CHAPTER IV.
OF THE WELLFIELDS.
At Ems, the morning of the same day, some time after the Trockenau procession had gone past on its way to the station, two young ladies seated themselves on a bench in the Kurgarten, beside the broad walk. They had brought their novels and their fancy-work, and were of one mind and one spirit in their purpose to idle away the morning, watch the visitors, and, after the manner of Miss Austen’s sarcastic heroes and ingenuous heroines, ‘quiz the company.’ They were English; they were the daughters of an M.P. for one of the great manufacturing towns. They were staying at the Vier Jahreszeiten, and they had closely observed all the rest of the company staying there. Until a few days ago, the most perfect sisterly harmony had reigned between them; but a lamentable discord had lately arisen, and that upon the subject of a man.
‘Dora, see! There’s your wonderful dark angel coming mooning along with his sister. Pray don’t miss the chance of looking at them, since you admire them so much.’
‘You are boiling over with spite, Lucy. I will look at them. I like looking at them, and so do you, but you won’t own it.’
‘I!’ ejaculated Lucy, with supreme contempt. ‘He is very handsome, I grant you; but I believe him to be a sham.’
‘What do you mean by a sham?’
‘He looks like a hero of romance, and I believe he is a very commonplace personage after all.’
‘No one with such a voice could be commonplace, Lucy. Sims Reeves is nothing to him.’
‘I should say you were cracked,’ replied Lucy, witheringly.
‘Should you? What a powerful imagination you must have! He is coming down this way. I am sure “a dark angel” is an excellent name for him.’
‘I shall conclude next that you write poetry about him—a man who has never spoken to you, and who doesn’t recognise you when he sees you. And as for that tall girl, with her streams of yellow hair, she ought in decency to put it up, in——’
‘In a chignon—do say a chignon at once! It would suit her so admirably—about as well as it would suit Venus or Hebe.’
‘We shall never agree about them, that is evident.’
‘Well, I know that. Do let me admire them in peace. ’Tis all I ask.’
The causes of this deplorable breach of good understanding between two generally loving sisters, were now too near for them to exchange any further remarks about them at present. Lucy indignantly stuck her parasol between herself and them, and studied her Tauchnitz volume in moody dignity. Dora, perfectly conscious that the Wellfields were unaware of her existence, had no scruple in raising her head as they went past, and looking at them openly and scrutinisingly. They did not see her, being absorbed in conversation, and looking intently at one another. Avice was hanging upon her brother’s arm, which she had taken as they left the hotel, and was gazing with a sort of rapt attention into his face, as if something in his looks or his voice attracted her irresistibly. He had been saying something, and had ceased to speak, and this something seemed to give her matter for thought. Soon after they had passed the two girls, Avice said:
‘Jerome, since I knew you—how long is it?’
‘It is just a month since I came to you here.’
‘It seems an eternity of pleasure. My life has changed so much since then that I hardly know myself.’
‘For the better, do you mean?’ he asked, looking down upon the delicately beautiful, upturned face, and feeling that Sara Ford’s words had been true: ‘She will some day be remarkably beautiful.’
‘For the better, of course. I used to be very tired of my life sometimes. Often I have sat in our balcony, when we had one at any hotel we were staying at, and envied the ragged children playing in the street.’
‘But why, child? My father seems to dote upon you.’
‘Oh yes! he dotes upon me, I suppose. But when the doting takes the form of scarcely allowing me to leave the house, and never to go out alone—in all the places we have been at, I never went to see the sights like other girls—I am so ignorant—you cannot imagine how ignorant. I know absolutely nothing.’
‘You know French and German, and Italian and English.’
‘What is that, when I am afraid to speak in them for fear of showing what an ignorant little fool I am!’
‘And you know politics. I sat in silent awe and amazement the other day when you were telling my father about the ministerial tactics in France and England.’
‘Oh! because I have read the papers to papa for years. I don’t know any grammar, nor any arithmetic, nor——’
‘What can you want with them? Grammar is bosh.’
‘Jerome!’
‘Of course it is bosh. Never be afraid to call it bosh. And as for arithmetic, you can add up what you receive and what you spend, I suppose.’
‘But I don’t mean that kind of arithmetic. I knew an English girl a little while ago where we were at Florence. She was spending the winter holidays there, and papa allowed me to go to see her sometimes. She showed me the work she had to do during the holidays, and it made me feel, oh, so fearfully ignorant. One of her sums was, “Find the present value of £760 at four and five-eighths per cent. for eighty days.” That is what I call arithmetic,’ said Avice, despondently.
‘Do you? Well, suppose we look out for a governess for both of us, for I know just as much about it as you do.’
Avice laughed and said: ‘It would have to be a very clever governess, Jerome.’
‘But not old and ugly, or I could not possibly learn from her; and yet, if she were young and handsome, I might fall in love with her. Upon my word, I think I should like to have a governess, Avice. Shall we see about it?’
‘How ridiculous you are! Since I have had you, I don’t care so much about a governess. How horribly frightened of you I was, before I saw you. Papa used to pinch my ear sometimes when he wanted to tease me, and say, “I wonder what Hieronymus will say when he first sees you—little interloper!” When I asked what you were like, he said I should have to mind my P’s and Q’s with you. Naturally I trembled at the very idea of beholding you.’
‘It was too bad to make me out such a bugbear.’
‘Oh, he did not make you out a bugbear, exactly; but he gave me a fearful idea of you. And one day he told me that you had been sent for—that was when he was ill, and thought he would not get better. And he added that when he was gone, you would have all his authority, and that he advised me to make myself agreeable to you. It was woman’s mission, he said, to make herself agreeable.’
‘My father has curious ideas upon woman’s mission and place in life, my dear. If he were to come in contact with the world again, he would find that they were out of date. Well?’
‘I was in the greatest anxiety. I did not know whether to put on my oldest, shabbiest frock, and to go and sit up in my bedroom, and not come down till I was sent for, and not speak till I was spoken to.’
‘What end did you purpose to serve by such a course?’
‘I thought you would think, “At least she is quite insignificant, and will not be in my way.” Then I thought it might be better to make myself look as well as I possibly could——’
‘Which you knew to be very well indeed, Miss Vanity, in your bronze velvet gown with the amber slashings, which makes you look like some picture of Titian or Veronese, but which would not lead anyone to suppose that you were an English school-girl.’
‘Oh, don’t call me an English school-girl. I think they are horrid. They know so much more than I do. But do you like me in that dress?’
‘Very much.’
‘I thought, well, if he sees me in this, he will think, “Ah, after all she is presentable. She might be worse.”’
‘Preposterous child! Finally, if I remember aright——’
‘Finally, papa was so ill that I forgot all about my dress. I was in a black frock, sitting beside his bed, I know, when you came.’
‘Yes, I remember. My eyes fell upon you the instant I came in. I remember being struck, then and there, with the contrast between your white face and black dress, and great startled eyes, and this flood of gold, Avice.’ He smiled slightly as he touched a tress of her hair.
‘And I remember that as you came in, I really turned cold with anxiety and alarm. You were pale too, and your eyes seemed to burn upon me. I remember how you walked up to my father, and bent over him, and I thought suddenly, “Oh, I hope he will like me!” Then papa remembered me, and took my hand, and said, “Here’s Avice—you must learn to know her, for when I’m gone she will have no one but you; and she is a hot-house plant, I can tell you.” And you, Jerome, you took my hand—I could not speak. You smiled at me, and I felt as if a tight string had been cut loose from my heart; and you said, “One only needs to look at her to see that.” I must have looked alarmed, for you said, “Do you think you can spare me a little of your regard, my child?” and you put your arm round me, and kissed me. I would have died for you, Jerome, from that moment,’ she concluded, looking into his face with eyes full of suppressed, passionate devotion.
‘Why, you never told me before anything of this,’ he said, in some surprise.
‘Because I waited to see if you would change; if you would presently begin to think me an interloper. But I know you don’t. Oh, I do so love you!’
He took her chin in his hand, and looked down into the glowing, excited young face; then stooped and kissed her, saying: ‘I only wish we had not been strangers so long.’
They turned back, having come to the end of the garden, and Avice went on:
‘I have a great many things to ask about, Jerome. First, I want to know if we are rich?’
‘Rich! No. At least, not millionaires. I don’t exactly know what my father’s income is. Somewhere about two or three thousand a year, I suppose. He has always allowed me six hundred, since I came of age; and it has been quite enough.’
‘But you lead such a simple life, compared with that of some young men.’
He looked at her, surprised. ‘What do you know about the lives “some” young men lead?’
‘I don’t know anything, except that most of papa’s gentlemen friends spend more than six hundred a year, I am sure. I could not help seeing things, when we have stayed in so many places. You don’t keep a lot of horses, nor play cards for large stakes, nor give grand entertainments, nor spend heaps of money on dress.’
‘In all those matters I am severely virtuous, I confess—at any rate, in the last. At the same time, my sweet child, I have always, by dint of unwearying exertions, contrived to live up to my income; and perhaps had it been larger even, I might have succeeded in spending it.’
‘I daresay; but you know what I mean. You would never be like young Baron Zeppenheim, for instance, whom we knew at Wiesbaden. I really believe he had hundreds of suits of clothes.’
Jerome laughed.
‘I think, sister mine, that such things have about the same significance for us both. You look charming in your bronze velvet, with the old Venetian clasps; but had you nothing to wear but some old black serge, you would still be what you are.’
‘I suppose so. I cannot imagine what difference it makes. But next I want to ask, have you ever been to our home—our real home that belongs to us—and has the same name as ourselves?’
‘Have I ever been at Wellfield? Of course I have—ages ago, though, when I was a boy of ten or eleven—nearly sixteen years ago, Avice; and yet I remember it as well as if it had been yesterday.’
‘Is it nice?’
‘It is a fine old place—yes—in a fine country. I should like well to see it again.’
‘I want to go there dreadfully, Jerome. Couldn’t you persuade papa to let us go and stay there for a while when he gets better? He never will talk to me about it. He says it is a musty old place, and that I may think I should like it, but that I should be like himself if I got there—dead in a week, aus lauter Langeweile. But I know better. I should be able to do as I liked, and to go out without a maid, and without gloves; and could have a room of my own to put my things in, without the horrid consciousness that in a week or two I should have to rout them all out again. That’s what I feel here; I feel an outcast.’
‘You have never seen the home of your ancestors, and you are sixteen! I never in the least realised it. Certainly you shall go. I will work him up to it.’
‘Oh, Jerome, you are an angel!’ she exclaimed fervently.
They were passing the English sisters again, who had quarrelled about them; and on hearing this exclamation, and seeing the enraptured face held up to Jerome, ‘Dora’ gave an exultant glance towards ‘Lucy,’ who merely shrugged her shoulders.
‘Were you so anxious to see the old place?’ pursued Jerome. ‘Well, I don’t wonder. It is a place to be proud of.’
‘Why don’t you go and live there? You could.’
‘Ah, that is another thing. Wellfield is a lovely spot, and the Abbey is a place to be proud of, no doubt; but to live there, after the kind of life one has been accustomed to here—c’est autre chose! It’s a Roman Catholic neighbourhood. Brentwood is close to, you know—the great Jesuit seminary, and a lot of those fossilised Roman Catholic gentry, as proud as Lucifer, and as exclusive as—as only such people can be.’
‘But surely we are their equals.’
‘Oh dear, yes! We have always been on the best of terms with them all, chiefly perhaps because we have been so little at Wellfield that there has been no time or chance for differences to arise. I don’t know how I should like it to live in, unless——’
‘Unless what?’
‘If something I should like very much took place, I should certainly ask my father to let me take up my abode at the Abbey. Who knows, Avice, under what circumstances you may go first to Wellfield Abbey?’
They found themselves opposite the Vier Jahreszeiten. Jerome looked at his watch.
‘I tell you what, young lady, we have consumed no end of time in this discussion. My father will think himself ill-used. We promised to walk with him at twelve. Come and let us find him.’
They went into the hall, and an attendant hurried up to them, only to say that Mr. Wellfield the elder had been taken very ill while reading his newspapers before rising, that a doctor had been sent for, and that he lay now between life and death.
Jerome and his sister hastened upstairs, and found their father in alternate convulsions of pain and intervals of utter, swooning unconsciousness. The doctor came, and after a very short examination pronounced the attack to be a most serious one. A Sister of Mercy from a neighbouring institution was sent for. Hours of suspense and anxiety passed before the delirious anguish of the patient at all abated. The dusk of evening had fallen, when the doctor, coming into the salon, found Jerome and Avice seated together in the window; the girl’s head pillowed on her brother’s knee, her hand in his.
‘Your father is now composed, and perfectly sensible,’ said the doctor. ‘He is very anxious to speak to you alone,’ he added, to Jerome. ‘The Sister will wait in the ante-room. Call her if there is the least need for help. She knows what to do. I will look in again about midnight.’
With a brief good-evening he was gone; and Jerome, rising, went to his father’s room.