The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [70]
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when the car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came down them, and solemnly assisted her to alight, while the setter and spaniel, who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of barking, smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to conduct her to the drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to take off her coat, uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of all things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double staircase rose overawingly at the end of the hall; the floor under her feet was dark and slippery, and when she did at length prepare to follow the butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses was not as pleasant as it sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his ears, and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an umbrella over the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
“D—n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, “can’t you keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who was crossing the hall, “Ho-ho! That’s a fine girl, begad! What’s she doing in my hall?”
“Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of shocked propriety. “That is a young lady visitor.”
“Then she’s my visitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous stick on the ground, “and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I’ll drive her out in my carriage to-morrow.”
“You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying the master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with her, followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an immeasurable distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her, still further off, the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just topping the cushion of a low arm-chair.
“Oh, how do you do!” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child’s frock at which she had been working. “You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart’s manner might have assured anyone less alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark; but such discernment was beyond Francie.
“Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said abjectly, “and as she had the car ordered for me I didn’t like—”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined bonhommie that was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you are here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her chair, and shook hands with the newcomer, as Lady Dysart strode from the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as responsive as