Mrs. Bligh. A novel

Front matter

H iHC.el BY RHODA BROUGHTON AUTHOR OF 'COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' 'DOCTOR CUPID,' ' ALAS !' ETI LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON gttblislters in ©rbimtrjj to g}.r itt.tjea.t) the CQucctt 1892 [All rights reserves TO ANDREW LANG, THIS SLENDER STORY IS OFFERED BY THE AUTHOR. CHx\PTER I. The portals of that as unhandsome as highly frequented place of worship, Holy Trinity Church, Chelsea, have just let loose the customary crowd of well-fed, well-to-do attendants on the 11.30 Sunday service. Their ears, and let us hope their hearts too, have been receiving the unsparing rebukes and virile admonishments weekly administered to them by the incumbent. It is doubtful whether the spirit of all the encomiums lavished on him by his furred and feathered flock as they stream home to their excellent luncheons this sharp-breathed Lenten Sunday would please him.

" He was finer than ever to-day !" says a mother to her daughter, in that tone of æsthetic relish that might have applauded the manner in which a popular actor has given a famous point, or a favourite soprano taken a high note ; " I think it is the best series we have ever had ; it outdoes the Beatitudes last year." " I like the Beatitudes best still," replies the daughter, "but" — enthusiastically — "he certainly is A i. I tried to catch your eye when he made that unmistakable allusion to baccarat. I wonder how Lord felt ! It is so annoying that we sit behind him, and so could not see his face. I noticed that he bent his head quite low down." " I expect a good many people have come out not feeling very comfortable," replies the parent, with a complacency which shows that she has no apprehension of belonginoto that distempered band, and in the same spirit of confident superiority which dictated Tottv c Poyser's speech about her brothers : " Dey naughty naughty boys ! me dood."

"Mrs. Bligh has gone out of mourning!" cries the girl, with that admirably abrupt change of idea for which the female mind has a special aptitude ; and indicating a middle-sized woman, who is lightly and alone walking homewards ahead of them. " I knew what it meant when she broke out into an eruption of Parma violets on Septua gesima Sunday." " She has something yellow about her, has not she ? Dear me, how bad my eyes are ! " She has planted a mimosa bush in her bonnet : she is determined that there shall be no mistake about her being out of mourning. I fancy" — uncharitably — "that inside she has been out of mourning some time." " Poor woman, one cannot blame her! It would have been rank hypocrisy in her to have pretended it was anything but a happy release ; and I hear that, in spite of her mimosa, she has a perfect horror of a second venture.

Chapter II

If, like Richard I l.'s queen, Mrs. Bligh had set forth : " Adorned hither, like sweet May," she is certainly, as was that poor lady, "Sent back like Hallowmas, or shortest day." She has scarcely energy enough to turn the latchkey in her own door, or to climb the stairs, which all the dogs — even lazy Tory — come trundling noisilv down to meet her. They can hardly believe their ears when she crossly bids them get out of her way. But there is a far severer disappointment in store for them than that caused by any want of amenity in her manner, when they by-and-by discover that their earthly providence is not iMRS. BLIGH 22 going to take them for their usual Sunday walk. They watch her nervously as she irritably pulls up the blinds, rattles the poker among the sleeping coals, and finally throwing off her cloak, flings herself into an armchair.

One slight spark of hope lingers in their minds, from the fact of her not having taken off her bonnet, but by-and-by even this dies out. It is difficult for a kindhearted person to resist the urgent entreaty of six humbly insistent eyes, and though in the case of Mrs. Bligh's dogs the number is reduced to five — since Sail was relieved of one in early life by a cat — her will generally melts like wax before the fire of that mutely eloquent joint stare. To-day she is obdurate. It is not that she is At Home on Sundays, being rather new to London, with few acquaintances and less belief in any ardent desire on the part ot those few to see her. The one person whom she had credited with a taste for her conversation has to-day with unmistakable plainness shown her her error. That she should ever have fallen into so gross a one makes her face blaze now into a flame, not kindled by the sulky fire, before which she lies in her armchair — blaze so that even the dogs' eyes trouble her and she puts up both hands to hide them out, while from between her fingers ejaculations such as "Fool!"

"Idiot!" "Fatuous folly!" shoot out, uttered aloud into the silent and empty room. Looked back upon now, the founda tions on which she had built her towering superstructure of hopes of his notice and belief in his interest are seen to be flimsy in the extreme. What are they, these foun dations, when examined with coolness and reason ? Three months ago she had accidentally met him at an inexpressibly dull Dorsetshire manor-house, whither his work had brought him, and where a snow-fall had detained him, bitterly against his will. Through five dreary days of frozen captivity she — her indifferent jokes, her slight smatter ing knowledge of the books he loved, her stupidly undisguised admiration for himself — had been the refuge of his ennui ; a fact he has recognised and shown his generous gratitude for since, by spending upon her two or three of his rare half-hours of leisure and liberty.

Until to-day she has never met him in any company except her own, or that of her bucolic cousins, has never seen him in the " Milieu " in which he habitually lives. Amid the polyglot company at luncheon there had been no ladies for him to wound her feelings by showing any preference for over her, none except the hostess, who had been far too much occupied in making her party go off to have leisure or inclination for pri vate dalliance with any one member of it, even the leading lion. Yet, as Mrs. Bligh's memory recalls the half-words so immediately understood, the allusions so instantly grasped by her friend which in most cases had been Greek to her she has an uncomfortable sen sation of having been out of it, of beinothe hungry little street-boy staring in through the window at the Christmas roast goose into which he will never thrust his knife.

Out of it ! Out of his life ! Out of his interests ! Out of all but his charity ! As he would give an old woman in a workhouse half a pound of tea, or a screw of tobacco, so he has thrown her ten civil words or a kind look, and she has mistaken these paltry alms for the magni ficent gift of his equal friendship. This is no doubt reserved for the feminine part of that society with the masculine half of which she has to-day seen him on such terms of gay cordiality. He has always told her that he greatly prefers women to men. If, then, such is the heartiness and warmth of his manner to the husbands and fathers, what must it be to the wives and daughters ? She knows that he is always at home on Sundays, receiving his friends in his studio, on a general invitation, which he has extended to her, but of which she has hitherto been too shy to avail herself.

Lying dismally in her rumpled armchair, she pictures him doing the honours of his beloved atelier, surrounded by beautiful women who are going to sit to him, by witty women with whom he is exchanging flashing repartees, by sympathetic women, to whom he is explaining his ideas before they are translated into stone. Mrs. Bligh is one of the many Englishwomen who gratuitously embitter their lives by cold Sunday supper instead of dinner, and by allowing her servants a right of almost universal exodus, ending in the crowning gaiety, so dear to every servant's heart, of evening church. The result to herself is a crop of small dis comforts, in unremoved tea-table, late and ill-lit lamps, and oddly announced visitors, whose names suffer strange metamorphoses in the mouth of an unaccustomed underling.

To this latter inconvenience she has not been exposed to day, since she has had no callers, and now it is too late to expect any, as the clock's finger points to a quarter to seven. The idea strikes her rather bitterly that London out of all its five millions has not spared one friendly human face and voice to her. Shall she go to evening church like the servants ? No, she will not offer her bore dom to God. But she will, at all events, put an end to this contemptible and idle puling over the inevitable, and will ring for the tarrying lights, to help her by occupation to rout her demon of discontent and sloth. She rises and pulls the bell, thinking, as it peals through the house, how like it is in sound to the hall-door one which has hung so idle through the long afternoon. She does not again sit down, but stands with foot on fender, and hot forehead leant against the white wood of the chimneypiece, a position she still keeps when the door opens in answer, as she supposes, to her ring.

"Bring the lamps!" she says, with her head still lying sideways on the mantelshelf, but her languid order is drowned in a universal uprising rush and clamour of the dogs. Why should they bark so loudly at their own familiar scullion ? Their mistress raises her head to put this question to them, and finds herself facing one who is strangely dressed for a kitchen-maid in a gray frock coat and a head to match — a head that, though grizzly, is thick clad and curly. " It's you, is it ?" she says in an odd jerky voice, and though her visitor knows her and her voice rather well, he has a moment of misgiving that he is not welcome. " Send me away if I am too late," he says apologetically. "lam late. I see you have got rid of all your other friends." " They were such a crowd that they had a difficulty in squeezing through the door," replies she, laughing dryly, adding, with an ungraciousness oddly out of harmony with her real feelings, " I thought that you were always at home on Sundays ?"

" Do not speak in that ferocious voice," replies the sculptor, looking round for a safe place on which to deposit his hat and stick out of reach of the dogs, and, having found it, subsiding on to a pouf at his hostess's feet. " Are you going to dance on me as you did on that unhappy innocent at luncheon ?" Her breath comes a little fast with the pleasure of seeing these indications of a pro posed stay on the part of her visitor, but her answer does not display much softness. " If I danced it was the Dance of Death! Did you ever see anything so ill-managed ? Was not I wretchedly placed ? I could not help thinking of a tale of a friend of mine who was sent into dinner with a terrific bore, and in the middle of the feast burst out cry ing from sheer ennui. I could have followed her example without any difficulty."

He looks up at her — her chair is on a much higher level than his low seat — startled, perhaps a little disturbed at the unnecessary vehemence of her expressions of annoyance, and for the moment has no rejoinder ready. " Well, at all events, somebody was pleased," continues Mrs. Bligh; " you were in your element ; you, at least, enjoyed yourself." " I !" repeats he, with an air of extreme surprise ; " my dear lady, you must be joking. I went because our hostess has never ceased asking me to luncheon since last Christmas twelvemonth ; and because " — with a timely, if not very sincere afterthought — " because I knew that I was to have the pleasure of meeting you there." She is aware that the last clause of this sentence is not strictly true, but it gives her such pleasure to even half believe it that she lets it pass undisputed.

"And you know," he adds with a smile, whose sweetness takes away any of the im plied rebuke that his words might seem to convey, " you know that, pleasant as it would undoubtedly be, one cannot always wear one's heart outside without inconvenience." " I know one cannot," she answers ; " though it is where for nine-and-twenty ill spent years I have carried mine !" Then, hurrying shyly away from the subject of that organ which between man and woman can seldom be dispassionately discussed, "If you were not enjoying yourself at luncheon, you were at least the cause of enjoyment in others. What good stories you and your friend were telling ! I am sure they were good, though that little miscreant beside me prevented my ever reaching their point. What do you think he kept asking me, while I was straining my ears to catch your dons mots — whether I knew Miss Smith?

I answered that I knew two hundred and fifty- Miss Smiths, and begged him to hold his tongue." " I should not think he needed much beg ging after that," says Coke with a smile, and a half-thought of what an impossible woman to make love to this odd, prickly little friend of his would be. " Did I know Miss Smith ?" repeats she, with an ire that is half put on, because she feels that it is amusing him, and yet is half sincere too. "I do not know whether you did, but I know a Miss Smith," rejoins Coke, still lazily amused at her vehemence ; " that is to say, I know one more Miss Smith than I did yesterday — not a hard, plain Smith, but some pretty little compound, though I cannot remember what it was. She was brought to my studio by an old Gorgon, to whom I have to be civil because she is ordering a big foun tain with river gods ancl a little Nereid — I mus. show you the clay sketch, clear friend— for her place in Bedfordshire ; and this little wild rose Smith came with her, and she knows you, and loves you, and we made great friends over you !"

" Was it Pamela Capel-Smith ?" asks Mrs. Bligh, sitting upright in her chair, with her eyes alight with interest. He shakes his head smiling. " We did not get to Christian names, though at the rate we were going we might have done in another quarter of an hour, if that old Medusa had not carried her off." " If it was Pamela," says the widow with emphasis, " she is a darling." "Then it was Pamela," returns he, laughing, " for she was a darling ; you, at least, ought to say so, for she raved about you." A colour that is by no means wholly born of pleasure runs over Mrs. Bligh's face. " I wish she would not ; it is so silly of her. I hope you stopped her." " Why should I ? On the contrary, sabon dais dans le meme sens ; but, seriously, she spoke of you with enthusiastic admiration." " I cannot think what possesses her," says the object of this commendation, in a tone of such unaffected wonder and disgust that her companion laughs outright.

" I could un derstand her liking me," continues she ; "there are things in me that might breed a moderate liking ; but what is there in me, I ask you, which could command enthusiastic admiration ?" As she speaks she fixes on her hearer her eager and intelligent eyes ; and since his own feeling for her, though sincere, is quite un tinged with ecstasy, and she is too much in earnest to be put off with a compliment, he is for a moment at a loss for a reply. Then — " She told me," he says, with a half-hesitating glance at an invalid chair standing in evident disuse against the wall of the back drawing-room, "of what a hard life you had had, and with what wonderful pluck you had borne it." Her eye follows the direction of his glance, and her lower lip twitches. " Why have you never talked to me about your past ?" he inquires in a tone of very nearly tender reproach ; " why did you leave me to learn from a little stranger chit what a heroine you have been !"

" But I have not !" cries she, her trenchant denial leaping out with the violence as of one rebutting the accusation of a crime. "If she told you so, she grossly misrepresented. Come now, what has she told you ?" The person thus challenged again hesitates for an instant. It may be roughly averred that none of us speak of our friends behind their backs precisely as we should to their faces ; and in the present instance Coke is aware of the need of adapting and Bowd lerising the statements of his young informant about the departed Bligh, so as to render them palatable to his widow. " She told me," he says slowly, and feeling his way, "about your marriage; that your husband was paralyzed almost from the be ginning of it, and that you nursed him for eight years devotedly and without a murmur! " Without a murmur !" repeats she, and her voice, although this time almost inaudibly low, expresses a disclaimer of the virtues attributed to her, even more emphatic than her former vociferous one.

" Why, I did nothing but murmur ! Looking back upon it now, it seems to me as if I had never done anything else !" " She told me how wonderfully patient you had been under the " He stops, uncertain how best to paraphrase the communication that had been made to him : " Though he was paralyzed, he had the temper of a devil, and used to throw things at her head." " I never was patient, it is not in me to be ; I was dreadfully sorry for him ; yes, that I was " (her voice shaking a little), " though I do not know whether he believed even that, and I had a bad time of it. I had not been married six weeks when it began — creeping paralysis ; and from that on to the end " She pauses expressively. "Yes, I had a bad time ; but, after all, what was it in comparison of his ! a soul as much alive as yours or mine, in a half-dead body ?"

Again she pauses. "And yet I often spoke crossly to him, often. He was naturally irritable ; who would not have been ?" A vision of three legged stools hurtling through the air passes before the hearer's mental eye. " Ancl of course I ought to have understood that it was only disease, and put up with it, but I did not. Often, often, I answered him as impatiently as " " As your neighbour at luncheon to-day?" half playfully. But she is in downright des perate earnest. "As badly as that — worse! It seems in credible now ; but I did. I kept that chair," again glancing towards the back room, " to remind me of it!" Her voice has grown harsh, an effect which emotion always pro duces upon it, as she winds up with : "So you'll know for the future how much to believe of the pretty things that admiring girls tell you about me !"

There is a silence, infringed only by a foolish bark from Tory, as she catches the sound of a dog's step in the street outside, being never able to realize that that thorough fare is not her private property.

Chapter III

Coke has not the least notion how to respond to that embarrassing remark about the chaise longue, whose ugly presence, cramming up his friend's little back room, his artistic eye has several times revolted against, though some instinct has happily preserved him from telling her so. She herself comes to his rescue. " Well," she cries brusquely, " we have had quite enough of me for one while ; let us have a little of you for a change. How is ' Rayon d'Or ' getting on ?" (naming a famous Derby winner). " Is he to be in bronze or marble ?" " The duke cannot make up his mind," replies Coke, hoping that the relief in his voice at the changed turn the conversation has taken is not as evident to her as it is to himself. " And is he to stand on two legs or four ? I mean" (laughing) "not the duke, but the horse !"

" I can't make up my mind ; you must ' (caressingly) "come and make it up for me." " You are so apt to ask for advice about your work, and I am so competent to give it," answers she dryly ; but she colours faintly with pleasure all the same. They are both standing now — he preparing to go, and she to bid him good-bye — each with a foot on the fender, and an elbow on the chimneypiece ; they face each other comfortably in the firelight. " When will you come ? Since I knew you, you have been to the studio only " He stops, for the life of him he can't recall the exact number of her visits. But her memory is more retentive : " Only twice ; and for the present it will have to remain only twice, since I am going out of London." " You ?" " Yes, I ! Moi qui vous park ! all the rest of the nobility and gentry " (smiling) " are turning out for Easter; why should not I, too ? ' " You are always gadding, madam ; and where are you going — to Dorsetshire ?" with a rather lowered voice, and a not very sincere sigh, paid to the memory of his sojourn in that dreary county.

" No, not to Dorsetshire," her voice lagging oo o with unconscioustenderness over the dear name. "Geography is not a very strong point with me, nor with you, either ; but I fancy it is a good deal in the other direction that I am going ; it is to the Isle of Anglesey !" "Are you going to look for Lycidas ' on the shaggy top of Mona high ?' ' ' That was not my leading motive " (aoain smiling) ; " but I dare say mine will turn out nearly as much of a fool's errand as that would be. I am going to visit a friend of my childhood, whom I have not seen since — since " " Since you were short - coated ?" with hurried jocosity, to avert an apprehended drifting back into the painful memories of her married life. That the effort is successful is apparent by her next remark, thoughtfully uttered : "When last she saw me my hair was down to my knees and my petticoats up to them ; how am I to prove to her that I am I ?"

"It cuts both ways. How is she to prove to you that she is she ?" " She cannot be as much altered as I am ; iii the first place, when we parted, her skirts were already long, and her hair short. She is three years older than I. We were school friends. I was a wretched ugly little girl, and she was a fine buxom big one. She always promised me that I should stay with her when she was married ! Neither of us ever faced so unlikely a possibility as my marrying." " She has taken some time in fulfilling her promise." " That was not her fault. I never could go anywhere, pay any visits during — while " "Yes, yes," hastily ; " I understand, and — she has a husband living ?" " Yes, an exceptionally attractive one, so she tells me ; and she has a child and two grown-up step-children, and oxen and sheep and camels and asses, and a place in Anglesey on the Menai Straits."

" No wonder that you cannot resist such a list of attractions. Anglesey !" wrinkling his forehead in the effort to recapture an illusive recollection. "Where have I been hearing of Anglesey lately ? Oh, I know ! only yesterday I got a letter, dated from some crackjaw Welsh Plas there ; it was from a Sir Somebody Something — his name escapes me — ordering a monument for his late mother. He writes to me" (looking amused) " rather as if I were a working stonemason ! Per haps" (with a sudden inspiration) "he may turn out to be your friend's husband, the exceptionally attractive husband of whom " — moving his gray coat-sleeve somewhat nearer her black one on the mantelshelf — " I am already a little jealous." " No, he is not a Sir. He is only a plain Mr." "Well, you must find out all about him for me — all about him and his 'late mother.' He wishes her to be recumbent like Lady , only without the baby."

" Yes ?" " And if you sind that he is a great Crœsus — I expect he has slate quarries — and that Anglesey is very paradisaical, it might be worth my while to run down for a day or two. No, no !" — marking, and half startled by the illumination of her whole face at the suggestion. " I am only joking ! Delightful as it would be, I could not possibly spare the time." " Of course not — of course not !" " Shall you take all the dogs ?" stooping to pull Sail's ear, as with her one eye rolling she stands up fat and tall, clawing his knee to attract his attention, though when she has gained it she has evidently nothing particular to say to him. " I should like to do a little group of you, with your dogs, in terra-cotta. I could make a pretty thing of it !" "You are a very clever man, but you are not quite clever enough for that," replies she, with one of her habitual and injudicious fleers at her own appearance ; since there is no such undoubted fact than that we are all valued at our own appraisement.

" And when do vou go ?" " On Wednesday." "And I shall not see you again?" in a regretful tone, and with a still further en croachment on her half of the chimney-piece by the gray elbow. " I suppose not," wistfully — so wistfully that he breaks out into a hurried explanation. "It is most unlucky ; but these two next clays are specially busy ones with me. To morrow H. R.H. comes at five. Royalties are often late, and of course I do not know how long he will stay ; and on Tuesday I have to go down into the country to get some more sketches of Rayon d'Or, and " " Of course, I had not the least expectation of seeing you again," interrupts she, her harsh touch reappearing in her voice with the fear of having seemed exacting, adding stiffly, " it was very good of you to come this evening." "It was very good of yrou to let me in.

Your little maid — the Sunday locum tenens, is not she ? — did not much like my looks. She made such a funny face, like a gargoyle ; she is rather like one of those heads on the spouts at Nuremberg. I must ask her to sit to me ; do you give your consent ?" " You have my full permission !" replies she ; ancl he goes away laughing, while she remains behind, staring into the neglected fire with a rather sardonic smile, and a re flective wonder as to which work of art will give her distinguished friend the greatest pleasure in the execution : the terra-cotta group of herself and her dogs, or the gargoyle head of the kitchen-maid ? The latter is fated to have another shock besore the evening is done. Mrs. Bligh is lingering over her cold chicken and claret, less from any lively enjoyment of them than from a reluctance to return to her now doubly-empty drawing room, when the hall-door bell once again peals.

The idea instantly flashes across the widow's mind that it is a commissionaire bearing a note from her late visitor. After all, he has found an unoccupied half-hour somewhere lurking in the compass of the next two days. " Where there is a will there is a way," and evidently in this case there is a will, is her exulting reflection. But this towering frame of mind lasts only during the short space that it takes a quick young foot to cross the little hall, an impatient young hand to open the door, and a fur-wrapped young figure to come skipping in. " Pamela !" "Yes, Anne, Pamela! Am I too late?" her face falling at the not very decided welcome of the word and tone. " Send me away if I am !" It strikes Mrs. Bligh with a slight and fanciful annoyance, which she would be puzzled to explain, that both her guests have employed exactly7 the same words with which to conjure her displeasure at their unexpected appearance.