Collected Works of Frances Trollope, page 286
“Besides what, Temple?” said Mr. Thorpe.
“I was going to say, that it would be a pity for the ladies to confine their walks to the garden this lovely day. The woods are beautiful.”
“You would not think it possible for ladies to walk in the woods at such a season as this, would you, Sir Charles Temple?” said his neighbour Miss Wilkyns, with a shudder.
“They will lose a very glorious spectacle if they do not,” he replied, somewhat brusquely.
“I suppose you think that a party of country girls, as, I presume, you call us, may plunge to their waists in snow without danger. But I am afraid we have neither strength, energy, romance, nor inclination sufficient for such an enterprise. Are there any drives cut through the woods that you say are so beautiful?”
“No, Miss Wilkyns, I believe not. But as I always walk, and never drive, it is possible that I may be mistaken.”
“I hope to heaven you are!” replied the young lady, “for it will certainly be very dull ( lowering her voice to a whisper) not to go out at all; and as to tearing through bushes and wading through snow, I can answer for my sisters and myself that it is perfectly out of the question.”
“There is no snow,” returned Sir Charles, in an accent fully as chilling as his theme.
“Then, pray, do you think it right,” said the piqued heiress, replying rather to his accent than his words, “do you think it right, Sir Charles Temple, for young ladies, girls who may consider themselves as the daughters of a gentleman, and who have been brought up like gentlewomen, do you think it right for them to scramble over hedges and ditches, tearing their way through bushes, like so many savages looking for roots and berries?”
“It would be very unnecessary, at least, for any of this party, to set off upon such a quest,” replied Sir Charles, helping himself from a dainty-looking pigeon-pie:— “may I have the pleasure of helping you, Miss Wilkyns?”
“I have breakfasted, sir, I thank you!” she replied, pushing back her coffee-cup, and drawing on her lemon-coloured gloves.
At this moment the door opened, and Florence entered. Every eye was turned upon her, but she was either perfectly unconscious or perfectly unheedful of it; for, with no deeper blush than her fresh walk had given her, she made her way to the top of the table, and bending down beside the master of the house, who turned round a smiling countenance to greet her, she said,— “I hope, uncle Thorpe, you are not angry with me for being so late. I did not know at all what o’clock it was, and the woods are so very beautiful!”
“The woods!... Heavens!” murmured Miss Wilkyns.
“The woods!.... mercy!” ejaculated Miss Eldruda.
“The woods!... incredible!” whispered Miss Winifred.
The two nobly-christened Etonians bent forward from the opposite sides of the table to stare at her, — and no great wonder; for with her half-straightened chestnut locks smoothly combed apart upon her forehead, her slight graceful figure, infinitely better shown by her plain, closely-fitted merino frock, than it would have been by the richest robe that ever fashion puckered, she looked so simply, thoroughly beautiful, that no eye, without a beam in it, could have looked at her without pleasure.
“Angry with you, my dear child!” said Mr. Thorpe, taking her hand, and gallantly kissing it, “angry with you for admiring my rough old woods?... But I will tell you what, Florence, I shall be angry with you, very angry, if you do not sit down here close to me, and make a good breakfast. Here is one who I know will make room for you.”
The one he meant to indicate was Sophia Martin; but before that affectionate girl, who had almost squeezed herself into her uncle’s pocket, could move her chair, Mrs. Heathcote had made space enough, and Algernon was already behind his sister, with a chair ready for her. Florence repaid their services by giving Algernon a nod and a smile, and impressing a kiss on the cheek of her step-mother.
“To think of you, Florence!” said Mrs. Heathcote, “who never breakfasted later than eight o’clock in your life, to think of you not being ready by ten!”
“I was ready, mamma!... I mean, I should have been ready, only I was so far away,” replied Florence, attacking the roll Mr. Thorpe had placed before her.
“So far?” said the eldest Miss Wilkyns, “where then have you been wandering, Miss Heathcote, if I may take the liberty of asking?”
“I hardly know how to tell you,” replied the laughing girl, “but it was a beautiful thick wood, with a narrow path that opened every now and then, as if on purpose for the view; and it was very near a waterfall!”
“A perfect Diana!” said Mr. Spencer, with something like a shrug and a sneer, and not quite approving the look of admiration with which their host was regarding her.
Sophia Martin breathed a heavy sigh. “Oh Florence!” she said; and then employed herself with her tea-spoon and coffee-cup, for she was evidently confused, though her cousin Florence evidently was not.
“You don’t mean that you have been to High Spring Fall, my dear, do you?” said Mr. Thorpe.
“Was it High Spring Fall, Sir Charles?” demanded Florence, innocently.
The young man coloured, for he knew, though she did not, the species of impertinence which was likely to follow this application to him, and would have saved her from it if possible; but it was not.
“You were at no great distance from High Spring Fall when I saw you, Miss Heathcote,” he replied; and then added, as gaily and gallantly as he could, “What say you, ladies all? have you courage to follow Miss Heathcote’s example? Shall we all start as soon as breakfast is over to visit this pretty cataract?.... The Fall is too mighty to be stopped by the frost; but I doubt not it will be beautifully decorated with icicles, and will offer as pretty a spectacle as you would wish to see.”
The proposal did not receive an immediate answer. Each lady seemed to intend that another should speak first. Miss Wilkyns was calculating the chance of her receiving an offer of Sir Charles Temple’s arm. Miss Eldruda was waiting to hear what Miss Elfreda said. Miss-Winifred was meditating on the danger of spoiling her curls, like “that wild girl of the woods, Florence Heathcote, whose sort of face could stand it so much better than hers could.” Mrs. Heathcote was weighing what the danger to her new boots might be. And Miss Martin was anxiously waiting to hear them all say they would go, that she might stay at home, tête-à-tête, with her uncle Thorpe. So as none of them spoke, poor Florence rashly undertook to answer for the whole party at once, and said, “To be sure, they will all go! It is impossible for anybody to stay at home such a day as this! I do fissure you that it is not the least cold, if you will but walk fast enough.”
“Your hands do not look very warm, Miss Heathcote,” said Miss Eldruda, drawing off her own glove, and employing her tolerable-looking hand, by arranging the moss on which the plovers’ eggs were placed.
The fingers of Florence, though they would have been recognised, had they been ten times frost-bitten, (by any eye that understood the question,) as infinitely more beautiful than the thin, sallow, but well-preserved hands of Miss Eldruda, did certainly at this moment look of a blood-red hue; and Miss Martin, in an audible whisper, said, “Oh, Florence, put on your gloves!” But Florence only shook her head and smiled; and, after the pause of a moment, said, “I do assure you my hands are not cold at all. It is only their colour that makes you think so: but nobody says anything about the waterfall.”
“Gracious Heaven! you do not want to set out again, do you?” cried Miss Wilkyns, shuddering. “What a very extraordinary young lady you are!”
“It would really be a great pity if you should get chilblains on your hands, my dear,” said Mr. Thorpe, rather gravely. “I would not recommend your going out again till you had restored circulation to your fingers. Young ladies must never have red hands.”
“I dare say it will go off, uncle, presently,” said Florence, carelessly.
“But do you not think, upon the whole, that it would be better for you to put off your next excursion to the cataract till shooting-time to-morrow?” said Miss Wilkyns, drawing up her eyes, and looking at her cousin through her eye-glass.
“Till to-morrow?” returned Florence, upon whom the “shooting” had produced no effect whatever. “To-morrow is Christmas-day, you know, and of course we shall all go to Church; and the next day is the third from this; and it is very likely indeed that this white frost will go then, and we shall lose the icicles altogether. Oh! do let us go to-day.”
“I dare say the two Mr. Spencers will have no objection to take a scramble with you through the woods,” said Miss Eldruda, laughing; “but really you must excuse us.”
“I think it is possible they may be de trop,” said Mr. Spencer senior.
“Very likely,” said Miss Wilkyns, quietly, but at the same time giving her graceful, official uncle, an intelligent look.
“Well, well, manage it as you like, and amuse yourselves as well as you can, my dear children,” said Mr. Thorpe. “Theresa billiard-table in one of the rooms up stairs, boys; but it is very likely that you will find the cloth worm-eaten, the balls lost, and the cues and maces broken. However, you may go and see. It is just possible that Mrs. Barnes may have extended her patronage to them, and she is a prodigious conservative.”
The young Spencers looked comforted, and started to their feet; neither did their father nor Major Heathcote hear of the billiard-table with indifference.
“Which way must we go, uncle Thorpe?” said Mr. Bentinck.
“Who will show us the way to the billiard-room, uncle?” said Mr. Montagu at the same moment.
“I will show you, boys, I will show you myself,” returned the old gentleman; “but I shan’t stir till my pretty niece here has finished her breakfast.... Only she must promise not to let me see any chilblains. I don’t like young ladies to have red hands.”
“Look at this hand now, sir!” said Mrs. Heathcote, who had silently seized upon the left hand of Florence, while the contented girl managed to get at her breakfast by aid of the right. “Look here, sir. I have just warmed her poor little hand a little between mine, and you see there are no chilblains now.”
The hand of Florence might, both in shape and colour, have served as a model for Van Dyck. The three Misses Wilkyns, who happened at this moment each to have a hand ungloved, all drew on a delicate gant de Paris, and seemed quite ready to leave the table.
“If Major Heathcote should happen to die, I think I should be strangely tempted to marry his widow,” whispered Sir Charles to Miss Wilkyns; and in return she gave him the kindest smile she had bestowed that day, for the fair Elfreda greatly enjoyed what she called “sly quizzing.” But it is just possible that upon this occasion she did not quite enter into the spirit of Sir Charles Temple’s jest.
Mr. Thorpe, meanwhile, took the delicate little hand thus offered into him to his own, saying very cordially as he examined it, “Why no, my dear madam, I cannot say I see any reason to find fault with the hand now; but have you done breakfast already, Florence?”
“Oh yes! But yet you see I am the last of all!”
CHAPTER VII.
On leaving the breakfast-room, which the whole party did together, Mr. Thorpe, when preparing to mount the stairs with the gentlemen in search of the billiard-table, desired Sir Charles Temple to escort the ladies to the east parlour, a gay-looking, cheerful little room, which had been prepared especially for their morning accommodation, and had been carefully supplied with lady-like books and engravings in abundance.
“What an extremely pleasant room!” exclaimed Miss Wilkyns to the young baronet, as they entered it. “The white ground of this India paper and the bright-coloured birds and butterflies make it quite beautiful! don’t they, Eldruda?”
“But look out of the window, Miss Wilkyns, and you will see what is more bright and beautiful still,” cried Florence, who perfectly unscathed by all the hits she had received concerning her preternatural love for waterfalls, could still think of nothing else. “What think you of the sun shining on all those sparkling boughs? and this is only a shut-up little garden! Think what it must be with all sorts of beautiful trees, great and small, all spreading themselves out, full dressed in this way, on purpose for you to look at them? I thought it was such a pity to come to a new place in the middle of winter, when, often, one can hardly get out at all! But instead of that, the sight from the walk in the wood is ten thousand times more beautiful than the brightest leaves and flowers of summer. It is a sight to make one dance and sing; and such a sight, Miss Wilkyns....
‘Oh! how can you renounce, and hope to be forgiven?’”
The pretty, playful, coaxing manner in which this was said might have been more successful, if the important young lady to whom it was addressed had not been influenced by the foregone conclusion, that her cousin-german, Miss Florence Heathcote, was an individual whom it was necessary to keep at arm’s length. In truth she considered her as a person whose education had been so lamentably neglected, as to make her utterly unfit for all companionship with ladies filling a certain station inlife; a station which made them, as she frequently observed, bound in honour to themselves, their ancestors, and their posterity, not to do anything that could compromise their character as gentlewomen. That walking with Florence to look at High Spring Fall must have been held by her as one of those past, present, and future acts of criminality, was made manifest by the stedfastness of her opposition to it.
“There are many things, I believe, Miss Heathcote,” she stiffly replied, “which young ladies are obliged to forego in order to preserve the refinement so essential to their possessing the esteem of the world; and scrambling through bogs and bushes, in search of the picturesque, is, in my opinion, one of them. I must beg you to excuse myself and my sisters from participating in anything of the kind.”
Florence looked quite frightened; and for the first time became aware that she had done or said something wrong. The bright smile vanished from her, and as she sat herself down close to her stepmother, slipping her arm within that of her protecting friend, Sir Charles Temple thought that she even looked pale from the rebuff she had received.
The east-parlour party consisted at this time only of Mrs. Heathcote and her offending daughter, the three Welsh heiresses, and himself; and had he joined the gentlemen, according to his first intention, he would have left, as he thought, a party singularly ill-constructed for the purposes of social enjoyment. He therefore changed his plan, and good-humouredly sat himself down at a table near the fire, and began examining the books that lay upon it, pointing out to Mrs. Heathcote a volume of engravings which he assured her were very good, and asking first one Miss Wilkyns, and then another, and then the third, all sorts of light literary questions, in order to set them talking, and so give his poor bruised companion of the morning, time to recover herself, and courage once more to raise her drooping head.
Miss Martin meanwhile had withdrawn herself from motives Of prudence. No sooner did she hear poor troublesome Florence begin again about sunshine and icicles, than all the dangers of a Winter walk rose to her imagination. She must either go out in a pair of shabby thick shoes, like those worn by her inconsiderate cousin, or injure for ever and for ever the appearance of a new pair, which set her short little foot off to the best advantage. She must either wear the black heaver bonnet, which made her look so very dark and old, or risk important injury to the new straw one, bought for the present great occasion. Then her neat and only silk gown might be splashed, her frill tumbled, her new shawl crushed, and her best kid gloves soiled. It was all ruin and destruction; and as she did not happen to care a single farthing about water-falls, and very little just at present about the young baronet, she quietly slipped out of the room while Florence was in the midst of her harangue, and made her way to her own room, determined not to leave its shelter till the danger was past.
It was not, however, as yet quite in readiness to receive her; but the housemaid employed upon it was the Nancy with whom she had commenced a friendship on the preceding night, and she again entered into conversation with her.
“I beg your pardon, Nancy, for coming up so soon. Of course I know you can’t he ready yet; but I am not going to stay a minute. Only do tell me, Nancy, something about this beautiful old house before I go down again. You must know, I hate walking out of doors in the winter. It makes such a mess of all one’s things; and, besides, I can’t bear giving the trouble of cleaning gown, shoes, and everything that one wears. So I came up here, because I think it very likely that all the others are going out; and instead of going with them I should like of all things to see some of the up-stairs rooms. Are there any family pictures here, Nancy?”
“Oh, yes, Miss; a number here and there about in the rooms. But there’s no gallery like, as there is at Temple,” replied the girl.
“Are they in the bed-rooms? I wonder if I could get a sight of them?.... I should so like it!”
“Why the most of ’em is in master’s own bed-room, Miss; and you may go there safe enough, if you like it, for all the gentlemen are got to billiards, old and young, and master in the midst of them, as gay as the best. I couldn’t help stopping to look at him as I passed by the open door; he ain’t like the same gentleman as he was before the company was here, for I am often here backwards and forwards when mother can spare me, helping my aunt, Mrs. Barnes, about the furniture, though I hav’n’t served here constant.”
“Do you think you Could spare time to go with me into my uncle’s room for a minute or two, Nancy? I should so like to see the pictures.”
“Yes, Miss, I can show you the way, if you please; but it is just right away at the other end of the house.”
“Come, then. I don’t mind about the distance.” And Miss Martin and the housemaid set off together very lovingly, beguiling the way with a good deal of domestic chat; for the young lady appeared to take interest in everything which in the slightest degree concerned the estimable relative to whom she had so recently been introduced.
