Short Fiction · At Twelve Tonight (2/3)

II

“I don’t admire her in the least, Mattie; she’s not at all my style,” said Nellie, addressing her pretty little maid, with whom, like most girls brought up without companions of their own age, she was on very confidential terms.

It was the evening of the day on which the newly-found cousins had arrived, and Nellie, as she dressed for dinner, was speaking her mind freely about them.

“I only saw her for a minute, Miss Nellie,” said Mattie, “and I thought she had on a lovely travelling-dress and hat.”

“Oh, I dare say she knows how to dress; although I think her hat was much too young for a woman of her age,” said Nellie, a little spitefully. “From what Uncle John said, she must be over thirty. Fancy a woman on the wrong side of thirty wearing a hat at all! I’m quite certain on the very day I’m twenty-nine⁠—especially if I’m an old maid⁠—I shall begin to wear prim all-round-the-face bonnets, tied with big ribbon bows under my chin.”

It may be mentioned in passing that Piers and Beatrix had seemed to get on remarkably well together during the short period of afternoon tea, and that Piers, at the request of the latter, had consented to put off his return to town.

“Your father was so good to my father at one time, when he was in great trouble, that I have always felt I should like to know you,” Beatrix had said, frankly, as she thanked him for his ready compliance with her wish.

Hair-brushing went on for a moment or two in silence. Then Mattie, who loved to make Nellie talk, in order to secure scraps of news to retail in the servants’ hall, began again.

“The gentleman isn’t thirty, Miss Nellie, is he?” she asked. “I met him as he crossed the gallery, on his way to his room, just now. I did think him handsome!”

“Thirty! no, not five-and-twenty. Handsome, I should think he was,” she added, enthusiastically. “Such eyes! I dare say he’s a trifle conceited. I caught him looking at himself in the glass, once or twice, and more than once or twice he seemed to be admiring his white hands and delicate fingernails. I wonder how many girls are in love with him!”

Then, as if to change the subject, she suddenly turned round, and faced Mattie with the question:

“How is Dick? Have you seen him this morning?”

Pretty Mattie flushed to the roots of her hair. “Only for five minutes, Miss Nellie; he was exercising the horses round the paddock, and⁠—”

“Ah, it’s lucky for you our grounds join the Squire’s, or you wouldn’t see him half so often. Has Dick had any more offers of marriage, lately?”

“None, Miss Nellie, since the one I told you of, from that horrid widow at the livery stables. She’s forty-five, if she’s a day, Miss Nellie.”

“Ah! and that’s the third offer that young man has had! I think, Mattie, you’re a lucky girl. I’d give anything to have a lover that every other woman in creation wanted to marry.” She paused a moment, and then added, in a quieter tone, “Now, Mattie, tell me honestly, could you fancy any woman, old or young, falling desperately⁠—mind, I say desperately⁠—in love with my cousin Piers?”

“He’s a little grave and dignified, Miss Nellie,” began Mattie, stammering a little over her reply. “But⁠—but I’m sure he’s devoted to you.”

“Oh, yes, I dare say he is, and that’s possibly why” She broke off abruptly. “I want a little extra jewellery tonight; my carbuncle and diamond set will do. I want to look particularly⁠—ah! who is that?” For at that moment, Beatrix’s voice was heard at the door, asking if she might come in, and before Nellie could say yea or nay, she had turned the handle, and stood upon the threshold.

Nellie was right, when she said that Beatrix Harley knew how to dress; but she was undoubtedly wrong, if she imagined that in her dress, costly and tasteful, though it might be, lay her chief attraction. Dressed in fustian, or in velvet, Beatrix would still have been a charming woman; charming by reason of her vivacity and grace of manner, as much as by reason of her personal appearance. In figure, she was tall and stately, and owned to the brightest of brown hair and eyes, and a delicate complexion. Vivacity, and love of fun, were perhaps more than anything else impressed upon her features; one had only to look at her, to be sure that the account she had given of herself was a true one, and that she must be always moving and doing, “going in for something or other,” as she so often phrased it, or life would have been an impossibility to her.

If Nellie had spoken out all the truth in her confidences with Mattie, she would have said, “Somehow, beside her I feel myself small and insignificant, indifferently dressed, and lacking in manner; and that’s why I’m not prepared to be very cordial with her.”

The feeling deepened in Nellie’s mind as Beatrix, after a moment’s critical survey of Nellie’s toilet, said, in a caressing tone:

“What a sweet little blossom she will be in a year or two!”

Nellie tossed her head, and began, hurriedly, to put on as much jewellery as her small hands, arms, and throat could reasonably carry.

Beatrix clasped her fifth bracelet for her. “Finished now, aren’t you?” she said. “Now, Nellie, I want you to show me Cousin John’s door; I’m going to rouse him out of his lair, in other words, make him take me down to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, impossible!” cried Nellie. “Not to be thought of! If he doesn’t come down we never dare disturb him. Oh, you don’t know the state of mind he’s in today.”

“State of mind!” repeated Beatrix, arching her brows.

“I mean,” corrected Nellie, “the state of mind he would be in if he were disturbed. Oh, if you only knew how much better it is for him to be locked in.”

Beatrix laughed. “My dear, he wouldn’t believe I was in the house if I didn’t make my presence felt.”

“Oh, you’ve no idea how he’ll storm.”

“Then he must be taught not to storm,” laughed Beatrix. “It was always good fun teaching Cousin John. Come along, Nellie, show me his door. To think”⁠—this was said half to herself⁠—“that, after fifteen years’ absence from England, Cousin John shouldn’t be one of the first to give me a welcome!”

After his stormy interviews with his young relatives, the Professor had found it a little difficult to get into vein for his work again. It was a rule of the house, that if he did not appear at the dinner-table he was on no account to be disturbed; so he confidently counted on a good five or six hours’ work before bedtime came round. The first of those hours he spent in mending his pen and muttering over and over again to himself the opening words of his treatise on “Philosophy as an aid to the control of the emotions.” The second was passed in collecting certain references in Plato and Aristotle, which he had marked for quotation. It was not till the third of those hours was halfway through that he found his thoughts flowing easily from the nib of his pen once more; and lo, just as he was beginning to feel that after all he would have something to show for his day’s work, soft and low there came another rap at his door, and a voice, which had not fallen upon his ear for over fifteen years, was heard, saying, “Cousin John, may I come in?”

The Professor changed to all sorts of colours; he glanced at his bolt, and then began to write away harder than ever. “He’s pretending not to hear,” whispered Beatrix to Nellie. “We’ll rap in turns, my knuckles are getting sore,” and slowly and steadily the raps increased in strength and rapidity.

Between the pauses of their rappings they could, by listening closely, hear the Professor’s pen scratching away hard and fast.

“I wonder if he has tied his pocket-handkerchief over his ears,” said Beatrix. “I remember at one time he had a trick of doing that when he didn’t want to hear outside noises. Give up rapping, dear, and let us sing; he won’t be able to shut that out.”

“Sing!” cried Nellie. “What on earth can we sing that’ll charm the bolt back?”

“Do you know the air of ‘Sweet Jenny Jones’? Well, sing these words to it:

How charming is divine philosophy,

Not harsh and crabbed as some dull fools suppose.

You take soprano, I’ll sing seconds.”

“The words won’t go, something wrong with the syllables,” Nellie whispered back.

“Make them go. Put in an Albani-like trill when you’re short of a syllable,” said Beatrix.

And then together they suddenly broke into the oddly-joined words and melody.

The Professor gave a groan and dropped his pen.

“It’s more than flesh and blood can bear,” he exclaimed. “She is evidently as active as ever. Yes, I must open the door a crack to get rid of her. Coming, coming!” he shouted, for the voices of the singers seemed gradually to be reaching a high pitch. “But she shan’t come in here; and no power on earth shall get me downstairs to be engulfed in all sorts of distractions when I might be coining golden thoughts for all ages!”

But he did both the things against which he vowed so strenuously, and that in the easiest and most natural way in the world.

Directly the door opened a crack and the Professor peeped out, Beatrix gave it a little push with her foot which laid the room bare to view.

“You dear old John! You haven’t altered a bit,” she exclaimed, linking her arm in his. “I knew you would open your door directly you realised who we were outside. Oh, what a comfortable study you have! Now why should you trouble to come downstairs and dine with us? Let us come up and dine with you instead. Tell the servants to wheel that big table into the middle of the room, and let them clear that writing-table for a sideboard, and the thing’s done!”

The Professor went downstairs arm-in-arm with her at once.