MARRIED OR SINGLE?
BY
B. M. CROKER
AUTHOR OF
“DIANA BARRINGTON,” “A FAMILY LIKENESS,” ETC.
[Illustration]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PUPIL-TEACHER 1
II. NO NEWS 23
III. THE BREAKING-UP DANCE 41
IV. THE LAST TRAIN 67
V. EXPELLED 89
VI. “POVERTY COMES IN AT THE DOOR” 102
VII. A TELEGRAM FOR MISS WEST 117
VIII. NOT MARRIED AFTER ALL 135
IX. BARGAINING 157
X. MRS. KANE BECOMES AFFECTIONATE 167
XI. CHANGE OF AIR AND SCENE 190
XII. “SHE WILL DO!” 205
XIII. MR. WEST’S WISHES 224
MARRIED OR SINGLE?
CHAPTER I.
THE PUPIL-TEACHER.
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| MRS. AND THE MISSES HARPER. |
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| SELECT ESTABLISHMENT |
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| FOR |
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| YOUNG LADIES. |
+-----------------------------+
The above, engraved in bold characters on a highly-polished brass
plate, may be read on the gate of an imposing mansion situated in the
far-spreading suburbs of Riverside, one of the principal mercantile
towns in England. “Harperton” is a solid and secluded residence,
standing in its own grounds (of two acres, one perch). It is planned
to resemble a country house of some pretensions, but the symmetry of
its proportions is spoiled by a long, low building jutting out at the
side, that may be taken for anything from a stable to a billiard-room,
but is, in fact, the scene of Mrs. Harper’s scholastic labours, erected
at her own cost--in other words, the schoolroom. This apartment is
illuminated by six windows, the lower halves of which are, of course,
of muffled glass. The floor is carpeted here and there, as it were,
in squares or plots, and in the midst of each square there is a desk
and a comfortable cushioned chair. These indicate the localities of
the various classes. The schoolroom walls are covered with maps,
book-cases, lists of rules, and practising hours, and lined with
narrow desks and benches. A worn piano, a prim, white-faced clock,
and a high wire fender comprise most of the furniture--ornamental and
otherwise; unless we include the two young ladies who are sitting at
one of the far desks, making the most of their time whilst the boarders
are out for their usual walk. One of these damsels has mendaciously
pleaded ear-ache in order to escape the hateful daily promenade. The
other--that nondescript character, a pupil-teacher--is fulfilling
a part of her duties, and diligently darning the “little ones’”
stockings, whilst her companion, with both elbows on the desk, and both
hands in her ruffled hair, watches her and talks.
“This must be perfectly awful for you, Maddie dear,” she was saying.
“Don’t you loathe it all, and wish you could run away? I should, if I
were in your shoes.”
“Run away! What nonsense, Flo! Where could I run to, even supposing
such an insane idea had entered my head, which it never has done? You
forget that I have no friends in England; and, after all, I am not such
an object of pity as you seem to imagine,” darning steadily all the
time.
“If you are not, I should like to know who is!” demanded her
schoolfellow, emphatically. “You are one day at the top of the tree,
the head of the first class, the best pupil Herr Kroot ever had,
adored by the Harpies”--here Miss Blewitt alluded to her respected
instructress and daughters--“always exquisitely dressed, with heaps
of pocket-money, sleeping in the best room, allowed a fire in winter,
every extra--claret and coffee--and I don’t know _what_! After years
and years of this style of thing, and when you are seventeen, and
almost finished, your father suddenly stops supplies, you are not paid
for for three whole terms, and the hateful Harpies make you into a
regular drudge--a pupil-teacher, a nursery governess, a servant! You
sleep in the attic with those odious little Smiths--wash, dress, and
teach them; you go messages to the shops, and even into Riverside--you,
who were never allowed to stir one yard alone; you mend and darn and
teach.”
She paused, not from lack of words, but from want of breath.
“And a very good thing that I _can_ do something to pay for my living,”
remarked the other, with composure. “If I could not sew and mend and
teach, what would become of me, I should be glad to know? I could
scarcely expect the Harpers to go on keeping me at their own expense;
and now I take the fifth class, the little ones’ music, and I save a
servant for those Indian children, I work for my bread--and I am worth
it.”
“I should rather think you were,” rejoined her listener, sarcastically.
“You are worth a hundred a year to them as teacher, besides being
dressmaker and nursery-maid. It makes me wild--I feel quite crazy--when
I see all that they get out of you, early and late, and the shameful
way they treat you! Once upon a time you were ‘darling Madeline’--their
‘dear, bright-faced girl,’ their ‘model pupil,’ now you are ‘Madeline
West,’ or ‘Miss West,’ and you are ‘slow,’ ‘awkward,’ ‘lazy,’ and
‘impertinent.’ Oh dear me! dear me! sometimes I feel as if I should
like to fly at Miss Selina and bite a piece out of her, I am so savage.”
“I hope to goodness you will restrain your feelings,” said Madeline,
with a smile, as she threaded a long needleful of black wool, and
commenced on a gaping heel. “The Harpers are only human, after
all! It was very hard on them, my father having failed; and all my
music-lessons, and painting, and singing, and German, for two terms,
had to be paid for out of their own pockets. Signor Squaletti charges
half a guinea an hour. Then there were my clothes. I feel hot all over
when I remember the quantity of money I laid out, believing that it
would be all settled, as usual, by father’s cheque at Christmas. There
was that white dress for the breaking-up party----”
“In which you made such an impression on the Wolfertons’ friend, young
Mr. Wynne,” interrupted Florence, with a meaning nudge. “Oh yes, I
remember the white dress!”
“Don’t, Flo! Your elbow is like a knife,” expostulated her friend, with
some discernible increase of colour. “As to Mr. Wynne, what you say is
nonsense, and you know Mrs. Harper forbids us to speak of--of--such
things.”
“I know that Mrs. Harper was most uneasy in her mind when she saw him
dancing four times with you running--yes, dance after dance--and she
came up and introduced him to Julia Flowers’ two red-haired sisters,
and said that gentlemen were so scarce, and her girls were not _out_,
and all that sort of rubbish; and she sent him down to supper with old
Mrs. Browne, and she sent you to bed because you looked pale! Oh yes,
I saw it all--all. I saw that Mr. Wynne never danced again, but stood
with his back to the wall for the rest of the evening, looking as cross
as two sticks. Very likely he would never have given you a thought,
if you had not been so plainly and openly banished: absence makes the
heart grow fonder! Mrs. Harper put the idea into his head by making
such a stupid fuss--and she has only herself to thank. He sent you
those flowers, he came to our church, and Miss Selina took it all to
herself--the ridiculous old cat! As if he would look at her! She closed
on the flowers: much good may they do her!”
“Now, Flo, how do you know that they were not for her?” asked her
companion with a smile. “But, don’t let us talk about them. It is an
old story.”
“But I _will_ talk about them,” persisted Flo, angrily. “I’ll talk
about your nice green tailor-made, and your winter coat trimmed with
fur, and your opera cloak, and your white dress--_the_ white dress,
which they took away from you!”
“Well, they had paid for them, you see,” rejoined Madeline quietly. “I
am glad they did take them--I owe them the less.”
“Thank goodness your gloves and boots were too small,” continued Flo,
in a tone of fervent congratulation, “otherwise they would have gone
also. They are rather different from the Harpers’ chaussure, which is
of the canal-boat type and size. Now I know what pedestrians mean when
they talk of ‘covering’ miles of ground.”
“Well, my dear excited Flo, they did not make their own feet,” said the
other coolly.
“How philosophical you are becoming! Quite an old head on young
shoulders! Who made their tempers, I should be glad to know?--or
their tongues? Thank goodness, this is my last half! Good-bye to
early rising, lectures, scoldings, resurrection pies, milk and water,
and rice puddings. Good-bye to Harperton--penitentiary and prison.
Good-bye to Harpies, and hurrah for home!”--throwing, as she spoke, a
dictionary up to the ceiling; failing to catch which, it fell open,
face downwards, with a bang.
“That is May’s dictionary, Flo,” remonstrated the other. “You will not
improve its poor back.”
“If you stay here long, Madeline, you will certainly become just
as preaching and particular as one of the Harpies themselves. You
are tremendously sobered as it is. Who would think, to look at you
darning away so industriously, that this time last year you were the
queen and moving spirit of the school; always getting up charades,
dances, and concerts, and carrying your point on every question, and
figuratively snapping your fingers at the Harpies if they interfered
with your schemes--which, to do them justice, was very seldom! Ah! my
poor Maddie, since then what a change has come o’er the spirit of your
dream! It is terrible. If you had always been a pupil-teacher it would
be another matter, or if you had gone to another school, where no one
knew that you had fallen from your high estate; but here, the scene
of your triumphs, to make the descent to the very foot of the ladder,
is--is frightful. I often wonder how you can bear it so well.”
“I often wonder too,” said Madeline shortly, winking her tears back
with a great effort. “You are not going the best way to work to help me
to endure my lot, Flo, raking up all these things. Bad or good, I must
submit. I have no alternative--nowhere to go, until my father comes
home. The best thing I can do is to be patient, and try and repay the
Harpers for some of the money they have expended on me.”
“Repay them!” echoed Miss Blewitt, scornfully. “They made a very good
thing out of you for nine years--large profits and quick returns. Now,
although your father has not sent his usual remittance--is not that the
word?--and they have heard that he is in business difficulties, yet I
think they might have given you a little more law--a longer day. They
might have exercised some patience. You have not heard of your father
for more than a year, have you?” she added bluntly.
“No, not for sixteen months,” answered the pupil-teacher.
“But even if he were dead,” proceeded Flo, with a fine disregard of her
friend’s feelings, and an open defiance of the laws of good breeding,
such as is occasionally to be found in girls of her age, “you could not
honestly pretend to be very much cut up! You have not seen him since
you were a small child. You left Australia when you were seven years
old. He is a stranger to you.”
“A stranger, certainly, in one way; but still he is my father, and I
have a presentiment that we shall meet again, and before long,” rolling
up a pair of stockings as she spoke, and averting her eyes from her
outspoken schoolfellow.
“Pooh! I don’t believe in presentiments. _I_ had a presentiment that
father was going to give me a cart and cob last holidays, and it ended
in smoke. If your father had been in the land of the living, surely you
would have heard. I know I am saying this very baldly and plainly, but
there is no use in beating about the bush--is there? You must face the
position sooner or later.”
“You mean the position of being an orphan?” said Madeline, tremulously.
“But I refuse to accept that until I have not one grain of hope left.
It is easy for you, who have your father and mother and five brothers
at home, to talk in this way. Remember, I have only one relation in the
world, and when I lose him I lose all.”
“Well, all I can say is, that I hope your presentiment will turn out
better than mine! Oh, here are the girls coming back!” she exclaimed
peevishly, as a long file of figures appeared, passing the windows
two and two. “What a bore they are! They seem to have only been out a
quarter of an hour, and here they come marching in, disturbing our nice
comfortable little talk.”
Florence Blewitt, who so successfully practised the art of plain
speaking and trampling on other people’s susceptibilities--people were
welcome to trample on hers, she declared; she had none--was a short,
squarely-built girl of sixteen, with a sharp nose, thick brown hair,
intelligent grey eyes, and a very dark skin--a skin that betrayed no
_soupçon_ of foreign blood, but was, nevertheless, more brown than
white. She was brusque, eccentric, clever, and indolent. Florence
could--if she would--but she so seldom would. She preferred the ease
of an undisturbed seat at the very bottom of the class to ambitious
battlings and feverish strivings for the first place. She was the
spoiled only daughter of a wealthy merchant and shipowner, and, being
deferred to and made much of at home, was disposed to be both arbitrary
and independent at school. Moreover, she was selfish, which is not
a taking trait in a young woman’s character, and was anything but a
popular idol. She would borrow readily, but hated to lend; and the only
thing with which she was generous was her advice; the sole present
she was ever known to make was her opinion--gratis. Few were honoured
by her liking, and if she had a friend at Harperton, it was the girl
who sat beside her, conscientiously mending a basketful of most
hopeless-looking stockings.
“I wonder what your fate will be, Maddie?” said Flo, staring at
her meditatively, and studying her delicate profile, her pencilled
eyebrows, her shining hair.
“I wonder too,” echoed Madeline, with a profound sigh.
Madeline West had been born in Melbourne, and sent home at the age
of seven to Mrs. Harper’s establishment, where she had remained for
ten years. From a skinny, elf-like, wildly excitable child, she had
grown up into an extremely pretty girl, with what the drawing-master
termed “wonderful colouring.” Her hair, eyebrows, and lashes were
dark, her eyes two shades lighter, but it was in her complexion and
the exquisite modelling of her head and features that her chief beauty
lay. Her head was small, and beautifully set upon her shoulders; her
skin was of creamy fairness, with a faint shade of carmine in her
cheeks--a colour so delicate that it went and came at a look or word.
She was tall, slight, and wonderfully graceful; full of vivacity,
activity, versatility and resource, ready to throw herself warmly into
any scheme for amusement or mischief--that was to say, twelve months
previously. She was by far the most striking-looking and admired of
Mrs. Harper’s forty boarders, and, notwithstanding this drawback to
feminine goodwill, was a great favourite with pupils, teachers, and
servants. Her popularity had even survived that terrible test of
altered circumstances--that dire fall from the wealthy Australian
heiress to the unpaid slavey of the establishment. She changed, of
course, her ringing laugh and her happy air; her merry repartee and
snatches of songs had disappeared with the pretty frocks and hats
and shoes which she had loved so well. She was developing a staid,
grown-up manner, according to her fellow-pupils; she held back from
their advances--abdicated of her own accord, and her place as queen of
the school was filled, after a decent interregnum, by a rich Cockney,
who was as lavish of her shillings, as she was frugal in the matter of
h’s, and who, according to Flo Blewitt, was “a harmless, good-natured,
vulgar, poor creature.”
It must not be supposed that Madeline West did not keenly feel her
altered position. Many a bitter tear she shed in secret; many a
sleepless hour she lay awake, when all her companions--with only
to-morrow’s lessons on their minds--were slumbering peacefully
in the arms of Morpheus. Every small indignity, every slighting
speech and sharp glance entered as an iron into her soul, but she
made no remonstrance or reply; her swiftly changing colour was the
sole index to her feelings, and what were a school-girl’s--a pauper
school-girl’s--feelings to Mrs. Harper? To tell the truth, Madeline had
never asserted herself even in her days of sunshine. She never could
face an unpleasant situation; she put aside a crisis with a laugh or a
gay word; her sensitive, luxurious nature shrank instinctively from all
unpleasant things. She was a moral coward, though no one suspected it.
The present clouds on her sky had brought out, in an unexpected
manner, unexpected depths in her character. Madeline, the humble
semi-nursemaid, was an industrious, prudent, self-possessed person, who
laboured gravely, doggedly from morning to night, a totally different
girl to the extravagant, generous, easy-going Madeline, the butterfly
who had fluttered the happy hours away for nine whole years. She was
now at another seminary. Adversity is said to be an excellent school,
and offers a fine test of character. Anomalous as it sounds, Madeline
West had _risen_ to the state of life into which she had _fallen_.