A Plucky Girl Part 6

I had not been nervous while I was speaking, but I felt nervous now. I knew that I was being weighed in the balance, that I and my scheme were being held up before the mental eyes of these people with the keenest, most scathing criticism. Would one in all that crowd understand me? I doubted it. Perhaps in my first sensation of sinking and almost despair something of my feeling stole into my face, for suddenly Jasmine sprang to her feet and said in an excited, tremulous voice--

"I for one say that Westenra is a very plucky girl. I wish her G.o.d speed, and I hope her scheme will succeed."

This was very nice indeed of Jasmine, but I do not know that it relieved the situation much, for still the others were silent, and then one lady got up and went over to mother and took her hand and said--

"I am very sorry for you, dear Mrs. Wickham, very sorry indeed. I fear I must say good-bye now; I am very sorry. Good-bye, dear Mrs.

Wickham."

And this lady's example was followed by most of the other ladies, until at last there was no one left in the room but the d.u.c.h.ess of Wilmot and Lady Thesiger and ourselves. Lady Thesiger's cheeks were brightly flushed.

"My dear Westenra," she said, "you are one of the most eccentric creatures in creation. Of course from first to last you are as wrong as you can be. You know nothing about keeping a boarding-house, and you are bound to fail. I could not say so before all those ridiculous people, who would not have understood, but I say so now to you. My dear girl, your speech was so much Greek to them. You spoke over their heads or under their feet, just as you please to put it, but comprehend you they did not. You will be the talk of the hour, and they will mention you as a girl whom they used to know, but who has gone a little mad, and then you will be forgotten. You would have done fifty times better by keeping this thing to yourself."

"That is precisely what I think," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "My dear Mary,"

she added, turning to my mother, "what is the matter with your child?

Is she quite _right_?" The d.u.c.h.ess gave an expressive nod, and I saw mother's face turn pale.

"Oh, do listen to me for a moment," interrupted pretty Lady Thesiger, "what I say is this. Westenra is on the wrong tack. If she wishes to earn money, why must she earn it in this preposterous, impossible manner? It would be fifty times better for her to go as a teacher or a secretary, but to keep a boarding-house! You see for yourself, dear Mrs. Wickham, that it is impossible. As long as we live in society we must adhere to its rules, and for West calmly to believe that people of position in London will know her and respect her when she is a boarding-house keeper, is to expect a miracle. Now, I for one will not cut you, Westenra."

"Nor will I cut you, Westenra," said the d.u.c.h.ess, and she gave a profound sigh and folded her hands in her lap.

"Two of your friends will not cut you, but I really think all the others will," said Lady Thesiger. "Then I suppose you expect me to recommend nice Americans to come and stay with you, but it is my opinion that, with your no knowledge at all of this sort of thing, you will keep a very so-so, harum-scarum sort of house. How can I recommend my nice American friends to be made thoroughly uncomfortable by you? Oh, I am _very_ sorry for you."

Lady Thesiger got up as she spoke; she kissed me, squeezed my hand, and said, "Oh child, what a goose you are!" and left the room.

The d.u.c.h.ess followed more slowly.

"I don't forget, my child," she said, "that I am your G.o.dmother, that I loved your dear father, that I love your mother, that I also love you. Do not be wilful, Westenra; give up this mad scheme. There are surely other ways open to you in this moment of misfortune. Above all things, try not to forget that you are your father's daughter."

CHAPTER V

JANE MULLINS

On the evening which followed our last "At Home," mother came to me, and earnestly begged of me to pause and reflect.

"Wherever you go I will go, Westenra," she said; "that may be taken as a matter of course, but I do think you are wrong to go against all the wishes of our friends."

"But our friends won't do anything for us, Mummy!" I answered, "and they will forget us just as soon in the cottage in the country, as they will in the boarding-house in town; sooner, in fact, if that is any consolation to you, and I do want to try it, Mummy, for I cannot be buried alive in the country at twenty-one."

"Then I will say no more," replied mother. "I only trust the way may be made plain for us, for at present I cannot see that it is; but if we can find a suitable house, and take it, I will go with you, West, although, darling, I hate the thing--I do truly."

After this speech of mother's it can easily be supposed that I slept badly that night. I began for the first time in my life to doubt myself, and my own judgment. I began even seriously to consider the cottage in the country with its genteel poverty, and I began to wonder if I was to spend the remainder of my youth getting thinner in mind and body, day by day, and hour by hour.

"Anaemic," I said to myself. "In the country with no money, and no interests, I shall become anaemic. My thoughts will be feeble and wanting in force, and I shall die long before my time a miserable old maid. Now, there are no real old maids in London. The unmarried women are just as full of force, and go, and common-sense, and ambition, and happiness as the married ones; but in the country, oh, it is different. There old age comes before its time. I knew that I was not the girl to endure having nothing to do, and yet that seemed to be my appointed portion. So during the night I shed very bitter tears, and I hated society for its coldness and want of comprehension. I longed more frantically than ever to find myself in the midst of the people, where "a man was a man for a' that," and mere veneer went for nothing.

But if mother's heart was likely to be broken by my taking this step, and if there was no house for me but 14 Cleveland Street, I doubted very much whether I could go on with my scheme. Judge therefore of my surprise and delight, when on the following morning, mother handed me a letter which she had just received. It was from Messrs. Macalister & Co.

"Read it," she said, "I do not quite know what it means."

I read the letter quickly, it ran as follows:--

"DEAR MADAM,--We write to acquaint you, that we have just had an interview with Mr. Hardcastle, the landlord of 17 Graham Square, and he desires us to say, that he is willing in your case to come to terms with regard to his house, and if you will take it for a lease of fourteen years, he will do it up for you, in the most approved style, and according to your own taste; he also withdraws his embargo to your letting apartments, or having paying guests in your house.

"Under the circ.u.mstances, we shall be glad to hear if you still entertain the idea of taking this mansion.

--Yours faithfully, MACALISTER & CO."

"Oh mother!" I cried, "this is just splendid!" My spirits rose with a bound. Anxious as I was to possess a boarding-house, I hated going to 14 Cleveland Street, but 17 Graham Square was a house where any one might be happy. It was charmingly built; it was large, commodious, cheerful, and then the landlord--he must be a delightful man when he withdrew his embargo, when he permitted us--_us_ to have paying guests in our dwelling. Even Jasmine need not be ashamed to send her nice, rich American friends to 17 Graham Square.

"This is splendid, mother!" I repeated.

"Dear me, Westenra," said mother, looking pale and troubled, "what house is he alluding to? I saw so many that first day, darling, and the only impression they left upon me was, that they were all stairs and narrowness; they seemed to go up and up, for ever and ever, my legs ache even now when I think of them."

"But you cannot forget 17 Graham Square," I said, "the last house we saw ... the corner-house. You recollect the hall, how wide it was, and you know there were darling balconies, and you shall have one, little mother, all to yourself, and such a sweet sun-blind over it, and you can keep your favourite plants there, and be, oh, so happy!

Mother--mother, this is magnificent!"

"I do recall the house now," said mother, "it was not quite as bad as the other houses; but still, Westenra, what does this mean? Why should there be an exception made in our favour?"

"Oh, that I know nothing about," I answered, "I suppose the landlord was not going to be so silly as to lose good tenants."

"And what is the rent of the house ... I forget."

"Two hundred and something," I said in a careless tone, "not at all high for such a house, and the landlord, Mr. Hardcastle, will do it up for us. Mother, we will have the carriage, and go and make our arrangements immediately."

"Then you are quite determined, West?"

"Mother, dear mother, I do think father would like us to do it."

Now, whenever I spoke of my dead father, mother looked intensely solemn and subdued. Once she told me that she thought there was a strong link between my father's spirit and mine, and that at times I spoke so exactly like him, and made use of the identically same expressions, and in short impressed her with the feeling that he was close to her. I did not often use my father's name, therefore, as a means of power over my mother, but I did use it now; and, with the usual result, she got up gently and said--

"We had better go and see the house once more."

We did go, we drove straight to the agents, and got the order to view, and went all over 17 Graham Square. Our second visit was far more delightful than the first, for the agent's clerk accompanied us. We found him in an excellent humour, most willing to offer suggestions and to accept any suggestions of ours. Not that mother made any, it was I who, with my usual daring, spoke of this improvement and the other.

But darling mother became a little cheerful when she stood in that n.o.ble drawing-room and saw the sun s.h.i.+ning in bars across the floor, and the agent's clerk was quite astonis.h.i.+ngly cheery; he knew just the colour the paper ought to be, for instance, and the tone of the paint, and he even suggested what curtains would go with such paper and such paint. I never saw a man so improved. He had lost his brusqueness, and was very anxious to please us.

"It is extraordinary," said mother afterwards; "really I never knew that house-agents could be such agreeable people. No. 17 Graham Square is a handsome house, Westenra, it is a great pity that it is not situated in Mayfair."

"But mother, dear mother, we could not have a boarding-house in the very midst of our friends," I said with a smile; "we shall do splendidly in Graham Square, and we should not do at all well in Mayfair."

When we returned to the agents, Mr. Macalister himself, one of the heads of the firm, came and interviewed us. After answering a great many questions, it was finally decided that he was to see Mr.

Hardcastle, the landlord, and that the landlord was to have an interview the next day with mother; and the agent further agreed that the landlord should call on mother at our own house in Sumner Place, and then we drove home.

"I suppose it is completed now," said mother, "the thing is done.

Well, child, you are having your own way; it will be a lesson to you, I only trust we shall not be quite ruined. I am already puzzled to know how we are to meet that enormous rent."

But at that moment of my career I thought nothing at all about the rent. That night I slept the sleep of the just, and was in high spirits the following day, when the landlord, a nice, jovial, rosy-faced man, arrived, accompanied by the agent. They both saw my mother, who told them frankly that she knew nothing about business, and so perforce they found themselves obliged to talk to me.