“I do not know her name, but Mrs. Rugby thought that she would prove a suitable and an obliging maid for you. You will of course engage what servants you deem necessary, but in the meantime this girl is here to wait on you.”
She was touched by this thought for her comfort, but merely said, “You are very good, my lord. But, regarding the servants you have recommended me to engage, pray, how are their wages to be paid?”
“They will be paid out of the estate,” he returned indifferently.
“But, as I collect, sir, that the estate is already grossly encumbered—”
“It need not concern you. There will be funds enough to cover such necessary expense.”
“Oh!” she said, a little doubtfully.
They were interrupted. “There had ought to be the hatchment up over the door,” said Barrow severely.
Carlyon turned quickly. The retainer was standing on the threshold, gloomily surveying them. “Hatchment,” he repeated.
“Nonsense!” Carlyon said impatiently. “Situated as this place is in the country, I see not the least need for—such a display.”
“When mistress took and died,” said Barrow obstinately, “we had the hatchment set up in proper style.”
“Then pray set it up over the door again!” said Elinor.
Barrow regarded her with approval. “And the knocker tied up with crape, missus?” he asked.
“By all means!”
“That’ll be primer-looking, that will,” nodded Barrow, and went off to attend to these matters.
“You are a woman of decision,” remarked Carlyon.
“I trust I have my wits about me, my lord. No good purpose could be served by offending the notions of these people.”
“My cousin had so cut himself off from county society that I doubt of your being troubled by visitors.”
“Indeed, I hope you may be right, sir!” was all that she replied.
They went downstairs again and to the bookroom, where a fire burned and the coffee cups had already been laid out. Carlyon declined partaking of this refreshment, but Elinor sat down by the table and poured out a cup for herself. He walked over to the desk and pulled a drawer open. It overflowed with papers, and after a cursory glance he shut it again, saying, “I must come here in a day or two with the lawyer and go through all these papers. It will be best, Mrs. Cheviot, if you leave any that you find for me to deal with.”
“Certainly,” she responded calmly. “If you are an executor of that infamous will, as I have little doubt you must be, you should lock up the desk, I believe.”
“I expect I should,” he agreed. “But as there does not appear to be a key to the desk, and I am persuaded I can trust you to keep all intact, I must dispense with that formality. I imagine there can be little here worthy of the trouble.” He left the desk and came to her, holding out his hand. “I shall leave you now, ma’am. Rest assured that your letter shall be conveyed to Miss Beccles without loss of time. I shall hope to see her safely installed here within a very few days.”
She took his hand, but said with a little loss of composure, “Thank you. But you will not leave me alone here for long?”
“No, indeed. If you should desire my attendance, send over to the Hall and I will come. This affair has cast a good deal of business upon me and I may be away from home for a day or two, but a message will soon bring me. I will send Nicky over in the morning to see how you go on. Good-by! Believe me, though, I have little sensibility I am fully conscious of the debt I owe you.”
He was gone, and she was left in some lowness of spirits, wondering how she should contrive and what would be the end of this strange adventure. A period of quiet reflection helped to calm the natural agitation of her mind. Since she had consented to take up her residence in this moldering house she must do as best she might. To this end she presently rang the bell, forgetting that the wire was broken. After an interval she was obliged to go in search of the servants, and so found her way for the first time to the kitchens.
These were old-fashioned, but she was glad to perceive that the floor and the table were both well scrubbed. Both the Barrows were there, with a respectable-looking abigail and a groom who lost no time in effacing himself. Mrs. Barrow was a woman of clean aspect and comfortable proportions. She at once rose to her feet and dropped a curtsy. Elinor thought it wisest to adopt an open manner with the Barrows, and she soon discovered that they were under no awkward misapprehensions as to the nature of her marriage. Mrs. Barrow, having presented the abigail to her, sent the girl off upon an errand and waited with her hands folded over her apron to hear what her new mistress had to say.
Elinor said with a little difficulty that she must think it strange to have an unknown mistress set over her in such circumstances, but Mrs. Barrow at once replied: “Oh, no, ma’am! Not if my lord thought it right!”
Such a dependence on Carlyon’s judgment in servants who were not his own seemed strange, but Mrs. Barrow’s acceptance of his infallibility was presently explained by her informing Elinor that she had been a housemaid up at the Hall until her marriage to Barrow. She was more genteel than her husband, whom she plainly kept in order, and seldom allowed her speech to lapse into the broad Sussex dialect which came ,most readily to Barrow’s tongue. She at once volunteered to conduct Elinor once more round the house and to show her in more detail than had Carlyon what could be cleaned or renovated and what must be thrown away. “For, questionless, ma’am, things come to a bad pass and such as must make my poor mistress turn in her grave, but what can one woman do when all’s said, and me with no help in the kitchen and not bred to kitchen work? But it was for my mistress’s sake me and Barrow has stayed with Mr. Eustace. Ah, there was a sainted lady, to be sure, and so nice in her ways—Well, there, it does no good to talk, but what we have always said and shall say is that Cheviot blood was never no good and never will be, and Mr. Eustace was all Cheviot! A Wincanton my late mistress was, and her late ladyship too, for they were sisters, and that attached you never saw the like! Her ladyship was younger than my mistress by two years, and old Mr. Wincanton, he left Highnoons to my mistress, and tied up, so they say, in his lordship.”
“Ay, old master, he never reckoned nowt to the Cheviots,” interpolated Barrow. “A foreigner, Mr. Cheviot was. Come out of Kent, so I believe.”
“Hush!” said his wife reprovingly. “Not but what it’s true enough, ma’am. No one hereabouts reckoned much to Mr. Cheviot, and it was for mistress’s sake we stayed here when she died.”
“Besides the pension,” Barrow assured Elinor.
Elinor allowed Mrs. Barrow to run on in this fashion while she went over the house with her, inspecting closets and linen cupboards, for she had no wish to alienate the good woman by snubbing her, and was, moreover, sufficiently curious not to object to listening to some gossip. She gathered that her late husband’s career had been one of ruinous dissipation, and that when he had visited his home, which was not often, it was usually in the company of a set of men—and sometimes not men only, said Mrs. Barrow repressively—association with whom could scarcely have been expected to improve the tone of his mind.
“And to think he should not have been in the house above a day when he should have met his end like he did!” Mrs. Barrow said. “And at Master Nicky’s hands, too, which does beat all, I will say! I was never more upset in my days, ma’am, me having known Master Nicky from the cradle. But his lordship will settle it!”
Elinor soon found that Carlyon was the great man of the neighborhood, a good landlord, as his father had been before him, and, in Mrs. Barrow’s estimation, a personage whose will was law and whose actions were above criticism. She had to suppress a smile as she listened, but while making every allowance for the loyalty of a woman born on his estate and attached to his family by every interest, she gained the impression of an estimable character who had the trick of endearing himself to his dependents.