It was an excessively elegant chamber — the sort of place that should be reserved for public concerts, with its draperies of gold, its little French chairs, its massive harp and violins in cases. The pianoforte to which Hary-O turned was of rosewood, beautifully inlaid — and but one of the instruments displayed in the room.
“A present from my father,” she observed, “sent down from London only three days ago. Though he can be said to possess not the slightest interest in music, he is still capable of spending ridiculous sums. I have not yet grown accustomed to the keys.”
She sat down at the instrument and trilled her fingers over the ivories. It was the first occasion on which I had chanced to remark her hands: long, thin, speaking fingers, expressive of all the fire and passion in her soul. These should never be tanned from neglect of a glove, nor coarsened by exposure to a scullery; they were hands designed for the fluttering of a fan or a pen, for the wearing of precious jewels, for the offering of a caress. Hands that might hold in a phaeton’s team or curb a wild horse as well — for there was strength unsuspected in their lines.
“I await your command,” she said with an eye for Andrew Danforth.
“Would that those words were true,” he murmured caressingly.
“That depends upon the construction one chooses,” Desdemona said briskly. “I would wish you to sing airs in the Italian; if you must descend into sentiment before us all, Mr. Danforth, you had much better do so unintelligibly.”
It occurred to me that the Countess — though preserving her manners with the grace that was second nature — did not approve of her friend’s suitor.
Mr. Danforth did not choose to remark her dislike; he obligingly turned over some sheets of music, and settled them before the fair performer; she commenced to play, with an infinitely superior taste than I should ever manage. Her voice was a little less equal to her fingering; but Mr. Danforth’s being strong and rich, the effect was charming. I resolved at once to cede all display to Lady Harriot, and heard her with pleasure.
Two songs were thus suffered to fall away, in rapt attention from myself and Desdemona, when an interval occurred in which Mr. Danforth must find a particular song — one he had attempted before in Lady Harriot’s hearing — one he would not be satisfied without attempting again — and the lady’s fingers fell silent.
“He will be searching out a tender embarrassment,” Desdemona confided in a lowered tone, “and I declare I shall be sick. A diversion, I think, is necessary.” And raising her voice slightly she said, “I make it the third night this week, Hary-O, that Hart has disappeared without a word. Perhaps he is gone a-trysting, and is ashamed to acknowledge it! We may declare that the result of Mr. Danforth’s example.”
“I suspect that young Hart is poaching,” Danforth declared from his place among the sheet-music; “it is the preferred entanglement of every country youth. He will be presently crouching in the underbrush of the Vernon grounds, in the company of a most disgraceful companion, intent upon the snaring of a brace of rabbits.”
“Is it quite safe for such a young fellow to be abroad, when murder has been done?” I enquired, with an air of idle curiosity. “But perhaps he confines himself to the park, and writes poetry in the Grotto.”
“Poetry! Hart?” Lady Harriot managed an expression of unaffected amusement; it softened the unyielding structure of her face, and made her appear suddenly more amiable. “It is meaning no disrespect to say that poor Hart is possessed of a tin ear. It is much to elicit two words from him, indeed; but on paper, he is an utter blank!”
“How very sad!” Desdemona cried. “It has been my experience that those young men who cannot pronounce a word, are the most eloquent hands at a love letter! Your easy and arrogant fellows, who may spout off an entire volume, have no time to waste in putting words to paper. I do not think I possess a single billet-doux in Swithin’s fist, however ardent his vows by moonlight.”
“Whoever murdered poor Tess is unlikely to concern himself with the heir to a dukedom,” Danforth added, for my ears. “The Marquess must enjoy such protection, by virtue of his birth and his manhood, as a stillroom maid could never know.”
“I will confess that I worry about Hart,” Lady Harriot murmured. Her long fingers spasmed slightly where they sat idle in her lap; she clutched them together, ever the mistress of control. “When I learned that murder had been done so recently as Monday night, my thoughts flew immediately to my brother. He was abroad until dawn.”
I stared at Lady Harriot, my breath suspended. Surely she must apprehend the cruel force of such a speech?
“He should not be allowed to wander alone,” she went on, in a fretful tone. “It would never have been permitted in my mother’s time. He should be forced to keep a groom at his heels—”
“I cannot think that Hart would thank you for your concern,” Danforth told her lightly. “No lad of fifteen wishes to be followed by a nursemaid.”
“If Lord Hartington was abroad on Monday night, how thankful you must have been to discover him safe — when first you learned of Tess Arnold’s death,” I added. “In so vast a house as this, I imagine it must be possible for a legion to come and go unnoticed.”
“I should never know if Hart had found his bed or slept in the stables,” Lady Harriot confirmed. “Fifteen is such a trying age! I will not scruple to admit that the boy has run completely wild this summer, Miss Austen.”
“Perhaps when he has got over the worst of his grief,” I suggested delicately, “you may observe a change. Perhaps if he were sent away to school—”
“Now that is a remedy I cannot hear of, without the most strenuous objection in the world,” Andrew Danforth declared with heat. “Whoever first conceived of an exile among schoolboys, far from the comforts of all that is familiar, as a remedy for grief, can never have known what beasts young boys may be.”
“You speak with all the force of experience, Mr. Danforth.”
“I do. My brother, Charles, saw fit to send me to Winchester, when my parents died; and it was many years before I could forgive his interference.”
“And yet,” I persisted, “a man must receive an education.”
“But why he must be educated at so great a distance from his home — alien to everything that must have a claim on his heart — is something I will never understand,” he replied, with less of anger than he had previously shown. “When I reflect that a woman may be schooled in her own attics, by the comfort of a fire, at the hands of domestics she has known all her life — I might almost exchange my Hessians for stays, Miss Austen!”
We all laughed; but Mona could not allow the argument to rest in Danforth’s hands. “It will not do, Mr. Danforth — you know that it will not do. The chief purpose in attending a school such as you describe, is not to be found in the Latin or Greek that is beaten into your head; but in the acquaintance one forms and the relations of friendship or reliance that may extend a lifetime. Hart must certainly benefit from these.”
“Tell me, Mr. Danforth,” I enquired, “did you regret your exile to Winchester so deeply, once you had been there the length of a term?”
“I hated it without qualification or exception for the whole three months I endured,” he retorted. “Had poor old Hemming not appeared as my saviour, I should hate it still.”
“Hemming? — Not Mr. George Hemming?”
“Naturally. Whom else should I mean? It was always Hemming Charles employed whenever anything distasteful had to be faced; and rather than come in search of me himself, and answer to the Headmaster, he sent his solicitor in his stead.”
“I see.” His solicitor, it would seem, was yet serving in that capacity; and having faced a Headmaster of Winchester, and stood his ground, perhaps George Hemming could find nothing very awful in the gallows after all.