother on the staircase in white satin who left her looks to us both,' said May.
'You'll have to wear badges,' said Annaple. 'You know the Leslies were so troublesome that one had to be shipped off to the East Indies and the other to the West.'
'They married, that's all,' said May, seeing Nuttie looking mystified; and at that moment, Blanche's side coming out victorious, Nuttie descended into the arena to congratulate and be asked to form part of the next set.
'Well, that was a scrape!' said Annaple; 'but she wasn't bad about it! I must do something to make up for it somehow—get Janet to invite her, but really Janet is in such a state of mind that I am mildness itself compared with her. She would not have come, only John was curious, and declared he should go whether we did or not.'
'Ah!' said May, 'I saw him, like the rest of mankind, at madame's feet.'
'Oh! is she of that sort?'
'No,' said May, 'not at all. Mother and father too both think she is good to the backbone; but she is very pretty, with just the inane soft sweetness that men rave about—innocent really. All accounts of her are excellent, and she has nice parish ways, and will be as helpful as Uncle Alwyn will let her.'
'But she couldn't always have been nice?'
'Well, I verily believe it was all Uncle Alwyn's and grandmamma's fault. I know Mark thinks so.'
'When the women of a family acquit a woman it goes for something,' said Annaple. 'That's not original, my dear, I heard old Lady Grosmede say so to Janet when she was deliberating over the invitation, "For a good deal more than Mr. Mark's, at any rate.'"
'Mark is very fond of her—the mother, I mean. He says when he was a little fellow her loss was worse to him than even our mother's.'
'Do you remember the catastrophe?'
'Not a bit. Only when she is petting Basil it strikes me that I have heard the tones before. I only remember the time of misery under the crosspatches grandmamma got for us.'
'Well, it was a splendid cutting of his own throat in Mark,' said Annaple, 'so it ought to turn out well.'
'I don't know how it is to turn out for Mark,' answered May. 'Oh, here he comes!'
'Will you come into this set, Annaple?' he asked. 'They want another couple,' and, as she accepted, 'How do you get on with May's double?'
'I pity May for having such a double.'
'Don't encourage her by misplaced pity.'
'It's abominable altogether! I want to fly at somebody!'
'Exhaust your feelings on your racket, and reflect that you see a man released from bondage.'
'Is that philosophy or high-faluting?' she said in a teasing tone as the game began.
The Ruthvens had very blue blood in their veins, but as there were nine of the present generation, they possessed little beyond their long pedigree; even the head of the family, Lord Ronnisglen, being forced to live as a soldier, leaving his castle to grouse shooters. His seven brothers had fared mostly in distant lands as they could, and his mother had found a home, together with her youngest child, at Lescombe, where her eldest was the wife of Sir John Delmar. Lady Ronnisglen was an invalid, confined to the house, and Lady Delmar had daughters fast treading on the heels of Annabella, so christened, but always called Annaple after the old Scottish queens, her ancestors. She had been May Egremont's chief friend ever since her importation at twelve years old, and the intimacy had been promoted by her mother and sister. Indeed, the neighbourhood had looked on with some amusement at the competition ascribed to Lady Delmar and to the wealthy parvenu, Mrs. West, for the heir-presumptive of Bridgefield Egremont.
Annaple's lightness and dexterity rendered her the best of the lady tennis-players, and the less practised Ursula found herself defeated in the match, in spite of a partner whose play was superior to Mark's, and with whom she shyly walked off to eat ices.
'I see,' said Annaple, 'it is a country-town edition of May. I shan't blunder between them again.'
'She will polish,' said Mark, 'but she is not equal to her mother.'
'Whom I have not seen yet. Ah, there's Mr. Egremont! Why, he looks quite renovated!'
'Well he may be!'
'But Mark, not to hurt your feelings, he must have behaved atrociously.'
'I'm not going to deny it,' said Mark.
'I always did think he looked like it,' said Annaple.
'When have you seen him before?'
'Only once, but it was my admirable sagacity, you understand? I always see all the villains in books just on his model. Oh, but who's that? How very pretty! You don't mean it is she! Well, she might be the heroine of anything!'
'Isn't she lovely?'
'And has she been keeping school like Patience on a monument all these years? It doesn't seem to have much damaged her damask cheek!'
'It was only daily governessing. She looks much better than when I first saw her; and as to the damask—why, that's deepened by the introduction to old Lady Grosmede that is impending.'
'She is being walked up to the old Spanish duck with the red rag round her leg to receive her fiat. What a thing it is to be a bearded Dowager, and rule one's neighbourhood!'
'I think she approves. She has made room for her by her side. Is she going to catechise her?'
Annaple made an absurd sound of mingled pity and disgust.
'Not that she—my aunt, I mean—need be afraid. The shame is all on the other side.'
'And I think Lady Grosmede has too much sense to think the worse of her for having worked for herself,' added Annaple. 'If it was not for mother I should long to begin!'
'You? It's a longing well known to me!—but you!'
'Exactly! As the Irishman felt blue moulded for want of a bating, so do I feel fagged out for want of an honest day's work.'
'If one only knew what to turn to,' said Mark so wearily that Annaple exclaimed,
'We seem to be in the frozen-out state of mind, and might walk up and down singing "I've got no work to do,"'—to which she gave the well known intonation.
'Too true,' said he, joining in the hum.
'But I thought you were by way of reading law.'
'One must see more than only "by way of" in these days to do any good.'
At that moment Basil ran up with a message that Lady Delmar was ready to go home.
They walked slowly up the terrace and Mark paused as they came near Mrs. Egremont to say, 'Aunt Alice, here is Miss Ruthven, May's great friend.'
Annaple met a pleasant smile, and they shook hands, exchanging an observation or two, while a little way off Lady Grosmede was nodding her strong old face at Lady Delmar, and saying, 'Tell your mother I'll soon come and see her, my dear. That's a nice little innocent body, lady-like, and thoroughly presentable. Alwyn Egremont might have done worse.'
'The only wonder is he did not!' returned Lady Delmar. 'They make the best of it here.'
'Very good taste of them. But, now I've seen her, I don't believe there's anything behind. Very hard upon the poor young man, though it was all his doing, his mother says. I congratulate you that it had not gone any farther in that quarter.'
'Oh, dear no! Never dreamt of it. She is May's friend, that's all.'
Nevertheless Lady Delmar made a second descent in person to hurry Annaple away.
'Isn't it disgusting?' said May, catching her stepmother's smile.
'You will see a good deal more of the same kind,' said the Canoness; 'I am afraid more mortification is in store for Mark than he guesses. I wish that girl were more like her mother.'
'Mamma! a girl brought up among umbrella-makers! Just fancy! Why, she has just nothing in her!'
'Don't set Mark against her, May; he might do worse.'
'Her head is a mere tennis ball,' said May, drawing her own higher than ever, 'and no one would know her from a shop girl.'
'She is young enough,' said the Canoness. 'Don't class me with Lady Delmar, May—I only say—if—and that I don't think you realise the change Mark will feel.'
'Better so than sell himself,' muttered May.
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