Prettey Miss Bellew: A Tale of Home Life

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Chapter I. The Schoolroom At No. 1 5

AN uncommonly wet evening! ,Not so much rain as fog and drizzle — London fog and London drizzle. In the atmosphere, a dim whitish blur, broken here and there by smears of red, where the gas-lamps were beginning to twinkle through the murky air. In the square, drops of moisture distilHng with a dreary trickle from every twig and bud and bough. At the comer, a policeman dimly revealed by the shine of his oilskin cape under the gas-lamp. Hidden somewhere in the fog in front of a neighboring house, an organ grinding away dismally at that sweetest and most mangled of all sweet and mangled waltzes — " II Bacio." Further still, and deeper in the fog and mud, a street-singer quavering shrilly among the top notes of one of the Christy Minstrel melodies. " Fair, fair, with golden hair," came faintly over the swaying trees and thickening darkness — " Fair, fair, with golden hair, sang a lone mother while weeping."

The "lone mother's" voice had a gincracked quaver, an asthmatic wheeze, which irritated the footman at No. 4. He even meditated a sally for the purpose of gLviiKj, chase to the nuisance, but his hair was just freshly powdered for dinner, and London fogs are surcharged with sooty particles which stick, and so he restrained his warlike desires, and submitted to the annoyance. > It was not audible enough to be disagreeable at No. 15, on the other side of the square, the house whose lighted drawing-room windows threw a flickering, weirdly yellow glare over the dank grass plots and blackened shrubs across the pavement. It was only firelight within, or else the blinds had been down; but it sparkled and danced right merrily on pale green walls and bright mirrors, on pictures, and photographs, and old china; on gipsy tables, rich in home-made point-lace, and big furry rugs, cunningly obscuring the worn patches on the Turkey carpet; on curtains of ruby damask, which looked quite new and brilliant in the ruddy light, and curtains of white lace hiding their darned parts in graceful folds ; last, not least, on the back view of a young lady gazing through the blurred and misty panes, as if in a vain effort to make out the " lone mother " afore-mentioned.

"Zr«/<?/w/ weather ! " said Kate. " Vile, hateful weather ! Oh ! how damp and cold they will be ! "

She came out into the firelight as she spoke, a girl of nineteen or thereabouts, with a quantity of wavy, bronzecolored hair knotted up on the top of her head ; with round, well-opened brown eyes, and nose fine at the bridge, and square at the tip ; with red, sharply curved lips, always apart, and a determined little chin cl^ft in two, like a white-heart cherry; with cheeks flushed with health, and dented by two infantine dimples; and arms and throat white as milk, and round and soft as a yearling babe's : a girl whose first appearance gave you an overpowering sense of life — life pure and healthy, and vigorous as a young forest tree ; whose voice had a sort of jubilant defiance in its fresh young tones, and whose laugh rang out with the clear, joyous vibration of a peal of wedding bells : a girl who might have stood for Canova's Hebe, and whose appetite was as healthy as her mind.

The firelight seemed to like her, it hung about the ripening curves of her young, round figure so lovingly, and kissed with a warm, tender glow the shapely, cream-white hands stretched out to meet it — the saucy, honest face bent down above it.

" Five o'clock," said Kate, looking from the vaguely flickering reflections of herself in the mirror over the fireplace, to the old-fashioned Dresden clock on the chimney-piece; "five o'clock — and they won't be here for another hour. I think I'll get some tea."

She was rather fond of talking to herself when there was no one else to talk to, preferring singing, or even soliloquy, to the alternative of silence. As her hght feet went tripping down the broad, shallow stairs, and across the hall, with its chessboard-like surface of black and white marble, she was humming the refrain of **John Brown's Body" in so joyous^a key, that three younger sets of lungs in the schoolroom took it up, and greeted her with a chorus as she entered, laughing.

" My dears, pray ! " cried Miss Smith, from her seat behind the tea-tray. " Eva, you too ! Good evening, Miss Bellew. Shall I give you some tea ? "

"Goodness gracious, Kittie, how swell you are! and what have you dressed so early for ? " broke in Madge (No. 3, and CBtat twelve), springing up from her chair, and jerking half the contents of her tea-cup over the cloth, in her hurry to inspect Kate's attire. Poor Miss Smith uttered a second remonstrance, and Eve (No. 2, and mtat fifteen) ably seconded her. [N. B. — Some of the tea had gone over her dress.]

" I never knew any one so rough and vulgar as Madge," she observed, in an icy little tone of disgust, which quite extinguished the governess's patient "Madge! Madge!"

Madge paid little attention to either. Bigger than Eve already, and at that clumsy age when the unshaped female form goes in where it ought to come out, and comes out where it ought to go in, she had planted a hand on either side of Kate's waist, and twisted her round for a better contemplation of the crisp white muslin and carnation-colored bows, which harmonized sa well with the wearer's lips and che^k?».

"Isn't she a swell, just?" cripd Madge, who delighted to use slang for the mere pleasure of seeing Eve's lips tighten shudderingly ; but she got no second rebuke, Eve merely asking as she handed her sister a cup of tea:

" Why are you dressed so early, Kate ? "

" Because I got tired of doing nothing," said Kate, laughing, and extricating herself from Madge's grasp to sit down in the well worn armchair by the fire, and put her feet on the fender. "I never can do anything when I am expecting Dick home; and I thought dressing would pass the time away as well as anything else."

"And is all that 'goffring' and finery for Dick?" asked Eve, with a natural sourness emanating from the maternal warning earlier in the day that she would dine with the three juveniles that evening, " company " being expected.

" Dick, indeed ! " broke in Master George, a stout, bullet-headed urchin of ten, looking up from the plate of bread and marmalade he was discussing. " Dick ! She don't dress for him. Don't you know there are lawyers and people coming?"

"Ah! I had forgotten the new lawyer," said Eve, drily. "So the red bows are for him, Kate? Well, when I am out, I will wait to see what manner of fish are in the stream before I dress my flies for them."

" Is you going to catch fiss, Katie ? " said little Dottie, turning up her innocent face, with wide, brown eyes wonderfully like Kate's, from her corner under Miss Smith's wing. "Will oo take me? I's be welly good, and carry ze bastet so nicely."

" Kate likes to capture all the fish," said Madge, bursting out laughing. "She doesn't want to keep them — do you, Kittie ? You'll throw them all back into the water for Eve afterwards."

" Of course I do," said Kate, turning her bright face round, "and of course my bows are for the new lawyer. I am trembling now lest Dick should hug all the starch out of my frills before his friend sees them. I want him to like me. And why not? Every one does generally; why shouldn't he ? "

" How do you know they do ? " asked Eve, satirically.

" By their ways and manners, of course. Don't you know when people like you ? "

"Nobody ever does," observed George, carefully removing some superfluous marmalade from his cheek with the end of his tongue; "she's too disagreeable."

" Master George," said the governess, " that is not the way to talk of your sister."

"I am used to it," said Eve, with dignity; "and T must say I should try to make people like me by what I was, rather than by what I had on."

" People like Kate without her trying," put in Madge, warmly. "I heard Mrs. Fisher telling mamma that she was the very nicestest girl at the last ball; and you know Mr. Luscott fell in love with her the — "

" Madge, my dear ! " cried Miss Smith, shocked. " What do you know of falling in — ahem ! No one is . talking of such a thing."

"Certainly not," said Eve. "I don't think there is much love in what Kate calls her flirtations. 'j

" Eve ! " said Miss Smith, reprovingly. . " I only call it flirting," cried Kate, reddening warmly, "because if I didn't, nasty people would. They always do say a girl is flirting if she is cheerful, and makes no humbug about liking to talk to pleasant people, and liking pleasant people to talk to her, and care for her, and — "

" Well, you need not get so red and hot over it," observed Eve. "You may call it flirting, or not flirting. Anyhow, I don't agree with it ; and I don't think you've any right to call people humbugs who — "

"My dear Eve," said Miss Smith, "do you know what flirting means ? Miss Belle w was only joking ; no well-bred young lady would think of such a thing."

" Is me a well-bwed lady ? " said little Dottie, anxiously. " My hands always unner de table."

" You're a darling duck," said Kate, pouncing on and kissing her, "and the sweetest little lady out, that you are. I say, youngsters, what's the matter with Eve, that she's so cross this evening ? Has she been greedy, and eaten up that pot of Devonshire cream. iVv^X \.\xtcv^^ '^.'ssis. yesterday ? "

Madge was busy maintaining a silent scuffle with George for the possession of a particularly crumby piece of bread. She turned round now with a mischievous laugh ; and George instantly seized the bone of contention, and stuffed one-third of it into his mouth, to make "assurance doubly sure."

"Cream? No, Kittie; she's been eating a dish of herbs in the schoolroom, and hatred withal, instead of going into the stalled ox and what-you-may-call-ems in the dining-room ! That's what's the matter with her."

"As if I cared about such a trifle!" Eve answered, loftily, with a toss of her smooth little flaxen head. " It only shows Dick's love of his family, that he would rather see any one else on the first day of his coming home from college."

"Dick does love his family," cried Kate, flushing up again. " Dick is a darling. Of course he likes us to ask one or two people to meet Mr. Clive. When a man brings his greatest friend home, it's only natural he should wish to do him a little honor ; and you know the table only holds six cosily. It is very unkind of you to say anything against Dick, Eva."

" Oh, never mind Eva, Kittie," broke in Madge, pushing away her cup and plate. "Tell us what the * stalled ox' is to-day. We all smelt duck quite plainly; but it was mixed up with something else — I said pastry, but George thought it was bacon, and that means fowls of course. We've got a bet on it. Which has won ? "

" I don't know, I'm sure," said Kate, with that happy ignorance of all culinary and housekeeping matters so natural in our young English matrons to be. " I suppose I shall see when I sit down to it. Smell a little harder as it comes upstairs, George, and perhaps you'll find out."

"Sail I help you smell, Georgie?" asked Dottie, inflating her little nostrils in readiness. "I tan smell twite hard— tan't I, Miss Smifl*?"

"Little girls never smell," said Miss Smith, primly; "it is not good man — Madge, my dear ! " — as Madge sent her chair over backwards in her hurry to get to Kate.

"J didn't do it on purpose, Miss Smith. Do wait one

PRETTY MISS BELLE W. . y

moment, Kittie. I want to know if Mr. Clive is a relation or not. Eve says he is."

"Oh dear, no — at least, only by courtesy. He's — let me see — a step-son of one of papa's second or third cousins. That is no relation to us, you know; but I believe Dick and he call cousins, and so I suppose we shall do the same. Dick wants him to feel quite at home here."

**A man and a brother," said George, pushing away the marmalade dish with a deep sigh — whether the result of repletion, or the melancholy courtesy of leaving the last and very least portion of that delicacy unappropriated, is not known. " I hope he'll be a jolly sort of fellow, who'll take us out, and stand Madame Tussaud, and that sort of thing. Dick never does."

" Dick hasn't time," said Kate, wincing visibly at any word against her elder brother. " Miss Smith can tell you grown-up men have too many friends and engagements to be always taking their family about. Now, then, what next?" — as George stayed her exit a second time by jumping up and putting his back against the door.

"Stoop, Kittie;" (in an ingratiating whisper) "promise to bring me something from the dessert; not just a biscuit, like last time, but something nice."

"And bwing me somesing nice too, Kittie," put in Dottie, clinging with her fat hands to Kate's sash. The elder girl stooped down, and kissed her, laughingly.

" You little wretches — a likely story ! Why, I brought you those biscuits at the risk of disgracing myself for ever and ever; and then I had on a silk dress with a pocket * convanient.' Fancy Mr. Clive seeing a handful of figs and raisins transparently visible through this ! " — holding out her cloudy skirts with a merry laugh. " Move out of the way, Georgie — Gorgy ! "

"You could smuggle it in your handkerchief, Kate. Just a peach ? "

" A peach ! when they cost a mint — at this season, too ! What next ? Good night, Dottie dumpling. Now, George, let me go."

"Oh, very well. I'm oil parole, then, that's all"

"Oh, George!" (from Madge) "you mean, greedy thing ! "

" Greedy yourself, Madge. You know you always got the biggest share."

[N. B. — Some little while back, the exit of the gentlemen from the dining-room had been, I grieve to say, the signal for a raid on the dessert, of which Tom, the pageboy, had proved an inefficient defender. George had, in consequence, been put on honor by his mother not to continue these enterprises, the fruits of which were shared with Madge, who also came in for her share of blame.]

"Not when I'm on parole, George."

"Yes; but mamma said when we were, we should have something nice next day."

"Well, wait till dinner to-morrow, and you'll have something."

" I don't like waiting. I — "

"Master George, is this proper, gentlemanly behavior?" — Really, Madge, I wish — "

"I'm not doing anything. Miss Smith. It's George won't let Katie go. Katie, make mamma come up from dinner quick. Eve and I want to see what Mr. Olive is like."

" I can't, Madge. Mrs^ Marryatt always sits so long over her wine."

" Put a pin in her chair."

" Put some vinegar in her wine."

"Oh, dear! are the Marryatts coming? That horrid man I I do hate him so."

" Because he will pat your cheeks. So ! "

"Well, George, would you like to be patted like a prize

pig?"

" Perhaps he thinks you're like one." " I'm not nearly as stout as you."

"Yes, you are; look at your legs."

"Don't be rude, sir. You burst a button off your waistcoat at dinner on Friday."

" It wasn't at dinner ; it was turning a wheel." " Oh, what a cram ! "

" My dear Madge, I — "

PRETTY MISS BELLEIV. g

" Oh ! hush, please — I beg your pardon " (from Kate) — what in the name of goodness is that ? "

That was a man's voice from the drawing-room floor — a familiar voice, too, calling out :

"Halloa! Katie! Somebody! Is no one at home?"

" It's Dick ! " cried Kate, in an agony — " Oh ! ! " and hurled herself at the door, scattering George, and rushing upstairs like a white whirlwind.

In the noisy babel of the schoolroom, no one had heard either the expected knock at the door or the voiced in the hall; and Kate, who had meant to be waiting ready to seize on her brother and welcome his friend in the very moment of their arrival, was utterly taken aback by the shock of hearing them above.

Forgetting altogether the graceful little greetmg she had prepared for Dick's hero in the overwhelming delight of Dick's presence, she tore upstairs, stumbling over her white flounces in her haste, and flung her arms round the first of two dark figures dimly visible against the firelight background of the drawing-room doorway.

Chapter II. "i Think Him A Pig."

FORTUNATELY it was Dick. I don't think people often make mistakes of that sort off the stage. Besides, Dick's head was flaxen, and stood two inches lower than his friend's. He reddened slightly in the darkness when half choked by two warm white arms, while an impetuous voice stammered out, " Oh, Dick, dear ! to think of our not hearing you come ! And I was watching for you. Oh, I'm so glad you're here; and — oh, dear ! how your moustache has grown ! "

She had quite forgotten the stranger, you see; and I think — I'm not sure — that Dick remembered him more than he did his pleasure at being so warmly welcomed. Anyway, he resisted the cowardly feeling, and kissed his sister with a sort of defiance as he said :

"Why, Katie, you'll eat me up. Here's my friend Clive. Haven't you a word for him as well ? "

Of course Kate had a word ; only she had but just remembered his existence. Letting go of Dick with a sort of feeling that she had "gushed," and yet with a happy confidence that even gushing, in this undemonstrative age, was pardonable when she was the gusher, and Dick the subject, she turned with a ready mingling of smile and color to the visitor; and saw, by the glimmer of firelight — what she never had seen before in any face- of man when turned in her direction — a sneer!

It was very slight, so slight and faint indeed as to be hardly dii^tinguishable even in a brighter light, save by a

lO very quick-witted person. Unfortunately Miss Bellew was very quick-witted. She distinguished it at once, and in one and the same moment hated Mr. Bernard Clive with a fierce and deadly hatred, which manifested itself in an immediate straightening of all the Hebe curves in her lithe young figure, and the frigid bend of her head, as with face "darkly, deeply, beautifully red," she pronounced the formal greeting :

"We are very happy to see you, Mr. Clive. I beg your pardon for not noticing you at first."

Dick was disappointed. He knew Kate to the core, and was well acquainted with her two forms of manner, the outspokenly cordial and outspokenly sharp. Naturally, he thought the former had been bespoken for his friend, and felt aggrieved at this chill politeness.

"Let us come into the drawing-room. Isn't my mother at home ? and are there no lights in the house ?" he said, sharply, drowning something Clive was saying about needing " an apology for intruding on domestic reunions " — something which sounded like an appendix to the sneer, Kate thought. She was quite unconscious how bewitching the angry flush made her, as reaching up one hand to light the centre lamp, she let the pure mellow light stream dgwn on dimpling cheek and gold bronzed hair ; and all the soft white curves of arm and dress relieved against a dark green background of dainty, fragile drawing-room ferns. Dick, who had not seen her for some time, and who was rather impressionable on the score of feminine charms, felt his vexation fade away in honest pride at the possession of such a pretty sister, and at being able to exhibit her to his critical third cousin by compliment.

Dick was not a very wise young man, and had not much to be proud of on his own account. Painfully slight, with flaxen hair like Eve's, and light blue eyes, which looked dark by reason of an unhealthy purplish shade round them, he made the most striking contrast to his favorite sister that could well be found. He was only twenty-one, and yet there were little crows'-feet at the corners of his eyes, and Httle lines on Kk fo\^\\^'^^^"axs.^'«^'^'^^ lines about his mouth : small unholy signatures that gave him an old, worn look, which went oddly with his fair hair and soft moustache. He was old, poor Dick! almost worn out and used up before he had gained his majority. He had run through life so quickly as, like that babe in the ballads, to be "elderly, elderly too," at the age when most young men are almost boys ; and you could see it in the slight stoop he had when " off guard," and in the nervous movements of his slight thin hands, as well as in those tell-tale lines — lines which had graven answering ones, deep and broad, across his mother's brow.

I am afraid he was no great comfort to that lady, although he was her first-born, and had been her idol. She had adored him, and flattered him, and spoiled him in every way since his boyhood ; and yet he had not turned out either self-denying, well-conducted, or energetic. I doubt if he was even grateful ; spoiled children seldom are. On the con-trary, he had been expelled from school, and almost driven into college; had learned nothing, and spent heaps of money ; and was now home in disgrace, rusticated for a year in consequence of some scrape worse than ordinary — some scrape so bad that only the vaguest rumors of it had reached Lady Margaret and her confidante. And yet when the culprit signified that he was bringing with him a distant connection who had distinguished himself at college, and at thirty years of age had made a name at the bar, and returned to Alma Mater to take a fellowship — and had ordered that a room should be got ready for this hero, and certain guests, legal and otherwise, invited to meet him — his mother and sister never dreamed of disobeying, but were, on the contrary, rather gratified at. knowing a means for insuring their idol being in a good temper on his return. He had come home in disgrace once before, and had been in a bad tempe'r. Lady Margaret and Kate remembered that first evening painfully. •

Of course they never dreamed of resenting his humors. Women, womanly women, that is, seldom do. When he offended his great-uncle. Lord Lovegoats, by declining that living, for the adorning of which his noble relative

PRE Try MISS BELLE W, 13

had allowed a hundred a year towards college expenses, and had curtly refused to go into the Church at all, or do anything unconnected with a red coat, Lady Margaret had almost gone down on her knees to coax her uncle into continuing the young reprobate's allowance, and keeping the living open for Tom, who was now at Rugby; and Kate made vigorous (but ineffectual) love to an old general in the neighborhood, to induce him to use his interest for getting her brother a commission in the Blues. And ever after Mrs. de Ponsonby spoke of her as " that fast Miss Bellew, who quite shocked the general by her way of going on."

Some people thought Eve would turn out a nicer girl, " more soft and feminine;" but Kate was quite unaware of these strictures, ai^ had a happy way of beHeving in every one's good disposition to herself, until startled by some overt proof to the contrary, such as Mr. Clive's sneer. She did not oTten come across one.

Lady Margaret was in the room by this time, had shaken hands with Clive, welcoming him in a few cordial words — just what Kate had meant tasay — and had kissed her son affectionately, but with a sort of arriere pensee as to the reason of his being at home at all at that time. She loved him so dearly, this black sheep of hers, and yet he was so black ! Why had he not kept to his books and consented to the Church ? He would have been provided for then ; and George would have been at school instead of dawdling on with Miss Smith. It was all very well for Kate to say, "Dick is not fitted for the Church, mamma" — and he certainly was not — ^but, as Lady Margaret said, " How many go into the Church without being fitted for it, and yet get on very well! And Guttlesburyin-the-Marshes is such a nice, quiet village, he couldn't have done anything very outrageous there."

I am afraid. Lady Margaret, that the cfbietness of Guttlesbury-in-the-Marshes was one reason against it in Dick's eyes. Lady Margaret thought the same, as did Kate in her heart ; but when you are very hard up, and have seven children, and there is a profession and income offering itself to the eldest, it is provoking if he won't take it. Lady Margaret was ati earl's daughter, but her father had been neither a rich nor economical man; and it was thought a good thing when Lady Jane, who was not handsome, became a Catholic and took the veil ; and an equally good thing when her sister, at seventeen,. married a gentleman who was something in the Woods and Forests.

The Woods and Forests had maintained her very well, kept a handsome house within five minutes' walk of Hyde Park, and a well-appointed brougham ; and never obliged its consort to trouble her head about money matters, or prudential calculations. Everything went very smoothly while Mr. Bellew lived. The pity was that he didn't go on living, but went and died instead: died just as Kate was beginning to think of the dehght of coming out and being presented in another year, and Dick had been put into the hands of an expensive tutor to be crammed for college.

Lady Margaret called on her uncle. Lord Lovegoats, in floods of tears, and talked of the workhouse. It is even reported that she was heard to murmur something relative to "a mangle" or "lodgings for respectable single men." And, indeed, an income under two thousand a year is not much to keep up a household containing seven children, and four or five servants — one son at Rugby, another (whose chief correspondence with his family consisted of appeals for money) at Oxford, a governess for the rest, and a residence in the aristocratic precincts of Gresham Square, Hyde Park. Lord Lovegoats, too, was not as sympathetic as he might have been, or as Lady Margaret thought he might have been. He did, indeed, allow Dick a hundred a year for the present; and he kept a horse for Kate, brusquely observing that as his niece's first duty was to get that young lady married, it was only fair to assist her in showing off the youthful Circassian in a style of equality with others in the same rank.

He kept a horse for Kate — had, indeed, chosen it with care, and made it a present to her — but he did not add a groom, or an animal for that individual to ride on, until

PRETTY MISS BELLE W.

Lady Margaret's frequent hints as to the great additiona. expense entailed on herself by Kate's new favorite, brought one of the Lovegoat grooms to the house, with the intimation that he had been ordered to attend Miss Belle w in all her future rides.

Myson used to come every day at the same hour, mounted on a very decent hack himself, and leading Kate's; and unless it were absolutely raining cats and dogs the young lady made a point of going, lest her great-uncle might think his kindness unappreciated, and revoke it.

Attentions from relations are sometimes a little onerous, as you know ; and as Myson soon let out in the servants' hall that he had no other duty at home but to look after Miss Bellew's horse and horsemanship, and had, indeed, been hired for that sole and only purpose, Kate sometimes asked (in private) why on earth Uncle Theo. didn't give them the groom instead of lending him. He would have been so useful at Gresham Square, and might have obviated the necessity of keeping that boy in buttons, whose appearance at door and table gave seemliness and style to Lady Margaret's establishment.