Fog greeted Mrs. Kendal’s eyes as she rose, and she resolved to make
an attack on the pond without loss of time. But Mr. Kendal was absorbed
nearly all breakfast-time in a letter from India, containing a scrap in
some uncouth character. As he finished his last cup of tea, he looked
up and said, ‘A letter from my old friend Penrose, of Bombay--an
inscription in the Salsette caves.’
‘Have you seen the Salsette caves?
‘Yes.’
She was longing to hear about them, but his horse was announced.
‘You said you would be engaged in the morning while I ride out,
Albinia?’ he said, ‘I shall return before luncheon. Gilbert, you had
better go at once to Mr. Bowles. I shall order your pony to be ready
when you come back.’
There was not a word of remonstrance, though the boy looked very
disconsolate, and began to murmur the moment his father had gone.
Albinia, who had regarded protection at a dentist’s one of the offices
of the head of a family, though dismayed at the task, told Gilbert that
she would come with him in a moment. The girls exclaimed that no one
thought of going with him, and fearing she had put an affront on his
manliness, she asked what he would like, but could get no answer, only
when Lucy scolded him for lingering, he said, ‘I thought _she_ was going
with me.’
‘Amiable,’ thought Albinia, as she ran up to put on her bonnet; ‘but I
suppose toothache puts people out of the pale of civilization. And if he
is thankless, is not that treating me more like a mother?’
Perhaps he had accepted her escort in hopes of deferring the evil hour,
for he seemed discomfited to see her so quickly ready, and not grateful
to his sisters, who hurried them by saying that Mr. Bowles would be gone
out upon his rounds.
Mr. Bowles was amazed at the sight of Mrs. Kendal, and so elaborate in
compliments and assurances that Mrs. Bowles would do herself the honour
of calling, that Albinia, pitying Gilbert, called his attention back.
With him the apothecary was peremptory and facetious. ‘He had expected
that he should soon see him after his papa’s return!’ And with a
‘soon be over,’ he set him down, and Albinia bravely stood a desperate
wringing of her hand at the tug of war. She was glad she had come, for
the boy suffered a good deal, and was faint, and Mr. Bowles pronounced
his mouth in no state for a ride to Tremblam.
‘I must go,’ said Gilbert, as they walked home, ‘I wish papa would
listen to anything.’
‘He would not wish you to hurt yourself.’
‘When papa says a thing--’ began Gilbert.
‘Well, Gilbert, you are quite right, and I hope you don’t think I
mean to teach you disobedience. But I do desire you, on my own
responsibility, not to go and catch an inflammation in your jaw. I’ll
undertake papa.’
Gilbert at once became quite another creature. He discoursed so much,
that she had to make him restore the handkerchief to his mouth; he held
open the gate, showed her a shoal of minnows, and tried to persuade her
to come round the garden before going in, but she clapped her hands
at him, and hunted him back into the warm room, much impressed and
delighted by his implicit obedience to his father. With Lucy and Sophy,
his remaining seemed likewise to make a great sensation; they looked at
Mrs. Kendal and whispered, and were evidently curious as to the result
of her audacity. Albinia, who had grown up with her brother Maurice and
cousin Frederick, was more used to boys than to girls, and was already
more at ease with her son than her daughters.
Gilbert lent a ready hand with hammer and chisel, and boxes were opened,
to the great delight and admiration of the girls. They were all very
happy and busy setting things to rights, but Albinia was in difficulty
how to bestow her books. There was an unaccountable scarcity both of
books and book-cases; none were to be seen except that, in a chiffoniere
in the drawing-room, there was a row in gilded bindings, chiefly Pope,
Gray, and the like; and one which Albinia took out had pages which
stuck together, a little pale blue string, faded at the end, and in the
garlanded fly-leaf the inscription, ‘To Miss Lucy Meadows, the reward of
good conduct, December 20th, 1822.’ The book seemed rather surprised at
being opened, and Albinia let it close itself as Lucy said, ‘Those are
poor mamma’s books, all the others are in the study. Come in, and I’ll
show you.’
She threw open the door, and Albinia entered. The study was shaded with
a mass of laurels that kept out the sun, and made it look chill and sad,
and the air in it was close. The round library-table was loaded with
desks, pocket-books, and papers, the mantelpiece was covered with
letters, and book-shelves mounted to the ceiling, filled with the
learned and the poetical of new and old times.
Over the fireplace hung what it needed not Lucy’s whisper to point out,
as ‘Poor mamma’s picture.’ It represented a very pretty girl, with
dark eyes, brilliant colour, and small cherry mouth, painted in the
exaggerated style usually called ‘ridiculously like.’
Albinia’s first feeling was that there was nothing in herself that could
atone for the loss of so fair a creature, and the thought became more
oppressive as she looked at a niche in the wall, holding a carved
sandal-wood work-box, with a silver watch lying on it.
‘Poor Edmund’s watch,’ said Lucy. ‘It was given to him for a reward just
before he was ill.’
Albinia tried to recover composure by reading the titles of the books.
Suddenly, Lucy started and exclaimed, ‘Come away. There he is!’
‘Why come away?’ said Albinia.
‘I would not have him find me there for all the world.’
In all her vexation and dismay, Albinia could not help thinking of
Bluebeard’s closet. Her inclination was to stay where she was, and take
her chance of losing her head, yet she felt as if she could not bear to
be found invading a sanctuary of past recollections, and was relieved to
find that it was a false alarm, though not relieved by the announcement
that Admiral and Mrs. Osborn and the Miss Osborns were in the
drawing-room.
‘Before luncheon--too bad!’ she exclaimed, as she hurried upstairs to
wash off the dust of unpacking.
Ere she could hurry down, there was another inundation streaming across
the hall, Mrs. Drury and three Miss Drurys, who, as she remembered, when
they began to kiss her, were some kind of cousins.
There was talk, but Albinia could not give entire attention; she was
watching for Mr. Kendal’s return, that she might guard Gilbert from his
displeasure, and the instant she heard him, she sprang up, and flew into
the hall. He could not help brightening at the eager welcome, but when
she told him of Mr. Bowles’ opinion, he looked graver, and said, ‘I fear
you must not always attach credit to all Gilbert’s reports.’
‘Mr. Bowles told me himself that he must run no risk of inflammation.’
‘You saw Mr. Bowles?’
‘I went with Gilbert.’
‘You? I never thought of your imposing so unpleasant a task on yourself.
I fear the boy has been trespassing on your kindness.’
‘No, indeed, he never asked me, but--’ with a sort of laugh to hide the
warmth excited by his pleased, grateful look, ‘I thought it all in the
day’s work, only natural--’
She would have given anything to have had time to enjoy his epanchement
de coeur at those words, bit she was obliged to add, ‘Alas! there’s all
the world in the drawing-room!’
‘Who?’
‘Osborns and Drurys.’
‘Do you want me?’
‘I ran away on the plea of calling you.’
‘I’ll never do so again,’ was her inward addition, as his countenance
settled into the accustomed fixed look of abstraction, and as an
unwilling victim he entered the room with her, and the visitors were
‘dreadful enough’ to congratulate him.
Albinia knew that it must be so unpleasant to him, that she blushed up
to the roots of her hair, and could not look at anybody.
When she recovered, the first comers were taking leave, but the second
set stayed on and on till past luncheon-time, and far past her patience,
before the room was at last cleared.
Gilbert hurried in, and was received by his father with, ‘You are very
much obliged to her!’
‘Indeed I am,’ said Gilbert, in a winning, pleasant manner.
‘I don’t want you to be,’ said Albinia, affectionately laying her arm
on his shoulder. ‘And now for luncheon--I pitied you, poor fellow; I
thought you must have been famished.’
‘Anything not to have all the Drurys at luncheon,’ said Gilbert,
confidentially, ‘I had begun to wish myself at Tremblam.’
‘By the bye,’ said Mr. Kendal, waking as he sat down at the bottom of
the table, ‘how was it that the Drurys did not stay to luncheon?’
‘Was that what they were waiting for?’ exclaimed Albinia. ‘Poor people,
I had no notion of that.’
‘They do have luncheon here in general,’ said Mr. Kendal, as if not
knowing exactly how it came to pass.
‘O yes,’ said Lucy; ‘Sarah Anne asked me whether we ate wedding-cake
every day.’
‘Poor Miss Sarah Anne!’ said Albinia, laughing. ‘But one cannot help
feeling inhospitable when people come so unconscionably early, and cut
up all one’s morning.’
The door was again besieged by visitors, just as they were all going out
to make the round of the garden, and it was not till half-past four
that the succession ceased, and Albinia was left to breathe freely, and
remember how often Maurice had called her to order for intolerance of
morning calls.
‘And not the only people I cared to see,’ she said, ‘the Dusautoys and
Nugents. But they have too much mercy to call the first day.’
Mr. Kendal looked as if his instinct were drawing him study-wards,
but Albinia hung on his arm, and made him come into the garden. Though
devoid of Winifred’s gardening tastes, she was dismayed at the untended
look of the flower-beds. The laurels were too high, and seemed to choke
the narrow space, and the turf owed its verdant appearance to damp moss.
She had made but few steps before the water squished under her feet,
and impelled her to exclaim, ‘What a pity this pond should not be filled
up!’
‘Filled up!--’
‘Yes, it would be so much less damp. One might drain it off into the
river, and then we should get rid of the fog.’
And she began actively to demonstrate the convenient slope, and the
beautiful flower-bed that might be made in its place. Mr. Kendal
answered with a few assenting sounds and complacent looks, and Albinia,
accustomed to a brother with whom to assent was to act, believed the
matter was in train, and that pond and fever would be annihilated.
The garden opened into a meadow with a causeway leading to a canal bank,
where there was a promising country walk, but the cruel visitors had
left no time for exploring, and Albinia had to return home and hurry up
her arrangements before there was space to turn round in her room--even
then it was not what Winifred could have seen without making a face.
Mr. Kendal had read aloud to his wife in the evening during the stay at
the sea-side, and she was anxious not to let the habit drop. He liked
it, and read beautifully, and she thought it good for the children. She
therefore begged him to read, catching him on the way to his study, and
coaxing him to stay no longer than to find a book. He brought Schlegel’s
Philosophy of History. She feared that it was above the young ones, but
it was delightful to herself, and the custom had better be established
before it was perilled by attempts to adapt it to the children. Lucy
and Sophy seemed astonished and displeased, and their whispers had to be
silenced, Gilbert learnt his lessons apart. Albinia rallied her spirits,
and insisted to herself that she did not feel discouraged.
Monday had gone, or rather Albinia had been robbed of it by
visitors--now for a vigorous Tuesday. Her unpacking and her setting
to rights were not half over, but as the surface was habitable, she
resolved to finish at her leisure, and sacrifice no more mornings of
study.
So after she had lingered at the door, to delight Gilbert by admiring
his pony, she returned to the dining-room, where the girls were loading
a small table in the window with piles of books and exercises, and Lucy
was standing, looking all eagerness to show off her drawings.
‘Yes, my dear, but first we had better read. I have been talking to your
papa, and we have settled that on Wednesdays and Fridays we will go
to church; but on these days we will begin by reading the Psalms and
Lessons.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucy, ‘we never do that, except when we are at grandmamma’s.’
‘Pray are you too old or too young for it?’ said Albinia.
‘We did it to please grandmamma,’ said Sophy.
‘Now you will do it to please me,’ said Albinia, ‘if for no better
reason. Fetch your Bibles and Prayerbooks.’
‘We shall never have time for our studies, I assure you, mamma,’
objected Lucy.
‘That is not your concern,’ said Albinia, her spirit rising at the
girls’ opposition. ‘I wish for obedience.’
Lucy went, Sophy leant against the table like a post. Albinia regretted
that the first shot should have been fired for such a cause, and sat
perplexing herself whether it were worse to give way, or to force the
girls to read Holy Scripture in such a mood.
Lucy came flying down with the four books in her hands, and began
officiously opening them before her sister, and exhorting her not to
give way to sullenness--she ought to like to read the Bible--which of
course made Sophy look crosser. The desire to establish her authority
conquered the scruple about reverence. Albinia set them to read, and
suffered for it. Lucy road flippantly; Sophy in the hoarse, dull, dogged
voice of a naughty boy. She did not dare to expostulate, lest she should
exasperate the tempers that she had roused.
‘Never mind,’ she thought, ‘when the institution is fixed, they will be
more amenable.’
She tried a little examination afterwards, but not one answer was to
be extracted from Sophy, and Lucy knew far less than the first class
at Fairmead, and made her replies wide of the mark, with an air of
satisfaction that nearly overthrew the young step-mother’s patience.
When Albinia took her Bible upstairs, she gave Sophy time to say what
Lucy reported instantly on her entrance.
‘Dear me, mamma, here is Sophy declaring that you ought to be a
charity-schoolmistress. You wont be angry with her, but it is so funny!’
‘If you were at my charity school, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘the first
lesson I should give you would be against telling tales.’
Lucy subsided.
Albinia turned to Sophy. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘perhaps I pressed this on
when you were not prepared for it, but I have always been used to think
of it as a duty.’
Sophy made no answer, but her moody attitude relaxed, and Albinia took
comfort in the hope that she might have been gracious if she had known
how to set about it.
‘I suppose Miss Belmarche is a Roman Catholic,’ she said, wishing to
account for this wonderful ignorance, and addressing herself to Sophy;
but Lucy, whom she thought she had effectually put down, was up again in
a moment like a Jack-in-a-box.
‘O yes, but not Genevieve. Her papa made it his desire that she should
be brought up a Protestant. Wasn’t it funny? You know Genevieve is
Madame Belmarche’s grand-daughter, and Mr. Durant was a dancing-master.’
‘Madame Belmarche’s father and brother were guillotined,’ continued
Sophy.
‘Ah! then she is an emigrant?’
‘Yes. Miss Belmarche has always kept school here. Our own mamma, and
Aunt Maria went to school to her, and Miss Celeste Belmarche married Mr.
Durant, a dancing-master--she was French teacher in a school in London
where he taught, and Madame Belmarche did not approve, for she and her
husband were something very grand in France, so they waited and waited
ever so long, and when at last they did marry, they were quite old, and
she died very soon; and they say he never was happy again, and pined
away till he really did die of grief, and so Genevieve came to her
grandmamma to be brought up.’
‘Poor child! How old is she?’
‘Fifteen,’ said Lucy. ‘She teaches in the school. She is not at all
pretty, and such a queer little thing.’
‘Was her father French?’
‘No,’ said Sophy.
‘Yes,’ said Lucy. ‘You know nothing about it, Sophy. He was French, but
of the Protestant French sort, that came to England a great many years
ago, when they ran away from the Sicilian Vespers, or the Edict of
Nantes, I don’t remember which; only the Spitalfields weavers have
something to do with it. However, at any rate Genevieve has got
something in a drawer up in her own room that she is very secret about,
and wont show to anybody.’
‘I think it is something that somebody was killed with,’ said Sophy, in
a low voice.
‘Dear me, if it is, I am sure it is quite wicked to keep it. I shall
be quite afraid to go into her room, and you know I slept there all the
time of the fever.’
‘It did not hurt you,’ said Sophy.
Albinia had been strongly interested by the touching facts, so
untouchingly narrated, and by the characteristic account of the Huguenot
emigration, but it suddenly occurred to her that she was promoting
gossip, and she returned to business. Lucy showed off her attainments
with her usual self-satisfaction. They were what might be expected from
a second-rate old-fashioned young ladies’ school, where nothing was
good but the French pronunciation. She was evidently considered a great
proficient, and her glib mediocrity was even more disheartening than
the ungracious carelessness or dulness--there was no knowing which--that
made her sister figure wretchedly in the examination. However, there was
little time--the door-bell rang at a quarter to twelve, and Mrs. Wolfe
was in the drawing-room.
‘I told you so,’ whispered Lucy, exultingly.
‘This is unbearable,’ cried Albinia. ‘I shall give notice that I am
always engaged in the morning.’
She desired each young lady to work a sum in her absence, and left them
to murmur, if they were so disposed. Perhaps it was Lucy’s speech that
made her inflict the employment; at any rate, her spirit was not as
serene as she could have desired.
Mr. Kendal was quite willing that she should henceforth shut her door
against company in the morning; that is to say, he bowed his head
assentingly. She was begging him to take a walk with her, when, at
another sound of the bell, he made a precipitate retreat into his
study. The visitors were the Belmarche family. The old lady was dark
and withered, small, yet in look and air, with a certain nobility and
grandeur that carried Albinia back in a moment to the days of hoops
and trains, of powder and high-heeled shoes, and made her feel that the
sweeping courtesy had come straight from the days of Marie
Antoinette, and that it was an honour and distinction conferred by a
superior--superior, indeed, in all the dignity of age, suffering, and
constancy.
Albinia blushed, and took her hand with respect very unlike the
patronizing airs of Bayford Bridge towards ‘poor old Madame Belmarche,’
and with downcast eyes, and pretty embarrassment, heard the stately
compliments of the ancien regime.
Miss Belmarche was not such a fine specimen of Sevres porcelain as
her mother. She was a brown, dried, small woman, having lost, or never
possessed, her country’s taste in dress, and with a rusty bonnet over
the tight, frizzly curls of her front, too thin and too scantily robed
to have any waist, and speaking English too well for the piquant grace
of her mother’s speech. Poor lady! born an exile, she had toiled, and
struggled for a whole lifetime to support her mother; but though care
had worn her down, there was still vivacity in her quick little black
eyes, and though her teeth were of a dreadful colour, her laugh was so
full of life and sweetness, that Albinia felt drawn towards her in a
moment.
Silent and demure, plainly dressed in an old dark merino, and a
white-ribboned faded bonnet, sat a little figure almost behind her
grandmother. Her face had the French want of complexion, but the eyes
were of the deepest, most lustrous hue of grey, almost as dark as the
pupils, and with the softness of long dark eyelashes--beautiful eyes,
full of light and expression--and as she moved towards the table, there
was a finish and delicacy about the whole form and movements, that made
her a most pleasing object.
But Albinia could not improve her acquaintance, for in flowed another
party of visitors, and Madame curtsied herself out again, Albinia
volunteering that she would soon come to see her, and being answered,
‘You will do me too much honour.’
Another afternoon devoured by visitors! Every one seemed to have come
except the persons who would have been most welcome, Mr. Dusautoy, and
Winifred’s friends, the Nugents.
When, at four o’clock, she had shaken hands with the last guest, she
gave a hearty yawn, jumped up and shook herself, as she exclaimed,
‘There! There! that is done! I wonder whether your papa would come out
now?’
‘He is in his study,’ said the girls.
Albinia thought of knocking and calling at the door, but somehow it
seemed impossible, and she decided on promenading past his window to
show that she was ready for him. But alas! those evergreens! She could
not see in, and probably he could not see out.
‘Ha!’ cried Lucy, as they pursued their walk into the kitchen garden,
‘here are some asparagus coming up. Grandmamma always has our first
asparagus.’
Albinia was delighted to find such an opening. Out came her knife--they
would cut the heads and take them up at once; but when the tempting
white-stalked, pink-tipped bundle had been made up and put into a
basket, a difficulty arose.
‘I’ll call the boy to take it,’ said Lucy.
‘What, when we are going ourselves?’ said Albinia.
‘Oh! but we can’t.’
‘Why? Do you think we shall break down under the weight?’
‘O no, but people will stare.’
‘Why--what should they stare at?’
‘It looks _so_ to carry a basket--’
Albinia burst into one of her merriest peals of laughing.
‘Not carry a basket! My dear, I have looked _so_ all the days of my
life. Bayford must endure the spectacle, so it may as well begin at
once.’
‘But, dear mamma--’
‘I’m not asking you to carry it. O no, I only hope you don’t think it
too ungenteel to walk with me. But the notion of calling a boy away from
his work, to carry a couple of dozen asparagus when an able-bodied woman
is going that way herself!’
Albinia was so tickled that she could hardly check herself, even when
she saw Lucy looking distressed and hurt, and little laughs would break
out every moment as she beheld the young lady keeping aloof, as if
ashamed of her company, turning towards the steep church steps, willing
at least to hide the dreadful sight from the High Street.
Just as they had entered the narrow alley, they heard a hasty tread, and
almost running over them with his long strides, came Mr. Dusautoy.
He brought himself up short, just in time, and exclaimed, ‘I beg your
pardon--Mrs. Kendal, I believe. Could you be kind enough to give me a
glass of brandy?’
Albinia gave a great start, as well she might.
‘I was going to fetch one,’ quickly proceeded Mr. Dusautoy, ‘but your
house is nearer. A poor man--there--just come home--been on the tramp
for work--quite exhausted--’ and he pointed to one of the cottages.
‘I’ll fetch it at once,’ cried Albinia.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as they crossed the street. ‘This poor fellow has
had nothing all day, has walked from Hadminster--just got home, sank
down quite worn out, and there is nothing in the house but dry bread.
His wife wants something nearly as much as he does.’
In the excitement, Albinia utterly forgot all scruples about
‘Bluebeard’s closet.’ She hurried into the house, and made but one dash,
standing before her astonished husband’s dreamy eyes, exclaiming, ‘Pray
give me the key of the cellaret; there’s a poor man just come home,
fainting with exhaustion, Mr. Dusautoy wants some brandy for him.’
Like a man but half awake, obeying an apparition, Mr. Kendal put his
hand into his pocket and gave her the key. She was instantly opening the
cellaret, seeking among the bottles, and asking questions all the time.
She proposed taking a jug of the kitchen-tea then in operation, and
Mr. Dusautoy caught at the idea, so that poor Lucy beheld the dreadful
spectacle of the vicar bearing a can full of steaming tea, and Mrs.
Kendal a small cup with the ‘spirituous liquor.’ What was the asparagus
to this?
Albinia told her to go on to Mrs. Meadows’, and that she should soon
follow. She intended to have gone the moment that she had carried in
the cup, leaving Mr. Dusautoy in the cottage, but the poor trembling
frightened wife needed woman’s sympathy and soothing, and she waited
to comfort her, and to see the pair more able to enjoy the meeting, in
their tidy, but bare and damp-looking cottage. She promised broth for
the morrow, and took her leave, the vicar coming away at the same time.
‘Thank you,’ he said, warmly, as they came out, and turned to mount the
hill together.
‘May I go and call on them again?’
‘It will be very kind in you. Poor Simkins is a steady, good sort of
fellow, but a clumsy workman, down-hearted, and with poor health, and
things have been untoward with him.’
‘People, who do not prosper in the world are not always the worst,’ said
Albinia.
‘No, indeed, and these are grateful, warm-hearted people that you will
like, if you can get over the poor woman’s lackadaisical manner. But you
are used to all that,’ he added, smiling. ‘I see you know what poor folk
are made of.’
‘I have been living among them nearly all my days,’ said Albinia. ‘I
hope you will give me something to do, I should be quite forlorn without
it;’ and she looked up to his kind, open face, as much at home with him
as if she had known, him for years.
‘Fanny--my wife--shall find work for you,’ he said. ‘You must excuse her
calling on you, she is never off the sofa, but--’ And what a bright look
he gave! as much as to say that his wife _on_ the sofa was better than
any one else _off_. ‘I was hoping to call some of these afternoons,’ he
continued, ‘but I have had little time, and Fanny thought your door was
besieged enough already.’
‘Thank you,’ said Albinia; ‘I own I thought it was your kindness in
leaving me a little breathing time. And would Mrs. Dusautoy be able to
see me if I were to call?’
‘She would be delighted. Suppose you were to come in at once.’
‘I wish I could, but I must go on to Mrs. Meadows’. If I were to come
to-morrow?’
‘Any time--any time,’ he said. ‘She is always at home, and she has
been much better since we came here. We were too much in the town at
Lauriston.’
Mr. Dusautoy, having a year ago come out of the diocese where had
been Albinia’s home, they had many common friends, and plunged into
‘ecclesiastical intelligence,’ with a mutual understanding of the topics
most often under discussion, that made Albinia quite in her element. ‘A
great Newfoundland dog of a man in size, and countenance, and kindness,’
thought she. ‘If his wife be worthy of him, I shall reck little of all
the rest.’
Her tread the gayer for this resumption of old habits, she proceeded
to Mrs. Meadows’, where the sensation created by her poor little basket
justified Lucy’s remonstrance. There were regrets, and assurances
that the girl could have come in a moment, and that she need not have
troubled herself, and her laughing declarations that it was no trouble
were disregarded, except that the old lady said, in gentle excuse to her
daughter, that Mrs. Kendal had always lived in the country, where people
could do as they pleased.
‘I mean to do as I please here,’ said Albinia, laughing; but the speech
was received with silent discomfiture that made her heartily regret it.
She disdained to explain it away; she was beginning to hold Mrs. and
Miss Meadows too cheap to think it worth while.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Meadows, as if yielding up the subject, ‘things may be
different from what they were in my time.’
‘Oh! mamma--Mrs. Kendal--I am sure--’ Albinia let Maria flounder, but
she only found her way out of the speech with ‘Well! and is not it the
most extraordinary!--Mr. Dusautoy--so rude--’
‘I should not wonder if you found me almost as extraordinary as Mr.
Dusautoy,’ said Albinia.
Why would Miss Meadows always nettle her into saying exactly the
wrong thing, so as to alarm and distress the old lady? That want of
comprehension of playfulness was a strangely hard trial. She turned to
Mrs. Meadows and tried to reassure her by saying, ‘You know I have been
always in the clerical line myself, so I naturally take the part of the
parson.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mrs. Meadows. ‘I dare say Mr. Dusautoy is a
very good man, but I wish he would allow his poor delicate wife more
butcher’s meat, and I don’t think it looks well to see the vicarage
without a man-servant.’
Albinia finally made her escape, and while wondering whether she should
ever visit that house without tingling with irritation with herself
and with the inmates, Lucy exclaimed, ‘There, you see I was right.
Grandmamma and Aunt Maria were surprised when I told them that you said
you were an able-bodied woman.’
What would not Albinia have given for Winifred to laugh with her? What
to do now she did not know, so she thought it best not to hear, and to
ask the way to a carpenter’s shop to order some book-shelves.
She was more uncomfortable after she came home, for by the sounds when
Mr. Kendal next emerged from his study, she found that he had locked
himself in, to guard against further intrusion. And when she offered to
return to him the key of the cellaret, he quietly replied that he should
prefer her retaining it,--not a formidable answer in itself, but one
which, coupled with the locking of the door, proved to her that she
might do anything rather than invade his privacy.
Now Maurice’s study was the thoroughfare of the household, the place for
all parish preparations unpresentable in the drawing-room, and Albinia
was taken by surprise. She grew hot and cold. Had she done anything
wrong? Could he care for her if he could lock her out?
‘I will not be morbid, I will not be absurd,’ said she to herself,
though the tears stood in her eyes. ‘Some men do not like to be rushed
in upon! It may be only habit. It may have been needful here. It is base
to take petty offences, and set up doubts.’
And Mr. Kendal’s tender manner when they were again together, his gentle
way of addressing her, and a sort of shy caress, proved that he was
far from all thought of displeasure; nay, he might be repenting of his
momentary annoyance, though he said nothing.
Albinia went to inquire after the sick man at her first leisure moment,
and while talking kindly to the wife, and hearing her troubles, was
surprised at the forlorn rickety state of the building, the broken
pavement, damp walls, and door that would not shut, because the frame
had sunk out of the perpendicular.
‘Can’t you ask your landlord to do something to the house?’
‘It is of no use, ma’am, Mr. Pettilove never will do nothing. Perhaps if
you would be kind enough to say a word to him, ma’am--’
‘Mr. Pettilove, the lawyer? I’ll try if Mr. Kendal can say anything to
him. It really is a shame to leave a house in this condition.’
Thanks were so profuse, that she feared that she was supposed to possess
some power of amelioration. The poor woman even insisted on conducting
her up a break-neck staircase to see the broken ceiling, whence water
often streamed in plentifully from the roof.
Her mind full of designs against the cruel landlord, she speeded up
the hill, exhilarated by each step she took into the fresh air, to the
garden-gate, which she was just unhasping when the hearty voice of the
Vicar was heard behind her. ‘Mrs. Kendal! I told Fanny you would come.’
Instead of taking her to the front door he conducted her across a
sloping lawn towards a French window open to the bright afternoon
sunshine.
‘Here she is, here is Mrs. Kendal!’ he said, sending his voice before
him, as they came in sight of the pretty little drawing-room, where
through the gay chintz curtains, she saw the clear fire shining upon
half-a-dozen school girls, ranged opposite to a couch. ‘Ah!’ as he
perceived them, ‘shall I take her for a turn in the garden while you
finish your lesson?’
‘One moment, if you please. I did not know it was so late,’ and a face
as bright as all the rest was turned towards the window.
‘Ah! give her her scholars, and she never knows how time passes,’ said
Mr. Dusautoy. ‘But step this way, and I’ll show you the best view in
Bayford.’ He took her up a step or two, to a little turfed mound, where
there was a rustic seat commanding the whole exquisite view of river,
vale, and woodland, with the church tower rising in the foreground. The
wind blew pleasantly, chasing the shadows of the clouds across the open
space. Albinia was delighted to feel it fan her brow, and her eager
exclamations contented Mr. Dusautoy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was all Fanny’s
notion. She planned it all last summer when I took her round the garden.
It is wonderful what an eye she has! I only hope when the dry weather
comes, that I shall be able to get her up there to enjoy it.’
On coming down they found that Mrs. Dusautoy had dismissed her class,
and come out to a low, long-backed sloping garden-seat at the window.
She was very little and slight, a mere doll in proportion to her great
husband, who could lift her as easily and tenderly as a baby, paying her
a sort of reverential deference and fond admiration that rendered them a
beautiful sight, in such full, redoubled measure was his fondness repaid
by the little, clever, fairy-looking woman, with her playful manner,
high spirits, keen wit, and the active habits that even confirmed
invalidism could not destroy. She had small deadly white hands, a fair
complexion, that varied more than was good for her, pretty, though
rather sharp and irregular features, and hazel eyes dancing with
merriment, and face and figure at some years above thirty, would have
suited a girl of twenty. To see Mr. Dusautoy bringing her footstools,
shawls, and cushions, and to remember the accusation of starvation, was
almost irresistibly ludicrous.
‘Now, John, you had better have been giving Mrs. Kendal a chair all this
time.’
‘Mrs. Kendal will excuse,’ said Mr. Dusautoy, as he brought her a seat.
‘Mrs. Kendal has excused,’ said Mrs. Dusautoy, bursting into a merry
fit of laughter. ‘Oh, I never heard anything more charming than your
introduction! I beg your pardon, but I laughed last evening till I was
worn out, and waked in the night laughing again.’
It was exhilarating to find that any one laughed at Bayford, and Albinia
partook of the mirth with all her heart. ‘Never was an address more
gratifying to me!’ she said.
‘It was like him! so unlike Bayford! So bold a venture!’ continued Mrs.
Dusautoy amid peals of laughter.
‘What is there to laugh at?’ said Mr. Dusautoy, putting on a look
between merriment and simplicity. ‘What else could I have done? I should
have done the same whoever I had met.’
‘Ah! now he is afraid of your taking it as too great a compliment! To
do him justice I believe he would, but the question is, what answer he
would have had.’
‘Nobody could have refused--’ began Albinia.
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Dusautoy. ‘Little you know Bayford.
‘Fanny! Fanny! this is too bad. Madame Belmarche--’
‘Would have had nothing but eau sucre! No, John, decidedly you and
Simkins fell upon your legs, and you had better take credit for your
“admirable sagacity.”’.
‘I like the people,’ said Albinia, ‘but they never can be well while
they live in such a shocking place. It is quite a disgrace to Bayford.’
‘It is in a sad state,’ said Mr. Dusautoy.
‘I know I should like to set my brother upon that Mr. Pettilove, who
they say will do nothing,’ exclaimed Albinia.
The Vicar was going to have said something, but a look from his wife
checked him. Albinia was sorry for it, as she detected a look of
suppressed amusement on Mrs. Dusautoy’s face. ‘I mean to ask Mr. Kendal
what can be done,’ she said; ‘and in the meantime, to descend from what
we can’t do to what we can. Mr. Dusautoy told me to come to you for
orders.’
‘And I told Mr. Dusautoy that I should give you none.’
‘Oh! that is hard.’
‘If you could have heard him! He thought he _had_ got a working lady at
last, and he would have had no mercy upon you. One would have imagined
that Mr. Kendal had brought you here for his sole behoof!’
‘Then I shall look to you, Mr. Dusautoy.’
‘No, I believe she is quite right,’ he said. ‘She says you ought to
undertake nothing till you have had time to see what leisure you have to
give us.’
‘Nay, I have been used to think the parish my business, home my
leisure.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Dusautoy, ‘but then you were the womankind of the
clergy, now you are a laywoman.’
‘I think you have work at home,’ said the Vicar.
‘Work, but not work _enough!_’ cried Albinia. ‘The girls will help me;
only tell me what I may do.’
‘I say, “what you can,”’ said Mrs. Dusautoy. ‘You see before you a
single-handed man. Only two of the ladies here can be called coadjutors,
one being poor little Genevieve Durant, the other the bookseller’s
daughter, Clarissa Richardson, who made all the rest fly off. All the
others do what good they mean to do according to their own sweet will,
free and independent women, and we can’t have any district system, so I
think you can only do what just comes to hand.’
Most heartily did Albinia undertake all that Mrs. Dusautoy would let her
husband assign to her.
‘Yes, John is a strong temptation,’ said the bright little invalid, ‘but
you must let Mrs. Kendal find out in a month’s time whether she has work
enough.’
‘I could think my wise brother Maurice had been cautioning you,’ said
Albinia, taking leave as of an old friend, for indeed she felt more
at home with Mrs. Dusautoy than with any acquaintance she had made in
Bayford.
Albinia told her husband of the state of the cottages, and railed at Mr.
Pettilove much to her own satisfaction. Mr. Kendal answered, ‘He would
see about it,’ an answer of which Albinia had yet to learn the import.