Across the garden, and through an iron gate which he unlocked, and which itself formed part of a railing shutting off one wing of the house from the rest and from the grounds, George Wainwright walked; then up a short flight of steps, topped by a heavy door, which he also unlocked with a master key which he took from his pocket, and which closed behind him with a heavy clang; through a short stone passage, in a room leading off which, immediately inside the door--a bright, snug, cheerful little room, with a handful of fire alight in the grate, and the gas burning brightly over the mantelpiece, and a tea-tray and appurtenances brightly shining on the table--was a young woman--handsome, black-eyed, and rosy-cheeked, tall, strongly built, and neatly dressed in a close-fitting dark-gray gown--who started up at the sound of the approaching footsteps, and presented herself at the door.
"You on duty, Miss Marshall?" said George, with a smile and a bow.
"Yes, Mr. George, it's my night-turn again; comes round quicker than one thinks for, or than one hopes for, indeed! Going to see your sweetheart as usual, Mr. George?"
"Yes; I don't often miss; never, indeed, when I'm at home."
"Ah, if all other men were as thoughtful and as kind and as true to their sweethearts as you are to yours, there would be less need for these sort of houses in the world, Mr. George," said the young woman, with a somewhat scornful toss of her head.
"Come, come, Miss Marshall," cried George, laughingly, "you've no occasion to talk in that manner, I'm sure. Besides, I might retort, and say that if all women were as kind and as loving and as pleased to see their sweethearts as mine is to see me, if they remained true to them for as many years as mine has remained true to me, if they were as patient and as quiet--yes, and I think as silent--as mine is, they would have a greater chance of retaining men's affections."
"Poor dear Madame!" said Miss Marshall. "Ah, you don't see many like her!"
"I never saw one," said George. "But she will be keeping awake on the chance of my coming to say goodnight to her."
And with another smile and bow he passed on.
First down another and a longer stone passage, the doors leading from either side of which were wide open, showing bathrooms, kitchens, and other domestic penetralia; then up a flight of stairs to a landing covered with cocoa-nut matting, and giving on to a long corridor, on the stone-coloured wall of which was painted in large black letters, "Corridor No. 4." Closed doors here--doors of dormitories, where the inmates were shut in for the night: some tossing on their dream-haunted pillows; some haply--God knows--enjoying a mental rest as soft and sweet as the slumber which enchained them, borne away to the bygone days, when they thought and felt and knew, ere the brain was distraught, and the memory snapped, and the mind either warped or void. All was perfectly quiet as George passed along, stopping at length before a door which was closed but not locked, and at which he tapped lightly. Lightly, but with a sound which was quickly heard, for a soft voice cried immediately "Entrez!" and he opened the door, and went in.
It was a pretty little room, considerably too lofty for its breadth--a long narrow slip of a place, which some people with pleasant development of mortuary tendencies might have rendered unpleasantly like a grave. But it was tricked out with a pretty wall-paper, all rosebuds and green leaves; some good photographs of foreign scenery were framed on the walls; a wooden Swiss peasant with a clock-face let into the centre of his waistcoat, and its works ticking and running and whirring away in the centre of his anatomy, stood on the mantelpiece; the fireplace was filled up with bright-gilded shavings; and the bed, instead of being the mere ordinary iron stump bedstead to be found in other dormitories of the house, was gay with white hangings, and blue bows tastefully disposed here and there.
On it lay a woman, who had risen on her elbow at George's knock, and who remained in the same attitude, awaiting his approach. A woman of small stature evidently, and delicately made, with small well-cut features and small bones. Her hair, as snow-white as the cap under which it was looped up, contrasted oddly with the deep ruddy bronze of her complexion; such bronze as, travelling south, you first begin to notice among the Lyonnaises, and afterwards find so common along the shores of the Mediterranean. But Time, though he had changed the colour of her locks--and to be so very white now, they must necessarily have been raven black before--had failed in dimming the lustre of her marvellous eyes; they remained large, and dark, and appealing, as they must have been in earliest youth. Full of liquid love and kindliness were they too, as they beamed a welcome to George, a welcome seconded by her outstretched hand, which rested on his head as he bent down beside her.
"You are late, George," she said, with the faintest foreign accent; "but I had not given you up."
"No,maman, you know better than that; you know that whenever I am at home I never think of going to bed without saying goodnight tomaman. But I am late, dear; I have had friends sitting with me, and they have only just gone."
"Friends, eh? Ah, that must be odd to see friends. And you took them for apromenadeon the Lac, and you----Ah, bah! quelle enfantillage!your friends were men, of course. Some of those who sing so sweetly sometimes? No! but still men? Ah, no one else has ever come here."
"No one else,maman?"
"See, George, come closer.Shehas not come?"
"No,maman," said the young man, rising, and regarding her with a look of genuine affection and pity. "No,maman, not yet."
"Ah, not yet--always not yet," she said, letting her elbow relax, and falling back in the bed--"always not yet!" And she covered her face with her hands, removing them after a few minutes to say: "But she will come? she will come?"
"Oh yes, dear, let us trust so," said George, quietly.
She looked at him, first earnestly, then wistfully, for several minutes; then she dried the tears which, unseen by him, almost unknown to her, had been trickling down her face, and said in a trembling voice: "Goodnight, my boy."
"Goodnight,maman. God bless you!"
And he bent over her, and kissed her forehead.
"Dieu me bénisse!" she said, with a half-smile. "In time, George, whenshecomes back! Meantime,Dieu te bénisse, my son!"
He bent his head again, and she encircled it with her arms, brushed each of his cheeks with her lips, and kissed his hand; then murmuring, "Goodnight," sank back on her pillow.
George took up his lamp, and crept silently from the room, and down the corridor, down the stairs, and towards the outer door. As he passed Miss Marshall's room he looked in, and saw her, bright, brisk, and cheerful, sitting at her needlework, an epitome of neatness and propriety. George could not refrain from stopping in his progress, and saying:
"You don't look much like a 'keeper,' Miss Marshall. I had a friend with me to-night, who laughingly asked me to show him the night-watch of such places as these, of whom he had read in songs and novels. I think he would have been rather astonished if I had brought him across the garden and introduced him to you."
"Oh, they're not much 'count, those kind of trash, I think, Mr. George," said Miss Marshall, who was eminently practical. "I read about 'em often enough when I was a nursery-governess, and before I came into the profession. I daresay he expected to see a man with big whiskers, with a sword and a brace of pistols in his belt, and perhaps two big dogs following him up and down the passages! At least, I know that used to be my idea. You found Madame Vaughan all well and quiet and comfortable, Mr. George? And left her so, no doubt?"
"Oh yes. She was just the same as usual, poor dear."
"Oh, poor dear, indeed! If they were all like her, one need not grumble about one's life here. There never was such a sweet creature. I'm sure if one-half of the sane women, the sensible creatures who expect one to possess all the cardinal virtues and to look after four of their brats for sixteen pounds a-year, were anything like as nice, or as sensible, or as sane, for the matter of that, as Madame Vaughan, the world would be a much nicer place to live in. She expected you, I suppose, sir?"
George Wainwright knew perfectly that Miss Marshall was, as the phrase is, "making conversation;" that she cared little about the patient whose state she was discussing; cared probably less about him. But he knew also that in the discharge of her duty she had to sit up all night, until relieved by one of the day-nurses at six o'clock in the morning; that she naturally enough grasped at any chance of making a portion, however small, of this time pass more pleasantly, with somebody to look at and somebody's voice to listen to. And she was a pretty girl and a good girl, and he was not particularly tired and was particularly good-natured; so he thought he would stop and chat with her for a few minutes.
"Oh yes, she expected me," he said; "so I should have been horribly sorry if I had neglected to go to her. One must be selfish indeed to deny anyone so much pleasure when it can be afforded by merely stepping across the garden."
"Did she speak of the usual subject, sir?"
"The child? Oh, yes; asked if anyone had come, as usual; and when I answered her, felt sure that her child would come speedily."
"I suppose there's no foundation for that idea of hers?"
"That the child will come, or, indeed, so far as we know, that she ever had a child, is, I imagine, the merest hallucination. At all events, from the number of years she has been here, her child, if she ever had one, must be a tolerably well-grown young lady, and not likely to be recognisable by, or to recognise her, poor thing!"
"Yes, indeed, Mr. George; and it's odd that of all our ladies, with the exception of poor Mrs. Stoneycroft, who, I imagine, is just kept here out of the Doctor's kindness and charity, Madame is the only one who never has any friends come to see her."
"She has outlived all her friends; that is to say, she has outlived their recollection of her. Nothing so easily forgotten as the trace of people we once knew, but who can no longer be of use to us, or administer to our vanity, our pleasure, or our amusement. I was at a cemetery the other day, and saw there an enormous and magnificent tombstone which a man had ordered to be erected over his wife; but before the order had been executed the man had married again, declined to pay for his extravagance in mortuary sculpture, and contented himself with a simple headstone. And the gardener told me that it is very seldom that the floral graves are kept up beyond the first twelve months. So it is not likely that in this, which, to such poor creatures as Madame Vaughan, is not much better than a living tomb, the occupants should be held in any long remembrance."
"I'm sure it's very kind of the Doctor to take such care of these poor creatures, Mr. George; more especially when he's not paid for it."
"That is not the case with Madame Vaughan. I think--in fact, I'm sure--she was one of the patients of my father's predecessor, and was made over to him on the transfer of the business; but though she has no friends to come and see her, the sum for her maintenance here is regularly discharged by a firm of solicitors who have money in trust for the purpose, and by whom it has been paid from the first."
"And is there nothing known of her history, Mr. George; who were her friends, or where she came from?"
"Nothing now. Dr. Bulph, I suppose, had some sort of information; but he was an odd man, and so long as his half-yearly bills were paid, did not trouble himself much further, I fancy."
"Lord, what a life!" said Miss Marshall, casting a sidelong glance at the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and smoothing her hair. "And it will end here, I suppose? The Doctor does not think she will ever be cured, Mr. George?"
"No, indeed!" said George, shaking his head. "And if she were, what would become of her? She has been here for nearly twenty years, and the outer world would be as strange and as impossible to her as it was to the released prisoner of the Bastille, who prayed to be taken back to his dungeon."
"Ah well, I should pray to be taken to my grave," said the practical Miss Marshall, "if I thought no one cared for me----"
"Ah, now you're talking of an impossibility, Miss Marshall," said George, rising. "If ever I have a necessity to expose the absurdity of that saying which advances the necessity for 'beauty sleep,' I shall bring you forward as my example; for you're never in bed by midnight, and are often up all night; and yet I should like to see anyone who could rival you in briskness or freshness. Goodnight, Miss Marshall."
"Goodnight, Mr. George."
As he rose, shook hands, and taking up his lamp made his way across the garden, the nurse looked after him with a pleased expression, and said to herself:
"What a nice young man that is!--so pleasant and kind! Nice-looking too, though a trifle old-fashioned and heavy; not like--ah, well, never mind. But much too good to mope away his life in this wretched old place, anyhow."
And when George reached his rooms he smiled to himself, and said:
"Well, if that little talk, and those little compliments, have the result of making Miss Marshall show any extra amount of kindness to my poormaman, my time will not have been ill bestowed."
George Wainwright was tolerably correct in all he had said regarding Madame Vaughan, though he had but an imperfect knowledge of her history. At the time when her mental malady first rendered it necessary that she should be placed under restraint, the private lunatic asylums of England were in a very different condition from what they are now. They were for the most part held by low-born ignorant men, who derived their entire livelihood from the sums of money paid for the maintenance of the unfortunate wretches confided to their charge, and whose gains were consequently greater in proportion to the manner in which they ignored or refused the requirements of their inmates. A person calling himself a physician, and perhaps in possession of some purchased degree, hired at a small stipend and non-resident, looked in occasionally, asked a few questions, and signed certificates destined to hoodwink official eyes, which in those days never saw too clearly at the best of times. But the staff of keepers, male and female, was always numerous and efficient. Those were the merry days of the iron collar and the broad leather bastinado, of the gag and the cold bath, of the irons and the whipping-post. They did not care much about what the Lunacy Commissioners did, or wrote, or exacted, in those days, and each man did what he thought best for himself. The date of the Commissioners' visits, which then were few and far between, were accurately known long beforehand; the "medical attendant" was on the spot; the patients, such as were visible, were tricked up into a proper state of cleanliness and order; and the others were duly hidden away until the authorities had departed. The licensing was a farce, only to be exceeded in absurdity by the other regulations; and villany, blackguardism, brutality, and chicanery reigned supreme.
For two years after Madame Vaughan was first received into the asylum--God help us!--as it was called, the outer world was mercifully a blank to her. She arrived in a settled state of stupor, in which she remained, cowering in a corner of the room which she shared with other afflicted creatures, but taking no heed of them, of the antics which they played, of the yells and shrieks which they uttered, of the fantastic illusions of which they were the victims, of the punishment which their conduct brought upon them. Her face covered by her hands, her poor body ever rocking to and fro, there she remained for ever in the one spot until nightfall, when she crept to the miserable couch allotted to her, and curling herself up as an animal in its slumber, was unheard, almost unseen, until the next day. The wretched food which they gave her, coarse in quality and meagre in quantity, she ate in silence; in silence she bore the spoken ribaldry, and the practical jokes which in the first few weeks after her admission the guardians of the establishment, and indeed the great proprietor himself, amused themselves by heaping upon her; so that in a little time she was found incapable of administering to their amusement, and was suffered to remain unmolested.
At the end of the time mentioned, a change took place in the condition of the patient under the following circumstances. One of the nurses had had her married sister and niece to visit her; and after tea, by way of a cheerful amusement, the visitors were conducted through the female ward. The child, a little girl of five or six years old, frightened out of her life, hung back as she entered the gloomy room, where women in every stage of mania, some fierce and shrieking, some silent and moody, were collected. But her aunt, the nurse, laughed at the child's fears; and the mother, who through the hospitality of their entertainer had, after the clearing away of the tea-equipage, been provided with a beverage which both cheered and inebriated, bade the girl not to be a fool; and on her still hanging back and evincing an intention of bursting into tears, administered to her a severe thump on the back, which had the effect of causing the little one to break forth at once into a howl.
From the first instant of the child's entrance into the room, Madame Vaughan had roused herself from her usual attitude. The sound of the child's pattering feet seemed to act on her with electrical influence. She raised her head from out her hands; she sat up erect, bright, observant. The corner in which she sat was dark, and no one was in the habit of taking any notice of her. So she sat, watching the shrinking child. She heard the mocking laugh with which the nurse sneered at the little one's terror, she heard the harsh tones in which the mother chid the child, and saw the blow which followed on the words. Then she made two springs forward, and the next minute had the woman on the ground, and was grappling at her throat. The attendants sprang upon her, released the woman from her grasp, and led her shrieking to her cell.
"My child, my child! why did she strike my child?" were the words which she screamed forth; almost the first which those in the asylum had ever heard her utter; so, at least, the nurse told the proprietor, who, with other assistants, male as well as female, was speedily on the spot.
"She used to sit as quiet as quiet, never opening her mouth, as you know very well, sir," said the woman, "and was sittin' just as usual, so far as I know, when my sister here, as I was showing round, fetched her little gal a smack on the head because she wouldn't come on; and then Vaughan springs at her like a wild-beast, and wanted to tear the life out of her, she did, a murderin' wretch!"
"Had she ever said anything about a child before?" asked the proprietor.
"Never said nothing about anybody, and certingly nothing about a child," replied the nurse.
"And it was because she saw this child struck that she burst out, and she's hollerin' about the child now--is that it?"
"Jest so, sir," replied the nurse, looking at a mark of teeth on her hand, and shaking her head viciously in the direction in which the patient had been led away.
"That's it, Agar," said the proprietor; "I thought we should get at it some day. Couldn't get anything out of the cove I first saw, and the lawyers were as tight as wax. 'You'll get your money,' they says. 'We're responsible for that,' they says, 'and that ought to be enough for you.' They wouldn't let on, any of 'em, what it was that had upset her at first; but I knew it would come out sooner or later, and it's come out now, though. She's gone off her head grievin' after a kid, and no two ways about it."
"Ah!" said Mr. Agar, who was a man of few words; "shouldn't wonder. Question is, what's to be done with her now? Mustn't be allowed to kick up these wagaries, you know; we shall have the neighbours complainin' again. Screamed and yelled and bit and fisted away like a good un, she did. We ain't had such a rumpus since the Tiger's time."
"She must be taught manners," said the proprietor, significantly. "Tell your missus to look after her. This woman," indicating the nurse with his elbow, "ain't any good when it comes to a rough and tumble, and I'm doubtful if Vaughan won't give us some trouble yet."
So Madame Vaughan was delivered over to the tender mercies of Mrs. Agar, and underwent some of the tortures which she had seen inflicted upon others. She was punished cruelly for her outbreak; but that done, there was an end of it. The proprietor was wrong in his surmise that she would give them further trouble. She lapsed back into her old silent state, cowering in her old corner, rocking to and fro after her old fashion; and thus she remained, when the proprietor, having made sufficient money, and having had several hints that certain malpractices of his, if further indulged in, would probably bring him to the Old Bailey, handed over his business to Dr. Bulph.
It was during Dr. Bulph's time that the poor lady had a severe bodily illness, during which she was sedulously attended by Dr. Bulph himself--a clever, hard man of the world, not unkind, but probably prompted in his attention to his patient by the feeling that it would be unwise to let a regularly-paid income of three hundred pounds a-year slip through his fingers if a little trouble on his part could save it. When she became convalescent, her mental condition seemed to have altered. Instead of being dull and moping, she was bright and restless, ever asking about her child, who, as it seemed to her poor distraught fancy, had been with her just before her illness. Dr. Bulph had had some idea, that when her bodily ailment left her, there was a chance that her mind might have become at last clearer; but he shook his head when he saw these new symptoms. Her child, her child! what had been done with it? Why had they taken it away? Why was it kept from her? That was the constant, incessant burden of her cry, sometimes asked almost calmly, sometimes with piteous wailings or fierce denunciations of their cruelty. Nothing satisfied her, nothing appeased her. Madame Vaughan's case was evidently a very bad one indeed: and when Dr. Bulph took Dr. Wainwright, who was about purchasing his business, the round of his establishment, he pointed Madame Vaughan out to him, and said: "That will be a noisy one, I'm afraid, until the end."
The doctor was wrong in his prophecy. Dr. Wainwright, with as much skill and far moresavoir fairethan his predecessor, adopted very different tactics. Although since the departure of the first proprietor of the asylum no cruelty had been inflicted on the patients, all of them who were at all intractable or difficult to govern had been kept in restraint. The first thing that Dr. Wainwright did, when he took possession, was to give them an amount of liberty which they had not previously enjoyed. Poor Madame Vaughan, falling into one of her shrieking-fits of "My child! where's my child?" was surprised on looking up to see the tall figure of the new doctor in the open doorway of her room; and her screams died away as she looked at his handsome smiling face, and heard his voice say in soft tones: "Where is she? Come, let us look for her." Then he took her gently by the arm and led her into the garden, round which they walked together. The new sense of liberty, the air blowing on her cheeks, the fresh smell of the flowers--these unaccustomed delights had a wonderful influence on the poor sufferer. For a time, at least, she forgot the main burden of her misery in the delight she experienced in dwelling on them; and thenceforward, though she recurred constantly, daily indeed, to her one theme of sorrow, it was never with the poignant bitterness of former times. She grew attached to the doctor, whose quiet interested manner suited her wonderfully, and formed a singular attachment for George, then a young man just entering on his office duties, looking forward to his coming with a sweet motherly tenderness, which he seemed to reciprocate in a most filial manner.
From that time forward Madame Vaughan's lot, as far as her melancholy condition permitted, was a happy one. No acute return of mania ever supervened; she remained in a state of harmless quiet; and save for her invariable expectation of the arrival of her child, a hope which she never failed to indulge in, it would have been impossible to think that the quiet, well-dressed, white-haired lady, who tended the flowers, and settled the ornaments of her little room, or paced regularly up and down the garden, sometimes alone, sometimes conversing with Dr. Wainwright, or leaning reliantly on George's arm, was the inmate of a lunatic asylum, and had gone through such tempestuous scenes as fall to her lot in the early days of her residence there. The "noisy one" had indeed come to be the gentlest member of that strange household; and one of the greatest annoyances which Dr. Wainwright ever experienced was when one of the members of the lawyers' firm who paid the annual stipend for the poor lady's care happened to call with the cheque, and on the doctor's wishing him to witness the comparative happy state to which the patient had arrived, said shortly that "he had enough to do in his business with people who were only sane enough to prevent their being shut up, and that he didn't want to have anything to do with those who were a stage further advanced in the disease."
On the morning after the events recorded in the beginning of this chapter, George Wainwright found a small pencil-note placed on the huge can of cold water which was brought to him for his bath. Opening it, he read:
"DEAR MR. GEORGE,--Madame hopes she shall see you before you go into town this morning. She has something special to say to you. I have told her I was sure you would not fail her.--Yours, L. MARSHALL."
In compliance with this wish, George presented himself immediately after breakfast at Madame Vaughan's room. He found her ready dressed, and anxiously expecting him.
"Why,maman," he commenced, "already up and doing! Your bright activity is an actual reproach to a sluggard like myself. But I heard you wanted me, and I'm here."
"Would you mind taking a turn in the garden, George?" she asked. "The morning looks very fine, and I've something to say to you that I think should be said in the sunlight and among the flowers."
"Something pleasant, then, I argue from that," he said. "And you know I'd do a great deal more than give up a few minutes from my dry dull old office to be of any pleasant use to you; besides, work is slack just now--it always is at this time of the year--and I can easily be spared. Come, let us walk."
She threw a shawl over her head and shoulders with, as George could not help remarking, all the innate grace and ease of a Frenchwoman, took his arm, and descended the stairs into the garden. It was indeed a lovely morning, just at that time when Summer makes her last determined fight before gracefully surrendering to Autumn. The turf was yet green and soft, though somewhat faded here and there by the sun's long-continued power, and the air was mild; but the paths were already flecked with leaves, and ruddy tints were visible on the extreme outer foliage of the trees. When they arrived in the grounds, they found several of the patients already there; some chattering to each other, others walking moodily apart. Many of them seemed to treat Madame Vaughan with marked deference, and exhibited that deference in immediately clearing out of the way, and leaving her and her companion unmolested in their walk.
After a few turns up and down, George said:
"Well,maman, and the special business?"
"Ah yes, George, I had forgotten," said Madame, pressing her hand to her head. "I dreamed aboutherlast night, George--about my child."
"Not an uncommon dream for you, surely,maman?" said George kindly. "What you are always thinking of by day will most probably not desert your mind at night."
"No, not at all uncommon; but I have never dreamed of her as I dreamed last night. George, she is coming; you will see her very soon."
"I! But you,maman--you will see her too?"
"I am not so sure of that, George. She was all dim and indistinct in my dream. I think I shall be dead, George; but you will see her; I shall have the comfort of knowing that, and--and of knowing that you will love her, George."
"Why,maman, of course I shall love her, for your sake."
"No, George; for her own. You will love her for her own sake, and you will marry her, my son."
"Maman, maman!" said George, taking her hand, and looking up into her face with a loving smile. "But how do you know that she will consent? You forget I am an old bachelor, and----"
"You will marry her, George," said Madame, her face clouding over at once. "And yet--and yet she is but an infant, poor child!"
"There, there,mamandarling----"
"No, no; don't attempt to get out of it. And yet I saw it all--you and she at St. Peter's after Tenebrae, and I--and----"
"Now this is a question for my father to be consulted on," said George. "He is the only man who could help us in this difficulty, and he's away in the country, you know. We must wait till he comes back;" and he drew her quietly towards the house.
"Poor dearmaman!" said George Wainwright to himself, as he stood waiting for the omnibus which was to bear him into town. "What a strange idea! Not so far wrong, though! A phantom evolved from a diseased brain, a nothing. A creature without existence is the only wife I'm ever likely to have! I only wish young Paul was as heart-free, and as likely to remain so."
It was a noticeable fact, that though the Beachborough folk were, as they would themselves have expressed it, "main curous" about Mrs. Stothard and her position in the Derinzy household, none of them devoted much time to speculating about Miss Annette, or Miss Netty as she was generally called by them. That she was a "dreadful in-vallid" all knew; that she was sometimes confined to the house for weeks together when labouring under a severe attack of her illness--which was ascribed by some to nerves, by some to weakness, and by others to a curious disorder known as "ricketts"--was also well known. It was understood, moreover, that she did not like her indisposition alluded to; and consequently, when she occasionally appeared in the village, accompanied by her aunt Mrs. Derinzy, it was a point of politeness on the part of the villagers to ignore the fact of their not having seen her for weeks past and the cause of her absence, and to entertain her with gossip about Bessy Fairlight's levity, Giles Croggin's drunkenness, Farmer Hawkers' harvest-home, or such kindred topics. No one ever mentioned illness or doctors before Miss Netty; if they had, Mrs. Derinzy, a woman of strong mind and, when necessary, sharp tongue, would speedily have cut in and changed the conversation.
But although the Beachborough people saw little of Annette Derinzy, that little they liked. Amongst simple folk of this kind a person labouring under illness, more especially chronic illness--not any of your common fevers or anything low of that kind, which nearly everybody has had in their time, and which are for the most part curable by very simple remedies--but mysterious illness, which "comes on when you don't expect it," as though most disorders were heralded and the exact time of their arrival announced by infallible symptoms, and which lasts for weeks together--such a person takes brevet rank with their acquaintance, and is looked up to with the greatest respect. Moreover, Miss Netty had a very pleasant way with her, being always courteous and friendly, sometimes, indeed, a little too friendly; for she would want to go into the fishermen's cottages, and into the lacemakers' rooms, and would ask questions which were not very pertinent, or indeed very wise; until she was brought up very short by her aunt, who would take her by the elbow, and haul her away with scant ceremony. And another great thing in her favour was, that she was very pretty.
Ah, well-meaning, kindly people, who endeavour to cheer your ugly children by repeating the scores of old adages with which the stupidity of our forefathers has enriched our language, telling them that "beauty is only skin deep," that "it is better to be good than beautiful," that "handsome is that handsome does," and a variety of other maxims of the same kind--when will you be honest, and confess that a pretty face is almost the best dowry a young girl can have? It gains her admirers always, and very frequently it gains her friends; it makes easy and pleasant her path in life, and saves her from the bitterest distress, the deepest laceration which can be inflicted on the female heart, in the feeling that she is despised of men, which, being translated, means that she is neglected, while others are appreciated. Miss Netty was pretty decidedly, but she was in that almost incredible position of being unaware of the fact. Save her own family and the people in the village, she saw no one; and though the gossips were inclined not to be reticent of their admiration even in the presence of its object, they were always restrained by a wholesome dread of the wrath of Mrs. Derinzy, which on more than one occasion had been evoked by the compliments paid to her niece.
It was the more extraordinary that such persons as Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp should have admired Annette, as her style was by no means such as generally finds favour with persons in their station in life. Great black staring eyes, snub noses, firm round red cheeks, bright red lips, and jet-black hair, well bandolined and greased so as to lie flat on the head, or corkscrewed into thin ringlets, generally make up their standard of beauty. Country people have a great opinion of strength of limb and firmness of flesh; and "she bethathard," was one of the most delicate tributes which a Beachborough swain could pay. In the agricultural districts those womanly qualities of tenderness, softness, and delicacy, which are so prized amongst more refined circles, are rather held at a discount; they are regarded by the rustic mind as on a level with piano-playing and Berlin-wool working--good enough as extras, but not to be compared with the homely talents of milking and stocking-darning. Personal appearance is regarded in much the same way, elegance of form being less thought of than strength, and a large arm obtaining much more admiration than a small hand. Annette was a tall, but a slight and decidedly delicate-looking girl.
"It isn't after her uncle she takes," Mrs. Powler would say; "a little giggling, flibberty-gibbet of a man, that might be blowed away in a pouf!"
"Well, mum," said little Ann Bradshaw, the "gell" who was specially retained for Mrs. Powler's service, and who, as jackal, purveyed all the gossip on which, after due preparation, her mistress lived--"well, mum, I du 'low Miss Netty's well enow to look at, but nothing like the Captain, who sure-lyis a main handsome man!"
"Eh, dear heart, did one ever hear the like!" cried Mrs. Powler. "Here's chits and chicks like this talkin' about main handsome men! Why, Ann, you was niver in Exeter, or you'd have seen a waxy image just like the Captain, wi' his black hair and his straight nose, and his blue chin, in the barber's shop-window. Handsome, indeed!" said the old lady, with a recollection of the deceased Mr. Fowler's rotund face; "he's but a poor show; a mere skellinton of a chap!"
"Well, mum, it can't be said that Miss Netty favours her aunt Mrs. D'rinzy neither," said Ann, who, seeing her mistress was disposed for a chat, saw her way to at least postponing the execution of a very portentous and elaborate job of darning which had sat heavy on her soul for some days past. "Mrs. D'rinzy is that slight and slim and gen-teel in her make, which Miss Netty do not follow after."
"Slight, and slim, and genteel make!" repeated Mrs. Powler with much indignation, and a downward glance at her own pursy proportions; "ah, straight up and down like a thrashin'-floor door, if that's what ye mean! Lord love us, here's a gal as I took out of charity, and saved from goin' to the workis, a givin' her 'pinions 'bout figgers, and shapes, and makes, and the like, as though she was a milliner, or a middiff! Well, well, on'y to think!"
"I didn't mean no harm, mum, I'm sure," said the worldly-ise handmaiden, "and I don't think much of Mrs. D'rinzy, nor indeed of the Captain neither, since Nancy Bell--as you know is housemaid up at the Tower--told me how she'd found the stick-stuff which he du make his eyebrows of--black, and grease, and muck."
"No?" exclaimed the old lady, her good temper returning at the chance of hearing some spicy retailable talk. "Du he do that? Do'ee tell, Ann!"
Thus invited, Miss Bradshaw launched out into an elaborate story, rendered more elaborate by her anti-darning proclivities, of the mysteries of Captain Derinzy's toilet, as she had learned them from Miss Bell. Mrs. Powler encouraged her to prattle on this point for a long time; and when she had finished, asked her whether Nancy Bell had mentioned anything about the general way of living at the Tower, more especially as Miss Netty and Mrs. Stothard were concerned.
"Not that anything she says isn't as full of lies as a sieve's full of holes," said the old lady. "I mind the time"--a terrible old lady this, with an unexampled memory for bad things against people--"I mind the time when she was quite a little gell, and went and told the vicar a passil o' lies about her uncle, Ned Richards the blacksmith. And the vicar put Ned into his sermin the next Sunday, and preached at un, and everybody knowed who was meant; and Ned stood up in church, and gev it to the vicar back again; and Ned was had up for brawlin', as they called it, and there was a fine to-do, and all through Nancy Bell. But what does she say of Miss Netty, Ann? Are they kind to her like up there?"
"Oh, yes, mum; Nancy thinks so, leastwise. But no one sees Miss Netty often, mum."
"No one sees her?"
"Only Mrs. Stothard, mum. She and Mrs. Stothard has their rooms away from the rest, mum, lest they should disturb the Captain when Miss Netty's ill, mum; and no one sees her but Mrs. Stothard then."
"Ah," said Mrs. Powler, "David or Solomon, or one of 'em, I don't rightly remember which, were not far off when he said that the bread of dependence was bitter, and these great folk don't bake it no more sweet than others for their poor relations, it seems. So they take the board and lodgin' out of Mrs. Stothard by makin' her a nuss, eh, Ann?"
"They du indeed, mum. I du 'low that's why we niver see Mrs. Stothard in the village, being so taken up with Miss Netty, and a nasty temper, not caring to throw a word at a dog, likewise."
"How does Nancy think they git on betwixt themselves?"
"What, the Captain and Mrs. D'rinzy? Oh, they git on all right; leastwise, she's master, Nance says. The Captain isn't much 'count in his own house; but Mrs. D. niver let him see it, bless you; and he du bluster and rave sometimes, Nance say, when he's put out, and thinks she can't hear him."
"What puts 'im out, Ann? He hev an easy life of it, sure-ly: nothin' to do but to kick up his heels about the place."
"That's just it, missus. He wants something more to du. He du hate the place like pison, Nance have heerd 'im say, and ask Mrs. D'rinzy, wi' awful language, what they was waitin' and wastin' their lives here for."
"And what did she say then?"
"Allays the same. 'You know,' says she, 'you know what we're waitin' for; and it'll come, it'll come sure as sure.' 'Wouldn't it come just the same, or easier rather, if we was out of this, up in London, or somewheres?' the Captain says once. 'No,' says Mrs. D., 'it wouldn't. When we've got the prize under lock and key,' she says, 'we know where to look for it, and who to send for it; but when it's open to the world, there's no knowin' who may run off with it,' she says."
"A prize!" said the old lady, looking very much astonished--"got a prize under lock and key? Why, what could she mean by that? You hain't heerd in the village o' anything hevin' been found up at the Tower, hev you, Ann?"
Ann, leaning against the door, withdrew one foot from the floor, and slowly rubbed it up and down her other leg--a gymnastic performance she was in the habit of going through when she taxed her powers of memory. It failed, however, to have any result in the present instance; and Ann was compelled to confess that she had never heard of anything in particular being found at the Tower. She did this with more reluctance, as she foresaw the speedy termination of the gossip, and her consequent relegation to her darning duties.
But Mrs. Powler, who had been much struck with the conversation overheard by Nancy Bell, and repeated to her by her own handmaiden, sat pondering over the words for some time, allowing Ann to remain in the room, and at last bade her go round and ask Mrs. Jupp to step in for a few minutes. When Mrs. Jupp arrived, Mrs. Powler made Ann repeat her story; and when she concluded, the old lady bade her stand away out of earshot, and said to Mrs. Jupp in a hollow whisper:
"What do you think of that?"
"Of what?" asked Mrs. Jupp, in an equally ghostly tone.
"'Bout the prize? Do you think, Harriet, that it can be any of Fowler's 'runs'? They used to hide 'em in the first place as come handy, when the excisers was after 'em; and I've been wondering whether they might ha' stowed away some kegs, or bales, or things, in the lower garden, or thereabouts, and these D'rinzys ha' found 'em. I wonder whether I could claim 'em, Harriet?" said the old lady earnestly. "He left everything he had in the world to his beloved wife, Powler did."
Mrs. Jupp, who had been receiving these last words with many sniffs, denoting her content for her friend's notions, waited patiently until Mrs. Powler had finished, and then said:
"I don't think you need trouble yourself about that. It isn't about runs, or kegs, or bales, or anything of that kind, that Mrs. Derinzy meant, if so be she said anything of the kind, which I main doubt; Nancy Bell and your Ann being regular Anias and Sapphira for lying, or the man as was turned into a white leopard by the prophet for saying he hadn't asked the young man for a change of clothes."
"Du let alone naggin' and girdin' at my Ann for once, Harriet!" interrupted Mrs. Powler. "Let's s'pose Mrs. D'rinzy said it; there's no harm in s'posin', you know. What did she mean 'bout the prize?"
"Mean? What could she mean but Miss Netty?"
"Miss Netty! prize!" cried Mrs. Powler, to whom the combination of these words was hopelessly embarrassing. "Ah, well, I'm becomin' a moithered old 'ooman, I suppose?"
"No, no, dear," said Mrs. Jupp, who never liked to see the old lady put out. "I'm sure there's they as are twenty years younger would like to be able to see as far into a milestone as you can. Only you don't know about this, because you don't get out much now, and you don't know what's goin' on up at the Tower, save from Ann and suchlike. Now my ideer is, that Miss Netty has come into a fortin'."
"No!" cried the old lady.
"Yes," said Mrs. Jupp, nodding her head violently. "Yes, I think she have, and that's what her aunt meant about a prize, I take it. For don't you see, we've asked, all of us, often enough, what kept them livin' down here. 'Tain't that they come down for the shootin', or the yachtin', or that, jest at one season, like Sir 'Erc'les, though he was bred and born down here, and it's his fam'ly place. But there they stick, summer and winter, spring and autumn, never movin', though the Captain's a-wearyin' hisself to death; and there's no call for Mrs. Derinzy to stop here neither."
"Not for her health?"
"Not a bit of it! Between you and me, I think there's a consp---- However, I'll tell you more about that when I know more; meantime, I think Mrs. Derinzy's all right, and I don't think it's for health Miss Annette is kept here."
"The Dorsetsheer air----" Mrs. Powler began; but seeing an incredulous smile on her friend's face, she broke off shortly, and said: "Well, then, what does keep 'em down here?"
"The fortin' that we was speakin' of; the prize that Nancy Bell heard Mrs. D. tell off. Don't you see, my dear? Suppose what I think is right--they've got the poor thing down here in their own hands, to do jest what they like wi'; nobody to say, with your leave, or by your leave; cooped up there wi' them two old people and that termagant Mrs. Stothard. Now if she was away in London, or Exeter, or any other large place o' that sort, why o' course there'd be young men sweetheartin' her--for she's a main pratty gell, though slouchin', and not one to show herself off--and she'd be gettin' married, and her money would go away from them to her husband. That's what Mrs. D. meant about the prize bein' 'open to the world,' and people 'runnin' off with it,' and that like."
Mrs. Powler sat speechless for a few moments, looking at her friend with her sharp little black eyes, and going over what had just been told her in her mind. Her faculties began to be somewhat dimmed by age, and she required time for intellectual digestion. Mrs. Jupp knew her friend's habit, and remained silent likewise, thoughtfully rubbing the side of her nose with a knitting-needle which she had produced from her pocket. At length the old lady said:
"I du 'low you're right, Harriet, though I niver give you credit for so much sharpness before."
And Mrs. Jupp had many pleasant teas, and many succulent suppers, and much pleasant gossip, on the strength of her perspicacity in the matter of the great Derinzy mystery.
Strange to say, the woman's idea was not very far away from the truth. When Mrs. Derinzy told her husband that their son Paul should have a fortune of eighty thousand pounds, which he should receive from his wife's trustees, she made up her mind from that moment to carry her intention into execution, come what might. The girl was so young, that there was plenty of time for the elaboration of her plans--two or three years hence it would do to work out the scheme in detail; all that was necessary to see after was, that so soon as the girl arrived at an impressible age, she should be taken to some very quiet place, where she could see very few people, and that at that time Paul should be thrown in her way, and the result left to favouring chance. Mrs. Derinzy was doubtful whether anything ought to be said to Paul about it; but the Captain spoke up strongly, and declared that any attempt to dispose of "the young man by private contract" would certainly result in prejudicing him against his cousin, and that it would be much better if he were left to "shake a loose leg" for a time, as it would render him much more docile and biddable when they spoke to him afterwards. Mrs. Derinzy, violently objurgating such language on the part of her husband, yet comprehended the soundness of his advice; and Paul, who saw very little of Annette on the occasion of his holidays from school, and then only thought of her as a little orphan cousin to whom his parents acted as guardians, was left to take up his appointment at the Stannaries Office, without having the least idea that, like Mr. Swiveller, "a young lady, who had not only great personal attractions, but great wealth, was at that moment growing up for him."
The young lady who furnished forth all this feast of gossip to the good folks of Beachborough--gossip not so completely unlike the sort of thing which goes on in larger places, and is practised by more important communities--had not the least suspicion that she was an object of curiosity and discussion to her humble neighbours. She knew little of them--that is to say, of the less-poor class among the poor--for to the lowest and most suffering part of the community she was generous with the desultory kindness of an untaught girl; and she had no notion that she differed in circumstances or disposition from other people sufficiently to excite curiosity or induce discussion. Few girls of Annette Derinzy's age, in her position in life, are so ignorant of the world, so completely without the means of instituting comparisons in social matters, or unravelling social problems, as she was. The conventional schoolgirl of real life, though perhaps not the ritualistic innocent of theDaisy-Chainliterature, could have beaten Annette Derinzy hollow in comprehension of human aims and motives, and in knowledge of the desirabilities of life. She was passably content with herself and her surroundings, and had not yet been moved by any stronger feeling than irritation, caused by her aunt's troublesome over-solicitude for her health and Mrs. Stothard's watchfulness.
She was not, she believed, so strong as most girls of her age, who lived in comfort, and had nothing to trouble them; but she felt sure the care, the restrictions she had to undergo, were unwarranted by her health; and she sometimes got so far on the path of worldly wisdom as to suspect that her aunt made a great fuss with her, in order to get the credit of self-sacrifice and superlative duty-doing. Annette's perspicacity did not extend to defining the individuals in the narrow and ultra-quiet society of Beachborough, among whom, as Captain Derinzy would have said, they "vegetated," who were to be deluded into giving Mrs. Derinzy a better character than she deserved. Like "the ugly duck," who scrambled through the hedge, and found himself in the wide, wide world, the most insignificant change of position would, to Annette Derinzy, have implied infinite possibilities of enlightenment; but at present she was very securely on the near side of the hedge, and almost ignorant that there was a far side.
The young lady of whom Mrs. Derinzy invariably spoke as "dear Annette," even when she was most annoyed with or about her, as though she had set this formula as a rule and a reminder for herself, was a very pretty girl, belonging to a type of beauty which is rather commonly to be found associated with delicate health. She was rather tall, very slight, with slender hands, and a transparently fair complexion. Her features were not very regular, and but for the deep, dark eyes, and the remarkably sweet, though somewhat rare, smile which lighted them up, she would hardly have been pronounced handsome by casual observers. But she was very handsome, as all would have been ready to acknowledge afterwards who had noticed the extreme refinement of her general appearance and the gracefulness of her figure. Her beauty was marred by no trace of ill-health beyond the uncertainty of the colour--which sometimes tinted her cheeks brightly enough, but at others faded into a waxen paleness--and the occasional restlessness of her movements. Annette was not very striking at first sight; she was one of those women who do not become less interesting by observation, but who rather continue to occupy, to interest, perhaps a little to perplex, the observer. She was graceful, she was even elegant in appearance, but she was not gentle-looking. The dark eyes had no fiery expression, and the well-shaped mouth, not foolishly small or unpleasantly compressed, had decided sweetness in the full fresh lips; and yet the last thing any accurate noter of physiognomy would have said of Miss Derinzy was, that she looked gentle. Impatience, impulse, whether for good or ill to be determined by circumstances--these were plainly to be read in her face. And one more indication was there--not, it may be, legible to indifferent eyes, but which, had there been any to study the girl with the clear-sightedness of affection, would have made itself plain in all its present meaning and future menace--the vacuity of an unoccupied, inactive heart. Annette Derinzy loved no living human being. She knew neither love nor grief, the true civilising influences which need to be exercised in each individual instance, if the human creature is to be elevated above primitive conditions. She had no recollection of her parents, and therefore no standard by which to measure the tenderness which she might covet as a possession, or deplore as a loss--by whose depth and endurance she might test the shallowness and the insufficiency of the conventional observance shown to her by the interested relatives who furnished all her life was destined to know of natural love and care. She had no brother or sister, or familiar girlish friendships, nor had she ever displayed an inclination to contract any of those lesser ties with which genial and sensitive natures endeavour to supplement their deprivation of the greater. Either she was of a reserved, uncommunicative temperament, or she had been so steadily restricted from the society of other young people, that the habit of depending entirely upon herself had been effectually formed; for Annette never complained of the seclusion in which the family lived, and in some cases received with a sufficiently ill grace intelligence that it was about to be broken in upon.
Like most ill-tempered persons, Mrs. Derinzy had a keen perception of faults of temper, and no toleration for them. She declared that of all things she hated selfishness and sulk most; and the recipients of the sentiments were apt to think she had all the justification of it which an intimate knowledge of the vices in question could supply. She accused "dear Annette" at times of both, not altogether unjustly perhaps, but yet not with strict justice. If she was selfish, it was because her life was narrow; its horizon was close upon her; no large interests occupied it, no external responsibility laid its claims upon Annette. There did not exist anyone to whom she could feel herself indispensable, or even "a comfort;" and though she was surrounded with external care and consideration to what she held to be a superfluous and unreasonable extent, her native shrewdness led her to distinguish with unerring accuracy between this perfunctory and organised observance and the spontaneous affectionate guardianship, without effort on the one side or constraint upon the other, which the natural relationship of parent and child secures. She did not love her aunt Mrs. Derinzy, and she positively disliked the Captain, who reciprocated the sentiment; as was not unnatural, seeing that he was paying the price of success in his schemes against her peace and happiness by the unmitigatedennuiproduced by his life at Beachborough. For what there really was of fine and noble, of amiable and elevated, in the character of Annette Derinzy, her own nature was accountable, and in no degree her training, associations, and surroundings. She had none of the enthusiasm and fancy of girlhood about her--the atmosphere of calculation, worldliness, and discontent in which she lived was too decidedly and fatally unfavourable to their growth--but she did not substitute for them any evil propensities or unworthy ambitions, and her chief faults were those of temper. She was undeniably sulky; her aunt did not traduce her on that point, though she did not fitly understand the origin of the defect, or make any kind or charitable allowance for its manifestation. Anger rarely took the form of passion with Annette; but when aroused, it was very difficult to allay, and her resentment was not easy to eradicate. The individual in the family whom she disliked most--her uncle--was that one who least often excited the girl's temper. She kept clear of him, away from him, as much as she could, and usually regarded him with a degree of contempt which seemed to act as a safeguard to her anger. But the internal life of the house, as shared by the three women, Mrs. Derinzy, her niece, and Mrs. Stothard, was sometimes far from peaceful. Annette was possessed of much better feelings than might have been expected, her antecedents and her present circumstances considered; and she was sometimes successfully appealed to to forego her own will and submit to Mrs. Derinzy's, by a representation of the delicacy of that lady's health, and the ill effect which opposition and the sudden estrangement of her niece would have upon her. Many quarrels were made up in this way, and not the less readily that Annette was curious about the condition of Mrs. Derinzy's health. She never exactly understood the nature of her illness--which did not seem to the girl to interfere with her pursuing the ordinary routine of a lady's life in a secluded country place, and admitted of all the moderate and mildly-flavoured diversions which such conditions of existence could bestow--but which was kept in view constantly by the patient herself and Mrs. Stothard, pleaded in support of the impossibility of any change in the mode of life of the Derinzy family, and substantiated by the periodic visits of Dr. Wainwright. Annette was wholly unconscious that while her own illness was the subject of village gossip, comment, and speculation, no one outside had any notion that Mrs. Derinzy was a chronic sufferer, requiring the expensive and solicitous care of a physician of eminence from London, who was well known in Beachborough to be such, and who was generally supposed to come to see the young lady. She would have been greatly angered had she suspected the existence of such an equivoque; for among the strongest of her feelings were a repugnance to knowing herself to be discussed, and an intense dislike to Dr. Wainwright.
Annette's conduct towards the confidential physician, who was said to be so clever in the treatment of disease, and especially of disease of the nondescript, or at least not described, kind from which Mrs. Derinzy suffered, had frequently been such as to justify her aunt's displeasure, and deserve her reprobation as ill-tempered and ill-bred. His appearance at Beachborough was invariably a signal for Annette's exhibiting herself in her least attractive light, and generally for open revolt against Mrs. Derinzy's wishes and authority. The girl would contrive to get out of the house unnoticed, and remain away for hours; or she would pretend illness and go to bed, and lie there quite silent and refusing food, until she was convinced, by the entrance of Dr. Wainwright into her room, and his accosting her with the calm imperturbable authority of a physician, that the very worst way in which to avoid seeing a doctor was by pretending to be ill. Or she would make her appearance just in time to sit down at dinner, and having returned his greeting with the utmost curtness and reluctance, maintain obstinate silence throughout the meal, and retire immediately on its conclusion. All remonstrances had failed to induce her to behave better in this respect, and even Dr. Wainwright's skilful quizzing of her for this peculiarity--which he told her was very unfashionable, because he was quite a favourite with the ladies--had no effect. She either could not or would not say why she disliked Dr. Wainwright, but she had no hesitation in acknowledging that she did dislike him.
Mrs. Stothard's position in the Derinzy household, however anomalous in the sight of outsiders, was such as to make her perfectly aware of the relations of each of its members to the others, while there was something in her own relation to each respectively unknown to, uncomprehended by, them. She ruled them all in a quiet unobtrusive way, whose absolutism was as complete as it was unmarked, unmarred by any tyranny of manner. We have seen how Captain Derinzy and she were affected towards each other, and this narrative will have to deal with her manipulation of Mrs. Derinzy's "scheme." As for Annette, she seemed to be Mrs. Stothard's chief object in life, as she certainly constituted her principal occupation in every day. But not ostentatiously or oppressively so. If Annette had been called upon to say which of her three associates was least displeasing to her, which she least frequently wished away, she would have replied, "Mrs. Stothard;" but she did not love even her. With Mrs. Stothard, Annette seldom quarrelled; but a visit from Dr. Wainwright always furnished the occasion for one of their rare disagreements; so that when the elder woman came to tell the girl of his arrival one afternoon, while she was lying down to rest after a long ramble, she knew she was bringing her very unwelcome news.
Annette had been restless of late. She was not ill, and there were no symptoms of suffering in her appearance; but she had taken one of her fits of mental weariness, for which her life offered no irrational excuse, and, as her habit was, she had resorted, as a means of wearing it off, to severe bodily exercise, walking such distances as secured her against the danger of a companion, and yet never succeeding in being as tired as she wished to be.
"I should like to sleep for a week, a month, a year," she would say, "and wake up in some new world, with nothing and nobody in it I had ever seen before, and everything one thinks and says and does quite different."
But when Annette was weariest of mind, and tried to be weariest of body, she slept less, and her temper was at its worst. So Mrs. Stothard found her, when she urged her to get up and dress nicely for dinner, because Dr. Wainwright had arrived, more than usually recalcitrant.
"I shan't," said the girl, tossing her handsome arms over her head as she lay at full length upon a sofa in her dressing-room, and ruffling her dark hair with her wilful hands; "I shan't. I detest him; you know I detest him. What is he always watching me, and trying to catch my eye, for? He's a bad cruel man, and he comes here for no good. What's the matter with my aunt? She was very well on Monday."
"I don't know indeed, Miss Annette; the old complaint, I suppose."
"The old complaint!whatold complaint? It's all nonsense, in my belief, and he persuades her she's ill for a purpose of his own. At all events, let him seeherand be done with it;I shan'tgo down to dinner."
"Oh yes, you will," said Mrs. Stothard, who had been quietly laying out Annette's dress, pouring hot water into a basin, and disposing combs and brushes on the toilet-table, "Oh yes, you will. You'll never be so foolish as to make a quarrel with your uncle and aunt about such a thing as that, and have the servants talking of it. Come, my dear, get up; you've no time to spare."
She looked steadily at the girl as she spoke, and put one hand under her shoulder, raising her from the pillow. Annette shrunk from her for a moment with a look partly cowed, partly of avoidance; the next she let her feet down to the floor, and stood up passively, but with her sullenest expression of face.
"Where's Mary?" she said.
"Busy with Mrs. Derinzy. She has been very poorly this afternoon. I'll help you to dress."
She did so silently; and Annette did not speak, but, like a froward child, twitched herself about, and made her task as troublesome as possible--a manoeuvre which Mrs. Stothard quietly ignored.
"Where is the odious man?" she asked suddenly, when she stood dressed for dinner before her toilet-glass, into which she did not look.
"In the drawing-room with the Captain; you had better join them."
"No, I won't, not till the bell rings. I'll keep out of his way as long as I can. I'm neither Dr. Wainwright's friend nor Dr. Wainwright's patient."