Short Fiction · Trooping with Crows (4/5) (1/3)

III

Still Among Crows

The London season has ended, another act in life’s drama has been played out, and the actors, wearied with failure or dazzled with success, as the case may be, have one and all taken flight to hide their disappointment or freshen their laurels by Scottish hillsides or Swiss lakes, or any other of Nature’s strongholds that wealth or fashion may dictate.

Lettice and her aunts are ensconced for a long visit at Mrs. Rosneath’s wide, ugly, yet, beyond everything else, comfortable mansion in Perthshire, and Captain and Miss McCormack have suddenly discovered that there is a charming little shooting-box to let at Ingleside, not ten miles distant from Rosneath.

“The very place beyond any other,” Lilla said to her brother as she signed and sealed her letter accepting the agent’s offer of the house. “What consternation there will be in the camp when we put in our first appearance at Rosneath, and those wise old ladies find themselves out-generalled by a young tactician like me! By the by, they nearly put a stop to your running with their absurd surveillance of that girl the last few weeks.”

Captain Ivie fidgeted. Bent as he was upon marrying Lettice, he could as yet scarcely bring his mind to the planning and scheming which Lilla conceived to be the only way of winning her.

He took up Lilla’s letter.

“It’s a cursed country for riding,” he said⁠—“hard, flinty, and rough. I know it well⁠—”

“Of course you know it well,” interrupted Lilla with a short laugh which grated unpleasantly on her brother’s ear. “Isn’t that delightful Scotch manse where you spent six weeks flirting with the minister’s daughter somewhere near? What was the name of the girl⁠—Miss Maggie Forbes or Ford? However, she’ll not be likely to trouble us, so it doesn’t much matter.”

Captain Ivie winced again.

“ ’Pon my life, Lilla,” he said, “I’d back you against any woman living in the art of making disagreeable speeches; you know well enough that thing has been over and done with long ago as far as I’m concerned.” Then he lit a cigar and went out.

“Over and done with long ago,” was it? No doubt as far as he was concerned it might be, but would the old Scotch pastor tell the same tale as he watched his pretty little daughter’s rosy cheeks grow pale and her bright eyes become heavy and tear-dimmed while she waited day after day for the letter which the handsome and fascinating captain had promised his sister would send, inviting her to stay at their London home as his promised wife?

Somewhere near Ingleside Captain Ivie had met with a riding accident, had been carried to the manse, and had been carefully nursed and tended by the pastor’s only daughter. It was an old story: the patient got well and the nurse fell sick, but with another complaint, and then there had followed a little love episode (one among a thousand in the captain’s life) which he was pleased to declare was now “all over and done with.”

It was very true that the surveillance over Lettice towards the end of the season had been severe, and Lettice had rebelled against it proportionately. Her opportunities for meeting either the captain or Miss Lilla had considerably dwindled owing to the tact and determination of Aunt Rosamond, who resolutely refused all invitations for Lettice where she thought there was the slightest chance of encountering the McCormacks.

On the one or two occasions, however, that Lettice and Captain Ivie had met it must be admitted that they each made the most of their opportunity.

“They’ll frown and look savage if I dance with you, Captain McCormack, and scold me all the way home. (They always begin when we’re all shut in together, and they know I can’t get away.) But I won’t dance with anyone else tonight, I promise you that.” And Lettice would keep her word, and to everyone who came up “Hoping they might have the pleasure,” she would be “Oh, so sorry, but I really am too tired,” and she would sit as a wallflower for the rest of the evening.

“Can she really be in love with the man?” wondered Aunt Rosamond more than once; “and is she really clever enough to be laying her plans to marry him?” So dispensing with Goodwood and the last few balls of the season the lady hurried on their departure to the North, and a full ten days before the London world had spread its wings to take flight they were fairly ensconced as members of the Rosneath household.

“Oh, this is like dear old Wales again!” exclaimed Lettice as the blue Auchterils burst upon her view with their layers of grey mist towering peak over peak above the silent lakes. “Auntie Judie, I really think I must have been getting homesick without knowing it. I have been so good and quiet lately, but those darling little hills will wake me up to life again, and you really won’t be able to hold me in now.”

“Won’t be able to hold her in now! Heavens!” groaned Aunt Rosamond in spirit, “have we ever been able to do so? What can a good Providence have in store for us now, I wonder?”

This question, however, was fated to have a very speedy solution, for Aunt Rosamond had scarcely begun to feel at home at Rosneath, had only just had time to choose a comfortable light corner for her writing-desk in the morning-room and a particular reclining-chair in the drawing-room for her own special use, when, to her unspeakable horror, Mrs. Rosneath announced the fact that Captain McCormack had taken Ingleside for the shooting season.

“Taken Ingleside! that man!” exclaimed Aunt Rosamond, in her surprise betraying herself. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rosneath,” she added, “if he is a friend of yours, but he has made himself a little unpleasant to me.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” replied her hostess, “because we all like Captain Ivie so much. He is an old friend of my husband’s⁠—a little fast perhaps, but still so delightful.”

“Lettice,” interrogated Aunt Rosamond, as soon as she found herself alone with her niece, “did you know the McCormacks had taken Ingleside, and would be down upon us here in a day or two?”

“Oh yes, auntie,” laughed Lettice, “I knew it two days ago. Lilla wrote and told me they were coming, but I didn’t say a word to you lest you should carry me off bodily just as I had begun to have a little fun.”

Aunt Rosamond paused to collect her thoughts, frowning severely as she did so.

“Aunt Rosamond,” pleaded Lettice, thinking a little explanation might be timely, “if you only knew⁠—”

“I know exactly what that man is and what he is trying to do, Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond angrily; “and let me tell you, once for all, that I will not for the rest of the time you are under my care allow the slightest approach to a flirtation on your part with him.”

“Auntie,” said Lettice, batting a tennis-ball high in the air as she spoke⁠—they were standing together on the lawn⁠—“I’ve told you over and over again that I can’t flirt, and never shall be able to. The only reason I”⁠—here another ball was sent into the neighbouring bushes⁠—“like to talk to Captain McCormack is”⁠—a third ball rises and falls and is sent off again⁠—“that he once knew that dear old Doctor Herron who is taking such care of papa, and we are always talking about him all the time you think I am flirting.” Here Lettice put both little hands into her tennis-apron’s pocket. “Auntie, all the balls are gone; I’m so sorry, but I must run and find them while I remember where they are,” and away she flew.

And Miss Tremarten, left standing alone in the sunshine under a big green umbrella, tried to see her way out of the difficulties which beset her on every side. “If she goes back to Wales free and unfettered she will be certain to marry that country doctor,” she argued to herself; “if she sees much more of that captain it will end in an elopement I’m convinced, and if I take her from here tomorrow she will lose all chance of winning the” (mark, not that) “earl. Is there any possible road out of such a maze of troubles?”

So the old lady stood thinking and thinking in the bright sunshine with the birds twittering all round her. The sound of young merry voices and the click click of croquet balls and mallets came to her from the other side of the hedge, for Mrs. Rosneath’s house had begun to fill now, and there was also a constant flux and reflux of visitors from Lord Lochiel’s, which adjoined Rosneath.

And as the old lady stood there her mind was made up and her plan of action formed. Yes, Lettice was tiresome, Lettice was headstrong, but as yet she had not done anything egregiously wrong. She was her only brother’s only child, and the young mother who had lived and died in those faraway years had been a much-cherished friend. Then, too, the girl was her own and Judith’s heiress, and how much more creditable and respectable would it be that the family estates and property should pass into the hands of a Countess Lochiel than into those of a country doctor’s wife or a Mrs. McCormack! Aunt Rosamond shuddered in fancy as the dreadful combination of syllables passed through her mind. “She may think herself very clever, and Miss Lilla McCormack may think herself very clever, and the captain no doubt fancies he has brains, but perhaps they will find that someone else has brains too.” And the lady slanted her green sunshade carefully over her eyes and went back to her shady nook in the drawing-room perfectly satisfied with the part she had resolved to play.

Her plan, after all, was a very simple one. She would stay at Rosneath another eight days only. In a week’s time there was to be a grand archery fête and distribution of prizes at Lochiel Castle. Lettice’s skill in archery was pronounced, and far above the average; her dress too, of dark green and cream, suited her à ravir, and there was little doubt but what with her bright delicate beauty and the prestige of her previous successes she would be the queen of the day. Lord Lochiel, whose attentions had been marked and unremitting since their arrival at Rosneath, would, she was sure, fairly succumb to such a combination of attractions, and no doubt his coronet would be at Lettice’s feet before the end of the day. “If Lettice accepts him,” argued the lady⁠—and what girl could be proof against a coronet?⁠—“I shall the next day carry her off to Paris before she has had time to alter her mind, and also to order her trousseau, for there shall be no long engagement, I’ll take care of that. And if she refuses him I shall carry her off all the same. We’ll do Paris, and the Alps, and Switzerland, and Vienna, and Rome, and⁠—and⁠—” here the energetic old lady was compelled to pause and arrange her geographical knowledge⁠—“and New York,” she went on, “and Niagara, and Utah, and Mexico, and Heaven only knows where we won’t go before I let her return to either of her disreputable suitors.”

But while Aunt Rosamond was so comfortably planning out her own and her niece’s future, Captain and Miss McCormack were spinning a web of a somewhat different texture.

Very close and confidential had been the talk of brother and sister during their drive over the last ten miles of their journey which brought them to Ingleside.

“It’s your last chance, Ivie,” said the sister; “it’s now or never without a doubt. Follow out my advice to the very letter, or else you’ll ruin everything.”

“I suppose I must,” replied Ivie, twirling his long silken moustache, for Lilla had fairly talked him into obedience now. “I should be very sorry, though, ’pon my honour, if it all fell through, and Lettice⁠—Miss Tremarten I mean⁠—were compromised in any way.”

“You idiot!” said Lilla in low angry tones. “You haven’t the sense of a tomtit even, I declare. Don’t you see that the girl must be compromised, or else it will fall through? How do you mean to get her, I should like to know, if not in the way I propose? Do you mean, after you have talked her over, to go to her father and tell him that you have little more than your pay to live on⁠—that you are up to your eyes in debt, and have given paper enough to the Jews to write a volume of sermons on, and then are you fool enough to imagine he will give you his handsome daughter with her fortune unfettered by settlements and trustees? Bah! I’ve no patience with such imbecility.” And Miss Lilla resolutely shut her mouth and refused to open it for the rest of the journey.

Lettice wondered much at not seeing either Captain Ivie or his sister for two or three days after their arrival, of which she had heard through her maid.

Lilla’s orders to her brother, however, had been very positive on that head.

“Don’t on any account show yourself at Rosneath till the archery day, Ivie. Here’s Lochiel’s card,” she said, handing it to him. “Depend upon it the old dragons will carry off the princess at once if the disreputable knight makes his appearance on the scene. Their maid told mine the other day when they met in the village that they were to leave the day after the fête. I’ve no doubt the clever old ladies imagine that Miss Lettice in dark green will knock Lord Lochiel over completely, but perhaps there are some others as clever as they, and Miss Lettice, instead of carrying off a coronet, may be carried off herself. But for Heaven’s sake, Ivie, don’t forget it’s your very last chance; if you let that day pass it’s all up with you. Once they get her away from here your little game is over.”

The day for the archery fête dawned in brilliant blue sky and golden sunshine, and, best of all, without even the rustle of a soft south wind.

“Of course the irreproachable earl will think of the immaculate tenants,” said Lettice to her aunts as she buckled on her waistbelt and counted up her arrows. “I only hope there won’t be a crowd.”

“My dear,” said Aunt Rosamond, “some day you may be very sorry for the way in which you habitually speak of a very dear friend of mine and one worthy of all esteem.”

Aunt Rosamond spoke so gently (for her, that is) that Lettice was moved to instant penitence.

“Auntie, please forgive me,” she said, going up to the old lady and kissing her. “I don’t know why I am so ill-tempered this morning. I think I’m getting a little tired of all this gaiety, there seems so much to get through today before bedtime. First the shooting, then the dinner, then the ball, and it seemed as if a crowd would add to the tiresomeness of it all.”

It flashed through Aunt Rosamond’s mind that it was just possible that the unexplained absence of Captain Ivie and his sister from the gaieties of the neighbourhood might have something to do with Lettice’s weariness and irritability. However, she very wisely abstained from any questions.

“My dear,” she said kindly, “you are a little overdone. Directly after the prizes are given away you had better go into the library at Lochiel (it will be the quietest room in the house such a day as this) and have a long rest, then you will be bright and fresh by dinnertime.”

And the good old lady’s mind wandered away to another possibility⁠—viz., what if, from a hint she might let fall, Lord Lochiel were to choose the same quiet room for a little rest, and what if⁠—But here her thoughts were broken off by the announcement that the carriage was waiting that was to take them to the castle.

“A rosebud garden of girls,” was Lord Lochiel’s comment, as, having welcomed Lettice and her aunts, he led them through the winding paths of the shrubberies to where, in a pleasantly-shaded corner of the grounds, the targets had been placed. Some twenty or thirty young ladies, dressed becomingly in the archer’s green and silver, were sauntering hither and thither on the smoothly-shaven lawn; others, in gauzy pink or maize, wandered in and out trying the points of the arrows, sometimes even essaying a shot, and a low murmur and ripple of talk and laughter mingled with the pleasant twitter of the birds in the big firs above, and the humming of the heather-fed bees.