“And it may be that you will not like that Mrs. Mathews should see you return with an escort?” replied the young man, again fixing his eyes on hers, and pressing the tips of his fingers to his lips, as he bounded away from her, and sprang lightly over the hedge near which they were walking.
Janet Anderson, meanwhile, quietly pursued her way to the house, and entered it as Mrs. Mathews was crossing the hall to the breakfast-parlour.
Her greeting was exactly such as the heart of Janet longed to receive from her, easy, familiar, and affectionate.
There was not much natural, and not an atom of artificial shyness in Janet Anderson; which, young as she was, may easily be explained by the fact, that from her earliest infancy she had been the almost constant companion of her father, and had always been permitted to associate freely and familiarly with his familiar friends; in addition to which she was by nature and habit sincere, and being equally free both from pretension and affectation, it was pretty nearly impossible that she should be shy.
Nevertheless she was, in her own way, sensitive enough; and had she found upon meeting Mrs. Mathews in the morning, that she had in any way mistaken, or over-rated the affectionate familiarity of her manner over night, a most mimosa-like process would have instantly taken place in her feelings, which would have caused her to shrink from all without, and wrap up all within more closely than anything merely deserving the name of shyness could have caused her to do.
But happily, most happily for both of them, nothing of this kind occurred on either side. The morning song and evening song were both alike; and Mrs. Mathews and Janet Anderson walked arm-in-arm together into the breakfast-room, looking and feeling as if they had known each other for many years.
Old Mr. King was already seated in his accustomed place at the breakfast-table; and there was something very amiable, ay, and very graceful, too, in the manner in which he welcomed the orphan daughter of his old friend.
“You will not think her like him at first, father,” said Mrs. Mathews, watching with interest, almost with anxiety, the effect which the sight of Janet produced on him; and greatly was she delighted when he replied, “You are mistaken, Mary, you are quite mistaken there, for I do see a likeness, a very great likeness. It is in the smile, my dear Oh, yes! you are very like your good father when you smile. Upon my word, I could almost fancy that I see John Anderson before me now, so strongly do you remind me of him!”
Mrs. Mathews, though not a very kissing person, certainly did long at that moment to put her arms round the neck of her father, and give him a salute; she restrained her feelings, however, and the more easily perhaps, because at that moment her well-dressed husband entered the room.
“I am delighted, fair lady!” said he, approaching Janet very much with the step of a venerable dancing-master, “I am very truly delighted to have the honour and happiness of being presented to you at last. It was a great disappointment, a very heavy disappointment to us gentlemen, not to see you last night, fair lady. It was an honour and happiness that we had been anticipating during the whole day.”
“Honour and happiness!” Poor Janet! she had almost forgotten her own destitute condition, but now, for a moment, she remembered it very painfully, and as the smiling Mr. Mathews stood obsequiously bowing before her she blushed vehemently and fixed her eyes upon the ground without replying a word.
Had any such quizzing thoughts as the poor stranger suspected been the origin of Mr. Mathews’ very elaborate grimaces, his chance of forgiveness at the hands, of his wife would have been small, and it might be difficult to say to what lengths her indignation might have carried her; but she knew the good man too well to suspect anything of the kind. Her keen eye was upon him as he offered his ridiculous greeting to her protégée, and she was not slow to perceive that Janet was very painfully oppressed by the manner of it; but she at once acquitted her spouse of any worse wickedness than the intention of captivating her to the very utmost extent that an elderly gentleman can captivate; and it was therefore with a smile of fun, instead of a frown of rage, that she now came to the rescue of the frightened girl.
“My Janet is a shy little puss, Mr. Mathews,” she said, “and you must wait till you are better acquainted before you permit her to be fully aware what a very fine gentleman she is come to live with. He is a very fine gentleman, Janet,” she continued, leading her pretty guest to a chair at the table, close beside her own; “but he is a good sort of man into the bargain, and therefore you must not look as if you were afraid of him.”
“Afraid of me!” exclaimed Mr. Mathews, in a voice of very genuine alarm, “God forbid! Mrs. Mathews — God forbid! my dear; perhaps, as she is young she has never been treated quite like a grown-up young lady yet, and I am sure I would not put her out of the way for the world.”
And then Janet, having tact enough to perceive that he spoke with the most perfect sincerity, recovered herself immediately, and sat down without feeling afraid of anybody, and with a lightness of heart which she would have gravely declared, about twenty-four hours before, it was quite impossible she could ever feel again.
CHAPTER XXI.
“AND here comes Stephen!” joyously exclaimed the happy grandfather, who had been anxiously looking for the young gentleman’s appearance, though ho did not venture to propose waiting for him; “here comes Stephen at last! Good morning, Sir! Where have you been, I wonder?”
“I have been with the gardener, Sir,” said the young man; “he has been showing me his beautiful kitchen-garden. I should not have been so late if he had not kept me to look at his fruit-trees. I really think I have been with him for above an hour.”
“You have got a taste for gardening, I suppose,” said Mrs. Mathews, as she returned the circular bow by which the young man saluted the party “Oh, I hope so!” he replied; “I would not be without it for the world!”
“That is so like me!” exclaimed Mr. Mathews. “Isn’t it like me?”
This inquiry, as it was addressed to no one in particular, received no particular answer; but Mrs. Mathews’ best apology for this silence was the seeming eagerness with which she said, “We appear to have forgotten that our young friends have never met before.”
Upon which Stephen Cornington immediately started up, as if to prepare himself in the most respectful style for the introduction that was to follow; but Janet prepared for it differently, for, addressing Mrs. Mathews, she said, without the slightest appearance of embarrassment, “We have introduced ourselves already; I met this gentleman when I was walking, and he tied up these violets and primroses for me.”
“And have you been making acquaintance with the gardener, too?” said Mrs. Mathews; “and did he exhibit his wonderful fruit-trees to you as well as to Mr. Stephen?”
“No, Mrs. Mathews,” replied Janet, pulling forth a few of her finest violets from her nosegay, and presenting them to her, “these sweet things did not grow in the garden but in the fields. It was in the field, where all that beautiful high grass is growing, that I met Mr. Cornington.”
Mrs. Mathews gave the glance of an instant to the young man, but it was long enough for her to perceive that his colour was considerably heightened, and the bow that he made in acknowledgment of Janet’s recognition was made in silence.
Mrs. Mathews would have greatly liked to give a scrutinizing glance at the face of Janet likewise; she would greatly have liked to ascertain whether this quiet little démenti had been given avec intention, but she could not manage it, for Janet was by this time busily occupied in buttering a roll.
But the silence of Mr. Stephen Cornington did not last long; he did not address himself, however, to the ladies, but to his grandfather.
“You seem to be living in a very nice, green, flowery country, my dear father,” said he; “Have you got any town near you?”
“Oh yes; several pretty considerable towns,” said Mr. Mathews, “and at no great distance; but we must show you all that by degrees, — and to Miss Anderson likewise,” he added, with a m
ost gracious bow and smile.
“Do not call her Miss Anderson; call her Janet,” said Mrs. Mathews, “and then she will feel herself at home.”
“To be sure, my dear, to be sure; and then everything will be pleasant, and as it ought to be; and you must call my dear boy Stephen, I hate to hear you call him Mr. Cornington! I hate it already, and I know I shall hate it more and more every day.”
In reply to this, Mrs. Mathews nodded her head two or three times in quick succession, which seemed perfectly to satisfy her husband, who was in the highest possible spirits, and nodded and smiled at her in return with a degree of vivacity which seemed intended to prove that he felt as young as he looked.
“And now, Mrs. Mathews, my dear,” he resumed, “now that we are all got so comfortably together, we must begin to think a little, and settle a little as to what we had better do first in the way of getting some sort of amusement for our young people. Do you know that I think we have been a little behindhand in our civilities to the Otterbornes, my dear; don’t you think we have?”
“I am always behindhand in my civilities to everybody, I believe,” replied Mrs. Mathews; “but our neighbours are very indulgent.”
“That’s quite true, quite true, indeed!” replied Mr. Mathews, with the air of a man of deep intelligence, who suddenly found himself awakened to the consciousness of a great truth which had hitherto escaped his notice; but after the interval of a moment, during which he appeared to be digesting the new idea which had been presented to him, he added, “And therefore, my dear love, I think the very best thing that we could do to-day would be for us all to go and call at the Manor-house.”
It did not appear by any means certain that Mrs. Mathews heard this, for she neither answered, looked up, nor exhibited any other symptom of having heard and comprehended what her husband had said to her.
Nevertheless she did hear him, as was made manifest by what passed afterwards; but the interval shall be occupied by a brief episode, which may be useful as an explanation of what will follow.
The neighbourhood of Weldon, though not a crowded one, had a fair sprinkling of gentlemen’s families living within easy distance of each other. The only one of these who bore a title was Sir Charles Otterborne; to him and his family, therefore, must be accorded the honour of precedence in the review we are going to take of these country worthies.
But it must be confessed that, as far as he is concerned personally, it would be difficult to find any individual less deserving honour or distinction of any kind than Sir Charles Otterborne; for he was silly, selfish, and unprincipled; and though his title was an old title, and that the acres which still remained to him had been attached to his name still longer than the title itself, it may be doubted whether all the dignity of the fine old mansion called Otterborne Manor-house would have enabled him to keep the station he held in the county, if ho had inhabited it alone.
But there was a Lady Otterborne, who was as deserving of all admiration and esteem as he was the reverse; and, moreover, they had a son, who very distinctly bore evidence to the dictum of Buffon, that “les races se feminissent,” for ho was as like his mother, and unlike his father, as it was possible for a son to be.
The father was fair, his hair of the colour which civil people call auburn, and rude people call red, and his eyes of the very palest possible shade of greenish grey. He was not a short man, but so greatly disposed to plumpness in every feature and in every limb, as to make him appear much shorter than he really was.
His son, on the contrary, from being as thin as his father was the reverse, appeared to be a much taller man; though in truth he was not so. His eyes and hair, like those of his mother, were nearly as dark as if his origin had been Spanish, and, like her, too, his features were noble, regular, and highly expressive; and every movement and gesture was graceful.
Before Lady Otterborne had passed through the twenty-four years which succeeded her marriage, she had been pre-eminently lovely; and she was so still in the eyes of all who preferred grace and intellectual expression to bloom. She had married Sir Charles, or, rather, by the influence of an uncle she had been married, to him, at the terribly early age of seventeen; and though pale and thin both constitutionally and from great mental suffering, the beauty of her features and the slightness of her form made her look even younger than she really was; so that strangers constantly, and with most perfect bonne foi, took her for the sister of her son, who, on his side, looked older than he really was.
The attachment between this mother and son was such as perhaps can only exist under circumstances in some degree similar, — for it might, in fact, be said that each was the only friend of the other.
Except that it made her the mother of such a son, the marriage of Lady Otterborne had been a most unfortunate one. Though well born, she was, at the time of her marriage, portionless, and already an orphan; and it was for this reason that her unprincipled uncle so eagerly accepted for her the proposal of Sir Charles, though his deeply encumbered estate rendered it impossible for him to settle upon her more than three hundred a year.
The rent-roll of this encumbered estate stated its revenue to be five thousand; and so it might have been, perhaps, had it not been so deeply mortgaged as to leave a clear income of somewhat less than two.
Herbert Otterborne, the only offspring of this ill-fated marriage, was about eighteen years old, when a distant relation of Lady Otterborne very unexpectedly left her thirty thousand pounds; and most earnestly did the helpless heiress implore her silly and improvident husband to use this unexpected wealth in clearing his encumbered estate. To this proposal he never made the least objection; on the contrary, indeed, he never ceased declaring, whenever the subject was mentioned, that the doing so was the only employment of the money that he had ever thought of; and the hearing this was the only satisfaction that Lady Otterborne ever derived from her legacy, — excepting, indeed, that her son was entered at Christchurch; an expense which Sir Charles had declared, and very truly, was totally beyond his means before.
Lady Otterborne had endured all the privation and inconvenience of an income sadly insufficient to support the mansion and grounds of Otterborne Manor, with the most uncomplaining resignation; and, as far as depended upon her, with the most meritorious economy: and most assuredly the period during which she was permitted to give up her horses, and send off her own maid and the butler, was one of much greater peace of mind than that which followed upon Sir Charles getting possession of her legacy; for not all her gentle influence, though steadily backed by that of her young son, could prevent her husband from re-modelling his establishment, and living at the rate of five or six thousand a year.
Such was the household at the Manor-house, and such was the ostentatious hospitality of Sir Charles, that he did all he could to fill his house with guests, even when the greatly stronger attractions of London prevented him from always receiving them in person.
There was much mutual kindness of feeling and much mutual esteem between Lady Otterborne and Mrs. Mathews; and perhaps a still stronger feeling of mutual liking and companionship between the young man of the Manor-house and the old lady of the den, — one proof of which was, that he had actually been more than once permitted to enter the said den, in order to find his way amidst the labyrinth of old volumes that reposed there, and to carry away with him any that he might choose to select. No degree of intimacy to this amount had ever existed as yet between the ladies; one reason for which was, that the health of Lady Otterborne was too delicate to permit her leaving home at all during the winter; and whenever this is the case it rarely happens that the invalid finds time enough within the limits of an English summer, so completely to put off stay-at-home habits as to become very sociable. Nevertheless, when Mrs. Mathews did at length condescend to reply to her husband’s proposal, it was by saying, —
“I shall have no objection to calling on Lady Otterborne to-day, if Janet has no objection to accompanying me.”
And hereupon, as in
duty bound, Janet ventured to assure her that whithersoever she was pleased to take her, thither she was quite certain she should be pleased to go.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE intelligent reader will easily guess that, the breakfast being ended, Mrs. Mathews took solitary, quiet, and secure possession of Janet for the purpose of introducing her to that secret bower in which the chief materials of her life’s history were to be found; and then an event occurred which had never occurred before during the course of all the years during which that secret bower had been her chief abode. This event was no less than the deliberately pronouncing a decree by which Janet was made as free of the premises as Mary Mathews, ci-devant Mary King, was herself.
It is extremely probable that at the moment this decree was announced to her, Janet Anderson was far from being conscious either of the strength of the impulse by which it was dictated, or of the importance of the privilege it conveyed; but the sense of this grew upon her so sensibly, and so evidently, as time wore on, that Mrs. Mathews had no reason to suspect that it was not fully appreciated.
It is certain that the first aspect of this oddly-shaped and oddly furnished apartment, as well as the queer, narrow, twisting little staircase which led to it, was not much calculated to excite admiration; but by degrees the young girl seemed to awaken to the consciousness of the peaceful seclusion, and the almost sacred leisure which seemed to reign there. And then she began timidly, and as if fearful of appearing presumptuous, to peep at the titles of the great miscellaneous ill-arranged mass of books that in one way or another seemed to occupy every part of the room.
“Is Mr. King a great reader?” said Janet, who was greatly puzzled to understand why such a vast quantity of books should have been collected together when it was very evident that it had not been the object of the collector to add the dignity of a library (commonly so called) to the habitable apartments of the mansion.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 394