“Please do not trouble; bread and cheese for us,” cried Priscilla.
“What about that plover’s egg that you were trifling with—oh, I see you have laid it quietly back on the dish,” he remarked, with an ingratiating smile in the direction of Rosa.
“I’m afraid,” murmured Mrs. Pearce—“I’m afraid that—that——”
She was looking in the direction of the covered dish on the tray.
“I’m not,” cried he. He lifted off the cover and displayed the twin halves of a chicken beautifully grilled. “She’s afraid that there isn’t enough to go round!” He pointed to the dish. “Gloriana! as if I could eat all that off my own bat! Do hurry about those plates—and, above all, don’t forget the glasses. Can you guess what the name of this hock is?” he added, turning to Rosa.
“It’s Liebfraumilch, and you were not asleep after all,” cried the girl, rosy and smiling.
“Not after all, but just before,” he said reassuringly, placing chairs at the table also with a good deal of assurance. But he was not so engrossed by the occupation as to fail to see the glances exchanged between the girls—glances of doubt, shot through with the enquiry, “Should we?”
“What a day it is turning out, and the morning looked so fine,” said he, not gloomily, but cheerfully. “Won’t you sit down? The spatchcock’s all right, only it takes offence if it isn’t eaten at once.”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” said Rosa boldly to her friend. The man turned his head away to enable her to do so—a movement that displayed tact and not tactics.
“You are extremely kind, Mr. Wingfield,” said Priscilla very formally. “I don’t suppose that we are quite in line with the precepts of the book of etiquette; and, besides, we have no business to deprive you of your lunch and——”
“And sleep,” murmured Rosa.
That finished the formally-worded apology. Before their triolet of laughter had passed away they were all seated at the table, and Mrs. Pearce had brought in the requisite crockery and cutlery. She did not forget the glasses. She beamed confidently upon the girls as if she was endeavouring to assure them that she was a mother herself, and that she would be at hand in case she should hear screams.
He showed some dexterity in carving his spatchcock. They kept their eyes on him, with a protest ready if he should leave nothing for himself; but they had no need of such vigilance, and their protest was uncalled for. He was quite fair to them and to himself, and witnessing his tact once more they became still more at their ease.
“The day doesn’t seem quite so hopeless now as it did a quarter of an hour ago,” he remarked, when they had all praised the cooking of Mrs. Pearce. “Nothing seems the same when a chap has done himself well in the eating and drinking line—especially the drinking. I don’t wonder that crimes are committed when people haven’t enough to eat.”
“I wonder if having too little to eat or too much to drink is most responsible,” said Priscilla.
“Meaning that it’s about time I opened that bottle?” said he. “Now, I can’t think that either of you is under the influence of a temperance lecturer; but if you are, you’ll drink all the same to my homecoming.”
“Delighted, I’m sure,” cried Rosa. “There’s no nicer thing to drink than Liebfraumilch, when it’s of the right year.”
“I was under the impression,” said he, scrutinizing the bottom of the cork, “that taking the bad years with the good, a chap has a better chance with Liebfraumilch than anything in that line.”
“I got it all from a catalogue—I have a good memory,” confessed Priscilla. “I hope it’s true.”
“A wine merchant’s catalogue? Gospel—absolute gospel,” said he solemnly.
He poured out half a glass and became more solemn still while he examined it in breathless silence. He held it up to the light, and the girls saw that it was a pale flame smouldering in the glass. He gave it a shake and it became a glorious topaz.
“A very fair colour indeed,” said he on the completion of these mysteries, and the girls breathed again. “Yes, I don’t know who laid it down, but I know who’ll take it up, and every time it will be with a hope that his grandsire’s halo is as good a colour. The occasion is an extremely interesting one, and the wine is almost equal to the occasion. If not, we are. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with feelings of etcetera, etcetera, that I bring to your notice the toast of the young heir now come into his inheritance. Long may he reign—I mean long may it rain, when it was the means of bringing so charming a company round his table, and so say all of us; with a—I’m extremely obliged to you, and I’ll respond later on.”
He had the aspect and the manner of a merry boy. About him there was a complete absence of self-consciousness. He treated the girls in the spirit of comradeship, and Priscilla at least felt that he must have been possessed of a certain gift of intuition to perceive that this spirit and no other was the one that was appropriate to the occasion; and moreover that he must have had other gifts that enabled him to perceive that they were the very girls to appreciate such a form of unconventional courtesy. He was in no way breezy or free-and-easy in his manner. He made fun like a schoolboy, never forcing the note; and these young women knew that he was perfectly natural from the ease with which they remained natural and with no oppression of self-consciousness in his company, in spite of the fact that the situation was not merely unconventional, but within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, to indiscreetness, as indiscreetness would be defined by the district visitor or her relative, Mrs. Grundy.
These young women, who found themselves taking lunch and drinking wine—actually hock of a brand that was habitually highly spoken of in the catalogues—at the invitation and in the house of a young man to whom they had never been presented, were beginning to feel as if they had been acquainted with him all their life, and they made an extremely good meal. The plovers’ eggs vanished when the spatchcock had been despatched, and the cream cheese and lettuce were still occupying them when Mrs. Pearce came from the kitchen to find out if all was well, and if she should serve the coffee in the library or in the drawing-room.
“Oh, the drawing-room by all means,” cried Mr. Wingfield; and when she disappeared he whispered, “The good creature has just been to the drawing-room to take off the covers, I’m sure, and she would never forgive us if we didn’t go to see how careful she has been of everything. The only thing about it is that I couldn’t find my way from here to the drawing-room.”
“You may depend on us,” said Rosa.
“I may? Then I place myself unreservedly in your hands,” said he. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. You shall show me through the house and tell me the story of all the rooms—who was killed in which, and where the celebrated duel was fought—you may, by the aid of a reasonable amount of imagination, still see the marks of the bullets in the wainscot.”
“I never heard anything of that,” said Rosa. “A duel? When did it happen?”
“What, do you mean to say that there’s no room in this house where the celebrated duel was fought?” cried he. “And you can assure me that there’s no picture of an old reprobate who went in the county by the name of Butcher Wingfield—or was it old Black Jack Wingfield—maybe Five-bottle Wingfield?”
“I really can’t tell. All that I can say is that I never heard of any of them,” said Rosa.
“This is a nice thing to confront a chap who has just entered into possession of an old house and, as he hoped, a lot of ready-made ancestors,” said he mournfully. “Not one of them with any of the regulation tokens of the old and crusted ancestor