Miss Precocity

Front matter

" I never did either heare or read of anything like to this sweete child.' Evelyn, Memoirs, vol. ii. By CHARLES T. C. JAMES author of ""■ 7/^ "holy wedlock;*' "mrs. grundy at home;" etc. IN TWO VOLUMES Volume I LONDON BLISS, SANDS AND FOSTER i5l CRAVEN STREET, STRAND, W.C CONTENTS. CHAPTER pAGH I. Night and Morning . ... 7 II. The Child Client . . . . 17 III. What might be Expected . . . 23 IV. Arranging the Details . 29 V. Vastly Fine . . ... 40 VI. A Private View . . 54 VII. Taking Possession . . 66 VIII. At Home . . . . . 81 IX. The Chief Mourner . . . . 96 X. Portrait of a Gentleman . . . 109 XI. "See the Conquering Hero Comes" . .121 XII. A Little Matter of Business . . . 140 XIII. A most Ridiculous Boy . . . 156 XIV. Christmas-tide . . . . 169 XV. Too many Cooks . . . . 190 XVI. The Burden of a Lonely Heart . .203 XVII. The Beginning of a New Year . .210

Chapter I

•ffliobt ano horning. f T might have come sooner ! Not much J. use now coming at all ! Not much use. Not to me. Great pity for us all that it didn't come sooner. Might have come in the summer-time, when there were a few leaves on the trees. Fernacres must look bare enough now. Just my luck ! always ! always ! " In these broken, half unconscious sentences the man upon the bed maundered the time away, scarcely knowing what he said. He lay in one of the barest, poorest, dingiest rooms ever let to a lodger, in the shabbiest and most depressing part of remoter Bloomsbury. It was difficult to tell his age from his appearance. Poverty and drink and low dissipation had wrecked him into a horrible inhumanity, wherein the ordinary criterions by which we judge of age were lost. He might have been between forty and fifty.

A flare of light from a guttering candle on the meagre chest of drawers fell full in the white, ghastly face, lying helplessly upon the pillow, and emphasised the meaningless stare with which the halfclosed eyes regarded the damp-stained wall in front of them. In the one torn and faded rep curtain, hanging from a mahogany pole at the narrow window (its only blind, and but partially excluding sight of the yellow fog the street lamps were feebly illuminating outside) ; in the broken chair beside the bed, from which the frayed canework hung down in all the disorder of an uncombed head; in the cracked basin and handleless jug of the washing-stand ; in the few shabby clothes hanging limply from a hook on the dirty door ; coarse, hopeless, degrading poverty was written indelibly in its own cramped caligraphy.

"Is that Will all right ? Have you got it safe ? " The words came out of the sick man's throat with the mutinous energy of a faculty whose allegiance is about to be unsworn by death. Through the last hour or so the incoherences of delirium had several times been cut short, cut through and smitten with this incisive, loudly-asked question. "Is that Will all right? Have you got it safe ? " The question was on each occasion addressed to the only thing not poverty-stricken in the room — to a corpulent, smooth-faced, large eared, benevolent-looking, loose-mouthed man of fifty, with something the general appearance of a humanised elephant about him, and whose well-cut dark clothes were relieved in the region where his waist ought to have been, by a massive gold chain and heavy seals. This elephantine gentleman — who stood at the foot of the bedstead, resting his arms upon it, and seemed ill at ease in such unaccustomed surroundings — on each occasion the question was put, made the same stereotyped answer in a rich, oily voice, "Quite right, quite safe, Sir Edward Marston," and still lingered there at the foot of the bed as though he were waiting for something — as indeed he was.

On the last putting of the repeated question, and the last receiving of a reply, Sir Edward Marston wandered away again into disjointed speech in this wise : "So the saint has gone to his account at last. . . , I hope he likes it. ... I hope they appreciate him fully where he is. The rotund gentleman in black, who had remained silent hitherto, save for the above recorded stereotyped reply to the stereotyped questions, interfered at this point for the first time, doingit with a kind of solemn sorrow that Fate should compel him to do it at all. "Sir Edward Marston, I will take the liberty of reminding you that Jellico and Son acted for the late Sir Richard Marston, Baronet, for a great number of years, and that consequently it is extremely painful to the head of that firm to hear disparaging remarks of one whom he always held in high esteem as a man of the most rigid and unfaltering probity."

"Haven't I called him a saint?" demanded the newly-succeeded baronet, with a nasty intonation. "What's the harm of a fellow calling his own father a saint ? Saint he may have been. Such a saint that he has ruined me body and soul. You know he hated me. Yes, you do ! Because I wasn't a psalmsmiter like himself. You know how he hated me. You know the life I 've been obliged to lead, on the pittance his Christian mercy to a sinner allowed me. See here what the end of it is. I succeed to the money and estate (for he couldn't prevent that on his death) when I am on my death-bed myself. What has my life been ? Circumstances making me dependent upon him for my daily bread, it has been a life of slavery ; my bread doled out to me, as it were, bound by this condition, bound by that condition, until I hate the thought of any conditions being laid upon any living soul."

In the passion that came upon him with the recital of his wrongs, the new baronet almost sate up in his wretched bed, and spoke with quite a surprising vigour. The glaze that had been fast gathering about his eyes, forsook them for the moment, and they flashed fiercely upon the head partner of Jellico and Son : who regarded him with considerable surprise and a very loose mouth. "Look at me!" continued Sir Edward fiercely, oblivious of the fact that Jellico was already looking at him as hard as any man could look. " Bound down like a slave, that's what I 've been. I wanted to go into the army. No. ' Ungodly.' I wanted to marry the girl I loved. No. She was below my station. Before my eyes, I saw her married to someone else, because I should have had to ask her to share beggary with me in marrying me against the saint's autocratic will.

I began to sink. I sunk lower and lower, pressed down by excessive saintdom. At last I managed for a time to get a companion in my misery. Then she left me. She'd have been a fool if she hadn't when she got the chance, for she was not bound to me. All I had by way of memento was the girl. God bless that child! If I believed in mercies sent to console us for trouble here, I should believe that child was sent to me almost ready grown up in intelligence to make up for the loss of her mother. I should indeed. At eight she 's a woman. You '11 see directly. Tell me the Will over again, just the drift of it. It does me good to hear it. It does me good to think I hold one good card to play at last, and am going to play it." He sat eagerly forward as he spoke, listening to the mellow tones of Mr. Jellico's well-fed, well-oiled voice.

" Briefly, having power as the only survivor of the family, you have left the whole of the property (including the family seat Fernacres) to your natural daughter, Dorothea Alvarez, absolutely ; and you direct me, as your sole trustee, to apply the income derived from the property for the maintenance of the child and the keeping up of the family mansion, of which the said child is left sole mistress during her minority. And it is your desire that the child shall be treated in every way as a responsible person. Briefly, those are the terms of your Will, Sir Edward. It is not for me to urge the folly of them further than I have already urged it. I can only repeat that I think you extremely fortunate under the circumstances, in being so situated with regard to next-of-kin, that there is no one who can dispute that Will after " Mr. Jellico pulled suddenly up.

" Out with it, man — after my death. Don't mince it ! Death, death, death ! Yes ; I like to hear that Will! It's a fine revenge. A glorious revenge ! I know what it is to be thwarted and fettered through life. She shall be free! I put her there — there — in the very place he has only so lately quitted. Her whom he would have expected to smell of brimstone ! I put her there — give her the run of his place, and everything that was his. Do you think people ever turn in their graves, Jellico? If they do, that old saint must be precious uneasy in his ! I have been oppressed and harassed through life, but I am triumphant in death ! I succeed to the winding-sheet and the worms ; but she — great heaven, I should like to see her there, a little queen, reigning and ruling over Fernacres ! So quaint a child !

So quietly wise ! So winningly clever ! You '11 see, for she '11 be in from school directly ! Oh, what a capital revenge ! Lord ! I hope now there 's another world as I never hoped for it before, that that old saint may look down on her from it, mistress of Fernacres — of every thing that was his ! " Suddenly the speaker sank back upon his coarse pillow, and the rickety bedstead creaked beneath the movement. Mr. Jellico went up beside the dying man, and looked keenly down at him. While he so stood, the door opposite him was opened, and Dorothea came in. She was a slim child, but tall for her age, and she wore a long blue cloak and a puritan hood. This costume did not leave very much of her to be seen, but her face was palely sedate, and she had two great dark eyes fringed by dusky, shadow-throwing lashes.

In her hand she carried a reticule with some school books in it. She placed this upon the broken cane chair, and looked enquiringly at Mr. Jellico, and then, without speaking a word, went and bent over her father, taking one of his hands in hers. He remained hopelessly immovable to her light touch. The child turned her pale face and great dark eyes up to the solicitor standing on the opposite side of the bed. " Do you think," she asked quietly, " that he is dead ? He told me yesterday he was going to die, and that when he did I wasn't to cry. Do you think that he is dead?" Mr. Jellico held a very strong opinion on that point, but he was about to parry the question to the child, when the baronet suddenly opened his eyes, and saw his little grave-faced daughter there, anxiously regarding him.

He could not speak, for the power of speech had left him ; but his withered hand closed feebly upon hers, and something in his eyes made her bend lower yet, and passionately kiss him with her warm young lips. The growing fog out of doors began to invade the room, and hang a halo round the guttering candle on the meagre chest of drawers. Mr. Jellico, who had not known exactly the same symptoms for forty years, tried to persuade himself it was an atmospheric influence that dimmed his eyes at that moment and made the free use of an immense silk handkerchief, of gorgeous design and colouring, a sudden necessity to them, as he stood there beside the bed and looked down on the lonely father and daughter, clasped together in that last embrace. There was dead silence in the room for quite five minutes, and then, very gradually and sedately, Dorothea got up.

Her eyes were full of tears obedience to her fathers last command would not let fall, and her face twitched a good deal as she looked up to Mr. Jellico (who was clearing his throat with great noise and determination) and said simply : "He's dead, Mr. Jellico, for he doesn't breathe. What do you think we ought to do now, to get him buried?"

Chapter II

TLbc Cbtlo Client. IN the moment os hearing that practical question, and of noting the power of self control which prevented the tears gathered in the child's eyes from falling down, Mr. Jellico assured himself mentally, " She '11 do ; my child client will do ! By the Law Courts, she '11 play the part to the life !" If Mr. Jellico swore at all, he invariably swore by the Law Courts, as professional, not committing him to very much, and as unpre judicial to any contingent reversionary interests which he might possess in the world to come. " We needn't be in too great a hurry about that, need we, my dear young lady ?" he said aloud, extremely elephantine as he looked down at the child, who still stood on the far side of the bed and looked up at him. " There are other things to be done before that.

I think you had better; that is to say" — cor rected the man of law, remembering the late B I. baronet's instructions, and humouring the idea — " that is to say, would you like to stay in this house until after the funeral, or would you prefer to come home with me ? My wife will be very pleased to see you, if you care to stop with us until you go down to take possession of Fernacres." " Do you live near here ? " came the practical question. " Not very. I live at Kensington." For the first time the child ceased to look at him, turned away, and going to the meagre chest of drawers opened the top one (standing on tip-toe to do it), and produced a little book with a shiny red cover. She looked into this volume, which was in manuscript, very intently for a minute or two. " There's one pound seventeen owing here," she remarked, " to our landlady, Mrs. Jones.

Father told me all about this book, and said we couldn't go till it was paid. I haven't got so much as that. Here 's all father's money." She tip-toed over the drawer again, brought out a small canvas bag, opened it, and began to count the contents : handling the money very deftly with her quick, fragile fingers. " Ten shillings and a sixpence," she gave THE CHILD CLIENT. 19 the sum total. " And I s'pose you haven't got the rest to make it up, have you ? Because if you have I '11 give it to you back when I get all that money father told me yesterday I shall have soon." Mr. Jellico, producing specie from his waistcoat pocket, thought, " Wonderful child ! wonderful child ! " and told her she could have the necessary advance to pay the book. " Then," remarked the child, moving to the door, " I '11 call Mrs. Jones."

It was an extraordinary scene altogether, that which followed — the red-faced landlady, red - armed, canvas - aproned, and extremely obese, bending down, with tears in her eyes, to receive the book and the money which the child demurely gave her : doubtful all the while whether to take the thing seriously or not, and lookingfrom time to time over the child's head at Mr. Jellico's heavy countenance and loose mouth with an expression in her eyes that was the incarnation of, " Did you ever ! " The feeble candle light more and more vanquished each moment by the invasive fog, but managing somehow to throw the most gigantic shadow distortions on wall and ceiling, and a sicklier fio-ht upon the dead man's face. When the transaction with Mrs. Jones was complete, the lawyer explained that he should make speedy arrangements for the funeral, and that the body would be taken away almost at once to the country.

"Ah!" remarked Mrs. Jones, with a depth of feeling somewhat enhanced by gin, " Ah ! and the poor gent was a Bart, too, worn't he?" Mr. Jellico intimated that this was the case. " Nobody wouldn't never have guessed it by his clothes," remarked the landlady. " But there, I s'pose even a Bart's, clothes gits shabby if worn too long ! Ah ! Mr. Jellicum, as I often says to my good man, 'What a world it is ! what a world it is ! ' " "Where," enquired Mr. Jellico, not particu larly appreciating this pathetic alcoholism, and the misnaming of himself, "is the young lady?" For the child had quietly opened the door and gone out. " Bless yer, she 's in her room next door ! She 's packing, that 's what 's she 's at. It won't take 'er long, poor thing, neither ! There ! did you ever see sich a child as that afore, Mr. Jellicum, sir, now did you ever?

For I never did ! I do assure you, if she 'd been the poor Bart's, deceased's own mother 'sted of 'is child, she couldn't 'ave acted better than she used to THE CHIID CLIENT. 21 act to 'im. Her mother, I 've been told, were Spanish," continued Mrs. Jones, making a feeble attempt to polish a brass knob of the bed-post with her canvas apron. " Now, whether Spanishers is borned into the world growed up, as I may put it, at one go, or whether this child, bein' always with the poor Bart, deceased, caught 'old of 'is ways and talk, I can't make out for certain. But there it is ; she 's a wonder ! That growed up in some things : that childish in others ! Lord, it 's somethink wonderful, and nothink less ! " This fine peroration (to which Mr. Jellico listened with a rather bad grace) synchronised with the re-appearance of the child, who carried in her hand a small bag.

" I 'm ready now," she said to Mr. Jellico ; "and good-bye, Mrs. Jones, and thank you." " Thank you, miss, I 'm sure," returned the landlady, with alcoholic emotion. " God bless you ! Then, while Mr. Jellico found his hat, and moved out on to the lighted staircase of the house, the girl turned for a moment to the bed on which her father lay. During the packing absence in the next room, Mrs. Jones had drawn the sheet over the marble face. Dorothea withdrew this covering for a moment, and took one last look at what it hid. She had borne up wonderfully through the trying time that had gone before, but some thing in that last look at what she loved and had lost for ever was too much for her young resolution. She bent nearer and nearer to the cold face ; she sunk upon her knees beside the bed ; the restrained tears would be restrained no longer.

For all her wisdom she was but a small girl child left alone in the world. She buried her face in the bed-clothes and sobbed. But it was the shortest shower that ever flooded down in diamond rain from the dappling of an April sky. When Mr. Jellico, finding he was not followed as quickly as he had expected, went back into the room to look for his young charge, he saw her on her feet, not crying, but with her dark eyes all wet with tears beneath her fur-edged puritan hood, and Mrs. Jones sobbing distillation of gin and water in her apron. " I 'm ready now," Dorothea said, and thoughtfully gathering up the little bag which contained all her personal belongings, the child client followed her solicitor out of the room, down the stairs, and into the foggy street below.

Chapter III

Mbat mlgbt be Ejpecteo. MR. JELLICO called a four-wheeled cab as soon as he could get one in the traffic confusion of the deepening fog, gave the man an address in Kensington, put Dorothea inside, and followed her as quickly as possible. That young lady set her bag upon the front seat, and sat herself demurely upright in the corner of the back one, with her hands clasped together in her lap. Very reserved, very silent, but wonderfully self-possessed, she sat there as primly upright as might be, while the cab rumbled along, and Mr. Jellico, taking sidelong glances at her when the lamps they passed permitted, pon dered what he should say to her. " I suppose," he hazarded at last, quite astonished to find how shy he felt in the society of this small child, " I suppose, now, you have some pet name, eh, by which people call you when they don't call you Dorothea ?

" " The girls at the day school used to call me Puff. That was a silly name to call anyone, wasn't it ? But they did. Father used to call me another name. I '11 tell it you some day — in the morning. Not now ? " Mr. Jellico (always ponderously elephantine when he spoke to his child-client ; partly by comparison of respective bulks, and partly from the effect of her youth and innocence upon him) turned so as to regard her more clearly after receiving this speech, and benevolently trumpeted, " Why not to-day ? " " Because if I think of him now, I '11 cry," returned the child with her face twitching, " and he told me I wasn't to." Mr. Jellico cleared the fog out of his throat with great vigour, and replied — "Ah, yes! Then pray reserve it! Dear me, dear me! Puff, eh? Well, you know, Puff isn't a bad name.

Suggestive perhaps of wind, but otherwise not objectionable. Now, Puff, do you know what a sovereign is ? " "Gold. The same as twenty shillings," returned Puff with alacrity. " Right ! quite right ! The same as twenty shillings. Just so. Now, Puff, to go a little further : Do you know that you will have to WHAT MIGHT BE EXPECTED. 25 manage a great many of those golden sove reigns, each one the same as twenty shillings?" " Yes, I know that." " And that you '11 have a fine old country house, and a lot of servants ? " " Yes. I know that too." " Do you think now, Puff, that you will be able to manage it all, and not lose your head or do anything silly ? " " I think I '11 know how to do it if anyone shows me first," Puff answered, with some slight tone of doubt in her voice for the first time. " I 'd like someone to show me first."

" Quite so ! Quite right! Quite natural !" (Mr. Jellico was so pleased at the answer that he rubbed his hands together in satisfac tion.) "Very wisely said! You shall have someone to show you how. I will make it my special business to see that you have a suitable person. The post, it seems to me, ought to be a permanent one. Without in any way wish ing to bias your judgment, don't you think the post ought to be a permanent one, Puff? " "What is that?" the child asked, in a difficulty with the long word. " Permanent — continuing: the person chosen ought to stay with you always," Mr. Jellico explained, only coming upon the simplification after considerable mental search for it, and getting it out with difficulty. " Don't you think so, eh ? " " If I like her she shall stay for always," Dorothea said in her quiet, old-fashioned way.

" If I don't like her I 'd rather I was by myself." "Quite so — quite natural, to be expected," returned the solicitor, with an increasing re spect for this child, who held opinions of her own and appeared to grasp her new but un assailable position so quickly. "I think I know of a young lady who is very clever, and knows a great deal, and could tell you all sorts of things you 'd dearly like to know, Puff, and who would be very glad indeed to stay with you at Fernacres as long as you cared to have her there. She's my own daughter, and her name is Coralie. How do you like it, Puff, eh?" demanded Mr. Jellico, with an approach to elephantine jocosity. "Coralie. Rather a pretty name on the whole, isn't it, Puff, eh ? " The grave, thoughtful child in the dark corner of the cab wasn't so much impressed as might have been expected by this delightful personal designation.

WHAT MIGHT BE EXPECTED. 27 "I s'pose she's very old?" she said enquiringly. "Oh dear, no! Quite young. Not more than five-and-twenty. Just the very sort of companionable young lady you'd like to have with you always. You '11 see directly, for we' re very near my house now." Dorothea seemed quite ready to wait for the pleasure of the sight, and not to be at all im patient for its fulfilment. "There will be the question of your studies to be considered," Mr. Jellico said a moment later. " We mustn't forget about them. There, again, Coralie will be of the greatest service to you. She is an extremely clever girl. She has been at a lady's college, and she came home with a great number of prizes." " Books?" the child enquired. " Chiefly," admitted Coralie's father pom pously, "books. There was also, I remember, a case of mathematical instruments ; but those you don't know of yet, of course."

" Compasses ? " asked the heiress, " with their brass legs straddling ? " " Dear me ! Most graphic ! Yes, my dear child ! with their brass legs straddling when not shut together in their box." " I 'm not going to do lessons much," Dorothea went on, " when I get to where I 'm going. Father said " — her little face twitched again at the mention of his name — " I wasn't to work too much at lessons, so I shan't." She said it so doggedly, so resolutely, that hearing her, and chancing to catch a glance of a very tightly-closed little mouth that followed the announcement, Mr. Jellico told himself that she wasn't going to be a child quite so easily led as he had hoped, and that he was rather afraid they might have trouble with her before they had done. With the inception of this disconcerting idea, the cab stopped with a jerk at the solicitor's door.

Chapter IV

arranging tbe H>etatls. MR. JELLICO'S house was one of those old-fashioned, roomy ones that are let at considerably less than their apparent value by reason of having a drawback to them which, though not at once patent to a casual observer, comes out fully developed after a short residence within their walls. When the cabman had been paid and dismissed, and when Dorothea was being introduced to Mrs. Jellico in the sombre old drawing-room behind the hall, a sudden ague seized upon the dwelling, accompanied by a most unearthly rumbling, which made even the self-possessed little orphan start and stare. " Don't be frightened, my dear child — the blow hole," explained Mrs. Jellico, who was a stout, dark old lady, with a suspicion of general greasiness about her. " The underground railway, you know.

Where they get the air for it. Of course it 's a great nuisance to the house, but the poor travellers can't be smothered, you see, can they?" The quiet, thoughtful child looked round the dreary room where the fog was fighting it out with the gasalier and solemnly shook her head. " Is Coralie at home?" she asked. "Ah, then you've heard of her already!" Mrs. Jellico exclaimed. " Thomas, have you told the dear child all about Coralie ? " Mr. Jellico, who was at a round table unburdening his pockets of several beautiful young deeds extremely tight-laced by waist belts of pink tape, and which (like some other beautiful young things) looked extremely innocent, but were in reality extremely danger ous, glanced up from his completed task and nodded to his wife. He did even more than this ; making some kind of expression that was evidently a signal of known import appear upon his face.

"Ah!" remarked the old lady with great satisfaction. "Just so, Thomas, just so. My dear, Coralie won't be long ; she may be expected home at any moment now. So you are going to make friends with her, are you, and going to have her to come and stay with you at your fine great house ? Well, my dear, I 'm sure there 's nobody who would be a nicer companion for you, for she's a very charming girl in every way, and I say it quite openly, though she is my own daughter, and I there fore ought not to sing her praises at all. Now, my child, will you come upstairs and take your things off?" The child intimated that she would, and followed the portly lady of the house out of the room, across the cold, narrow hall, and up the dimly-lighted stairs. Mr. Jellico seemed much gratified at this proceeding, going across to the fire in the grate at the end of the drawing-room, bending down before it with his lower lip extremely loose, and rubbing his hands together in the genial warmth.