Yule broke into a comprehensive laugh. “It seems absurd, but I’m not in the least acquainted with my house.”
She seized his arm. “Then do let me show it to you!”
“I shall be delighted.” His tone, as Chivers returned breathless from the front, showed he desired a clear field. “Who in the world’s there?”
“A party! Over from Gossage—to see the house.”
The lady embraced the incident. “Oh, let me show it!” But addressing Chivers, she dropped into drollery. “Dear me, I forgot—you get the tips! But I can get them too, and I’ll simply make them over to you. Perhaps they’ll be bigger—for me!”
Yule was highly amused. “I should think they’d be enormous—for you! But I should like to go over with you alone.”
“Just you and me?”
“Just you and me—as you kindly proposed.”
She stood reminded; but, throwing it off: “That must be for after!”
“Ah, but not too late. I go back tonight.”
“Laws, sir!” Chivers groaned.
“You want to keep him?” the stranger asked. Yule turned away at the question, but she found herself instantly answered. “Then I’ll help you.”
“Shall I show them straight in, sir?” Chivers appealed.
“By all means—if there’s money in it!” This was jocose, but the old man’s departing step held new hope. The lady had exerted an influence.
She continued to exert one. “Oh, and I promised to show it to Miss Prodmore! Won’t you call her?”
The coldness of his response made it none. “‘Call’ her? Dear lady, I don’t know her!”
“You must, then—she’s wonderful.” At her look, Cora Prodmore presented herself in the doorway of the morning-room. “See? She’s charming!” The girl dashed across the open as if under heavy fire, but the extremity of exposure was promptly embodied in her friend’s public embrace. “Miss Prodmore, let me present Captain Yule. Captain Yule, Miss Prodmore. Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule.”
There was stiffness in such notice as either party took. “Papa, let me ‘present’ you to Mrs. Gracedew. Mrs. Gracedew, Mr. Prodmore. Mr. Prodmore, Mrs. Gracedew.”
Mrs. Gracedew pronounced him, sparing him nothing. “So happy to meet your daughter’s father. Your daughter’s so perfect a specimen.”
Prodmore seized the perch held out. “So perfect a specimen, yes!”
“So fresh, so quaint, so droll!” She kept Cora in the middle.
Prodmore gave Yule the advantage. “So fresh, so quaint, so droll!”
But Chivers’s return made the moment a circumstance. He preceded several plain provincial sightseers, drawing them up in a broken line with suppressed pulls. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is perhaps the most important feature—the grand old feudal, baronial ’all. Being from all accounts the most ancient portion of the edifice, it was erected in the very earliest ages.” He paused, then coughed. “Some do say—in the course of the fifteenth century.”
Mrs. Gracedew pounced on him with affection. “I say in the fourteenth, my dear—you’re robbing us of a hundred years!”
He yielded without a struggle. “I do seem in them dark old centuries sometimes to trip a little.” His audience, gaping, moved nearer. “The Gothic roof is much admired, but the west gallery is a modern addition.”
“What in the name of Methuselah do you call ‘modern’?” Mrs. Gracedew interposed. “It was here at the visit of James the First, in 1611. The great fireplace is Jacobean.”
She took him up with wondrous benignant authority, plunging into the old book, and he could only assent with grateful obeisances. “The tapestry on the left Italian—the elegant wood-work Flemish.”
“Excuse me if I just deprecate a misconception. The elegant wood-work Italian—the tapestry on the left Flemish.” She put it to him before them all, looking now for sympathy. “Do you really mind if I just do it? Oh, I know how: I can do quite beautifully the housekeeper last week at Castle Gaunt.” She addressed the company. “How do you do? Ain’t it thrilling? Keep well together, please—I’ve my duty to all parties.”
The contingent from Gossage had its spokesman—a very erect little personage in a new suit and green necktie, with a long face and upstanding hair. “How many parties, now, can you manage?”
Mrs. Gracedew was superbly definite. “Two. The party up and the party down.” She pointed to the escutcheons. “Observe in the centre compartment the family arms.” Before Chivers knew it, she had crossed to the black old portrait. “And observe the family legs!” She flew from pavement to roof. “Observe the suit of armour worn at Tewkesbury—observe the tattered banner carried at Blenheim.” They bobbed wherever she pointed, but saw her alone—Clement Yule especially, who never took his eyes from her. All her own, for a moment, frankly went back to him. “Observe, above all, that you’re in one of the most interesting old houses in England; for which the ages have been tender and the generations wise: letting it change so slowly that there’s always more left than taken—living their lives in it, but letting it shape their lives!”
Prodmore took it up at once. “A most striking and appropriate tribute to a real historical monument! You do, madam, bring the whole thing out!”
The visitor with the green tie, with a loud renewal of boldness: “Doesn’t she indeed, Jane, bring it out?”
Mrs. Gracedew laughed. “But who in the world wants to keep it in? It isn’t a secret—it isn’t a strange cat or a political party!” She soared to the roof. “Just look at those lovely lines! Just look at the tone of that glass, and the gilding of that leather, and the cutting of that oak, and the dear old flags of the very floor. To look, in this place, is to love!”
A voice from the party took it up with a guffaw, accompanied by a pinch to one of the ladies. “I say—to love!”
One of the ladies properly replied. “It depends on who you look at!”
Prodmore made his profit. “Do you hear that, Captain? You must look at the right person!”
Mrs. Gracedew faltered. “I don’t think Captain Yule cares. He doesn’t do justice—”
“Madam?”
“To the value of your house.”
“I like to hear you express it!”
“I can’t express it!” She looked all round, more gravely, and tried but broke down. “It’s too inexpressible!”
Prodmore was not prepared to assent. “Do what you can for it, madam. It would bring it quite home.”
She gave another try. “Well—the value’s a fancy value!”
Prodmore turned triumphant. “Exactly what I told you!”
“When a thing’s unique, it’s unique!”
“It’s unique!” Prodmore cried. The gentleman in the green tie caught it. “It’s unique!” They all vociferously did.
“It’s worth anything you like,” Mrs. Gracedew insisted.
“Anything you like!” Prodmore reverberated.
“Twenty thousand now?” a very young gentleman with a coaxing voice inquired, blushing.
“I wouldn’t look at twenty thousand!” Mrs. Gracedew replied.
“She wouldn’t look at twenty thousand!” Prodmore announced to the Captain.
“Thirty, then, as it stands?”
“It would be giving it away!”
“It would be giving it away!” Prodmore cried.
“You’d hold out for forty—?”
“Fifty thousand, Captain Yule, is what I think I should propose.”
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