My lady was up betimes in the morning. Remembering the previous day's dinner, she went to seek the cook, intending to come down upon her with a reprimand. The servants were only just rising from breakfast, which afforded my lady an opportunity of seeing the style of that meal as served in the kitchen of the Red Court Farm.
Tea and coffee; part of a ham, cold; toasted bacon, hot; eggs boiled; watercress and radishes; a raised pie; cold beef; shrimps; hot rolls; toast and butter. The sight of all this so completely took Lady Ellis aback, that she could only stare and wonder.
"Is this your usual breakfast table?" she asked of the cook when the rest had left the kitchen.
"Yes, my lady."
"By whose permission?"
"By--I don't understand," said the cook, a stolid sort of woman in ordinary, with a placid face, though very great in her own department.
"Who is it that allows all this?"
Still the woman did not quite comprehend. The scale of living at the Red Court Farm was so profuse, that the servants in point of fact could eat what they pleased.
"Sometimes the eatables is varied, my lady."
"But--does Mr. Thornycroft know of this extravagance going on? Is he aware that you sit down to such a breakfast?"
Cook could not say. He did not trouble himself about the matter. Yes, now she remembered, the justice had come in when they were at breakfast and other meals.
"Who has been the manager here?--who has had the ordering of things?" inquired my lady, in a suppressed passion.
"Sinnett, chiefly. Once in a way the justice would give the orders for dinner; a'most never," was the reply.
Compressing her lips, determining to suppress all this ere many days should be over, my lady quitted the subject for the one she had chiefly come to speak upon.
"And now, cook, what did you mean by flying in the face of my orders yesterday?"
"Did I fly in the face of 'em?" asked the cook, simply.
"Did you! I ordered a plain dinner--fish, a joint, and pudding. You sent up--I know not what in addition to it."
"Oh, it's them extra dishes you mean. Yes, my lady, Sinnett ordered 'em."
"Sinnett!" echoed my lady. "Did you tell her I had desired the dinner should be plain--that I had fixed on it?" she asked after a pause.
"Sinnett said that sort of dinner wouldn't do for the justice, and I was to send up a better one."
My lady bit her thin lips. "Call Sinnett here if you please."
Sinnett, about her work upstairs, came in obedience to the summons. She was a little, pale-faced, dark woman, of about thirty-five, given to wear smart caps. My lady attacked her quietly enough, but with a manner authoritative.
"I beg you to understand at once that I am mistress here, Sinnett, and must be obeyed. When I give my orders, whether for dinner or for anything else, they are not to be improved upon."
"My lady, in regard to adding to the dinner yesterday, I did it for the best; not to act in opposition to you," replied Sinnett, respectfully. "A good dinner has to be sent in always: those are the general orders. The young gentlemen are so much in the habit of bringing in chance guests, that the contingency has to be provided for. I have known a party of eight or ten brought in before now, and we servants quite unaware of it until about to lay the cloth."
"Yes," said my lady, hastily, "that might be all very well when there was no controlling mistress here. Mr. Thornycroft's sons appear to have been allowed great license in the house; of course it will be different now. Remember one thing, if you please, Sinnett, that you do not interfere with my orders for dinner today."
"Very well, my lady."
Catching up her dress--a beautiful muslin that shone like gold--my lady turned to the larder, telling the cook to follow her. She had expected to see on its shelves the dishes that left the table yesterday; but she saw very little.
"What has become of the ducks, cook? They were scarcely touched at table."
"We had 'em for our suppers, my lady."
My lady had a wrathful word on the tip of her tongue; she did not speak it.
"Ducks for supper in the kitchen! Are you in the habit of taking your supper indiscriminately from the dinner dishes that come down?"
"Yes, my lady. Such is master's orders."
"It appears to me that a vast quantity of provisions must be consumed," remarked my lady.
"Pretty well," was the cook's answer. "It's a tolerable large family; and Mr. Thornycroft has a good deal given away."
"Provisions?"
"He do; he's a downright good man, my lady. Not a morning passes, but some poor family or other from the village comes up and carries home what's not wanted here."
"I wonder you don't have them up at night as well," said my lady, in sarcasm.
The cook took it literally.
"That's one of the few things not allowed at the Red Court Farm. Mr. Thornycroft won't have people coming here at night: and for the matter of that," added the woman, "they'd not care to come by the plateau after dark.--About today's dinner, my lady?"
Yes; about today's dinner. As if in aggravation of the powers that had been, my lady ordered soles, a piece of roast beef, the tart that had not been cut yesterday, and the remainder of the lemon cream.
As she went sailing away, the cook returned into the kitchen to Sinnett. The woman was really perplexed.
"I say, Sinnett, here's a start! A piece of ribs of beef, and nothing else. What's to be done?"
"Send it up," quietly replied Sinnett.
"But what on earth will the justice and the young masters say?"
"We shall see. I wash my hands of interfering. Exactly what she has ordered, cook, and no more, mind: she and the master must settle it between them."
Mary Anne Thornycroft had hoped she "should not die of it." Of that there was little chance; but that the girl had received a great blow, there was no disputing. Mr. Thornycroft had said a word to her that morning after breakfast in his authoritative manner, to remind her that she was not to run wild, now there was some one at home to be her friend, mother, companion. Smarting under the sense of wrongs that in her limited experience, her ignorance of the woes of the world, she believed had never fallen on anybody's head before, Mary Anne when left alone burst into a flood of tears; and Isaac surprised her in them. Half in vexation, half in pride, she dried them hastily. Isaac drew her before him, and stood holding her hands in his, looking down gravely into her face.
"What did you promise me, Mary Anne?"
No answer.
"That you would, for a time at least, make the best of things. That you would try the new rule before rebelling against it."
"But I can't. It is too hard, Isaac. Papa's beginning to interfere now."
"Interfere! Is that the right word to use?"
She looked down, pouting her pretty lips. It was a good sign, as Isaac knew.
"There was no harm in my walking to Mrs. Copp's after breakfast yesterday; or in my staying there; or in my going with you to Jutpoint."
"Did papa say there was harm?"
"He told me I was not to run wild now. He told me that I had a"--the poor chest heaved piteously--"a mother. A mother to control me!"
"Well!" said Isaac.
"She is not my mother--I will never call her so. Oh, Isaac! why can't the old days come back again, when mademoiselle was here?"
"Hush! don't cry. Richard or she may be coming in. There; be your own calm self, while I say a word to you. Listen. This calamity has been--"
"There!" she interrupted. "You say yourself it is a calamity."
"I have never thought it anything else; but it cannot be averted now, and therefore nothing remains but to try and lighten it. It has been brought about by you; by you alone, Mary Anne; and if I revert to that fact for a moment, my dear, it is not to pain you, but to draw an inference from it for the future. Do not rebel at first to the control of my lady. It would be unjust, ungracious, altogether wrong; it might lead to further trouble for you; we know not of what sort. Promise me," he added, kissing her lips, "that you will not be the one to make first mischief. It is for your own good that I urge it."
Her better judgment came to her, and she gave Isaac a little nod in answer.
My lady reaped the benefit of this lecture. Coming in from her somewhat unsatisfactory visit to the cook, she found the young lady dutifully practising the Moonlight sonata. My lady looked about the room, as if by good luck she might find something to avert weariness. Miss Thornycroft had hoped she should not die of her; my lady was beginning to hope she should not die of ennui.
"Do you never have any books here? Novels?"
"Sometimes," replied Mary Anne, turning round to speak. "We get them from the library at Jutpoint. There are some books upstairs in the book-case that used to be mamma's--Walter Scott's, and Dickens's, and others."
The Moonlight sonata went on again. My lady, who had no soul for music, thought it the most wofully dull piece she had ever listened to. She sat inert on the sofa. Life--this life at the Red Court Farm--was already looking indescribably dreary. And she had pictured it as a second Utopia! It is ever so; when anticipation becomes lost in possession, romance and desire are alike gone.
"How long has Sinnett lived here?" she suddenly asked, again interrupting Miss Thornycroft.
"Ever so long," was the young lady's reply. "She came just before mamma died."
"What are her precise functions here?--What does she call herself?"
"We don't call her anything in particular. She is a sort of general servant, overlooking everything. She is housekeeper and manager."
"Ah! she has taken a great deal of authority on herself, I can see."
"Has she?" replied Mary Anne. "I have heard papa say she is one of the best servants we ever had; thoroughly capable."
My lady gave her head a little defiant nod: and relapsed into silence and ennui.
Somehow the morning was got through. In the afternoon they set out to walk to the heath; it was rather late, for my lady, lying on the sofa in her bedroom, dropped off to sleep after luncheon. The dinner hour had been postponed to eight in the evening in consequence of a message from Mr. Thornycroft.
Winding round the churchyard, Mary Anne stood a moment and looked over the dwarf quickset hedge, on that side not much higher than her knee. My lady observed that her hands were clasped for a moment, that her lips moved.
"What are you doing, Mary Anne?"
"I never like to go by mamma's grave without staying a moment to look at it, and to say a word or two of prayer," was the simple answer.
My lady laughed, not kindly. "That comes of having a Roman Catholic governess."
"Does it!" answered the girl quietly, indignant at the laugh. "Mademoiselle happens to be a Protestant. I did not learn it from her, or from any one; it comes from my heart."
Turning abruptly on to the heath, Mary Anne saw Mademoiselle Derode coming towards them, and sprung off to meet her with a glad step.
Disappointment was in store for my lady's private dream of keeping Miss Derode as governess. Mademoiselle was then on her way to the Red Court to tell them she was leaving for France in two days.
"You cannot go," said Mary Anne, with the decisively authoritative manner peculiar to the Thornycrofts. "You must come and spend some weeks with me at the Red Court."
Mademoiselle shook her little brown head. It was not possible, she said; happy as she could be at the Red Court; much as she would have liked to stay again with her dear Miss Mary Anne. Her mother wanted her, and she must go.
Turning about and about, they paced the heath while she repeated the substance of her mother's letter. Madame, said she, was suffering from a cold, from the separation, from loneliness, and had written for her. The Champs Elysées had no charms without her dear daughter; the toilettes were miserable; the playing children hustled her, their bonnes were not polite. Virginie must return the very first hour it would be convenient to do so. The pot-au-feu got burnt, the appartement smoked; madame had been so long en pension that she had forgotten how to manage things; never clever at household affairs, the craft of her hand appeared to have gone from her utterly. She had not had a dinner, so to say, since Virginie left; she had not slept one whole night. While Monsieur and Madame--her pupil's parents--had been away on their wedding tour, she had said nothing of this, but now that they were home again she would no longer keep silence. Virginie must come; and her best prayers would be upon her on the journey.
A sort of mocking smile, covered on the instant by a sweet word, crossed my lady's lips.
"It was all very well," she said, "just what a good mother would write; but mademoiselle must write back, and explain that she was wanted yet for some weeks at the Red Court Farm."
"I cannot," said mademoiselle; "I wish I could. Miladi is very good to invite me; but my mother is my mother."
"You left your mother for seven years; she did well then."
"But, yes; that was different. Miladi can picture it. We have our ménage now."
"I have set my heart upon your coming to us, mademoiselle," was miladi's rejoinder, showing for a moment her white teeth.
"I should not need the pressing, if I could come," was the simple answer. "It is a holiday to me now to be at the Red Court Farm; but some things are practicable and others are not practicable, as miladi knows."
And the poor little governess in the cause of her mother was hard as adamant. They walked about until my lady's legs were tired, and then prepared to return.
"Of course you will come back with us, and dine for the last time?" said Mary Anne.
On any other occasion my lady might have interposed with an intimation that Mary Anne Thornycroft had no longer licence to invite whom she pleased to the table of the Red Court Farm. Without waiting for her to second the invitation, mademoiselle at once accepted it.
"For the last time," she repeated; "I shall be making my baggage tomorrow."
My lady did not change her dress for dinner. The odds and ends of what we are pleased to call full dinner-dress did not seem to be appreciated at the Red Court. Yesterday Richard and Isaac had sat down in their velveteen clothes. A moment before dinner Mr. Thornycroft came into the drawing-room, and said his sons had brought in two or three friends. My lady, meeting them in the hall, stared at their appearance and number.
"What is it? who are they?" she whispered to Mary Anne.
"Oh, it is only one of their impromptu dinner parties," carelessly replied Mary Anne. "I guessed they were thinking of it by their delaying the dinner. They have supper parties instead sometimes."
My lady thought she had never seen so rough a dinner party in her life, in the matter of dress. Richard and Isaac wore thin light clothes, loose and easy; the strangers' costume was, to say the least of it, varied. Old Connaught, temporarily abroad again, was wrapped in a suit of grey flannel; the superintendent of the coastguard wore brown; and Captain Copp had arrived in a pea-jacket. Mary Anne shook hands with them all; Miss Derode chattered; and Mr. Thornycroft introduced the superintendent by name to his wife--Mr. Dangerfield.
"Only six today," whispered Mary Anne to her stepmother. "Sometimes they have a dozen."
Quite enough for the fare provided. Before Mr. Thornycroft began to help the soles, he looked everywhere for a second dish--on the table, on the sideboard, on the dumb waiter. "There's more fish than this, Sinnett?" he exclaimed, hastily.
"No, sir. That's all."
Mr. Thornycroft stared his servants severally in the face, as if the fault were theirs. Three of them were in waiting: Sinnett, a maid, and Hyde. He then applied himself to the helping of the fish, and, by dint of contrivance, managed to make it go round.
Well and good. Some ribs of beef came on next, fortunately a large piece. Mr. Thornycroft let it get cold before him; he could not imagine what the hindrance meant. Presently it struck him that the three servants stood in their places waiting for the meat to be served. The guests waited.
"Where are the other things, Hyde?"
"There's only that, sir."
The justice looked up the table and down the table; never in his whole life had he felt ashamed of his hospitality until now. But by this time the curious aspect of affairs had penetrated to Richard.
"Is this all you have to give us for dinner?" he asked of Sinnett, in his deep, stern tones; and he did not think it necessary to lower his voice.
"Yes, sir."
"This! That piece of beef?"
"There's nothing else, sir."
"By whose management?--by whose fault? Speak, woman."
"My lady gave the orders, sir."
Richard turned his dark face on my lady, as if demanding whether Sinnett was not telling a lie; and Mr. Thornycroft began to cut the beef as fast as he could cut it.
"I did not anticipate that we should have friends with us," murmured the new mistress. She felt truly uncomfortable, really sorry for the contretemps; all eyes were turned upon her, following the dark condemning ones of Richard.
"We must make the best of our beef; there are worse misfortunes at sea," said Isaac, his good-natured voice breaking the silence. "You will judge of our appetites better when you get more used to us," he added to my lady with a kind smile.
"I should think there is worse misfortunes at sea," observed Captain Copp, forgetting his grammar in his wish to smooth the unpleasantness. "Bless and save my wooden leg! if us sailors had such a glorious piece of beef to sit down to of a day on the long voyages, we should not hear quite so much of hardships. I remember once--it was the very voyage before the one when I saw that sea-serpent in the Pacific--our tins of preserved meat turned bad, and an awful gale we met washed away our live stock. Ah, you should have been with us then, Mr. Richard; you'd never despise a piece of prime beef again."
Richard vouchsafed no answer: he had been thoroughly vexed. Captain Copp, seated at my lady's right hand, asked her to take wine with him, and then took it with the table generally.
My lady got away as soon as she could: hardly knowing whether to resent the advent of the visitors, the free and easy hospitality that appeared to prevail at the Red Court, or her own mistake in not having provided better. With that dark resolute face of power in her mind--Richard's--instinct whispered her that it would not answer to draw the reins too tight. At any rate, she felt uncomfortable at the table, and quitted it.
Leaving Miss Thornycroft and mademoiselle to go where they pleased, she went up at once to her chamber: a roomy apartment facing the sea. By its side was a small dressing-room, or boudoir; with a pleasant window to sit at on a summer's day. It was night now, but my lady threw up the window, and remained at it. A mist was arising out at sea: not much as yet. She was musing on the state of affairs. Had she made a mistake in coming to the Red Court for life? Early days as yet to think so, but a doubt of it lay upon her spirit.
The subdued tones of the piano underneath were echoing to the beautiful touch of Mademoiselle Derode; the soft, light touch that she had not been able to impart to her pupil. Mary Anne Thornycroft's playing, though clear, brilliant, and good, was, like herself, firm and decisive. You never heard the low melodious music from her that charms the heart to sweet sadness, rather than wins the ear and the admiration.
Suddenly, as my lady stood listening and musing, a figure, very dim and shadowy, appeared on the edge of the plateau, and she strained her eyes on it with a start.
Not of fear; she had no superstition in her hard composition, and all she felt was curiosity--surprise. Mademoiselle Derode might have given utterance to a faint scream, and scuttered away where she could not see the plateau, in dread belief that the ghost was walking. My lady had the good sense to know that a figure, shadowy by this light, might be very substantial by daylight. All in a moment she lost sight of it. It appeared to be standing still on the plateau's edge, whether looking this way or over the sea, her far sight, remarkably keen, could not tell her, but as she looked the figure disappeared. It was gone, so, far as she could see; certainly it did not walk either to the right or the left. For a brief instant my lady wondered whether it had fallen over the cliff--as the poor coastguard-man had once done.
Footsteps underneath. Some one was crossing the garden, apparently having come from the direction of the plateau, and making for the solitary door in the dead wall at the unused end of the house; the end that she had been warned could not welcome ladies. TO her intense surprise she recognised her husband, but dressed differently from what he had been at dinner. The black frock coat (his usual attire) was replaced by one of common velveteen, the gaiters were buttoned over the pantaloons, the customary hat by a disreputable wide-awake. Where could he have been?--when she had thought him busy with his guests!
The mist was extending to the land very rapidly; my lady shut down the window in haste and descended the stairs. The drawing-room windows were open, and she rang the bell for them to be closed. In those few moments the mist had increased so greatly that she could not see halfway across the garden. It was almost like an instantaneous cloud of blight.
"Mr. Thornycroft has left the dining-room," she observed to Hyde, as he was shutting the windows. "Have the people gone?"
"No, my lady. I have just taken in the pipes and spirits."
"Pipes and spirits! Do they smoke at these impromptu dinner gatherings--and drink spirits?"
"Generally," answered Hyde.
"But Mr. Thornycroft is not with them? I saw him out of doors."
Hyde, his windows and shutters closed, turned round to face her, and spoke with emphasis.
"The justice is in the dining-room, my lady. He does not quit it when he has friends with him."
Believing the man told her a lie, for her own sight was perfectly reliable sight--at least it had been so hitherto--she determined to satisfy herself. Waiting until he had gone, she crossed the hall, opened the dining-room door an inch and peeped in. Hyde was right. There sat Mr. Thornycroft in his place at the foot of the table, almost close to her, in the same dress he had worn at dinner, a long churchwarden's pipe in his mouth, and a steaming glass of something hot before him.
"What will you allow me for housekeeping, Mr. Thornycroft?" she asked in the morning.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing," repeated the justice in his firmest tone, decisive as Richard's. She was taking her breakfast languidly in her room. It was eleven o'clock, but she had a headache, she said: the truth being that my lady liked to lie in bed. Mr. Thornycroft, coming in, condoled with her in his hearty manner, never believing but the plea was genuine--the straightforward country gentleman would as soon have believed Captain Copp's wooden leg to be a real one, as a headache false. He entered on the matter he came to speak of, the dinner of yesterday. Kindly enough, but very emphatically, he warned her that such a thing must not occur a second time. It had been altogether a mistake.
"Any money you may wish for yourself, for your own purposes, is yours heartily," he resumed; "but in the housekeeping you must not interfere. The cost is my care, and Sinnett sees to it: she has been in the house so long as to know perfectly well how to provide. I would have given ten pounds out of my pocket rather than have had that happen last night," added the justice, giving a flick to his trousers' right-hand pocket in momentary irritation at the recollection.
"But to provide such dinners is most unreasonable," she remonstrated. "It is only for the servants to eat. I don't think you can have an idea of the extravagance that goes on in the kitchen."
"Pooh! Extravagance! I can afford it. The servants only eat what goes down from our table; and what they can't eat is given away to those who want food. It was my father's plan before me, and it is mine."
"It is sinful waste," retorted my lady. "If you choose to sit down to an outrageously profuse table yourself, the servants ought not to follow suit."
"What would you have done with the superfluous victuals?" demanded the justice. "Put up for auction of a morning and sold?"
"As you ask me what I would have done, I will answer--do not provide them. The housekeeping is altogether on too liberal a scale."
Mr. Thornycroft, who had been looking from the window over the sea, lying hot and clear and beautiful this morning, turned and stood before her; his fair, handsome face grave, his towering form raised to its full height, his voice, as he spoke, impressive in its calm decision.
"Lady Ellis, understand one thing--that this is a matter you must not interfere in. The housekeeping at the Red Court Farm that you are pleased to find cause of fault with--is an established rule; so to say, an institution. It cannot be changed. Sinnett will conduct it as hitherto without trouble to or interference from yourself. Whenever it does not please you to sit down to table, there are other rooms in which you can order your dinner served."
"And suppose I say that I must exert my right of authority--my privilege of controlling the dinners?" she rejoined, her voice getting just a little harsh with the opposition.
"You cannot say it. I am master of my own house and my own table."
"You have made me the mistress!"
"Just so; but not to alter the established usages."
Lady Ellis tapped her foot on the soft carpet. "Do you consider that there is any reason in keeping so large a table?"
"There may or may not be. My pleasure is that it shall be kept. My sons have been brought up to it; they would not have it curtailed."
"I think your sons have been brought up to a great deal that is unfitting. One would think they were lords."
"Handsome, noble fellows!" aspirated the justice, with perhaps a little spice of aggravation. "There are not many lords that can match them."
My lady bit her thin lips, a sure sign of rising temper. "It seems to me to be my duty, Mr. Thornycroft, exercising the authority you have vested in me by making me your wife, to control the extravagance hitherto running riot. Opposition, ill-feeling, in the house will not be seemly."
"Neither will I have it," put in the justice.
"I do not see that it can be avoided. I give certain orders. Sinnett, acting under you, opposes them. What can the result be but unseemly contention? How would you avoid it, I ask?"
"By going to live in one of the cottages on the heath, and leaving Isaac--I mean Richard--master of the Red Court Farm."
He spoke promptly--like a man whose mind is fully made up. The prospect of living in a cottage on the heath nearly took my lady's breath away.
"Mr. Thornycroft!" she passionately exclaimed, and then her tone changed to one of peevish remonstrance: "why do you bring up impossibilities? A cottage on the heath!"
Mr. Thornycroft brought down his hand, not in anger but emphasis, on the small breakfast table.
"Were the order of the Red Court upset by unnecessary interference on your part--were I to find that I could be no longer master of it without being subjected to continual opposition, I should surely quit it. If a cottage on the heath were distasteful to you I would take lodgings at Jutpoint."
Lady Ellis sipped her coffee. It did not appear safe to say more. A cottage on the heath, or lodgings at Jutpoint!
"I only wished to put a stop to unnecessary extravagance," she said, in a tone of conciliation.
"No doubt. I give you credit for good motives, of course; but these things must be left to me. The same gentlemen who dined here yesterday evening are coming to supper this. I have made out the bill of fare myself, and given it to Sinnett."
"Coming again to-night!" she could not help exclaiming.
"To atone for the shortcomings of yesterday's dinner," spoke the justice. "I never had occasion to feel ashamed of my table before."
"I cannot think what possible pleasure you can find in the society of such men," she said, after a pause. "Look at them, coming out to dinner in those rough coats!"
Mr. Thornycroft laughed. "We don't go in often for evening dress at Coastdown. As to the pleasure, they have been in the habit of sitting at my table for some years now, madam, and I enjoy the companionship."
"I fancied you left them early; I thought I saw you cross the garden, as if coming from the plateau," she said, resolving to speak of the matter which had so puzzled her.
"We did not leave the dining-room until eleven o'clock."
"Well--it was very strange. I was standing at this window, and certainly saw some one exactly like you; the same figure, the same face; but not in the same dress. He seemed to have on gaiters and a velveteen coat, and a low broad-brimmed hat, very ugly. What should you say it could have been?"
"I should say that you were dreaming."
"I was wide awake. It was just before that mist came on," she added.
"Ah, the fault must have lain in the mist. I have known it come as a mirage occasionally, bringing deception and confusion."
Did he really mean it? It seemed so, for there was seriousness on his face as he spoke. Quitting the room, he descended the stairs, and made his way to the fields. In the four-acre mead--as it was called in common parlance on the farm--he came upon Richard watching the hay-makers. Richard wished him good morning; abroad early, it was the first time he had seen his father that day.
"What was the failure, Dick?" asked the justice. "Fog," shortly answered Richard. "Couldn't see the light."
Mr. Thornycroft nodded.
"Are we to have a repetition, sir, of yesterday's dinner table?" resumed Richard. "If so, I think the sooner your wife is requested to take up her residence somewhere else, the better."
"You will not have it again. Sinnett holds my orders, and my wife has been made aware she does. There's no need for you to put yourself out."
With the injunction, spoken rather testily, Mr. Thornycroft left him. But a little later, when he met Isaac, he voluntarily entered on the subject; hinting his vexation at the past, promising that it would never again occur, almost as if he were tendering an apology for the accident.
"I'm afraid I made a mistake, Ikey; I'm afraid I made a mistake; but I meant it for the best."
It was ever thus. To his second son Mr. Thornycroft's behaviour was somewhat different from what it was to his eldest. It could not be said that he paid him more deference: but it was to Isaac he generally spoke of business, when speaking was needed; if an opinion was required, Isaac's was sought in preference to Richard's. It was just as though Isaac had been the eldest son. That Richard had brought this on himself, by his assumption of authority, was quite probable: and the little preference seemed to spring from the justice involuntarily.
The evening supper took place, and the guests were consoled by the ample table for the scantiness of the previous dinner. My lady was not invited to join it; nothing appeared further from Mr. Thornycroft's thoughts than to have ladies at table. She spent a solitary sort of evening; Mary Anne was at Mrs. Wilkinson's, taking leave of Miss Derode.
Was it, she asked herself, to go on like this always and always? Had she become the wife of Justice Thornycroft only to die of the dreary life at the Red Court Farm? Let us give her her due. When she married him she did intend to do her duty as an honest woman, and send ridiculous flirtations, such as that carried on with Robert Lake, to the winds. But she did not expect to be done to death of ennui.
A short while went on. Nearly open warfare set in between Mary Anne and her stepmother. To-day my lady would be harsh, exacting, almost cruel in her rule; tomorrow the girl would be wholly neglected--suffered to run wild. Mr. Thornycroft saw that things could not continue thus, and the refrain of the words he had spoken to Isaac beat ever on his brain, day by day bringing greater force to them: "I fear I made a mistake; I fear I made a mistake."
One morning Mary Anne astonished the justice by appearing before him in his bureau, in what she was pleased to call the uncivilized rooms. He sat there with Mr. Hopley, of Dartfield, some account books before them. Her dress, a beautiful muslin with a raised blue spot, was torn out at the gathers and trailed behind her. My lady had done it in a passion.
"Holloa! what do you do here?" cried the justice, emphatically; and Mr. Hopley went out whistling, with his hands in his pockets, and crossed over to stare at the idle dog-cart in the coach-house, as if to give privacy for the explanation.
She had come with one of her tales of woe. She had come to beg and pray to be sent to school. What a change! Mr. Thornycroft was nearly at his wits' end.
Ere the day was over, his wife brought a complaint to him on her own score: not altogether of Mary Anne. She simply said, incidentally, that ill-trained young lady was getting quite beyond her control, and therefore she must wash her hands of her. The complaint was of her own health; it appeared to be failing her in a rather remarkable manner, certainly a sudden one. This was true. She had concluded that the air of Coastdown was inimical to her, she wished it might be managed for her to live away--say Cheltenham, or some other healthy place.
How eagerly Mr. Thornycroft caught at the suggestion, he felt afterwards half ashamed to think of. In matters involving money he was always liberal, and he at once named a handsome sum per month that she might enjoy, at Cheltenham, or anywhere else that pleased her.