Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

And then the old piano, which nobody had touched for years—for Joan, who had ended her education at fifteen, had never learned any more music than was contained in a first book of exercises—was sent off to an attic, and a new piano was bought for Lydia. Where it came from no one could quite understand, for it was impossible to believe that Joscelyn had drawn his purse-strings to such an extent; but all the same it arrived, and Lydia, sometimes going into Wyburgh, sometimes having her professor out to the White House, had lessons, and practised diligently, and by-and-bye became in her way a musician, astonishing all the neighbourhood with her powers. A young lady who rode about the country on a handsome horse, and who played the piano, was something altogether new in the place. She might have been much more profoundly instructed without producing half so great an impression. The house altogether rose in the social scale. People came to call who had never been seen near the White House before; and they found the mistress of the house, who had always been genteel, a gentle woman, ladylike and subdued, and her daughter one of the prettiest girls in the county, with a sort of elegance about her which was the inheritance she had received from her mother, strengthened and consolidated by the superior strength which she got from the other side of the house. When Joscelyn himself appeared, which was rarely, his fine form and strength, and the refinement imparted by a crown of white hair, raised him, too, to a sort of pinnacle. People began to say that they found they had done him injustice, and that after all the present representative of the Joscelyns was not unworthy his race. The process was slow, but it was very complete. When Will and Tom appeared with their wives, it was unaccountable how “put out” and “set down” they felt, as if they were going to their landlord’s, where everything was finer than the surroundings they were accustomed to, and not to their father’s, upon whose shabby furniture Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom had looked with contempt. Even Joan looked round her with a curiosity which was mingled with grievance, scarcely able to restrain the thought that what was good enough for her, might certainly have been good enough for Liddy. Liddy it was clear did not think so. And how that little thing knew, or where she had got her instinctive acquaintance with polite ways, Mrs. Selby, who was on the whole proud of Liddy, could not tell; but so it was. The house brightened up generally; here a new carpet, and there a new curtain, made a change in its dingy aspect. The old furniture was made the most of, and old china, and all the stores of a long established house brought out to embellish the parlours; the very hall and passages were brushed up, the table, and the service at the table, so improved, that Joan too thought she must be dining with some of the great county people, whom the Joscelyns had always thought themselves equal to, but who had not acknowledged the Joscelyns.

“The thing that surprises me is where she learned it all,” Mrs. Selby said; “a bit of a thing that has seen no more than the rest of us; but she has a deal of you in her, mother, far more than any of the rest.”

“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, shaking her head, “I never had the courage to settle things my own way. It was not that I didn’t know: I knew very well how things ought to be done.” This little gentle assertion of her gentility Mrs. Joscelyn felt was her due in the new development of affairs. It was not all the discovery of Liddy. She had known well enough all the time. Circumstances had been too much for her; but the refinements of society were her natural atmosphere. Joan looked at her mother with mingled respect and amusement, proud that she was such a lady, yet feeling the joke of her superiority.

“Yes, mother,” she said, “I mind how you and Phil talked the first time he came to the White House. It was as good as a play to hear you. He never let on it was me he wanted, but to have a talk with you, such a superior woman. I did not understand a word you were saying, and I took pains to let him see that the dairy and the stables were what I was most acquainted with; but that didn’t make any difference, you see.”

“You were never one to make the most of yourself, Joan,” said the mother, mildly. “I always knew there was a great deal more in you than you would ever show,” at which Joan laughed; but she was not displeased. And she was proud of her young sister when Liddy came riding over on the last perfection from her father’s stable, looking like a young princess. She was the nearest thing to a child of her own that Joan was ever likely to have, and she forgave her possession of a great many indulgences which no one had thought of conceding to Joan. When it appeared, however, that Lydia had a groom behind her, Mrs. Selby’s soul was stirred within her.

“Now, Liddy,” she said, “I can stand a deal, but you’ll ruin father if you go on like this. A groom behind you! what will you want next? Father’s just infatuated, that is all I can say.”

“It’s only a livery coat,” said Liddy, “that’s all. It doesn’t cost very much. I’ll pay it off my own allowance, and father will never be the worse——”

Here she was interrupted by a shriek from her elder sister. “Your allowance? What next?” she said. “I never had a penny to myself when I was at home, and hard ado to get a bill paid. If it had not been for the butter money, I should never have had a gown to my back.”

“But that would not do for me,” said Lydia, with a toss of her head; and, indeed, to see her here with her airy figure, and her close-fitting habit, and the beautiful bay arching his fine neck in the background, and to suggest any connection with the butter money was a thing which only an elder sister without sentiment or sense of appropriateness could have done. The Duke’s daughter did not look more unlike any such homely particulars; indeed, the Duke’s daughter was not fit, as Joan said, proudly, to herself, to “hold the candle” to little Liddy Joscelyn.

“I don’t know what’s coming of it,” Mrs. Selby said to her husband; “but, Phil, you and me will stand by that child, and see her out of it—will you, goodman?”