In Silk Attire: A Novel. William Black
from a chair is so obviously an easy feat.
"I'm doing this out of pure mischief," she said, "and earning for myself such heaps of muttered scolding and ill will. The gardener comes to us twice a week; and he is quite savage if I have meddled with anything in the meantime. I can't pacify him. I have tried every means; but he is too obdurate. Miss Featherstone says I ought to hire a young gardener, and I might have the garden done any way I wished."
"Sulky servants are always the best servants," said Will, rather absently; for the clear, dark Italian face, and the bright smile, and the white teeth, oppressed him with a vague, delicious melancholy. "But a gardener, whether he is good or bad, is always sulky. My mother is afraid to touch one of the plants in the greenhouse until it is half withered; and when some people come, and she carries off a lot of the plants for the hall and dinner-table, she trembles to meet the old man next morning. I suppose gardeners get so fond of their flowers as to be jealous, and jealousy is always cross. By-the-bye, wasn't that Miss Featherstone who left as I came in?"
"Yes."
"I scarcely knew her. In fact, I only saw her once before off the stage – at that supper; and yet she was kind enough to bid me good morning."
"Then she must have thought you were a newspaper gentleman," said Mrs. Christmas, with a good-natured little laugh. "She is very partial to them. And that one she knows just now teaches her such dreadful things, and the heedless girl repeats them wherever she goes, to make people laugh. What was it she said this morning, Miss Annie? – that on St. Patrick's Day there were so many wicked things done in Ireland, that the recording angel had to take to shorthand."
"Well, Lady Jane," said Miss Brunel, "you need not have repeated what she said; and it's very wrong of you to say anything against poor Nelly, who is a warm-hearted, mad little creature."
"She's not so simple as she looks," said Mrs. Christmas, nodding her head sagaciously. "I am an old woman, and I know. And the way she uses that poor young gentleman – him in the government office, who was at the supper, you know, Mr. Anerley – is downright shameful. She told me this morning that he made her swear on an open prayer-book never to put bismuth on her arms or neck again; I suppose because he expects to marry her, and doesn't want to have her all shrivelled up, and bismuth is very bad, you know, for that; and that newspaper gentleman whom she knows said, whenever she wanted to quarrel with the poor young man, and make him believe that she had perjured herself all for the love of shiny white arms, she ought to – !"
"Mr. Anerley," said the young girl, looking down from her work, "will you silence that talkative child by giving it a piece of sugar? What must you think of us actresses if she goes on like that?"
"She– bah!" said the old woman, in a melodramatic whisper, with a nod towards Miss Brunel. "She knows no more of Nelly Featherstone and the rest of 'em than an infant does. They don't talk to her like they do to an old woman like me."
"Now I have finished," said the young lady, jumping lightly down from the chair (Will did not even get the chance of taking her hand), "and we'll go inside, if you please."
"Shall I bring in the chair?" asked Will.
"Oh, no! We leave the old thing out here: it is for no other use."
Somehow it seemed to be quite a valuable chair in his eyes: he would have given a good deal to be its owner just then.
As they got indoors, Mrs. Christmas went upstairs, and Will followed Annie Brunel into the drawing-room, which was rather prettily furnished, and had a good deal of loose music scattered about the tables and piano. He had been in finer drawing-rooms, with grander ladies; and yet he had never before felt so rough and uncultivated. He wished he had looked particularly at his hair and moustache before corning out, and hoped they were not very matted, and loose, and reckless – which they certainly were. Indeed, he looked like some stalwart and bronzed seaman who had just come off a long voyage, and who seemed to regard with a sort of wonder the little daintinesses of land-life.
"I thought you had quite run away with my sis – , with that young lady, the other evening when she went to see you," he said.
"You would have been sorry for that," she replied, with a quiet smile.
Will was not at all so pleased with the gentle motherly tone in which she uttered these words as he ought to have been. She seemed to take it for granted that his love-secret was known to her; he would have preferred – without any particular reason – its not being known.
"What a gentle, loveable girl she is!" continued the young actress. "I never knew any one who so thoroughly won me over in a few minutes. She was so sweet, and quiet, and frank; one could tell by her face everything she thought. She must be very sensitive and affectionate; I hope so tender a creature will never have to suffer much. And you – you must be very proud of her."
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