Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.

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When Mrs Brunton's bonnet with the long veil was taken off, and her long cloak, which was half covered with crape, she presented a very agreeable figure in a well-fitting dress, which indeed was black, but in no special way gloomy, and pleasantly "threw up" her light brown hair and pretty complexion. The crape, which was rather shabby, was indeed more or less worn—if not for effect as Percy Fitzroy supposed—at least by way of response to a natural prejudice in favour of "deep" mourning, which Nelly knew to exist among the English kindred, apt as they were to forget that a long time had elapsed since that crape was a necessity and quite congenial to her feelings. The tears which had come to her eyes when she first saw her cousins, the sigh with which she had greeted the dear old room (though kept back for half a second by the unexpected sight of a stranger), were quite authentic and genuine. Much indeed had passed over her head since she had been last there, much since she had met the "dear old Ju" and little Maysey of her youthful recollections. The over-experienced young man who had fixed his cynical eyes upon Mrs Brunton set it all down as fictitious, with a wisdom which is still more ignorant and silly than foolishness. He took the smile of a buoyant nature which lay perdu about the corners of her mouth for an equally cynical amusement at the rôle she had to play. And he was entirely wrong, as such penetrating observers usually are. She was ready to smile whenever an occasion should arise, but at that moment she was very ready to cry. When they took her out upon the well-known lawn, and established her in the very same old chair which she remembered, before the same tea-things, the old silver teapot, the china which she would have recognised anywhere, Nelly burst out crying in spite of herself. "I don't believe there is a cup cracked of the whole set," she said; "and to think how many things have happened to me!" May, quite touched, threw herself down on her knees by Nelly's side and clasped her arms round her cousin's waist ("And I dared to think the child was unfeeling!" Miss Bampton, remorseful, said to herself), while Julia bent over her and kissed her, and even old Mr Bampton stroked her shoulder with his heavy hand, saying, "You must keep up your heart, Nelly—you must try to keep up your heart." And then presently they all dried their eyes, and sat down in comfortable chairs and took their tea.

It was all as natural as the sunshine and the rain. Mrs Brunton had not perhaps great cause to be an inconsolable widow; and she was not so. Her husband, had he been the bereaved person, would probably by this time have married again, and she had no thought of doing that. But she had felt his loss keenly, and the change in her life and all the unexpected differences in her lot which separated her from so many of her contemporaries to whom nothing had happened. Fortunately the unfortunates in this world often come to feel a certain superiority in their experience to those who have had no trouble, to whom nothing has happened, which modifies the great inequalities of the balance; and this had some share in Nelly's feelings. The cousins had been happy and at peace all the time during which she had "gone through" so much; but she felt herself on such a height of experience and development over their heads as no words could say. They had never known what trouble was—they were here with their old china, their old silver teapot, polished! as if that was the great business in life; not a cup was cracked, not a chair displaced, old Sinnett the butler stepping softly across the noiseless grass, with the cake basket, just as he had always done. After Nelly had cried with a full heart, she laughed, looking round, as she took her tea. "Does nothing ever happen over here?" she said; "are you all exactly as you used to be before I went away?"

"Ju has never gone off, you see; she can't bring any man to the point," said the old heavy father with a laugh.

"Oh, papa!" said the gentle Julia—"but Nelly knows your naughty ways."

"Yes, I know my uncle's naughty ways—and that he gives thanks on his knees night and morning that Julia has never brought any man to the point: for what would Bampton-Leigh do without her?" Nelly cried.

"Oh, there's me!" said May.

"That little thing!" said Mr Bampton; "she is in the other line, quite the other line. I can't go out for my walk in the morning but some young fellow or other comes trying to make up to me—I'm May's father, Nelly, nowadays: that's what I am to those young men."

"I saw one in the drawing-room," said Mrs Brunton; "I suppose it was one of them. It gave me quite a start to see a stranger there."

"And very bad taste of him," said Miss Bampton, reddening; "the very worst taste! I suppose he stopped to see whether you were nice-looking enough to please him, Nelly."

"Nothing of the sort!" cried May; "he stopped to finish a song we were practising. Julia is always saying disagreeable things of Mr Fitzroy."

Nelly had not the air of finding it very disagreeable that the young man had waited to see whether she was nice-looking. She smoothed back her hair, which curled a little on her forehead, and said with a smile: "That was why you couldn't come to meet me at the station, May."

"It is for a concert in the village," said May, with a great flush of colour.

"Oh!" said Julia hastily, "you must not think, Nelly, it was the child's fault. I gave all the hints I could, but we could not get him to go away. He is one of those society men, as people call them, who do exactly what they please and never mind what you say."

"Julia is so dreadfully prejudiced—she is nothing but a bundle of prejudices!"

"And is there nothing new but Mr Fitzroy?—if that is his name," Nelly said.

Then they began to tell her of all the vicissitudes of the country life, the people who had been married, the children who had been born, a point on which Nelly, being a mother herself, was very curious—and the sons who had gone away to seek their fortune. Mr Bampton by this time had taken his tea and gone in again, so that the ladies were alone with their gossip; and Mrs Brunton sat and listened with a smile, in the relief of having got the first meeting over, and the first shock of the old recollections. She felt at her ease now, not disturbed by any fear of criticism, or of meeting in Julia's eye a reminder that she ought to have had her hair covered by a cap. If truth must be told, it had wounded Julia's feelings much to see her cousin take off her bonnet so simply, without putting up her hand to her head and saying "But I have no cap!" as ladies who wear that article generally do. Miss Bampton, however, had still a hope that when Nelly dressed for the evening it might appear, covering her with the appropriate crown of sorrow. All was not lost as yet, though already indeed Julia had begun to feel a regret that the pretty hair should so covered up, and was in a state of mind to forgive Nelly if that outward and visible sign was not in her wardrobe at all.

When Nelly came down to dinner it was a shock, but not so great a shock as Miss Bampton, had she foreseen it, would have expected. She had no cap—but then her dress was in such very good taste! It was of very thin black stuff, almost transparent, faintly showing her shoulders and arms through, but made quite up to the throat and of a material which was very black and "deep," with no lustre or reflections in it, not even jet or any of the deadly-lively ornaments with which mourning is "lighted up." It made her look very slim, very young, very much like a girl—but poor Nelly could not help that. And nothing, Miss Bampton said to herself, could be nicer than Nelly was. She asked May about her concert that was coming off, and begged that she might be told what songs she was going to sing. "I might help you a little," she said; "I could play your accompaniments at least." And so she did, helping her, for Nelly was a good musician, and giving her a great many hints—as good as a lesson, May acknowledged. And later in the evening when Mr Bampton came in and asked if she could not sing for him that old-fashioned song she used to sing, Nelly, sighing a little, and smiling, and with a tear in her eyes, sang "My mother bids me bind my hair" with a pathos in her voice for Lubin who was away, that made the good Julia cry. She dashed off after that into another lighter song that meant nothing, to take away the taste of the first, she said, which was a little too much for her. Oh no, she had not given up her singing—but nobody had asked her for that old song for years.

"Shows what fools they are nowadays—in music as well as everything else," Mr Bampton said.

The next day Nelly offered most good-naturedly to help May and Mr Fitzroy with their accompaniments—and the next they tried the trio, which was accomplished with great success. She was a better musician and had a much finer voice than May—and before her visit was half over it was she who sang with Fitzroy, taking the leading part in all the concerted music. There were two or three small parties, and it was decided by everybody that it was with Nelly's soprano, not May's, that the baritone went so well. "Dear May's is a delicious little voice," said Mrs Spencer-Jackson, "so pure and so sweet; but Mrs Brunton has a great deal of execution, and she has been so well trained. It is what I call artificial singing, not sweet and child-like, like dear May's. But then so is Percy Fitzroy's—these are the two that go together." Perhaps there was a secret inclination on the part of Mrs Spencer-Jackson to give a little prick to the Bamptons, who had stolen her young man from her. But he was now more away from her than ever. He had always something that called him to Bampton-Leigh, and, if she had disliked to have him carried off by May, there was a still stronger reason for objecting to his entire absorption in Mrs Brunton. However, among most of the audience which listened to their music—whether in the continual rehearsal of which all but the singers were tired—or at the village concert where Nelly, "for such a good motive," was persuaded to lay aside her scruples and take a part—the same idea was prevalent. These were the two that went together. It had always been a delusion in respect to May Bampton. Her little chirp of a voice never could hold its place along with Mr Fitzroy's baritone: which shows how people deceive themselves when their own vanity is concerned. Thus the whole neighbourhood concurred in the verdict. And poor little May, much surprised, was left out of it without any preparation or softening to her of the event. Percy Fitzroy had never been her lover, so that there was nothing at all to blame him for. If the girl had taken foolish notions into her head, there was nobody to blame but herself.

May, for her part, was so much surprised when Fitzroy transferred his attentions to her cousin that she could not believe her eyes. He came as often as ever, and he was ready enough to throw her a crumb of kindness, a scrap of compliment, a morsel of conversation in something of the old tones. She was not jealous of Nelly, or what she and Julia called her strong voice; but when the little girl, new to all perfidies, perceived that the man who had hung about her and charmed her was turning all the artillery of whispers and glances in another direction, and that Nelly, in her black dress—Nelly, who was a widow, who ought to be entirely above the region of flirtation—was the object of these seductions, a cruel astonishment was the first feeling in her breast. She had been flattered and pleased and amused by the little éclat of Fitzroy's subjugation. She now stood by in amazement, and watched the change without understanding it. At first everybody had been so sorry for Nelly; and it was easy to imagine that Fitzroy, too, shared that admirable sentiment. A widow, so young! though, now that it came to this, May began secretly to count up Nelly's years, and to decide that at thirty Nelly was not so very young; that she had quite reached the shady side of life, when troubles were to be calculated upon. At twenty, thirty is a great age: it means more than maturity—it is the beginning of decadence. After all, why was Nelly so much to be pitied? And there was such a thing as carrying pity too far. May did not know how to account at first for the change in her own feelings towards her cousin, any more than for the change in her own position, so strangely brought about—the change from being the first, always considered, to being in a manner nobody at all.