Vagabondia Part 8

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Mollie, opening her eyes. "I thought everybody knew that. They have been engaged ever since they were ever so much younger.

Dolly was only fifteen, and Griffith was only eighteen, when they first fell in love."

"And they have been engaged ever since?" said Gowan, his curiosity getting decidedly the better of him.

"Yes, and would have been married long ago, if Griffith could have got into something; or if Old Flynn would have raised his salary. He has only a hundred a year," with unabashed frankness, "and, of course, they couldn't be married on that, so they are obliged to wait. A hundred and fifty would do, Dolly says,--but then, they have n't got a hundred and fifty."

Ralph Gowan was meanly conscious of not being overpowered with regret on hearing this latter statement of facts. And yet he was by no means devoid of generous impulse. He was quite honest, however deeply he might be mistaken, in deciding that it would be an unfortunate thing for Dolly if she married Griffith Donne. He thought he was right, and certainly if there had been no more good in his rival than he himself had seen on the surface, he would not have been far wrong; but as it was he was unconsciously very far wrong indeed. He ran into the almost excusable extreme of condemning Griffith upon circ.u.mstantial evidence. Unfair advantage had been taken of Dolly, he told himself. She had engaged herself before she knew her own heart, and was true to her lover because it was not in her nature to be false. Besides, what right has a man with a hundred a year to bind any woman to the prospect of the life of narrow economies and privations such an income would necessarily entail?

And forthwith his admiration of Dolly became touched with pity, and increased fourfold. _She_ was unselfish, at least, whatever her affianced might be. Poor little soul! (It is a circ.u.mstance worthy of note, because ill.u.s.trative of the blindness of human nature, that at this very moment Miss Dorothea Crewe was enjoying her quiet _tete-a-tete_ with her lover wondrously, and would not have changed places with any young lady in the kingdom upon any consideration whatever.)

It is not at all to be wondered at that, in the absence of other entertainment, Gowan drifted into a confidential chat with Mollie. She was the sort of girl few people could have remained entirely indifferent to. Her _navete_ was as novel as her beauty, and her weakness, so to speak, was her strength. Gowan found it so at least, but still it must be confessed that Dolly was the chief subject of their conversation.

"You are very fond of your sister?" he said to the child.

Mollie nodded.

"Yes," she said, "I am very fond of her. We are all very fond of her.

Dolly 's the clever one of the family, next to Phil. She is n't afraid of anybody, and things don't upset her. I wish I was like her. You ought to see her talk to Lady Augusta, I believe she is the only person in the world Lady Augusta can't patronize, and she is always trying to snub her just because she is so cool. But it never troubles Dolly. I have seen her sit and smile and talk in her quiet way until Lady Augusta could do nothing but sit still and stare at her as if she was choked, with her bonnet strings actually trembling."

Gowan laughed. He could imagine the effect produced so well, and it was so easy to picture Dolly smiling up in the face of her gaunt patroness, and all the time favoring her with a shower of beautiful little stabs, rendered pointed by the very essence of artfulness. He decided that upon the whole Lady Augusta was somewhat to be pitied.

"Dolly says," proceeded Mollie, "that she would like to be a beauty; but if I was like her I should n't care about being a beauty."

"Ah!" said Gowan, unable to resist the temptation to try with a fine speech,--"ah! it is all very well for _you_ to talk about not caring to be a beauty."

It did not occur to him for an instant that it was indiscreet to say such a thing to her. He only meant it for a jest, and nine girls out of ten even at sixteen would have understood his languid air of grandiloquence in an instant. But Mollie at sixteen was extremely liberal-minded, and almost Arcadian in her simplicity of thought and demeanor.

Her brown eyes flew wide open, and for a minute she stared at him with mingled amazement and questioning.

"Me!" she said, ignoring all given rules of propriety of speech.

"Yes, you," answered Gowan, smiling, and looking down at her amusedly.

"I have been paying you a compliment, Mollie."

"Oh!" said Mollie, bewilderment settling on her face. But the next instant the blood rushed to her cheeks, and her eyes fell, and she moved a little farther away from him.

It was the first compliment she had received in all her life, and it was the beginning of an era.

CHAPTER V. ~ IN WHICH THE PHILISTINES BE UPON US.

"We are going," Dolly to Ralph Gowan, "to have a family rejoicing, and we should like you to join us. We are going to celebrate Mollie's birthday."

"Thanks," he answered, "I shall be delighted." He had heard of these family rejoicings before, and was really pleased with the idea of attending one of them. They were strictly Vagabondian, which was one recommendation, and they were entirely free from the Bilberry element, which was another. They were not grand affairs, it is true, and set etiquette and the rules of society at open defiance, but they were cheerful, at least, and n.o.body attended them who had not previously resolved upon enjoying himself and taking kindly to even the most unexpected state of affairs. At Bloomsbury Place, Lady Augusta's "coffee and conversation" became "conversation and coffee," and the conversation came as naturally as the coffee. People who had jokes to make made them, and people who had not were exhilarated by the _bon-mots_ of the rest.

"Mollie will be seventeen," said Dolly, "and it is rather a trial to me."

Gowan laughed.

"Why?" he asked.

She shook her head gravely.

"In the first place," she answered, "it makes me feel as if the dust of ages was acc.u.mulating in my pathway, and in the second, it is not safe for her."

"Why, again?" he demanded.

"She is far too pretty, and her knowledge of the world is far too limited. She secretly believes in Lord Burleigh, and clings to the poetic memory of King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid."

"And you do not?"

She held up her small forefinger and shook it at him.

"If ever there was an artful little minx," she said, "that Beggar-maid was one. I never believed in her. I doubted her before I was twelve.

With her eyes cast down and her sly tricks! She did not cast them down for nothing. She did it because she had long eyelashes, and it was becoming. And it is my impression she knew more about the king than she professed to. She had studied his character and found it weak.

Beggar-maid me no beggar-maids! She was as deep as she was handsome."

Of course he laughed again. Her air of severe worldly experience and that small warning forefinger were irresistible.

"But Mollie," he said, "with all her belief in Cophetua, you think there is not enough of the beggar-maid element in her character to sustain her under like circ.u.mstances?"

"If she met a Cophetua," she answered, "she would open her great eyes at his royal purple in positive delight, and if he caught her looking at him she would blush furiously and pout a little, and be so ashamed of her weakness that she would be ready to run away; but if he was artful enough to manage her aright, she would believe every word he said, and romance about him until her head was turned upside down. My fear is that some false Cophetua will masquerade for her benefit some day. She would never doubt his veracity, and if he asked her to run away with him I believe she would enjoy the idea. We shall have to keep sharp watch upon her."

"You never were so troubled about Aimee?" Gowan suggested.

"Aimee!" she exclaimed. "Aimee has kept us all in order, and managed our affairs for us ever since she wore Berlin wool boots and a coral necklace. She regulated the household in her earliest years, and will regulate it until she dies or somebody marries her, and what we are to do then our lares and penates only know. Aimee! n.o.body ever had any trouble with Aimee, and n.o.body ever will. Mollie is more like me, you see,--shares my weaknesses and minor sins, and always sees her indiscretions ten minutes too late for redemption. And then, since she is the youngest, and has been the baby so long, we have not been in the habit of regarding her as a responsible being exactly. It has struck me once or twice that Bloomsbury Place hardly afforded wise training to Mollie. Poor little soul!" And a faint shadow fell upon her face and rested there for a moment.

But it faded out again as her fits of gravity usually did, and in a few minutes she was giving him such a description of Lady Augusta's unexpected appearance upon a like occasion in time past, that he laughed until the room echoed, and forgot everything else but the audacious grotesqueness of her mimicry.

It being agreed upon that Mollie's birthday was to be celebrated, the whole household was plunged into preparations at once, though, of course, they were preparations upon a small scale and of a strictly private and domestic nature. Belinda, being promptly attacked with inflammation of the throat, which was a chronic weakness of hers, was rather inconveniently, but not at all to the surprise of her employers, incapacitated from service, and accordingly Dolly's duties became varied and mult.i.tudinous.

Sudden inflammation on the part of Belinda was so unavoidable a consequence of any approaching demand upon her services as to have become proverbial, and the swelling of that young person's "tornsuls,"

as she termed them, was antic.i.p.ated as might be antic.i.p.ated the rising of the sun. Not that it was Belinda's fault, however; Belinda's anxiety to be useful amounted at all times to something very nearly approaching a monomania; the fact simply was, that, her ailment being chronic, it usually evinced itself at inopportune periods. "It's the luck of the family," said Phil. "We never loved a tree or flower, etc."

And so Belinda was accepted as an unavoidable inconvenience, and was borne with cheerfully, accordingly.

It was not expected of her that she should appear otherwise on the eventful day than with the regulation roll of flannel about her neck.

Dolly did not expect it of her at least, so she was not surprised, on entering the kitchen in the morning, to be accosted by her grimy young handmaiden in the usual form of announcement:--

"Which, if yer please, miss, my tornsuls is swole most awful."

"Are they?" said Dolly. "Well, I am very sorry, Belinda. It can't be helped, though; Mollie will have to run the errands and answer the door-bell, and you must stay with me and keep out of the draught.

You can help a little, I dare say, if you are obliged to stay in the kitchen."

"Yes, 'm," said Belinda, and then sidling up to the dresser, and rubbing her nose in an abas.e.m.e.nt of spirit, which resulted in divers startling adornments of that already rather highly ornamented feature. "If yer please, 'm," she said, "I 'm very sorry, Miss Dolly. Seems like I ain't never o' no use to yer?"

"Yes, you are," said Dolly, cheerily, "and you can't help the sore throat, you know. You are a great deal of use to me sometimes. See how you save my hands from being spoiled; they would n't be as white as they are if I had to polish the grates and build the fires. Never mind, you will be better in a day or so. Now for the cookery-book."