Читать книгу Mignonette - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 19

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Francis Shermandine came to Stone Hall with the intention of asking Barbara Lawne to be his wife. He had thought over this prospect frequently and discussed it often with Sir Timothy; it was so familiar to him that it seemed to him as if it had for very long been part of his designs, though he had known Barbara only for a few weeks.

His uncle had keenly approved the quiet lady with her sensitive intelligence that was not in the least aggressive but had, rather, a feminine timidity. She had many other advantages, a family not altogether obscure, a fortune sufficient to replenish the Boys estates for any charges she might make on them. This pleased Sir Timothy, who liked to be careful in some things that he might be extravagant in others.

However, she was conveniently isolated; she had no relations to be tiresome or difficult. Sir Timothy would have the marriage of his heir entirely his own way, as he had had everything his own way, as far as was humanly possible, all his life.

Barbara Lawne was not only a woman who could be guided into the pattern desirable for the mistress of the Boys fortune, but one who would be grateful to the trainer. The two men had gone far ahead in their discussions. Sir Timothy had suggested that the first son should be named Boys, and the first daughter Geraldine, after his late wife.

Apart from such calculations, he liked Barbara. He valued all that was uncommon about her. She was really different from all the young women whom he had considered as possible wives for Francis. Her almost cloistered existence, her unconscious self-sacrifice to her parents, her life in Portsmouth, neither of the city nor the country, as Sir Timothy knew the city and the country, gave her a rare quality that this sensitive man, himself so enclosed from the ugly and the commonplace, greatly prized.

He had been delighted with her letters to Francis, so impersonal that he could read them without question. He dwelt gratefully on the prospect of showing her his properties, of planning a suite of rooms, a garden for her special delight.

Francis shared all these sentiments and added to them a warm tenderness. He knew himself to be shy and fastidious, and he considered that he had been extremely fortunate in meeting Barbara Lawne, by one of those chances that had been given the name of destiny or fate.

When Sir Timothy had first seen her at her father's table, he had hardly noticed her—she had been so effaced and stayed so short a time and she had been most unbecomingly dressed. He often reflected on that. Her mourning was hideous, but the dull, heavy black did set off her pure coloring, and concealed, Sir Timothy suspected, her indifferent taste. In that matter, also, she could be trained.

Francis Shermandine, arriving at Stone Hall, was also disturbed by this question of taste.

The stern house, in a pretentious Palladian style, the overcrowded garden, the wide sweep of the gravel, the heavy portico, depressed him. His mental picture of Barbara against the background of exotic Mirabile, or the trim verandah of the Sandyrock Hotel, was blurred.

The interior cast a further gloom over his spirits. He was accustomed to avoiding such places. The rooms were overfurnished and everything was large and dark, from the gloomy pictures and prints in massive frames, to the sideboards like sarcophagi, and the marble vases like funeral urns. The radiant summer evening was shut out by thick curtains of dun-colored damask, and even the roses, stiffly arranged in cut glasses set where they could not catch the light, looked artificial.

How could she write those letters in this place? he thought, then told himself that this room was her father's fault. Probably the preoccupied man, with an invalid wife, had given upholsterers the order to furnish the home and never questioned anything but the accounts. Some of the pieces, good in themselves, had probably been purchased by the grandfather, the builder of this pompous, ugly house.

Barbara entered and her black dress blended sadly with the gloom of the surroundings, but the gentle, peering eyes, the sweet expression, warmed Francis. He took her hands gratefully, as if he wanted to snatch her away from Stone Hall.

"I am half an hour before my time," he began, and she interrupted with a nervous account of her little dinner, given expressly for him, "Dr. Mildmay and his wife, Mr. Latimer, a business friend of her father's—"

"I wanted to see you alone," said Francis, smiling. "We have come to know each other pretty well from our letters. I have brought you some small portfolios of drawings."

"You know that I value that." Her sincerity was touching, she flushed. "Perhaps I shall find the courage to show you mine, but, please, one request."

"Anything you like." He thought she was about to say how she detested the dismal house she had inherited, instead she brought up a subject that he had forgotten.

"I have my French friend staying here—it is very dull for her, I'm afraid I asked her on an impulse, without thinking of that."

"Of course, I remember."

"You will think her frivolous—but really she is accomplished, only not intellectual."

Francis understood that Barbara was asking him to be kind to an empty-headed girl, and smiled pleasantly. She thought how attractive was his narrow, authoritative, aquiline face with the brilliant hazel eyes, and he thought, She is the dearest creature. I shall tell her at once that I want her for my wife.

At that moment Mignonette entered the room. She paused inside the door as they fell a step farther apart.

"This is Mademoiselle Falconet," said Barbara smiling.

"I am called Mignonette." The girl advanced. "I did not know that anyone was here yet."

She made a civil conversation to cover the discomfiture of the other two interrupted at an emotional moment. Barbara had guessed what Francis was going to ask her. She felt deeply moved, but in no way resentful of Mignonette's intrusion, she was even pleased that her excited happiness was still to come, a treasure in reserve. Francis made perfunctory replies to the French girl, who, like a bird trying to escape from a cage, had gone to the window and kept glancing out as she spoke, so that she seemed to dissociate herself from the ugly room.

Barbara had never seen her look like this before; her hair was plastered in close curls, as if it had been molded, and surrounded by a tight coronal of amber-colored velvet buds, round the base of her throat was a necklace of square yellow topaz, and her dress simple green, cut heart shape over her bosom, with a tucker of Brussels lace.

"Shall I see if the table is quite ready—the flowers, the napkins?" Aimée asked, and, without waiting for an answer, was gone as quickly and gracefully as she had come.

"How old is she?" asked Francis.

"Eighteen." Barbara flushed, recalling that she had never asked the day of Aimée's birth. "She looks older."

"The dress is older, yes, for one so young."

Barbara sensed his disapproval, she herself thought she would not have known how to express her objections, thought that Aimée's appearance was not correct.

"What is her name?"

"Aimée. I wanted to call her Amy, in the English way, but she will have Mignonette, which is rather silly."

"But it suits her perfectly—the little Eastern reseda, with green flowers."

"Oh, is it?"

"Yes, Egyptian, the French have a sense for this kind of thing—'little darling.'"

"I am glad you don't dislike her," said Barbara, pleased.

Francis gave her an alert glance.

"Why should anyone dislike Mademoiselle Falconet?"

"Indeed, I don't know. I thought you might find her frivolous, people seem to think her odd."

"No doubt. Why is she here?"

Barbara put forth a plain tale too plainly. Francis, who had never before shown the slightest interest in her friend, now seemed to consider the matter closely.

The girl was without relations, friends, introductions; she was to be married in the autumn?

"Yes, yes, and yes," smiled Barbara.

"I cannot imagine why she wanted to come to Portsmouth."

Barbara did not doubt that this seemed strange. She wished that the secret was entirely her own so that she could confide it to Francis. She was grateful that he had taken serious notice of Aimée, and told him so warmly.

"She is lovely," he replied abruptly.

The other guests arrived and the commonplace of the evening absorbed Barbara, but not entirely. Deep in her mind was the new realization of her half sister as a lovely woman. Francis had said so, and she respected his fastidious taste. Several times she glanced at Aimée, who had behaved charmingly during the long, dull dinner, but who looked, behind that snowy damask, those cut-glass vases of pink roses, that silver-gilt epergne loaded with hothouse fruit, decidedly out of place, a foreigner, a woman dressed differently from the other women, too much at ease for a young girl, for her dubious position. For always, even in the midst of her generous impulses toward Aimée, Barbara had had an unacknowledged feeling, deep bred from her Puritan ancestry and upbringing, that Aimée ought to be ashamed of her origin. And again with a light shock of surprise there echoed in her mind—Aimée is lovely—Francis thinks she is lovely. Barbara peered across the table to where Aimée sat beside the doctor, and wondered wherein this beauty consisted. It seemed to her that perhaps she had never understood about beauty.

It was a heavy evening, but Barbara did not care or even notice. She was serenely confident in the future. She felt sure, before the evening was out, that Francis would make another appointment to see her, and then all their affairs would be settled. Then, too, perhaps, as he admired Aimée, he might in some way help her by introducing her to some of the many young people he must know. But she dismissed these kind reflections. It would be much better for Aimée, who was so different from everyone Barbara knew, to return to Paris and her marriage.