He that will not when he may; vol. II

At Markham Chase there had been great wonder and consternation at the sudden departure of the elders of the family. Bell had been called to her mother’s room in the morning, and the morals of the house, so to speak, placed in her hands. She was thirteen, a great age, quite a woman. “Harry will help you: but he is careless, and he is always out. You will promise to be very careful and look after everything,” Lady Markham had said. Bell, growing pale with the solemnity of this strange commission, gave her promise with paling cheek, and a great light of excitement in her eyes; and when they heard of it, the others were almost equally impressed. “There is something the matter with Paul,” Bell said; and when the carriage drove away the solemnity of the great house all to themselves made a still greater impression upon them. It is true that Mrs. Fry showed signs of thinking that she was the virtual head of the establishment, and Brown did not pay that deference to Bell’s orders which she expected as mamma’s deputy to receive; but still they all acknowledged the responsibility that lay upon them to conduct themselves better than girls and boys had ever conducted themselves before. The girls naturally felt this the most. They would not go out with their brothers, but stayed indoors and occupied themselves with various rather grimy pieces of needlework begun on various occasions of penitence or bad weather. To complete them felt like a proper exercise for such an occasion; and Bell caused the door to be shut and all the windows in front of the house. She and Marie established themselves in their mother’s special sanctuary--the west room; where after a while the work languished, and where the elder sister, with a sense of seniority and protection, pointed out all the pictures to Marie, and gave her their names. “That is me, when I was a baby,” said Bell, “just below the Rafil.”

“The Raffle,” said Marie. “I thought a raffle was a thing where you drew lots.”

“So it is,” said the elder with dignity, “but it is a man’s name, too. It is pronounced a little different, and he was a very fine painter. You know,” said the little instructress with great seriousness, “what the subject is--the beautiful lady and the little boy?”

“I know what they all are quite well,” said Marie, impatient of so much superiority; “I have seen them just as often as you have. Mamma has told me hundreds of times. That’s me too as well as you, underneath the big picture, and there’s Alice, and that’s papa--as if I didn’t know!”

“How can you help knowing Alice and papa; any one can do that,” said Bell; “but you don’t know the landscapes. That one is painted by two people, and it is called Both. At least, I suppose they both did a bit, as mamma does sometimes with Alice. There is some one ringing the bell at the hall door! Somebody must be coming to call. Will Brown say ‘My lady is not at home,’ or will he say ‘The young ladies are at home,’ as he does when Alice is here? Oh, there it is again! Can anything have happened? Either it is somebody who is in a great hurry, or it is a telegram, or, Marie, quick, run to the schoolroom and there we can see.”

As they neared the hall they ran across Brown, who was advancing in a leisurely manner to open the door. “Young ladies,” said Brown, “you should not scuttle about like that, frightening people. And I wonder who it was that shut the hall door.”

Bell made no reply, but ran out of the way, and they reached the schoolroom window in time to see what was going to happen. At the door stood some one waiting. “A little gentleman” in light-coloured clothes, with a large white umbrella. There was no carriage, which was one reason why Brown had taken his time in answering the bell. He would not, a person of his importance, have condescended to open the door at all but for a curiosity which had taken possession of him, a certainty in his mind that something of more than ordinary importance was going on in the family. The little gentleman who had rung the bell had walked up the avenue slowly, and had looked about him much. He had the air of being very much interested in the place. At every opening in the trees he had paused to look, and when he came to the open space in front of the house, had stood still for some time with a glass in his eye examining it. He was very brown of hue, very spare and slim, exceedingly neat and carefully dressed, though in clothes that were not quite like English clothes. They fitted him loosely, and they were of lighter material than gentlemen usually wear in England; but yet he was very well dressed. He had neat small feet, most carefully chaussés; and he had carried his large white umbrella, lined with green, over his head as he approached the door. When Brown threw the great door open, he was startled to see this trim figure so near to him upon the highest step. He had put down his white umbrella, and he stood with a small cardcase between his finger and thumb, as ready at once to proclaim himself who he was.

“Sir William Markham?” he asked. The little cardcase had been opened, and the white edge of the card was visible in his hand.

“Not at home, sir,” said Brown.

“Ah! that’s your English way. I am not a novice, though you may think so,” said the little gentleman. “Take in this card and you will see that he will be at home for me.”

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said Brown. Though he had no objection to saying “not at home” when occasion demanded, he felt offended by being supposed to have done so falsely when his statement was true. “Master is not a gentleman that has himself denied when he is here. When I say not at home, I mean it. Sir William left Markham to-day.”

“Left to-day!--that is very unlucky,” said the stranger. He stood quite disconcerted for the moment, and gnawed the ends of his moustache, still with the card half extended between his finger and thumb. “You are sure now,” he added in a conciliatory tone, “that it is not by way of getting rid of intruders? I am no intruder. I am--a relation.”

“Very sorry, sir,” said Brown; “if you were one of the family--if you were Mr. Markham himself, I couldn’t say no different. Sir William, and my lady, and Miss Alice, they went to Oxford this morning by the early train.”

“Mr. Markham himself--who is Mr. Markham?” he said, with a peculiar smile hovering about his mouth. “I am--a relation; but I have never been in England before, and I don’t know much about the family. Is Mr. Markham a son, or brother--perhaps brother to Sir William?”

“The eldest son and heir, sir,” said Brown, with dignity. “You’ll see it in the Baronetage of England all about him, ‘Paul Reginald, born May 6, 18--.’ He came of age this year.”

The brown face of the stranger was full of varying expression while this was said--surprise, a half amusement, mingled with anger; emotions much too personal to be consistent with his ignorance of the family history. Strange, when he did not know anything about it, that he should be so much interested! Brown eyed him very keenly, with natural suspicion, though he did not know what it was he suspected. The little gentleman had closed his card-case, but still held it in his hand.

“So,” he said, “the heir; then perhaps he is at home?”

“There is nobody at home but the young ladies and the young gentlemen,” said Brown, testily. “If any of the grown-up ones had been in the house or about the place, I’d have said so.”

Brown felt himself the master when the heads of the family were away, and this sort of persistency did not please him.

“I’d like to see the young ladies and gentlemen,” said the stranger. “I’d like to see the house. You seem unwilling to let me in; but I am equally unwilling to come such a long distance and then go away----”

“Well, sir,” said Brown, embarrassed, “Markham Chase, though it’s one of the finest places in the county, is not a show-place. I don’t say but what the gardener would take a visitor round the gardens, and by the fish-pond, and that, when the family are away; but it has never been made a practice to show the house. And it cannot even be said at present that the family are away. They’ve gone on some business as far as Oxford. They might be back, Sir William told me, in two days.”

“My man!” said the stranger, “I can promise you your master will give you a good wigging when he hears that you have sent me away.”

“A good--what, sir?”

Brown grew red with indignation; but all the same a chill little doubt stole over him. This personage, who was so very sure of his welcome, might after all turn out to be a person whom he had no right to send away.

“I said a wigging, my good man. Perhaps you don’t understand that in England. We do in our place. Come,” he said, drawing out the card, and with it a very palpable sovereign, “here’s my name. You can see I’m no impostor. You had better let me see the house.”

The card was a very highly glazed foreign-looking piece of pasteboard, and upon it was the name of Mr. Augustus Markham Gaveston, at full length, in old English characters. And now that Brown looked at him again, he seemed to see a certain likeness to Sir William in this pertinacious visitor. He was about the same height, his eyes were the same colour, and there was something in the sound of his voice--Brown thought on the whole it would be best to pocket the indignity and the sovereign, and let the stranger have his way.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said; “Sir William didn’t say nothing to me about expecting a relation, and I’m not one that likes to take liberties in the absence of the family; but if so be as your mind is set upon it, I think I may take it upon me to let you see the house.”

“I thought we should understand each other, sooner or later,” said the stranger, with a smile. “Sir William could not tell you, for he did not know I was coming,” he said, a moment afterwards, with a short laugh. “I’ve come from--a long way off, where people are not--much in the way of writing letters. Besides, it is so long since he’s seen me, I dare say he has forgotten me: but the first glance at my card will bring it all back.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” said Brown. He had taken the sovereign, though not without doubts and compunctions, and now he felt himself half unwillingly bound to the service of this unknown personage. He admitted him into the hall with a momentary pang. “The house was built by the great-grandfather of the present baronet,” he said. “This hall is considered a great feature. The pillars were brought from Sicily; they’re no imitation, like what you see in many places, but real marble. On the right is the dining-room, and on the left the drawing-room. There is a fine gallery which is only used for balls and so forth----”

“Ah--we’ll take them in turn,” said the little gentleman. He put down his big white umbrella, and shook himself free of several particles of dust which he perceived on his light coat. “I’ll rest here a moment, thank you,” he said, seating himself in the same big chair in which Colonel Lenny had fallen asleep. “This reminds me of where I’ve come from. I dare say Sir William brought it over. Now fetch me some iced water or seltzer, or cold punch if you’ve got such a thing. Before I start sight-seeing, I’d like a little rest.”