Читать книгу The Third Miss St Quentin - Molesworth Mrs. - Страница 5

When his daughters were leaving the room that evening after dinner, Colonel St Quentin detained Madelene by an almost imperceptible gesture. On her side Madelene glanced at Ermine, and by the slightest possible turn of her eyelids recommended Ella to her care. None of this was lost upon the young lady.

“Going to talk me over again,” she said to herself as she followed Ermine, “well, they’ll have plenty of opportunities of doing so before they’ve done with me, I’m afraid.”

“Sit down for a minute or two, can’t you, my dear?” said her father, as Madelene stood beside him; “it fidgets me to see you standing. Surely Ermine can look after that child for a few minutes.”

“Oh, yes,” Miss St Quentin replied, drawing a chair close to her father’s as she spoke.

“It’s about her I want to speak of course,” Colonel St Quentin went on. “I have been thinking a great deal about her even in the hour or two since she came. What are we to do with her, Madelene?” Madelene could not help smiling a little at her father’s overwhelmed tone. He who had faced unmoved all the dangers and vicissitudes of a soldier’s life, who had not so many years ago borne with comparative equanimity the complete loss of all the fortune he could really call his own, now seemed quite unnerved by what was surely but a most natural, not to say agreeable event, the return of his youngest child to her home.

“Oh, papa, don’t worry about her,” she said. “Things will settle themselves, you’ll see. It is only the awkwardness of her sudden arrival that makes you feel uneasy about her. She must be a nice child – she couldn’t be your daughter and poor Ellen’s – ” since the death of her young stepmother, Miss St Quentin had half-unconsciously adopted the habit of speaking of her by her Christian name – “without having a true and good nature au fond.”

“If she only were a child,” said her father, “but it strikes me pretty forcibly,” he went on, smiling a little, though rather grimly, in spite of himself, “that she is, and considers herself very decidedly a young woman. She’s very pretty too, and knows how to set herself off, that little black frock with those fal-de-rals, rosettes – what do you call ’em?”

“Bows,” corrected Madelene.

“Bows then – was very coquettishly managed.”

“It was too old for her,” said Miss St Quentin decidedly. “And – not altogether good style for so young a girl as she really is. I fancy Mrs Robertson has left her a good deal to herself, of late especially. I think it was time she came to us, papa,” she added. “Indeed I only wish – ” but she stopped.

“That she had never left us – but don’t say it, Madelene. It’s no use, and – I don’t know that she would have been alive but for Phillis’s care.”

“Perhaps not,” said Madelene. “Still, she is not like her mother – she has not that transparent look.” She did not say more, reserving to herself her private opinion that Ella was and always had been, her slight make notwithstanding, a most sturdy little person, for which indeed there was every precedent, as young Mrs St Quentin had been the only delicate member of her own family. “It may perhaps soften papa to think her not strong,” she said to herself.

“Like her mother,” repeated Colonel St Quentin, “no, indeed. Ellen was the simplest, most gentle creature. I don’t suppose she ever gave two thoughts to herself in any way – appearance or anything else. Yet – oh Madelene, I do wish I had not married again!” he burst out with a sigh.

“Papa?” said Madelene, and her tone sounded almost as if she were a little shocked. “I can’t quite understand how you can say so, or feel so, dear papa,” she went on, more softly. “When you say yourself, how perfectly sweet and gentle Ellen was – and not only sweet, sturdily true, and high-principled, even for our sakes, Ermie’s and mine, you should be glad we had such an influence as hers for the six or seven years she lived. I often think we don’t know how much we owe her.”

“Yes,” said her father, “that is true, and I thank you for reminding me of it. If her own child had had the same advantage all might have been well. It has all gone wrong; the having to part with her for so long – and then my losses. Of course but for that I would probably have had her home sooner, but I could not bear you girls to have all the expenses of her education, and the running about with her to mild climates if the winter happened to be severe, as well as your poor old father on your hands!”

“Papa – I did not know you had thought of it that way,” said Madelene, rather sadly. “It makes me feel as if we really have something to make up for to poor little Ella.”

“No – don’t begin fancying that,” he said quietly. “There were other reasons, too – my health for a time; and then Phillis was able and willing. I wish I hadn’t said it. For of all things I dread your spoiling Ella. And don’t sacrifice yourselves to her for my sake in any way, I entreat you, my dear child.”

He looked up anxiously.

Madelene smiled as she replied, though in her heart she sighed. Colonel St Quentin was not a selfish man, in intention even less so than in deed. And the sacrifice, a sacrifice of some years’ duration already, which his eldest daughter had made to him, he suspected as little as she desired that he should.

“You needn’t be afraid, papa,” she said. “For her own sake it would be wrong to spoil her.”

“But there’s spoiling and spoiling,” he went on. “In her place now, she should go on studying for some time. You know, Madelene, she should be prepared for contingencies. She may have to work for her living; there is no saying.”

“Only in case of both Ermine and me dying,” said Madelene calmly. “And that, to say the least, is not probable. Besides – we might easily increase our life insurance, papa?”

“No, no, nothing of the kind,” said Colonel St Quentin excitedly. “I won’t have you crippling your income any more – do you hear, Madelene? If such an awful catastrophe happened as your both dying before me – well, surely it would kill me?” he said. “Though such things don’t kill! But there would be enough for me, as much as I have deserved, after mismanaging my own money.”

“It wasn’t your fault, papa. Everybody says so,” his daughter replied. “I do wish you wouldn’t speak of it that way.”

“But besides that,” Colonel St Quentin went on, “there are other and less terrible possibilities. If you married, Madelene, you and Ermine, and of course that may happen any day, though I know you are both of you rather, what the French call difficile– your husbands might not, naturally enough – care about being saddled with a little half-sister-in-law, even if he consented to the pensioning off of the old man himself.”

“Papa,” said Madelene again, but this time her tone was really stern, “you pain me indescribably, really indescribably, by speaking so. Anything reasonable —anything, really for Ella’s good, you may depend on our carrying out. But you cannot expect us to sympathise with you when you become, I must say, really morbid on this subject.”

Colonel St Quentin was silent for a moment or two. He sat, shading his face with his hand, so that Madelene could not judge as to his expression.

“There is another view of the case, too,” said Madelene. “Ella is very attractive. Why should she not marry? Surely there are some few men in the world who don’t look out for heiresses.”

“Perhaps,” said her father. “Well yes, I suppose we may allow that is a possibility. Still – that brings in complications too – there must be no sailing under false colours, and it would be so natural for her to be credited with her share of your fortunes by strangers. No, Madelene, till she is old enough to understand the whole – and I agree with you that till she has come really to know you and Ermine, it may be best to avoid explanations – I think the less society she sees the better. And one outlay I will not object to for her – let her have a few thoroughly good lessons, the best you can get; it will give her occupation, and at the same time fit her to be independent – should the worst come to the worst so to speak?”

“Very well,” said Madelene. “I agree with you, that it will be good for her to have occupation – ”

“And make her useful – practically useful, so far as you possibly can,” interrupted her father again.

“Very well,” she said again. “But, papa dear, as far as ‘the worst’s coming’ in any sense except that Ermie and I might die – is to be taken into account, do dismiss it for ever. We couldn’t marry men who would look at things in the way you put it. You wouldn’t wish us to marry selfish brutes, papa?”

And Colonel St Quentin was forced to smile.

Then Madelene and he joined the two others in the drawing-room.

“Can we not have a little music?” said Colonel St Quentin, a minute or two latter. “Ella, my dear, you play I suppose – or do you sing?”

His tone was kindlier again. Madelene’s spirits rose. She thought her talk with her father had done good. She went towards the piano and opened it, glancing smilingly at her young sister.

Ella was seated on a low chair in a corner of the room – the light of a lamp fell on her face and bright hair. It struck Madelene that she looked paler than on her first arrival.

“Will you play something, Ella?” she said, “or are you perhaps too tired?”

“I am not the least tired, thank you,” the girl replied, “but I hate playing. I never practise, on that account.”

“Upon my word,” muttered Colonel St Quentin.

“Do you sing then?” Ermine interposed, quickly. Ella hesitated.

“Your mother – mamma,” said Madelene, using purposely the old name for her stepmother, “mamma sang beautifully.”

Ella turned towards her.

“Do you mean my own mother?” she asked coldly.

“Of course,” Madelene replied. “I said so.” Colonel St Quentin moved impatiently.

“Why can you not answer Ermine’s question simply, Ella?” he said. “And why do you speak to Madelene in that tone? It is, to say the least, very questionable taste to accentuate in that way the fact that you and your sisters had not the same mother. And – if no one has told you so before, I tell you now that your mother, my second wife, loved my two elder daughters as if they had been her own, and her best wish for you was that you might resemble them. Where you have got these vulgar notions about half-sisters and so on – I see you are full of them – I can’t conceive. Is it from your Aunt Phillis?”

“No-o,” Ella replied, a little startled apparently by her father’s vehemence. “I did not intend to say anything to annoy you,” she added.

“But about the singing?” Ermine said again.

“Yes,” said Ella, “I do sing a little. I like it better than playing. I will try to sing if you – if papa wishes it.”

Her tone was humble – almost too much so. There was a kind of obtrusive dutifulness about it that was rather irritating. Still Madelene gave her credit for having put some force on herself to keep down her temper.

“Shall I play a little in the first place?” Miss St Quentin said, seating herself at the piano as she spoke.

Madelene played beautifully, though her style was very quiet. Ella rose gently from her seat and came nearer her; she stood silent and motionless till the last soft notes had died away.

“That is lovely, most lovely,” she said, her whole face and manner changing. “I should love the piano if I could play like that.”

“You must love music, I suspect,” Madelene replied. “Perhaps it is the actual mechanical part of playing that has discouraged you.”

“I have bad hands for it,” said Ella, looking at her very little fingers, as she spoke.

“You have peculiarly small ones,” said her sister; “that is like mamma. Still she managed to play very charmingly. Now what will you sing? I dare say we have some of your songs.”

Ella opened a book of songs and ran through its contents.

“Yes,” she said, “there are one or two of mine here. Perhaps,” she added more timidly, “they are some that mamma sang, as Aunt Phillis chose them. I will try this if you like,” and she pointed to what had been in fact one of Mrs St Quentin’s special favourites.

It was a simple enough song, calling for no great execution, still, though the observation may sound absurd, it was a song depending for its beauty on the voice of the singer. And Ella’s young voice suited it perfectly. There was complete silence till she ended. Then a slight sigh from her father made her glance at him.