Silverbeach Manor Read online

  Chapter 2

  Fashionable Society.

  WHATEVER have you done to yourself?" Mrs. Adair asks, putting up her eyeglass in languid disapproval of Pansy's Sunday dress. "Where is the pretty red frock that made such a gipsy of you among the leaves?"

  "It was old," stammers Pansy. "The sleeves were torn. I had it four years ago. This dress was new only last month." But she understands the lady's smile, and hates and despises this dress from that time forward.

  "The style is a little out of date, but it is good enough for the country," says Mrs. Adair, indulgently. "Most of the people round here look as if Mrs. Noah had designed their garments. I should like to see you in a really well-made dress. It would be quite a new sensation for you, if you really belong to these wilds. I have a crimson and gold tea gown that would suit you delightfully, and make you quite a treasure for an artist."

  Pansy thinks wistfully that her life is condemned to a place where tea gowns are unknown and unappreciated, and where, year after year, she will be doomed to blush unseen, knowing the brilliancy and glory of the fashionable world only by the pictures and stories in the novelettes Aunt Temperance sells.

  Her large expressive eyes look at Mrs. Adair. "Are you an artist, my lady?" she asks, timidly.

  "My tastes lie that way, child, but I have such poor health that I paint but little now. My nerves are out of tone, and the artistic flame consumes my constitution -- so the physicians tell me. But I used to paint once." Mrs. Adair sighs a little, perhaps in memory of long-past struggling days, when she knew all the rapture and anxieties of an art career before she chose the luxury offered by a loveless marriage with an elderly, wealthy man who lifted her beyond the reach of want, and clad her in "purple and fine linen." Somehow, from that time her artistic power began to wane.

  Mrs. Adair is a widow now, with far more money than she can spend on her own ease and enjoyment, but from the hour she turned her back on Truth, and promised her love to one who had not in the remotest degree reached her heart, she lost the capacity of an artist in its highest, best, and most glorious degree. Still, as she says, her "tastes lie that way," and her beautiful riverside mansion, Silverbeach Manor, far away from here in the County of Surrey is the resort of artists, both amateur and professional.

  Pansy tells the story of the elopement of her mother, an officer's daughter, with her father, who was her music teacher.

  "Of course it was a marriage considered by many to be much beneath my mother's family," she says. "Grandfather cast her off, being related himself to the nobility."

  After the death of Pansy's parents, Aunt Temperance Piper had wholly provided for Pansy, planning for her, trying ineffectually to save money for her, dreaming of her, adoring her, counting the pretty, clever child as the apple of her eye. Polesheaton people could relate considerably more than Pansy now tells Mrs. Adair, who forms the opinion that it is rather a pity for such an attractive-looking girl to be hidden away in a remote country post office. She is amused to see Pansy's cheeks flush and her eyes brighten to hear of London and London gaieties.

  Mrs. Adair is entrancing the girl by an account of the occasion when she was presented at Court, and in imagination Pansy is sailing up to her Majesty Queen Victoria in a low-necked dress and feathers, and a brocaded train (a full account of which would, of course, appear in The Polesheaton Herald, to the dismay and envy of the Sotham girls from the farm), when a face peers through the open garden door, catches sight of a glimpse of Pansy's dress amid the trees, and Deb rushes excitedly into the garden.

  "There, Miss Pansy, if the girl at the baker's didn't say she saw you come in here! But I couldn't never believe it!"

  "Go away, Deborah!" says Pansy with forced dignity, adding in a low voice, "Please excuse her, your ladyship. She is only a common girl we took out of the workhouse -- a girl who does not belong to anybody. Who gave you permission to come into the lady's garden, Deborah? "

  "Nobody didn't, Miss Pansy, but mistress is out, and there's a party came after Spanish onions, and mistress didn't tell me nothing about them. What is Spanish onions a pound, please, Miss Pansy? "

  Deb takes no notice of the fair, frizzled hair, the dainty bonnet, or the magnificent cloak. Her whole soul is engrossed in the necessity of obtaining the price of the onions for her mistress.

  "I know nothing about it -- go away directly," says Pansy, haughtily.

  "Anyways, I can book them onions," cries Deb, a happy thought suddenly striking her, as she runs off to debit the customer with the purchase.

  "What a little barbarian!" says Mrs. Adair. "A workhouse child must be hopeless material as regards uplifting. But here comes Robson to take me in. You will lunch with me, of course? Pray do, for I am all alone today, and shall be miserably dull."

  Pansy detects no selfishness in the invitation. It is market day, and Miss Piper will not be home for some time. As a rule, Pansy would dine off mince and suet pudding in company with Deb. Her heart thrills within her as she follows the Bath chair to the thick, dark yew hedge near the old entrance hall, and passes beneath the portals whence bygone Tatlocks issued to marriage, ball, and rout -- ay, and to more than these; but Pansy's excited thoughts can couple with wealth and fashion nothing but the festive and the glad.

  At table she is much overawed by the size of the dining room, hung with ancestral paintings, and oak panelled up to the ceiling. She pictures the lovely Lady Berengaria from her story banqueting here by the side of the young baron who wears her glove at joust and tournament, but she is roused from these legendary glories by uncertainty as to the right way of eating her fish, and perplexity as to the nature of the dish Mrs. Adair recommends, the name of which is in some foreign language. It seems to Pansy that the noiseless footman keeps his eye upon her awkwardness, and notices her every difficulty. She is dreadfully afraid of him, and little dreams at this moment that the time will come when it will be as natural to her for fawning attendants to anticipate her every want, as for her to sit down to French dishes every day of her life.

  Pansy becomes far more at her ease when, in the music room, she finds an old, sweet-toned violin, and surprises and delights Mrs. Adair by notes that seem the outpouring of a restless human heart.

  "Why, child," exclaims her hostess, reclining on the couch, "your touch is superb. Wherever have you learned to play like that?"

  "People say I inherit father's touch," says Pansy, the colour coming and going in her face as the sweet harmonies seem still echoing around. "The organist at the church has taught me all I know. I have Father's violin, but it is nothing like this.'

  "A country organist! My dear child, such a touch as yours deserves the highest cultivation. Your aunt should secure for you the first professors of the day."

  "There is no music in Aunt Temperance," says Pansy, discontentedly. "She used to sing me to sleep when I was little, and she likes the Sunday school hymns, and things like those, but of real music she knows nothing at all."

  "It is a thousand pities," says Mrs. Adair, "that you cannot receive the training your talent deserves. You are a born violinist. Now play me something light and pretty."

  Pansy breaks into a joyous gavotte, like the dancing of a fairy throng across the flowers, and then Mrs. Adair takes her upstairs and brings out the crimson and gold tea gown, and bids her array herself for once in a dress that was made in Paris.

  "And there comes a visitor," she exclaims, as a ring resounds through the house. "Come down just as you are, Pansy. I expect it is Cyril Langdale, the portrait-painter. He will be enraptured."

  Pansy steals a glance at the mirror, and scarcely recognizes herself. She looks so tall and womanly, so different from her everyday self in the graceful, clinging folds of the silk-lined cashmere, trimmed with lace of the colour of old gold. Is she dreaming? Will she wake and find herself in the bed in the attic, with the worn curtains at the window, the broken jug and basin, and the china dog with the chipped nose upon the mantelpiece?

  Cyril Langdale, a tall, ext
remely handsome man in a black velvet coat, with long, curling black hair, a silky moustache, and an exotic flower in his buttonhole, becomes to her the picture of the most noble, manly, and exquisite man in her beloved romances. Surely the noble youth who tore sweet Genevieve from her tyrant father in last week's Charmer must have looked exactly like this aristocratic gentleman. Or perhaps Sir Humphrey de Lovelocks, who so gallantly assisted Lady Phyllis to escape from the parental roof by means of the creeper beneath her lattice window. It occurs to Pansy that in her romances parents are always tyrants, and daughters are oppressed.

  Langdale is quite unprepared for the charming vision that brightens the music room where tea is served. He is an old acquaintance of Mrs. Adair's, a very accomplished portrait painter and a society pet. Just now he is staying at the new town of Firlands, and has driven over to while away an hour with his friend, Mrs. Adair. The lady now sees that her protégée has made a great impression on the artist, and while Pansy plays again by her request, she tells him in a low voice how she has discovered this charming little damsel among the savages of Polesheaton.

  "I have been recommended to engage a young, lively companion by my physicians," she says. "I may probably take this girl to London with me. Her face is like a picture."

  "I should like to paint her as the 'Gipsy Countess'," says Langdale. "The colouring of the face is perfect -- like the blush of a peach."

  So they discuss her, as though, indeed, she were a painting, while on Pansy's senses the glow of the fire that is lighted every gloaming, the gleam of the silver tea service, the delicious tea and cream and dainty cakes, the scent of the flowers in the vases, combine to produce a rapturous impression. Happy the people who live day by day in an atmosphere like this -- the people to whom sorrow and depression and discontent must be utterly unknown!

  Cyril Langdale pays her a few sweet compliments in his low, confidential voice, as concerns her playing, and then sits down in the dusk at the piano, and sings in a rich baritone voice an Italian love song.

  Pansy does not understand a word, but she is entranced by his voice and the tenderness of the melody, and she is startled as from a vision when Mrs. Adair tells her the "dressing-bell" is ringing, and she had better run home now, but she can come in and take tea with her again tomorrow afternoon.

  Cyril Langdale opens the door for her, and she runs upstairs alone to remove the gorgeous tea gown and don once more her dreadful dress of violet and blue that she now sees to be altogether too short, too baggy, and deficient in taste and style. Yet this sort of thing is to be her fate in wretched old humdrum Polesheaton. The angry tears rise to Pansy's eyes as she drags her ill-fitting bodice together.

  Her aunt and Deb are taking tea in the kitchen by the light of a solitary candle. To Deb, set in the midst of a home after ten years of workhouse life, there is quite a lavish grandeur about this evening meal, by the side of a cosy fire, a round of toast in front of her, and old Tab the cat blinking and winking close by. To Pansy, however, fresh from the silver service and eggshell china, the frosted cakes and luscious cream, the noiseless carpet and long-haired Persian chinchilla kitten on the Eastern rug, the whole scene seems common in the extreme, and she sits down in the elbow-chair that was her grandfather's, feeling wretched.

  "Oh, Miss Pansy, to think of your getting your dinner with the quality!" cries Deb, excitedly. "Do tell us what they gave you, miss. I've heard tell it's a gentleman cook just now at The Grange."

  "I will thank you not to be so free, Deborah," says Pansy, with dignity. "There is nothing at all strange in my being invited to The Grange. I think you forget I am a lady myself -- a lady by birth."

  "I didn't know, miss," says Deborah, meekly: "I begs pardon. Will I make you some toast, Miss Pansy?"

  "No, indeed. I have had my tea with Mrs. Adair, and she has asked me to spend tomorrow afternoon with her as well."

  "Oh, but, my dearie, that is the afternoon we make out the bills together! My poor head would be lost without yours now, Pansy," says Aunt Temperance. "I have to bake in the morning, otherwise we could do the bills then."

  "Oh, the bills must wait!" says Pansy, impatiently. "I am not going to miss a visit to The Grange for a lot of stupid bills."

  "Can't I do them, mistress?" asks Deb, anxiously. "I keeps my own accounts of the shilling a week you gives me. I'll be ever so careful, if only you'll try me, mistress. I does want to help you all I can."

  "So do I, of course," says Pansy, now in tears. "You need not praise yourself at my expense, Deborah -- putting me down before my own face like that! I'll do your bills if they are so particular, Aunt Temperance -- never mind about my losing the visit."

  "Nay, my dearie, you get but little pleasure. The bills must just wait," says Aunt Temperance, gazing fondly at the weeping girl. "You are overtired, Pansy, and you must go early to bed and dream of your treat tomorrow. The lady must be very kind to take such notice of my Pansy."

  But in her secret heart Miss Piper is just the least bit jealous of this grand, strange lady who has fascinated her Pansy.

  Chapter 3

  Pansy's Choice.

  PANSY wears the red dress with a bit of old lace that was her mother's around her neck, and goes to afternoon tea at The Grange as arranged. The next day she lunches there, and the following day Mrs. Adair drives her over to Firlands, and they have table d'hôte lunch at the Royal Hotel. Quite a new world of refinement, fashion, and rapture seems revealed to Pansy's eyes.

  Aunt Temperance and Deborah are extremely proud to think of Pansy riding in Mrs. Adair's landau, and Deborah reduces the second Miss Sotham to the depths of curiosity and envy by a recital of Pansy's grandeur and festivity, while selling the farmer's daughter a stamp. Events are rare now-a-days in Polesheaton, and the exciting news soon spreads across the district that "Pansy Piper and her ladyship at The Grange be as thick as two peas."

  Scarcely a day goes by without a visit from Pansy Piper to Mrs. Adair. There is plenty of old music about the music room once used by the Tatlocks, and Pansy comes across sweet, dreamy melodies for the violin which she loves to try over in that beautiful retreat, with the scent of flowers all around, and Mrs. Adair's elegant dress sweeping the couch, and as often as not Cyril Langdale close by to pour honeyed words into the young girl's ear, and vouchsafe his charming smile in response to her shy, faltering speech.

  "Such a dear, unsophisticated little thing!" mentally soliloquizes Mrs. Adair. "Quite a child of Nature. I am wearied of those animated fashion-plates one sees every day of one's life. It would be a new enjoyment to introduce this lovely child to society and witness the sensation caused by her beauty and her genius. I should take fresh interest in going into society as chaperone of little Pansy, my adopted daughter, but of course she would take my name -- Pansy Piper is too dreadful."

  "Think well before you burden yourself with a charge like this," says a lady friend of Mrs. Adair's, staying at the Firlands Hydropathic. "A young person removed from her proper station and introduced into society cannot be got rid of like a bird, a poodle, or a picture of which one has grown tired. If you take this young villager to Silverbeach with you, let it be as a paid companion. Give her an annual salary, and agree as to a term of notice if unsatisfactory."

  But in her secret heart Mrs. Adair feels she wants somebody to belong to herself entirely, somebody who will have no ideas and plans apart from her own. She is growing fond of Pansy and thinks she will be proud of her when society vindicates her approval. A scheme gradually possesses her to place this talented, affectionate girl in the position of a daughter or young sister of her own.

  One afternoon she is teaching Pansy how to elaborate a heron in needlework, and the girl is contrasting the graceful sewing with the mending and darning to which fate has condemned her so long, when Mrs. Adair says, caressingly, "Will you miss me very much, petite, when I go back to town?"

  Pansy looks up in blank dismay. "I thought you were going to stay all the winter," she falters.

  "I ha
ve taken The Grange till February," says Mrs. Adair, "but even the fine air would never induce me to winter at Polesheaton. I shall spend Christmas in the South of France, and then settle down again at my own place in Surrey, Silverbeach Manor -- the most comfortable house in England. Mr. Adair was always adding hot water pipes, or corridor-lounges, or a lift, or something to make Silverbeach Manor perfect. It is a home of luxury, but I get tired of it every now and then. It is bearable in the spring and summer, though, and I always like the South of Europe in the winter. Polesheaton is altogether too humdrum for me, my dear child. You people do not live here, you vegetate, and how you exist in Polesheaton I cannot imagine. I think of starting this day week."

  Pansy makes no reply, but Mrs. Adair sees that the dark eyes are full of tears and the pretty face is wistful and miserable. To Pansy, Mrs. Adair's departure means the return to the monotony that the reading of romances hour by hour has made all too distasteful -- serving in the shop, writing Aunt Temperance Piper's bills, mending old dresses, teaching dull music pupils their notes, dreaming in vain of lords and ladies and silk attire and marble halls.

  "Pansy," says Mrs. Adair, conscious of the generous magnificence of the proposal, "I have become attached to you, and my physicians advise for me to mix in young society. I thought of advertising for a companion, but I prefer to mould one for myself, and then I shall be sure to get just what I wish. I am thinking of adopting you, Pansy, as my companion, and if you give me satisfaction, probably as my heiress. What do you say to the notion? Will you leave Polesheaton behind for ever, and enter society under my care?"

  "Oh, Mrs. Adair!" The colour comes and goes in Pansy's face, and the dimples shine joyously about the rosy lips as she takes in the meaning of these momentous words. Leave Polesheaton behind, and enter a world of Paris-made dresses and exquisite music and cushioned carriages and hothouse flowers! Well, such a destiny is hers by right, for was not her mother of aristocratic descent?