MRS. BROWN AT THOMPSON HALL.
“PLEASE, sir, we were to ask for Mr. Jones,” said the servant, putting
his head into the carriage after both Mr. and Mrs. Brown had seated
themselves.
“Mr. Jones!” exclaimed the husband.
“Why ask for Mr. Jones?” demanded the wife. The servant was about to
tender some explanation, when Mr. Jones stepped up and said that he was
Mr. Jones. “We are going to Thompson Hall,” said the lady, with great
vigor.
“So am I,” said Mr. Jones, with much dignity. It was, however, arranged
that he should sit with the coachman, as there was a rumble behind for
the other servant. The luggage was put into a cart, and away all went
for Thompson Hall.
“What do you think about it, Mary?” whispered Mr. Brown, after a pause.
He was evidently awe-struck by the horror of the occasion.
“I cannot make it out at all. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. Jones going to Thompson Hall!”
“He’s a very good-looking young man,” said Mrs. Brown.
“Well--that’s as people think. A stiff, stuck-up fellow, I should say.
Up to this moment he has never forgiven you for what you did to him.”
“Would you have forgiven his wife, Charles, if she’d done it to you?”
“He hasn’t got a wife--yet.”
“How do you know?”
“He is coming home now to be married,” said Mr. Brown. “He expects to
meet the young lady this very Christmas-day. He told me so. That was one
of the reasons why he was so angry at being stopped by what you did last
night.”
“I suppose he knows Uncle John, or he wouldn’t be going to the Hall,”
said Mrs. Brown.
“I can’t make it out,” said Mr. Brown, shaking his head.
“He looks quite like a gentleman,” said Mrs. Brown, “though he has been
so stiff. Jones! Barnaby Jones! You’re sure it was Barnaby?”
“That was the name on the card.”
“Not Burnaby?” asked Mrs. Brown.
“It was Barnaby Jones on the card--just the same as ‘Barnaby Rudge’; and
as for looking like a gentleman, I’m by no means quite so sure. A
gentleman takes an apology when it’s offered.”
[Illustration]
“Perhaps, my dear, that depends on the condition of his throat. If you
had had a mustard plaster on all night, you might not have liked it. But
here we are at Thompson Hall at last.”
Thompson Hall was an old brick mansion, standing within a huge iron
gate, with a gravel sweep before it. It had stood there before Stratford
was a town, or even a suburb, and had then been known by the name of Bow
Place. But it had been in the hands of the present family for the last
thirty years, and was now known far and wide as Thompson Hall--a
comfortable, roomy, old-fashioned place, perhaps a little dark and dull
to look at, but much more substantially built than most of our modern
villas. Mrs. Brown jumped with alacrity from the carriage, and with a
quick step entered the home of her forefathers. Her husband followed her
more leisurely; but he too felt that he was at home at Thompson Hall.
Then Mr. Jones walked in also; but he looked as though he were not at
all at home. It was still very early, and no one of the family was as
yet down. In these circumstances it was almost necessary that something
should be said to Mr. Jones.
“Do you know Mr. Thompson?” asked Mr. Brown.
“I never had the pleasure of seeing him--as yet,” answered Mr. Jones,
very stiffly.
“Oh--I didn’t know. Because you said you were coming here.”
“And I have come here. Are you friends of Mr. Thompson?”
“Oh dear yes,” said Mrs. Brown. “I was a Thompson myself before I
married.”
“Oh--indeed!” said Mr. Jones. “How very odd!--very odd indeed.”
During this time the luggage was being brought into the house, and two
old family servants were offering them assistance. Would the new-comers
like to go up to their bed-rooms? Then the housekeeper, Mrs. Green,
intimated with a wink that Miss Jane would, she was sure, be down quite
immediately. The present moment, however, was still very unpleasant. The
lady probably had made her guess as to the mystery, but the two
gentlemen were still altogether in the dark. Mrs. Brown had no doubt
declared her parentage, but Mr. Jones, with such a multitude of strange
facts crowding on his mind, had been slow to understand her. Being
somewhat suspicious by nature, he was beginning to think whether
possibly the mustard had been put by this lady on his throat with some
reference to his connection with Thompson Hall. Could it be that she,
for some reason of her own, had wished to prevent his coming, and had
contrived this untoward stratagem out of her brain? or had she wished to
make him ridiculous to the Thompson family, to whom, as a family, he was
at present unknown? It was becoming more and more improbable to him that
the whole thing should have been an accident. When, after the first
horrid torments of that morning in which he had in his agony invoked the
assistance of the night porter, he had begun to reflect on his
situation, he had determined that it would be better that nothing
further should be said about it. What would life be worth to him if he
were to be known wherever he went as the man who had been
mustard-plastered in the middle of the night by a strange lady? The
worst of a practical joke is that the remembrance of the absurd
condition sticks so long to the sufferer. At the hotel that night
porter, who had possessed himself of the handkerchief, and had read the
name, and had connected that name with the occupant of 333, whom he had
found wandering about the house with some strange purpose, had not
permitted the thing to sleep. The porter had pressed the matter home
against the Browns, and had produced the interview which has been
recorded. But during the whole of that day Mr. Jones had been resolving
that he would never again either think of the Browns or speak of them. A
great injury had been done to him--a most outrageous injustice; but it
was a thing which had to be endured. A horrid woman had come across him
like a nightmare. All he could do was to endeavor to forget the terrible
visitation. Such had been his resolve, in making which he had passed
that long day in Paris. And now the Browns had stuck to him from the
moment of his leaving his room! He had been forced to travel with them,
but had travelled with them as a stranger. He had tried to comfort
himself with the reflection that at every fresh stage he would shake
them off. In one railway after another the vicinity had been bad--but
still they were strangers. Now he found himself in the same house with
them, where of course the story would be told. Had not the thing been
done on purpose that the story might be told there at Thompson Hall?
Mrs. Brown had acceded to the proposition of the housekeeper, and was
about to be taken to her room, when there was heard a sound of footsteps
along the passage above and on the stairs, and a young lady came
bounding on to the scene. “You have all of you come a quarter of an hour
earlier than we thought possible,” said the young lady. “I did so mean
to be up to receive you!” With that she passed her sister on the
stairs--for the young lady was Miss Jane Thompson, sister to our Mrs.
Brown--and hurried down into the hall. Here Mr. Brown, who had ever been
on affectionate terms with his sister-in-law, put himself forward to
receive her embraces; but she, apparently not noticing him in her ardor,
rushed on and threw herself on to the breast of the other gentleman.
“This is my Charles,” she said. “O Charles, I thought you never would be
here!”
Mr. Charles Burnaby Jones--for such was his name since he had inherited
the Jones property in Pembrokeshire--received into his arms the ardent
girl of his heart with all that love and devotion to which she was
entitled, but could not do so without some external shrinking from her
embrace. “O Charles, what is it?” she said.
“Nothing, dearest--only--only--” Then he looked piteously up into Mrs.
Brown’s face, as though imploring her not to tell the story.
“Perhaps, Jane, you had better introduce us,” said Mrs. Brown.
“Introduce you! I thought you had been travelling together, and staying
at the same hotel, and all that.”
“So we have; but people may be in the same hotel without knowing each
other. And we have travelled all the way home with Mr. Jones without in
the least knowing who he was.”
“How very odd! Do you mean you have never spoken?”
“Not a word,” said Mrs. Brown.
“I do so hope you’ll love each other,” said Jane.
“It sha’n’t be my fault if we don’t,” said Mrs. Brown.
“I’m sure it sha’n’t be mine,” said Mr. Brown, tendering his hand to the
other gentleman. The various feelings of the moment were too much for
Mr. Jones, and he could not respond quite as he should have done. But as
he was taken up-stairs to his room, he determined that he would make the
best of it.
The owner of the house was old Uncle John. He was a bachelor, and with
him lived various members of the family. There was the great Thompson of
them all, Cousin Robert, who was now member of Parliament for the Essex
Flats; and young John, as a certain enterprising Thompson of the age of
forty was usually called; and then there was old Aunt Bess; and among
other young branches there was Miss Jane Thompson, who was now engaged
to marry Mr. Charles Burnaby Jones. As it happened, no other member of
the family had as yet seen Mr. Burnaby Jones, and he, being by nature of
a retiring disposition, felt himself to be ill at ease when he came
into the breakfast parlor among all the Thompsons. He was known to be a
gentleman of good family and ample means, and all the Thompsons had
approved of the match; but during that first Christmas breakfast he did
not seem to accept his condition jovially. His own Jane sat beside him,
but then on the other side sat Mrs. Brown. She assumed an immediate
intimacy--as women know how to do on such occasions--being determined
from the very first to regard her sister’s husband as a brother; but he
still feared her. She was still to him the woman who had come to him in
the dead of night with that horrid mixture--and had then left him.
“It was so odd that both of you should have been detained on the very
same day,” said Jane.
“Yes, it was odd,” said Mrs. Brown, with a smile, looking round upon her
neighbor.
“It was abominably bad weather, you know,” said Brown.
“But you were both so determined to come,” said the old gentleman. “When
we got the two telegrams at the same moment, we were sure that there had
been some agreement between you.”
“Not exactly an agreement,” said Mrs. Brown; whereupon Mr. Jones looked
as grim as death.
“I’m sure there is something more than we understand yet,” said the
member of Parliament.
[Illustration]
Then they all went to church, as a united family ought to do on
Christmas-day, and came home to a fine old English early dinner at three
o’clock,-a sirloin of beef a foot and a half broad, a turkey as big as
an ostrich, a plum-pudding bigger than the turkey, and two or three
dozen mince-pies. “That’s a very large bit of beef,” said Mr. Jones, who
had not lived much in England latterly.
“It won’t look so large,” said the old gentleman, “when all our friends
down-stairs have had their say to it.” “A plum pudding on Christmas-day
can’t be too big,” he said again, “if the cook will but take time enough
over it. I never knew a bit to go to waste yet.”
By this time there had been some explanation as to past events between
the two sisters. Mrs. Brown had, indeed, told Jane all about it,--how
ill her husband had been, how she had been forced to go down and look
for the mustard, and then what she had done with the mustard.
“I don’t think they are a bit alike, you know, Mary, if you mean that,”
said Jane.
“Well, no; perhaps not quite alike. I only saw his beard, you know. No
doubt it was stupid, but I did it.”
“Why didn’t you take it off again?” asked the sister.
“O Jane, if you’d only think of it! Could you?” Then, of course, all
that occurred was explained,--how they had been stopped on their
journey, how Brown had made the best apology in his power, and how Jones
had travelled with them and had never spoken a word. The gentleman had
only taken his new name a week since, but of course had had his new card
printed immediately, “I’m sure I should have thought of it, if they
hadn’t made a mistake of the first name. Charles said it was like
Barnaby Rudge.”
“Not at all like Barnaby Rudge,” said Jane: “Charles Burnaby Jones is a
very good name.”
“Very good indeed--and I’m sure that after a little bit he won’t be at
all the worse for the accident.”
Before dinner the secret had been told no further, but still there had
crept about among the Thompsons, and, indeed, down-stairs also among the
retainers, a feeling that there was a secret. The old housekeeper was
sure that Miss Mary, as she still called Mrs. Brown, had something to
tell, if she could only be induced to tell it, and that this something
had reference to Mr. Jones’s personal comfort. The head of the family,
who was a sharp old gentleman, felt this also, and the member of
Parliament, who had an idea that he especially should never be kept in
the dark, was almost angry. Mr. Jones, suffering from some kindred
feeling throughout the dinner, remained silent and unhappy. When two or
three toasts had been drunk--the Queen’s health, the old gentleman’s
health, the young couple’s health, Brown’s health, and the general
health of all the Thompsons--then tongues were loosened and a question
was asked. “I know that there has been something doing in Paris between
these young people that we haven’t heard as yet,” said the uncle. Then
Mrs. Brown laughed, and Jane, laughing too, gave Mr. Jones to
understand that she, at any rate, knew all about it.
“If there is a mystery, I hope it will be told at once,” said the member
of Parliament angrily.
“Come, Brown, what is it?” asked another male cousin.
“Well, there was an accident. I’d rather Jones should tell,” said he.
Jones’s brow became blacker than thunder, but he did not say a word.
“You mustn’t be angry with Mary,” Jane whispered into her lover’s ear.
“Come, Mary, you never were slow at talking,” said the uncle.
“I do hate this kind of thing,” said the member of Parliament.
“I will tell it all,” said Mrs. Brown, very nearly in tears, or else
pretending to be very nearly in tears. “I know I was very wrong, and I
do beg his pardon; and if he won’t say that he forgives me, I never
shall be happy again.” Then she clasped her hands, and, turning round,
looked him piteously in the face.
“Oh, yes; I do forgive you,” said Mr. Jones.
“My brother,” said she, throwing her arms round him and kissing him. He
recoiled from the embrace, but I think that he attempted to return the
kiss. “And now I will tell the whole story,” said Mrs. Brown. And she
told it, acknowledging her fault with true contrition, and swearing that
she would atone for it by life-long sisterly devotion.
“And you mustard-plastered the wrong man!” said the old gentleman,
almost rolling off his chair with delight.
“I did,” said Mrs. Brown, sobbing; “and I think that no woman ever
suffered as I suffered.”
“And Jones wouldn’t let you leave the hotel?”
“It was the handkerchief stopped us,” said Brown.
“If it had turned out to be anybody else,” said the member of
Parliament, “the results might have been most serious--not to say
discreditable.”
“That’s nonsense, Robert,” said Mrs. Brown, who was disposed to resent
the use of so severe a word, even from the legislator cousin.
“In a strange gentleman’s bedroom!” he continued. “It only shows that
what I have always said is quite true. You should never go to bed in a
strange house without locking your door.”
Nevertheless it was a very jovial meeting, and before the evening was
over Mr. Jones was happy, and had been brought to acknowledge that the
mustard plaster would probably not do him any permanent injury.
End of Project Gutenberg's Christmas at Thompson Hall, by Anthony Trollope