CHAPTER III.A SUPERIOR PERSON.
Mildredand her father’s ward got on remarkably well—perhaps a little too well to please Mrs. Fausset, who had been jealous of the new-comer, and resentful of her intrusion from the outset. Mildred did not show herself capricious in her treatment of her playfellow. The child had never had a young companion before, and to her the advent of Fay meant the beginning of a brighter life. Until Fay came there had been no one but mother; and mother spent the greater part of her life in visiting and receiving visits. Only the briefest intervals between a ceaseless round of gaieties could be afforded to Mildred. Her mother doated on her, or thought she did; but she had allowed herself to be caught in the cogs of the great society wheel, and she was obliged to go round with the wheel. So far as brightly-furnished rooms and an expensivemorning governess, ever so much too clever for the pupil’s requirements, and costly toys and pretty frocks and carriage-drives, could go, Mildred was a child in an earthly paradise; but there are some children who yearn for something more than luxurious surroundings and fine clothes, and Mildred Fausset was one of those. She wanted a great deal of love—she wanted love always; not in brief snatches, as her mother gave it—hurried caresses given in the midst of dressing for a ball, hasty kisses before stepping into her carriage to be whisked off to a garden-party, or in all the pomp and splendour of ostrich feathers, diamonds, and court-train before the solemn function of a Drawing-room. Such passing glimpses of love were not enough for Mildred. She wanted warm affections interwoven with the fabric of her life; she wanted loving companionship from morning till night; and this she had from Fay. From the first moment of their clasping hands the two girls had loved each other. Each sorely in need of love, they had come together naturally, and with all the force of free undisciplined nature, meeting and mingling like two rivers.
John Fausset saw their affection, and was delighted. That loving union between the girl and the child seemed to solve all difficulties. Fay was no longer a stranger. She was a part of the family, merged in the golden circle of domestic love. Mrs. Fausset looked on with jaundiced eye.
“If one could only believe it were genuine!” she sighed.
“Genuine! which of them do you suppose is pretending? Not Mildred, surely?”
“Mildred! No, indeed.Sheis truth itself.”
“Why do you suspect Fay of falsehood?”
“My dear John, I fear—I only say I fear—that yourprotégéeis sly. She has a quiet self-contained air that I don’t like in one so young.”
“I don’t wonder she is self-contained. You do so little to draw her out.”
“Her attachment to Mildred has an exaggerated air—as if she wanted to curry favour with us by pretending to be fond of our child,” said Mrs. Fausset, ignoring her husband’s remark.
“Why should she curry favour? She is not here as a dependent—though she is made to wearthe look of one sometimes more than I like. I have told you that her future is provided for; and as for pretending to be fond of Mildred, she is the last girl to pretend affection. She would have been better liked at school if she had been capable of pretending. There is a wild, undisciplined nature under that self-contained air you talk about.”
“There is a very bad temper, if that is what you mean. Bell has complained to me more than once on that subject.”
“I hope you have not set Bell in authority over her,” exclaimed Mr. Fausset hastily.
“There must be some one to maintain order when Miss Colville is away.”
“That some one should be you or I, not Bell.”
“Bell is a conscientious person, and she would make no improper use of authority.”
“She is a very disagreeable person. That is all I know about her,” retorted Mr. Fausset, as he left the room.
He was dissatisfied with Fay’s position in the house, yet hardly knew how to complain or what alteration to suggest. There were no positive wrongsto resent. Fay shared Mildred’s studies and amusements; they had their meals together, and took their airings together.
When Mildred went down to the morning-room or the drawing-room Fay generally went with her—generally, not always. There were times when Bell looked in at the schoolroom-door and beckoned Mildred. “Mamma wants you alone,” she would whisper on the threshold; and Mildred ran off to be petted and paraded before some privileged visitor.
There were differences which Fay felt keenly, and inwardly resented. She was allowed to sit aloof when the drawing-room was full of fine ladies, upon Mrs. Fausset’s afternoon; while Mildred was brought into notice and talked about, her little graces exhibited and expatiated upon, or her childish tastes conciliated. Fay would sit looking at one of the art-books piled upon a side-table, or turning over photographs and prints in a portfolio. She never talked unless spoken to, or did anything to put herself forward.
Sometimes an officious visitor would notice her.
“What a clever-looking girl! Who is she?”asked a prosperous dowager, whose own daughters were all planted out in life, happy wives and mothers, and who could afford to interest herself in stray members of the human race.
“She is a ward of my husband’s, Miss Fausset.”
“Indeed! A cousin, I suppose?”
“Hardly so near as that. A distant connection.”
Mrs. Fausset’s tone expressed a wish not to be bored by praise of the clever-looking girl. People soon perceived that Miss Fausset was to be taken no more notice of than a piece of furniture. She was there for some reason known to Mr. and Mrs. Fausset, but she was not there because she was wanted—except by Mildred. Everybody could see that Mildred wanted her. Mildred would run to her as she sat apart, and clamber on her knee, and hang upon her, and whisper and giggle with her, and warm the statue into life. Mildred would carry her tea and cakes, and make a loving fuss about her in spite of all the world.
Bell was a power in the house in Upper ParchmentStreet. She was that kind of old servant who is as bad as a mother-in-law, or even worse; for your mother-in-law is a lady by breeding and education, and is in somewise governed by reason, while your trustworthy old servant is apt to be a creature of impulse, influenced only by feeling. Bell was a woman of strong feelings, devotedly attached to Mrs. Fausset.
Twenty-seven years ago, when Maud Donfrey was an infant, Martha Bell was the young wife of the head-gardener at Castle-Connell. The gardener and his wife lived at one of the lodges near the bank of the Shannon, and were altogether superior people for their class. Martha had been a lace-maker at Limerick, and was fairly educated. Patrick Bell was less refined, and had no ideas beyond his garden; but he was honest, sober, and thoroughly respectable. He seldom read the newspapers, and had never heard of Home Rule or the three F.s.
Their first child died within three weeks of its birth, and a wet-nurse being wanted at the great house for Lady Castle-Connell’s seventh baby, Mrs. Bell was chosen as altogether the best person forthat confidential office. She went to live at the great white house in the beautiful gardens near the river. It was only a temporary separation, she told Patrick; and Patrick took courage at the thought that his wife would return to him as soon as Lady Castle-Connell’s daughter was weaned, while in the meantime he was to enjoy the privilege of seeing her every Sunday afternoon; but somehow it happened that Martha Bell never went back to the commonly-furnished little rooms in the lodge, or to the coarse-handed husband.
Martha Bell was a woman of strong feelings. She grieved passionately for her dead baby, and she took the stranger’s child reluctantly to her aching breast. But babies have a way of getting themselves loved, and one baby will creep into the place of another unawares. Before Mrs. Bell had been at the great house three months she idolised her nursling. By the time she had been there a year she felt that life would be unbearable without her foster-child. Fortunately for her, she seemed as necessary to the child as the child was to her. Maud was delicate, fragile, lovely, and evanescent of aspect.Lady Castle-Connell had lost two out of her brood, partly, she feared, from carelessness in the nursery. Bell was devoted to her charge, and Bell was entreated to remain for a year or two at least.
Bell consented to remain for a year; she became accustomed to the comforts and refinements of a nobleman’s house; she hated the lodge, and she cared very little for her husband. It was a relief to her when Patrick Bell sickened of his desolate home, and took it into his head to emigrate to Canada, where he had brothers and sisters settled already. He and his wife parted in the friendliest spirit, with some ideas of reunion years hence, when the Honourable Maud should have outgrown the need of a nurse; but the husband died in Canada before the wife had made up her mind to join him there. Mrs. Bell lived at the great white house until Maud Donfrey left Castle-Connell as the bride of John Fausset. She went before her mistress to the house in Upper Parchment Street, and was there when the husband and wife arrived after their Continental honeymoon. From that hour she remained in possession at The Hook, Surrey, or at Upper ParchmentStreet, or at any temporary abode by sea or lake. Bell was always a power in Mrs. Fausset’s life, ruling over the other servants, dictating and fault-finding in a quiet, respectful way, discovering the weak side of everybody’s character, and getting to the bottom of everybody’s history. The servants hated her, and bowed down before her. Mrs. Fausset was fond of her as a part of her own childhood, remembering that great love which had watched through all her infantine illnesses and delighted in all her childish joys. Yet, even despite these fond associations, there were times when Maud Fausset thought that it would be a good thing if dear old Bell would accept a liberal pension and go and live in some rose and honeysuckle cottage among the summery meadows by the Thames. Mrs. Fausset had only seen that riverside region in summer, and she had hardly realised the stern fact of winter in that district. She never thought of rheumatism in connection with one of those low white-walled cottages, half-hidden under overhanging thatched gables, and curtained with woodbine and passionflower, rose and myrtle. Dear old Bell was forty-eight,straight as a ramrod, very thin, with sharp features, and eager gray eyes under bushy iron-gray brows. She had thick iron-gray hair, and she never wore a cap; that was one of her privileges, and a mark of demarcation between her and the other servants—that and her afternoon gown of black silk or satin.
She had no specific duties in the house, but had something to say about everything. Mrs. Fausset’s French maid and Mildred’s German maid were at one in their detestation of Bell; but both were eminently civil to that authority.
From the hour of Fay’s advent in Upper Parchment Street, Bell had set her face against her. In the first place, she had not been taken into Mr. and Mrs. Fausset’s confidence about the girl. She had not been consulted or appealed to in any way; and, in the second place, she had been told that her bedroom would be wanted for the new-comer, and that she must henceforward share a room with one of the housemaids, an indignity which this superior person keenly felt.
Nor did Fay do anything to conciliate this domesticpower. Fay disliked Bell as heartily as Bell disliked Fay. She refused all offers of service from the confidential servant at the outset, and when Bell wanted to help in unpacking her boxes—perhaps with some idea of peering into those details of a girl’s possessions which in themselves constitute a history—Fay declined her help curtly, and shut the door in her face.
Bell had sounded her mistress, but had obtained the scantiest information from that source. A distant connection of Mr. Fausset’s—his ward, an heiress. Not one detail beyond this could Bell extract from her mistress, who had never kept a secret from her. Evidently Mrs. Fausset knew no more.
“I must say, ma’am, that for an heiress the child has been sadly neglected,” said Bell. “Her under-linen was all at sixes and sevens tillItook it in hand; and she came to this house with her left boot worn down at heel. Her drawers are stuffed with clothes, but many of them are out of repair; and she is such a wilful young lady that she will hardly letmetouch her things.”
Bell had a habit of emphasising personal pronouns that referred to herself.
“You must do whatever you think proper about her clothes, whether she likes it or not,” answered Mrs. Fausset, standing before her glass, and giving final touches to the feathery golden hair which her maid had arranged a few minutes before. “If she wants new things, you can buy them for her from any of my tradespeople. Mr. Fausset says she is to be looked after in every way. You had better not go to Bond Street for her under-linen. Oxford Street will do; and you need not go to Stephanie for her hats. She is such a very plain girl that it would be absurd—cruel even—to dress her like Mildred.”
“Yes, indeed, it would, ma’am,” assented Bell; and then she pursued musingly: “If it was a good school she was at, all I can say is that the wardrobe-woman was a very queer person to send any pupil away with her linen in such a neglected state. And as for her education, Miss Colville says she is shockingly backward. Miss Mildred knows moregeography and more grammar than that great overgrown girl of fourteen.”
Mrs. Fausset sighed.
“Yes, Bell, she has evidently been neglected; but her education matters very little. It is her disposition I am anxious about.”
“Ah, ma’am, and so amI,” sighed Bell.
When Bell had withdrawn, Maud Fausset sat in front of her dressing-table in a reverie. She forgot to put on her bonnet or to ring for her maid, though she had been told the carriage was waiting, and although she was due at a musical recital in ten minutes. She sat there lost in thought, while the horses jingled their bits impatiently in the street below.
“Yes, there is a mystery,” she said to herself; “everybody sees it, even Bell.”