He frowned at the pantry boy, young John, who slipped and nearly fell, staggering under the load of yet another pair of candlesticks.
The dogs gazed up at me, dejected.
One of them crept and hid under the settle in the hall. I went upstairs.
Heaven knows when last I had trespassed into the blue room.
We never had visitors, and it was connected in my mind with some game of hide-and-seek, long since, when Louise had come over with my godfather one Christmas.
I could remember creeping into the silent room and hiding beneath the bed, among the dust.
I had a dim recollection that Ambrose had once said it was aunt Phoebe’s room, and aunt Phoebe had gone away to live in Kent, and later died.
No trace of her remained today.
The boys, under Seecombe’s direction, had worked hard, and aunt Phoebe had been swept away with the dust of years.
The windows were open, looking out on the grounds, and the morning sun shone on the well-beaten rugs.
Fresh linen, of a quality unknown to me, had been put upon the bed.
Had that washstand and ewer always been there, I wondered, in the dressing room adjoining?
Did that easy chair belong?
I remembered none of them, but then I remembered nothing of aunt Phoebe, who had taken herself to Kent before I was even born.
Well, what had done for her would do for my cousin Rachel.
The third room, under the arch, making up the suite, had been aunt Phoebe’s boudoir.
This too had been dusted, and the windows opened.
I dare say I had not entered this room either since those days of hide-and-seek.
There was a portrait of Ambrose hanging on the wall above the fireplace, painted when he was a young man.
I did not even know of its existence, and he had probably forgotten it.
Had it been done by some well-known painter it would have been below with the other family portraits, but sent up here, to a room never used, suggested no one had thought much of it.
It was painted three-quarter length, and he had his gun under his arm and carried a dead partridge in his left hand.
The eyes looked ahead, into my eyes, and the mouth smiled a little.
His hair was longer than I remembered it.
There was nothing very striking in the portrait, or in the face.
Only one thing.
It was strangely like myself.
I looked in the mirror, and back again to the portrait, and the only difference lay in the slant of his eyes, something narrower than mine, and in his darker coloring of hair.
We could be brothers, though, almost twin brothers, that young man in the portrait and myself.
This sudden realization of our likeness gave an uplift to my spirits.
It was as if the young Ambrose was smiling at me saying
“I am with you.”
And the older Ambrose, too, felt very close.
I shut the door behind me and, passing back once more through the dressing room and the blue bedroom, went downstairs.
I heard the sound of wheels out on the drive.
It was Louise, in the dogcart, and she had great bunches of michaelmas daisies and dahlias on the seat beside her.
“For the drawing room,” she called, on sight of me.
“I thought that Seecombe might be glad of them.”
Seecombe, passing that moment through the hall with his drove of minions, looked offended.
He stood stiffly, as Louise passed into the house carrying the flowers.
“You should not have troubled, Miss Louise,” he said,
“I had made all arrangements with Tamlyn.
Sufficient flowers were brought in first thing from the walled garden.”
“I can arrange them, then,” said Louise; “your men will only break the vases.
I suppose you have vases.
Or have they been cramming the flowers into jam-pots?”
Seecombe’s face was a study in pained dignity.
I pushed Louise into the library hurriedly and shut the door.
“I wondered,” said Louise, in an undertone, “whether you would have liked me to stay and see to things, and be here when Mrs. Ashley comes.
Father would have accompanied me, but he is still rather unwell, and with this threatening rain I thought it best he remained indoors.