CHAPTER VII.
The Rexford family was without a servant. Eliza, the girl they had brought with them from Quebec, had gone to a situation at the Chellaston hotel. The proprietor and manager of that large building, having become lame with rheumatism, had been sorely in need of a lieutenant, or housekeeper, and had chosen one with that shrewdness which had ever been his business capital. His choice had fallen on Eliza and she had accepted the place.
When Robert Trenholme heard of this arrangement he was concerned, knowing how difficult servants were to procure. He took occasion to speak to Miss Rexford on the subject, expressing sympathy with her and strong censure of Eliza.
"Indeed I am not sure but that she has done right," said Sophia.
"You surprise me very much. I thought you made somewhat of a companion of her."
"I do; and that is why, after hearing what she has to say about it, I think she has done right. She has abilities, and this is the only opening in sight in which she can exercise them."
"I should think"—sternly—"that these abilities were better unexercised."
"That is probably because you haven't the least idea what it is to have energies and faculties for which you have no scope"—this archly.
"But I should think the risk of learning pert manners—"
"That is the way men always argue about women. I tell you there is no such risk for an energetic, clever girl as to place her where the rust of unexercised faculties will eat into her soul. It is just because so many girls have to undergo this risk, and cannot do it safely, that the world is so full of women that are captious or morbid or silly. Boys treated in the same way would turn out as badly."
"But there is scope for all the highest faculties of a woman's nature in such a household as yours," cried he.
"Since you say so"—politely—"I am bound to believe it."
"No, but really—do you mean to say you don't think so?"
"You have just expressed yourself so positively that I am curious to know how you came by your knowledge, first, as to Eliza's faculties, and secondly, as to the scope for them in our house."
"It is unkind of you to laugh at me when I am only a humble enquirer after truth."
"Having expressed yourself thus modestly—"
"Nay, but I only said what I would have said about any girl in any such family."
"And you only said it with that simplicity of certainty which every man would have felt on the same subject."
"I cry a truce; I plead for mercy. Let us have out the traits of Eliza's character separately, and examine the scope in detail."
"To begin with, she has wonderful foresight; her power to plan the work of the house so as to get it done as easily as possible often surprises me. Now, of what use is this faculty in the kingdom of my step-mother, who always acts on the last impulse, and upsets every one's plans without even observing them? She has great executive ability, too; but what use is it when, as soon as she gets interested in the accomplishment of something, my mother cries, 'Come, Eliza, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; go and romp with the children!' Then, too, she has plenty of resource; but of what use is that, when the thing she sees to be best in an emergency is seldom the thing that is done? The hotel-keeper is more observing than you; he has noticed that Eliza is no ordinary manager, and offered her high wages."
"You know, of course, what you are talking about," said Trenholme, feelingly, for he had no doubt that her sympathy with Eliza had arisen out of the pains of her own experience; "but in your house there is surely boundless room for humble, loving service; and how much better this girl would be if she could set aside her cleverness to perform such service." He did not add, "as you have done," but there was that in his voice which implied it. He went on: "I do not yet allow that you have disproved my statement, for I said that where she was she had scope for her highest faculties."
"I suppose it is admitted that the highest faculty of man is worship," remarked Sophia, suggesting that he was not speaking to the point; "but that is no reason why a boy with a head for figures should be made a farmer, or that a young woman with special ability should remain a maid-of-all-work."
"And what of the affections—love for children, and for other women better than herself? A girl who has such privileges as this girl had with you has a far better chance of doing well than in a public hotel, even if that were a safe place for her."
Possibly Sophia thought her companion showed too great sensibility concerning Eliza's privileges, for she did not take notice of any but the last part of his sentence.
"It is a safe place for her; for she is able to take care of herself anywhere, if she chooses; and if she doesn't choose, no place is safe. Besides, you know, the place is a boarding-house really, rather than an hotel."
"I am not so surprised at the view you take of it, for you will do more than any one else to supply her place."
This, Trenholme's feeling prophecy, was quite true. Sophia did do more of Eliza's work than any one. She spared her younger sisters because she wanted them to be happy.
In spite of this, however, Sophia was not so much in need of some one's sympathy as were those younger girls, who had less work to do. A large element in happiness is the satisfaction of one's craving for romance. Now, there are three eras of romance in human life. The first is childhood, when, even if the mind is not filled with fictitious fairy tales which clothe nature, life is itself a fairy tale, a journey through an unexplored region, an enterprise full of effort and wonder, big with hope, an endless expectation, to which trivial realisations seem large. It was in this era that the younger Rexford children, up to Winifred, still lived; they built snow-men, half-expecting, when they finished them in the gloaming, that the thing of their creation would turn and pursue them; they learned to guide toboggans with a trailing toe, and half dreamed that their steeds were alive when they felt them bound and strain, so perfectly did they respond to the rider's will. Sophia, again, had reached the third epoch of romance, when, at a certain age, people make the discovery of the wondrous loveliness in the face of the Lady Duty, and, putting a hand in hers, go onward, thinking nothing hard because of her beauty. But it is admitted by all that there is often a stage between these two, when all the romance of life is summed up in the hackneyed word "love." The pretty girls who were nicknamed Blue and Red had outgrown childhood, and they saw no particular charm in work; they were very dull, and scarce knew why, except that they half envied Eliza, who had gone to the hotel, and who, it was well known, had a suitor in the person of Mr. Cyril Harkness, the Philadelphian dentist.
Harkness had set up his consulting room in the hotel, but, for economy's sake, he lodged himself in the old Harmon house that was just beyond Captain Rexford's, on the same road. By this arrangement he passed the latter house twice a day, but he never took any notice of Blue and Red. They did not wish that he should—oh no, they were above that—but they felt sure that Eliza was very silly to dislike him as she did, and—well, between themselves, they found an infinite variety of things to say concerning him, sayings emphasised by sweet little chuckles of laughter, and not unfrequently wandering sighs. Sophia, at their age, had had many suitors, this was the family tradition, and lo, upon their own barren horizon there was only one pretty young man, and he only to be looked at, as it were, through the bars of a fence.
One day, when the blue merino frock was flitting about near the red one, the wearers of both being engaged in shaking up a feather bed, Red suddenly stopped her occupation in some excitement.
"Oh, Blue!" She paused a moment as if she were experiencing some interesting sensation; "oh, Blue, I think I've got toothache."
"No!" cried Blue, incredulously, but with hope.
Again over Red's face came the absorbed expression of introspection, and she carefully indented the outside of her pretty cheek several times with her forefinger.
"Yes, I'm sure I feel it. But no; there, it's gone again!"
"It's just the very way things have," said Blue, lamenting. "For two months we've quite wished we had toothache, and there was Tommy the other night just roaring with it."
"I shouldn't like a roaring toothache," said Red, reflectively.
"Oh, but the worse it was," cried Blue, encouragingly, "the more necessary it would be—" She stopped and shook her head with a very roguish and significant glance at her sister.
"Mamma only put a bag of hot salt to Tommy's," said Red, prognosticating evil.
"But if it were me," cried Blue, with assurance, "I'd not be cured by bags of hot salt. I would insist upon consulting a dentist."
They both laughed a laugh of joyful plotting.
"It was only the other day," said Red, twisting her little English voice into the American accent, "that he told Harold he was right down clever at tinkering a tooth in the most pain_less_ manner."
"Oh, Red, dear Red," begged Blue, "do feel it again, for my sake; it would be so joyfully funny if mamma would take us to him."
"I'd a little bit rather you, had the ache, Blue."
"I'd have it this instant if I could, but"—reproachfully—"it was you that felt the twinge.".
"Well, I don't mind," said Red, heroically, "as long as my cheek doesn't swell; I won't go with a swelled face."
"What would it matter? He knows that your face is alike on both sides usually."
"Still, I shouldn't like it," replied Red, with a touch of obstinacy.
Eliza, however, was of a very different mind about this same young man. She had not taken her new situation with any desire to see more of him; rather she hoped that by seeing him oftener she should more quickly put an end to his addresses.
The "Grand Hotel" of Chellaston was, as Miss Rexford had said, a boarding-house. It had few transient visitors. The only manufacturer of the village, and his wife, lived in it all the year round; so did one of the shopkeepers. Several other quiet people lived there all winter; in summer the prices were raised, and it was filled to overflowing by more fashionable visitors from the two cities that were within a short journey. This "hotel" was an enormous wooden house, built in the simplest fashion, a wide corridor running from front to rear on each storey, on which the room doors opened. Rooms and corridors were large, lofty, and well-lighted by large windows. The dining-room, billiard-room, office, and bar-room, on the ground-floor, together with the stairs and corridors, were uncarpeted, painted all over a light slate grey. With the exception of healthy geraniums in most of the windows, there was little ornament in these ground-floor rooms; but all was new, clean, and airy. The upper rooms were more heavily furnished, but were most of them shut up in winter. All the year round the landlord took in the daily papers; and for that reason his bar-room, large and always tolerably quiet, was the best public reading-room the village boasted.
The keeper of this establishment was a rather elderly man, and of late he had been so crippled by rheumatism that he could walk little and only on crutches. He was not a dainty man; his coat was generally dusty, his grey beard had always a grimy appearance of tobacco about it. He spent the greater part of his day now sitting in a high pivot chair, his crutches leaning against it.
"You see, miss," he said to Eliza, "I'll tell you what the crying need for you is in this house at present; it's to step round spry and see that the girls do their work. It's this way; when I was spry, if I wasn't in the room, the young people knew that, like as not, I was just round the corner; they knew I might be there any minute; at present they know they'll hear my sticks before I see them. It makes all the difference. What I want of you is to be feet for me, and eyes for me, and specially in the dining-room. Mrs. Bantry—that dressy lady you saw in the corridor—Mrs. Bantry told me that this morning they brought her buckwheat cakes, and ten minutes after, the syrup to eat 'em with. How hot do you suppose they were?"
He finished his speech with the fine sarcasm of this question. He looked at Eliza keenly. "You're young," he remarked warningly, "but I believe you're powerful."
And Eliza showed that she was powerful by doing the thing that he desired of her, in spite of the opposition from the servants which she at first experienced. She had a share of hand work to do also, which was not light, but she had high wages, a comfortable room in the top storey, and the women who were boarding in the house made friends with her. She would have thought herself very well off had it not been for her dislike of Harkness, for which one reason certainly was the show he made of being in love with her.
Harkness had his office on the first floor, and he took dinner at the hotel. For about a week after Eliza's advent the young dentist and the young housekeeper measured each other with watchful eyes, a measurement for which the fact that they crossed each other's path several times a day gave ample opportunity. Because the woman had the steadier eyes and the man was the more open-tempered, Eliza gained more insight into Harkness's character than he did into hers. While he, to use his own phrase, "couldn't reckon her up the least mite in the world," she perceived that under his variable and sensitive nature there was a strong grip of purpose upon all that was for his own interest in a material way; but having discovered this vein of calculating selfishness, mixed with much of the purely idle and something that was really warmhearted, she became only the more suspicious of his intentions towards herself, and summoned the whole strength of her nature to oppose him.
She said to him one day, "I'm surprised to hear that you go about telling other gentlemen that you like me. I wonder that you're not ashamed."
As she had hitherto been silent, he was surprised at this attack, and at first he took it as an invitation to come to terms.
"I've a right-down, hearty admiration for you, Miss White. I express it whenever I get the chance; I'm not ashamed of my admiration."
"But I am," said Eliza, indignantly. "It's very unkind of you."
Harkness looked at her, failing to unravel her meaning.
"There ain't anything a young lady likes better than to have an admirer. She mayn't always like him, but she always likes him to be admiring of her."
However true this philosophy of the inner secrets of the heart might be, Eliza did not admit it for a moment. She denounced his behaviour, but it was clear, as the saying is, that she was speaking over the head of her audience. The youth evidently received it as a new idea that, when he had spoken only in her praise, she could seriously object.
"Why now," he burst forth, "if any young lady took to admiring me, thinking a heap of me and talking about me to her friends, d'ye think I'd be cut up? I'd be pleased to that extent I'd go about on the broad grin. I mightn't want to marry just yet; and when I did, I mightn't possibly take up with her; but I can tell you, as soon as I was disposed to marry, I'd have a soft side towards her; I'd certainly think it right to give her the first chance in considering who I'd have. And that's all I ask of you, Miss White. You won't have anything to do with me (why, I can't think), but I just give it put that I'm an admirer, and I hang on, hoping that you'll think better of it."
He was good-natured about it, perfectly open apparently, and at the same time evidently so confident that his was the sensible view of the matter that Eliza could only repeat her prohibition less hopefully.
A little later she found that he had quelled a revolt against her authority that was simmering in the minds of the table-maids. She went at once to the door that was decorated with the dentist's sign.
It was opened by Harkness in the bowing manner with which he was wont to open to patients. When he saw Eliza's expression he straightened himself.
"I want to know what you've been saying to those girls downstairs about me."
"Well now," said he, a little flustered, "nothing that you'd dislike to hear."
"Do you think," she went on with calm severity, "that I can't manage my affairs without your help?"
"By no means." His emphasis implied that he readily perceived which answer would give least offence. "Same time, if I can make your path more flowery—fail to see objections to such a course."
"I don't want you to trouble yourself."
"It wasn't the least mite of trouble," he assured her. "Why, those girls downstairs, whenever I roll my eyes, they just fly to do the thing I want."
"Do you think that is nice?" asked Eliza.
"Lovely—so convenient!"
"I do not like it."
"It don't follow that whenever they roll their eyes, I do what they want. Jemima! no. They might roll them, and roll them, and roll them, right round to the back of their heads; 'twouldn't have an atom of effect on me."
He waited to see some result from this avowal, but Eliza was looking at him as coldly as ever.
"In that respect," he added, "there ain't no one that interferes with your prerogative."
Eliza looked as if he had spoken in a foreign tongue. "I do not understand," she said, and in this she told a lie, but she told it so successfully that he really did not know whether she had understood, or whether it behooved him to speak more plainly.
Before he could make up his mind, she had taken her departure. When she was gone he stood looking darkly, wishing he knew how to hasten the day when she should change her aspect to him.