Crossing the straggling, meandering village street, the cousins entered the grounds of the Rectory, an irregular but well-kept building of the soft stone of the country, all the garden front of it a deep verandah that was kept open in summer, but closed with glass frames in the winter--flower-beds lying before it, and beyond a lawn where the young folk were playing at the inevitable lawn-tennis.
Margaret was not so pretty as Blanche, but had a more sensible face, and her welcome to Ursula was civil but reserved. Rosalind and Adela were bright little things, in quite a different style from their half-sisters, much lighter in complexion and promising to be handsomer women. They looked full of eagerness and curiosity at the new cousin, whom Blanche set down on a bank, and proceeded to instruct in the mysteries of the all-important game by comments and criticisms on the players.
As soon as Mark and Adela had come out conquerors, Ursula was called on to take her first lesson. May resigned her racket, saying she had something to do, and walked off the field, and carrying off with her Adela, who, as Blanche said, 'had a spine,' and was ordered to lie down for an hour every afternoon. The cheerfulness with which she went spoke well for the training of the family.
Nuttie was light-footed and dexterous handed, and accustomed to active amusements, so that, under the tuition of her cousins, she became a promising pupil, and thawed rapidly, even towards Mark.
She was in the midst of her game when the two mothers came out, for the drive had been extended all round the park, under pretext of showing it to its new mistress, but really to give the Canoness an opportunity of judging of her in a tete-a-tete. Yet that sensible woman had asked no alarming questions on the past, still less had offered any advice that could seem like interference. She had only named localities, mentioned neighbours, and made little communications about the ways of the place such as might elicit remarks; and, as Alice's voice betrayed less and less constraint, she ventured on speaking of their daughters, so as to draw forth some account of how Ursula might have been educated.
And of this, Alice was ready and eager to talk, telling how clever and how industrious Nuttie had always been, and how great an advantage Miss Nugent's kindness was, and how she was hoping to go up for the Cambridge examination; then, detecting some doubt in her companion's manner, she said, 'It would be a great disappointment to her not to do so now. Do you think she had better not?'
'I don't think she will find time to go on with the preparation! And, to tell the truth, I don't think we are quite ripe for such things in this county. We are rather backward, and Ursula, coming in fresh upon us, might find it a disadvantage to be thought much cleverer than other people.'
'Ah! I was not quite sure whether her father would like it.'
'I do not think he would. I am sure that if my little Rose were to take it into her head, I should have hard work to get her father's consent, though no doubt the world will have progressed by the time she is old enough.'
'That settles it,' said Alice. 'Thank you, Mrs. Egremont. I own,' she added presently, 'that I do somewhat regret that it cannot be, for I thought that a motive for keeping up her studies would be helpful to my child;--I do not mean for the sake of the studies, but of the--the balance in all this change and novelty.'
'You are quite right, I have felt it myself,' said her sister-in-law. 'Perhaps something could be done by essay societies. May belongs to one, and if Ursula is an intellectual girl, perhaps you could keep her up to some regular employment in the morning. I succeeded in doing so when May came out, but I can accomplish nothing regular but music with Blanche; and an hour's steady practice a day is better than nothing.'
The drive was on the whole a success, and so was the tea-drinking in the verandah, where Aunt Alice and little five-years old Basil became fast friends and mutual admirers; the Canon strolled out and was installed in the big, cushioned basket-chair that crackled under his weight; Blanche recounted Nuttie's successes, and her own tennis engagements for the week; Mark lay on a rug and teased her, and her dachshund; Nuttie listened to the family chatter as if it were a play, and May dispensed the cups, and looked grave and severe.
'Well?' said the Canon anxiously, when Mark, Blanche, and little Basil had insisted on escorting the guests home, and he and his wife were for a few minutes tete-a-tete.
'It might have been much worse,' said the lady. 'She is a good little innocent thing, and has more good sense than I expected. Governessy, that's all, but she will shake out of that.'
'Of course she will. It's the best thing imaginable for Alwyn!'
His wife kept back the words, 'A hundred times too good for Alwyn!'
CHAPTER XI. LAWN-TENNIS.
'Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, My young lady asked for!'--Romeo and Juliet.
A garden-party, Mrs. William Egremont decided, would be the best mode of testifying her approbation of her sister-in-law, and introducing the newcomers to the neighbourhood. So the invitations were sent forth for an early day of the coming week.
From how many points of view was Mrs. William Egremont's garden-party regarded, and how different! There was Basil, to whom it meant wearing his velvet suit and eating as many ices as mother would allow. To Blanche, it was an occasion for triumph on the tennis ground for herself, and for hopes for her pupil; and Ursula herself looked forward to it and practised for it like a knight for his first encounter in the lists, her sole care being to distinguish herself with her racket. To her mother, it was an ordeal, where she trusted not to be a mortification to her husband and his family; while to the hostess, it was a not unwelcome occasion of exercising honest diplomacy and tact, not without a sense of magnanimity. To May, it was a bore to be endured with dutiful philosophy; to her good-natured father an occasion for hospitality, where he trusted that his brother would appear, and appear to advantage, and was ready even to bribe him thereto with that wonderful claret that Alwyn had always envied, and declared to be wasted on a parson. And Mark, perhaps he viewed the occasion with different eyes from any one else. At any rate, even the denizens of Bridgefield mustered there with as many minds as Scott ascribes to the combatants of Bannockburn, and there were probably as many other circles of feeling more or less intersecting one another among the more distant guests, most of them, however, with the same feeling of curiosity as to what this newly-discovered wife and daughter of Alwyn Egremont might be like.
Externally, in her rich black silk, trimmed with point lace, and her little straw-coloured bonnet with its tuft of feathery grass and blue cornflower, she was so charming that her daughter danced round her, crying, 'O mammy, mammy, if they could but see you at home'--then, at a look: 'Well then--Aunt Ursel, and Miss Mary, and Mr. Dutton!'
Nuttie was very much pleased with her own pretty tennis dress; but she had no personal vanity for herself, only for her mother. The knowledge that she was no beauty was no grievance to her youthful spirits; but when her father surveyed them in the hall, she looked for his verdict for her mother as if their relations were reversed.
'Ha! Well, you certainly are a pretty creature, Edda,' he said graciously. 'You'll pass muster! You want nothing but style. And, hang it! you'll do just as well without it, if the Canoness will only do you justice. Faces like that weren't given for nothing.'
She blushed incarnadine and accepted one of his kisses with a pleasure, at which Nuttie wondered, her motherly affection prompting her to murmur in his ear--
'And Ursula?'
'She'll not cut you out; but she is Egremont enough to do very fairly. Going already?'
'If you would come with us,' she said wistfully, to the horror of Nuttie, who was burning to be at the beginning of all the matches.
'I? oh no! I promised old Will to look in, but that won't be till late in the day, or I shall have to go handing all the dowagers into the dining-room to tea.'