A SUPERIOR PERSON.
Mildred and her father’s ward got on remarkably well—perhaps a little
too well to please Mrs. Fausset, who had been jealous of the new-comer,
and resentful of her intrusion from the outset. Mildred did not show
herself capricious in her treatment of her playfellow. The child had
never had a young companion before, and to her the advent of Fay
meant the beginning of a brighter life. Until Fay came there had been
no one but mother; and mother spent the greater part of her life in
visiting and receiving visits. Only the briefest intervals between a
ceaseless round of gaieties could be afforded to Mildred. Her mother
doated on her, or thought she did; but she had allowed herself to be
caught in the cogs of the great society wheel, and she was obliged to
go round with the wheel. So far as brightly-furnished rooms and an
expensive morning governess, ever so much too clever for the pupil’s
requirements, and costly toys and pretty frocks and carriage-drives,
could go, Mildred was a child in an earthly paradise; but there are
some children who yearn for something more than luxurious surroundings
and fine clothes, and Mildred Fausset was one of those. She wanted a
great deal of love—she wanted love always; not in brief snatches, as
her mother gave it—hurried caresses given in the midst of dressing for
a ball, hasty kisses before stepping into her carriage to be whisked
off to a garden-party, or in all the pomp and splendour of ostrich
feathers, diamonds, and court-train before the solemn function of
a Drawing-room. Such passing glimpses of love were not enough for
Mildred. She wanted warm affections interwoven with the fabric of her
life; she wanted loving companionship from morning till night; and this
she had from Fay. From the first moment of their clasping hands the
two girls had loved each other. Each sorely in need of love, they had
come together naturally, and with all the force of free undisciplined
nature, meeting and mingling like two rivers.
John Fausset saw their affection, and was delighted. That loving union
between the girl and the child seemed to solve all difficulties. Fay
was no longer a stranger. She was a part of the family, merged in the
golden circle of domestic love. Mrs. Fausset looked on with jaundiced
eye.
“If one could only believe it were genuine!” she sighed.
“Genuine! which of them do you suppose is pretending? Not Mildred,
surely?”
“Mildred! No, indeed. _She_ is truth itself.”
“Why do you suspect Fay of falsehood?”
“My dear John, I fear—I only say I fear—that your _protégée_ is sly.
She has a quiet self-contained air that I don’t like in one so young.”
“I don’t wonder she is self-contained. You do so little to draw her
out.”
“Her attachment to Mildred has an exaggerated air—as if she wanted to
curry favour with us by pretending to be fond of our child,” said Mrs.
Fausset, ignoring her husband’s remark.
“Why should she curry favour? She is not here as a dependent—though she
is made to wear the look of one sometimes more than I like. I have
told you that her future is provided for; and as for pretending to be
fond of Mildred, she is the last girl to pretend affection. She would
have been better liked at school if she had been capable of pretending.
There is a wild, undisciplined nature under that self-contained air you
talk about.”
“There is a very bad temper, if that is what you mean. Bell has
complained to me more than once on that subject.”
“I hope you have not set Bell in authority over her,” exclaimed Mr.
Fausset hastily.
“There must be some one to maintain order when Miss Colville is away.”
“That some one should be you or I, not Bell.”
“Bell is a conscientious person, and she would make no improper use of
authority.”
“She is a very disagreeable person. That is all I know about her,”
retorted Mr. Fausset, as he left the room.
He was dissatisfied with Fay’s position in the house, yet hardly knew
how to complain or what alteration to suggest. There were no positive
wrongs to resent. Fay shared Mildred’s studies and amusements; they
had their meals together, and took their airings together.
When Mildred went down to the morning-room or the drawing-room Fay
generally went with her—generally, not always. There were times when
Bell looked in at the schoolroom-door and beckoned Mildred. “Mamma
wants you alone,” she would whisper on the threshold; and Mildred ran
off to be petted and paraded before some privileged visitor.
There were differences which Fay felt keenly, and inwardly resented.
She was allowed to sit aloof when the drawing-room was full of fine
ladies, upon Mrs. Fausset’s afternoon; while Mildred was brought into
notice and talked about, her little graces exhibited and expatiated
upon, or her childish tastes conciliated. Fay would sit looking at one
of the art-books piled upon a side-table, or turning over photographs
and prints in a portfolio. She never talked unless spoken to, or did
anything to put herself forward.
Sometimes an officious visitor would notice her.
“What a clever-looking girl! Who is she?” asked a prosperous dowager,
whose own daughters were all planted out in life, happy wives and
mothers, and who could afford to interest herself in stray members of
the human race.
“She is a ward of my husband’s, Miss Fausset.”
“Indeed! A cousin, I suppose?”
“Hardly so near as that. A distant connection.”
Mrs. Fausset’s tone expressed a wish not to be bored by praise of the
clever-looking girl. People soon perceived that Miss Fausset was to
be taken no more notice of than a piece of furniture. She was there
for some reason known to Mr. and Mrs. Fausset, but she was not there
because she was wanted—except by Mildred. Everybody could see that
Mildred wanted her. Mildred would run to her as she sat apart, and
clamber on her knee, and hang upon her, and whisper and giggle with
her, and warm the statue into life. Mildred would carry her tea and
cakes, and make a loving fuss about her in spite of all the world.
* * * * *
Bell was a power in the house in Upper Parchment Street. She was that
kind of old servant who is as bad as a mother-in-law, or even worse;
for your mother-in-law is a lady by breeding and education, and is in
somewise governed by reason, while your trustworthy old servant is apt
to be a creature of impulse, influenced only by feeling. Bell was a
woman of strong feelings, devotedly attached to Mrs. Fausset.
Twenty-seven years ago, when Maud Donfrey was an infant, Martha Bell
was the young wife of the head-gardener at Castle-Connell. The gardener
and his wife lived at one of the lodges near the bank of the Shannon,
and were altogether superior people for their class. Martha had been a
lace-maker at Limerick, and was fairly educated. Patrick Bell was less
refined, and had no ideas beyond his garden; but he was honest, sober,
and thoroughly respectable. He seldom read the newspapers, and had
never heard of Home Rule or the three F.s.
Their first child died within three weeks of its birth, and a wet-nurse
being wanted at the great house for Lady Castle-Connell’s seventh
baby, Mrs. Bell was chosen as altogether the best person for that
confidential office. She went to live at the great white house in the
beautiful gardens near the river. It was only a temporary separation,
she told Patrick; and Patrick took courage at the thought that his
wife would return to him as soon as Lady Castle-Connell’s daughter was
weaned, while in the meantime he was to enjoy the privilege of seeing
her every Sunday afternoon; but somehow it happened that Martha Bell
never went back to the commonly-furnished little rooms in the lodge, or
to the coarse-handed husband.
Martha Bell was a woman of strong feelings. She grieved passionately
for her dead baby, and she took the stranger’s child reluctantly to
her aching breast. But babies have a way of getting themselves loved,
and one baby will creep into the place of another unawares. Before
Mrs. Bell had been at the great house three months she idolised
her nursling. By the time she had been there a year she felt that
life would be unbearable without her foster-child. Fortunately for
her, she seemed as necessary to the child as the child was to her.
Maud was delicate, fragile, lovely, and evanescent of aspect. Lady
Castle-Connell had lost two out of her brood, partly, she feared, from
carelessness in the nursery. Bell was devoted to her charge, and Bell
was entreated to remain for a year or two at least.
Bell consented to remain for a year; she became accustomed to the
comforts and refinements of a nobleman’s house; she hated the lodge,
and she cared very little for her husband. It was a relief to her
when Patrick Bell sickened of his desolate home, and took it into his
head to emigrate to Canada, where he had brothers and sisters settled
already. He and his wife parted in the friendliest spirit, with some
ideas of reunion years hence, when the Honourable Maud should have
outgrown the need of a nurse; but the husband died in Canada before the
wife had made up her mind to join him there. Mrs. Bell lived at the
great white house until Maud Donfrey left Castle-Connell as the bride
of John Fausset. She went before her mistress to the house in Upper
Parchment Street, and was there when the husband and wife arrived after
their Continental honeymoon. From that hour she remained in possession
at The Hook, Surrey, or at Upper Parchment Street, or at any temporary
abode by sea or lake. Bell was always a power in Mrs. Fausset’s life,
ruling over the other servants, dictating and fault-finding in a quiet,
respectful way, discovering the weak side of everybody’s character,
and getting to the bottom of everybody’s history. The servants hated
her, and bowed down before her. Mrs. Fausset was fond of her as a part
of her own childhood, remembering that great love which had watched
through all her infantine illnesses and delighted in all her childish
joys. Yet, even despite these fond associations, there were times
when Maud Fausset thought that it would be a good thing if dear old
Bell would accept a liberal pension and go and live in some rose and
honeysuckle cottage among the summery meadows by the Thames. Mrs.
Fausset had only seen that riverside region in summer, and she had
hardly realised the stern fact of winter in that district. She never
thought of rheumatism in connection with one of those low white-walled
cottages, half-hidden under overhanging thatched gables, and curtained
with woodbine and passionflower, rose and myrtle. Dear old Bell was
forty-eight, straight as a ramrod, very thin, with sharp features, and
eager gray eyes under bushy iron-gray brows. She had thick iron-gray
hair, and she never wore a cap; that was one of her privileges, and a
mark of demarcation between her and the other servants—that and her
afternoon gown of black silk or satin.
She had no specific duties in the house, but had something to say about
everything. Mrs. Fausset’s French maid and Mildred’s German maid were
at one in their detestation of Bell; but both were eminently civil to
that authority.
From the hour of Fay’s advent in Upper Parchment Street, Bell had set
her face against her. In the first place, she had not been taken into
Mr. and Mrs. Fausset’s confidence about the girl. She had not been
consulted or appealed to in any way; and, in the second place, she
had been told that her bedroom would be wanted for the new-comer, and
that she must henceforward share a room with one of the housemaids, an
indignity which this superior person keenly felt.
Nor did Fay do anything to conciliate this domestic power. Fay
disliked Bell as heartily as Bell disliked Fay. She refused all offers
of service from the confidential servant at the outset, and when
Bell wanted to help in unpacking her boxes—perhaps with some idea of
peering into those details of a girl’s possessions which in themselves
constitute a history—Fay declined her help curtly, and shut the door in
her face.
Bell had sounded her mistress, but had obtained the scantiest
information from that source. A distant connection of Mr. Fausset’s—his
ward, an heiress. Not one detail beyond this could Bell extract from
her mistress, who had never kept a secret from her. Evidently Mrs.
Fausset knew no more.
“I must say, ma’am, that for an heiress the child has been sadly
neglected,” said Bell. “Her under-linen was all at sixes and sevens
till _I_ took it in hand; and she came to this house with her left boot
worn down at heel. Her drawers are stuffed with clothes, but many of
them are out of repair; and she is such a wilful young lady that she
will hardly let _me_ touch her things.”
Bell had a habit of emphasising personal pronouns that referred to
herself.
“You must do whatever you think proper about her clothes, whether she
likes it or not,” answered Mrs. Fausset, standing before her glass,
and giving final touches to the feathery golden hair which her maid
had arranged a few minutes before. “If she wants new things, you can
buy them for her from any of my tradespeople. Mr. Fausset says she is
to be looked after in every way. You had better not go to Bond Street
for her under-linen. Oxford Street will do; and you need not go to
Stephanie for her hats. She is such a very plain girl that it would be
absurd—cruel even—to dress her like Mildred.”
“Yes, indeed, it would, ma’am,” assented Bell; and then she pursued
musingly: “If it was a good school she was at, all I can say is that
the wardrobe-woman was a very queer person to send any pupil away with
her linen in such a neglected state. And as for her education, Miss
Colville says she is shockingly backward. Miss Mildred knows more
geography and more grammar than that great overgrown girl of fourteen.”
Mrs. Fausset sighed.
“Yes, Bell, she has evidently been neglected; but her education matters
very little. It is her disposition I am anxious about.”
“Ah, ma’am, and so am _I_,” sighed Bell.
When Bell had withdrawn, Maud Fausset sat in front of her
dressing-table in a reverie. She forgot to put on her bonnet or to ring
for her maid, though she had been told the carriage was waiting, and
although she was due at a musical recital in ten minutes. She sat there
lost in thought, while the horses jingled their bits impatiently in the
street below.
“Yes, there is a mystery,” she said to herself; “everybody sees it,
even Bell.”