CHAPTER XVII.
LIFE’S LITTLE AMENITIES.
etermined to do all she could to please Florence, Lucy donned a pretty evening dress which she had already worn on the few occasions when she and Charlie had left their “ain fireside.” She had freshened it up with white net ruching about the throat and arms. She indulged herself with a cluster of roses, and in order to arrive as early as possible, she treated herself to a cab, though otherwise, in the warm summer evening, her thrifty inclination would have been to shroud herself in a cloak and eke out the journey by an omnibus.
Still there seemed something exhilarating in the little outburst of elegance, ease and harmless “extravagance.” For once, surely, Florence would be quite satisfied. And certainly Mrs. Brand’s glance swept all over Lucy, from her little comb to her very shoes, even before she kissed her.
Mrs. Brand was not yet in her drawing-room awaiting her guests, but in her own apartment completing her dinner toilet. A tired sullen-looking servant was in attendance, and was curtly dismissed by her mistress when Lucy came in.
“It’s getting late, Lucy,” said Mrs. Brand, “and the few minutes we can have now is all the time we shall enjoy together. If I want a hand, you’ll help me, won’t you? I’m glad to get rid of Sophy, she’s so stupid and clumsy.”
“You haven’t started a maid, have you, Flo?” asked Mrs. Challoner.
Her sister looked at her, half-bewildered, then replied—
“No, that’s the parlour-maid. I know what you are thinking—that she will soon be telling me ‘it is not her place’ to push in a hairpin, or fasten a hook. I ought to have a proper maid, I know. But when I said so to Jem, he said there were already six women in the house to help his wife to do her part of the partnership, while to get the money which keeps the whole affair floating, there are only himself and two clerks. Jem turns that way sometimes. It’s very ridiculous of him. But he generally comes right by-and-by. Men do, if one knows how to manage them. The crosser he is the sooner it’s over, and the more sorry he is, and the more ready to make amends.”
“But six women, Flo?” echoed Lucy, “Is it really so? That’s an increase, isn’t it?”
“Six women and a boy—the page,” Florence returned in a stage whisper. “Jem actually forgot all about him, for, of course, he should have counted in somewhere, either on my side or Jem’s.”
“That’s an increased contingent, isn’t it?” asked Lucy.
“Well, yes, I believe it is. I’ve not seen you for such a time. There’s cook and her scullery-maid, and the housemaid, and the parlour-maid, and the schoolroom-maid, and the nursery governess. And it is not one more than is needed. Mrs. Jinxson, next door, has only one child, but she has seven women servants, and a footman instead of a boy. And she wasn’t brought up as we were, Lucy. She was quite a common person. You can see that still, under all the veneer. You’ll meet her to-night. I say, Lucy, how nice you look! How do you manage it? I believe the fairies dress you sometimes! I am so glad you’ve come. It is such folly of you to tie yourself up to Hugh. Why, a queen’s children have to be left to servants sometimes. I don’t think you had any high hopes of your present girl, but I suppose she is giving you satisfaction, and is turning out a swan, as geese have a knack of doing under your hands.”
Lucy was not quite proof against Florence’s little flatteries. They reminded her of old times. She answered playfully—
“My ‘present girl,’ as you call her—you must mean Jane Smith—is now my past girl, and is represented by another who is a woman of about forty.”
“Dear, dear! So you’ve had another change! Even immaculate you! Now you won’t wonder at my changes. You used not to find it easy to believe they were necessary. But you won’t readily get another Pollie. Such good fortune does not recur.”
Lucy did not remind her sister of her former doubts and sneers concerning Pollie, and she little knew that Florence’s rash and thoughtless talk had prematurely cost her the services of that young woman.
“What went wrong with Jane Smith?” asked Mrs. Brand.
“She had a lover whose visits I permitted,” answered Lucy bravely, fully aware that after this she would receive no more flattery, but only censure. “And she changed him for another without one week’s intermission, and without one word of explanation to me. Then when she felt I would remonstrate, she gave me notice, and has taken service with my opposite neighbours.”
Florence laughed elfishly.
“Poor Lucy!” she cried. “When will you learn sense? The only way to do is to forbid all visitors whatever, as I do.”
“Very Draconian and very unfair that seems to me,” said Lucy, “and apt, like all Draconian laws, to be ignored.”
“Of course it is,” answered Florence. “And I know how it is done. Our gates, back and front, are heavy, and we can hear them open or shut. But our next-door neighbour—the other side from the Jinxsons—is a doctor, and he leaves his gates open, that a night call may be readily and noiselessly attended to at his hall door. Consequently, my girls’ ‘young men’ come through his gate at night-fall, and leap over the low railing between our gardens. They depart in the same way.”
“Then of what service is your rule?” asked Lucy.
“It saves us from all responsibility,” Florence answered. “Whoever is in the house, or whatever happens, it is all absolutely against our strict orders, and the girls have no excuse to fall back upon. Of course, we know—and they know—that we cannot enforce our rule, seeing that Jem and I go out so much of an evening.”
“Well, I think it is all very unfair and demoralising,” said Lucy. “A respectable girl who wishes to obey you is reduced to solitude, and her decent friends and connexions are kept away, while any hussy who does not care a whit for your regulations is able to enjoy herself to her heart’s content. It is precisely the young men who are prepared ‘to leap over walls’ whom I would wish to keep out of my house!”
“Well, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating,’” returned Florence. “And now that you have lost your paragon, and are reduced to the rank and file of domestic servants, you do not seem to get on much better than the rest of us. What sort of person have you got now?”
“A middle-aged woman—as I told you, a Highland woman. She was recommended to me by Mrs. Bray’s Rachel,” said Lucy.
“She ought to be another paragon, then,” remarked Florence; “for Rachel is a model. It needs to be a saint to live with Mrs. Bray, who keeps her maid ‘going’ from morning to night. And evidently you start with implicit trust in your Highland woman, as you have so promptly trusted Hugh to her society, in defiance of all your stoutly defended principles.”
“I think I might trust him with her,” Lucy answered mildly. “Nevertheless I should not have done so yet. I have Miss Latimer staying with me, and Hugh is left in the company of young Tom Black. Don’t you remember the nice lad Charlie was so interested in, and who was one of my visitors on that awful Christmas Day? He has come to board with us.”
Florence sprang up, and confronted her sister.
“What?” she cried, with startling emphasis.
“He has come to board with us,” Lucy repeated. “He had lost the good home Charlie had found for him, and as I saw this Clementina Gillespie was a person who could be trusted to keep the housework regularly done, I suggested that he should come to us. He makes life much happier for Hugh than I can do myself just now.”
“Well, to be sure!” said Florence. “And so you’ve turned lodging-house keeper. You don’t mean to say you needed to do it, Lucy?” she asked with a bitter tone. “In that case you might first have spoken to Jem and me——”
“I cannot say I needed to do it. So far as money is concerned, everything is going on as I arranged and hoped,” returned Lucy. “Rather I felt that the house is the better for another friendly inmate, full of good nature and spirits. I do not repent of it. Miss Latimer is old, the servant is elderly, and I am often too tired to talk to Hugh or play with him. If it will comfort your gentility to know there is not much money profit in the new arrangement, I can give you that assurance, Florence. Young Black pays me exactly what he gave Mrs. Mott in her little suburban house. It is a trifle over his actual expenses (as I can see by watching the weekly bills). But it cannot be said to take its share in the upkeep of a house in Pelham Street. It is a friendly agreement. Of course Tom could not afford more.”
“Then you give up your privacy—your social status—for absolutely nothing!” cried Florence. “I never did see anybody like you, Lucy. If you don’t want to make a profit out of your lodger, why did you take one? You could have got scores of young ladies glad to live in such a house as yours, without any salary—or even, I do believe, paying a trifle, and you could have called her Hugh’s ‘governess’ or your own ‘companion.’ You might have taken Hugh away from the Kindergarten, and let her teach him at home. Any young lady could teach Hugh all he needs to learn yet.”
Lucy shook her head. “Every young lady has not been taught how to teach,” she answered. “If she had, it would not be fair to take her training for nothing.”
“Oh, fair enough, if she were ready to give it,” said Florence. “There are plenty of girls, with a little means of their own—who can’t get on with their own people, and don’t care to submit to the restraints of really salaried employment—who would have just suited you. And, as I say, I have no doubt there are many such who would even pay you as much as this boy does. For Pelham Street is a good address (nobody knows yours is the only small house there), and your appointment as art-teacher at the Institute would satisfy their friends of your eligibility as a chaperon.”
Lucy shook her head more vigorously. “I am not eligible as a chaperon,” she said. “I want my evenings for rest, and my Saturdays for my child and my house. And I am prejudiced against girls of the very type you say I might have found so ready to come to me. I certainly would not subject Hugh to the casual instructions of such errant misses. I desire his school education to proceed in orderly fashion. Therefore my household furnishes no occupation or interest for any who are without regular occupation or interests of their own outside of it. But you miss the true point of the position, Florence. The girls you speak of are all strangers to me. I know none such. But I do know Tom Black. Charlie also knew him and liked him. If I had known equally well some young woman-clerk or teacher also in Tom’s plight, I should have made the same suggestion to her which I made to him.”
“Miss Latimer ought to have been ready to teach Hugh and look after him, considering she is staying with you,” observed Florence.
“Miss Latimer has her own pupils,” Lucy answered. “She has as much work as her strength is equal for. And she is not my guest, Florence, but my boarder. She pays her own expenses, and I am much indebted to her for giving me the comfort of her society.”
“What can she afford to pay?” Florence asked contemptuously. “One comfort is that it sounds well to say you have your old governess living with you. Nobody will think she pays anything.”
Lucy was severely silent.
“And to open your house only to lower it, to get in people earning wages or salaries, or whatever they please to call them!” groaned Florence. “If you chose to do such a thing, you might have acted so differently! It might not have been a bad idea if you had worked it out wisely. I’ve known reduced ladies who have really kept their establishments going in this way, taking care never to receive anybody but those who could pay really well. There are always wealthy families ready to pay handsomely to secure a happy home for some member who was born with a want or whose mind has failed. Jem has some friends who pay three hundred pounds a year for the care of their sister, quite a gentlewoman and cultivated, but just a little ‘touched.’ I believe he could have secured her for you if we had dreamed of such a thing. But of course you’d have had to keep a second servant and a first-rate table. Still, if you’d managed well, I believe it might have paid you better than going to the Institute. And it would have kept you quite in touch with social life, instead of shutting you out of it, as your daily engagements do.”
Florence poured her words out in such a rapid stream that Lucy could not launch a word on the current. “My dear sister,” she said, “to my mind there is no shame in any honest work or domestic arrangement. But it seems to me that one imports pain into these domestic arrangements precisely in the degree in which money matters and ‘profits’ come into them rather than individual selection and personal harmony. And certainly while I can earn bread in any other way I shall not bring a half crazy woman to live in the house with Hugh.”
“Well, still there are others,” persisted Florence. “There’s the Arcuts’ son. He isn’t an idiot; he is quite gentlemanly; he just has a want. Of course it is painful for his people, and they pay ever so much for a home apart for himself and his man-servant. They like him to live in a lady’s house and to sit at her table, so as to keep up refined habits. Or there are many well-to-do married couples who like to board, because they don’t get on very well alone together, or the wife doesn’t care for the trouble of housekeeping. I believe Jem and I may do it, when we are old and the girls are married off.”
“Florence,” repeated Lucy patiently, “I tell you again, you miss the whole point of the position. I did not do this for money. I did it because under present conditions it seemed an opportunity for the interchange of neighbourly service. If Charlie had been at home, I am sure he would have asked the boy to be our guest for a week or two, till some fit home was found for him, which Charlie would have helped to find. I have done the next best thing—the one thing possible under present circumstances, and I receive a favour in giving one, which is always the most wholesome and pleasant thing for both parties concerned.”
“It seems to me that you consider everybody and everything except your own position and the feelings of your relations,” returned Florence. “But it is high time we were downstairs; and I must put the whole matter out of my mind for the present, or I shall not be fit to receive my visitors. That ever I should live to see the day——”
She bustled off leaving her sentence unfinished, Lucy meekly following her.
If Lucy’s news had “shocked” Florence, Lucy was certainly startled by the new standpoint in the Brand establishment! If the five people to whom she was introduced—quite strange to her, and in most elaborate toilettes—were “one or two friends,” what represented “formality” in the Brand ideas? Of course, the hostess’s sister was introduced to them all—a murmur of names, a waving of bowing figures, amid which Lucy caught the name of Jinxson, and was able to associate it with a little woman, in emerald green brocade, a thatch of tawny curls beetling over a brow which needed no dwarfing. Then she found herself relegated to the more special society of a very tall man, very dark, with a sounding Highland name, whose prefix alone fastened itself upon her ears, so that ever afterwards she thought of him as “Mr. Mac.” He opened conversation with her by asking first if she had seen the last opera, and then if she contemplated going “for the autumn” to the Highlands or to Norway? Then he murmured, “May I have the honour,” and they fell into the procession filing into the dining-room.
The dining-room was a still further revelation of the long distance the Brands’ customs had travelled during the few months since Lucy had last joined in their social life. Fine napery they had always had, but now the long table-cloth was edged with rich embroidery and heavy lace. The table centre was a creamy film over pale rose-satin, and that note of colour was carried out in every detail of china, glass and floral decoration. The latter was a wonderful arrangement, which Lucy at once knew it must have taken hours to work out. The menu was equally elaborate; one out-of-season delicacy followed another. The wines and liqueurs seemed to Lucy to be equally rare and choice, judging from their names whispered in her ear ever and again by two men in severely correct evening dress who “waited at table,” and were in their turn waited upon by the housemaid and the parlour-maid.
One of the ladies exclaimed on the loveliness of the floral scheme. “What genius you have at your service, Mrs. Brand!” she cried.
“Oh, not at my service only,” Florence replied nonchalantly. “I could not trust such a thing to my maids, and I could not spare time for it myself. Gosson, the florist, knows of one or two young women whom he recommends for such work.”
“It needs much taste,” said the Highland gentleman.
“Oh, I understand they are quite superior people,” Florence answered. “When I asked if one could rely on their honesty, he gave me the history of the one he meant to send. The daughter of a doctor, I think Gosson said, who had found it so impossible to provide for his family by his profession that he was tempted into speculation, and, of course, lost everything and committed suicide. It looked odd to see the dismal-looking girl in black creating such visions of beauty.”
“Ah, you have such a sensitive heart, dear Mrs. Brand,” said Mrs. Jinxson. “I should not wonder you helped her with most valuable suggestions. I think I trace your exquisite taste.” Florence smiled and did not reply.
Conversation on the whole was not very brisk. Possibly there was too much shifting of plates and variety of flavours to admit of that. Lucy found herself seated between her tall escort and a stout man with a closely shaven head. The former, finding it hard to discover any subject on which Lucy was readily responsive, devoted himself chiefly to Florence at the head of the table. His remarks concerned bags of game, a county hunt and a forthcoming military ball. Lucy’s other neighbour, whose name she had never caught, made a polite effort to include her in a conversation going on between himself and Mr. Brand. It consisted of mutual congratulations as to the magnificent prospects of a certain “company,” laudation of a man whom Lucy believed to be a most dangerous enemy to British freedom and honour, and scornful denunciations of another whom she regarded as their faithful champion. Lucy could not attempt expostulation or argument under such circumstances, but she was thankful that her silences were soon sufficiently understood to check any further appeals for her sympathy and concurrence. These were readily tendered by Mrs. Jinxson, who indeed went beyond the gentleman in her derogation of the statesman whose influence they deprecated.
When dessert made its appearance, little Muriel and Sybil came upon the scene. The one was a trifle older than Lucy’s Hugh, the other as much younger. They were artistically dressed, with fair hair floating over their shoulders. “Just like little pictures!” cried Mrs. Jinxson ecstatically. Lucy’s Highland escort began to pay court to Sybil as she stood between him and her mother. He heard her whispered appeal for a pear which lay in a dish immediately on his right hand.
“Yes, little lady, you shall have it at once,” he said, “but you must pay me for it. Do you think you will be able to afford one little kiss?”
The child looked up at him with her hard blue eyes. “Give me the pear,” she said.
“Certainly; I will trust my payment to my little lady’s honour,” said the gentleman.
Sybil snatched the pear from his hand.
“I will kiss oo when oo washes oor face,” she said rudely in a sharp childish treble. The other guests laughed. The Highlander coloured beneath his swarthy complexion.
Muriel had worked her way round to her Aunt Lucy. “Why are you dressed in black?” she whispered. “The governess always wears black; but that’s because she’s only the governess. But then you’re only a governess too, aren’t you? Nurse said so.”
“I think the lady opposite us wishes to speak to you,” Lucy said, disregarding her niece’s remarks, and noting that the elderly dame at the other side of the table was making enticing gesticulations.
Muriel shook herself. “I’m not going,” she said, in a stage whisper. “I don’t like her. I don’t like people who wear spectacles.”
“But, Muriel,” pleaded Lucy, in a low tone, “you ought not to make personal remarks of that sort! And your mamma herself will have to wear spectacles if she lives long enough.”
“Then I hope she won’t,” said Muriel. She was going to say something else, but interrupted herself to put out her tongue at Sybil at the other side of the table. Possibly Mrs. Brand herself noticed this performance, and as rebuke to such children at such a moment would have probably had still more compromising results, all she could do was to make the signal for the ladies’ retreat into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Jinxson evidently held the position of intimate in the Brand mansion. She and Florence promptly began to exchange confidences, while Lucy took up her rôle of the hostess’s sister by trying to interest the spectacled dame. That lady, however, preferred to strike into the other conversation.
“Do I hear you say you are changing your footman, Mrs. Jinxson?” she said.
“Yes,” said that lady, turning to her with animation. “I was just congratulating dear Mrs. Brand on only keeping a page. It is far better to secure, for occasions, such perfect attendance as we have had to-night than to have to endure one’s own man-servant, who is always either a clumsy raw hand or a finished villain—either quarrelling with one’s maids or making love to them. But Mr. Jinxson will have his own way; he has always been used to men-servants, and he will not hear reason.”
Mr. Jinxson’s father, a very respectable man, had kept a pleasant little hotel in a provincial town.
“We are parting with our present footman,” Mrs. Jinxson proceeded, “because he is so crude. Nothing will mellow him. When we have gentlemen’s dinner parties—as we so often do—and story-telling and jokes are going, his face is covered with a broad grin. Once I actually heard him giggle.” She turned to Lucy. “Such a thing is unendurable, is it not? It is the A B C of a servant’s training, man or woman, that not a muscle shall move whatever is said or done. What right have they to take an interest in anything but their work?”
Now this very difficulty had occurred in some of the houses where Lucy’s friend, Miss Latimer, had been governess. She and Lucy had discussed it together. Miss Latimer had told her that Dr. Thomas Guthrie, the great preacher, having heard such a complaint raised against a servant, had remarked that, for his part, if a servant were able to conceal all interest in family mirth or misery going on before his eyes, he should be inclined to wonder what else he had acquired equal skill in concealing. Lucy told this little story with a smile and without any comment.
The spectacled lady stared at her stonily. Mrs. Jinxson gave a polite sniff, and there was a little motion of Florence’s head which effectually suppressed her sister.
But at that moment the gentlemen came upstairs, and the conversation drifted into chit-chat about books which nobody seemed to have read, and pictures which nobody seemed to have seen. Then there was “a little music”—the elderly spectacled dame contributing “My mother bids me bind my hair,” and Mr. Jinxson following suit with “My love, she’s but a lassie yet.” Then somebody’s carriage was announced, and the little party broke up, Lucy naturally being the last to leave.
“Flo, you’ve never asked me the details of my last news from Charlie,” whispered Lucy—speaking playfully and meaning no reflection on her sister—as she and the Brands stood on the stairs waiting for the drawing up of Lucy’s cab.
“There, make a grievance and a fuss over that!” cried Florence, her nerves breaking between the tension in which they had been held by her anxiety that “all should go off well,” and the consciousness of sundry lapses which she felt sure had not escaped the lynx eyes of Mrs. Jinxson. “Of course, I expect you to tell me anything that is worth telling! But you just lie in wait to catch——”
“Your cab, mum,” said the page.
And Lucy hastily kissed Florence and kept her news to herself.
(To be continued.)