Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [29]
“Fanny,” Madame Delahoussaye said, with a touch of warning in her tone, “Sir William has only just arrived. You forget yourself, my dear.”
“Indeed, I do not. Did I forget myself, I might remain in Sir William's company for hours, Mamma,” Fanny said plaintively. “It is because I cannot forget myself that I must bid Sir William adieu.”
“I should think a walk in the Park might improve your spirits,” Lieutenant Hearst observed.
“I am certain that it should.” Fanny turned without further ado and hastened from the drawing-room.
“Fanny—” Madame set down her needlework, her eyes on Tom Hearst, who had thrust himself away from the hearth.
“Do not disturb yourself, dear Madame,*’ the Lieutenant said, bending gallantly over her hand. “I shall make certain your daughter comes to no harm.”
“But it snows!” Madame Delahoussaye cried, Sir William forgotten. She snatched her hand from Tom Hearst's with a baleful look and hastened after Fanny.
The Lieutenant threw back his head and laughed aloud, much to Fitzroy Payne's dismay and, to judge by his countenance, Lord Harold Trowbridge's amusement. That gentleman had set aside his London journal, the better to observe Tom Hearst's tricks. But he rose now in Madame Delahoussaye's wake, and clapped the Lieutenant on the shoulder.
“You had much better play at cards with me, my good fellow,” Trowbridge told him. “Leave the chit to her mamma.”
“I must offer my apologies, Sir William,” Fitzroy Payne said, with a heightened gravity, as Trowbridge and the Lieutenant bowed and turned towards the hall. “I fear our household is in some disarray. The Earl's passing has made us all unlike ourselves.”
“Or perhaps,” George Hearst observed from his corner, “more truly like ourselves?” He closed his book and rose, of a mind to follow his brother. “I fear; Sir William, that Death has forced us all to reckon with mortality. And so you find us as we shall probably face our graves—with determined frivolity, indifferent tempers, and general regret.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Sir William replied. “I had always aspired to meet my Maker armed with a comfortably full stomach and a good night's rest.”
My old friend's good humour was lost upon Mr. Hearst.
“Then you would indeed be fortunate,” he gravely observed, “and in a measure but rarely accorded your fellows. I am sure my uncle wished for the same—with the added thought that Death, however inevitable, was better met on a more distant day. You see how little his hopes availed him. Not all the power and wealth the Earl of Scargrave might summon, could command him another hour of life.”
“Assuredly,” Sir William said, with an uneasy glance for the Countess. Isobel's brown eyes looked overly-large in her white face, and they were fixed dreadfully upon Mr. Hearst. “You have undoubtedly profited by your uncle's example.”
“The Earl loved to instruct, Sir William, however little his pupils warranted the lesson.” This last was spoken with an edge of bitterness, and George Hearst's mouth set into a hard line. I thought, as I gazed at him, how little he resembled his brother; where the Lieutenant's eyes were wont to dance, Mr. Hearst's were hollow; and the excellent moulding of the cavalryman's features was turned harsh and angular in the ecclesiastic's. An expression of abstraction swept over his face as I studied it, and with the briefest of nods for us all, Mr. Hearst left the drawing-room. Sir William expelled a heavy sigh, as though shifting a burdensome weight, and turned to Lord Scargrave with a smile.
“Well, my lord, if the spectre of Death has shown us your truest self, we may rest easy in the stewardship of the earldom. For in your own case, Lord Payne—or should I say, Lord Scargrave—only an increase in your usual sense, estimable self-restraint, and good breeding is evident. Rarely has a gentleman conducted himself with such dignity, in the midst of so much—distraction.”
Fitzroy Payne merely inclined his head, but I silently applauded my old friend; he had perfectly described the newly-titled Earl. The more