Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘No, no, Bruno; you do not know what a beautiful nature she has. I cannot tell you how devoted she was to me while I was ill — what an untiring nurse, what an affectionate companion.’

  ‘I know she was deeply anxious about you, as she had good reason to be. I saw her very often in those sad days at Ingleshaw. She was the only person who ever gave me detailed information about my darling.’

  ‘And she used to bring me flowers and messages from you. Sometimes when my mind was all astray, and it was difficult for me to understand what people said to me, she would take pains to let me know that you were near and sorry for me. Do you want me to forget all that, Bruno, now that I am well and that you are with me?’

  ‘No, dear, but I want you to be reasonable. A girl picked out of the gutter is a rough diamond at best. Such a gem must needs require a great deal of polishing before it is worthy to shine side by side with my pearl of price.’

  All Lucille’s thoughts on that day of reunion were given to her lover. They lunched together, Miss Marjorum — very sharp set after the unaccustomed delay — counting for no more than if she had been a painter’s lay-figure. They went for a long ramble together after luncheon, Lucille being eager to make Bruno acquainted with the rural beauties of the surrounding scenery. The landscape around Weymouth is not particularly poetic or striking; but it is rustic and pretty, fertile, varied by hill and hollow, with more timber than is usually to be found in the region of the sea. Bruno thought those country lanes, those grassy hills, the realisation of paradise. The lovers walked and talked, and talked and walked, forgetting time and distance, mankind and the world, until they had need to hasten in order to reach the house on the parade in time for the eight-o’clock dinner.

  ‘I am afraid you must be dreadfully tired,” said Bruno, as they neared the town; ‘I ought not to have let you walk so far.’

  ‘I don’t feel as if I had walked a mile,’ answered Lucille; ‘I never felt stronger or better in my life.’

  Tompion was waiting to dress her young mistress, and during that hurried toilet Lucille had no time to make any inquiry about Elizabeth, nor was Tompion disposed to volunteer information. She had been standing on her dignity ever since Elizabeth’s appearance in the household.

  Bruno and his betrothed spent the evening absorbed in each other and Mozart, while Miss Marjorum slumbered placidly in the twilight of the back drawing-room, feeling that she was fulfilling all her duties as a dragon of prudery by the mere fact of her presence. Her slumbering figure, the very image of middle-aged repose, was the incarnation of the proprieties.

  The next morning was gray and showery; but Bruno, too happy to sleep late o’ mornings, had left his hotel for an early swim before the blinds were drawn up at the house on the parade. When he had had his swim he went for a walk on the sands, careless of light showers. Sea and sky were a dull gray, with gleams of watery light touching the waves here and there.

  He had walked some distance, and was nearing the point of the bay, when he overtook a solitary young woman in black. He recognised the tall slim figure, the graceful walk, that free untutored grace which comes of an active life.

  ‘Good-morning, Elizabeth,’ he said, overtaking her; ‘ you are out very early’

  She started at the sound of his voice, and turned to meet him, with the same vivid carnation which he had noted yesterday — a blush that might mean surprise, anger, shyness, anything, but which heightened her beauty.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be out?’ she asked. ‘I suppose the sands are as free to me as to you, though I am a servant.’

  This was an impulse of her old unregenerate nature, which prompted her to defiance of her superiors as a kind of self-defence.

  ‘All the world is free to youth and intellect,’ said Bruno coolly. ‘Why are you so disagreeable? I thought you were a good-tempered, well-meaning young woman, when I saw you at Ingleshaw.’

  ‘I hope I shall always mean well to those who are good to me,’ answered the girl;’ but I don’t like to be taken up like a plaything, and cast aside and forgotten.’

  ‘How do you moan?’

  ‘Till you came I was with Lady Lucille almost every hour of the day. She taught me, she read to me, she let me sit by her when she played the piano; I got to know all her favourite tunes. But when you came she left me on the beach and forgot me. I have not seen her or heard her voice since then. All yesterday afternoon and evening I sat alone in my little room at the top of the house, and watched the sea.’

  ‘Why prefer solitude when there were Tompion and Mrs. Prince in the housekeeper’s room? You might have been with them.’

  ‘No, I mightn’t. I hate them and they hate me. I have been a flower-girl; but I am not a servant; and I can’t get on with servants.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you will have to leave Ingleshaw Castle. You can hardly expect to spend your life in the drawing room with an Earl’s daughter.’

  ‘Lady Lucille said she was fond of me, and that she wanted to teach me to be a lady. Why cannot I be with her, if she likes to have me?’

  ‘Because you are a foolish and ungrateful young woman,’ replied Bruno, hardening his heart against this girl, whose lovely eyes were fixed upon his face with an appealing look which was full of pathos. ‘You are not content to enjoy Lady Lucille’s society when it is convenient to her to have you with her. You give yourself offended airs because she prefers her future husband to a person whom she has known only two months, and of whose character and belongings she knows nothing.’

  ‘When I love people I love them with all my soul; I love them until love is like a pain — a slow gnawing pain that eats my heart,’ answered the girl impetuously. ‘What difference does it make to me that Lady Lucille is an Earl’s daughter? She and I are made of the same flesh and blood, are we not?’

  ‘No doubt; but eighteen years’ culture and training are in themselves a distinction, to say nothing of hereditary influences,’ said Bruno, answering his own thoughts rather than that passionate speaker.

  He had been wondering at the delicate beauty, the grand carriage of this gutter-bred creature; the daring with which she asserted herself, and claimed indulgence for her passionate feelings — she who belonged to the class which has been taught from its cradle to cringe and whine.

  And then, gravely yet kindly, he took her to task for her folly.

  ‘My good girl,’ he said,’ you are altogether wrong in your manner of looking at your new life. Lady Lucille has been very kind to you — kinder than one young lady in twenty would have been; so kind that she has run counter to the opinion of her father, her governess, and myself, in order to gratify her inclination to help you. But this goodness of hers can give you no claim upon her, beyond the common claim of your helplessness. You have no right to exact more than it is wise or convenient for her to give. If you are willing to be a true and faithful servant to her, to respect her position and your own place as a servant, there is no reason she should not please herself by keeping you in her service; but if you are subject to jealous tempers, she had better find you a place elsewhere, where your affection for your mistress will be less intense, and your notions of a servant’s duty will be clearer.’

  Elizabeth’s heart beat loud and fast as she listened to his cold and measured words. Was it hatred of the speaker which made her so angry? Her passionate soul revolted at the idea of these differences of rank, which made it an impertinence in her to love her benefactress with a jealous and exacting love. Ever since she had been able to think she had been a Radical. Her daring intellect had overleapt the barriers of rank and fortune. Tramping in the mud — bonnetless, almost shoeless — she had looked at the women in carriages, and had told herself that she was as good as they. To her, as to the rugged philosopher Carlyle, it had seemed that the difference between beauty in the gutter and beauty in a three-hundred-guinea barouche was only a question of clothes. She had never heard of hereditary influences — the slow and gradual development of privileged races, the perpetual
imperceptible education of favourable surroundings.

  ‘If I was to be no better than a servant — a dog to fetch and to carry, and to eat and drink and get fat — why did Lady Lucille teach me, and read to me, and let me hear her play?’ asked Bess. ‘She never did as much as that for Tompion.’

  ‘And she was very foolish when she did it for you. She has spoiled the makings of a good servant.’

  ‘I’ll try to prove you wrong in that,’ answered Bess, frowning defiance at him. ‘If I am to be a servant, I’ll be a good one. I’ll show you that I can keep my place as well as any of them.’

  ‘I shall be very glad to find you can do so,’ replied Bruno, turning upon his heel, and leaving the damsel to her reflections.

  It was not without compunction that he so left her. He would have liked to have said something kind at parting; but she had shown him the danger of over-much kindness. She was evidently a person who must be ruled with a high hand.

  He breakfasted with Lady Lucille and Miss Marjorum, and left them almost immediately after breakfast. He had some business to transact at the other end of the town, he told Lucille — a fact which she was inwardly inclined to resent. What business had he to be anywhere except with her?

  When he was gone, Miss Marjorum summoned Elizabeth to her morning studies in the back drawing-room. The girl came, the image of meek obedience, but with pallid cheeks, and red rings round her eyes.

  ‘You have been crying,’ said Miss Marjorum severely.

  ‘I had the toothache,’ faltered Bess, with her swollen eyelids drooping over the dark eyes.

  ‘And you cried because of the toothache? What childish want of self-command! Are you aware of the great mass of suffering that is always going on in this world; and can you shed tears for any petty pain of your own?’

  ‘One’s own pains hurt most,’ answered Bess. ‘I daresay other people cry about theirs.’

  ‘Only people who are without fortitude and submission to the will of God,’ answered Miss Marjorum. ‘All suffering is sent us for our benefit.’

  ‘Then I had rather not be benefited — in that way,’ said Bess, so meekly that her instructress could hardly resent the remark.

  Then came the usual morning’s work — multiplication tables, weights and measures, English grammar, a little geography, a little English history — just that elementary knowledge which would bring Elizabeth May on a level with the lowest form in a Board school. But dry-as-dust though the lessons were, Elizabeth gave all the powers of her mind to the comprehension and digestion of them. She learnt with a quickness that astonished her teacher, who had never before taught any one with whom lessons meant rescue from the dismal swamp of ignorance and vulgarity.

  Elizabeth was still bending over her page of parsing when Bruno came in, flushed and joyous-looking, smelling of sea-breezes and sunshine.

  ‘Lucille, I want you to come for a cruise in my yacht,’ he said.

  ‘Your yacht!’ exclaimed Lucille, starting up from her work, delighted at her lover’s return. ‘That is a tremendous joke. How should you come by a yacht?’

  ‘In the most sordid and commonplace manner — I have hired one.’

  ‘Then that was your business this morning?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘O you darling! Pray forgive me.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For my wickedness. I thought it was so unkind of you to have business at the other end of the town when I wanted you here.’

  ‘My business was to charter a vessel in which we can explore the coast between Bournemouth and Dawlish. You behold the skipper of the Urania sloop, forty tons, crew five men and a boy. For one month certain I am her proud proprietor.’

  ‘And you know how to yacht?’ inquired Lucille naively.

  ‘I had some small experience in that line in the Mediterranean; but I have engaged the captain of the Urania — an old salt. You needn’t be afraid to trust yourself on my boat.’

  ‘I would sail across the Atlantic with you in a cockle-shell,’ said Lucille.

  They were standing on the balcony, out of everybody’s hearing, and could afford to be foolish.

  ‘We should both go to the bottom,’ answered Bruno; ‘but it would be happiness. There she is! How do you like her? Lovely, isn’t she?’ he asked, gazing seaward.

  ‘I did not know you had any friends here,’ said Lucille, looking along the parade with a by no means rapturous expression. She thought her lover had been talking of some fair promenader.

  ‘No morel have, sweet, nor hardly a feminine friend in this wide world except you. The Urania, love, yonder against the blue. I sent her round that you might look at her. Are not her lines graceful?’

  ‘She looks very pretty, and how coquettishly she bobs to the sea!’ said Lucille, as the Urania dipped her nose to the water. ‘When am I to go on board her?’

  ‘Directly after luncheon if you like. We might come home to a nine o’clock dinner.’

  ‘Never mind luncheon. Let us pack up some biscuits and things, and go at once/ exclaimed Lucille, with her eyes on the sloop. ‘She doesn’t take the slightest notice of us. Have you any means of communicating with the captain?’

  ‘Only a handkerchief. I told him to keep his eye on these houses,’ answered Bruno, waving his white silk handkerchief. ‘Now he will lay to, and send a boat on shore, and you and Miss Marjorum can come as soon as you please.’

  Lucille ran to the back drawing-room to tell the governess what bliss awaited her.

  ‘We are going at once — at once,’ she exclaimed, after she had rapidly related Bruno’s acquisition of the Urania. ‘Put on your mushroom-hat directly, like a darling, and bring your biggest sunshade. You can come, Elizabeth. Hun down and. tell Prince to pack a basket of luncheon, with everything nice that she can get in five minutes — wine, too, for Mr. Challoner, and lemonade for us. And you can bring some nice books with you, though I don’t suppose any one will want to read; and my crewel-basket, though I’m sure I shan’t work.’

  Lucille was gone before Miss Marjorum could question or remonstrate. There was nothing to be done but obey. If she declined to go, the lovers would assuredly go without her; and though the proprieties, as observed between engaged people, might be stretched to allow of a country walk, they would be seriously outraged by yachting without a chaperon. Miss Marjorum loved not the sea, nor the sea her. At her best, she could just manage to escape sea-sickness by maintaining a statuesque immobility which hardly permitted her to think. She would have liked to do her voyages under the influence of chloroform, were that possible.

  All the gray clouds had drifted away; the sky was one unbroken blue. Poor Miss Marjorum could not hint a doubt of the weather. She went up to her room, and put on her brown mushroom-hat, and was ready to start when Mrs. Prince’s basket was packed — a task which took so long as to make Lucille impatient.

  At last everything was ready, and in less than a quarter of an hour afterwards they were all on board — Miss Marjorum seated in a luxurious nest of cushions and shawls, out wardly the image of repose, but inwardly suffering, a Quarterly Review lying open in her lap, at an interesting article on Herder, of which she was incapable of reading a line; Lucille dancing about the deck alter Bruno, looking at this and that, and asking innumerable questions; Elizabeth May sitting in a corner apart, the very furthest corner available, working diligently, and never lifting her eyes from her work.

  She bad been told that she ought to remember her position as a servant, and she wanted to show Bruno Challoner that she did so remember herself.

  They went coasting around by picturesque cliffs; they saw caves, and other wonders of the shore — jelly-fish, and other marvels of the deep. Life, for two out of these four, was steeped in the sunshine that lights an earthly paradise. The summer sea and the summer air were full of rapture. The other two sat still and silently endured — one the agony of suppressed sea-sickness, the other suppressed heartache; though why her heart should ache Elizabeth May hardly
knew.

  ‘Why should the sight of their happiness make me miserable?’ she asked herself. ‘Am I made up of envy and jealousy?’

  Many days came after this — long summer days of peerless weather, fresh seas, and flowing sails. They spent every day on the Urania. Miss Marjorum’s silent sufferings grew less acute. Custom dulled the edge of agony; or it may be that, in the language of the captain, Miss Marjorum was getting her sea-legs. Elizabeth went with them every day, always provided with her work-basket, but she worked very little now, and no longer sat in a remote corner. Were she ever so willing to keep her place as a servant, it was not easy for her to do so, when Lucille was inclined to treat her as a companion; and Lucille was so inclined always, most especially on board the yacht, where the innocent happiness of Bruno’s betrothed overflowed in kindliness to everybody. She had the sweetest words and looks even for the sun-burnt weatherbeaten old sailors. She made much of them, and gave them dainties out of her ample picnic-basket, and spoiled them for future service, giving them false views of young ladyhood.

  Bruno hired a funny little piano, built on purpose for a yacht, and to this he and his betrothed sang many a lover’s duet on calm evenings. By-and-by Lucille discovered that Elizabeth had a fine contralto voice, whereupon she taught the girl to take part in the ‘Canadian Boat-Song,’ ‘Blow, Gentle Gales,’ and other sea-going glees. Bruno felt that it was foolish, wrong even, to make this girl the companion of their lives, she whose earlier life was unknown to them, save by her unattested record of bare facts. He remonstrated with Lucille, and then gave way. It was true that Elizabeth was an exceptional person; the lowness of her bringing up had left no indelible stamp of vulgarity. She grew more refined in manner and diction, nay, even in ideas, every day of her life. It was impossible to dispute her innate superiority; a rough diamond perhaps, but assuredly a diamond of purest water, and one that took kindly to the polishing process.

  She had never lost her temper since that first day. If the lovers forgot or neglected her, she sat apart and held her peace, patiently awaiting Lucille’s pleasure; or she sat at Miss Marjorum’s feet and read aloud., her instructress feeling very proud of her progress.