THE NEW ESTATE
Mary took the news of her great promotion in an unthankful spirit.
"Lady Anne is very kind," she said tearfully; "but I don't want to stay
with her. I couldn't bear to live anywhere but in Wistaria Terrace. It
is absurd that you should say you have given your consent, papa. How
could you possibly have consented when the house could not get on
without me? You know it could not. Why, even for a day things would be
all topsy-turvy without me."
"And so you have not gone to school," the father answered, with an
accent of self-reproach. "You have been weighed down with
responsibilities and cares that you ought to have been free of for years
to come. You have even been stunted in your growth, as Lady Anne said.
It is time things were altered. I don't know how I was so blind. We
ought to be grateful to the accident that has opened a door to us."
When he had gone, Lady Anne came and comforted Mary. There was a deal of
kindness in the old lady's heart.
"You shall help them," she said. "Dear me, how much help you will be
able to give them! Imagine beginning with a salary at fifteen! You are
to leave things to me, Mary. I have sent help to your stepmother--an
excellent woman, Mrs. Devine, whom I have known for many years. She is
very capable. I will tell her that she must remain with your stepmother.
It is amazing what one really capable woman can do. And afterwards there
will be the salary."
The salary, and perhaps a quick, warm feeling for Lady Anne which sprang
up suddenly in Mary's heart, settled the question. After all, as Lady
Anne said, despite her greatness she was very lonely. She had lost her
son and her grandson, and she could not endure her nephew or his family.
She had only a few old cronies. As a matter of fact, although she had
taken a fancy to Mary Gray and captured the child's susceptible heart,
she was not a particularly amiable or lovable old lady to the rest of
the world. She was too keen-sighted and sharp-tongued to be popular.
Mary slept that night in such a room as she had never dreamt of. There
was a little bed in the corner of it with a flowing veil of white,
lace-trimmed muslin like a baby's cot. There was white muslin tied with
blue ribbons at the window, and the dressing-table was as gaily and
innocently adorned. There was a work-box on a little table, a
writing-desk on another; a shelf of books hung on the wall. The room had
really been made ready for a dear young cousin of Lady Anne's, who had
not lived to enjoy it. If Mary had only known, she owed something of
Lady Anne's interest to the fact that her eyes were grey, like Viola's,
her cheek transparent like Viola's.
Apart from the discomfort of the broken arm, as she lay in the soft,
downy little bed, she was ill at ease, wondering how they were getting
on without her at Wistaria Terrace. Her breast had an ache for the baby
who was used to lie warm against it. Her good arm felt strange and
lonely for the familiar little body. She kept putting it out in a panic
during her sleep because she missed the baby.
In the morning Simmons, Lady Anne's maid, came to help her dress. It was
very difficult, Mary found, to do things for one's self with a broken
arm. Her head ached because of the disturbed sleep and the pain of the
broken limb. Simmons had come to her in a somewhat hostile frame of
mind. She did not hold with picking up gutter-children from no one knew
where and setting people as were respectable to wait upon them. But at
heart she was a good-natured woman, and her indignation disappeared
before the unchildish pain and weariness of Mary's face.
"There," she said, "I wouldn't be fretting, if I were you. Lor' bless
you, there's fine treats in store for you. Her ladyship sent only last
night for a roll of grey cashmere. I'm to fit you after your breakfast
and make it up as quick as I can. Then you'll be fit to go out with her
ladyship in the carriage and get your other things."
It was the last day of the ugly linsey. Simmons got through her task
with great quickness. She was a woman of taste, else she had not been
Lady Anne's maid. Lady Anne was more particular about her garments than
most young women. And, having once made up her mind to like Mary,
Simmons took an interest in her task.
"You are so kind, Mrs. Simmons," Mary said gratefully, feeling the
gentleness and dexterity with which the woman tried on her new garments
without once jarring the broken arm.
"I'm kind enough to those who take me the proper way," said Simmons,
greatly pleased with Mary's prefix of Mrs., which was brevet rank, since
Simmons had never married. It would have made a great difference to
Mary's comfort at this time if she had been sufficiently ill-advised to
call Simmons without a prefix, as Lady Anne did.
Dr. Carruthers had called to see Mary the morning after the accident. He
had interviewed his patient in the morning-room, and was passing out
through the hall when Lady Anne's voice over the banisters summoned him
to her presence.
"You can give me a little while, Dr. Carruthers?" she said. "I shall not
be interfering with your work?"
"I am quite free"--a little colour came into his cheeks. "The friend
whose work I was doing at the House of Mercy returned last night.
Yesterday was my last day."
"Ah! and yesterday brought you an unexpected patient. How do you find
her?"
"She has less physique than she ought to have."
"Yes, she has been underfed and overworked. I am going to alter all
that. I have taken her into my house as my little companion."
Dr. Carruthers stared in spite of himself.
"You think it very odd of me? Well, I _am_ odd, and I can afford to do
what pleases me. Mary Gray is going to live here. You should know her
father. A quite remarkable man, I consider him. Now, about yourself. I
have heard of you, Dr. Carruthers. I have heard that you are a very
clever young man and devoted to your work, that you have all the
knowledge of the schools at your fingertips, but very little experience,
and no practice to speak of."
"Excuse me, Lady Anne. I was three years house surgeon at the Good
Samaritan; and I have done a great deal of work since I have been here.
I will confess that my patients have been of a poor class."
"Who have not paid you a penny. I don't know whether you do it for
philanthropy or to keep your hand in----"
"A little of both," the young man said with a faint smile.
"But it is a good thing to do," the old lady went on, without noticing
his interpellation. "You're spoken well of by the poor, if the rich have
not heard anything about you. I know you're living beyond your means in
a big house, hoping that a paying practice will come to you. My dear
man, it never will, so long as people think you are in need of it. They
like Dr. Pownall at their doors with his carriage and pair, even if he
can only give them five minutes. Pownall forgot himself with me. I
remember his father--a very decent, respectable man who used to grow
cabbages. That's nothing against Pownall--creditable to him, I should
say. Still, he hadn't time to listen to my symptoms, and he was rude. 'A
woman of your age,' he said. I should like to know who told Dr. Pownall
my age. A lady has no age. 'It's time you retired,' I said to him. 'I
don't think of it,' said he; 'not for ten years yet. My patients won't
hear of it.' 'You're greedy,' said I; 'if you weren't your patients
might go to Hong Kong.' He thought it was a joke--hadn't time to find
out whether I was serious or not. I made him, Dr. Carruthers. It's time
for him to retire now. I shall mention to all my friends that you are my
body-physician."
She spoke like one of the Royal Family. But Dr. Carruthers had no
inclination to laugh. His eyes were dim as he murmured his
acknowledgments. It was fame, it was fortune, in those parts to be
approved by Lady Anne Hamilton. Hitherto she had been understood to
swear by Dr. Pownall.
"It means a deal to us, Lady Anne," he said, stumbling over his words.
"We had made up our minds to give up the big house and look for a slum
practice. The children--I have two living--are not very strong, any more
than Mildred. We put all we could into the venture of taking the house.
It was our bid for fortune."
"I wouldn't approve of it in a general way," said Lady Anne. "Still, it
has turned out well. Will your wife be at home to-morrow afternoon? I
should like to call upon her."
"She will be delighted."
Dr. Carruthers was regaining his self-control. He knew that the presence
of Lady Anne's barouche at his door for an hour in the afternoon would
be more potent in opening doors to him than if he had made the most
brilliant cure on record.
Mary was with Lady Anne next day when she went to call on Mrs.
Carruthers. It was characteristic of Lady Anne that she thought to tell
Jennings, the coachman, to drive up and down in front of the house and
round the sides, for Dr. Carruthers' house was a corner one with a
frontage to three sides. It was a hot summer day, and Jennings wondered
disrespectfully what bee the old lady had got in her bonnet. Such a
jangling of harness, such a flashing of polished surfaces! Every window
that commanded the three sides of Dr. Carruthers' house had an eye at
the pane. The tidings flew from one to another that Lady Anne Hamilton
was visiting Mrs. Carruthers, and was making a very long call.
Mildred was still on her sofa. She would have risen when Lady Anne came
in, but the old lady prevented her. Lady Anne could be royally kind when
it pleased her.
She drew a chair by the sofa and sat down. Mary, who had come in with
her, listened in some wonder to Lady Anne's sympathetic questions about
the children. That was something in which Mary was interested, in which
Mary had knowledge and experience; but though she listened she would not
have spoken a word for worlds.
As she sat there on the edge of one of Mrs. Carruthers' chairs--the
drawing-room furniture was of the sparsest; a chair or small table
dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor--she could see
herself in a pier-glass at the other end of the room. It was a quite
unfamiliar presentment she saw. This Mary was dressed in soft dove-grey.
She had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. She had
a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. Her good hand was
gloved in delicate grey kid. There was something quaint about her
aspect; for that artist, Simmons, had discovered that Mary, for all her
fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled on
top of her head. When she presented Mary so to Lady Anne the old lady
was fain to acknowledge that Simmons was right. There was a quaint and
delightful stateliness about Mary which made Lady Anne say to herself
once more that the child had gentle blood in her.
"Dear me," Mildred Carruthers thought, as her eyes wandered again and
again to the elegant little figure, "Kit said nothing of this. I
expected to find a rather interesting child of the humbler classes. I
remember particularly that he said she looked as though she had had a
hard time."
Mary's changed aspect had one unforeseen result. When she presented
herself at Wistaria Terrace the baby did not know her. Her stepmother
shed a few tears, which were half-gratification. The elder children were
already a bit shy of her, the baby's immediate predecessor even
murmuring of her as "the yady," and surveying her from afar, finger in
mouth. But the baby could in no way be brought to recognise her, and
only shouted lustily when she tried to force herself upon his
recognition.
"I shall come to-morrow in my old frock," Mary said, bitterly hurt by
this lack of perception on the baby's part. "I hate these hideous
things; so I do. To-morrow he will come to his Mary, so he will."
But when the morrow came, and she sought for her old work-a-day garments
in that pretty white and blue wardrobe where she had hung them when she
had discarded them for the grey frock and hat, they were not to be
found. There were numbers of things such as Mary had never dreamed of.
Lady Anne had provided her with an outfit, simple according to her
thoughts, but splendid in Mary's eyes. A white cashmere dressing-gown,
trimmed with lace, hung on the peg where the grey linsey had been.
Mary flew to Simmons to know where her old frock had gone to. The good
woman, who by this time had taken Mary under her wing to uphold her
against the rest of the household if it were inclined to resent the new
inmate, looked at her reprovingly.
"You never wanted that old frock, and you her ladyship's companion? No,
Miss Mary--for so I shall call you, as by her ladyship's orders, let
some people say what they like--that frock you never will see, for gone
it has to a poor child that'll maybe find it a comfort when winter
comes. I wonder at you for thinking on it, so I do, seeing as how I've
taken so much trouble with your clothes."
Mary turned away with a desolate feeling. The grey linsey might have
been like the feathers of the enchanted bird that became a woman for the
love of a mortal, the feathers which, if she wore them again, had the
power of transporting her back to her kindred and her old estate. The
old life was indeed closed to Mary with the disappearance of the grey
linsey; and it was long before she lost the feeling that if she could
only have kept her old garments she need not have been so separated from
the old life.