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Summer had set in early that year, and the sun poured through the stained glass window subscribed for by the parish to a former Squire Verrall, casting kaleidoscopic patterns of purple and crimson on to grandmamma's brown silk bonnet; a premature bumble-bee droned and bumped up and down the panes, the atmosphere felt airless, and Aunt Ellen sniffed elegantly at her green salts-bottle. Stella grew drowsy; she could not attend to the sermon, and her thoughts strayed on in confusion. … Would Canon Grass, the vicar, dare to change his lot if he might? Perhaps he would like to change Mrs. Grass, who was older than himself, for the pretty visitor who was one of The Court party in the chancel pew. … And how about Mrs. Daw, who was so artistic, and considered her talents wasted in her position as wife to a country doctor; who complained that no one in the village really understood or appreciated "Art". … How much happier Mrs. Daw would be in London had she the opportunity of changing her lot—of converting her husband into a West End physician. And as to the villagers; everyone knew that they were never contented, no matter what was done for them. At this point in her reflections Stella fell asleep.
The service over, she followed grandmamma and the aunts slowly down the aisle, while the school children clattered through the porch. The Court party left the building by the chancel door, and Stella saw them pace down the slope of the churchyard between the tombstones and the yew trees to where a carriage and pair of horses awaited them at the gates. Squire Verrall went first, in a black coat and a square hat like a box, his whiskers were brushed smartly aside from his ruddy cheeks, his large nose shone in the sun, he waved his malacca cane to the school children marshalled on either side of the pathway; Mrs. Verrall followed, delicate, smiling, sweet, in dark green satin, and a white ostrich feather floating from a boat-shaped hat; with her came the pretty visitor, who walked with a Grecian bend … and Maud. Stella observed that Maud was "showing off"; that she minced and looked down her nose as she passed between the rows of bobbing, saluting children and villagers. Stella was filled with an envious contempt for such conceit; such airs and graces! Three maid-servants completed the procession; even they would drive back to The Court, on the rumble of the big carriage, while Stella Carrington would walk through the lanes to The Chestnuts pulling her grandmother's chair, Aunt Augusta pushing behind, Aunt Ellen shielding the old lady with a green-lined umbrella. They would wait on themselves at luncheon; probably there would be boiled mutton and a milk pudding. …
There was: in her present rebellious mood, the sight of the plain, wholesome food was to Stella as the proverbial last straw. Aunt Augusta carved the mutton; a watery red stream issued from the joint, mingling with the caper sauce that surrounded it.
"None for me, thank you," said Stella, with suppressed fury.
"My dear, why not?" It was grandmamma who made the inquiry, and Stella thought the old lady looked like a sea-gull, seated at the end of the table in her close white cap, her snowy hair looped on either side of her curved nose.
"I hate boiled mutton!" Beneath her rising defiance the girl was conscious of amazement at her own temerity. She pushed back her chair and stood up, quivering—a slim young beauty, giving promise of fine development, though neither beauty nor promise had as yet been recognised by herself or by her guardians.
"Yes, I do hate it!" she cried, and her eyes, the colour of burnt sienna, filled with rebellious tears, "and I hate milk puddings and babyish clothes, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night with nothing in between—the same every day. How you could all stand up and sing that hymn, 'I dare not choose my lot,'" she mocked, "'I would not if I might,' as if you meant it! Why, for most of us, it was simply a lie!"
For a space there was a shocked silence. Augusta, the carving knife poised in her hand, looked at her mother; Ellen stared at her plate and extracted her salts-bottle with stealth from her pocket; Stella found her own gaze drawn helplessly to the expressionless old countenance at the end of the table, and, despite her new-born courage, she quailed.
"My dear," said grandmamma smoothly, "you had better go and lie down. The weather has upset you. I think you require a powder."
Stella burst into something between laughter and tears; she made a childish dash for the door and ran noisily up the stairs.
The meal in the dining-room continued as though nothing had happened. It was not a Carrington custom to discuss unpleasant occurrences at meals, or, indeed, at any other time, if such discussions could possibly be avoided; the Carrington elders possessed a fine faculty for ignoring difficult subjects. It was a gift that had carried them apparently unscathed through various trials. When it became imperative to speak of anything painful it was done as briefly and reservedly as possible. It was not until well on in the afternoon, when Mrs. Carrington had awakened from her nap in the drawing-room, that Stella's outrageous behaviour was mentioned.
The drawing-room at The Chestnuts was a long narrow room with three French windows opening on a little paved terrace. Formerly the house had been a farm dwelling, the last remnant of a property acquired a century ago by a Carrington ancestor with a fortune made in the East and dissipated in the West. The Court, where the Verralls now reigned, had once belonged to this magnificent Carrington, and the ladies of The Chestnuts never forgot the fact. They regarded the Verralls as interlopers, though by now the Verralls had been lords of the manor for several generations.
But though The Court and all its acres were lost to the Carringtons, they had clung as a family to Chestnut Farm, adding to it from time to time as fluctuating fortunes permitted. It was a haven for Carrington widows, unmarried daughters, retired old-soldier Carringtons; a jumping-off place for sons as they started in life, a holiday home for successions of young Carringtons while their parents were abroad; and there was still the family vault in the parish church where they could be buried if India spared them to die in England. Stella's grandfather, whom she could not remember, lay there with others of his name, and it had never entered grandmamma's mind to live or die anywhere but at The Chestnuts.
But to return to the drawing-room—a room that breathed of a people long connected with the East—here were sandal-wood boxes, caskets composed of porcupine quills, coloured clay models of Indian servants, brasses and embroideries. The warmth of the afternoon drew forth faint aromas still stored in these relics, mementoes of travel and service and adventure, the perfume that still hung in the folds of the handsome cashmere shawl draped about old Mrs. Carrington's shoulders.
It was she who opened the debate; failing her lead, neither of her daughters would have dreamed of alluding to their niece's outburst at the luncheon table.
"What do you imagine is wrong with Stella?" The old lady's sunken dark eyes, that yet were quick and bright, turned from one daughter to the other. The rest of her muscles were perfectly still.
"She is growing up," said Augusta boldly. She was the elder of the two and more nearly resembled her mother, physically and mentally, than did faint-hearted Ellen.
"She is still a child!" pronounced Mrs. Carrington, oblivious of the fact that she herself had been married at the age of seventeen, had sailed to India and returned with three children before she was twenty-one.
"Perhaps," ventured Ellen, "seeing Maud Verrall in church dressed as a grown-up young lady made her feel a little—well, I hardly know how to express myself—rather kept back?"
Ellen herself had been guiltily conscious of a vague feeling of envy caused by the sight of The Court people in all their prosperity and finery.
"Kept back from what?" demanded Mrs. Carrington. "Would you wish to see Stella trigged out like that forward monkey Maud Verrall?"
"Maud was always a most underbred child," said Augusta.
Ellen hastily took up the cue. "Yes, don't you remember the day she came to tea and broke the vase, and allowed Stella to be blamed? I saw her break it myself, but of course we could say nothing as Maud was our guest, and dear little Stella said nothing."
"But what has that to do with the way Stella behaved to-day?" inquired her sister. Ellen