by Ellen Wood
Mrs. Philip sat down like one paralyzed. “If I did not say it!” she uttered. “I wish he had chosen any body else, for I don’t like the woman, and the children will never like her. What can possess him?”
She wrapped herself up, the next morning, and set off in the snow to see Mr. Danesbury. Not going to the house, but seeking him at the Works. He was in his private room.
“John,” she said, when greetings had passed, and she warmed her hands over the hot blaze of the fire, “you are going to marry again, I hear.”
“I believe so, Maria.”
“What did I tell you? That, if you did not take care, she would play her cards and win. And she has done it!”
“It was well for me to marry again. Not that I cared about it,” he emphatically added, “for I have not yet forgotten Isabel. But the house wanted a mistress, and the children a mother. Miss St. George is amiable, she seems a good manager, and I do believe,” he added, with a comical look, “that her whole heart is wrapt up in me and the children. You should see how fond she has grown of William.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Mrs. Philip Danesbury.
“What does that interjection mean?” laughed Mr. Danesbury.
“Why it means that I do not take in what you say, John. I believe you are as completely done, as ever man was. I do not believe in her amiability, for I think it is all put on; and I do not believe in her love for the children, no, not even for William, for I think that is put on. I can not speak as to what it may be for you.”
“Maria, you were always prejudiced against Miss St. George. You were, before you saw her.”
“Admitted. Because her coming down here, in the way she did, looked to me a suspicious proceeding. Now, I am sure it was one. But when I came to see and know Miss St. George, my prejudice did not lessen. I wish you had chosen any one else, for the children’s sake. At the time I went away, I was beginning to think and hope there was another your choice would fall upon.”
He looked at her inquiringly.
“Miss Roper.”
“Ah, she is a nice girl,” said Mr. Danesbury, with animation. “She would have been rather young for me, Maria.”
“She is six or seven-and-twenty. And I am quite sure she would have made a loving mother to your children. I am astonished at your want of taste, John, in preferring Miss St. George to her.”
“Now, don’t call my taste in question, if you please, Maria,” said he, good-humouredly. “I admire Miss Roper more than I do Miss St. George, and I do not particularly care for either. I can never care for any woman as I cared for Isabel.”
“You will persuade me, next, you are out of your senses,” was the retort of Mrs. Philip. “If you prefer Miss Roper, why do you marry Miss St George?”
“To tell you the truth,” he answered in a low tone, “I was, in a manner, drawn into the marriage. But of course this must never go beyond you.”
“Drawn into it! I do not understand.”
“It seems the neighbourhood got talking about my attention to Miss St. George. Which appears to me to be very strange, for I declare that I never paid her any particular attention? I certainly used to drive them out in the open carriage most evenings, herself and the two children, and she sat in the front seat with me: I could not pat her in the back, you know, a relation of Isabel: and I used to give her my arm to church, and there my attention ended.”
“And who says the neighbourhood made remarks?” interrupted Mrs. Philip Danesbury.
“Listen. One day Mrs. Serle arrived here in a desperate bustle. She sought an interview with me, and said Eliza had written to her that she was miserable; that after what the neighbourhood had been pleased to say, she should never hold up her head again in happiness, and that of course she must leave Danesbury House, and they might as well tear her life from her, as tear her from me and the children.”
“What did you say to all this rhapsody?”
“Gave the neighbourhood a blessing, or something equivalent to it — though no rumours had reached my ears; and told Mrs. Serle that it was a mistake to suppose I had paid any particular attentions: I had paid none whatever. Mrs. Serle assured me things had been said, and asked what I could do in the dilemma; hinting that for a reproach to have been cast on Isabel’s cousin—”
“About forty times removed,” contemptuously interrupted Mrs. Philip Danesbury.
Mr. Danesbury smiled, as he continued. “That for a reproach to have been cast on Isabel’s cousin, would have proved a bitter grief to her had she been in life. Then I began to think that, as I had almost determined to marry again, I might as well take Miss St. George as any body else, and settle the neighbourhood that way. So, without giving myself time for consideration — I acknowledge that — I told Mrs. Serle that the matter had better be ended in that manner.”
“And they snapped at it!”
“They accepted it,” said Mr. Danesbury.
‘‘It, was all a planned trap!” vehemently spoke Mrs. Philip. “Mrs. Serle’s coming down, and saying what she did, was a pleasant trap to draw you in, planned between her and Miss St. George. I wish I was as sure of heaven! She has played out her game.”
Mr. Danesbury stood, his tall form drawn to its full height. He began pushing with his boot some starting bits of coal into the fire, between the bars of the grate.
‘‘John!” said Mrs. Philip.
“Well?”
“Do not carry it out. Let her bring an action for breach of promise. She is just the one to do it.”
“But, indeed, I mean to carry it out. You must not think I repent, Maria. I believe in Miss St. George’s amiability, if you do not, and I think she will make me a suitable wife.”
“Well — if you are satisfied. I only hope you will always find cause to be so,” added Mrs. Philip, earnestly. “Believe me, no one would rejoice more than I to find that I am wrong. When is it to be? I hear Miss St. George is in London.”
“She returned with her sister. It is to take place immediately.”
And it did so. And Eliza St. George became the second Mrs. Danesbury, to her own unequivocal self-gratulation and delight.
It was on a Tuesday afternoon, and just a week after the wedding. Glisson and Jessy were seated in their old room, the nursery; Glisson, not rocking herself in idleness, but pacing about angrily, in what Jessy called “a temper.” On the carpet sat William, playing with some toys; and Jessy was trimming a cap for herself with white satin ribbon. The work seemed somewhat to puzzle her, for she pinned the ribbon on, and unpinned it, in indecision.
“Nurse, see here,” cried she, holding the cap toward the view of Mrs. Glisson, as the latter approached her in her restless wanderings. “Would this look better, quilled round the crown, or put in bows at the sides? Just tell me what you think: I want it to be smart.”
“It would look best this way,” returned the nurse; and, taking the cap and ribbon from Jessy’s hand, she dashed them to the ground. The reader, however, must not take a wrong view of Mrs. Glisson’s strange action: she was perfectly sober.
“Now, then!” uttered Jessy, “what’s that for?”
“I have no patience with you!” she burst forth. “Decking yourself off for a woman that’s not fit to stand in your poor dead mistress’s shoes; not fit to tie ’em for her, or to buckle on her garters! You are as bad as she is. Let her come and see you with the black bows in your cap, as she will me; it may show her that we sorrow after the old mistress more than we care to welcome the new.”
“Black or white won’t alter it,” rejoined Jessy, intent on her cap again. “It is done, and it can’t be undone; and if the rest of the maids put on white ribbons, there’s no reason why I should not. You are as cranky as you can be to-day.”
“Cranky, ay!” ejaculated Mrs. Glisson, flinging herself on a chair with a groan, “and you’d be cranky too, if you had the feelings of an owl. I wonder you can reconcile yourself to stop in the house after such a change! I wonder the servants down stairs can do it!”
/> “You are stopping yourself,” said Jessy. “Because I am forced to it. Could I go and leave that baby” — pointing to the unconscious little fellow on the carpet— “to her mercies? When I meet my poor dear mistress face to face in heaven, what would she say to me, if I had abandoned her child to the dislike of a deceitful step-mother? No; if master goes and makes a fool of himself, and brings home twenty wives with two faces, one for him, and t’other for other folks, I must stop on, and put up with it till William’s beyond my care. I told master so.”
“You never did!” uttered Jessy. “When?”
“That don’t matter to you. Get on with your fine wedding-cap.”
There was a pause. Jessy, who was then standing at the window, broke it. “Here comes Mrs. Philip Danesbury. I suppose her cold’s better, then. She has not got the children with her: I wonder how long she intends to keep them?”
“I hope she’ll keep them till they are dragged from her with cords,” fired Glisson. “She would, if she was of my mind. Her home will be better for them than their own now.”
Mrs. Philip Danesbury came into the nursery. “Well, Glisson; well, Jessy,” cried she, as the servants rose. “You have thought me lost, no doubt, but it is nine days since I stepped outside the door. Willie, what has aunt Philip got?”
The child had risen and run to her. Next to Glisson, whom he dearly loved, he was fondest of Mrs. Philip Danesbury
“There,” she said, giving him a pretty little toy in sugar, “Sister Isabel sent that for Willie.”
“When are the children coming home, ma’am?” put in Jessy.
“When their father asks for them; not before,” replied Mrs. Philip, with a sharpness in her accent that seemed akin to that of Glisson. “He, and — and — his wife — will not be here before Friday.”
“Oh, won’t they though!” retorted Glisson, forgetting her respect in her mind’s annoyance. “They are coming to-day, ma’am.”
“To-day!”
“This very blessed Tuesday,” returned Glisson. “Master’s wanted in a hurry for some business at the Works, and some of them wrote to him, and he wrote word back he would be home to-day. They got the letter at the factory this morning, and sent in and told us, by his orders. It’s a black day for me, I know that”
“Jessy,” said Mrs. Philip, not immediately replying to Glisson, “Miss Isabel requires a clean tucker or two; will you put them up.”
Jessy left the room. “You must try and make the best of it, Glisson,” Mrs. Philip continued, when they were alone. “It would never do, you know, for you to leave William.”
“That’s the only thing that’s keeping me; nothing else in the world. If she begins to treat him badly, I’ll step between them, and ask master to uphold me for his late wife’s sake.”
“Hush, Glisson! she will not do that. She appears to be so very fond of him.”
“Just as a certain gentleman is of holy water,” irreverently snapped Glisson. “From the very first hour she set foot in this house, she has been plotting how best to catch master: I saw through her, if nobody else did. He had no more chance against her than a fly has with a spider, but just walked into the web, like a blindfolded simpleton. It’s of no good, ma’am, I must speak! I am fit this day to take and hang myself. Oh, my poor dear mistress!”
Glisson bent her head in her hands, and swung backward and forward in her chair, after the manner of one overwhelmed with grief. In a minute she looked up again.
“Ma’am! Mrs. Philip Danesbury I didn’t you see through her?”
“I did,” was the low answer.
The woman wrung her hands. “Then why, oh why, didn’t you warn master, and set him on his guard? It was not for me to do such a thing, ma’am, but you might.”
“I did warn him,” was the rejoinder on Mrs. Philip’s lips; but she checked herself, and did not speak it.
“It was a funny thing, altogether,” resumed Glisson. “Master did not seem fond of her; he did not seem to care about her at all. Then came that visit of Mrs. Serle. She was closeted with Miss St. George after she got here, and I’ll be whipped if I didn’t say to Jessy that those two were hatching mischief. After that, master was sent for from the factory, and Mrs. Serle was closeted with him. The next day the two sisters went back to London together, and we heard that there was going to be a marriage. They are deep ones, those women, if my eyes are worth any thing.”
“I heard that, about the time of this visit of Mrs. Serle, there was a report in the neighbourhood that Mr. Danesbury’s name had been gratuitously coupled with that of Miss St. George.”
“There never was such a report,” returned Glisson, decisively, “and whoever says it, says wrong. It was just the other way. When Miss St. George came first, folks laughed and joked, and said she had come to pick up Mr. Danesbury. But at the twelvemonth’s end, when she was no nearer doing it, they laughed at her for being baulked, and said Mr. Danesbury was too wise to be caught.”
“Nurse, are you sure of this?”
“I am sure and certain. The servants down stairs have not had much else to do than collect news, and I’ll back them for being awake to what goes on in the neighbourhood, and for what’s said. Whoever told you, ma’am, that scandal was talked of master and Miss St. George, told an untruth, and knows it. It was, I say, just the opposite.”
It wanted not this to confirm Mrs. Philip Danesbury’s suspicions that her brother-in-law had been made the victim of a cunning plan.
“Not another hour would I have stopped, but for the child,” went on Glisson, “and so I told master. It was one day after Miss St. George was gone; the children were out, an master was dining alone. After dinner, the bell rang for the baby, and I took him down, and master put him on his knee. ‘Glisson,’ said he, turning to me, ‘I suppose you have heard that there is going to be a change.’ ‘Yes, master,’ says I, ‘and I’d rather have been swallowed up by an earthquake than have heard it; and I am thinking that I sha’n’t be able to stop; it’ll go against the grain.’ ‘What are you saying?’ he interrupted, ‘you must stop: you have not been in the family so many years, to leave it now.’ ‘There’s only one thing keeps me, sir,’ I said, ‘and that’s this precious child: I must stop to put myself between him and harm, knowing that I sent his poor mother out of the world.’ ‘Stop with him always, Glisson,’ whispered master, as he gave the child back to me, and I saw that his eye were wet.”
At this juncture in came Jessy, all excitement. “Ma’am! ma’am! here they are! Glisson, they are come!”
“Who are come?” demanded Mrs. Philip, considerably startled, as she hastened to the window in the wake of Jessy. “Glisson, there’s my cap never finished!”
“And I hope it never will be, with those ribbons on it,” retorted Glisson.
The carriage drew up, and its inmates alighted, the servants going out to receive them and to unpack the chariot. Mr. Danesbury entered but for a minute or two, and then departed to the factory, and Mrs. Danesbury was heard ascending the stairs. Her new rooms, once those of her predecessor, were on the same floor as the nursery, and it “What on earth am I to do?” uttered Mrs. Philip.
“Step in here, to the night nursery, ma’am,” suggested Jessy in a whisper, as she held the door open. “I do believe she is coming here.”
Mrs. Philip did so. Most particularly unpalatable was it to her to be in the new Mrs. Danesbury’s house at this, the moment of her return, though she did not stay to analyze the reason. Mrs. Philip looked round the room: Glisson’s bed was in it, and little William’s by its side; and there she stood listening.
Mrs. Danesbury had, however, turned into her own rooms, and Mrs. Philip, after waiting a few minutes, was about to emerge from her hiding chamber, when Mrs. Danesbury’s steps were again heard. She entered the day nursery, and Mrs. Philip, at sound of her voice, whisked quietly inside a closet by Glisson’s bed.
“How do you do, nurse?” said Mrs. Danesbury.
Glisson snatched up little William, be
fore she answered. “I’m among the middlings, ma’am.”
“You little love!” uttered Mrs. Danesbury, making a great show of kissing the boy. “How well he looks, nurse!”
The nurse coughed. “It’s to be hoped he isn’t ill ma’am.”
William raised his finger, and pointed to the door of the night nursery; “Aunt Phe-eep dere,” lisped he.
Jessy felt her face flush the colour of a peony, but Glisson had her presence of mind about her.
“You silly little donkey,” quoth she to the child, beginning to toss him in her arms, as if for sport, and turning his face from the door, “it’s not your aunt Philip, its Mrs. Danesbury. He has got a trick of calling all folks aunt Philip,” added Glisson, popping out an untruth in her perplexity.
Mrs. Danesbury laughed, and returned to her own room, deeming she had accomplished her duty to her nursery, in paying it a visit, and glad that it was over.
Glisson looked in at the chamber door. She could not see Mrs. Philip Danesbury. “Why, where — why, she’s never gone into my closet!” breathed Glisson to herself; “but I’m the fool for leaving the key in the door!” And when Mrs. Philip emerged from it, Glisson, albeit not one of the blushing sort, turned as red as Jessy had just done.
“She’s gone, is she not?” whispered Mrs. Philip.
“All safe, and shut up in her own room, ma’am. She won’t come again, I’ll answer for it.”
“Nurse, my petticoats have knocked a bottle down, and it is either broken, or else the cork has come out. It appears to have gin in it.”
“Gin!” repeated nurse Glisson in a tone of remonstrance. “Gin, ma’am?”
“Well, I wondered myself what could bring gin in your closet; but it certainly is gin; there’s no mistaking the smell.”
“Goodness me!” cried the nurse aloud, but as though she were deliberating a question with herself, “I never can have kept that drop of gin in there, since the night, ever so long ago, when I was bent double with the spasms — legs, and body, and chest, all in a cramp together!”