"Uh, it would never do!" she exclaimed, to his surprise and pleasure.
"Quite right," he returned. "Just what I felt. Nothing can make me so glad as to see that you think the idea as socking as I do."
"Our going to Swanslea would be much better-far more natural, and no one could object. We could refurnish, and make it perfect; whereas nothing can be done to this place, so inconveniently built and buried in trees. I should feel much freer in a place of my own."
"So that is what you meant when I thought you were thinking of my mother?"
"I am obliged to take thought for myself when you take heed to no one but her," said Cecil; and as the carriage was at that moment announced, she left him. Which was the most sick at heart it would be hard to say, the wife with the sense that she was postponed in everything to the mother, the husband at the alienation that had never before been so fully expressed. Cecil's errand was a council about the bazaar; and driving round by Sirenwood, Lady Tyrrell became her companion in the carriage. The quick eyes soon perceived that something had taken place, and confidence was soon drawn forth.
"The ice is broken; and by whom do you think?"
"By la belle mere? Skilful strategy to know when the position is not tenable."
"She wants to retreat to Church-house."
"Don't consent to that."
"I said I should prefer Swanslea for ourselves."
"Hold to that, whatever you do. If she moves to the village you will have all the odium and none of the advantages. There will be the same daily haunt; and as to your freedom of action, there are no spies like the abdicated and their dependents. A very clever plan, but don't be led away by it."
"No," said Cecil, resolutely; but after a moment: "It would be inconvenient to Raymond to live so far away from the property."
"Swanslea will be property too, and a ride over on business is not like strolling in constantly."
"I know I shall never feel like my own mistress in a house of hers."
"Still less with her close by, with the Rectory family running in and out to exchange remarks. No, no, hold fast to insisting that she must not leave the ancestral halls. That you can do dutifully and gracefully."
Cecil knew she had been betrayed into the contrary; but they were by this time in the High Street, bowing to others of the committee on their way to the town-hall, a structure of parti-coloured brick in harlequin patterns, with a peaked roof, all over little sham domes, which went far to justify its title of the Rat-house, since nothing larger could well use them. The facade was thus somewhat imposing; of the rear the less said the better; and as to the interior, it was at present one expanse of dust, impeded by scaffold-poles, and all the windows had large blotches of paint upon them.
It required a lively imagination to devise situations for the stalls; but Mrs. Duncombe valiantly tripped about, instructing her attendant carpenter with little assistance except from the well-experienced Miss Strangeways. The other ladies had enough to do in keeping their plumage unsoiled. Lady Tyrrell kept on a little peninsula of encaustic tile, Cecil hopped across bird-like and unsoiled, Miss Slater held her carmelite high and dry, but poor Miss Fuller's pale blue and drab, trailing at every step, became constantly more blended!
The dust induced thirst. Lady Tyrrell lamented that the Wil'sbro' confectioner was so far off and his ices doubtful, and Miss Slater suggested that she had been making a temperance effort by setting up an excellent widow in the lane that opened opposite to them in a shop with raspberry vinegar, ginger-beer, and the like mild compounds, and Mrs. Duncombe caught at the opportunity of exhibiting the sparkling water of the well which supplied this same lane. The widow lived in one of the tenements which Pettitt had renovated under her guidance, and on a loan advanced by Cecil, and she was proud of her work.
"Clio Tallboys would view this as a triumph," said Mrs. Duncombe, as, standing on the steps of the town-hall, she surveyed the four tenements at the corner of the alley. "Not a man would stir in the business except Pettitt, who left it all to me."
"Taking example by the Professor," said Lady Tyrrell.
"It is strange," said Miss Slater, "how much illness there has been ever since the people went into those houses. They are in my district, you know."
"You should make them open their windows," said Mrs. Duncombe.
"They lay it on the draughts."
"And stuff up my ventilators. That is always the way they begin."
The excellent widow herself had a bad finger, which was a great impediment in administering the cooling beverages, but these were so excellent as to suggest the furnishing of a stall therewith for the thirsty, as something sure to be popular and at small expense. Therewith the committee broke up, all having been present but Miss Moy, whose absence was not regretted, though apologized for by Mrs. Duncombe. "I could not get her away from the stables," she said. "She and Bob would contemplate Dark Hag day and night, I believe."
"I wouldn't allow it," said Lady Tyrrell.
Mrs. Duncombe shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "That's Mr. Moy's look-out," she said.
"You don't choose to interfere with her emancipation," said Lady Tyrrell.
"Clio would tell you she could take care of herself at the stables as well as anywhere else."
"Query?" said Lady Tyrrell. "Don't get into a scrape, Bessie. Does your Captain report on the flirtation with young Simmonds?"
"Who is he?" asked Cecil
"The trainer's son," said Bessie. "It is only a bit of imitation of Aurora Floyd."
"You know she's an heiress," said Lady Tyrrell. "You had better take care how you put such a temptation in his way."
"I don't suppose the Moys are anybody," said Cecil.
"Not in your sense, my dear," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing; "but from another level there's a wide gap between the heiress of Proudfoot Lawn and the heir of the training stables."
"Cecil looks simply disgusted," said Bessie. "She can't bear the Moys betwixt the wind and her nobility."
"They are the great drawback to Swansea, I confess," said Cecil.
"Oh! are you thinking of Swanslea?" cried Mrs Duncombe.
"Yes," said Lady Tyrrell, "she is one to be congratulated on emancipation."
"Well can I do so," said Mrs. Duncombe. "Don't I know what mothers-in-law are? Mine is the most wonderful old Goody, with exactly the notions of your meek Mrs. Miles."
"Incompatibility decidedly," said Lady Tyrrell.
"Only she was the Spartan mother combined with it," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "When Bob was a little urchin, he once, in anticipation of his future tastes, committed the enormity of riding on a stick on Sunday; so she locked him up till he had learnt six verses of one of Watts's hymns about going to church being like a little heaven below, isn't it?"
"Increasing his longing that way," said Lady Tyrrell.
"She doesn't even light the drawing-room fire on Sunday, for fear people should not sit in their rooms and meditate," continued Mrs. Duncombe. "Bob manages to be fond of her through all; but she regularly hates me."
"Not very wonderful," said Lady Tyrrell, laughing. "I suppose there is a charming reciprocity of feeling."
"I think I can afford to pity her," said Mrs. Duncombe, lightly. "Just fancy what I must have been to her! You know I was brought up in a convent at Paris. The very bosom of the scarlet woman."
"But," interrupted Cecil, "you were never a Roman Catholic, Bessie!"
"Oh dear, no; the Protestant boarders were let entirely alone. There were only two of us, and we lay in bed while the others went to mass, and played while they went to confession, that was all. I was an orphan; never remember my mother, and my father died abroad. Luckily for me, Bob was done for by my first ball. Very odd he should have liked a little red-haired thing like me; but every one is ticketed, I believe. My uncle was glad enough to get rid of me, and poor old Mrs. Duncombe was unsuspecting till we went home-and then!"