Exton manor

Contents

CII \P'

I. — Two Bachelors and some Ladies II. — At the White House III. — The Vicarage IV.— Lord Wrotiiam .

V. — Fred Prentice .

Chapter I

The lights of Captain Thomas Turner's dog-cart shone between the trees of the woodland ride, stood still for a moment at the gate, advanced a pace or two, stood still again as the gate banged to, and then came slowly bumping across the rutty grass track between the gorse bushes until they reached the high road. Here they faced to the right, and were borne evenly along the straight quarter mile which lay between the point at which they had emerged from the wood and the Upper Heath gate.

Captain Turner, owing to the number of years he had lived alone and busied himself with the absorbing, but hardly sociable, occupation of breeding trout, had contracted the habit of thinking aloud, and was so far aware of his infirmity that he had permanently relegated his groom to the back seat of his cart, when it would often have been more convenient to have him seated by his side; This precaution did not completely fulfil its object, and Robert Kitcher, the groom, was well posted up in the various currents of thought that, from time to time, passed through his master's mind. But he was a middle-aged bachelor himself, and, while turning over with interest the information he acquired as to his master's ideas and intentions, he imparted it to no one, and would, indeed, have considered it a breach of confidence to do so.

The detached sentences that came to his ears during this half-mile drive, cut short occasionally by cautious mutterings, lost, too, sometimes in the gusts of March wind that blew across the open heath to their left, were somewhat as follows : " Now, Thomas Turner, be careful to-night. Don't make a fool of yourself. You don't want her. You're very well as you are. Let Browne ... if he's fool enough to want

14 Ex* on Manor

it . . . don't kuf.w when he's well off. You're forty-one, Tom Turnf] Here followed a subdued mutter, and

after that a sweep of wind, which lasted for some time. When it had died down again the current of thought seemed to have set in another direction, for the next sentence that came to the groom's ears was, " Funny thing, the two old men dying together. There'll be. . . . Hate changes. Wonder what Browne has heard from the old lady."

They arrived at the Upper Heath gate, which Kitcher got down to open, and drove a little way along the road to the right, and again to the right into the drive which led to the house of Turner's friend, Maximilian Browne, agent to the ten thousand acres or so of farm and forest land which made up the estate of Exton Manor.

That this house was not his ultimate objective became apparent from the fact that, when he drew up at the front door, Kitcher got down from behind and rang the bell, while Turner sat still writh the reins in his hand, and addressed to his horse's ears the remark, ct Bound to keep me waiting. Confound the fellow ! "

The door was opened almost immediately by an elderly manservant, who said, " Mr. Browrne has only just got back, sir. He told me to ask you if you would go up to him."

Turner alighted, and went into the house, and upstairs to his friend's bedroom, where he found that gentleman in the very early stages of dressing for dinner.

'• Now, don't swear, old man," said Browne, the instant he appeared inside the door. " It's all right. I sent a wire to Mrs. Redcliffe, asking her to make dinner a quarter past eight. We've got plenty of time."

Turner gave a grunt, and stationed himself in front of the fire. He was a tall thin man, dark, with somewhat pronounced features, and an expression that bordered on melancholy. This first impression, caused perhaps by a droop of the eyes and of the corners of the mouth, was lessened by a closer inspection of the face, and disappeared when the mouth opened to emit a voice that was gruff, but crisp and decisive in speech, and anything but melancholy. The high shoulders were slightly bent, but the spare frame was active and well-knit. The hands were nervous, the fingers long and pointed. The forehead was high and narrow, the head, covered with straight dark hair, long.

Maximilian Browne had also reached the age of forty ; that age at which life ceases to be lived in the future, and, if less ambitious than before, becomes a quite tolerable affair of the present. He was in appearance almost the complete opposite of his friend. He was of about the middle height, and inclined to corpulency ; would, indeed, have been stout, had not a life of incessant open-air activity exercised a restraining influence on the natural tendency of his body. His face was large and round and red, and his thick neck, now exposed to the gaze of the beholder, was weathered to the colour of brickdust by sun and wind, and displayed an astonishing contrast of colour to the white skin below it. His straw-coloured hair was beginning to ebb away from his brow and the top of his head. His moustache was red, his eyes blue and mild.

Turner, from his vantage ground on the hearthrug, bent a searching gaze on him as he struggled into a white starched shirt. " Any news ? " he asked curtly.

" News ? Yes," replied the other. " Plenty of news. I've had the deuce of a time with her ladyship. She's been hauling me over the coals most confoundedly. She's — well, I don't know that I need keep it to myself ; she didn't tell me to — she's coming to live here."

" Coming to live here ? What, at the Abbey ? M

" Yes. At the Abbey."

Turner gave vent to a long whistle of surprise. " Who would have thought of that ? " he said.

u I'm bound to say I never did. In one way it's a relief. Ever since old Sir Joseph died I've been worrying over a tenant for the place, wondering whether I should get anybody to take it without the shooting. It's deuced hard to let a house of that size without the shooting, and Sir Joseph Chapmans don't grow on every tree. That difficulty's over. She's quite content to let the Ferrabys go on as they are at present. But — well, Turner, it's no use disguising the fact that her ladyship's going to upset us. Oh, good Lord ! why can't I be allowed to live a quiet life ? "

He threw up his hands in a comic gesture of despair, which seemed to relieve his overwrought feelings.

" What has she been hauling you over the coals for ? " asked Turner.

" It isn't that so much. My position's all right. I never took a tenant without consulting the old lord, and, as far as I know, she never showed the slightest interest in anybody or anything to do with this place as long as he was alive. But now she's got her nose into everything, and nothing and nobody's right. Mind, this don't go any further. I'm only telling you.''

" Of course. It's the tenants who are wrong, is it ? I don't think we're such a bad lot. What's the matter with this particular tenant ? "

" We hardly mentioned you. Of course you're doing something on the place. In a way you go in with the farming tenants, and she don't complain of them. She knows nothing about them. It's the residents she's got her knife into."

14 What's the matter with 'em ? What's the matter with the Ferrabys ? " ,.*

Browne paused in the act of fastening his braces on to an ample waistbelt, and composed his features to as near as possible an imitation of an elderly lady delivering a judgment. " Worldly people ! " he said, with pursed-up lips. " Cannot possibly give a good tone to the place."

" They give jolly good dinners," commented Turner. " Does she want you to get rid of them ? "

" No. I made her understand that they didn't give any tone to the place at all, either good or bad. They come down for a month in August, and off and on in the winter to shoot. They bring their own friends with them, they are two miles away from the village, and hardly anybody sees them here at all."

' You and I see a good deal of them when they're here."

" Yes. I didn't tell her that. Anyway, they don't spoil our tone much. So we left it at that. Then she began about Prentice. Was he high or low ? I said he was high. I suppose he is, isn't he ? "

•' As high as he dares be."

" Yes ; quite so. Well, I had an idea she was high herself, but it appears I was wrong. She's low. So that didn't suit her, and Master Prentice may look out for squalls."

" How about — about our friend ? "

" Mrs. Redcliffe ? "

" Well, Mrs. Redcliffe."

" She was rather odd about Mrs. Redcliffe. Shut her mouth up tight, and gave me to understand she knew all about Mrs. Redcliffe."

" She couldn't know anything about her that isn't all right."

" From her manner you would have said she did."

" Did you tell her she was an Australian ? Some people object to Australians/ '

"She knew it. So I suppose she does know something about her. You know the old lord was governor of a colony out there years ago."

" Yes. Western Australia. But Mrs. Redcliffe comes from Queensland. It's as far as from here to Egypt. Still, people do know each other all over the continent out there if they are anybody, and Redcliffe had some sort of a government appointment. I dare say she would have heard of them. Still, I refuse to believe that she heard anything that wasn't all right."

" So do I. Still, it didn't look as if she was going to open her arms to her. Then there was Mrs. O'Keefe."

" Ah ! Well, what about Mrs. O'Keefe ? "

11 I got really annoyed with her over that." Browne was now buttoning his waistcoat, and pausing again to draw himself up into an attitude of inquiry, his large round head poised ludicrously aslant, and his red lips pursed. " ' And who may Mrs. O'Keefe be ? ' I told her who she was. ' Her husband was a brother of Lord Ballyshannon,' I said. ' He died about a year ago, and she took Street House soon afterwards/ ' Lord Ballyshannon/ she said. ' Never heard of him/ I hadn't cither, till Mrs. O'Keefe came here, so I didn't say anything. Then sne snapped out, ' How old is she ? ' I said, 1 I should think about. twenty-five/ "

*■■ She isn't," interpolated Turner, with a trace of indignation. " She's only just twenty-three."

" Well, I didn't want to give her away. Her ladyship looked at me with a sort of searching eye. ' A young widow/ she said. ' A beautiful young widow, I suppose, Mr. Browne/ "

Got you there, Maximilian," chuckled Turner. " I suppose you blushed beetroot."

" I didn't do anything of the sort. I was very annoyed."

" Well, what did you say ? "

" I didn't say anything."

■' Then of course you blushed."

" I tell you I didn't. Why should I ? Then she had the cheek to say, ' I believe you let the Street House for ten pounds a year less than you got from the last tenant, Mr. Browne ? ' ' Yes, Lady Wrotham/ I said ; ' I did. I exercised my discretion, and Lord Wrotham approved of what Fd done/ "

Turner chuckled again in acute enjoyment. " Virtuous indignation," he said. " The old lady's got sharp eyes. You'll have to go slow in your wooing, Maximilian, when she comes on the scene."

" My wooing ! What nonsense are you up to ? You know very well who's doing the wooing in that quarter. I should be ashamed of myself if I had any idea of a woman twenty years younger than myself. Not that I blame you for it. I was only saying to myself as I drove up, I hoped you'd fix it up pretty soon, as you seem bent on it. You needn't have any fear of my cutting in."

'■ Ah, it's all very well to talk like that. The old lady knew what she was about when she put that leading question. No, Maximilian ; you don't work it off on me. I'm a great admirer of the lady. I don't deny it. But as for wanting to be anything closer, it has never so much as entered my mind. I'll be your best man if you'll have me, and give you a silver tea-service, the best that money can buy. Only have the wedding at some time when I'm not busy with the fish. That's all I ask."

" You're talking through your hat, Turner, and no one knows that better than you. It is my pocket the money will come out of for the silver tea-service, and you'll be welcome to it. I'm ready. Go on first, and I'll turn out the

light.-

The two friends, in the best of humours with one another in spite of their sparring, got into the cart and drove out through the gate and down the hill between the leafless trees on either side of the road, whose branches were tossing in the March wind under the light of a struggling moon. At the bottom of the hill they came to another white gate, which opened into a short drive leading to the door of a low white house, standing in a large garden, where they alighted, and were presently admitted into the warm interior.

The house was an enlarged cottage, delightfully transformed. They wrent from a red-tiled hall into a low oakraftered sitting-room, full of unexpected corners, with a large bay window and half -glazed doors opening into the garden.

The gay chintzes of the chairs and window curtains gave brightness to the room, and the many books interest. A deep sofa faced the fire burning in a grate of brick surmounted by oak panelling. The glow of the lamp and the many candles with which the room was lighted fell softly on china, silver, and old brass, and. gave an air of warmth and comfort to a charming interior. It was a woman's room in which a man could feel at home, and Browne and Turner came into it, out of the cold March night, with a sense of gratification. They were alone for a minute or two, and then a door leading out of the room straight on to a little cottage staircase opened, and their hostess came in, followed by her daughter.

Mrs. Redcliffe was a woman of perhaps five and forty, of a square middle-sized figure. Her hair was plentiful, but conspicuously grey, with white locks springing from her temples. Her face was pleasant and intelligent, quite free from care, and the grip of her plump white hand gave an impression o' firmness, and not a little warmth of character. The greeting between her and the two men was that of old friends, cordial, but without effusion.

It is not so easy to convey an impression of Hilda Redcliffe. She was at this time a few months short of twenty-one, and had all the grace and charm of fresh girlhood. But she had something more. She had, if not actual beauty, for her features were perhaps too irregular for that, a face that would have attracted attention anywhere. If you looked first at the great masses of brown hair which shaded her brow, and then at her brown honest eyes, fringed with long lashes, you said to yourself that she was certainly beautiful. Then when you took in the rest of the face, the short nose without special feature, the mouth too irregular for perfect symmetry, the decisively jutting chin, you were not quite so sure. But if she smiled, away flew your doubts again, for the two little rows of teeth were entrancing, and the smile revealed some of the charm of her frank and loyal nature. It was a face whose attractions would grow upon you, and, if you were of an age and condition to fall in love with its owner, might very well come to be considered beautiful, and something more. For the rest, she was half a head taller than her mother, and held herself straight, walking with the grace and ease of a young girl whose activities are concerned with the life of the open air, summer or winter, rain or shine. She also received the two men with an air of comradeship, and unconsciously emphasized the number of years that had passed over their bachelorhood by the freshness of her slim youth.

There was no time for more than a few words of greeting, for immediately after the entrance of mother and daughter the door by which the two men had entered the room opened, and Mrs. O'Keefe was announced.

Whatever doubt might have been felt at first sight as to the beauty of Hilda Rcdcliffe, there could be none about that of Norah O'Keefe. She stood for a moment in the whitepanelled and balustraded recess which gave entrance to the room, and was raised a step above it, and the eyes of the four were drawn towards her in irresistible admiration. All the grace of early womanhood seemed to be gathered up in her tall black-gowned form, to which the whiteness of her throat and neck formed a contrast almost startling, unrelieved as her dress was by a touch of white. Her dark eyes were deep-set in a face of perfect oval, and her head, crowned with waving masses of dark hair, was poised lightly on the slender column of her neck. She wore a jewel in her hair, and a necklace of uncut emeralds. It is difficult to describe actual beauty. As compared with that of Hilda Redcliffe, although she was but little older, Norah O'Keefe's was the charm of a woman, and not of a girl. When it has been said that her charm lay not wholly in her beauty, and that it was as apparent to women as to men, perhaps more has been told than could be conveyed in pages of analysis and description.

" My dear Norah/' said Mrs. Redcliffe, going forward to greet her. " I am so pleased to see you. I hope you didn't mind being put off for a quarter of an hour. How did you come up ? "

" I walked, of course," she replied, shaking hands with Browne and Turner, and smiling impartially upon each of them. " There is a moon, and I didn't have to bring a lantern. My faithful Bridget will come and fetch me at half-past ten, and I shall walk back again."

" No, I shall drive you down," said Turner gallantly. " You and Bridget too. There will be room for all four."

" A walk on a night like this is very pleasant," put in Browne. " Let me take you home, Mrs. O'Keefe."

She laughed gaily. " I shouldn't think of taking you quite in the opposite direction from that in which you have to go," she said. " And how would you like to walk between me and Bridget ? Thank you very much all the same, Mr. ■ Browne/'

" Indeed, I don't mind a walk on a night like this. I like it," he replied, with an eager expression on his round red face.

" Then you won't mind walking up to Upper Heath," said Turner. " I'll drive Mrs. O'Keefe down, and go home through the wood."

" Well, we needn't settle about going home yet awhile," said Mrs. Redcliffe. " Let us go in. Dinner is ready."

Chapter II

They went in singly to the little square dining-room, and arranged themselves at a round table. A subsurface and quite seemly struggle between Browne and Turner as to which of them should sit next to Norah O'Keefe was decided by superior strategy in favour of the former, but the smallness of the company robbed Turner's defeat of most of its sting.

" You have been to Hurstbury Court/' said Mrs. Redclifte to Browne, when they had settled themselves in their places. " Have you any interesting news to tell us ? How is Lady Wrotham bearing her loss ? "

" Wonderful woman ! " said Browne, with a side glance at the parlourmaid. '* Simply full of energy, and beginning her life all over again as if she thoroughly enjoyed it."

" Of course," said Mrs. Redcliffe, " she was nearly twenty years younger than Lord Wrotham, and an energetic woman always. So one heard, for I have never seen her."

A remembrance came to Browne's mind. *" Didn't you ever see her when the old lord was Governor of Western Australia ? " he asked.

"No, never," she replied. " That was many years ago, and I was quite a girl. Besides, Queensland and Western Australia are a very long distance apart. I was never in Western Australia, and I do not think that Lord and Lady Wrotham were ever in Queensland; I have no recollection of it if they were."

She spoke in her usual placid, rather deliberate manner. Browne glanced at her quiet sensible face, unclouded by a hint of disturbance, and decided that he must have mistaken

Lady Wrotham's meaning when she told him that she knew all about Mrs. Redcliffe. It was impossible to connect her with the remotest shadow of a scandal — a scandal, that is, in which she could have been in the least to blame.

" You have been here five years, haven't you, Mrs. Redcliffe ? " asked Norah O'Keefe. " Hasn't Lady Wrotham ever been to Exton in that time ? "

" No," said Mrs. Redcliffe, and Browne added, " She told me that she had not been here for five and twenty years. That was just after Sir Joseph had practically rebuilt the Abbey. She said that she thought he had completely spoilt it, and she had never had the slightest wish to see it again."

" Spoilt it ! " exclaimed Hilda. " Why, it is perfectly beautiful ! "

" Yes," said Browne. " But, you see, she came when it was only just finished. Everything was new and staring. I really hardly recognized the description she gave me of it, but I can see it to a certain extent with her eyes. The garden was brand new ; twelve acres, or more, just planted. We know it after five and twenty years' growth, but in those days it can't have been very interesting. And the new part of the house hadn't toned down to look of a piece with the old, as it has now. She spent her honeymoon there. The house must have been very uncomfortable, only halffurnished ; but there it was, with all its surroundings, just as it had been built after the Reformation, when most of the monastery had been pulled down. She will find it very different now."

" Is she coming to see it, then ? " asked Mrs. Redcliffe.

" H'm, ha ! " muttered Browne, recollecting the parlourmaid. " I expect she and Kemsing — I mean Lord\Vrotham — will be down to have a look at us before long."

" Poor old Sir Joseph ! " said Mrs. Redcliffe. " What a pride he took in the place ! It was a delight to go pottering round with him. I am sure he never thought of it as otherwise than his own."

" I really don't think he did," said Browne. " He spent money on it just as if it belonged to him, and, in a way, he has made it."

" Sir Joseph Chapman made the house, and Maximilian Browne made the estate," said Turner. " Honour where honour is due."

Browne's round face was suffused with a deprecatory smile. " I have pulled it round a bit," he said. " It's quite true. All the farms are let now, and as for the private houses — well, I'm quite satisfied with the tenants we've got." He looked round the table with a congratulatory air, finishing up with a side look at the tenant of the Street House, just long enough to turn a general compliment into a particular one.

No rah O'Keefe, however, seemed blissfully unconscious of it. "I hope the new Lord Wrotham is pleased wTith the result of your labours," she said ; " yours and Sir Joseph's. He has reason to be."

" Oh, he's pleased enough," said Browne.

" And have you got a new tenant for the Abbey yet ? " asked Hilda. " It will be rather an excitement to us, but we shall be very hard to please after dear old Sir Joseph."

The maid had now left the room. Browne gave vent to a premonitory cough, and said, " Well, the fact is that Lady Wrotham is coming to live here herself."

There was a general exclamation from all except Turner. Browne leaned back in his chair and enjoyed the commotion he had raised. It was at this moment that recollection came to Turner. Three pairs of feminine eyes were bent upon Browne's rubicund visage. Turner's turned with some curiosity on Mrs. Redcliffe. Her face was as interested as that of her daughter, or Mrs. O'Keefe. There was no trace of any other expression on it. Like his friend, Turner dismissed from his mind once and for all any suspicions that there was anything Lady Wrotham could know about Mrs. Redcliffe that she would wish to be hidden.

" Now that we have heard that important piece of news," said Norah O'Keefe, when the first expression of surprise had died down, " we, want to hear more about Lady Wrotham herself. None of us know her. If she is going to be our new neighbour, we want to know what she is like."

" You'll like her," said Browne loyally. The disturbance of mind he had admitted to Turner was not to be disclosed to any one else, not even to these three ladies with whom he lived on terms of considerable intimacy. " You'll like her. She is a wonderful woman. Full of energy — and of good works. She'll take the lead."

Mrs. O'Keefe made a slight grimace. " Will she take the lead of all of us ? " she asked. " That looks rather as if our pleasant little society will be altered. None of us take the lead now. We are a small and very contented republic/'

" Even old Sir Joseph was one of us," said Hilda. " He would come in and out just as he liked, and if we wanted to see him we went to the Abbey, and were always sure of a welcome. I suppose that will be altered now, and we shall have to wait till we're sent for."

" There is one among us," said Turner dryly, " who is quite ready to take the lead."

Mrs. Redcliffe turned a reproving face on him. " Now you know that is not allowed," she said. "We all get on very well together, and there is not one of our neighbours that we are not always pleased to see — all of us."

" Please make an exception in my case," said Turner, unabashed.

" As long as we behave ourselves we are treated with favour," said No rah O'Keefe.

" And gracious condescension," added Hilda.

Browne's broad face showed some bewilderment. He was not at his ease with ellipsis. " I suppose you mean Mrs. Prentice," he said. " To tell you the truth, I'm afraid there may be a little friction between Lady Wrotham and Mrs. Prentice at first, though I shouldn't like it to be known that I said so. Her ladyship asked me a lot about the condition of the villagers. She means to take an active interest in them as she does in the property at Hurstbury. Yes ; I'm half afraid there may be a little friction."

" There'll be no friction," said Turner. " The lady in question will drop milk and honey in her talk, and all will be sweetness and submission."

" Now I can't have any more of this," said Mrs. Redcliffe decisively. " At this table we criticise nobody."

" Dear Mrs. Redcliffe," said Norah affectionately, " if all the world were as charitable as you, it would be a pleasanter place to live in."

" It would be a much worse place if we wrere all to give rein to our tongues in criticising our neighbours," said Mrs. Redcliffe. " But tell us more about Lady Wrotham. Mr. Browne. We have not heard half enough yet."

But the entrance of the maid put a stop to further confidences for the time being, and, although the subject was returned to and discussed in all its bearings at intervals during the progress of the meal and later on in the evening, the conversation need not be further recorded.