The House of Egremont

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Madame Michot invited them all to breakfast with her and Jacques; and they all accepted. The table was spread in the orchard, and the proud Roger Egremont enjoyed very much this meal with the director of the King’s Opera, the landlady and her son, and the turnkey’s niece. They were a very merry party. Bess was in the highest spirits; here at last was that chance, so longed for, to rise into a respectable sphere of life,—for Bess did not count the gaoler’s trade as respectable. And singing was so easy! She could not keep from doing it if she tried. She supposed there would be some hardships, but she knew the ugly face of hardship too well to be frightened at it, and perhaps Roger—here Bess sternly checked her vagrant imagination. The others did not know, and she earnestly hoped might never find out, the story of her childhood and youth; but Roger knew it, and could never forget it.

That day and for some days afterward, there was much carolling to the accompaniment of a crazy clavichord in Monsieur Mazet’s lodgings; for he was to remain some days at St. Germains, and immediately began Bess’s musical education. Bess took to music and singing with ardor and intelligence; she had a strong frame and was never tired, although everybody within hearing, except Monsieur Mazet, got a little weary sometimes of her incessant trilling. On the third day, after meeting with Monsieur Mazet, she found an instrument more to her liking than Monsieur Mazet’s clavichord. This was Dicky Egremont’s fiddle.

On that afternoon, Bess, who was always provided with knitting, was sitting on a bench in the orchard, her fingers flying. Monsieur Mazet, having thrummed and strummed the whole morning on the clavichord, teaching his apt pupil, was taking a rest in his lodgings. Madame Michot and Jacques were at the inn. Madame Michot noticed with approval that Bess showed no inclination to hang about the inn, but when her work was over went off to the orchard, or to the little closet of a room she had, to spend her leisure. It was not possible that the presence of a girl so handsome, and lately from England, should not be known to the merry gentlemen who frequented Madame Michot’s common room; and had not Bess kept out of the way she could easily have made herself a toast, and likewise a subject of gossip, among those same merry gentlemen. But Bess had learned prudence in a hard school, and had learned it well, and, her ideas of the chivalry of men having been formed upon those who dwelt in Newgate, she had by no means a high opinion of the sex in general. Therefore, when she saw approaching her in the pleasant August afternoon a young man in the black dress of a seminarian, she quickly determined that the orchard would not very long be large enough for both. And having heard bad accounts of papists and papistry in general, the fact that the young man wore a monkish dress set her still more against him. Presently he came near, and bowed and smiled and blushed,—for Dicky Egremont seemed always blushing,—and Bess could not for the life of her keep from returning his friendly glance.

“’Tis Mistress Bess Lukens I have the honor of addressing,” said Dicky in his sweet and youthful voice.

Bess rose and dropped a courtesy, trying to scowl, but failing.

“Pray let me introduce myself. I am Mr. Richard Egremont, a cousin of Mr. Roger Egremont.”

“Are you Dicky?” cried Bess, surprised out of herself, and then coloring at her inadvertence.

“I am Dicky to Roger,” replied Dicky, “and naturally you never heard him speak of me by any other name. Know, Mistress Bess, Roger has told me of all your goodness to him while he was in prison, and for that reason, when I came to the inn just now and heard you were here, I ventured to come and pay you my respects. For all who are good to my cousin, Roger Egremont, are friends of mine.”

“Thank you, Mr. D—I mean Mr. Egremont. ’Twas little I could do for Mr. Roger, but I had the best will in the world.”

Dicky had seated himself at the other end of the garden bench, and Bess had resumed her knitting. The afternoon sun sifted down upon her great plaits of auburn hair, bringing out all the red and gold in it, and the tawny depths in her brown eyes. Dicky noticed what Madame Michot had,—the evidences of hard work on Bess’s hands, and he thought he knew her to be, from Roger’s description, one of the best women in the world.