“She is a ward of my husband’s, Miss Fausset.”
“Indeed! A cousin, I suppose?”
“Hardly so near as that. A distant connection.”
Mrs. Fausset’s tone expressed a wish not to be bored by praise of the clever-looking girl. People soon perceived that Miss Fausset was to be taken no more notice of than a piece of furniture. She was there for some reason known to Mr. and Mrs. Fausset, but she was not there because she was wanted—except by Mildred. Everybody could see that Mildred wanted her. Mildred would run to her as she sat apart, and clamber on her knee, and hang upon her, and whisper and giggle with her, and warm the statue into life. Mildred would carry her tea and cakes, and make a loving fuss about her in spite of all the world.
Bell was a power in the house in Upper Parchment Street. She was that kind of old servant who is as bad as a mother-in-law, or even worse; for your mother-in-law is a lady by breeding and education, and is in somewise governed by reason, while your trustworthy old servant is apt to be a creature of impulse, influenced only by feeling. Bell was a woman of strong feelings, devotedly attached to Mrs. Fausset.
Twenty-seven years ago, when Maud Donfrey was an infant, Martha Bell was the young wife of the head-gardener at Castle-Connell. The gardener and his wife lived at one of the lodges near the bank of the Shannon, and were altogether superior people for their class. Martha had been a lace-maker at Limerick, and was fairly educated. Patrick Bell was less refined, and had no ideas beyond his garden; but he was honest, sober, and thoroughly respectable. He seldom read the newspapers, and had never heard of Home Rule or the three F.s.
Their first child died within three weeks of its birth, and a wet-nurse being wanted at the great house for Lady Castle-Connell’s seventh baby, Mrs. Bell was chosen as altogether the best person for that confidential office. She went to live at the great white house in the beautiful gardens near the river. It was only a temporary separation, she told Patrick; and Patrick took courage at the thought that his wife would return to him as soon as Lady Castle-Connell’s daughter was weaned, while in the meantime he was to enjoy the privilege of seeing her every Sunday afternoon; but somehow it happened that Martha Bell never went back to the commonly-furnished little rooms in the lodge, or to the coarse-handed husband.
Martha Bell was a woman of strong feelings. She grieved passionately for her dead baby, and she took the stranger’s child reluctantly to her aching breast. But babies have a way of getting themselves loved, and one baby will creep into the place of another unawares. Before Mrs. Bell had been at the great house three months she idolised her nursling. By the time she had been there a year she felt that life would be unbearable without her foster-child. Fortunately for her, she seemed as necessary to the child as the child was to her. Maud was delicate, fragile, lovely, and evanescent of aspect. Lady Castle-Connell had lost two out of her brood, partly, she feared, from carelessness in the nursery. Bell was devoted to her charge, and Bell was entreated to remain for a year or two at least.
Bell consented to remain for a year; she became accustomed to the comforts and refinements of a nobleman’s house; she hated the lodge, and she cared very little for her husband. It was a relief to her when Patrick Bell sickened of his desolate home, and took it into his head to emigrate to Canada, where he had brothers and sisters settled already. He and his wife parted in the friendliest spirit, with some ideas of reunion years hence, when the Honourable Maud should have outgrown the need of a nurse; but the husband died in Canada before the wife had made up her mind to join him there. Mrs. Bell lived at the great white house until Maud Donfrey left Castle-Connell as the bride of John Fausset. She went before her mistress to the house in Upper Parchment Street, and was there when the husband and wife arrived after their Continental honeymoon. From that hour she remained in possession at The Hook, Surrey, or at Upper Parchment Street, or at any temporary abode by sea or lake. Bell was always a power in Mrs. Fausset’s life, ruling over the other servants, dictating and fault-finding in a quiet, respectful way, discovering the weak side of everybody’s character, and getting to the bottom of everybody’s history. The servants hated her, and bowed down before her. Mrs. Fausset was fond of her as a part of her own childhood, remembering that great love which had watched through all her infantine illnesses and delighted in all her childish joys. Yet, even despite these fond associations, there were times when Maud Fausset thought that it would be a good thing if dear old Bell would accept a liberal pension and go and live in some rose and honeysuckle cottage among the summery meadows by the Thames. Mrs. Fausset had only seen that riverside region in summer, and she had hardly realised the stern fact of winter in that district. She never thought of rheumatism in connection with one of those low white-walled cottages, half-hidden under overhanging thatched gables, and curtained with woodbine and passionflower, rose and myrtle. Dear old Bell was forty-eight, straight as a ramrod, very thin, with sharp features, and eager gray eyes under bushy iron-gray brows. She had thick iron-gray hair, and she never wore a cap; that was one of her privileges, and a mark of demarcation between her and the other servants—that and her afternoon gown of black silk or satin.