THE DARK LADY--TROUBLE IMPENDING--BEAUTIFUL, GOLDEN MAMMA
So two years passed away. Nurse Bundle was still with me. With her I
"did lessons" after a fashion. I learned to read, I had many of the
Psalms and a good deal of poetry--sacred and secular--by heart. In an
old-fashioned, but slow and thorough manner, I acquired the first
outlines of geography, arithmetic, etc., and what Mrs. Bundle taught
me I repeated to Rubens. But I don't think he ever learned the
"capital towns of Europe," though we studied them together under the
same oak tree.
We had a happy two years of it together under the Bundle dynasty, and
then trouble came.
I was never fond of demonstrative affection from strangers. The ladies
who lavish kisses and flattery upon one's youthful head after eating
papa's good dinner--keeping a sharp protective eye on their own silk
dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl
into one eye with a kid-gloved finger--I held in unfeigned abhorrence.
But over and above my natural instinct against the unloving fondling
of drawing-room visitors, I had a special and peculiar antipathy to
Miss Eliza Burton.
At first, I think I rather admired her. Her rolling eyes, the black
hair plastered low upon her forehead,--the colour high, but never
changeable or delicate--the amplitude and rustle of her skirts, the
impressiveness of her manner, her very positive matureness, were just
what the crude taste of childhood is apt to be fascinated by. She was
the sister of my father's man of business; and she and her brother
were visiting at my home. She really looked well in the morning,
"toned down" by a fresh, summer muslin, and all womanly anxiety to
relieve my father of the trouble of making the tea for breakfast.
"Dear Mr. Dacre, _do_ let me relieve you of that task," she cried, her
ribbons fluttering over the sugar-basin. "I never like to see a
gentleman sacrificing himself for his guests at breakfast. You have
enough to do at dinner, carving large joints, and jointing those
terrible birds. At breakfast a gentleman should have no trouble but
the cracking of his own egg and the reading of his own newspaper. Now
do let me!"
Miss Burton's long fingers were almost on the tea-caddy; but at that
moment my father quietly opened it, and began to measure out the tea.
"I never trouble my lady visitors with this," he said, quietly. "I am
only too well accustomed to it."
Child as I was, I felt well satisfied that my father would let no one
fill my mother's place. For so it was, and all Miss Burton's efforts
failed to put her, even for a moment, at the head of his table.
I do not quite know how or when it was that I began to realize that
such was her effort. I remember once hearing a scrap of conversation
between our most respectable and respectful butler and the
housekeeper--"behind the scenes"--as the former worthy came from the
breakfast-room.
"And how's the new missis this morning, Mr. Smith?" asked the
housekeeper, with a bitterness not softened by the prospect of
possible dethronement.
"Another try for the tea-tray, ma'am," replied Smith, "but it's no
go."
"A brazen, black-haired old maid!" cried the housekeeper. "To think of
her taking the place of that sweet angel, Mrs. Dacre (and she barely
two years in her grave), and pretending to act a mother's part by the
poor boy and all. I've no patience!"
On one excuse or another, the Burtons contrived to extend their visit;
and the prospect of a marriage between my father and Miss Burton was
now discussed too openly behind his back for me to fail to hear it.
Then Nurse Bundle on this subject hardly exercised her usual
discretion in withholding me from servants' gossip, and servants'
gossip from me. Her own indignation was strongly aroused, and I had no
difficulty in connecting her tearful embraces, and her allusions to my
dead mother, with the misfortune we all believed to be impending.
[Illustration: The lank lawyer wagged my hand of a morning, and said,
"And how is Miss Eliza's little beau?"]
At first I had admired Miss Burton's bouncing looks. Then my head had
been turned to some extent by her flattery, and by the establishment
of that most objectionable of domestic jokes, the parody of love
affairs in connection with children. Miss Burton called me her little
sweetheart, and sent me messages, and vowed that I was quite a little
man of the world, and then was sure that I was a desperate flirt. The
lank lawyer wagged my hand of a morning, and said, "And how is
Miss Eliza's little beau?" And I laughed, and looked important,
and talked rather louder, and escaped as often as I could from the
nursery, and endeavoured to act up to the character assigned me with
about as much grace as Æsop's donkey trying to dance. I must have
become a perfect nuisance to any sensible person at this period, and
indeed my father had an interview with Nurse Bundle on the subject.
"Master Reginald seems to me to be more troublesome than he used to
be, nurse," said my father.
"Indeed you say true, sir," said Mrs. Bundle, only too glad to reply;
"but it's the drawing-room and not the nursery as does it. Miss Burton
is always a begging for him to be allowed to stay up at nights and to
lunch in the dining-room, and to come down of a morning, and to have a
half-holiday in an afternoon; and, saving your better knowledge, sir,
it's a bad thing to break into the regular ways of children. It ain't
for their happiness, nor for any one else's."
"You are perfectly right, perfectly right," said my father, "and it
shall not occur again. Ah! my poor boy," he added in an irrepressible
outburst, "you suffer for lack of a mother's care. I do what I can,
but a man cannot supply a woman's place to a child."
Mrs. Bundle's feelings at this soliloquy may be imagined. "You might
have knocked me down with a feather, sir," she assured the butler
(unlikely as it seemed!) in describing the scene afterwards. She found
strength, however, to reply to my father's remark.
"Indeed, sir, a mother's place never can be filled to a child by no
one whatever. Least of all such a mother as he had in your dear lady.
But he's a boy, sir, and not a girl, and in all reason a father is
what he'll chiefly look to in a year or two. And for the meanwhile,
sir, I ask you, could Master Reginald look better or behave better
than he did afore the company come? It's only natural as smart ladies
who knows nothing whatever of children, and how they should be brought
up, and what's for their good, should think it a kindness to spoil
them. Any one may see the lady has no notion of children, and would be
the ruin of Master Reginald if she had much to do with him; but when
the company's gone, sir, and he's left quiet with his papa, you'll
find him as good as any young gentleman needs to be, if you'll excuse
my freedom in speaking, sir."
Whatever my father thought of Mrs. Bundle's freedom of speech, he only
said,
"Master Reginald will be quite under your orders for the future,
Nurse," and so dismissed her.
And Mrs. Bundle having "said her say," withdrew to say it over again
in confidence to the housekeeper.
As for me, if my vanity was stronger than my good taste for a while,
the quickness of childish instinct soon convinced me that Miss Burton
had no real affection for me. Then I was puzzled by her spasmodic
attentions when my father was in the room, and her rough repulses when
I "bothered" her at less appropriate moments. I got tired of her, too,
of the sound of her voice, of her black hair and unchanging red
cheeks. And from the day that I caught her beating Rubens for lying on
the edge of her dress, I lived in terror of her. Those rolling black
eyes had not a pleasant look when the lady was out of temper. And was
she really to be the new mistress of the house? To take the place of
my fair, gentle, beautiful mother? That wave of household gossip which
for ever surges behind the master's back was always breaking over me
now, in expressions of pity for the motherless child of "the dear lady
dead and gone."
"I don't like black hair," I announced one day at luncheon; "I like
beautiful, shining, golden hair, like poor mamma's."
"Don't talk nonsense, Reginald," said my father, angrily, and shortly
afterwards I was dismissed to the nursery.
If I had only had my childish memory to trust to, I do not think that
I could have kept so clear a remembrance of my mother as I had. But in
my father's dressing-room there hung a water-colour sketch of his
young wife, with me--her first baby--on her lap. It was a very happy
portrait. The little one was nestled in her arms, and she herself was
just looking up with a bright smile of happiness and pride. That look
came full at the spectator, and perhaps it was because it was so very
lifelike that I had (ever since I could remember) indulged a curious
freak of childish sentiment by nodding to the picture and saying,
"Good-morning, mamma," whenever I came into the room. Such little
superstitions become part of one's life, and I freely confess that I
salute that portrait still! I remember, too, that as time went on I
lost sight of the fact that it was I who lay on my mother's lap, and
always regarded the two as Mamma and Sister Alice--that ever-baby
sister whom I had once kissed, and no more. I generally saw them at
least once a day, for it was my privilege to play in my father's
dressing-room during part of his toilet, and we had a stereotyped
joke between us in reference to his shaving, which always ended in my
receiving a piece of the creamy lather on the tip of my nose.
But it was one evening when the shadow hanging over the household was
deepest upon me, that I slipped unobserved out of the drawing-room
where Miss Burton was "performing" on my mother's piano, and crept
slowly and sadly upstairs. I went slowly, partly out of my heavy
grief, and partly because I carried Rubens in my arms. Had not the
lawyer kicked him because he lay upon the pedal? I was resolved that
after such an insult he should not so much as have the trouble of
walking upstairs. So I carried him, and as I went I condoled with him.
"Did the nasty man kick him? My poor Ru, my darling, dear Ru! The
pedal is yours, and not his, and the whole house is yours, and not his
nor Miss Burton's; and oh, I wish they would go!"
As I whined, Rubens whined; as I kissed him he licked me, and the
result was unfavourable to balance, and I was obliged to sit down on a
step. And as I sat I wept, and as I wept that overpowering mother-need
came over me, which drives even the little ragamuffin of the gutter to
carry his complaints to "mother" for comfort and redress. And I took
up Rubens in my arms again, sobbing, and saying, "I shall go to
Mamma!" and so weeping and in the darkness we crept into the
dressing-room.
I could see nothing, but I knew well where "Mamma" was, and standing
under the picture, I sobbed out my incoherent complaint.
"Good-evening, Mamma! Good-evening, Sister Alice! Please, Mamma, it's
me and Rubens." (Sobs on my part, and frantic attempts by Rubens to
lick every inch of my face at once.) "And please, Mamma, we're very
miser-r-r-r-rable. And oh! please, Mamma, don't let papa marry Miss
Burton. Please, please don't, dear, beautiful, golden Mamma! And oh!
how we wish you could come back! Rubens and I."
My voice died away with a wail which was dismally echoed by Rubens.
Then, suddenly, in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and
I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and
soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement, and the
boundless faith of childhood, I thought my mother had heard me, and
come back.
But it was only Nurse Bundle. She had been putting away some clothes
in my father's bedroom, and had been drawn to the dressing-room by
hearing my voice.
I think this scene decided her to take some active steps. I feel
convinced that in some way it was through her influence that a letter
of invitation was despatched the following day to Aunt Maria.