CHAPTER XVII.
STOCK-TAKING.
Joanna was given the letter by Mr. Worthivale, and walked through the park to Court Royal. The evergreen shrubs on both sides of the drive relieved the monotony of winter bleakness. The pines were clothed; of them there was great variety. The oak, though turned brown, was not divested of all its leaves. The day was fine and the air mild. Joanna knew nothing of the country; she was surprised at and delighted with all she saw. She stood watching the fallow deer, till she was frightened by the rush past her, on wing, of a pheasant. The wood-pigeons were flying in hundreds from one beech clump to another, rejoicing over the fallen masts. The afternoon sun shone yellow over the front of Court Royal, making the windows glitter like sheets of gold leaf. Joanna went round to the back of the house, and delivered her letter and message. She was taken into the servants’ hall, where some of the maids were receiving visitors from Kingsbridge, and stuffing them with veal pie, ham, tarts and clotted cream. They ate cream with their ham, heaped it on their bread, and jam on top of the cream equally deep; they drank it with their tea, and filled the cups with lump sugar till the lumps stood out of the tea like Ararat above the flood. Some of the servants’ friends had brought their children with them; these over-ate themselves, were unwell, retired, and came back to repeat the process.
Joanna looked on in amazement. She was invited to take her place with the rest, but declined, as she had dined recently.
Then the housekeeper came in, smiled benevolently on the visitors, bade them enjoy themselves, and called Joanna away to see round the Court.
The housekeeper had been bred in the traditions of the knowledge and love and fear of the great Kingsbridge family. Her father had been a footman, her mother (a lady’s maid in the service of the late Duke), who had married and kept the lodge. The first recollection of her infant mind was being noticed as a healthy, pretty child, by the late Dowager Duchess. She had been educated, gratis, at the school supported by his Grace, a school which had in its window the Ducal arms and supporters in stained glass, and outside, in the gable, the Ducal coronet and initials of Bevis, seventh Duke of Kingsbridge. At an early age she had served the family by opening the gates of the drive, and had worshipped the family with curtsies before she had been found old enough to go to church and worship God. Then she had been taken into the Court, and been a servant there all her life, first in one capacity, then in another, till she married the red-faced coachman, who wore a white wig and sat on a hammercloth emblazoned with the Ducal arms. Upon the death of the coachman, Mrs. Probus returned to the great house as housekeeper. It was unnecessary for her to do so. She had saved, during her long service, a good deal of money. The pickings had been considerable. But the pickings were too considerable, the living too good, the work too light to be resigned hastily, and Mrs. Probus felt that it would be banishment to hyperborean night to be consigned to an almshouse for the rest of her days, away from the splendour of the Ducal system, illumined only by the flicker of consciousness that the almshouses had been founded for the reception of worn-out Ducal retainers. So, though Mrs. Probus often spoke of retiring, she postponed the evil day.
Her little sitting-room, into which she introduced Joanna, was furnished with memorials of the Eveleighs. Over the chimney-piece, of course, was the portrait of the present Duke; over the sideboard, the picture of the late Duke. On the cheffonier were the silver tea-kettle given her by the Duke on her marriage, and a silver salver with a long inscription, presented to the late lamented coachman on his completion of the fiftieth year of service. On all sides were presents—remembrances of the Dowager Duchess Anna Maria, of the late Duchess Sophia. On her bosom she bore a brooch containing the hair of the Marquess and Lady Grace, whom she had nursed as infants; and about her finger was a white ring woven of silver hair, cut from the head of Frederick Augustus, sixth Duke of Kingsbridge, Marquess of Saltcombe, Viscount Churchstowe, Baron Portlemouth, Baronet, Grand Commander of the Bath, Knight of the Garter, of Saint Patrick, of the Black Eagle, etc. etc. etc., cut off his head when she had laid him out for burial.
Mrs. Probus was proud to show the house to Joanna. When she learned that Joanna was the new servant come to the Lodge, she understood at once that she had been sent down there to be impressed, and Mrs. Probus was never happier than when stamping the Ducal family on young minds. A reverent fear and love of the family was the best preservative youth could have against the trials and temptations of life. It would save a girl from flightiness. Everyone who moved in the Kingsbridge system was respectable to the tips of little finger and little toe. Imprudence was impossible to one nurtured in the Kingsbridge atmosphere. When the butler heard of a young man who had taken to drinking and gone to the bad, ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, ‘if only he could have been received as a stableboy here!’ When the housekeeper was told of a young woman who had lost her character, ‘How dreadful!’ she exclaimed; ‘would that she had been kitchen-maid at Court Royal!’ As the monks and nuns of old believed that salvation was hardly possible outside the cloister, the domestics in the Kingsbridge constellation held that no one went to hell from Court Royal or Kingsbridge House, Piccadilly. The same feeling pervaded the entire estate. The tenants were steeped in it. They were all respectable; the farmers Conservative, churchgoers, and temperate; their wives clean and rosy-cheeked, attending to their dairies themselves, and curtseying like schoolgirls, and standing with their hands under their aprons, when visited by one of the family. The cottagers reared their children to abstain from evil and do that which is good, because there was a great Duke far above them who knew everything that went on upon his estates, and who, if the children were clean and respectable, would take them up into service in the Great House, and provide for them and make them happy for ever. No more moral, respectable, orderly, religious people were to be found in the West of England than those on the Kingsbridge estate; but all this morality, respectability, order, and religion rested on the foundation of the love and fear of the Duke. One Sunday, when the Rector’s wife was catechising the school children, she inquired who were ‘the elect people of God,’ whereupon they responded, as with one voice, ‘The tenants of the Duke, ma’am.’ And what they said, they believed.
Mrs. Probus took Joanna up the grand staircase, turning and glancing at her face at the landings, to see that the proper expression of wondering awe was there. She bade her look at the pictures, and narrated the hackneyed story of their acquisition on the Continent by the great Duke who was a general in the reign of George I. The keen eyes of the girl were in every corner, not on the pictures, which she did not understand, but on the cabinets, the Chinese vases, the pile carpet, the exotic ferns. In the state drawing-room she made a halt, and caught her breath.
‘O my goodness!’ she gasped; ‘the Chippendale!’
‘The what?’
‘The Chippendale!’ exclaimed Joanna. ‘What first quality chairs and tables and cabinets. Why, they are worth a pot of money, just now that the fashion runs on Chippendale.’
‘Of course the furniture is valuable,’ said Mrs. Probus with dignity. ‘But pray do not speak of it as though it were about to be sold at an auction.’
‘And the china!’ cried Joanna excitedly. ‘That pair of Sèvres vases any dealer would give a hundred pounds for, and ask for them two hundred and fifty, and take two hundred.’
‘No doubt the vases are precious. They were given to the late Duke by King Charles X. from the royal manufactory.’
‘That nude figure of a woman seated on a dolphin is fine,’ said Joanna. ‘Oh, please may I look at the mark? Double C crowned—Ludwigsburg, modelled by Ringler. Look at the glaze. Observe the moulding!’
‘It is scarcely delicate,’ said Mrs. Probus.
‘On the contrary, it is most delicate, and considering the delicacy in admirable condition. Only some of the flowers on the pedestal are chipped.’
‘I did not allude to the fragility of the china, but to the impropriety of a lady going about with only a scarf over her. However, the subject must be right, or it would not be here.’
‘Of course it is right,’ said Joanna, excitedly. ‘It is splendid; worth thirty pounds to a dealer, double to a purchaser. That is a pretty First Empire clock.’
‘It don’t go,’ said Mrs. Probus.
‘Who cares for that?’ answered Joanna. ‘The shape is the thing. The ornaments are very chaste. There you have some old Plymouth.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about porcelain.’
‘I do know something.’
‘Ah, you ought to see the collection the Marquess has in his room. He is a fancier, and does not care what he pays to secure a piece to his taste.’ The housekeeper was gratified at the enthusiasm and delight of the girl.
‘May I—oh, may I see it?’
‘Let me see—the Marquess has gone out. I think it would be possible, though not allowed. We may not show strangers over the private apartments inhabited by the family. Still, this is a different case; you are a servant, almost I may say, of the family, as you are in the house of the steward. Follow me through the dining-room. I must show you the Rubens and Ostades and Van Dycks, and the Murillo bought by the late Duke Frederick Augustus; he gave for it seven thousand pounds.’
Joanna sighed. ‘I am ashamed to say I know nothing of the value of pictures. That requires a special education, which I have not had. It is a branch of the business—’ She stopped abruptly, and then said, ‘I dare say you have a catalogue of the paintings, which you could let me have. I should so much like to know what you have here; what to admire. Then, on another occasion, I shall be better able to enter into the merits of the pictures. You see, ma’am, with so much that is wonderful about one, the mind becomes bewildered. I will not look at the paintings to-day, I will look only at the china and the furniture.’
‘Certainly,’ said the housekeeper, ‘what you say is just. I will give you a printed catalogue—privately printed, you understand.’
‘That is a magnificent inlaid Florentine cabinet,’ said Joanna; ‘worth a hundred guineas. Oh, what treasures you have here!’
‘Treasures indeed,’ said Mrs. Probus; ‘you see their Graces the Dukes of Kingsbridge have always been patrons of art, and have collected beautiful things in their travels through Europe.’
‘If only there were to be a sale here'
‘Sale!’ exclaimed the housekeeper; ‘good heavens above! What do you mean? Sale!—sale in a Ducal mansion! Young woman, restrain your tongue. The word is indecent.’
She tossed her head, frowned, and walked forward stiffly, expressing disgust in every rustle of her silk gown and in the very creak of her shoes.
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. I was dazzled, and did not know what I was talking about.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Probus, ‘that alters the case. Now we are in the wing containing the private apartments. Here everything is more modern and comfortable. You admire the flowers I perceive. Yes, there are camellia and ferns in the corridor. If you like it, I will conduct you over the conservatories—not now—presently. His Grace sets great store on the greenhouses and the winter-garden.’
‘Dear ma’am, I should so greatly like to see them. I love flowers above everything in the world. I have only five little pots at home, on the roof, and one of them contains a bit of wild heather I dug up with my scissors, on the rare occasion of a holiday. Now that I am away, I do not know who will attend to my poor plants, and whether I shall find them alive when I return. I have no one in the world whom I can ask to do a thing for me.’
‘This is the apartment of Lord Ronald,’ said the housekeeper. ‘I will not show you in there. It contains nothing of interest—that is, nothing very extraordinary. His lordship was a soldier, and loves to have everything plain. No doubt it contains much that would interest military men, but such as you and me don’t understand those pursuits. Here is the Marquess’s door. Wait a moment, whilst I tap and peep in to make sure he is out. I am sure he went out shooting, I saw him with the keeper and the dogs—that is,’ she corrected herself, ‘I saw the keeper and the dogs with him.’
Mrs. Probus tapped timidly, and then opened. ‘Look about you,’ she said, ‘at the costly china. He is out, as I supposed. It is very bold of me to enter and introduce you. See what abundance of porcelain there is here. The Marquess is most particular. He will not allow the housemaids to touch it. When dusty, Lady Grace takes it down and cleans it. He allows no other fingers than hers to touch his valuable collection.’
‘How pretty the flowers are,’ said Joanna, looking at the bouquets on the table and on the chimney-piece. ‘So many posies—and specimen glasses everywhere.’
‘Lady Grace always arranges them for her brother,’ answered the housekeeper.
‘No wonder that they are lovely,’ said the girl. ‘I should so much like to see Lady Grace.’
‘You will do so some day. Yes—’ she said, as she saw that Joanna was looking at a miniature on the wall over the fireplace, ‘that is her ladyship when she was younger—when she was about eighteen.’
Joanna looked at the portrait with interest for a long while. Reluctantly, at last, she turned away and began to examine the china.
‘This is Chelsea,’ she said, contemptuously, ‘bad of its kind.’
‘It cannot be bad,’ protested Mrs. Probus, ‘or it would not be here.’
‘This group—’ began Joanna, putting forth her finger.
Mrs. Probus arrested her hand. ‘For heaven’s sake do not touch. You might break—and then—dear life! I should sink through the floor in shame and sorrow.’
‘I shall not break anything,’ answered Joanna. ‘I could walk like a cat among Dresden figures, or a best Swansea service, and not upset or injure one article. Besides, if that group were broken, what odds! It is a modern imitation.’
‘What! a connoisseur among my china! Condemning it, moreover!’
Mrs. Probus turned, shivered through all the gathers of her silk gown, raised her hands deprecatingly, and turned pale.
Joanna looked round at the speaker and recognised the Marquess from the photograph she had been shown. She said, with perfect composure, ‘Yes, my lord, this piece is not genuine. I can tell it by the colour of the glaze.’
‘Indeed! I gave a long price for it.’
‘You were taken in, my lord. It is not worth fifteen shillings.’
‘Oh, my lord,’ gasped Mrs. Probus, ‘I beg your pardon ten thousand times. I thought you was out, and I dared take the liberty—the inexcusable liberty—of bringing this young person in, who pretended to be interested in porcelain—and her to dare and say your lordship was taken in! You’ll excuse my audacity, my lord, I pray, and her ignorance and impertinence.’
‘My dear Probus,’ said the Marquess, smiling, ‘I am over-pleased to have my collection shown to one who has taste and knowledge, and discrimination.’ Turning to Joanna, he added, ‘I believe, to my cost, that you are right. Doctor Jenkyn, who knows more about china than anyone else in this county, has pronounced unhesitatingly against this piece. You are of the same opinion.’
‘I know it, my lord. I know where it was made. There is a manufactory of these sham antiques. I can tell their articles at a glance.’
‘You seem to have an accurate eye and considerable knowledge.’
‘In my former situation I was with a master who collected china, and so I learned all about it—if I broke any, I got whacks.’
‘Don’t be so familiar,’ whispered Mrs. Probus, greatly shocked.
‘And,’ continued Joanna, ‘my master, after a while, so trusted my judgment, that he would let me spend pounds on pounds on porcelain for him.’
‘Were you never taken in?’
Joanna laughed. She taken in! ‘Never, my lord.’
‘I should like to know your opinion of these bits of Chelsea.’
‘I have already given it,’ said Joanna, disregarding the monitions of the housekeeper. ‘I told Mrs. Probus it was a lot of rubbish.’
The Marquess laughed.
‘Right again. That is exactly Dr. Jenkyn’s opinion, not expressed quite as forcibly as by you.’
‘Here, my lord, you have a charming little Dresden cup and saucer; really good; canary yellow, with the cherubs in pink. It is well painted, and good of its kind.’
‘Keep it,’ said the Marquess. ‘I make you a present of it as a remembrance of my den which you have invaded.’
‘Thank you, thank you! this is kind,’ said Joanna, with sparkling eye. ‘I will never part with my little cup, never; and I beg pardon, my lord, for having persuaded Mrs. Probus to bring me in here, against her better judgment. It was not her fault, it was mine. I entreated her to let me see your china.’
‘Not another word; you are heartily welcome. If I want to buy china again, I will consult you.’
Joanna withdrew with a curtsey. Lord Saltcombe signed to the housekeeper to remain behind.
‘Who is the little china-fancier?’ he asked, in a low tone.
‘Oh, my lord! I am so ashamed. Only the new housemaid at the Lodge.’
‘Indeed! How education advances!’ laughed the Marquess. ‘In the march of culture we are being overtaken. Who would have supposed to find a housemaid so thorough a connoisseur? Well, she looks brimming over with brains, she has plenty of assurance, and is deucedly pretty.’