The Shuttle & The Making of a Marchioness. Frances Hodgson Burnett
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courageously, “it is a very comfortable place, really.”
“We can make it much more cheerful, my lady,” Jane said, with grateful appreciation. “And the relief makes it like Paradise.” She was leaving the room and stopped at the door. “There’s not a person, black or white, can get across the door-mat, past mother and me, until his lordship comes,” she allowed herself the privilege of adding.
Emily felt a little nervous when she pictured to herself Lord Walderhurst crossing the door-mat of a house in Mortimer Street in search of his Marchioness. She had not yet had time to tell him the story of the episode of the glass of milk and Hester Osborn’s sudden outburst. Every moment had been given to carefully managed arrangement for the journey which was to seem so natural. Hester’s cleverness had suggested every step and had supported her throughout. But for Hester she was afraid she might have betrayed herself. There had been no time for writing. But when James received her letter (of late she had more than once thought of him as “James”), he would know the one thing that was important. And she had asked him to come to her. She had apologised for suggesting any alteration of his plans, but she had really asked him to come to her.
“I think he will come,” she said to herself. “I do think he will. I shall be so glad. Perhaps I have not been sensible, perhaps I have not done the best thing, but if I keep myself safe until he comes back, that really seems what is most important.”
Two or three days in the familiar rooms, attended only by the two friendly creatures she knew so well, seemed to restore the balance of life for her. Existence became comfortable and prosaic again. The best bedroom and the room in which she spent her days were made quite cheerful through Jane’s enterprise and memories of the appointments of Palstrey. Jane brought her tea in the morning, Mrs. Cupp presided over the kitchen. The agreeable doctor, whose reputation they had heard so much of, came and went, leaving his patient feeling that she might establish a friendship. He looked so clever and so kind.
She began to smile her childlike smile again. Mrs. Cupp and Jane told each other in private that if she had not been a married lady, they would have felt that she was Miss Fox-Seton again. She looked so like herself, with her fresh colour and her nice, cheerful eyes. And yet to think of the changes there had been, and what they had gone through!
People in London know nothing—or everything—of their neighbours. The people who lived in Mortimer Street were of the hardworked lodging-house keeping class, and had too many anxieties connected with butcher’s bills, rent, and taxes, to be able to give much time to their neighbours. The life in the house which had changed hands had nothing noticeable about it. It looked from the outside as it had always looked. The doorsteps were kept clean, milk was taken in twice a day, and local tradesmen’s carts left things in the ordinary manner. A doctor occasionally called to see someone, and the only person who had inquired about the patient (she was a friendly creature, who met Mrs. Cupp at the grocer’s, and exchanged a few neighbourly words) was told that ladies who lived in furnished apartments, and had nothing to do, seemed to find an interest in seeing a doctor about things working-women had no time to bother about. Mrs. Cupp’s view seemed to be that doctor’s visits and medicine bottles furnished entertainment. Mrs. Jameson had “as good a colour and as good an appetite as you or me,” but she was one who “thought she caught cold easy,” and she was “afraid of fresh air.”
Dr. Warren’s interest in the Extraordinary Case increased at each visit he made. He did not see the ruby ring again. When he had left the house after his first call, Mrs. Cupp had called Lady Walderhurst’s attention to the fact that the ring was on her hand, and could not be considered compatible with even a first floor front in Mortimer Street. Emily had been frightened and had removed it.
“But the thing that upsets me when I hand him in,” Jane said to her mother anxiously in private, “is the way she can’t help looking. You know what I mean, mother,—her nice, free, good look. And we never could talk to her about it. We should have to let her know that it’s more than likely he thinks she’s just what she isn’t. It makes me mad to think of it. But as it had to be, if she only looked a little awkward, or not such a lady, or a bit uppish and fretful, she would seem so much more real. And then there’s another thing. You know she always did carry her head well, even when she was nothing but poor Miss Fox-Seton tramping about shopping with muddy feet. And now, having been a marchioness till she’s got used to it, and knowing that she is one, gives her an innocent, stately look sometimes. It’s a thing she doesn’t know of herself, but I do declare that sometimes as she’s sat there talking just as sweet as could be, I’ve felt as if I ought to say, ‘Oh! if you please, my lady, if you could look not quite so much as if you’d got on a tiara.’”
“Ah!” and Mrs. Cupp shook her head, “but that’s what her Maker did for her. She was born just what she looks, and she looks just what she was born,—a respectable female.”
Whereby Dr. Warren continued to feel himself baffled.
“She only goes out for exercise after dark, Mary,” he said. “Also in the course of conversation I have discovered that she believes every word of the Bible literally, and would be alarmed if one could not accept the Athanasian Creed. She is rather wounded and puzzled by the curses it contains, but she feels sure that it would be wrong to question anything in the Church Service. Her extraordinariness is wholly her incompatibleness.”
Gradually they had established the friendship Emily had thought possible. Once or twice Dr. Warren took tea with her. Her unabashed and accustomed readiness of hospitality was as incompatible with her circumstances as all the rest. She had the ease of a woman who had amiably poured out tea for afternoon callers all her life. Women who were uncertain of themselves were not amiably at ease with small social amenities. Her ingenuous talk and her fervent italics were an absolute delight to the man who was studying her. He, too, had noticed the carriage of her head Jane Cupp had deplored.
“I should say she was well born,” he commented to his wife. “She holds herself as no common woman could.”
“Ah! I haven’t a doubt that she is well born, poor soul.”
“No, not ‘poor soul.’ No woman who is as happy as she is needs pity. Since she has had time to rest, she looks radiant.”
In course of time, however, she was less radiant. Most people know something of waiting for answers to letters written to foreign lands. It seems impossible to calculate correctly as to what length of time must elapse before the reply to the letter one sent by the last mail can reach one. He who waits is always premature in the calculation he makes. The mail should be due at a certain date, one is so sure. The letter could be written on such a day and posted at once. But the date calculated for arrives, passes,—the answer has not come. Who does not remember?
Emily Walderhurst had passed through the experience and knew it well. But previously the letters she had sent had been of less vital importance. When the replies to them had lingered on their way she had, it is true, watched eagerly ‘, for the postman, and had lived restlessly between the arrivals of the mails, but she had taught herself resignation to the inevitable. Now life had altered its aspect and its significance. She had tried, with the aid of an untried imagination, to paint to herself the moments in which her husband would read the letter which told him what she had told. She had wondered if he would start, if he would look amazed, if his grey-brown eyes would light with pleasure! Might he not want to see her? Might he not perhaps write at once? She never could advance farther in her imagined reading of this reply than the first lines:
“MY DEAR EMILY,—The unexpected good news your letter contains has given me the greatest satisfaction. You do not perhaps know how strong my desire has been—”
She used to sit and flush with happiness when she reached this point. She so wished that she was capable of depicting to herself what the rest would be.
She calculated with the utmost care the probable date of the epistle’s arrival. She thought she made sure of allowing plenty of time for all possible delays. The safety of her letters she had managed, with Hester’s aid, to arrange for. They were forwarded to her bankers and called for. Only the letters from India were of any importance, and they