Love and Life: An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume
reached her, in terror uncontrollable, she caught up her candle, rushed
down the stairs like a wild bird, and stood panting before Mrs. Aylward,
who had a big Bible open on the table before her.
“Oh, ma’am,” she cried, between her panting sobs, “I can’t stay there! I
shall die!”
“What means this, madam?” said Mrs. Aylward, stiffly, making the word
sound much like “foolish child.”
“The--the music!” she managed faintly to utter, falling again into the
friendly chair.
“The music?” said Mrs. Aylward, considering; then with a shade of polite
contempt, “O! Jumbo’s fiddle! I did not know it could be heard in your
room, but no doubt the windows below are open.”
“Is Jumbo that black man?” asked Aurelia, shuddering; for negro
servants, though the fashion in town, had not penetrated into the west.
“Mr. Belamour’s blackamoor. He often plays to him half the night.”
“Oh!” with another quivering sound of alarm; “is Mr. Belamour the
gentleman in the dark?”
“Even so, madam, but you need have no fears. He keeps his room and
admits no one, though he sometimes walks out by night. You will only
have to keep the children from a noise making near his apartments. Good
night, madam.”
“Oh, pray, if I do not disturb you, would you be pleased to let me stay
till you have finished your chapter; I might not be so frightened then.”
In common humanity Mrs. Aylward could not refuse, and Aurelia sat
silently grasping the arms of her chair, and trying to derive all the
comfort she could from the presence of a Bible and a good woman. Her
nerves were, in fact, calmed by the interval, and when Mrs. Aylward
took off her spectacles and shut up her book, it had become possible to
endure the terrors of the lonely chamber.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ENCHANTED CASTLE.
A little she began to lose her fear.--MORRIS.
Aurelia slept till she was wakened by a bounce at the door, and the
rattling of the lock, but it was a little child’s voice that was crying,
“I will! I will! I will go in and seem by cousin!”
Then came Mrs. Aylward’s severe voice: “No, miss, you are not to waken
your cousin. Come away. Where is that slut, Jenny?”
Then there was a scuffle and a howl, as if the child were being forcibly
carried away. Aurelia sprang out of bed, for sunshine was flooding the
room, and she felt accountable for tardiness. She had made some progress
in dressing, when again little hands were on the lock, little feet
kicking the door, and little voices calling, “Let me in.”
She opened the door, and white nightgowns, all tumbled back one over the
other.
“My little cousins,” she said, “come and kiss me.”
One came forward and lifted up a sweet little pale face, but the other
two stood, each with a finger in the mouth, right across the threshold,
in a manner highly inconvenient to Aurelia, who was only in her stiff
stays and dimity petticoat, with a mass of hair hanging down below her
waist. She turned to them with arms out-stretched, but this put them
instantly to the rout, and they ran off as fast as their bare pink feet
could carry them, till one stumbled, and lay with her face down and her
plump legs kicking in the air. Aurelia caught her up, but the capture
produced a powerful yell, and out, all at once hurried into
the corridor, Mrs. Aylward, a tidy maid servant, a stout, buxom
countrywoman, and a rough girl, scarcely out of bed, but awake enough
to snatch the child out of the young lady’s arms, and carry her off.
The housekeeper began scolding vigorously all round, and Aurelia escaped
into her room, where she completed her toilette, looking out into a
garden below, laid out in the formal Dutch fashion, with walks and beds
centring in a fountain, the grass plats as sharply defined as possible,
and stiff yews and cypresses dotted at regular intervals or forming
straight alleys. She felt strange and shy, but the sunshine, the
cheerfulness, and the sight of the children, had reassured her, and when
she had said her morning prayer, she had lost the last night’s sense of
hopeless dreariness and unprotectedness. When another knock came,
she opened the door cheerfully, but there was a chill in meeting Mrs.
Aylward’s grave, cold face, and stiff salutation. “If you are ready,
madam,” she said, “I will show you to the south parlour, where the
children will eat with you.”
Aurelia ventured to ask about her baggage, and was told that it would be
forwarded from Brentford. Mrs. Aylward then led the way to a wide stone
staircase, with handsome carved balusters, leading down into the great
hall, with doors opening from all sides. All was perfectly empty, and so
still, that the sweep of the dresses, and the tap of the heels made an
echo; and the sunshine, streaming in at the large window, marked out
every one upon the floor, in light and shadow, and exactly repeated
the brown-shaded, yellow-framed medallions of painted glass upon the
pavement. There was something awful and oppressive in the entire absence
of all tokens of habitation, among those many closed doors.
One, however, at the foot of the stairs was opened by Mrs. Aylward. It
led to a sort of narrow lobby, with a sashed window above a low door,
opening on stone steps down to the terrace and garden. To the right was
an open door, giving admittance to a room hung with tapestry, with a
small carpet in the centre of the floor, and a table prepared for the
morning meal. There was a certain cheerfulness about it, though it was
bare of furniture; but there was an easy chair, a settee, a long
couch, a spinnet, and an embroidery frame, so that altogether it had
capabilities of being lived in.
“Here you will sit, madam, with the young ladies,” said Mrs. Aylward.
“They have a maid-servant who will wait on you, and if you require
anything, you will be pleased to speak to me. My Lady wishes you to take
charge of them, and likewise to execute the piece of embroidery you will
find in that frame, with the materials. This will be your apartment,
and you can take the young ladies into the garden and park, wherever you
please, except that they must not make a noise before the windows of the
other wing, which you will see closed with shutters, for those are Mr.
Belamour’s rooms.”
With these words Mrs. Aylward curtsied as if about to retire, Aurelia
held out her hand in entreaty. “Oh, cannot you stay with me?”
“No, madam, my office is the housekeeper’s,” was the stiff response.
“Molly will call me if you require my services. I think you said you
preferred bread and milk for breakfast. Dinner will be served at one.”
Mrs. Aylward retreated, leaving a chill on the heart of the lonely girl.
She was a clergyman’s widow, though with no pretensions to gentility,
and was a plain, conscientious, godly woman, but with the narrow
self-concentrated piety of the time, which seemed to ignore all the
active part of the duty to our neighbour. She had lived many years as
a faithful retainer to the Belamour family, and avoided perplexity by
minding no one’s business but her own, and that thoroughly. Naturally
reserved, and disapproving much that she saw around her, she had never
held it to be needful to do more than preserve her own integrity, and
the interests of her employers, and she made it a principle to be in
no wise concerned in family affairs, and to hold aloof from perilous
confidences.
Thus Aurelia was left to herself, till three bowls of milk were borne in
by Molly, who was by no means loth to speak.
“The little misses will be down directly, ma’am,” she said, “that is,
two on ‘em. The little one, she won’t leave Jenny Bowles, but Dame
Wheatfield, she’ll bring down the other two. You see, ma’am, they
be only just taken home from being out at nurse, and don’t know one
another, nor the place, and a pretty handful we shall have of ‘em.”
Here came a call for Molly, and the girl with a petulant exclamation,
sped away, leaving Aurelia to the society of the tapestry. It was of
that set of Gobelin work which represents the four elements personified
by their goddesses, and Aurelia’s mythology, founded on Fenelon, was
just sufficient to enable her to recognise the forge of Vulcan and the
car [chariot--D.L.] of Venus. Then she looked at the work prepared for
her, a creamy piece of white satin, and a most elaborate pattern of
knots of roses, lilacs, hyacinths, and laburnums, at which her heart
sank within her. However, at that moment the stout woman she had seen in
the morning appeared at the open door with a little girl in each hand,
both in little round muslin caps, long white frocks, and blue sashes.
One went up readily to Aurelia and allowed herself to be kissed, and
lifted to a chair; the other clung to Dame Wheatfield, in spite of
coaxing entreaties. “Speak pretty, my dear; speak to the pretty lady.
Don’t ye see how good your sister is? It won’t do, miss,” to Aurelia;
“she’s daunted, is my pretty lamb. If I might just give her her
breakwist--for it is the last time I shall do it--then she might get
used to you before my good man comes for me.”
Aurelia was only too glad to instal Dame Wheatfield in a chair with her
charge in her lap. The other child was feeding herself very tidily and
independently, and Aurelia asked her if she were the eldest.
“Yes,” she said.
“And what shall I call you, my dear?”
“I’m Missy.”
“No, Missy, me--me eldest,” cried the other.
“Bless the poor children!” exclaimed Mrs. Wheatfield, laughing, “they be
both of ‘em eldest, as one may say.”
“They are twins, then?” said Aurelia.
“More than that--all three of them came together! I’ve heard tell of
such a thing once or twice, but never of all living and thriving. Folk
said it was a judgment on my Lady that she spoke sharp and hard to a
poor beggar woman with a child on each arm. It was not a week out before
my Lady herself was down, quite unexpected, as I may say, for she was
staying here for a week, with a lot of company, when these three was
born. They do say she was nigh beside herself that the like of that
should have happened to her. Mr. Wayland, he was not so ill pleased, but
the poor little things had to be got out of the house any way, for she
could not abear to hear of them. Mrs. Rolfe, as was an old servant of
the family, took that one, and I was right glad to have you, my pretty
one, for I had just lost my babe at a fortnight old, and the third was
sent to Goody Bowles, for want of a better. They says as how my Lady
means to bring them out one by one, and to make as this here is bigger,
and the other up stairs is lesser, and never let on that they are all of
an age.”
The good gossip must have presumed greatly on the children’s want of
comprehension if she did not suppose that they understood her at least
as well as the young lady to whom her dialect was strange.
“And has she not seen them?”
“Never till last Monday, if you’ll believe me miss, when she drove down
in her coach, and the children were all brought home. I thought she
might have said something handsome, considering the poor little babe
as my Missy here was when I had her--not so long as my hand--and scarce
able to cry enough to show she was alive. The work I and my good man had
with her! He would walk up and down half the night with her. Not as we
grudged it. He is as fond of the child as myself; and Mr. Wayland, he
knew it. ‘She has a good nurse, dame,’ says he to me, with the water in
his eyes, before he went to foreign parts. But my Lady! When the little
one as had been with Goody Bowles--an ignorant woman, you see--cried and
clung to her, and kicked, ‘Little savages all,’ says my Lady. There was
thanks to them that had had more work to rear her children than ever
with one of her own! ‘Perfect little rustics!’ she said, even when you
made your curtsey as pretty as could be, didn’t you, my little lammie?”