The Carved Cupboard | Page 8

of women, with no opportunities of getting away from one another occasionally; that is what I object to,' said Clare, leaning back in her chair, and looking at her sisters rather meditatively. 'If we quarrel, it will be dreadful, and I am perfectly certain we shall never agree on every point.'
'You will not on any point,' said Gwen, a little drily.
'We have the country round us,' put in Elfie, 'and there must be some people to know; it is only just at first we shall be shut up to ourselves, I expect.'
'As to the people, there will be the villagers, of course,' said Gwen briskly; 'but we needn't count upon many friends in our own class of life. The big houses round here won't be desirous of the acquaintance of four unknown females with a very small income.'
'I always thought,' said Elfie, 'that country villages contained a clergyman and family, a doctor, and a squire. Isn't that the case here?'
'No; this is a kind of suburb of Brambleton. There is a vicarage, but I don't know anything about the clergyman.'
'Well, I hope we shan't all die of the dumps,' said Clare, shivering slightly, as a fresh blast of wind howled and shrieked in the old chimney.
'Oh, that dreadful wind, how I hate it! It seems like a bad omen to have such a welcome when we get here.'
'Rubbish! Go to bed, if you don't like it, and put your head under the clothes. Of course we notice the wind more in the country because of the trees.'
Clare did not get much sympathy from her sisters, and she soon left them and went up to her bedroom. There was a bright fire burning, and some of her own pretty things were already being unpacked by the busy Jane, who was perhaps more attached to her than to any of the others.
'Captain Knox thinks her the best of the bunch,' said she in confidence to Martha, when on the subject of 'our young ladies,' 'and so do I--Miss Agatha is rather commonplace, to my mind, though she is a good mistress, and Miss Gwendoline is always catching up one and taking one's breath away. Miss Elfrida is very pleasant, but she's always the same. Now Miss Clare's never two days alike; she's that gentle and appealin' sometimes, that she makes me love her, and then she's miles away in the clouds, and very cross, and then her spirits get so high that she's ready for any mischief--and there's no knowin' how to take her.'
'Isn't the wind dreadful, Jane?' said Clare presently. 'We couldn't have had a more dreary and depressing day for coming here.'
'It's terrible lonely, miss. How you young ladies will put up with it is more than Martha and me can imagine! My home is in the country, so I don't mind it. I never could abear London with its fog and dirt. Mrs. Tucker has been telling me and Martha queer tales about the gentleman who lived here.'
Clare wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and sat down by the fire. She rarely checked Jane's flow of talk, and perhaps that was why the maid liked her.
'What kind of tales?'
'Mrs. Tucker says he ought to have the property here called The Park, for he is the eldest son, and his younger brother, Major Lester, has taken it all, for Mr. Tom Lester offended his father by marrying a foreign lady, and he struck him out of his will. Mrs. Tucker says she believes the quarrel last autumn was about Major Lester's son, who is missing somewhere abroad, and who Mr. Tom Lester hates. And did you hear about the cupboard downstairs? Mrs. Tucker says she never has been inside it herself, for Mr. Lester only used to open it late at night, and he's gone away and taken the key with him, and says it isn't to be touched. I says to Mrs. Tucker that there might be anything in the cupboard, and Martha says she's afraid to go near it, for you do hear such dreadful tales about locked cupboards, and skeletons inside them, don't you, miss?'
'Only in your penny novelettes, that do you more harm than good, Jane!' said Clare a little shortly. I think if Mrs. Tucker is such a gossip, we shan't care to have her about the house. Where does she live now?'
'She's going to stay with her married sister in Brambleton, miss, and she's going out cooking if she can. I says to Martha that her tongue runned away with her, we could hardly get in a word, she talks so; but she's a very good-natured person, and has given Martha and me a lot of information about the neighbourhood.'
Clare did not respond, but soon dismissed Jane, and then sat for some time in dreams