“But you know all about her?”
“Only that her history is a sorrowful one.”
“The usual thing, I suppose?”
“She has told me very little.”
Mr. Field shrugged his shoulders.
“I have no prejudices,” he said, with his brilliant smile — a smile that was often ironical and sometimes pathetic; a smile that lighted up the wan face. “ If I ever had any, I have outlived them. They don’t stand the wear and tear of thirty years’ solitary confinement.” Thirty years! It was heart-breaking to think of it. Austin Sedgwick bent down, and reverently kissed the pale thin hand that lay upon the satin coverlet. For three eventful decades in which the world had been moving from change to change, spoiling old beautiful things, and calling their work progress, inventing new ways of wasting strong young lives, and calling it the march of science, Conway Field had been crippled, helpless, joyless, lying in his “mattress grave.” Solitary he need not have been, since he had three married sisters and their offspring, all eager to visit and cheer him, and one single sister who was obtrusively affectionate, and would have liked nothing better than to live in his house and watch over him with unrelenting tenderness. But suffering had soured a temper that had never been angelic, and Conway Field generally spoke of his sisters and their progeny as “the herd.”
“If their name had not been legion, I might have been almost fond of them,” he told Austin, from whom he had no reserves.
Two only of the legion, Austin and his cousin George Bertram, had found favour with the invalid. Of those two nephews he was really fond, and his liking for them had kindled golden hopes in the hearts of the two mothers, Mrs. Sedgwick and Mrs. Bertram. Each of these hopeful ladies was secretly assured that her son would inherit the bulk of the Field wealth, but each sister exercised a prudent reticence in keeping this faith to herself.
It was five o’clock when Austin and his protégée drove into the courtyard of Warburton House, one of those rare mansions in the little world of Mayfair which still remained as an evidence of the dignity with which rank and wealth was clothed in the early Georgian era. It was not as grand as Chesterfield House, nor as stately as Devonshire House, but it was more secluded; shut in by high walls and massive oaken gates from the dull street that had once been gay with running footmen, and the chairmen’s flaring links, from midnight to the edge of dawn.
Mary Smith looked round her wonderingly, but was silent. She did not know that London held such a solemn courtyard, such gloomy splendour.
“Does your uncle live in that great stern house?” she asked.
“Does it frighten you?”
“A little.”
“You will see splendour inside, but less gloom. My uncle has surrounded himself with beautiful things in the thirty years that he has been confined to his wheelchair.”
“Thirty years! Oh, that is dreadful!”
“I don’t know how he would have lived through the years if he had not been a connoisseur and a collector,” Austin said. “Every picture he buys — every etching or bit of china, helps him over a little time. The weeks and months go by somehow. I hope you are fond of art.”
“I love looking at pictures, but I know nothing except that they are wonderful. I have seen the Louvre, and the galleries and churches in Belgium.”
“You never told me that you had been on the Continent,” Austin said rather reproachfully.
“For one month of my life only. It belongs to the time I try to forget.”
They were waiting in the hall while a servant went to see if his master was ready to receive them.
The great square hall was hung with Gobelins tapestry, and it was peopled with world-famous statues, the Venus of the Capitol, the Dying Gladiator, the Belvidere Apollo, fine copies by a modern Italian, and the frieze above the tapestry was an original work by Thorwaldsen, the story of Cupid and Psyche.
The footman came back while Mary was looking about her, lost in wonder at the splendour of those marble figures against the background of rich colour.
“Mr. Field was disengaged and would like to see them,” and having made this intimation, the man led the way up the broad staircase to a long gallery on the first floor, in which the walls were covered with pictures, and where there were several folding screens accommodating watercolour drawings, etchings and pastels.
In the middle of this spacious gallery there was one solitary statue — the figure of a girl seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading. She was only half dressed, as if she had stopped in the midst of her simple toilet, to read some absorbing book. A long plait of hair hung over her naked shoulder, and her shift and corset suggested the humblest rank of life. The face was thoughtful and sweet, of a pensive beauty, a face in repose, but a living face. The charm of the statue was its reality — a page out of the simple life. The girl, the chair she sat upon, the coarse shift and common stays, the scanty petticoat, all were the things seen every day in humble dwellings. The statue had made a sensation in the International Exhibition of 1862, and had been discovered later in Florence by Conway Field.
“That is my uncle’s ‘Reading Girl,’ one of his most cherished acquisitions,” said Austin softly, as they went in at the door which the servant was holding open for them.
Mary Smith was silent. Very pale, and with lips that were faintly tremulous, she followed her friend across the spacious room to the motionless figure near the hearth, and found herself face to face with the man upon whose will her fate depended.
A pale wan face, with a wasted frame, hands that were almost transparent, lying in languid abandonment upon a black and gold coverlet of Chinese embroidery, a figure that was infinitely pathetic in its enforced repose; but out of the pale face there flashed the steely light of eyes that seemed to look through material forms to the soul behind them. Standing there, dumb and nerve-shaken, Mary felt as if she could have no secrets from this man — no choice of how much of her dismal story to tell or to withhold from him. He could read her pitiful record as if her mind were an open book.
“Please take that chair, Miss Smith,” he said, pointing to the one next his own, and then testily to his nephew, who was standing in front of the low wood fire: “Sit down, Austin, for God’s sake.”
The windows were open, and the room was golden with the flowers of early summer, white lilac, pale hothouse roses, Parma violets.
Austin dropped hastily into the nearest chair, remembering his uncle’s dislike of anyone standing over him. And the young man and his protégée were thus established on each side of the invalid.
“My nephew tells me you are a capable reader,” he said, with his steady gaze on the girl’s face. “Pray, has he ever heard you read?”
Mary smiled.
“He knows that I used to read to my father, when his sight began to fail.”
“For an hour at a time, perhaps, or half an hour? And then you were tired, and your throat began to hurt you, eh?”
“For four or five hours, if he was sleepless—”
“What kind of book. Sensation novels?”
“Almost every kind of book, except novels.”
“What was your father?”
“A critic, and a political writer.”
“Indeed!”
“I read books that were sent for him to review — and sometimes his old favourites, the books he had loved when he was at Oxford.”
The severe eyebrows were raised over the wonderful eyes.
“Then your experience makes for intelligence and refinement. But the crucial question remains: Whether you can read aloud? I have had so many reading girls who couldn’t read, that you must forgive me if I am difficult. Will you give me a taste of your quality?”
“With pleasure.”
“Then here is one of my favourite Ruskins — the ‘Queen of the Air.’ Read the page I have marked.”
She read the eloquent lines in a low level voice, quietly, with no exaggerated emphasis — the voice that can soothe jaded nerves, and he
r accent was irreproachable.
“Can you read French?”
“I read many French books to my father. I’m afraid my pronunciation is British. My father sometimes laughed at my accent, but he was satisfied if I read the words distinctly.”
“Well, I won’t ask you to give me a sample; but you must read my French classics if you stay with me. I may be able to improve your accent, if it is faulty. I think you may suit me if you can stand the work — to read long hours to a peevish old man, in a house where nothing joyous ever enters, to come and go at my bidding — to come to me at midnight, and read till the first streak of dawn perhaps, to have no pleasant words, no sign of gratitude, from a mind diseased and a body in pain? Can you stand that, Miss Smith? Have you more patience than the generality of girls of your age?”
“I have had more sorrow than the generality of girls,” she answered quietly.
“You have learnt in suffering. Well, sorrow is the best school for patience.”
“I have to earn my living somehow, and there is no task I should like better than to read good literature to an invalid. I do not think you would be rude or unkind to anyone who tried honestly to please you.”
“I hope I should not be unkind; but I won’t vouch for courtesy. My nerves were shattered thirty years ago. You will have to make large allowances. Will you come to me, knowing this?”
“I shall be glad to come.”
“That is enough. My nephew shall arrange everything for you. There is a wilderness of rooms on the two floors above this, and my housekeeper shall find you comfortable quarters.”
This was all. She was to begin her duties next day, or as soon as possible.
“Women never take a step in life without wanting new clothes. If you have to buy frocks, please do not make a lugubrious choice. Most women look their best in black — but, as I have to see the same figure every day and nearly all day long, I always ask my reading girls to dress in pale soft colours that blend harmoniously with the other things I have about me.”
“I shall try to please you,” the girl answered, in her serious voice.
“Let my nephew advise you. He has a fine eye for colour — and I think he is your friend.”
“He is the only friend I have.”
“And a safe one, which is more than I would say of the average man of thirty. That will do.”
He held out his hand to her — the pale hand which was a history of his life in little — the hand that had not held a gun, or a horse’s bridle for thirty years — the hand of a man who had done with all that life means for the living world of men.
Austin observed the offered hand, and knew that Mary Smith had won signal favour. Never had he seen any reading girl so honoured. His uncle had been liberal in his dealings with them, but had held them at an immeasurable distance; reluctantly owning to himself that they were human.
Mary Smith went down the broad staircase, and walked past the white figures in the hall as if she had been moving in a dream. She had no consciousness of the marble floor or of the gravel in the courtyard. She was walking beside Austin in the street before she could find speech.
“Am I really to consider myself engaged?” she asked simply.
“Of course you are. Didn’t you hear my uncle say that he left all details to me? That means salary, your holidays, and any other matters. I do not suppose you will be greedy for holidays.”
“What should I do with them?”
“And can you be happy in that great silent house?”
“I have been almost happy in the Refuge.”
“That is a good answer, Mary.”
“I have no words to thank you for all you have done for me. You know something of what my life was before — before—” She faltered and stopped.
“Before you fell among thieves.”
“You know that my father never loved me; but you don’t know what a lonely childhood, what a joyless girlhood I had. I have not to mourn over friends I have forfeited — for I never had any friends but a few cottagers, and their dogs, and our two Cornish maids, who were very kind to me; perhaps because they saw how lonely I was. I loved the little fishing town, and the harbour where the bright-coloured boats lay at anchor in the sunshine, and the hills that rose up behind it, and the glorious sea. Those were the joys of my youth.”
“Then I think you may be happy with my uncle. He is a good man, but not an amiable one. Who can expect a martyr to be amiable? He is not a religious man, indeed I hardly dare call him a Christian — but he is a philosopher, and is incapable of an unjust or a mean thought.” And then he told her that she must lose no time in providing herself with all things becoming to her new position. As she knew nothing of London shops, he would call for her on the following afternoon, and take her to Sparrow’s Stores where his mother dealt, and where she could get almost everything that she wanted under one roof. She would want nice things for her toilet. She would want everything, he told her.
“You will have to live under a searching eye.”
“Your uncle’s?”
“His housekeeper’s. Mrs. Tredgold has grander ideas than her master. She is a clergyman’s widow. Her husband had a living worth three hundred a year in a Lincolnshire village — but she takes rank from him as if he had been an Archbishop. You will have to hear all about his great mind, and how he vegetated in his dreary parish. If you listen quietly, and seem interested, Mrs. Tredgold will be kind to you. She has a terrible eye, a district visitor’s eye, and she will scrutinize everything you wear—”
“And find fault with me?”
“She will want to advise you, which may be worse. But you must bear with her, for she is an estimable woman after her kind. There are only a few such, created to be housekeepers in the homes of the rich: women who delight in their office, and love to rule, and so take no thought for the morrow, and don’t want to feather their own nests, at the expense of their employers. I don’t believe the most insidious tradesman would attempt to bribe Mrs. Tredgold.”
“I hope she is not an inquisitive person.”
“Your own tact must protect you, if she bothers you with questions. You arc going into the world now, Mary, and you must harden your heart, and take your stand bravely upon your own merits, and win friends for yourself in Warburton House, as you have done in the Refuge.”
Mary sighed. She had lived among sinners, and the sinners had been easy to get on with. How would the saints treat her? She had a shrinking fear of the saints, as represented by the Lincolnshire vicar’s widow.
V
IT was a new and wonderful thing to walk about the leviathan premises of Sparrows, Limited, to go up in lifts, and to go down in other lifts, to move through halls of splendour, through millinery departments and boot-and-shoe departments and trunks and underlinens, stoves and laces, and that most dazzling of all departments, the Fancy goods, with a purse full of five-pound notes and sovereigns, which Austin Sedgwick had given her, after he had looked at cashmeres and silks, and helped her to choose such colours as please the educated eye. Having done that, he could leave her to do the rest of the shopping, and get back to the Refuge in a cab. There were thirty pounds in the purse, and she was to buy all the things she wanted.
Alas, she wanted everything, all the things she had never had, the nice things, and the pretty things, that for the daughter of prosperous parents are a matter of course, but which for the child of the man of letters, living on the fruits of his pen, had been out of the question. A hat now and then, when her father had received a twenty-pound cheque for three months’ work, a frock now and then; but all these unconsidered trifles that make up the sum of a woman’s dress, and are so much more costly than anyone would suppose, were impossible to Mary Smith. Doing without things had been perhaps the most useful part of her education; for what greater virtue can a woman have than self-denial. The consciousness of that purseful of money did not turn her head. She did not like taking Austin’s money, but she told herself that she could repay him in qu
arterly instalments out of her salary. She thought that Mr. Field would hardly give her less than forty pounds a year, and if so, she could pay her debt to Austin in less than a year, since she could want to buy nothing more for herself within that time.
She bought judiciously, and in her clear young brain there was always the knowledge of the amount she was spending in each department. She knew that wisdom lay in buying good things and not too many of them. Two frocks, one of fine cashmere, and one of mole-coloured cloth that was lustrous as satin, with a superior dress of soft silk, the pale grey that Austin had chosen for her, would last her a year, if she was careful. Her hats were of less importance, as Mr. Field would not see them, and here her selections were tasteful and discreet, and the little black hat and the little grey hat were neat and becoming, and what young women call “dainty.” Everything in that modest trousseau was of the best quality, and almost Quaker-like simplicity. A girl who chose such things did not want to be stared at and admired in the street, nor to be at the top of to-day’s fashion. Things so neutral had never been fashionable, and would not soon be démodé. It is the striking fashion of the year before last that marks the badly-dressed woman.
The two hours spent in leisurely shopping were very pleasant — even the solitary cup of tea at the little table in the nearly empty tea-room, which gave her time to look through her bills and make a pencil list of the amounts. Discreetly as she had bought, she had spent nearly all her money. There was just twenty-five shillings left, after she had paid for her tea — enough to buy an umbrella, and leave two shillings for her cab. She had spent all, but she felt that she had spent wisely. She need not be afraid to face the awful eye of Mrs. Tredgold, since she had not forgotten the essential necessity of a good basket trunk, large enough to hold all her belongings, a small dressing bag, and a Bible and prayer-book.
Mr. Sedgwick had telephoned to Mrs. Gurdon, so there was no astonishment at her long absence, nor at her return in a cab crammed with parcels. The kind matron was delighted when she heard Mary’s account of the fortune that had befallen her.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1005
