Aunt Johnnie. A novel

Front matter

1 H movel. BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER, AUTHOR OF » BOOTLES' BABY," " CAVALRY LIFE," " ARMY SOCIETY," "BEAUTIFUL JIM," " MIGNON'S SECRET," "DINNA FORGET," " BUTTONS," " THE OTHER MAN'S WIFE," " GOOD-BYE," "MRS. BOB," "ONLY HUMAN," "THREE GIRLS," "A SOLDIER'S CHILDREN," "MY GEOFF," Etc. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : F. V. WHITE & CO., 31, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C, 1893. PRINTED BT KELLY AND CO. LIMITED, OATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES. CONTENTS. CHAP. pAQg I. — A Doll's House . . . . 1 H.— "Moy" 14 III.— Off! 25 IV.— A Real Man .... 33 V. — Enemies' Children .... 51 VI. — Getting On 65 VII. — A Jerk of the String ... 78 VIII.— A Hint 92 IX. — Disappointment .... 106 X. — Doubts 120 XL — An Understanding .... 134 XII. — Face to Face with a Difficulty 148 XIII. — Breaking the News . ■ . .163 XIV. — At Hedingham .... 177 XV.— A Dead Wall 193 XVI.— Run to Earth .... 209 XVII.— A Little Dinner . . . .224 XVIII. — A Suggested Alternative . .

Chapter I

a doll's house. " Censure no man for swimming with the current." Mrs. John Durham's friends were in the habit of calling her Mrs. Johnnie, as a kind of affectionate nickname, and they also called her house — which was very small and ex ceedingly inconvenient, but which rejoiced in the secondary address of Eaton Square — " the Doll's House." They had called it " the Doll's House " many a year before Henrik Ibsen had created a new madness in this country, although anything more unlike a doll than Mrs. Johnnie one could not readily imagine. She was a gay and frisky creature of fifty odd, a grandmother of ten years' standing, who comfortably turned the scale at thirteen vol. i. stone ten. She was not only fat, but she was podgily fat ; she had an inconvenient roll at the back of her neck, and another under her chin.

Her hair was remarkably luxuriant for her age, and her figure might certainly have been much better. Yet it was immaterial. Mrs. Johnnie was a frisky widow ; she flirted, and danced, and coquetted with the youngest and loveliest of her sex ; she had her chosen attendants wherever she went, her bouquets when she went to a ball, which was pretty often, and generally — though she was no longer young, and had never been beautiful — she led the life and gave herself the airs of a young married woman of indisputable grace and attractiveness. Why Mrs. Johnnie Durham occupied the position which she undoubtedly did, will, I think, for ever remain one of the mj-steries of that greatest mysterj?- of all, London society. She had no raison d'etre at all. Her husband had been nobody in particular ; she had never done anything out of the common — except in the eyes of a certain class, who said that she made a fool of herself.

She was supposed to be fairly well off, although the servants in the little house in Ebury Street could have told many a story of a sixpence being made to look like half-a-crown. She dressed outrageously, and she had, at the time when this story opens, undertaken to chaperon her only niece through the mazes of a London season. Now this same niece was young and beautiful, and she was also motherless. Her father was a somewhat poor landowner — poor, that is to say, for his position in Loam shire — and she had two brothers, both in the Service, and not one single living female relative, excepting her father's only sister, Mrs. Johnnie Durham. It happened that London did not suit the owner of Stonor's Rest. Unlike his gay and volatile sister, Mr. Stonor was a shy, delicate, and retiring man, never really well when away from home.

And he knew also that for him to take his daughter to Town for the season would be a far greater expense to him than if he simply provided for her staying 1* with his sister ; neither had he any fancy for going the round of the treadmill of fashion. Mrs. Johnnie was in the way of all that sort of thing ; she liked it, she did it for her own pleasure. Surely then, he argued, she was a more suitable person to induct his daughter into the gay world than he was. So Meg Stonor, early in January, arived at the Doll's House in Ebury Street, for a stay of about six months. There was a great deal going on that January, a great many little informal gatherings, more or less of an im promptu character, very enjoyable and very delightful to those in the swim, but — shall I confess it at once ? — a little disappointing to the country-bred girl, accustomed to being a person of importance in her own county and utterly unused to the kind of life that her father's sister led.

What a round it was ! One could not say that Mrs. Johnnie did not take her niece out duly and truly, to dinners, and dances, and crowds of every description that could come under the definition of fashion — all, mind you, more or less informal, not to say familiar. She took her to musical afternoons and to musical evenings, to one or two first nights and to a good many semi-Bohemian parties, to little dinners at this hotel, and to little suppers at that club, and she held forth visions of Barn Elms and Hurlingham, of Ascot and Henley, of the Lyric for the Boat Race, and of the Eton and Harrow at Lord's, to say nothing of the regular swing of the London season. But, although Meg had been more than a month installed as a member of the little Doll's House in Ebury Street, she still felt utterly and entirely alone.

She had gone everywhere that there was to go to at that time of the year, and she had seen Mrs. Johnnie frisking and flirting contentedly and delightedly with what she disdainfully called " bits of boys." She had writhed under the indignity of hearing her aunt say to some chosen man-child of her train, " Take my little girl down to supper for me, there's a dear boy ; she don't know a soul, don'tcher know." And then the clean-shaven — or stay, was it not too great a compliment to call such clean-shaven ? — then the smooth-faced slip of a lad, after an inane simper and grin at — " at his grandmother," as Meg vexedly put it — would turn to her, and hold out his arm, bent to a particular angle, and say, " Have some supper, Miss Stonor ? " and entertain her all the time with his ideas of her luck in having such a charming aunt as Mrs. Johnnie to go about with.

Oh, dear, dear ! how tired Meg was of Mrs. Johnnie's men-children, with their quaint old little faces, and their lack-lustre eyes, their collars and their cuffs, and their little Picca dilly jargon. She longed to ask them whether they could stand quite straight up or whether they'd been ricked in the back as babies. She longed to ask them how long they thought they would be able to keep on going about — for if they were like this at something and twenty, what would they be like if they ever got to something and sixty, or even to Mrs. Johnnie's age ? Dear, dear, it was a strange experience for a girl born and bred in the country, able and willing to do her eight or ten miles walking a day as easily as she could play a game of tennis — a girl who could hunt, and shoot, and golf, and thin the grapes and take an interest in the bedding-out plants, in the young chickens, and the dear little gold and brown pheasants in the sunniest corner of the poultry-yard.

She was desperately dull, desperately tired of all this make-believe, which seemed to be the key-note of Mrs. Johnnie's life. And it was all make-believe. She made believe that she couldn't bear a bis* house, although most people knocked their heads every time they went up the stairs in Ebury Street, and you couldn't possibly seat more than twelve people in the drawing-room, not if you tried ever so, and four people to dinner was quite a large dinner-party, and even then the servant couldn't get round to wait properly. But Mrs. Johnnie was wont to declare plaintively that she really did love — love her dear little wee tiny house. It was quite pretty to hear the stout and buxom lady descant on the feeling of loneliness which would be hers if she lived in a decent sized domicile. She also made believe that she didn't like London eggs.

Well, I don't know that anybody does really like eggs that are ostensibly London eggs ; but at the same time, it is no use shutting your eyes to the fact that you can get decent eggs in London, if you like to pay for them. But Mrs. Johnnie never had eggs, because she said that she didn't like London eggs. There were a great many other things that Mrs. Johnnie didn't like — joints — for instance — and there were times when Meg, with her healthy country appetite, got up from the table almost as hungry as she had sat down to it. " We won't have much dinner to-night," Mrs. Johnnie would say, " because we're going to see Irving in Charles the First. Oh, yes, dear child, it's a revival, but you ought to see it ; it's part of your education to see Irving in everything- — you should make a point of it.

I know I shall cry my eyes out and make myself hideous, which is a nuisance, as we are going to supper afterwards with Teddy Mazarin at the Lyric." " Don't you think you'd better eat a good dinner first, Auntie ? " said Meg, thinking, it must be confessed, a little of herself. " It's better to support yourself under affliction, isn't it ? " " No, dear child, we can make it up at the Lyric," said Mrs. Johnnie wisely. " I have told Cook that a little soup and some cutlets will be enoup-h for us." They had quite a long dinner out of that soup and those cutlets on that particular evening. First of all they had a little round of fried toast spread with anchovy paste, to give them an appetite, which was most essential, especially as they were not going to have much dinner. Then they had soup, or rather some most excellent potato puree, for which Meg, at least, was very thankful, or would have been if only she could have had another helping of it !

Then they had a tiny, tiny little patty each. To this day Meg never knew what there was inside of them, but she believes — she was not quite sure, but she believes — that there was one oyster between the two. Then they had the piece de re sistance, which was mutton cutlets, beautifully cooked but very small. " I told Cook we shouldn't have time for sweets," said Mrs. Johnnie, pegging away at her bread ; so then they had just biscuits and cheese. But it must be confessed, Mrs. Johnnie made up for it at supper that night. " I am always glad of a supper at the Lyric," she remarked on her way home from that delectable spot, " and I do think it's such a pity when a young fellow gives you a supper not to do justice to it." There was no doubt poor Meg had done full justice to the supper ; she had never noticed whether Mrs. Johnnie had done the same.

Well, as I said, Meg had been more than a month an inmate of the Doll's House, in Ebury Street, and she was getting used to the life, although she was still bored by it, and she longed to get into the country, as only a country-bred girl can do. However, there she was, and there she was bound to remain until the very end of the season ; she felt somehow as though it would be until the bitter end of the season. But there, we never know what is in store for us next. She came down to breakfast one morning to find a letter in a handwriting which she did not know awaiting her. " Oh, Auntie ! " she cried as she glanced at it. " Oh, isn't this lovely ? It's from Lady Vivian." " Is it ? " said Mrs. Johnnie, looking up with interest from a billet-doux of her own. " Yes, and this is what she says : " ' My dear Child, " ' You promised me, when I saw you in town last month, that you would come and stay a few days with me at Ingleby.

Now the week after next we have the un wonted dissipation of no less than three balls at Blankhampton. On Tuesday night is the ball given by the cavalry officers stationed here, on Wednesday night we have the hospital ball, which always follows some particularly good gathering, and on Thurs day night there is the ball given by the Yeomanry officers. This, I need hardly tell you, makes the week one of the pleasantest in the whole year, as there are generally other things got up, and we are quite gay. I would like you to come to me on the Monday, if you can manage it, to stay about ten days or a fortnight. For your mother's sake, whom I remember with much affection — you are very like her, my dear — I will do my best to give you a very happy time, and to make you feel thoroughly at home in my house.

Please let me know as soon as you possibly can. Give my kind remembrances to Mrs. Johnnie, who will, I daresay, be glad to get rid of you for a few days. " ' Very sincerely yours, '"Mary Vivian.' " There," said Meg, " now isn't that good of her? I suppose you won't mind my going ? " " Oh, my dear ! " cried Mrs. Johnnie promptly, " of course not. Take pleasure while you can get it — that's my motto, it always has been and always will be. But don't think that you're going to have a particularly good time at Ingleby. I've stayed at Ingleby myself. Lady Vivian is a very solid and gorgeous person on her native heath, and solid and gorgeous persons who in a great measure take their position from the soil on which they live, are generally a little heavy in hand. Mary Fane was a preter naturally good girl, as a girl — wouldn't dance with anyone else when she was engaged to Thomas Vivian, who couldn't dance before he was married because he never had the sense to learn how, exactly for the same reason that he never learned after.

And then when Mary Fane became Lady Vivian, she didn't dance because Thomas Vivian didn't like it. H'm ! I'd like to see mvself sitting out, glued v G ■* G to a wall, watching other women enjoy themselves ! "

Chapter II

" MOY." "Deserve success and you shall command it." It must be confessed that, in a way, Mrs. Johnnie was a very good adviser for a girl making her first real entry into society. Instead of carrying her off to a modiste's, on her arrival in London in the beginning of January, she glanced over her frocks, telling her that any rag would do for that time of year. " I don't want you, my child," she said sapiently, " to waste all your money on pretty frocks, when every other woman is wearing her rags or little gowns done up by her maid ; but rather that you should be very nice and smart when other fresh young debutantes are coming out. Therefore, on this side of the Drawing-rooms, the less you can do with the better for you." As I said, she glanced over her niece's MOY, 15 frocks, and decided that her white silk, with its garniture of real old lace, was quite as good a party-frock as she would need for smart occasions ; that her pretty black dress, powdered with gold stars, was quite as good as she need wear for any little informal dances or evenings ; that her pretty pink frock, a bit the worse for wear, would bear doing up for entertainments of scarcely so particular a quality ; and that two ancient white frocks and a more ancient black one would admirably see her through more ordinary occasions.

But when she had to think of Lady Vivian's house-party, Mrs. Johnnie regarded the time of year in a different light altogether. " You can't go down to Blankhampton, where they have the prettiest girls and the best-dressed women — or they think so, which comes to the same thing— to be found in England (I can't say I think much of them myself, but then I never did admire your bread-and-butter misses, as I think I have told you before, my dear), particularly to stay in such a house as Ingleby, unless you are properly turned out. She hasn't given you too much time ; but as it is this time of year I daresay Madame will be able to do something." " Won't any of my dresses do ? " asked Meg*. " Oh, yes, yes, yes. But I think you ought to have a new dress for each of the balls ; your other dresses will do for the rest of the time.

I think if you've three new evening dresses and a tailor-gown — you must have a decent tailor-gown for the country " " But I've got a decent tailor-gown," said Meg. " Yes, I know you have, but you've worn it ever since you came up. You'd better have a new one. You don't want to disgrace Lady Vivian ; and besides, you never know in these sleepy old country towns, when you're going into a really good set, what may happen to you. You may meet a duke, for anything you know." " I don't want to meet a duke," said Meg. " No, my dear child, I know you don't ; but as every French soldier is supposed to MOY. 17 carry a field-marshal's bdton in his knapsack, so every debutante expects to meet a duke and polish him off during her first season. The dukes, unfortunately, are not many, and they don't generally marry exactly debutantes.

But that's a detail. You're exceedingly pretty, and you're dreadfully ingenue, and you're of a very good family, and you're my niece — that ought to help you a good bit." For the life of her, Meg Stonor could not see what particular help it had been to her up to the present, that she happened to be Mrs. Johnnie's niece. Certainly she had gone about as one of her train, as a sort of clog to the heels of that gay and frisky lady. But she could not very well tell Mrs. Johnnie so, therefore she suffered the remark to pass in silence. Immediately after breakfast, they sallied out to see Madame. Madame was a dress maker of great repute in London. She rejoiced in the name of Cheri ; but none of her fair clients ever spoke of her as Madame Cheri — they always called her "Madame." VOL. i. Madame heard of the occasions for which the three ball-gowns were required, and after a few minutes' deep thought suggested a white gown, a pink one, and also one of pale blue.

After leaving Madame's they went on to a tailor's — a tailor with a very great reputation for riding habits and such-like garments — who, as a favour and a concession to Mrs. Johnnie's popularity or notoriety, whichever you will, periodically condescended to make her such garments as would squeeze her superabundant fat into the semblance of a good figure. " Of course he's dear," said Mrs. Johnnie, as they drove down Bond Street. " Nobody can deny that Moy is dear, but then it's worth it. I don't know what there is about Moy that should be so different to other tailors. Why he should, without pinching, without squeezing, without making you so that you can't breathe, be able to take a good fifteen years off your age is beyond me — but he does it." " But, my dear Auntie," cried Meg, with a MOY. 19 twinkle in her eyes, " if Mr. Moy takes a good fifteen years off my age, what will be the good of my going down to try and catch a duke, so as to do you credit ?

" which, as the young lady was but nineteen years of age, was a very reasonable remark. " Oh, well, my dear," said Mrs. Johnnie airily, " I was thinking of myself — I was thinking of myself, not of you. In the case of a slip of a girl such as you are, with a good complexion and a pair of dewy eyes, a man like Moy makes just the difference between a slip of a girl, who may be nobody, and an elegant young woman who is fit to be a duchess. Don't you see ? " " Well, of course there is something in that," Meg admitted. The great Mr. Moy looked at her with critical eyes. He was in the habit of saying, among those who believed in his genius the most, that he was able to do more for a debutante than any other man in the world, that he had made more marriages and brought about more good matches than any other living person.

" Give me a girl with a 2* straight figure, a pair of good eyes and a decent complexion," he was wont to sa)', "and I'll make you the most beautiful creature on the face of God's earth." Well, the great Mr. Moy looked Miss Stonor over, exactly as if she had been a young filly, walked this way and that, made her turn her head from side to side, moved her arm this way and that, lifted her chin up an inch, and finally, just as Madame had done, entered into an apparently abstruse calculation. " Miss Stonor," he said, addressing himself to Mrs. Johnnie, who hung on his words as if he had been a great artist or a profound philosopher — " Miss Stonor has a figure that can be done a great deal with. Does the young lady ride ? " Now it happened that Miss Stonor was a Loamshire girl, and, as every man, woman and child in the country knows, Loamshire is a corner of the world devoted to horse-flesh.

Meg was so intensely amused at this question that she burst out laughing; so it was a very radiant face that she turned towards him. MOY, 21 " Oh, Mr. Moy ! " she cried, " if everything else failed, I should certainly try and get a berth in a circus." " You intend to ride this season, Madam ? " he inquired, taking no notice of her remark. " If so, if I make you a gown at such exceedingly short notice, I should like to put a habit in hand for you at once. I could not allow it to be said that you wore a gown of mine, if you did not wear a habit of mine, as I am more of a habit-maker than a ladies' tailor. If you were wearing a habit of mine and a gown of someone else's, or even of your maid's, it would be quite another thing ; but with ladies who ride, I make it an invariable rule never to make them a gown at all, unless I make also their habits."

" You want a new habit, Meg, don't you ? " said Mrs. Johnnie, turning to her niece. " Yes, I shall want a new one. I have only got my last year's summer habit, which has seen some very hard wear, and a thick winter one in which I've hunted regularly for several months." "Then you may as well order it now, dear," said the older lady, then uttered a little regretful sigh. " I wish I could order a habit, Mr. Moy ; but, alas ! my riding days are over. I haven't the nerve that I had." It was on the tip of Meg's tongue to say that she had not the figure either. However, she refrained from giving utterance to the unholy thought, and entered with considerable avidity into a discussion as to the best kind of habit for her to wear in Town. Having arranged the order for the habit — one would say " secured " it, in speaking of a less important person than Mr. Moy — having arranged the order for the habit, Mr. Moy condescended to go into the matter of the gown.

" In three days' time, Madam, you will be kind enough to give us a first fitting ; during the week following you will kindly give us from eleven to twelve each morning." Miss Stonor turned round and regarded the great tailor with ej-es of unmitigated horror and astonishment. " Mr. Moy," she said, " do you mean to tell me that you will MOY, 23 have to fit me on seven times for this one dress ? " " Possibly, Madam," he said, in a bland and indulgent manner. " Not seven times for one dress, Mr. Moy ? " said Miss Stonor incredulously. "Not positively, Madam, but possibly," said the great man ; " I should like to be able to fit it as many times if necessary." " Of course you must arrange to come," said Mrs. Johnnie, who, if the truth be told, was exceedingly flattered that the great man had condescended to bestow so much time upon her niece.

She knew that it meant great things ; he never wanted more than five sittings — I mean fittings — from her. " My dear," she said, as they got into the brougham again, " Moy is going to make a beauty of you." " Auntie ! " said Meg. " Yes, I saw by the way that he looked at you that he admired you." " Really ! " said Meg, putting her dear little, saucy nose in the air. " Yes, and a very great compliment it is ; you ought to be very proud of yourself. You will be — at least he will make you per fection." Already, in Mrs. Johnnie's eyes, Meg Stonor had begun to assume a very considerable im portance. She had been glad to have her niece to spend the season with her ; she had been delighted to have her to talk to when none of her men-children were by ; she had been pleased to take her here, there and everywhere, and to let the girl, who was almost an entire stranger to her world, do the best she could for herself.

But since Moy, the creator of more feminine loveliness than any other man alive, had regarded her with eyes of such favour, that he actually had ordered seven sittings — I mean fittings — for her gown, Meg had become indeed quite another person, and Mrs. Johnnie saw nothing at all far-fetched or ludicrous in the very possible, not to say probable, idea that during her visit to Lady Vivian, Miss Stonor might meet and subjugate to her charms that ambition of all debutantes, a noble duke.

Chapter III. Off

! ' Before you marry, reflect ; for it is a knot you cannot untie." It must be confessed that Moy, together with Madame, turned out a brilliant success, so far as Miss Stonor's garments were concerned. The three evening dresses were simply per fection ; nothing could have been better or more appropriate to the wearer or to the occasion than those which were carefully packed in Meg's trunks ready for her journey to Blankhampton. The gown " built " by Moy was something more than simply per fection ; it transformed Meg into another being. I know not where the difference was, but it was marvellous anyway. " My dear, you will carry everything before you," said Mrs. Johnnie, when she had seen her niece arrayed in the wonderful garment. " You will carry everything before you ; I begin to feel very proud of you."

To Meg it was quite a new sensation to have this interest taken in her by her gay and frisky aunt, and the morning that she was to leave for Blankhampton she really felt more gay herself than she had done at any time since she had left her father's house. The two ladies breakfasted together at ten o'clock in the tiny dining-room of the Doll's House. " You must eat a good breakfast, Meg," said Mrs. Johnnie, kindly. Now, according to Meg, nobody could eat a good breakfast off such a board as Mrs. Johnnie provided ; but that was immaterial. She began with a sardine — there were only three on the dish and she didn't like to take two — followed it up with a tiny strip of bacon, and then started, somewhat doubtfully, on an egg. There was only one egg, for, as I said before, Mrs. Johnnie didn't -like London eggs, so she only had one cooked for Meg.