The Reflections of Ambrosine: Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It was odious weather, the afternoon of the 15th. Our eight guns had
arrived in time for tea, some with wives, some without--one with a
playful, giddy daughter. Men predominated.

There were some two or three decent people from the county round. The
remainder, commercial connections, friends of the past.

One terrible woman, with parted, plastered hair and an aggressive
voice and rustling silks, dominated the conversation. She is the wife
of the brother of the late Mr. Gurrage's partner who "died youngish."

This couple come apparently every year to the best partridge drive.
"Dodd" is their name.

Mrs. Dodd was extremely ill at ease among the other ladies, but was
determined to let them know that she considered herself their superior
in every way.

At the moment when she was recounting, in a strident voice, the
shortcomings of one of her local neighbors, the butler announced:

"Sir Antony Thornhirst."

Our ninth gun had arrived.

"So good of you to ask me," he said, as he shook hands, and his voice
sounded like smooth velvet after the others. And for a minute there
was a singing in my ears.

"Jolly glad to see you," Augustus blustered. "What beastly weather!
You motored over, I suppose?"

Sir Antony sat down by me.

I remembered the ways he would be accustomed to and did not introduce
him to any one.

He had exchanged casual "How do you do's" with the neighbors he knew.

I poured him out some tea.

"I don't drink it," he said, "but give me some, and sugar, and cream,
and anything that will take time to put in."

I laughed.

"It is very long since we met at Harley, and I began to think you were
going to forget me again, Comtesse!"

"Is that why you came here?"

"Yes--and because they tell me your keeper can show at least a hundred
and fifty brace of partridges each day!"

"Augustus was right, then."

"What about?"

"He said you would come because of the number of the birds. I--I--felt
sure you would be engaged."

"Your note was not cordial nor cousinly, and I was engaged, but the
attraction of the game, as Mr. Gurrage says, decided me."

His smile had never looked so mocking nor his eyes so kind.

"Might I trouble you for a second cup, please, Mrs. Gussie?" the
female Dodd interrupted, loudly, from half across the room, "Mr.
McCormack is taking it over to you. And a little stronger this
time, please. I don't care for this new-fangled taste for weak
tea--dish-water, I call it--only fit for the jaded digestions of
worn-out worldly women."

"Who owns this fog-horn?" my kinsman whispered. "Will it come out
shooting to-morrow? The game-book record will be considerably lower
if so!"

"It won't shoot; it will only lunch," I whispered back.

Somehow, my spirits had risen. I loved to sit and laugh there
with--Antony. (I think of him as Antony, now we are cousins, I must
remember.)

I poured out the blackest tea I could, and inadvertently put a lump
of sugar into it. I am afraid I was not attending.

Mr. McCormack, a big, burly youth, with a red face and fearfully
nervous manners, stood first on one foot, then on the other, while he
waited for the cup, which, eventually, he took back to Mrs. Dodd.

All this time Antony was sitting talking to me in his delightfully
lazy way, quite undisturbed by any one else in the room. He has
exactly grandmamma's manner of finding a general company simply
furniture.

He was just telling an amusing story of the house in Scotland he
had come from, when an explosion happened at the other side of
the fireplace. Loud coughing and choking, mixed with a clatter of
teaspoons and china--and, amid a terrified silence, the fog-horn
exclaimed:

"Surely, Mrs. Gussie, I told you plain enough that sugar in my tea
makes me sick."

I apologized as well as I could, and repaired my want of attention,
and then I felt my other guests must claim me, so I whispered to
Antony:

"Do go and talk to Lady Wakely, please. You are preventing me from
doing my duty! I am listening to you instead."

"Virtuous Comtesse!"

But he rose, and crossed over to the fat wife of the member for this
division, and soon her face beamed with smiles.

I soothed Mr. McCormack, who somehow felt the sugar had been his
fault.

Augustus mollified the fog-horn Dodd, and peace was restored all
around.

It is a long time between tea and dinner when the days are growing
short. It was only half-past six when every excuse for lingering over
the teacups had expired.

What on earth could one do with this ill-assorted company for a whole
hour?

Augustus, with a desire to be extremely smart, had commanded dinner at
half-past eight.

Mercifully, the decent people and some of the men played bridge, and
were soon engaged at one or two tables. Augustus, who is growing fond
of the game, made one of the fourth, thus leaving five of our guests
hanging upon my hands.

"Shall I show you your rooms? Perhaps you would like to rest before
dinner," I said to the ladies, who were good enough to assent, with
the exception of Mrs. Dodd, who snorted at the idea of resting.

"Wullie," she said to Mr. Dodd. She had evidently picked up the
Scotch pronunciation of his name from him, a quiet, red-haired man
originally from Glasgow. He was hovering in the direction of one of
the bridge-tables. "Wullie, don't let me see you playing that game of
cards. There are letters to be written to Martha and my mother. Come
with me," she commanded.

Mr. Dodd obeyed, and they retired to the library together.

They are evidently quite at home here, and did not need any attention
from me.

Antony Thornhirst was the only other guest unemployed, and he
immediately rose and went to write letters in the hall, he said.
He had refused to play bridge on account of this important
correspondence.

So at last I got the two women off to their rooms, and was standing
irresolutely for a second, glancing over the balustrade after closing
the last door, when my kinsman looked up.

"Comtesse," he called, softly, "won't you come down and tell me when
the post goes?"

I descended the stairs. He was standing at the bottom by one of the
negro figures when I reached the last step.

"Have you not some quiet corner where we might sit and talk of our
ancestors?" he asked, with a comic look in his cat's eyes. "This place
is so draughty, and I am afraid of the bears! And we should disturb
that loving couple in the library and the bridge-players in the
drawing-room. Have you no suggestions for my comfort? I am one of your
guests, too, you know!"

"There is Mrs. Gurrage's boudoir, that has straight-up, padded chairs
and crimson satin, and there is my own, that is mustard yellow. Which
could you bear best before dinner?" I said, laughing.

"Oh! the yellow--mustard is stimulating and will give me an appetite."

So we walked up the stairs again together and he followed me down the
thickly carpeted passage to my highly gilded shrine.

For the first time since I have owned it, I felt sorry I had been too
numb to make it nice. The house-maids arrange it in the morning, and
there it stays, a monument of the English upholsterer's idea of a
Louis XV. boudoir.

As I told Hephzibah, the little copy of La Rochefoucauld and the
miniature of Ambrosine Eustasie are the only things of mine--my
own--that are here, besides all my new books, of course.

I sat down in the straight-backed sofa. It has terra-cotta and buff
tulips running over the mustard brocade. The gilt part runs into your
back.

Antony sat at the other end.

A very fat, rich cushion of "school of art" embroidery, with frills,
fell between us. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met, and
we both laughed.

"You remind me of a picture I bought last year," Antony said. "It
was a little pastel by La Tour, and the last owner had framed it in
a brand-new, brilliant gilt Florentine frame."

Suddenly, as he spoke, a sense of shame came over me. I felt how wrong
I had been to laugh with him about this--my home. It is because, after
all these months, I cannot realize that Ledstone is my home that I
have been capable of committing this bad taste.

I felt my cheeks getting red and I looked down.

"I--I like bright colors," I said, defiantly. "They are cheerful
and--and--"

"Sweet Comtesse!" interrupted Antony, in his mocking tone, which does
not anger me. "Tell me about your books."

He got up lazily, and began reading the titles of a heap on the table
beyond.

"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you
these?"

"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for
all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them
are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."

He did not speak for a few moments.

"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."

"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and
mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things,
and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see
the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read
those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one
forget when it rains."

"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and
beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and _Maximes_, and love
poems--clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out
of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary
of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are
delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."

He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the
title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound
in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my
chatelaine has--the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an
"A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his
waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

"My knife," I said.

"Tell me all about her--A.E. de C.," he commanded, seating himself
on the sofa again.

"She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined. See--I
will show you her miniature," and I took it from its case on the
writing-table. I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the
old, paste frame. It has doors that shut, and I don't let her look
too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

"What an extraordinary likeness!" Antony exclaimed, as he looked
at it. "Are you sure I am not dreaming and you are not your own
great-great-grandmother?"

"No, I am myself. But I am supposed to be like her, though."

"It is the very image of you. She has your air and carriage of the
head, and--and--" he looked at it very carefully under the electric
light which sprouts from a twisted bunch of brass lilies on the wall,
their stalks suggesting a modern Louis XV. nightmare.

"And what?"

"Well, never mind. Now I want to hear her story." And we both sat down
again for the third time on the tulip-sofa.

I told him the history just as I had told him the outline of my life
the day in the Harley woods. Only, as then I felt I was speaking of
another person, now I seemed to be talking of myself when I came to
the part of walking up the guillotine steps.

"And so they cut her head off--poor little lady!" said Antony, when I
had finished, and he looked straight into my eyes.

The pillow of art-needlework and frills had fallen to the floor--even
it could not remain comfortably on the hard seat! There was nothing
between us on the sofa.

Antony leaned forward, close to me. His voice was strangely moved.

"Comtesse!" he began, when McGreggor knocked at the door.

"Mr. Gurrage is calling you, ma'am," she said, in her heavy, Scotch
voice, "and he seems in a hurry, ma'am."

"Ambrosine!" echoed impatiently in the hall.

"Why, it must be dressing-time!" said Antony, calmly, looking at his
watch. "I must not keep you," and he quietly left the room as Augustus
burst in from my bedroom door.

"Where on earth have you been?" he said, crossly. "That Dodd woman
has been driving us all mad! Willie Dodd came and joined us at bridge
and took McCormack's place, and the old she-tike came after him and
chattered like a monkey until she got him away. Where were you that
you did not look after her?"

"I was here, in my sitting-room, talking to Sir Antony Thornhirst," I
said, almost laughing. The picture of Mrs. Dodd at the bridge-table
amused me to think of. Augustus saw me smiling, and he looked less
ruffled.

"She is an old wretch," he said. "I wish I had not to ask Willie Dodd
every year, but business is business, and I'll trouble you to be civil
to them. We will weed out the whole of this lot, gradually, now. The
mater will go off to Bournemouth at this time of the year, and so,
by-and-by, we can have nothing but smart people."

The evening passed in an endless, boring round. This sort of company
does not adapt itself as the people at Harley did. With my best
endeavors to be a good hostess, the uneasiness of my guests prevented
me from making them feel comfortable or at home.

Mrs. Dodd's impertinence would have been insupportable if it had not
been so funny.

She complained of most things--the draughts, the inconvenience of the
hours of the train departures, and so on.

She was gorgeously dressed and hung with diamonds. Without being
exceptionally stout, everything is so tight and pushed-up that she
seems to come straight out from her chin in a kind of platform, where
the diamonds lose themselves in a narrow, perpendicular depression in
the middle.

Antony sat next me at dinner, at one side; on the other was old Sir
Samuel Wakely. Mr. Dodd on his left hand had Miss Springle, the
playful, giddy daughter of one of the guns.

She chaffed him all the time, much to the annoyance of his life's
partner, who was sitting opposite, and who, owing to an erection of
flowers, was unable to quite see what was going on.

"Yes," we heard Mr. Dodd say, at last, "I nearly bought it in Paris at
the Exhibition. Eh! but it was a beautiful statue!"

"I like statues," said Miss Springle.

"Well, she was just a perfect specimen of a woman, but Missus Dodd
wouldna let me purchase her, because the puir thing wasna dressed. I
didna think it could matter in marble."

"What's that you are saying about Mrs. Dodd?" demanded that lady from
across the table, dodging the chrysanthemums.

"I was telling Miss Springle, my dear, of the statue of 'Innocence' I
wanted to buy at the Exhibition at Paris," replied Mr. Dodd, meekly,
"and that you wouldna let me on account of the scanty clothing."

"Innocence, indeed!" snorted Mrs. Dodd. "Pretty names they give things
over there! And her clothing scant, you call it, Wullie? Why, you are
stretching a point to the verge of untruth to call it clothing at
all--a scarf of muslin and a couple of doves! Anyhow, I'll have it
known I'll not have a naked woman in my drawing-room, in marble or
flesh!"

The conversation of the whole table was paralyzed by her voice. My eye
caught Antony's, and we both laughed.

"There, there, my dear, don't be even suggesting such things," said
Mr. Dodd, soothingly.

"La! Mrs. Dodd, you make me blush," giggled Miss Springle.

I wondered what Antony thought of it all, and whether he had ever been
among such people before. His face betrayed nothing after he laughed
with me, and he seemed to be quietly enjoying his dinner, which,
fortunately, was good.

It was only for a few minutes before we all said good-night that we
spoke together alone.

"Shall you be down to breakfast, Comtesse?" he asked me.

"Oh yes," I said, "These people would never understand. They would
think I was being deliberately rude if I breakfasted in my room."

"At nine o'clock, then?"

"Yes."

"Lend me your La Rochefoucauld to read to-night?" he asked.

"With pleasure. I will have it sent to your room."

"No, let me get it from your mustard boudoir myself. I shall be coming
up, probably, to change into a smoking-coat, and my room is down that
way, you know."

"Very well."

So we said good-night.

Half an hour afterwards, I was standing by my sitting-room fire when
Antony came into the room. He leaned on the mantel-piece beside me and
looked down into my face.

"When will you come over to Dane Mount, Comtesse? I want to show you
_my_ great-great-grandmother. She was yours, too, by-the-way," he
said.

"When will you ask us?"

"In about a fortnight. I have to run about Norfolk until then. Will
you come some time near the 4th of November?"

"I shall have to ask Augustus, but I dare say we can."

He frowned slightly at the mention of Augustus.

"Of course. Well, I will not have a party, only some one to talk
to--your husband. The ancestors won't interest him, probably."

"Oh! Do ask Lady Tilchester," I said. "I love her."

He bent down suddenly to look at the Dresden clock.

"No, I don't think so. She will be entertaining herself just then," he
said, "and probably could not get away. But leave it to me, I promise
to arrange that Augustus shall not be bored."

He picked up La Rochefoucauld and opened it.

"I see you have marked some of the _maximes_."

"No. Grandmamma and the Marquis must have done that. Look, they are
all of the most witty and cynical that are pencilled. I can hear them
talking when I read them. That is just how they spoke to one another."

He read aloud:

"'_C'est une grande folie de vouloir �tre sage tout seul_!' Don't
be '_sage tout seul_,' Comtesse. Let me keep you company in your
_sagesse_," he said.

I looked up at him. His eyes were full of a quizzical smile. There
is something in the way his head is set, a distinction, an air of
command. It infinitely pleases me. I felt--I know not what!

"Now I will say good-night. I am tired, and it is getting late," I
said.

"Good-night, Comtesse," and he walked to the door. "I shall be down
at nine o'clock."

And so we parted.

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