Oh mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all? ­The Three Bears

“I do really think Terry has found the secret of happiness, for a little while at least,” said Rosamond, entering Mrs. Poynsett’s room.  “That funny little man in the loan museum has asked him to help in the arrangement.”

“Who is it?”

“The little watchmaker, or watch cobbler, in the old curiosity shop.”

“Yes; Terry calls him a descendant of the Genoese Frescobaldi, and I’m sure his black eyes were never made for an English head.  Terry has always haunted those uncanny wares of his, and has pursued them to the museum. ’’Tis not every young gentleman I would wish to see there,’ says the old man, ’but the Honourable Mr. De Lancey has the soul of an antiquarian.’”

“They say the old man is really very clever and well read.”

“He looks like an old magician, with his white cap and spectacles, and he had need to have a wand to bring order out of that awful chaos.  Everybody all round has gone and cleared out their rubbish-closet.  Upon my word, it looks so.  There are pictures all one network of cracks, and iron caps and gauntlets out of all the halls in every stage of rust, and pots and pans and broken crocks, and baskets of coin all verdigris and tarnish! ­Pah!”

“Are Miles’s birds safe?”

“Oh yes, with a swordfish’s sword and a sawfish’s saw making a trophy on the top.  Terry is in the library, hunting material for a dissertation upon the ancient unicorn, which ought to conclude with the battle royal witnessed by Alice in Wonderland.  The stuffed department is numerous but in a bad way as to hair, and chiefly consists of everybody’s grandmother’s old parrots and squirrels and white rats.  Then, every boy, who ever had a fit of birds’ eggs or butterflies, has sent in a collection, chiefly minus the lower wings, and with volunteer specimens of moth; but luckily some give leave to do what they please with them, so the magician is making composition animals with the debris.”

“Not really!”

“I made a feeble attempt with an admiral’s wings and an orange tip, but I was scouted.  About four dilapidated ones make up a proper specimen, and I can’t think how it is all to be done in the time; but really something fit to be seen is emerging.  Terry is sorting the coins, a pretty job, I should say; but felicity to him.  But oh! the industrial articles!  There are all the regalia, carved out of cherry-stones, and a patchwork quilt of 5000 bits of silk each no bigger than a shilling.  And a calculation of the middle verse in the Bible, and the longest verse, and the shortest verse, and the like edifying Scriptural researches, all copied out like flies’ legs, in writing no one can see but Julius with his spectacles off, and set in a brooch as big as the top of a thimble, all done by a one-legged sergeant of marines.  So that the line might not be out done, I offered my sergeant-major’s banner-screen, but I am sorry to say they declined it, which made me jealous.”

“Are there any drawings of the Reynolds’ boy?”

“Yes, Lenore Vivian brought them down, and very good they are.  Every one says he has the making of a genius, but he does not look as if it agreed with him; he is grown tall, and thin, and white, and I should not wonder if those good-for-nothing servants bullied him.”

“Did you see anything of Eleonora?”

“Nothing so impossible.  I meet her every day, but she is always beset with the Strangeways, and I think she avoids me.”

“I can hardly think so.”

“I don’t like it!  That man is always hanging about Sirenwood, and Lenore never stirs an inch without one of those girls.  I wish Frank could see for himself, poor fellow.”

“He does hope to run down next week.  I have just heard from him in high spirits.  One of his seniors has come into some property, another is out of health and retires, so there is some promotion in view.”

“I wish it would make haste then.  I don’t like the look of things.”

“I can hardly disbelieve in the dear girl herself; yet I do feel as if it were against nature for it to succeed.  Did you hear anything of Mrs. Bowater to-day?”

“Yes, she is much better, and Edith is coming to go into the gallery with me on Tuesday when they inaugurate the Rat-house.  Oh! did you hear of the debate about it?  You know there’s to be a procession ­ all the Volunteers, and all the Odd Fellows, and all the Good Templars, and all the school-children of all denominations ­whatever can walk behind a flag.  Our choir boys grew emulous, and asked Herbert to ask the Rector to let them have our lovely banner with the lilies on it; but he declined, though there’s no choice but to give the holiday that will be taken.”

“Was that the debate?”

“Oh no! that was among the higher powers ­where the procession should start from.  The precedent was an opening that began with going to church, and having a sermon from the Bishop; but then there’s no church, and after that spur the Bishop gave them they can’t ask him without one; besides, the mayor dissents, and so do a good many more of them.  So they are to meet at the Market Cross, and Mr. Fuller, in the famous black gown, supported by Mr. Driver, is to head them.  I’m not sure that Julius and Herbert were not in the programme, but Mr. Truelove spoke up, and declared that Mr. Flynn the Wesleyan Methodist, and Mr. Howler the Primitive Methodist, and Mr. Riffell the Baptist, had quite as good a right to walk in the foreground and to hold forth, and Mr. Moy supported him.”

“Popularity hunting against Raymond.”

“Precisely.  But Howler, Flynn, and Co. were too much for Mr. Fuller, so he seceded, and the religious ceremonies are now to be confined to his saying grace at the dinner.  Raymond thinks it as well, for the inaugural speech would only have been solemn mockery; but Julius thinks it a sad beginning for the place to have no blessing because of our unhappy divisions.  Isn’t that like Julius?”

“Exactly, though I see it more from Raymond’s point of view.  So you are going to the dinner?”

“Oh yes.  Happily my Rector has nothing to say against that, and I am sure he owes me something for keeping me out of the bazaar.  In fact, having avoided the trouble, I couldn’t take the pleasure! and he must set that against the races.”

“My dear, though I am not set against races like Julius, I think, considering his strong feelings on the subject ­”

“My dear Mrs. Poynsett, it would be very bad for Julius to give in to his fancies.  The next thing would be to set baby up in a little hood and veil like a nun!”

Rosamond’s winsome nonsense could not but gain a smile.  No doubt she was a pleasant daughter-in-law, though, for substantial care, Anne was the strength and reliance.  Even Anne was much engrossed by preparations for the bazaar.  It had been a great perplexity to her that the one thing she thought not worldly should be condemned by Julius, and he had not tried to prevent her from assisting Cecil, thinking, as he had told Eleonora, that the question of right and wrong was not so trenchant as to divide households.

The banquet and inauguration went off fairly well.  There was nothing in it worth recording, except that Rosamond pronounced that Raymond only wanted a particle of Irish fluency to be a perfect speaker; but every one was observing how ill and depressed he looked.  Even Cecil began to see it herself, and to ask Lady Tyrrell with some anxiety whether she thought him altered.

“Men always look worn after a Session,” said Lady Tyrrell.

“If this really makes him unhappy!”

“My dear Cecil, that’s the very proof of the necessity.  If it makes him unhappy to go five miles away with his wife, it ought not.  You should wean him from such dependence.”

Cecil had tears in her eyes as she said, “I don’t know!  When I hear him sighing in his sleep, I long to give it up and tell him I will try to be happy here.”

“My dear child, don’t be weak.  If you give way now, you will rue it all your life.”

“If I could have taken to his mother, I think he would have cared more for me.”

“No.  The moment her jealousy was excited she would have resumed him, and you would have been the more shut out in the cold.  A little firmness now, and the fresh start is before you.”

Cecil sighed, feeling that she was paying a heavy price for that fresh start, but her hands were too full for much thought.  Guests came to dinner, Mrs. Poynsett kept more to her own room, and Raymond exerted himself to talk, so that the blank of the evenings was less apparent.  The days were spent at the town-hall, where the stalls were raised early enough for all the ladies, their maids and footmen, to buzz about them all day, decking them out.

Mrs. Duncombe was as usual the guiding spirit, contriving all with a cleverness that made the deficiencies of her household the more remarkable.  Conny and Bee Strangeways were the best workers, having plenty of experience and resource, and being ready to do anything, however hard, dusty, or disagreeable; and to drudge contentedly, with plenty of chatter indeed, but quite as freely to a female as to a male companion; whereas Miss Moy had a knot of men constantly about her, and made a noise which was a sore trial to Cecil’s heavy spirit all the first day, exclusive of the offence to her native fastidiousness.  She even called upon Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe to hold a council whether all gentlemen should not be excluded the next day, as spoiling the ladies’ work, and of no use themselves; but there were one or two who really did toil, and so well that they could not be dispensed with, and Mrs. Duncombe added that it would not do to give offence.

There was a harassed look about Mrs. Duncombe herself, for much depended on the success of her husband’s filly, Dark Hag.  The Captain had hitherto been cautious, and had secured himself against heavy loss, so as to make the turf a tolerable speculation, on but the wonderful perfections of this animal had led him to stake much more on her than had been his wont; and though his wife was assured of being a rich woman in another week, she was not sorry for the multiplicity of occupations which hindered her mind from dwelling too much on the chances.

“How calm you look, ­how I envy you!” she said, as she came to borrow some tape of Eleonora Vivian, who was fastening the pendent articles to the drapery of her sister’s stall.  Eleonora gave a constrained smile, feeling how little truth there was in her apparent peace, wearied out as she was with the long conflict and constant distrust.  She was the more anxious to be with Lady Susan, whose every word she could believe, and she finally promised to leave home with Bee and Conny the day after the ball, and to meet their mother in London.  They knew there was no chance for Lorimer, but they took her on her own terms, hoping something perhaps, and at any rate glad to be a comfort to one whom they really loved, while Lady Tyrrell was delighted to promote the visit, seeing that the family did more for Lorimer’s cause than he did for himself; and in his own home who could guess the result, especially after certain other manoeuvres of her ladyship had taken effect?

Lady Tyrrell did not know, nor indeed did Conny or Bee, that, though they would meet their mother in London, she would not at once go into Yorkshire with them, but would send them to their uncle’s, while she repaired to the retreat at St. Faith’s.  The harass of these last few weeks, especially the endeavour to make her go to the races, had removed all scruples from Lenore’s mind as to leaving her home in ignorance of her intentions.  To her mind, the circumstances of her brother’s death had made a race-course no place for any of the family, especially that of Backsworth; gout coming opportunely to disable her father in London, and one or two other little accidents, had prevented the matter from coming to an issue while she had been in London, and the avowal of her intention to keep away had filled her father with passion at her for her absurd scruples and pretences at being better than other people.  It had been Lady Tyrrell who pacified him with assurances that she would soon do better; no one wished to force her conscience, and Lenore, always on the watch, began to wonder whether her sister had any reason for wishing to keep her away, and longed the more for the house of truth and peace.

So came on the bazaar day, which Mrs. Poynsett spent in solitude, except for visits from the Rectory, and one from Joanna Bowater, who looked in while Julius was sitting with her, and amused them by her account of herself as an emissary from home with ten pounds to be got rid of from her father and mother for good neighbourhood’s sake.  She brought Mrs. Poynsett a beautiful bouquet, for the elderly spinsters, she said, sat on the stairs and kept up a constant supply; and she had also some exquisite Genoese wire ornaments from Cecil’s counter, and a set of studs from a tray of polished pebbles sent up from Vivian’s favourite lapidary at Rockpier.  She had been amused to find the Miss Strangeways hunting over it to match that very simple-looking charm which Lena wore on to her watch, for, as she said, “the attraction must either be the simplicity of it, or the general Lena-worship in which those girls indulge.”

“How does that dear child look?”

“Fagged, I think, but so does every one, and it was not easy to keep order, Mrs. Duncombe’s counter was such a rendezvous for noisy people, and Miss Moy was perfectly dreadful, running about forcing things on people and refusing change.”

“And how is poor Anne enduring?”

“Like Christian in Vanity Fair as long as she did endure, for she retired to the spinsters on the back stairs.  I offered to bring her home, and she accepted with delight, but I dropped her in the village to bestow her presents.  I was determined to come on here; we go on Monday.”

“Shall you be at the Ordination?”

“I trust so.  If mamma is pretty well, we shall both go.”

“Is Edith going to the ball on Thursday?”

“No, she has given it up.  It seems as if we at least ought to recollect our Ember days, though I am ashamed to think we never did till this time last year.”

“I confess that I never heard of them,” said Mrs. Poynsett.  “Don’t look shocked, my dear; such things were not taught in my time.”

Julius showed her the rubric and the prayer from the book in his pocket, knowing that the one endeared to her by association was one of the Prayer-books made easy by omission of all not needed at the barest Sunday service.

“I see,” she said, “it seems quite right.  I wish you had told me before you were ordained, my dear.”

“You kept your Ember days for me by instinct, dear mother.”

“Don’t be too sure, Julius.  One learns many things when one is laid on one’s back.”

“Think of Herbert now,” whispered Jenny.  “I am glad he is sheltered from all this hubbub by being at the palace.  I suppose you cannot go to the Cathedral, Julius?”

“No, Bindon will not come back till his brother’s holiday is over, nor do I even know where to write to him.  Oh! here comes Anne.  Now for her impressions.”

Anne had brought her little gift for Mrs. Poynsett, and displayed her presents for Glen Fraser, but as to what she had seen it made her shudder and say, “You were right, Julius, I did not know people could go on so!  And with all those poor people ill close by.  Miss Slater, who sat on the stairs just below me tying up flowers, is much grieved about a lad who was at work there till a fortnight ago, and now is dying of a fever, and harassed by all the rattling of the carriages.”

“What! close by!  Nothing infectious, I hope?”

“The doctor called it gastric fever, but no one was to hear of it lest there should be an alarm; and it was too late to change the place of the bazaar, though it is so sad to have all that gaiety close at hand.”

If these were the impressions of Anne and Joanna early in the day, what were they later, when, in those not sustained by excitement, spirit and energy began to flag?  Cecil’s counter, with her excellent and expensive wares, and her own dignified propriety, was far less popular than those where the goods were cheaper and the saleswomen less inaccessible, and she was not only disappointed at her failure, but vexed when told that the articles must be raffled for.  She could not object, but it seemed an unworthy end for what had cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people.

Miss Moy had around her a court of ‘horsey’ men who were lounging away the day before the races, and who had excited her spirits to a pitch of boisterousness such as dismayed Mrs. Duncombe herself when her attempts at repression were only laughed at.

Somehow, among these adherents, there arose a proposal for the election of a queen of beauty, each gentleman paying half-a-crown for the right of voting.  Miss Moy bridled and tried to blush.  She was a tall, highly-coloured, flashing-eyed brunette, to whom a triumph would be immense over the refined, statuesque, severe Miss Vivian, and an apple-blossom innocent-looking girl who was also present, and though Lady Tyrrell was incontestably the handsomest person in the room, her age and standing had probably prevented her occurring to the propounders of the scheme.

The design was taking shape when young Strangeways, who was willing to exchange chaff with Gussie Moy, but was gentleman enough to feel the indecorum of the whole thing, moved across to his sister, and muttered, “I say, Con, they are getting up that stupid trick of election of a queen of beauty.  Does Lady Tyrrell know it?”

“Wouldn’t it be rather fun?”

“Horrid bad form, downright impudence.  Mother would squash it at once.  Go and warn one of them,” signing with his head.

Constance made her way to Eleonora, who had already been perplexed and angered by more than one critical stare, as one and another man loitered past and gazed intrepidly at her.  She hurried at once to her sister, who was sitting passively behind her counter as if wearied out, and who would not be stirred to interference.  “Never mind, Lenore, it can’t be helped.  It is all for the cause, and to stop it would be worse taste, fitting on the cap as an acknowledged beauty, and to that I’m not equal.”

“It is an insult.”

“Never fear, they’ll never choose you while you look so forbidding, though perhaps it is rather becoming.  They have not the taste.”

Eleonora said no more, but went over to the window where Raymond was keeping his guard, with his old-fashioned sense of protection.  She had no sooner told him than he started into incredulous indignation, in which he was joined by his wife who only wished him to dash forward to prevent the scheme before he would believe it real.

However, when the ballot-box came his way, and a simpering youth presented him with a card, begging for his opinion, he spoke so as to be heard by all, “No, thank you, sir.  I am requested by the ladies present to state that such competition was never contemplated by their committee and would be repugnant to all their sentiments.  They beg that the election may be at once dropped and the money returned.”

Mr. Charnock Poynsett had a weight that no one resisted.  There was a moment’s silence, a little murmur, apologetic and remonstrant, but the deed was done.

Only a clear voice, with the thrillings of disappointed vanity and exultation scarcely disguised by a laugh, was heard saying, louder than the owner knew, “Oh, of course Mr. Charnock Poynsett spoiled sport.  It would have been awkward between his wife and his old flame.”

“For shame, Gussie,” hushed Mrs. Duncombe, “they’ll hear.”

“I don’t care!  Let them!  Stuck-up people!”

Whoever heard, Cecil Charnock Poynsett did, and felt as if the ground were giving way with her.