The Honorable Miss Part 24

At that moment Clara appeared with the tea. Now, if there was a thing Mrs. Meadowsweet was particular about it was her tea; she revelled in her tea; she always bought it from some very particular and exclusive house in London. She saw that it was served strong and hot; she was particular to have it made with what she called the "first boil"

of the water. Water that had boiled for five minutes made, in Mrs.

Meadowsweet's opinion, contemptible tea. Then she liked it well sweetened, and flavored with very rich cream. Such a cup of tea, as she expressed it, set her up for the day. The felt carpet had given Mrs.

Meadowsweet a kind of shock, but all her natural spirits revived when she saw the tea equipage. She approved of the exquisite eggsh.e.l.l china, and noted with satisfaction that the teapot was really silver.

"What a refreshment a cup of tea is!" exclaimed the good woman. "Nothing like it, as I dare say you know, Mrs. Bertram."

Mrs. Bertram smiled languidly, and raising the teapot, prepared to pour out a cup for her guest. She was startled by a noise, which sounded something like a shout, coming from the fat lady's lips.

"Did you speak?" she asked.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bertram, but don't--it's cruel."

"Don't do what?"

"The tea isn't drawn. Let it rest a bit--why, it's the color of straw."

"This peculiar tea is always of a light color," replied Mrs. Bertram, her sallow face growing darkly red. "I hope you will appreciate it; but perhaps it is a matter of training. It is, however, I a.s.sure you, quite the vogue among my friends in London."

Mrs. Meadowsweet felt crushed. She received the cup of flavorless, half-cold liquid presented to her in a subdued spirit, sipped it with the air of a martyr, and devoutly wished herself back again in the Gray House.

Mrs. Bertram knew perfectly well that her guest thought the tea detestable and the cake stale. It was as necessary for people of Mrs.

Meadowsweet's cla.s.s to go in for strong tea and high living as it was for people of Mrs. Bertram's cla.s.s to aspire to faded felt in the matter of carpets, and water bewitched in the shape of tea. Each after her kind, Mrs. Bertram murmured. But as she had an object in view it was necessary for her to earn the good-will of the well-to-do widow.

Accordingly, when the slender meal came to an end, and the two ladies found themselves under the shelter of the friendly oak-tree, matters went more smoothly. Mrs. Bertram put her guest into an excellent humor by bestowing some cordial praise upon Beatrice.

"She is not like you," continued the good lady, with some navete.

"No, no," responded the gratified mother. "And sorry I'd be to think that Beatrice took after me. I'm commonplace. Mrs. Bertram. I have no figure to boast of, nor much of a face either. What _he_ saw to like in me, poor man, has puzzled my brain a score and score of times.

Kind and affectionate he ever was, but he couldn't but own, as own I did for him, that I was a cut below him. Beatrice features her father, Mrs.

Bertram, both in mind and body."

Mrs. Bertram murmured some compliment about the mother's kind heart, and then turned to a subject which is known to be of infallible interest to all ladies. She spoke of her ailments.

Mrs. Meadowsweet beamed all over when this subject came on the _tapis_. She even laid her fat hand on Mrs. Bertram's lap.

"Now, _did_ you ever try Eleazer Macjone's Pills of Life?" she asked. "I always have a lot of them in the house; and I a.s.sure you, Mrs.

Bertram, they are worth all the doctor's messes put together; for years I have taken the pills, and it's a positive fact that they're made to fit the human body all round. Headaches--it's wonderful what Macjone's pills do for headaches. If you have a low, all-overish feeling, Macjone's pills pick you up directly. They are wonderful, too, for colds; and if there's any infection going they nip it in the bud. I wish you would try them, Mrs. Bertram; I know they'd pull you round, I'll send for a box for you with pleasure when I'm having my next chest of tea down from London. I always get my tea from London. I think what they sell here is little better than dishwater; so I say to Beatrice, 'Bee, my love, whatever happens, we'll get our tea from town."

"And your pills from town, too," responded Mrs. Bertram. "I think you are a very wise woman, Mrs. Meadowsweet. How well your daughter plays tennis. Yes, she is decidedly graceful. I have heard of many pills in my day, and patent pills invariably fit one all round, but I have never yet heard of Eleazer Macjone's Life Pills. You look very well, Mrs.

Meadowsweet, so I shall recommend them in future. For my part, I think the less drugs one swallows the better."

"You are quite right, Mrs. Bertram, quite right. Except for the pills I never touch medicine. And now I'd like to give you a wrinkle. I wouldn't spend much money, if I were you, on Dr. Morris. He's all fads, poor man, all fads. He speaks of the Life Pills as poison, and his terms--I have over and over told his wife, Jessie Morris, that her husband's terms are preposterous."

"Then I am afraid he will not suit me," replied Mrs. Bertram, "I cannot afford to meet preposterous terms, for I, alas! am poor."

"Dear, dear, I'm truly sorry to hear it, Mrs. Bertram. And with your fine young family, too. That lad of yours is as handsome a young fellow as I've often set eyes on. And your girls, particularly Miss Catherine, are specially genteel."

"A great many people consider Catherine handsome," replied her mother, who began to shiver inwardly under the infliction of Mrs. Meadowsweet's talk. She tried to add something about Loftus, but for some reason or other words failed her. After a moment's pause she resumed:

"Only those who know what small means are can understand the constant self-denial they inflict.

"And that's true enough, Mrs. Bertram."

"Ah, Mrs. Meadowsweet, you must be only a.s.suming this sympathetic tone.

For, if all reports are true, you and Miss Beatrice are wealthy."

Mrs. Meadowsweet's eyes beamed lovingly on her hostess.

"We have enough and to spare," she responded. "Thank the good G.o.d we have enough and to spare. Meadowsweet saw to that, poor man."

"Your husband was in business?" gently in quired Mrs. Bertram.

"He kept a shop, Mrs. Bertram. I'm the last to deny it. He kept a good, thriving draper's shop in the High Street. The best of goods he had, and he sold fair. I used to help him in those days. I used to go to London to buy the Spring fashions, and pretty things I'd buy, uncommonly pretty, and the prettiest of all, you may be sure, for little Beatrice.

Ah! you could get a stylish hat in Northbury in those days. Poor man, he had the custom of all the country round. There was no shop like Meadowsweet's. Well, he made his fortune in it, and he died full of money and much respected. What could man do more?"

"And your daughter Beatrice resembles her father?"

"She does, Mrs. Bertram. He was a very genteel man--a cut above me, as I said before. He was fond of books, and but for me maybe he'd have got into trade in the book line. But I warned him off that shoal. I said to him, scores of times, 'Mark my words, William, dress will last, and books won't. People must be clothed, but they needn't read.' He was wise enough to stick to my words, and he made his fortune."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Bertram, in a slow, meditative voice, "that a--um--merchant--in a small town like this, might, with care, realize, say, two or three thousand pounds."

Mrs. Meadowsweet's eyes almost flashed.

"Two or three thousand!" she said, "dearie me, dearie me. When people talk of fortunes, in Northbury, they _mean_ fortunes, Mrs. Bertram."

"And your daughter will inherit?" asked the hostess of her guest.

"There's full and plenty for me, Mrs. Bertram, and when Beatrice comes of age, or when she marries with her mother's approval, she'll have twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand invested in the funds, that's her fortune, not bad for a shopkeeper's daughter, is it, Mrs. Bertram?"

Mrs. Bertram said that it was anything but bad, and she inwardly reflected on the best means of absolutely suppressing the memory of the shopkeeper, and how, by a little judicious training, she might induce Mrs. Meadowsweet to speak of her late partner as belonging to the roll of British merchants.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE WITCH WITH THE YELLOW HAIR.

A corner is a very pretty addition to a room, and a cleft-stick has been known to present a more picturesque appearance than a straight one. But to find oneself, metaphorically speaking, pushed into the corner or wedged into the cleft of the stick is neither picturesque nor pleasant.

This was Mrs. Bertram's present position. She had suddenly, and at a moment when she least expected it, been confronted with the ghost of a long ago past. The ghost of a past, so remote that she had almost forgotten it, had come back and stared her in the face. This ghost had a.s.sumed terrible dimensions, and the poor woman was dreadfully afraid of it.

She had taken a hurried journey to London in the vain hope of laying it.

Alas! it would not be laid. Most things, however, can be bought at a price, and Mrs. Bertram had bought the silence of this troublesome ghost of the past. She had bought it at a very heavy cost.

Her money was in the hands of trustees; she dared not go to them to a.s.sist her, therefore, the only price she could pay was out of her yearly income.

To quiet this troublesome ghost she agreed to part with four hundred a year. A third of her means was, therefore, taken away with one fell swoop. Loftus must still have his allowance, for Loftus of all people must know nothing of his mother's anxieties. Mrs. Bertram and her girls would, therefore, have barely five hundred a year to live on. Out of this sum she would still struggle to save, but she knew she could save but little. She knew that all chance of introducing Catherine and Mabel into society was at an end. She had dreamed dreams for her girls, and these dreams must come to nothing. She had hoped many things for them both, she had thought that all her care and trouble would receive its fruition some day in Catherine's establishment, and that Mabel would also marry worthily. In playing with her grandchildren by-and-bye, Mrs.

Bertram thought that she might relax her anxieties and feel that her labors had not been in vain. She must put these hopes aside now, for her girls would probably never marry. They would live on at this dull old Manor until their youth had left them, and their sweet, fresh bloom departed.