CHAPTER VI.

Esdaile Court.

Their ways were ways of pleasant grace, They toiled not neither did they spin; But since their smiles made glad the place, Dare men of sterner cast of face Account such carelessness a sin?

It was on a sunny September afternoon that Paul Seaton first saw Esdaile Court; and the mellowed Elizabethan house, with its stately avenues and large lake, was very pleasant to look upon in the autumn sunlight. On his arrival he was ushered by a stout and pompous butler into the drawing-room, where Lady Esdaile was taking tea with her son and daughter, aged respectively nine and fourteen. Lady Esdaile had been a great beauty in her day, and at eight-and-thirty was still a lovely woman.

"How do you do, Mr. Beaton?" she began. "How nice of you to come just in time for tea! Violet and Dick are having tea with me to-day for a treat, but they generally have it in the schoolroom, don't you know? Come, children, this is Mr. Beaton who is so kind as to come and teach Dick."

Violet, who inherited her mother's beauty, treated the new tutor to a supercilious little nod; but Dick, a plain and wholesome little boy, thrust a sticky and jam-besprinkled palm into Paul's outstretched hand.

"I say," said Dick, "I've been out shooting with father to-day."

"Have you?" replied Paul with polite interest. "I hope you have had good sport."

Dick shook his little red head. "We had bad luck," he said, "shocking bad luck; only four brace and a couple of hares all day. But father let me carry the birds home, and I got my clothes covered with blood," he added more cheerfully.

"As Dick has been out all day, and walked so far, I am letting him have an egg with his tea," said Lady Esdaile, "and he insists upon eating bread and jam with it. I wish he wouldn't! Do you think it will make him ill?"

"I cannot say. It is not a combination that would suit me, but other times other manners, you know, Lady Esdaile."

"What a fuss you make about a chap, mother!" exclaimed Dick with scorn. "I'm all right and feel as fit as a fiddle. But it is enough to make a fellow sick to hear you talking so much about whether things are good for us or not."

"Very well, darling. But promise me you will leave off eating jam with your egg the minute you begin to feel not quite well. And, oh! Mr. Sebright, I was forgetting all about you, and you have had such a long journey and must want your tea dreadfully! How stupid I am!"

"Not at all. The journey from Chayford is quite a short one really, only there are so many changes it makes it rather troublesome."

"I know. I hate changes, don't you? just when you've got your things all about the carriage and are settling yourself down to a nice book, a horrid guard or porter or something comes shouting at you, and makes you jump out of your carriage and leave half your things behind. And my maid never will help at stations, because she hates travelling and is offended with me every time I take her from home. She says the train makes her giddy or something. And you see I can't go without her, because I couldn't do my own hair to save my life."

"I suppose not," said Paul, feeling very much amused by her ladyship's flow of conversation.

"And there, I have gone and forgotten your tea again! How careless I am! I am afraid this tea is not very fresh, Mr. Sebright; in fact it has stood for over an hour; but Simmons (that is the butler) is so dreadfully offended if I send out for fresh tea to be made during the afternoon, that I really dare not do it. You won't mind much, will you, if it is rather strong and cold?"

Paul smiled, and forsook the paths of rectitude so far as to assure her ladyship that tea on the lees was the beverage he fancied above all others.

"Oh, how dear of you to say that! And you can have as much hot water as you like, though the hot water is cold too. But it will take off the bitter taste which makes the special nastiness of old tea. Is it very bad, now you come to drink it?" asked Lady Esdaile with sympathetic interest.

Paul lied bravely. "It is delicious."

"I am so glad. It really is tiresome having a butler who takes offence if you ask him to do anything!"

"It must make life very difficult, Lady Esdaile."

"It does; very difficult indeed. I often don't get enough to eat, because I daren't ask for more when Simmons is carving; but I make up with vegetables, because the footmen hand them, and I'm not afraid of a footman. Still, vegetables without meat are very fattening, don't you think? and the dread of my life is to get fat. I don't think that any woman looks well when she is fat, do you?"

"I really don't know," answered Paul, who had hitherto lived among women who cared for none of these things. "I am afraid I never thought about it."

"How quaint of you! But you are awfully clever, you see, and so never think about anything but books and sums and things. Now I'm not a bit clever or learned or anything."

Paul again wandered from the path of the upright by expressing polite surprise at this platitude.

"Have another cup of tea--do," begged Lady Esdaile. "If you don't, I shall know you told a story about its not tasting as bad as we expected."

And Paul was so charmed by her ladyship's beauty and good-nature, that he asked for another cup, and swallowed the same without wincing. Nevertheless he possessed the spirit of a philanthropist, so he remarked: "There is a sort of arrangement, I've seen somewhere, of putting the tea-leaves into a little bag and pouring the hot water over them. Then the leaves are removed; so that however long the tea stands, it never gets any stronger."

"What a lovely idea! and it would be such fun taking the tea-leaves out again while they were all wet."

"It would make a jolly mess, I bet!" agreed Dick enthusiastically. "You'd always let me do it, wouldn't you, mother?"

"Of course, darling, if you would promise to take care not to burn your fingers."

"I'd make a fine splash all over the cloth!" chuckled Dick.

"What a dirty boy you are!" said Violet reprovingly.

Dick did not reply to his sister in words; but he turned upon her such a wilfully contorted countenance that Violet dissolved into laughter.

"But I'm afraid Simmons wouldn't approve of that arrangement," sighed Lady Esdaile. "He always sets his face against anything fresh. I remember once Sir Richard bought a new kind of carving-knife--a _patent masticator_, I think it was called, or some such disgusting name--and Simmons said he would give notice rather than demean himself by using it. He had carved for the family for thirty years, he said, and his own right hand had been enough all that time, and would be till the end; it wasn't true, because he had always used a carving-knife of some sort; but Simmons is quite poetical when he is excited."

"What did Sir Richard do?" asked Paul.

"Oh! he roared with laughter and threw the thing behind the fire. To tell the truth, I believe Richard is as much afraid of Simmons as I am; but he'd rather die than own it."

Paul very soon settled down in his new quarters at Esdaile Court. He liked the place and the people. The latter were so different from everything that he had been accustomed to, that they completely fascinated him. Their wheels were all well oiled; and so they took life easily, and never seemed to look below the surface of things. And yet they did their duty in the state of life to which they were called; and they were high-minded and upright and well-bred, and were careful to act honourably and charitably towards their neighbours, and to go to the parish church regularly once every Sunday. They never talked about their hearts or their souls or their consciences; but ate and drank and were merry, and made the corner of the earth where their lot was cast a better place for their being in it.

Sir Richard Esdaile was a typical fox-hunting English squire, a good many years older than his beautiful wife, of whom he was intensely proud. He and Paul got on very well together, though they had nothing in common, save their mutual respect and admiration. As for little Dick, he at once began to adore Paul, and appointed his tutor his final court of appeal in all things; and Paul grew very fond of Dick, and was a better man for it.

"I suppose Dick will go into the army when he grows up," said Paul to Lady Esdaile one day.

"I suppose so, if he can get through those silly, tiresome examinations. And if he does, I do hope he'll go into a regiment where there is a pretty uniform; a blue one would be best for him with his red hair. I don't like scarlet with red hair, do you, Mr. Seaton?" Lady Esdaile had mastered Paul's name by this time.

Paul laughed. "I don't think it matters to a man what colour his clothes are."

"Don't you?"

"No; do you?"

"Oh! yes, dreadfully. I always adore to see men in dark blue. Think how nice a blue serge morning-suit looks on a man, and how sweet sailors always are! Of course a pink coat looks jolly for hunting, but I don't like red uniforms half as well as blue ones--especially for fair hair."

Lady Esdaile's way of looking at life was a source of never-ending amusement to Paul; she always seemed to be gazing at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. And Paul was not as severe on frivolity as he had been in the days when he so ruthlessly passed sentence on Alice; he was becoming more a man of the world, and consequently more sympathetic with, and tender towards, human nature. For life teaches a man more than all the Universities rolled in one.

"I've just had such a fright," Lady Esdaile confided to her son's tutor, when the latter had been about a year at Esdaile.

"What is the matter? Can I assist in anyway?" asked Paul, who was the help of the family in all difficulties, from the writing of French menus to the letting of cats out of traps.

"I was afraid Isabel Carnaby was coming to live with us."

"But who is Isabel Carnaby? I fear I cannot gauge the extent of your anxiety till I know who the lady is."

"Oh! I thought everybody knew Isabel. She is my husband's niece He had two sisters, Lady Farley and Mrs. Carnaby. Isabel was the Carnabys' only child, and Mrs. Carnaby died when she was born. It was a pity Mrs. Carnaby died, she had such lovely blue eyes and such a knack of knowing what suited her. She was the best-dressed woman I ever met, and Major Carnaby was devoted to her."

"Is Major Carnaby dead?" asked Paul.

"Yes; he died out in India while Isabel was still a child, and she has lived with the Farleys ever since. She is fairly well off; and her father left word in his will that when she was of age she must decide whether to live with the Farleys or with us, as both Sir Benjamin and my husband were ready to take her for her mother's sake. She has just come of age, and I was dreadfully afraid she would decide to come to us."

"And you wouldn't have liked it?"

"No. I hate girls of that age; they always say you are getting stout, and that your hair isn't all your own."

Paul concealed a smile. "Did she give the apple to Sir Benjamin?" he inquired.

"Yes; to my great relief. Sir Benjamin has got a governorship out in India, so Isabel has chosen to go on living with them. She is just the sort of girl to like being with 'Excellencies,' and all that sort of thing."

"What is Miss Carnaby like? Is she pretty?"

"Oh! no; not pretty, but smart and stylish, and knows how to put her clothes on. And she is dreadfully clever. She positively terrified me the last time she was over in England."

"What sort of cleverness? Does she write books?" asked Paul, who was always interested in literary ventures.

"Good gracious, no; not so bad as that!" replied Lady Esdaile, looking shocked. "But she reads a good deal, and says sharp things, and you never know whether she is laughing at you or not. She makes me quite nervous."

"I don't like that sort of sharpness--especially in a woman."

"No more do I. And then Isabel is so abominably vain. And I don't see anything to be conceited about in mere cleverness; do you? It isn't as if she were pretty."

"Still even clever people are sometimes conceited, Lady Esdaile."

"Oh! of course cleverness in a man is awfully nice, and quite a thing to be conceited about," owned her ladyship graciously. "I can't tell you how much my husband and I admire your cleverness, nor how thankful we are for Dick to have the advantage of it. But I don't think it is quite the thing for a girl; do you? Prettiness is so much more important."

"I suppose beauty is the best gift for a woman to possess," said Paul; "but there are clever women and clever women; and Miss Carnaby seems--from your description--to be exactly the sort of clever woman that I specially detest."

Lady Esdaile shook her head. "Men don't generally detest her," she confessed, "she is a man's woman out and out. And she is a woman's woman too," she added; "she really can make herself awfully pleasant if she likes, and she has a wonderful knack of getting on with anybody. She is simply splendid if you have got a lot of dull people in hand; there is nobody she cannot talk to. I believe if she met the man in the moon she would find out that he and she had a lot of mutual acquaintances, even if they weren't related to one another."

"Then she has her good points?"

"Yes. It seems to me that the great question everybody is asking everybody else is: 'Do you know the So-and-Sos?' If you do know them, the conversation flourishes; and if you don't, it drops. The So-and-Sos are really far more important as a conversational opening than the weather. I always think it rather _bourgeois_ to talk about the weather; don't you?"

"It certainly is a hackneyed subject," owned Paul.

"Well, Isabel invariably does know the So-and-Sos; and therefore, socially, she is a success. Take her to the dreariest tea-party, and in five minutes there is a buzz of conversation."

"Then she is popular, I presume, and therefore spoiled. I don't generally like what are termed popular people, I am afraid."

"To a certain extent she is popular," said Lady Esdaile grudgingly. "That is to say, she has always crowds of men fluttering round her. Sir Richard expects that she will make a brilliant marriage out in India; but I'm not so sure. The clever women may get the most partners, but it is the handsome ones that make the best matches."

"Well, anyway, I am very glad she is not coming here."

"Oh! I daresay you'd have got on with her all right. You and she could have talked about books and things, don't you know?"

Paul smiled. "But there are other things to be talked about besides books, Lady Esdaile."

"Yes; but some people find books awfully interesting. I should myself if they didn't always send me to sleep before I had properly got into them."

And Paul smiled again.

So Isabel Carnaby did not come to Esdaile Court just then, and Paul went on with his teaching of Dick; and made wonderful progress, considering the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture a scholar. He also tried his hand at literature, and earned an additional hundred a year by his contributions to magazines; whereby life at the cottage at Chayford was made considerably easier than it would otherwise have been.

At Chayford things went on much the same as usual. Edgar continued to woo Alice in silence, and consequently in vain; but he comforted himself by the idea that, as she grew older and found how false and fickle the world is, she would learn the value of one faithful heart that would never fail her, however unworthy she might prove herself to be. As for her, her mind was still full of thoughts of Paul. He was not on the spot, it is true, as Edgar was, but he came home every holidays; and it takes an exceptionally clever woman to forget a man in three months--even when she has another man to help her.