Читать книгу A Perfect Fool - Florence Warden - Страница 3

Table of Contents

“My dear, the girl’s a perfect fool. What her poor mother is going to do with her I don’t know. As for teaching, I don’t believe she knows anything herself. And as for getting married, why, I’m perfectly certain she doesn’t know beef from mutton, and couldn’t tell the difference between a cabbage and a cauliflower. I should be very sorry for the man who took Chris Abercarne for a wife!”

So spoke one of Chris Abercarne’s mother’s friends to another old lady, who was of exactly the same way of thinking, as a pretty girl, with dark-brown hair and merry dark blue eyes, passed the window of a dull house in a dull road in that part of Hammersmith which calls itself West Kensington.

Indeed, matters had come to a serious point with Chris and her mother. The widow of an officer in the army, Mrs. Abercarne, having only the one child, had got on very comfortably for some years, until one of those periodical upheavals of “things in the city” had caused a sudden diminution of her small income, and brought the two ladies face to face with actual instead of conventional, poverty. Poor Mrs. Abercarne felt utterly helpless; and Chris, merry Chris who hitherto had had nothing to do but to laugh and keep her mother and her friends in good spirits, found with surprising suddenness that some aspects of life are no laughing matter.

At first there had been a vague tendency on the ladies’ part to trust to the help of their rich and well-born relations. But this tendency was checked very early by the uncompromising tone of their relations’ letters. It was clear that to get out of their difficulties they had no one but themselves to rely upon. Mrs. Abercarne was a hopeful woman, however, with an enormous belief in her own untried powers. She had an unacknowledged belief that nothing very dreadful ever did, or ever could, happen to the widow of a Colonel, who was also the granddaughter of an Admiral, and first cousin to the son of a Marquis. She would manage, so she said a hundred times, to pull herself and her “little daughter” through their difficulties.

Chris she had always treated as a baby, a very sweet and charming child, but a creature to be tenderly cared for and played with, not to be trusted or confided in. Mrs. Abercarne had old-fashioned notions about the bringing-up of girls, and she would have been reduced to her last crust before consenting to allow her daughter to leave her, except as a wife.

Now Chris, without daring openly to combat her mother’s opinion that she was a mere baby, unfit by reason of her tender years to have a voice in any serious discussion, had her own views as to the wisdom of her adored mother’s behaviour, over which she brooded in secret. She could not help feeling that she was by no means the helpless creature her mother and her mother’s friends imagined, and she set about devising plans whereby she might bring such wits as she possessed to their common aid.

To this end she used to buy The Times, and the other daily papers, and search their columns with a view to finding a rapid and easy way of making a fortune.

According to these same papers, nothing in the world was so simple. You had only to send fourteen stamps to somebody with an address in an obscure street, to learn the golden secret of “realising a competence without hindrance to present employment.”

“As our present employment consists generally in sitting looking at the fire, with our hands clasped, wondering where the next quarter’s rent is to come from,” she remarked to her mother, who looked upon these exercises as trivial, “it wouldn’t matter if we were hindered in it!”

Although Mrs. Abercarne felt convinced that the brilliant prospect was illusory, and the work offered would be something inconsistent with the dignity of a gentlewoman, she was always ready to supply the necessary fourteen stamps, and she waited with quite as much anxiety as her daughter for the answers they received to their applications. These answers were, unfortunately, nearly all of the same kind. The applicant for the fortune was to sell small and, for the most part, useless articles on commission among his or her friends.

“And you know, mamma,” commented Chris, sorrowfully, as she looked at a pair of aluminium studs which had been sent in return for the latest fourteen stamps, “as our commission is only threepence on each pair, if we had forty thousand friends and each friend bought a pair of studs from us, that would be only four hundred and ninety-eight pounds ten shillings! I’ve worked it out, and that isn’t what I should call a fortune, after all!”

Her mother sighed, and then said, rather petulantly, that she had known those advertisements were only nonsense, and she hoped she would not want to waste any more money in that way.

“No, mother,” said Chris gently.

And then the blood rushed up into her face, as her eye caught sight in the columns of the newspaper before her, of an advertisement of a different kind.

“If I only dared!” she thought as she threw a sly glance at her mother’s worried face. But she did not dare, until presently she saw a tear drop suddenly on to her mother’s dark dress.

In a moment Chris was on her knees. Her pretty, round young face was full of eagerness, as well as of sympathy, and in the touch of her arms, as they closed round her mother’s neck, there was the clinging caress of one who entreats.

“Mother—mother!” whispered she breathlessly, “don’t be angry—you mustn’t. Only—only I have something to say—something you must see. Look here!” and she thrust the newspaper into Mrs. Abercarne’s hands, and placed the lady’s white fingers on a certain paragraph. “Read that!”

Drying her eyes hastily, ashamed to have been detected, Mrs. Abercarne did as she was asked to do. But the words she read conveyed no meaning to her, or, at least, she pretended they did not. But a slight tone of acerbity was noticeable in her voice as she answered; and Chris knew that her mother understood.

“Well, my dear,” said the Colonel’s widow, with bland dignity, which she meant to denote unconsciousness, “I see nothing that can possibly interest you or me in the lines you have pointed out. Your finger must have slipped, I think.”

“Read the lines aloud, mother dear,” whispered Chris, caressing her mother’s hand.

Still with the same imperfect assumption of extreme innocence, Mrs. Abercarne read by the light of the fire the following advertisement:

“Wanted, a thoroughly reliable and trustworthy woman, with daughter preferred, as house-keeper in a large establishment, where the owner is often away. Apply by letter only in the first instance, to J. B., Wyngham House, Wyngham-on-Sea.”

“Well, my dear child,” said Mrs. Abercarne, superbly, as she laid down the paper, “surely that is not what you wanted me to read?”

But Chris buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.

“Yes, but it is, though,” she whispered.

Of course, the elder lady had expected this; equally, of course, she had to affect the utmost amazement.

“And is it possible, my dear Christina,” she murmured, gently, “that you can consider the words, ‘a reliable and trustworthy woman,’ applicable to me?”

But here, luckily for the girl, her sense of fun carried her away, and she laughed until she cried. Her tears, however, were not all of merriment.

“Why, certainly, mother,” said she merrily. “I should be very indignant with any person who said they were not! Look here,” she went on with sudden gravity, “what’s the use of pretending any longer that we can live on in the old way, when you know we can’t? What’s the use of keeping up this house, and having servants, whom we don’t see how we shall be able to pay, when we dread every knock of the postman, because it may be more bills? Mother—mother, do let us give it up. Don’t let us play any longer at being anything but dreadfully poor. Let us face it, and make the best of it.”

“What!” exclaimed the poor lady, whose pitiful pride, to do her justice, was much more concerned with her beautiful young daughter’s position than with her own; “and be a housekeeper! Just an upper servant; and, perhaps, have this horrid man asking you to mend the tablecloths and count the clothes for the wash!”

“Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind,” said Chris laughing; “and it’s too bad to call him a horrid man, when the worst thing the poor fellow has been guilty of, so far, is to advertise for a housekeeper for his ‘large establishment.’ Oh! mother, wouldn’t you like to be at the head of a large establishment again, even if it were somebody else’s!”

But Mrs. Abercarne shook her head. Her daughter’s persuasions—perhaps the very novelty of her child’s trying to persuade seriously at all—were taking their effect upon her; but it was an effect which produced in the poor gentlewoman the most acute shame and misery.

“What would Lord Llanfyllin say?” murmured she.

“What could he say except that it was a good deal better to keep somebody else’s house, than to starve in one’s own?” retorted Chris, brightly. “And as he’s never seen me, or taken the slightest notice of you since poor papa died, we really needn’t trouble ourselves about him at all.”

This was self-evident, but Mrs. Abercarne did not like to be reminded of the fact. Her cousin, by a remote cousinship, Lord Llanfyllin, had forgotten her very existence years ago; but in the most sacred recesses of her heart he still sat enthroned, symbol of all that was greatest and noblest in the land and of her connection with it. She liked to think that her actions mattered to him; and to be reminded of the fact that they did not, was eminently distasteful to her.

The postman, soon after this, came to the aid of Chris and her arguments by bringing the usual batch of worrying letters with bills and threats. With a burst of tears Mrs. Abercarne gave way, and with her daughter’s soothing arms around her neck answered the loathsome advertisement with an eager hope in her heart that her letter would remain unnoticed by the advertiser.

Poor lady! she was disappointed. Two days later she received an answer to her letter, written in the neat hand of a man of business, in the following words:

“Dear Madam,—Please state terms and approximate age of self and daughter; also date when able to come.

“Yours faithfully,

“John Bradfield.”

Mrs. Abercarne felt stupefied, almost frightened.

“You said most likely he’d not even answer!” she said, reproachfully, to her daughter.

But Chris, who felt that the honour or the shame of this undertaking would devolve upon her, was full of excitement, and did not rest until she had hurried her mother into an answer intimating that they would be willing to become inmates of his house, and that Mrs. Abercarne would undertake the superintendence of his establishment for an honorarium of sixty pounds a year.

“As for telling him my age, Christina,” went on the lady, haughtily, “that I certainly shall not do. I consider the request most impertinent, and it seems to me to prove conclusively that, however well off he may be, this Mr. John Bradfield is not a gentleman.”

“Very well, mother; you didn’t need tell him your age; you can tell him mine. And then he can guess yours pretty nearly,” she added, with a mischievous laugh. “It looks rather as if we thought we were doing him a great favour by condescending to accept his money and live comfortably in his house, doesn’t it?” she said, when she had glanced through her mother’s letter.

This was exactly Mrs. Abercarne’s view of the transaction, and she was rather shocked to find that it was not also her daughter’s. So she tried hard to impress upon Chris, who listened dutifully and without comment, that when two women of gentle birth and breeding took upon themselves such an appointment, they were indeed conferring upon the individual whose humble duty it was to maintain them in such a position an honour and a priceless boon.

Chris, who was beginning secretly to indulge in the luxury of opinions of her own, grew rather anxious lest her mother’s peculiarities of style should frighten Mr. John Bradfield, and induce him to bestow the “appointment” in question upon some mother and daughter less well-born, perhaps, but at the same time less graciously condescending and more accommodating. She watched eagerly for the postman for the next few days, and when another letter did arrive in the neat, business-like hand, her fingers trembled as she ran with it to her mother. Then Chris noticed that Mrs. Abercarne, while still careful to affect the haughtiest indifference, was really as anxious as she as to the contents of the letter. Indeed, the poor lady had more debts and more difficulties than she let her child know anything about, and she was by this time wondering what would become of them if Mr. Bradfield should decide not to avail himself of her condescending offer.

This was the letter:

“Dear Madam,—Leave Charing Cross to-morrow (Thursday), at 3.30 you will reach Wyngham at 6.5 (if you don’t get into the wrong train when you change at Abbey Marsh), and you will find a conveyance at the station to bring you to the house.—Yours faithfully,

“John Bradfield.”

Mrs. Abercarne drew a long breath.

“To-morrow!” she gasped. “Oh, Chris! we must give the whole thing up. The man is evidently quite mad. I shouldn’t wonder if the place were to turn out to be a private lunatic asylum. To-morrow!”

And the poor lady, bitterly disappointed, although she would not own it, fell to laughing hysterically. Chris threw her arms round her neck; she did not mean the project to fall through now.

“Why not to-morrow, as well as any other day, mother, and get it over?” suggested she. “He isn’t mad, I expect. Only eccentric. You know that people who live in the country always grow eccentric and very self-willed. Don’t give up until you have seen what he is like.”

To the girl’s mind nothing could be more enchanting than the prospect of missing the round of farewell visits, the half-sincere condolences of her mother’s large circle of friends, the dread of facing whom had been haunting her; and in the end Chris had her way, and by a mighty effort everything was packed that night, except a few necessaries which Chris herself unmethodically rammed into the trunks on the following morning, while Mrs. Abercarne made a rapid circuit of such friends as lived near, that she might not quite miss the ceremony and the sympathy of a formal leave-taking.

Mrs. Abercarne had scarcely recovered the breath which Mr. Bradfield’s last letter had taken away, when the train, on a cold but fine November evening, arrived at Wyngham station.

There were few people on the platform, but there was a footman evidently looking out for some one, and Chris suggested that it must be for them, and her guess was correct. The man got their luggage out, under the supervision of Mrs. Abercarne, and as the lady had thought proper to bring a great many more trunks than she really wanted in order to give a sense of her dignity and importance, this was a work of time.

Meanwhile Chris, by her mother’s direction, stood back a little, and to be under her mother’s eye, waited. She was stiff and cold, and she stood first on one leg, and then on the other, weary and impatient at her mother’s lengthy proceedings.

“You can sit down on that bench if you’re tired. There’s no extra charge,” said a harsh voice, ironically, close to her ear.

She turned quickly, and saw a man rather under than over the middle height, of spare figure, and hard-featured face, who was standing by the book-stall, turning over the leaves of a Christmas number. He wore a long frieze overcoat, which enveloped him from his chin to his heels, and a little cap to match, which hid his eyes.

Little as she could see of him, Chris instantly jumped to the conclusion that this was Mr. Bradfield himself.

“He wouldn’t order me about like that if he were not,” she said to herself. And she felt rather frightened, wondering how her mother would receive this style of address, and picturing to herself the “awful row” there would be between the two at or very soon after their very first interview.

She said “Thank you,” rather timidly, and took the suggestion offered, rather to prevent further conversation than because she wished to rest. When her mother had finished with the luggage, Chris ran towards her, to check any verbal indiscretion of the kind she had been indulging in on the way down, concerning the supposed unpleasant idiosyncrasies of the master of Wyngham House.

But she was too late.

“Very bucolic domestics this gentleman seems to have. Let us hope we shall not see their characteristics repeated in the master,” said Mrs. Abercarne, in a voice loud enough for the man at the bookstall to hear, as she and her daughter met.

The man in the frieze overcoat turned round, and regarded the speaker with an amused stare, which that lady chose to consider very offensive. She turned her back upon him sharply, therefore, as she went on speaking to Chris, who looked frightened. The man in the frieze coat walked away.

“What extremely bad manners these rustics have!” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, before he was well out of hearing.

“Sh-sh, mamma! We don’t know who he is,” said Chris, in a terror-struck whisper.

Mrs. Abercarne was going to retort rather sharply, when a thought, a suspicion, perhaps the same that had alarmed her daughter, made her pause, and turn abruptly to the porter who was standing behind her.

“Who is that man?” she asked, quickly.

“Which man, ma’am?”

“The man in the long coat; the man who was standing at the bookstall.”

The porter stared at her. He seemed to think she must be joking to make such an inquiry, and in such a tone.

“The gentleman who has just gone out, ma’am?” ejaculated he, repeating her words with a difference; “why, that gentleman is Mr. Bradfield of the big house!”

And he made the announcement in the tone of one who rebukes a blasphemer.