Madam Cavendish was down that morning, sitting at table with her
stick beside her, her head topped with a great tower of snowy cap,
her old face now ivory-yellow, but with a wonderful precision of
feature, for she had been a great beauty in her day, so alert and
alive with the ready comprehension of her black eyes, under slightly
scowling brows, that naught escaped her that was within her reach of
vision. Somewhat dull was she of hearing, but that sharpness of eye
did much to atone for it. She looked up, when we entered, with such
keenness that for a second my thought was that she knew all.
"What were the sounds of merrymaking down the road?" said she.
"'Twas the morris dancers and the May-pole; 'tis the first of May,
as you know, madam," said Mary in her sweet voice, made clear and
loud to reach her grandmother's ear; then up she went to kiss her,
and the old woman eyed her with pride, which she was fain to conceal
by chiding. "You will ruin your complexion if you go out in such a
wind without your mask," she said, and looked at the maiden's roses
and lilies with that rapture of admiration occasioned half by memory
of her own charms which had faded, and half by understanding of the
value of them in coin of love, which one woman can waken only in
another.
For Catherine, Madam Cavendish had no glance of admiration nor word,
though she had tended her faithfully all the day before and half the
night, rubbing her with an effusion of herbs and oil for her
rheumatic pains. Yet for her, Madam Cavendish had no love, and
treated her with a stately toleration and no more. Mary understood
no cause for it, and often looked, as she did then, with a
distressful wonder at her grandmother when she seemed to hold her
sister so slightingly.
"Here is Catherine, grandmother," said she, "and she has had a
narrow escape from being pressed as Maid Marion by the morris
dancers." Madam Cavendish made a slight motion, and looked not at
Catherine, but turned to me with that face of anxious kindness which
she wore for me alone. "Saw you aught of the Golden Horn this
morning, Master Wingfield?" asked she, and I replied truthfully
enough that I had not.
Then, to my dismay, she turned to Mary and inquired what were the
goods which she had ordered from England, and to my greater dismay
the maid, with such a light of daring and mischief in her blue eyes
as I never saw, rattled off, the while Catherine and I stared aghast
at her, such a list of women's folderols as I never heard, and most
of them quite beyond my masculine comprehension.