“What a fortunate circumstance, to be sure! I hope you meant to contribute a handsome wreath to my obsequies?”
“Certainly! In the nature of things, it is likely that you will predecease me.”
“If I survive this adventure there can be no question of that. Your fate is writ clear; you will be murdered. I cannot conceive how it comes about that you were not murdered long since!”
“How odd! Charles himself once said that to me, or something like it!”
“There is nothing odd in it; any sensible man must say it!”
She laughed, but said, “No, you are unjust! I have never yet done the least harm to anyone! It may be that with regard to Charles my stratagems may not succeed; in your case I am convinced they must! That may well content us. Poor Cecy! Only conceive how dreadful to be obliged to marry Augustus and to spend the rest of one’s life listening to his poems!”
This aspect of the situation struck Lord Charlbury so forcibly that he was smitten to silence. He said nothing of deserting Sophy when they stopped at the next pike, but appeared to be resigned to his fate.
Lacy Manor, which lay a little way off the turnpike road, was an Elizabethan house, considerably added to in succeeding generations, but still retaining much of its original beauty. It was reached by an avenue of noble trees and had once been set among well-tended formal gardens. These, through the circumstance of Sir Horace’s being not only an absentee but also a careless landlord, had become overgrown of late years, so that the shrubbery was indistinguishable from the wilderness, and unpruned rose bushes rioted at will in unweeded flower beds. The sky had been overcast all day, but a fitful ray of sunlight, penetrating the lowering clouds, showed the mullioned windows of the house much in need of cleaning. A trail of smoke issued from one chimney, the only observable sign that the house was still inhabited. Sophy, alighting from the chaise, looked about her critically, while Charlbury tugged at the iron bellpull beside the front door.
“Everything seems to be in shocking disorder!” she observed. “I must tell Sir Horace that it will not do! He should not neglect the house in this way. There is work here for an army of gardeners! He never liked the place, you know. I have sometimes wondered if it was because my mother died here.” Lord Charlbury made a sympathetic sound in his throat, but Sophy continued cheerfully. “But I daresay it is only because he is shockingly indolent! Ring the bell again, Charlbury!”
After a prolonged interval, they heard the sound of footsteps within the house, to be followed immediately by the scrape of bolts being drawn back, and the clank of a chain removed from the door.
“I am reconciled, Sophy!” announced Charlbury. “Never did I hope to find myself existing between the covers of a library novel! Will there be cobwebs and a skeleton under the stairs?”
“I fear not, but only think how delightful if there should be!” she retorted. She added, as the door was opened, and a surprised face appeared in the aperture, “Good day, Clavering. Yes, it is I indeed, and I have come home to see how you and Mathilda go on!”
The retainer, a spare man with grizzled locks and a bent back, peered at her for a moment before gasping, “Miss Sophy! Lor’, miss, if we’d thought you was coming! Such a turn as it give me, to hear the bell a-pealing! Here, Matty! Matty, I say! it’s Miss Sophy!”
A female form, as stout as his was lean, appeared in the background, uttering distressful sounds, and trying to untie the strings of a grimy apron. Much flustered, Mrs. Clavering begged her young mistress to step into the house and to excuse the disorder everywhere. They had had no warning of her advent. The master had said he would take order when he returned from foreign parts. She doubted whether there was as much as a pinch of tea in the house. If she had but known of Miss Sophy’s intention to visit them, she would have had the chimney’s swept and the best parlor cleaned and taken out of Holland covers.
Sophy soothed her agitation with the assurance that she had come prepared to find the house in disarray, and stepped into the hall. This was a large apartment, paneled and low pitched, from which, at one end, a handsome staircase of oak rose in easy flights to the upper floors of the house. The chairs were all shrouded in Holland covers, and a film of dust lay over the gate-legged table in the center of the room. The air struck unpleasantly dank, and a large patch of damp on one wall made this circumstance easily understandable.
“We must open all the windows and light fires!” Sophy said briskly. “Has the Marquesa — has a Spanish lady arrived yet?”
She was assured that no Spanish lady had been seen at the manor, a circumstance for which the Claverings seemed to think they deserved to be congratulated.
“Good!” said Sophy. “She will be here presently, and we must strive to make things a little more comfortable before we admit her. Bring some wood and kindling for this fire, Clavering, and do you, Matty, pull off these covers! If there is no tea in the house, I am sure there is some ale! Bring some for Lord Charlbury, if you please! Charlbury, I beg your pardon for inviting you to so derelict a house! Wait, Clavering! Are the stables in decent order? I don’t wish the chaise to drive away, and the horses must be baited and rubbed down, and the postboys refreshed!”
Lord Charlbury, abandoning his scruples to enjoyment of this situation, said, “Will you permit me to attend to that matter for you? If Clavering will show me the way to your stables — ?”
“Yes, pray do so!” said Sophy gratefully. “I must see which rooms are most fit to be used, and, until we have a fire lit here, it will be most uncomfortable for you.”
His lordship, correctly interpreting this to mean that he would be very much in the way if he stayed in the house, went off with Clavering to lead the postboys to the stables, happily still watertight and under the charge of an aged pensioner, whose rheumy eye perceptibly brightened at the sight of even such cattle as job horses. A stout cob, and a couple of farm horses, were the only occupants of the commodious stables, but the pensioner assured him that there was both bedding and fodder enough and further undertook to regale the postboys in his own cottage, which adjoined the stables.
Lord Charlbury then strolled about the gardens until some heavy drops of rain drove him back to the house. There he found that the covers had been taken off the chairs in the hall, a duster employed, and a fire lit in the gigantic hearth.
“It is not really cold,” said Sophy, “but it will make everything appear more cheerful!”
His lordship, dubiously eyeing the puffs of smoke issuing from the fireplace into the room, agreed to this meekly enough, and even made a show of warming his hands at the small blue flame showing amidst the coals. A more violent gust of smoke caused him to retreat, seized by a fit of coughing. Sophy knelt to thrust a poker under the black mass, raising it to let the draught through. “It’s my belief there may be a starling’s nest in the chimney,” she observed dispassionately. “Mathilda, however, says fires always smoke for a while when the chimneys are cold. We shall see! I found some tea in one of the cupboards in the pantry, and Mathilda is bringing it to us directly. She had no notion it was there. I wonder how long it has laid hidden in the cupboard?”
“I wonder?” echoed his lordship, fascinated by the thought of this relic of forgotten days at Lacy Manor.
“Fortunately, tea does not turn bad with keeping,” said Sophy. “At least — does it?”
“I have no idea, but that we shall also see,” returned Charlbury. He began to walk about the hall, inspecting the pictures and the ornaments. “What a shame it is that this place should be left to go to ruin!” he remarked. “That is a charming Dresden group, and I have quite lost my heart to that Harlequin over there. I wonder your father would not rather prefer to hire his house to some respectable people while he is employed abroad than let it rot!”
“Well, for a great many years he allowed my aunt Clara to live here,” explained Sophy. “She was most eccentric, and kept cats, and died two years ago.”