Works of Ellen Wood, page 351
“Why, what can I do towards it?” responded Lionel.
“You can do something. You can talk. They have got Decima into her room, and I must be up and down with her. I don’t like leaving Lucy alone the first day she is in the house; she will take a prejudice against it. One blessed thing, she seams quite simple — not exacting.”
“Anything but exacting, I should say,” replied Lionel. “I will stay for an hour or two, if you like, mother, but I must be home to dinner.”
Lady Verner need not have troubled herself about “entertaining” Lucy Tempest. She was accustomed to entertain herself; and as to any ceremony or homage being paid to her, she would not have understood it, and might have felt embarrassed had it been tendered. She had not been used to anything of the sort. Could Lady Verner have seen her then, at the very moment she was talking to Lionel, her fears might have been relieved. Lucy Tempest had found her way to Decima’s room, and had taken up her position in a very undignified fashion at that young lady’s feet, her soft, candid brown eyes fixed upwards on Decima’s face, and her tongue busy with reminiscences of India. After some time spent in this manner, she was scared away by the entrance of a gentleman whom Decima called “Jan.” Upon which she proceeded to the chamber she had been shown to as hers, to dress; a process which did not appear to be very elaborate by the time it took, and then she went downstairs to find Lady Verner.
Lady Verner had not quitted Lionel. She had been grumbling and complaining all that time. It was half the pastime of Lady Verner’s life to grumble in the ears of Lionel and Decima. Bitterly mortified had Lady Verner been when she found, upon her arrival from India, that Stephen Verner, her late husband’s younger brother, had succeeded to Verner’s Pride, to the exclusion of herself and of Lionel; and bitterly mortified she remained. Whether it had been by some strange oversight on the part of old Mr. Verner, or whether it had been intentional, no provision whatever had been left by him to Lady Verner and to her children. Stephen Verner would have remedied this. On the arrival of Lady Verner, he had proposed to pay over to her yearly a certain sum out of the estate; but Lady Verner, smarting under disappointment, under the sense of injustice, had flung his proposal back to him. Never, so long as he lived, she told Stephen Verner, passionately, would she be obliged to him for the worth of a sixpence in money or in kind. And she had kept her word.
Her income was sadly limited. It was very little besides her pay as a colonel’s widow; and to Lady Verner it seemed less than it really was, for her habits were somewhat expensive. She took this house, Deerham Court, then to be let without the land, had it embellished inside and out — which cost her more than she could afford, and had since resided in it. She would not have rented under Mr. Verner had he paid her to do it. She declined all intercourse with Verner’s Pride; had never put her foot over its threshold. Decima went once in a way; but she, never. If she and Stephen Verner met abroad, she was coldly civil to him; she was indifferently haughty to Mrs. Verner, whom she despised in her heart for not being a lady. With all her deficiencies, Lady Verner was essentially a gentlewoman — not to be one amounted in her eyes to little less than a sin. No wonder that she, with her delicate beauty of person, her quiet refinements of dress, shrank within herself as she swept past poor Mrs. Verner, with her great person, her crimson face, and her flaunting colours! No wonder that Lady Verner, smarting under her wrongs, passed half her time giving utterance to them; or that her smooth face was acquiring premature wrinkles of discontent. Lionel had a somewhat difficult course to steer between Verner’s Pride and Deerham Court, so as to keep friends with both.
Lucy Tempest appeared at the door. She stood there hesitating, after the manner of a timid school-girl. They turned round and saw her.
“If you please, may I come in?”
Lady Verner could have sighed over the deficiency of “style,” or confidence, whichever you may like to term it. Lionel laughed, as he crossed the room to throw the door wider by way of welcome.
She wore a light shot pink dress of peculiar material, a sort of cashmere, very fine and soft. Looking at it one way it was pink, the other, mauve; the general shade of it was beautiful. Lady Verner could have sighed again: if the wearer was deficient in style, so also was the dress. A low body and short sleeves, perfectly simple, a narrow bit of white lace alone edging them: nothing on her neck, nothing on her arms, no gloves. A child of seven might have been so dressed. Lady Verner looked at her, her brow knit, and various thoughts running through her brain. She began to fear that Miss Tempest would require so much training as would give her trouble.
Lucy saw the look, and deemed that her attire was wrong.
“Ought I to have put on my best things — my new silk?” she asked.
My new silk! My best things! Lady Verner was almost at a loss for an answer. “You have not an extensive wardrobe, possibly, my dear?”
“Not very,” replied Lucy. “This was my best dress, until I had my new silk. Mrs. Cust told me to put this one on for dinner to-day, and she said if Lady — if you and Miss Verner dressed very much, I could change it for the silk to-morrow. It is a beautiful dress,” Lucy added, looking ingenuously at Lady Verner, “a pearl gray. Then I have my morning dresses, and then my white for dancing. Mrs. Cust said that anything you found deficient in my wardrobe it would be better for you to supply, than for her, as you would be the best judge of what I should require.”
“Mrs. Cust does not pay much attention to dress, probably,” observed Lady Verner coldly. “She is a clergyman’s wife. It is sad taste when people neglect themselves, whatever may be the duties of their station.”
“But Mrs. Cust does not neglect herself,” spoke up Lucy, a surprised look upon her face. “She is always dressed nicely — not fine, you know. Mrs. Cust says that the lower classes have become so fine nowadays, that nearly the only way you may know a lady, until she speaks, is by her quiet simplicity.”
“My dear, Mrs. Cust should say elegant simplicity,” corrected Lady Verner. “She ought to know. She is of good family.”
Lucy humbly acquiesced. She feared she herself must be too “quiet” to satisfy Lady Verner. “Will you be so kind, then, as to get me what you please?” she asked.
“My daughter will see to all these things, Lucy,” replied Lady Verner. “She is not young like you, and she is remarkably steady, and experienced.”
“She does not look old,” said Lucy, in her open candour. “She is very pretty.”
“She is turned five-and-twenty. Have you seen her?”
“I have been with her ever so long. We were talking about India. She remembers my dear mamma; and, do you know” — her bright expression fading to sadness— “I can scarcely remember her! I should have stayed with Decima — may I call her Decima?” broke off Lucy, with a faltering tongue, as if she had done wrong.
“Certainly you may.”
“I should have stayed with Decima until now, talking about mamma, but a gentleman came in.”
“A gentleman?” echoed Lady Verner.
“Yes. Some one tall and very thin. Decima called him Jan. After that, I went to my room again. I could not find it at first,” she added, with a pleasant little laugh. “I looked into two; but neither was mine, for I could not see the boxes. Then I changed my dress, and came down.”
“I hope you had my maid to assist you,” quickly remarked Lady Verner.
“Some one assisted me. When I had my dress on, ready to be fastened, I looked out to see if I could find any one to do it, and I did. A servant was at the end of the corridor, by the window.”
“But, my dear Miss Tempest, you should have rung,” exclaimed Lady Verner, half petrified at the young lady’s unformed manners, and privately speculating upon the sins Mrs. Cust must have to answer for. “Was it Thérèse?”
“I don’t know,” replied Lucy. “She was rather old, and had a broom in her hand.”
“Old Catherine, I declare! Sweeping and dusting as usual! She might have soiled your dress.”
“She wiped her hands on her apron,” said Lucy simply. “She had a nice face: I liked it.”
“I beg, my dear, that in future you will ring for Thérèse,” emphatically returned Lady Verner, in her discomposure. “She understands that she is to wait upon you. Thérèse is my maid, and her time is not half occupied. Decima exacts very little of her. But take care that you do not allow her to lapse into English when with you. It is what she is apt to do unless checked. You speak French, of course?” added Lady Verner, the thought crossing her that Mrs. Cust’s educational training might have been as deficient on that point, as she deemed it had been on that of “style.”
“I speak it quite well,” replied Lucy; “as well, or nearly as well, as a French girl. But I do not require anybody to wait on me,” she continued. “There is never anything to do for me, but just to fasten these evening dresses that close behind. I am much obliged to you, all the same, for thinking of it, Lady Verner.”
Lady Verner turned from the subject: it seemed to grow more and more unprofitable. “I shall go and hear what Jan says, if he is there,” she remarked to Lionel.
“I wonder we did not see or hear him come in,” was Lionel’s answer.
“As if Jan could come into the house like a gentleman!” returned Lady Verner, with intense acrimony. “The back way is a step or two nearer, and therefore he patronises it.”
She quitted the room as she spoke, and Lionel turned to Miss Tempest. He had been exceedingly amused and edified at the conversation between her and his mother; but while Lady Verner had been inclined to groan over it, he had rejoiced. That Lucy Tempest was thoroughly and genuinely unsophisticated; that she was of a nature too sincere and honest for her manners to be otherwise than of truthful simplicity, he was certain. A delightful child, he thought; one he could have taken to his heart and loved as a sister. Not with any other love: that was already given elsewhere by Lionel Verner.
The winter evening was drawing on, and little light was in the room, save that cast by the blaze of the fire. It flickered upon Lucy’s face, as she stood near it. Lionel drew a chair towards her. “Will you not sit down, Miss Tempest?”
A formidable-looking chair, large and stately, as Lucy turned to look at it. Her eyes fell upon the low one which, earlier in the afternoon, had been occupied by Lady Verner. “May I sit in this one instead? I like it best.”
“You ‘may’ sit in any chair that the room contains, or on an ottoman, or anywhere that you like,” answered Lionel, considerably amused. “Perhaps you would prefer this?”
“This” was a very low seat indeed — in point of fact, Lady Verner’s footstool. He had spoke in jest, but she waited for no second permission, drew it close to the fire, and sat down upon it. Lionel looked at her, his lips and eyes dancing.
“Possibly you would have preferred the rug?”
“Yes, I should,” answered she frankly, “It is what we did at the rectory. Between the lights, on a winter’s evening, we were allowed to do what we pleased for twenty minutes, and we used to sit down on the rug before the fire, and talk.”
“Mrs. Cust, also?” asked Lionel.
“Not Mrs. Cust; you are laughing at me. If she came in, and saw us, she would say we were too old to sit there, and should be better on chairs. But we liked the rug best.”
“What had you used to talk of?”
“Of everything, I think. About the poor; Mr. Cust’s poor, you know; and the village, and our studies, and — But I don’t think I must tell you that,” broke off Lucy, laughing merrily at her own thoughts.
“Yes, you may,” said Lionel.
“It was about that poor old German teacher of ours. We used to play her such tricks, and it was round the fire that we planned them. But she is very good,” added Lucy, becoming serious, and lifting her eyes to Lionel, as if to bespeak his sympathy for the German teacher.
“Is she?”
“She was always patient and kind. The first time Lady Verner lets me go to a shop, I mean to buy her a warm winter cloak. Hers is so thin. Do you think I could get her one for two pounds?”
“I don’t know at all,” smiled Lionel. “A greatcoat for me would cost more than two pounds.”
“I have two sovereigns left of my pocket-money, besides some silver. I hope it will buy a cloak. It is Lady Verner who will have the management of my money, is it not, now that I have left Mrs. Cust’s?”
“I believe so.”
“I wonder how much she will allow me for myself?” continued Lucy, gazing up at Lionel with a serious expression of inquiry, as if the question were a momentous one.
“I think cloaks for old teachers ought to be apart,” cried Lionel. “They should not come out of your pocket-money.”
“Oh, but I like them to do so. I wish I had a home of my own! — as I shall have when papa returns to Europe. I should invite her to me for the holidays, and give her nice dinners always, and buy her some nice clothes, and send her back with her poor old heart happy.”
“Invite whom?”
“Fraulein Müller. Her father was a gentleman of good position, and he somehow lost his inheritance. When he died she found it out — there was not a shilling for her, instead of a fortune, as she had always thought. She was over forty then, and she had to come to England and begin teaching for a living. She is fifty now, and nearly all she gets she sends to Heidelberg to her poor sick sister. I wonder how much good warm cloaks do cost?”
Lucy Tempest spoke the last sentence dreamily. She was evidently debating the question in her own mind. Her small white hands rested inertly upon her pink dress, her clear face with its delicate bloom was still, her eyes were bent on the fire. But that Lionel’s heart was elsewhere, it might have gone out, there and then, to that young girl and her attractive simplicity.
“What a pretty child you are!” involuntarily broke from him.
Up came those eyes to him, soft and luminous, their only expression being surprise, not a shade of vanity.
“I am not a child; why do you call me one? But Mrs. Cust said you would all be taking me for a child, until you knew me.”
“How old are you?” asked Lionel.
“I was eighteen last September.”
“Eighteen!” involuntarily repeated Lionel.
“Yes; eighteen. We had a party on my birthday. Mr. Cust gave me a most beautifully bound copy of Thomas à Kempis; he had had it bound on purpose. I will show it to you when my books are unpacked. You would like Mr. Cust, if you knew him. He is an old man now, and he has white hair. He is twenty years older than Mrs. Cust; but he is so good!”
“How is it,” almost vehemently broke forth Lionel, “that you are so different from others?”
“I don’t know. Am I different?”
“So different — so different — that — that—”
“What is the matter with me?” she asked timidly, almost humbly, the delicate colour in her cheeks deepening to crimson.
“There is nothing the matter with you,” he answered, smiling; “a good thing if there were as little the matter with everybody else. Do you know that I never saw any one whom I liked so much at first sight as I like you, although you appear to me only as a child? If I call here often I shall grow to love you almost as much as I love my sister Decima.”
“Is not this your home?”
“No. My home is at Verner’s Pride.”
CHAPTER XII.
DR. WEST’S HOME.
The house of Dr. West was already lighted up. Gas at its front door, gas at its surgery door, gas inside its windows: no habitation in the place was ever so extensively lighted as Dr. West’s. The house was inclosed with iron railings, and on its side — detached — was the surgery. A very low place, this surgery; you had to go down a step or two, and then plunge into a low door. In the time of the last tenant it had been used as a garden tool-house. It was a tolerably large room, and had a tolerably small window, which was in front, the door being on the side, opposite the side entrance of the house. A counter ran along the room at the back, and a table, covered with miscellaneous articles, stood on the right. Shelves were ranged completely round the room aloft, and a pair of steps, used for getting down the jars and bottles, rested in a corner. There was another room behind it, used exclusively by Dr. West.
Seated on the counter, pounding desperately away at something in a mortar, as if his life depended on it, was a peculiar-looking gentleman in shirt-sleeves. Very tall, very thin, with legs and arms that bore the appearance of being too long even for his tall body, great hands and feet, a thin face dark and red, a thin aquiline nose, black hair, and black prominent eyes that seemed to be always on the stare — there sat he, his legs dangling and his fingers working. A straightforward, honest, simple fellow looked he, all utility and practicalness — if there is such a word. One, plain in all ways.
It was Janus Verner — never, in the memory of anybody, called anything but “Jan” — second and youngest son of Lady Verner, brother to Lionel. He brother to courtly Lionel, to stately Decima, son to refined Lady Verner? He certainly was; though Lady Verner in her cross moods would declare that Jan must have been changed at nurse — an assertion without foundation, since he had been nursed at home under her own eye. Never in his life had he been called anything but Jan; address him as Janus, or as Mr. Verner, and it may be questioned if Jan would have answered to it. People called him “droll,” and, if to be of plain, unvarnished manners and speech is to be droll, Jan decidedly was so. Some said Jan was a fool, some said he was a bear. Lady Verner did not accord him any great amount of favour herself. She had tried to make Jan what she called a gentleman, to beat into him suavity, gracefulness, tact, gloss of speech and bearing, something between a Lord Chesterfield and a Sir Roger de Coverley; and she had been obliged lo give it up as a hopeless job. Jan was utterly irreclaimable: Nature had made him plain and straightforward, and so he remained. But there was many a one that the world would bow down to as a model, whose intrinsic worth was poor compared to unoffending Jan’s. Lady Verner would tell Jan he was undutiful. Jan tried to be as dutiful to her as ever he could; but he could not change his ungainly person, his awkward manner. As well try to wash a negro white.
