Читать книгу The Making of a Marchioness + The Shuttle (2 Unabridged Classic Romances) - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Страница 11

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When Miss Emily Fox-Seton was preparing for the extraordinary change in her life which transformed her from a very poor, hardworking woman into one of the richest marchionesses in England, Lord Walderhurst’s cousin, Lady Maria Bayne, was extremely good to her. She gave her advice, and though advice is a cheap present as far as the giver is concerned, there are occasions when it may be a very valuable one to the recipient. Lady Maria’s was valuable to Emily Fox-Seton, who had but one difficulty, which was to adjust herself to the marvellous fortune which had befallen her.

There was a certain thing Emily found herself continually saying. It used to break from her lips when she was alone in her room, when she was on her way to her dressmaker’s, and in spite of herself, sometimes when she was with her whilom patroness.

“I can’t believe it is true! I can’t believe it!”

“I don’t wonder, my dear girl,” Lady Maria answered the second time she heard it. “But what circumstances demand of you is that you should learn to.”

“Yes,” said Emily, “I know I must. But it seems like a dream. Sometimes,” passing her hand over her forehead with a little laugh, “I feel as if I should suddenly find myself wakened in the room in Mortimer Street by Jane Cupp bringing in my morning tea. And I can see the wallpaper and the Turkey-red cotton curtains. One of them was an inch or so too short. I never could afford to buy the new bit, though I always intended to.”

“How much was the stuff a yard?” Lady Maria inquired.

“Sevenpence.”

“How many yards did you need?”

“Two. It would have cost one and twopence, you see. And I really could get on without it.”

Lady Maria put up her lorgnette and looked at her protégée with an interest which bordered on affection, it was so enjoyable to her epicurean old mind.

“I didn’t suspect it was as bad as that, Emily,” she said. “I should never have dreamed it. You managed to do yourself with such astonishing decency. You were actually nice—always.”

“I was very much poorer than anyone knew,” said Emily. “People don’t like one’s troubles. And when one is earning one’s living as I was, one must be agreeable, you know. It would never do to seem tiresome.”

“There’s cleverness in realising that fact,” said Lady Maria. “You were always the most cheerful creature. That was one of the reasons Walderhurst admired you.”

The future marchioness blushed all over. Lady Maria saw even her neck itself blush, and it amused her ladyship greatly. She was intensely edified by the fact that Emily could be made to blush by the mere mention of her mature fiancé‘s name.

“She’s in such a state of mind about the man that she’s delightful,” was the old woman’s internal reflection; “I believe she’s in love with him, as if she was a nursemaid and he was a butcher’s boy.”

“You see,” Emily went on in her nice, confiding way (one of the most surprising privileges of her new position was that it made it possible for her to confide in old Lady Maria), “it was not only the living from day to day that made one anxious, it was the Future!” (Lady Maria knew that the word began in this case with a capital letter.) “No one knows what the Future is to poor women. One knows that one must get older, and one may not keep well, and if one could not be active and in good spirits, if one could not run about on errands, and things fell off, what could one do? It takes hard work, Lady Maria, to keep up even the tiniest nice little room and the plainest presentable wardrobe, if one isn’t clever. If I had been clever it would have been quite different, I dare say. I have been so frightened sometimes in the middle of the night, when I wakened and thought about living to be sixty-five, that I have lain and shaken all over. You see,” her blush had so far disappeared that she looked for the moment pale at the memory, “I had nobody—nobody.”

“And now you are going to be the Marchioness of Walderhurst,” remarked Lady Maria.

Emily’s hands, which rested on her knee, wrung themselves together.

“That is what it seems impossible to believe,” she said, “or to be grateful enough for to—to—” and she blushed all over again.

“Say ‘James’,” put in Lady Maria, with a sinful if amiable sense of comedy; “you will have to get accustomed to thinking of him as ‘James’ sometimes, at all events.”

But Emily did not say “James.” There was something interesting in the innocent fineness of her feeling for Lord Walderhurst. In the midst of her bewildered awe and pleasure at the material splendours looming up in her horizon, her soul was filled with a tenderness as exquisite as the religion of a child. It was a combination of intense gratitude and the guileless passion of a hitherto wholly unawakened woman—a woman who had not hoped for love or allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it, and who therefore had no clear understanding of its full meaning. She could not have explained her feeling if she had tried, and she did not dream of trying. If a person less inarticulate than herself had translated it to her she would have been amazed and abashed. So would Lord Walderhurst have been amazed, so would Lady Maria; but her ladyship’s amazement would have expressed itself after its first opening of the eyes, with a faint elderly chuckle.

When Miss Fox-Seton had returned to town she had returned with Lady Maria to South Audley Street. The Mortimer Street episode was closed, as was the Cupps’ house. Mrs. Cupp and Jane had gone to Chichester, Jane leaving behind her a letter the really meritorious neatness of which was blotted by two or three distinct tears. Jane respectfully expressed her affectionate rapture at the wondrous news which “Modern Society” had revealed to her before Miss Fox-Seton herself had time to do so.

“I am afraid, miss,” she ended her epistle, “that I am not experienced enough to serve a lady in a grand position, but hoping it is not a liberty to ask it, if at any time your own maid should be wanting a young woman to work under her, I should be grateful to be remembered. Perhaps having learned your ways, and being a good needlewoman and fond of it, might be a little recommendation for me.”

“I should like to take Jane for my maid,” Emily had said to Lady Maria. “Do you think I might make her do?”

“She would probably be worth half a dozen French minxes who would amuse themselves by getting up intrigues with your footmen,” was Lady Maria’s astute observation. “I would pay an extra ten pounds a year myself for slavish affection, if it was to be obtained at agency offices. Send her to a French hairdresser to take a course of lessons, and she will be worth anything. To turn you out perfectly will be her life’s ambition.”

To Jane Cupp’s rapture the next post brought her the following letter:—

DEAR JANE,—It is just like you to write such a nice letter to me, and I can assure you I appreciated all your good wishes very much. I feel that I have been most fortunate, and am, of course, very happy. I have spoken to Lady Maria Bayne about you, and she thinks that you might make me a useful maid if I gave you the advantage of a course of lessons in hairdressing. I myself know that you would be faithful and interested and that I could not have a more trustworthy young woman. If your mother is willing to spare you, I will engage you. The wages would be thirty-five pounds a year (and beer, of course) to begin with, and an increase later as you became more accustomed to your duties. I am glad to hear that your mother is so well and comfortable. Remember me to her kindly.

Yours truly,