"Now do tell us, there's a dear man," said cook, alias Sarah Stock, to
Edward, the hard-faced footman, as he sat in front of the kitchen fire
at Copse Hall, gently rubbing his shins and ruminating; while the
housemaid, with her workbox on the table, was pretending to be busy over
some piece of useful needlework, though she was watching Edward the
hard-faced with all her might.
For it was that cosy half-hour after supper when all was at peace in the
mansion; when the late dinner things had all been washed up, the kitchen
tidied, and cook had performed the operation which she called setting
herself straight--a manifest impossibility, for she was a circular woman
of at least sixteen stone weight. All the same, though, she had changed
her dress, polished her face till it shone, and then crowned herself
with a gorgeous corona of lace and bright-hued ribbons and net-work, an
edifice which she called her cap. The cat sat and purred upon the round
smooth centre of the bright steel fender, winked at the fire, twitched
its ears, and purred and ruminated at intervals; for it was fast nearing
the hour when it would be shown the door for the night; so that it was
getting itself thoroughly warmed through. The firelight danced in the
bright tin dish-covers hung upon the wall, and then gleamed off, and
dodged about from bright stewpan to brass candlestick, and back again to
the clean crockery and the dresser; the old Dutch clock swung its
pendulum busily to and fro, as if labouring under the mistake that it
had nearly done work for the day; and altogether the place looked bright
and snug, and spoke of the approaching hour of rest, when cook, having
tapped the fire playfully here and there, to the destruction of several
golden caverns in the centre, and taking up an apparently interrupted
conversation, said, as above:
"Now, do tell us, there's a dear man;" when the housemaid gave her head
a toss, as much as to say, "What indelicacy!--don't think I endorse that
expression!"
Then she smiled with a kind of pitying contempt, for, according to her
notions, cook and Edward were courting; and of course, if he chose to
prefer a great fat coarse woman like that, he had a right to. An the
slim maiden of thirty-eight bridled and looked almost as hard-faced as
Edward himself. For though cook called him a dear man, it almost seemed
at first as if she were bantering him, till it was taken into
consideration that every eye forms its own beauty. In fact, just then
Edward looked more hard-faced and grim than ever.
"You will tell us all about it, now won't you?" said cook, for Edward
remained silent.
"'Tain't likely," said Edward at last.
"Why not?" said cook.
"There was two buttons off my shirt in the very worst places on Sunday
morning."
"I _am_ sorry!" exclaimed cook.
"Don't believe it!" said Edward; "and it's mean and unfair. Didn't you
say, if I'd always get your coals in, you'd always see to my buttons and
darn my stockings? And at this present moment there's a hole as big as
a shilling in them as I've got on."
"But it shan't never occur again, Eddard, if you'll only tell us; for
Mary and me is as interested as can be."
"O, I don't care about knowing, if Mr Edward don't choose to tell,"
said the housemaid, with a toss of her head.
"Who's trying to pick a quarrel now?" retorted Edward; "when missus said
we was always to be peaceful and orderly in the kitchen."
"Not me, I'm sure," said the housemaid. "I wouldn't bemean myself to
quarrel."
"Now don't, dear," said cook; "Mr Eddard's agoin' to tell us all about
it, and really, you know, if it ain't for all the world like chapters
out o' that book as missus had from Mugie's libery--the one you brought
up out of the drawin'-room, and read of a night when we was in bed."
"Stuff!" said the housemaid tartly.
"Now, don't say so, dear," said the cook, who was particularly suave for
once in her life. "There she is, just like a herrowine, and a
nice-looking one too."
"Get out! call her good-looking?" said the housemaid.
"Well, 'taint to be denied as she has what some folks would call good
looks. Then you see she's pussycuted by one lover, and another loves
her to distraction, and his father won't hear of it; and first one comes
and then another, and then the father, and frightens the poor dear into
fits, and goes away fainting--no, I mean goes away leaving her fainting
away, and wanting salts and burnt feathers, and all sorts. Why, it's
for all the world like a real story in a book, that it is; and I declare
the way Mr Eddard has told us all about it has been beautiful."
"There's soft soap," growled the hard-faced footman, smiling grimly.
"That it ain't now, I'm sure," said cook. "It really was beautiful, and
almost as good as seeing or reading it all. I'm sure I never lived in a
house before where there was such goings on. I declare that bit where
you told us about how you took the dandy by the scruff of his neck, and
says to him, `Now, out you go, or I'll stuff you up the chimney!' was as
exciting as could be. And so it was where you dragged him across the
hall, and pitched him neck and crop down the front steps. I could
a'most see it; and we both of us did hear the door slam."
"Mr Eddard," who had been slightly adding to the history of Ella's
visitors, smiled a little here, and his face relaxed somewhat from its
stern expression.
"Lor', what a nice clear fire!" said cook, who had detected the melting
sign. "Let me hot you a sup of beer in a little stoopan, with a bit of
nuckmeg and ginger, and a spoonful of sugar. Don't say no, Eddard."
"Yes, I shall," said Edward, who was tightening up again. "I sha'n't
have none unless you two join with me."
"Well, if it comes to that," said cook, "sooner than you should go
without, I'll have the least taste in the world."
The housemaid shook her head as if despising such excuses; but ten
minutes after, when a mug of the hot sweet-scented compound was placed
before her by cook, who winked at Edward as she did so, the lady of the
dustpan and brush condescended to simper, and say, "O, the very idee!"
Then she smiled, and at the end of another ten minutes the trio were all
smiling as they sat with their feet on the fender, Edward regaling
himself and his fellow-servants with an account of what had taken place
during the afternoon.
"I should say it was as near as could be three o'clock," said Edward
punctiliously; "it might have been a little after, though I hadn't heard
it strike, or it might have been a little before: I ain't certain.
Anyhow, it was as near as could be to three o'clock when the front-door
bell rings.
"`Visitor for Miss Bedford,' I says to myself, laughing like, and
meaning it as a joke; for as we'd had one that day, I didn't of course
expect no more."
"What time was it as Sir Philip Vining went away?" said cook, who was
deeply interested.
"O, that was before lunch," said Edward.
"To be sure, so it was," said the housemaid.
"Well, I slips on my coat--for I was dusting the glasses over before
going to lay the dinner-cloth--and up I goes."
"And up you goes," said cook; for Edward had paused to soften his hard
face with a little more of the stewpan decoction.
"Yes, up I goes, to find it was Mr Charles Vining, looking as bright
and happy as could be--quite another man to what he was when he come
last week.
"`Ah,' I says to myself, `you don't know about your governor being here
afore lunch, young man, or you'd be laughing the other side of your
mouth.' But I says aloud:
"`To see Miss Bedford, sir?'
"`No, my man,' he says; and he looked at me very curious and hesitating,
as if he'd like to have said `yes.'
"`Show me in to your mistress,' he says."
"Now it's a-coming!" said cook, rocking herself to and fro with
excitement, and rubbing her hands softly together.
"Now what's a-coming, stoopid?" said Edward gruffly. "What d'ye mean?"
"I--I only meant that the interesting bit was now coming--the denowment,
you know," said cook humbly, and seeking to mollify the insulted
narrator by emptying the little stewpan, cloves, bits of ginger, and all
into his mug.
"If you're so precious clever, you'd better tell it yourself," growled
Edward fiercely, "instead of keeping on interrupting like that. Who's
to go on, I should like to know?"
"O, I'm sure cook didn't mean nothing, Mr Eddard," said the interested
housemaid. "Do go on!"
"What's she want to say anything for, if she don't mean anything then,
eh?" grumbled Edward. "I hate such ways."
Cook looked at housemaid, and slightly raised her hands, while the
offended dignitary sipped and muttered, and muttered and sipped, and his
audience waited, not daring to speak, lest they should miss the rest of
the expected treat.
"I wouldn't say another word if I hadn't begun, that I wouldn't!"
growled the hard-faced one. "Now, then, where'd I got to?"
"`Show me in to your mistress,'" exclaimed cook; when "Mr Eddard,"
turning round upon her very sharply, she shrunk as it were into her
shell, and nipped together her lips.
"I tell you what it is," said Edward viciously; "if I'm to tell this
here, I tells it, but I ain't going to be driven wild with vexatious
interruptions. Do you both want to know it, or don't you?"
"O yes, please, Mr Eddard, we do indeed," exclaimed the two domestics;
"so please go on!"
Thus adjured, and apparently mollified by the respect paid to him, as
much as by the stewpan essence, "Mr Eddard" continued: "Well, I shows
him into the breakfast-room, and then goes in to missus, who had just
come down from Miss Bedford's room; and looking all white and troubled,
she goes across the hall, and I opens the door for her, and up comes my
gentleman with a rush, catches her hand in his, and kisses it.
"`That's making yourself at home anyhow, young man,' I says to myself,
backing-out of the room; and I can't say how it happened, but the corner
of the carpet got rucked up, so that I was ever so long before I could
get the door shut, and they would keep talking, so that I couldn't help
hearing what they said."
"And what did they say?" said cook.
"Ain't I a-coming to it as fast as I can?" said Edward angrily. "What
an outrageous hurry you always are in with everything, except getting
the dinner ready in time!"
"Now don't be cruel, Mr Eddard," said the housemaid, tittering, when
"Mr Eddard" himself condescended to laugh at what our Scotch brethren
would call his own "wut," to the great discomfiture of cook, who wanted
to fire-up and give them a bit of her mind, but did not dare, for fear
of losing the end of the coveted history. The consequence of her
reticence, though, was that "Mr Eddard" grew exceedingly amiable, and
went on with his account.
"That door being shut," he said, with a grim smile, which was meant to
be pleasant, but was the very reverse, "I didn't want to go; for I put
it to you now, under the circumstances, was it likely as he'd stay
long?"
"Of course not!" said cook.
"Not likely!" said the housemaid.
"Well, then," continued Edward, "where was the use of me going back to
my pantry only to be called directly? So I took his hat and brushed it,
and when I'd brushed it and set it down, I set to and brushed it again,
and so on half a dozen times, while--it was very foolish of them if they
didn't want other people to hear--they kept on talking louder and
louder.
"`Mr Vining,' says missus, `I must ask you as a gentleman to come no
more.'
"`But, in 'evin's name,' he says, `what have I done that you should turn
upon me like this?'
"`Nothing,' says missus; `nothing at all. I pity you from the bottom of
my heart, as much as I pity that sweet girl; but it cannot be. You must
come here no more.'
"`Are you a woman?' he says. `Have you feeling? Can you form any idea
of the pain your words are giving me?'
"`Yes, yes, yes,' says missus. `Mr Vining, why do you force me to
speak? I do not wish to cause trouble, but you drive me to do so.'
"`Speak, then,' he says, quite in another voice, `unless you wish to
drive me mad, or to something worse--' There, I'm blessed," continued
Edward, breaking short off in his narrative, and pointing to the cook,
"did you ever see such a woman? Why, what are you snivelling about?"
"I--I--I c-c-c-can't help it, Eddard, when I think of what those poor
things must be suffering," sobbed cook, with a liberal application of
her apron to her eyes.
"Suffer, indeed--such stuff!" said Edward.
"Ah, Eddard," said cook, turning upon him a languishing look, "if I have
saved up forty-seven pound ten in the savings bank, I've a heart still,
and know what it is for it to bleed when some one says a hard word to
me."
The housemaid sniffed.
"I'm a going on," said Edward, who was evidently moved by the culinary
lady's remarks.
"`Drive you,' says Mr Vining, `to speak! Why, stay!' he says
excitedly, as if a thought had struck him. `Why, yes; I'm sure of it.
My father has been here to-day.'
"`He has,' says missus solemnly.
"`It was cowardly and cruel!' cries Mr Vining, quite shouting now, for
his monkey was evidently up. `And pray, madam, what is the result of
his visit? There, I can answer it myself: Miss Bedford refuses to see
me; you decline to receive me into your house.'
"`Mr Vining,' says missus softly, and I could fancy that she took his
hand, `I grieve for you, as I do for that suffering girl.'
"`What!' cries Mr Vining, `is she ill? Let me--let me see her--only
once--for a minute, dear Mrs Brandon! Pray--on my knees I beg it of
you! You cannot be so cruel, so hardhearted, as to refuse!' And then I
heard a loud sobbing wail as of a woman crying, and--There, I'm blest if
I go on, if you will keep on snivelling. Why, blame the women, you're
both on you at it!"
"We--we--we--we--we're--only a-blowin' our noses," sobbed the housemaid.
"Never see such noses!" growled Edward, who then continued:
"Well, directly after, as if in a passion, Mr Vining says:
"`Mrs Brandon, this is cruel and harsh. I left you last week with my
hopes raised; to-day you dash them to the ground.'
"`Mr Vining--Mr Vining!' she says softly.
"`I tell you this,' he says, shouting again; and hearing his words, you
could almost see him stamping up and down the breakfast-room--`I tell
you this. Mrs Brandon: the ties of duty are strong, but the ties
formed by the heart of a man newly-awakened to love are stronger. To
win Ella Bedford, my own love, I will give all--time, hope, everything;
I will leave no stone unturned--I will stop at nothing! I see that she
has been coerced--that she has been, as it were, cruelly stolen from me
by external pressure; and it shall be my task to win her back. I had
hoped to have had you on my side; as it is, I must begin my battle by
myself. I thank you for your patient hearing of my words; but before I
go I tell you this--that _till I learn that, by her own act, she gives
herself to another_, I will never cease from my pursuit.'
"The next minute he was in the hall, and I handed him his hat, brushed
as he never had it brushed before; when, even then, upset as he was, he
puts his hand in his pocket, and pushed something into my fist.
"`Sixpence,' I says to myself, as I shut the door after him, and him
a-walking away like mad."
"Sixpence!" echoed the cook.
"Sixpence!" squeaked the housemaid.
"Well, it did feel like it, sutternly," said Edward; "but it was arf a
suffrin'."
"But what did he mean by never ceasing from the pursuit till she gave
herself to another? Would she give herself to another?" said cook, who
was very moist of eye.
"No, I should say not--never!" said the housemaid.
And so said, mentally, Charley Vining as, disappointed and half
maddened, he galloped homeward that afternoon; but the day came when,
bitterly laughing to himself, he said otherwise, and hummed with aching
heart the words of the old song:
"Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?"
And then he turned over and over in his hand--what?
A wedding-ring!
Volume 2, Chapter XII.