ears were three times tortured with the ringing of the bell, and the advent of undesired guests—for Donne followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Donne, and more wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining-room (for, though old Helstone chid the inferior priesthood when he found them ‘carousing,’ as he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table he ever liked to treat them to a glass of his best), and through the closed doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter and the vacant cackle of their voices. Her fear was lest they should stay to tea, for she had no pleasure in making tea for that particular trio. What distinctions people draw! These three were men, young men, educated men, like Moore: yet, for her, how great the difference! Their society was a bore, his a delight.
Not only was she destined to be favoured with their clerical company, but Fortune was at this moment bringing her four other guests—lady guests, all packed in a pony-phaeton now rolling somewhat heavily along the road from Whinbury. An elderly lady and three of her buxom daughters were coming to see her ‘in a friendly way,’ as the custom of that neighbourhood was. Yes, a fourth time the bell clanged. Fanny brought the present announcement to the drawing-room:
‘Mrs. Sykes and the three Misses Sykes.’
When Caroline was going to receive company, her habit was to wring her hands very nervously, to flush a little, and come forward hurriedly yet hesitatingly, wishing herself meantime at Jericho. She was, at such crises, sadly deficient in finished manner, though she had once been at school a year. Accordingly, on this occasion, her small white hands sadly maltreated each other while she stood up waiting the entrance of Mrs. Sykes.
In stalked that lady, a tall, bilious gentlewoman, who made an ample and not altogether insincere profession of piety, and was greatly given to hospitality towards the clergy. In sailed her three daughters, a showy trio, being all three well-grown and more or less handsome.
In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked. Whether young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all (or most all) have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to say, ‘I know—I do not boast of it—but I know that I am the standard of what is proper. Let everyone, therefore, whom I approach, or who approaches me, keep a sharp look-out, for wherein they differ from me—be the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice—therein they are wrong.’
Mrs. and Misses Sykes, far from being exceptions to this observation, were pointed illustrations of its truth. Miss Mary—a well-looked, well-meant, and, on the whole, well-dispositioned girl—wore her complacency with some state, though without harshness; Miss Harriet—a beauty—carried it more overbearingly; she looked high and cold; Miss Hannah, who was conceited, dashing, pushing, flourished hers consciously and openly; the mother evinced it with the gravity proper to her age and religious fame.
The reception was got through somehow. Caroline ‘was glad to see them’ (an unmitigated fib), hoped they were well, hoped Mrs. Sykes’s cough was better (Mrs. Sykes had had a cough for the last twenty years), hoped the Misses Sykes had left their sisters at home well; to which inquiry the Misses Sykes, sitting on three chairs opposite the music-stool whereon Caroline had undesignedly come to anchor, after wavering for some seconds between it and a large arm-chair, into which she at length recollected she ought to induct Mrs. Sykes, and, indeed, that lady saved her the trouble by depositing herself therein; the Misses Sykes replied to Caroline by one simultaneous bow, very majestic and mighty awful. A pause followed; this bow was of a character to insure silence for the next five minutes, and it did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr. Helstone, and whether he had had any return of rheumatism, and whether preaching twice on a Sunday fatigued him, and if he was capable of taking a full service now, and, on being assured he was, she and all her daughters, combining in chorus, expressed their opinion that he was ‘a wonderful man of his years.’
Pause second.