In a little while, along the path, I heard the clank of a step, and the gentleman in the green cutaway coat, sucking his cane, and eyeing me with an offensive familiar sort of stare the while, passed me by, rather hesitating as he did so.
I was glad when he turned the corner in the little hollow close by, and disappeared. I stood up at once, and was reassured by a sight of Madame, not very many yards away, looking at the ruin, and apparently restored to her right mind. The last beams of the sun were by this time touching the uplands, and I was longing to recommence our walk home. I was hesitating about calling to Madame, because that lady had a certain spirit of opposition within her, and to disclose a small wish of any sort was generally, if it lay in her power, to prevent its accomplishment.
At this moment the gentleman in the green coat returned, approaching me with a slow sort of swagger.
‘I say, Miss, I dropped a glove close by here. May you have seen it?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, drawing back a little, and looking, I dare say, both frightened and offended.
‘I do think I must ‘a dropped it close by your foot, Miss.’
‘No, sir,’ I repeated.
‘No offence, Miss, but you’re sure you didn’t hide it?’
I was beginning to grow seriously uncomfortable.
‘Don’t be frightened, Miss; it’s only a bit o’ chaff. I’m not going to search.’
I called aloud, ‘Madame, Madame!’ and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, ‘Madame, Madame,’ and added, ‘She’s as deaf as a tombstone, or she’ll hear that. Gi’e her my compliments, and say I said you’re a beauty, Miss;’ and with a laugh and a leer he strode off.
Altogether this had not been a very pleasant excursion. Madame gobbled up our sandwiches, commending them every now and then to me. But I had been too much excited to have any appetite left, and very tired I was when we reached home.
‘So, there is lady coming tomorrow?’ said Madame, who knew everything. ‘Wat is her name? I forget.’
‘Lady Knollys,’ I answered.
‘Lady Knollys — wat odd name! She is very young — is she not?’
‘Past fifty, I think.’
‘Hélas! She’s vary old, then. Is she rich?’
‘I don’t know. She has a place in Derbyshire.’
‘Derbyshire — that is one of your English counties, is it not?’
‘Oh yes, Madame,’ I answered, laughing. ‘I have said it to you twice since you came;’ and I gabbled through the chief towns and rivers as catalogued in my geography.
‘Bah! to be sure — of course, cheaile. And is she your relation?’
‘Papa’s first cousin.’
‘Won’t you presenta me, pray? — I would so like!’
Madame had fallen into the English way of liking people with titles, as perhaps foreigners would if titles implied the sort of power they do generally with us.
‘Certainly, Madame.’
‘You will not forget?’
‘Oh no.’
Madame reminded me twice, in the course of the evening, of my promise. She was very eager on this point. But it is a world of disappointment, influenza, and rheumatics; and next morning Madame was prostrate in her bed, and careless of all things but flannel and James’s powder.
Madame was désolée; but she could not raise her head. She only murmured a question.
‘For ‘ow long time, dear, will Lady Knollys remain?’
‘A very few days, I believe.’
‘Hélas! ‘ow onlucky! maybe tomorrow I shall be better Ouah! my ear. The laudanum, dear cheaile!’
And so our conversation for that time ended, and Madame buried her head in her old red cashmere shawl.
CHAPTER IX
MONICA KNOLLYS
Punctually Lady Knollys arrived. She was accompanied by her nephew, Captain Oakley.
They arrived a little before dinner; just in time to get to their rooms and dress. But Mary Quince enlivened my toilet with eloquent descriptions of the youthful Captain whom she had met in the gallery, on his way to his room, with the servant, and told me how he stopped to let her pass, and how ‘he smiled so ‘ansom.’
I was very young then, you know, and more childish even than my years; but this talk of Mary Quince’s interested me, I must confess, considerably. I was painting all sort of portraits of this heroic soldier, while affecting, I am afraid, a hypocritical indifference to her narration, and I know I was very nervous and painstaking about my toilet that evening. When I went down to the drawingroom, Lady Knollys was there, talking volubly to my father as I entered — a woman not really old, but such as very young people fancy aged — energetic, bright, saucy, dressed handsomely in purple satin, with a good deal of lace, and a rich point — I know not how to call it — not a cap, a sort of head-dress — light and simple, but grand withal, over her greyish, silken hair.
Rather tall, by no means stout, on the whole a good firm figure, with something kindly in her look. She got up, quite like a young person, and coming quickly to meet me with a smile —
‘My young cousin!’ she cried, and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘You know who I am? Your cousin Monica — Monica Knollys — and very glad, dear, to see you, though she has not set eyes on you since you were no longer than that paper-knife. Now come here to the lamp, for I must look at you. Who is she like? Let me see. Like your poor mother, I think, my dear; but you’ve the Aylmer nose — yes — not a bad nose either, and, come I very good eyes, upon my life — yes, certainly something of her poor mother — not a bit like you, Austin.’
My father gave her a look as near a smile as I had seen there for a long time, shrewd, cynical, but kindly too, and said he —
‘So much the better, Monica, eh?’
‘It was not for me to say — but you know, Austin, you always were an ugly creature. How shocked and indignant the little girl looks! You must not be vexed, you loyal little woman, with Cousin Monica for telling the truth. Papa was and will be ugly all his days. Come, Austin, dear, tell her — is not it so?’
‘What! depose against myself! That’s not English law, Monica.’
‘Well, maybe not; but if the child won’t believe her own eyes, how is she to believe me? She has long, pretty hands — you have — and very nice feet too. How old is she?’
‘How old, child?’ said my father to me, transferring the question.
She recurred again to my eyes.
‘That is the true grey — large, deep, soft — very peculiar. Yes, dear, very pretty — long lashes, and such bright tints! You’ll be in the Book of Beauty, my dear, when you come out, and have all the poet people writing verses to the tip of your nose — and a very pretty little nose it is!’
I must mention here how striking was the change in my father’s spirit while talking and listening to his odd and voluble old Cousin Monica. Reflected from bygone associations, there had come a glimmer of something, not gaiety, indeed, but like an appreciation of gaiety. The gloom and inflexibility were gone, and there was an evident encouragement and enjoyment of the incessant sallies of his bustling visitor.
How morbid must have been the tendencies of his habitual solitude, I think, appeared from the evident thawing and brightening that accompanied even this transient gleam of human society. I was not a companion — more childish than most girls of my age, and trained in all his whimsical ways, never to interrupt a silence, or force his thoughts by unexpected question or remark out of their monotonous or painful channel.
I was as much surprised at the goodhumour with which he submitted to his cousin’s saucy talk; and, indeed, just then those black-panelled and pictured walls, and that quaint, misshapen room, seemed to have exchanged their stern and awful character for something wonderfully pleasanter to me, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the personal criticism to which the plain-spoken lady chose to subject me.
Just at that moment Captain Oakley joined us. He was my first actual vision of that awful and distant world of fashion, of whose splen
dours I had already read something in the three-volumed gospel of the circulating library.
Handsome, elegant, with features almost feminine, and soft, wavy, black hair, whiskers and moustache, he was altogether such a knight as I had never beheld, or even fancied, at Knowl — a hero of another species, and from the region of the demigods. I did not then perceive that coldness of the eye, and cruel curl of the voluptuous lip — only a suspicion, yet enough to indicate the profligate man, and savouring of death unto death.
But I was young, and had not yet the direful knowledge of good and evil that comes with years; and he was so very handsome, and talked in a way that was so new to me, and was so much more charming than the well-bred converse of the humdrum county families with whom I had occasionally sojourned for a week at a time.
It came out incidentally that his leave of absence was to expire the day after tomorrow. A Lilliputian pang of disappointment followed this announcement. Already I was sorry to lose him. So soon we begin to make a property of what pleases us.
I was shy, but not awkward. I was flattered by the attention of this amusing, perhaps rather fascinating, young man of the world; and he plainly addressed himself with diligence to amuse and please me. I dare say there was more effort than I fancied in bringing his talk down to my humble level, and interesting me and making me laugh about people whom I had never heard of before, than I then suspected.
Cousin Knollys meanwhile was talking to papa. It was just the conversation that suited a man so silent as habit had made him, for her frolic fluency left him little to supply. It was totally impossible, indeed, even in our taciturn household, that conversation should ever flag while she was among us.
Cousin Knollys and I went into the drawingroom together, leaving the gentlemen — rather ill-assorted, I fear — to entertain one another for a time.
‘Come here, my dear, and sit near me,’ said Lady Knollys, dropping into an easy chair with an energetic little plump, ‘and tell me how you and your papa get on. I can remember him quite a cheerful man once, and rather amusing — yes, indeed — and now you see what a bore he is — all by shutting himself up and nursing his whims and fancies. Are those your drawings, dear?’
‘Yes, very bad, I’m afraid; but there are a few, better, I think in the portfolio in the cabinet in the hall.’
‘They are by no means bad, my dear; and you play, of course?’
‘Yes — that is, a little — pretty well, I hope.’
‘I dare say. I must hear you by-and-by. And how does your papa amuse you? You look bewildered, dear. Well, I dare say, amusement is not a frequent word in this house. But you must not turn into a nun, or worse, into a puritan. What is he? A Fifth-Monarchy-man, or something — I forget; tell me the name, my dear.’
‘Papa is a Swedenborgian, I believe.’
‘Yes, yes — I forgot the horrid name — a Swedenborgian, that is it. I don’t know exactly what they think, but everyone knows they are a sort of pagans, my dear. He’s not making one of you, dear — is he?’
‘I go to church every Sunday.’
‘Well, that’s a mercy; Swedenborgian is such an ugly name, and besides, they are all likely to be damned, my dear, and that’s a serious consideration. I really wish poor Austin had hit on something else; I’d much rather have no religion, and enjoy life while I’m in it, than choose one to worry me here and bedevil me hereafter. But some people, my dear, have a taste for being miserable, and provide, like poor Austin, for its gratification in the next world as well as here. Ha, ha, ha! how grave the little woman looks! Don’t you think me very wicked? You know you do; and very likely you are right. Who makes your dresses, my dear? You are such a figure of fun!’
‘Mrs. Rusk, I think, ordered this dress. I and Mary Quince planned it. I thought it very nice. We all like it very well.’
There was something, I dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again as it was subsiding.
‘There, you mustn’t be vexed with old Cousin Monica,’ she cried, jumping up, and giving me a little hug, and bestowing a hearty kiss on my forehead, and a jolly little slap on my cheek. ‘Always remember your cousin Monica is an outspoken, wicked old fool, who likes you, and never be offended by her nonsense. A council of three — you all sat upon it — Mrs. Rusk, you said, and Mary Quince, and your wise self, the weird sisters; and Austin stepped in, as Macbeth, and said, ‘What is’t ye do?’ you all made answer together, ‘A something or other without a name!’ Now, seriously, my dear, it is quite unpardonable in Austin — your papa, I mean — to hand you over to be robed and bedizened according to the whimsies of these wild old women — aren’t they old? If they know better, it’s positively fiendish. I’ll blow him up — I will indeed, my dear. You know you’re an heiress, and ought not to appear like a jack-pudding.’
‘Papa intends sending me to London with Madame and Mary Quince, and going with me himself, if Doctor Bryerly says he may make the journey, and then I am to have dresses and everything.’
‘Well, that is better. And who is Doctor Bryerly — is your papa ill?’
‘Ill; oh no; he always seems just the same. You don’t think him ill-looking ill, I mean?’ I asked eagerly and frightened.
‘No, my dear, he looks very well for his time of life; but why is Doctor What’s-his-name here? Is he a physician, or a divine, or a horse-doctor? and why is his leave asked?’
‘I — I really don’t understand.’
‘Is he a what d’ye call’em — a Swedenborgian?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Oh, I see; ha, ha, ha! And so poor Austin must ask leave to go up to town. Well, go he shall, whether his doctor likes it or not, for it would not do to send you there in charge of your Frenchwoman, my dear. What’s her name?’
‘Madame de la Rougierre.’
CHAPTER X
LADY KNOLLYS REMOVES A COVERLET
Lady Knollys pursued her enquiries.
‘And why does not Madame make your dresses, my dear? I wager a guinea the woman’s a milliner. Did not she engage to make your dresses?’
‘I — I really don’t know; I rather think not. She is my governess — a finishing governess, Mrs. Rusk says.’
‘Finishing fiddle! Hoitytoity! and my lady’s too grand to cut out your dresses and help to sew them? And what does she do? I venture to say she’s fit to teach nothing but devilment — not that she has taught you much, my dear — yet at least. I’ll see her, my dear; where is she? Come, let us visit Madame. I should so like to talk to her a little.’
‘But she is ill,’ I answered, and all this time I was ready to cry for vexation, thinking of my dress, which must be very absurd to elicit so much unaffected laughter from my experienced relative, and I was only longing to get away and hide myself before that handsome Captain returned.
‘Ill! is she? what’s the matter?’
‘A cold — feverish and rheumatic, she says.’
‘Oh, a cold; is she up, or in bed?’
‘In her room, but not in bed.’
‘I should so like to see her, my dear. It is not mere curiosity, I assure you. In fact, curiosity has nothing on earth to do with it. A governess may be a very useful or a very useless person; but she may also be about the most pernicious inmate imaginable. She may teach you a bad accent, and worse manners, and heaven knows what beside. Send the housekeeper, my dear, to tell her that I am going to see her.’
‘I had better go myself, perhaps,’ I said, fearing a collision between Mrs. Rusk and the bitter Frenchwoman.
‘Very well, dear.’
And away I ran, not sorry somehow to escape before Captain O
akley returned.
As I went along the passage, I was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it, and trying in vain to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy. I could not — quite the reverse, indeed. Still I was uncomfortable and feverish — girls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable, under similar circumstances, such a misgiving would make them.
It was a long way to Madame’s room. I met Mrs. Rusk bustling along the passage with a housemaid.
‘How is Madame?’ I asked.
‘Quite well, I believe,’ answered the housekeeper, drily. ‘Nothing the matter that I know of. She eat enough for two to-day. I wish I could sit in my room doing nothing.’
Madame was sitting, or rather reclining, in a low armchair, when I entered the room, close to the fire, as was her wont, her feet extended near to the bars, and a little coffee equipage beside her. She stuffed a book hastily between her dress and the chair, and received me in a state of langour which, had it not been for Mrs. Rusk’s comfortable assurances, would have frightened me.
‘I hope you are better, Madame,’ I said, approaching.
‘Better than I deserve, my dear cheaile, sufficiently well. The people are all so good, trying me with every little thing, like a bird; here is café — Mrs. Rusk-a, poor woman, I try to swallow a little to please her.’
‘And your cold, is it better?’
She shook her head languidly, her elbow resting on the chair, and three fingertips supporting her forehead, and then she made a little sigh, looking down from the corners of her eyes, in an interesting dejection.
‘Je sens des lassitudes in all the members — but I am quaite ‘appy, and though I suffer I am console and oblige des bontés, ma chère, que vous avez tous pour moi;’ and with these words she turned a languid glance of gratitude on me which dropped on the ground.
‘Lady Knollys wishes very much to see you, only for a few minutes, if you could admit her.’
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 218