The Third Miss St Quentin. Molesworth Mrs.
any inclination to smile at the butler’s grandiloquence, which was often, almost more than any one’s risible nerves could stand unmoved – the three cousins looked at each other. And again they made simultaneously the same exclamation; this time consisting of but one word, —
“Ella!” they all three ejaculated.
Chapter Three
“It is Really Ella.”
“What shall we do? What can be the matter?” said Madelene, when after an instant’s silence she began to take in the fact of Ella’s arrival.
“Receive her cordially of course. What else in Heaven’s name can you do?” Sir Philip replied with a touch of impatience. “After all there is nothing so extraordinary in a girl’s coming to her own father’s house – even taking refuge there if, as is possible – ”
“She has been turned out of her aunt’s,” interrupted Ermine. “Yes, I’m certain that’s it – she and old Burton have come to blows and Ella’s high spirits or high temper have proved too much for him.”
“Ermine,” said Philip, warningly, “you should really,” and he glanced in Barnes’s direction.
But if Barnes did hear what they were saying he at least appeared so absolutely unconscious that Philip’s remonstrance fell rather flat. The butler had retired to a few paces distance, where he stood awaiting orders with an irreproachably blank expression.
“Is the young – is Miss Ella St Quentin in the library?” asked Sir Philip suddenly.
“Yes, my – I beg pardon – yes, Sir Philip,” Barnes replied. His former master had been a peer, and even after some years of serving a commoner Barnes found it difficult to ignore the old habit.
“Then go and tell her Miss St Quentin; mind you, say it distinctly, no Miss Madelene or Miss Ermine – the young lady is, as you supposed, Miss Ella St Quentin – say that Miss St Quentin will be with her immediately. You’d better go at once, Maddie.”
“She couldn’t have meant to call herself Miss St Quentin – it was just an accident, no doubt,” said Madelene nervously.
“Of course, but it’s just as well from the first to remind her that she is not Miss St Quentin,” said Philip. “Stupid of her aunt to have let her get into the habit. But Madelene – ”
“Yes, yes. Ermine, hadn’t you better get some fresh tea? – this will be cold,” said Madelene, touching the teapot. “Philip, hadn’t Ermine better come too?”
No one could have believed it of her – no one ever did believe it possible that the cold, stately Madelene was in reality a martyr to shyness and timidity. But the two or three who knew her well, knew the fact and pitied her intensely, her cousin Philip among them. But he knew, too, the best way to treat it, cruel as it sometimes seemed.
“No,” he said, “decidedly not. You will get on much better alone, Maddie. Off with you, there’s a good girl. And good-bye. I’m going round to the stable-yard and I’ll mount there. I’m dying with curiosity, but all the same I’m too high-principled to indulge it. It wouldn’t do for me to stay – you and Ermine are quite enough for the poor child to face at first.”
“Oh, Philip,” said Madelene, stopping short again, for by this time she had got a few yards on her way, “I thought you would have stayed to help us.”
“Not I,” Philip called after her. “It’s much better not, I assure you. I’ll look in to-morrow to see how you’re all getting on, and to hear the whole story. And if I meet Uncle Marcus on his way home, as I dare say I shall, I’ll tell him of the arrival, so as to save you having to break it to him.”
“And do beg him to come home as quickly as he can,” replied Madelene.
Philip got up from his seat and moved to go.
“Good-bye, Ermine,” he said.
Ermine looked at him dubiously.
“Are you in earnest, Philip?” she said. “I have more than half an idea that you are going off out of cowardice, and – and – that all your regard for Ella’s feelings, etc, is – ”
“What?” said Philip, smiling.
“Talk,” Ermine replied curtly.
Philip laughed.
“No, truly,” he said. “All things considered it is much better for me to leave you. And it’s quite true about my curiosity. I’m awfully curious both to hear about it all and to see this little personage who has descended among us in this thunder-and-lightning, bomb-shell sort of way. By Jove – ” and he stopped short, while a different expression came into his face – “what a nuisance it is to think that all our jolly times together are over! I was grumbling at it prospectively this morning – to think that it has already come to pass.”
He sighed. Ermine sighed too.
“Yes,” she said, “it is horrid. For I know – as positively as if I could hear what is at this moment passing in the library – that the child has come to stay.”
“Oh Lord, yes,” Philip exclaimed, “not a doubt of it.”
“I only wish she were a child,” pursued Ermine. “It might be more of a bother in some ways, but in others – seventeen’s an awful sort of age – most girls then are really children and full of fancying themselves grown-up, and standing on their dignity, and all the rest of it, and yet not really grown-up enough to be proper companions to – ”
“Two full-fledged old maids like you and Maddie,” put in Philip.
“Exactly,” said Ermine.
“Well, good-bye again,” he said, lifting his hat as he turned away in the direction of the stables.
Miss St Quentin made her way slowly to the house. She looked outwardly calm, indeed to look anything else had scarcely ever in her life occurred to Madelene, but inwardly she was greatly perturbed. To begin with, she was as I have said, a sufferer from intense shyness; shyness of that kind most painful and difficult to contend with, better perhaps defined as moral timidity, which shrinks with almost morbid horror from giving or witnessing pain or discomfort, which, but for the constraining and restraining force of a strong sense of duty, would any day gladly endure personal suffering or neglect, or allow wrong-doing to go unrebuked, rather than attempt the slightest remonstrance. Madelene could enter a roomful of strangers without a touch of nervousness, but the thought of reproving a servant would keep her awake for nights! and that something in the action of her young half-sister was about to call for rebuke or disapproval she felt instinctively certain. Then there were other reasons for her feeling far from able to meet Ella with the hearty welcome she would have wished; housekeeper’s considerations were on her mind!
“I did so want to have the rooms arranged the way Ermine and I were planning,” she said to herself. “It would have been so much better to have begun regularly at once. Now I really don’t know what to do. Papa would certainly be displeased if I gave her one of the long corridor ones, and yet the two or three empty rooms in the south wing are so small and would seem shabby. But I am afraid there is nothing else to do. I must explain to her that the rooms intended for her can’t possibly be ready for some time. And about the maids too – we had planned it so well. Now, there will really be no one able to look after her, for I can’t trust Mélanie; she is so injudicious with that chattering tongue of hers.”
Meantime, the cause of all these discussions was waiting alone in the library. She had seated herself when first shown in, in a matter-of-course, unrestrained manner, as if quite at her ease. But this had been for the benefit of Barnes and his subordinates. No sooner was she left alone, than the girl got up and strolled nervously towards the window, where she stood looking out. Now that the deed was done, her courage began to flag.
“I wonder,” she said to herself, clasping her little hands together, “I wonder what they’ll say. They surely can’t blame me, when I tell them how unendurable it was, and that even Aunt Phillis, in her heart, though she wouldn’t