The Three Miss Kings

CHAPTER XLVIII.

PROBATION

Mr. Yelverton did not return home from his mission until Mrs. Duff-Scott's farewell kettle-drum was in full blast. He found the two drawing-rooms filled with a fashionable crowd; and the hum of sprightly conversation, the tinkle of teaspoons, the rustle of crisp draperies, the all-pervading clamour of soft feminine voices, raised in staccato exclamations and laughter, were such that he did not see his way to getting a word in edgeways. Round each of the Yelverton sisters the press of bland and attentive visitors was noticeably great. They were swallowed up in the compact groups around them. This I am tempted to impute to the fact of their recent elevation to rank and wealth, and to a certain extent it may be admitted that that fact was influential. And why not? But in justice I must state that the three pretty Miss Kings had become favourites in Melbourne society while the utmost ignorance prevailed as to their birth and antecedents, in conjunction with the most exact knowledge as to the narrowness of their incomes. Melbourne society, if a little too loosely constituted to please the tastes of a British prig, born and bred to class exclusiveness, is, I honestly believe, as free as may be from the elaborate snobbishness with which that typical individual (though rather as his misfortune than his fault) must be credited.

In Mrs. Duff-Scott's drawing-room were numerous representatives of this society – its most select circle, in fact – numbering amongst them women of all sorts; women like Mrs. Duff-Scott herself, who busied themselves with hospitals and benevolent schemes, conscious of natural aspirations and abilities for better things than dressing and gossiping and intriguing for social triumphs; women like Mrs. Aarons, who had had to struggle desperately to rise with the "cream" to the top of the cup, and whose every nerve was strained to retain the advantages so hardly won; women to whom scandal was the breath of their nostrils, and the dissemination thereof the occupation of their lives; women whose highest ambition was to make a large waist into a small one; women with the still higher ambition to have a house that was more pleasant and popular than anybody else's. All sorts and conditions of women, indeed; including a good proportion of those whose womanhood was unspoiled and unspoilable even by the deteriorating influences of luxury and idleness, and whose intellect and mental culture and charming qualities generally were such as one would need to hunt well to find anything better in the same line elsewhere. These people had all accepted the Miss Kings cordially when Mrs. Duff-Scott brought them into their circle and enabled the girls to do their duty therein by dressing well, and looking pretty, and contributing a graceful element to fashionable gatherings by their very attractive manners. That was all that was demanded of them, and, as Miss Kings only, they would doubtless have had a brilliant career and never been made to feel the want of either pedigree or fortune. Now, as representatives of a great family and possessors of independent wealth, they were overwhelmed with attentions; but this, I maintain, was due to the interesting nature of the situation rather than to that worship of worldly prosperity which (because he has plenty of it) is supposed to characterise the successful colonist.

Mr. Yelverton looked round, and dropped into a chair near the door, to talk to a group of ladies with whom he had friendly relations until he could find an opportunity to rejoin his family. The hostess was dispensing tea, with Nelly's assistance – Nelly being herself attended by Mr. Westmoreland, who dogged her footsteps with patient and abject assiduity – other men straying about amongst the crowd with the precious little fragile cups and saucers in their hands. Elizabeth was surrounded by young matrons fervently interested in her new condition, and pouring out upon her their several experiences of European life, in the form of information and advice for her own guidance. The best shops, the best dressmakers, the best hotels, the best travelling routes, and generally the best things to do and see, were emphatically and at great length impressed upon her, and she made notes of them on the back of an envelope with polite gratitude, invariably convinced that her husband knew all about such things far better than anybody else could do. Patty was in the music-room, not playing, but sitting at the piano, and when Kingscote turned his head in her direction he met a full and glowing look of inquiry from her bright eyes that told him she knew or guessed the nature of his recent errand. There was such an invitation in her face that he found himself drawn from his chair as by a strong magnet. He and she had already had those "fights" which she had prophetically anticipated. Lately their relations had been such that he had permitted himself to call her a "spitfire" in speaking of her to her own sister. But they were friends, tacitly trusting each other at heart even when most openly at war, and the force that drew them apart was always returned in the rebound that united them when their quarrels were over. They seemed to be all over for the present. As he approached her she resumed her talk with the ladies beside her, and dropped her eyes as if taking no notice of him; but she had the greatest difficulty to keep herself down on the music-stool and resist an inclination to kiss him that for the first time beset her. She did, indeed, suddenly put out her hand to him – her left hand – with a vigour of intention that called faint smiles to the faces of the fair spectators; who concluded that Mr. Yelverton had been out of town and was receiving a welcome home after a too long absence. Then Patty was seized with an ungovernable restlessness. She quivered all over; she fidgetted in her seat; she did not know who spoke to her or what she was talking about; her fingers went fluttering up and down the keyboard.

"Play us something, dear Miss Yelverton," said a lady sitting by. "Let us hear your lovely touch once more."

"I don't think I can," said Patty, falteringly – the first time she had ever made such a reply to such a demand. She got up and began to turn over some loose music that lay about on the piano. Her brother-in-law essayed to help her; he saw what an agony of suspense and expectation she was in.

"You know where I have been?" he inquired in a careless tone, speaking low, so that only she could hear.

"Yes" – breathlessly – "I think so."

"I went to take an invitation from Mrs. Duff-Scott."

"Yes?"

"I had a pleasant talk. I am very glad I went. He is coming to dine here to-night."

"Is he?"

"Mrs. Duff-Scott thought you would all like to see him before you went away. Let us have the 'Moonlight Sonata,' shall we? Beauty fades and mere goodness is apt to pall, as Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins would say, but one never gets tired of the 'Moonlight Sonata,' when it is played as you play it. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Aarons?"

"I do, indeed," responded that lady, fervently. She agreed with everybody in his rank of life. And she implored Patty to give them the "Moonlight Sonata."

Patty did – disdaining "notes," and sitting at the piano like a young queen upon her throne. She laid her fingers on the keyboard with a touch as light as thistle-down, but only so light because it was so strong, and played with a hushed passion and subdued power that testified to the effect on her of her brother-in-law's communication – her face set and calm, but radiant in its sudden peacefulness. Her way, too, as well as Elizabeth's, was opening before her now. She lost sight of the gorgeous ladies around her for a little while, and saw only the comfortable path which she and Paul would tread together thenceforth. She played the "Moonlight Sonata" to him, sitting in his own chamber corner, with his pipe, resting himself after his work. "I will never," she said to herself, with a little remote smile that nobody saw, "I will never have a room in my house that he shall not smoke in, if he likes. When he is with me, he shall enjoy himself." In those sweet few minutes she sketched the entire programme of her married life.

The crowd thinned by degrees, and filtered away; the drawing-rooms were deserted, save for the soft-footed servants who came in to set them in order, and light the wax candles and rosy lamps, and the great gas-burner over the piano, which was as the sun amongst his planet family. Night came, and the ladies returned in their pretty dinner costumes; and the major stole downstairs after them, and smiled and chuckled silently over the new affair as he had done over the old – looking on like a benevolent, superannuated Jove upon these simple little romances from the high Olympus of his own brilliant past; and then (preceded by no carriage wheels) there was a step on the gravel and a ring at the door bell, and the guest of the evening was announced.

When Paul came in, correctly appointed, and looking so fierce and commanding that Patty's heart swelled with pride as she gazed at him, seeing how well – how almost too well, indeed – he upheld his dignity and hers, which had been subjected to so many trials, he found himself received with a cordiality that left him nothing to find fault with. Mrs. Duff-Scott was an impulsive, and generous, and well-bred woman, not given to do things by halves. She still hoped that Patty would not marry this young man, and did not mean to let her if she could help it; but, having gone the length of inviting him to her house, she treated him accordingly. She greeted him as if he were an old friend, and she chatted to him pleasantly while they waited for dinner, questioning him with subtle flattery about his professional affairs, and implying that reverence for the majesty of the press which is so gratifying to all enlightened people. Then she took his arm into dinner, and continued to talk to him throughout the meal as only one hostess in a hundred, really nice and clever, with a hospitable soul, and a warm heart, and abundant tact and good taste, can talk, and was surprised herself to find how much she appreciated it. She intended to make the poor young fellow enjoy his brief taste of Paradise, since she had given herself leave to do so, and Paul responded by shining for her entertainment with a mental effulgence that astonished and charmed her. He put forth his very best wares for her inspection, and at the same time, in a difficult position, conducted himself with irreproachable propriety. By the time she left the table she was ready to own herself heartily sorry that fickle fortune had not endowed him according to his deserts.

"I do so like really interesting and intellectual young men, who don't give themselves any airs about it," she said to nobody in particular, when she strolled back to the drawing-room with her three girls; "and one does so very seldom meet with them!" She threw herself into a low chair, snatched up a fan, and began to fan herself vigorously. The discovery that a press writer of Paul Brion's standing meant a cultured man of the world impressed her strongly; the thought of him as a new son for herself, clever, enterprising, active-minded as she was – a man to be governed, perhaps, in a motherly way, and to be proud of whether he let himself be governed or not – danced tantalisingly through her brain. She felt it necessary to put a very strong check upon herself to keep her from being foolish.

She escaped that danger, however. A high sense of duty to Patty held her back from foolishness. Still she could not help being kind to the young couple while she had the opportunity; turning her head when they strolled into the conservatory after the men came in from the dining-room, and otherwise shutting her eyes to their joint proceedings. And they had a peaceful and sad and happy time, by her gracious favour, for two days and a half – until the mail ship carried one of them to England, and left the other behind.

CHAPTER XLIX.

YELVERTON

Patty went "home," and stayed there for two years; but it was never home to her, though all her friends and connections, save one, were with her – because that one was absent. She saw "the great Alps and the Doge's palace," and all the beauty and glory of that great world that she had so ardently dreamed of and longed for; travelling in comfort and luxury, and enjoying herself thoroughly all the while. She was presented at Court – "Miss Yelverton, by her sister, Mrs. Kingscote Yelverton" – and held a distinguished place in the Court Journal and in the gossip of London society for the better part of two seasons. She was taught to know that she was a beauty, if she had never known it before; she was made to understand the value of a high social position and the inestimable advantage of large means (and she did understand it perfectly, being a young person abundantly gifted with common sense); and she was offered these good things for the rest of her life, and a coronet into the bargain. Nevertheless, she chose to abide by her first choice, and to remain faithful to her penniless press writer under all temptations. She passed through the fire of every trying ordeal that the ingenuity of Mrs. Duff-Scott could devise; her unpledged constancy underwent the severest tests that, in the case of a girl of her tastes and character, it could possibly be subjected to; and at the end of a year and a half, when the owner of the coronet above-mentioned raised the question of her matrimonial prospects, she announced to him, and subsequently to her family, that they had been irrevocably settled long ago; that she was entirely unchanged in her sentiments and relations towards Paul Brion; and that she intended, moreover, if they had no objection, to return to Australia to marry him.

It was in September when she thus declared herself – after keeping a hopeful silence, for the most part, concerning her love affairs, since she disgraced herself before a crowd of people by weeping in her sweetheart's arms on the deck of the mail steamer at the moment when she was bidden by a cruel fate to part from him. The Yelverton family had spent the previous winter in the South of Europe, "doing" the palaces, and churches, and picture galleries that were such an old story to most people of their class, but to the unsophisticated sisters so fresh and wonderful an experience – an experience that fulfilled all expectations, moreover, which such realisations of young dreams so seldom do. Generally, when at last one has one's wish of this sort, the spirit that conceived the charms and pleasures of it is quenched by bodily wearinesses and vexations and the thousand and one petty accidents that circumvent one's schemes. One is burdened and fretted with uncongenial companions, perhaps, or one is worried and hampered for want of money; or one is nervous or bilious, or one is too old and careworn to enjoy as one might once have done; in some way or other one's heart's desire comes to one as if only to show the "leanness withal" in the soul that seemed (until thus proved) to have such power to assimilate happiness and enrich itself thereby. But with the Yelverton sisters there was no disillusionment of this sort. They had their little drawbacks, of course. Elizabeth was not always in good health; Patty pined for her Paul; Eleanor sprained her ankle and had to lie on Roman sofas while the others were exploring Roman ruins out of doors; and there were features about the winter, even in those famous climes, which gave them sensible discomfort and occasionally set them on the verge of discontent. But, looking back upon their travels, they have no recollection of these things. Young, and strong, and rich, with no troubles to speak of and the keenest appetites to see and learn, they had as good a time as pleasure-seeking mortals can hope for in this world; the memories of it, tenderly stored up to the smallest detail, will be a joy for ever to all of them. On their return to England they took up their abode in the London house, and for some weeks they revelled delightedly in balls, drums, garden parties, concerts, and so on, under the supervision and generalship of Mrs. Duff-Scott; and they also made acquaintance with the widely-ramifying Whitechapel institutions. Early in the summer Elizabeth and her husband went to Yelverton, which in their absence had been prepared for "the family" to live in again. A neighbouring country house and several cottages had been rented and fitted up for the waifs and strays, where they had been made as comfortable as before, and were still under the eye of their protector; and the ancestral furniture that had been removed for their convenience and its own safety was put back in its place, and bright (no, not bright – Mrs. Duff-Scott undertook the task of fitting them up – but eminently artistic and charming) rooms were newly decorated and made ready for Elizabeth's occupation.

She went there early in June – she and her husband alone, leaving Mrs. Duff-Scott and the girls in London. Mr. Yelverton had always a little jealousy about keeping his wife to himself on these specially sacred occasions, and he invited no one to join them during their first days at home, and instructed Mr. Le Breton to repress any tendency that might be apparent in tenants or protégés to make a public festival of their arrival there. The rôle of squire was in no way to his taste, nor that of Lady Bountiful to hers. And yet he had planned for their home-coming with the utmost care and forethought, that nothing should be wanting to make it satisfying and complete – as he had planned for their wedding journey on the eve of their hurried marriage.

It is too late in my story to say much about Yelverton. It merits a description, but a description would be out of place, and serve no purpose now. Those who are familiar with old Elizabethan country seats, and the general environment of a hereditary dweller therein, will have a sufficient idea of Elizabeth's home; and those who have never seen such things – who have not grown up in personal association with the traditions of an "old family" – will not care to be told about it. In the near future (for, though his brother magnates of the county, hearing of the restoration of the house, congratulated themselves that Yelverton's marriage had cured him of his crack-brained fads, he only delivered her property intact to his wife in order that they might be crack-brained together, at her instance and with her legal permission in new and worse directions afterwards) Yelverton will lose many of its time-honoured aristocratic distinctions; oxen and sheep will take the place of its antlered herds, and the vulgar plough and ploughman will break up the broad park lawns, where now the pheasant walks in the evening, and the fox, stealing out from his cover, haunts for his dainty meal. But when Elizabeth saw it that tender June night, just when the sun was setting, as in England it only sets in June, all its old-world charm of feudal state and beauty, jealously walled off from the common herd outside as one man's heritage by divine right and for his exclusive enjoyment, lay about it, as it had lain for generations past. Will she ever forget that drive in the summer evening from the little country railway station to her ancestral home? – the silent road, with the great trees almost meeting overhead; the snug farm-houses, old and picturesque, and standing behind their white gates amongst their hollyhocks and bee-hives; the thatched cottages by the roadside, with groups of wide-eyed children standing at the doors to see the carriage pass; the smell of the hay and the red clover in the fields, and the honeysuckle and the sweet-briar in the hedges; the sound of the wood pigeons cooing in the plantations; the first sight of her own lodge gates, with their great ramping griffins stonily pawing the air, and of those miles and miles of shadow-dappled sward within, those mysterious dark coverts, whence now and then a stag looked out at her and went crashing back to his ferny lair, and those odorous avenues of beech and lime, still haunted by belated bees and buzzing cockchafers, under which she passed to the inner enclosure of lawns and gardens where the old house stood, with open doors of welcome, awaiting her. What an old house! She had seen such in pictures – in the little prints that adorned old-fashioned pocket-books of her mother's time – but the reality, as in the case of the Continental palaces, transcended all her dreams. White smoke curled up to the sky from the fluted chimney-stacks; the diamond-paned casements – little sections of the enormous mullioned windows – were set wide to the evening breezes and sunshine; on the steps before the porch a group of servants, respectful but not obsequious, stood ready to receive their new mistress, and to efface themselves as soon as they had made her welcome.