CHAPTER II.FAY.
Mrs. Fausset’sthree parties, the last of which was a very smart ball, kept her away from home until the summer sun was rising above Grosvenor Square, and the cocks were crowing in the mews behind Upper Parchment Street. Having been so late in the morning, Mrs. Fausset ignored breakfast, and only made her appearance in time for lunch, when her husband came in from his ride. He had escorted her to the first of her parties, and had left her on the way to the second, to go and finish his evening in the House, which he found much more interesting than society.
They met at luncheon, and talked of their previous night’s experiences, and of indifferent matters. Not a word about the expected presence which was so soon to disturb their domestic calm. Mr. Fausset affected cheerfulness, yet was evidently out of spirits.He looked round the picturesque old oak dining-room wistfully; he strolled into the inner room, with its dwarf bookcases, pictures, and bronzes, its cosy corner behind a sixfold Indian screen, a century-old screen, bought at Christie’s out of a famous collection. He surveyed this temple of domestic peace, and wondered within himself whether it would be quite as peaceful when a new presence was among them.
“Surely a girl of fourteen can make no difference,” he argued, “even if she has a peculiar temper. If she is inclined to be troublesome, she shall be made to keep herself to herself. Maud shall not be rendered unhappy by her.”
He went out soon after lunch, and came home again at afternoon tea-time in a hansom, with a girl in a black frock. A four-wheeler followed, with a large trunk and two smaller boxes. The splendid creatures in knee-breeches and powder who opened the door had been ordered to deny their mistress to everybody, so Mrs. Fausset was taking tea alone in her morning-room.
The morning-room occupied the whole front ofthe second floor, a beautiful room with three windows, the centre a large bow jutting out over empty space. This bow-window had been added when Mr. Fausset married, on a suggestion from hisfiancée. It spoiled the external appearance of the house, but it made the room delightful. For furniture and decoration there was everything pretty, novel, eccentric, and expensive that Maud Fausset had ever been able to think of. She had only stopped her caprices and her purchases when the room would not hold another thing of beauty. There was a confusion of form and colour, but the general effect was charming; and Mrs. Fausset, in a loose white muslin gown, suited the room, just as the room suited Mrs. Fausset.
She was sitting in the bow-window, in a semicircle of flowers and amidst the noises of the West End world, waiting for her husband and the new-comer, nervous and apprehensive. The scarlet Japanese tea-table stood untouched, the water bubbling in the quaint little bronze tea-kettle, swinging between a pair of rampant dragons.
She started as the door opened, but kept herseat. She did not want to spoil the new-comer by an undue appearance of interest.
John Fausset came into the room, leading a pale girl dressed in black. She was tall for her age, and very thin, and her small face had a pinched look, which made the great black eyes look larger. She was a peculiar-looking girl, with an olive tint in her complexion which hinted at a lineage not altogether English. She was badly dressed in the best materials, and had a look of never having been much cared for since she was born.
“This is Fay,” said Mr. Fausset, trying to be cheerful.
His wife held out her hand, which the girl took coldly, but not shyly. She had an air of being perfectly self-possessed.
“Her name is Fay, is it? What a pretty name! By the bye, you did not tell me her surname.”
“Did I not? Her name is Fausset. She is a distant relation of my family.”
“I did not understand that last night,” said Mrs. Fausset, with a puzzled air. “You only talked of a friend.”
“Was that so? I should have said a family connection. Yes, Fay and I are namesakes, and kindred.”
He patted the girl’s shoulder caressingly, and made her sit down by the little red table in front of the tea-cups, and cakes, and buns. The buns reminded him of his daughter.
“Where is Mildred?”
“She is at her music-lesson; but she will be here in a minute or two, no doubt,” answered his wife.
“Poor little mite, to have to begin lessons so soon; the chubby little fingers stuck down upon the cold hard keys. The piano is so uninviting at seven years old; such a world of labour for such a small effect. If she could turn a barrel-organ, with a monkey on the top, I’m sure she would like music ever so much better; and after a year or two of grinding it would dawn upon her that there was something wanting in that kind of music, and then she would attack the piano of her own accord, and its difficulties would not seem so hopelessly uninteresting. Are you fond of lessons, Fay?”
“I hate them,” answered the girl, with vindictive emphasis.
“And I suppose you hate books too?” said Mrs. Fausset, rather scornfully.
“No, I love books.”
She looked about the spacious room, curiously, with admiring eyes. People who came from very pretty rooms of their own were lost in admiration at Mrs. Fausset’s morning-room, with its heterogeneous styles of art—here Louis Seize, there Japanese; Italian on one side, Indian on the other. What a dazzling effect, then, it must needs have upon this girl, who had spent the last five years of her life amidst the barren surroundings of a suburban school!
“What a pretty room!” she exclaimed at last.
“Don’t you think my wife was made to live in pretty rooms?” asked Fausset, touching Maud’s delicate hand as it moved among the tea-things.
“She is very pretty herself,” said Fay, bluntly.
“Yes, and all things about her should be pretty. This thing, for instance,” as Mildred came bounding into the room, and clambered on her father’s knee.“This is my daughter, Fay, and your playfellow, if you know how to play.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, for they always snubbed us for anything like play,” answered the stranger, “but Mildred shall teach me, if she will.”
She had learnt the child’s name from Mr. Fausset during the drive from Streatham Common to Upper Parchment Street.
Mildred stretched out her little hand to the girl in black with somewhat of a patronising air. She had lived all her little life among bright colours and beautiful objects, in a kind of butterfly world; and she concluded that this pale girl in sombre raiment must needs be poor and unhappy. She looked her prettiest, smiling down at the stranger from her father’s shoulder, where she hung fondly. She looked like a cherub in a picture by Rubens, red-lipped, with eyes of azure, and flaxen hair just touched with gold, and a complexion of dazzling lily and carnation-colour suffused with light.
“I mean to give you my very best doll,” she said.
“You darling, how I shall adore you!” cried thestrange girl impulsively, rising from her seat at the tea-table, and clasping Mildred in her arms.
“That is as it should be,” said Fausset, patting Fay’s shoulder affectionately. “Let there be a bond of love between you two.”
“And will you play with me, and learn your lessons with me, and sleep in my room?” asked Mildred coaxingly.
“No, darling. Fay will have a room of her own,” said Mrs. Fausset, replying to the last inquiry. “It is much nicer for girls to have rooms to themselves.”
“No, it isn’t,” answered Mildred, with a touch of petulance that was pretty in so lovely a child. “I want Fay to sleep with me. I want her to tell me stories every night.”
“You have mother to tell you stories, Mildred,” said Mrs. Fausset, already inclined to be jealous.
“Not very often. Mother goes to parties almost every night.”
“Not at The Hook, love.”
“O, but at The Hook there’s always company.Why can’t I have Fay to tell me stories every night?” urged the child persistently.
“I don’t see why they should not be together, Maud,” said Mr. Fausset, always prone to indulge Mildred’s lightest whim.
“It is better that Fay should have a room of her own, for a great many reasons,” replied his wife, with a look of displeasure.
“Very well, Maud, so be it,” he answered, evidently desiring to conciliate her. “And which room is Fay to have?”
“I have given her Bell’s room.”
Mr. Fausset’s countenance fell.
“Bell’s room—a servant’s room!”—he repeated blankly.
“It is very inconvenient for Bell, of course,” said Mrs. Fausset. “She will have to put up with an extra bed in the housemaid’s room; and as she has always been used to a room of her own, she made herself rather disagreeable about the change.”
Mr. Fausset was silent, and seemed thoughtful. Mildred had pulled Fay away from the table and ledher to a distant window, where a pair of Virginian love-birds were twittering in their gilded cage, half hidden amidst the bank of feathery white spirea and yellow marguerites which filled the recess.
“I should like to see the room,” said Fausset presently, when his wife had put down her teacup.
“My dear John, why should you trouble yourself about such a detail?”
“I want to do my duty to the girl—if I can.”
“I think you might trust such a small matter tome, or even to my housekeeper,” Maud Fausset answered with an offended air. “However, you are quite at liberty to make a personal inspection. Bell is very particular, and any room she occupied is sure to be nice. But you can judge for yourself. The room is on the same floor as Mildred’s.”
This last remark implied that to occupy any apartment on that floor must be a privilege.
“But not with the same aspect.”
“Isn’t it? No, I suppose not. The windows look the other way,” said Mrs. Fausset innocently.
She was not an over-educated person. She adored Keats, Shelley, and Browning, and talkedabout them learnedly in a way; but she hardly knew the points of the compass.
She sauntered out of the room, a picture of languid elegance in her flowing muslin gown. There were flowers on the landing, and a scarlet Japanese screen to fence off the stairs that went downward, and a blue-and-gold Algerian curtain to hide the upward flight. This second floor was Mrs. Fausset’s particular domain. Her bedroom and bathroom and dressing-room were all on this floor. Mr. Fausset lived there also, but seemed to be there on sufferance.
She pulled aside the Algerian curtain, and they went up to the third story. The two front rooms were Mildred’s bedroom and schoolroom. The bedroom-door was open, revealing an airy room with two windows brightened by outside flower-boxes, full of gaudy red geraniums and snow-white marguerites, a gay-looking room, with a pale blue paper and a blue-and-cream-colour carpet. A little brass bed, with lace curtains, for Mildred—an iron bed, without curtains, for Mildred’s maid.
The house was like many old London houses,more spacious than it looked outside. There were four or five small rooms at the back occupied by servants, and it was one of those rooms—a very small room looking into a mews—which Mr. Fausset went to inspect.
It was not a delightful room. There was an outside wall at right-angles with the one window which shut off the glory of the westering sun. There was a forest of chimney-pots by way of prospect. There was not even a flower-box to redeem the dinginess of the outlook. The furniture was neat, and the room was spotlessly clean; but as much might be said of a cell in Portland Prison. A narrow iron bedstead, a couple of cane chairs, a common mahogany chest of drawers in the window, and on the chest of drawers a white toilet-cover and a small mahogany looking-glass; a deal washstand and a zinc bath. These are not luxurious surroundings; and Mr. Fausset’s countenance did not express approval.
“I’m sure it is quite as nice a room as she would have at any boarding-school,” said his wife, answering that disapproving look.
“Perhaps; but I want her to feel as if she were not at school, but at home.”
“She can have a prettier room at The Hook, I daresay, though we are short of bedrooms even there—if she is to go to The Hook with us.”
“Why, of course she is to go with us. She is to live with us till she marries.”
Mrs. Fausset sighed, and looked profoundly melancholy.
“I don’t think we shall get her married very easily,” she said.
“Why not?” asked her husband quickly, looking at her anxiously as he spoke.
“She is so remarkably plain.”
“Did she strike you so? I think her rather pretty, or at least interesting. She has magnificent eyes.”
“So has an owl in an ivy-bush,” exclaimed Mrs. Fausset petulantly. “Those great black eyes in that small pale face are positively repulsive. However, I don’t want to depreciate her. She is of your kith and kin, and you are interested in her;so we must do the best we can. I only hope Mildred will get on with her.”
This conversation took place upon the stairs. Mr. Fausset was at the morning-room door by this time. He opened it, and saw his daughter in the sunlit window among the flowers, with her arm round Fay’s neck.
“They have begun very well,” he said.
“Children are so capricious,” answered his wife.