r. Effingham was always an early riser. The next morning he was earlier than usual, and had not only commenced his breakfast, but concluded it, and gone off to his business eastward, before any of the ladies, except his wife, had made their appearance in the breakfast-room. Want of punctuality in her step-daughters was one of the evils which Clemence longed, though in vain, to reform. Lady Selina’s example not only excused it, but rendered it in a certain degree fashionable in the family. “It is for slaves to be tied down to hours!” exclaimed Arabella, on a gentle hint being once ventured by Clemence; “only dull mechanics, whose time is their bread, count their minutes as they would count their coppers!” Clemence was not, however, Mr. Effingham’s only companion at his early meal. The jovial captain, full of merriment and good-humour, and disposed to do full justice to the ham and an unlimited number of eggs, performed his part at the table. His niece would have been extremely diverted by his na?ve observations on the events of the previous evening—observations which showed at once natural shrewdness and the most absolute ignorance of fashionable life—had she not feared that his boisterous heartiness of manner might be disagreeable to her husband. Mr. Effingham was perfectly polite, but did not look disposed to be amused. He appeared hardly to hear the jokes of the captain, and hurried over his breakfast with a thoughtful, pre-occupied air.
Clemence’s own mind was often wandering to the subject of Mademoiselle Lafleur, and she contemplated with some uneasiness and fear the effect which would be produced on her circle by the announcement of that lady’s dismissal. She also felt anxious as to the footing on which her dear old relative would stand in the proud family to which she had been united by marriage. In him a new and very vulnerable point seemed presented to the shafts of malice which were constantly levelled at herself. His very simplicity and unconsciousness of insult made her doubly sensitive on his account, and many a plan Clemence turned over in her mind for guarding him from the well-bred rudeness which none knew better than Lady Selina how to show to one whom she despised. Mrs. Effingham’s reflections made her more silent and grave than had been her wont. “She is not such a good talker as she used to be,” thought the old uncle; “nor such a good listener neither, for the matter of that!”
Captain Thistlewood found, however, both a ready talker and listener when Louisa entered the room. The young lady, if the truth must be confessed, regarded the merry old sailor as rather an acquisition to the circle. He noticed her much, and Louisa would rather have been censured than unnoticed; he amused her, and love of amusement was one of her ruling passions. She could laugh with him when he was present, and at him when he was absent. Louisa imagined herself a wit; and what so needful to a wit as a butt! Her morning greeting to him was given with an air of coquettish levity, which contrasted with Arabella’s sullen silence, and Lady Selina’s frigid politeness.
“And what did you think of our party, Captain Thistlewood?” inquired Louisa, as the old sailor gallantly handed to her the cup of chocolate which Clemence had prepared.
“Well, it was good enough in its way, only too many kickshaws handed about, and too many lackeys behind the table to whip off the plate from before you, if you chanced to look round at a neighbour. I must say that your London society is a stiff, formal sort of thing. It reminds one of those swindling pieces of goods which tradesmen pass off on the unwary—all dress, you see, just stiffened and smoothed to sell, and not to wear. Only give the gentility a good hearty pull, and the powder flies up in your face!”
“I suppose that yesterday was the first time that he ever sat at a gentleman’s table!” muttered Arabella inaudibly to herself; but the thought expressed itself in her face.
“If there’s any powder about that young lass it’s gunpowder!” thought the captain; “we may look out for an explosion by-and-by—I see she’s primed for a volley. But I’ll try a little conciliation for May-blossom’s sake—hang out a flag of truce. No wonder that my poor child looks grave and pale;—a pretty life she must have of it here, with an iceberg on the one side and a volcano on the other!” All the more determined to draw Arabella into conversation, from marking her haughty reserve, Captain Thistlewood rested his knife and fork perpendicularly on either side of his plate, and addressed her across the table.
“We’re coming near to Christmas now. I like the merry old season, and I shall be glad to see for once how Christmas is kept in London. I noticed many a jolly dinner hanging up in the butchers’ and poulterers’ shops as I passed along in the ’bus; quite a sight they are, those shops—turkeys strung on long lines, as though they were so many larks; and huge joints of beef, that, for their size, might have been cut from elephants! Glorious they look in the flaring gas-light, decked out with whole shrubberies of holly! Then the pretty little Christmas-trees, hung with tapers and gim-cracks—they pleased me mightily too; for, thinks I, there’ll be plenty of harmless fun, plenty of laughing young faces round those trees, when the tapers are lighted! I love to see children happy, and ’specially the children of the poor. Shall I tell you my notion of a good Christmas-tree?” Arabella looked as though she did not care to hear it, but the captain took it for granted that she did. “I’d have a tree as big as the biggest of those yonder in the Square, and invite all the ragged little urchins far and near to the lighting of the same. I’d have it hung, not with sparkling thing-a-bobs, or sugar trash in funny shapes, not even with sham peaches,” he added, laughing, “but with good solid joints of meat for blossoms, and warm winter jackets for leaves; and I’ll be bound that every child would think my tree the very finest that he ever had seen in his life. Don’t you call that uniting the ornamental with the useful?”
“The idea shows so much elegance, so much refinement of taste,” replied Arabella, with satirical emphasis, “that it will doubtless be instantly carried out by Mrs. Effingham.”
There was something in the tone in which the name was pronounced which stung the old sailor as no personal rudeness to himself could have done. As a single word will sometimes suffice to rouse a whole train of associations, startle a host of ideas into life, the name “Mrs. Effingham,” so pronounced by her step-daughter, conjured up before the warm-hearted old man a picture coloured indeed, by fancy, but not without an outline of truth. His sweet Clemence was not loved and valued in her home; she, his darling, his heart’s delight, was looked down upon by those who should have deemed it an honour to sun themselves in her smile! Such was the suspicion which flashed out into words of sudden indignation.
“Mrs. Effingham! and pray who may she be? I see here my niece, your father’s wife, your mother by marriage; but no one whom you or I can either speak or think of as ‘Mrs. Effingham!’”
The most insolent in temper are usually those who have least courage to back their insolence. Those who delight in wounding the sensitive and brow-beating the timid, when they find their weapon crossed by another, when they become aware that their shafts may be returned on themselves, often are the first to draw back from the contest so wantonly provoked. Arabella was startled into a momentary confusion; and her opponent, who carried “anger as the flint bears fire,” at once recovered his usual temper. The captain was aware that he had given way to a burst that had been scarcely called for by anything actually uttered; he had, perhaps, been too ready to imagine an affront where no such thing was intended.
“Forgive an old man’s vehemence,” he said frankly; “I got my ideas in the last century, and they may by this time be quite old-fashioned. There are many, I take it, who scarcely know what to call a step-mother at first, especially one so young. For once I think that the French have hit on a better title than our own. It must sound odd enough applied to many; but here is a case where belle-mère is quite appropriate,”—he glanced fondly at his niece; then added, bowing gallantly to Louisa, “and also the title of belle-fille.”
The thunder-cloud only gathered blacker on the brow of Arabella, but Louisa tittered and gaily replied, “I have often wondered why our French neighbours should make such a spell of marriage—to turn connections on both sides into beauties, brothers, old fathers, and all! I’ll ask mademoiselle for the derivation of the term. By-the-by,” added Louisa, addressing Clemence, “on what day does mademoiselle come back?”
It was an unfortunate question at that moment. The flush which rose to the cheek of Clemence, her little pause before she replied, fixed every eye upon her. The young wife felt like one about to fire a train, when she answered, “Mademoiselle is not coming back at all.”
“Not coming back!” exclaimed both girls at once. “Not coming back!” echoed Lady Selina, in accents of unfeigned surprise. Clemence knew th............