Silverbeach Manor (3 page)

"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, extremely 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.

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 have
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.