Mrs. Stothard had been lucky in getting her daughter into such an unexceptionable establishment as that presided over by Madame Clarisse; at least, so everybody said who spoke to her on the subject, and, as we well know, what everybody says must be right. It does not detract from the truth of the assertion when it is confessed that very few people knew anything about Mrs. Stothard or her daughter; but the fact remains the same. Madame Clarisse was decidedly the milliner most in vogue during her day with the best--that is to say, the most clothes-wearing and mostcachet-giving--section of London society; and any young woman who had the luck to learn her experience in such a school, and, after a few years, had the money to set up in business for herself, might consider her fortune as good as made.
No doubt that Madame Clarisse's position was not ungrudgingly yielded up to her, was not achieved, in fact, without an enormous amount of work, and worry, and industry, and self-negation on her part; without a proportionate quantity of jealousy and heart-burning, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, on the part of those engaged in the same occupation. Even in the very heyday of her success, when her workwomen were sitting up for forty-eight hours at a stretch (Madame Clarisse lived, it must be recollected, before the passing of any ridiculous Acts of Parliament limiting the hours for women's labour); when the carriages were in double rows before her door; and when, after a drawing-room or a court-ball, the columns of the fashionable journals were seething with repetitions of her name--there were some people who said that they preferred the Misses Block, and roundly asserted that the Misses Block's "cut" was better than Madame Clarisse's. The Misses Block were attenuated old maids, who lived in Edwards Street, Portman Square, in a house which was as old-fashioned as, Madame Clarisse used to declare, were its occupiers, and who had suddenly blossomed from the steady county connection which their mother bequeathed to them into a whirl of fashionable patronage, notwithstanding that they were "bêtes--Dieu, comme elles sont bêtes!" according to their lively rival's account.
Madame Clarisse was notbête. If she had been, she would never have made the fame or the money which she enjoyed, and which were entirely the result of her own tact, and talent, and industry. No mother had ever left her a snug business with a county connection. All that she recollected of a mother was a snuffy old person with a silk handkerchief tied round her head, who used to live on a fifth floor in a little street debouching from the Cannebière in Marseilles, and who used to whack her little daughter with a long flat bit of wood when she cried from hunger or other causes. When this mother died, which she was good enough to do at a sufficiently early period of the girl's life, Clarisse was taken in hand by her uncle, anépicierand ship-chandler, who apprenticed her to a milliner in the town, and was kind to her in his odd way. The girl was sharp and appreciative, ready with her needle, readier with her tongue--she had a knack of conciliating obstreperous customers whose orders had been unduly delayed in a manner that delighted her mistress, a plain, blunt, stupid woman--readiest of all with her eyes. Not as regardsoeillades, though that was a kind of sharpshooting in which she was not unskilled, but in the use of her eyes for business purposes. Mademoiselle Clarisse looked on and listened, and learned the world. No one came in or went out of the work-room or the showroom without being diligently studied and appraised by those sharp eyes and that quick brain. It was from her appreciation of the English character, as learned in the milliner's shop at Marseilles, that Mademoiselle Clarisse determined on seeking her fortune in our favoured land, should the opportunity ever present itself. Marseilles has a population of resident English--ship-owners, ship-captains, naval men connected with the great Peninsular and Oriental Company, many of whose vessels ply from that port--and these worthy people have for the most part wives and daughters, whose principal consolation in their banishment from England is that they are enabled to dress themselves in the French fashion, and at a much cheaper rate than they could were they at home. There is no gainsaying that the prices charged by the Marseilles milliner, even to the English ladies, were less than those which they would have been liable to in their native land; but these prices, which were willingly paid, were still so much in excess of those charged to the townspeople, that Mademoiselle Clarisse clearly saw that a country which produced people at once so rich and so simple was the place for her future action.
She was a clear-headed young woman, with simple tastes and an innate propensity for saving money; so that when her apprenticeship expired she had a sum laid by--small indeed, but still something--with which she determined to try her fortune in England. She had picked up a little of the language, and had obtained a few introductions to compatriots living in London; so that when she arrived, she was not wholly friendless or utterly dependent. Mademoiselle Anatole--born in Lyons, but long resident in London--wanted a partner; and after a very sharp wrangle, conducted by the ladies on each side with great skill and diplomacy, a portion of Mademoiselle Clarisse's savings was transferred to her countrywoman, and a limp and ill-printed circular informed Mademoiselle Anatole's patronesses that she had just received into partnership the celebrated Mademoiselle Clarisse from Paris, and that they hoped henceforth, etc.
Mademoiselle Anatole lived on the first floor of an old house in the Bloomsbury district, which had once been a fashionable mansion, but which was now let out in lodgings. Under the French milliner, a German importer of pipes and pictures and Bohemian glass had his rooms, and his name, "Korb," shone out truculently from the street-door jamb, towering above the milliner's more modest announcement of her residence. The entire neighbourhood had a foreign and Bohemian flavour. In an otherwise modest and British-looking house, Malmédie Frères announced in black-and-gold letters, much too slim and upright, that they kept an hotel "À la Boule d'Or." From the open windows in the summer-time poured forth, mixed with clouds of tobacco-smoke, waitings and roarings of the human voice, and poundings and grindings of pianos. The artists-colourmen had the street on their books (keeping it there as little as possible), canvases and millboards were perpetually arriving at one or other of the houses where the windows looking northward were run up into the next floor, and bearded men smoking short pipes pervaded the neighbourhood night and day.
Even the very house in which the milliners lived was not free from the Bohemian taint. On the second floor, immediately above themagasin des modes, and immediately under the private rooms of Mesdames Anatole and Clarisse, lived Mr. Rupert Robinson. Shortly after her arrival Mademoiselle Clarisse met on the stairs several times a middle-sized, middle-aged, jolly-looking gentleman, with bright roguish eyes and a light-brown beard, who bowed as he passed by, and gave her the inside of the staircase with much politeness, and with a "Pardon, ma'amselle," in a very good accent. Asked who this could be, Mademoiselle Anatole responded that it was probably "ceRobinson:" asked what wasceRobinson, Madamoiselle Anatole further replied that he was "feuilletoniste, littérateur--je ne sais quoi!" And Mademoiselle Anatole was not far out in her guess, to which she had probably been assisted by the constant sight of a grimy-faced printer's-boy peacefully slumbering on a stool specially placed for his accommodation outside Robinson's door. Those were the early days of cheap periodicals, and there were few newspaper-offices or publishers' shops where Mr. Rupert Robinson was unknown or where he was not welcome. He was a bright, genial, jolly fellow, with an inexhaustible stock of animal spirits and good-humour, with a keen appreciation of the ludicrous, and a singular power of hunting-out and levelling lance at small social shams and inflated humbugs of the day; and though he would not have used a bludgeon, and could not have wielded a cutlass, yet he made excellent practice with his foil, and when he chose, as it happened sometimes, to break the button off and set to work in earnest, his adversary always bore the marks of the bout. Generally, however, he kept clear of anything like heavy work, for which his temperament unsuited him, and confined himself to light literature, at which he was one of the smartest hands of the day; and, in addition to his journalistic and periodical work, he was one of the pillars of the Parthenon Theatre.
Those who only know the Parthenon in its present days--when it occasionally remains shut for months, to open for a few nights with "Herr Eselkopfs celebrated impersonation of the 'Jew whom Shakespeare drew,'"videpublic advertisement and, published criticism fromBerwick-on-Tweed Argus; when it alternates between opera and burlesque or tragedy and breakdowns, but is always dirty, and dingy, and mouldy-smelling, and bankrupt-looking--can have little idea of what it was in the days of which we are writing, when Mr. and Mrs. Momus were its lessees, and when there was more fun to be found within its walls than in any other place in London, even of treble its size. The chiefs of that merry company are both dead; the belles whose bright eyes enthralled us then are portly matrons now, renewing their former beauty in their daughters; the walking gentlemen have walked off entirely or lapsed into heavy fathers; and the authors, who were constantly lounging in the greenroom, and convulsing actors and actresses with their audacious chaff, are some dead, and all who are left sobered and steadied and aged. But all were young, and jolly, and witty, and daring in those days; and foremost amongst them was Mr. Rupert Robinson, who was then just beginning to write burlesques in a style which his successors have spoiled and written out, and was dramatising popular nursery stories, and filling them with the jokes, allusions, and parodies of the day.
Although Mr. Rupert Robinson had been for some time domiciled under the same roof as Mademoiselle Anatole, he had made no attempt to cultivate the acquaintance of that lady, who was in truth a very long, very thin, very flat, very melancholy person, who had not merelyles larmes dans sa voix, but seemed to be thoroughly saturated with misery. But soon after Mademoiselle Clarisse was added to the firm, the "littery gent," as Mrs. Mogg the landlady was accustomed to call her second-floor lodger, contrived to get up a bowing acquaintance, which soon ripened into speaking, and afterwards into much greater intimacy. Mademoiselle Anatole at first disapproved of thecamaraderiethus established; but she was mollified by the judicious presentation of unlimited orders for the theatres and the opera, and by other kindness which had more satisfactory and more enduring results; for Mr. Rupert Robinson, being of a convivial nature, was in the habit of frequently giving what he called "jolly little suppers" to certain select ladies of thecorps de balletof the Parthenon; cheery little meals, where the male portion of the company was contributed by the Household Brigade, the Legislature, the Bar, and the Press, and where the comestibles were the succulent oyster opened in the room and eaten fresh from the operating knife, the creamy lobster, and hot potato handed from the block-tin repository presided over by a peripatetic provider known to the guests as "Tatur Khan." In his early youth Rupert had been a medical student at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, and he strove, not unsuccessfully, to imbue these little parties with a spirit of thevie de Bohèmewhich rules the denizens of the Latin Quarter. The viands were very good and very cheap, and though there was plenty of fun and laughter, there was no license.
Soon after the establishment of his acquaintance with Clarisse, Rupert invited her and her partner to one of these banquets, and she soon became popular with the set who were admitted to them. Mademoiselle Anatole they did not think much of; indeed, Miss Bella Montmorency, one of the four leadingcoryphéeswho at that time were creating such a sensation in the ballet ofMustaphaat the T.R.D.L, said all the use that that thin Frenchwoman could be made of was to replace the skeleton, a relic of Rupert's old surgical life, which he sometimes brought out of its box and seated at the table, crowned with flowers. But with Clarisse they were very different. She was bright and cheery, sang a pretty little song, and laughed a merry little ringing laugh at all the jokes, whether she understood them or not; and the ballet-girls liked her very much, and invited her to come and see them, and tried to help her in the world. They could not do much in that way themselves, for they made their own dresses of course, and when they had a present of a black-silk gown or a shawl, had no chance of recommending any particular vendor; but when they saw that the Frenchwomen were really excellent in their business, they spoke about them in the theatre so loudly, that the rumours of their proficiency reached the ears of Mrs. Lannigan and Miss Calverley, the two "leading ladies" of the theatre, and incited their curiosity. The crimson-slashed jackets and the lovely diaphanous nether garments, the Polish lancer-caps and the red boots with brass heels, which these ladies wore in the burlesques, were provided by the management and prepared by Miss Hirst, the wardrobe woman, a crushed creature with a pock-marked face and a wall-eye, who always had the bosom of her gown studded with pins, and her hair streaked with fluffy ends of thread. But when phases of modern life were to be represented, the ladies chose to find their own dresses; and hearing of the excellent "cut" and "fit" of Mademoiselles Anatole and Clarisse, were persuaded to give those young women a trial. The result was favourable, recommendation followed on recommendation, and the firm had as much work as it could possibly get through.
It was about this period of her life that Mademoiselle Clarisse, in her visits to the theatre, made the acquaintance of M. Pierre. It was not to be doubted that M. Pierre, as well as Mademoiselles Anatole and Clarisse, was in possession of a legitimate surname in addition to thenom de baptêmeby which he was commonly known; but, following the custom of those of his class, he had suffered it to lapse on coming to England, and though known as "ce cherLélong" by his compatriots, called himself to his customers M. Pierre, and was so called by them. M. Pierre was acoiffeurby profession--unfortunately, as he thought; for he lived at a time when that profession was rather at a discount. In his early youth, when the great ladies wore their own hair dressed in the most elaborate fashion, thecoiffeurwas a necessary adjunct to every well-regulated establishment. Had he lived until now, when the great ladies wear other persons' hair dressed in the most preposterous manner, he would have found plenty to do, and would probably have invented various washes, which would have ruined the health of thousands of silly women and made the fortune of their concocter. But when M. Pierre was in the prime of his life, elaborate hair-dressing went out of fashion, and the simplicity of knots, bands, and ringlets, which could be intrusted to the maid or even executed by the fair fingers of the wearer, came in its stead. This was an awful blow to M. Pierre, whose experience was thus restricted to members of the theatrical profession, or to the occasional preparation of wigs and headdresses for a fancy ball; but he had saved a little money, and being a long-headed calculating man, he arranged to invest and reinvest it to great advantage. At the time that he was introduced to Mademoiselle Clarisse he was an elderly man, but he had lost none of his shrewdness andsavoir faire. He saw at a glance that his countrywoman was not merely perfect mistress of her art, but generally a clever woman of the world; and after a little time he proposed to her that they should club their means and hunt the rich English in couples. He pointed out to her that his connection formerly lay among the very highest and best classes, many of whom recollected him, and would be glad to give anyone a turn on his recommendation; that he, as a man, had a much greater chance of buying merchandise good and cheap than any woman; finally, that he had capital, without which she could never do anything great, which he would put into the business.
Mademoiselle Clarisse took a week to think over all that Pierre had said to her before coming to any decision. Her ambition had increased with her success, and she had long since ceased to think very highly of the patronage of the theatrical ladies, to obtain which at one time she would have made any sacrifice. For some time she had been in business on her own account; Mademoiselle Anatole, so soon as she realised a sufficiency, having retired to Lyons, there to weep and grizzle and sniff, and make herself as uncomfortable and unpleasant-looking as the vast majority of French old maids. And Clarisse was fully aware of M. Pierre's talent, and believed in his fortune; and verging towards middle age, and having lost sight of Rupert Robinson, and others for whom she had had hercapricesafter him, and having lost her zest for rollicking suppers and fun of that kind, thought she could not do better than settle herself in life, and accordingly accepted M. Pierre's proposal.
She soon found she had done rightly. Many of her husband's old patronesses consented to give her a trial for his sake, and were so pleased that they recommended her to all their friends. The establishment in George Street was then first opened, and M. Pierre not only did all he promised but a great deal more. For, being always a man of great taste, he turned his attention to the devising of special articles of millinery, then employed his manual dexterity in carrying out his ideas; and not suffering in any way from a sense of the ridiculous, he might be seen hour after hour in his sanctum, with his glasses on his nose and an embroidered skull-cap on his head, singing away some pastoralchansonor drinking couplet, while his nimble fingers were busily engaged in stitching at a novel kind of headdress or in sketching out a design for an artistic bonnet. He was proud of his wife's appearance and pleased with her industry and success, and he enjoyed his married life very much for a couple of years, making a point of going to St. James's Street on drawing-room days, and to the Opera on great nights, to admire the results of his handiwork, but otherwise living very domestically and quietly; and then he died, leaving all his worldly possessions to his widow.
The success which had attended Madame Clarisse during her husband's lifetime continued after his death, and there was scarcely a house in the millinery business holding a higher reputation than hers. It was this reputation which induced Mrs. Stothard, ordinarily so quiet and self-contained, to make a great effort to get her daughter engaged as a member of Madame Clarisse's staff. Many young women of Daisy's position in life would have eagerly accepted such a chance; "From Madame Clarisse's," figuring on a brass door-plate in the future, being an excellent recommendation and an almost certain augury of success. The Frenchwoman was perfectly cognisant of this, and required a large premium with her apprentices. That once paid, the girls were turned into the workroom and left to "take it out" as best they might; unless, indeed, one of them showed exceptional talent and skill--qualities which were immediately recognised by their employer.
Daisy's promotion had, however, not been due to her possession of either of these qualities. She had one, a much rarer, which influenced her removal from the work-room to the showroom, and which led Madame Clarisse and all her customers to take notice of the girl--and that was the exceptional style of her beauty. Ladies young and old would call Madame to them, and in undertones ask her who was the "young person" with that wonderful complexion and that excellent manner. Was she not some one who--they meant to say--not born in that class of life, don't you know; so very bred-looking anddistinguée, and that sort of thing? Some women would have been jealous of such compliments paid to their assistants, but Madame was far above anything of that kind. She used to bow and to invent any little nonsense as it occurred to her at the moment, enough to satisfy the querists without leading them to pursue their inquiries, and then would dismiss the subject from her thoughts. The girl wasasses gentille, neat, and even elegant in her appearance, and of good address; looked well in the street, wore pretty gloves, Madame had noticed, in contradistinction to most Anglaises--"qui sont ordinairement gantées comme les chats bottes," as she would say with a shrug of horror--and walked well--in Madame's mind another unusual accomplishment in an Englishwoman. Altogether she was a credit to the establishment; and Madame began to take a little more notice of her, talk more confidentially of business matters to her, and leave her in charge of affairs when pleasure engagements, of which she had a great many, summoned her away. Under these different circumstances the girl became a different being in her employer's eyes. Hitherto Madame Clarisse had only seen her as a quiet impassive young woman doing her duty in the showroom; but when she came to know her, and to see how every feeling was reflected in her face--how the gray eyes could flash and the colour would rush into the pale cheek, heightened in its brilliancy by the creamy whiteness surrounding it--she allowed to herself that "Fanfan," as she now called her, was lovely indeed.
And then Madame Clarisse began to have new notions about Fanfan. The French milliner was not an exceptionally good woman, nor, indeed, ever thought of arrogating to herself the title. In the days of her youth she had not permitted any straitlaced notions of morality to interfere with her pleasures; and in her comfortable middle age she never neglected an opportunity of gratifying the two passions by which she was most swayed--money-making and good living. She cared very little as to what her young women might do during the few spare hours of their leisure; but it was a necessity of her business, that the assistants in the showroom should be presentable persons and of a certain staid demeanour. Fanfan's manners were admirably suited for her place--cold, respectful, and intelligent; but when Madame had discovered the existence of the volcano beneath the icy exterior, had learned, as she did quietly and dexterously, that, with all the good schooling she had gone through, and the restraint which she had brought to bear upon herself, the girl was full of feeling and passion, and that there was "a great deal of human nature" in her, she took a special and peculiar interest in Fanfan's future.
"To make herself amodistehere in London without money is impossible," she mused. "To set up in Brighton or Tonbridge, to marry anépicieror anemployé--ah, my faith, she is too good for that! Is it that Madame Lobbia, that little dame,mince, and like to a white rabbit, who flies to and from Saint Jean's Woot at the great trot with her beautiful horses, and wears diamonds in full day; is it that Mdlle. Victorine,feu écuyèreat Franconi's, who leads Milor Milliken such a dance, throws his money to the winds, and laughs to his nose; is it that they are to be mentioned with Fanfan? And there are other Jews, merchants of diamonds, than M. Lobbia, and other milors as rich and as silly as Milor Milliken. Forward, my Fanfan! why this dull life to you? For me, do you ask, why I give myself so much trouble? Hold, I know nothing! In watching the progress of others one renews one's own youth, and toexploiterso much grace and beauty would be interesting, and might be remunerative.Et du reste----" and Madame Clarisse paused for a moment, reflecting; then shrugged her shoulders slightly, and said, "du reste, à la guerre comme à la guerre!"
But whatever Madame's notions on the subject might have been, she kept them strictly to herself, never making any difference in her manner towards Daisy, save, perhaps, in being a little kinder and showing a little increased confidence in her. It was not until the evening after the day on which Fanny Stothard had written to her mother that Madame made any regular approach to familiarity with her assistant. They had had a long and busy and tiring day, for the end of the season was coming on, as it always does, with a rush, and people had neglected ordering their autumn clothes, as they always do, until the last, and the showrooms had been crammed for six hours with an impatient crowd, every component member of which desired to be served at once. Madame had given up anyréunionsfor that evening, and had taken her fair share of the work and supervised everything, remaining in the showroom until all the girls, except Daisy, had gone. Then she walked up to Daisy, and put one hand on the girl's shoulder, tapping her cheek with the other, and saying:
"Enfin, Mademoiselle Fanfan, this dreadful day has come to an end at last. You look worn and fatigued, my child. It's lucky that the end of the season is close at hand, or you would what you call 'knock-up,' without fail."
"Oh, I shall do very well, Madame, thank you," replied Daisy, a little coldly; "a night's rest will quite set me up again."
"Oh, but you must have something before your night's rest, Fanfan. You aretristeand tired; I see it in your eyes. You want a--tiens!what is it that littlefarceur, the advocate Chose, calls it?--a peg. Ha, ha! that is it! You want a sherry peg or a glass of champagne. We will go up to my room, and have some Lyonssaucissonand some champagne."
At any other time Daisy would have declined this invitation; but partly because she really felt low and hipped and overwrought, and imagined that the wine would restore her, partly because she was afraid of appearing ungracious to her employer, whose increased kindness to her of late she had noticed, she now said she should be delighted, and followed Madame up the stairs.
Such a cosy little sitting-room was Madame's--low-ceilinged and odd-shaped, like an ordinaryentresolcarried up a story; with French furniture in red velvet, with the walls covered with engravings and nicknacks and Danton's statuettes, and the tables littered "with scrofulous French novels" in their yellow paper covers. The room was lit by one large window and a half, the other half giving light to Madame's bedroom, which led out by a door, through which, when open, as it usually was, glimpses could be obtained of the end of a brass bedstead apparently dressed up in blue muslin. There was a cloth on the table, and Madame bustled about, and, assisted by her little French maid--the page-boy retired home after customers' hours--soon produced some sausage and the remains of a Strasbourg pie, bread, butter, andfromage de Brie, and from the cellar (which was a cupboard on the landing with a patent lock, where Madame kept a small stock of remarkably good wine) a bottle of champagne.
Daisy could not eat very much, she was over-tired for that; but the wine did her good, and she talked much more freely than was her wont.
Madame Clarisse was delighted with her; a certain bitterness in the girl's tone being specially appreciated by the Frenchwoman. After some little talk she said to her:
"You still live in the same apartment, Fanfan?"
"Yes, Madame--in the same garret."
"Garret!" echoed Madame Clarisse. "Eh bien, what does it matter? Garret or palace, it makes little difference when one is young.
'Bravant le monde, et les sots et les sages,Sans avenir, fier de mon printemps,Leste et joyeux je montais six étages--Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans.'"
'Bravant le monde, et les sots et les sages,
Sans avenir, fier de mon printemps,
Leste et joyeux je montais six étages--
Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans.'"
And as she trolled out the verse in a rich voice, Madame's eyes looked very wicked, and she chinked her glass against her companion's.
"Perhaps it is because I only live on the third story--though there's nothing above it--but I certainly never feellesteorjoyeuse," said the girl.
"No?" said Madame interrogatively. "That's a sad thing to say. And yet you have youth and beauty, Fanfan."
"Youth and beauty!" cried the girl. "If I have them, what good are they to me? Can they drag me out of this life of slavery, take me from that wretched garret, give me gowns and jewels, and horses, and carriages, and a position in life?"
Daisy was full of excitement; the tones of her voice were thrilling, her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed. Madame Clarisse eyed her curiously.
"Yes," she said, after a minute's pause; "they can do all this, and"--taking Daisy's hand--"some day, Fanfan, perhaps they may."
"Perhaps they may," said Daisy.
She was thinking of the chance of her marrying Paul Derinzy, whom she knew as Mr. Douglas. But Madame Clarisse did not know Mr. Derinzy, so she was not thinking of Daisy's marrying him--or anybody else, as it happened.
When Mrs. Stothard said, "Oh yes, you will!" as comment upon Annette Derinzy's outspoken declaration that she would not go down to dinner, she probably knew that she had grounds for the assertion. At all events, the result proved her to be right. The dinner-bell clanged out, pealing through the crazy tumble-down Tower, and awaking all the echoes lying in wait in that ramshackle building; and ere the reverberation of the noise had ceased, the door of Miss Derinzy's bedroom was wide open. Annette's back had been turned to it, and when she wheeled round, her attention attracted by the current of air which rushed in and disarranged a muslin scarf which she wore round her shoulders, she saw that Mrs. Stothard was busily engaged at a chest of drawers standing in a somewhat remote corner of the room. Annette was silent, but she glanced stealthily and shiftily out of the corners of her eyes. Mrs. Stothard still remained immersed in her occupation. The girl shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, hesitating, dallying; then shook herself together, as it were, and seeing she was still unnoticed, with a low chuckle silently and swiftly passed through the doorway and descended the stairs.
In seaside places such as Beachborough the evenings in late summer are chilly. There was a handful of fire in the dining-room grate, and while Miss Annette was sulking upstairs, and deliberating whether she should or should not come down, Captain Derinzy was standing on the rug with his back to the grate, and from that post of vantage was haranguing his wife and his guest--Dr. Wainwright--in his own peculiar way. When he was alone with his wife the Captain was silent and submissive; when a third person was present, and he knew that a curtain-lecture was the worst he had to dread, he was loquacious and imperative.
"And again I say to you, Wainwright," said he, in continuance of some previous conversation, "she's got to that pitch now that she isn't to be borne. I can stand a good deal--no man more so; they used to say, when I was on the Committee of the Windham, that I had a--a--what was it?--judicial mind; that was what they called it, a judicial mind--but I can't stand this girl and her tempers, and so something must be done; and there's an end of it, Wainwright!"
There are some men who are never called by any but their christian-names, and those often familiarly abbreviated, by their most promiscuous acquaintance. There are others in whose appearance and manners something forbids their interlocutors ever dispensing with their courtesy titles. Dr. Wainwright, one would have said, undoubtedly belonged to the latter class. He was a tall man, standing over six feet in height, with a high bald forehead, large features, square jaw, and deep piercing gray eyes. His manners were placidly courtly, his naturally sonorous voice was skilfully modulated, and there was an unmistakable air of latent strength about him, a sort of consciousness of the possession of certain power, you could not tell what. He might have been a duke, or a philosopher in easy circumstances, or a "man in authority, having servants under him." Quiet, dignified, and bland, he held his own amongst all sorts and conditions of men, and with the exception of two or three intimates of a quarter of a century's standing, Captain Derinzy was probably the only person living who would have thought of calling him "Wainwright." The Doctor winced a little at the repetition of the familiarity, but beyond that took no notice of it.
"My dear Captain Derinzy," said he, after a moment's pause, "I can perfectly appreciate your feelings. I have not the least doubt that Miss Derinzy's unfortunate illness is the source of great annoyance to you. Still, if you are indisposed to run certain risks, which, as I have explained to Mrs. Derinzy----"
"I thought by this time, Dr. Wainwright," interrupted the lady, "you would have seen the utter futility of paying the least attention to anything which Captain Derinzy may say!"
"My love!" murmured the Captain.
"He is as fully impressed as any of us," continued Mrs. Derinzy, without taking the least notice of her husband, "with the necessity of our pursuing the course we have agreed upon; but he has a passion for hearing his own voice; and as he knows that I never listen to him, he is only too glad to find someone who will."
"No, no! Look here, Wainwright," said the Captain. "It's all very well, you know, but Mrs. Derinzy don't put the thing quite fairly. She's a woman, you know, and it's natural for women to be dull and left alone, and all that; but a man's a different thing. He requires----"
Captain Derinzy did not finish his sentence as to a man's requirements, for Dr. Wainwright's quick ear had caught the sound of an approaching footstep, and he held up his hand and raised his eyebrows in warning, only in time to stop his voluble host as the door opened and Annette appeared.
As she entered the room Dr. Wainwright immediately faced her. There was no mistaking his figure and presence, even if she had not expected to find him there. Nevertheless, her first idea was to close the door and run away. But she would scarcely have had the opportunity of doing this, however much she might have wished it; for the Doctor at once stepped across the room, and had taken her hand in his, and was bowing over it in his old-fashioned courtly way, almost before she was aware of it.
"There is no occasion to ask after your health, Miss Annette," he said in his soft pleasant tone. "One has only to look at you to have one's pleasantest hopes confirmed. You and the Dorsetshire air do credit to each other."
"I am quite well," said Annette shortly, taking her hand from his.
"Here's dinner!" said the Captain. "You see, we don't make a stranger of you, Wainwright--at least, Mrs. Derinzy doesn't. There's a dam prejudice in this house against using the drawing-room; so we sit stiving in this infernal place, 'parlour, and kitchen, and all,' and---- Where will you sit?"
Sentence abruptly concluded in consequence of unmistakable manifestations of his wife's being unable to put up with him any longer.
"Thank you, Captain Derinzy, I'll sit over here, if you please," said the Doctor, with an extra dash of stiffness in his manner; "opposite Miss Annette; and, if you'll permit me, I will move these flowers a little on one side, that I may get a better view of her."
"Why do you always stare at me?" said Annette, with a defiant air.
"Do I stare?" asked Dr. Wainwright. "If I do, I am exceedingly rude, and ought to know better. But haven't you used the wrong word, my dear young lady? I look at you, perhaps; but I hope I don't stare."
"Looking and staring are all the same. I hate to be looked at!"
"You are the very first girl I ever heard give utterance to that sentiment," said the Doctor cheerily; "and you'll soon outgrow such ideas."
"I daresay we shall hear no more of them after her cousin Paul has been staying with us," said Mrs. Derinzy. "We expect Paul soon now, Doctor."
"I have heard a good deal of Mr. Paul from my son, who is in the same office with him. They seem to be great allies, and George speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Paul."
"Is your son's name George?" asked Annette.
"Yes."
"Your own name is not George?"
"No; mine is Philip."
"I'm glad it is not the same as your son's."
The Doctor and Mrs. Derinzy exchanged glances, and were silent; but Captain Derinzy, who all his life had been notorious for his obtuseness in taking a hint, said:
"Why, what a ridick'lous thing you are sayin', Annette! Why are you glad the Doctor's son's name's not the same as his? What on earth difference could it make to you?"
"It could not make any difference to me," said the girl quietly; "only, I don't know why, I think I should wish to like Dr. Wainwright's son, and--and----"
"And the less he is like his father the greater the chance of your doing so; isn't that it, Miss Annette?" asked the Doctor, with his pleasant smile.
"Yes," said Annette, looking him straight in the face, "you're quite right; that is it."
This blunt communication was received by those who heard it after very different fashions. Mrs. Derinzy knit her brows, and, after looking savagely at her niece, shrugged her shoulders at the Doctor, as much as to say, "What could you expect?" Captain Derinzy laid down his knife and fork, and muttered, "Oh, dam!" apparently in confidence to his plate. The Doctor alone maintained his equanimity unimpaired. There was a pause--considering the tremendous character of the last remark--a very short pause--and then he said:
"Now, there's an instance of the injustice which is done by your sex, Mrs. Derinzy, to ours. Miss Netty--with an honesty which isimpayable, and which, if there were a little more of it in polite society, would go far to the explosion of what Mr. Carlyle calls 'shams and wind-bags'--says she doesn't like me. She gives no reason, you observe; so that I am relegated to the same position as another member of our profession--Dr. Fell--who also was misliked, and equally without reason alleged."
"I could tell you the reasons for my disliking you," said Annette.
It was extraordinary, the change which had come over her face. The cheeks were full-blooded, the eyes suffused and starting from her head, the hair pushed back, the whole look fierce and defiant.
"Could you?" said the Doctor; then, after looking up at her, adding very quickly, "Ah, but you must not. I don't want to hear a list of my shortcomings, or a catalogue of my faults. I'm too old to make up for the one or get rid of the other; and---- Mrs. Derinzy, I must congratulate you on your cook. It is rare indeed, in what I may be pardoned in calling these out-of-the-way regions, that one comes across anything like thisfilet de sole."
He turned his face towards his hostess as he said these words, and spoke in her direction, but he scarcely moved his eyes from direct contemplation of Annette. The girl's face, with the same flush on it, was looking down, and she seemed to be working nervously with her hands, rapidly intertwining and then separating them, under the table.
Captain Derinzy, at the Doctor's last remark, had given vent to a very curious sound, half-sigh of self-commiseration, half a grunt of contempt. He had not learned much in the half-century during which he had adorned life--his natural gifts had been small, and he had not taken much trouble to improve upon them--but one thing he had arrived at, and that was an appreciation of good cooking. He not merely knew the difference between good and bad dishes--in itself by no means a common acquirement--but he had a knowledge of the arcana of the art, and great high-priests whose temples were the kitchens of London clubs had taken his opinion on the merits of variousplats.
"Well," he said, after a moment, "that's a funny thing! I know you, Wainwright. You're not the kind of fellow to go in for politeness, and all that kind of thing--I mean, of course, flummery, you know, and all that--and yet you say we've got a good cook, and this is nicefilet de sole! Why, there are fellows used to tell you about doctors, you know--'Oh yes, it's all very fine,' they used to say, 'for doctors to tell you not to eat this, and not to drink that, and all the time they're regulargourmets, don't you know!' Well, I think that's all stuff, for my part. They may know all very well about broth and beef-tea, and all that sort of beastliness that they give people when they're getting better; but I only knew one of 'em that ever knew anything really about cooking, and he was an old fellow who'd been out in India, and was a C.B., or something of that sort; and he told the cook at Windham how to make a curry--peculiar kind of thing, quite different from what you get mostly--that was delicious, by Jove! As for this stuff," continued the Captain, taking up a portion of the lauded filet on the end of his fork, and eyeing it with great disgust, "it's dry and tough and leathery, and tastes like badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, by Jove!"
During this speech Dr. Wainwright, although his polite attention to it had been obvious, had scarcely removed his glance from Annette. It remained on her as he said, turning his face in the Captain's direction, and laughing heartily:
"I never tasted badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, Captain Derinzy, and I still stand up for the excellence of thefilet. However, I'm not going to be led into giving any opinion whether we're good judges of good living, or rather whether we exemplify the well-known exceptions which prove rules by not practising what we preach. But one thing can't be denied--that we hear of very curious stories about fancies in eating and drinking. I heard of one only the other day, of an old gentleman who had had the same breakfast for thirty years; and what do you think, Mrs. Derinzy, were its component parts?"
Mrs. Derinzy, also curiously observant of Annette, roused from her quiet watchfulness, and gave herself up to guessing. Tea, coffee, milk, cream, porridge, toast, ham, eggs, she suggested; while claret, brandy-and-soda, anchovy, devilled anything, and bitter beer in a tankard, were proposed by her husband. The Doctor shook his head at all these items, grimly saying:
"What should you say to Irish stew and hot whisky-and-water?"
"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Derinzy.
"For breakfast?" asked the Captain.
"For breakfast; and eaten in bed every day for thirty years!"
"Oh, dam!" said the Captain. "If you hadn't told the story, Wainwright, I shouldn't have believed it. Of course, if you say so, it is so; but the fellow must have been off his head--mad!"
Before he had uttered the last word Mrs. Derinzy, who seemed to have an idea of what was coming, had stretched out her hand towards her husband in warning, while even Dr. Wainwright moved uncomfortably on his chair. Had Annette heard it? Little doubt of that. She looked up slyly, very slyly, with a half-stealthy, half-searching glance at the Doctor; then raising her head, glared defiantly at her aunt, as though marking whether she were affected by the suggestion. She looked long and earnestly, then finding that Mrs. Derinzy's attention was concentrated on her, she withdrew her glance, and relapsed into her former stolid condition.
So the dinner progressed--pleasantly to Captain Derinzy, as a break in the monotony of his life. Not merely did Mrs. Derinzy, who, in her capacity of housekeeper, kept the keys of the cellar and exercised a rigorous economy in that department--not merely did she increase both the quality and quantity of the wine supplied to the table, but she refrained from joining in the conversation more than was absolutely demanded of her by politeness, and consequently the Captain was able to direct it into those channels which most delighted him. It is needless to say that those channels ran with small-talk and fashionable gossip, and petty details of that London life which he had once so thoroughly enjoyed, and from which he was now so unwillingly exiled. The Captain found his interlocutor perfectly able to converse on these his favourite topics. One might have thought that Dr. Wainwright had nothing better to do than to flutter from club to mess-room, and from mess-room to boudoir, so well was he up in thechronique scandaleuseof the day, adapting his phraseology, his voice, and manner to the fashion of the times. The Captain was delighted; great names, once familiar in his mouth as household words, but the mention of which he had not heard for ages, were once more ringing in his ears; the conversation seemed to possess the old smoking-room and barrack flavour so dear to him once, so dead to him of late; and while under its spell, his manner renewed its ancient swagger and his voice its old roll. He yet asked himself how the man whom he had hitherto only known as the sober sedate physician could have recalled such sentiments or borne so essential a part in their discussion.
At length the Doctor's anecdotes commenced to flag, and the Doctor himself was obviously seeking for an opportunity of breaking off the conversation. Mrs. Derinzy, who had been apparently dropping off to sleep, roused up with the declining voices, and catching a peculiar expression in the Doctor's face, was on the alert in an instant. That peculiar expression was a glance towards Annette, accompanied by a significant elevation of the eyebrows, following immediately upon which Dr. Wainwright said:
"And now I must drop this charming conversation which we have had, my dear Captain Derinzy, and, falling back into my professional character, must declare that it is time for us to adjourn.--Beauty sleep, my dear Miss Netty"--walking quickly round and laying his hand lightly on her shoulder--lightly, though she quivered under the touch, and rose at once from her seat--"beauty sleep is not to be had after twelve, they tell us; and though you don't require it, and though you said you didn't like to be looked at--oh, Miss Netty!--yet I think we're all of us sufficiently tired to wish for it to-night. So goodnight! You don't mind shaking hands with me, though you were cruel enough to say you disliked me; goodnight.--Goodnight, Mrs. Derinzy; you feel stronger to-night? Let me feel your pulse for one moment." Then in a rapid undertone to her, "Do you go with her, while I speak a word to Mrs. Stothard. Don't leave till she returns." Again aloud, "Goodnight."
The Captain was making a final foray among the decanters as Mrs. Derinzy and Annette, closely followed by Dr. Wainwright, passed out of the door, immediately on the other side of which Mrs. Stothard was standing. She was about to follow the ladies, but a sign from the Doctor arrested her, and she let them pass on, remaining behind with him. He said but very few words to her, and those in a muttered undertone, but she understood them apparently, nodded her reply, and hurried away upstairs.
"Now, Miss Derinzy, get to bed; do you hear? This is the last time I shall speak to you; next time I shallmakeyou."
The tone in which these words are said is very unlike Mrs. Stothard's usual tone; but it is Mrs. Stothard's voice and it is Mrs. Stothard herself--equipped in a tight linen jacket fitting her closely and without any superfluity of material, and a short clinging petticoat--who is standing by the bed on which Annette is seated.
"Come, do you hear me?" she repeats, taking the girl by the shoulder; "undress now, and get into bed. We're ever so late as it is."
But the girl sits stolidly gazing before her, and never moving a muscle.
Then Mrs. Stothard bends down and looks into her face--looks long and earnestly, the girl never flinching the while--and comes back to her upright position, with her cheeks a little paler and her mouth a little more set.
"The doctor was right," she mutters between her teeth; "there's one coming on to-night, and a bad one, too, I fancy."
She goes to a drawer, takes out some article, and lays it on the bed hard by. The girl shoots a stealthy glance out from under her eyelids, sees what is done, sees what is fetched, and drops her eyes again on to the floor.
"You won't! you've heard me, you know, Annette! You won't undress! Come, then, you shall!"
Mrs. Stothard, bending over the girl, undoes the top button of her dress, the second button, the third. The fourth is not so easily undone, and Mrs. Stothard shifts her position, comes round, and kneels in front of her. Then, with a low long howl, more like that of a beast at bay than a human creature, the girl dashes at her throat and bears her to the ground. A bad time for the nurse, this. The attack is so sudden, that for one moment she is overpowered; the next her presence of mind returns, and with it her strength of wrist. Her hands are wound in the girl's long hair then floating down her back; she tears at it with all her force, until the distorted face, which had been glaring into hers, is wrenched backward, and under torture the hand-grip on her throat is relaxed. Then she slips herself from underneath her foe and closes with her. They are both on the ground, locked in each other's arms, and struggling furiously, what is more wonderful silently, for, save their deep breathing, neither emits a sound, when the door opens softly and Dr. Wainwright enters. Annette's face is towards him: her eyes meet his, and the wild rage dies out of them, to be succeeded by a glance of fear and horror; and her grasp relaxes and her arms fall helplessly by her sides, and she moans in a low voice.
"It is here again! Oh my God, it is here again!"
"And only here just in time, apparently, Mrs. Stothard," says the doctor, helping the nurse to rise. "This is a very bad attack. Just assist me to put this on her," he added, taking thecamisole de forcefrom off the bed, and putting it over Annette's head as she sat rigid on the floor; "and keep it on all night, please. A very bad attack indeed."
"Bad attack!" said Mrs. Stothard; "I'm glad you've seen it, Dr. Wainwright. You never would believe me before. But I've often told you, in all your practice you've got no worse case than that she-devil there. And yet these fools here think she will be cured!"
"Strong language, strong language, Mrs. Stothard," said the doctor deprecatingly. "But I don't think you're far out in what you say; I don't, indeed!"