A Bonnet Gained And A Lover Lost
"My letters have come at last," said Brandon, next morning, as he
joined his friends at breakfast. "My overseer, I suppose, wanted to
show his economy, and posted them by the Southampton mail, which does
not suit me at all. I would rather do without my dinner on mail-day
than have my letters delayed for nearly a week. And now there is bad
news for me, I must leave by the first ship. Had I got my letters when
you received yours, I should have gone by the mail steamer and saved a
month, but I cannot possibly manage to get off so soon."
"Oh! Mr. Brandon," said Mrs. Phillips, calmly, "there surely is no such
need for hurry."
"Everything is going to the dogs at my station. I will probably have to
buy land at a high price; and there appears to have been great
mismanagement, from the accounts I hear. Another six months like the
last and I will be a ruined man. It is very hard that one cannot take a
short holiday without suffering so grievously for it. What were your
accounts, Phillips; I think you said they were rather unsatisfactory?"
"Not very good, certainly; but not so bad as that comes to. You will
look to Wiriwilta a little when you return, and send me your opinion. I
had better entrust you with full powers to act for me, for I should
prefer you as my attorney to Grant."
"I hope he will not be offended at the transfer," said Brandon.
"Oh! I think not; he took it very reluctantly, for he said his own
affairs were enough for him."
"And perhaps a little more than enough," said Brandon, with a smile.
"In that case I will be very glad to do all in my power for you."
"I have no wish to return to Australia," said Mr. Phillips, "if I can
possibly afford to live here. With a family like mine, England offers
so many advantages. In fact, there is only one place in the world worth
living in, and that is London."
"Very true, if you have enough to live on," said Brandon, shrugging his
shoulders. "I must go now to work as hard as ever to get things set to
rights again, and perhaps in another dozen of years, when I am feeble,
old, and grey, I may return and spend the poor remnant of my days in
this delightful centre of civilization. But with me, fortunately, there
are only the two alternatives, either London or the bush of
Australia--there is no middle course of life desirable. If I cannot
attain the one, I must make the best of the other."
Harriett Phillips listened to all this, and believed that matters were
much worse with Brandon than they really were. She had no fancy for a
twelve years' banishment from England, nor for a rough life in the
bush. Mr. Brandon had been represented to her as a thriving settler who
had made money. She saw the very comfortable style in which her brother
lived, and she had no objection to such an establishment for herself;
but she was not so particularly fond of Mr. Brandon as to accept for
his sake a life so very different and so very much inferior. She felt
that she had been deceived, and she did not like being deceived, or
mistaken, and she still less liked to make mistakes; and instead of
blaming herself, she was angry with everyone else--her brother, her
sister-in-law, Brandon himself--for leading her to believe that his
circumstances were so much better than they were. Of course, he would
ask her--he could not help doing so; but as to accepting him--that was
quite a different question.
She had put on her old bonnet with a grudge at Elsie; and when Mrs.
Phillips appeared in the drawing-room ready for the party to the
exhibition in all the splendour of her new one, which really looked
lovely, and she lovely in it, and Harriett caught the reflection of
both figures in the large mirror, she felt still more dissatisfied with
everybody than she had done before. The gentlemen were ready, and they
were just about to start, when a light quick step came to the door, and
a little tap was heard.
Harriett opened it, and was delighted to see Elsie holding in her hand
the second bonnet completed--equally beautiful, equally tasteful, and
apparently quite as expensive.
"Oh, Alice, how good of you! What a love of a bonnet! Come in and see
Mr. Hogarth. Look, Mrs. Phillips--look at Alice's clever handiwork."
And Alice was introduced a little unwillingly into the drawing room to
be complimented on her taste and her despatch, and to shake hands with
the two gentlemen. Miss Phillips was too much engrossed with her
bonnet, and with the improvement it would make in her appearance, to
observe the earnest, anxious looks of her two fancied admirers, as they
greeted her sister's lady'smaid; or that they looked with interest and
concern on her tired face, which, though now a little flushed with
excitement, bore to those who knew the circumstances traces of having
been up very late and very early over her work.
"I knew she could do it," Harriett whispered to Mr. Brandon, when Alice
left the room; "she is so excessively quick. I never would have said so
much about it yesterday, if I had not known she could easily do it; and
does not mine look as well as Mrs. Phillips's? I said it would." And so
she accepted Mr. Hogarth's arm, and went to see the pictures with a
better judge than Brandon, in all the triumph of her new bonnet--the
lightest, the most becoming she had ever had in her life: but her
influence with Walter Brandon was lost for ever. He wished he had had
Jane Melville, with her good common sense, or Elsie, with her sweet
voice and winning ways, hanging on his arm instead of Mrs. Phillips,
who was very uninteresting to him, though her great beauty and
excellent style of dress made her an object of interest to other
people, and who always enjoyed being well stared at in public places.
But Jane was engaged with her pupils at this time, and Elsie was always
kept very busy, so that neither of them could accompany the party, and
Francis Hogarth felt disappointed, for he had anticipated the society
of one or both of them.
How curiously the egotist, who fancies every one is engrossed with him
or with her, would be disappointed if he or she could see the real
thoughts of the people about them.. How Harriett Phillips would have
started if she could have read the hearts of Hogarth and Brandon, and
seen what a very infinitesimal share she had in either.
Francis was only impelled to pay attention to Miss Phillips by his
natural sense of politeness, and by the wish to make the situation of
his cousins in the family pleasant, as far as it lay in his power to do
so; while Brandon, who had at last struck the key-note of Harriett's
character, was astonished to find new proofs of her selfishness and
egotism peeping out in the most trifling circumstances. He observed how
different her manner was towards him, now that a man of property in the
old country had appeared in the circle of her acquaintances, and he
could not fail to see that an additional coldness had come over her
when his circumstances were supposed to be less flourishing, and this
made him rather disposed to make the most and the worst of his bad news.
In Derbyshire, where she had her own established place in the
household, and where her father and her sister Georgiana gave way to
her so much, she had appeared more amiable than she did now. The armed
neutrality which she maintained with her sister-in-law had amused
Brandon at first, but now it appeared to him to be unladylike and
ungraceful to accept of hospitality in her brother's house without any
gratitude or any forbearance. He began to question the reality of her
very great superiority over Mrs. Phillips; with all her advantages of
education and society she ought to have shown more gentleness and
affection both to her brother's wife and his children. He analysed, as
he had never done before, her expressions, and weighed her opinions,
and found they generally had more sound than sense; and her habitual
assumption that she knew everything much better than other people,
became tiresome when he did not believe in her superiority.
He began, too, to contrast the charm of a face, when the colour went
and came with every emotion, with that of one so unimpressible as
Harriett Phillips's--whose self-possession was nearly as different from
that of Jane Melville as it was from the timidity and diffidence of
Elsie. Jane's calmness was the result of a strong will mastering the
strong emotions which she really felt, and not in the absence of any
powerful feeling or emotion whatever. Brandon had learned to like Jane
better as he knew more of her, and rather enjoyed being preached to by
one who could practise as well as preach. He felt that if she was
superior to him she did not look down on him; and she certainly had the
power of making him speak well, and of bringing out the very large
amount of real useful practical knowledge that he had acquired in his
Australian life. Her eagerness to hear everything about Australia and
Australians certainly was in pleasing contrast to Miss Phillips's
distaste for all things and people colonial; but above all, Miss
Phillips's want of consideration for Alice Melville had weaned Mr.
Brandon's heart from her. It was not merely unladylike; it was
unwomanly. He could not love a wife who had so little sympathy and so
little generosity.