IN THE BEAUDESSART ARMS
One morning, a week after the interview with Mr. Shand, the sisters were in their own private sitting-room together.
Joan was putting away sundry trifles that belonged to her, and getting rid of the ten thousand accumulations that gather in a house during a long tenancy. She burned many old bills and letters.
Sibyll was engaged in doing little more than help her sister, by ensuring combustion of bills and letters, by turning them over, or pressing them down among the coals with the poker in her hand.
"I have made up my mind what I shall do," said she. "I shall go a round of visits, and spend my Christmas with the Maleverers. I shall be able to spin out my engagements through the spring and early summer, and by that time something is sure to turn up."
"You cannot do this," said Joan, looking at her sister with surprise; "visiting comes expensive."
"But it will be economy—I shall save my grub with you."
"Dear Sibyll, that is nothing. Visiting will entail a good deal of outlay in dress."
"You would not have me go shabby."
"No—but as Mr. Shand says, 'You must cut your coat according to your cloth.' You must dress as our means will permit. Besides, there are the servants—presents must be made to them—and there is the cost of travelling. Indeed, Sibyll, it is not possible."
"What shall we be driven to do? Go out as governesses? Well, if I can find a nice family, where the children give no trouble and the salary is good, I will even submit to that. Miss Blair did not have a bad time of it with us—only she would so persistently paint and frizzle, and set her cap at papa."
"Sibyll, you have not been educated for a governess."
"Pshaw! I can read and write and spell indifferently well. I am not much of a hand at the piano, but of course I could teach. It only means letting the pupil muddle along at the scales, and you sit by with a novel, and just throw in a word now and then."
"No, dear, you have neither the training nor the application."
"I have as much as most governesses."
"That may be—but the country is overrun with incapables drifting from situation to situation, staying a term in each, till their incapacity has demonstrated itself unequivocally. No—you are not calculated to be a successful governess."
"Then I shall go on the stage. There are pots of money to be made there so long as one is decent-looking."
"The stage is a profession that is most exacting. It demands training and hard work. You know, Sibyll, that you have a woeful short memory. Go on with the beginning of the Paradise Lost, from
- 'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree'"—
"No, Joan, I detest Milton; you know that."
"Well, then, try something else that you learned quite recently with Miss Blair—
- 'The stag at eve had drunk his fill
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill.'"
"I have forgotten all that stuff."
"Sibyll, no stage for you. You are as ill-adapted for that profession as you are to be a governess."
"Then I shall become a nurse. Some of the nurses' costumes are quite fascinating, and they have a jolly lively time in the hospitals, I hear."
"My dear Sibyll, you would have to pass through an apprenticeship, scrubbing the floors and doing real menial work, with a chance of being rejected."
"I'm not going to do anything menial. Scrub the floors indeed! Black the medical students boots next! Not I—rather than that I'll marry old Colonel Wood."
"It is not leap year, so you cannot ask him if he will have you."
At this juncture Matthews entered with a salver and presented a note to Miss Frobisher.
"Any answer?" she inquired.
"I really do not know, miss. The boy brought it from the Beaudessart Arms, and said that he had forgotten whether he was to wait for an answer or not."
Joan opened the envelope, which was addressed to her in a feminine hand, and her face at once assumed an expression of surprise.
"In a moment, Matthews. I must consider."
The butler withdrew.
"It is odd," she said, rather to herself than to her sister. "What can she want?"
"Who, Joan?"
"Look yourself at the note." She passed the sheet to her sister.
Sibyll read it, tossed it across the table, and said, "I call that a jolly bit of cheek. If I were you I would not answer it in any way."
"I do not know what she wants. It may be kindly intended."
"Oh, kindly intended indeed! The gloating cormorant! Allow me to go and give her my mind plainly and forcibly expressed."
"No, Sibyll, she asks to see me. I will go, but I do not much like this. Touch the bell."
When the butler reappeared, Joan said, "There is no message. I will answer the note in person."
Then she left the room, dressed to go out, and quitted the house.
As she walked through the grounds along the drive, she could not but wince at the sight of such familiar and beautiful landscape that she would be leaving without a prospect of seeing it again.
Hard by the entrance lodge stood a neat inn, "The Beaudessart Arms," and to that Joan directed her steps. She was immediately admitted to the little parlour, where was seated a lady in widow's weeds. She had abundant white hair, and dark eyes under well-drawn dark eyebrows.
She rose immediately, and advancing towards the visitor, said, "Miss Frobisher."
"Mrs. Beaudessart, I presume."
"Will you take a chair?" said the lady. "I dare-say you are surprised at the step I have taken of driving over from Rosewood, and putting up my cob here, and then sending to entreat your visit. For many reasons I thought it most expedient to adopt this method of communicating with you. Will you not be seated?"
Joan did not accept the invitation; she made a slight apologetic bow, and remained standing.
"Miss Frobisher," continued the widow, in a gentle voice tinged with a Colonial accent, "there are things better spoken between woman and woman than committed to writing, or passed through the medium of a solicitor. It sometimes happens that words at one time read leave one callous, which at another time move one to tears. So much depends on the reader and the mood of the listener. I wish to communicate a proposition, that I prefer should come from my lips to your ear, than that it should reach you in any other way. There has been estrangement, bitterness, in the past, harsh thoughts and resentful feelings have been entertained—but those heads in which the thoughts tossed are laid low, on one side and the other. The hearts that were fired with resentment are both still. There is no reason why we should carry on these same feelings; let them die and be forgotten. Come, I will have you by my side on the sofa." She laid her hand on Joan's wrist, and drew her down.
"I can assure you that my son and I have no other thought towards you than one of deep sympathy and heartfelt goodwill. He has had the privilege of making your acquaintance. I should have gone on my way grieving at not knowing you—and that is one reason why I have been so bold as to ask you to honour me with a visit here."
She retained her hand on Joan's wrist, and looked at her with her kind eyes.
"Miss Frobisher, let me tell you a little about ourselves."
Joan wondered. The lady seemed reluctant to make the proposal she had said it was her purpose to make, and to make which she had driven over from Rosewood.
"When my dear husband was dismissed from home—it was for no wrong done, but because he entertained opinions very different from his father—he went to Canada, and entered a house of business. He was advanced from being clerk to be partner, and realised a respectable fortune, after which he withdrew entirely from business, just before his death. I do not say that what he made was a large sum, so that my son Hector was left a wealthy man, but that he was comfortably off. On account of his expectations in England there was no necessity that he should be put into business. It might have been better if he had been, as then his life would have been less desultory. However, I have not come here to discuss that. My dear husband's one ambition was that Hector should grow up to be a thorough English gentleman, and he was willing—in order to ensure this—to undergo great sacrifices, the greatest of all the parting with his son to be bred in England. However, I have not asked you to meet me that I might talk about my son, but about yourself and your sister. Will you take what I am going to say in good part, as it is intended? We are not relatives, and yet it almost seems as though we ought to be akin. Cannot earth constitute a tie as well as blood? You have been born, and lived on, and have loved Pendabury, where my husband was born and where his forefathers had lived for centuries. And I may say that, separated from it by the wide ocean, deprived of it, he loved it to the last with intense passion. As somehow akin, linked through Pendabury, my son and I consider that we are allied to you. If you will acknowledge the bond, none so gratified and happy as we. Hector thinks, and so do I, that in common fairness, if your father had been given the estate for his life, he ought to have been allowed to charge it to a reasonable amount his family. It was hardly treating him fairly deny him the means to provide for his nearest and dearest. Now, Miss Frobisher"—the lady pressed the girl's wrist gently—"you will allow it to be so—let there be a small sum paid over to you and your sister in quarterly instalments; just as your father would have desired had he been able so to arrange it."
"You are very kind," answered Joan, touched by the offer and the way in which it had been made. "I feel unable to express to you how deeply I am moved by your goodness. But do not be angry, do not consider me ungrateful, if I say that I cannot possibly accept this generous proposition. I tell you, in all frankness, that since I have known how my father stepped into the Pendabury estate, I have felt that a great injustice was done to Mr. Walter Beaudessart. If my father had viewed the matter as I do, he would have refused to profit by the will, and have set himself to work out a career for himself, gone into business, and made his own way to a competence. Actually, the whole twenty-eight years that he lived in Pendabury were years in which the rightful owner was thrust out of the enjoyment of it. He to whom the place properly belonged never had it, and I cannot consent to take anything more out of the estate. I recognise, with all my heart, the kind intent that has prompted you to make me this noble offer, but excuse me if I say that I cannot accept it. Already has Mr. Shand offered to send round the hat among those we have known and entertained and regarded as our fellows. I declined the proposal. The rector has heard of some almshouses for decayed gentlewomen, and has asked me to sanction his canvassing for votes to get me and my sister into one of them—as buxom damsels to figure as decayed gentlewomen. I could not entertain such an idea. I refused that also. No, dear Mrs. Beaudessart, I feel that it is exhilarating, like having the east wind in one's face, to meet the world and make one's own fate, and rely on God, one's stout heart, and ten nimble fingers—but I thank you all the same." And she stood up to depart.