Kitabı oku: «A Plucky Girl», sayfa 5

"Things are exactly as I feared," said mother, and I saw her anxious eyes look across the room as though she were gazing at a vision which gave her the greatest disquietude.

Early the next day I hung father's picture in such a position in the drawing-room that mother could have the eyes following her wherever she turned. She often said that she was never comfortable, nor quite at home, unless under the gaze of those eyes, and we made up our minds not to mind the fact of our new boarders asking questions about the picture, for we were intensely proud of my father, and felt that we could say in a few dignified words all that was necessary, and that my dear father would in a measure protect us in our new career.

Early the next week the first boarders arrived. Three or four families came the same day. Jane said that that was best. Jane was the one who received them. She went into the hall and welcomed them in her brusque tone and took them immediately to their rooms, in each of which printed rules of the establishment were pinned up, and mother and I did not appear until just before dinner, when the different boarders had assembled in the drawing-room.

"Dress for dinner and make yourself look as nice as you possibly can," was Jane's parting shot to me, and I took her advice in my own way.

CHAPTER VIII
THE FLOUR IN THE CAKE

"Put on the least becoming dress you have got, Westenra," said mother.

"And what is that?" I asked, pausing with my hand on the handle of mother's door.

"Well," said my mother, considering, "it is a little difficult, for all your dresses are perfectly sweet; but I think if there is one that suits you rather less than another it is that cloudy blue with the silver gauze over it."

"O mother! that is a great deal too dressy," I exclaimed.

"Well, there is the pale primrose."

"Too dressy again."

"One of your many white dresses – but then you look exquisite in white, darling."

"You had better leave it to me, mother," I said. "I promise to make myself look as plain and uninteresting and unpretentious as possible." And then I shut the door quickly and left her.

The stepping down had been exciting, but the first firm footfall on our new terra firma was more exciting still. The boarders and I were to meet at dinner. For the first time I was to be known to the world as Miss Wickham, who kept a boarding-house in company with her mother and a certain Miss Jane Mullins. It was not a high position according to that set in which I was born. But never mind. Just because my father had won the Victoria Cross would his daughter think nothing degrading which meant an honourable and honest livelihood. So I hastily donned a black net dress which was not too fashionable, and without any ornament whatsoever, not even a string of pearls round my neck, ran downstairs. But the dress was low and the sleeves were short, and I could not keep the crimson of excitement out of my cheeks, nor the fire of excitement out of my eyes. I ran into the drawing-room, exclaiming "Mother! mother!" and forgot for the moment that the drawing-room no longer belonged to mother and me, but was the property of our paying guests, and our house was no longer ours.

Mrs. and Miss Armstrong were standing near the hearth. Mrs. Armstrong was a thin, meagre little woman, of about forty years of age. Country was written all over her – provincial country. She had faded hair and a faded complexion, and at times, and when not greatly excited, a faded manner. When she was thinking of herself she was painfully affected; when she was not thinking of herself she was hopelessly vulgar. Her daughter was a downright buxom young person, who quite held her own. Neither Mrs. nor Miss Armstrong were in evening dress, and they stared with amazement and indignation at me. Miss Armstrong's cheeks became flushed with an ugly red, but I tripped up to them just as if there were no such thing as dress in the world, and held out my hand.

"How do you do?" I said. "I am glad to see you. Won't you both sit down? I hope you have found everything comfortable in your room."

Then, as Mrs. Armstrong still stared at me, her eyes growing big with amazement, I said in a low voice —

"My name is Wickham. I am one of the owners of this house."

"Oh, Miss Wickham," said Mrs. Armstrong, and there was a perceptible tone of relief in her voice. It did not matter how stylish Miss Wickham looked, she was still only Miss Wickham, a person of no importance whatsoever.

"Come here, Marion," said Mrs. Armstrong, relapsing at once into her commonest manner. "You must not sit too near the fire, for you will get your nose red, and that is not becoming."

Marion, however, drew nearer to the fire, and did not take the least notice of her mother's remark.

"So you keep this boarding-house," said Mrs. Armstrong, turning to me again. "Well, I am surprised. Do you mind my making a blunt remark?"

I did not answer, but I looked quietly back at her. I think something in my steady gaze disquieted her, for she uttered a nervous laugh, and then said abruptly —

"You don't look the thing, you know. You're one of the most stylish young ladies I have ever seen. Isn't she, Marion?"

"She is indeed," answered Miss Marion. "I thought she was a duchess at least when she came into the room."

"Come over here, Marion, and don't stare into the flames," was Mrs. Armstrong's next remark. "I didn't know," she added, "we were coming to a place of this kind. It is very gratifying to me. I suppose the bulk of the guests here will be quite up to your standard, Miss Wickham?"

"I hope so," I replied. I was spared any more of my new boarders' intolerable remarks, for at that moment Mrs. and Captain Furlong appeared. He was a gentleman, and she was a lady. She was an everyday sort of little body to look at, but had the kindest heart in the world. She was neither young nor old, neither handsome nor the reverse. She was just like thousands of other women, but there was a rest and peace about her very refreshing. She was dressed suitably, and her husband wore semi-evening dress.

I went up to them, talked a little, and showed them some of the most comfortable chairs in the room. We chatted on everyday matters, and then mother appeared. Dear, dear mother! Had I done right to put her in this position? She looked nervous, and yet she looked stately as I had never seen her look before. I introduced her not only to the Furlongs, who knew instinctively how to treat her, but also to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong, and then to a Mr. and Mrs. Cousins who appeared, and the three Miss Frosts, and some other people, who were all taking possession of us and our house. Oh, it was confusing on that first night. I could scarcely bear it myself. I had never guessed that the very boarders would look down on us, that just because we were ladies they would consider our position an equivocal one, and treat us accordingly. I hoped that by-and-by it might be all right, but now I knew that mother and I were passing through the most trying period of this undertaking. Some of our guests were people of refinement, who would know how to act and what to do under any circumstances, and some again were of the Armstrong type, who would be pushing and disagreeable wherever they went. Marion Armstrong, in particular, intended to make her presence felt. She had a short conversation with her mother, and then pushed her way across the room to where my own mother sat, and stood before her and began to talk in a loud, brusque, penetrating voice.

"I have not been introduced to you, Madam; my name is Marion Armstrong. I have come up to London to study Art. I was rather taken aback when I saw you. You and Miss Wickham are the people who are our landladies, so to speak, and you are so different from most landladies that mother and I feel a little confused about it. Oh, thank you; you wish to know if we are comfortable. We are fairly so, all things considered; we don't mind our attic room, but it's likely we'll have to say a few words to your housekeeper – Miss Mullins, I think you call her – in the morning. You doubtless, Madam, do not care to interfere with the more sordid part of your duties."

At that moment, and before my really angry mother could answer, the door was opened, and there entered Jane Mullins in her usual sensible, downright silken gown, and a tall man. I glanced at him for a puzzled moment, feeling sure that I had seen him before, and yet not being quite certain. He had good features, was above the medium height, had a quiet manner and a sort of distant bearing which would make it impossible for any one to take liberties with him.

Miss Mullins brought him straight across the room to mother and introduced him. I caught the name, Randolph. Mother bowed, and so did he, and then he stood close to her, talking very quietly, but so effectively, that Miss Armstrong, after staring for a moment, had to vanish nonplussed into a distant corner of the drawing-room. I saw by the way that young lady's eyes blazed that she was now intensely excited. Mother and I had startled and confused her a good deal, and Mr. Randolph finished the dazzling impression her new home was giving her. Certainly she had not expected to see a person of his type here. She admired him, I saw at a glance, immensely, and now stood near her own mother, shaking her head now and then in an ominous manner, and whispering audibly.

Suddenly Jane, who was here, there, and everywhere, whisked sharply round.

"Don't you know Mr. Randolph, Miss Wickham?" she said.

I shook my head. She took my hand and brought me up to mother's side.

"Mr. Randolph," she said, "this is our youngest hostess, Miss Westenra Wickham."

Mr. Randolph bowed, said something in a cold, courteous tone, scarcely glanced at me, and then resumed his conversation with mother.

CHAPTER IX
THE ARTIST'S EYE

During dinner I found myself seated next Miss Armstrong. Miss Armstrong was on one side of me, and her mother was at the other. I don't really know how I got placed between two such uncongenial people, but perhaps it was good for me, showing me the worst as well as the best of our position at once. I was having a cold douche with a vengeance.

As we were taking our soup (I may as well say that the ménu was excellent, quite as good as many a grand West End dinner which I had attended in my palmy days), Miss Armstrong bent towards me, spilling a little of her soup as she did so, and said, in a somewhat audible whisper —

"I wish you would give me a hint about him."

"About whom?" I asked in return.

"Mr. Randolph; he is one of the most stylish people I have ever met. What are his tastes? Don't you know anything at all about him? Is he married, for instance?"

"I never saw Mr. Randolph before, and I know nothing about him," I answered in a low, steady voice, which was in marked contrast to Miss Armstrong's buzzing, noisy whisper.

"Oh my!" said that young lady, returning again to the contemplation of her soup. Her plate was taken away, and in the interval she once more led the attack.

"He is distingué," she said, "quite one of the upper ten. I wish you would tell me where you met him before. You must have met him before, you know; he would not come to a house like this if he was not interested in you and your mother. He is a very good-looking man; I admire him myself immensely."

"I don't care to make personal remarks at dinner," I said, looking steadily at the young lady.

"Oh my!" she answered again to this; but as some delicious turbot was now facing her, she began to eat it, and tried to cover her mortification.

Presently my neighbour to my right began to speak, and Mrs. Armstrong's manners were only a shade more intolerable than her daughter's.

"Marion has come up to London to study h'Art," she said. She uttered the last word in a most emphatic tone. "Marion has a great taste for h'Art, and she wants to attend one of the schools and become an h'artist. Do you think you could give us any advice on the subject, Miss Wickham?"

I answered gently that I had never studied Art myself, having no leaning in that direction.

"Oh dear: now I should have said you had the h'artist's h'eye," said Mrs. Armstrong, glancing at my dress and at the way my hair was arranged as she spoke. "You are very stylish, you know; you are a good-looking girl, too, very good-looking. You don't mind me giving you a plain compliment, do you, my dear?"

I made no reply, but my cheeks had never felt more hot, nor I myself more uncomfortable.

Mrs. Armstrong looked me all over again, then she nodded across my back at Miss Armstrong, and said, still in her buzzing half-whisper, for the benefit of her daughter —

"Miss Wickham has got the h'artist's h'eye, and she'll help us fine, after she's got over her first amazement. She's new to this business any one can see; but, Marion, by-and-by you might ask her if she would lend you that bodice to take the pattern. I like the way it is cut so much. You have got a good plump neck, and would look well in one made like it."

Marion's answer to this was, "O mother, do hush;" and thus the miserable meal proceeded.

I was wondering how my own mother was getting on, and at last I ventured to glance in her direction. She was seated at the head of the table, really doing nothing in the way of carving, for the dishes, except the joints, were all handed round, and the joints Jane Mullins managed, standing up to them and carving away with a rapidity and savoir faire which could not but arouse my admiration. The upper part of the table seemed to be in a very peaceful condition, and I presently perceived that Mr. Randolph led the conversation. He was having an argument on a subject of public interest with Captain Furlong, and Captain Furlong was replying, and Mr. Randolph was distinctly but in very firm language showing the worthy captain that he was in the wrong, and Mrs. Furlong was laughing, and mother was listening with a pleased flush on her cheeks. After all the dear mother was happy, she was not in the thick of the storm, she was not assailed by two of the most terrible women it had ever been my lot to encounter.

The meal came to an end, and at last we left the room.

"Stay one minute behind, dear," said Jane Mullins to me.

I did so. She took me into her tiny little parlour on the ground floor.

"Now then, Miss Wickham, what's the matter? You just look as if you were ready to burst into tears. What's up? Don't you think our first dinner was very successful – a good long table all surrounded with people pleased with their dinner, and in high good humour, and you were the cause of the success, let me tell you, dear. They will talk of you right and left. This boarding-house will never be empty from this night out, mark my words; and I never was wrong yet in a matter of plain common-sense."

"But oh, dear!" I cried, and I sank into a chair, and I am sure the tears filled my eyes; "the company are so mixed, Miss Mullins, so terribly mixed."

"It takes a lot of mixing to make a good cake," was Jane's somewhat ambiguous answer.

"Now, what do you mean?"

"Well, any one can see with half an eye that you object to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong, and I will own they are not the sort of folks a young lady like yourself is accustomed to associate with; but all the same, if we stay here and turn this house into a good commercial success, we must put up with those sort of people, they are, so to speak, the support of an establishment of this sort. I call them the flour of the cake. Now, flour is not interesting stuff, at least uncombined with other things; but you cannot make a cake without it. People of that sort will go to the attics, and if we don't let the attics, my dear Miss Wickham, the thing won't pay. Every attic in the place must be let, and to people who will pay their weekly accounts regularly, and not run up bills. It's not folks like your grand Captain Furlong, nor even like Mr. Randolph, who make these sort of places 'hum,' so to speak. This establishment shall hum, my dear, and hum right merrily, and be one of the most popular boarding-houses in London. But you leave people like the Armstrongs to me. To-morrow you shall sit right away from them."

"No, I will not," I said stoutly, "why should you have all the burden, and mother and I all the pleasure? You are brave, Miss Mullins."

"If you love me, dear, call me Jane, I can't bear the name of Mullins. From the time I could speak I hated it, and three times in my youth I hoped to change it, and three times was I disappointed. The first man jilted me, dear, and the second died, and the third went into an asylum. I'm Mullins now, and Mullins I'll be to the end. I never had much looks to boast of, and what I had have gone, so don't fret me with the knowledge that I am an old maid, but call me Jane."

"Jane you shall be," I said. She really was a darling, and I loved her.

I found after my interview with Jane that the time in the drawing-room passed off extremely well, and this I quickly discovered was owing to Mr. Randolph, who, without making the smallest effort to conciliate the Armstrongs, or the Cousinses, or any of the other attic strata, as Jane called them, kept them all more or less in order. He told a few good stories for the benefit of the company, and then he sat down to the piano and sang one or two songs. He had a nice voice, not brilliant, but sweet and a real tenor, and he pronounced his words distinctly, and every one could listen, and every one did listen with pleasure. As to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong they held their lips apart in their amazement and delight. Altogether, I felt that Mr. Randolph had made the evening a success, and that without him, notwithstanding Jane's cheery words, the thing would have been an absolute failure.

Just towards the close of the evening he came up to my side.

"I must congratulate you," he said.

"On what?" I answered somewhat bitterly.

"On your delightful home, on your bravery." He gave me a quick glance, which I could not understand, which I did not understand until many months afterwards. I was not sure at that moment whether he was laughing at me or whether he was in earnest.

"I have something to thank you for," I said after a moment, "it was good of you to entertain our guests, but you must not feel that you are obliged to do so."

He looked at me then again with a grave and not easily comprehended glance.

"I assure you," he said slowly, "I never do anything I don't like. Pray don't thank me for exactly following my own inclinations. I was in the humour to sing, I sing most nights wherever I am. If you object to my singing pray say so, but do not condemn me to silence in the future, particularly as you have a very nice piano."

"You look dreadfully out of place in this house," was my next remark; and then I said boldly, "I cannot imagine why you came."

"I wonder if that is a compliment, or if it is not," said Mr. Randolph. "I do not believe I look more out of place here than you do, but it seems to me that neither of us are out of place, and that the house suits us very well. I like it; I expect I shall be extremely comfortable. Jane Mullins is an old friend of mine. I always told her, that whenever she set up a boarding-house I would live with her. For instance, did you ever eat a better dinner than you had to-night?"

"I don't know," I answered, "I don't care much about dinners, but it seemed good, at least it satisfied every one."

"Now I am a hopeless epicure," he said slowly. "I would not go anywhere if I was not sure that the food would be of the very best. No, Miss Wickham, I am afraid, whether you like it or not, you cannot get rid of me at present; but I must not stand talking any longer. I promised to lend your mother a book, it is one of Whittier's, I will fetch it."

He left the room, came back with the book in question, and sat down by mother's side. He was decidedly good-looking, and most people would have thought him charming, but his manner to me puzzled me a good deal, and I was by no means sure that I liked him. He had grey eyes, quite ordinary in shape and colour, but they had a wonderfully quizzical glance, and I felt a sort of fear, that when he seemed to sympathise he was laughing at me; I also felt certain that I had seen him before. Who was he? How was it possible that a man of his standing should have anything to do with Jane Mullins, and yet they were excellent friends. The little woman went up to him constantly in the course of the evening, and asked his advice on all sorts of matters. What did it mean? I could not understand it!

We took a few days settling down, and during that time the house became full. It was quite true that Mrs. Armstrong talked of us to her friends. The next day, indeed, she took a complete survey of the house accompanied by Jane; making frank comments on all she saw, complaining of the high prices, but never for a moment vouchsafing to give up her large front attic, which was indeed a bedroom quite comfortable enough for any lady. She must have written to her friends in the country, for other girls somewhat in appearance like Marion Armstrong joined our family circle, sat in the drawing-room in the evening, talked at Mr. Randolph, and looked at him with eager, covetous eyes.

Mr. Randolph was perfectly polite to these young ladies, without ever for a single moment stepping down from his own pedestal. Marion Armstrong, poke as she would, could not discover what his special tastes were. When she questioned him, he declared that he liked everything. Music? – certainly, he adored music. Art? – yes, he did sketch a little. The drama? – he went to every piece worth seeing, and generally on first nights. The opera? – he owned that a friend of his had a box for the season, and that he sometimes gave him a seat in it.

Miss Armstrong grew more and more excited. She perfectly worried me with questions about this man. Where did he come from? Who was he? What was his profession? Did I think he was married! Had he a secret care? Was he laughing at us?

Ah, when she asked me the last question, I found myself turning red.

"You know something about him, and you don't choose to tell it," said Marion Armstrong then, and she turned to Mrs. Cousins' daughter, who had come up to town with a view of studying music, and they put their heads together, and looked unutterable things.

Before we had been a fortnight in the place, all the other girls vied with me as to their dinner dress. They wore low dresses, with short sleeves, and gay colours, and their hair was fantastically curled, and they all glanced in the direction where Mr. Randolph sat.

What hopes they entertained with regard to him I could never divine, but he seemed to be having the effect which Jane desired, and the attics were filling delightfully.

Jane whispered to me at the end of the second week, that she feared she had made a great mistake.

"Had I known that Mr. Randolph would have the effect he seems to be having," she said, "I might have doubled our prices from the very beginning, but it is quite too late now."

"But why should it be necessary for us to make so much money?" I said.

Jane looked at me with a queer expression.

"So much!" she said. "Oh, we shall do, I am certain we shall do; but I am particularly anxious not to touch that seven thousand pounds capital; at least not much of it. I want the house to pay, and although it is a delightful house, and there are many guests coming and going, and it promises soon to be quite full, yet it must remain full all through the year, except just, of course, in the dull season, if it is to pay well. We might have charged more from the beginning; I see it now, but it is too late."

She paused, gazed straight before her, and then continued.

"We must get more people of the Captain Furlong type," she said. "I shall advertise in the Morning Post, and the Standard; I will also advertise in the Guardian. Advertisements in that paper are always regarded as eminently respectable. We ought to have some clergymen in the house, and some nice unmarried ladies, who will take rooms and settle down, and give a sort of religious respectable tone. We cannot have too many Miss Armstrongs about; there were six to dinner last night, and they rather overweighted the scale. Our cake will be heavy if we put so much flour into it."

I laughed, and counselled Jane to advertise as soon as possible, and then ran away to my own room. I felt if this sort of thing went on much longer, if the girls of the Armstrong type came in greater and greater numbers, and if they insisted on wearing all the colours of the rainbow at dinner, and very low dresses and very short sleeves, I must take to putting on a high dress without any ornaments whatsoever, and must request mother to do likewise.

Miss Armstrong was already attending an Art school, where, I cannot remember, I know it was not the Slade; and on bringing back some of her drawings, she first of all exhibited them to her friends, and then left them lying on the mantelpiece in the drawing-room, evidently in the hopes of catching Mr. Randolph's eye. She did this every evening for a week without any result, but at the end of that time he caught sight of a frightfully out-of-drawing charcoal study. It was the sort of thing which made you feel rubbed the wrong way the moment you glanced at it. It evidently rubbed him the wrong way, but he stopped before it as if fascinated, raised his eyebrows slightly, and looked full into Miss Armstrong's blushing face.

"You are the artist?" he said.

"I am," she replied; "it is a little study." Her voice shook with emotion.

"I thought so," he said again; "may I congratulate you?" He took up the drawing, looked at it with that half-quizzical, half-earnest glance, which puzzled not only Miss Armstrong and her friends but also myself, and then put it quietly back on the mantelpiece.

"If you leave it there, it will get dusty and be spoiled," he said. "Is it for sale?" he continued, as if it were an after-thought.

"Oh no, sir," cried Miss Armstrong, half abashed and delighted. "It is not worth any money – at least I fear it is not."

"But I am so glad you like it, Mr. Randolph," said Mrs. Armstrong, now pushing vigorously to the front; "I always did say that Marion had the h'artist's soul. It shines out of her eyes, at least I am proud to think so; and Marion, my dear, if the good gentleman would like the little sketch, I am sure you would be pleased to give it to him."

"But I could not think of depriving Miss Armstrong of her drawing," said Mr. Randolph, immediately putting on his coldest manner. He crossed the room and seated himself near mother.

"There now, ma, you have offended him," said Marion, nearly crying with vexation.