Shortly before Christmas, they received a visit from Lord Rotherham. One of his estates, not his principal seat, which was situated in quite another part of the country, but a smaller and more favoured residence, was Claycross Abbey, which lay some ten miles beyond Quenbury. He rode over on a damp, cheerless day, and was ushered into the drawing-room to find Serena alone there, engaged, not very expertly, in knotting a fringe. “Good God, Serena!” he ejaculated, checking on the threshold.
She had never been more glad to see him. Every grudge was forgotten in delight at this visit from one who represented at that moment a lost world. “Rotherham!” she cried, jumping up, and going to him with her hand held out. “Of all the charming surprises!”
“My poor girl, you must be bored!” he said.
She laughed. “Witness my occupation! To tears, I assure you! I was so extravagant as to send to London for a parcel of new books, thinking to be kept well entertained for at least a month. But having been so improvident as to swallow Guy Mannering almost at one gulp—has it come in your way? I like it better, I think, than Waverley—I am left with The Pastor’s Fireside, which seems sadly flat; a History of New England, for which I am not in the correct humour; a most tedious Life of Napoleon, written in verse, if you please! and, of all imaginable things, an Enquiry into Rent! Fanny has failed miserably to teach me to do tambour work that doesn’t shame the pair of us, so, in desperation, I am knotting a fringe. But sit down, and tell me what has been going on in the world all this time!”
“Nothing that I know of. You must have seen that Wellington and Castlereagh carried it against old Blücher. For the rest, the only on-dits which have come in my way are that Sir Hudson Lowe has his eye on a handsome widow, and that the Princess of Wales has now taken to driving about the Italian countryside in a resplendent carriage drawn by cream-coloured ponies. Rehearsing an appearance at Astley’s, no doubt. Tell me how you go on!”
“Oh—tolerably well! What has brought you into Gloucestershire? Do you mean to spend your Christmas at Claycross?”
“Yes: an unwilling sacrifice on the altar of duty. My sister comes tomorrow, bringing with her I know not how many of her offspring; and my cousin Cordelia, labouring, apparently, under the mistaken belief that I must be pining for a sight of my wards, brings the whole pack down upon me on Thursday.”
“Good heavens, what a houseful! I wonder you should not rather invite them to Delford!”
“I invited them nowhere. Augusta informed me that I should be delighted to receive them all, and as for taking Cordelia’s eldest cub into Leicestershire at this season, no, I thank you! I have more regard for my horses, and should certainly prefer Gerard not to break his neck while under my aegis.”
She frowned, and said, with a touch of asperity: “It is a pity you cannot be kinder to that boy!”
“I might be, if his mother were less so,” he responded coolly.
“I think it is not in your nature. You have neither patience nor compunction, Ivo.”
“On your tongue the stricture sits oddly, my dear Serena!”
She flushed. “I hope that at least I have compunction.”
“So do I, but I have not seen it!”
Her eyes flashed, but she choked back a retort, saying, after a moment’s struggle: “I beg your pardon! You remind me—very properly!—that your conduct towards your wards is no concern of mine.”
“Good science, Serena!” he said approvingly. “I am now thrown in the close, and shall make no attempt to come up to time. You are at liberty to censure my conduct towards my wards as much as you please, but why waste these remarks on me? Cordelia will certainly drive over to pay you a visit, and will be delighted to learn your opinion of me: it is identical with her own!”
Fanny entered the room as Serena exclaimed: “Oh, can we never be for ten minutes together without quarrelling?”
“I believe it has been rather longer than that, so we may plume ourselves upon the improvement,” he replied, rising, and shaking hands with Fanny. “How do you do? You have no occasion to look dismayed: I came only to pay my respects, and have already stayed too long. I hope you are well?”
She had never known how to reply to such speeches as this, and coloured hotly, stammering that she was so glad—hoped he would stay to dine—they had not expected—
“Thank you, no! I have no business with Spenborough, and paused here only on my way to Milverley.”
“You need not vent your anger on poor Fanny!” Serena said indignantly.
“I have no compunction!” he flung at her. “My sister spends Christmas at Claycross, Lady Spenborough, and has charged me to discover from you whether you are yet receiving visitors.”
“Oh, yes! We shall be very happy to see Lady Silchester. Pray, assure her—! It is most kind!”
He bowed, and took his leave of them. Fanny gave a sigh of relief, and said: “I am so thankful! Mrs Stowe tells me that the turbot had to be thrown away, and to have been obliged to have set an indifferent dinner before Lord Rotherham would have made me feel ready to sink! How he would have looked! What has put him out of temper?”
“Must you ask? I did, of course!”
“Dearest Serena, indeed you should not!”
“No, I did mean not to quarrel, only I said something severe—Well! It was true enough, but I never thought it would touch him on the raw! I’m sorry for it, but I daresay if we had not quarrelled over that we should have done so over something else.”
“Oh, dear! But perhaps he won’t visit us again!” said Fanny hopefully.
4
Fanny’s hope was soon proved to be ill-founded. Two days later, Serena, who had been walking in the park, returned to the Dower House to find a strange carriage standing in the stableyard. Even as she recognized the crest on the panel, Rotherham came out of the stable, and, after the curtest of greetings, said abruptly: “That mare of yours is too short in the back.”
“Nonsense!” she replied.
“I never talk nonsense about horseflesh.”
She laughed, putting back the hood from her bright hair. “I have a wager with myself that I will once meet you without quarrelling, so let us agree that the mare is by far too short in the back, has weak hocks as well, and very likely a spavin forming.”
A smile glimmered; he said, in a milder voice: “Where have you been walking? I should have thought it too dirty a day to lure you out for any other exercise than hunting.”
She stifled a sigh. “Don’t speak of hunting! I believe they met today at Normansholt, and have been thinking that the scent must be running breast-high. How comes it that you are not out?”
“Augusta commanded me to escort her here instead.”
“I pity you! Is she with Fanny? I must go in.”
He began to walk with her towards the house, the long skirt of his driving coat of white drab brushing his ankles. “Do you continue to stable your other horses at Milverley?” he demanded.
She hesitated. “I might have done so, but no!”
“Where, then?”
“Why, the truth is I’ve sold ’em!” she said lightly.
He looked thunderstruck. “Sold them! Good God, am I to understand that your cousin would not house them for you?”
“By no means! He was perfectly willing to do so, but it would be a great piece of nonsense for me to be keeping half a dozen hunters I can’t use eating their heads off in the stable; and since Jane doesn’t ride I thought it best to be rid of them. Besides, were we not agreed—such an event you cannot have forgotten!—that I cannot, in my present circumstances, afford to maintain a string of hunters?”