Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

‘You’ve got to be plastic if you want to earn your living in our walk of life,’ Miss Pomeroy replied, her cheek flushing, nevertheless, with ingenuous pleasure at this well-deserved praise. ‘But I flatter myself I do make up my back hair as well as the best of ’em. Still, the work’s hard, there’s no denying it. It ain’t the Cassowary I mind so much, though she is trying sometimes; the way she goes on about her back hair’s something positively ridiculous. It’s not my fault, is it, if there ain’t any more of it? But it’s the society of the servants’ hall that drives me frantic. I don’t mind the airs and graces of the drawing-room so much: they’ve been born and bred to it, and they do it well; but to have to endure the respectabilities and proprieties of all those footmen and coachmen, the faddy little etiquettes of Dear Woodbine’s maid, and that reduced gentlewoman, the housekeeper — oh, Arthur, it just sickens me. A man couldn’t do it, you know. He wouldn’t be hypocrite enough. But, thank Heaven, as you say, I’m absolutely plastic. ‘Pon my word, I could almost make love to the butler, I believe, if business required it; and I couldn’t say fairer than that, I’m certain.’

  Mr. Roper smiled a sympathetic smile. ‘It must be hard,’ he said seriously, ‘for a person of your tastes and education, Bess, to be mixed up in a house with a low lot of people like that. You’re quite right, I admit it: I couldn’t stand ’em. There’s your butler, for example. I’ve forgotten the gentleman’s respected name — but I’m sure he’d be the death of me. I was brought up genteel, and genteel I shall remain as long as I live, even if circumstances have driven me to be an ornament of the crib-cracking profession. When I go to the work’us, I shall go there in a hansom. Still, it does credit to your head and heart that you manage to get on with these people at all. You must do it at such a complete sacrifice of all your finer feelings.’ And Mr. Roper sighed pensively.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that they’re so low,’ Miss Pomeroy answered, rising and assuming the magnificent pose of a powdered John Thomas. ‘They’re so high; that’s the bother of it. One feels the absurdity of the situation so keenly — the grand way they talk, and the airs they give themselves. “Good mawning, Miss Williams. Fine mawning to-day. I ‘ope you feel bettah than you did last night. I think you complained of a little headache.” That’s the sort of thing that makes it dreadful to live with them. However, my poor dear mother’s so very ill now,’ and Miss Pomeroy jerked her left thumb gracefully over her left shoulder— ‘that she can’t hold out much longer, I’m afraid; and as soon as she’s laid to rest, dear soul, under the green churchyard sod, and the yews are waving solemnly — —’

  ‘Oh, Bess, you’ll be the death of me!’

  ‘Well, when the yews have done their usual duty over the grave, I shall find the work of attending to my young lady more than my impaired health and shattered nerves can stand, and then I’ll retire from service on her little property, to go and keep house for my dear kind brother, the national-school master.’

  ‘Bess, Bess,’ Mr. Roper ejaculated, eyeing her with admiration, ‘I don’t wonder you take ’em in. The saintliness of your air, the sweetness of your manner! Why, you’d make your fortune, you would, if you were to go on the stage. You were cut out for an actress.’

  ‘Indeed, I’m sure, sir, it’s very kind and thoughtful of you to say so,’ Miss Pomeroy chimed in, in her favourite character as the Perfect Treasure. ‘If I’ve earned your approbation, sir, by my humble efforts to please, I’m more than satisfied.’ She lifted the corner of an imaginary apron and looked down modestly. ‘My one aim in life is to give satisfaction to my ke-ind employers. For securing valuables when the right moment arrives, there’s nothing on earth like an unblemished character.’

  ‘How’s the lights in the house?’ Mr. Roper inquired, with a flash, suddenly recalled from admiration to serious business. He prided himself on being the inventor of the modern early or full gas-lamp system of committing burglary, in contradistinction to the old and more compromising four a.m. principle.

  ‘Electric all over, my dear, thank Heaven,’ Miss Pomeroy answered devoutly. ‘The newest thing out. This Amberley incandescent that everybody’s talking about. It’s all Amberley nowadays at Hurst Croft. We’re run entirely on the Amberley system. Amberley bosses us. We’ve the Amberley light in all the rooms, and the Amberley telephone to the stables and garden, and the Amberley alarm to wake us with the early morning cock, and the Amberley motor to work the lift and the garden rollers. Our governor finances the Amberley syndicate, whatever that may be. But never you mind the light. It’s all right. The more the better. It’ll be turned on full in every one of the passages. It’s much simpler so. You walk straight in with your hat in your hand, in your best Sunday suit, as if the place belonged to you, and if anybody happens to meet you and ask any questions, just you pull your mug and say you’re Miss Williams’s brother, come down for the night, and Miss Williams has sent you to Miss Venables’ room for Miss Venables’ smelling-bottle.’

  ‘Is it safe, do you think?’ Mr. Roper inquired, with a dubious expression.

  ‘Anything’s safe, I should think, with such a dunder-headed lot of blathering idiots as the Hurst Croft servants. You might walk in by the window before their very eyes, and if you said “Good-evening, sir,” they’d be perfectly satisfied. You might tell them you were the Queen’s Taxes called to inspect the gas-meter, and they’d think it was all right. They’d show you up at once to the dynamos for the Amberley motor.’

  ‘Well, mind you give me time enough to get clear away before you raise the alarm, any way,’ Mr. Roper put in. ‘I always think you raise the alarm a leetle bit too soon. Some day, if you don’t look out, they’ll run up, and I’ll get lagged at it.’

  ‘Trust me for that. I know my own business. It’s indispensable the door should be locked from the inside, and I should raise the house for it before anyone else discovers the loss. That’s the one guarantee for my immaculate character. If it weren’t for that, inconsiderate fools might actually suspect me of being a confederate or an accessory.’

  ‘Shall I want any shooting-irons?’ Mr. Roper asked suddenly with an interested air. ‘Because, if not absolutely necessary, it’s safest, of course, not to carry ’em about with one. It creates a prejudice against a man in the eyes of the police if he’s found walking about with a six-shooter in his pocket.’

  ‘Oh dear no!’ Miss Pomeroy answered briskly. ‘Not the slightest need in the world for that. There never was a safer plant yet than this one. And, indeed, on personal grounds, I should particularly dislike your being obliged to do anything that might hurt the Cassowary or any member of the family.’

  Mr. Roper glanced across at her with a faint curl of disdain upon his sinister lips. ‘Why, what a regular sentimentalist you are, Bess!’ he exclaimed, with some suppressed amusement.

  Miss Pomeroy blushed. ‘No, not a sentimentalist,’ she answered warmly, as one who repels a disgraceful imputation against his moral character. ‘But when you live in the house, you naturally take more interest in the members of the family, with whom you have more sympathies and ideas in common, than in the servants’-hall people, who bore one to death with their inane affectations. Besides, I like the Cassowary. She treats me sometimes almost as if she thought I was human. And now, suppose you order up a bottle of fizz. It’s wearing on the spirits, don’t you know, this trial of seeing my poor mother so ill; and I don’t mind joining you in a glass of cham before I go home again to the Cassowary’s back hair and the butler’s compliments.’

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  DISINHERITED.

  On Tuesday night, all was bustle and confusion at Hurst Croft. The east wing, where Sabine had her rooms, was altogether deserted, and the whole strength of the establishment was concentrated on the opposite side of the house, where Old Affability stalked nervously about in Mrs. Venables’ apartments.

  Old Affability was evidently ill at ease. Even his latest toy, the Amberley light, of which he was inordinately proud, having just completed an entirely new instal
lation, seemed to afford but little comfort to his troubled mind. He paced up and down through the silent rooms, and rubbed his hands together in an agitated fashion, in exact accordance with Miss Pomeroy’s clever prediction. It was clear he was awaiting important news. Could Unified have declined one-eighth in Paris, or were Argentines being boomed that day in Wall Street? The banker’s face wore that unmistakable air of suspense and anxiety which is the outward and visible sign of internal expectancy.

  Presently the door opened, and Miss Elizabeth Pomeroy herself glided softly into the Blue Room.

  ‘How is she now, Williams?’ Mr. Venables asked with obvious anxiety.

  ‘Pretty much the same, sir,’ Miss Pomeroy answered deferentially, in her soft, subdued voice.

  What a capital servant she was, to be sure — so much above her station in manners and feelings! She was the very person, Old Affability thought, for a sick-chamber. All her movements were so gentle; all her tones were so low. He did wish to goodness dear Woodbine could only have had such a nurse to take care of her as that very superior woman.

  ‘And where’s Miss Venables?’ he asked once more, still rubbing his hands vigorously.

  ‘In the library,’ the invaluable lady’s maid answered, with quiet promptitude. ‘Shall I ask her to come to you, sir?’

  ‘No — eh — no, thank you,’ Mr. Venables replied, hesitating. ‘I — eh — I prefer to be alone, thanks. And she does also.’

  Miss Pomeroy glided away with a noiseless tread towards the library door. Her manner was outwardly as calm and unmoved as if she expected nothing. But it was two o’clock in the morning by the great hall clock; and at two sharp Mr. Arthur Roper was due for a professional engagement in the east wing. Miss Pomeroy, however, was too well trained a servant to exhibit her internal agitation by any outer signs. She walked into the library with as firm a step as if Mr. Arthur Roper was snoring peacefully in his London lodging.

  ‘Can I do anything for you, miss?’ she asked of Sabine with that unfailing deference that always marked her.

  Sabine was pale and very weary-looking.

  ‘No, thank you, Williams,’ she answered, looking up. ‘But don’t let me keep you. There’s no need for you to wait. You can go to bed if you like now.’

  Miss Pomeroy’s face was all polite refusal.

  ‘It’s very kind of you, miss,’ she said demurely, ‘but I couldn’t sleep, thank you. I’d rather sit up, if you don’t mind, till we know what happens.’

  Which was perfectly true, in more senses than the one Miss Pomeroy herself intended it to be taken in.

  And she glided away, as noiseless as ever, with that ineffably respectful and respectable air floating like an invisible cloak around her.

  As soon as she was gone, Sabine sat down and pretended to look at the magazines on the table. But she couldn’t really read; she could only turn over the leaves one by one in listless expectation. Every five minutes or so she looked at her watch, and sighed audibly. This was slow work. Half an hour passed by, five minutes at a time, then Miss Pomeroy’s light step approached the door. Sabine’s heart beat hard. She knew from some faint difference in her maid’s footfall that the great question was now finally settled.

  ‘Well, Williams?’ she said, in a deadly cold voice, as her maid entered.

  Miss Pomeroy’s face gave a dubious smile of respectful assent to the unspoken query.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ she answered, more deferential than ever. ‘It’s all over.’

  ‘A boy or a girl?’ Sabine asked, with a chill.

  ‘A boy,’ Miss Pomeroy replied, as though she had no idea how much difference the result of that natural toss-up made to Sabine. ‘A very fine baby.’

  Sabine rose up and moved quickly towards the door.

  ‘Can I go and see it?’ she asked, with a choking lump in her throat. For the very worst had come, and she knew now she was really nobody.

  ‘Yes, miss, if you like. It’s in Mrs. Venables’ boudoir. Mr. Venables is there, and he told the nurse to send me to call you.’

  Sabine groped her way, faltering, into Woodbine’s boudoir. The rooms were lit up with a dazzling flood of the Amberley system, but her eyes were blinded. In the boudoir her father stood uneasily, rubbing his hands still with the same curious nervous anxiety as ever, and bending over a shapeless little mass of flannel, that the nurse held carefully balanced in both hands. As Sabine entered, he turned round to her with a half-guilty look.

  ‘It’s a boy, my dear Sabine,’ he said, in his most apologetic manner— ‘a very fine boy. And our dear Woodbine they tell me’s progressing favourably.’

  ‘So I hear,’ Sabine answered, as cold as ice. ‘Is this the child?’

  And she inspected the little bundle of flannel critically.

  In its centre lay a tiny brown lump of humanity, with blinking eyes and mottled red face, so soft and small, it looked as if a touch of one finger might crush it out of shape for ever and ever. Sabine gazed at her new brother with a long, stony stare of supreme contempt. Was this atom the supplanter, then? This ridiculous little creature the expected enemy? Why, how could she ever be even angry with it? To think that a putty-like lump of flesh such as that, with its blinking small eyes and its flabby cheeks, had outwitted and ousted her! It was really absurd. There was something almost humiliating in the tininess and ruddiness of the new heir. For so many years she had considered herself the actual or prospective mistress of Hurst Croft; and now, to be superseded by that insignificant red and white mite of flesh there! It was bad enough, in all conscience, when Woodbine took her place; though Woodbine was at least a woman, after a fashion, with views of her own, however cartilaginous, about Æschylus, and evolution, and the Christian virtues; but this insensible little podgy dollop of human dough — why, the very thought of it was ridiculous. She could hardly swallow it.

  ‘He’s a very fine child,’ her father repeated once more, after waiting in vain nearly ninety seconds for some spontaneous expression of Sabine’s critical opinion.

  ‘I dare say he is — as children go,’ Sabine answered icily, inspecting the strange object askance with an uncertain air of candid inquiry; ‘I don’t understand them myself in this stage of development. I’ve never seriously devoted my energies to the personal study of the human infant. But he’s very like a jelly fish.’

  ‘He’s a beauty, that he is,’ the nurse put in with warmth, in the conventional crowing voice of nursery approbation. ‘Did he wonder what it all meant, then, with his pretty little eyes and his dear small nose? Did he wonder what they wanted with him? Did he think it such a curious, funny sort of a world, with all these lights and all these sights, and all these queer sounds, and all these strangers?’ And she held him up admiringly.

  ‘Probably he doesn’t think about it at all, as yet,’ Sabine responded, with crushing common-sense. ‘His only distinct idea must be that he finds flannel most unpleasantly tickling. It’s a foretaste of the general discomfort of life, and he doesn’t seem to like the sample.’

  As she delivered herself of this cheerfully pessimistic criticism of human existence to its new adventurer, they were interrupted by a serious face looking in at the doorway from the adjacent room where Woodbine lay ill. Mr. Venables started. It was one of the three doctors in attendance on the case, and his aspect was ominous.

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr. Venables,’ he said, coming forward with a very grave air, ‘you’d better step in and see your wife at once, for fear of accident. She’s in a most feeble condition, and she’s asking to speak with you. You must be prepared to find her very weak indeed, after the effects of the chloroform. Her constitution’s naturally frail, as you must be well aware, and this sturdy young gentleman here has put a severe strain upon it.’

  ‘She’s not in danger?’ Sabine asked, alarmed at the gravity of his face.

  The doctor raised a deprecating hand in front of him.

  ‘My dear young lady!’ he said, very low. ‘No such word as danger for worlds, I beg of you. Sh
e may overhear what you say. Her nerves are in such a preternaturally exalted state.’ He dropped his voice still lower. ‘Well, yes, I am afraid it would be useless to conceal from you the fact that her condition’s critical — extremely critical. A very weak heart; very weak indeed. I don’t say she mayn’t pull through; we’ll hope for the best; but you should be prepared for a sudden calamity. There’s no knowing how soon she may collapse altogether. Mrs. Venables was never in her life very strong, you see; and, between ourselves, like so many of these Girton girls, she’s totally unfit for the strain of maternity.’

  ‘Can I see her?’ Sabine asked, her lips quivering with remorse.

  ‘Well, she oughtn’t to be excited,’ the doctor answered, with a doubtful glance towards the door where Mr. Venables had just disappeared. ‘She should be kept as quiet and as undisturbed as possible. But it might be as well for you to creep in unobserved and just stand beside the bed behind the curtain. There’s no saying any moment now what may or may not happen.’

  Sabine slipped into the sick-room with a throbbing heart. She was none too early. Woodbine lay upon the bed, very thin and pale, a strange calm upon her face, with her eyes fixed blankly upon the canopy overhead, and one white hand lying motionless as marble in her husband’s. The senior of the doctors, at the head of the bed, was bathing her brow tenderly from time to time with eau de Cologne; his companion was holding her pulse, watch in hand, with one finger on his lip in ominous warning. Nobody spoke. There was a deadly silence.

  At last Woodbine murmured in a very faint voice:

  ‘Raise up my head, please;’ and they propped it up with pillows.

  Again there was silence for one long breathless moment. Then Woodbine spoke once more.

  ‘Bring me my baby,’ she said; and Miss Pomeroy, who stood by Sabine’s side behind the sheltering curtain, glided noiselessly out like a ghost to fetch it.

  When she returned with the nurse, Sabine noticed with surprise that tears were standing in her maid’s eyes. Immaculate servant as she knew Williams to be, it astonished her to find she could cry so humanly.