The evening passed in a whirl, such as Katherine, altogether unused to
the strange mingled life of family occupations and self-indulgence,
could not understand. There was not a tranquil moment for the talk and
the explanations. Stella ran from room to room, approving and objecting.
She liked the state apartment with its smart furniture in which she had
herself been placed, but she did not like the choice of the rooms for
the babies, and had them transferred to others, and the furniture
altered and pulled about to suit their needs. The house had put on a
gala air for the new guests; there were fires blazing everywhere,
flowers everywhere, such as could be got at that advanced season. Stella
sent the chrysanthemums away, which were the chief point in the
decorations. “They have such a horrid smell. They make my head
ache--they remind me,” she said, “of everything that’s dreadful.” And
she stood over the worried maid while she opened the boxes, dragging out
the dresses by a corner and flinging them about on the floors. “I shall
not want any of those old things. Isn’t there a rag of a black that I
can wear now? Kate, you were dreadfully remiss not to order me some
things. How can I go downstairs and show myself in all my blues and
greens? Oh, yes, of course I require to be fitted on, but I’d rather
have an ill-fitting gown than none at all. I could wear one of yours, it
is true, but my figure is different from yours. I’m not all one straight
line from head to foot, as you are; and you’re covered over with crape,
which is quite unnecessary--nobody thinks of such a thing now. I’ll wear
_that_,” she added, giving a little kick to a white dress, which was one
of those she had dragged out by a flounce and flung on the floor. “You
can put some black ribbons to it, Pearson. Oh, how glad I shall be to
get rid of all those old things, and get something fit to wear, even if
it’s black. I shall telegraph at once to London to send someone down
about my things to-morrow, but I warn you I’m not going to wear mourning
for a whole year, Kate. No one thinks of such a thing now.”
“You always look well in black, my lady, with your complexion,” said
Pearson, the maid.
“Well, perhaps I do,” said Stella mollified. “Please run down and send
off the telegram, Kate; there is such a crowd of things to do.”
And thus the day went on. At dinner there was perforce a little time
during which the trio were together; but then the servants were present,
making any intimate conversation impossible, and the talk that was was
entirely about the dishes, which did not please either Sir Charles or
his wife. Poor Mrs. Simmons, anxious to please, had with great care
compounded what she called and thought to be a curry, upon which both of
them looked with disgust. “Take it away,” they both said, after a
contemptuous examination of the dish, turning over its contents with the
end of a fork, one after the other. “Kate, why do you let that woman try
things she knows nothing about?” said Stella severely. “But you never
care what you eat, and you think that’s fine, I know. Old Simmons never
could do much but what English people call roast and boil--what any
savage could do! and you’ve kept her on all these years! I suppose you
have eaten meekly whatever she chose to set before you ever since I went
away.”
“I think,” said Sir Charles in his moustache, “if I am to be here much
there will certainly have to be a change in the cook.”
“You can do what you please, Stella--as soon as everything is settled,”
Katherine said. Her sister had taken her place without any question at
the head of the table; and Somers, perhaps unconsciously, had placed
himself opposite. Katherine had taken with some surprise and a
momentary hesitation a seat at the side, as if she were their
guest--which indeed she was, she said to herself. But she had never
occupied that place before; even in the time of Stella’s undoubted
ascendancy, Katherine had always sat at the head of the table. She felt
this as one feels the minor pricks of one’s great troubles. After
dinner, when she had calculated upon having time for her explanation,
Sir Charles took out his cigar case before the servants had left the
room. Stella interrupted him with a little scream. “Oh, Charles, Kate
isn’t used to smoke! She will be thinking of her curtains and all sorts
of things.”
“If Kate objects, of course,” he said, cutting the end off his cigar and
looking up from the operation.
Katherine objected, as many women do, not to the cigar but to the
disrespect. She said, “Stella is mistress. I take no authority upon me,”
with as easy an air as she could assume.
“Come along and see the children,” Stella cried, jumping up, “you’ll
like that, or else you’ll pretend to like it,” she said as they went out
of the room together, “to please me. Now, you needn’t trouble to please
me in that way. I’m not silly about the children. There they are, and
one has to make the best of them, but it’s rather hard to have the boy a
teeny weeny thing like Job. The girl’s strong enough, but it don’t
matter so much for a girl. And Charlie is an idiot about Job. Ten to one
he will be upstairs as soon as we are, snatching the little wretch out
of his bed and carrying him off. They sit and croon for hours together
when there’s no one else to amuse Charlie. And I’m sure I don’t know
what is to become of him, for there will be nobody to amuse him here.”
“But it must be so bad for the child, Stella. How can he be well if you
allow that to go on?”
“Oh,” cried Stella, clapping her hands, “I knew you would be the very
model of a maiden aunt! Now you’ve found your real _rôle_ in life, Kate.
But don’t go crossing the ayah, for she won’t understand you, and you’ll
come to dreadful grief. Oh, the children! We should only disturb them
if we went in. I said that for an excuse to get you away. Come into my
room, and let’s look over my clothes. I am sure I have a black gown
somewhere. There was a royal mourning, don’t you know, and I had to get
one in a hurry to go to Government House in--unless Pearson has taken it
for herself. Black is becoming to my complexion, I know--but I don’t
like it all the same--it shows every mark, and it’s hot, and if you wear
crape it should always be quite fresh. This of yours is crumpled a
little. You’ll look like an old woman from the workhouse directly if you
wear crumpled crape--it is the most expensive, the most----”
“You need not mind that now, Stella; and for papa’s sake----”
“Good gracious! what a thing that is to say! I need never mind it!
Charlie will say I should always mind it. He says no income could stand
me. Are you there, Pearson? Well, it is just as well she isn’t; we can
look them over at our ease without her greedy eyes watching what she is
to have. She’ll have to get them all, I suppose, for they will be
old-fashioned before I could put them on again. Look here,” cried
Stella, opening the great wardrobe and pulling down in the most careless
way the things which the maid had placed there. She flung them on the
floor as before, one above the other. “This is one I invented myself,”
she said. “Don’t you think that grey with the silver is good? It had a
great _succès_. They say it looked like moonlight. By the bye,” she
added, “that might come in again. Grey with silver is mourning! What a
good thing I thought of that! It must have been an inspiration. I’ve
only worn it once, and it’s so fantastic it’s independent of the
fashion. It will come in quite well again.”
“Stella, I do wish you would let me tell you how things are, and how it
all happened, and----”
“Yes, yes,” cried Lady Somers, “another time! Here’s one, again, that
I’ve only worn once; but that will be of no use, for it’s pink--unless
we could make out somehow that it was mauve, there is very little
difference--a sort of blue shade cast upon it, which might be done by a
little draping, and it would make such a pretty mauve. There is very
little difference between the two, only mauve is mourning and pink
is--frivolity, don’t you know. Oh, Pearson, here you are! I suppose you
have been down at your supper? What you can do to keep you so long at
your supper I never can tell. I suppose you flirt with all the gentlemen
in the servants’ hall. Look here, don’t you think this pink, which I
have only worn once, could be made with a little trouble to look mauve?
I am sure it does already a little by this light.”
“It is a very bright rose-pink, my lady,” said Pearson, not at all
disposed to see one of the freshest of her mistress’s dresses taken out
of her hands.
“You say that because you think you will get it for yourself,” said Lady
Somers, “but I am certain with a little blue carefully arranged to throw
a shade it would make a beautiful mauve.”
“Blue-and-pink are the Watteau mixture,” said Pearson, holding her
ground, “which is always considered the brightest thing you can wear.”
“Oh, if you are obstinate about it!” cried the mistress. “But recollect
I am not at your mercy here, Pearson, and I shall refer it to Louise.
Kate, I’m dreadfully tired; I think I’ll go to bed. Remember I haven’t
been on solid ground for ever so long. I feel the motion of the boat as
if I were going up and down. You do go on feeling it, I believe, for
weeks after. Take off this tight dress, Pearson, quick, and let me get
to bed.”
“Shall I sit by you a little after, and tell you, Stella?”
“Oh goodness, no! Tell me about a death and all that happened, in the
very same house where it was, to make me nervous and take away my rest!
You quite forget that I am delicate, Kate! I never could bear the things
that you, a great, robust, middle-aged woman, that have never had any
drain on your strength, can go through. Do let me have a quiet night, my
first night after a sea voyage. Go and talk to Charlie, if you like, he
has got no nerves; and Pearson, put the lemonade by my bed, and turn
down the light.”
Katherine left her sister’s room with the most curious sensations. She
was foiled at every point by Stella’s lightness, by her self-occupation,
the rapidity of her loose and shallow thoughts, and their devotion to
one subject. She recognised in a half-angry way the potency and
influence of this self-occupation. It was so sincere that it was almost
interesting. Stella found her own concerns full of interest; she had no
amiable delusions about them. She spoke out quite simply what she felt,
even about her children. She did not claim anything except boundless
indulgence for herself. And then it struck Katherine very strangely, it
must be allowed, to hear herself described as a great, robust,
middle-aged woman. Was that how Stella saw her--was she _that_,
probably, to other people? She laughed a little to herself, but it was
not a happy laugh. How misguided was the poet when he prayed that we
might see ourselves as others see us! Would not that be a dreadful
coming down to almost everybody, even to the fairest and the wisest. The
words kept flitting through Katherine’s mind without any will of hers.
“A great, robust, middle-aged woman.” She passed a long mirror in the
corridor (there were mirrors everywhere in Mr. Tredgold’s much decorated
house), and started a little involuntarily to see the slim black figure
in it gliding forward as if to meet her. Was this herself, Katherine, or
was it the ghost of what she had thought she was, a girl at home,
although twenty-nine? After all, middle-age does begin with the
thirties, Katherine said to herself. Dante was thirty-five only when he
described himself as at the _mezzo del cammin_. Perhaps Stella was
right. She was three years younger. As she went towards the stairs
occupied by these thoughts, she suddenly saw Sir Charles, a tall shadow,
still more ghost-like than herself, in the mirror, with a little white
figure seated on his shoulder. It was the little Job, the delicate boy,
his little feet held in his father’s hand to keep them warm, his arms
clinging round his father’s head as he sat upon his shoulder. Katherine
started when she came upon the group, and made out the little boy’s
small face and staring eyes up on those heights. Her brother-in-law
greeted her with a laugh: “You wouldn’t stop with me to smoke a cigar,
so I have found a companion who never objects. You like the smoke, don’t
you, Job?”
“Job fader’s little boy,” said the small creature, in a voice with a
shiver in it.
“Put a shawl round him, at least,” cried Katherine, going hastily to a
wardrobe in the corridor; “the poor little man is cold.”
“Not a bit, are you, Job, with your feet in father’s hand?”
“Indland,” said the child, with a still more perceptible shiver,
“Indland’s cold.”
But he tried to kick at Katherine as she approached to put the shawl
round him, which Sir Charles stooped to permit, with an instinct of
politeness.
“What, kick at a lady!” cried Sir Charles, giving the child a shake.
“But we are not used to all these punctilios. We shall do very well, I
don’t fear.”
“It is very bad for the child--indeed, he ought to be asleep,” Katherine
could not but say. She felt herself the maiden aunt, as Stella had
called her, the robust middle-aged woman--a superannuated care-taking
creature who did nothing but interfere.
“Oh, we’ll look after that, Job and I,” the father said, going on down
the stairs without even the fictitious courtesy of waiting till
Katherine should pass. She stood and watched them going towards the
drawing-room, the father and child. The devotion between them was a
pretty sight--no doubt it was a pretty sight. The group of the mother
and child is the one group in the world which calls forth human
sentiment everywhere; and yet the father and child is more moving, more
pathetic still, to most, certainly to all feminine, eyes. It seems to
imply more--a want in the infant life to which its mother is not first,
a void in the man’s. Is it that they seem to cling to each other for
want of better? But that would be derogatory to the father’s office. At
all events it is so. Katherine’s heart melted at this sight. The poor
little child uncared for in the midst of so much ease, awake with his
big excited eyes when he ought to have been asleep, exposed to the cold
to which he was unaccustomed, shivering yet not complaining, his father
carrying him away to comfort his own heart--negligent, but not
intentionally so, of the child’s welfare, holding him as his dearest
thing in the world. The ayah, on hearing the sound of voices, came to
the door of the room, expostulating largely in her unknown tongue,
gesticulating, appealing to the unknown lady. “He catch death--cold,”
she cried, and Katherine shook her head as she stood watching them, the
child recovering his spirits in the warmth of the shawl, his little
laugh sounding through the house. Oh, how bad it was for little Job! and
yet the conjunction was so touching that it went to her heart. She
hesitated for a moment. What would be the use of following them, of
endeavouring through Sir Charles’ cigar and Job’s chatter to give her
brother-in-law the needful information, joyful though it must be. She
did not understand these strange, eager, insouciant, money-grasping, yet
apparently indifferent people, who were satisfied with her curt
intimation of their restoration to wealth, even though they were
forever, as Lady Jane said, agape for more. She stood for a moment
hesitating, and then she turned away in the other direction to her own
room, and gave it over for the night.
But Katherine’s cares were not over; in her room she found Mrs. Simmons
waiting for her, handkerchief in hand, with her cap a little awry and
her eyes red with crying. “I’m told, Miss Katherine,” said Simmons with
a sniff, “as Miss Stella, which they calls her ladyship, don’t think
nothing of my cookin’, and says I’m no better than a savage. I’ve bin in
this house nigh upon twenty years, and my things always liked, and me
trusted with everything; and that’s what I won’t take from no one, if it
was the Lord Chamberlain himself. I never thought to live to hear myself
called a savage--and it’s what I can’t put up with, Miss Katherine--not
to go again you. I wouldn’t cross you not for no money. I’ve ’ad my
offers, both for service and for publics, and other things. Mr.
Harrison, the butler, he have been very pressin’--but I’ve said just
this, and it’s my last word, I won’t leave Miss Katherine while she’s in
trouble. I know my dooty better nor that, I’ve always said.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Simmons; you were always very good to me,” said
Katherine, “and you must not mind anything that is said at table. You
know Stella always was hasty, and never meant half she said.”
“Folks do say, Miss Katherine,” said Simmons, “as it’s a going to be
Miss Stella’s house.”
“Yes, it will be her house; but whether she will stay in it or not I
cannot tell you yet. It would be very nice for you, Simmons, to be left
here as housekeeper with a maid or two to attend you, and nothing to
do.”
“I hope,” said Simmons, with again a sniff, “as I am not come so low
down as that--to be a caretaker, me at my time of life. And it don’t
seem to me justice as Miss Stella should have the house as she runned
away from and broke poor old master’s heart. He’s never been himself
from that day. I wonder she can show her face in it, Miss Katherine,
that I do! Going and calling old servants savages, as has been true and
faithful and stood by him, and done their best for him up to the very
last.”
“You must not be offended, Simmons, by a foolish word; and you must not
speak so of my sister. She is my only sister, and I am glad she should
have everything, everything!” Katherine cried with fervour, the moisture
rising to her eyes.
“Then, Miss Katherine, it’s more nor anyone else is, either in the
servants’ hall or the kitchen. Miss Stella, or her ladyship as they
calls her, is a very ’andsome young lady, and I knows it, and dreadful
spoiled she has been all her life. But she don’t have no consideration
for servants. And we’ll clear out, leastways I will for one, if she is
to be the Missus here.”
“I hope you will wait first and see what she intends. I am sure she
would be very sorry, Simmons, to lose so good a servant as you.”
“I don’t know as it will grieve her much--me as she has called no better
nor a savage; but she’ll have to stand it all the same. And the most of
the others, I warn you, Miss Katherine, will go with me.”
“Don’t, dear Simmons,” said Katherine. “Poor Stella has been nearly
seven long years away, and she has been among black people, where--where
people are not particular what they say; don’t plunge her into trouble
with her house the moment she gets back.”
“She ought to have thought of that,” cried Simmons, “afore she called a
white woman and a good Christian, I hope, a savage--a savage! I am not
one of them black people; and I doubt if the black people themselves
would put up with it. Miss Katherine, I won’t ask you for a character.”
“Oh, Simmons, don’t speak of that.”
“No,” said Simmons, dabbing her eyes, then turning to Katherine with an
insinuating smile, “because--because I’ll not want one if what I expect
comes to pass. Miss Katherine, you haven’t got no objections to me.”
“You know I have not, Simmons! You know I have always looked to you to
stand by me and back me up.”
“Your poor old Simmons, Miss Katherine, as made cakes for you, and them
apples as you were so fond of when you were small! And as was always
ready, no matter for what, if it was a lunch or if it was a supper, or a
picnic, or whatever you wanted, and never a grumble; if it was ever so
unreasonable, Miss Katherine, dear! If this house is Miss Stella’s
house, take me with you! I shouldn’t mind a smaller ’ouse. Fifteen is a
many to manage, and so long as I’ve my kitchenmaid I don’t hold with no
crowds in the kitchen. Take me with you, Miss Katherine--you might be
modest about it--seeing as you are not a married lady and no gentleman,
and a different style of establishment. But you will want a cook and a
housekeeper wherever you go--take me with you, Miss Katherine, dear.”
“Dear Simmons,” said Katherine, “I have not money enough for that. I
shall not be rich now. I shall have to go into lodgings with Hannah--if
I can keep Hannah.”
“You are joking,” said Simmons, withdrawing with wonder her handkerchief
from her eyes. “You, Mr. Tredgold’s daughter, you the eldest! Oh, Miss
Katherine, say it plain if you won’t have me, but don’t tell me that.”
“But indeed it is true,” cried Katherine. “Simmons, you know what things
cost better than I do, and Mrs. Shanks says and Miss Mildmay----”
“Oh, Mrs. Shanks and Miss Mildmay! Them as you used to call the old
cats! Don’t you mind, Miss Katherine, what they say.”
“Simmons, tell me,” asked Katherine, “what can I do, how many servants
can I keep, with five hundred a year?”
Simmons’ countenance fell, her mouth opened in her consternation, her
jaw dropped. She knew very well the value of money. She gasped as she
repeated; “Five hundred a year!”