CHAPTER XI
Rosamond’s Apologue

 
Pray, sir, do you laugh at me?
 

—Title of Old Caricature

Was Cecil’s allegiance to Dunstone, or was it to the heiress of Dunstone?  Tests of allegiance consist in very small matters, and it is not always easy to see the turning-point.  Now Cecil had always stood on a pinnacle at Dunstone, and she had found neither its claims nor her own recognized at Compton.  One kind of allegiance would have remained on the level, and retained the same standard, whether accepted or not.  Another would climb on any pinnacle that any one would erect for the purpose, and become alienated from whatever interfered with such eminence.

So as nobody seemed so willing to own Cecil’s claims to county supremacy as Lady Tyrrell, her bias was all towards Sirenwood; and whereas such practices as prevailed at Dunstone evidently were viewed as obsolete and narrow by these new friends, Cecil was willing to prove herself superior to them, and was far more irritated than convinced when her husband appealed to her former habits.

The separation of the welfare of body and soul had never occurred to the beneficence of Dunstone, and it cost Cecil a qualm to accept it; but she could not be a goody in the eyes of Sirenwood; and besides, she was reading some contemporary literature, which made it plain that any religious instruction was a most unjustifiable interference with the great law, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and so, when she met Anne with a handful of texts neatly written out in printing letters, she administered her warning.

Cecil and Anne had become allies to a certain extent, chiefly through their joint disapproval of Rosamond, not to say of Julius; and the order was so amazing that Anne did not at first take it in; and when she understood that all mention of religion was forbidden, she said, “I do not think I ought to yield in this.”

“Surely,” said Cecil, “there is no connection between piety and cutting out.”

“I don’t know,” said Anne; “but it does not seem to me to be right to go on with a work where my Master’s Name is forbidden.”

“Religion ought never to be obtruded,” said Cecil.

“The Word ought to flavour everything, in season or out of season,” said Anne, thoughtfully.

“Oh! that’s impossible.  It’s your narrow view.  If you thrust preaching into everything, we can never work together.”

“Oh, then,” said Anne, quickly, “I must give it up!”  And she turned away with a rapid step, to carry her texts back to her room.

“Anne!” called Cecil, “I did not mean that!”

Anne paused for a moment, looked over the baluster, and repeated firmly, “No, Cecil; it would be denying Christ to work where His Name is forbidden.”

Perhaps there was something in the elevation and the carved rail that gave the idea of a pulpit, for Cecil felt as if she was being preached at, and turned her back, indignant and vexed at what she had by no means intended to incur—the loss of such a useful assistant as she found in Anne.

“Such nonsense!” she said to herself, as she crossed the hall alone, there meeting with Rosamond, equipped for the village.  “Is not Anne going to-day?” she said, as she saw the pony-carriage at the door.

“No.  It is so vexatious.  She is so determined upon preaching to the women, that I have been obliged to put a stop to it.”

“Indeed!  I should not have thought it of poor Anne; but no one can tell what those semi-dissenters think right.”

“When she declared she ought to do it in season or out of season, what was one to do?” said Cecil.

“I thought that was for clergymen,” said Rosamond, hitting the right nail on the head in her ignorance, as so often happened.

“She sees no difference,” said Cecil.  “Shall I drive you down?” she added graciously, according to the fashion of uniting with one sister-in-law against the other; and Rosamond not only accepted, but asked to be taken on to Willansborough, to buy a birthday present for her brother Terry, get stamps for an Indian letter, and perform a dozen more commissions that seemed to arise in her mind with the opportunity.  Her two brothers were to spend the Christmas holidays with her, and she was in high spirits, and so communicative about them that she hardly observed how little interest Cecil took in Terry’s achievements.

“Who is that,” she presently asked, “with those red-haired children?  It looked like Miss Vivian’s figure.”

“I believe it was.  Julius and I often see her walking about the lanes; but she passes like—like a fire-flaught, whatever that is—just bows, and hardly ever speaks.”

“She is a strange girl,” said Cecil.  “Lady Tyrrell says she cannot draw her into any of her interests, but she will go her own way.”

“Like poor Anne?”

“No, not out of mere moping and want of intellect, like Anne.  But Lady Tyrrell says she feels for her; she was brought a great deal too forward, and was made quite mistress of the house at Rockpier, being her father’s darling and all, and now it is trying to her, though it is quite wholesome, to be in her proper place.  It is a pity she is so bitter over it, and flies off her own way.”

“That boy!” said Rosamond; “I hope she does something for his good.”

“She teaches him, I believe; but there’s another instance of her strange ways.  She was absolutely vexed when Lady Tyrrell took him into the house, though he was her protégé, only because it was not done in her way.  It is a great trial to Camilla.”

“I could fancy a reason for that,” said Rosamond.  “Julius does not like the tone of the household at all.”  But she added hastily, “Who could those children be?  They did not look quite like poor children.”

“Ah! she is always taking up with some odd person in her own away,” said Cecil.  “But here we are.  Will you drive on to the hotel, or get out here?”

When, at the end of two hours, the sisters-in-law met at the work-room, and Rosamond had taken a survey of the row of needle-women, coming up one by one to give their work, be paid and dismissed, there was a look of weariness and vexation on Cecil’s face.  She had found it less easy to keep order and hinder gossip, and had hardly known how to answer when that kind lady, Mrs. Miles Charnock, had been asked after; but she would have scorned to allow that she had missed her assistant, and only politely asked how Rosamond had sped.

“Oh! excellently.  People were so well advised as to be out, so I paid off all my calls.”

“You did not return your calls without Julius?”

“There’s nothing he hates so much.  I would not have dragged him with me on any account.”

“I think it is due to one’s self.”

“Ah! but then I don’t care what is due to myself.  I saw a friend of yours, Cecil.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Duncombe,” said Rosamond.  “I went to Pettitt’s—the little perfumer, you know, that Julius did so much for at the fire; and there she was, leaning on the counter, haranguing him confidentially upon setting an example with sanatory measures.”

“Sanitary,” corrected Cecil; “sanitas is health, sano to cure.  People never know the difference.”

“Certainly I don’t,” said Rosamond.  “It must be microscopic!”

“Only it shows the difference between culture and the reverse,” said Cecil.

“Well, you know, I’m the reverse,” said Rosamond, leaning sleepily back, and becoming silent; but Cecil was too anxious for intelligence to let her rest, and asked on what Mrs. Duncombe was saying.

“I am not quite sure—she was stirring up his public spirit, I think, about the drainage; and they were both of them deploring the slackness and insensibility of the corporation, and canvassing for Mr. Whitlock, as I believe.  It struck me as a funny subject for a lady, but I believe she does not stick at trifles.”

“No real work can be carried out by those who do,” said Cecil.

“Oh!” added Rosamond, “I met Mrs. and Miss Bowater, and they desired me to say that Jenny can’t come till the dinner-party on the 20th, and then they will leave her.”

“How cool to send a message instead of writing!”

“Oh! she has always been like one of themselves, like a sister to them all.”

“I can’t bear that sort of people.”

“What sort?”

“Who worm themselves in.”

“Miss Bowater could have no occasion for worming.  They must be quite on equal terms.”

“At any rate, she was only engaged to their poor relation.”

“What poor relation?  Tell me!  Who told you?”

“Raymond.  It was a young attorney—a kind of cousin of the Poynsett side, named Douglas.”

“What?  There’s a cross in the churchyard to Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Francis Poynsett, and wife of James Douglas, and at the bottom another inscription to Archibald Douglas, her son, lost in the Hippolyta.”

“Yes, that must be the man.  He was flying from England, having been suspected of some embezzlement.”

“Indeed!  And was Jenny engaged to him?  Julius told me that Mrs. Douglas had been his mother’s dearest friend, and that this Archie had been brought up with them, but he did not say any more.”

“Perhaps he did not like having had a cousin in an attorney’s office.  I am sure I had no notion of such a thing.”

Rosamond laughed till she was exhausted at the notion of Julius’s sharing the fastidious objections she heard in Cecil’s voice; and then, struck by the sadness of the story, she cried, “And that makes them all so fond of Miss Bowater.  Poor girl, what must she not have gone through!  And yet how cheerful she does look!”

“People say,” proceeded Cecil, unable to resist the impulse to acquire a partaker in her half-jealous aversion, “that it was a great disappointment that Mrs. Poynsett could not make her sons like her as much as she did herself.”

“Oh!” cried Rosamond, “how little peace we should have if we always heeded what people say!”

“People that know,” persisted Cecil.

“Not very wise or very kind people to say so,” quoth Rosamond; “though, by the bye, the intended sting is happily lost, considering that it lies among five.”

“Why should you assume a sting?”

“Because I see you are stung, and want to sting me,” said Rosamond, in so merry a tone that the earnestness was disguised.

“I!  I’m not stung!  What Mrs. Poynsett or Miss Bowater may have schemed is nothing to me,” said Cecil, with all her childish dignity.

“People talk of Irish imagination,” said Rosamond in her lazy meditative tone.

“Well?” demanded Cecil, sharply.

“Only it is not my Irish imagination that has devised this dreadful picture of the artful Jenny and Mrs. Poynsett spinning their toils to entrap the whole five brothers.  Come, Cecil, take my advice and put it out of your head.  Suppose it were true, small blame to Mrs. Poynsett.”

“What do you mean?” said Cecil, in a voice of hurt dignity.

“I may mean myself.”  And Rosamond’s peal of merry laughter was most amazing and inexplicable to her companion, who was not sure that she was not presuming to laugh at her.

There was a silence, broken at last by Rosamond.  “Cecil, I have been tumbled about the world a good deal more than you have, and I never found that one got any good by disregarding the warnings of the natives.  There’s an immense deal in the cat and the cock.”