Mrs. Benson approached the wardrobe trunk with the air of a person who has taken an immediate and violent dislike to an object.
"We have all looked at your box, ma'am, but I am sorry to say we are not sure that it is set up properly. It is very different from any we have ever seen at the Manor, and the men had some difficulty in getting it up to the room. I fancy it is upside down, is it not? No? We rather thought it was. I would call the boot-and-knife boy to unlock it, but he jammed his hand in attempting to force the catches, and I thought you would be kind enough to instruct me how to open it, perhaps?"
"I am quite able to do it myself," said Robinette, keeping down a hysterical laugh. "See how easily it goes when you know the secret!" and she deftly turned her key in two locks one after the other, let down the mysterious facade of the affair, and pulled out an extraordinary rack on which hung so many dresses and wraps that Mrs. Benson lost her breath in surprise.
"Would you like me to carry some of your things into another room, ma'am?" she asked. "They will never go in the wardrobe; it is only a plain English wardrobe, ma'am. We have never had any American guests."
"The things needn't be moved," said Robinette, "many of them will be quite convenient where they are;--and now you need not trouble about me; I am well used to helping myself, if you will be kind enough to come in just before dinner for a moment."
Mrs. Benson disappeared below stairs, where she regaled the injured boot-and-knife boy and the female servants with the first instalment of what was destined to be the most dramatic and sensational serial story ever told at the Manor House.
"The lid of the box don't lift up," she explained, "like all the box lids as ever I saw, and me with Lady Chitterton for six years, traveling constantly. The front of the thing splits in the middle and the bottom half falls on the floor. A heathenish kind of tray lifts off from its hinges like a door, and a clothes rack pulls out on runners. 'T is a sight to curdle your blood; and the number of dresses she's brought would make her out to be richer than Crusoe!--though I have heard from a cousin of mine who was in service in America that the ladies over there spend every penny they can rake and scrape on their clothes. Their husbands may work their fingers to the bone, and their parents be in the workhouse, but fine frocks they will have!"
"Rather!" said the boot-and-knife boy, nursing his injured thumb.
On the departure of Mrs. Benson from her room, Robinette gave a stifled shriek in which laughter and tears were equally mingled. Then she flew like a lapwing to the fire-place and lifted off a fan of white paper from the grate.
"No possibility of help there!" she exclaimed. "Cold within, cold without! How shall I unpack? How shall I dress? How shall I live without a fire? Ah! here is the coal box! Empty! Empty, and it is only the month of April! 'Oh! to be in England now that April's there!' How could Browning write that line without his teeth chattering! How well I understand the desire of the British to keep India and South Africa! They must have some place to go where they can get warm! Now for unpacking, or any sort of manual labour which will put my frozen blood in circulation!"
Slapping her hands, beating her breast, stamping her feet, Mrs. Loring removed a few dresses from the offending trunk to the mahogany wardrobe, and disposed her effects neatly in the drawers of bureau and highboy.
"I have made a mistake at the very beginning," she thought. "I supposed nothing could be too pretty for the Manor House and now I am afraid my worst is too fine. The Manor House of Stoke Revel! Wouldn't that appeal to anyone's imagination? Now what for to-night? White satin with crystal? Back you go into the trunk! Back goes the silver grey chiffon! I'll have it re-hung over flannel! Avaunt! heliotrope velvet with amethyst spangles, made with a view to ensnaring the High Church clergy! I wish I had a princess dress of moleskin with a court train of squirrel hanging from the shoulders! Here is the thing; my black Liberty satin two years old. I will cover part of my exposed neck and shoulders with a fichu of lace; my black silk openwork stockings will be drawn on over a pair of balbriggans, and the number of petticoats I shall don would discourage a Scotch fishwife! To-morrow I'll write Mrs. Spalding's maid to buy me two hot-water bottles, mittens, a box of quinine tablets and a Shetland shawl.... What are these--_fans?_ Retire into the depths of that tray and never look me in the face again!... _Parasols?_ I wonder at your impertinence in coming here! I shall give you cod liver oil and make you grow into umbrellas!"
Presently the dinner gong growled through the house, and Robinette, still shivering, flung across her shoulders a shimmering scarf of white and silver. It fell over her simple black dress in just the right way, adding a last touch to the somewhat exotic grace which made her a stranger in her mother's home. Then she fled down the darkening passages, instinctively aware that unpunctuality was a crime in this house. Yet in spite of her haste, she paused before the window of an upper lobby, arrested by the scene it framed. Heavy rain still fell, and the light, made greenish by the nearness of great trees just coming into leaf, was cheerless and singularly cold. But that could not mar the majesty of the outlook which made the Manor of Stoke Revel, on its height, unique. Far below the house, the broad river slipped towards the sea, between woods that rose tier upon tier above and beyond--woods of beech and of oak, not yet green, but purplish under the rainy mist. On the bank, woods too, and here, where the river, in excess of strength, swirled into a creek--a shining sand-bank where fishing nets were hung. Then the low, strong tower of a church, with the sombreness of cypress beside it, and the thatched roofs of cottages.
Something stirred in the heart of Robinette as she looked, that part of her blood which her English mother had given her. This scene, so indescribably English as hardly to be imaginable in another land, had been painted for her again and again by her mother with all the retrospective romance of an exile's touch. She knew it, but she did not know if she could ever love it, beautiful though it was and noble.
But she banished these misgivings and ran down the twisted stairway so fast that she was almost panting when she reached the drawing-room door.
"I will take your arm, please," said the hostess coldly, while Miss Smeardon wore the virtuous and injured air of one who has been kept waiting. Mrs. de Tracy laid, on the warm and smooth arm of her guest, one of her small, dry hands, sparkling with rings, and the procession closed with the companion and the lap-dog.
In the dining room, the shutters were closed, and the candles, in branching candlesticks of silver, only partially lit a room long and low like the other. The walls were darkened with pictures, and Robinette's bright eyes searched them eagerly.
"The Sir Joshua is not here!" she thought. "And it was not in the drawing room. Has Aunt de Tracy given, or hidden it away--my very own name-picture?"
With all her determination, Robinette somehow could not summon courage enough to ask where this picture was. Such a question would involve the mention of her mother's name, and from that she shrank. Young Mrs. Loring had never before found herself in a society where conversation was apparently regarded as a crime, and to fit herself to her environment, under the scrutiny of Mrs. de Tracy and the decidedly inimical looks of the companion, took all her time. A burden of self-consciousness lay upon her such as her light and elastic spirit had never known. She found herself morbidly observant of minute details; the pattern of the tablecloth; the crest upon the spoons; the curious red knobs upon Miss Smeardon's fingers, and the odd mincing way she held her fork; the almost athletic efforts of the butler when he raised an enormous silver dish-cover, and the curiously frugal and unappetizing nature of the viand it disclosed. The wizened face of the lap-dog, too, peering over the table's edge, out of Miss Smeardon's lap, might have acquired its distrustful expression, Robinette thought, from habitual doubts as to whether enough to eat would ever be his good fortune. The meal ended with the ceremonious presentation to each lady in turn, of three wrinkled apples and two crooked bananas in a probably priceless dish of Crown Derby. Then the procession re-formed and returned to the drawing room.
"And the evening and the morning were the first day!" sighed Robinette to herself in the chilly solitude of her own room. How often could she endure the repetition?