Jane Aubrey-Blythe was not in the habit of weakly shedding tears;
nevertheless on this occasion she wept herself into a state of
somnolence like a whipped child, when she lay quite still, her
handkerchief rolled into a tight, damp ball, her limp figure shaken with
an occasional recurrent sob.
"They are all too hateful," she murmured brokenly. "I wish something
would happen--anything; I don't care what."
As a matter of fact, something did happen almost immediately. As Jane
was sleepily pulling the blankets about her chilly shoulders, Susan's
honest face, shining like a hard red apple in the light of the candle
she carried, was thrust inside the door.
"O Miss Jane Evelyn," she whispered, "are you 'ere?"
"What is it, Susan?" demanded Jane, sitting up and winking drowsily at
the candle flame.
"W'y, you've 'ad no dinner, miss, an' so I've brought you a bite of
chicken and a mouthful of salad," said Susan briskly. "Just you lie back
comfortable-like on these 'ere pillows, miss, an' I'll bring it in
directly."
"But I'm not ill, Susan, and I'm not hungry," protested Jane. "I--I'm
just tired."
"You'll be ill directly if you don't pick a bit o' somethink," Susan
declared oracularly, "an' you that slender an' delicate, Miss Jane
Evelyn." She was arranging the contents of a neat tray before Jane as
she spoke. "Now you jus' try a mossel o' that bird, an' you'll find it
tastes moreish, or I'm mistook i' the looks o' it. Miss Gwendolen, now,
is that thick i' the waist she might go wi'out her dinner for a
fortnight, that she might, miss. It was all I could do a-'ookin' up 'er
frock this very evenin'. 'You're such a stoopid, Susan,' she says, 'your
fingers is all thumbs.' Then she turns an' twists afore 'er glass as
proud as proud, though the Lord knows she's nothink to be proud of, wi'
that rough, muddy skin o' hers, alongside of yours, Miss Jane Evelyn."
"You are very impertinent, Susan," said Jane reprovingly. "Gwen can't
help her complexion, nor her thick figure, though of course they must
get on her nerves, poor thing." And Jane dimpled demurely, as she tasted
her salad with appetite. "I was hungry, after all," she acknowledged.
Susan gazed at the young lady with admiring eyes. "Of course you were,
Miss Jane Evelyn," she exulted, "an' I knowed it. As I says to cook,
'Miss Jane Evelyn's 'ad nary bite o' supper,' I says; an' cook says to
me, 'Susan,' she says, 'you'll find a tray i' th' buttry, once I'm
through wi' dishin' up.'"
Jane's eyes filled with fresh tears; and she choked a little over her
tea. "You're too good, Susan," she murmured, "and so is cook, to think
of me at all."
"All I hasks in return, miss, is that you'll take me on as lidy's maid
once you're married an' settled in a 'ome o' your own."
Jane fixed wistful eyes upon Susan's broad, kindly face. "O Susan," she
said, "do you suppose I'll ever have a home of my own?"
"Do I suppose you'll ever-- W'y, land o' love, Miss Jane Evelyn, in
course you will! Mussy me, don't I _know_? Ain't I seen young ladies in
my time? There was Miss Constance and Mary Selwyn, both of 'em thought
to be beauties, an' me scullery maid an' seein' 'em constant goin' in
an' out of their kerridge through the area windy, where I was put to
clean vegetables; an' they wasn't a patch on you, miss, fer figure, nor
yet fer complexion, nor yet fer eyes, nor yet----"
"O Susan!" exclaimed Jane soulfully, "you oughtn't to talk that way. I'm
not at all pretty."
"You're jus' beautiful, Miss Jane Evelyn," said Susan firmly, "beautiful
enough fer a dook or a prince, if it's only me as says it; an' you'll
see what you'll see some o' these days, that you will. W'y, only last
night I was tellin' your fortin' wi' cards, miss, an' the dark man wi'
a crown was fightin' a dool wi' the light man, an' all for the love of
you, miss; an' if that ain't a sign o' somethin' serious then I don't
know cards nor fortins neither."
"That will do, Susan," said Jane, very dignified indeed. "Thank you so
much for bringing me something to eat, and will you thank cook for me,
too. I think I will go to bed now, Susan, and you may take the tray
away."
"I'll take the tray down directly, Miss Jane Evelyn," said honest Susan,
quite unabashed, "but go to bed you'll not, miss, because the master
wishes to see you quite pertic'lar in the library when 'e's through 'is
dinner."
"What! Uncle Robert?" exclaimed Jane, flying out of bed, and beginning
to pull the pins out of her tumbled hair. "I wonder what he can possibly
want with me." Her little hands trembled. "Oh, I'm afraid Aunt
Agatha----!"
"No; it ain't, miss," beamed Susan encouragingly. "I'll bet it's
somethink himportant, that I do. I was jus' a-comin' downstairs after
Miss Gwendolen's flowers, an' the master was standin' in the 'all.
'Where's Jane?' he says to my Lidy. 'She should be down by this.' An' my
Lidy she says, 'aughty an' cold-like, 'Jane 'ad her supper in the
school-room with the children, as usual, to-night,' she says. 'She
didn't care to come down.' 'Why, dang it,' 'e says, or some such word,
'Jane ought to be down to-night of all nights; 'aven't you told her,
madam?' 'No,' says my Lidy, 'I 'aven't. I left that to you. Then 'e
turns to me, an' horders me to tell you to be in the library at ten
o'clock, an' to say that you was to wait for 'im there till 'e come. It
ain't much after nine, miss, so you've time a-plenty, an' I'll 'elp you
to dress."
Jane's eyes were shining like frightened stars. "Oh!" she murmured
brokenly, "I wonder what it can be!"
"Now, don't you be scared ner yet worrited, Miss Jane Evelyn," exhorted
Susan, her head in Jane's little wardrobe. "You just put on this 'ere
white frock an' I'll 'ook it up fer you. But first I'll do your 'air, if
you'll let me."
Jane resigned herself with a sigh to Susan's deft hands. "You do brush
my hair so nicely, Susan," she murmured, after a long silence filled
with the steady stroking of the brush through her long brown tresses.
"It's the Lord's own mussy you'll let me do it, miss," cried Susan
fervently, "else a 'ouse-maid I'd live an' die, an' me wantin' to be a
lidy's maid sence I was knee high to a grass-'opper. I says to Miss
Gwendolen on'y yesterday, 'Mayn't I brush your 'air, miss,' I says,
'Parks bein' busy, I think I can do it satisfactory.' 'Go 'way, Susan!'
she snaps out, 'do you s'pose I'd 'ave your great, rough, clumsy 'ands
about my 'ead?' she says."
"Your hands are not rough, nor clumsy, either," said Jane, understanding
the pause, and filling it exactly as Susan wished; "and if I ever do
have a lady's maid it shall be you, Susan."
"Thank you kindly, Miss Jane Evelyn," beamed Susan. "Now ain't that a
lovely coffer? I'll bet Parks couldn't do no better nor that in a
hundred years! But it 'ud be a simple idgit what couldn't do your 'air,
miss; it's that soft an' shinin' an' curls itself better nor
curlin'-tongs could do it."
All of which was strictly true, as Jane's brown eyes told her. Then the
white frock was carefully put on, and Susan next produced from somewhere
three great creamy buds, one of which she fastened behind Miss Blythe's
pretty pink ear; the other two she pinned to the modest little bodice,
standing off to survey her handiwork with an air of honest pride.
"I 'ooked them three roses from Miss Gwendolen's bouquet," she announced
unblushingly, "an' a mighty good job it were."
"Then I'll not wear them," said Jane decidedly. "You may take them away,
Susan. I may be forced to wear Gwen's cast-off frocks; but I'll _not_
wear her flowers!"
An ethical differentiation which it would have puzzled Miss Blythe to
explain, and which left poor Susan in open-mouthed dismay.
"She's a reg'lar lidy, is Miss Jane Evelyn, as ever was," cogitated
that worthy hand-maiden, as Jane's light step passed down the corridor,
"'igh an' 'aughty as the 'aughtiest, yet that sweet an' lovely in her
w'ys I can't 'elp a-worshipin' the ground she walks on. It's a dook or a
lord as ought to marry Miss Jane Evelyn, an' it's me as 'll be her
lidy's maid." And she proceeded to put the poor little room with its
shabby appointments into truly exquisite order with all the zeal born of
her anticipations.
There was no one in the library when Jane entered it, so she sat down in
one of the great carved chairs by the fire, feeling very small and young
and lonely. The gentle hum of conversation and the subdued tinkle of
glass and silver reached her where she sat, and between curtained
doorways she could catch glimpses of the softly lighted drawing-room
beyond, gay with masses of azaleas and ferns.
After a little Jane found herself busy with dim memories of her past.
She had been a child of three when her father and mother died, within a
month of each other, she had been told; the broken-hearted young wife
apparently not caring enough for her one child to face her bleak future.
"Oliver Aubrey-Blythe's wife was an exceedingly weak woman," Lady Agatha
had once told Jane cruelly; "and I feel that it is my duty to train
_you_ into something far different, if such a thing is at all possible."
Jane's little hands grew quite cold, as she strove vainly to fix the
illusive memory of the two faces which had bent over her on the day she
had fallen into the fountain at Blythe Court. She remembered the
fountain distinctly, with its darting goldfish and the stout cherub in
the middle staggering under the weight of an impossible dolphin from
whose open mouth gushed a dazzling jet of water.
There were blue flowers growing about the edge of the marble basin, and
she had recklessly trampled them under foot in her baby efforts to grasp
a particularly beautiful goldfish. The rest was a blur, wherein dazzling
blue sky seen through green waving treetops an immense distance away
made a background for the two shadowy figures which stood out from the
others. It was pleasant at the bottom of the fountain, Jane remembered,
where one could look up through the clear water and see the far blue sky
and the waving trees. For an instant she paused to wonder what would
have happened had the shadowy figures of her parents been farther away
when she shrieked and fell--quite at the other side of the garden, say.
Would the blue sky and the waving trees have faded quite away into
nothingness after a little? And was somethingness so much better than
nothingness, after all?
But all this ghostly cogitation being quite at variance with Miss
Blythe's usual optimistic and cheerfully human way of looking at things,
she presently abandoned it altogether to speculate on the nature of the
interview with her uncle, an event which certainly concerned her
immediate fortunes much more intimately. Mr. Robert Aubrey-Blythe was an
exalted personage with whom Jane felt herself to be very slightly
acquainted. He was kind; yes, certainly. Jane could not recall a single
occasion upon which he had spoken to her in a manner even remotely
approaching unkindness. Indeed, he very rarely spoke to her at all
beyond a curt 'Good evening, Jane' when she slipped into her place at
the family dinner table. Twice before this she had been summoned to the
library; each time to receive a perfunctory rebuke for some childish
piece of mischief, reported presumably by Lady Agatha; whereat she had
gone away shaking in her small shoes to lead a blameless existence for
many days thereafter.
"Aunt Agatha has told Uncle Robert what I said to her about being paid
for teaching Percy and Cecil," the girl decided. "Well, I hope she has.
I don't mind being a nursery governess, not in the least; but I
hate--hate--_hate_ the way I am living now. Even the servants pity me!"
She stood up and drew her slight figure to its full height as she heard
the swish and rustle of silken skirts in the corridor; the women were
coming away from table. It was a small party, after all. Jane watched
the vanishing trains of the five dinner-gowns with a speculative smile.
How would it seem, she wondered, to be beautifully dressed every night
and dine with guests who were not forever carping at one, but whose
chief business in life it was to be agreeable. Then she faced about at
sound of her cousin Gwendolen's voice.
"What are you doing in here, Jane?" demanded that young lady snappishly,
as she advanced to the fire.
"Waiting for Uncle Robert," Jane told her briefly.
Gwendolen frowned and twisted her rings so as to make them sparkle in
the firelight. "How _very_ coy and unconscious we are!" she said
sneeringly. Then suddenly she burst into a disagreeable laugh.
"What are you laughing at, Gwen?" asked Jane, with real curiosity.
"At you, goose," replied Miss Aubrey-Blythe crossly. She turned and
moved toward the door. "Don't you know what papa wants with you?" she
paused to demand.
"No, I don't," said Jane steadily. "Do you?"
But Miss Gwendolen merely shrugged her ugly shoulders as she dropped the
heavy curtains into place behind her.