“Veil now, vat does donty vonty mean, I should like to know? You’d better give over the child to me, ma’am — I knows his vays, and he knows my vords.”
The style in which this dainty damsel, who was frightfully marked by the smallpox, approached, was not conciliatory, for her red arms were stuck akimbo, and her nose, always of the retroussé order, turned up in very evident contempt.
“Mind your manners, Phebe!” cried her mistress, but Phebe strode on towards the low rocking-chair on which Mrs. Major Allen was seated, and placing herself before her as close as it was possible to stand, while a pair of squinting eyes, that were intended to look boldly at her, seemed wandering, heaven knows where, repeated in no very silvery tones—” You’d better give over the child to me.”
Upon every former occasion when Mrs. Major Allen had mixed herself up with the nursery arrangements of her friend, the scene of action, however active and interesting the business going on, had always been the parlour. But this happened to be washing-day, and the absence of Phebe being absolutely certain till dinner-time, Mrs. Sheepshanks gave herself up altogether, as she said, to supply her place, and nothing less than the pertinacity of Mrs. Allen could have obtained an entrance into the house. Once pursued, however, into that receptacle of all litter, her nursery, the poor lady was perhaps not sorry to have some one as willing as Mrs. Allen to nurse a baby — for she had made up her mind that day to have a general review of all her children’s heads; and accordingly the major’s lady was put in possession of the nursing-chair, and permitted, as we have seen, to revel in the delight of handling a baby to her heart’s content.
So earnestly was she engaged in unravelling the manifold mysteries of baby buttons and strings^ that, notwithstanding Phebe’s abrupt address, Mrs. Allen did not raise her eyes towards the girl, till she stood close before her face; and when at last she did so, she pushed the chair violently back, very nearly let little Van Diemen fall out of her arms, and uttered, “Oh! good gracious me!” in a voice that almost amounted to a scream.
“Lord have mercy! what’s the matter, Mrs. Allen?” cried Mrs. Sheepshanks, pushing aside the head upon which she was operating, “Van isn’t taken with a fit, is he?”
By this time the agitated Mrs. Major Allen had risen from the nursing-chair, and having hastily laid the baby in the cradle beside it, she approached her friend with strong symptoms of agitation.
“For Heaven’s sake come into the parlour with me for one moment, my dear Mrs. Sheepshanks!” she said. “I will not detain you more than a moment. I am going home directly, but indeed, indeed, I must speak to you first.”
“Dear me! I don’t know what to do, I’m sure, with the butter and beer, and all lying about in this way. Wouldn’t it do Mrs. Allen if I was to come in and hear what you want to say after dinner?”
“Good Heaven, no! you have no idea of the state of mind I am in! Indeed, you must let me speak to you directly.”
Thus urged, poor Mrs. Sheepshanks, though looking exceedingly distressed, resigned her sponge and her combs, placed everything upon the chimney-piece, as much out of reach as she could — wiped her hands upon her linen apron, before she took it off, and then followed her terrified-looking guest to the parlour.
“Oh, my dear friend! tell me your opinion honestly and truly — I conjure you not to deceive me! You have had great experience — you must he able to form a judgment. Do you think there is any danger of my child’s being like that dreadful girl?”
“What girl, ma’am? What is it you mean, Mrs. Allen?” said Mrs. Sheepshanks, looking a little cross, and as if she did not as yet perceive any good and sufficient reason for her having been forced to abandon her important avocations in the nursery.
“What girl? — oh!” with a violent shudder, “that frightful, frightful girl that you call Phebe. For Heaven’s sake, Mrs. Sheepshanks, don’t be out of temper. Don’t be angry with me, but consider my situation! Though I have been a married woman, as you know, for some years, this is the first time — .
In short, you know what my condition is, and now I implore you to tell me if you think there is any danger, nervous and delicate as I am, that my looking up so very suddenly close under that horrid girl’s face, is likely to mark the child.”
“What, with the smallpox, Mrs. Allen?” said Mrs. Sheepshanks, with great simplicity.
“I don’t know. Mercy on me! how should I know? Smallpox, squinting, that dreadful nose too! Oh, Mrs. Sheepshanks, Mrs. Sheepshanks! all the happiness, all the delight I have promised myself, will be lost and destroyed for ever, if my child is born in any way like that horrid girl!”
Here Mrs. Major Allen burst into a very passionate flood of tears, and wrung her hands so piteously, as she fixed her streaming eyes upon her neighbour’s face, that the good lady, though thinking her cause of grief rather visionary, could not refuse her sympathy, and answered very kindly, “No, indeed, Mrs. Allen, I don’t think you have got the least bit of reason to fear any such thing. It is much more likely, depend upon it, that your dear babe should resemble its good-looking papa, or your own self, Mrs. Allen, who have got such good, striking features, than a girl that you never happened to look at but once.”
“That’s it, Mrs. Sheepshanks — that’s just the most shocking and provoking part of it. If I did not know that the Major had always been considered as exceedingly handsome, and myself too — I won’t deny it, for why should I? — I was always counted something out of the common way, in that respect, and if I did not know all this as well as I do, I should not mind the thing half so much.”
“But why should your child be like Phebe Perkins, Mrs. Allen? The girl is no beauty, to be sure, I’m not going to say she is; but yet I can’t understand why her ugliness should put you into such a way as this,” replied Mrs. Sheepshanks, with some little severity of emphasis.
“For mercy’s sake don’t he angry with me my dear, dear friend. For mercy’s sake don’t reproach me! Something very unfortunate will happen, I’m quite sure, if you do. You can’t think, I am certain you can’t, how I feel. ’Twas the suddenness, Mrs. Sheepshanks, the shocking suddenness, with which I looked up, that made the danger, as I take it. Tell me, for pity’s sake, without being hasty with me, did any such thing ever happen to you?”
“What thing, Mrs. Allen? The seeing Phebe?”
“No, no, that I suppose you got accustomed to a little at a time, as I may say, and by degrees. So unlike poor unlucky me! But what I mean is, if any of your children were ever marked in any way?”
“Dear me, no, Mrs. Allen,” replied this fond mother of many children, with a very natural air of displeasure, “can’t you see that they are not?”
“Oh yes, to be sure — not in sight, not in sight, certainly,” sobbed out the agitated lady.
“Nor out of sight either, I assure you, ma’am.”
“Oh my dear, what a happy, happy, woman you are! and so many of them like you too!” rejoined Mrs. Allen, in so very flattering and conciliatory a tone, that her friend’s little feeling of displeasure vanished at once, and cordially seizing her hand, she said, — , “Don’t you worry yourself about any such nonsense, my dear Mrs. Allen. You go home, and look in the glass, and there it is that you’ll see what your dear baby will be most like.”
There was something in this assurance so calculated to touch the heart of Mrs. Major Allen, that she could not resist it. With an emotion over which she really seemed to have no control, she threw her arms round the neck of the kind prophetess, and bestowed upon her a very fervent kiss.
“Heaven grant that your words may come true, my dear, dear Mrs. Sheepshanks!” she exclaimed, with her eyes once more flashing through her tears. “I do declare, that if I could have a girl exactly like what I was when Captain Tate first came to Silverton, I should be the very happiest woman in the world!”
“Well then, I’m sure I hope you will. But I suppose you’d like it to be a little like the Major too?” said Mrs. Sheepshanks, playfully.
; “Oh! about that I don’t know, my dear. If you could know what I was at the time I talk about, I don’t think you’d advise any alteration — unless it was to be a boy, indeed.”
“And then I suppose you would be better pleased still. Most ladies like to have a boy first.”
“But I don’t though,” replied Mrs. Major Allen, rather sharply. “That’s all very well for people who are never celebrated for having anything particular about them. But where there is beauty, and great family beauty particularly, it is certainly most desirable to have a girl, because it’s likely to answer best.”
“Well then,” returned Mrs. Sheepshanks, rising hastily, for she heard sounds alarmingly indicative of a general nursery riot, “well then, dear Mrs. Allen, go home, sit down before your looking-glass, and take my word for it, there is a deal better chance that your child will be like what you see there, than to poor pock-fretten Phebe. Good bye, good bye.”
Mrs. Major Allen delayed not a moment longer, but took leave as briskly as Mrs. Sheepshanks herself could desire. There was certainly something like superstitious respect in the reverence with which Mrs. Major Allen listened to every word à propos of maternity which fell from the lips of this lady. Looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, and terribly afraid that some acquaintance might stop her ere she reached her home, Mrs. Allen hurried forward, with as rapid a step as she considered prudent under existing circumstances, and the moment her door was opened to her, hastened up stairs without pausing to make any of the little domestic inquiries which usually followed her return.
For a moment she sat down to recover breath, and then slowly and carefully, and without too much exertion, permitted herself to draw the table, which served her for a toilet, into what she considered to be the most advantageous light. Not the strongest, perhaps, but that which by former experiments she knew would show the most favourably to her own eyes, that large portion of her charms still left unscathed by time.
Having hazarded this active, but unnecessary exercise, Mrs. Allen placed herself in a soft and ample chair, and sat for some minutes of complete and soothing repose, with her mirror at the right angle, and her own still bright eyes very fondly fixed upon it. The motive for the occupation in which she was employed, perhaps gave an additional charm to her expression, and she thought she was almost as handsome as ever.
There was, however, none of that dangerous confidence of self-conceit in Mrs. Allen, which leads some people to fancy that they are quite handsome enough, and need no improvement. On the contrary, in her very best days she had never encouraged the belief that her beauty, remarkable as it was, required no assistance from human ingenuity and skill. She knew the contrary, and even now, alone as she was, and under the influence only of motives the most pure and sublime that can elevate the heart (or the art) of woman, she shook off the feeling of fatigue which her exertions at Mrs. Sheepshanks’s had occasioned, and ceased not to add touch to touch, and divide, and subdivide ringlet from ringlet, till, as she gazed on the finished picture, she felt that there was no more to be done!
A poet has said that Industry to beauty adds new grace.
And though it is probable that this expression originally alluded to labours of another kind, it is impossible not to perceive that it may be beautifully applied to the charming woman whose image is now before our mind’s eye.
Nothing, surely, can be imagined more touching than the occupation and appearance of Mrs. Allen at this time; and a painter would do well to seize and embody a moment of feeling so calculated to find sympathy in every female heart. We all know that pretty women love to adorn themselves for conquest, and we smile, though with no very harsh satire, at the vanity that flutters the while around their fair bosoms.
But how different was the spectacle offered by Mrs. Major Allen, as she sat in her lone chamber in Van Diemen’s Land! Her whole soul occupied, it is true, with the idea of her own beauty; but in the hope, not of slaying whole hecatombs of lovers with that beauty, as perhaps she might have dreamed of in the giddy days of yore, but of transmitting it to a dear pledge of wedded love, who should carry it down through unnumbered generations of posterity!
Callous must be the heart, and lifeless the imagination, that does not kindle at this image!
CHAPTER II.
AT length the happy hour arrived, and Mrs. Major Allen became a mother. Only those who have waited as long as this lady had done for the honoured blessing can be capable of appreciating her feelings on the occasion.
It is not, nevertheless, recorded of her by those who knew her best, that any very remarkable development of the organ of philo-progenitiveness was perceptible in her formation. The triumphant gladness of her heart arose from a complex variety of intellectual impressions with which this sort of mere animal organisation had, in truth, very little to do. It was the consciousness that, while almost all other married ladies had children, she had none, which had galled her. It was the idea that her well-secured money would “have to go to somebody who did not belong to her” that rankled at her heart; and it was a vague suspicion that her gay husband occasionally alluded to her childless condition, and quizzed her ignorance of all nursery concerns in his conversation with other, and perhaps younger, ladies, which irritated her spirit. It was, therefore, the cure for all these gnawing griefs that she blessed and hailed with rapture, when a bouncing, stout-screaming little girl was put into her arms.
Most ladies love a little fuss upon such occasions, and it is not very wonderful if Mrs. Major Allen coveted a good deal. Though feeling as little like an invalid as any lady ever did under such circumstances, she would not abate an hour of the regular stipulated month’s confinement, which she had heard repeatedly spoken of as the proper period of retreat for ladies of delicate health. Not, indeed, that she desired to live alone till the baby-moon’s evolution was complete — on the contrary, not only her friend and constant preceptress, Mrs. Sheepshanks, but all the other genteel ladies of Sydney, were given to understand that they might come to look at Mrs. Major Allen and her beautiful baby every morning if they liked it; and as very sufficient caudle, and vast quantities of plum-cake were daily distributed, they all did like it very much, and came accordingly.
Any lady of any land might, indeed, have found much in Mrs. Allen’s Sydney dressing-room, at this time, to repay the trouble of a visit, provided, that is to say, it was within tolerably easy reach of them. It might not, perhaps, have been worth while to sail round half the world in order to enter it; yet there was a vast deal there both to see and to admire.
Reading people already know that Mrs. Major Allen was remarkable for her taste in dress; and that wherever display was called for, her peculiar genius appeared to the greatest advantage. The retirement of a sick chamber might, by many, be considered as likely to check, at least for a time, this propensity for striking decoration; but such was not the case with Mrs. Allen; and, though in a different style, her toilet was as distinguished during her first month of maternity as at any period of her existence. From the hour she quitted her bed, which, feeling herself exceedingly strong and well, she insisted upon doing with as little loss of time as possible, her costume was perfect. This part of the business had been long meditated upon, and the preparation for it having commenced at a very early stage of her hopes, was persevered in with unwearied industry to the end. Her long-loved satin-stitch was, upon this occasion as heretofore, of the most essential use to her; indeed, without it, she never could have reached that perfection of attire for herself, her room, and her child which became the admiration of Sydney and all its neighbouring villas.
Where a great effect is produced by very delicate touches, it is not altogether easy either to follow the process, or do justice to the result; but what is both original and beautiful should never be passed over in silence, from the doubting timidity of those whose duty it is to describe it.
The curtains of Mrs. Major Allen’s apartment were, upon this occasion, of full rose-coloured calico, covered with a specie
s of muslin so open in its texture as to be exported for mosquito-nets. Upon the draperies of these she had, some weeks before her confinement, affixed some white scallops of her own invention, each one having a little tassel of rose-coloured calico, cut into slips, attached to it. Her sofa, removed from the parlour for the occasion, was clothed in the same style, and elicited an exclamation of wonder and delight from every one who approached it. Three small cushions, carelessly balanced on the back and arms of this extensive couch, were also of the same gay and happy hue, and not a corner of them but showed in patterns of labyrinthine grace and intricacy the powers of a skilful needle.
Mrs. Major Allen herself was habited in a robe of white, which, though not of a particularly fine texture, was really exquisitely elegant, as all the Sydney ladies agreed, from the profusion of elaborate satin-stitch bestowed upon its cuffs and collar.
“I always said so,” observed Mrs. Major Allen to her nurse, the first time she put on one of the two beautiful robes thus prepared, “I always said that there was nothing in the whole world like satin-stitch for giving an elegant finish; and I will tell you what, nurse, you may depend upon it, that amongst all the things that a woman does, there is nothing, positively nothing, that answers so well as satin-stitch.”
It is no use to talk of THE cap of Mrs. Major Allen upon this occasion, for she not only wore a succession of caps, all more or less indebted to the same favourite decoration for their superiority to all other caps — but moreover, with a refinement of taste and ingenuity of arrangement only to be equalled, perhaps, by the manner in which progressive sunshine is made to steal upon the pictures of the diorama, almost every day was made to chronicle her approach to convalescence by some delicate strengthening, if I may so say, of her beauty. The rouge, which long habit had made so habitually a part of her daily puttings on, that within twenty-four hours of Miss Allen’s birth, the maternal cheek had received
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