Chapter III: Received by the County

At half-past twelve o’clock on the following day Sibyl and Mr. Trenchard start on their drive to the How. It is more than an hour’s drive, even with Mr. Trenchard’s well-fed horses, who are used so little that they are in a chronic state of either wanting to run away or languishing into a crawl. Their paces between Redcastle and the How are an alternate bolt and dawdle, and perhaps, on the whole, they take more time about the journey than the less pampered steeds which ply for hire at Redcastle station.

Sir Wilford Cardonnel is smoking his cigar on the grassy walk inside the moat as Mr. Trenchard’s carriage drives through the gateway. The How is a good old place of the moated grange order. Tudor gables and windows in front; roofs and chimneys at the back of the premises of an earlier period; a fine old chapel, which has been converted into a drawing-room; a monkish refectory, which has been made a billiard-room. The gardens are lovely, and that deep wide moat, with its dark still water and smooth green banks, adds not a little to their beauty. A swan comes sailing down the dark shining water as Sibyl alights, assisted by Sir Wilford, who has thrown away his cigar and come to welcome his guests.

‘How late you are!’ he exclaims. ‘I have been expecting you for the last two hours. Now what will you see first?--the stables or the gardens?’

Sibyl is going to say the gardens, but Mr. Trenchard, who knows that his host’s tastes are turfy, votes for the stables.

‘I’m so glad you like stables,’ exclaims Sir Wilford, addressing himself to Sibyl, as if the choice were hers. ‘I’m rather proud of mine, you know. I’ve spent a good deal of money upon ’em. They were regular pigsties when I inherited the place. My poor father didn’t care about his stables, you know. As long as he had a couple of carriage horses to drag the family about, a weight-carrying cob for his own use, and a pony or two for us children, he was satisfied. His horses weren’t members of his family. Why, in his time the gardeners and farm labourers were as well accommodated as the horses,’ concludes Sir Wilford, as if this were the summit of iniquity.

They traverse a shrubbery, and find themselves in the stable department, a spacious quadrangle, stone-paved, with a stone basin of water in the middle. Numbered doors, and windows adorned with flower-boxes, surround this neat square quadrangle, each door opening into a loose box, each number belonging to a special quadruped in Sir Wilford’s stud. Within, the loose boxes are as neat as a spinster annuitant’s best parlour. Each horse is provided with a cat or dog for company, while one animal, more social than the rest, is not satisfied without the society of a stable boy, who sits in a corner of his box reading the paper all the summer afternoon, while the lordly beast stares dreamily at him across the swinging door, and makes an occasional snap at him, displaying an appalling range of long yellow teeth, in pure playfulness.

Sibyl is introduced severally to the horses, who are swathed in double sets of clothing, as if they were in Siberia.

‘Why are the poor things wrapped up so this warm weather?’ inquires Sibyl.

‘That’s to keep up the beauty of their coats, mum,’ says a stable boy.

Numerous animals are unclothed, and brought out in the sunny quadrangle to display their various graces. They all seem pretty much alike to Sibyl, except that some are thin and some thick. Sibyl admires the slimmer animals, but Sir Wilford, Mr. Trenchard, and the stud groom go into raptures about the thicker and more stalwart quadrupeds.

‘There’s a shoulder!’ says the groom, punching a bull-necked brute. ‘Carry a church.’

‘There are legs,’ cries Sir Wilford, ‘regular gateposts!’

‘Shall I bring out Bull of Bashan, sir?’ inquires the stud groom, and another thick-set beast is led forth, plunging viciously to the rearwards as he emerges from his cool retreat.

Bull of Bashan is the gem of the stud. His leading qualification is cobbiness, thick neck, thick legs, a straight line from hock to fetlock, short barrel, broad chest, an eye like Jove to threaten or command, and not a white hair about him, as the stud groom remarks complacently. Time was when Bull of Bashan would have been esteemed a serviceable horse for a village miller, or a tenant farmer. To-day he is the last fashion for a gentleman of fortune.

‘Ran away with a stable boy yesterday morning when he was being exercised,’ says Sir Wilford, approvingly, patting the beast’s solid shoulder, which familiarity the Bull resents by sticking his ears back till he appears to be unprovided with those appendages, and giving a vicious kick in the direction of his master’s shins.

‘How do you like the Bull, Miss Faunthorpe?’

‘Isn’t he rather bad tempered?’ inquires Sibyl, doubtfully.

‘Oh, he’s a lively horse, I admit, but the best goer in the stable. The men don’t care about riding him, but he and I understand each other,--don’t we, Bull? There, take him in, Chanter.’

They look into other loose boxes, and Sibyl begins to think there is no end to the horses; but the stable inspection is over at last, and they go back to the gardens, where the baronet’s sisters condescend to join them.

Phœbe Cardonnel is a little more inclined to be civil to-day than she showed herself at Lancaster Lodge yesterday. She tells Sibyl the names of roses and ferns, and makes herself otherwise agreeable. This amelioration of the young lady’s manners has been brought about by a domestic process which Sir Wilford calls ‘a jolly good setting down.’

The baronet has informed his sisters in the plainest language that he considers Miss Faunthorpe the nicest girl he has met for a long time, that he has been informed that she has large expectations from the old Indian beggar, meaning Stephen Trenchard, and that in his, Sir Wilford’s opinion, she would suit him admirably for a wife.

Whereupon the two sisters, Phœbe and Lavinia, as with one voice, exclaim in the words of Mrs. Stormont,--

‘Wilford! a girl of no family.’

‘Hang family!’ ejaculates Sir Wilford. ‘We’ve got pedigree enough and to spare. The needful thing is ready money.’

‘Oh, Wilford, you are rich enough surely.’

‘Oh, I can rub along, if that’s what you mean,’ answers the baronet. ‘But I could buy the Longley Bottom Estate if I had fifty thousand to dispose of, and then I should be the largest landowner between this and York. There’s an upland meadow that would make the finest gallop in England, and you know how badly I want some good training-ground.’

‘Well, Wilford, if I were the head of the family I wouldn’t degrade myself by a plebeian marriage for the sake of a few paltry thousands. You might have Lady Malvina Vielleroche for the asking.’

‘But I never shall ask,’ answers Sir Wilford decisively. ‘Lady Malvina is a good deal too weedy for my money, and I don’t like ’em that colour. I’d marry Miss Faunthorpe if she hadn’t a sixpence, but of course I take all the more kindly to the notion on account of that old chap’s cash. I shouldn’t like to see Longley Manor owned by some three-quarter bred cockney.’

The result of this conversation, which took place after dinner yesterday evening, is Phœbe Cardonnel’s amiable welcome of to-day. She takes Sibyl up to her own room to take off her hat before luncheon, and Sibyl admires the fine old house with its spacious corridors, massive Tudor windows, and innumerable rooms. It is all so different from the formal splendour of Lancaster Lodge. Here all is picturesque, full of old associations, suggestive of ruffs and farthingales, silken hose, and jewelled sword-hilts. There must be a family ghost, of course, in such a house.

‘It is a place whose mistress must feel like a queen,’ thinks Sibyl, as she stands before the carved oak dressing-table, with its old Venice mirror, not quite so convenient as a modern dressing-table, but wondrous stately. From the wide mullioned window she sees the gardens and park spreading far away to the summer woods, and woods as well as park and gardens belong to Sir Wilford Cardonnel.

She can but think what a mighty conquest she has made, if Sir Wilford is really in love with her, as she can hardly doubt. She is just a little intoxicated by the idea. She feels as if she had been raised suddenly to a dizzy height, from which she must come toppling down presently. She feels as she has often felt in a dream years ago at Miss Worrie’s boarding school, when her slumbers were frequently visited by a vision of pride in which she saw herself wooed by some rich and noble suitor, and from which she awoke at the shrill peal of the school-bell, to find herself in the bleak bare dormitory, with the prospect of a winter day’s dreary toil before her.

Luncheon at the How is a bounteous and hospitable meal, in an oak-paneled dining-room. After luncheon they explore the old house, which although not a show place, is well worthy that honour. They look at the family pictures, which seem to Sibyl rather a collection of wigs than of faces, so much more distinctive are the wigs than the countenances they embellish. The portrait gallery is, of course, a compendium of the family history, and Sibyl here discovers that the Cardonnels have produced alternate commanders by land and sea, for the protection of their country, and have occasionally blossomed into a judge.

Stephen Trenchard takes his part in the day’s proceedings with supreme patience; admires the family portraits just as he admired Sir Wilford’s horses; and makes himself generally agreeable. It is only when he is seated in the carriage with his niece that the tension of the bow is relaxed, and weariness overshadows the Anglo-Indian’s sallow countenance.

‘Rather a long morning, Sibyl,’ he says, ‘and more sight-seeing than I care about; but I have borne it all for your sake. It will be a proud day for me if I live to see you mistress of that place. Yes, my dear, one of the proudest days of my life; and yet I have made many a conquest over fortune since I left Redcastle, more than fifty years ago, a gaunt hungry lad--turned my back resolutely on my native town, knowing very well that there was nothing but starvation for me if I stayed there any longer.’

Sibyl is silent. It would be cruel to dispel a fancy which evidently gives the old man pleasure. Let him dream on. If what Mrs. Stormont says is true--and Stephen Trenchard’s strength is dwindling fast,--the end may come before he is awakened from his dream.

‘And it will please him better to leave me his money if he thinks that I am going to be a rich baronet’s wife,’ reasons Sibyl within herself. ‘To add riches to riches is the delight of such men.’