How they loved him, Vol. 1 (of 3)

Fenella did not see her mother on the following morning until she descended to the breakfast-room, but their meeting then seemed to atone for everything that had gone before. Mrs Barrington was looking her best, for she had no intention of letting her young daughter into her secrets too soon. Eliza Bennett had already arranged her golden-tinted hair into its many twists and curls, and a pale blue cashmere dressing gown, trimmed with swan’s-down, greatly enhanced the effect of the powder on her delicate complexion, and the touch of carmine she had applied to her lips.

‘Oh, mamma, how beautiful you look!’ was the girl’s first greeting, and the admiration was genuine. Mrs Barrington’s style and attire were so totally opposed to anything she had been accustomed to see at the convent, that Fenella thought she was the rarest, daintiest vision of beauty that had ever burst upon her sight. She had always considered her friend Honorée pretty, because she loved her; but Honorée’s looks became commonplace by comparison with those of her mother. Mrs Barrington was not displeased at the compliment. She was so vain that all flattery was welcome to her, even when it came from the lips of an inexperienced child, fresh from her convent school. She bridled and smiled, and told Fenella she was a silly girl to say such things of an old woman whom no one else considered worth looking at.

‘An old woman, mamma! How can you say so?’ cried her daughter. ‘Do you know, my greatest wonder is to find you still so young? I don’t know what I can have been thinking about, but I really expected you to be quite middle-aged, and perhaps have grey hair by this time.’

‘Foolish child,’ murmured Mrs Barrington, though rather consciously.

‘Yes; am I not? I suppose it is because I have been away so many years that I make such a mistake. And another thing, mamma, I always fancied your hair was dark. I used to tell the girls at school that my mother had dark hair. I seem quite to have forgotten it was golden—and such a pretty golden too—the prettiest colour, I think, that I have ever seen. How could I be so silly as to forget it?’

‘Children have usually short memories, and take all sorts of fancies into their heads,’ replied Mrs Barrington, with a visible increase of colour. ‘I daresay you dreamt it, my dear. But let us take our breakfast, for I have to go shopping this morning.’

‘How delightful that will be,’ chattered Fenella, as she poured out the tea. ‘There was a girl at Ansprach who lived in London, and she used to tell us so much about the shops. Are you going to buy me some new dresses, mamma?’

‘I don’t know, my dear,’ said Mrs Barrington.

She had come downstairs determined, before breakfast was over, to tell her daughter of the absolute necessity of her going to the sea-side; but somehow, looking into those fearless grey eyes, the task became more difficult than it had seemed to be.

‘I am not sure whether you will require new dresses till the summer is over,’ she went on; ‘for I have several that can be altered nicely for you, and you will be at a quiet sea-side place where your convent uniform will do as well as anything else.’

‘Shall we?’ exclaimed Fenella eagerly; ‘oh, I am very glad of that! To be at some quiet place with you, where we shall be always together, and there will be no tiresome balls and parties to take you away in the evenings, will be just like heaven, won’t it? And we shall be able to bathe, and to sit on the beach all day, and if Bennett will cut out my frocks, I will make them myself—I love work, and chère mère used to say I was the quickest worker in the school.’

So ran on Fenella, never doubting but that wherever she went, her mother would go too. For what other reason than to be with her had she been sent home from Ansprach. But Mrs Barrington did not immediately respond. Practised deceiver as she was, she required a little time, in order to frame a politic reply.

‘I don’t think you need trouble yourself about the work, my dear,’ she said after a pause; ‘Bennett will do all that you require, and I want you to enjoy yourself, and get all the strength you can during your visit to the sea. You will never be able to stand a London life, Fenella, if you don’t grow strong. I shall want you to go to balls and parties with me by-and-by, and that is very fatiguing for anybody. And, of course, you must bathe—every day—and be in the open air as much as you can. You have evidently been shut up too much at Ansprach.’

‘Don’t you like bathing, mamma?’

‘No, my dear! it doesn’t agree with me, nor the sea-side either! I am generally ill there.’

Fenella’s face grew ominously grave.

‘Oh, mother, don’t go then! What does my health signify in comparison with yours? Besides, I am really stronger than I look—and now I am with you again, I am sure I shall be quite well. We mustn’t go to the sea, mamma; I shall be wretched if we do.’

‘My dear, I have already taken a doctor’s opinion on the subject, and he says it is absolutely necessary you should have the benefit of sea air. At all risks, therefore, you must go to the sea.’

The tears started into Fenella’s eyes. A suspicion of the truth darted on her.

‘Come, come, I must have no fretting,’ said her mother, as she rose from table; ‘we have all to make sacrifices sometimes in this world, dear, and you will never find me backward, I hope, in setting you a brave example. And now I must leave you for my shopping.’

‘Mayn’t I go with you, mamma?’ pleaded Fenella as she resolutely swallowed an ominous feeling that had risen in her throat. ‘I will be ready before you are!’

Mrs Barrington looked the girl from head to foot.

‘I would take you directly, Fenella, but not this morning, my love, you see you are scarcely suitably dressed to drive about town. Besides, I am going out on a very uninteresting errand, and shall visit none of the fine shops your schoolfellows spoke to you about. My business lies entirely with house-agents and coach-builders. But if you feel inclined for a walk, Bennett shall take you into the park, or down Regent Street, where you will see all the prettiest things in London.’

‘No thank you, mamma,’ replied the girl, in a disappointed tone. ‘If I can’t go with you, I would rather stay at home till you return.’

‘Just as you please, my dear. I shall be home to luncheon,’ said Mrs Barrington, as smiling sweetly she tripped up to her room. On the threshold she met Eliza Bennett.

‘Just fancy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Miss Fenella’s taken it into her head to sulk because I refused to let her accompany me out driving this morning. As if I could be seen with a girl dressed up such an object as she is! But if she’s going to turn out sulky, there’ll be an end of all peace between us, Bennett. I hate a sullen temper. Her poor father had it, you remember; and what words it made between us! It was bad enough from a husband, but I never could endure it from a daughter.’

‘I don’t think Miss Fenella is sulky, ma’am,’ replied Bennett; ‘but I fancy she’s a little disappointed at finding things different from what she expected.’

‘Different! How different?’ snapped Mrs Barrington.

‘She hasn’t seen much of you since she came home, ma’am.’

‘How could she expect to do so when I have all these engagements? Give me the black satin cloak, Bennett, and the velvet bonnet.’

‘Shall you be gone long, ma’am?’

‘No; I shall be back to luncheon. I am going out early on purpose to be at home when Mr Wilson calls. He is sure to look in this afternoon. And mind, Bennett, if any one comes whilst I am away, they are not to be admitted. Say I am out, and shall not be back till three o’clock. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, ma’am—only, did you not say I was to go to French’s this morning about the cleaning of your lace?’

‘Of course! and so you must go, or it will not be done in time. How provoking! You ought to be here to answer the door in case of visitors.’

‘Can’t Mrs Watson do it, ma’am?’

‘She is so stupid; she never understands an order.’

‘I’ll make her understand, ma’am; it’s easy enough. No one is to be admitted on any account, and Miss Fenella will be quite happy with her books whilst I’m away. I sha’n’t be gone more than half-an-hour.’

‘Very well, Bennett. I leave it to you,’ said Mrs Barrington, as she descended to the carriage in waiting for her.

The servant saw her drive away, and then returned to the breakfast-room, where she found Fenella in a very dejected attitude, looking out at the leads from the back window.

‘Come, Miss Fenella!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have to go out on a little business for your mamma, and you must try and amuse yourself whilst I am away. There isn’t much to see in this room, but if you’ll go into the drawing-room, there’s a nice fire, and the piano, and plenty of picture-books, and as soon as I come back I’ll dust it and set it in order against the mistress has company in the afternoon.’

Fenella’s sad face brightened. Bennett’s words had suggested that she might be of some use.

‘Is mamma going to have company?’ she exclaimed. ‘Let me set the drawing-room in order for her, Bennett. I can do it just as well as you. We always had to make our beds and keep the dormitories clean at St Barbara. Will you give me a duster and a brush, and let me be of use to you and mamma?’ she said, with a pleading look, as she approached the servant’s side.

‘Of course I will, if it will give you any pleasure, miss,’ replied Bennett; ‘although it don’t seem quite the right thing for your papa’s daughter to do. Still, I don’t suppose your mamma will be angry, and that’s the main point.’

‘I will run and get my apron,’ said Fenella, and a few minutes after Bennett left her busily engaged dusting the books and ornaments in the drawing-room.

‘Mind,’ said the servant to the owner of the apartments, as she passed her in the hall on her way out, ‘if anybody calls whilst I’m absent, you’re to say Mrs Barrington won’t be back till three. Do you understand?’

‘Well, it’s not particularly difficult to understand,’ muttered the woman, who didn’t like being dictated to by a servant.

Meanwhile Fenella, having dusted all the china and pictures, and looked through the photograph albums (where the only portrait she recognised was that of her father), remembered the piano, and opened it to try its tone. One of the girl’s chief talents lay in music. She was too young to be a finished instrumentalist, but she possessed a soprano voice of unusual purity and power, which had been assiduously cultivated by the Sisters of St Barbara, in order that she might perform in their choir.

To hear Fenella sing was like listening to a thrush at early morning carolling in a lilac bush; her voice was so fresh and shrill, it reminded you only of a bird that sang because it could not help singing. It lacked as yet the modulation that comes only with culture and experience, but it had that in it which every year would lessen—the sound of nature and youth and gladness that could not be restrained, and yet moved the listener to tears in remembering what he had lost. The girl knew few songs and fewer ballads. Such compositions spoke of earth rather than heaven, and had been condemned by the good sisters as dangerous. But she had a glorious stock of hymns and anthems—the grand old Catholic hymns for which the masters of their art had not considered it infra dig. to compose the music, and with which the most solemn acts of Faith of the Church were intimately associated.

As Fenella opened her mother’s piano, the desire to sing came over her, and without preface she placed her hands upon the notes and brought out some such chords as Rossini loved to handle, or Mozart create. And then her pure, young voice rose in unison, and a solemn chant sounded through the rooms that made the woman in the hall pause with her broom in her hand to listen. It was not often (if ever) that such sounds had floated through these apartments. Mrs Barrington was no musician; she kept her piano for the use of her friends rather than herself, and such chords as were usually struck from it were of a decidedly secular—not to say unholy—nature. So the woman in the hall leant on her broom and said, ‘Well, I never!’

At that moment a gentleman came up the front steps and stood at the door—which was open.

‘Is Mrs Barrington at home?’ he inquired.

‘No, sir, she ain’t; and she won’t be home till three o’clock.’

The visitor paused.

‘Surely that is Mrs Barrington’s piano that I hear?’ he said. ‘Are you quite sure she is out?’

‘Quite sure, sir—at least so her servant told me just now. But I think that’s the young lady as is playing the pianner.’

‘What young lady?’

‘Miss Barrington, sir; she came home yesterday from school.’

Mr Henry Wilson (for it was he) stood and deliberated with himself for a moment. He had heard that the fascinating widow, who occupied most of his thoughts at the present time, had a daughter, but he had always imagined she was a little girl of five or six years old. Everything connected with Mrs Barrington was naturally interesting to him, and he suddenly conceived a desire to see the little girl and judge for himself. So he turned to his informant and said,—

‘If Miss Barrington is at home, I will go upstairs and leave my message with her.’

This proposal not in any way infringing (as the woman thought) on Eliza Bennett’s admonition, she led the way to the drawing-room, and opening the door, announced Mr Wilson as ‘a gentleman to see your ma, miss,’ and retired, leaving him in the presence of Fenella.

The girl rose from the piano as he appeared, but was in nowise abashed by his entrance. She only made him a slight reverence (after the polite fashion in which foreign children are educated), and brought forward a chair for his acceptance, which Mr Wilson, colouring scarlet, seized from her hand with alacrity. Then he seated himself awkwardly enough—the unexpected appearance of this fine young woman so entirely upset his mental equilibrium—whilst Fenella sat opposite, calmly waiting to hear him address her.

‘I think I must be mistaken,’ he stammered at last. ‘The person who admitted me said Miss Barrington was at home, but it is quite impossible that you can be the daughter of my friend Mrs Barrington.’

Fenella looked puzzled, and knit her white brows.

‘Because I am not so pretty as she is, do you mean?’ she said ingenuously.

‘Oh, Miss Barrington, how could you suppose such a thing? No, indeed! but I imagined—I had an idea that Mrs Barrington’s daughter was quite a little girl.’

‘Had you? How funny. Did mamma never tell you, then? I know I am tall for my age, but I was sixteen last birthday, so I ought to be tall, ought I not?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Mr Wilson; ‘and you are really, then, Fenella Barrington?’

‘Yes, I am Fenella. I came from the Convent at Ansprach yesterday with our maid Bennett, but mamma and I are soon going away again to some place abroad where I can get well, for I am not very strong. Mamma has gone out on business, but she will be back to lunch. Do you want to see her?’

‘I did call for that purpose, but I am very well pleased to see you instead.’

‘Ah, now! you are laughing, I am sure. I know I cannot be a bit like mamma to any one. She is so beautiful and so good.’

‘I quite agree with you; but there are different sorts of beauty in the world. Was it your voice that I heard singing when I entered the house?’

At this question Fenella did blush, but she answered frankly,—

‘Yes, it was I—’

‘Would it be too much to ask you to sing again? I love music dearly.’

‘Do you? But I don’t think you would care for mine. I don’t know any songs—only hymns and chants.’

‘But sacred music is the most glorious music in the world,’ said Mr Wilson.

‘If you think so, I will sing again,’ replied Fenella quietly, and she sat down to the piano, and her fresh young voice rung out the notes of an air from Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise.

‘It is charming!—delicious! How I should like my mother to hear you!’ exclaimed her visitor, when she had concluded.

‘I don’t think mamma would like me to sing before company,’ said the girl. ‘She says I am too young for parties yet. And who is your mother?’ she added naïvely.

‘She is called Lady Wilson, and is a great friend of Mrs Barrington’s.’

‘Then, perhaps, I may be allowed to sing to her; I cannot say. Are those flowers for my mother?’ she continued, looking at a hothouse bouquet that Mr Wilson carried in his hand. He had intended them for an offering to the fair widow, but somehow his fealty wavered, and he thought he should like to give them to her daughter instead. He was a man of the world, and to utter a white lie was no difficulty to him.

‘No!’ he answered boldly, as he held them towards her. ‘I brought them for you.’

Her look of childish delight repaid him for the onus he had taken on himself. The improbability of the circumstance, when he had confessed himself unaware of her being in London, never seemed to strike her.

‘Did you really?’ she exclaimed, as she buried her face in the roses and hyacinths and stephanotis of which the bouquet was composed. ‘How kind of you to think of me—and when I love flowers so dearly. But I shall give them to my mother. You won’t mind that, will you?—because I have nothing to give her that is really my own, and it seems so hard not to be able to give to those we love. If I had thousands and thousands of pounds, I would spend them all upon my mother.’

‘You are very fond of your mother, Miss Barrington.’

‘Of course I am; and I have no father, you know. My papa died when I was only ten years old. Have you seen his likeness?’

‘I don’t think I have,’ said Mr Wilson, rather uneasily, the virtues of the late Captain Barrington not having formed the usual topic of conversation between the widow and himself.

Fenella dropped her bouquet, and flew for the photograph book.

‘Here he is!’ she exclaimed, as she presented it open to her visitor. ‘Hasn’t he a nice, good face? Some people think I am very like papa, and I am always so proud to hear them say so. And he was clever too, as well as good. And my poor mother has had to live without him all this time—isn’t it sad for her?’

‘Very sad,’ replied Henry Wilson, not knowing what else to say.

‘Bennett thinks that is the reason mamma has kept me so long at Ansprach,’ resumed Fenella, in a mysterious voice, ‘because I remind her too painfully of papa; but I hope she won’t love me the less for that, now that I have come home again.’

‘And are you not going back to school, Miss Barrington?’

‘No!—never, I think; for as soon as I have grown strong and well, I am to go out to balls and parties with mamma. I don’t know whether I shall care much for them, but I shall love to go with mamma everywhere, and look at her when I am not speaking to her. It is so very, very long, you see, since we have been together.’

‘I can quite understand your pleasure at the reunion,’ replied Mr Wilson, rising; ‘and now, I think, I have intruded on your time long enough, Miss Barrington, and had better take my leave.’

‘Won’t you wait to see mamma?’ demanded Fenella. ‘She will be back to lunch.’

‘Not this morning, thank you. Will you give Mrs Barrington my kindest regards, and say that, if quite convenient to her, I will look in to-morrow afternoon to let her know the final arrangements for our starting on Friday?’

‘Are we all going together, then?’ exclaimed Fenella brightly. ‘Oh, that will be very nice! and I shall be able to sing to you whenever you wish me to do so.’

‘I shall claim your promise until, I am afraid, you will regret having given it,’ he answered, and then he bowed himself out of the room, and left Fenella smiling and nodding above her bunch of roses and hyacinths.

‘What a nice, kind man!’ she thought as the door closed behind him. ‘If all mamma’s friends are like him, I sha’n’t be frightened of meeting them. But I must put my lovely flowers in water, lest they should fade before she returns.’

Meanwhile Henry Wilson went back to his mother’s house with somewhat of a cloud upon his brow, which she was not slow to detect. For Lady Wilson, though a hard woman, was a good mother, and this was her only child.

‘Henry,’ she asked, ‘what is the matter with you?’ and he answered,—

‘Nothing! don’t bother me,’ after the manner of men.

But Lady Wilson was not to be put off in that way.

‘Mrs Barrington is at the bottom of this,’ she said; ‘it’s no use your trying to deceive me. There is always some worry about that woman now-a-days, and I wish she had been at the bottom of the sea before I had consented to her making one of our party to Mentone.’

‘I’ve not even seen Mrs Barrington this morning,’ replied her son.

‘But you have been to her house! Whom did you see?’

‘I saw her daughter.’

‘Her daughter! What! has she got that child home? What does she intend to do with her? She can’t bring her to Mentone. I hate children in the house. They upset everything.’

‘But she isn’t a child,’ interposed Mr Wilson, who was only too glad to have an opportunity of retailing his news. ‘She is quite a young woman, and twice the size of her mother! I never was so astonished in my life. She sings charmingly, and told me she was sixteen on her last birthday.’

‘Sixteen last birthday,’ repeated Lady Wilson, as she made rapid mental calculations. And then she turned round and pounced upon her son.

‘Henry! haven’t I told you again and again that Mrs Barrington is much older than she looks?’

‘I daresay she is. What does it matter to me?’ he answered consciously.

‘Well, I hope it doesn’t matter, but it’s the truth. She’s nearer forty than thirty—in fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s more than forty; those niminy-piminy women with dolly features always manage to keep their looks to the last. And so the girl’s a young woman, is she? Why, her mother has always spoken of her as if she were still in frilled trousers and frocks.’

‘Yes; she looks very young, of course, and her hair hangs down her back; but she’s nearly as tall as I am, and she talks as composedly as if she’d been “out” all her life. She’s deucedly pretty too, mother, though not at all like Mrs Barrington.’

‘She’s none the worse for that,’ snapped Lady Wilson; ‘however, pretty or not, I can’t have her at Mentone, and I shall write and tell her mother so. Our party’s made up—it was with the greatest inconvenience I could squeeze Mrs Barrington in, and a fifth person will upset everything. Five people can’t go in a carriage, nor an opera box, nor a coupé; it would split us into two parties at once, and I won’t have it. If Mrs Barrington has decided to take her daughter abroad, they must go by themselves. Give me my blottingbook and inkstand, Henry, and let me write and settle this matter at once.’

‘You won’t say anything to make Mrs Barrington think we don’t want her,’ remarked the young man, as he complied with his mother’s request.

‘I shall say just what I told you—that we can’t make room for the girl; that is all. I know you are very partial to the widow’s society, Henry,’ she continued pointedly, ‘though I sincerely trust there will never be anything but friendship between you; but you must see that, if she takes her daughter abroad, you will not enjoy even that unmolested. Did Miss Barrington appear to know anything of her mother’s plans?’

‘Yes; she spoke of it as a settled thing that she was to accompany her abroad for the sake of her health.’

‘What impertinence! and without consulting me!’ replied Lady Wilson, as she commenced to write her letter. ‘However, Mrs Barrington shall soon know my mind on the matter.’

‘Let me see what you have said,’ pleaded her son, as he leant over her shoulder.

‘Certainly. I wish to have no secrets from you, Henry.’

He read the note through, and sighed.

‘Is it not right?’ demanded his mother.

‘Yes; I don’t see what else you could have said. Miss Barrington’s presence would certainly prove a great kill-joy to the party.’

‘Ah! my son,’ said Lady Wilson, as she looked up affectionately in his face, ‘perhaps, did I consult my own interests, I might put myself out of the way to receive this young lady, for her mother is not a favourite companion of mine. But I want you to see this woman as she is in her own home, Henry—selfish, vain, and worldly—and when you have done that, I will leave the issue of it to your own good sense.’

‘Hush, mother,’ he said gently; ‘don’t discuss her faults—it gives me pain!’

‘I know it does; so does the surgeon’s probe when it touches a secret wound. But I cannot believe, Henry, but that you would rather know the worst before marriage than after, and this note will help to show it you. Mrs Barrington has been separated for five years from her only child, who returns home—(how it is that she has returned is a mystery to me)—just in time to interfere with her mother’s plans of pleasure! Let us see which the widow prefers—her daughter or herself! There is little doubt which she should prefer, and, I think, even you will acknowledge that a bad mother is scarcely likely to make a good wife. Oh, Henry, Henry! twenty-five and forty—’

‘No, no, mother; she can’t be forty!’

‘My boy, I tell you she is. Why, that would only make her twenty-four years old when this girl was born, and—’

‘Give me your note and I will see it is sent at once,’ cried her son, as he seized the letter and left the room, to avoid further discussion of a subject which was beginning to make him feel ashamed as well as miserable.