WHITEWASH
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL
WHITEWASH
BY
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL
Author “The Soul of Susan Yellam,” “Fishpingle,”
“Quinney’s,” etc., etc.
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1920,
By George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America
TO
MORLEY ROBERTS
CONTENTS
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
WHITEWASH
CHAPTER I LADY SELINA CHANDOS
Lady Selina laid down her pen—a quill—smiling pensively. Early in life she had been taught to smile by a mother with half a dozen attractive but dowerless daughters, who had smiled themselves obediently into wives and matrons. Critics admitted that the smile had quality. No derision twisted it. Artlessly, with absolute sincerity, Lady Selina scattered her smiles as largesse. Royalties know the value of such smiles, and so do politicians.
Her eyes—blue, heavily-lidded, with arched brows above them—wandered from her desk, the desk of a busy lady of the manor, to the portrait of her late husband which hung above the chimney-piece. Henry Chandos had been her senior by some five and twenty years. During another quarter of a century of tranquil married life Lady Selina had loved, honoured and obeyed him as the dominant partner. A stranger, looking at the portrait, might have guessed that the Squire of Upworthy—if physiognomy is to be trusted (which it isn’t)—was likely to inspire honour and obedience rather than love. An uncompromising chin, a Wellingtonia gigantea nose and steel-grey eyes overhung by beetling brows, bespoke the autocrat. He wore a stained red hunting coat and grasped a hunting horn in his left hand. Hounds came swiftly to the toot of that horn; and eager horsemen, you may be sure, followed at a respectful distance. Henry Chandos never bullied his “field.” He checked “thrusters” with a glance. The wags christened him “Old Gimlets.” And in the County Council, upon the Bench, in and out of his own house, he exercised a gift of silence. His neighbours knew that he took his own line over any country regardless of obstacles. If damage ensued he paid for it generously.
When at work in her sitting-room, Lady Selina was always conscious of her husband’s portrait, sensible that his counterfeit presentment looked down approvingly upon her labours. He, too, had worked hard in this fine room, and since his death the widow had carried on that work along his lines, as, with his last breath, he had entreated her to do.
She rose from her chair and crossed to the sofa on which were piled many red flannel cloaks. On a table lay pound packages of tea, and a small basket holding gills of gin discreetly covered with a white napkin. These were her particular gifts to her own people, to be bestowed presently, coram publico, before tea was served on the lawn beneath the approving eyes of the doctor, parson, and such of the local gentry as might “drop in.”
As she rose, glancing at the neat piles of books and letters, a sigh escaped her. Nobody knew how much her work perplexed and bothered her. If her smile disarmed criticism, it was partly, perhaps, because pathos informed it. At times it seemed to say: “I want to please people, but it’s horribly difficult.” No business training had been vouchsafed her, except such knowledge as had come from dealing with servants and tradesmen. In the management of a large estate her husband had never consulted her. And yet—a tremendous tribute—he had left her everything during her lifetime, scorning to impose any conditions should she marry again. Possibly he knew that she would not do so.
As she stood beside the sofa, plump and prosperous, erect mentally and physically, an intelligent child might have proclaimed her to be what she was, a superb specimen of the English châtelaine. Obviously a gentlewoman, courteous alike to the Lord-Lieutenant of her county or to the humblest of her many dependents, exacting respect from all and affection from many, she had just passed her fifty-fifth birthday. But her face remained free from wrinkles, smoothly pink as if glowing autumnally after a sunny summer; and her features were on the happiest terms with each other, firmly but delicately modelled, prominent, but not aggressively so.
She wore clothes of no particular mode that became her admirably. Her butler entered the room.
“Well, Stimson, what is it?”
Her voice was very pleasant and articulate. At the mere sound of it the austere face of the old retainer relaxed. Deprecatingly, he informed his mistress that Mr. Goodrich had arrived.
Lady Selina frowned slightly. Her guests had been invited for four. It was not yet half-past three.
“Show Mr. Goodrich on to the lawn. Tell him, with my compliments, that I will join him there in a few minutes.”
“Very good, my lady. Mr. Goodrich expressed a wish to see your ladyship before the others came.”
