Thrale, to come down to vacuity."
"Well, it is only a visit of two or three days. My daughter Ethel is coming out next spring, and she came up to meet us here. I wish her to have a few weeks with masters, and there are more things to be thought of than you would suppose. Do you think there is anything a country miss would do well to read up that we might have forgotten?"
"Read? read? Oh! yes, two things."
"What are they?"
"If she has a sound knowledge of the heathen mythology, and a smattering of the Bible, she"ll do very well."
"But she won"t talk about the Bible," laughed papa; "people who like it, read it to themselves."
"Very true," said Doctor Droqville, "you never mention it; but, quite unconsciously, you are perpetually alluding to it. Nothing strikes a stranger more, if he understands your language as I do. You had a note from Lady Lorrimer?"
"No," said mamma.
The word "note," I think, struck papa as implying that she was nearer than letter-writing distance, and he glanced quickly at Doctor Droqville.
"And where is Lady Lorrimer now?" asked papa.
"That is what I came to tell you. She is at Mivart"s. I told her you were in town, and I fancied you would have had a note from her; but I thought I might as well look in and tell you."
"She"s quite well, I hope?" said mamma.
"Now did you ever, Mrs. Ware, in all your life, see her quite well? I never did. She would lose all pleasure in life, if she thought she wasn"t leaving it. She arrived last night, and summoned me to her at ten this morning. I felt her pulse. It was horribly regular. She had slept well, and breakfasted well, but that was all. In short, I found her suffering under her usual chronic attack of good health, and, as the case was not to be trifled with, I ordered her instantly some medicine which could not possibly produce any effect whatever; and in that critical state I left her, with a promise to look in again in the afternoon to ascertain that the more robust symptoms were not gaining ground, and in the interval I came to see you and tell you all about it."
"I suppose, then, I should find her in her bed?" said mamma.
"No; I rather think she has postponed dying till after dinner--she ordered a very good one--and means to expire in her sitting-room, where you"ll find her. And you have not been very well?"
"Remember the story he has just told you of your aunt Lorrimer, and take care he doesn"t tell her the same story of you," said papa, laughing.
"I wish I could," said Doctor Droqville; "few things would please me better. That pain in the nerves of the head is a very real torment."
So he and mamma talked over her head-aches in an undertone for some minutes; and while this was going on there came in a note for mamma.
The servant was was waiting for an answer in the hall.
"Shall I read it?" said papa, holding it up by the corner. "It is Lady Lorrimer"s, I"m sure."
"Do, dear," said mamma, and she continued her confidences in Doctor Droqville"s ear.
Papa smiled a little satirically as he read it. He threw it across the table, saying:
"You can read it, Ethel; it concerns you rather."
I was very curious. The hand was youthful and pretty, considering Lady Lorrimer"s years. It was a whimpering, apathetic, selfish little note.
She was miserable, she said, and had quite made up her mind that she could not exist in London smoke. She had sent for the doctor.
She continued: "I shall make an effort to see you, if you can look in about three, for a few minutes. Have you any of your children with you?
If they are very quiet I should like to see them. It would amuse me. It is an age since I saw your little people, and I really forget their ages, and even their names. Say if I am to expect you at three. I have told the servant to wait."
People who live in the country fancy themselves of more importance than they really are. I was mortified, and almost shocked at the cool sentences about "the little people," etc.
"Well, you promise to be very quiet, won"t you? You won"t pull the cat"s tail, or light paper in the fire, or roar for plum-cake?" said papa.
"I don"t think she wants to see us. I don"t think she cares the least about us. Perhaps mamma won"t go," I said, resentfully, hoping that she would not pay that homage to the insolent old woman.
Doctor Droqville stood up, having written a prescription.
"Well, I"m off; and I think this will do you a world of good. Can I do any commission for you about town; I shall be in every possible direction in the next three hours?"
No, there was nothing; and this man, whom I somehow liked less than ever, although he rather amused me, vanished, and we saw his cab drive by the window.
"Well, here"s her note. You"ll go to see her, I suppose?" said papa.
"Certainly; I have a great affection for my aunt. She was very kind to me when there was no one else to care about me."
Mamma spoke with more animation than I believed her capable of--I thought I even saw tears in her eyes. It struck me that she did not like papa"s tone in speaking about her. The same thing probably struck him.
"You are quite right, darling, as you always are in a matter of feeling, and you"ll take Ethel, won"t you?"
"Yes, I should like her to come."
"And you know, if she should ask you, don"t tell her I"m a bit better off than I really am. I have had some awful losses lately. I don"t like bothering you about business, and it was no fault or negligence of mine; but I really--it is of very great importance she should not do anything less that she intended for you, or anything whimsical or unjust. I give you my honour there isn"t a guinea to spare now, it would be a positive cruelty."
Mamma looked at him, but she was by this time so accustomed to alarms of that kind that they did not make a very deep impression upon her.
"I don"t think she"s likely to talk about such matters, dear," said mamma; "but if she should make any inquiries, I shall certainly tell her the truth."
I remembered Lady Lorrimer long ago at Malory. It was a figure seen in the haze of infancy, and remembered through the distance of many years.
I recollect coming down the stairs, the nursery-maid holding me by the hand, and seeing a carriage and servants in the court before the door. I remember, as part of the same dream, sitting in the lap of a strange lady in the drawing-room, who left a vague impression of having been richly dressed, who talked to me in a sweet, gentle voice, and gave me toys, and whom I always knew to have been Lady Lorrimer. How much of this I actually saw, and how much was picked up with the vivid power of reproducing pictures from description that belongs to children, I cannot say; but I always heard of Aunt Lorrimer afterwards with interest, and now at length I was about to see her. Her note had disappointed me, still I was curious.
CHAPTER XXVI.
LADY LORRIMER.
My curiosity was soon gratified. After luncheon we drove to Mivart"s, and there in her sitting-room I saw Lady Lorrimer. I was agreeably surprised. Her figure was still beautiful. She was, I believe, past sixty then; but, like all our family whom I have ever seen, she looked a great deal younger than her years. I thought her very handsome, very like my idea of Mary Queen of Scots in her later years; and her good looks palpably owed nothing to "making up." Her smile was very winning, and her eyes still soft and brilliant. Through so many years, her voice as she greeted us returned with a strange and very sweet recognition upon my ear.
She put her arms about mamma"s neck, and kissed her tenderly. In like manner she kissed me. She made me sit beside her on a sofa, and held my hands in hers. Mamma sat opposite in a chair.
Lady Lorrimer might be very selfish--lonely people often are; but she certainly was very affectionate. There were tears in her fine eyes as she looked at me. It was not such a stare as a dealer might bestow on a picture, to which, as a child, I had sometimes been subjected by old friends in search of a likeness. By-and-by she talked of me.
"The flight of my years is so silent," she said, with a sad smile to mamma, "that I forgot, as I wrote to you, how few are left me, and that Ethel is no longer a child. I think her quite lovely; she is like what I remember you, but it is only a likeness--not the same; she does not sacrifice her originality. I"m not afraid, dear, to say all that before you," she said, turning on me for a moment her engaging smile. "I think, Ethel, in this world, where people without a particle of merit are always pushing themselves to the front, young people who have beauty should know it. But, my dear," she said, looking on me again, "good looks don"t last very long. Your mamma, there, keeps hers wonderfully; but look at me. I was once a pretty girl, as you are now; and see what I am!
"Le meme cours des planetes Regle nos jours et nos nuits; On me vit ce que vous etes, Vous serez ce que je suis."