The Rosary

CHAPTER III

THE SUR­PRISE PACK­ET

The sun-​di­al point­ed to half past four o’clock. The hour of si­lence ap­peared to be over. The birds com­menced twit­ter­ing; and a cuck­oo, in an ad­ja­cent wood, sound­ed his note at in­ter­vals.

The house awoke to sud­den life. There was an open­ing and shut­ting of doors. Two foot­men, in the mul­ber­ry and sil­ver of the Mel­drum liv­ery, hur­ried down from the ter­race, car­ry­ing fold­ing tea-​ta­bles, with which they sup­ple­ment­ed those of rus­tic oak stand­ing per­ma­nent­ly un­der the cedar. One, prompt­ly re­turned to the house; while the oth­er re­mained be­hind, spread­ing snowy cloths over each ta­ble.

The macaw awoke, stretched his wings and flapped them twice, then si­dled up and down his perch, con­cen­trat­ing his at­ten­tion up­on the foot­man.

“Mind!” he ex­claimed sud­den­ly, in the but­ler’s voice, as a cloth, flung on too hur­ried­ly, flut­tered to the grass.

“Hold your jaw!” said the young foot­man ir­ri­ta­bly, flick­ing the bird with the ta­ble-​cloth, and then glanc­ing furtive­ly at the rose- gar­den.

“Tom­my wants a goose­ber­ry!” shrieked the macaw, dodg­ing the ta­ble- cloth and hang­ing, head down­wards, from his perch.

“Don’t you wish you may get it?” said the foot­man vi­cious­ly.

“Give it him, some­body,” re­marked Tom­my, in the duchess’s voice.

The foot­man start­ed, and looked over his shoul­der; then hur­ried­ly told Tom­my just what he thought of him, and where he wished him; cuffed him sound­ly, and re­turned to the house, fol­lowed by peals of laugh­ter, min­gled with ex­hor­ta­tions and im­pre­ca­tions from the an­gry bird, who danced up and down on his perch un­til his en­emy had van­ished from view.

A few min­utes lat­er the ta­bles were spread with the large va­ri­ety of eat­ables con­sid­ered nec­es­sary at an En­glish af­ter­noon tea; the mas­sive sil­ver urn and teapots gleamed on the buf­fet-​ta­ble, be­hind which the old but­ler presid­ed; muffins, crum­pets, cakes, and ev­ery kind of sand­wich sup­ple­ment­ed the dain­ty lit­tle rolled slices of white and brown bread-​and-​but­ter, while heaped-​up bowls of fresh­ly gath­ered straw­ber­ries lent a touch of colour to the artis­tic ef­fect of white and sil­ver. When all was ready, the but­ler raised his hand and sound­ed an old Chi­nese gong hang­ing in the cedar tree. Be­fore the pen­etrat­ing boom had died away, voic­es were heard in the dis­tance from all over the grounds.

Up from the riv­er, down from the ten­nis courts, out from house and gar­den, came the duchess’s guests, re­joic­ing in the re­fresh­ing prospect of tea, hur­ry­ing to the wel­come shade of the cedar;– charm­ing wom­en in white, care­ful­ly guard­ing their com­plex­ions be­neath shady hats and pic­turesque para­sols;–de­light­ful girls, who had long ago sac­ri­ficed com­plex­ions to com­fort, and now walked across the lawn bare­head­ed, swing­ing their rack­ets and dis­cussing the last hard-​fought set; men in flan­nels, sun­burned and hand­some, join­ing in the talk and laugh­ter; prais­ing their part­ners, while re­main­ing un­ob­tru­sive­ly silent as to their own achieve­ments.

They made a pic­turesque group as they gath­ered un­der the tree, sub­sid­ing with im­mense sat­is­fac­tion in­to the low wick­er chairs, or on to the soft turf, and help­ing them­selves to what they pleased. When all were sup­plied with tea, cof­fee, or iced drinks, to their lik­ing, con­ver­sa­tion flowed again.

“So the duchess’s con­cert comes off to-​night,” re­marked some one. “I wish to good­ness they would hang this tree with Chi­nese lanterns and, have it out here. It is too hot to face a crowd­ed func­tion in­doors.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Garth Dal­main, “I’m stage-​man­ag­er, you know; and I can promise you that all the long win­dows open­ing on to the ter­race shall stand wide. So no one need be in the con­cert-​room, who prefers to stop out­side. There will be a row of lounge chairs placed on the ter­race near the win­dows. You won’t see much; but you will hear, per­fect­ly.”

“Ah, but half the fun is in see­ing,” ex­claimed one of the ten­nis girls. “Peo­ple who have re­mained on the ter­race will miss all the point of it af­ter­wards when the dear duchess shows us how ev­ery­body did it. I don’t care how hot it is. Book me a seat in the front row!”

“Who is the sur­prise pack­et to-​night?” asked La­dy In­gle­by, who had ar­rived since lun­cheon.

“Vel­ma,” said Mary Strath­ern. “She is com­ing for the week-​end, and de­light­ful it will be to have her. No one but the duchess could have worked it, and no place but Over­dene would have tempt­ed her. She will sing on­ly one song at the con­cert; but she is sure to break forth lat­er on, and give us plen­ty. We will per­suade Jane to drift to the pi­ano ac­ci­den­tal­ly and play over, just by chance, the open­ing bars of some of Vel­ma’s best things, and we shall soon hear the mag­ic voice. She nev­er can re­sist a per­fect­ly played ac­com­pa­ni­ment.”

“Why call Madame Vel­ma the `sur­prise pack­et’?” asked a girl, to whom the Over­dene “best par­ties” were a new ex­pe­ri­ence.

“That, my dear,” replied La­dy In­gle­by, “is a lit­tle joke of the duchess’s. This con­cert is ar­ranged for the amuse­ment of her house par­ty, and for the grat­ifi­ca­tion and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of lo­cal celebri­ties. The whole neigh­bour­hood is in­vit­ed. None of you are asked to per­form, but lo­cal celebri­ties are. In fact they fur­nish the en­tire pro­gramme, to their own de­light, the sat­is­fac­tion of their friends and rel­atives, and our en­ter­tain­ment, par­tic­ular­ly af­ter­wards when the duchess takes us through ev­ery item, with orig­inal notes, com­ments, and im­per­son­ations. Oh, Dal! Do you re­mem­ber when she tucked a sheet of white writ­ing-​pa­per in­to her tea-​gown for a dog col­lar, and took off the high-​church cu­rate ner­vous­ly singing a com­ic song? Then at the very end, you see–and re­al­ly some of it is quite good for am­ateurs–she trots out Vel­ma, or some equal­ly per­fect artiste, to show them how it re­al­ly can be done; and sud­den­ly the place is full of mu­sic, and a great hush falls on the au­di­ence, and the poor com­pla­cent am­ateurs re­alise that the noise they have been mak­ing was, af­ter all, not mu­sic; and they go dumb­ly home. But they have for­got­ten all about it by the fol­low­ing year; or a fresh con­tin­gent of will­ing per­form­ers steps in­to the breach. The duchess’s lit­tle joke al­ways comes off.”

“The Hon­ourable Jane does not ap­prove of it,” said young Ronald In­gram; “there­fore she is gen­er­al­ly giv­en march­ing or­ders and de­parts to her next vis­it be­fore the event. But no one can ac­com­pa­ny Madame Vel­ma so per­fect­ly, so this time she is com­mand­ed to stay. But I doubt if the ’sur­prise pack­et’ will come off with quite such a shock as usu­al, and I am cer­tain the fun won’t be so good af­ter­wards. The Hon­ourable Jane has been known to jump on the duchess for that sort of thing. She is safe to get the worst of it at the time, but it has a re­strain­ing ef­fect af­ter­wards.”

“I think Miss Cham­pi­on is quite right,” said a bright-​faced Amer­ican girl, brave­ly, hold­ing a gold spoon poised for a mo­ment over the straw­ber­ry ice-​cream with which Garth Dal­main had sup­plied her.

“In my coun­try we should call it re­al mean to laugh, at peo­ple who had been our guests and per­formed in our hous­es.”

“In your coun­try, my dear,” said Myra In­gle­by, “you have no duchess­es.”

“Well, we sup­ply you with quite a good few,” replied the Amer­ican girl calm­ly, and went on with her ice.

A gen­er­al laugh fol­lowed; and the lat­est An­glo-​Amer­ican match came up for dis­cus­sion.

“Where is the Hon­ourable Jane?” in­quired some­one present­ly.

“Golf­ing with Bil­ly,” said Ronald In­gram. “Ah, here they come.”

Jane’s tall fig­ure was seen, walk­ing along the ter­race, ac­com­pa­nied by Bil­ly Cath­cart, talk­ing ea­ger­ly. They put their clubs away in the low­er hall; then came down the lawn to­geth­er to the tea-​ta­bles.

Jane wore a tai­lor-​made coat and skirt of grey tweed, a blue and white cam­bric shirt, starched linen col­lar and cuffs, a silk tie, and a soft felt hat with a few black quills in it. She walked with the free­dom of move­ment and swing of limb which in­di­cate great strength and a body well un­der con­trol. Her ap­pear­ance was ex­traor­di­nar­ily un­like that of all the pret­ty and grace­ful wom­en grouped be­neath the cedar tree. And yet it was in no sense mas­cu­line–or, to use a more ap­pro­pri­ate word, man­nish; for ev­ery­thing strong is mas­cu­line; but a wom­an who apes an ap­pear­ance of strength which she does not pos­sess, is man­nish;–rather was it so tru­ly fem­inine that she could af­ford to adopt a se­vere sim­plic­ity of at­tire, which suit­ed ad­mirably the de­cid­ed plain­ness of her fea­tures, and the al­most mas­sive pro­por­tions of her fig­ure.

She stepped in­to the cir­cle be­neath the cedar, and took one of the half-​dozen places im­me­di­ate­ly va­cat­ed by the men, with the com­plete ab­sence of self-​con­scious­ness which al­ways char­ac­terised her.

“What did you go round in, Miss Cham­pi­on?” in­quired one of the men.

“My or­di­nary clothes,” replied Jane; quot­ing Punch, and evad­ing the ques­tion.

But Bil­ly burst out: “She went round in–“

“Oh, be qui­et, Bil­ly,” in­ter­posed Jane. “You and I are prac­ti­cal­ly the on­ly golf ma­ni­acs present. Most of these dear peo­ple are even ig­no­rant as to who ‘bo­gie’ is, or why we should be so proud of beat­ing him. Where is my aunt? Poor Sim­mons was tod­dling all over the place when we went in to put away our clubs, search­ing for her with a tele­gram.”

“Why didn’t you open it?” asked Myra.

“Be­cause my aunt nev­er al­lows her tele­grams to be opened. She loves shocks; and there is al­ways the pos­si­bil­ity of a tele­gram con­tain­ing startling news. She says it com­plete­ly spoils it if some one else knows it first, and breaks it to her gen­tly.”

“Here comes the duchess,” said Garth Dal­main, who was sit­ting where he could see the lit­tle gate in­to the rose-​gar­den.

“Do not men­tion the tele­gram,” cau­tioned Jane. “It would not please her that I should even know of its ar­rival. It would be a shame to take any of the bloom off the un­ex­pect­ed de­light of a wire on this hot day, when noth­ing un­usu­al seemed like­ly to hap­pen.”

They turned and looked to­wards the duchess as she bus­tled across the lawn; this quaint old fig­ure, who had called them to­geth­er; who owned the love­ly place where they were spend­ing such de­light­ful days; and whose odd whim­si­cal­ities had been so freely dis­cussed while they drank her tea and feast­ed off her straw­ber­ries. The men rose as she ap­proached, but not quite so spon­ta­neous­ly as they had done for her niece.

The duchess car­ried a large wood­en bas­ket filled to over­flow­ing with exquisite ros­es. Ev­ery bloom was per­fect, and each had been cut at ex­act­ly the right mo­ment.