y dear girls, I can indeed enter into your feelings,” said Lady Selina Mountjoy in a tone of sympathy; “it is trying to have to welcome a stranger to your home, to see her take the place once occupied by your dear departed mother.” “It is not so much that,” interrupted Arabella with some abruptness, “but—”
“I understand—I understand perfectly,” said Lady Selina, with an expressive movement of the head; “if your dear papa had chosen differently—some one whom you knew, valued, could confide in—some one, in short, of your mother’s position in life, to whom you could look up as to a second parent, it would have been very different; but the orphan of a country doctor—so young, so inexperienced—to have her placed at the head of an establishment like this, is—But I ought not to speak thus; of course your dear papa has chosen very well, very wisely; no doubt Mrs. Effingham is a very charming creature;” and the lady leaned back on her cushioned chair, folded her hands, and looked into the fire with an air of melancholy meditation.
Vincent, the youngest of the party, a boy about eleven years of age, had been sitting at the table with a book before him, but had never turned over a leaf, drinking in eagerly every word uttered by his aunt on the subject of the step-mother whose arrival with her husband was now hourly expected in Belgrave Square. He was a bright, intelligent boy, in whose blue eyes every passing emotion was mirrored as in a glass, whether the feeling were good or evil. The expression of those eyes was neither kind nor gentle as he said abruptly, “Didn’t you tell us that her grandmother was a Frenchwoman? I do hate and detest everything French!”
“Her own name—Clemence—is French,” observed Louisa, the younger of the two girls who sat, with embroidery in their hands, before the fire, with their feet resting on the bright fender for the sake of warmth, as the month was November, and the weather cold.
“Yes,” sighed Lady Selina, “it is true. Her grandmother was a French refugee,—of course a Papist; and, no doubt, her descendant is tinctured with Romish errors. No fault of hers, poor thing!”
“She’s not a Roman Catholic,” said Vincent quickly. “Don’t you remember that papa said that she was a great friend of the clergyman at Stoneby, and helped him in the schools and with the poor? He would not have let a Papist do that.”
“My dear child,” replied Lady Selina, languidly stirring the fire, “I never for a moment imagined that your papa would marry one who was avowedly a Papist; but, depend upon it, there will be a leaning, a dangerous leaning. We shall require to be on our guard, there is such a natural tendency in the human heart towards idolatry. As to her having helped Mr. Gray, that was very natural—very natural indeed. She was glad to make friends, and the clergyman and his wife were probably her only neighbours. Besides, in a dull country place there is such a lack of occupation, that young ladies take to district visiting to save themselves from dying of ennui.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Louisa, “after such a dismal life, what a change it will be to her to come to London! How she will delight in all its amusements! I hope that she’ll be as mad after the opera as I am; and that from week’s end to week’s end we may never have the penance of an evening at home, except when we entertain company ourselves! I can forgive anything in her but being dull, sober, and solemn.”
“Giddy child!” lisped Lady Selina, with uplifted finger and affected smile, “you sadly need some one to keep you in order—some one to hold the rein with a firmer hand than your poor indulgent aunt ever has done.”
“Hold the rein!” repeated Arabella with indignant pride, the blood mounting to her forehead as she spoke. “I hope that Mrs. Effingham will make no attempt of that kind with us. There’s but five years’ difference between her age and mine; and as regards knowledge of the world, I suppose that the difference lies all the other way. I have no idea of being governed by an apothecary’s daughter!”
“Nor I!” exclaimed Louisa, shaking her pretty ringlets with a contemptuous toss of the head.
“Nor I!” echoed Vincent, shutting his book, and joining his sisters by the fire.
“Little rebels!—fy! fy!” said their aunt, with a smile on her lips that contradicted her words. Lady Selina saw that she had succeeded in her aim. She had prejudiced the minds of her sister’s children against the young bride of their father; she had created a party against Clemence in the home which she was about to enter as its mistress. Arabella, Louisa, and their brother, would be on the watch to find out defects in the character, manners, and education of their step-mother; they would regard her rather in the light of a usurper, from whom any assertion of power would be an encroachment on their rights, than as a friend united to them by a close and tender tie.
It was not, perhaps, surprising that Lady Selina should contemplate with little satisfaction a marriage which dethroned her from the position in Mr. Effingham’s house which she had held for seven years. Lady Selina had enjoyed more of the luxuries of life and the pleasures of society in the dwelling of her brother-in-law, than her small capital of ten thousand pounds could have secured for her anywhere else. To Vincent Effingham it had been a satisfaction to have at the head of his household a lady of position and intelligence, who would take a general super-intendence of the education of his three motherless children. How far Lady Selina was fitted to do justice to the charge, is a different question. She was one who passed well in the world when viewed only in its candle-light glare—one to whom had been applied the various epithets of “a sensible woman,” “an amiable creature,” and “a very desirable acquaintance.”
Lady Selina had acquired the reputation for sense, from those whose opinions resembled her own, for her tact in steering clear of every theological difficulty. Her religion, if religion it could be called, was of the simplest and most easy description. To her the path to heaven was so wide that its boundaries were scarcely visible. There was, of course, a decent attendance to forms, for that the laws of society demanded; nay more, Lady Selina had about half-a-dozen cut and dried religious phrases, to be brought forward before clergymen and serious visitors, and put back again immediately upon their departure: these were, perhaps, satisfactory evidence to herself that her condition, as regards spiritual things, was one of the most perfect security. Enthusiasm on any subject regarding a future state appeared to the “woman of sense” a weak and childish folly. She could understand a politician’s strong interest in his party, a landlord’s in his estate, a lady’s in raising her position by a single step in the social circle; but the longing of an immortal soul for peace, pardon, and purity, was a matter completely foreign to her experience, and beyond her comprehension. Lady Selina wore her religion as she did her mantle; it was becoming, fashionable, and commodious, and it could be laid aside at a moment’s notice if it occasioned the slightest inconvenience.
And Lady Selina was called “an amiable creature” by such as are easily won by a polished manner and courteous address. She possessed the art of being censorious without appearing so. She seldom openly expressed an unfavourable opinion of any one; but conveyed more sarcastic meaning in a word of faint praise or disparaging pity, a shake of the head, a hesitating tone, or a soft, compassionating sigh, than might have been expressed by severe vituperation. None of her strokes were direct strokes—she never appeared to take aim; but her balls ever glanced off at some delicate angle, and effected her object without visible effort of her own. She had a secret pride in her power of influencing others, never considering that her ingenuity simply consisted in the art of gratifying malice at the expense of generosity and candour.
Lady Selina was “a very desirable acquaintance” to those who only knew her as an acquaintance. Her kindliness was as the blue tint on the distant mountain, which vanishes as we approach nearer towards the barren height. Whoever might rest upon her friendship, would lean, indeed, upon a broken reed. But, in the exchange of ordinary courtesies, in the art of simulating cordiality and sympathy, Lady Selina was a perfect adept. Few left her presence without a feeling of self-satisfaction and gratified vanity, which caused both the visit and her to whom it had been made to be remembered with pleasure.
The woman of the world’s ideas of education were the reflection and counterpart of her views on religion. To her, the first object in life was to shine in the world; and, accordingly, so far as young people were trained to accomplish this object, so far she deemed their education complete. Arabella and Louisa were provided with a French governess, and the first masters in music and drawing; and their aunt, with the air of one who feels that she has conscientiously performed an arduous duty, spoke to her acquaintance of her anxious and indefatigable efforts to do full justice to her motherless charge. It is true, that occasionally a moral maxim or religious precept dropped from the lips of Lady Selina for the benefit of her sister’s children; such was the caution against the heart’s tendency to idolatry uttered in the preceding conversation. The words had been lightly spoken, and their meaning weighed neither by speaker nor listeners; but whether they might not with advantage have been applied to the consciences of all, will be seen in the following narrative.
The marriage of Mr. Effingham with Clemence Fairburne, a young lady whom he had met in Cornwall while on a visit to a clerical friend, was to Lady Selina an unwelcome event. Notwithstanding, however, the complaint that she rather insinuated than expressed to her numerous acquaintance, that her wealthy brother-in-law had united himself to one possessing neither fortune nor high position, it is probable that Lady Selina would have been far more annoyed had his second wife been equal in rank to his first. Clemence was young and unacquainted with the world. She would probably enter into society with the diffidence of one to whom its usages were not familiar. Lady Selina, like some astute politician of old, foresaw an extension of her own regency under the minority of the rightful sovereign. She determined that Clemence should be a mere cipher in her own house, and follow instead of leading; she should occupy as low a position as possible in the eyes of those over whom circumstances had placed her. Artfully and successfully Lady Selina impressed the family, and even the household, with the idea that Clemence was some low-born, half-educated girl, whom Mr. Effingham had had the weakness to marry, because she possessed a few personal attractions! On the few hints thrown out by Lady Selina others enlarged—they filled up her lightly sketched outlines. The French governess, Mademoiselle Lafleur, shrugged her shoulders in the school-room, ventured to breathe the word mésalliance even in the presence of her pupils, and directed the flow of her conversation perpetually on the theme of the miseries inflicted by tyrannical step-mothers. Arabella and Louisa began almost to look upon themselves in the light of injured parties, because their father, still in the vigour of life, had sought to add to his domestic happiness! Their prejudices would have been still more strong and bitter but for the young wife’s letters, which reached them from time to time, and which breathed such a kindly spirit, such a desire to know and to love the children of her dear husband, that even Lady Selina’s insinuations could scarcely destroy their effect.
And now the day appointed for the first meeting of Clemence with her new family had arrived; everything in the house was made ready for the reception of the master and the lady of his choice. There was the bustle of preparation in the lower regions of the dwelling; the harsh voice of Mrs. Ventner, the housekeeper, was pitched to a sharper key than usual; while in the drawing-room a restless sensation of expectation prevailed, which prevented Lady Selina and her nieces from settling to any of their usual occupations. The piano had been opened, but its keys were untouched; the needle pressed the embroidery, but not a single additional leaf gave sign of progress in the work.
The short November day was darkening into twilight; the yellow lights round the Square started one by one into view, faintly gleaming through the cold white haze. A few snow-flakes fell noiselessly upon the pavement, along which, at long intervals, a foot-passenger hurried, wrapping his cloak tightly around him to fence out the piercing north wind. Vincent took his station at the window to give earliest notice of the arrival, while Lady Selina and his sisters chatted around the blazing fire.
“Here they are at last!” exclaimed Vincent, as a chariot dashed up to the door, with dusty imperial and travel-soiled wheels, and horses from whose heated sides the steam rose into the chill evening air. “Here they are!” he repeated, and swinging himself down the stairs, he was at the hall door almost before the powdered footmen who were there in waiting had had time to open it. The ladies more slowly followed; but curiosity with Louisa getting the better of dignity, she ran lightly down the long broad flight of steps, and found Vincent returning the affectionate embrace of her who longed to find in him indeed a son.