“Why did you not let us know you were Clive’s aunt?” Ethel asked, putting out her hand. The old lady took hers very kindly, and said, “Because you didn’t give me time. And do you love Clive, my dear?”
The reconciliation between Miss Honeyman and her lodger was perfect. Lady Anne wrote a quire of notepaper off to Sir Brian for that day’s post—only she was too late, as she always was. Mr. Kuhn perfectly delighted Miss Honeyman that evening by his droll sayings, jokes, and pronunciation, and by his praises of Master Glife, as he called him. He lived out of the house, did everything for everybody, was never out of the way when wanted, and never in the way when not wanted. Ere long Miss Honeyman got out a bottle of the famous Madeira which her Colonel sent her, and treated him to a glass in her own room. Kuhn smacked his lips and held out the glass again. The honest rogue knew good wine.
CHAPTER X.
Ethel and her Relations
For four-and-twenty successive hours Lady Anne Newcome was perfectly in raptures with her new lodgings, and every person and thing which they contained. The drawing-rooms were fitted with the greatest taste; the dinner was exquisite. Were there ever such delicious veal-cutlets, such verdant French beans? “Why do we have those odious French cooks, my dear, with their shocking principles—the principles of all Frenchmen are shocking—and the dreadful bills they bring us in; and their consequential airs and graces? I am determined to part with Brignol. I have written to your father this evening to give Brignol warning. When did he ever give us veal-cutlets? What can be nicer?”
“Indeed they were very good,” said Miss Ethel, who had mutton five times a week at one o’clock. “I am so glad you like the house, and Clive, and Mrs. Honeyman.”
“Like her! the dear little old woman. I feel as if she had been my friend all my life! I feel quite drawn towards her. What a wonderful coincidence that Dr. Goodenough should direct us to this very house! I have written to your father about it. And to think that I should have written to Clive at this very house, and quite forgotten Mrs. Honeyman’s name—and such an odd name too. I forget everything, everything! You know I forgot your Aunt Louisa’s husband’s name; and when I was godmother to her baby, and the clergyman said, ‘What is the infant’s name?’ I said, ‘Really I forget.’ And so I did. He was a London clergyman, but I forget at what church. Suppose it should be this very Mr. Honeyman! It may have been, you know, and then the coincidence would be still more droll. That tall, old, nice-looking, respectable person, with a mark on her nose, the housekeeper—what is her name?—seems a most invaluable person. I think I shall ask her to come to us. I am sure she would save me I don’t know how much money every week; and I am certain Mrs. Trotter is making a fortune by us. I shall write to your papa, and ask him permission to ask this person.” Ethel’s mother was constantly falling in love with her new acquaintances; their man-servants and their maid-servants, their horses and ponies, and the visitor within their gates. She would ask strangers to Newcome, hug and embrace them on Sunday; not speak to them on Monday; and on Tuesday behave so rudely to them, that they were gone before Wednesday. Her daughter had had so many governesses—all darlings during the first week, and monsters afterwards—that the poor child possessed none of the accomplishments of her age. She could not play on the piano; she could not speak French well; she could not tell you when gunpowder was invented: she had not the faintest idea of the date of the Norman Conquest, or whether the earth went round the sun, or vice versa. She did not know the number of counties in England, Scotland, and Wales, let alone Ireland; she did not know the difference between latitude and longitude. She had had so many governesses: their accounts differed: poor Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of teachers, and thought herself a monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a Sunday School, and little girls of eight years old answered questions of which she knew nothing. The place swam before her. She could not see the sun shining on their fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children holding up their eager hands, and crying the answer to this question and that, seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, “O Ethel, you dunce, dunce, dunce!” She went home silent in the carriage, and burst into bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest spirit, resolute and imperious, this little visit to the parish school taught Ethel lessons more valuable than ever so much arithmetic and geography. Clive has told me a story of her in her youth, which, perhaps, may apply to some others of the youthful female aristocracy. She used to walk, with other select young ladies and gentlemen, their nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of ground railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in the neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the age of nine or thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules O’Ryan.—as every one of my gentle readers knows, one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion which grew up between these young persons; it being a provision in nature that a boy always falls in love with a girl older than himself, or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her affections on a little boy, who submits to receive them.
One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was inconsolable. “What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?” she asked of her nurse.
The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, “Perhaps his lordship would know nothing about the circumstance.” “He will,” said Miss Ethel—“he’ll read it in the newspaper.” My Lord Hercules, it is to be hoped, strangled this infant passion in the cradle; having long since married Isabella, only daughter of ——— Grains, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a partner in the great brewery of Foker and Co.
When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall girl, that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. “Fancy myself,” she thought, “dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore like Lucy Tucker!” She did not care for their sports. She could not walk with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the academy, nor attend the Cours de Littérature Universelle et de Science Compréhensive of the professor then the mode—the smallest girls took her up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things they bade her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex, when, under the guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to tea at six o’clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not with the children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit apart at these assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs; but Ethel romped with the little children—the rosy little trots—and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure—she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at her bidding.
Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family, whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding the Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian Newcome had married.