Читать книгу Bessie's Fortune - Mary Jane Holmes - Страница 18

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The table was laid in the large dining-room, which faced the south, and whose long French windows looked into the terraced flower-garden and upon the evergreens fashioned after those in the park at Versailles. When alone, Lucy took all her meals in the pleasant little breakfast room, where only two pictures hung upon the wall, and both of Robin—one taken in all his infantile beauty, when he was two years old, and the other at the age of fourteen, after the lovely blue eyes which smiled so brightly upon you from the first canvas were darkened forever, and the eyelids were closed over them. This was Lucy's favorite room, for there Robin seemed nearer to her. But Geraldine did not like it. It was like attending a funeral all the time, she said; and so, though it was quite large enough to accommodate her Thanksgiving guests, Lucy had ordered the dinner to be served in the larger room, which looked very warm and cheerful with the crimson hangings at the windows and the bright fire on the hearth.

After having regaled herself with a glass of sherry, a biscuit, a piece of sponge cake, and some fruit, Mrs. Geraldine had descended to the dining-room to see a new rug, of which Lucy told her. Glancing at the table, which was glittering with china, and glass, and silver, she began counting:

"One, two, three, four, five, six places. You surely did not expect Burton's father?"

Lucy flushed a little, as she replied:

"Oh, no; the sixth place is for Miss McPherson."

"Miss McPherson! What possessed you to invite her? I detest her, with her sharp tongue and prying ways. Why, she is positively rude at times, and exasperates me so," Geraldine said, angrily; and her sister rejoined:

"I know she is peculiar and outspoken, but at heart she is true as steel, and I thought she would be very lonely taking her Thanksgiving dinner alone. And then she will be glad to see you and inquire after her brother's family, whom she knows you met abroad."

"Yes, we spent a week with her brother, the Hon. John McPherson, and his wife Lady Jane, at the house of Captain Smithers in Middlesex. Miss McPherson is, at least, well connected," Geraldine said, mollified at once as she recalled her intimacy with Lady Jane McPherson.

To be acquainted with a titled lady was, in her opinion, something to be proud of, and since her return from Europe she had wearied and disgusted her friends with her frequent allusions to Lady Jane and her visit to Penrhyn Park where she had met her. And Miss McPherson was her sister-in-law, and on that account she must be tolerated and treated, at least, with a show of friendship. So when she heard that she had arrived she went to meet her with a good deal of gush and demonstration, which, however, did not in the least mislead the lady with regard to her real sentiments, for she and Geraldine had always been at odds, and from the very nature of things there could be no real sympathy between the fashionable lady of society, whose life was all a deception, and the blunt, outspoken woman, who called a spade a spade, and whose rule of action was, as she expressed it, the naked truth and nothing but the naked truth. Had she worn false teeth and supposed any one thought them natural, she would at once have taken them out to show that they were not; and as to false hair, and frizzes, and powder, and all the many devices used, as she said, "to build a woman," she abominated them, and preferred to be just what the Lord had made her, without any attempt to improve upon his work. Once Lucy Grey had asked her why she did not call herself Elizabeth, or Lizzie, instead of Betsey, which was so old-fashioned, and she had retorted, sharply, that though of all names upon earth she thought Betsey the worst, it was given to her by her sponsors in baptism, and Betsey she would remain to the day of her death.

She was tall and angular, with large features, sharp nose, and little bright, black, bead-like eyes, which seemed to look you through, and read your most secret thoughts. As her name indicated, she was of Scotch descent; indeed, her grandfather was Scotch by birth, but he had moved into England, where her father and mother, and herself were born, so that she called herself English, though she gloried in her Scotch blood and her Scotch face, which was unmistakable.

After her birth, her father had bought a place in Bangor, Wales, which he called Stoneleigh, and there her two brothers, Hugh and John, were born, and her parents had died.

She had come alone to Allington, when comparatively young, and, settling down quietly, had for a time watched closely the habits of the people around her, and posted herself thoroughly with regard to the workings and institutions of a Republic, and then she adopted them heartily, and became an out-and-out American, and only lamented that she could not vote and take part in the politics of the country. Of her past life she never spoke, and of her family seldom. Her father and mother were dead; she had two brothers, both well enough in their way, but wholly unlike each other, she had once told Lucy Grey, whom she had always liked, and with whom she was more intimate than with any one else in Allington, unless it were Hannah Jerrold. Although very proud of her family name and family blood, she was no boaster, and no one in Allington would ever have known that one of her brothers had been in Parliament, and that his wife was a Lady Jane Trevellian, if chance had not thrown them in the way of Mrs. Geraldine.

Once, and once only, had she returned to her native land, and that two or three years before our story opens. Then she had been absent three or four months, and when she returned to Allington, she seemed grimmer and sterner than ever, and more intolerant of everything which did not savor of the "naked truth." And yet, as Lucy Grey had said of her to her sister, she was true as steel to her friends, and at heart was one of the kindest and best of women, and, with the exception of Miss Lucy Grey, no one in Allington was found so often in the houses of the poor as she, and though she rebuked sharply when it was necessary, and told them they were dirty and shiftless when they were, she made her kindness felt in so many ways that she was, if possible, more popular than Lucy herself, for, while Lucy only gave them money and sympathy, she helped them with her hands, and, if necessary, swept their floors, and washed their faces, and made their beds, and sometimes took their children home and kept them with her for days.

Such was Miss Betsey McPherson, who, as she is to figure conspicuously in this story, merits this introduction to the reader, and who, in her black silk of a dozen years old, with a long, heavy gold chain around her neck and a cap fashioned after the English style upon her head, stood up very tall and stiff to receive Mrs. Geraldine, but did not bend her head when she saw it was that lady's intention to kiss her.

"I know she would as soon kiss a piece of sole-leather as me, and I would rather kiss a flour-barrel than that powdered face," was her thought; and so she only gave her hand to Mrs. Jerrold, who told her how glad she was to see her and how much she was pleased with her brother, the Hon. John McPherson, and his charming wife, the Lady Jane.

"Why have you never spoken of them to us? I should be proud of such relatives," she said; and Miss McPherson replied:

"Umph! What's the use? I'm no better, no worse for them."

Just then the sound of bells was heard, and Hannah and Grey came in, and were received most cordially by Miss McPherson, who unbent to them as she had not done to the Boston lady. Indeed, there was something even tender in her voice as she spoke to Hannah and inquired after her father. Then, turning to Grey, she laid one hand on his head, and taking his chin in the other, looked searchingly in his face as she said:

"I wonder if you are the same boy I used to like so much, or has a trip to Europe spoiled you, as it does so many Americans?"

"Not a bit of it," Grey answered, merrily. "Europe is grand; Europe is beautiful; but she is very old, and I like young America better, with her freedom and her go-ahead, even if she is not as intensely respectable, and dignified, as her mother across the water."

The dinner-bell here put an end to the conversation, and Lucy preceded her guests to the dining-room, followed by her brother, who had been more than usually affectionate in his greeting to his sister, whom he took in to dinner, while Grey escorted his mother and Miss McPherson.