It was the second week in October, and the woods were changing their green liveries of summer for tawny and amber tints, so various and so harmonious in their delicate gradations that the eye of the artist was gladdened by their decay. The hawthorns in Wimperfield Park glowed in the distance like patches of crimson flame, and the undulating sweeps of bracken showed golden-brown against the green-sward; while the oaks-symbolic of all that is solid, ponderous, and constant in woodland nature, slow to bloom and slow to die — had hardly a faded leaf to murk the coming of winter.
A fine domain, this Wimperfield Park, with its hill and vale, its oaks and beeches, and avenue of immemorial elms, to be owned by the man who six weeks ago had no better shelter than a lath and plaster villa in a French village, and who had found it a hard thing to pay the rent of that trumpery tenement; and yet Sir Reginald Palliser accepted the change in his circumstances as tranquilly as if it had been but a migration from the red room to the blue. He took good fortune with the same easy indolent air with which he had endured evil fortune. He had the Horatian temperament, uneager to anticipate the future, content if the present were fairly comfortable, sighing for no palatial halls over-arched with gold and ivory, no porphyry columns, or marble terraces encroaching upon the sea. He was a man to whom it had been but a slight affliction to live in a small house, and to be deprived of all pomp and state, nay, even of the normal surroundings of gentle birth, so long as he had those things which were absolutely necessary to his own personal comfort. He was honestly sorry for the untimely fate of his young kinsmen; but he slipped into his nephew’s vacant place with an ease which filled his wife and daughter with wonder.
To poor little Fanny Palliser, who had never known the sensation of a spare five-pound note, nay, of even a sovereign which she might squander on the whim of the moment, this sudden possession of ample means was strange even to bewilderment. Not to have to cut and contrive any more, not to have to cook her husband’s dinners, or to run about from morning till twilight, supplementing the labours of an incompetent maid-of-all-work, was to enter upon a new phase of life almost as surprising as if she, Fanny Palliser, had died and been buried, and been resolved back into the elements, to be born again as a princess of the blood royal. She kept on repeating feebly that it was all like a dream — she had not been able to realise the change yet.
To Reginald Palliser the inheritance of Wimperfield was only a return to the home of his childhood. To his lowly-born little helpmeet it was the beginning of a new life. It was a new sensation to Fanny Palliser to live in large rooms, to walk about a house in which the long corridors, the wide staircase, the echoing stone hall, the plenitude of light and space, seemed to her to belong to a public institution rather than to a domestic dwelling — a new sensation, and not altogether a pleasant one. She was awe-stricken by the grandeur — the largeness and airiness of her new surroundings.
There was not one of the sitting-rooms at Wimperfield in which, even after a month’s residence, she could feel thoroughly at home. She envied Mrs. Moggs, the housekeeper, her parlour looking into the stable-yard, which seemed to Sir Reginald’s wife the only really snug room within the four walls of that respectable mansion. Mrs. Moggs’ old-fashioned grate and brass fender, little round table, tea-tray, and kettle singing on the hob, reminded Fanny Palliser of her own girlhood, when her mother’s sitting room had worn just such an air of humble comfort. Those white and gold drawing-rooms, with their amber satin curtains and Georgian furniture, had a scenic and altogether artificial appearance to the unaccustomed eyes of one born and reared amidst the narrow surroundings of poverty.
And then, again, how terrible was that highly respectable old butler, who knew the ways of gentle folks so much better than his new mistress did; and who put her to shame, in a quiet unconscious way, a hundred times a day by his superior knowledge and experience. How often she asked for things that were altogether wrong; how continually she exposed her ignorance, both to Rogers the butler, and to Moggs, the housekeeper; and what a feeble creature she felt herself in the presence of Jane Dyson, her own maid, who had come to her fresh from the sainted presence of an archbishop’s wife, and who was inclined to be slightly dictatorial in consequence, always quoting and referring to that paragon of women, her late mistress, whose only error in life had been the leaving it before Jane Dyson had saved enough to justify her retirement from service. Those highly-educated retainers were a terror to poor little Fanny Palliser. There were times when she would have been glad to be impecunious again, and running after her faithful Lizette, who had every possible failing except that of being superior to her mistress. These Wimperfield servants were models; but they did not disguise their quiet contempt for a lady who was evidently a stranger in that sphere where powdered footmen and elaborate dinners are among the indispensables of existence.
Only six weeks, and Sir Reginald and his family were established in the place that had been Sir Vernon’s, and the old servants waited on their new lord, and all the mechanical routine of life went on as smoothly as if there had been no change of masters. Ida found herself wondering which was the reality and which the dream — the past or the present. There had been a few days of excitement, hurry, and confusion at Les Fontaines after the awful news of the wreck: and then Sir Reginald had come to London with his wife and boy, and had put up at the Grosvenor Hotel while the lawyers settled the details of his inheritance. Sir Vernon had left no will. Everything went to the heir-at-law — pictures, plate, horses and carriages, and those wonderful cellars of old wine which had been slowly accumulated by Sir Reginald’s father and grandfather.
Reginald Palliser passed from the pittance of a half-pay captain, eked out by the desultory donations of his open-handed nephew, to the possession of a fine income and a perfectly-appointed establishment. There was nothing for him to do, no trouble of furnishing, or finding servants. He came into his kingdom, and everything was ready for him. Yet in this house where he was born, in which every stone was familiar to him, how little that was mortal was left of those vanished days of his youth! Among all these old servants there was only one who remembered the new master’s boyhood; and that was a deaf old helper in the garden, a man who seemed past all labour except the sweeping up of dead leaves, being himself little better than a withered leaf. This man remembered wheeling the present baronet about the gardens in his barrow, forty years ago — his function even then being to collect the fallen leaves — and was a little offended with Sir Reginald for having forgotten the man and the fact.
At the Grosvenor Hotel, calm even in the dawn of his altered fortunes, Brian Walford found his father-in-law, and told, with the pleasantest, most plausible air, the story of Ida’s clandestine marriage, slurring over every detail that reflected on himself, and making very light of Ida’s revulsion of feeling, which he represented as a girlish whim, rather than a woman’s bitter anger against the husband who had allowed her to marry him under a delusion as to his social status.
Sir Reginald was at first inclined to be angry. The whole thing was a mystification — absurd, discreditable. His daughter had grossly deceived him. It needed all the stepmother’s gentle influence to soften the outraged father’s feelings. But Lady Palliser said all that was kindly about Ida’s youth and inexperience, her impulsive nature; and a man who has just dropped into ￡7,000 a year is hardly disposed to be inflexible. Sir Reginald was too generous even to question Brian closely as to his capability of supporting a wife. The man was a gentleman — young, good-looking, with winning manners, and a member of a family in which his daughter had found warm and generous friends. Ida’s father could not be uncivil to a Wendover.
‘Well, my good fellow, it is altogether a foolish business,’ he said; ‘but what’s done cannot be undone. I am sorry my daughter did not ask my leave before she plunged into matrimony; but I suppose I must forgive her, and her husband into the bargain. You have both acted like a pair of children, falling in love and marrying, and quarrelling, and making friends again, without rhyme or reason; but the best thing you can do is to bring your wife — your wife? my little Ida a wife? — Good God, how old I am getting! — yes, you had better bring her to Wimperfield next week, and then we can get better acquainted with you, and I shall see what I can do for you both.’
This no doubt meant a handsome allowance. Brian Walford felt, for the first time in his life, that he had fallen on his feet. He hated the country, and Wimperfield would be only a shade better than Kingthorpe; but it was essential that he should please his easy-tempered father-in-law.
‘If he wanted me to live in the moon I should have to go there!’ he said to himself. And then Lady Palliser went into an adjoining chamber and brought forth little Vernon, to exhibit him, as a particular favour and privilege, to Ida’s husband; and Brian, who detested children, had to appear grateful, and to address himself to the irksome task of making friends with the little man. This was not easy, for the boy, though frank and bright enough in a general way, did not take to his new connexion: and it was only when Brian spoke of Ida that his young brother-in-law became friendly. ‘Where is she? why haven’t you brought her? Take me to her directly-minute,’ said the child, whose English savoured rather of the lower than the upper strata of society.
Brian snapped at the opportunity, and carried the boy off instanter in a Hansom cab to that hotel near Fleet Street where his young wife was pining in her second-floor sitting-room, like a wild woodland bird behind the bars of a cage. The young man thought the little fellow might be a harbinger of peace — nor was he mistaken, for Ida melted at sight of him, and seemed quite happy when they three sat down to a dainty little luncheon, she waiting upon and petting her young brother all the while.
‘This is partridge, isn’t it?’ asked Vernie. ‘I like partridge. We always have nice dinners now — jellies, and creams, and wine that goes fizz; and we all have the same as pa. We didn’t in France, you know,’ explained the boy, unconscious of any reason for suppressing facts in the presence of the waiter.
‘Mamma and I used to have any little bits — it didn’t matter for us, you know — we could pinch. Mamma was used to it, and it was good for me, you know, because I’m often bilious — and it’s better to go without rich things than to take Gregory’s powder, isn’t it?’
‘Decidedly,’ said Brian, who was not too old to remember that bugbear of the Edinburgh pharmacopoeia.
‘And now we have dessert every day,’ continued Vernie; ‘lovely dessert — almonds and raisins, and pears, and nuts, and things, just like Christmas Day. I thought that kind of dessert was only meant for Christmas Day. And we have men to wait upon us, dressed like clergymen, just like him,’ added the child, pointing to the waiter.
‘Oh, Vernie, it’s so rude to point,’ murmured Ida.
‘Not for me; I can’t be rude,’ replied the boy, with conviction. ‘I’m a baronet’s son. I shall be a baronet myself some day. Mamma told me. I may do what I like.’
‘No, pet, you must be a gentleman. If you were a king’s son you would have to be that.’
‘Then I wouldn’t. What’s the use of being rich if you can’t do what you like?’ demanded Vernie, who already began to have ideas, and who was as sharp for his age as the chicken which begins to catch flies directly its head is out of the shell.
‘What’s the good of being somebody if you have to behave just as well as if you were nobody?’ said Brian. ‘Little Vernon has the feudal idea strongly developed; no doubt; in evolution from some long-departed ancestor, who lived in the days when there were different laws for the knight and the villain. Now, how are we going to amuse this young gentleman? I have leave to keep him till half-past seven, when we are all three to dine with Sir Reginald and Lady Palliser at the Grosvenor.’
Vernie, who was half way through his second glass of sparkling moselle, burst out laughing.
‘Lady Palliser!’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s so funny to hear mamma called Lady: because she isn’t a lady, you know. She used to run about the house all day with her sleeves tucked up, and she used to cook; and Jane, our English servant, said no lady ever did that. Jane and mamma used to quarrel,’ explained the infant, calmly.
‘Jane knew very little about what makes a lady or not a lady,’ said Ida, grieved to find a want of elevation in the little man’s ideas. ‘Some of the truest and noblest ladies have worked hard all their lives.’
‘But not with their sleeves tucked up,’ argued the boy; ‘no lady would do that. Papa told mamma so one day, and he must know. He told her she was cook, slush, and bottle-washer. Wasn’t that funny? You worked hard too, didn’t you, Ida?’ interrogated Vernon. ‘Papa paid you were a regular drudge at Miss Pew’s. He said it was a hard thing that such a handsome girl as you should be a drudge, but his poverty and not his will consented.’
‘Vernie quotes Shakespeare,’ exclaimed Brian, trying to take the thing lightly, but painfully conscious of the head waiter, who was deliberately removing crumbs with a silver scraper. It could not matter to any one what the waiter — a waif from Whitechapel or the Dials most likely — knew or did not know of Mr. and Mrs. Wendover’s family affairs; but there is an instinctive feeling that any humiliating details............