Philippa

But Mrs Raynsworth still looked annoyed. She was feeling really anxious and concerned about her elder daughter, and was in consequence less calm than usual.

“Evelyn,” said Philippa, “do come up to bed. I’ll stay with you while you undress.”

Mrs Headfort got up slowly.

“Philippa is queer this evening,” she thought to herself. “She’s not very nice to mamma.”

“I will come down again in a few minutes,” said Philippa, as they left the room. “I only want to make sure of Evelyn taking her medicine, and to prevent her going into the nursery again to-night. – What will you do without me to look after you,” she added, turning to her sister.

“There will be no nursery for me to wander into,” said Evelyn, with a sigh, “when I feel dull or lonely, as there is here.”

Philippa turned quickly.

“But you never do feel dull or lonely – at least not lonely, here with mamma and me, surely?” she said, with a touch of reproach.

“Oh, well, no, not in the same way, of course. But there must be times when I feel lonely without Duke, even though I love so being at home with all of you. It wouldn’t be natural if I didn’t miss him.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Philippa, half absently, for in her own mind she was thinking, “How strange it must be to care for anybody more than for one’s own people! I cannot picture it to myself at all.”

The few minutes she had spoken of to her mother turned out thirty at least, for more than half an hour had passed before her younger daughter rejoined Mrs Raynsworth in the drawing-room. And even then Philippa seemed so carried away and preoccupied that her mother felt again slightly irritated by her manner.

“Are you very tired this evening, Philippa?” she said at last; “or is there anything the matter? You don’t seem like yourself.”

Philippa gave a little start.

“I’m quite well – not the least tired, I mean,” she said, quickly. “I am thinking about Evelyn; there is nothing else the matter.”

“You mean about her going to-morrow alone?” said Mrs Raynsworth; “I am not at all happy about it myself. She looks so fragile, poor little thing. She is not nearly as strong as you, Philippa, in any way. But it is always a satisfaction to me to see how fond you are of each other; she clings to you so. And to tell you the truth, before she and the children came to us, I had some misgiving as to how it would be, for you were practically a child when she married, and those two or three years made all the difference. You had come to be so thoroughly the daughter at home – helping your father and me. I have perhaps never said to you before in so many words that I have been very pleased, very gratified by your whole tone towards and about Evey. You have been unselfish and self-forgetting all through.”

The young girl’s eyes glistened with pleasure. It was not often that Mrs Raynsworth – as a rule a somewhat silent and undemonstrative woman – expressed herself so unreservedly.

“Dear mamma,” said Philippa, “there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Evelyn. And I am so glad, so particularly glad, that you understand it. Thank you so much for what you’ve said. Now, I think I will go to bed if you don’t mind,” and she kissed her mother warmly.

“She must be tired, though she won’t own to it,” thought Mrs Raynsworth as Philippa left the room. “It is generally so difficult to get her to go to bed early,” and again the feeling came over her of there being something slightly unusual about her younger daughter that evening.

She would have been still more perplexed and surprised could she have seen Philippa an hour or two later in her own room. For long after the whole household was asleep, the girl was busily sewing at various articles of her attire, altering them and modifying them with the help of some small purchases she had made that afternoon. And when at last all was completed to her satisfaction, she drew out a small light trunk, already partially packed, which she proceeded to fill.

“I think that will do,” she said to herself, as she stood up and surveyed it with satisfaction. “With this and a hand-bag, and the things I’ll manage to get into Evelyn’s roll of rugs, I am sure I shall have all I need. Now I’ve only to write my letter of explanation to mamma. Dorcas must give it to her when it is quite certainly too late to overtake me.”

And half an hour later she was in bed and fast asleep, her mother’s words having removed any misgivings she had felt as to what she was about to do.

Mrs Headfort looked a little better the next morning, thanks to a good night’s rest; thanks also, perhaps, to the not unnatural excitement she was feeling about her journey and its results. Between her anticipations and her regret at leaving her children, she was sufficiently distracted not to notice that Philippa had slipped away in some mysterious fashion quite an hour before the time fixed for her own departure. It was actually not till she was standing at the hall door, waiting till the luggage should be safely established on the top of the fly before getting in herself, that she suddenly exclaimed:

“Where can Philippa be, mamma? I haven’t seen her since breakfast.”

Mrs Raynsworth glanced round with an air of annoyance.

“I have no idea,” she said. “She is certainly not with your father. What was it she was saying last night about not going to the station with you?”

“Oh, just that she couldn’t go; she has some mysterious engagement. But she might at least have said good-bye first.”

“It is so unlike her,” replied the mother. “And somehow I didn’t take it in, otherwise I would have got ready to see you off myself.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that part of it in the least,” said Evelyn. “It’s not as if it were a big crowded station. But tell Philippa, all the same, that I don’t understand her going off like that. Now, good-bye, dear mamma, and don’t worry about me. I shall be all right if I get good news of the children, and you or Phil will write every day, I’m sure – a mere word would be enough.”

“Yes, dear, of course we shall,” replied Mrs Raynsworth, reassuringly, though her face had a more anxious expression than usual. “I won’t ask you to write every day,” she went on, “for I know how tiresome it is to feel bound to do so when one is staying with people. Only let us know of your arrival as soon as you can, and say how you are.”

She stood watching the fly as it made its way down the short drive, waving her hand in response to Evelyn’s last smile and nod. Then she went slowly back into the house.

“I couldn’t have said anything to disturb Evelyn just as she was starting,” she thought to herself, “but I really do think Philippa is behaving most extraordinarily. I hope these very independent ways of hers are not the result of her visit to Dorriford. I wonder, by-the-by, if Dorcas knows where she is gone.”

But, strange to say, Dorcas was not to be found in any of her usual haunts, though one of the under-servants said she had seen her not five minutes before, up-stairs in Miss Philippa’s room. Tired and somewhat depressed, though she scarcely knew why, Mrs Raynsworth sat down in the drawing-room with a vague intention of writing a letter or otherwise employing herself usefully, but contrary to her usual habits, more than an hour passed before she exerted herself to do anything but gaze dreamily out of the window, where the now fast-falling leaves were whirling about fantastically in the breeze.

“I feel as if I were waiting for something, though for what I don’t know,” she thought, and it was with a start of surprise that the clock, striking one, caught her ear. “Dear me, how idle I have been – one o’clock! Evelyn must be well on her way by this. I wonder when Philippa intends to come in?”

Just then the door opened and Dorcas appeared. She carried a salver in her hand, and on it lay a letter.

“If you please, ma’am,” the old servant began, “Miss Philippa wished me to give you this at one o’clock, but not before. I don’t know what it’s about, I don’t, indeed,” she added, anxiously, “but I do hope there’s nothing wrong.”

Her words were well intended, but they only served to sharpen the uneasiness which Mrs Raynsworth was already feeling. Her face grew pale, and her heart beat painfully fast as she took hold of the envelope.

“A letter, and from Philippa!” she exclaimed; “what can it mean? No, don’t go away, Dorcas,” though the old servant had shown no sign of doing so. “If – if there is anything wrong,” – though what could have been wrong she would have been at a loss to say – “I must keep calm. Don’t go till I see what it is.” And with trembling fingers she opened the letter.

For Philippa had been preoccupied and unlike herself the night before, and even this very morning, there was no denying.

Chapter Four

Fellow-Travellers

In the meantime all had progressed smoothly with Mrs Headfort.

The train was already in the station when she and her boxes found themselves on the platform, for Marlby was a terminus in its small way. It lay about an hour off the main line, and as express trains do not always wait the arrival of small local ones, departures from Marlby for the junction were characterised by most praiseworthy punctuality, any wafting that might occur being pretty sure to take place at Wrexhill junction itself.

But to-day the express proved worthy of its name, barely five minutes having been passed at the big station before Evelyn found herself re-established in her favourite corner of a first-class compartment, otherwise empty, of the train.

“Now I shall feel settled,” she said to herself, with satisfaction, “no more changes till I get almost to my journey’s end. I do hope nobody will get in. I wish I could go to sleep and then I should feel fresh on arriving, and I never like to shut my eyes with strangers in the carriage – for one thing, one looks so silly; I’ve often laughed at other people. I wish the train would start – oh, dear,” – as at that moment the door opened to admit a new-comer – “what a bother!” and as she made this mental ejaculation the train began to move.

“How rash of her!” thought Mrs Headfort, glancing at the intruder, whose back for the moment was turned towards her.

She was a tall, slender woman, neatly but simply dressed in black, young too, as far as Mrs Headfort’s present chances of observation could decide. “She looks like a maid – she must have got in first-class by mistake sorely,” but at this point in her reflections the black-robed figure turned, calmly seating herself opposite Evelyn, and lifting the thick veil she wore, disclosed to the gazer’s astonished eyes the face of her sister Philippa!

Mrs Headfort grew pale – more than pale indeed, perfectly white – and uttered a faint scream. For the moment, in the confusion of ideas always engendered by the utterly unexpected, she really felt as if she had seen a ghost. It was impossible for her at once to grasp the fact that before her was indeed her sister, a flesh-and-blood Philippa. She could scarcely have been more amazed had the figure in front of her proceeded to dissolve into thin air and disappear! And the effect on the girl herself of her sister’s agitation was for an instant paralysing. Any enjoyment she had anticipated in this coup d’état, any thought of “fun” completely faded. She felt so terrified and startled at the effect upon Evelyn of what she had imagined would cause at the most but a start of surprise, and probably some vehement remonstrance, that she was utterly unable to speak. Only, when at length – or what seemed at length, for in reality not twenty seconds had passed since the new-comer had revealed herself – Evelyn’s pale lips murmured with a gasp, “Philippa!” did her own power of utterance return to her.

“Evey, Evey,” she exclaimed, “don’t look like that I never thought you would be so frightened. I – I thought that on the whole you’d be pleased.”

The distress in Philippa’s face touched her sister. She tried to smile, and the effort brought some colour back again to her pale face.

“It was silly of me,” she said at last, “but I don’t understand! Did you mean to come with me to Wrexhill? Oh, no, I forgot, we have passed it; we shall not stop again till Crowminster, ever so far away. Philippa, what are you thinking of?” and again her face grew very troubled.

“Of course I know we don’t stop for ever so long,” said Philippa, trying to speak easily. “I looked it all out in the railway guide; that was why I wouldn’t let you know I was in the train till after we had passed the junction. It’s too late to send me back now, Evey; the trains don’t match in the least I should have hours to wait at Crowminster, and again at the junction. I shouldn’t get home till who knows when, and what is still more to the purpose,” she added, but in a lower voice, “I wouldn’t go back if you told me to – nothing in the world would make me go back.”

The sense of her last words did not reach her sister’s brain. She sat staring at Philippa with more and more widely opening eyes.

“Why are you dressed like that?” she exclaimed, gradually taking in the fact of her sister’s unusual get-up. “Is it some trick you are playing, Philippa – some silly, practical joke? I cannot understand you, just now, especially, when I wanted to be calm and as easy-minded as possible for this visit!”

The reproach in her tone roused Philippa’s indignation.

“Trick – practical joke!” she repeated. “How can you say such a thing? What do you take me for?” and her voice faltered. “You are very stupid, Evelyn,” she went on, more lightly. “You surely must understand what I mean to do. I am no longer Philippa Raynsworth, I am Mrs Headfort’s maid – a very good, trustworthy girl, though rather young and not very experienced. So I hope, ma’am, I have made things clear.”

Evelyn gasped.

“Phil!” was all she could find breath to say for a moment. “Yes, indeed,” she went on, “I have been fearfully dense and stupid. I might have suspected something from your manner the last day or two, and when you so suddenly gave in about my going alone. But, oh, Phil, you are perfectly mad; such a thing cannot possibly be allowed. Just think if it were found out! What would Duke say?”

“Duke shall never hear of it!” Philippa replied, composedly. “It is my secret, Evelyn; I throw myself upon your honour never to tell anybody– do you hear – anybody without my leave. You must promise.”

“But papa and mamma?” said Evelyn, bewilderedly. “Papa and mamma,” repeated Philippa again, forgetting good manners in her excitement. “They know, of course. I mean,” – catching the increasing amazement on her sister’s face – “I mean they will know by this time. I left a letter for Dorcas to give mamma as soon as it was quite too late to stop me. In her heart I do believe mamma will be thankful to know I am with you, to take care of you, my poor little sweet, with your troubled white face. Oh, darling, do cheer up and see the bright side of it. Its going to be– nothing would make me give it up – do understand that, and let yourself be comfortable. Think how beautifully I can do your hair, and dress you, and everything, and what nice talks we can have when you are tired and come up to your room for a little rest. I can be ever so much more use to you even for talking and consulting, than if I were going with you as your sister. And think, if you feel ill or very depressed, how glad you will be to know I am at hand. And how glad mamma will be – why, I can write to her every day and keep her mind at rest.”

Evelyn’s face relaxed a little.

“But, Phil,” she began, and by the tone of her voice, in spite of the remonstrating, “but,” Philippa knew the battle was won, “but, Phil, the life for you – among the servants– you, my sister! Oh, no, it – ”

“It will be such a chance for studying one part of the other side of things as falls to very few,” she interrupted. “Just what I shall enjoy. Why, if ever I come to write stories, as papa says I may do some day, think how valuable it will be to me to have actually made one at the ‘second table’ myself. It will be something like a night-in-a-casual-ward experience.”

Evelyn shuddered.

“Don’t say such things, Philippa, it makes it worse and worse. At least the servants will be clean.”

“It is to be hoped so,” said her sister, coolly.

“But the men-servants,” continued Mrs Headfort; “fancy you sitting down between the butler and the valet! Oh, Philippa, when papa hears of it I believe he will come off by the first train to fetch you himself.”

“He will do nothing of the kind,” returned Philippa. “He will shrug his shoulders and say it will be a good lesson for me, and in his heart he will enjoy the humour of it. You can certainly trust me to keep all the butlers and valets in the world in their place, even though I’m only a lady’s-maid,” and she drew up her head proudly. “But seriously, Evey,” she went on, “I’m sure there will be nothing of the kind required at Wyverston; you may be pretty certain the servants will be a most decorous, old-fashioned set. I shall not be expected to do more than ‘speak when I’m spoken to’ and ‘mend your clothes’ if you tear them.”

Philippa knew what she was about. She went on talking in the same strain till she succeeded in making Evelyn smile and even laugh, taking care to treat the whole affair as irrevocable – a fait accompli– knowing Mrs Headfort’s mind to be so constituted that taking her acceptance for granted was in nine cases out of ten to insure it.

An hour and more passed, Evelyn’s intended opposition to the extraordinary drama arranged by Philippa, growing, half unconsciously to herself, feebler and fainter. She was feeling very tired, too, as the result of the agitation she had gone through, and in such conditions it came naturally to her to cling with childlike appeal to those around her. And Philippa’s stronger personality made her a very rock of support to poor Evey.

Suddenly a thought struck her.

“Phil,” she said, “how is it you are travelling in here? Did you take a first-class ticket?”

Miss Raynsworth shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she replied; “I am going to get out at Crowminster. There is a second-class compartment next door. I don’t suppose there will be any difficulty about my having come this bit of the way with you, but if there should be, I can pay the difference. It is much better for me not to stay with you: we shall get into our rôle more quickly if we start at once. I will look in at every station to see if you want anything. We must be getting near Crowminster now.”

Evelyn did not speak for a moment or two.

“There is just one little thing to be settled,” Philippa went on, with a touch of hesitation. “What will you call me, Evey?”

Evey glanced at her.

“Oh, Phil,” she exclaimed, “it is altogether impossible. I shall never be able to keep it up.”

“Nonsense,” said her sister, with a touch of asperity. “You will have no keeping up, as you call it, to do, and as for my part of it, you can safely leave that to me.”

“I shall never be able to call you anything but Phil,” said Mrs Headfort, plaintively.

“I’ve thought of that,” replied the young girl. “We had better choose a name which would not clash – I mean, so that if you did call me ‘Phil’ by mistake, people would either not notice it or think you had interrupted yourself. What do you say to ‘Phillis’? It would do very well, I think?”

“I daresay it would,” said Mrs Headfort, with a curious kind of resignation in her voice.

“Of course it is a perfect name for a maid,” said Philippa, “if people didn’t always use surnames. But you can truthfully say, if any one remarks upon it, that you’ve known me all my life, though I’ve only lately entered your service.”

“I cannot go into any explanations of the kind, whatever people say, I warn you, Philippa. I haven’t the nerve for it. Even if my words were true, I should feel as if I were telling stories.”

“Oh, well, say nothing, then,” her sister replied, tranquilly. “On the whole it will be as well, or perhaps better. But now, Evey, we are getting near Crowminster, and I must go back to my own carriage. There’s only just one thing more I want to prepare you for. – Shut your eyes for a minute.”

Evey meekly obeyed; she was past the stage of any attempt at restiveness by this time.

“Now,” said Philippa, and Evelyn, looking up, gave a slight exclamation.

“Who would have thought it would change you so? Where in the world did you get them?”

The “it” and the “them” referred to a pair of bluish-tinted spectacles which Philippa had composedly donned.

“Aren’t they splendid?” she said. “Don’t you remember them? They’re a pair mamma had that summer ages ago, when she went to Switzerland with papa, to shade her eyes from the glare. Of course they’re only plain glass, and very dark blue ones wouldn’t have done; they look so like a disguise. At least, in all the sensational stories, they are always used for that. And real spectacles would have dazed me, for my sight’s as keen as – ”

“A hawk’s!” said Mrs Headfort, with a spark of reviving vivacity. “But, oh, Phil, the train is slackening. I wish you could have stayed with me.”

“It is much better not,” said Philippa, philosophically. “Very much better not. We should have gone on talking and forgetting the new state of things. My being in another compartment is the first act in the play – it will help us to realise it. And now, ma’am,” she continued, rising as she spoke, for by this time the train had stopped, “I had better leave you. I will come to see if you desire me for anything at the next station we stop at.”

Without the undue effort or constraint, which would have accompanied any complete change of tone for a prolonged period, she had managed slightly to modify her usual inflection of voice and manner of speaking. It was slower and more monotonous than its wont, with a slight suggestion of choosing her words, as might be done by an intelligent girl of a lower class with enough education to make her aspire to perfect correctness.

“All right, Phillis,” Mrs Headfort replied, with a somewhat pitiful and not very successful attempt at following her sister’s lead. “No,” she continued, with a sudden change of tone, “don’t speak to me. I can’t stand it! I will do my best to brace myself up to it, but it won’t be easy. Perhaps it is better for you to leave me alone.”

Philippa did not reply, except by a smile and a nod, feeling, to tell the truth, far less easy-minded than she looked. She was becoming conscious that till now she had not sufficiently taken into account Evelyn’s peculiar unfitness for acting a part of any kind; all she had directed her attention to having been the mere obtaining of her sister’s consent to her scheme.

“Yet, after all,” she thought to herself, as she stepped into the second-class compartment next door, “after all, all she will have to do will be very easy; there will be no acting involved. We shall hardly ever be seen together, and if her manner is constrained and peculiar, it will only be thought to be her way with servants. It isn’t as if we were going among people who had ever seen her before.”

With these reflections she did her best to quell her misgivings, and feeling that it would be better not to let her mind dwell too long on her own concerns, she looked about her for a little diversion.

There were two or three other occupants of the compartment, and her glance fell almost immediately on one of them who at once riveted her attention. This was a long-nosed, melancholy-eyed dachshund, whom Philippa’s judgment, experienced in matters pertaining to his family, straightway mentally labelled as a “perfect beauty.” In other words, as consistently and entirely ugly as the strictest connoisseur could demand.

Philippa loved dogs, and in general her amiable feelings towards them were reciprocated. She had a very tender association with dachshunds, the tragic death of one such pet having been literally the sorest grief of her childhood, and as she gazed on her four-footed fellow-traveller, whose soft eyes gazed back at her in return from the seat exactly opposite hers, where he was comfortably established in a corner, it was perhaps well for her that the blue-tinted spectacles hid the tears which involuntarily dimmed their surface.

Never since that terrible day – now, what the young girl would have called “so many, many years ago,” when the broken-hearted child had sobbed itself to sleep for the loss of her darling – never had she seen another dog so exactly like “Valentine.”