“No, sir,” White answered timidly. “But Thrush, the pig-killer — he’s one of the old lot, the Cripples, that your father put into the corporation — —”
“Ay, and I wish I had kept them cripples.” Sir Robert growled. “All cripples! My father was right, and I was a fool to think better men would do as well, and do us credit. In his time there were but two of the thirteen could read and write; but they did as they were bid. They did as they were bid. And now — well, man, what of Thrush?”
“He was gaoled yesterday by Mr. Forward, of Steynsham, for assault.”
“For how long?”
“For a fortnight, sir.”
Sir Robert nearly had a fit. He reared himself to his full height, and glared at White. “The infernal rascal!” he cried. “He did it on purpose!”
“I’ve no doubt, sir, that it determined them to fight,” the agent answered. “With Dyas they are five. And five to seven is not such — such odds that they may not have some hope of winning.”
“Five to seven!” Sir Robert repeated; and at an end of words, at an end of oaths, could only stare aghast. “Five to seven!” he muttered. “You’re not going to tell me — there’s something more.”
“No, sir, no; that’s the worst,” White answered, relieved that his tale was told. “That’s the worst, and may be bettered. I’ve thought it well to postpone the nomination until Wednesday the 4th, to give Sergeant Wathen a better chance of dealing with Dyas.”
“Well, well!” Sir Robert muttered. “It has come to that. It has come to dealing with such men as butchers, to treating them as if they had minds to alter and views to change. Well, well!”
And that was all Sir Robert could say. And so it was settled; the Vermuyden dinner for the 2nd, the nomination and polling for the 4th. “You’ll let Mr. Vaughan know,” Sir Robert concluded. “It’s well we can count on somebody.”
X
THE QUEEN’S SQUARE ACADEMY FOR
YOUNG LADIES
Miss Sibson sat in state in her parlour in Queen’s Square. Rather more dignified of mien than usual, and more highly powdered of nose, the schoolmistress was dividing her attention between the culprit in the corner, the elms outside — between which fledgeling rooks were making adventurous voyages — and the longcloth which she was preparing for the young ladies’ plain-sewing; for in those days plain-sewing was still taught in the most select academies. Nor, while she was thus engaged in providing for the domestic training of her charges, was she without assurance that their minds were under care. The double doors which separated the schoolroom from the parlour were ajar, and through the aperture one shrill voice after another could be heard, raised in monotonous perusal of Mrs. Chapone’s “Letters to a Young Lady upon the Improvement of the Mind.”
Miss Sibson wore her best dress, of black silk, secured half-way down the bodice by the large cameo brooch. But neither this nor the reading in the next room could divert her attention from her duties.
“The tongue,” she enunciated with great clearness, as she raised the longcloth in both hands and carefully inspected it over her glasses, “is an unruly member. Ill-nature,” she continued, slowly meting off a portion, and measuring a second portion against it, “is the fruit of a bad heart. Our opinions of others” — this with a stern look at Miss Hilhouse, fourteen years old, and in disgrace— “are the reflections of ourselves.”
The young lady, who was paying with the backboard for a too ready wit, put out the unruly member, and, narrowly escaping detection, looked inconceivably sullen.
“The face is the mirror to the mind,” Miss Sibson continued thoughtfully, as she threaded a needle against the light. “I hope, Miss Hilhouse, that you are now sorry for your fault.”
Miss Hilhouse maintained a stolid silence. Her shoulders ached, but she was proud.
“Very good,” said Miss Sibson placidly; “very good! With time comes reflection.”
Time, a mere minute, brought more than reflection. A gentleman walked quickly across the fore-court to the door, the knocker fell sharply, and Miss Hilhouse’s sullenness dropped from her. She looked first uncomfortable, then alarmed. “Please, may I go now?” she muttered.
Wise Miss Sibson paid no heed. “A gentleman?” she said to the maid who had entered. “Will I see him? Procure his name.”
“Oh, Miss Sibson,” came from the corner in an agonised whisper, “please may I go?” Fourteen standing on a stool with a backboard could not bear to be seen by the other sex.
Miss Sibson looked grave. “Are you sincerely sorry for your fault?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And will you apologise to Miss Smith for your — your gross rudeness?”
“Ye-es.”
“Then go and do so,” Miss Sibson replied; “and close the doors after you.”
The girl fled. And simultaneously Miss Sibson rose, with a mixture of dignity and blandness, to receive Arthur Vaughan. The schoolmistress of that day who had not manner at command had nothing; for deportment ranked among the essentials. And she was quite at her case. The same could not be said of the gentleman. But that his pride still smarted, but that the outrage of yesterday was fresh, but that he drew a savage satisfaction from the prospect of the apologies he was here to receive, he had not come. Even so, he had told himself more than once that he was a fool to come; a fool to set foot in the house. He was almost sure that he had done more wisely had he burned the letter in which the schoolmistress informed him that she had an explanation to offer — and so had made an end.
But if in place of meeting him with humble apologies, this confounded woman were going to bear herself as if no amends were due, he had indeed made a mistake.
Yet her manner said almost as much as that. “Pray be seated, sir,” she said; and she indicated a chair.
He sat down stiffly, and glowered at her. “I received your note,” he said.
She smoothed her ample lap, and looked at him more graciously. “Yes,” she said, “I was relieved to find that the unfortunate occurrence of yesterday was open to another explanation.”
“I have yet,” he said curtly, “to hear the explanation.” Confound the woman’s impudence!
“Exactly,” she said slowly. “Exactly. Well, it turns out that the parcel you left behind you when you” — for an instant a smile broke the rubicund placidity of her face— “when you retired so hurriedly contained a pelisse.”
“Indeed?” he said drily.
“Yes; and a letter.”
“Oh?”
“Yes; a letter from a lady who has for some years taken an interest in Miss Smith. The pelisse proved to be a gift from her.”
“Then I fail to see — —”
“Exactly,” Miss Sibson interposed blandly, indeed too blandly. “You fail to see why you came to be selected as the bearer? So do I. Perhaps you can explain that.”
“No,” he answered shortly. “Nor is that my affair. What I fail to see, Madam, is why Miss Smith did not at once suspect that the present came from the lady in question.”
“Because,” Miss Sibson replied, “the lady was not known to be in this part of England; and because you, sir, maintained that Miss Smith had left the parcel in the coach.”
“I maintained what I was told.”
“But it was not the fact. However, let that pass.”
“No,” Vaughan retorted, with some warmth. “For it seems to me, Madam, very extraordinary that in a matter which was capable of so simple an explanation you should have elected to insult a stranger — a stranger who — —”
“Who was performing no more than an office of civility, you would say?”
“Precisely.”
“Well — yes.” Miss Sibson spoke slowly, and was silent for a moment after she had spoken. Then, somewhat abruptly, “You are an usher, I think,” she said, “at Mr. Bengough’s?”
Vaughan almost jumped in his chair. “I, Madam?” he cried. “Certainly not!”
“Not at Mr. Bengough’s?”
> “Certainly not!” he repeated, with indignation. Was the woman mad? An usher? Good heavens!
“I know your name,” she said slowly. “But — —”
“I came from London the day before yesterday. I am staying at the White Lion, and I am late of the 14th Dragoons.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, indeed,” she said. “Is that so? Well,” rubbing a little of the powder from her nose with a needlecase, and looking at him very shrewdly, “I think,” she continued, “that that is the answer to your question.”
Vaughan stared.
“I do not understand you,” he said.
“Then I must speak more plainly. Were you an usher at Mr. Bengough’s your civility — civility, I think you called it? — to my assistant had passed very well, Mr. Vaughan. But the civility of a gentleman, late of the 14th Dragoons, fresh from London, and staying at the White Lion, to a young person in Miss Smith’s position is apt, as in this case — eh? — to lead to misconstruction.”
“You do me an injustice!” he said, reddening to the roots of his hair.
“Possibly, possibly,” Miss Sibson said. But on that, without warning, she gave way to a fit of silent laughter, which caused her portly form to shake like a jelly. It was a habit with her, attributed by some to her private view of Mrs. Chapone’s famous letters on the improvement of the mind; by others, to that knowledge of the tricks and turns of her sex with which thirty years of schoolkeeping had endowed her.
No doubt the face of rueful resentment with which Arthur Vaughan regarded her did not shorten the fit. But at last, “Young gentleman,” she said, “you do not deceive me! You did not come here to-day merely to hear an old woman make an apology.”
He tried to maintain an attitude of dignified surprise. But her jolly laugh, her shrewd red face were too much for him. His eyes fell. “Upon my honour,” he said, “I meant nothing.”
She shook with fresh laughter. “It is just of that I complain, sir,” she said.
“You can trust me.”
“I can trust Miss Smith,” she retorted, shaking her head. “Her I know, though our acquaintance is of the shortest. Still, I know her from top to toe. You, young gentleman, I don’t know. Mind,” she continued, with good-nature, “I don’t say that you meant any harm when you came to-day. But I’ll wager you thought that you’d see her.”
Vaughan laughed out frankly. Her humour had conquered him. “Well,” he said audaciously, “and am I not to see her?”
Miss Sibson looked at him, and rubbed a little more powder from her nose. “Umph!” she said doubtfully. “If I knew you I’d know what to say to that. A pretty girl, eh?” she added with her head on one side.
He smiled.
“And a good one! And if you were the usher at Mr. Bengough’s I’d ask no more, but I’d send for her. But — —”
She stopped. Vaughan said nothing, but a little out of countenance looked at the floor.
“Just so, just so,” Miss Sibson said, as quietly as if he had answered her. “Well, I am afraid I must not send for her.”
He looked at the carpet. “I have seen so little of her,” he said.
“And I daresay you are a man of property?”
“I am independent.”
“Well, well, there it is.” Miss Sibson smoothed out the lap of her silk dress.
“I do not think,” he said, in some embarrassment, “that five minutes’ talk would hurt her.”
“Umph!”
He laughed — an awkward laugh. “Come, Miss Sibson,” he said. “Let us have the five minutes, and let us both have the chance.”
She looked out of the window, and rubbed her glasses reflectively. “Well,” she said at length, as if she had not quite made up her mind, “I will be quite frank with you, Mr. Vaughan. I did not intend to be so, but you have met me half-way, and I believe you to be a gentleman. The truth is, I should not have gone as far with you as I have unless” — she looked at him suddenly— “I had had a character of you.”
“Of me?” he cried in astonishment.
“Yes.”
“From Miss Smith?”
Miss Sibson smiled at his simplicity. “Oh, no,” she said; “you are going to see the character.” And with that the schoolmistress drew from her workbox a small slip of paper, which she unfolded and gave to him. “It is from the lady,” she said, “who made use of you yesterday.”
He took it in much astonishment. On the inner side of the paper, which was faintly scented, he read a dozen words in a fine handwriting:
“Mary Smith, from her fairy godmother. The bearer may be trusted.”
Vaughan stared at the paper in undiminished surprise. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Who is the lady, and what does she know of me?”
“I cannot tell you, nor can Miss Smith,” Miss Sibson replied. “Who, indeed, has seen her only twice or thrice, at long intervals, and has not heard her name. But Miss Smith’s education — she has never known her parents — was defrayed, I presume, by this godmother. And once a year Miss Smith has been in the habit of receiving a gift, of some value to a young person in her position, accompanied by a few words in that handwriting.”
Vaughan stared. “And,” he said, “you draw the inference that — that — —”
“I draw no inference,” Miss Sibson replied drily, “save that I have authority from — shall I say her godmother — to trust you farther than I should have trusted you. That is the only inference I draw. But I have one thing to add,” she continued. “Miss Smith did not enter my employment in an ordinary way. My late assistant left me abruptly. While I was at a loss an attorney of character in this city called on me and said that a client desired to place a young person in safe hands; that she was a trained teacher, and must live by teaching, but that care was necessary, since she was very young, and had more than her share of good looks. He hinted, Mr. Vaughan, at the inference which you, I believe, have already drawn. And — and that is all.”
Vaughan looked thoughtfully at the carpet.
Miss Sibson waited awhile. At last: “The point is,” she said shrewdly, “do you still wish to have the five minutes?”
Arthur Vaughan hesitated. He knew that he ought, that it was his duty, to say “No.” But something in the woman’s humorous eye challenged him, and recklessly — for the gratification of a moment — he said: “Yes, if you please, I will see her.”
“Very good, very good,” Miss Sibson answered slowly. She had not been blind to the momentary hesitation. “Then I will send her to you to make her apologies. Only be kind enough to remember that she does not know that you have seen that slip of paper.”
He assented, and with a good-natured nod Miss Sibson rose and went heavily from the room. Not for nothing was she held in Bristol a woman of sagacity, whose game of whist it was a pleasure to watch; nor without reason had that attorney of character, of whom we have heard, chosen ‘her in custodiam puellæ.
Vaughan waited, and to be frank, his heart beat more quickly than usual. He knew that he was doing a foolish thing, though he had refused to commit himself; and an unworthy thing, though Miss Sibson, perhaps for her own reasons, had winked at it. He knew that he had no right to see the girl if he did not mean her well; and how could he mean her well when he had no intention of marrying her? For, for a man with his career in prospect to marry a girl in her position — to say nothing of the stigma which no doubt lay upon her birth — was a folly of which none but boys and old men were capable.
He listened, ill at ease, already repenting. The voices in the next room, reduced to a faint murmur by the closed doors, ceased. She was being told. She was being sent to him. He coloured. Yes, he was ashamed of himself. He rose and went to the window, and wished that he had said “No”; that he had taken himself off. What was he doing here at his time of life — the most sane and best balanced time of life — in this girls’ school? It was unworthy of him.
The door opened, and he forgot his unworthiness, he forgot all. The abnormal attraction,
allurement, charm, call it what you will, which had overcome him when she turned her eyes on him on the coach overcame him again — and tenfold. He thought that it must lie in her eyes, gentle as a dove’s. And yet he did not know. He had not seen her indoors before, and her hair gathered in a knot at the back of her head was a Greek surprise to him; while her blushes, the quivering of her mouth, her figure slender but full of grace, and high-girdled after the mode of the day — all, all were so perfect, so enticing, that he knew not where the magic lay.
But magic there was. And such magic that though he had prepared himself, and though the last thing in his thoughts was to insult her, he forgot himself. As she paused, her hand still resting on the door, her face downcast and distressed, “Good G — d,” he cried, “how beautiful you are!”
And she saw that he meant no insult, that the words burst from him spontaneously. But not the less for that was their effect on her. She turned white, her very heart seeming to stop, she appeared to be about to swoon. While he, forgetting all but her shrinking beauty, devoured her with his eyes.
Until he remembered himself. Then he turned from her to the window. “Forgive me!” he cried. “I did not know what I said. You came on me so suddenly; you looked so beautiful — —”
He stopped; he could not go on.
And she was trembling from head to foot; but she made an effort to escape back to the commonplace. “I came,” she stammered — it was clear that she hardly knew what she was saying— “Miss Sibson told me to come to say that I — I was sorry, sir, that I — I misjudged you yesterday.”
“Yesterday? Yesterday?” he cried, almost angrily. “Bah, it is an age since yesterday!”
She could make no answer to that, though she knew well what he meant. If she answered him it was only by suffering him to gaze at her in an eloquent silence — a silence in which his eyes cried again and again, “How beautiful you are!” While her eyes, downcast, under trembling lashes, her heart beaten down, defenceless, cried only for “Quarter, quarter!”
They were yards apart. The table, and on it Miss Sibson’s squat workbox and a pile of longcloth, was between them. Miss Sibson herself could have desired nothing more proper. And yet —
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 515