Mrs. Dorriman Volume I Part 8

Grace and her sister saw it come with different feelings. Grace was resolved to take her stand from the first, and Margaret was so much occupied with her anxieties for her sister that she forgot to have any anxieties for herself; and into this small group of people, intensely interested, and full of suppressed excitement, came the slight pale woman, herself conscious of so much conflicting emotion that she had not much room for acute observation.

"So you are here," said John Sandford, as he gave her his hand. Kissing between these two had never been in fas.h.i.+on; and then in a manner that he meant to be imposing, but which only succeeded in being pompous, he pushed the two girls towards her.

"There," he said, "go and welcome her; Mrs. Dorriman, my wards, Grace and Margaret Rivers."

Grace held out her hand, with an air which was entirely lost upon Mrs.

Dorriman, who was conscious only of one overpowering wish, to go to her room and cry without being observed.

She was composed because she had in years gone by learned self-control--any exhibition of feeling seemed only to place her at her brother's level of sarcasm.

Margaret, stirred to the depths of her kind and unselfish heart, gave an appealing look at her sister, and then bending timidly she kissed the pale cheek and said something in a kindly manner about resting and a cup of tea.

Mrs. Dorriman was surprised and moved at the girl's action, and allowed herself to be taken upstairs and looked after in her own room with a feeling akin to grat.i.tude.

The evidence of friends.h.i.+p offered just when she was feeling so forlorn came to her as a ray of suns.h.i.+ne. The house, so bare and so desolate-looking in its exterior, had struck her painfully as she went up to it. Her last home, with its wooded knolls and a lovely background of hills, was vividly present to her.

Why, if her brother did not want money, had he sold the place? Surely he must have had some liking for a home where so many generations had lived and died, and, as her eye took in the ugly garden and the closely-built streets at a stone's throw only of his gate, her wonder increased.

She was conscious of a perfect sinking of the heart when she thought that here must probably all the rest of her days be spent.

Christie's words rushed into her mind, and then came the meeting at the hall-door, and Margaret's sweetness.

Yes; that was a real comfort to her, and no caress ever was bestowed with greater results; the drop of kindness just when she so needed kindness sank into her heart. Whatever the days might hold for her in the future, this would always be gratefully remembered.

Poor Margaret, having left her, went to congratulate Grace, as she did herself, upon so pleasant a surprise. Instead of the disagreeable and authoritative woman they had pictured to themselves, here was a gentle and timid lady, whom it would be easy to love. Full of this relief, she found Grace in their own room.

She was leaning against the shutters, and her eyes were fixed upon the town. Margaret knew by instinct that she was ruffled.

"Anything wrong?" she asked, brightly, going up to her, and laying her hand affectionately upon her shoulder.

Grace made no reply, but she gave a little shrug, and dislodged her sister's hand.

"What is wrong, Gracie?" asked Margaret anxiously; "what have I done?

Are you vexed with me, dear?"

"Vexed with you! oh, dear no! but you really are very dull, Margaret.

You make life here difficult for me."

"I make life more difficult for you!" And Margaret coloured, partly from a just sense of Grace's unfairness, and partly because she was indignant as well as hurt.

"How can I put that Mrs. Dorriman in her place, when my sister, my own sister, makes such a fuss about her?"

"It never occurred to me that she was a person you would think of putting in her place."

"That is just what I complain of."

"She seems to me so gentle and so timid. I think it will be more difficult for her to take up a position than you think. I cannot fancy her ever saying anything to you you may not like."

"If she does, I will soon let her know my opinion about her; but you heard what Mr. Sandford said, and I mistrust these quiet women. I feel as though she might be as obstinate as possible. Did you notice, her upper lip?"

"You are so much cleverer than I am, darling, and so much quicker. No; I only saw that she felt coming here very much, she looked ready to cry."

"Well, Margaret, if you think yourself wiser than I am, I give it up. As I said before--making a fuss about her at the very outset makes my part very much more difficult; and after all your violent professions it seems hard that on the very first opportunity you fail me, and take up a line of your own."

Poor Margaret! Though it was not the first time that Grace had accused her of swerving in her allegiance to her, it was the first time such an accusation had been made on such serious grounds.

Very real tears stood in her soft eyes as she held out her hand to her sister and said--

"What do you wish me to do? What can I do to please you?"

"To please me! Nothing; only for your own sake, Margaret, for the sake of being a little consistent, you need not gush over her, and pretend to like her, before you know whether she is for us or against us."

She turned away, and began to change her dress, her head held high, not yet forgiving. Margaret felt as though the luxury of tears would be a relief, but she thought she would make one more effort to win back her sister's cordiality.

"I am sure," she began, while her lip quivered nervously, "I mean nothing. I was sorry for her, and showed I felt sorry, but I think I shall hate her if her coming is to make differences between us."

"It need not make any difference if you are only true to me," said Grace, firmly. "Leave her alone and watch me, and you can do what I do."

"I never can," pleaded Margaret. "And oh! Grace, sometimes, when you are disdainful, I feel as if I must go and console. You don't know how hard it is for people when you draw yourself up and say something cutting. I always feel so sorry for whoever it is."

"You are a little goose," said Grace melting a little at this tribute to her power, "you exaggerate everything about me."

But she did not think so.

She threw her arms round her sister now with a protecting gesture she herself was unconscious of, and hurried to get ready for dinner, in a way that Grace Rivers hardly would have done some days before. At any rate, she had learnt one lesson--not to be late for anything Mr.

Sandford was connected with.

The two girls went into the drawing-room only as dinner was announced by an insignificant little bell, and Mr. Sandford marched off with his sister.

Placing her at the head of the table, he said in his most pompous manner, "It is my wish that you act as mistress of my house, and that all should consider you in that light," and he glared round as though many were there to hear this, and not only two girls who already understood this.

Mrs. Dorriman, conscious of an action antagonistic to his wishes, sat silent, feeling as though she were a traitor; never was there any one more acutely self-tormenting, more sensitive about anything she did, than this poor lady. She was perpetually worrying herself about trifles she might, or should, have done or left undone, and this was no trifle; though she little thought that her presence in her brother's house, and her being uprooted from her little home, was due to the colour and agitation that had betrayed to her brother that she had knowledge of the papers he wished to possess.

She roused herself after a time and was then for the first time conscious of Margaret's changed manner.

All the sweetness and kindness which had so cheered her advent, and lessened the pain of her arrival, had gone, and was replaced by a cold indifference--which was Margaret's only possible way of being unlike herself.

Poor Mrs. Dorriman imagined that she was in some way in fault, and blamed herself for her abstraction, but her efforts were quite unavailing--the girl's one anxiety was to prove her loyalty and allegiance to her sister. She was conscious of a dawning feeling of affection for the little woman who sat looking pale and sweet opposite Mr. Sandford's ma.s.sive figure. She had felt her clinging arms round her, and the feeling had been of comfort and sympathy, but Grace decreed otherwise, and Grace's word was her law.

Never, perhaps, sat four people together whose thoughts were of so different a nature; when four people live together, generally, there is, at any rate a bond of union, some interest, in which, however much they diverge in their thoughts towards it, forms, at last, something in common--here there was nothing!

Mr. Sandford, at other times an acute observer, noticed nothing to-night. The face of his sister opposite to him affected him strangely.

No one had so faced him since his wife had died, and he was so busy looking through the long vista of years, and seeing the one creature he had ever loved, looking back at him from the past, that he ate mechanically and did not speak.

At length he roused himself and addressed Mrs. Dorriman, "I hope you will bring things into better order," he said abruptly; "if the cook cannot do better than this, you must change her. I look to you. I'm not a dainty man, but I pay for the best and I intend having the best."

"And I will do my best," said Mrs. Dorriman, gently.