Short Fiction · Trooping with Crows (3/5) (2/2)

And the captain, with his full knowledge of Lilla and her resolute temper, is perfectly certain that not another word will be said.

While Lettice’s fate and fortune are being thus discussed by her friends and acquaintances, the Misses Tremarten themselves are beginning to feel a little anxiety on the matter.

Lettice and her affairs generally came upon the tapis in the early morning after breakfast while Lettice was enjoying her canter in the park, for neither of the Misses Tremarten being equestrians, they were obliged to hand over the chaperonage of their niece to a middle-aged matron of active habits and without encumbrances in the shape of single ineligible sons.

“I am not altogether pleased with the result of Lettice’s first season,” said Aunt Rosamond on one occasion as she and her sister sat quietly with their books and work in their pleasantly-furnished drawing-room.

Aunt Judith suspended her knitting for a moment, and commenced in her weak, quavering voice⁠—

“Satisfied! No; how could you be? The girl is self-willed and ill-trained, and unless she turns over a new leaf the sooner she goes back to her father the better.”

“I won’t say that,” the elder lady replied; “but still I am not satisfied with the turn matters are taking. Of course a great deal must be laid to the charge of the foolish education she has had and her total ignorance of the ways and small etiquettes of society. At the same time, unless she can be very well looked after during the next month, she will find herself not a little talked about at the end of the season.”

“It’s too much anxiety by far,” chimed Aunt Judith. “It will wear you out altogether.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” replied Aunt Rosamond; “I can soon recruit when I go up to the North. I should feel well repaid if I could see Owen’s child making a really creditable marriage⁠—a marriage, indeed, that she ought to feel bound to make considering what her prospects are. At one time I dreaded the idea of her settling down as a country doctor’s wife, but now I begin to fear she will choose even a worse fate than that. You see I hoped so much from this introduction to Lord Lochiel, and now it is ending in worse than nothing, for a man at his time of life doesn’t like to be played fast and loose with⁠—”

“Ah,” interrupted Miss Judith with a deep sigh, “if we could only teach her what wickedness it is to play football with men’s hearts⁠—”

“Football! football!” echoed Lettice, coming into the room at that moment bright and radiant from her morning’s ride, with a bunch of yellow roses in her hand, which she arranged tastefully in the bosom of her riding-habit while she was talking. “Football! Who is going to play, auntie? How I should enjoy a game if it were not the very middle of summer and everyone at tropical heat! Is the irreproachable earl starting it among his tenantry?”

Aunt Rosamond frowned severely.

“Lettice, when you speak of my friends I will thank you to speak of them respectfully. Tell me, if you please, who were your companions this morning.”

“Oh, Mrs. St. John Waters and I started alone, afterwards ever so many joined us for a chat (all such nice people, auntie), among others Lilla McCormack and her brother.” This was said with a mischievous twinkle of the eye.

The aunts exchanged glances.

“Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond sternly, “you see a great deal too much of the McCormacks to please me. Lilla is all very well, but please remember I won’t have you carrying on a flirtation with that Captain Ivie.”

“But auntie, you know,” pleaded Lettice, “I couldn’t flirt⁠—I am too unsophisticated! There was no one to teach me at home, and no one to practise on except poor old Roberts and Dr. Herron.” Here she drew down the corners of her little mouth deprecatingly.

“Don’t interrupt me, Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond angrily. “It seems to me you know quite as much about flirtation as any young lady of your age, and perhaps a little more. What I want to impress upon you is that it is incumbent upon a niece of mine and living under my roof to conduct herself at all times with propriety and to be wise in the selection of her intimate friends. And one thing let me warn you of, Lettice: I tell you frankly I won’t incur the responsibility of having you here another season, so this will be your one and only chance of making a creditable marriage, therefore you had better be prudent and⁠—”

“Make hay while the sun shines,” laughs Lettice. “Yes, auntie, and I have such a world of hay to make this morning that I must set about it this very minute.”

“Captain and Miss McCormack,” announced the footman at that moment, throwing back the drawing-room door.

Aunt Rosamond looked annoyed. Lettice rose instantly and shook hands warmly with Miss McCormack, gave a more subdued welcome to Captain Ivie, and said very softly to him as she passed out of the room, “Aunt Rosamond thinks I see too much of you. I really daren’t stay and talk this morning. Goodbye till tonight.”

“Really, Ivie,” said Lilla to her brother that same night as they drove home from a ball at which the captain had managed to secure Lettice for no less than three round dances⁠—“really, Ivie, you have made wonderful progress considering how short a time you have known that girl. What an immense restraint, too, you must have put upon yourself to confine your attentions absolutely to one young lady for a period of three weeks!”

“Hang it, Lilla,” broke in Ivie, “can’t you give a man credit for having a heart in his body even though he has been in the habit of handing it about in small portions? I tell you that girl, as you call her⁠—”

“Will be your wife before the end of the season if you play your cards properly and secure her before she has had time to find you out,” interrupted Lilla; “but if you allow society to rub off the rough edges of her rusticity or simplicity⁠—whichever you like to call it⁠—then she’ll throw you over as the others have done.”

After that identical ball there was heavy and prolonged consultation in the Misses Tremarten’s dressing-room as they too discussed the events of the evening and Miss Lettice’s deportment.

“It is not to be allowed,” said Aunt Rosamond with decision as she laid aside her lace lappets and jewelled pins for the nightcap of common life. “I know she is utterly ignorant of les convenances, but we are not, and her stupidity or wilfulness will be laid to our charge. Three round dances (the only three she danced) with Captain McCormack this evening, and when Lord Lochiel comes up for one quadrille she is ‘too tired,’ and that in spite of my frowns.”

“And I too frowned as hard as you did,” echoed Aunt Judith, “and I told her when I said good night just now that we should have much to say to her in the morning.”

“I don’t know that saying is much good, she is so heedless and self-willed. We must just bring all this flirtation and folly to an end, and make our flitting as soon as ever we can. It has this moment occurred to me we may as well accept Mrs. Rosneath’s invitation to Perth. Her estate joins Lord Lochiel’s, and he will soon be running down for the shooting. No doubt the McCormacks and the other undesirables will be off to Baden or Rome or Venice, and in this way we shall get clear of the whole objectionable clique.”

And while her aunts are thus plotting and contriving her future, Lettice stands barefooted in her long white nightdress at her bedroom window above. Her brown hair has fallen all tangled and wavy over her forehead and down to her waist, and in spite of the lateness of the hour her eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed. She has put out her lights and thrown open her window to say good night to the clear golden moon and myriads of silver stars shining out in the summer’s sky, and is drinking in the fresh sweet air which comes to her redolent of the plants in the balcony below.

“Now over there is the west,” she is saying to herself, “and down there somewhere are the dear old Welsh hills, and here is a great big kiss going to dear papa.” She gathers one off her lips and throws it into the silent night air. “And here is another for Lilla McCormack,” she says, throwing a second as far as her arm will reach; “and here is a third for⁠—” But the rest of the sentence she whispers to herself.