Philippa. Molesworth Mrs.
those children do adore her!” thought their mother. “I’m afraid they won’t let her go, and I really must settle about these tiresome clothes!”
But barely five minutes had passed before Philippa appeared again, divested of her travelling things, bright and interested.
“How did you manage to escape from the nursery?” said Mrs Headfort, admiringly.
Philippa laughed.
“I told them I must come down to you; children have a great respect for ‘must’ Oh, how pretty!” she went on, as she caught sight of an evening-dress lying on the bed; “you don’t mean to say that’s your old heliotrope! How capitally you’ve managed it!”
“I am so glad you like it,” said Evelyn, in a tone of great gratification. “I took it to Warder’s as soon as I heard about this terrible visit. It is really the only thing that’s quite ready. I must get one completely new evening-dress. Mamma and I thought white or cream would be best.”
“Yes,” Philippa agreed, “anything in colour gets so quickly, known, and white always suits you.”
“And, of course,” said Mrs Headfort, “I want something I can wear for a long time, and one can always alter a white dress. There are so many things to consider, you see, Philippa. Duke wouldn’t want them to think me extravagant, and yet, on the other side, I must on no account be dowdy.” She gave a deep sigh. “Men have no idea how difficult things are for women!”
“It is difficult,” Philippa agreed, “but your having no maid still seems to me the worst of it. Its hateful to depend on a housemaid’s good offices, and even morning-dresses are so difficult to manage by one’s self nowadays.”
“Yes indeed,” said Evelyn; “I shall never know if I look nice or not; it isn’t as if they were people I knew well – or knew at all. Oh, dear me, how I wish they had waited to ask me till Duke came home! But now you must help me to decide on one of these patterns, or I shall miss the post.”
The next half-hour passed quickly in discussions of the details of her sister’s trousseau, as Philippa laughingly called it; and if the younger girl in her secret heart found the minutiae rather wearisome, she kept her feelings to herself, and was more than rewarded by Evelyn’s increased good spirits and cheerfulness.
“You don’t know what a comfort it is to have Philippa back again,” she said to her mother that evening at dinner; “I am beginning to feel ever so much happier about Wyverston. I shall be able to write quite comfortably to poor old Duke by next mail.”
Mrs Raynsworth glanced affectionately at her younger daughter. Personally these two resembled each other very closely, nor did the resemblance stop with their outward appearance. There was decision and firmness in both faces, both even more strongly marked in Philippa’s case than in her mother’s, for young as the girl still was, she gave one an impression of extreme reliability, and of late years somewhat failing health and the mellowing influence of time had softened the character of Mrs Raynsworth’s whole personality. Her married life, though far from an unhappy one, had been by no means free from the undue share of practical cares which almost inevitably falls to the wife of a scholar. And that Mr Raynsworth was a scholar, in the fullest sense of the word, there could be no two opinions. It was from him Philippa inherited the intellectual side of her character, balanced by her mother’s practical good sense, and other more ordinary though not the less desirable feminine qualities.
In his secret heart there were times when Mr Raynsworth sighed over the girl’s eager interest in social amusements and the daily life of those about her.
“She almost has it in her to be a really learned woman,” he would say to himself, and in other surroundings it is possible that his ideal for her might have been realised. But as things were, Philippa would have choked in a study had the bulk of her time been spent poring over books. Her lessons with her father over, or, in later years, the work she did for him, and that with real appreciation, completed for the time being, she would fly off to arrange flowers in the drawing-room, or even to discuss the fashion of a new dress, with as keen enjoyment as if she had never touched a Greek or Latin book in her life.
Personally she was like her mother. Dark-haired, brown-eyed, and of a make and bearing suggestive of unusual vigour; while by one of those curious inconsistencies which abound in family likenesses, Evelyn Headfort resembled her father in appearance and temperament, and though by careful education her brain-powers had been made the most of, they were not above the average.
One gift she possessed – the source of infinite pleasure to those about her – that of a very beautiful voice, and if Philippa’s generous nature had been capable of even a passing touch of jealousy of her sister, it would have shown in this direction.
“It is strange,” she would say, sometimes, “that one can adore music as I feel I do, and yet have no power of expressing it one’s self.”
And even as a little child her sweetest dreams and fancies were shaped and coloured by the longing to find herself in possession of the marvellous gift of music, a gift which she sometimes felt inclined to reproach her sister for not sufficiently prizing. For musical as she undoubtedly was, Evelyn was neither poetical nor imaginative, however difficult it might be to credit this when one gazed at her delicate, almost ethereal features and lovely, dreamy blue eyes.
“One can’t have everything,” she would reply, prosaically enough, to her sister. “You’re a hundred, thousand times cleverer than I, and quite as capable or more so, and, to my mind, quite as nice-looking. You really needn’t grudge me my voice. I only care about it because all of you do.”
But for the dissimilarity between them – possibly, indeed, to some extent in consequence of it – never were two sisters more heartily attached to each other. Never was a home less disturbed by the friction of opposing tastes or unrestrained moods than theirs. There was, no doubt, dormant intensity of feeling, depths of devotion and capacity for suffering in the younger girl’s nature not yet gauged – potentialities which, it is to be questioned, if any of those about her could have understood even had she been sufficiently conscious of them herself to attempt to express them, or egotistical enough to wish to do so. But though possibly there was less power of sympathy with her deepest self than she had any idea of, there had been nothing in her life or surroundings to stunt or thwart her individuality. Nay, rather very much the reverse – calm and stillness are excellent guardians of character in certain stages of its development.
Chapter Three
“So Unlike Her.”
The next few days were fully occupied with Evelyn’s preparations for her visit. And here, perhaps, it may be well to explain why so apparently unimportant a matter as young Mrs Headfort’s spending a few days with her husband’s relations should have been looked upon by herself and her own family as an event of such moment.
It was now nearly four years since Evelyn Raynsworth’s marriage to Captain Headfort, and during that time two deaths had taken place in the immediate family of his cousin – the head of the house and master of Wyverston – which had greatly altered the young man’s position as a Headfort, with regard to the future. For the deaths had been those of Mr Headfort’s two sons, and though the large estates were not entailed, the family feeling of respect for the male line was proverbially strong. Marmaduke was an only son, and had been early left an orphan; the care of him in childhood and youth devolving upon relatives on his mother’s side, elderly people now dead. They had done their duty by the boy in a conscientious, unemotional fashion, and had left him a small addition to his own little patrimony: all, indeed, that they had it in their power to dispose of. So, though Captain Headfort’s childhood had been a somewhat loveless one, he remembered his uncle and aunt with gratitude – never so warm, perhaps, as when, at eight-and-twenty, he fell in love with Mr Raynsworth’s charming daughter – as but for this opportune legacy he would scarcely have thought it possible to marry. It had never occurred to him in his wildest dreams, that a day might come when he should be looked upon as the probable heir to the large estates belonging to the head of his family, of which he considered himself a very unimportant member; he was not even disappointed or hurt when no