The Frobishers/Chapter 2

PENDABURY

Steps led to the front door, that was under a portico composed of Ionic pillars of Bath stone, that contrasted, as did the white coigns, with the red sandstone of which the house was built, one of the warmest and best of building materials. The long windows had casements painted creamy white, and the roof of the house was concealed by a balustrade of white stone.

At the steps the ladies dismounted, and the groom and a boy who had run from the stables took the horses.

Then the two girls, gathering up their habits, mounted to the door, and Joan, as she ascended, turned with a slight bow and a smile of encouragement to the young man, feeling at the same time not a little puzzled at the hesitation, even reluctance, that he manifested in accompanying her within.

The butler opened the glass doors, and all then entered the lofty hall, out of which the staircase ascended to the upper apartments. It was a fine hall, rich with plaster work, and hung with full-length portraits.

"Matthews," said Miss Frobisher, "will you kindly inform your master that a gentleman is here&mdash;Mr. Beaudessart? Yet stay, we will drink tea in the dining-room. Please to put cold meat and wine on the sideboard."

"Yes, miss."

The man withdrew with a bow.

"Joan," said Sibyll," I am going to rid myself of my boots and shed my habit."

"Have your tea first," urged. the elder. "There is no occasion for such a hurry."

"Yes there is," answered the young girl. "It is all very well for you to sit down at once to a meal&mdash;you have been muddling along at a snail's pace on Ruby with a sore shoulder, but I have been in the swim all day, and was at the finish. I say, Joan, am I really much painted? It is rather horrible, is it not?&mdash;but such fun to have Reynard's blood on one's cheek. Only I suspect the painting was done in the slightest possible manner. I must send for the keeper to dress the brush for me. What is put on&mdash;borax? He will know. I will ring for Matthews to send after him."

"You really must postpone changing for ten minutes. Papa will be so interested to hear of your adventures and success."

"Oh, I shall run to him in the library on my way, and show him the badges of war and trophies of victory. I must go&mdash;I shall be down again in a trice. I have torn my skirt in a thorn bush, and am plastered with mud. Tally-ho! ta-ra-ra!"

Then she departed, twittering, "We will all go a-hunting to-day."

Joan turned to the young man with a pleasant smile, and said&mdash;

"My sister is somewhat wilful. You must excuse her&mdash;she is the spoilt child of the house. My father dotes on her, and every man, woman, and child in the place is her humble servant. Now look about you. Here all the faces and figures that adorn the walls are Beaudessarts, from that grim-visaged gentleman in trunk hose and spindle legs, which is the earliest portrait we have. Is there, by the way, anything you would like? A whisky and soda? Perhaps a wash above all things? I will call the footman. I shall be making tea, and you can come to me in the dining-room. Papa will be there. The servant, Joseph, will be your guide."

Joan expected her father to appear at once, but he did not arrive. Matthews had not found him in the study, he had gone forth into the grounds.

Sibylla, as well, was disappointed; she had bounded into the library to display her spoils.

Joan put tea in the silver pot over the lamp, and saw that the sideboard was well supplied with cold beef and pheasant, and that spirits and wine were set out; then she went to a glass and hastily arranged her hair.

Mr. Beaudessart was shown in by Joseph.

"Now," said the girl, "whilst the tea is brewing I am entirely at your service to show you the pictures. That over the mantelpiece is my father, and yonder is my mother, who was taken from us sixteen years go. She was a beautiful woman when young, and you can see that in middle age the traces were not gone Yonder is the portrait I told you of, Squire Hector Beaudessart, the last of the family in Pendabury. After his death the property fell to papa, though how it came about I cannot inform you. I believe it was a complicated affair."

The young man walked up to the picture and stood before it, gazing intently on the canvas. The evening sun shone into the room, not, happily, on the painting itself, but on a side wall, and the reflected light illumined the picture sufficiently for him to be able to see it distinctly.

"It is very well painted, I believe. Do you not consider it so?" asked Joan. "The artist was Knight, the academician."

"It is admirable. It portrays not only the outward features, as nose and eyes, but the inner character, resolution and remorselessness."

"I have heard that he was considered a determined old gentleman," said the girl.

"Pertinacious in pursuing his own course, impatient of contradiction, implacable in his resentments, and then&mdash;proud."

"If we have any good in us we are proud," said Joan. "Pride is a necessary factor in a man up to a certain point. It implies strength, or furnishes it. But vanity is mere weakness."

"Yes," answered the young man, "we must all have self-respect, but at the same time respect others. That I do not think my grandfather ever did if they dared to differ from him."

"Your grandfather!"

A cough behind them, as they stood contemplating the picture.

Joan knew it, whisked about, and saw her father entering the room with his stick in his hand.

"Oh, papa! I am so glad that you have arrived. Here is Mr. Beaudessart from Canada, so interested in the family portraits."

"Mr. Beaudessart," said Mr. Frobisher stiffly; "pray what Mr. Beaudessart?"

"I must apologise, sir, for my intrusion," said the young man, feeling at once a sense of chill from the presence of the squire. "I have ventured to ask Miss Frobisher to permit me to see the pictures."

"Papa!" said Joan, also aware of the coldness of her father's manner," I insisted on Mr. Beaudessart coming in, he has been so kind. Ruby was frightfully rubbed, and he lent me his mare. Had he not done so I should have had to walk home from Littlefold Wood."

"What Mr. Beaudessart may this gentleman be?" asked the squire, with a freezing manner. He was an old, spare man, with shrivelled legs, about which his trousers hung loosely, with a long, knife-like face, his hair very grey and curled about the temples. His nose was aquiline, his eyebrows thick and white, and his eyes bright and hard.

He wore a grey suit that, however, did not become him. He was one of those men with face and figure belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century, who look ill fitted in modern costume, one whom nothing would become save the high-collared coat, and the short waistcoat and abundant necktie of the reign of William IV. The studied absence of graciousness of manner assumed by Mr. Frobisher affected both the young people with a feeling of discomfort.

"My father was Walter," said the stranger; "he was son to that old gentleman yonder. My name is the same as that of my grandfather&mdash;Hector Beaudessart."

Joan was aware that something grated on and angered her father.

"My dear papa," she said, "you have no idea what a generous assistance Mr. Beaudessart has rendered me&mdash;at the sacrifice of his day's sport and pleasure. How I could have got home without his courteous and ready help I cannot tell. And having seen me to the Pendabury gates, he proposed returning home. But I would not hear of it; I insisted on his coming in and having some refreshment. Sibyll followed the hounds to the grim death, but I was brought to a full stop in the wood by the condition of Ruby."

"Sir," said Mr. Frobisher, looking straight at Mr. Beaudessart and ignoring his daughter, "I take it as a most surprising piece of assurance, your thrusting yourself into this house."

The young man coloured up, and replied with dignity&mdash;

"I grieve to my heart that you should so regard it; I am aware that there was some ill-feeling existing between yourself and my father, but I can assure you I do not share it, and I trusted that you, on your part, would have laid aside any sentiment that was bitter when the earth closed over his head. Allow me to relieve you of my presence."

"Sir," said Mr. Frobisher, bridling up and pointing at him with his stick," I repeat, and emphasise my opinion, I consider it a gross, an unwarrantable piece of effrontery your intrusion here, taking advantage of my daughter's ignorance of the world, and of circumstances that must for ever estrange our families. Your deceased father's conduct"-

"Excuse me, sir. I may be to blame for my thoughtlessness, or for my belief that human nature was gentler than I find it, but I can hear nothing against my father. He behaved always as an honourable man. What charge can you or anyone lay against him?"

"That of having formed and obstinately maintained opinions contrary to those held by his father, the author of his being and the squire of the parish!" He flourished his stick and pointed to the picture of the old Squire Hector. "He might at least have kept his views to himself. I maintain that, by his conduct, he lost the blessing which is pronounced upon dutiful sons."

"A man is free to form his own opinions," said the young Hector, "and it would be unworthy of a man to keep them to himself. If he is worth his salt he will maintain them. My father did not disguise what he felt in his heart, and he suffered for his independence. I wish you a good-day."

He bowed and looked hastily at Miss Frobisher, whose cheek burned with shame. She could not meet his eye; her own were lowered and full of tears.

"Oh, papa! Papa!" she gasped.

Mr. Beaudessart was gone.

"Papa, how could you treat him so after his great civility to me? It was I who asked him in. He was most reluctant to come here, but I insisted."

"Like a fatuous girl, you did wrong out of sheer dulness. It was a piece of outrageous impertinence in him, poking his nose into this house. I am, thank God, not dead yet, and till I am&mdash;But there, I have no patience to speak of the fellow. To come prying here! Desirous to see the pictures, indeed! He wanted to peer about at everything&mdash;take stock of all there is in the house."

"But why so, papa?"

"Why!&mdash;because, forsooth, some day Pendabury will be his."

"His&mdash;Mr. Beaudessart's!"

Joan was startled.

"Yes, his; but not one minute before I am laid in the churchyard."

"How can that be? The estate has left the Beaudessarts and come to us Frobishers."

"It has left them only during my life. Mr. Hector yonder"&mdash;he pointed with his stick to the portrait of the old squire&mdash;"his grandfather, very rightly was incensed with his son, Walter, for taking up with liberal views in politics, and for being bitten with advanced church opinions, such as were promulgated by the Oxford tract writers. Young fools at the time were up in the clouds with all sorts of inflated notions. Mr. Hector, the old squire, was furious with his son. As Walter would not abandon his opinions, the old man washed his hands of him, would not speak to him or admit him over his doorstep. He left the estate to me, his second wife's son by her former marriage, for my life, to revert to the Beaudessarts only after my decease and that of his son Walter, who, he protested, should be excluded entirely from the property."

"Really, papa, I think that Walter was very hardly treated. Young men are hot-headed and enthusiastic, but they cool down as they grow older."

"I do not see that he was hardly treated. I do not see it at all. It is I, or you, who meet with unfair treatment. If I had been so happy as to have had a son of my own, would I not have desired to transmit Pendabury to him? Is it not a monstrous injustice that I should be debarred from so doing? And you. I should have liked to constitute you heiress, so that, on your marriage, you would have carried this place to your husband. But it cannot be. This Beaudessart cub intervenes. When I depart this life you will have to pack your portmanteaus and turn out. It is atrocious, inhuman, unchristian."

"But, papa, it is we who are the interlopers. It is the Beaudessarts who have been unjustly treated."

"Interlopers! Oh, you think that jackanapes is defrauded of his rights by your own father? Is that an opinion a child of mine dares to entertain? There is filial respect, indeed! There is reverence for my grey hairs! Is contrariety a thing bred in these walls? Does a curse rest on Pendabury, that the child there should rise up and call its parent opprobrious names?"

"Oh, papa, I never did that! If any wrong were committed, it was not by you, but by the old Squire Hector. However, let all that be&mdash;I really know nothing of the particulars except what you have divulged. But do consider in what a painful, humiliating position I was placed by your speaking to the young Mr. Beaudessart as you did, and practically turning him out of the house."

"It was due to your own thoughtlessness."

"I knew nothing of what you have now told me; if I had I would have hesitated about asking him in."

"But he was aware, and should not have taken advantage of your ignorance. Enough of this&mdash;pour me out some tea. Ha, shrimps! Tea is the only meal at which I care for them, and then&mdash;if fresh&mdash;I love them."