GIOVANNA AT MAYLINGS
While the events last recorded were working themselves out at St.
Oswyth’s, affairs at Withington Chase had not been at a standstill.
Luigi Rispani, now known to the world under his assumed name of Lewis
Clare, had taken up his quarters at the Chase in his position as Sir
Gilbert’s grandson, while Giovanna, otherwise Mrs. Care, his supposed
mother, was duly installed at Maylings, the house which the Baronet had
had specially fitted up for her occupancy.
Plain to the verge of ugliness as far as its architectural pretensions
were concerned, but roomy and homelike indoors, Maylings, which dated
from the era of the Second George, was far too large a domicile for the
limited requirements of Mrs. Clare; so much so, indeed, that Sir
Gilbert contented himself with having about half its number of rooms
furnished and made habitable. Its situation was somewhat lonely, there
being no other house within a quarter of a mile of it. It stood back
from the high road, fronting a huge clump of evergreens and a small
carriage sweep, but from the drawing-room windows in the rear of the
house one looked into a charming old-fashioned flower-garden. To
Giovanna it all seemed very lonely and very dull.
One other thing, however, Sir Gilbert did which filled her with
unfeigned pleasure, and that was to make her a present of a horse and
brougham. And within a few days there arrived a grand piano, of which
Giovanna at once determined to avail herself to the utmost. She had
been gifted by nature with a full rich contralto voice, together with a
large measure of that musical talent which seems inherent in the
children of the Sunny South; but her life hitherto had afforded her no
opportunity of cultivating either one or the other. Now, however, her
opportunity had come, and the very first time Captain Verinder came to
see her, she requested him to find her a competent teacher, male or
female, she did not care which. Thus it presently came to pass that
Signor Sampi, a grey-haired but clever musician, journeyed twice a week
to Maylings, and in the cultivation of her long-neglected gifts
Giovanna found a new pleasure in life.
Not for many a long year had such a sensation been known among the good
folk of Mapleford and its neighbourhood as that with which Sir Gilbert
Clare had provided them, and they did not fail to appreciate it to the
full.
Giovanna had not been settled at Maylings more than a couple of days,
before one carriage after another of the local gentry began to include
it in their round of afternoon calls, and she found herself the
recipient of quite a shower of visiting cards. Then presently Giovanna
found herself under the necessity of returning at least a portion of
the calls. She was a firm believer in first impressions, and for some
of her callers she had conceived an immediate dislike which caused her
silently to determine to see as little of them as possible in time to
come. That, of course, is not the code of English society, which
teaches us to smile our sweetest on those whom we dislike the most. But
Giovanna had always been in the habit of giving way to her impulses,
and she still had much to learn.
Sir Gilbert had felt from the first that it would not do for his
daughter-in-law to live entirely alone. She must have some one of
suitable age and character to fill the post of companion to her, whose
services should be remunerated out of his own pocket. Accordingly he
made it his business to call upon Mrs. Merton, the vicar’s wife, and
enlist her services in his behalf. It did not take that lady long to
find precisely the kind of person Sir Gilbert wanted, in a certain Mrs.
Tew, the widow of a minor canon, who, owing to some unfortunate
speculations on her late husband’s part, had found herself at his death
but just removed beyond the verge of penury. Mrs. Tew was a lively,
well-preserved little lady of fifty-five, who had seen something of the
world in her youth, was tolerably well read, and contrived to keep
herself fairly _au courant_ with the chief topics of the day. She had
not been long in her new position before she discovered that one of her
principal duties would be to “make talk,” both when people called upon
Mrs. Clare, and when the latter returned their visits. No task could
have been found more congenial to the canon’s widow. She had always
cherished the opinion that she was gifted with considerable
conversational powers, although it was one which her late husband, who
was of a morose, brooding disposition, had not encouraged her to reduce
to practice, either in public or private. Now, however, that an
opportunity was afforded her of compensating herself for the repression
of years, she did not fail to avail herself of it. And as the little
lady had a really pleasant manner, and never seemed at a loss for
either ideas or words, and as no slightest tincture of malice ever
tipped her tongue, everyone with whom she was brought into contact had
a good word to say about her.
At no time had Giovanna been a loquacious woman, and it was not likely
that she would willingly allow the people among whom she now mixed to
discover how terribly ignorant she was about many of the subjects on
which they talked so glibly. She had naturally good manners, and had
been well trained by her English mother as long as that mother had
lived, besides which she had excellent taste in dress, all of which
told in her favour. But, when it became a question of something beyond
manners and dress, Giovanna knew that, for her own credit’s sake, her
part in the social comedy must to all intents and purposes be a silent
one. Her place was to listen to everybody with smiling courtesy, and to
look as if she felt an intelligent interest in all that was talked
about, but to say as little as possible in return; and, above all,
unless driven into a corner, never to originate any proposition of her
own.
It was precisely here that she found Mrs. Tew so invaluable. That lady
proved herself a person of infinite tact and resource. Whenever there
seemed a risk of Mrs. Clare being drawn into a conversation about
matters concerning which, as the canon’s widow surmised, she was
probably more or less ignorant, she, Mrs. Tew, came boldly to her
rescue, and by means of some apposite remark or pertinent question,
addressed directly to some other person in the company, contrived, to
attract the current of talk to herself, or else to deflect it into some
less dangerous channel.
Giovanna was sufficiently clear-sighted to see through Mrs. Tew’s
object, and was proportionately grateful; not being like some of her
sex, who would have been more than annoyed at finding that their paid
dependent had taken upon herself to gauge their ignorance, and had had
the impertinence to assume that their educational acquirements were not
on a par with those of the people with whom, for anything the said
dependent was supposed to know to the contrary, they had been in the
habit of mixing from youth upward. But whatever her faults in other
directions might be, Giovanna had no false pride about her, and was not
afflicted with any deficiency of common-sense.
Then again, the canon’s widow had the tact never to bore Giovanna with
too much, either of her talk or her company, when they two were at home
together. The widow had her own cosy sitting-room, and there, when her
presence was not required elsewhere, what between needlework and
novel-reading, she never found the time hang heavy on her hands. The
late canon had objected to novels on principle as being a species of
mental pabulum beneath the consideration of reasonable beings, as well
as entailing results which in many cases were positively harmful, and
as long as he lived his wife had meekly acquiesced in his dictum. Now,
however, that she was her own mistress, she proceeded to indemnify her
starved imagination for its long abstinence. Fortunately there was a
very tolerable library in Mapleford, which for her proved an
inexhaustible mine of intellectual treasures. It mattered not that
numbers of the works on its shelves dated back a quarter of a century
or more, to her they were as new, fresh, and wonderful—perhaps more
so—as if they had borne yesterday’s imprimatur. And how she revelled in
the love stories, dear little lady that she was! Hers had been a
repressed and unsatisfied existence, and now when she sat, often till
long after the rest of the household was abed, deep in some sweet tale
of love and constancy, of partings and comings together again, she
would feel for a little while as if she were again a girl in her teens
with all life’s possibilities still before her. Then, when she had read
the last line of the last chapter, she would shut the book with a sigh
and remove her spectacles, and murmur under her breath, “What would
dear Stephen say if he knew how I had been occupying my time? I am
afraid he would think me greatly to blame.” For all that, undeterred by
any qualms of conscience, she would begin a fresh novel next day with
an unappeased appetite.
While Sir Gilbert had been at the pains to provide his daughter-in-law
with a suitable companion, he doubtless expected, if the matter ever
crossed his mind, that she would provide her own maid. But Giovanna,
who all her life had been used to wait on herself, would have been
quite satisfied to go on doing the same for ever had not Captain
Verinder impressed upon her that, for a person in her position, a maid
was an absolute necessity. Further than that, he undertook to supply
her with the necessity in question, which he did in the person of
Lucille Fretin, the daughter of one of his many more or less
impecunious foreign acquaintances. It was quite understood between
Lucille and the Captain that she should keep both her eyes and ears
open, so as to be in a position to furnish him with a minute account of
everything that went on under the roof at Maylings, together with any
scraps of gossip, or information which might reach her anent the Chase
and its inmates.
Captain Verinder, in view of the unaccountable dislike which Sir
Gilbert Clare had conceived for him, kept strictly within the limits of
the line of conduct which he had laid down for himself. The Chase
itself he never went near, but on one evening in each week, when he
knew that Giovanna was not dining with the Baronet, he ran down by the
train which reached Mapleford at seven o’clock, driving from the
station to Maylings in a fly, and walking back in time to catch the
last up train.
When Giovanna, before her arrival at Maylings, put into her uncle’s
hands the cheque given her by Sir Gilbert, with a request that he would
get it cashed for her, he made up his mind that ten pounds out of the
hundred should find their way into his own pocket, as representing his
modest commission on the very clever stroke of business which he had
just succeeded in bringing to so fortunate a termination. He would give
her further to understand that he should look forward to being allowed
a similar sum out of each quarterly cheque of which his niece would
henceforward be the recipient. But when, without a word or a hint on
his part, Giovanna put into his hands, not ten, but twenty pounds of
the hundred, he determined to wait and see what the next quarter would
do for him; for it seemed not unlikely that he might benefit more by
trusting to her generosity than by putting forward anything in the
shape of a definite claim on his own account.
Certainly, forty, or even eighty pounds a year was not a very
magnificent sum: still, it would make an acceptable addition to his
limited income; besides which, he looked forward to squeezing a further
allowance out of Luigi. Of course, when in the not distant future, as
he trusted, Luigi should have become Sir Lewis Clare, with a rent-roll
of something like eight thousand a year (for there was little doubt,
unless he should make a consummate ass of himself meanwhile, that his
grandfather would constitute him his heir), then indeed matters would
assume a very different aspect so far as he, Augustus Verinder, was
concerned. Meanwhile it was the day of small things and he must content
himself as best he could to play a waiting game.