The Frobishers/Chapter 1
A BUTTERFLY OUT OF PLACE
"I thought as much!" said Joan.
She was standing in a road—a byway—through an oak coppice, in her riding habit beside her horse, and had ungirthed him and removed the saddle.
"Poor old boy, I am sorry for you. You must have suffered, and yet you went bravely along, and splendidly over the fence."
Ruby turned his head at his mistress's voice, snuffed his approval of her sympathy, and stood unmoving, save that the skin twitched about an ugly raw on the shoulder.
"It is that tree again," said Joan. "Some saddlers seem never to grasp the law by which a tree is made to fit. I have sent this saddle twice to Oxley, and he has vowed, by all things blue, on each occasion, that he has rectified the defect. Never, old boy, shall you have this side-saddle on your back again."
Once more the patient horse turned his head, looked at his mistress and snuffed, as though accepting the assurance in full confidence. He knew Joan, knew that she pitied him, knew that he would be cared for.
"I beg your pardon—are you in difficulties? and can I be of any assistance?" asked a young man, breaking through the coppice of sere russet leaves, and descending on his hunter to the road that was cut some two feet below the surface of the shrub and tree clothed hillside. He was not in pink, but in a dark serviceable coat, and wore white corduroy breeches, a stiff velvet hunting cap, and top-boots, and was spurred.
"I am at a loss what to do," answered the girl. "I have acted most inconsiderately. I let my sister Sibyll ride on, and take the groom with her. I lagged because I had a suspicion that something was going wrong with Ruby. Of course I ought to have detained the groom, but my sister was eager, and I did not like to spoil her sport. Next piece of want of consideration that I was guilty of was to dismount here in the wood, to lift the saddle and see if the dear old fellow were rubbed. Look! how badly he has been served. I cannot possibly replace the saddle and remount him. So I shall have to walk all the way to Pendabury House in a riding skirt—and only a lady knows how laborious that is."
"To Pendabury!"
"Yes, that is our home."
Joan now looked for the first time with any interest at the gentleman with whom she had been conversing, and at once perceived that he was not one of the usual party that attended a meet and followed the hunt, but was an entire stranger.
"I am Miss Frobisher," she said.
"I must introduce myself," he at once spoke; "my name is Beaudessart."
"Beaudessart!"
It was now her turn to express surprise.
"Then," said she, "I have a sort of notion that some kind of relationship exists between us!"
"For my sins, none," answered the young man; "in place of relation there has been estrangement. My grandfather married a Mrs. Frobisher, a widow, and your father was her son by a former husband. The families have been in contact, brought so by this marriage, but it has produced friction. However, let us not consider that; let the fact of there having been some connection embolden me to ask your permission to transfer your side-saddle to my mare, and to lead your galled Ruby to his stable."
"You are very good."
"There is not a man in the hunt who would not make the same offer."
"I cheerfully admit that our South Staffordshire hunters are ever courteous and ready to assist a damsel in difficulties. Is not that the quality of Chivalry?"
"The same applies to every gentleman in England," said Mr. Beaudessart. "Wherever he sees need, perplexity, distress, thither he flies with eager heart to assist."
He had already dismounted, and without another word proceeded to remove his own saddle, and to adjust that of the lady to the back of his mare.
"One moment," said Joan Frobisher. "I ought to forewarn you that you are running a risk—the tree of my saddle will fit the back of no living horse."
"It will do no harm so long as my Sally is not galloped, Miss Frobisher. I shall have to lay on you the injunction not to fly away. Besides, I am a stranger in this part of the country. It was that which threw me out, and brought me through the coppice. I do not know my way to Pendabury, and shall need your guidance."
He placed his hands in position to receive Joan's foot, and with a spring she was in the saddle. Then he looked up at her.
She was a tall, well-built girl. In her dark green hunting habit, the collar turned up with scarlet, and brightened with the South Staffordshire hunt buttons, her graceful form was shown to good effect.
She had well-moulded features, the jaw had a bold sweep, and the chin was firmly marked. The eyes were large, lustrous, and soft. If the modelling of the lower portion of her face conveyed a suspicion of hardness, this was at once dispelled by the soft light of the kindly eyes.
Mr. Beaudessart now fitted his own saddle on the back of Ruby so as not to incommode the galled beast.
"I was in a difficulty," said Joan, as they began to move forward down the roadway. "I might have been run in by the agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and had to appear at the next Petty Sessions—before papa—think of that, and be fined sixpence, and costs, eight-and-nine; total, nine-and-threepence. It would have made a hole in my pocket-money."
"Do the costs stand in that proportion to the fine? I really know nothing of English magistrates and their courts."
"Oh, the magistrates have nothing to do with costs. These are inexplicable to the uninitiated. The Greek mysteries are nothing to them."
Then they proceeded a little way without talking, as the road became steep.
On reaching ground less precipitous, Joan asked—
"You say that you are a stranger in these parts?"
"Yes—entirely."
"No, not entirely. Your name is familiar to all. Why, our church is full of Beaudessart monuments, and the county history is prodigal in the matter of pedigree of Beaudessart. For the matter of that, we have any number of pictures of them at Pendabury."
"Are you great in pedigree?" asked the young man with a smile.
"Of a horse. I know nothing of my own, and care little. By the way, it is through a Beaudessart that we came by our home; and"—laughing—"we do not intend to surrender it without a siege. We have a portrait in the dining-room of the last of the Beaudessart squires of Pendabury, a choleric, resolute man, to judge by his counterfeit presentment."
The young man looked up at Joan with a flicker in his eyes and a twinkle of a smile on his lips.
Joan perceived it, and was rendered nervous, lest she might have said something in bad taste, something that had touched him and made him wince, and he had disguised the pain with a smile. Did he really think that she suspected him of making a claim to the Pendabury estate? She scrutinised his face to read his mind, but the smile ambiguously twitching the corners of the mouth had passed away, and he strode forwards serene in countenance, with an elastic tread and a toss of the head, as though he had put from him whatever thought had passed through his mind at the provocation of her words. The young man was upright in carriage, broad in back, his head covered with light hair that rippled over his forehead and curled forth behind from under his velvet cap. Surely when a child he must have had natural ringlets of gold. His face was fresh, open, honest, and careless in expression. His eyes were dark grey. He looked like a man of good feeling, and one who was well bred.
"Mr. Beaudessart," said Joan, "you must have formed a very bad opinion of my intelligence, coming on me as you did, in the depth of a wood and far from assistance. I had put myself into a position of great awkwardness; I got off Ruby to examine his shoulder without a thought that, granted he were sound, I could not girth him up tight enough to remount, and that if I found him badly rubbed I should have to walk home. What can you think of me?"
"I think only of the tenderness of your heart, that put all considerations for self on one side, in solicitude for your horse."
"Thank you. I am very fond of Ruby. Nevertheless, I blame myself for lack of foresight." Then, changing her tone as she changed the subject, she asked, "Have you been long in our neighbourhood?"
"We took the cottage at Rosewood—do you chance to know it?"
Joan made a movement of assent.
"We took it at Lady Day last on a term of years. But we, that is my mother and I, spent all the summer in Switzerland, after we had settled our few sticks of furniture in the house. The garden had been neglected and not stocked, so that it was too late in the year when we came into possession to do very much with it. My mother has great ambition to cultivate a garden. We are not notable gardeners in Canada—she is a Canadian, and I was born there. It will be a new experience here, and one to give her great pleasure. She has read about English ladies and the little paradises they create, in which they pass their innocent hours, and she hopes to acquire the same tastes, and reap the same joys, and to spend her declining years in flowery bliss. She is a dear mother to me," he added, in a tone full of tenderness, and Joan liked him for the words.
Thus conversing, they reached the outskirts of the wood, and were on the highway between hedges in pleasant champaign country.
"I have some excuse for being ignorant of the lie of the land," said Mr. Beaudessart. "I was born, as I told you, in Canada. My father lived and died there."
"And your mother will be happy in England?"
"Oh, she knows that I have to be here; it was my father's urgent request. He hungered after the old fatherland."
"Have you sisters?"
"I have a sister, who is now with my mother, but she is with her only now and then. She has taken her own line, and has become a nurse. I suppose Rosewood is some miles from here—how many I have not the faintest notion."
"If you hunt with us, you will don the pink?"
"I do not know about that. It costs about twenty pounds to blaze out a full-blown poppy, and the suit will last but a season. It is rather like advertising oneself as a man of large fortune, and I am not that. I can live, but cannot be lavish."
So they talked, falling into half confidences; and presently many evidences appeared of approach to a gentleman's seat of some importance. The trees stood in clumps. Hedges no longer divided the fields; they were parted by wire fences. Ploughed land gave way to pasturage. Then were heard the sounds of rooks cawing, and a church spire pierced the rounded banks of trees, that had not all lost their foliage, though that foliage was turned to copper.
And presently they came to the gates.
At that moment up trotted Joan's sister Sibyll, with the groom following her. The younger Miss Frobisher was but eighteen; she was a very pretty and graceful girl, with a high colour and dancing eyes. She was now in great spirits, and, riding up to her sister, exclaimed—
"Oh, Joan! give me joy! I am the happiest girl on earth. On this, the first meet of the season, I was in at the death. Look! I have had my cheeks painted; and see! I have the brush, and am promised the mask when it is mounted."
Then she noticed the gentleman leading Ruby, and raised her eyebrows.
"What ails your horse?" she inquired.
"Sibylla—this is Mr. Beaudessart. Sir—my sister. Mr. Beaudessart has been so very kind. My poor Ruby is frightfully rawed; I could not ride him home, so this gentleman has most generously lent me his mount and has led my horse." Then to the young man: "Mr. Beaudessart, you must come into Pendabury and have a cup of tea or a glass of wine. You have eight or nine miles to cover before reaching home, and I have spoiled your day's hunting. Moreover, you positively must see the original Beaudessart Stammburg, as the Germans would term it."
He bowed, and said in reply—
"Are you sure that your father would desire it?"
"Quite so. How could he do other?" Still he hesitated. Joan saw that he was desirous of accepting her invitation, but was unwilling to intrude.
"No!" she said, "I will not take a refusal. A lady's invitation carries all the force of a command. If it be not accepted, she is mortally affronted."
"In that case I have no alternative."
They passed through the great gates into the grounds that unfolded before them as they proceeded, sweeping lawns, park-like, with the house, a Queen Anne mansion, square and stately, standing back against a well-wooded hill, the sun flashing golden in the long windows that looked to the west.
"It is a beautiful spot," said the young man in a grave tone, and a change came over his face.
"Oh, Joan!" exclaimed Sibyll, riding beside her sister, "such fun! I had never been in at the death before. And fancy! when puss was in extremis, fallen on and torn to pieces by the hounds—will you believe me? there was a butterfly flickering above the scene of blood and death-agony unconcernedly. Conceive! a butterfly at this period of the year; so out of season!"
"So out of place," said Joan.