Salome Part 11

"Yes; but perhaps it may turn out differently. You are sure to get on, whatever happens. It is about Raymond I am so afraid. I cannot imagine him in an office in Harstone.--How that girl is staring at me, Reginald, and the boy too. Is it at my hair?"

"Come along," said Reginald; "don't look at them."

He turned towards the low wall which skirts the side of the down where the high rocks, through which the river runs, rise to a considerable height on the Roxburgh side. Reginald leaned with folded arms against the wall, and Salome, uncomfortably conscious that her hair was floating over her back in most dire confusion, stood by him, never turning her head again. At last Salome heard a voice close to her say,--

"Yes, I am sure it is, Digby. Let me ask her."

"Nonsense. You can't be sure."

There was a moment's silence, and then Kate Wilton seized on her chance.

Salome's pocket-handkerchief, as she turned at a sign from Reginald to walk away, fell from the pocket at the side of her dress.

"I think this is yours," said Kate, "your pocket-handkerchief; and I think you are my cousin. We--we came to see you at Maplestone two years ago."

The brightest colour rose to Salome's face, and she said, "Yes, I am Salome Wilton. Reginald!"--for Reginald had walked on, resolutely determined not to believe they had any kins.h.i.+p with the boy and girl who had stared at them--"Reginald," Salome said, overtaking him, "do stop;"

adding in a lower voice, "It's so uncivil."

Reginald, thus appealed to, was obliged to turn his head, and in the very gruffest voice said, "How do you do?" to Digby, who advanced towards him.

"I am so glad we met you," Kate said. "I have been watching you for ever so long. Something made me sure you were our cousin. I was not so sure about your brother. I daresay he has very much grown in two years, but you are so little altered, and"--Kate paused and laughed--"I knew your hair; it is such wonderful hair. Don't you remember how you used to let it down at Maplestone, and make me guess which was your face and which was the back of your head? It was not so long then."

Salome felt more and more uncomfortable about her hair, and said, "I am quite ashamed of my untidiness; but I have lost all my pins, and my hair is such a dreadful bother."

"It is beautiful," said Kate. "I am sure I should not call it a bother.

I wish you could give me some; but we have all scraggy rats' tails. We should like to walk with you, if we may," Kate continued. "Which way are you going?"

"Oh, no way in particular. Reginald and I came out for a walk. We have had such dreadful weather since we have been here."

"Yes; and Digby and I, like you and your brother, were tired of staying at home. It is so dull for the boys when they have bad weather in the holidays. I hope it is going to clear up now."

Salome hoped so too, and then there was silence. But Kate soon broke it with some trivial remark, and the girls made more rapid advances towards friends.h.i.+p than the boys. Kate was pleasant and good-tempered, and was easy to get on with. But Salome listened in vain for much conversation between the boys. All the talk came from Digby, and she felt vexed with her brother for his ungraciousness. But boys are generally more reticent than girls, and have not so many small subjects to discuss with each other on first acquaintance, till they get upon school life and games.

"I hope you will come home with us," Kate said, after a pause, during which she had been calculating the time of her mother and Louise's departure to luncheon at a friend's house in the neighbourhood. A glance at the clock of a church they pa.s.sed rea.s.sured her. "They were certain to have started," she thought. "Aunt Betha would not mind if I took home half-a-dozen people to luncheon."

"You are going out of your way, Salome," said Reginald. "We ought to turn up this way to Elm Fields."

"I want them to come home to luncheon, Digby. Do make them."

"Oh yes, pray, come," said Digby, "unless you have anything better to do."

"Oh no," said Salome simply. "Reginald and I were going to get some buns at a shop. We did not intend to go back till--"

A warning, not to say angry, glance from Reginald stopped Salome, and she added,--

"Perhaps we had better not come, thanks. Mamma and Ada and the children are coming this afternoon, and Reginald has to be at the station at five o'clock to meet them."

"Well, as it's not one o'clock yet," said Digby, "there's time, I should think, for both." He changed companions as he spoke, and, leaving Kate to Reginald, walked briskly on with Salome towards Edinburgh Crescent.

The bell was ringing for the "children's dinner" as the four cousins were admitted by the "boy in b.u.t.tons" who answered the doctor's bell, and had in truth time for little else than swinging back that door on the hinges and receiving patients' notes, telegrams, and messages.

"You are late, Miss Kate," was Bean's greeting. By reason of his name poor Bean had a variety of sobriquets in the family. Of these "Stalky Jack" and "Vegetable" were amongst the most conspicuous.

"Is mamma gone?" Kate asked anxiously.

"Yes, miss, just turned the corner as you came up. Lady Monroe don't lunch till one-thirty: _we_ lunch at one sharp."

Another ring, before the door had well closed, took Bean to it again, and Kate, saying, "It is all right, Salome, come upstairs," led the way to the room she shared with Louise, while Digby took Reginald into the dining-room.

An evening dress of blue and white lay on one of the little beds, and Kate dexterously covered it with a white shawl; for Salome's deep c.r.a.pe reminded her that neither she nor Louise was really wearing the proper mourning for her uncle.

"Just take the daisies out of your hats," her mother had said, "and wear your black cashmeres. It is really impossible to provide mourning for a family like this; and besides, so few people here will know much about it--so many are away; and by the time Roxburgh is full again, the six weeks' mourning for an uncle will be over. Still, as you two elder girls are seen with me, you must not be in colours; it is a fortunate thing I had just had that black silk made up."

The memory of her mother's words pa.s.sed swiftly through Kate's mind, and she hoped Salome would not notice the blue dress. She need not have been afraid. Salome was fully occupied with plaiting up her hair and possessing herself of two or three stray hair-pins she saw on the dressing-table.

The room was not particularly tidy or attractive; very different to the bright sunny room at Maplestone, with its wreath of ivy round the windows and its decorations within, in which Ada delighted. The back of Edinburgh Crescent looked out on strips of dark gardens, shut in by red brick walls; and beyond, the backs of another row of houses.

"Louise and I are obliged to share a room," Kate said. "Though this house looks large, we fill it from top to bottom--we are such an enormous family. That's poor little Guy," she said, as a wailing, fretful cry was heard. "The nursery is next our room. Guy is our baby: he is very delicate, and I don't think papa has much hope that he will live. Now we must come down to luncheon. I hope you don't mind barley soup and treacle pudding. We are certain not to have anything better to-day, because mamma and Louise are out." She said this laughing as she ran down before Salome.

The long table with its row of young faces bewildered Salome. She felt shy and uncomfortable, and Aunt Betha, rising from her place at the head of the table, advanced kindly toward her.

"Come and sit next me, my dear. There are so many cousins; don't attempt to speak to them all. Will you have some hashed mutton or cold beef?--Go on with your dinners, Edith and Maude"--for the little girls had stopped short in eating to gaze curiously at their cousin. "Do you take beer, my dear? Only water! that is right. We are all better for taking water.--Now, Digby, send down the potatoes.--We wait on ourselves at luncheon. I hope you find your lodgings comfortable. Mrs. Pryor is a very superior person, rather gloomy, but Ruth laughs enough for a dozen.

A giddy girl she was when she lived here.--You remember Ruth, Kate?"

"No, I don't," said Kate; "we have a tide of girls pa.s.sing through the house. They are all alike."

Aunt Betha's kindly chatter was a great help to Salome, and she began to feel less oppressed by the presence of her cousins. Such an army of boys and girls it seemed to her! and the home picture so widely different to that which she had known at Maplestone. "Children's dinner," with neither father nor mother present, at Dr. Wilton's was of the plainest, and Mrs. Wilton expended her ornamental taste on her drawing-room, where she had many afternoon teas and "at homes." Dinner parties or even luncheon parties were rare, and the dining-room was therefore generally bare and commonplace in its arrangements. A dusty fern, which looked unhappy and gas-stricken, drooped rather than lived in a china pot in the middle of the table; but beyond this there were no signs of flower or of leaf.

Yet it was _home_, and Salome felt by force of contrast homeless and sad. The boys were going to see a cricket match, and Digby wanted Reginald to come with them.

"I shall not have time, thank you. We ought to be going back now, Salome."

But Kate overruled this, and Reginald was obliged to consent, and went off with his cousins till four o'clock, when he was to return to pick up his sister and take her to Elm Fields before going to the station.

"We will have a cozy talk in the school-room, and I will get Aunt Betha to let us have some tea. The children are all going out, and mamma and Louise will not be back yet, so we shall have peace." Kate said this as, with her arm in Salome's, she led the way to the school-room,--a very bare, untidy room in the wing built out at the back of the house, and over Dr. Wilton's consulting-room. Two battered leather chairs, which had seen years of service, were on either side of the fireplace; and there was a long bookcase, taking up the wall on one side, where school books for every age and degree were arranged in brown paper covers. A writing-desk standing on the table, with a cover over it, and an inkstand with pen and pencil, all belonging to Miss Scott, the daily governess, was the only really tidy spot in the whole room. The walls were covered with maps and pictures cut from the _Ill.u.s.trated News_--two or three of these in frames--conspicuous amongst them the familiar child in the big sun bonnet tying up her stocking on the way to school, and another sitting on a snowy slope, apparently in a most uncomfortable position, but smiling nevertheless serenely on the world generally.

"This is our school-room, and I am glad I have nearly done with it. That cracked piano is enough to drive one wild. It is good enough for the 'little ones' to drum on. Do you care for music?"

"Yes, I care for it, but I don't play much. Ada plays beautifully."

"Ada is very pretty, isn't she? I remember one of you was very pretty."

"Yes, Ada is thought lovely. She is not in the least like me."

"Well, I hope we shall be good friends. I am sorry you are out in that poky part of Roxburgh; but Digby and I shall come very often, and you must come here whenever you can."

"It is so odd," Kate went on, "that only a year ago we used to call you our grand relations, who were too stuck-up to care for us--"

"Oh! please, don't talk so," said Salome, with a sudden earnestness of appeal. "Pray don't talk so. I can't bear it."