Inoculated for a Wolf.
Suddenly in the midst of the work there was the sound of a whip cracking, accompanied by loud oaths, many of them very red, shouts, and the jerking noise of chain harness.
It was nothing new, but being a diversion from the monotony of their work, half the brickmakers stopped to look on.
The remnant of a fine horse was in the shafts of a heavily-laden sand cart, which he had dragged for some distance through the tenacious mud of the deeply-cut ruts, till, coming to a softer place than usual, one wheel had gone down nearly to the nave in the mire, tilting the cart sideways, and every frantic struggle made by the poor beast only seemed to set it more fast. Its hoofs, which sank deeply, churned up the mud and water, and it stood still at last with heaving flanks, its great earnest eyes staring appealingly at its masters, while the blindfolded skeleton in the clay mill went round and round, then stopped short, and gave its head a jerk, as if saying once more, “It doesn’t matter; it will not be for long.”
Click, clack, clack went the whip, and the skeleton in the mill started energetically once more, while the horse in the cart struggled spasmodically to move the load, much of its strength being, however, exhausted by extricating its hoofs from the clayey, sticky mud.
Click, clack, clack went the whip once more, and as Jane Glyne came along panting and perspiring with the weight of her bundle, a little crowd of clayey savages began to collect.
The horse struggled with a piteous expression in the wrinkles above its starting eyes; its flanks heaved; they moistened the lash of the cruel whip, and still it strove; but the cart wheels had sunk so low that a team could hardly have dragged it out, and the willing beast vainly essayed the impossible. A dozen strong men stood around, as many shovels were within reach ready to remove the clay from the wheels, and partially dig them out; but, as Jane Glyne looked on, in a strange, hard, callous manner, no one made a move, not a hand was placed to a wheel-spoke to help with a few pounds the labouring beast. Cartloads of hard broken brick rubbish lay about that could have been thrown down to fill up the ruts; but not a barrowful was brought, and amidst a shower of oaths, there was added, to make it a storm, a shower of blows.
The horse’s struggles grew interesting, and as the little crowd increased pipes were replenished, and the heavy clay-sullied men looked on.
More blows, more struggles; but the cart sank deeper, and was not likely to be moved, for, in spite of the frantic way in which the horse plunged into its collar, it could not stir the load an inch. Not an inch, strong as it was; but there is exhaustion even for the strongest, and at last the poor brute stood deep in the tenacious mud, with wet heaving flanks, staring eyes, and trembling in every limb.
“Here, give us holt!” cried father; and his children brought up in this earthly school looked on with glee.
“Father ’ll soon fetch him out,” said the eldest boy; and it seemed that at last the poor brute was to get some help. But it was not help the horse was to have, for the whip was handed to father.
“Take holt on his head,” he cried to the man in charge, and the latter ruffian seized the rein, and began to jerk and drag the bit savagely.
“Jeet—jeet—aw—a—a—ya! Hoot!” roared the ruffian, with a hot burst of oaths, while father, puffing regularly his smoke, turned his machinery to bear upon the poor dumb brute, and with a grim smile lashed and cut at it, ingeniously seeking out the tender parts beneath.
“Gie’t ’im, lad. Gie’t ’im,” rose in chorus.
The poor trembling horse, roused by the stinging thong, shot into the collar in a way that broke one of the chains that linked it to the shaft, and then as a more cruel lash fell upon its side, it fell upon its knees, the cart shafts pinning it down as the load sank forward. Now followed more lashing, the horse struggled frantically, rolled over, dragging its legs from the mud, plunged and struck out as if galloping, though its hoofs only beat the mud and water. Then it raised its head two or three times as if trying to regain its feet, before letting it subside into the mud, and the eye that was visible began to roll.
“Get up!” roared father, with a burst of oaths, and again the whip came into play.
But it was an order that the poor brute, willing to the last, could not obey, pinned down as it was by the shafts and the weight of the sand. At the first cut of the whip, though, the horse struck out with its hoofs, sending the mud flying, and causing a roar of laughter amongst the crowd as father was bespattered from head to foot. Then there was a curious gasping cry as the horse threw up its head; a shiver ran through its heaving frame; a couple of jets of blood started from its nostrils; there was a strange sigh, and the head fell heavily down in the mud and water.
Even then there was a sharp lash given with the whip, just as a convulsive kick or two splashed up the mud, before the willing beast lay motionless; it had broken its heart—no metaphor here for excess of sorrow, but the simple truth, while the listening skeleton in the mill gave its head another jerk, and seemed to say, “I knew it wouldn’t be for long.”
“Well—”
Father did not finish his sentence, for Jane Glyne uttered a loud shriek and dropped her bundle in the mud just as a shout arose from one of father’s clay-daubed sons.
“Hi! chivy him,” roared the boy. “Bill Jones’s dawg has got that kid.”
It was too true: the wolfish starveling beast had watched his opportunity while the crowd was occupied, slinked up to the shed, seized the babe by one arm, and was stealing cautiously off, when the boy turned and saw him, shouted, gave chase, and the savage brute broke into a heavy lumbering canter.
For a short distance he dragged the child along the earth; then, with a dexterous twist, he threw it over his shoulders and increased his pace.
“Hi! stop him, hi!” roared a score of voices which echoed through the brickfield, and men, women, and children came hurrying from all parts to take up the chase.
For they saw in a moment what had taken place, and the hunt roused all to a pitch of excitement consequent upon the evil reputation borne by “Bill Jones’s dawg.”
This being the case, the way off to the open fields where the woodland and stream lay beyond the flat plain was closed, and for a moment or two the dog halted and threw up his head to see that he was hemmed in on three sides by enemies, while at his back was the canal, and for water he had no love.
Enemies they were indeed, for the brickfield savages were human, after all, and every man, woman, and child was armed with shovel, stick, or well-burned fragment of refuse brick—this last, a missile that he knew by heart as angular and sharp; and dog as he was, he had sense enough to feel that, if taken, they would pound the life out of his wretched carcase on the spot.
If he had dropped his prey, he might have shown his pursuers a clean pair of heels; but he was hungry—wolfishly hungry, and more savage than domestic as he was, he literally knew the taste of that which he held between his teeth. He would have died the death before, on suspicion, had not Bill, his master, interposed. Now, however, he saw the said Bill armed with a clay spade, although he whistled to him to come. But “Bill Jones’s dawg” knew too well the treachery of the human heart, and would not listen to whistle nor following call.
Which way should he go? Towards that frantic woman who had torn off her shawl? No. There was the clinker kiln, where a whole burning of bricks was spoiled. He could not reach the open—he would have been cut off as he went, and chopped with spades, and stunned with brick-bats; but there was that kiln standing old and weather-beaten, a very sanctuary of bricks burned into solid masses, full in view, though a quarter of a mile lower by the other works. Yes, there was that kiln abounding in convenient holes, where he had often spent the night; he might reach there in safety with his prey, and then—
“Hi! stop him—stop him!”
The yelling crowd was closing in and growing more dangerous every moment, so the dog took a tighter grip of his prize, and made straight for the old kiln.
Brickmaking was impossible in the face of such a chase, and everyone joined in, with the full determination that this day “Bill Jones’s dawg” must die.
“Hi! stop him—stop him!”
By an ingenious double or two, the dog nearly reached the refuge that he sought, but he was cut off and turned back by swift-footed boys, yelling with excitement and panting to hurl the first lump of brick at the hated beast. But the dog kept out of harm’s way by running between the rows of piled-up, unburnt bricks, which afforded him shelter, and the baby, too, for missiles went flying after them at every chance.
Up this row, down that, and zigzag to and fro, till the canal was near, and the forces joining, the dog was nearly driven to leap into the foul stagnant water; but again he doubled, passed through an opening, and was once more in the shelter between two rows of bricks, cantering along towards the end. Here, though, he was cut off again by one of the lads, who, divining the course he had taken, shouted to part of the contingent, and turned the wily brute back.
But he was not beaten. He was starving, but he was hard and strong: no fattened, asthmatic favourite was he, but long-winded and lank, ready to run for an hour yet, even with the load he bore. Wily too, as his relative the fox, he cleverly doubled in and out, in the maze-like rows of wet bricks, avoiding as if by magic the missiles that were thrown; and at last, just as the boys were driving him back towards the spade-armed men, whom he had from the first given a wide berth, he cleverly dashed for the weak part in the advancing line of lads, passed them, put on all his pace, and went away for the kiln.
There were swift runners amongst those lightly-clad, barefooted boys, and now that it had become a tail race, away they went with all their might, faster and faster, and yelling till they were hoarse. For there were shouts and cries of encouragement from behind, enough to spur on the greatest laggard, and on they went till the dog reached the old kiln and tried to enter a low hole, probably the one he made his den.
Here, though, he had a check, by the clothes of the infant catching in the rough scoria, when—foxlike—he backed out, turned, and then began to back in.
That momentary check saved the child: for just as it was disappearing in the opening, the foremost boy bounded up, caught the infant by its leg, and the long robe it wore, and, pulling and shouting hard, succeeded in drawing the wretched little object back, the dog snarling savagely, and holding on with all his might; but just then half a brick smote him on the head, he loosed his hold, and, backing in, the child with its lacerated arm and shoulder was held up on high amidst the cheering of the boys.
In another minute the panting crowd surrounded the opening, and Jane Glyne had the baby in her arms, wondering whether it was alive or dead.
The tragedy was not over yet.
Bill Jones stood amongst the men, and was for defending his “dawg,” but the blood of all present was thoroughly roused, and though Bill declared his readiness to fight any man present for a pot, he soon cried off on finding that his challenge was taken up by a score of fellow-workers, half of whom began to prepare for the trial by battle on the spot.
“I don’t keer what you do wi’ the dawg,” Bill growled, taking out and beginning to fill his pipe, and directly after joining in the attempt about to be made to get the beast out of his place of refuge.
Forming themselves into a semicircle round the opening, a part stood ready, while some of the sturdiest brickmakers began to drag the burrs apart, a task in which they had not been long engaged, standing upon the heap, before there was a rustling noise; the old rough bricks began to crumble down inwards; and with a savage snarl the frightened dog bounded out.
There was a shout, a chorus of yells, mingled with which was the last ever given by “Bill Jones’s dawg,” for his mortal race was run. Even Cerberus of the three heads could not have existed many seconds beneath the shower of bricks and clinkers that assailed him after the savage chop given by father’s spade. One yell only, and there was a mass of brick rising over him, the dog’s death and burial being a simultaneous act on the part of those who, old and young, did not pause until they had erected a rough but respectable mausoleum over the wolfish creature’s grave.
“Put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place,” said father, removing his pipe as he turned to where Jane Glyne and mother were examining the little frail morsel, which, in spite of its usage, began now to wail feebly; “put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place; it ain’t dead. There, give it to mother; and, I say, when are you going to pay agen?”
“Never,” cried Jane Glyne, hastily wrapping the baby in the shawl now handed by one of the staring girls.
“Oh, it ain’t hurt much,” said father; “put a bit o’ wet ’bacco on the place.”
“Hurt!” cried the woman excitedly, as with a newly-awakened interest she held the child tightly to her hard breast, “it’s a’most killed, and if it lives, that dog’s teeth have poisoned it, and it will go mad.”
“Not it,” growled father; “why, the dawg is dead. Give it to mother, and I say, when—why, she’s gone!”
He said this after a pause, as he stared after Jane Glyne hurrying towards the path where her bundle lay, but thinking more of her little burden, inoculated by the poison of those wolfish teeth—blood-poisoned, perhaps, as to its mental or bodily state—certainly suffering from lacerations that might end its feeble little life.
Volume One—Chapter One. The Story - Years Ago.
Cinderella and the Sisters.
“Ruth.”
“Yes, dear; I’ll come directly.”
“Ruth!”
“Be quiet, Clo. She can’t come yet.”
“But she must come. Ruth!”
“May I go to her, Marie?”
“No, certainly not. Finish my hair first.”
Two pretty little white patient hands went on busying themselves plaiting the rich dark-brown hair of a singularly handsome girl, sitting back in a shabby, painted, rush-bottomed chair, in a meanly-furnished chamber, whose bare boards looked the more chilly for the scraps of carpet stretched by bedside, toilet-table, and washstand.
The bed had not long been left, and the two pillows each bore the impress of a head. The bedstead was an attenuated four-post structure, with dreary and scanty slate-coloured hangings, that seemed to have shrunk in their many washings, and grown skimpy and faded with time; the rush-bottomed chairs were worn and the seats giving way, and a tall painted wardrobe had been scrubbed until half the paint had gone. Even the looking-glass upon the paltry old dressing-table seemed to have reflected until it could perform its duties no more, for the silver had come off in patches, and showed the bare brown wood behind.
Wherever the eye rested it was upon traces of cleanly, punctilious poverty, for even the dresses that were hanging from the row of drab-painted wooden pegs nailed against the dreary washed-out wall-paper looked mean and in keeping with the room. There was not one single attractive object of furniture or attire besides, not even a bright spring flower in a vase or glass; all was drab, dreary, and dull, and yet the room and objects full of life and light.
For the girl seated indolently in the chair before the glass, draped in a long washed-out dressing-gown that heightened rather than hid the graces of her well-developed form, possessed features which might have been envied by a queen. Her dark, well-arched eyebrows, the long heavy lashes that drooped over her large eyes, her creamy complexion, rather full but well-cut lips and high brow, were all those of a beautiful woman whom you would expect to look imperious and passionate if she started into motion, and raised and flashed upon you the eyes that were intent upon a paper-covered French novel, whose leaves she turned over from time to time.
Bending over her, and nimbly arranging the rich hair that hung over the reader’s shoulders, was a girl not unlike her in feature, but of a fairer and more English type. Where the hair of the one was rich and dark, that of the other was soft and brown. The contour was much the same, but softer, and the eyes were of that delicious well-marked grey that accords so well with light nut-brown hair. There was no imperious look in her pleasant, girlish countenance, for it was full of care consequent upon her being wanted in two places at once.
For the sharp demand made upon her was uttered by a third occupant of the room—a girl of one or two and twenty, sister, without doubt, of the reader at the dressing-table, and greatly like her, but darker, her eyebrows and hair being nearly black, her complexion of a richer creamy hue, one which seemed to indicate the possibility of other than English blood being mingled in her veins.
She, too, was draped in a long washed-out print dressing-gown, and as she lolled upon a great box whose top was thinly stuffed and covered with chintz to make it do duty for an ottoman, her long dark hair fell in masses over her shoulders.
Sisters undoubtedly, and the family resemblance of the fair-complexioned girl suggested the possibility of her occupying the same relationship, though the difference was so marked that cousin seemed more probable.
“Finish your own hair,” cried the girl upon the ottoman, in an angry voice. “I won’t wait any longer; I was up first;” and she banged down the circulating library novel she had been skimming.
“Shan’t!”
“Bring my hairbrush, Ruth.”
The girl addressed retained her hold of the massive plait that she was forming, and, snatching a well-worn hairbrush from the table, reached out as far as she could from the tether of plait that held her to the girl in the chair, when the brush was snatched from her, and sent whizzing through the air, narrowly missing the reader’s head, but putting an end to the reflective troubles of the unfortunate toilet-glass, which was struck right in the centre, and shivered into fragments.
“Oh!” ejaculated Ruth.
“Beast!” cried Marie, leaping up, sending her chair backwards, and dashing the French novel at her sister.
“Wretch! devil!” retorted the other, her creamy face flushing, her dark eyes scintillating with passion, and her ruddy lips parting from her regular white teeth, as she retaliated by throwing the book she held, but with a very bad aim.
For a moment it seemed as if blows were to follow, but after a short skirmish with a comb, an empty scent-bottle, and a pin-cushion, the beginner of the fight uttered a cry of triumph, and pounced upon the French novel.
“I wanted that,” she cried.
“Ruth, fetch back that book,” cried Marie.
“Please give me that book back, Clotilde,” said the obedient girl, as, crossing the room, she held out her hand to the angry beauty.
For answer, the maiden upon the box caught her by the wrist with both hands, bent her head rapidly down, and fixed her white teeth in the soft, round arm.
“There, take that, and I wish it was ’Rie’s. Now you stop here, and do my hair directly. Hateful little beast! why didn’t you come before?”
The blood flushed up in Ruth’s face, and little troubled lines made their appearance in her forehead as, after a piteous glance at the other sister, she began to brush the great flowing bands of dark hair waiting their turn.
“I don’t care,” said Marie, with all the aggravating petulance of a child. “Mine was just done.”
“But I’ve got the book,” retorted the other. “Be careful, little beast; don’t pull it out by the roots.”
She turned her face up sharply to the busy toiler, with the effect that she dragged her own hair, and this time she struck the girl so sharply on the cheek with the open hand that the tears started to her eyes.
“Nasty, spiteful, malicious wretch!” said Marie, giving the finishing touches to her own hair; “but you’ll have a good lecture for breaking the glass. Aunties will be angry.”
“I shall say Ruth did it,” said the girl.
“Just like you, Clo,” retorted the other.
“If you call me Clo again, I’ll—I’ll poison you.”
“Shall if I like: Clo, old Clo—Jew—Jew—Jew! There!”
As she spoke, Marie turned her mocking countenance to her sister, and finished off by making what children call “a face,” by screwing up her mouth and nose; desisting, however, as Clotilde made a dash at the water-glass to throw it at her head, and then made a feint of spitting at her in a feline way.
The whole affair seemed to be more the quarrel of vulgar, spoiled children of nine or ten than an encounter between a couple of grown women in the springtide of their youth, and Ruth silently glanced from one to the other with a troubled, half-pitying expression of countenance; but she did not speak until the noise had begun to lull.
“Please don’t say that I broke the glass,” she said at last.
“I shall. Hold your tongue, miss. She broke it through her wretched carelessness, didn’t she, ’Rie?”
“Give me back the French book, and I’ll tell you,” was the reply.
“Take your nasty old French book,” said Clotilde, throwing it back. “I’ve read it all, and it’s horribly naughty. Now, then, didn’t she break the glass?”
“Yes,” said Marie, arranging her shabby morning dress, and standing before the fragments of the toilet-glass, a handsome, lady-like girl, whose beauty no shabbiness of costume could conceal.
“There,” said Clotilde, “do you hear, Cindy? You broke the glass, and if you say you didn’t I’ll make your wretched little life miserable.”
“Very well, dear, I’ll say I did,” said Ruth calmly.
“Hist, ’Rie! The book!” whispered Clotilde, her sharp ears having detected a coming step.
Marie made a pantherine bound across the room, and thrust the book between the mattress and palliasse just as the handle rattled, and a tall, gaunt elderly woman entered the room.
She was not pleasant to look upon, for there was too much suggestion of a draped scaffold erected for the building of a female human figure about her hard square bony form, while her hard face, which seemed to wrinkle only about the forehead, as if it had never smiled since childhood, was not made more pleasant by the depth and darkness of the lines in her brow all being suggestive of the soap and flannel never probing their depths, which was not the case, however, for she was scrupulously clean, even to her blonde cap, and its side whiskers with a sad-coloured flower in each.
“Morning, children,” she said harshly. “Your aunts ’ll be down directly. You ought to be dressed by now.”
“Morning, nurse,” said the girls in chorus.
“Ruth’s so slow,” said Clotilde.
“Then do your hair yourself,” said the woman roughly. “Ruth, child, turn down that bed, and open the window.”
Their actions before her arrival had been those of children; she treated them like children, and they were as obedient and demure now as little girls, while the woman placed a large white jug containing a tablespoon upon the table, and a plain tumbler beside it.
Ruth began to open the bed, and Marie cast anxious eyes at the part where her French novel lay perdu.
“’Tisn’t physic morning again, nurse,” said Clotilde pettishly.
“Yes it is, miss, so don’t you grumble. You know it’s Wednesday as well as I do.”
Clotilde turned her head away, and gave her teeth an angry snap as she went on rapidly dressing, while the new arrival poured out half a tumbler of a dark-brown fluid from the jug, after giving the said jug a twirl round to amalgamate its contents. This tumbler was handed to Clotilde.
“I’m not ready, nurse,” she said pettishly; “leave it on the table, and we’ll take it. We shall be down directly.”
“I don’t go till I can tell your aunts that every drop’s taken,” said the woman sturdily. “I know your tricks, making Miss Ruth drink it all. Both of you did last time.”
“Did Ruth dare to say we did?” cried Marie sharply.
“No, she didn’t, miss, so don’t you go in a pet.”
“Then how could you tell?” cried Clotilde.
“How could I tell, big baby?” said the woman scornfully; “why, wouldn’t three doses make her ill?”
“I don’t know. Ugh! filthy stuff!” said Clotilde, taking the tumbler, drinking off the brown draught, and shuddering afterwards. She set down the glass, which was, after another flourish of the white jug, the spoon being held captive by the woman’s thumb, half filled again.
“Now, Miss Marie.”
Marie made a grimace, and drank her portion in turn, after which Ruth swallowed hers with the patience and long-suffering of custom.
“Now, Miss Clotilde,” said the woman, picking out something dark from the bottom of the jug with the spoon, “here’s your prune.”
This was held out in the spoon, and it was ludicrous to see the handsome, womanly girl open her ruddy lips to admit the brown swollen morsel, a similar process being gone through with Marie and Ruth.
“There, children, don’t make such a fuss about it,” said the woman. “It’s lucky for you that you’ve got aunties who take such care of you. Pretty skins and complexions you’d have if you weren’t looked after, and when you grow up, if you’re wise, you’ll treat yourselves just the same. Now then, make haste down.”
This was uttered as she left the room and closed the door, after which Clotilde waited till her steps were inaudible, when she stamped with both her feet, and ground her teeth like an angry child.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she cried. “The disgusting, filthy stuff. I’m sick of it all, ’Rie. I’ll run away with the first man who asks me, even if he’s a sweep. I hate it; I hate everything; I hate myself, and won’t submit any longer. We’re not children, and I won’t have it. Where’s our spirit, that we don’t rebel?”
“Where could we go? What could we do?” replied Marie. “It’s horrible. How could we bear it all these weary years?”
She clasped her hands, and threw herself into her chair, rocking herself to and fro, while Ruth crept softly to her side, and placed her blonde face against the riper, rounder cheek of her cousin.
It was a mute way of showing her sympathy, and Marie felt it to be so, for she turned quickly and kissed her just as the loud jangle of a large hand-bell was heard from below, and Clotilde returned from the open window.
“Come down, girls,” she said bitterly; “there’s the bell. Old Markes didn’t see the broken glass. Go on, Ruthy, and let’s get prayers over, or you’ll be afraid to tell that fib.”
The bell was still clanging as the three girls went down the one flight of stairs contained in their aunts’ share of the private apartments at Hampton Court, at the bottom of which stairs a tall, thin young man, in a striped jacket, was frantically swinging the noisy instrument to and fro—having to stop, though, to allow the young ladies to pass, when he set down the bell with a clang upon the hearth-stoned floor in a dark corner, fiercely dragged a form from under the stairs, and carried it into the dining-room.
It was a brilliant morning in May, but the one window of that dark room received none of the sunshine, for it looked north, over a festive-looking yard or quadrangle, whose stones were mossy and green, kept comfortably damp by their proximity to a basin of water, out of which spurts of water rose from what looked like pieces of black gas-pipe; while three bloated gold and two silver fish swam solemnly round and round, gaping placidly, and staring with apoplectic eyes upwards at the strange phenomenon of what must have seemed to them like a constant shower of rain.
The room was lofty, and panelled in regular compartments, all painted a pale drab, as were also the sides of the floor where the well-worn, indescribable-patterned carpet did not reach; and over this painted portion chair-legs gave uncomfortable scroops.
It was a depressing room, without a particle of ornament, and would have produced indigestion in the healthiest subject. There was a circular sideboard at one end, upon which stood a solemn-looking lamp, whose globe made a dismal boom like a funeral knell when it was removed. Twelve spindly-legged chairs covered with chintz of a washed-out material stood stiffly against the walls, and there were two uneasy chairs covered with chintz and very angular in their backs on either side of the fire, where hung a pair of old-fashioned brass bellows and a worn-out telescope toasting-fork.
As the young ladies entered the room, looking as prim and demure as the chintz-covered chairs, a thin sharp cough was heard on the stairs, followed immediately by another thin sharp cough like the echo of the first, and two very tall meagre ladies entered the room.
Each was dressed in a pale washed-out fabric, with voluminous sleeves tight at the wrists, and had her grey hair in a large cluster of curls at the temple, the back hair being kept in place by a large tortoiseshell comb similar in shape to the leather withers protector carried on the collar by the horses in a brewer’s dray.
There was a pinched, refined air about the aspect of their faces, as if they had led ascetic lives in an aristocratic shade; and as they entered the room side by side, the young ladies approached them, and were received with an old-fashioned courtly grace such as was probably presumed to be correct within these palatial walls.
“Good-morning, aunt dear,” was said to each in turn by the young ladies, in return for which a little birdlike peck of a kiss was given to each soft round face, after which there was silence, each one waiting till there was a scuffle outside, and a little angry muttering, all of which was entirely ignored by the tall, thin, pale ladies, who stood with their mitten-covered hands crossed in front of them, and their eyes cast down.
Everything was so chilly, in spite of its being a warm spring morning, that the advent of a very old and battered but very hot bronze urn seemed quite to send a glow through the room as it was whisked in by the thin young man and placed upon the table, to hurry out and return directly with a crockery toast-rack, full of thin, dry husks of mortified half-burned bread.
Meanwhile, Sister Philippa unlocked a tea-caddy, while Sister Isabella let some hot water run into the pot, and poured it out into the pale blue-and-white cups.
Two caddy-spoonfuls were then placed in the pot, which was duly filled, and Sister Philippa said with grave austereness:
“My dears, will you take your places?”
Then in utter silence the three girls came to the table, and partook with their aunts of the very thin tea, sweetened with no liberal hand, while the bread-and-butter looked untempting and stale.
This went on for some few minutes, every act in connection with the breakfast being performed with scrupulous attention to etiquette, as taught in the highest old-fashioned circles.
“May I give you a little more tea, Clotilde?”
“Will you have the goodness to pass the bread-and-butter, Marie?”
“Ruth, I will trouble you, my dear, for the dry toast.”
After awhile Sister Philippa started an enlivening conversation on the number of drawing-rooms that were held by her late Majesty Queen Adelaide at which they were present as girls, Sister Isabella being of our opinion that the Court dresses of that period of history were much more modest, refined and graceful than those of to-day.
Sister Philippa agreed to this, and with her agreement the breakfast came to an end.
“We will take our morning’s walk, my dears, at once, as it is fine,” said Sister Philippa. “Will you go and dress?”
“Yes, aunt,” was chorused, and the young ladies rose, curtsied, and retired backwards from the room, to ascend to their chamber, through which Ruth had to proceed to get into the cupboard which held her bed and a small chest of drawers.
The moment they were inside the room, Clotilde rushed into the middle, gritting her teeth together and clenching her fists.
“Oh-h-h!” she exclaimed, with a cry of suppressed passion, “I can’t bear it. I shall go mad.”
Then with a bound she dashed to the bed, striking at it and seizing the pillow in her teeth.
Marie got rid of her suppressed vitality by fiercely seizing Ruth by the shoulders, shaking her angrily, and then, as if repenting, catching her about the waist, and waltzing her round the room.
“Oh, Clo! it’s horrible,” she cried, loosing Ruth to seize her sister. “Get up, and let’s quarrel or fight, or do something. I can’t—I won’t—I shan’t—I will not bear it. It’s like being mummies in a tomb.”
Clotilde turned round, and let herself sink upon the floor, with her head leaning back against the bed, biting the counterpane and twisting it viciously with her hands.
“’Rie,” she said at last, and her eyes sparkled as she spoke, “do you know what happened in the old days to the captive maidens in the stony castles?”
“Yes; the knights came and rescued them.”
“Then, why don’t they come and rescue us? I’ll run away with the first man who asks me. I’d marry that thin wretch Joseph to-morrow if he’d have me, and I’d stick pins in him all the rest of his life to see him writhe.”
“I can’t bear it much longer,” said Marie, in a low, deep voice; “I’m nineteen, Clo, and you are turned twenty, and they treat us as if we were little children still. Ah, how I hate them both!”
“Oh, Marie,” said Ruth reproachfully, “how can you say so!”
“Because I do—I do,” she cried. “I’m not a soft, smooth thing like you. If this lasts much longer I shall poison them, so as to be hung out of my misery.”
“I shan’t,” said Clotilde. “I say I’ll marry the first man who asks me. I will marry him; I’ll make him marry me; and then—ah,” she cried fiercely, as she started up, and began pacing up and down, beautiful as some caged leopard, “once I am free, what I will do! We might as well be nuns.”
“Better,” cried Marie angrily, “for we should be real prisoners, and expect no better. Now we are supposed to be free.”
“And there’d be some nice fat old father confessors to tease. Better than the smooth-faced, saintly Paul Montaigne. Oh, how I would confess!” cried Clotilde.
“Old Paul’s a prig,” said Marie.
“He’s a humbug, I think,” said Clotilde.
“Bother your nice old fat father confessors,” cried Marie, with her eyes gleaming. “I should like them to be young, and big, and strong, and handsome.”
“And with shaven crowns,” said Clotilde maliciously. “How should you like them, Ruth?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruth simply. “I have never thought of such a thing.”
“Take that, and that, you wicked story-teller!” cried Clotilde, slapping her arms; “I know you think more about men than either of us. For my part, the man I mean to have will—”
She stopped, for Marie laid her hand upon her lips, and they both began to prepare themselves for their walk as the grave-looking woman entered the room.
“Oh, you’re not ready, then?” she said grimly.
“No, nurse; but we shall be directly.”
“No, you needn’t; you’re not going.”
“Not going, nurse? Why?”
“The new Lancer regiment is coming to the barracks this morning, and your aunts say some of the officers may be about.”
Volume One—Chapter Two.
His Uncle’s Nephew.
“Why didn’t I come? Why should I? Very kind of Lady Millet to ask me, but I’m not a society man.”
“Oh, but—”
“Yes, I know, lad. Did the affair go off well?”
“Splendidly, only mamma left the wine to the confectioner, and the champagne—”
“Gave you a horrible headache, eh? Serve you right; should have had toast-and-water.”
“Marcus!”
“So Malpas came, did he?”
“Yes. Bad form, too. I don’t like him, Glen. But that’s all over now. Fellow can’t always marry the woman he wants.”
“Can’t he?”
“No, of course not. I wish you had come, though.”
“Thank you! But you speak in riddles, my little Samson. What’s all over now, and what fellow can’t always marry the woman he wants? Speak out, small sage!”
“I say, Glen, I didn’t make myself.”
“True, O king!”
“’Tisn’t my fault I’m small.”
“True.”
“You do chaff me so about my size.”
“For the last time: now proceed, and don’t lisp and drawl. Who’s who? as Bailey says.”
“I thought I told you before about my sisters?”
“Often: that you have two pretty sisters—one married and one free.”
“Well, my married sister, Mrs Morrison, used, I think, to care for Major Malpas.”
“Sorry she had such bad taste.”
This in an undertone.
“Eh?”
“Go on.”
“Well, it didn’t go on or come off, as you call it.”
“As you call it, Dicky.”
“I say, don’t talk to me as if I were a bird.”
“All right. Now then, let me finish for you: mamma married the young lady to someone else, and there is just a fag-end of the old penchant left.”
“Oh, hang it, no!”
“I beg pardon!—the young lady’s, too. But, my dear Dick, I am one of the most even-tempered of men; but if you keep up that miserable fashionable drawl and lisp, I shall take hold of you and shake you.”
“But, my dear fellow—weally, Mawcus.”
“Am I to do it? Say ‘Marcus’ out plain.”
“Mawcus.”
“No! Marcus.”
“Marcus.”
“That’s better. There, hang it all, Dick, you are a soldier; for heaven’s sake be one. Try to be manly, old fellow, and pitch over those silly affectations.”
“It’s all very well for you,” said Dick Millet, in an ill-used tone. “You are naturally manly. Why, you are five feet ten at least, and broad-shouldered and strong.”
“While you are only about five feet two, and slight, and have a face as smooth as a girl’s.”
“Five feet three and a half,” said the other quickly.
“How do you know?”
“I made the sergeant put me under the standard this morning. I can’t help it if I haven’t got a heavy brown moustache like you!”
“Who said you could help it, stupid? Why, what a little gander you are, Dick! I’m eight-and-twenty, and you are eighteen.”
“Nineteen!”
“Well, nineteen, then. There, there, you are only a boy yet, so why not be content to be a boy? You’ll grow old quite fast enough, my dear lad. Do you know why I like you?”
“Well, not exactly. But you do like me, don’t you, Glen?”
“Like you? Yes, when you are what I see before me now, boyish and natural. When you put on those confounded would-be manly airs, and grow affected and mincing as some confounded Burlington Arcade dandy, I think to myself, What a contemptible little puppy it is!”
“I say, you know—” cried the lad, and he tried to look offended.
“Say away, stupid! Well?”
Captain Marcus Glen, of Her Majesty’s 50th Lancers, a detachment of which, from the headquarters at Hounslow, were stationed at Hampton Court, sank back in his chair, let fall the newspaper he had been reading, and took out and proceeded to light a cigar, while Richard Millet flushed up angrily, got off the edge of the table where he had been sitting and swinging a neat patent-leather boot adorned with a spur, and seemed for a moment as if he were about to leave the room in a pet.
Marcus Glen saw this and smiled.
“Have a cigar, Dick?” he said.
The lad frowned, and it was on his lips to say, “Thanks, I have plenty of my own,” but his eyes met those of the speaker looking kindly and half laughingly in his, and the feeling of reverence for the other’s manly attributes, as well as his vanity at being the chosen friend of one he considered to be the finest fellow in the regiment, made him pause, hesitate, and then hold out his hand for the cigar.
“Better not take it, Dick. Tobacco stops the growth.”
The boy paused with the cigar in his hand, and the other burst into a merry laugh, rose lazily, lit a match, and handed it to the young officer, clapping him directly after upon the shoulder.
“Look here, Dick,” he said; “shall I give you the genuine receipt how to grow into a strong, honest Englishman?”
“Yes,” cried the lad eagerly, the officer and the would-be man dropped, for the schoolboy to reassert itself in full force. “I wish you would, Glen, ’pon my soul I do.”
“Forget yourself then, entirely, and don’t set number one up for an idol at whose shrine you are always ready to worship.”
“I don’t quite understand you,” said the lad, reddening ingenuously.
“Oh yes, you do, Dick, or you would not have been measured this morning, and made that little nick with the razor on your cheek in shaving off nothing but soap. If you did not worship your confounded small self, you would not have squeezed your feet into those wretched little boots, nor have waxed those twenty-four hairs upon your upper lip; and ’pon my word, Dick, that really is a work of supererogation, for the world at large, that is to say our little world at large, is perfectly ignorant of their existence.”
“Oh, I say, you are hard on a man, Glen! ’Pon my soul, you are;” and the handsome little fellow looked, with his flushed cheeks and white skin, more girlish than ever.
“Hard? Nonsense! I don’t want to see you grow into a puppy. I must give you a lesson now and then, or you’ll be spoiled; and then how am I to face Lady Millet after promising what I did?”
“Oh, I had a letter from mamma this morning,” said the lad; “she sent her kindest regards to you.”
“Thank her for them,” said the young officer. “Well, so the party went off all right, Dick?”
“Splendid! You ought to have been there. Gertrude would have been delighted to see you.”
“Humph! Out of place, my boy. Lady Millet wants a rich husband for your sister. I’m the wrong colour.”
“Not you. I don’t want Gerty to have someone she does not like.”
“But I thought you said that there was a Mr Huish, or some such name?”
“Well, yes, there is; but it may not come off. Mamma hates the Huishes.”
“You’re a character, Dick!” said the officer laughingly. “There, I’m going to make you dissipated to get you square, so light your cigar, my lad; I won’t bully you any more,” he continued, smiling good-humouredly, “and you may shave till your beard comes if you like, and wax your—your eyebrows—I mean moustache, and dandify yourself a little, for I like to see you smart; but an you love me, as the poet says, no more of that confounded lisp. Now then, you’ve been reconnoitring, have you, and spying out the barrenness of the land?”
“Yes, and it’s a horrible one-eyed sort of a place. Why don’t you come and have a look?”
“I shall presently. Seen the Palace?”
“I had a walk round and went into the gardens, which are all very well—old-fashioned, you know; but the private apartments are full of old maids.”
“Ah, yes; maiden ladies and widows. Sort of aristocratic union, I’ve heard. Good thing for you, Dick.”
“Why?” said the lad, who had again perched himself on the edge of the table and was complacently glancing at his boots.
“Because your inflammable young heart will not be set on fire by antique virgins and blushing widows of sixty.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” cried the lad excitedly, taking off his natty little foraging cap. “Marcus, dear boy, I was walking round a cloister sort of place with a fountain in the middle, and then through a blank square court, and I saw three of the loveliest women, at one of the windows, I ever saw in my life.”
“Distance lends enchantment to the view, my dear boy. If you had gone closer you would have seen the wrinkles and the silvery hairs, if they had not been dyed.”
“I tell you they weren’t old,” continued Dick, whose eyes sparkled like those of a girl.
“I’m not a marrying man, for reasons best known to my banker and my creditors.”
“Two of them were dark and the other was fair,” continued the lad, revelling in his description. “Oh, those two dark girls! You never saw such eyes, such hair, such lovely complexions. Juno-like—that they were. I was quite struck.”
“Foolish?”
“No, no; the Lelys in one of the rooms are nothing to them.”
“Lilies?”
“Nonsense—Lelys: the pictures, Court beauties. I could only stand and gaze at them.”
“Young buck—at gaze,” said the other, smiling at the boy’s enthusiasm. “What was the fair one like?”
“Oh, sweet and Madonnaesque—pensive and gentle. Look here, Marcus, you and I will have a walk round there presently.”
“Not if my name’s Marcus,” said the other, laughing. “Go along, you silly young butterfly, scenting honey in every flower. I say, Dick, shall you go in full review order?”
“I wish you weren’t so fond of chaffing a fellow.”
“Did the maidens—old, or young, or doubtful—at the window see our handsome young Adonis with his clustering curls?”
“Hang me if I ever tell you anything again!” cried the lad pettishly. “Where do you keep your matches? You are always chaffing.”
“Not I,” said the other, turning himself lazily in his chair, “only I want to see you grow into a matter-of-fact man.”
“Is it a sign of manhood to grow into a Diogenes sort of fellow, who sneers at every woman he sees?” said the lad hotly.
“No, Dick, but it’s a sign of hobble-de-hoyishness to be falling in love with pretty housemaids and boarding-school girls.”
“Which I don’t do,” said the lad fiercely.
“Except when you are forming desperate attachments to well-developed ladies, who, after your stupid young heart has been pretty well frizzled in the imaginary fire cast by their eyes, turn out to be other men’s wives.”
“I declare you are unbearable, Glen,” cried the lad hotly.
“My dear Dick, you are the most refreshing little chap I ever knew,” said the other, rising. “There, put on your cap, my boy, and let’s go;” and leaving the direction of their course to his younger companion, Captain Glen found himself at last on the broad walk facing the old red-brick Palace.
“I wonder you have never seen it before.”
“So do I; but I never did. Well, old Dutch William had a very good idea of taking care of himself, that’s all I can say.”
“But come along here; some of the interior is very curious, especially the quadrangles.”
“So I should suppose,” said Glen drily. “But I have a fancy for examining some of these quaint old parterres and carven trees, so we’ll turn down here.”
Richard Millet’s countenance twitched, but he said nothing; and together they strolled about the grounds, the elder pointing out the pretty effects to be seen here and there, the younger seeing nothing but the faces of three ladies standing at a window, and longing to be back in that cloister-like square to gaze upon them again.
“This place will be dull,” said Glen, as he seated himself upon a bench at the edge of a long spread of velvet turf; “but better than dingy Hounslow, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we might be much worse off. The society may turn out pretty decent, after all. This old garden will be splendid for a stroll. And—look there, Dick, the inhabitant of the land is fair. Here is another chance for you to fall in love.”
“What, with one of those old—Oh, I say, look, look! I did not see them at first. Those are the very girls.”
For Richard Millet’s face had been turned in the other direction, and when he first spoke he had only caught sight of the Honourable Misses Dymcox, walking side by side for their morning walk, closely followed by their three nieces, to make up for a close confinement to the house for three days, consequent upon the coming of the fresh troops to the barracks; the military being a necessary evil in the eyes of these elderly ladies, and such dreadful people that they were to be avoided upon all occasions.
“Oh, those are the damsels, are they?” said Glen, watching the little party as they walked straight on along a broad gravel path. “The old ladies look as if they were marching a squad of an Amazonian brigade to relieve guard somewhere. My word: how formal and precise! Now, I’ll be bound to say, my lad, that you would like to see where they are posted, and go and commit a breach of discipline by talking to the pretty sentries.”
“I should,” cried Dick eagerly. “Did you notice them?”
“Well, I must own that they are nice-looking, young inflammable, certainly.”
“But that first one, with the dark hair and eyes—she just glanced towards me—isn’t she lovely?”
“Well, now, that’s odd,” said Glen, smiling. “I suppose it was my conceit: do you know, I fancied that she glanced at me. At all events, I seemed to catch her eye.”
“Ah, it might seem so, but of course she recognised me again! Let’s walk gently after them.”
“What for?”
“To—er—well, to see which way they go.”
“I don’t want to know which way they go, my dear lad, and if I did, why, we can see very well from where we are. There they go, along that path to the right; you can see their dresses amongst the trees; and now they have turned off to the left. Would you like to stand upon the seat?”
“Oh, how cold and impassive you are! I feel as if I must see which way they go, and then we might take a short cut over the grass, and meet them again.”
“When those two fierce-looking old gorgons would see that you were following them up, and they would fire such a round from their watchful eyes that you, my dear boy, would retire in discomfiture, and looking uncommonly foolish. I remember once, when I was somewhere about your age, I had a very severe encounter with a chaperone in a cashmere shawl.”
“Oh, do get up, Glen, there’s a good fellow, and let’s go.”
“I had fallen in love with a young lady. I fancy now that she wore drawers with frills at the bottom, and that her dresses were short—frocks, I believe.”
“There they are again,” cried the boy, jumping up; “look, they are going down that path.”
“I think the young lady was still in the schoolroom, but though undeveloped, and given to slipping her shoulders out of the bands of her frock, she was very pretty—bony, but pretty—and I was desperately in love.”
“How wonderfully they are alike in height!”
“I believe,” continued the captain, in a slow, ponderous way, though all the while he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his companion’s eagerness, “that if I had made love-offerings to my fair young friend—I never knew her name, Dick, and unkindly fate parted us—they would have taken the form of sweet cakes or acidulated drops, and been much appreciated; but alas!—”
“Oh, hang it all, I can’t stand this! There goes Malpas. He has seen them, and is making chase. Glen, I shall shoot that fellow, or run him through.”
“What for, my boy?”
“Because he is always sitting upon me, and making fun of me at the mess. Hang him! I hate him!”
“Don’t take any notice of his banter,” said Glen seriously, “and if he is very unpleasant, it is more dignified to suffer than to fall out. Between ourselves, and in confidence, I advise you not to quarrel with Major Malpas. He can be very disagreeable when he likes.”
“As if I didn’t know! He was always hanging after our Renée—Mrs Frank Morrison, I mean.”
“Indeed!”
“Before she was married, of course.”
“Oh!”
“And used to treat me like a schoolboy. I hadn’t joined then, you know.”
“No, no, of course not,” said the captain with a peculiar smile.
“But look at him. You can see his black moustache and hooked nose here. He’s going straight for them. Look, don’t you see?”
“Well, yes, he does seem to be doing as you say. If he is, you may just thank your stars.”
“Thank my stars? What for?”
“For his getting the snub that you would have received had you been so foolish as to go after those ladies—for they are ladies, Dick.”
“Yes, of course, but it is horrible to be bested like this. Will you come?”
“No; and I won’t let you go. Sit still, you little stupid, and—there, see how propitious the fates are to you!” he continued, as he saw something unnoticed by his little companion.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, the enemy.”
“The enemy?”
“Well, the Amazonian brigade have seen the demonstration being made by the Major on their left flank, the officer in command has given the order, and they have countermarched and are returning by troops from the left.”
“But are they coming back this way?”
“To be sure they are, and if you sit still you will be able to enfilade them as they retreat.”
“Oh, please don’t—pray don’t, Glen, there’s a good fellow!”
“My dear boy, don’t what?”
“Don’t light another cigar. Elderly ladies hate smoking, and you’ll send them off in another direction. Besides, it’s forbidden.”
“Oh, very well, most inflammable of youths. I shall have to make this the subject of a despatch to mamma.”
“Hush! be quiet. Don’t seem to notice them, or they may turn off another way. I say, old Malpas is done.”
“And you are able to deliver a charge without change of position.”
It might have been from design, or it might have been pure accident, for ladies’ pockets always do seem made to hold their contents unsafely. Certain it was, however, that as the Honourable Misses Dymcox marched stiffly by, closely followed by their nieces, all looking straight before them, and as if they were not enjoying their walk in the slightest degree, there was a glint of something white, and Clotilde’s little old and not particularly fine handkerchief fell to the ground.
Glen saw it, and did not move.
Richard Millet did not see it for the moment, but as soon as it caught his eye he impulsively dashed from his seat, picked it up, and ran a few steps after the little party.
“Excuse me,” he exclaimed.
“Oh, thank you,” said Clotilde; and she stretched out her hand to take the handkerchief, but in a quick, unobtrusive way Miss Isabella interposed her thin stiff form, received the handkerchief from the young officer with a formal obeisance, and before he could recover from the paralysing chill of her severe look, the party had passed on.
“But I had a good look at her,” he cried excitedly, as he rejoined his companion.
“And that severe lady had a good look at you, Dick. What a cold, steely glance it was!”
“But did you see her eyes, Glen—dark as night!” he cried rapturously. “Did you see the glance she gave me?”
“No,” said the young officer bluntly, “seemed to me as if she wanted her glasses;” and then to himself, “She is handsome, and if it were not conceited, I should say she was looking at me.”