Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the sparsely furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life was a perpetual conflict with other people’s untidiness.

  The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French style — inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers, chairs cushioned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham tortoiseshell clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece, alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the spaciousness of Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother could breathe in such rooms.

  That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl’s rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated newspapers, and torn toy-books.

  ‘You won’t mind Vernon’s using the room in the day, dear, will you?’ said

  Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. ‘It shall be tidied for you at night.’

  This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had no right to be there.

  ‘I should like to see my father soon,’ she said, with a trembling lip, stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

  He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable, confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

  ‘You shall have your breakfast with him,’ said Mrs. Palliser, feeling that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain’s breakfast was a meal apart. ‘I don’t say but what he’ll be a little cross to you at first; but you must put up with that. He’ll come round afterwards.’

  ‘He has not seen me for two years and a half,’ said Ida, thinking that fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circumstances.

  ‘Yes, it’s only two years and a half,’ sighed Mrs. Palliser, ‘and you were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked old woman to cheat your father out of six months’ board and tuition. He paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you — fifty pounds — a heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to us like a bad penny.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering comparison. ‘But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess’s situation directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give you back the fifty pounds by degrees.’

  ‘Ah, that’s the dreadful part of it all,’ sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common to people who live within four narrow walls. ‘Goodness knows how you are ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your capacity?’

  ‘Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.’

  ‘The people you went to visit in Hampshire. Ah! there went another five pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don’t know whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.’

  ‘He is an angel,’ said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. ‘I will wait upon him like a slave. You do love me, don’t you, pet?’

  ‘Ess, I love ‘oo, but I don’t know who ‘oo is. Connais pas,’ said

  Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

  ‘I am your sister, darling, your only sister.’

  ‘My half-sister,’ said Vernon. ‘Maman said I had a half-sister, and she was naughty. Dites donc, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?’

  Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described, gravely questioned the boy.

  ‘I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to him like that, mother,’ said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her step-mother, who was melted to tears.

  ‘Your father was so upset by Miss Pew’s letter,’ she murmured apologetically. ‘To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.’

  ‘It was harder for me,’ said Ida; ‘I had to stand up and face that wicked woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her life.’

  ‘I must go and make your father’s omelette,’ said the stepmother, ‘while you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there’s some water on the washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.’

  The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back presently with the towel — one towel, which was about in proportion to the water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plentitude of water and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board ship; shook and brushed the shabby gray cashmere — her wedding gown, she thought, with a bitter smile — before she put it on again, and then went down the bare narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

  Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour, looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and stood staring at her.

  ‘By Jove, how handsome you have grown!’ he said, and then he look her in his arms and kissed her. ‘But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,’ he went on in a fretful tone,’ to come back upon us like a bad penny.’

  ‘That is what my step-mother said just now.’

  ‘My dear, how can one help saying it, when it’s the truth? After my paying fifty pounds, don’t you know, and thinking that you were comfortably disposed of for the next three years, and that at the expiry of the term Miss Pew would place you in a gentleman’s family, where you would receive from sixty to a hundred per annum, according to your acquirements — those were her very words — to have you sent back to us like this, in disgrace, and to be told that you had been carrying on in an absurd way with a young man on the bank of a river. It is most humiliating. And now my wife tells me the young man has not a sixpence which makes the whole thing so very culpable.’

  ‘Please let me tell you the extent of my iniquity, father, and then you can judge what right Miss Pew had to expel me.’

  Whereupon Ida quietly described her afternoon promenades upon the river-path, with the Fräulein always in her company, and how her friend’s cousin had been permitted to walk up and down with them.

  ‘Nobody supposes there was any actual harm,’ replied Captain Palliser, ‘but you must have been perfectly aware that you were acting foolishly — that this kind of thing was a violation of the school etiquette. Come, now, you knew Miss Pew would disapprove of such goings on, did you not?’

  ‘Well, yes, no doubt I knew old Pew would be horrified. Perhaps it was the idea of that which gave a zest to the thing.’

  ‘Precisely! and you never thought of my fifty pounds, and you ran this risk for the sake of a young man without a penny, who never could be your husband.’

  Ida grew scarlet and then deadly pale.<
br />
  ‘There, don’t look so distressed, child. I must try to forget my fifty pounds, and to think of your future career. It is a deuced awkward business — here come the omelette and the coffee — an escapade of this kind is always cropping up against a girl in after life — sit down and make yourself comfortable — capital dish of kidneys — the world is so small; and of course every pupil at Mauleverer Manor will gabble about this business. No mushrooms! — what is the little woman thinking about?’

  Captain Palliser seated himself, and arranged his napkin under his chin, French fashion. His features were of that aquiline type which seems to have been invented on purpose for army men. His eyes were light blue, like his boy’s — Ida’s dark eyes were a maternal inheritance — his hair was auburn, sprinkled with gray, his moustache straw-colour and with a carefully trained cavalry droop. His clothes and boots were perfect of their kind, albeit they had seen good wear. He had been heard to declare that he had rather wear feathers and war-paint, like a red Indian, than a coat made by a third-rate tailor. He was tall and inclining to stoutness, broad-shouldered, and with an easy carriage and a nonchalant air, which were not without their charm. He had what most people called a patrician look — that is to say the air of never having done anything useful in the whole course of his existence — not such a patrician as a Palmerston, a Russell, a Derby, or a Salisbury, but the ideal lotus-eating aristocrat, who dresses, drives, and dines and gossips through a languid existence.

  The Captain’s career in the East had not been particularly brilliant. His lines had not lain in great battles or stirring campaigns. Except during the awful episode of the Mutiny, when he was still a young man, he had seen little active service. His life, since his return from India, had been a blank.

  His mind, never vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life’s river as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events of his life — if it was well with these it was well with him.

  There was a rustic tavern where in summer a good many people came to dine, either in the house or the garden, and in a room adjoining the kitchen there was a small French billiard-table with very big balls. Here the Captain played of an evening with the habitués of the place, and was much looked up to for his superior skill. An occasional drive into Dieppe on the banquette of the diligence, and a saunter by the sea, was his only other amusement.

  His daughter poured out his coffee, and ministered to his various wants as he breakfasted, eating with but little appetite herself, albeit the fare was excellent.

  Captain Palliser talked in a desultory way as he ate, not often looking up from his plate, but meandering on. Happily for Ida, who had been reduced to the lowest stage of self-abasement by her welcome, he said no more about Miss Pew or his daughter’s gloomy prospects. It was not without a considerable mental effort that he was able to bring his thoughts to bear upon other people’s business. He had strained his mind a good deal during the last twenty-four hours, and he was very glad to relax the tension of the bow.

  ‘Rather a dull kind of life for a man who has been used to society — eh, Ida?’ he murmured, as he ate his omelette; ‘but we contrive to rub on somehow. Your step-mother likes it, and the boy likes it — wonderful healthy air, don’t you know — no smoke — no fogs — only three miles from the sea, as the crow flies. It suits them, and it’s cheap — a paramount consideration with a poor devil on half-pay; and in the season there are some of the best people in Europe to be seen at the établissement.’

  ‘I suppose you go to Dieppe often in the season, father?’ said Ida, pleased to find he had dropped Miss Pew and the governess question.

  ‘Well, yes; I wander in almost every fine day.’

  ‘You don’t walk?’ exclaimed Ida, surprised at such activity in a man of his languid temper.

  ‘Oh, no; I never walk. I just wander in — on the diligence — or in, a return fly. I wander in and look about me a little, and perhaps take a cup of coffee with a friend at the Hôtel des Bains. There is generally some one I know at the Bains or the Royal. Ah, by-the-bye whom, do you think I saw there a fortnight ago?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ answered Ida; ‘I know so few of your friends.’

  ‘No, of course not. You never saw Sir Vernon Palliser, but you’ve heard me talk about him.’

  ‘Your rich brother, the wicked old baronet in Sussex, who never did you a kindness in his life?’

  ‘My dear, old Sir Vernon has been dead two years.’

  ‘I never heard of his death.’

  ‘No, by-the-bye. It wasn’t worth while worrying you about it, especially as we could not afford to go into mourning. Your step-mother fretted about that dreadfully, poor little woman; as if it could matter to her, when she had never seen the man in her life. She said if one had a baronet in one’s family one ought to go into mourning for him. I can’t understand the passion some women have for mourning. They are eager to smother themselves in crape at the slightest provocation, and for a mean old beggar like Vernon, who never gave me a sixpence. But as I was saying, these two young fellows turned up the other day in front of the Hôtel des Bains.’

  ‘Which two young fellows, my dear father? I haven’t the faintest idea of whom you are talking,’ protested Ida, who found her father’s conversation very difficult to follow.

  ‘Why, Sir Vernon, of course — the present Sir Vernon and his brother Peter: ugly name, isn’t it, Ida? but there has always been a Peter in the family; and as a rule,’ added Captain Palliser, growing slower and dreamier of speech as he fell into reminiscences of the past—’as a rule the Peter Pallisers have gone to the dogs. There was Major Palliser — fought in the Peninsula — knew George the Fourth — married a very pretty woman and beat her — died in the Bench.’

  ‘Tell me about the present Sir Vernon,’ asked Ida, more interested in the moving, breathing life of to-day than in memories of the unknown dead. ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘He is a fine, broad-shouldered young fellow — seven or eight and twenty. No, not handsome — my brother Vernon was never distinguished for beauty, though he had all the markings of race. There is nothing like race, Ida; you see it in a man’s walk; you hear it in every tone of a man’s voice.’

  ‘Dear father, I was asking about this particular Sir Vernon,’ urged Ida, with a touch of impatience, unaccustomed to this slow meandering talk.

  ‘And I was telling you about him,’ answered the Captain, slightly offended. His little low-born wife never hurried and hustled his thoughts in this way. She was content to sit at his feet, and let him meander on for hours. True that she did not often listen, but she was always respectful. ‘I was remarking that Sir Vernon is a fine young fellow, and likely to live to see himself a great-grandfather. His brother, too, is nearly as big and healthy — healthy to a degree. The breakfast I saw those two young men devour at the hotel would have made your hair stand on end. But, thank heaven, I have never been the kind of man to wait for dead men’s shoes.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ida. ‘If these boys had been sickly and had died young, you would have succeeded to the baronetcy.’

  ‘To the baronetcy and to the estate in Sussex, which is a very fine estate, worth eight thousand a year.’

  ‘Then, of course, they are strong, and likely to live to the age of Methuselah!’ exclaimed Ida, with a laugh of passing bitterness. ‘Who ever heard of luck coming our way? It is not in our race to be fortunate.’

  The shame and agony of her own failure to win fortune were still strong upon her.

  ‘Who knows what might happen?’ said the Captain, with amiable listlessness. ‘I have never allowed my thoughts to dwell upon the possibilities of the future; yet it is a fact that, so long as those young men remain unmarried, there are only two lives between me and wealth. They feel the position themselves; for when Sir Vernon came over here to lunch, he patted my boy on the head and said, in his joking way, “If Peter and I had falle
n down a crevasse the other day in the Oberland, this little chap would have been heir to Wimperfield.”’

  ‘No doubt Sir Vernon and his brother will marry and set up nurseries of their own within the next two or three years,’ said Ida, carelessly. Eager as she had been to be rich during those two and a half bitter years in which she had so keenly felt the sting of poverty, she was not capable of seeing her way to fortune through the dark gate of death.

  ‘Yes, I daresay they will both marry,’ replied Captain Palliser, gravely, folding his napkin and whisking an accidental crumb off his waistcoat. ‘Young men always get drifted into matrimony. If they are rich all the women are after them, If they are poor — well, there is generally some woman weak enough to prefer dual starvation to bread and cheese and solitude. Vernon told me he had no idea of marriage. He and his brother are both rovers — fond of mountain-climbing, yachting, every open-air amusement.’

  ‘Did you see much of them while they were at Dieppe?’

  ‘They only stayed three days. They walked over here to lunch, put the poor little woman in a fluster — although they were very pleasant and easy about everything — invited me to dinner, tipped the boy munificently, and went off by the night-boat, bound straight for Wimperfield and the partridges. Very fine partridge shooting at Wimperfield! Vernon asked me to go across with him and stay at the old place for a week or two; but my sporting days are over. I can’t get up early; and I can’t walk in shooting-boots. Besides, the little woman would have fretted if I had left her alone so long.’

  ‘But the change would have done you good, father.’

  ‘No, my dear; any change of habits would worry me. I have dropped into my groove and I must stay in it. What a pity you were not here when your cousins called! Who knows what might have happened? Vernon might have fallen over head and ears in love with you.’

  ‘Don’t, father!’ cried Ida, with absolute pain in her voice. ‘Don’t talk about marrying for money. There is nothing in life so revolting, so degrading. Be sure, it is a sin which always brings its own punishment.’