The Semi-detached House/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
"I had a funny note this morning from your friend the Baroness, Willis," said Mrs. Hopkinson. "It appears she has got into some dispute with Randall, and she, rather coolly, asks me to come and look over the inventory with him, as she cannot trust her servants, and is not accustomed to that sort of drudgery herself. Now I am sure I like to be neighbourly, but I do not see why I am to drudge for Baroness Sampson, and I don't want to get into a quarrel with Randall."
"Of course not, ma'am. You are quite right. It is an object with me to keep well with the Sampsons, and I suppose she thought naturally enough, that my family would be civil to her. She is disappointed. That is not of the slightest consequence. Poor woman! She has only just discovered the macaw. She says she never would have taken Marble Hall, if she had been aware of that nuisance, and she thinks Randall ought to have told her, and wants him to get rid of it; but he not only says, he does not know where it is, but that he thought it sounded very cheerful. Ah well! it's all of a piece with the rest of life, as I tell her. Incivility your only help, and a macaw's scream your only harmony. Life! life!"
"Law, my dear, don't talk in that way. I did not mean to be uncivil."
"So I told her ma'am, when she said how much your note had surprised and distressed her. I assured her you did not mean any incivility, and that indeed I felt certain that from the melancholy tie which binds you and me, that you could not have intended to annoy any friend of mine, and Miss Monteneros agreed with me. I had meant to have dined at Marble Hall, it will be a convenience to me in that sort of way, but it is in such confusion that I must go back to my solitary home."
Mrs. Hopkinson looked consternated at the view presented to her of her conduct, and professed her willingness to go instantly to Marble Hall, and make herself of use, a concession that Willis accepted simply with a sigh—the true Willis sigh, to be had only of the inventor. The girls, who did not at all approve of his selfish management of their mother, said that as she had already refused, she could not go now unless a new request were made for her services.
"It has been made through me. I told Miss Monteneros I should go and fetch her."
"And who, upon earth, is Miss Monteneros?" said Rose.
"Baron Sampson's niece, a very rich heiress and a charming girl."
This was said severely, and intended to make his sisters-in-law feel that they were not to be ranked in that category.
"Well, then, she might assist her aunt."
Willis shook his head, murmured, "How little you understand her" and then asked Mrs. Hopkinson if she were ready. He led his victim away in mournful triumph, leaving the girls in a high state of indignation, and with a slight hope that Miss Monteneros might eventually turn out his consoler. "And I trust she has a domineering temper," said Janet.
"And very high spirits," added Rose.
The Baroness received poor Mrs. Hopkinson very coldly. If that excellent woman had persisted in her refusal, the Baroness would probably have called on her the following day, and would have treated her with politeness as an equal. Now she saw an opening for transforming her into a slave, and a tame slave would be a useful addition to her establishment. Marble Hall was certainly in a great state of confusion—the butler and housekeeper at open war with each other, but united in their abuse of Randall; one charwoman in a vociferous state of inebriation, another suffering under a sleepy form of the same disease, a housemaid in hysterics, and two ladies' maids drinking tea, and calmly surveying a long row of unopened imperials and cap boxes. The Baroness was scolding them all in terms of such vulgar energy, that a faint thought crossed Mrs. Hopkinson's mind that she must, at an early period of her life, have been personally acquainted with the habits and language of the offices. At all events, her manner of treating her servants was not calculated to excite either their attachment or respect. At the sight of Mrs. Hopkinson she immediately relapsed into the helpless fine lady, "Oh! you are come, I am so much obliged to Willis." Again Mrs. Hopkinson thought that a little gratitude to herself would have been an agreeable variety. "Just step into the drawing-room, and I will tell you all my difficulties, and I know, you good soul, that you will undertake them for me. You see my butler, (I took him from the Marquis Guadagni) is a very fine gentleman, and says he cannot undertake hired glass. He has been used to the best cut of his own, and he will have nothing to do with the inventory, and that put it into my housekeeper's head to say the same of the china; and my maid and Miss Monteneros' will not unpack our things because they are not satisfied with the wardrobes; and then Randall will not furnish Psyche glasses, and the women that came to help are both drunk. This is really too much for even my spirits," said the Baroness, sinking into an arm-chair. "How Countess Montalbano would laugh if she saw me called upon to arrange all this embarras—poor me! and so now do take it all in hand, you kind creature, and see if you can make some order out of this chaos."
I don't see much that I can do," said Mrs. Hopkinson bluntly, "I can ask Randall to send in another looking-glass or two, perhaps he may oblige me as an old neighbour, and I can recommend one or two steady char-women in place of those you have; but you must get rid of the others first."
"Ah, yes!" said the Baroness sinking deeper into her languor, "those creatures must go. Would you kindly send them away; and then if you would just run over the inventory with Randall, it would help my butler and housekeeper out of the dilemma in which they have placed themselves."
This was too much even for the goodnature of Mrs. Hopkinson, who was as nearly being angry as ever she was in her life; and at all events, it swept away all concern for Willis' feelings towards the Sampsons.
"Well they must remain where they have placed themselves, if it depends on me to help them out of it. I am happy to say I know nothing about fine servants and their ways. Mine do what I tell them, and there is an end of it; and I would advise you, Baroness, to tell yours that if everything is not arranged in the course of the afternoon, you will send them all away in the evening. If they obey, there is an end of your troubles; if not, there is an end of your servants, and a good thing too."
"And about the inventory?" said the Baroness, making a last attempt to treat Mrs. Hopkinson as a dependant.
"I have no doubt is all right. If not, that young lady perhaps could see to it."
"Me!" said Miss Monteneros, opening her very large eyes, and dropping the glass with which she had been surveying her aunt and Mrs. Hopkinson.
"Rachel taking an inventory!" said the Baroness, with a scornful laugh, "that is not very likely."
"No, indeed," said Willis, "I am sure she is not equal to these household cares."
Again Rachel surveyed them through her glass, and then turning away, murmured
"Ye household cares, vex not my mind
With your inglorious strife,
Nor seek in sordid chains to bind
My free aesthetic life."
"Oh dear, that poetry!" said the Baroness, who was thoroughly out of sorts, "am I never to hear anything else?"
"You never heard that before, Aunt. I composed those lines while you and your friend were transacting business. What would become of us," she said, in a sort of caressing manner to Mrs. Hopkinson, "without that meaning word æsthetic? Does not it express all and everything?"
"It may, my dear," said Mrs. Hopkinson, who could not help laughing at Rachel's drawling manner; "but I never heard it before, and do not know what it means now. If you had said asthmatic, I should have understood you at once; and now I must wish you all good morning, my girls will be expecting me."
The Baroness coldly said good-bye: the young lady seemed dreamingly disposed, and Willis, who was half ashamed of his friends, condescended to escort his mother-in-law, and withdrew rather statelily.
"Now there!" said the Baroness, "I do believe that woman is affronted. She really gives herself airs, not that I care, provided she does not influence the precious Willis—the morose son-in-law."
"A little more than kin and less than kind," interposed Rachel.
"Now do give up that nonsensical habit, it has lasted a week and I am sick of it, and what is more, it does not take with Willis, and I tell you once more, that it is of immense importance to the Baron to . . . . to . . . ." she was puzzled with the Baron's schemes, and perhaps ashamed to put them into words. "In short, Rachel, Mr. Willis must be—"
"Taken in Aunt Rebecca?" she looked fixedly at her Aunt and saw her shrink, but the Baroness rallied, and said
"He must be civilly treated and made to feel that we are his real friends, and I must insist on your making our house agreeable to him."
"I cannot possibly combine the two very distinct ideas of Mr. Willis and agreeableness; and if you object to my poetical vein, I am lost. You told me he was sentimental, and I had collected a splendid set of quotations, adapted to that state of mind, and now 'my tongue must be a stringless instrument.' What next Aunt?"
"There is no use in attempting to make you hear reason," said the Baroness, who was in a towering passion, to the great delight of Rachel; "your uncle will be extremely angry, and now, as that tiresome woman will not help me, I must go and settle the house somehow. The Baron wants to give a great fête next week, and then there is that water-party, and half the tickets are still on my hands, and none of the arrangements made; and you—what are you as a help? lying on a sofa reading poetry—more of an encumbrance than a help."
"Thank you, Aunt. At all events it is a blessing to be something, if it be only an encumbrance; and as you are going up-stairs, will you ask the maids, if they have not drank all the tea, to bring me a cup?"
There was a slight approximation to a bang, in the manner in which the Baroness shut the door; but when it was closed, Rachel's whole expression and manner altered, her half insolent, half sleepy looks vanished, and the repressed air of drollery which characterised her countenance changed to a look of anxiety, as resting her head on her clasped hands, she seemed to give herself up to deep and painful thoughts. She was trying to realize her position, days of childhood came before her—a home, a mother, young affections, strong and cherished, and then a blank—parents, brother, all swept away, and she the ward of Baron Sampson. Not a burden, for she inherited the wealth, that to one so young was valueless; but no longer the child of Home, not uncared for, but unloved. Her school days had not been unhappy; she found warm friends in some of her companions, and an able guide in her instructress, and by her own desire she remained at school till she was nineteen. Then the Baroness claimed her with an unaccountable eagerness. She was courted, flattered, petted; but the instincts of youth are even clearer than the experience of age. She felt the falseness of the atmosphere in which she lived, all was false, the Baron's courtesy, the Baroness's caresses, the attentions of Cousin Moses. "We are all actors and actresses," she used to say, "and none of us quite up to our parts, though we act all day long."
This went on for two years. A month ago she came of age, and on her birthday, her uncle presented her with a splendid parure of opals and diamonds, ("false, of course," she thought to herself) and, at the same time, requested her to sign some dreary looking parchments, which he called "releases—mere forms; but they relieve me from all responsibility with regard to your fortune, and they make you a very independant young lady." From that day the tone of the family had visibly changed, she felt she was treated with neglect, more as the poor relation than the wealthy ward, and there was less disguise practised as to the Baron's speculations and money matters.
The manner in which she had been almost ordered to decoy Willis into the house had awakened suspicions, which her Aunt's change of countenance, when jestingly taxed with deceiving him, had confirmed; and she was now bringing herself to the conviction that the Baron's wealth was another falsity, and that her fortune had been, by some artifice, connected with those parchments, placed in his power. "And I have not a relation nor a friend at hand whose aid I can demand, I live in a prison disguised as a palace, and take my share in the foolery that is to deceive the bystanders. But I will not lure others into the ruin that may have overtaken me. If that man's eyes cannot be opened, his mother shall be warned. How that woman's honesty warmed me, I could have hugged her. I think I like my Aunt better since she has become openly uncivil, there is truth in that, and I suppose I shall have enough of it to satisfy me."
But there she was mistaken. The Baron arrived from the city and was for some time closeted with his wife, and when they all met at a very uncomfortable dinner, the old caressing manners were resumed. Rachel was, "dear child," and "lady fair," and "sweet thing," at every moment, and when the ladies withdrew, the Baroness was in fits of laughter at herself. "Those horrid servants had so annoyed her, that she supposed she must almost have lost her temper, and certainly must have lost her senses when she spoke as she had done to her little Rachel; such a dear, and so amusing with her funny little quotations—the Baroness delighted in them, and would not miss one for the world."
"'The world is a huge thing, a large price for a small vice.' That is from Othello, Aunt."
"You clever creature, what talents you have! The Baron always says you are the shrewdest woman he ever saw, it would be impossible to deceive you."
"Then some deceit is intended," was the shrewd woman's thought, and she made up her mind to watch.