A Dozen Ways Of Love by Lily Dougall (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

elder sister, like a sensible child who knew better how to arrange the game, interposed.

'I'll explain it to you. Eliz and I are giving a party to-night. There hasn't been any company in the house since father died four years ago, and we know he wouldn't like us to be dull, so when our stepmother went out, and sent word that she couldn't come back to-night, we decided to have a grand party. There are only to be play-people, you know; all the people in Miss Austen's books are coming, and the nice ones out of _Sir Charles Grandison_.'

She paused to see if he understood.

'Are the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ invited?' he asked.

'No, the others we just chose here and there, because we liked them--Evelina, although she was rather silly and we told her that we couldn't have Lord Ormond, and Miss Matty and Brother Peter out of _Cranford_, and Moses Wakefield, because we liked him best of the family, and the Portuguese nun who wrote the letters. We thought we would have liked to invite the young man in _Maud_ to meet her, but we decided we should have to draw the line somewhere and leave out the poetry-people.'

The girl, leaning her forearms slightly on the back of her sister's chair, gave the explanation in soft, business-like tones, and there was only the faintest lurking of a smile about the corners of her lips to indicate that she kept in view both reality and fantasy.

'I think that I shall have to ask for an introduction to the Portuguese nun,' said Courthope; 'the others, I am happy to say, I have met before.'

A smile of approval leapt straight out of her dark eyes into his, as if she would have said: 'Good boy! you have read quite the right sort of books!'

Eliz was not endowed with the same well-balanced sense of proportion; for the time the imaginary was the real.

'The only question that remains to be decided,' she cried, 'is what _you_ would prefer to be. We will let you choose--Bingley, or Darcy, or----'

'It would be fair to tell him,' said the other, her smile broadening now, 'that it's only the elderly people and notables who have been invited to dinner, the young folks are coming in after; so if you are hungry----' Her soft voice paused, as if suspended in mid-air, allowing him to draw the inference.

'It depends entirely on who you are, who I would like to be.' He did not realise that there was undue gallantry in his speech; he felt exactly like another child playing, loyally determined to be her mate, whatever the character that might entail. 'I will even be the idiotic Edward if you are Eleanor Dashwood.'

Her chin was raised just half-an-inch higher; the smile that had been peeping from eyes and dimples seemed to retire for the moment.

'Oh, we,' she said, 'are the hostesses. My sister is Eliz King and I am Madge King, and I think you had better be a real person too; just a Mr. Courthope, come in by accident.'

'Well, then, he can help us in the receiving and chatting to them.' Eliz was quite reconciled.

He felt glad to realise that his mistake had been merely playful. 'In that case, may I have dinner without growing grey?' He asked it of Madge, and her smile came back, so readily did she forget what she had hardly consciously perceived.

When the sharp-voiced little Eliz had been wheeled into the dining-room to superintend some preparations there before the meal was ready, Courthope could again break through the spell that the imaginary reception imposed. He came from his dressing-room to find Madge at the housewifely act of replenishing the fire. Filled with curiosity, unwilling to ask questions, he remarked that he feared she must often feel lonely, that he supposed Mrs. King did not often make visits unaccompanied by her daughters.

'She does not, worse luck!' Madge on her knees replied with childish audacity.

'I hope when she returns she may not be offended by my intrusion.'

'Don't hope it,'--she smiled--'such hope would be vain.'

He could not help laughing.

'Is it dutiful then of you'--he paused--'or of me?'

'Which do you prefer--to sleep in the barn, or that I should be undutiful and disobey my stepmother?'

In a minute she gave her chin that lift in the air that he had seen before.

'You need not feel uncomfortable about Mrs. King; the house is really mine, not hers, and father always had his house full of company. I am doing my duty to him in taking you in, and in making a feast to please Eliz when the stepmother happens to be away and I can do it peaceably. And when she happens to be here I do my duty to him by keeping the peace with her.'

'Is she unkind to you?' he asked, with the ready, overflowing pity that young men are apt to give to pretty women who complain.

But she would have him know that she had not complained.

There was no bitterness in her tone--her philosophy of life was all sweetness. 'No! Bless her! God made her, I suppose, just as He made us; so, according to the way she is made, she packs away all the linen and silver, she keeps this room shut up for fear it will get worn out, and we never see any visitors. But to-day she went away to St. Philippe to see a dying man--I think she was going to convert him or something; but he took a long time to die; and now we may be snowed up for days, and we are going to have a perfectly glorious time.' She added hospitably, 'You need not feel under the slightest obligation, for it gives us pleasure to have you, and I know that father would have taken you in.'

Courthope rose up and followed her glance, almost an adoring glance, to the portrait he had before observed. He went and stood again face to face with it.

A goodly man was painted there, dressed in a judge's robe. Courthope read the lineaments by the help of the living interpretation of the daughter's likeness. Benevolence in the mouth, a love of good cheer and good friends in the rounded cheeks, a lurking sense of the poetry of life in the quiet eyes, and in the brow reason and a keen sense of right proportion dominant. He would have given something to have exchanged a quiet word with the man in the portrait, whose hospitality, living after him, he was now receiving.

Madge had been arranging the logs to her satisfaction, she would not accept Courthope's aid, and now she told him who were going to dine with them. She had great zest for the play.

'Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, of course, and we thought we might have Mr. Knightley, because he is a squire and not so very young, even though he is not yet married. Miss Bates, of course, and the Westons. Mrs. Dashwood has declined, of which we are rather glad, but we are having Mrs. Jennings.' So she went on with her list. 'We could not help asking Sir Charles with Lord and Lady G----, because he is so important; but Grandmamma Shirley is "mortifying" at present. She wrote that she could not stand "so rich a regale." Sir Hargrave Pollexfen will come afterwards with Harriet, and I am thankful to say that Lady Clementina is not in England at present, so could not be invited.' She stopped, looking up at him freshly to make a comment. 'Don't you detest Lady Clementina?'

When they went into the dining-room, the choice spirits deemed worthy to be at the board were each introduced by name to the Lady Eliz, who explained that because of her infirmities she had been unable to have the honour of receiving them in the drawing-room. She made appropriate remarks, inquiring after the relatives of each, offering congratulations or condolences as the case demanded. It was cleverly done. Courthope stood aside, immensely entertained, and when at last he too began to offer spirited remarks to the imaginary guests, he went up in favour so immensely that Eliz cried, 'Let Mr. Courthope take the end of the table. Let Mr. Courthope be father. It's much nicer to have a master of the house.' She began at once introducing him to the invisible guests as her father, and Madge, if she did not like the fancy, did not cross her will. There was in Madge's manner a large good-humoured tolerance.

The table was long, and amply spread with fine glass and silver; nothing was antique, everything was in the old-fashioned tasteless style of a former generation, but the value of solid silver was not small. The homely serving-woman in her peasant-like dress stood aside, submissive, as it seemed, but ignorant of how to behave at so large a dinner. Courthope, who in a visit to the stables had discovered that this Frenchwoman with her husband and one young daughter were at present the whole retinue of servants, wondered the more that such precious articles as the young girls and the plate should be safe in so lonely a place.

Madge was seated at the head of the table, Courthope at the foot; Eliz in her high chair had been wheeled to the centre of one side. Madge, playing the hostess with gentle dignity, was enjoying herself to the full, a rosy, cooing sort of joy in the play, in the feast that she had succeeded in preparing, in her amusement at the literary sallies of Eliz, and, above all perhaps, in the company of the new and unexpected playmate to whom, because of his youth, she attributed the same perfect sympathy with their sentiments which seemed to exist between themselves. Courthope felt this--he felt that he was idealised through no virtue of his own; but it was a delightful sensation, and brought out the best that was in him of wit and pure joyfulness. To Eliz the creatures of her imagination were too real for perfect pleasure; her face was tense, her eyes shot sparkles of light, her voice was high, for her the entertainment of the invisible guests involved real responsibility and effort.

'Asides are allowed, of course?' said Eliz, as if pronouncing a debatable rule at cards.

'Of course,' said Madge, 'or we could not play.'

'It's the greatest fun,' cried Eliz, 'to hear Sir Charles telling Mr. John Knightley about the good example that a virtuous man ought to set. With "hands and eyes uplifted" he is explaining the duty he owes to his Maker. It's rare to see John Knightley's face. I seated them on purpose with only Miss Matty between them, because I knew she wouldn't interrupt.'

Courthope saw the smile in Madge's eyes was bent upon him as she said softly, 'You won't forget that you have Lady Catherine de Bourg at your right hand to look after. I can see that brother Peter has got his eye upon her, and I don't know how she would take the "seraphim" story.'

'If she begins any of her dignified impertinence here,' he answered, 'I intend to steer her into a conversation with Charlotte, Lady G----.'

Courthope had a turkey to carve. He was fain to turn from the guests to ask advice as to its anatomy of Madge, who was carving a ham and assuring Mr. Woodhouse that it was 'thrice baked, exactly as Serle would have done it.'

'Stupid!--it was apples that were baked,' whispered Eliz.

'You see,' said Madge, when she had told him