Читать книгу A Perfect Fool - Florence Warden - Страница 5

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Chris had jumped up from her chair in an uncontrollable impulse of terror at the sound of Mr. Bradfield’s voice, although he spoke in tones which betrayed more amusement than annoyance. She looked so much alarmed that even her mother smiled, while the great man himself nearly laughed outright.

“Ah—ha!” said he, shaking his head in pretended menace. “You did not think you would so soon hear him roar, did you?”

Chris, still white, and with tears starting to her eyes, stammered some sort of incoherent apology. Mrs. Abercarne, pitying the poor child, who was indeed most miserable at this fresh mishap, addressed the dreaded employer in a stately and dignified fashion.

“You must forgive my daughter, sir,” she began, with a great affectation of deference. Indeed, her humility was so deep, so laboured in expression, as to constitute almost an offence, implying as it did that her natural position was so lofty, that it required a good deal of make-believe to bring herself into a semblance of inferiority to him. “She had no intention of offending you, I can assure you. Her words were merely idle ones, uttered in girlish folly, and without the slightest idea that you were near enough to overhear them.”

Mrs. Abercarne slightly emphasised these last words, just to remind him that in approaching without warning he had committed a breach of what she considered good form.

So far from appearing to be impressed by the gentle rebuke, Mr. Bradfield proceeded to offend more deeply. Merely nodding to the elderly lady, without the formality of a glance in her direction, he kept his eyes fixed upon Chris as he took a step forward, which brought him into the corner by the piano, and in front of the fireplace. Here he stood for a few moments in perfect silence, still looking at the young girl, and rubbing his hands softly, the one over the other, in the warmth of the fire. Chris, who, instead of being pale, was now crimson, looked at the carpet and remained standing, wishing she had never persuaded her mother to take this degrading position, and feeling acutely that if they had come as visitors, and not as dependents, Mr. Bradfield would never have dared to stare at her in this persistent and insulting manner.

Mrs. Abercarne, older and more self-possessed, was able to get a good view of the man on whom so much now depended, and to form some sort of opinion as to their chances of staying in this luxurious home.

Mr. Bradfield was not handsome, neither was he of very distinguished appearance. A little below the middle height, neither stout nor thin, there was nothing more striking about him than his very black whiskers, moustache and eyebrows, and a certain steady stare of his sharp grey eyes, which was rather disconcerting, since it gave the idea that he was always inwardly taking stock of the person on whom his eyes were fixed.

“Girlish folly?” he repeated at last. “Do you plead guilty to that, Miss—Miss——” Here he paused, hunted in his pockets, and producing Mrs. Abercarne’s letter, turned to the signature. “Miss Abercarne. You must excuse me, but I have had a good deal of correspondence the last few days, and I haven’t taken proper note of your name. Now,” he went on, still ignoring the elderly lady altogether, “do you still plead guilty to girlish folly, Miss Abercarne?”

“Yes,” murmured Chris, “and I am very sorry.”

“Not at all, not at all. You were quite right. I am a beast, and you—well, you know best whether the other title applies to you.”

“My daughter would be the last person to think so,” broke in Mrs. Abercarne, with just enough emphasis to show that it was to herself that he ought to be addressing his conversation; “she would no more think of calling herself a beauty, than she would of—of——”

“Calling me a beast?” added Mr. Bradfield, turning upon her so quickly that she drew her breath sharply, as if she had been frightened. “Well, and where would be the harm, when her mother set her the example? Oh, you can’t deny it. What was it I heard you say about me at the station? That I was more of a rustic than my own servants, and that my manners were—I forget what; but you remember, I daresay. Perhaps you will be kind enough to repeat your criticism now that we are both calm, and I will try and profit by it.”

It was Mrs. Abercarne’s turn to be out of countenance, and her daughter’s to glance at her in some amusement. For Chris saw by Mr. Bradfield’s manner that she and her mother would not have to suffer for their verbal indiscretions.

“You must have misunderstood what I said,” said Mrs. Abercarne, regaining her composure again very quickly, and speaking with a bland dignity which made contradiction almost an impossibility.

But Mr. Bradfield was a man used to performing impossibilities, and he laughed in her face.

“Not a bit of it,” said he shortly. “It was the truth of your observation that made it so striking. I am a rustic, and as bucolic-looking as my servants. There’s just the hope, of course, that the influence of your own grand manners may have a good effect upon mine.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Abercarne, with spirit, “I should have thought, sir, that if you believe us capable of so much rudeness you would scarcely wish us, or rather wish me,” she corrected, “to enter your—your—your service.”

She got the obnoxious word out at last, with the same deliberate emphasis that she had used on the word “sir.” Mr. Bradfield evidently got impatient.

“I told you I didn’t mind,” he said, shortly. “What does it matter what you please to think of me or my manners? If you had thought my looks or my manners so important you would have made inquiries about them before coming, wouldn’t you? You would have written: ‘Dear Sir,—Please send reference as to your appearance and general behaviour.’ As you didn’t write me like that, I take it for granted you did not care what my manners were, any more than I cared about yours. I take it that our coming together was a matter of mutual convenience, and that as long as we don’t get in each other’s way we need trouble ourselves no more about each other’s personality than if we were in separate hemispheres. Well, then, I can promise you at least that I won’t get in your way any more than I can help.”

Mr. Bradfield delivered this speech with his back to the fire and his hands clasped behind him. From time to time, as he spoke, he cast furtive glances at Chris, but he did not look once at the lady he was addressing. Mrs. Abercarne, however made up her mind to put up with his peculiarities, so she uttered a curious little sound, which passed by courtesy for a laugh of appreciation of his humour, and graciously expressed her own gratitude and her daughter’s for his kind reception of them.

“My only fear is that you are spoiling us by treating us too well, sir,” she concluded.

Again she rolled out the “sir” in the manner of a duchess conversing with a prince. Mr. Bradfield winced perceptibly.

“You needn’t say ‘sir’ if you don’t like it,” said he, drily. “It doesn’t seem to agree with you. Glad you’re pleased. You can have this room to yourselves if you like; I don’t use it much. And anything you want let me know of it at once. You needn’t come to me,” he continued, quickly, “but just send word. I want you to be comfortable, very comfortable. Perkins will give you the keys and all that. And—and I hope you’ll be happy here.”

Again he glanced at the girl as he walked rapidly to the door, nodded “good-night,” and went out.

For a few moments after they were left alone together neither mother nor daughter uttered a single word. They glanced at the door as if determined not to commit further indiscretions by hazarding any comment on Mr. Bradfield, until he had had time to take himself to the remotest part of the house. At last, when each had well considered the countenance of the other, Mrs. Abercarne spoke.

“A very kindly, hospitable man, and very forgiving, too; don’t you think so, my dear?” were her first words.

Chris stared at her mother, and then at the door. Surely Mrs. Abercarne must have an idea that she could be overheard, or she would never perjure herself in this fashion. The elder lady went smoothly on, without appearing to notice her daughter’s hesitation in answering.

“A little brusque, a little unpolished, perhaps, but a thoroughly honest fellow, without hypocrisy and without affectation. The sort of man one instinctively feels that one can trust.”

And Mrs. Abercarne crossed the room to the fireside, and settled herself comfortably in an easy chair, with her feet on the fender-stool.

Then Chris, perceiving that there was some occult meaning in all this, replied discreetly:

“I am glad you think so well of him, mother. But I—I shouldn’t have thought he was the kind of man you would have taken such a fancy to.”

“Ah, my dear, you girls always judge by the exterior,” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, as she took up her knitting, and began counting the stitches. “But I should have thought that at any rate Mr. Bradfield’s talk would have amused you.”

“Why, so it did, mother.”

Chris had grown very quiet, and was pondering the situation. She began to have a faint suspicion of the direction whither these remarks were tending, and some words which presently fell from her mother’s lips confirmed it.

“I wonder, Chris,” she said softly, running her fingers gently up and down one of the steel knitting-pins, “whether Mr. Bradfield is a bachelor, or a widower, or what?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure, mother,” answered the young girl demurely.

Then there was silence for a short space, and when Mrs. Abercarne spoke again it was about something else. By tacit agreement the master of the house was not mentioned again by either of the ladies until they had retired to rest.

Then Mrs. Abercarne heard a voice calling softly, “Mother!” and she perceived by the light of the fire a pair of very wide-awake eyes on the pillow beside hers.

“Yes, dear?”

“Why do people always think that honesty must go with rough manners?”

Mrs. Abercarne could not answer her. So she affected to laugh at the words as if they were a jest. But presently she asked in a rather tentative tone:

“Don’t you like Mr. Bradfield then?”

And the answer came very decidedly indeed:

“No, mother, I don’t like him at all.”