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Title: A broken blossom vol. 1 of 3
Author: Florence Marryat
Release date: March 24, 2026 [eBook #78292]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Samuel Tinsley & Co, 1879
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78292
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BROKEN BLOSSOM VOL. 1 OF 3 ***
A BROKEN BLOSSOM.
=A Novel.=
BY
FLORENCE MARRYAT,
AUTHOR OF “LOVE’S CONFLICT,” ETC., ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
[Illustration: MIND IS STRONGER THAN MATTER]
=London:=
SAMUEL TINSLEY & CO.,
10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND.
1879.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
=Dedicated to=
MY DEAREST CHILDREN AND MOST FAITHFUL FRIENDS,
EVA FLORENCE
AND
FRANCIS FREDERICK MARRYAT
WITH THEIR MOTHER’S PROUD AND GRATEFUL LOVE.
LONDON,
_April, 1879_.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ALONE 1
II. REFUSED 24
III. LAUNCHED 47
IV. ST. PUCELLE 69
V. ANGE 92
VI. TURKEY AND TRUFFLES 111
VII. THE FAIR SOPHIA 137
VIII. MADAME FROMARD 155
IX. SUNDAY 187
X. CHATEAU DES ROSES 213
[Illustration]
A BROKEN BLOSSOM.
CHAPTER I.
ALONE.
I was alone—I felt it for the first time in my life—horribly and
fearfully _alone_. Everything around me was unchanged, and yet nothing
looked the same. The August sun streamed in mercilessly through the
white window blind, lighting up every nook and corner of the
commonly-furnished room. I had known those ornaments upon the
chimney-piece for years past—that Parian figure of Innocence, pretending
to be modest behind a rag of drapery about the size of a housemaid’s
duster—and that fine Court gentleman in imitation Dresden, who never
left off beckoning to the lady who stood opposite to him, hiding her
face coquettishly behind a fan. I had heard the tick of the carriage
clock, which was one of the very few remnants left of our former luxury,
ever since I could remember anything, without having noticed that it was
particularly loud; and I had trodden and retrodden the green and red
Brussels carpet beneath my feet without having observed that it was
woven in the colours of a macaw. But now, as I sat in the armchair, with
my hands folded listlessly upon my lap and my blistered eyes staring
vacuously at all around me, the rag with which Innocence defended her
modesty appeared so ludicrously small, and the smirk of the lady and
gentleman courtiers such a veritable leer, that I burst into a nervous
hysterical giggle as I caught sight of them. The tick of the clock upon
the mantelpiece, too, seemed to strike like a hammer on my empty,
bewildered brain; and I perceived, to my horror, that a blue and yellow
worsted, that made me shudder each time I looked at it, was twisted
amongst the red and green pattern of the carpet. It appeared strange to
me that I should never have observed that glaring blue and yellow line
before, when it seemed to stand out now from the rest of the design as
if the carpet were all yellow and blue, and nothing else. What a fool I
must have been all these years to imagine it was red and green! The idea
of my folly was so ludicrous that I began to giggle again, and ended in
a burst of tears that left me no better than before. I had shed so many
tears during the last week, they seemed to have lost their effect upon
me. They only inflamed my eyes anew, and caused their lids to smart
more. I felt cold, too, although the day was unusually warm, and my head
was like a ball of fire. After a while I rose, and, leaning my elbows on
the mantelpiece, stared at myself in the glass. People had called me
pretty sometimes, and I believed that they spoke the truth, but few
would have said so now.
My eyes were dull and fishy; my complexion sodden; my hair rough and in
disorder. I looked to myself like an old woman; older than _she_ had
done when I had seen her last with her own living face upon her.
It was a week now since she had left me—eight whole days; and I was
still alive. It seemed marvellous to me!
I was not a young girl—I had completed my twenty-fourth year; and I
knew, of course, that the majority of daughters were called upon to see
their mothers leave this world before them. But then my mother had not
been like other women’s mothers. She was my friend and companion—my
second self—the only confidante I had ever made. We had almost grown up
together, for there were but eighteen years between us, and I felt
utterly stunned and lost to think that she could go and leave me behind
her—_alone_. How often we had talked together of leaving the rooms we
had occupied so long at Norwood, and travelling, in the modest style our
limited means would admit of, through Switzerland and Germany and
France! Unless I married, meanwhile, she said with a smile (knowing well
there was not a man on earth who had the power to separate me from her),
we really must think of breaking up our English establishment this
autumn, and making a move southward—that is, if Mr. Lovett approved of
the plan.
Mr. Lovett was a personage of whom I had often heard, but never seen. He
was a clergyman, and had been an intimate friend and schoolfellow of my
late father, and my mother held his name in infinite respect. He was the
trustee also, of our small capital, and the quarterly interest of it
always came to us through his hands. He lived abroad, which was the
reason I had never met him, but his name was as familiar to me as a
household word. If Mr. Lovett approved, then, my dear mother had said,
we should travel together that autumn, and I had been looking forward to
the novel pleasure with unmixed delight. And now, the autumn had not yet
come, and she was—_where?_ As these thoughts recurred to me, I pressed
both my hands to my head to prevent my screaming aloud. It was too
horrible—too dreadful—I could not realise it!
She had been so well, and we had been so happy, until two short weeks
before. She was only forty-two years of age, and very youthful-looking;
our friends had often said, in jest, that I was the older and the graver
of the two. She was a tall woman, with an unusually fine figure, and a
bright speaking face that would have looked young to the last; a soft,
fair complexion, sunny blue eyes, and a mouth that was always ready for
a kiss. She had a happy temperament, too, that ever looked on the
brighter side, and was capable of taking the keenest enjoyment and
interest in everything that was beautiful in Art or Nature.
If I had ever thought of death coming between us two, it was of dying
myself, with my head on that dear bosom, and those kind eyes fixed on me
to the last. But if _she_ would have suffered in that instance as _I_
had suffered during the past fortnight, I thanked God for singling me
out as His victim.
At that phase of my existence I felt there was nothing else to thank Him
for.
Eight days before, she had been with me, struggling, it is true, in the
last throes of the fearful malady that separated us, but still there,
with her dear blue eyes, grown meek with suffering, turned lovingly to
me, and her hot, fevered hand able to acknowledge the clasp of mine. And
then arrived that awful moment when the light faded and the grasp
relaxed, and they half pulled, half pushed me out of the room; and
something seemed to burst in my head, and make a thousand wheels, like
the burring of machinery, go round and round in my brain, until they
expended themselves like fireworks, and went out one after another, and
my spirit escaped somewhere into a land of darkness and forgetfulness.
As soon as I came to myself again, and they would let me leave my room,
I rushed to _her_.
I could not believe but that she was still living: that she yet could
open her eyes and look at me, or clasp my hand. I rushed into the room
and ran straight up to the bed; but I had been absent for an hour, and
the officious attendants had already what they termed ‘laid her out.’ I
pulled off the sheet impetuously, intending to cast myself upon her
breast, but drew back in horror.
That straightened flattened figure, like a bad model made in discoloured
wax—those dark, closed, sunken eyes—that pinched and drawn-down
nose—those livid, half-parted lips—they never belonged to the mother who
bore me. As well assure me that the house I see fallen to decay, with
clouded panes and shuttered windows and stained walls, is the same that
I have passed when the sunlight played on every square of glass, and
dainty lace curtains shaded, and many-coloured blossoms ornamented every
sill. It was the casket that had once enshrined her soul, I knew; but
that it was my mother, I never realised. It was my first view of the
common change—so common and yet always so strangely new—and it was my
first and last view of the shape that had held what was so dear to me. I
clasped both my hands before my eyes, and fled from it in loathing. They
called me unnatural and hard, and begged of me to look at it again; but
no persuasions could induce me to re-enter the chamber. On the contrary,
I sat in my own room, trying hard to forget I had ever seen it. I wanted
to remember my mother at her best and brightest. I wanted to think of
her as she had appeared to me as a little child—when I had thought her
the cleverest and most beautiful and most wonderful of created
beings—who knew everything and could do everything, and read my mind
before I had expressed it. And I wanted to think of her as she had been
to the last—my friend and companion, who sympathised in all my troubles
and took pleasure in all my joy. And I felt as if the happier
remembrance could never come back to me while _that_ remained in the
room that had been hers, lying stark and stiff upon the bed, or cased
within its narrow coffin, with a sheet drawn over it to keep off the
flies, and a few July roses lying prone upon its sunken surface. Ah! how
I suffered during those days of waiting, heaven and my own heart only
knew. I longed for two things only: that the dreaded funeral might be
over and done with, and I might be able to go away somewhere—no matter
where, so long as the place was very distant from that in which I had
been so miserable—and that I might never see any of the things again by
which I was then surrounded.
And now one of my wishes had been realised, and I had followed the dark
coffin to Norwood Cemetery, and seen it lowered into a grave dug in the
grass. And I had come back to the house again, to find it still more
empty than before.
That was yesterday. The people of the house had drawn up the blinds
again, and the chamber in which she had died was having ‘a regular turn
out.’ I could hear the maidservants from where I sat, throwing the
casements wide, and laughing with one another as they shook the bed and
pillows, and smartly swept the carpet which had been innocent of broom
so long. I heard them rattling the glass and china, and moving the
furniture about the room, and my heart sickened afresh at the unusual
sound of bustle. Pshaw! what did it matter, after all? They could not
disturb her, lying six feet under ground in Norwood Cemetery; and as for
me, I must get used to such things. Yet, for all that, my lip was
quivering terribly as a knock at the door caused me to turn from the
looking-glass to confront my landlady, Mrs. Medlicott.
‘Mr. Warrington wishes to speak to you, if you please, miss.’
Mrs. Medlicott’s voice was unusually low and subdued. You would have
thought, to hear her, that butter would not melt in her mouth; and to
me, who knew how spiteful and shrill her tones could be on occasions,
the change was irritating. What had happened to me more than to others,
that a common lodging-house keeper should presume to show me compassion!
‘Show him in,’ I answered, almost sharply.
Mr. Warrington was my mother’s solicitor. I had seen him at the funeral
yesterday, as I had seen the rest of the mourners, through a sort of
misty haze, but we had not spoken to each other. I knew he came to talk
to me now about money, and my future mode of living, and my soul
sickened at the mere idea; but nothing could make me worse than I was,
so I said: ‘Show him in.’
Mr. Warrington was not at all like the conventional family lawyer. He
was a fashionable man in appearance, not more than forty, and always
looked distinguished, in well-cut clothes, trimly-arranged hair, and a
fresh bouquet in his button-hole. To-day it was composed of lilies of
the valley and gardenias; and the faint smell of the latter blossom
recalled to my mind, I could not tell why, the painful scene of
yesterday, with so much acuteness, that I felt as though I must tear it
from his breast and trample it under foot. But I schooled myself to
raise my heavy eyes in his direction, and greet him with composure. Then
we shook hands in complete silence.
‘I trust I have not called upon you too early, Miss Marsh,’ commenced
Mr. Warrington; ‘but I was anxious to see if I could be of any use, and
also to have a little conversation with you about your money-matters.’
‘Yes?’ I said, interrogatively.
‘I received a letter this morning, also, from your trustee, Mr. Lovett,
the contents of which he is desirous I should communicate to you. You
have no personal knowledge of Mr. Lovett, I believe, Miss Marsh?’
‘None whatever!’
‘But you are aware, I suppose, that your—your late mother’s income was
derivable from a pension granted her on your father’s death, in
recognition of his scientific discoveries, and a sum of money vested in
East India property which realised about one hundred and fifty pounds a
year?’
‘Yes; I have heard so.’
‘The Rev. Horace Lovett, who was your father’s most intimate friend, was
left trustee for this small property during your mother’s lifetime. At
her death it was to revert, unconditionally, to you; but Mr. Lovett is
still willing to continue his trust, if you wish it, and will re-appoint
him to the charge.’
‘I have no choice in the matter. You had better arrange it all, Mr.
Warrington.’
‘But shall I seem impertinent if I ask you what you intend to do?’
‘I have no intentions of any sort.’
‘You will not continue to live here?’
‘Oh no! I suppose things will settle themselves in due time, and I shall
drift on somewhere. It will be all “drifting” henceforward. I cannot
look forward to “living” again.’
‘No, no; of course not—not for the present; no one could expect it,’
replied Mr. Warrington, soothingly. ‘But you are too young to live
alone, Miss Hilda.’
‘Am I? Numbers live alone who are as young as I am. And I see no
alternative.’
‘There are several! Young ladies situated as you are, generally try to
board with some pleasant family; or they have an older lady to live with
them, and chaperon them into the world.’
‘I shall want no chaperonage,’ I said sadly, recalling the arm on which
I had leant for so many years; ‘neither shall I go out into the world. I
am only sure of one thing, that I must leave this place; but whether to
go into a convent or on the stage is perfectly indifferent to me. I have
no present, Mr. Warrington, and no future! All I desire to do is to
forget.’
‘Come, come! you mustn’t talk to me in that strain,’ he answered. ‘I
know it is quite natural, but it is not like the sensible, philosophical
reasoning I have heard you exercise on the behalf of others. You have
doubtless experienced a very heavy loss——’
‘Mr. Warrington, will you be good enough not to speak to me about it?
You may say what you like about myself, but nothing, please, that refers
to the past.’
I dreaded breaking down before this hard, cynical man of the world, who
looked upon death as the end of all things, and had frequently
challenged me to prove to him, by even the feeblest argument, that the
soul lived again after it had quitted the body.
‘Very well, Miss Hilda,’ he replied, nonchalantly; ‘your wishes shall be
respected in all things. But since you have formed no plans for
yourself, may I be permitted to suggest one for you? Mr. Lovett writes
me most feelingly on the subject this morning, and proposes that you
should go, as soon as ever you please, to St. Pucelle, and form one of
his family circle, as long as it suits your convenience to do so.’
‘I go to St. Pucelle!’ I exclaimed.
‘Why not? It is a charming old-fashioned town, on the very frontiers of
the Belgian territory, and Mr. Lovett’s family consists of two
motherless daughters, who would form pleasant companions for you. Mr.
Lovett is not rich, as you may suppose. The salary of a Protestant
clergyman abroad is barely sufficient to enable him to live in decent
gentility; but he offers, should you go there, to hand you over fifty
pounds annually for your own expenses, and I do not think that you will
easily find a pleasanter or cheaper home in which to establish yourself.
And so eminently respectable, too; living in a clergyman’s family, and
under the guardianship of your trustee. I hope you will think of the
proposal favourably.’
‘To go to St. Pucelle!’ I repeated vaguely. Thoughts of the foreign trip
that _we_ had planned together rushed rebelliously into my mind, and for
a few minutes I could not trust myself to speak. But as the mental mist
cleared off, I found the plan that Mr. Warrington had proposed a very
feasible one.
‘You _cannot_ live alone,’ continued the solicitor, earnestly. ‘It is of
no use discussing the question. You are too young, and, if you will
forgive me for saying so, Miss Hilda, you are much too handsome, to set
up housekeeping on your own account. You have your name, and the name of
those who are gone, to consider, and I am sure you will never dream of
doing anything that would have displeased them.’
‘No, no,’ I answered, hastily; ‘but I must have time to think about it.’
I had no friends to consult upon the subject. I suppose there never was
a girl who found herself more completely thrown upon the world than I
did. My father had been an only child, and my mother had come from
Australia. Brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins, were names
unknown to me, except as they related to other people. I was literally
my own mistress, and I felt terribly alone in remembering it—I, who had
never felt alone in my life before. For the last few years I had
believed myself to be so much of a woman, for my experience in some
things had been greater than that of other girls, and _she_ had made me
her intimate companion, and unfolded all her mind to me as I had done
mine to her. Now I felt like a little child that wanted advice and
guidance, and had no one to depend on but herself. But Mr. Lovett’s
offer had opened new ideas to me, and I felt it was not to be rejected
hastily.
‘I suppose, if I go to St. Pucelle,’ I continued, after a pause, ‘that
my stay there will be perfectly optional, and I shall be able to leave
it whenever I choose?’
‘Certainly. I can have no idea that Mr. Lovett wishes to keep you a
prisoner there. The proposal is evidently made only with a view to your
benefit, and I will make it a proviso in my answer that your actions are
to be perfectly uncontrolled. But, at the same time, let me ask what you
could possibly do, at your age, in the world by yourself?’
‘Oh, don’t worry me!’ I said, impatiently; ‘there are a thousand things
I could do if I chose, and I will never stay in any family whose habits
are uncongenial to me. I have been used to have my own way too much for
that!’
Mr. Warrington rose, and commenced smoothing down the nap of his hat,
which the crape band of yesterday still encircled.
‘Very good, Miss Marsh! Then I will leave you to consider the matter at
your leisure, and I hope you will give me the first intimation of your
decision. I presume you have sufficient money in hand for current
expenses?’
‘Yes, yes; I have everything I want,’ I answered. I was longing for him
to be gone, and leave me to myself. Every moment he stayed recalled the
past so vividly to me. After a few more words of courtesy, he bowed
himself deferentially out of the room, and I was once more alone.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
REFUSED.
As soon as he had disappeared, I sat down in my chair and began to
think. I might just as well do it then as at any other time. There was
nothing for me to do. All my occupation seemed gone for ever. It would
have been better if I had been one of the housemaids who were beating up
the bed on which she died, with so much cheerful energy; or if I had had
a little brother or sister, any one dependent on me, for whom I should
have been obliged to order meals and bestir myself to amuse or to attend
to. But my time was too much my own. Mrs. Medlicott, in deference to my
loss, sent up my dinner even without the least reference to me. I had
not the poor distraction of annoyance or trouble to divert my thoughts
from the great void that had been suddenly made in my life. So I sat
with my head buried in my hands, and pondered upon St. Pucelle. The idea
of going there, although not positively agreeable, attracted me more
than any that had passed through my brain yet. Naturally, I had thought
a little of my future. In the pauses when grief had spent itself, and I
had wept till I was in a state of insensibility to everything, I had
more than once wondered, in a dull sort of way, what was to become of
me; but, as I had told Mr. Warrington, whether I went into a convent or
on the stage was a matter of perfect indifference. All I wanted was to
change my outward surroundings: not to be obliged every morning to pass
the closed bedroom door which I had been accustomed to enter with an
affectionate greeting; not to have to sit down at the same table where a
chair had always been placed opposite to mine, and eat my meals in
solitude; not, in fact, to have my heart torn every minute by those
seeming ‘nothings’ which make up the happiness or the misery of every
human life.
St. Pucelle could have no power to remind me of all this, although I
knew that in my inmost heart I should never forget it. But there I
should be in a totally new country—amongst a set of strangers—far from
everything connected with the bitter suffering I was undergoing now.
The thought, instead of intimidating me, gave me courage. I seemed to
breathe freer when I had decided to accept Mr. Lovett’s offer of a home
at all events, for the next few months; and I rose, with the first
semblance of interest I had experienced in anything since _she_ left me,
to find an old atlas which was stowed away amongst our small collection
of books, and see if St. Pucelle was of sufficient importance to be
marked anywhere upon the frontiers of Belgium. I found it, very much
screwed up in a corner, it is true, but still distinct enough to be
read, close to the Valley of Artois, and on the borders of the
celebrated Forest of Piron. The afternoon was merging, by this time,
into the dusk of evening, and I was just about to ring the bell and
desire the servant to light the lamp, when my attention was attracted by
an altercation going on in the hall. Mrs. Medlicott was apparently, if
one might judge by sounds, fighting with some one who wished to effect
an entrance to her domains.
‘You can’t come in, sir,’ I heard her say, after a long consultation, ‘I
couldn’t think of allowing it. She ain’t fit to see no one—and won’t be
for days—that’s my opinion; and if she was, I’m quite sure as she would
never dream of admitting a gentleman at this hour. Why, it’s as near
dark as can be—and Miss Marsh quite alone, as she is too.’
‘Only for a minute!’ pleaded a young fresh voice.
Why! it was Charlie—dear old Charlie Sandilands, and she was actually
sending him away! Something rushed up to my throat and my eyes, and I
felt as if I _must_ see him; as if it would do me all the good in the
world to look in his honest eyes and feel the warm grasp of his hand.
What Mrs. Medlicott thought of my propriety I do not know, but I flew to
the drawing-room door, and opening it just wide enough to allow of my
voice being heard, exclaimed:
‘Yes, Charlie, come in; I should like to see you;’ which caused him
quickly to pass the irate landlady on the doormat, and enter my
apartment.
I had met Mr. Warrington with dry eyes and a composed voice, and I had
intended to do the same by Charlie Sandilands. But we had had so many
happy evenings together, when _she_ had been present, to laugh at the
absurd devotion which this foolish young man persisted in paying me,
that the contrast between them and the position in which I now stood
struck me too forcibly, and instead of taking the hand he extended to
me, I retreated to my armchair again, and burst into a storm of tears.
I had not set eyes on Charlie since she had been attacked with her fatal
illness, although his dear good mother had come to me as soon as she had
heard of my trouble, and remained with me to the end. All that had
happened since we met last, and all the sad details of which we must
speak together, overwhelmed me, and for a few minutes I could do nothing
but cry. But then I held out my hand to him, without raising my head,
and said:
‘Oh, Charlie! you must not think I am not glad to see you; but you know
how much I loved her, and how very miserable I must be.’
‘Yes, of course, I know all about it,’ he answered, in an awkward manner
(men do feel so strangely awkward in the presence of a weeping woman
whom they have no right to console); ‘but please don’t mind me, Hilda. I
will go away at once, if you wish it; but I thought I would like to see
you, if I could, and tell you how sorry we all are about it.’
‘Don’t go away just yet,’ I murmured. ‘I shall be all right presently.
We will have a cup of tea together, and that will do me good. I am not
often so silly as this, Charlie; for, after all, what is the good of
crying? It cannot bring her back again.’
The poor boy looked very uncomfortable at my sad words, of which there
was no refutation, and tried to cover their effect by ringing the bell
for me. I call him a boy, because we had always looked upon and spoken
of him as such, but in reality he was only two years younger than
myself. He was the eldest of a large family of children belonging to a
widowed friend, and we had been such near neighbours for several years,
that we were very intimate. Scarcely a day had passed without our seeing
or hearing something of the Sandilands; and Charlie, who was a clerk in
Somerset House, and spent all his days in London, had been used to walk
in and out of our little room in the evenings like a tame cat. We made
nobody of Charlie Sandilands; and though his mother and mine had had
many a laugh over his flirtation with me, I looked upon him quite in the
light of a brother or a cousin, and took what liberties with him I
chose.
When the tea made its appearance, we drank it so silently, that I
observed at last that I thought we were holding a Quakers meeting.
‘I saw you and your brothers in the cemetery yesterday, Charlie,’ I
continued, with an effort, believing that if I did not break the ice I
should never be able to speak to him at all; ‘and I thought it so kind
of you to come.’
‘There was no kindness in it, Hilda. I would not have been absent for
worlds.’
‘Well, I thought it kind. I suppose one feels small attentions at such
times more than at others. And _she_ was very fond of you, Charlie. She
used to call you “the blue-eyed baby.”’
‘She was always too good to me, I know that. Though I am not much of a
baby, Hilda. I shall be twenty-three next birthday.’
‘What of that? It is experience, not years, that makes our age. You will
always be a baby, I think. Your mother has spoiled you so.’
‘Oh, come, that’s not fair! She spoils Willy and Herbert twice as much
as she does me! Not that I’m jealous of it, for I hate being coddled.’
‘Ah, don’t hate it, dear. You may live to miss it, as I am doing now.’
‘Mother sent her best love,’ Charlie went on rapidly, feeling he had
made a blunder; ‘and said, if it would be any comfort to you, she would
be so glad if you would come to us for a few days—or for as long as you
like.’
‘I couldn’t, Charlie, thank you. It is very kind of your mother, and you
must tell her so; but I would rather be alone. Besides, I have work to
do at home.’
‘You could be as much alone as you liked with us. I’d be sorry for the
one who would dare to disturb you. And until your affairs are settled,
and all that sort of thing, wouldn’t it be better for you, Hilda, to
stay with friends, than in these lodgings by yourself?’
‘My affairs are already settled, Charlie. I am going to live with my
father’s old friend, Mr. Lovett, at St. Pucelle.’
‘_What?_’ cried poor Charlie, thunderstruck at my announcement.
‘I am going abroad,’ I said, with the selfish indifference that a great
trouble gives us to other people’s pain. ‘I could not stay in Norwood,
you know. I should go mad before a month was over my head; and my
greatest desire now is to lose sight of it at once and for ever. It’s
very name is hateful to me.’
‘Oh, Hilda! is it possible you are going to leave us?’ he said, in a
voice of despair.
‘Why, you could never have imagined I should remain here. I have
suffered too much for that. I have no home now, and no friends; and I
must try and begin a new existence for myself, if that is possible,
where I can wipe out the memory of the past as soon as may be.’
‘What will Norwood be without you?’ he exclaimed.
‘Oh, Charlie, don’t be so ungrateful, when your good mother will still
be here, and all your brothers and sisters! Do you think if I had a
mother and a home circle left to me, as you have, that I should give
more than an ordinary regret to the departure or arrival of mere
friends, however pleasant their company might be!’
‘It is quite different, Hilda. You are not a mere friend to me, and you
have known it for a long time past.’
This was one of the speeches which a month ago I should have laughed at
merrily, and called him a saucy boy for making. But there was a mournful
earnestness in his voice to-day, that, added to the solemnity of my own
feelings, forbid my even smiling at him.
‘Please don’t talk like that,’ I said quietly; ‘the time is past with us
for jesting.’
‘But it is no jest, Hilda; it is truth—reality! I have loved you for
years. Oh, don’t leave Norwood! Stay with us, and let my mother be your
mother, and make me happy. I should be so very, very happy if you were
my wife.’
‘_Your wife!_’
The idea seemed sacrilege to me. But the poor boy took my vehement
surprise for anger.
‘Oh, I ought not to have said anything about it now. It is unseemly,
indecent. I have given you pain. But do forgive me, Hilda. I had not the
least intention of offending you. It slipped out of my mouth before I
was aware of it. The news of your departure was such a dreadful blow!’
‘I am not angry,’ I replied. ‘I do not see why the presence of a great
grief should make it indecent to speak of love. It is at such times we
want love most. But it can never be spoken of between you and me,
Charlie—not seriously; and so I am very sorry you ever spoke of it at
all.’
‘Is it impossible, then, that you could ever marry me, Hilda? I have two
hundred a year already from Somerset House, and the salary increases
annually. I know it is very little, but I could contrive to keep you in
the same style in which you have been living, and my mother would take
you to her heart as another daughter.’
I was so troubled for the poor young fellow. I looked up into his blue
eyes, and they were actually swimming in tears. I felt I had been a
heartless brute to let him go on loving me all this time, and think that
it was play. But I could no more have got up a semblance of passion for
him, than I could for the table which divided us.
‘Charlie!’ I said, ‘if you had two thousand a year it would make no
difference to me. I shall never marry any one. My heart was all hers,
and it will lie in her grave till we meet again.’
‘You think so now, but you will alter your mind by-and-by, perhaps.’
‘Nothing can alter it. And I feel very angry with myself to think that I
should have let you grow fond of me, and never found out you were in
earnest.’
‘_In earnest!_ It is the hope of my life. And I will never give it up
until one of us is dead and buried.’
‘What am I to do to convince you it will be of no use?’ I said
despondingly. ‘If you will give me your solemn promise of secrecy,
Charlie, I will tell you something that I have never told to a single
soul, except to _her_; and that I would cut my tongue out sooner than
tell you, unless it were to try and repair the wrong which, it seems, I
have done you.’
‘You have never done me any wrong,’ replied the poor boy, with the
generosity of a true affection. ‘You didn’t mean it, Hilda. It is all my
own fault.’
‘But I won’t allow that, Charlie. I have not laid myself out to attract
you, it is true; but I am older than you are, and I should have
remembered what our intimacy might lead to.’
‘You seem to harp a great deal on the fact of there being a couple of
years’ difference in our ages; but if a man is not a man at
two-and-twenty, he never will be.’
‘Well, I am going to show you now that I consider you to be a man, and
to treat you as such. I have told you that there is a reason why I shall
never marry you nor any one; and that reason is, because—because——’
It was much harder to tell than I had imagined it would be. I felt so
much for poor Charlie’s disappointment, that I thought I could make any
sacrifice in order to salve his wounded feelings; but nothing is so
mortifying to a woman as to have to confess that she has loved in vain.
‘Don’t go on if you don’t wish to,’ said Charlie, with ungrammatical
consideration, as I paused to gain a little courage.
‘Oh yes; I mean to tell you, that you may be sure that my refusal has
nothing to do with yourself.’
‘You care for somebody else!’ he exclaimed intuitively.
‘No, I don’t,’ I said, reddening up under the consciousness of telling a
lie; ‘but I did—that is, I used to—I mean that years and years ago I met
some one in whom I was very much interested, as you are in me, and I
thought things would have been all right between us; but they never
were, and so I shall be Hilda Marsh to the end of my days.’
‘Is that _all_?’ said Charlie, evidently disappointed at so tame a
love-story. ‘I shouldn’t lose heart over that, Hilda; you’ll meet the
fellow again some day, and come to an understanding with him; or perhaps
you’ll forget him, and learn to think of me instead.’
‘How utterly I must have failed to make you comprehend my meaning,’ I
replied. ‘Do be convinced, once and for ever, Charlie, there can be no
question of love for me, in this world, again.’
‘Is he dead, then?’
‘Yes, he is dead—at least to me.’
My face burned as I uttered the words. Charlie received them with a look
of blank dismay. Then he said:
‘All this has made me feel very miserable, Hilda. I think, perhaps, that
I had better go home.’
‘Yes, Charlie, I wish you would. It can do you no good to stay here, and
the sight of your home may make you feel there are other people less
lucky than you are.’
We shook hands in silence, and he crept quietly out of the house. I was
very sorry for him, for I knew I possessed influence over him, and I was
afraid that he might find some difficulty in shaking it off again. It
was as well for him as for myself that I had determined to leave
Norwood. The conversation I had just held had recalled Cave Charteris
powerfully to my mind; and for some time after Charlie had left me, I
sat pondering over that epoch in my life, which was so entirely closed
and done with, but which yet had left such ineffaceable marks behind it.
It had happened five years before; but the remembrance was as fresh as
yesterday. I had always believed myself most to blame in the matter,
whilst my dear mother had unhesitatingly attributed all the wrong to
him. But then I had loved the man, and she had only viewed him through
the misery he had caused me. I had told Charlie Sandilands but half the
story; it would have blistered my lips to let him know the whole truth.
But from my heart I could have no secrets. As I sat by myself that
evening, I recalled every expression of Cave’s handsome features, every
tone of his thrilling voice, as he lingered, day after day, in our
little drawing-room, or accompanied us in our walks, or on our journeys
to town.
I had believed so fully then, and so had _she_, that the most momentous
period of my existence had arrived, and that all those walks and talks
could end but in one way—the declaration of Cave Charteris’s love for
me.
For why else had he, over a period of months, attached himself to our
side as though he had a right to accompany us everywhere? I had no doubt
on the subject, and permitted myself to love him without limit; and my
mother looked upon him as her future son, and hailed every good trait in
his character as a fresh guarantee for my happiness. And so we had gone
on, in our blind belief, until one day, after he had been absent for
about a week, I received an affectionate letter from him, claiming my
congratulations on the score of his father having, at last, withdrawn
his refusal to consent to his travelling on the Continent for a couple
of years, preparatory to his entering the profession of the law. And
from that hour I had never heard from him again. His philandering after
me proved only to have been the expression of an impatient spirit
waiting restlessly to hear its doom, and anxious, meanwhile, to make the
weary hours pass away by any means that came easiest to hand.
I know that heaps of women must have deceived themselves after this
fashion, and felt it as keenly, perhaps, as I did; but it seemed to me,
in my inexperience of pain, as if nobody had ever suffered so much in
this world before.
My dear mother might rave against the dishonour of Mr. Charteris’s
behaviour to me, as freely as she chose, but we two poor unprotected
women had no remedy against it. We could only fly into each other’s
arms, and weep over it until we could weep no more. I poured out all my
soul to my one true friend and companion, and then we made a compact
never to speak of his name to one another again, unless the burden
should become too heavy to bear alone.
It was out of this grief that the complete love and reverence I
maintained for my lost parent had been finally cemented. Her tenderness
and sympathy for me in the great trial of health and spirits that
followed, had made her appear more like an angel than a woman in my
eyes; and at the time of her death, it is true that I would not have
exchanged her love for that of any man. She had been my one great good
in this world, and the Creator of the universe had seen fit to take it
away. What wonder was it that both my heart and my soul were in a state
of rebellion against Him?
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III.
LAUNCHED.
Before I went to bed that night I wrote to Mr. Warrington, telling him I
had decided to accept Mr. Lovett’s offer; and before another fortnight
was over my head, I was on my way to St. Pucelle. There was no reason
for delay, and the few things I had to do, I hurried over as quickly as
possible. We had always lived in furnished rooms; one week’s notice was
sufficient to set me free from them. The books and articles that had
belonged especially to my mother found house-room with my kind friend
Mrs. Sandilands. The only possessions I carried away with me were her
Bible and her portrait and my own limited wardrobe. I wanted to begin
life anew, cumbered with as few reminders of the past as possible.
I did not think, though, that I should find parting with the grave in
Norwood Cemetery so hard. I had believed myself to be too philosophical
to care about leaving that, any more than the old books that Mrs.
Sandilands had taken charge of. But when the time came to say good-bye
to it, and that which lay in it, I found I was as stupid, commonplace
and non-reasoning an animal as ever wept above an inanimate object that
could neither see, hear, nor respond.
Mr. Warrington’s cruel arguments came back to my mind, and I found
myself wondering if the end of it all had really come, and I was tearing
myself away from the only link that could ever bind me to her again. It
was late in the evening, at the close of the last day I was to spend in
Norwood, that I stole into the cemetery and found my way, less by sight
than by instinct, to the heap of earth, as yet unsoftened by any grass,
that covered her. It must be allowed to sink—so the sexton had informed
me—before it could be decorated like the other graves.
To sink right down upon _her_—pressing, pressing, with its awful
unyielding weight, upon the lid of the coffin which covered that dear
dead face—dear, even in spite of its ghastly want of resemblance to that
which she had borne in life. I had said good-bye to the Sandilands and
all my friends in Norwood; this was to be the last farewell my lips
should utter there.
I sank down upon the mound of clay, and wrestled with my agony alone.
Where was she, this beloved mother of mine? Who could tell me, _without
any doubt_, of her habitation, her occupation, or her final destiny? Was
she really gone for ever, as Mr. Warrington would have assured me,
resolved, body and spirit, into the dust out of which she had been made,
and as effectually lost as the burnt-out candle, the particles of which
have mingled with the air? Was there no place of meeting beyond this
world where I should see and clasp her again? The parson would, of
course, have answered ‘yes;’ but the attainment of his conventional
paradise was saddled with so many conditions that I was hopeless of ever
reaching it. _She_ might have got there, with her angelic love and
tenderness for all things, whether in heaven or on earth, but I knew
myself to be unequal to following her footsteps. I sat on her grave
stunned and hopeless. We had often talked of a future world together,
and it had seemed easy to believe anything when her lips uttered it; but
now that she had left me, I wanted _proof_, certain and unanswerable
proof, of the truth of what I had been taught; and the foundation on
which I had built my apparent trust had all crumbled under my touchstone
like sand. I felt there was no proof, no certainty, only a vague hope
for ourselves, which became a broken reed when we tried to find comfort
in it under the loss of those we had loved. Every one had conjured me to
look forward to meeting her again. No one had given me one convincing
argument that I should do so. I was surrounded by the dark, impenetrable
mystery of death, and I got up from the grave and walked back to my
lodgings in a condition of dull, sodden despair.
I was to meet Mr. Warrington the next morning, at twelve o’clock, at one
of the large London wharves. He had been very anxious to accompany me to
St. Pucelle, and deliver me safely into Mr. Lovett’s charge, but I had
refused his kind offices. In the first place, I was quite able to travel
alone; in the second, I longed to find myself so. I had merely to cross
to Antwerp, and take the train on from there to St. Pucelle—or rather to
Artois, which was the nearest railway-station to it. I was sufficiently
acquainted with the French language not to have the slightest doubt of
being able to make my wants understood, and something struck me as very
ludicrous in the idea of a little dandy like Mr. Warrington conducting a
great, tall woman like myself across the water, and delivering me over
to Mr. Lovett’s care, as if I had been a child. So, after he had met me
at the wharf, looking as fresh and trim, with an exquisite button-hole
of white rosebuds and forget-me-nots, as if he were just about to take a
stroll in the Park, and secured a berth for me, and paid my fare, and
seen that my luggage was safely on board, I dismissed him with
ungrateful alacrity, and felt a sensation of relief as the steamboat
quietly glided down the river, and I saw him take off his hat to me for
at least the sixth time, before he quitted the landing-stage.
‘At last,’ I said to myself, with a long-drawn sigh, ‘I am free to
forget. Everything about me—even to the dress I wear—is a novelty. I
have positively nothing, except a piece of pasteboard and a book, that
belongs to the past. Thank God for it!’
I forgot the heart I carried in my bosom. For a while I diverted myself
by watching my fellow-passengers and trying to guess their histories.
There were only about a dozen of them, and they were all collected upon
deck. There was the conventional newly-married couple; I found them out
at once, principally because everything the bride had on was new, even
to the soles of her boots, which were almost as fresh as when they had
left the workman’s hands, and had evidently never trod the vulgar earth
before that morning.
There were a mother and father with a couple of odious children, whom
they permitted to run against the other passengers just as they chose,
smearing their dresses with their sticky fingers and staring rudely in
their faces for five minutes together. They kept leaping up on the seats
also, and leaning over the sides of the vessel, till I began to hope
that one or both might disappear for ever under the water. No such good
luck, however, was in store for us. To the end of the voyage the
children were ubiquitous. They scrambled for food at the dinner-table,
and long after they had been put to bed, reappeared in their
night-dresses to demand more fruit and biscuits.
If parents only would realise what an abominable nuisance their
offspring are to everybody but themselves, they would not, perhaps,
entail so many unnecessary invectives on their heads as they do. If
there is one character in history with whom I have more sympathy than
another, it certainly is Herod. My attention was diverted for a time
from these horrid imps by a young girl dressed, as I was, in deep
mourning, who sat by herself in a very subdued attitude at one end of
the vessel. I found she was going, for the first time, to a foreign
school at Ghent. She had lost her father, and was anxious to perfect
herself in French and German, before attempting to earn her own
livelihood as a governess. It was a melancholy prospect, I thought. I
imagined myself the governess of two such children as were annoying the
company now, whilst their mother complacently read a cheap novel, and
felt sure that in such a case I should have ended my career upon the
gallows. Had it been necessary for me to work for my bread, I would have
been a housemaid, a cook, shop-girl—anything rather than a governess or
a nurse!
Two or three foreigners, seedy and dirty in appearance, were standing
near me, and looking rather impertinently in my face, which gave me a
desire to change my seat. I rose, with the intention of crossing the
deck, when my hand-bag, which had been lying on my lap, fell to the
ground.
Some one quickly picked it up and restored it to me. Not one of my seedy
foreigners, but a bright-haired English lad of not more, I thought, than
sixteen or seventeen years old.
‘Do you wish to go downstairs?’ he inquired politely; ‘and may I help
you?’
It was such a nice, frank, boyish voice and face, that I quite took to
him.
‘No, thank you,’ I said; ‘I only wish to sit on the other side of the
boat.’
‘I will find you a seat. It is much cooler there,’ he answered, with
alacrity.
My boy-gallant then accompanied me across the deck, and having arranged
my plaid for me to sit down upon, ensconced himself by my side.
‘We shall have a charming passage across this time,’ he remarked,
confidentially.
‘Shall we? I know nothing of the tides. I have never crossed before.’
‘Do you go by Calais, then?’
‘No! This is the first time I have ever left England!’
He opened his round eyes to their utmost.
‘Oh! I say! Why, I cross six times every year, and sometimes oftener.’
‘Do you live abroad, then?’
‘No! I live in London—at least, my dad does—but I’m coaching for the
Civil Service, with old Felton, at Rille, and run home at Christmas and
Easter and Midsummer. I’m just going back after the summer vacation.
Isn’t it a bore?’
‘Dreadful!’ I acquiesced. ‘But is not Rille near Artois?’
‘About twenty miles distant. Why?’
‘Only that I am going to Artois, or near it.’
‘That’s jolly! I’ll look after you and see you get there all right, as
you’ve not been used to travelling—that is, if you’d like me to.’
‘Thank you, very much.’
I could not help inwardly smiling to think that I, who had so scornfully
rejected the escort of the polite and experienced Mr. Warrington, should
be thanking a raw schoolboy for the offer of his valuable protection to
Rille. But the cordial unconventionality of the lad pleased me, and I
thought I should like to have him for a travelling companion.
‘It is not much of a journey from Antwerp to Rille,’ I said.
‘Only a couple of hours. We shall get in about eight o’clock to-morrow
morning, and there’s a train at half-past which will land me at my shop
by half-past ten, and you at Artois at eleven. I pity you staying at
Artois; it’s a horrid dull place.’
‘Oh! I am not going to remain at Artois. My friends live a little
farther on.’
As he saw I did not volunteer the information, his intuitive delicacy
forbid his asking me the name of my friends, or of myself. But he
frankly disclosed his own.
‘My dad’s name is Sir John Stephenson. Dare say you’ve heard of him.
He’s a bigwig in the doctor way. He wanted me to be one. He said, “Fred,
my boy, there’s nothing like the medical profession.” But I didn’t see
it—I don’t fancy cutting off arms and legs—should you?’
‘No, indeed! And so your name is Frederick Stephenson?’
‘Yes! And I’ve got two brothers, Bob and Ernest; but they’re quite
little chaps.’
‘I suppose I must tell you my name in return, especially as we shall
travel to Rille together. I am called Hilda Marsh.’
‘That’s an awfully jolly name—Hilda, I mean. I’ve got three sisters, and
they have rather nice names, I think: Jessie and Amy and Blanche, but
“Hilda” beats them all to smash.’
‘I am glad you think so! Do you like living at Rille?’
‘Pretty well, but I shall be very glad when I’ve done with it. We have
larks now and then, but old Felton’s the clergyman there, and awfully
stiff with us. He hardly ever lets us go into the town.’
At this juncture the dinner-bell rang, and my young friend was all alert
to obey it.
‘Won’t you come down?’ he urged. ‘They give very good spreads on board
this boat, and if you’re likely to be ill when we get out to sea, you’ll
be all the worse for not having eaten anything.’
But I could not join them at the dinnertable. I had not sat down to a
regular meal for weeks, and the idea of roast and boiled joints sickened
me. I persuaded Master Fred Stephenson to leave me where I was, whilst
he satisfied the cravings of nature, to look at the charming sights
which presented themselves on either side the river, which we were now
fast leaving for the open sea.
By six o’clock we were well out in the ocean, which was calm as a lake
at that time of year; and I shrank with dismay at the idea of quitting
the cool sweet-smelling deck for the stuffy cabin, to which I had been
introduced in the former part of the day.
‘Why should you?’ exclaimed Master Fred, to whom I had confided my
grievance; ‘we’ll have a mattress and pillow sent up on deck for you,
and you’ll sleep twice as well here as you would below. I’ll go and
speak to the captain at once about it.’
He strode off with the air of a man, before I had time to dissuade him
from asking for what appeared to me an impossible indulgence. However,
his application was speedily followed by the appearance of a seaman
bearing the mattress, pillows, and blankets; and when I saw several
others of the passengers making themselves comfortable for the night in
the same manner, I grew less shy of using my improvised couch, and was
thankful to rest upon it.
As I lay there through the dark night, gazing up into the faces of the
moon and the stars, I could hardly believe that every throb of the
machinery was carrying me farther and farther away from the scenes with
which I had been associated so long. It was a lonely, peaceful
sensation, that of being borne along upon the lapping waves and through
the cool night air without any exertion, and only the burr of the
steamer’s wheels, and an occasional order from the captain to intimate
that some one was watching over my safety whether I slept or not. I lay
thus for some hours, thinking the one great thought that never left my
brain then, by night or day, until at last fatigue overcame me, and I
fell asleep. I woke with a sensation of being stifled. There was no
light, no air, nothing. What had happened to me? I struggled violently
for a moment, when some one, with a gay laugh, suddenly twitched a
blanket off my face, and I was free to breathe again.
‘Holloa! Miss Marsh,’ exclaimed Fred Stephenson, ‘did you think you were
buried alive?’
‘Something very like it,’ I replied; ‘what happened to me?’
‘Only this, that when the dew began to fall this morning, I drew the
blanket over your face. It isn’t safe to sleep in it, you know, and
every one is covered up in the same way.’
‘Well, it was very kind of you to think of it,’ I said, ‘but I certainly
thought we were all going to the bottom. How still the sea is!’
‘We’ve been out of the sea for the last four hours. We are going up the
Scheldt now, and shall be in Antwerp before you’ve had time to have your
breakfast and make a comfortable toilet.’
I scrambled to my feet at this intelligence, and sought the shelter of
my cabin, which felt closer and more stuffy even than it had done the
day before. A cup of coffee woke me completely up again, and by the time
the boat steamed alongside the quay at Antwerp, I was on deck, ready to
admire or be surprised at every fresh thing I saw. Master Fred
Stephenson proved an admirable cicerone, and never ceased to call my
attention to everything that he thought would interest or amuse me.
‘Aren’t those rum houses and trees?’ he said in his schoolboy language,
as he pointed out some quaint buildings on the quay; ‘they look for all
the world like the contents of one of those German boxes of toys the
children get at home, set up on end. And that’s a milk-cart drawn by
that dog, with all those brass cans in it. Did you ever see such caps
and bonnets as the women wear. I tried to squash one of their bonnets
once by sitting on it, but it was no use. They’re as hard as wood.
Holloa! here come the Custom-house people to look at the boxes. If you
will let me have your keys, Miss Marsh, I’ll see your luggage passed. I
suppose you’ve got nothing to declare.’
I assured him I had not.
‘Well, I’ve got lots, but I’m blessed if they shall find them. I smuggle
more things, every time I cross, than the rest of the English pupils put
together; but I’m an awfully lucky fellow, and have never been caught
yet.’
I stood on the bridge to watch the Custom-house officers at their duty,
and found it a very amusing sight. The distinction they made between
searching the luggage of their own countrymen and that of mine, inspired
me with a feeling of pride that, notwithstanding Master Fred’s
peccadilloes, the word of an Englishman should be so readily taken.
I observed that when the bridegroom and the father of the obnoxious
children had simply said they had nothing in their boxes liable to duty,
the keys were returned to them after the merest feint had been made of
raising the lids. But no such declarations availed the seedy foreigners,
though they accompanied them with oaths. Their scanty apparel, very
yellow and shabby in appearance, was religiously displayed on deck for
the admiration of the rest of the passengers, and every crevice of their
trunks carefully searched; and I felt sincere pity for one poor wretch
who was compelled to turn out the whole contents of an enormous hamper,
which was found, after all, to contain nothing but apples and pears.
When it came to the turn for Master Fred’s boxes, he threw his keys to
the Custom-house officers in the most nonchalant manner, desiring him to
search for himself.
The consequence of which was that, the trouble promising to prove too
great, the keys were merely turned in the locks and delivered again to
their owner.
‘That’s the way I do them, Miss Marsh,’ said Master Fred, with the
greatest glee, as we drove together to the station. ‘There’s nothing
goes down in this world like a perfect absence of fear. If you try to
prevent those fellows from rumpling your collars, they turn everything
over in order to find your contraband goods; but if you tell them to
look for themselves and not bother you, they feel sure directly that
innocence alone can make you so brave.’
‘You are a very naughty boy,’ I said, smiling in spite of myself at his
self-assurance and British cheek.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV.
ST. PUCELLE.
But notwithstanding his youth, I found Master Fred Stephenson not only
entertaining, but useful, for he took all trouble off my hands, and
before long I found myself sitting by his side in a _coupé_, and
travelling fast towards Rille and Artois. He rattled on, in his boyish
manner, of his school-life and pursuits, mingling his discourse with
more than one tale of scandal concerning the English abroad.
‘You should not repeat such stories young man,’ I said reprovingly,
‘whether they are true or not.’
‘Oh! they deserve everything one can say of them, Miss Marsh. You never
saw such a lot—greedy, grasping, ill-natured, and tale-bearing. They
seem to live only to cheat each other and pick holes in their
neighbours’ characters. I am generally ashamed to meet any of my
countrymen on the Continent. And the way they dress, too! I wonder, for
my part, that any of the tradesmen trust them. Now there’s an old card
who’s a great chum of Felton’s—to see him and hear him talk, you’d think
he was a perfect saint; but just listen to the tales that are told of
his being in debt all over the place, and fleecing young men out of
their money! Oh! criminy!’
‘Perhaps they are not all true,’ I suggested mildly, for as we neared my
destination I began to feel rather nervous at the prospect of meeting my
unknown friends, and less well disposed to listen to the social scandal
Master Stephenson amused himself by retailing to me. ‘Were we not rather
late in starting? It is nearly half-past ten now, and we are several
stations yet from Rille. I wonder if Mr. Lovett has received my letter
to say I should start yesterday.’
‘Mr.—_who_?’ exclaimed Fred Stephenson.
‘Mr. Lovett, the Protestant minister of St. Pucelle. He is my trustee,
and a sort of guardian. It is at his house that I am going to stay.’
‘Well, I _am_ blowed!’ ejaculated my elegant young friend.
‘Do you know him, then?’
‘_Know him!_ Of course I do! Everybody knows him within fifty miles of
Artois. He was tutor, or guardian, or something of the kind, to the
young German Prince Francius von Rudelstein de Ritzburg, and spends half
his time at court. He is considered quite a swell in his way, and is
often over at Rille. And so you’re going to St. Pucelle! What a lark!’
I could not exactly see in what the ‘lark’ consisted; but I thought it a
singular coincidence that my young travelling companion should be
acquainted with Mr. Lovett.
‘Perhaps you will be surprised to hear that I have never seen him yet.
What is he like?’
‘Oh, a very fine-looking old fellow, with snow-white hair and the most
benevolent of countenances. He’s got two jolly daughters, too.’
‘I am glad to hear that, because I am likely to see much more of them
than of their father. What are their ages?’
‘I can’t tell you that, because I’m not sure; but I should think the
eldest must be about your age, and her sister a few years younger.
They’re both pretty; Tessie has fair hair and a nice tall figure, but
the little one’s darker.’
‘Have you seen much of them?’
‘No; very little; only when they came to Rille with their father, to be
confirmed. But, by Jove! here’s the old shop itself. I’m so awfully
sorry I can’t see you safe to Artois, Miss Marsh, but it’s only three
stations farther on, and the diligence will be in waiting to take you on
to St. Pucelle. Good-bye! I’m so glad I met you! Hope we shall soon meet
again! Shouldn’t wonder if old Felton lets me run over to Piron for a
day’s shooting this autumn. No; no thanks. I’m so glad I was able to do
anything for you!’ And, with a wave of his hat and many smiles, the
nice, frank-hearted boy ran away to greet a group of his schoolfellows,
who were assembled on the platform. The last I saw of his happy face, as
the train moved slowly out of the station, was a succession of nods; the
last I heard of his joyous voice, a hearty ‘_Au revoir._’
Well, he had been much comfort to me on my first essay at traversing the
world alone, and I was thankful I had encountered him. Now he was gone,
and I turned my thoughts entirely to the meeting which lay so short a
way ahead of me.
When I arrived at Artois, I found, as he had told me, a diligence in
waiting to take all passengers and luggage on to St. Pucelle. This
conveyance, so fast becoming extinct upon the Continent, excited much of
my interest. It is true that it had no springs, and jolted along the
rough country-road to such an extent as nearly to jolt me into pieces;
true, that the four little mules that drew it, decorated with scarlet
woollen tassels and jingling with bells, required a constant succession
of oaths and cracks of the whip to make them move out of a walk, and
often stopped dead of their own accord, notwithstanding their driver’s
energy. I was wedged in tightly, also, on a broiling August morning,
between some fat market-women, who regarded my foreign appearance with
curious wonder, and, opposite, a set of men who puffed smoke in my face
with the utmost nonchalance. But the diligence was making its slow,
uneven way on a road cut in the side of a hill. On one hand lay the
lovely fertile valley of Artois, through the green bosom of which a
river was winding its way like a silver snake, glistening in the
sunlight. On the other was a high hill, which looked almost like a
mountain in my inexperienced eyes, and was covered to the top with
purple heather, precisely similar to that we find in England and
Scotland, intermingled with wild flowers of every form and colour. I was
wrapt in admiration of the view. I gazed from right to left in silent
wonder, thinking I had never seen anything in my life before so
beautiful and bright, and forgetful alike of the uncomfortable pressure
I was enduring from my stout neighbours, and the vile tobacco-smoke
which came puffing in my face from over the way. Subsequent experience
made me aware that the journey from Artois to St. Pucelle, when
performed in the diligence, occupied an hour and a quarter; but it did
not seem to have been half that time to me when the vehicle suddenly
came to a standstill, and I heard a voice in parley with the driver.
The fat women looked at each other and murmured something about the
‘_Curé Anglais_;’ and my curiosity was just being awakened by a few
words of French which I had caught from outside, when an old gentleman
came round to the diligence-door and looked in upon us.
‘_Bonjour, monsieur!_’ cried all its occupants, save one,
simultaneously; and the new-comer raised his hat in reply to the general
salutation. I thought I had never seen such a perfect picture of an old
man before. His snow-white hair covered his finely-formed head in loose,
wavy curls; his high forehead bore the impress of intellect and
benevolence; and his bright blue eyes beamed forth from a face the
complexion of which was soft and fair as that of a child. He had a tall,
upright figure, rather stout than otherwise, and must have been, in his
youth, an unusually handsome man. His long cloth coat and broad-brimmed
hat told me his profession before he spoke, and I was delighted when I
heard him demand, in English, if I were Miss Marsh.
‘Am I speaking to Mr. Lovett?’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, my dear, yes; no other. Your letter reached us safely this
morning, so I thought I would walk a little way down the road to meet
the diligence. I hope you have travelled here comfortably?’
‘Very comfortably, thank you. But are we so short a distance, then, from
St. Pucelle?’
‘We are within a stone’s throw of the town. There it stands, on the brow
of the hill.’
‘I should very much like then, if I may, Mr. Lovett, to walk back with
you instead of driving.’
‘By all means, my dear,’ he replied, as he opened the door and helped me
out of the vehicle.
A few words in French explained matters to the driver, and in another
minute the diligence was lost to view in a cloud of white dust, and the
Rev. Horace Lovett and I were left standing alone on the road to St.
Pucelle. The first thing he did was to take my hand, and regard me
steadfastly in the face.
‘You are _very_ like your poor father,’ he said, ‘both in feature and
expression, and you will be all the dearer to me for the resemblance.
Perhaps you have heard—you may have been told—what firm, fast friends we
were in the olden days.’
‘Oh yes, Mr. Lovett; my mother has often told me so.’
‘I did not know your poor mother,’ he replied; ‘I was settled here
before your father’s marriage. But report has told me how good and
amiable a wife he had gained in her.’
‘She was indeed good,’ I said falteringly. ‘I seem to have lost
everything I possessed in losing her.’
‘Come, come, my child,’ he said soothingly, ‘I should not have mentioned
the subject to you so soon. Do not let us speak of it today. You have
come to the house of your father’s earliest and closest friend. You must
try and think that it is a second father himself who welcomes you
there.’
‘Indeed you are very good to me,’ I replied; ‘and I felt the kindness of
your offer from the first, though I have scarcely thanked you for it.’
‘You have thanked me in the best way possible, my dear, by accepting it.
I have had two daughters hitherto; now I shall have three. My little
girls are all impatience to form your acquaintance; but you must make
allowances for them. You will find them rough little Wallons, who know
nothing of England or English customs.’
‘What is a Wallon, Mr. Lovett? I am afraid you will find me as ignorant
of Continental ways and fashions as your girls are of English.’
‘Then you must teach each other. We are in what they call here the
Wallon country, my dear, which they would term in Scotland, I think,
“neither fish, flesh, nor good red herrin’.” The people hereabout speak
a _patois_ of French and German, rather difficult of comprehension at
first, and which has considerably spoilt my little girls’ accent.
We were now approaching the entrance of the town, which consisted
principally of one long street built on a steep hill, so that to mount
it almost seemed like climbing up stairs, especially as it was paved
irregularly with grey rough stone. At the very summit of it stood an
imposing-looking edifice built of granite, with a spire and cross lifted
to the skies, which I concluded to be the church of which Mr. Lovett had
charge. But he soon undeceived me.
‘Oh no, my dear; you must not expect to see our faith honoured after
that fashion in this country. That is the Catholic church, under the
superintendence of my very good friend, the Abbé Morteville. I have
offered to exchange with him more than once, but he has not taken the
hint.’
‘I should hardly have thought there had been sufficient Protestants in a
town like this to render it worth while to keep up a church and minister
for them.’
‘No more there are. But my excellent friend and patron, the Grand Duke
Francius von Rudelstein, interested himself on my behalf, and placed me
here in order to attend to the spiritual wants of the summer visitors.
We have a great many visitors to St. Pucelle in the summer season.’
‘I don’t wonder at it. It seems to me the loveliest place I have ever
seen.’
At this juncture, a man dressed in a blue blouse, buckled round his
waist, and a cap with a peak to it, ran out of a shop and button-holed
Mr. Lovett, whilst he apparently pleaded for something, very volubly and
earnestly, in his own language.
‘Some parochial confidence,’ I thought, as I saw my old friend move
farther from my side, so as to take the man out of earshot. They spoke
together for some minutes; the tradesman still pleading, and Mr. Lovett
seeming to try and soothe him down to a quieter frame of mind. At last
he prevailed. The man in the blouse smiled and raised his peaked cap,
and Mr. Lovett, calling out cheerily, ‘_À demain_,’ returned his smile
in the most benevolent manner, and hastened to my side again.
‘You will excuse me, my dear,’ he said, ‘but a minister is at the beck
and call of all his parishioners.’
‘Is that man a Protestant, then?’ I asked with surprise.
I do not know why I should have been surprised, but he had looked so
thoroughly unlike it.
‘We have a regular mixture here,’ replied Mr. Lovett, without answering
my question. ‘Do you see that house on the right hand, my dear child,
with steps leading up either side to the porch? that is my humble abode,
and that is where I hope you will make yourself very happy for a long
time to come.’
I followed the direction of his silver-headed cane with a quick
curiosity that the appearance of the house was well calculated to
increase. It was built of wood, and looked to me more like the
representations I had seen of Swiss châlets than any other sort of
private dwelling. The principal door was reached, as Mr. Lovett had
pointed out to me, by a double flight of wooden steps, with rails on the
outer side of them. The windows were lattices, with diamond-shaped panes
of glass. The house looked large and commodious, but it was so much
built on a slope that the garden to one side of it was level with the
windows of the first story; so that the lower rooms must consequently
have been, in part at least, under ground. The front was covered with a
luxuriant union of vine, fig and pear tree, and the little garden to the
side, which was visible above the top of the wall, was a mass of
fragrant bloom. But what attracted me most was the figure of a girl,
leaning over the rails which guarded the porch.
Her features did not strike me at first sight as being pretty, but there
was a grace about her figure, and a sweet, fair womanliness in her face,
that made me feel at once we should be friends.
‘Papa!’ she called out, with a decidedly French pronunciation, as we
drew near the porch.
Mr. Lovett looked up and shook his stick gaily at her.
‘There is my Tessie,’ he said proudly, ‘the elder of the two; and as
good a child as ever walked alone! And where is my little maid?’ he
continued to his daughter; ‘has she run away to hide herself, in fear of
this formidable stranger?’
‘No, no, papa!’ replied Tessie, laughing. ‘Ange has gone up the hill to
fetch some eggs from Mère Fromard. For we did not expect Miss Marsh
would arrive so soon.’
I thought she was a daughter for any man to be proud of, as she came
gracefully down the steps to meet me, and extended her hand in greeting.
She was tall and slight, and clothed in a black stuff dress, with a
broad white muslin apron on, fashioned with a bib that was pinned on
either shoulder. Her fair, soft hair was taken loosely off her face and
coiled in a knot behind her head, and her grey eyes—too small and too
grey to be like her father’s—beamed forth mildly from a complexion that
was unusually delicate for a country-bred girl. But what struck me most
in Teresa Lovett’s face was the unmistakable look which betrayed that
she had suffered—and seen others suffer—as I had. It was a bond of union
between us that was cemented the first day we met, and will last until
time is no more.
‘Come, girls! kiss each other!’ cried Mr. Lovett, as he watched the
commonplace greeting with which we timidly touched each other’s hand.
‘That’s right,’ he continued, as we obeyed his directions; ‘you must
never forget that your fathers were more like brothers than friends in
the olden time. God bless my soul! it’s many a scrape I got in with Dick
Marsh in our college days; and many a time we’ve hoped we should live to
meet again, and have a crack over the past. But that wish has been
overruled, so we must make the best of what remains to us. But if you
girls don’t get on together, I shall never forgive you. You are both
motherless, and you’ve only got one father left between the lot of you;
so it will be very hard if you can’t cling together and make the rest of
your lives as pleasant as may be.’
‘We mean to try to do so, dear papa,’ said Tessie in her soft voice, as
she gave me a second embrace, preparatory to leading me into the house.
‘I am sure you must be tired,’ she continued; ‘do come in and rest.’
All this had taken place in front of the house, and in the very centre
of the street; but then the street of St. Pucelle must not be judged by
the rules of any other. It was just past noon. The inhabitants of the
town were unanimously partaking of their mid-day meal.
Not a passenger was to be seen from one end of the long thoroughfare to
the other, and doubtless my new friends and I might have embraced for
the next half-hour without observation. But I was beginning to feel very
weary, and was glad to accept Tessie’s invitation to enter and rest
myself. My slumbers on board the boat had been but broken ones, and the
fatigue of the excitement consequent on my journey was beginning to make
itself apparent. So that I felt thankful when I had mounted the wooden
steps which led to the hall-door, and realised that, for the time being,
I had reached the end of my travels.
The door opened immediately upon a large room, the floor of which was
but half covered by a threadbare carpet, in which it was impossible to
trace even the remains of colour; in the centre stood a deal table with
a faded green cloth, round which were placed some half-dozen or more
rush-bottomed chairs. A large oil painting of the Crucifixion hung over
the narrow, wooden mantelpiece, and was the only visible ornament. And a
buffet covered with wine-glasses and tumblers stood to one side of the
apartment, which I concluded to be the dining-room. I confess, though,
that I was hardly prepared for the meagre appearance of its furniture,
and I suppose Tessie guessed my surprise from the expression of my face.
‘You must not expect to find all the customs of this country similar to
those of England,’ she said, with a touch of pride. ‘Papa tells me you
think a great deal of your furniture and rooms there, but no one does so
in St. Pucelle. In the first place, there are so few people here to see
and admire it; and in the second, the servants would not know how to
keep it in order. Not that we have always been so shabby as we are now,’
she added, in a lower voice; ‘but Ange and I were only babies when poor
mamma died, and there has been no one to look after such things since.
We don’t care for ourselves—Ange and I—we would as soon sit on
rush-bottomed chairs as on velvet; but it is sad for poor papa, who has
been used to such a different life from this.’
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V.
ANGE.
‘Ange is your sister’s name, is it not?’ I asked her.
‘Yes. And you will like her so much. She is such a darling! She was
baptised ‘Angela,’ but we have always called her Ange for short. The
country people gave it to her first. She was so pretty, like a little
angel, running amongst them with her golden curls, and they named her
‘_Petite Ange!_’ And then we took it up, and she has been called so ever
since.’
‘It is a very pretty abbreviation! Is there much difference in your
ages?’
‘Five years. I am three-and-twenty, and she is but just eighteen. Am I
younger than you?’
‘By a twelvemonth only. I hope we shall be very good friends, Tessie—if
I may call you so.’
‘Yes, indeed you must; and I must call you by your name—Hilda—since papa
says we are to be sisters. But if you should find the life here too dull
and stupid after England! That would be very sad for all of us, would it
not?’
‘Why should you anticipate it? I have not been accustomed to a gay life,
Tessie. I lived all alone with my dear mother until—until——’
‘Yes, yes, I know!’ cried the girl, with ready sympathy.
‘And, as you may imagine, I am hardly likely to wish to mix in scenes of
gaiety now. All I want is rest and peace.’
‘Shall we ever get it in this life?’ inquired Tessie, in a low voice.
I looked up at her in astonishment.
‘I mean—I mean—’ she went on confusedly, ‘that I am not going to let you
stand here any longer. Come and see the bedroom I have prepared for
you.’
For we were still lingering in the barely-furnished dining-room by which
we had entered the house. She led me through a second apartment, smaller
than the first, but bearing more signs of occupation, having an old
piano in one corner, a case of books in another, and a cage of canary
birds singing loudly in the window. Then, to my astonishment, we entered
a large stone kitchen, from which a flight of stairs led up to the
bedroom floor. At the table in the centre sat an old Frenchwoman,
shredding potatoes into a wooden bowl; but whether she was a servant or
not I felt puzzled to decide. She wore a stuff gown, as good as
Tessie’s, with a scarlet worsted shawl, notwithstanding the heat, pinned
tightly across her bosom, and a net-cap much ornamented with artificial
flowers and ribbons, such as is never assumed by the lower classes in
Belgium except on Sundays and fête days.
She did not look up, either, as we entered the kitchen, nor show any
sign of noticing our presence until Tessie addressed her, as I thought,
with some timidity.
‘This is Miss Marsh, Madame; she has just arrived by the diligence, and
I am about to take her up to her bedroom that she may refresh herself
before luncheon.’
‘Very good! You know your way there,’ muttered the woman in French,
going on with her occupation.
‘We generally have our luncheon about this time,’ said Tessie to me,
‘but if you would like to take any refreshment beforehand——’
‘What refreshment would you offer her, unless it be an apple and a glass
of sour beer?’ interrupted the potato-shredder, who appeared to
understand English perfectly, although she spoke in French.
‘Oh, Madame! we can surely find Miss Marsh a roll and a little butter,’
replied Tessie, with a nervous laugh; but I assured her that I should
need nothing until the family meal was announced.
I heard the Frenchwoman grumbling to herself as we ascended the stairs,
and trusted that a close association with her would not form a necessary
part of my new life.
‘Madame Marmoret is not very genial with strangers,’ remarked Tessie, as
we entered a long bare corridor upon which the doors of the bedchambers
opened.
‘Is she your housekeeper?’ I inquired
‘She is our everything. She nursed me and Ange when we were babies, and
has reared us ever since. She is the cook and the housemaid and the
footman and the butler all in one. But she is a shocking tyrant, and
Ange and I hardly dare call our souls our own when she says that we
shall not.’
‘Why don’t you get rid of her, then?’
Tessie’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.
‘Get rid of Madame Marmoret! We should almost as soon think of getting
rid of papa. Oh, no! we shall never get rid of her, as long as we live.
She is an “institution.” She wouldn’t go even if we asked her. She would
turn us all out of the house first.’
To me, who possessed a strongly conservative spirit, and had no idea of
permitting my inferiors to take a liberty with me, Tessie’s mode of
talking about Madame Marmoret appeared only as excellent satire. I was
yet to learn that it was sad and sober truth. But we had arrived at my
bedchamber, and though I was a little disappointed at its want of size,
all the bulk of the house seeming to be monopolised by passages and
staircases, I could not help observing with gratitude the evident care
that had been bestowed on the arrangement of the little white bed, and
the muslin curtain that draped the window, and was touched beyond
measure at the discovery of a small blue silk pincushion on the
toilet-table, ready filled with pins, with ‘Hilda’ worked across the
front of it in white beads.
‘Ange did that,’ said Tessie, delighted with my pleasure at the sight;
‘she was making that all last week, especially for your table. She
wanted to work a little cross beneath your name, but I would not allow
her. I thought you might not like it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the English, as a rule, are so superstitious. They are afraid
of a cross. One would think it portended evil. But Ange is so good—so
pious! She would live in the church, if it were possible.’
‘Is your church far from here?’
‘Ah! I did not mean our church—I meant that of our good friend, Monsieur
Morteville. No, it is not far off—it is just over the way. But it is not
a church at all. It is only a room.’
My face fell. I had always greatly enjoyed the services of religion,
especially where well conducted, and I felt I should need the comfort of
them more than ever now.
There had been something in Mr. Lovett’s manner and appearance—I know
not why—that had led me to hope that I should derive much solace from
being under his care. I suppose it was the look of extra refinement that
had misled me. But Tessie’s description of their place of worship was
very discouraging.
‘Only a room!’ I echoed, in a tone of disappointment.
‘Yes, and such an ugly one! It is a schoolroom on week-days, and we have
to sit on the dirty benches that the children use. I play the harmonium,
and Ange leads the hymns, but it is sorry work. It will be better now
you have come. I hope you will sing with us. Papa is grand, of course.
He is grand whatever he does, or wherever you put him; but it makes me
sad to see him thrown away in such a horrid place. I always feel he
ought to be preaching in a splendid cathedral like St. Gudule, at
Brussels. He looks altogether out of place with whitewashed walls.’
‘St. Paul, in the upper room at Athens,’ I said, smiling.
‘Ah! St. Paul was never half such a man as our father. He ought to be
Archbishop of Canterbury at the very least, or, as Ange says, Pope of
Rome!’
‘He is certainly a very fine-looking old gentleman,’ I acquiesced.
‘Do you think he looks _old_?’ said Tessie. ‘He never seems to grow old,
to Ange and me. It would be a dreadful thing to wake up some day and
find that papa had really changed into an old gentleman.’
I could not say he looked young, and so I discreetly held my tongue. I
had not quite completed my toilette when a bell was heard to tinkle.
‘I must go!’ cried Tessie. ‘That is Madame ringing the bell for me to
lay the table for _goûter_. You see, Ange and I are obliged to help her
in these little matters, or she could not get through her work. Do you
think you can find your way downstairs again, Hilda, without me?’
‘I am sure I can,’ I answered; and in a few minutes more I proved my
words by following her through the kitchen to the apartment which held
the piano. There I found her busily employed in laying the
luncheon-table, and singing a little French song as she worked.
The repast was a very simple one, but it looked inviting. There was a
loaf of rye bread, a country cheese, a large basket of rosy apples, a
bowl of custard, and a plate of _gaufres_, which Tessie told me she had
made herself. Everything was beautifully clean, but there was evidence
of strict economy, if not of poverty, in the arrangements, which,
remembering what I had been told of the Reverend Horace Lovett’s grand
patrons and connection with court, rather surprised me. However, I was
no gourmand, and did not give a second thought to the matter. As soon as
the _goûter_ was prepared, Madame Marmoret went out at the front door
and rang a handbell violently on the balcony, which was shortly followed
by the sound of her master’s voice and footsteps as he obeyed the signal
to return home.
‘There is papa!’ exclaimed Tessie, ‘and there—yes! there comes Ange with
him! I thought she could not be much longer. They must have met in the
street.’
At this moment Mr. Lovett, his face beaming with kindly benevolence,
appeared on the threshold of the room we sat in, dragging a girl after
him by both her hands held in one of his.
‘Here she is,’ he said; ‘here’s my little maid, Hilda. I found her
hiding somewhere away in the cow-house, afraid to show her face indoors
for fear you would bite her nose off; and I believe she would have
stayed there till to-morrow morning if I had not chanced to come across
her.’
‘No, no, papa! indeed,’ remonstrated Ange, with the same foreign accent
I had observed in her sister, ‘you are not just to me. I am not afraid:
I was only going round to give the eggs to Madame, and take off my hat
before presenting myself to Mademoiselle Marsh.’
He swung the girl in front of him, and nearly pushed her into my arms.
‘Go and present yourself to Mademoiselle Marsh, then,’ he said,
mimicking her pronunciation.
As she stood before me, with her heightened colour and a deprecating
look upon her face, I thought I had never seen such a pretty creature
before as Mr. Lovett’s ‘little maid.’ She was dressed in black serge,
like her sister, and had a white muslin pelerine crossed quaintly over
her bosom; a straw hat, with a black ribbon tied round it, and a wide
flapping brim that almost hid her features, formed her head-dress, and a
plain silver cross, depending from her throat, was her only ornament.
But how shall I ever describe her face! that mobile face, the expression
of which changed every second, like a restless sea that never can keep
still; and that delicate variable bloom, that rose and fell in crimson
waves with every emotion that passed through her sensitive little brain!
In actual appearance she was very like the old man, which accounted for
his evident pride in her. She had his rich blue eyes, with long dark
lashes and well-marked eyebrows: the chestnut hair—which I afterwards
learned he had also possessed when young—with a natural wave in it like
his, that kept it rippling low on her brow and the nape of her neck and
round about her ears in little sunny curls. The tip of her pretty nose
was just sufficiently tilted to redeem it from being aquiline, and her
laughing mouth, displaying a row of firm white teeth, was childlike in
its dewy roseleaf bloom.
I am not given to falling into raptures over the perfections of my own
sex: few women are, in this century of pearl powder, belladonna, rouge
and auricomus. But it was just because I had detected and been disgusted
at such falsehoods, that I gazed at Angela Lovett as at something that I
had never seen before. She looked as if she had but just stepped down,
fresh made, from the hand of her Creator.
‘Oh, Ange!’ I exclaimed involuntarily, my admiration made patent by my
voice, ‘I hope that you will like me!’
‘Like you—why, of course she will! what should she do else?’ replied her
father, answering for her. ‘We must hear no more of likes and dislikes
after to-day, Hilda! Here are my three daughters, all ready to attend me
at my _goûter_, and I mean to make no distinction between them
henceforward. So now, my little maid, kiss your sister Hilda, and let us
see if Madame has given us anything that my poor old teeth can manage to
crack for luncheon.’
The old gentleman’s kindness made me feel so completely at home, that
when Ange blushingly advanced to salute me, I opened my arms and pressed
the girl to my heart as if she had indeed been my younger sister. I was
not surprised, as we gathered round the table, to see that Tessie had
slipped out of the room and returned with a basin of hot soup, which she
placed before her father, whilst Ange silently rose and produced a small
tin of rusks for him to eat with it. It was but right that the old man,
whose digestion was probably impaired, should fare more daintily than
his young daughters, who could eat anything.
I resolved that, before the morrow came, I would ask Tessie to let me
share in the labour of waiting on him and attending to his wants.
He was good enough to call me his daughter, and I would not take the
name unless I were allowed to fulfil the service. So we girls ate rye
bread and cheese and munched apples, whilst Mr. Lovett sipped his soup
and sherry, and talked to us of the days before we were born, when he
had been hand-in-glove with some of the highest and most celebrated
names in England, until I wondered why he should have left a country
which was reeking with patronage and interest for him, to bury himself
abroad, even though it were as the tutor of a German prince. I could not
venture, however, to put the question, although I did ask him if he had
not greatly missed the associates of whom he spoke on first leaving
them.
‘Yes, my dear Hilda, you are right. I certainly did so, but my motto
through life has been, _Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra_. It was
duty that called me to this country; a hard and difficult duty it is
true, but one which I could not have neglected without sacrificing what
was dearer to me than pleasure—my sense of right!’
And Mr. Lovett struck his broad chest with an energy that raised him
very considerably in my estimation. There is something so ennobling in
the sight of a man who is strong enough to conquer inclination in the
cause of his religion. His girls regarded the sentiment he had expressed
with the same admiration that I did. I could see Ange’s blue eyes
beaming upon him from the opposite side of the table, whilst Tessie’s
looked tenderer than before. It was beautiful to see their devotion to
their father. How glad I was to find myself in a family who respected
and loved each other, and were, moreover, so perfectly united.
On rising from the table, the girls asked me if I would accompany them
in a walk, but the fatigue I had encountered since the day before was
beginning to make itself palpably felt, and I decided to spend the
afternoon in my own room, putting my wardrobe in order. Tessie offered
to assist me, but I declined her services. After so much novelty and
excitement, the idea of a few hours’ rest and solitude was grateful to
me. But when I got alone I found I was too tired even to think. I turned
out the contents of my boxes into the wooden press that waited for them,
and then I flung myself down upon the inviting-looking little bed and
fell fast asleep.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI.
TURKEY AND TRUFFLES.
I must have slept for several hours, when I was awakened by the sound of
a shrill voice that reached me from the courtyard below. For my room was
at the back of the house, and looked out on a little paved court that
lay on the other side of the narrow garden, and led through a cow-shed
into the main street again. So primitive was the mode of architecture
and the idea of comfort in the town of St. Pucelle.
‘_Tiens!_’ the shrill voice was exclaiming when my ears were suddenly
made cognisant of its existence; ‘you are a fool—a pig, a _maladroit_,
to fancy any such thing! She will cost twice the money to keep that one
of our girls do. Can we feed her on nettle soup and dandelion salad?
Will she eat rye bread every day, and be content with crust _potage_ for
her dinner? And her presence here will make the town furious. We shall
be beset by them; they will say you have no right to increase your
family; and if you tell them the reason why, they will answer, “Then
give us justice,” and you will look like a fool—as you are!’
‘But, my dear good Marmoret,’ replied a soft voice, which sounded
wonderfully like that of my guardian, though I could not believe that it
was he, ‘you are mistaken; I shall tell them nothing.’
‘And you think I have four hands to work with, perhaps, and four feet on
which to run up and down these stairs from morning till night, that you
bring me another person to cook for and clean after. Bah! but it is you
that will find yourself mistaken! If justice is to be done to any one it
begins with me, Marie Marmoret, who has slaved and toiled for the last
twenty-two years without so much as a “thank you” for it.’
‘Is that quite true?’ demanded the same soft voice. ‘But you are not
yourself to-day, my good Marmoret; let us leave the discussion of these
domestic matters until tomorrow.’
‘_Not myself!_’ echoed Madame, sharply; ‘it is false. I am not myself
when I cringe and smile and speak softly, and pretend to believe that
which I know to be a lie; but I am telling you my true mind now, and you
can make what you please of it. I am getting tired—that is the
truth—tired and sick of it all; and I know not why I should hold my
tongue more than others.’
‘Well, well! I am about to see Dumont and Chrétien to-morrow, and they
will believe what I say to them, if you do not.’
‘And much good your seeing them will do them—poor fools! They’d better
by far come to me. I could give them a piece of advice worth two of
yours.’
‘Now, my dear good Marmoret,’ said the other voice, ‘I must entreat you
to be reasonable. I can manage my own affairs perfectly well, and need
no assistance. You must oblige me by not interfering.’
‘Bah! I have been “reasonable,” as you call it, too long. If Dumont and
Chrétien are to see you, I do so first. Have I not the prior claim?
Answer me that!’
‘Certainly you have, and I always acknowledge it. But be patient, and
your reward will come.’
‘I should like to see it,’ grumbled Madame Marmoret, as she bustled into
the house again.
Now the whole of this conversation, being carried on in voluble French,
was not patent to my understanding; but I could catch a word here and
there, and it made me uneasy.
Madame Marmoret was evidently very angry, and her anger was chiefly
directed against me. I was sure that the first part of her conversation
alluded to my arrival at St. Pucelle, and her disgust at the prospect of
having more work to do in consequence. It was annoying to think I had
been the cause of a disturbance so soon; but Madame Marmoret had judged
me too hastily, and I had no doubt that when she knew more of me she
would alter her opinion. I should never dream of entering a household
with only one servant, without taking my share of its duties. She
thought, doubtless, that I was a fine English lady, accustomed to be
waited on for everything, and unwilling to raise a hand to help myself.
She would soon find out her mistake. I could dust and sweep and make
beds perhaps as well as she could, and I had fully intended to join
Tessie and Ange in their domestic avocations the very next morning.
But what puzzled me was to guess to whom Madame could possibly have been
confiding her grievances. At first I had thought the voice was like that
of Mr. Lovett, but when I heard the familiar way in which she addressed
her companion, I knew at once that it could not be her master with whom
she had been talking. And I was further convinced of the justice of my
conclusion when a tap at my door was followed by the entrance of Ange to
tell me that dinner would be ready in a few minutes.
‘We have been for such a long walk, Tessie and I,’ she said, as she took
off her broad-brimmed hat and fanned her heated face with it; ‘right up
the hill and as far as the forest. It was delightful when we got there!
You would have enjoyed it, Hilda! The trees are so big and beautiful,
and under them it is as cool and as shady as a church. And you and papa
have been sleeping all the afternoon away. Lazy people!’
‘Has your papa been asleep also?’
‘Yes. We found him fast asleep in the big straw chair. I hid behind it,
and tickled his nose with a branch of flowering lime until he woke. It
was such fun to see his dear old head bobbing round to find out who it
was. Most people would have been cross, you know, but papa is never
cross about anything.’
‘Not with _you_, I expect,’ I said, smiling.
‘Nor with anybody, unless they have done something very bad indeed. Papa
is an angel; you will know that when you have stayed here a little
while. He is a great deal too good for this world.’
‘They say the best praise a man can have is that of his own household.’
‘Then papa deserves the very best, for every one loves him—in the house
and out of it—they couldn’t help it. He is so good and holy. I should
have no fear at all about getting into heaven if I were only sure I
might keep hold of his skirts.’
‘My dear, you shouldn’t say that of any man.’
‘I must say it of papa. I often think he is only half a man. He is so
much more like some of those dear old saints whose lives Monsieur
Morteville has lent me to read, and who were too holy to live with
sinners upon earth. You will say the same in a few days, Hilda. But now
it is dinnertime, and we must go down, or we shall get a scolding.’
‘Few gentlemen like being kept waiting for their dinner,’ I observed.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean from papa; he never scolds. It is Madame who will be
so angry if we are late. And as likely as not she will carry off the
dishes again, and leave us without any dinner at all,’ cried Ange,
laughing, as she disappeared.
I did not consider it a laughing matter, and so I quickly arranged my
toilet and hurried after her.
The meal was laid in the front room, I found, this time—the _salle_, as
they familiarly termed it—and the family were already assembled there.
Mr. Lovett sat at the head of the table, looking like a veritable
patriarch, with his table-napkin pinned to his breast, after the foreign
fashion; the girls were on either side of him, and I found I was
expected to fill the seat of honour at the bottom.
‘As the eldest, my dear—as the eldest,’ he averred. ‘It is your proper
place.’
Madame now appeared with a large covered dish, which she put before her
master, and the contents of which, on being disclosed, proved to be a
turkey stuffed with truffles. I felt quite hungry at the sight. My
_goûter_ had been sparse, and the roast turkey smelt delicious. I had no
hesitation in answering in the affirmative when I was asked if I would
take some of it.
I thought Madame Marmoret seemed to be muttering very much to herself
when she held my plate to her master, and as she returned it to me, her
words were audible enough.
‘Extravagance—ruin!’ she let off close to my ears, like so many
pistol-shots of anger.
I saw Ange and Tessie colour and look at me and then at their father,
and Mr. Lovett himself seemed to think it was time to put an end to such
exhibitions of folly.
‘_Tais-toi!_’ he said quite sharply to the woman, and then, appearing to
regret his harshness, he added: ‘We know what we are about, my friend.
Suppose you help me to some potatoes.’
Tessie and Ange made a simultaneous grab at the potato-dish, and, under
cover of their alacrity to help their father, Madame grumbled herself
out of the room.
When the confusion which followed this episode had somewhat subsided, I
looked round the table and saw that neither of the girls had taken any
turkey. I suppose their father had offered it to them, but they had not
accepted it. Tessie was eating some slices of spiced sausage and bread,
and Ange had cut up an entire cucumber as her share of dinner.
‘Do you not eat meat?’ I inquired, without thinking.
To the thoroughbred Briton, there appears something so extraordinary in
any one dining on vegetables and bread.
‘No,’ replied Ange, with a pretty blush, ‘we do not care for it. In this
country you see few people eat it, and, for my part, I could live upon
cucumbers all the year round.’
Mr. Lovett was evidently not one of the ‘few.’ He consumed his turkey
and truffles with the air of a real connoisseur, returning to it until
he had nearly caused the whole of the breast to disappear, and washing
it down with copious draughts of champagne, a bottle of which stood at
his elbow. He asked me to take a glass, but I declined. I had never been
used to wine, and preferred drinking water, as I saw the girls do. If
Mr. Lovett’s daughters did not care for meat, it was not because they
meant to make up the deficiency by pudding, for no second course
followed the turkey. Some Gruyère cheese and biscuits were put upon the
table for their father, but the flavour was too strong to suit anybody
but himself. Tessie picked some ripe figs and grapes from the walls of
the house and offered them to me in her sweet shy way, and we sat
together on the sill of the window that looked out upon the street,
eating our fruit and watching Ange perched upon her father’s knee, tying
up the silver curls that hung over his brow with little bits of blue
ribbon, as she was accustomed to do with her poodle’s top-knot.
It was a charming sight to see them together—the handsome old man with
his look of proud contentment, and the beautiful girl who was playing
with him; both so like and yet so unlike each other; she in her extreme
youth and innocence, and he with the weight perhaps of five-and-sixty
winters on his brow. Yet, when at last her gentle touch had sent him off
to sleep in his chair, he almost seemed the younger of the two, as he
lay back, peacefully slumbering, with scarcely a wrinkle on his fair
smooth skin, and the little witch’s blue ribbons fluttering in his
silver hair.
Meanwhile Ange joined Tessie and myself in the window-sill, and there we
sat whispering to each other of all the thousand and one foolish things
that enter young women’s brains.
‘And are you the only English in St. Pucelle?’ I asked, after we had
finished discussing the place.
‘Oh, Tessie! only hear what Hilda is saying!’ exclaimed Ange. ‘What
would Miss Sophia Markham do if she were to hear her? She would have a
fit of hysterics, at the very least.’
‘Sophia Markham! That sounds dreadfully English,’ I observed.
‘And Miss Markham considers herself essentially French,’ replied Tessie,
laughing. ‘She is constantly putting us right on subjects with which we
have been familiar from our birth, and on more than one occasion she has
been kind enough to correct our accent for us.’
‘What an unpleasant person! Does she live here?’
‘No; it is difficult to say where she lives——’
‘I can tell you,’ interrupted Ange, ‘with whoever will take her in.’
‘Or let themselves be taken in,’ continued her sister. ‘Miss Markham is
ubiquitous. She has no settled home, but we seem to meet her everywhere.
This summer she is staying here with a family of the name of Carolus,
from Brussels.’
‘And, poor things, how sick they are of her! I am sure I pity them,
having to listen to her silly chatter all day.’
‘Well, Ange, it strikes me that Mrs. Carolus and Miss Markham get on
very well together. They are inseparable companions, and have always
some mutual acquaintance to abuse. This Miss Markham is really clever,
Hilda; she can do anything in needle-work, and is very talkative and
pleasant——’
‘When there are gentlemen present,’ interposed Ange.
‘Oh, Ange! that is spiteful of you, though I must allow she is more
pleasant with them than with her own sex.’
‘Is she a young woman?’ I asked.
‘Oh no! I should think she must be forty or more, but she always talks
as if she were very young indeed, and she calls me and Ange “mere
children.”’
‘I know the sort of woman you mean, exactly. We had one of them at
Norwood, who made herself pre-eminently ridiculous. They can never
believe they are too old for love or admiration, and they generally
dress so as to make themselves the laughing-stocks of society.’
‘Oh! that is true, Hilda. Miss Markham borrowed a pelerine from Ange
last week, and has come out in one exactly like it.’
‘Is it not strange,’ said Ange, musingly, ‘that Madame, who in general
dislikes strangers so much, should have taken such a fancy to Sophia
Markham? She says she is “_une dame très amiable_,” that she has “_l’air
noble_,” and would well adorn a throne! What can Madame see in her to
say all that?’
‘I am sure I cannot tell, Ange. Hilda will see her for herself, and then
she can judge. But Miss Markham does not comprise the whole English
population of St. Pucelle. There are, I should think, at present about a
dozen families of visitors here, beside several single men for
shooting.’
‘Is there shooting about here, then?’
‘Oh yes, in the forest of Piron—wild boars and rabbits, and hares and
wolves——’
‘_Wolves!_ Tessie! Are you in earnest? You make me shiver.’
‘Indeed there are! And M. Condé keeps one in a cage, which we will show
you. And there is excellent trout-fishing here also, Hilda.’
The mention of sport had recalled my young travelling companion to my
mind, and I suddenly exclaimed:
‘By the way, I met some one on my journey from England, who told me that
he knew you both: some one who met you at Rille, when you went to be
confirmed there.’
Notwithstanding the fast-falling dusk, I saw the crimson mount to the
cheek of Ange.
‘Who can it be?’ said Tessie. ‘Was it Mr. Henderson, a very old
gentleman?’
‘No; this gentleman was quite young.’
‘Not Mr.——’ began Ange, and there she stopped short, and would say no
more.
‘Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. It was a Master
Frederick Stephenson who is at school at Mr. Felton’s, and was greatly
interested at hearing I was coming to live at St. Pucelle. He seems a
very nice boy. He was so kind and polite to me about my luggage and
train-ticket.’
‘Oh! is that all?’ said Ange, disappointedly.
‘Ange thought it was a duke at the very least, coming back again to
propose for her,’ said her sister.
‘I didn’t,’ pouted the little maid; ‘but we know such heaps of
school-boys. It is nothing new to hear they come backwards and forwards.
I do not remember Master Stephenson, but Mr. Felton is a great friend of
papa’s, and we stayed at his house whilst we were in Rille.’
‘_Bonjour, mesdemoiselles_,’ said a courteous voice at the open door,
and we started to see a gentleman enter the _salle_.
‘Monsieur le Baron!’ exclaimed Tessie and Ange in a breath, as they rose
to their feet, and having saluted the new-comer, introduced him to me as
the Baron de Nesselrode.
‘Papa! papa! here is Monsieur le Baron!’ cried Ange, as she pulled the
blue top-knots out of her father’s curls and wakened him with a kiss on
either cheek.
Mr. Lovett appeared delighted to welcome his friend, and they were soon
engaged in active conversation.
‘Such an unfortunate young man,’ whispered Tessie to me, under cover of
the gentlemen’s voices. ‘He belongs to one of the highest families in
France, but he got so dreadfully into debt that his creditors have
confiscated all his fortune, and only leave him a wretched little estate
in St. Pucelle to live upon. Is it not melancholy? The poor Baron always
looks so sad and dull to me. He has nothing to do but to shoot and visit
his neighbours, and during the winter season we are almost the only
people left here. Papa is very fond of him. He pities him so much, and
thinks he has been so hardly used for a little wildness.’
‘And papa’s daughter seems to follow his example,’ I said, smiling.
‘Oh! no, _indeed_!’ remonstrated Tessie, earnestly; ‘but it _is_ sad to
be left to live alone so young—don’t you think so? He is not thirty
yet.’
Ange, entering at that moment with a lamp, showed me that Armand de
Nesselrode was not only young, but very good-looking, which made me
still further inclined to doubt whether fair-haired Tessie had not
mistaken her feelings of compassion for him. He had an air of melancholy
also that, combined with his dark languid eyes and the story I had
heard, made him doubtless a very interesting object. He did not appear,
however, to have paid his visit for the sake of seeing the Miss Lovetts,
for, after the first ordinary greetings that had passed between them, he
confined his attention entirely to their father, with whom he seemed to
be on terms of the greatest intimacy. Cigars were produced and lighted,
which was apparently the signal for the weaker sex to retire, as Tessie
immediately asked me if I would go into the next room with them and have
some music. Music I had little inclination for, but the wisdom of
withdrawal I saw at once.
‘Papa always likes to be left alone with the Baron,’ said Tessie, as we
entered the smaller apartment, ‘they have so much to talk about
together.’
The girls asked me to sing, but I begged them to excuse me. I possessed
a good voice, and the use of it had formed one of my favourite
occupations. I had been accustomed to sing at all sorts of places: in
church choirs, for charitable concerts, at evening parties; and _she_
had always been so proud to accompany me to the scenes of my small
triumphs, and to double the praises I earned. Now I felt as if I should
never sing again.
My voice, except for the common purposes of speech, would be as silent
as hers from whom I had inherited it. I have learned since that this is
the commonest feeling attendant upon sorrow. But grief was new to me
then, and I believed myself to be thoroughly in earnest. Presently Ange
sat down to the tinkling old instrument, whose notes were a misery to
listen to, and began to sing—in low tones at first, but louder as she
gained confidence—a French _chansonnette_. The little maid had not much
volume of voice, I could have extinguished it with mine in a couple of
bars; but what she possessed was so sweetly fresh and true, that it was
a real pleasure to hear her. I sat at the window gazing up into the dark
blue sky, now besprinkled with stars, and could have fancied I was
listening to a child-angel singing—that is, if they ever sing
_chansonnettes_. By-and-by she passed into a Latin hymn—one of those
half-solemn, half-joyous chants that are so much in use in the Catholic
churches, and then indeed I could look up to heaven through my tears and
wonder if _she_ were listening too. Did she know of the sudden change
that had taken place in my life, or were all my doings, my thoughts, my
joys and my sorrows, to be matters of indifference to her thenceforward;
to her who had ever been so ready to sympathise with me, even if I had a
finger-ache? Under the influence of this thought and the music, my tears
fell faster, and, unwilling that the girls should perceive my emotion, I
rose, with the intention of going to my own room for a few minutes until
I should have recovered myself. But the geography of the house was as
yet unfamiliar to me, and in the dusk I made a mistake, and turned the
handle of the door that led into the _salle_ instead of that which would
have taken me to the kitchen.
I closed it again at once, but not before I had seen what was going on
inside. The Baron and Mr. Lovett were seated close together at the
table, playing cards by the light of a shaded lamp. There was not much
harm in the circumstance, perhaps, but I had been brought up with rather
strict ideas with regard to the clergy, and it offended my ideas of
propriety. Yet, after all, what was there in a game of cards? I asked
myself, as soon as I was alone. It was not likely that Mr. Lovett would
play for anything but the pleasure of defeating his antagonist. And in a
place like St. Pucelle, where there was no amusement to be had but such
as one might devise for one’s self, it seemed hard that even a clergyman
should be deprived of any innocent diversion. So I put the game of cards
to one side, under the general decision that I must not judge the
customs of one country by those of another.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VII.
THE FAIR SOPHIA.
Had I waited a day or two, I should have had no occasion to ask Teresa
Lovett if her family formed the English population of St. Pucelle. The
news of my arrival spread like wild-fire, and before a week was over my
head, I had been introduced to every individual, English or Belgian, in
the place. The very first whom I had the pleasure of meeting was Miss
Sophia Markham, who ran in—Miss Markham never walked—on the morning
following my arrival. As soon as I entered the room I recognised her,
from the description given me the night before. She was so wonderfully
infantile in dress, manner, and conversation. She was a woman of
forty—of forty-five—perhaps even fifty years of age, but she was very
well preserved and looked much younger. And this preservation had been
accomplished, not by means of cosmetics, but by the lack of them. Miss
Markham was wise in her generation. She knew that powder and paint never
yet hid wrinkles effectually, and that to dye the hair a different
colour from that which nature has bestowed upon it, is to violate one of
the first principles of art.
But this fact must not lead one to suppose that she was not intensely
vain of her personal appearance, and took any amount of trouble to
maintain it. For years past she had never gone to bed without plastering
her face with cold cream, in order to keep her skin soft and unwrinkled.
Each grey hair, as it made its unwelcome appearance, had been sedulously
rooted out, and she spent hours before the looking-glass, brushing and
oiling the remainder. She had bestowed equal attention on her teeth and
her complexion and her figure, and the result was, that in middle life,
though she could not look a girl (as she fondly persisted in thinking
that she did), Miss Sophia Markham had certainly contrived to drop at
least ten years of her existence. She was a short woman, with a large
head, and very small hands and feet, of which she was inordinately vain.
She had fine eyes and good teeth; a large nose and a small brain. But,
after the fashion of most mortals, she was so shortsighted as to be
quite unable to distinguish in what she excelled and in what she did
not, and persisted in imagining that her fleshy nose was a pert
_retroussé_, and her mind of a ponderous and weighty order, equal in
value to that of any of her peers.
As a child, she had given promise of a prettiness that had never been
fulfilled. This was unfortunate, as her parents’ undue admiration had
taught her to believe her pretensions would be realised, and after their
death she had refused to be convinced that their judgment had proved
false. She had been left alone in the world with a small income barely
sufficient to procure the necessaries of life, and from an early period
it had been borne in upon her mind that she must be dependent for its
luxuries upon her friends. Miss Sophia knew which side her bread was
buttered well enough. She found that, in order to be welcome in other
people’s houses and allowed to stay there as long as she chose, she must
give them a _quid pro quo_ for their hospitality over and above the
charms of her mind and person, and the questionable merit of her
talents. Some she had to fawn upon and flatter till they were full to
surfeiting with praises of themselves: for others she was compelled to
exercise her skill in needlework, and slave at making caps and dresses
wherewith to adorn their persons and recoup them for the food she was
consuming: to others, again, she acted as a foil or a blind, or in any
other useful capacity that a woman past her _première jeunesse_ can
fill, although she would have been quite faithless and unbelieving had
she been told so.
At St. Pucelle she was staying, as Tessie had told me, with a couple of
the name of Carolus, who were spending a few months on the Continent. It
was easy to guess why _they_ had come together. Mrs. Carolus, although
older than Miss Markham, was newly-married, and possessed scarcely any
knowledge of French. Mr. Carolus also, who was again many years senior
to his wife, was fussy, taciturn, and given, about every other day, to
making sudden resolutions to return to England and his merchant’s
office, which Mrs. Carolus was anxious to prevent. She found, therefore,
in Miss Markham at once a companion, an interpreter, and an advocate to
plead against and turn the rash intentions of her husband.
At the same time, the two ladies appeared to be of very congenial
temperaments, if abusing each other behind their backs and everybody
else in common might be taken in evidence of the fact.
On the first occasion of my meeting Miss Sophia Markham, she was attired
in a white muslin dress striped with a tiny line of blue, that might
have been put on a child of ten: a pelerine edged with lace, the pattern
of which she had borrowed from Angela; and a broad-brimmed hat, trimmed
with the same material and ornamented with a bunch of red cherries and
leaves, that bobbed about in the most tempting manner each time she
moved. In her arms she carried a little beast of a terrier, that snapped
at every one who approached within a few yards of it, and which she
spoke of and addressed as if it had been a human being.
In attempting to sketch a biography of Miss Markham as it came to my
knowledge, little by little, I have made one grand omission, which is to
state that, throughout her varied career, she had never lost, and
evidently never would lose, the hope of being married. When she was
young, nothing but a duke or a marquis could have satisfied her sense of
what befitted her merits; in riper years, a baronet or a general would
not have been rejected without consideration: now, she would have sworn
to love, honour and obey anything, so long as it was in the shape of a
man. From the youth of eighteen or twenty to the octogenarian, she could
not be made to believe but that the whole race of man had been formed
but for one purpose: to admire, follow, and fall in love with her. Yet
she was by no means a specimen, at least outwardly, of what is termed ‘a
spiteful old maid.’ All Miss Markham’s speeches were placid, and her
words oil and honey. Even when she intended to sting most sharply, it
was done under cover of the greatest amiability and the very best
intentions, and she never lost an opportunity of wounding the self-love
of others by encouraging and patronising them for that which they
believed they did better than anything else. But I have spent too much
time on a description of Miss Markham’s failings. She must come forward
now and speak for herself.
When I first entered the room where she was sitting, I found her engaged
in an animated conversation with the ‘little maid,’ on the component
parts of a certain ball-dress which she had worn the month before at
Paris.
‘Yes! it was so pretty, dear, the prettiest dress in the room, everybody
said so—all pink and white silk—the very palest pink, you know—and
little rosebuds peeping out every here and there from the trimming, and
one gentleman said I looked just like a little rosebud myself in the
midst of my pink and white drapery! He! he! he!’
At this juncture my entrance was perceived, and an introduction gone
through.
‘_Marsh!_’ exclaimed Miss Markham, as if she had not heard my name
before; ‘are you any relation to the Marshes of Northampton?’
‘No! I have never heard of them.’
‘They were great friends of mine—indeed, Walter Marsh wanted to marry
me—he! he! he!—only I wouldn’t have him. He always used to call me “the
pocket Venus;” and when I refused him, his family thought he would have
gone out of his mind.’
‘You are so hard-hearted, Sophia! you have refused so many people,’
cried Tessie, laughing; but Miss Markham did not perceive that the laugh
was against herself.
‘Well, one cannot marry every one, you see, and perhaps my early
experience has made me rather particular. I was engaged to Lord
Vauxhall, you know, before I was sixteen. Such a handsome man, and with
an income of ten thousand a year. Ah! I was very foolish in those days.’
‘Why didn’t you marry him?’ asked Ange.
‘Well, dear, I broke off the engagement myself. I had been taught to
look higher by my dear father, who did not think any man in the world
good enough for me. Mrs. Carolus cannot understand such a thing. She
evidently married the first man who asked her—and such a man, too! If
you could only see the way he mumbles his food, it is enough to make one
leave the dinnertable. And they go on in the most absurd manner for
people of their age. She calls him “Willy,” and if he does anything she
disapproves of, she says he’s “a naughty boy.” Did you ever hear
anything like it? I have found out, from some things Mrs. Carolus has
told me, that she must be past sixty herself. Why, she was at a
finishing school when King William died. And as for Mr. Carolus, he must
be ten or fifteen years older. He has had a wife before, and twelve
children. I think he ought to have been ashamed of himself for marrying
again. But as for her, poor thing! I expect it was her only chance, so
you can scarcely wonder at her taking it. And I _have_ heard—but mind
you don’t mention my name—that she was not _too_ particular in her
younger days, and so I dare say it was rather unexpected her receiving
an offer of marriage at all. My friends the Willoughbys met some people
in Norfolk this spring, who lived in the same place as Mrs. Carolus’s
family, and I hear they had some very queer stories to tell about her
sisters and herself.’
‘Isn’t it a great pity,’ said Tessie, quietly, ‘that people should
trouble themselves to take away the character of a woman who is a
perfect stranger to them?’
‘Oh! but she was not a perfect stranger, my dear! They knew her well—by
repute, that is to say. And, indeed, from all one hears, she must have
been quite notorious some twenty or thirty years ago.’
‘Is it wise of you to stay with her, then?’ asked Ange, innocently.
I found afterwards that the little maid was very much in the habit of
putting awkward questions in the most aggravatingly innocent manner. The
present one caused Miss Markham to redden up like a peony.
‘As for that matter, Ange,’ she retorted, ‘I might go far enough, I
expect, before I found any one to stay with against whose advantage
there is not to be heard some story or other. I dare say Mrs. Carolus is
no worse than many of your own friends; Lucy Edgecombe for instance, who
ran away with and married a man against her parents’ wishes, and found
out afterwards that he had a wife already in America. That was a nice
little scandal, wasn’t it?’
‘Ah! poor Lucy!’ said Ange, her bright eyes filling with tears; ‘it has
been a most terrible grief and misfortune for her—you know that, Miss
Markham. I am sure I can never think of her without crying. She used to
be such a bright merry girl when we knew her in Rille, two years ago.
And it broke her poor old father’s heart.’
‘Oh yes! I dare say. These scandals always do break the heart of
somebody or other, and generally the one who is least to blame in the
matter. But that doesn’t alter the fact. Why do you let Ange wear her
hair so much over her eyes, Tessie? It is not _bong tong_ at all. The
Paris ladies all wear their hair taken off the forehead, as I do. But
then you must have a high, intellectual forehead for that style to suit
you.’
‘Papa likes her to wear it so,’ said Tessie.
‘And I am not a Paris lady, and I have not a high intellectual
forehead,’ interposed Ange. ‘So I’m much better as I am.’
‘Perhaps so, my dear. Indeed your forehead is not high. Arthur Thrale
was remarking only the other day that you had more of the _paysanne_
than the _ancienne noblesse_ air about you.’
‘Yet I should like to see papa’s pedigree placed by that of Arthur
Thrale,’ cried Tessie, indignantly. ‘We have some of the best blood in
England in our veins, though we are so poor. Papa has often said so, and
Mrs. Carolus told us the other day that Mr. Thrale’s father is a large
linendraper in one of the suburbs of London.’
‘Of course Mrs. Carolus will run the poor boy down, because he is so
absurdly devoted to me. She has tried all she can to get him for
herself, without success.’
‘Oh! Sophia! what can you be thinking of?’ exclaimed Tessie. ‘Why,
Arthur Thrale is young enough to be——’
‘What?’ demanded Miss Markham, sharply.
‘Mrs. Carolus’s grandson,’ replied Tessie, saving herself by a grand
_coup d’état_.
‘So he may be,’ said Miss Markham, drawing a long breath of relief, ‘but
that makes no difference to her. Her jealousy of me is proverbial. She
has even said—he! he! he!—that I have tried to turn “Willy’s” affections
from her.’
‘There goes papa,’ remarked Ange, more with the intention of diverting
attention from the folly of their visitor than anything else, as she
pointed out Mr. Lovett walking past the window on his way to the town.
‘Well, good-bye then, dears, I can’t stay any longer,’ exclaimed Miss
Markham with sudden energy, as she jumped up and kissed the two girls.
‘Adieu! Miss Marsh; I hope we shall soon meet again. Come! my sweet
little Toodles,’ to the terrier, who was leaping and yapping round her;
‘did it want to go for a walk? Then its mammy shall take it for one, the
dear little angel’; and off she tripped, with the dog at her heels, in
the same direction as that taken by Mr. Lovett.
‘I wonder,’ said Ange thoughtfully, as she watched her from the open
window, ‘why Sophia Markham always pretends to like papa so much. She is
generally so bitter against old men and women. But just look at her now,
Hilda. She is actually taking his arm. And oh! do see the cherries
bobbing up and down in his face, I should catch one in my mouth if I
were he. But do you think she is in earnest, Hilda, or is it humbug?’
‘How can I tell, Ange? I have only seen the woman for an hour. But even
from that short experience, I should feel very much disposed to call it
“humbug.” Miss Markham has not the face of a true woman, neither would I
like to have her for my friend.’
‘I observed that you were very silent during her visit.’
‘I was listening to what she said, and judging her out of her own mouth;
and I do not think your father would have cared for the style of
conversation she kept up with you this morning. It was worse than idle.’
‘I think papa rather likes Miss Markham than otherwise,’ remarked Ange.
‘He is always pleased when she spends the evening here.’
‘Because she is such an abominable flatterer,’ said Tessie. ‘She praises
up his appearance, and his preaching, and his daughters to him, till he
does not know whether he is on his head or his heels. Any one would like
it.’
‘Oh! Tessie! you do not suppose that papa could be influenced by a woman
like that, just because she flattered him,’ cried Ange, with holy
horror.
‘Well, no, perhaps not,’ replied Tessie, dubiously, whilst I thought
myself that Mr. Lovett must be the saint his little daughter made him
out, and not a man, if he were proof against flattery, even from Miss
Markham.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VIII.
MADAME FROMARD.
Tessie had prophesied that Mrs. Carolus and Miss Markham would not call
in each other’s company, and so it happened. The married lady did not
pay her visit till some days after her friend, and then it was performed
with much greater ceremony. The two girls had gone out for a walk
together towards Artois, and I had promised to follow them as soon as I
had finished a long epistle which I was writing to dear Mrs. Sandilands,
descriptive of my new life and the thoughts it had brought to me. I had
sealed my letter and put on my black hat and cloak, when Madame Marmoret
shouted at me from the kitchen staircase that Mrs. Carolus had arrived,
and was waiting to see me in the _salon_. I would willingly have avoided
her, but found, on inquiry, that she had asked for me by name, and
Madame had confessed I was at home. So there was no alternative but to
receive her, and I descended to the sitting-room with my letter in my
hand. I found Mrs. Carolus robed in state, with a Parisian bonnet on and
a Parisian mantle, and new lavender-coloured gloves. Her grandeur quite
overcame me, and I felt very meek in my straw hat bound with crape, and
my untrimmed, every-day costume.
‘Miss Marsh, I believe,’ she said, as she shook hands with me, and I was
fain to acknowledge that she believed aright.
‘I have delayed my visit to you for a few days, Miss Marsh,’ Mrs.
Carolus continued, ‘not from any want of desire to make your
acquaintance, I can assure you; but because I consider it the height of
ill-breeding to rush upon a stranger the very minute of her arrival,
without giving her time to turn round, as if a lady had nothing else to
do, at the end of a fatiguing journey, than to make the acquaintance of
a pack of people she has never seen before.’
‘It is very considerate of you,’ I said.
‘I think it is only polite, and I have hinted the same to others; but my
advice is not often taken, I find, especially by those who are most
indebted to me. My husband, Mr. Carolus,’ said the bride, with an
attempt at a blush, ‘would have had the pleasure of accompanying me
to-day; but he is suffering from a little indigestion, and I forbid him
to move.’
‘I am sorry Mr. Carolus is ill.’
‘It is not serious; but gentlemen are difficult creatures to keep in
order, as perhaps you will discover for yourself some day. You know my
friend Miss Markham, I think?’
‘Yes; she called here the day after my arrival.’
‘I guessed as much! Mr. Lovett is the great attraction here, I believe;
but I cannot say I have ever seen much good result from single ladies
running after gentlemen in that way—widowers or not. But this is a
terrible place for flirtation, Miss Marsh! and you will have as many
opportunities of pursuing it as anybody.’
‘Indeed! I do not quite understand you.’
‘Why, all the young men in St. Pucelle collect about Mr. Lovett. He is a
general favourite with them. Have you not seen the Baron de Nesselrode
here?’
‘Yes; he comes almost every evening.’
‘Just so. Some people think it is a pity that Mr. Lovett should
encourage his young friends so much. It is not as if they came to speak
of the things that a clergyman is usually supposed to talk about, you
know.’
‘But surely young men could never derive anything but benefit from
association with such a good man as Mr. Lovett,’ I replied. ‘You should
hear his daughters speak of him, Mrs. Carolus. They cannot find terms
high enough in which to sing their father’s praises.’
‘Oh yes, my dear; I have heard them speak of him. And, of course, no one
could dare to say that he would do his friends any harm. But still,
there’s the Baron, you see. Poor fellow! he’s gambled away more than
two-thirds of his fortune already, and has to live on a pittance until
his debts are discharged. It is a pity, is it not, that he should not
have given up cards even yet? I wish dear good Mr. Lovett would
remonstrate with him on the subject, and advise him better. But he is
too easy with young men. I understand he was very wild himself in his
early days—at least, so my Willy tells me—and that makes him disposed to
be lenient, perhaps, with others.’
I felt that to this speech I had no answer to make, so I evaded it with
a remark:
‘With two such pretty girls in the house,’ I said, ‘I should have
thought people would have had no difficulty in deciding the motive which
made young men congregate about their father.’
‘Oh no, my dear, it’s not that,’ replied Mrs. Carolus, hastily. ‘He has
not got either of them off his hands yet, you see, though the eldest
must be seven-and-twenty.’
‘Three-and-twenty,’ I murmured in correction.
‘Only three-and-twenty! Dear me! She looks very old for her age. There
was a talk, some few months ago, of the little one being very much
admired by a young fellow of the name of—let me see, what was his name?
I declare I have quite forgotten it. But Sophia can tell you—Sophia can
always remember a gentleman’s name, whatever she forgets. However, the
Lovetts met him at Rille, where their father takes them every now and
then; and I suppose he paid Miss Angela some attention (for that little
one really, is very nice-looking), but it came to nothing after all; and
it’s my opinion they’ll neither of them ever be married.’
‘What a terrible fate!’ I said, laughing.
‘Ah, well, my dear Miss Marsh, you may be able to afford to laugh at the
idea; but a single life _is_ a terrible fate for a woman after all! And
how it sours them! Just look at Sophia Markham! That girl—I call her a
girl, you know, but in reality she is many years older than myself; and
I might have been married fifty times over before I made up my mind to
take Willy—well, to hear her speak of her own sex is shocking! She has
never a good word to say for any one of them. Now, I am sure I may trust
you, Miss Marsh, and you won’t mention my name again, if I tell you that
the way Sophia Markham has gone on under my roof has distressed me to
that degree, that I can never invite her to stay with me again—never! No
gentleman is safe from her attacks—young or old, rich or poor, it is all
the same. She would carry my Willy off from under my very eyes if I
would let her! But I drew the line there. Of course I cannot interfere
with her goings-on in other directions; still, it annoys me greatly. For
I am quite convinced she will never be married. Not on account of her
age; though I think few people would credit she is only ten years my
senior,’ added Mrs. Carolus with a smirk, ‘but because of her manners,
which are bold and forward to a degree. But you were going out, Miss
Marsh! I am afraid I am detaining you.’
‘I was going to post this letter, and then to join the Miss Lovetts, who
have gone for a walk on the Artois road.’
‘Do not let me keep you any longer, then; indeed, I will walk a little
way with you if you will permit me,’ said Mrs. Carolus.
I did not particularly wish for the company of this lady, who appeared
to me only a degree less objectionable than her friend, but as it was
drawing near the post-time, and I was anxious that Mrs. Sandilands
should get my letter without delay, I consented to the proposal made me.
‘Do you consider that Mr. Lovett is likely to marry again, Miss Marsh?’
inquired Mrs. Carolus, as we left the house together.
The question took me so completely by surprise, that I did not know what
to answer.
‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘I have been here far too short a time to be able to
form any opinion on the matter.’
‘I should think it very improbable myself, with those girls dependent on
him, and in the state of his affairs too; but doubtless you know quite
as much about _them_ as I do. Everybody in St. Pucelle is admiring you
so much for coming to live with them, Miss Marsh, and says that it is an
act of pure benevolence on your part.’
‘I am afraid you are giving me more credit than I deserve, Mrs. Carolus.
I came here on the invitation of Mr. Lovett, simply because I needed
change of scene, and I considered myself more than any one else in
making the decision.’
‘Ah! and so did he, my dear—so did he. There is little doubt of that.
But what is to become of those poor girls when he is gone? He can’t last
for ever, you know. He must be past seventy now!’
‘I have never thought of it. It does not come within my province to do
so.’
‘To be sure not, and I trust it never may. Death is a sad thing! I
suppose you know pretty nearly every one in St. Pucelle by this time,
Miss Marsh.’
‘I think I have made acquaintance with all the ladies. A very pretty
girl, a Mrs. Arthur Johnstone called upon me yesterday. She does not
look much older than Ange.’
‘Poor child! yes, she has very tolerable features. For my part, I like
her, but one cannot quite shut one’s ears to all one hears. Did the
husband come with her?’
‘No!’
‘I thought as much! He never goes anywhere. Only too glad to keep out of
sight, I should think. The Ormerods tell me he has been cashiered from
the army!’
‘How dreadful for his poor little wife! And she seems so cheerful too.
She laughed the whole time she was with us yesterday.’
‘Perhaps she doesn’t know it, or doesn’t care. You will meet strange
characters abroad, my dear. The Continent is the general refuge for all
those who are unable to live in England.’
‘So I have heard,’ I answered listlessly.
I was thinking of Frederick Stephenson’s stories on the same subject,
and it vexed me. It was not pleasant to believe one’s self surrounded by
a set of dishonourable vagabonds. And if it were so, I would rather have
been left to find it out for myself than have been told of it by Mrs.
Carolus. We had reached the high ground by this time which led to the
Artois road, and I was looking about me with the admiration with which I
never ceased to view the country that surrounded St. Pucelle. The grass
we trod upon sent up a grateful fragrance of crushed herbs, and little
tufts of flowers grew between each cleft of the rocky hill as if they
had been planted there on purpose for effect.
As we strolled along, we gazed down upon the town which we had quitted,
lying in the steep hollow beneath us, with its long narrow street of
wooden houses and grey granite walls, peopled by women in short
petticoats, bare feet, and snowy caps, with men in blue blouses and
leathern aprons, with rough carts drawn by oxen, and a heterogeneous
mass of children tumbling about in the stream of dirty water which the
gutter conveyed rapidly to its level in the valley. On the summit of the
green hill which we had to gain before descending, like the dirty water,
to Artois, there stood a large wooden Calvary, which might be seen for
many miles round. Rough as this representation of the most important
event that ever occurred in the world’s history was upon a closer
inspection, its size and colouring, with the green mound on which it was
erected, gave it a very solemn appearance when viewed from a distance,
particularly when, as was the case on this occasion, a group of
worshippers knelt at the foot of the Cross.
We instinctively dropped our voices and walked slower as we approached
the Calvary, but before we had passed it, a woman and a little girl rose
hastily and confronted us. They were peasants, and carried covered
baskets, filled probably with butter and eggs. The woman was wiping her
eyes on the corner of her rough apron, when she perceived Mrs. Carolus,
and gave her a ‘_Bon jour, madame._’
My companion returned the greeting, and we were continuing our walk when
the woman suddenly ran after us and touched Mrs. Carolus on the sleeve.
‘Is that the demoiselle that has come to live with Monsieur le Curé
Anglais?’ she demanded in her own language, as she intimated me with her
forefinger.
‘_Je ne comprenez pas_,’ replied Mrs. Carolus.
Notwithstanding my inexperience of speaking French, I thought I could do
a little better in the way of verbs than this, and ventured to answer
the woman myself.
‘Yes! I am the demoiselle. What do you want?’
But on hearing these few faltering words, the poor woman gave vent to
such a mingled torrent of tears and explanations, that I was out of my
depth again directly. She was _désolée_; she was _distraite_; she would
pray that the good Lord would take her life, only that Monsieur l’Abbé
would refuse her absolution if she did so.
‘But would mademoiselle conceive of her position. Monsieur le Curé
Anglais was so beloved and so respected, ‘_c’est un homme si bon, si
amiable, si dévoué_.’ How could one go to him again for the fourteenth
time in a month, and ask for his pity, his benevolence, his compassion?
But then mademoiselle must consider her family. She had five children to
provide for, and here was the eldest, not old enough to do more than
carry the baskets to and from the Artois market. It was but little they
wanted; they had been very patient, and she had been praying the _bon
Dieu_ for more patience, but mademoiselle must know that people cannot
live without eating, though ’twas but little enough they had had inside
them for the last month.’
‘But what has all this got to do with me?’ I said in despair.
I had tried to translate the question three times into French, but
failing to do so, was obliged to have recourse to Mrs. Carolus and the
English language.
‘Oh! I think I can guess fast enough,’ she replied, with a sarcastic
laugh.
The woman, with the quickness of her race, had caught the meaning of my
words and answered them.
‘If mademoiselle would only speak for me,’ she pleaded, ‘we are so poor,
and _mon mari_ has been in his bed for the last twelvemonth. A few
francs, mademoiselle. We do not ask for a large sum, but if we could
have half, or even a quarter of it.’
‘Does she want me to give her money?’ I inquired in my bewilderment of
Mrs. Carolus.
‘I should hardly think so. There are no beggars here. What does she
say?’
‘She says she is so poor—they have not enough to eat, and her husband is
ill.’
‘Give her half a franc, then; but I should hardly think it is true. The
Catholics are too well looked after to want.’
I tendered the coin to the woman, but she pushed it away impatiently.
‘No! no! mademoiselle,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘I am not a beggar.
I do not want your charity.’
‘Then what _do_ you want?’ I asked, defying grammar and accent in my
desire to make her understand.
‘_Mon droit_,’ she answered proudly.
‘What is your name?’ I said.
‘I am Madame Fromard.’
‘_Fromard!_’ echoed Mrs. Carolus suddenly; ‘you sell eggs, don’t you?
_vous vendez urfs—urfs et boor?_’ she repeated for Madame Fromard’s
benefit.
‘_Oui, madame! oui! des œufs et du beurre._’
‘Oh! I know her well. You’d better come on, Miss Marsh. It is of no use
stopping to talk to this woman. She will keep you till midnight if you
let her.’
‘What is her cause of complaint?’ I said, as, having bidden Madame
Fromard farewell, and left her snivelling and wiping her eyes upon her
apron, we strolled on together.
Mrs. Carolus regarded me with a very curious expression.
‘Haven’t you found out?’ she said; ‘I thought you understood French.’
‘So I do, after the English fashion, but when these natives begin to
chatter, they run on so fast, there is no keeping pace with them. I
could make out that she was very poor and wanted francs, but I suppose
they would all say that, if they found any one to listen to them.’
‘You’ll understand them a great deal better after you have been here a
little while,’ replied Mrs. Carolus, mysteriously, so mysteriously and
unpleasantly, indeed, that I did not like her manner at all, and was
quite glad when I perceived the figures of Tessie and Ange advancing to
meet us.
‘What a time you have been!’ exclaimed the little maid. ‘We have walked
half way to Artois and back. Monsieur Condé met us, and wanted us to go
into the park and see him shoot a young bear he keeps there that has
become dangerous—horrid man! as if we would; and he is coming to see you
very soon, Hilda. He is anxious to take you over the grottoes. He thinks
they are the only things worth seeing in the world.’
‘What grottoes?’
‘Why, the grottoes of St. Jean! Have you never heard of them? They are
very wonderful, full of beautiful crystals and stalactites. We must make
a party and go over them some day. It is no fun going alone. Have you
seen them, Mrs. Carolus?’
‘Oh yes! We visited them on our first arrival here, and thought them
very interesting.’
It was more, however, than Mrs. Carolus appeared to think our
conversation, for she declined to turn back with us again.
‘Tell them all about Mère Fromard,’ she called out to me before she
finally disappeared.
‘What about Mère Fromard?’ asked Tessie.
So I told them of the peasants we had encountered kneeling at the
Calvary, and the broken conversation that had subsequently ensued
between us. I saw Tessie and Ange exchange glances as I proceeded with
my story, and I fancied they were not pleased with it.
‘I could barely catch her meaning,’ I concluded, ‘but I fancy she
mentioned your names. I suppose you know her.’
‘Oh yes! we know her well,’ said Tessie.
‘Is she amongst the poor that you visit?’
‘There are no families here whom we visit in the way you mean. Monsieur
l’Abbé looks after them too well for that. But we go if they are sick or
in trouble, as we should offer our sympathy to any other friends.’
‘This poor woman seemed in trouble.’
‘Ange will go and see her as soon as she has time,’ said Tessie. ‘For
the present, we cannot do her any good, so let us take this little path
into the town, or we may meet her again. She is very troublesome to
shake off if she once gets a hearing.’
I thought both the girls seemed graver and less sympathetic than they
usually were when talking of their poorer neighbours, and I concluded
that the Fromards were not amongst the most deserving in St. Pucelle.
Mr. Lovett appeared at dinner-time looking as handsome and benignant as
usual, and quite full of the pleasant stroll he had had with Miss
Markham, and the successful manner in which she had beguiled the time.
‘She is a most amusing companion,’ he said. ‘Her fund of anecdotes seems
inexhaustible, and she tells her stories in an irresistibly funny
manner. I do not know when I have laughed so much as I did this
afternoon.’
‘I am glad you enjoyed yourself, papa,’ remarked Tessie, quietly.
‘I did indeed! Miss Markham reminds me in a powerful degree of the late
Duchess of Rochester, who was one of the wittiest women in society in
Lord Amor’s time. And she is well-looking for her age too—very
well-looking!’
‘She is better than well-looking, is Mademoiselle Markham,’ said the
shrill voice of Marmoret, as she placed a roast hare before her master;
‘she has got money, and that’s worth all the beauty in the world, in my
opinion.’
‘It’s not a bad thing, Madame, is it,’ replied Mr. Lovett; ‘but how do
you know the lady in question possesses any?’
‘Why, by using my eyes, to be sure! Do you think I’m blind, or a fool,
like some I could mention? Look at that demoiselle’s dresses. Why! she
wears a fresh muslin every morning, and the silk she went to church in
last Sunday would have stood of itself. Of course she’s got money. How
do you suppose she could pay for such things else?’
‘Perhaps she doesn’t pay for them,’ remarked my guardian facetiously,
but he had to answer for doubting the truth of Madame Marmoret’s
expressed opinion.
‘_Doesn’t pay for them!_’ she echoed in a tone steeped in vinegar. ‘Why
should you imagine such a scandal? It is not everybody, remember, who
would stoop to defraud honest people of their money, when they’ve worked
hard to earn it.’
The woman was in such an evident rage that the two girls looked quite
frightened.
‘Dear Madame, do be reasonable,’ pleaded Tessie.
But Mr. Lovett put it down with a higher hand.
‘Come—come! let us have no nonsense of this kind,’ he said. ‘I like to
have my dinner in peace, or I shall digest nothing that I eat; and as
for you, Madame, the kitchen is your arena for display, and not the
_salle à manger_.’
‘And much you would get to eat or to digest either, if I stayed there,’
she exclaimed, as she flounced off to her own domains.
The girls looked annoyed, as they always did when Madame Marmoret
displayed any temper, but their father laughed as if it were a very good
joke.
‘She will go out in the court and cool herself upon the flagstones,’ he
said, ‘meanwhile we will discuss our dinner. Hilda, my dear, may I help
you to a little of this hare?’
I had found, since the first day of my dining with them, that his
daughters never partook of the same dish as he did, and I had learnt to
follow their example. It is true that, considering the amount that was
to be deducted from my income for my keep, I might reasonably have
considered myself entitled to the best that was put upon the table; but
there was a strong feeling in me against sharing in the luxuries which
they were forbidden. I liked them both too well. The meals greatly
varied too, both in quality and quantity. I had found that out already.
Sometimes there was barely sufficient to go round the family, and that
of food of the commonest or most distasteful quality; at others, we
rejoiced in an influx of fish, flesh, and fowl—a regular _embarras des
richesses_, and accompanied by bottles of champagne and burgundy. On
such occasions the old father would be in the very best of spirits,
laughing and jesting with us all, and brilliant with repartee and
anecdote. At others, he would seem low and despondent, remaining silent
during the dinner hour, or alluding only to his poverty and altered
circumstances.
Then his girls would vie with each other to pet and caress him,
reminding him of his past successes, and of what a favourite he was at
the Belgian Court, until he would leave them with the determination to
write to some of his friends in office and seek redress for the hardness
of his position.
Yet the very next day, perhaps, we would have trout for breakfast and
beef for dinner, and all would go merry as a marriage bell.
To-day the secret springs that moved the machinery of the kitchen and
larder had evidently gone right, for the roast hare was crowned with red
currant jelly and flanked by sauterne; but I refused all the dainties
Mr. Lovett pressed upon me, and preferred to eat stewed veal, the
commonest dish of the country, with Tessie and Ange instead.
‘I heard an unpleasant thing to-day about some acquaintances of ours,’
remarked Mr. Lovett, as he finished his second plate of hare—‘a very
unpleasant thing, indeed.’
‘From Miss Markham, papa?’ inquired Tessie, timidly.
‘Yes; but not repeated with the slightest ill-nature, I can assure you.
In fact, I was quite charmed with the candid and liberal manner in which
the story was told me. The truth is, Miss Markham, who is quite a woman
of the world and shows a wonderful interest in you two girls, considered
it quite her duty to inform me of it, and I assured her she was right.’
‘Oh, papa! what is it?’ cried Ange, anxiously.
‘Nothing to alarm you, my little maid. It is only about the Johnstones.
Miss Markham does not think Mrs. Johnstone a very desirable acquaintance
for you, and neither do I.’
‘What has she done, sir?’ I inquired.
‘Nothing herself, my dear Hilda, at least that I have heard of, but the
husband appears to be a very loose character. It seems that he was
cashiered from the army for gambling, and left England only to prevent
himself from being arrested for debt.’
‘Oh, how dishonourable that is!’ I exclaimed. ‘I think there is no
meanness equal to that of defrauding tradesmen of their due.’
‘And neither do I,’ said Angela, stoutly. Tessie sat by and heard us,
but she said nothing.
‘Yet it is hard that her husband’s dishonesty should inculpate poor Mrs.
Johnstone,’ I observed; ‘perhaps she knows nothing of it all.’
‘Perhaps not,’ replied Mr. Lovett, ‘but she shares his disgrace. It is
the penalty of having married a man without principle. And I would not
have my children’s names associated with hers, after what I have heard
to-day. So mind, girls, what I say. Be civil to her when you meet, but
don’t go to her house any more, nor invite her to come here.’
‘I am _so_ sorry for the Johnstones,’ remarked Tessie, softly, as we sat
in our own room together afterwards.
‘_I_ am not,’ said Ange; ‘I think there is nothing so horrible in this
world as swindling tradesmen. Fancy, going to a lot of poor people who
trust your honour, and getting clothes and provisions out of them, and
then running away and leaving them to pay for you. It is so pitifully
mean and ungenerous.’
‘I quite agree with you, Ange,’ I said; ‘still, people do sometimes get
into debt before they are aware of it.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ returned the little maid; ‘no one but a child or
an idiot could do that. Why, if papa were to swindle or cheat people, I
don’t think I could ever speak to him again. It would break my heart
with shame and agony. I should never be able to look anybody in the
face. Would you, Tessie?’
‘What did you say, dear? I was not listening.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather that papa were dead than a cheat and a swindler
like Mr. Johnstone?’
‘Oh, Ange! don’t say such hard things of people.’
‘Are they too hard? I didn’t think they could be. Well! there’s one
comfort in hearing of such villany. It makes one feel so thankful that
papa is not as other men are! The dear, dear, good old pappy! If he had
ever done such things, I should die at once.’
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IX.
SUNDAY.
Sunday at St. Pucelle was not such an uninteresting day as I had
anticipated. On the first Saturday I spent there, I passed through the
kitchen and detected Tessie, with a large holland apron and bib pinned
over her serge dress, busily employed in making tartlets. How fair and
gentle she looked—somehow after I had seen Ange I never could call
Tessie pretty, although her sweet womanly face gained by the contrast
with that of her lovely sister. There she stood with her sleeves rolled
off her arms, and a smile dimpling every feature as I confronted her.
‘Making good things for to-morrow’s dinner?’ I asked.
‘Oh no! though I’ll keep some for you, Hilda, if you particularly wish
it. These are for papa during the service.’
‘_For papa during the service!_’ I could not help re-echoing her words.
There seemed something so intensely ludicrous in the idea of a minister
of the Church consuming jam tarts between the Litany and the Communion.
‘Yes; he requires something to keep him up, you know. It is very
fatiguing for an old man to read and preach for two hours at a time, so
we always prepare him a little _goûter_ in the vestry.’
‘Has Mr. Lovett no help, then?’
‘A layman occasionally reads the lessons for him. Young Mr. Thrale has
promised to do so to-morrow, but otherwise he has all the work on his
own hands.’
‘And three services a day, I suppose?’
‘Oh no! only one in the morning. There are not enough Protestants to
make it worth while. No one would come a second time. But I hope you
will like our service, Hilda. It is nothing very grand, of course, but
Ange and I try to make the singing as nice as we can, and nothing could
exceed papa’s preaching. It is beautiful!’
When I had become acquainted with the Protestant service held in the
schoolroom vacated by the little Romanists of St. Pucelle, I agreed with
Tessie, that, considering all the disadvantages it laboured under, it
was very nice, and it owed much of its success to the labours of herself
and Ange. From the moment that Sunday dawned, these two girls were very
important people indeed. They appeared to me to combine the offices of
sacristan, clerk, organist and choir all in one. As soon as their
breakfast was completed they ran over to the schoolroom to make sure
that it was properly aired, dusted and swept: to arrange the Communion
table, which was stowed away in a cupboard during the week: to see that
the benches were properly placed; the tiny harmonium pulled into
position, and the lessons and hymns for the day looked out ready for
their father and themselves. They had the arrangements for all the music
and chanting in their own hands, and merely placed a list of the hymns
to be sung on the Communion table; which always bore a vase of flowers
set there by Ange.
Of course they had secured me to take part in the singing, which I was
willing enough to do. To sing praise to God and to sing songs to the
piano were two different things. I felt I came nearer _her_ whilst
engaged in the former practice, and that if my dull ears could only be
opened, I might be able to distinguish her own sweet voice mingling with
mine.
So at a few minutes before eleven, we three girls were established
behind the harmonium; Tessie in front of it as accompanist, and Ange and
I on either side, to take soprano and alto as lustily as we could, and
induce the congregation to chime in.
It was difficult to divest one’s mind of the idea that we were only in a
schoolroom, nor to help being amused by the remarks Ange made on the
people as they filed in, one after another. There were the poor
condemned Johnstones, looking handsomer and more stylish than anybody
there: there were, of necessity, the giddy Sophia Markham, with young
Thrale in close attendance: Mr. and Mrs. Carolus, dressed in their
newest and best. Colonel Berwick, with his interminable family of girls
and boys—a gentleman of such ultra-Protestant views that he would not
permit his children to pass the Catholic church in their daily walks,
for fear the Abbé Morteville should rush out and baptise them all in the
middle of the road: Mrs. Dart, a handsome widow, of whose antecedents no
one could find out anything; and a dozen or more stray men and women
whose names I had been told, but who were not particularly intimate with
the Lovetts. These naturally did not constitute the resident part of the
population of St. Pucelle, who were all Catholics.
They were the English visitors only, who filled the two little primitive
hotels of the town—the Hôtel de la Cloche and the Hôtel de l’Étoile—for
three to six months in the year. They had scarcely settled down in their
seats—Miss Markham having turned round first and nodded to us all in a
manner which I thought most irreverent in a place of worship—when Mr.
Lovett entered and ascended the temporary pulpit that was dragged out of
the cupboard with the Communion-table every Sunday morning. As I saw the
old man in his surplice and bands, I was ready to agree with all the
admiration his daughters bestowed upon him; he looked so handsome, so
venerable and so much like a saint, that he was what the nurses term ‘a
perfect picture.’
As he knelt in prayer, with his finely-shaped hands clasped together,
his beautiful blue eyes upraised to heaven, and his silver curls
crowning a brow which must have befitted an Antinous in earlier days, he
should have been painted for a prophet or an apostle, pleading with the
Almighty for mercy on sins which he knew only through the weakness of
others. And if I thought my guardian’s personal appearance striking on
that occasion, I was still more delighted with his delivery. His
elocution was remarkable. Each word fell from his lips with musical
distinctness, and it was evident that the art had formed an important
part of his studies. He read the lessons—young Thrale being too nervous
to do so when it came to the point—as I had never heard them read
before. Without any theatrical display, he gave the New Testament
history for the day, as a history, not divided into so many monotonous
verses badly punctuated, but strongly and energetically delivered, with
an expression that must have riveted the attention of every one who was
listening to him.
I felt at once that there stood before me a man of no common parts or
learning, a man who should have been (as his daughter had fondly said)
set in a high place to give light to the world. Nor was I disappointed
by the sermon that followed the prayers. It was stirring—terse—to the
point, and delivered with energy. The blue eyes flashed with anger or
glowed with feeling as he denounced sin or invited to pardon, and when
in a few words he described the horrors that awaited the impenitent, a
thrill of terror ran through his congregation.
I felt it keenly, and glanced towards my companions to see what effect
it had upon them. Tessie was looking like an ordinary mortal, quietly
interested; but Ange had her whole attention riveted on her father’s
words and face. Her eyes were filled with tears, her cheeks were
glowing, her whole expression was one of adoring admiration. When Mr.
Lovett had finished his sermon, which was so superabundantly superior to
anything I had ever heard from a pulpit before, that I was quite
surprised the congregation did not applaud him, she waked up from her
reverie with a start and a long-drawn sigh, and had only time to whisper
hurriedly to me, ‘Isn’t he perfect?’ before the harmonium struck up
again, and we rose to sing the parting hymn.
The service, simply as it was conducted, had had such a solemn effect
upon me that I was disgusted to see Miss Sophia Markham, before she left
the schoolroom, approach the place where we were sitting, and to hear
her ask Ange in a loud whisper if we would all go over to their hotel in
the afternoon and have tea with them.
‘Arthur Thrale’s friend—the sporting man—my great admirer (you know who
I mean), has promised to come over from Rille, if possible, and we can
all go for a walk over the hills together. _You_ can come, can’t you, if
the others won’t?’
I saw the crimson colour rush like a flood over Ange’s lovely face, but
she shook her head determinately in answer to the invitation.
‘We make a rule of never going out on Sundays, Miss Markham.’
‘Oh, well! just as you like, you know; but I thought it would give you
pleasure. What are you going to do to-morrow?’
‘Papa will be waiting for us in the vestry, Ange,’ whispered Tessie, who
had put away the chant-books and did not appear to like this sort of
conversation going on in church any more than I did.
Ange took the hint, and, rising without further ceremony, we walked up
to the little room where Mr. Lovett robed and disrobed. But here I was
rather startled by coming upon the reverend gentleman seated in his
surplice before a small table on which, spread on an old newspaper, were
some sandwiches, a flask of sherry, and the tartlets Tessie had made the
day before. Yet she did not seem to see anything in the sight
incongruous with the words we had just heard fall from those lips, now
besmeared with _compôte de fraises_.
‘Are they good, papa?’ she inquired affectionately.
‘Very good, my dear!’ he replied, with his mouth full; ‘but your second
hymn was so short, I had no time to eat them before. You must look out a
longer one for next Sunday! You forget the work I have to do whilst you
are singing a couple of verses. Four is the very least I can accomplish
it under.’
‘He _shall_ have four—the dear old dad!’ exclaimed Ange, as she kissed
the top of his head; ‘or six if he likes it better. Oh, papa! you were
divine to-day. You made me cry so! How I wish we were all dead and safe
in heaven together!’
‘Tut! tut! you silly little mouse!’ said her father, as he patted her
rose-leaf cheek; ‘you mustn’t talk about being dead and buried just yet!
You’ll have to put me under ground first, you know.’
‘Oh, papa! papa! _don’t!_’ she cried, in a voice of real pain.
‘Well, then, trot home and see after the dinner being got ready in time.
We are obliged to dine early to-day, my dear Hilda, in consideration of
the proceedings of our domestic tyrant Madame Marmoret, who insists upon
attending three services at her own church every Sunday, and
disregarding everything she hears there on the remaining six days of the
week.’
‘A very common practice, Mr. Lovett, with people much better instructed
than Madame Marmoret.’
‘Very true, my dear! I wonder how many of my congregation of to-day will
even remember, let alone practise, the precepts I have just preached to
them. But come, little people, clear out of my vestry, for I want to
resume my usual garb.’
I thought Ange was uncommonly thoughtful that afternoon, and I could not
help associating her mood with the information Mrs. Carolus had given me
about the young man at Rille who had paid her so much attention, which
had come to nothing.
Was it possible, I thought, as I watched her sitting on the ground with
her hands folded idly on her lap, and her sunny head laid against her
father’s knee, that her young heart could have suffered a
disappointment, anything akin, in magnitude or bitterness, to that which
had been experienced by my own? I could not believe it. The infidelity
of Cave Charteris, whether it had been brought on by my credulous folly
or his thoughtlessness, had left a mark upon me which I knew that
nothing in this world could ever obliterate. I was not so young nor so
blind as to imagine that I should never be happy again. I knew that men
and women had sustained and conquered greater griefs and more crushing
shames than mine. But I no more believed that I should ever forget the
awful pain my first disappointment had caused me, than that I should
replace the dear friend and mother whose death had left a vacancy in my
bruised heart that no mortal could fill again.
Ange seemed to me too young to have suffered in proportion with myself;
not too young in years, but in spirit. How I envied the youthful gaiety
with which she enjoyed her walks and talks, and simple occupations, the
fresh laughter that burst from her, with her will or against it, at
anything that touched her sense of ridicule; and the innocent mischief
which made her love to tease her father or her sister, or even Madame,
until she was compelled to win their pardon by her kisses.
No! Ange could never have passed through the same valley of suffering as
I had! Its shadows would have frightened her lightheartedness to death.
Yet she was certainly very grave that afternoon, and very silent; but,
when I taxed her with it, she replied that she was always tired on
Sundays, and wanted rest after the exertion of singing, or, as she
expressed it, of ‘bawling at the top of her voice, for two hours,
without stopping.’ After which I was surprised, when tea was over, to
see her come down into the sitting-room, robed for walking.
‘Are you going out again, Ange?’
‘Yes, to evening church.’
‘I thought there was only one service here.’
‘Papa has only one; but Monsieur l’Abbé has the regular number at his
church. I always go there in the evening, the service is so beautiful.
Will you come with me?’
‘I shall be delighted.’
It was nothing extraordinary in _me_ to consent to attend a Catholic
service, because I was a very broad and muscular Christian indeed,
bound, by my own conscience, to no creed nor church whatever, but ready
to join in any prayers that satisfied my ideas of what religious worship
should be, and to believe that the path that took him readiest to God
was the right path for each man to walk in, irrespective of the pilot
who led the way. But then I was not a minister of the Established Church
of England, who had taken a very solemn oath to uphold her doctrines and
protect her interests in every possible manner, and it seemed very
strange to me that Mr. Lovett should like it to be known, in a little
town like St. Pucelle, that his daughters attended the services of a
Church whose doctrines were so diametrically opposed to those of his
own.
‘Does your papa approve of your going to vespers at St. Marie?’ I said
to Ange, as we walked there together.
‘Oh, Hilda! Do you suppose I should do so without his approval? Why, of
course he does. And the Abbé Morteville is one of papa’s very best and
most intimate friends.’
‘That may be. I see no reason whatever why a difference of religious
opinion should have any effect upon the friendship of men. Still, I
should have thought, as Mr. Lovett is a Protestant minister, that he
would have been almost afraid to let you and Tessie attend the Catholic
services.’
‘Why?’ she asked quickly.
‘For various reasons; the chief being, that you might be converted to
Catholicism yourselves.’
‘I don’t think papa would object to it if we were! You don’t half know
yet how good and generous and liberal-minded he is, Hilda. If he thought
Tessie and I were fully persuaded that we should not be happy unless we
became Catholics, he would never oppose our wishes. But he need have no
fear; at all events on my account. I shall never leave the English
Church so long as he is in it.’
I admired the beautiful childlike faith which she had in her father, and
in everything which he believed to be right, but I could not join in it.
To me it seemed the most culpable negligence to allow a girl with so
unformed a mind as that of Ange to attend regularly the offices of a
church to which she did not belong. However, it was no concern of mine,
and I was silent.
As we approached the porch of St. Marie, we met the Baron de Nesselrode.
‘How do you do, M. le Baron?’ exclaimed Ange. ‘We are going to attend
vespers this evening. Will you come with us?’
Armand de Nesselrode laughed uneasily.
‘I am afraid you must excuse me,’ he replied; ‘it is a very long time
since I have seen the inside of a church, Mademoiselle Ange.’
‘Is that so? What a sad confession! What would Monsieur l’Abbé say were
he to hear it?’
‘The truth, probably—that I am a lost sheep not worth the looking
after.’
‘Indeed he would not. I can answer for that. Monsieur l’Abbé is far too
good to say such a thing of any one.’
‘But he has given me up all the same, and he is wise to do so. He has
too much occupation for his time to waste it upon a _vaurien_ like
myself. No one remembers me, Mademoiselle Ange. I am an outcast, and
alone.’
_Alone!_ The word struck painfully upon my ear. I had so often used it
in reference to my own condition. And although Armand de Nesselrode
laughed with apparent carelessness as he said it, I felt sure that he
was suffering bitterly the while. I wished, at that moment, that I could
speak French as fluently as Ange did—that I might assure him that I
could sympathise in his sense of solitude. But a foolish timidity bound
my tongue. The young Baron spoke with a pure Parisian accent, and I was
ashamed to air my boarding-school French before him. Yet, as he raised
his hat to me in parting, I ventured to say, in a very low voice:
‘Monsieur, when we pray to-night, we will not forget you.’
A gleam of pleasure and sudden interest lit up the dark eyes which he
fixed upon me.
‘I thank you—I thank you much, mademoiselle,’ he replied fervently, as
we passed into the church.
When we returned home that evening, we went at once into the little
sitting-room where Tessie was sitting by herself, reading.
‘Where is papa, Tessie?’
‘He has gone over to the Hôtel de la Cloche to see Miss Markham. She
sent up a note by Arthur Thrale to ask him to do so. I suppose the
visitor they expected from Rille has arrived, and requires a little more
amusement than can be extracted from poor old Mr. Carolus.’
Again that vivid burning blush on Ange’s cheek, but she did not make any
remark upon her sister’s news. She only threw her hat and cape upon a
chair, and, going up to the piano, sat down and commenced to play a
hymn. It was a familiar one to all of us.
Tessie left her book and took a seat beside me, and put her arm round my
waist, and we sang the words together. Amidst the noise which we made
with our own voices, I could not distinguish if the little maid joined
us or no. We had not finished the hymn, however, when the door from the
_salle_ softly opened, and the tall figure of the Baron de Nesselrode
stood upon the threshold. We would have stopped at once, but he motioned
us to proceed, and stood there, with the door in his hand, until the
hymn was concluded. Then he closed it behind him, and advanced into our
midst.
‘Monsieur Lovett, I find, is not at home, so I ventured to come a little
farther than the _salle_,’ he said to Tessie. ‘Will you continue your
singing, Mademoiselle Ange? It is such a treat to me to listen to music.
I never hear any now.’
‘You are fond of it, then, Monsieur le Baron?’
‘Passionately, mademoiselle. At one time I thought I could never live
without it. But one is forced to learn hard lessons in this world. There
is a fine organ up at my old château, but it has not been opened for
years; and I conclude that, like its owner, it is ruined.’
‘What a pity! You should have it examined. Why not get the opinion of
the organist of St. Marie upon it?’
‘I would rather have the opinion of you, demoiselles, if you would
graciously accord it to me. Do you think Monsieur votre père would so
far honour me as to bring you all up to the château some day, that you
may see and pronounce on the merits of my poor old organ for
yourselves?’
‘We will ask papa, Monsieur le Baron, but I do not think he will have
any objection.’
‘Objection!’ cried Ange, wheeling round on her music-stool, ‘I should
think not. I won’t let him have an objection. Tessie and I have so often
longed to see your château, Monsieur le Baron—the dear old romantic
tumbled-down place. I have peeped over the wall dozens of times, and
picked all the roses within my reach, but of course I dared not venture
within the gates, it would not have been _comme-il-faut_!’
‘A dear old romantic tumbled-down place,’ repeated the Baron, bitterly.
‘Yes! that is the fittest name for the only rest my folly has left for
the sole of my foot. Bah! do not let us talk of it any more. Monsieur
will bring you to visit me there, I trust, and old Denise shall receive
you with all the reverence befitting your own position, if not with the
luxury a De Nesselrode should be able to lavish upon his guests. Sing to
me again, mesdemoiselles. Let me forget the memories this little
conversation has provoked, in listening to your voices.’
So Ange struck up the plaintive air of ‘Sun of my soul,’ and we all
joined in the evening hymn together. Its last chords were dying away,
when Mr. Lovett’s footstep was heard entering the _salle_. The Baron
rose at once to join him, but before he had time to leave the room,
Tessie and Ange had flown past him to welcome their father home.
Consequently, he and I were left for one brief moment together.
‘Did you forget your promise, mademoiselle?’ he asked me, in a low
earnest voice.
‘I did not, monsieur.’
He made no answer, but he threw one long searching glance upon me before
he left the room, and I sat there thinking what a pity it was that he
was so careless and dissipated, and what a desirable husband he would
make for Tessie, if he could only be converted to see the errors of his
ways.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X.
CHÂTEAU DES ROSES.
I thought of this long after I went to bed that night, and for several
succeeding days. I felt sure that Tessie liked the Baron, and indeed few
girls with hearts that were disengaged could have helped doing so. He
was very handsome, with that dark Southern beauty which bespeaks fire
and energy, and all that makes a man attractive to a woman. And he was
interesting—a more dangerous circumstance still. A halo of romance hung
around his ill-fortune and his solitude, even though both had been
induced by his own misdeeds. And I doubt, moreover, whether a man’s
errors, unless directed towards herself, ever closed a woman’s heart
against him. Although we are but too often the tempters and destroyers
of the other sex, we like to flatter ourselves with the idea that we
were sent into this world to be their guardian angels. The instinct of
maternity, too, is rampant in the breasts of most of us, and a sick man
or a naughty man is for the time being very like a child, something that
is to be petted and tended and caressed, or coaxed and reprimanded and
forgiven. I never heard the girls mention the young Baron de Nesselrode
without a word of pity or excuse, and I too had much the same feeling
for him.
But I had heard that his present state of poverty was not to last for
ever. The interest of his large fortune alone was being annually
swallowed by his greedy creditors; and if the Baron could only be
persuaded to lose no more money in the interim, a few years’ probation
would certainly set him free again. Meanwhile his family had utterly
refused to assist him, over which piece of cruelty I had heard Tessie
properly indignant. But privately I argued that in all probability his
family had not the means of doing so. The Baron de Nesselrode was the
representative of his race, and his relations were naturally incensed to
find that his extravagance had led him to represent it in a ruinous old
château at St. Pucelle.
The great thing to be done now, I said to myself, was to persuade him to
give up that fatal habit of gambling, which we heard that he still
continued to practise at more than one private house in the town.
If he would only learn to be wise in time, and to see the beauties of
Tessie’s character as I saw them, what a charming couple they would
make! She was so thoroughly good and amiable. Each day I seemed to
discover some fresh trait in her disposition which rendered her more
worthy of my affection; and I pictured her to myself as the future
Baronne de Nesselrode, and thought how well she would look the part, and
how faithfully she would discharge the duties of her position as wife
and mother and mistress of the household.
I wonder now why I never thought of the probability of the Baron
preferring Ange to her sister—Ange, with her lovely, ever-changing
countenance, her childlike gaiety of disposition, her ardent faith in
religion and her father—but it never struck me that it might be so.
Tessie, with her quiet, somewhat pensive air, and her softly-braided
flaxen locks, was always the ideal Baronne that figured in my airy
castles; whilst bright-haired, blushing Ange was nowhere.
But the first thing, of course, to be done was to convert Armand de
Nesselrode; and with that idea seething in my brain, I was very pleased,
a few days afterwards, to hear that Mr. Lovett had arranged to take us
all over to the château that very afternoon.
‘Hilda, it will be delightful!’ cried Ange, dancing about me in her
glee. ‘You don’t know how often Tessie and I have longed to see inside
the old château.’
‘And Monsieur le Baron has never asked you all these years?’
‘Never once—until last Sunday; indeed, I believe we shall be the first
people in St. Pucelle who have set foot inside it. The poor Baron is
ashamed of his poverty, so Madame says. I know he has only one servant
to wait on him: I have seen her at market. She looks like a veritable
old _châtelaine_. I should never dare to ask her to clean my boots. But
I must go, Hilda, or I shall not be back again by twelve o’clock. I have
five people to call upon within an hour.’
And off she ran, with a little basket on her arm, to see her poor.
I have forgotten to mention what a charitable heart Ange Lovett had. Not
the charity that enters poor people’s homes without knocking, and sows
good advice and platitudes broadcast, to bring up a crop of curses and
complaints; but a large-hearted love, that saw no distinction between
herself and them except that made by poverty, and greater need of
friendship. When I saw her stop and salute her humbler friends, I was
not surprised to hear they called her ‘_Petite Ange_’ even to that day.
Yet she carried them neither food nor money: she had none to spare. The
basket on her arm held some trifling remembrance, perhaps: a rag doll,
manufactured by herself, for a sick child; the Sunday cap of some old
woman which she had turned and made to look as good as new; or a bottle
of physic for cough or ague, concocted by Madame Marmoret, and which was
about the only thing in which that unpleasant domestic seemed willing to
accommodate herself to the wishes of her young mistresses. So, although
Ange possessed nothing wherewith to win the affections of her poor
neighbours, beyond her ready sympathy and beaming smile, she was the
cherished friend of every one of them; and even the Abbé Morteville used
to say that he always knew, when called upon to visit the sick, if the
little Angel of St. Pucelle had been there before him or no. Sweet Ange!
She used to laugh at Tessie and me, and call us lazy, because we did not
join her in her work of love; but the fact was that she left us nothing
to do. There was scarcely a day that she had not flitted in and out of
half the cottages in St. Pucelle. She lived amongst the poor as though
she had been one of themselves.
We were an expectant party as we walked up together to the Château des
Roses, as the Baron’s domicile was romantically called, for the girls
had talked to me so much on the subject, that I had become almost as
curious to find myself within its walls as they were. I found that the
château was situated quite a mile away from St. Pucelle. Two massive
pillars that had once supported the gates, and were surmounted by
wolves’ heads carved in stone, the armorial bearing of the family of De
Nesselrode, became visible some time before we reached the entrance.
When we had gained it, we discovered that the way was open: the gate
being off its hinges and thrown carelessly amongst the bushes within. To
the top of either pillar had climbed a rose-tree, the fragrant blossoms
of which were hanging halfway to the ground; whilst various costly
shrubs, which had once been planted about the entrance with a due regard
to effect, had obtruded their luxuriant growth until it encroached upon
the highway.
‘Is not this a regular wilderness of sweets?’ said Angela. ‘These are
the roses, papa, that I told the Baron I had so often picked in passing.
I wonder if he has more of them within; for if so, I must steal a
bouquet before we return again.’
We had little time to wonder, for as we took our way to the château by a
pathway cut through the pinewood, which sheltered it on three sides from
the mountain air, we discovered that it well deserved its name. We
seemed to be surrounded by roses of every size and colour. They ran
along the ground at our feet, they hung in clusters from the trees at
our side, they entangled themselves in the skirts of our dresses and
caught the flimsy trimmings of our hats. For myself, I thought I had
never traversed such a labyrinth of beauty; though the rose-trees, in
common with everything else, bore the appearance of a long-sustained and
utter neglect.
As we came in sight of the fine old château, which had originally been
built of grey granite, but was much disfigured by having been restored
in various places by common red brick, we saw our host approaching to
greet us. He looked so picturesque in a black velveteen coat, with a
little handkerchief of grey silk carelessly knotted about his throat,
that I could not resist glancing at Tessie to see how his appearance
struck her. To my disappointment, she was not looking at the Baron at
all, but busily engaged in fastening a bunch of yellow rosebuds in her
bosom.
Well, Tessie cared for something higher than mere outward seeming
perhaps. So much the better! Her happiness, when it came, would be all
the more lasting and to be depended on. Still, Monsieur le Baron did
look very graceful and aristocratic in his artistic suit—there was no
manner of doubt about that!
We all rushed at him, open-mouthed, with praises of his lovely roses.
‘_Ah, les roses_,’ he said, indifferently. ‘Yes, they are very abundant;
and I am only too flattered that mesdemoiselles should deign to honour
my poor flowers with their regard! But my little _goûter_ is waiting for
you, and I trust that your walk has given you an appetite. Mademoiselle,
will you permit me to conduct you into the Château des Roses?’
He offered his arm to me as he spoke, and I was surprised that he should
not have chosen Tessie instead, until I remembered that Mr. Lovett had
told several of his friends that he regarded me as his eldest daughter.
The entrance-hall to the château was very imposing; only, had I not
known it was inhabited by a gentleman of the nineteenth century, I
should certainly have imagined I was being introduced to the residence
of some feudal chief of the tenth instead. Suits of armour, coated with
rust, covered the walls; on the stone floor were laid numerous rough
skins of animals which the Baron had killed in the chase. A stand,
filled with all sorts of murderous weapons, ornamented one end of the
hall; whilst on the other hung an arras of tapestry, faded into
indistinctness and moth-eaten, until it would hardly hold together. Here
we encountered Denise, the old _châtelaine_, as Ange had designated
her—an ancient dame who had once been the Baron’s nurse, and had
followed him into his exile with a fidelity as rare as it is beautiful.
As I saw this old servant, whose appearance was the very picture of
modest decorum, receiving her young master’s guests with as much state
as though she had had a band of domestics behind her to execute her
orders, I could not help thinking that there must be something good left
in the man who, in the midst of misfortune brought on his own head,
could yet command the service and fidelity of so thoroughly respectable
a woman.
‘Denise,’ said the Baron, ‘these young ladies have condescended to
honour the château with their presence for a few hours. I commend them,
during their visit, to your care.’
‘Will mesdemoiselles follow me upstairs and remove their walking attire
before partaking of _goûter_?’ inquired the old servant, and we were
very thankful, after a hot and dusty walk, to bathe our hands and faces
in the cool spring water she had provided for us.
‘I never saw anything like this in my life before,’ exclaimed Tessie, as
we followed Denise up a wide staircase into a long corridor lined with
flapping tapestry, and ornamented with grim oil-paintings of the
martyred saints. ‘Could you not fancy, Hilda, this corridor at dead of
night peopled with the ghosts of these poor martyrs and ringing with
their groans?’
Old Denise crossed herself.
‘Do not speak of it, mademoiselle,’ she said. ‘The blessed martyrs are
in heaven, and would not return to this earth if they could; and as for
the spirits of others, surely _Le bon Dieu_ would never permit them to
terrify a poor old woman like me. Though, for the matter of that, there
has always been a legend in our family that one of my dear master’s
noble ancestors, Le Sieur Armand de Valois, still walks the Château des
Roses, which was his favourite summer residence when alive; and that is
the reason, mesdemoiselles, that the old house is in so sad a condition
of ruin and decay, for no one has cared to keep it up or live in it.’
‘I wonder you were not afraid to come here, then, madame,’ I remarked.
‘I should not have been afraid to go anywhere with my dear master,
mademoiselle; and since those thieves who stripped him of his rightful
property left him no shelter but this, why I had no choice but to follow
and take care of him.’
‘It does you honour!’ said Tessie, as we entered the bed-chamber.
Such a chamber! uncarpeted and uncurtained, with a huge bedstead of
carved oak, a Venetian mirror which distorted our features until we did
not recognise ourselves—and for the purposes of washing, a brass ewer
and basin shining like burnished gold, but placed upon a table of ebony.
The towels offered us were of the finest fringed damask, but Denise was
profuse in her apologies for the humbleness of the accommodation she had
prepared.
‘This is not as it should be,’ she said sorrowfully, ‘but mesdemoiselles
must be gracious and overlook our poverty. When Monsieur le Baron told
me that ladies were coming to the château, you might have knocked me
down with a feather. “Ladies,” I said, “and not a room to show them
into.”
‘But my dear master assured me you would excuse it. Ah, mesdemoiselles!
until those thieves and robbers restore his rights to him, what can you
expect? We have no money to replace these things. But when that day
comes,’ exclaimed the old woman, brightening up, ‘then his friends and
his enemies alike shall see what the Baron de Nesselrode can do. They
shall be fine times, mesdemoiselles, when we go back to our château at
Versailles, and our châlet in beautiful Switzerland, and above all, our
hôtel in Paris. The Château des Roses may fall to the ground then—we
shall need it no longer. But, meanwhile, we have sore need of
patience—Heaven knows!’
‘But this is all very beautiful,’ I said. ‘What could be better? I would
not have it changed for worlds, if it were mine.’
Denise shook her head despondently.
‘Mademoiselle is too good to say so,’ she replied, ‘but if she and these
young ladies will excuse me, I will descend again and see that the
_salle_ is prepared for their reception.’
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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