The Lark (Nesbit)/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV
Many of my readers are no doubt familiar with the tremulous timidities, the doubtful diffidences, the agitation, the soul-searching with which a young woman prepares for the first meeting with his mother, and this even if he be merely an agreeable acquaintance who might possibly be suspected of harbouring sentiments a little beyond those involved in mere acquaintanceship. You will have noticed how the heart beats, how the hands tremble, how long it takes to decide on the right frock, and how impossible it is to do the hair decently. You know how desirous you are that she should like you, and how determined you are that you will like her. And how, as the moment of meeting approaches, and when it is beyond doubt too late to make any change, you wish wretchedly that you had chosen another frock and done your hair a different way.
You know how you wish that your hands were not at once warm and clammy, and how you wonder whether she can see your heart beating like a steam-hammer under your thin best jumper.
These nerve-racking experiences Jane was spared. And besides, of course, Mr. Rochester was nothing to her—or, at any rate, only a friend. And she had been spared the torments of nervous anticipation. On the other hand, Mr. Rochester was a friend, and she would have liked to be decent to his mother. Instead of which she had thumped his mother on the back and called her "old girl," and said, "No, you don't!"
What was Jane to do? What would you have done?
What Jane said was: "Oh, I am so sorry. There's a looking-glass just behind you."
For Mrs. Rochester had put both hands up to her hat, which had been shaken from its exquisite calculated poise by the sudden and violent impact of Jane's little paw on the shoulder of the hat's wearer. Mrs. Rochester mechanically turned to the looking-glass, a pretty oval Empire thing in whose frame doves and cupids fought it out amid endless loops of carved and gilded ribbon.
"I am most frightfully sorry," Jane went on. "You must think I'm quite mad, but I'm not, really. I thought you were my friend, dressed up."
A silence. Mrs. Rochester's fingers were busy with the hat—elegant, half-diaphanous, lacy, with floating veil of grey and perfectly-placed pink and grey velvet pansies. Jane noticed this, and noticed anew the gilded birds and boys; also she noted in the mirror the pretty, faded, furious, powdered face of her visitor.
"Do please forgive me," said Jane again. "I thought it was my friend. She dressed up once before and pretended to be—to be a lady."
"Your friend is not a lady then?" was Mrs. Rochester's first word. Jane resisted the old Adam and went on meekly.
"I mean she pretended to be a strange lady come to call, I thought it was her again, dressed up."
"Do I look like a person dressed up and pretending to be a lady?" Mrs. Rochester asked, flashing the front view of her perfectly dressed self on the cringing Jane.
"You look absolutely lovely," said poor Jane quickly, "but I saw only the back of you; and I just thought how clever of Lucilla to get up like that—so different from the last time when she dressed up. She was dowdy and old then, and she quite took me in. I'd not the least idea it wasn't Lucilla."
"Your maid didn't tell you my name then?"
"Oh, she said something, but I didn't pay much attention, I was so sure it was Lucilla," said Jane, perceiving new pitfalls on every hand, and wondering whether she would be forced into downright lying. "Do please try to forgive me—I do hope I didn't hurt you. I feel like a bull in a china-shop when I think Oh, how could I? Do sit down and try to forgive me for being such a blundering idiot."
Perhaps Mrs. Rochester was softened by Jane's appeals. Perhaps the wisdom of the dove had not quite deserted Miss Quested in this her hour of need. Perhaps John Rochester's mother felt that in this clumsy hoyden behaving, as the hoyden herself admitted, like a bull in a china-shop, Miss Antrobus had not the serious rival she had feared. This girl at any rate was no siren—just a blowsy, blundering schoolgirl.
However it may have been, Mrs. Rochester smiled—a neat, mechanical smile performed by the lips alone, wholly unassisted by the eyes—and said:
"Please don't apologise any more. I quite understand. Just a youthful frolic."
She seated herself with a perfect grace, and Jane, standing before her, felt like a whipped puppy.
"Do sit down too, won't you?" said the lady in grey silk and violet embroideries, and Jane sat. Her frock was crumpled and crushed from the hammock and her hair in a pigtail. She looked about fourteen. No—certainly not a siren.
"You must wonder at my descending on you in this way," Mrs. Rochester went on, but your friend Lady Hesketh—we were neighbours in the country—wrote to me that you were—that you were desirous of entertaining paying guests. Yes?"
"Yes," said Jane, wishing that her hands were clean, or, alternatively, that she had never been born. "I asked Emmie to ask everyone she knew—Emmie—Lady Hesketh, you know."
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Rochester, looking about her through the most impertinent tortoiseshell-framed lorgnettes. "What a charming old-world place this is, is it not?"
"Yes," said Jane, rendering heartfelt tribute to Lucilla's instinct, and found herself continuing: "It has all the lure of the bygone, hasn't it?"
"Are you a fool or are you being clever?" Mrs. Rochester mused. Aloud she said something vague about the beauties of old gardens, to which Jane alertly responded by something still vaguer about the beauties of Nature. "So nice, isn't it?" she found herself saying. "Old trees and lawns and things. So quaint."
The talk stagnated in this backwater for some time. It was Mrs. Rochester—Jane was determined that it should be—who moved back to the main stream.
"But I mustn't forget the object of my visit in your delightful conversation," she said—most unfairly, Jane thought. "We really must talk business, mustn't we?"
If Jane hadn't seen the real Mrs. Rochester in the looking-glass she might have believed in that tone of gentle camaraderie. As it was, she answered coldly:
"Yes? About the P.G.'s—paying guests, I mean? Our terms are five guineas a week, and we haven't any rooms except on the second floor."
"You have other guests then? Yes?"
"Yes, several," said Jane.
The young friend I am making these enquiries for is a Miss Antrobus—a very charming girl. She is coming to London to study something—now what is it—art—music? Oh no, I remember, it's political economy. And it wouldn't suit her health to be right in London. So it seemed as though this would be quite ideal. Thank you so much for the information you have given me—and for our delightful chat. And now I think I had better see your mother."
"My mother," said Jane steadily, "is dead."
"Well, your aunt then, or your cousin, or whoever it is that chaperones you."
"Would my great aunt do?" said Jane, suddenly making up her mind.
"Certainly."
"Well, I don't think she's at home to-day, but you can see her to-morrow if you really feel it's necessary to see her. Really, I can tell you anything you want to know. (I wish I'd said six guineas. That might have choked her off.)"
"Could I not see her if I called this evening—say at nine? I shall be dining with my son. We could come round after dinner. Yes?"
"That will do perfectly," said Jane, rising with much the air of a duchess ending an interview with a dressmaker. She knew better, but also she heard a movement in the library which told her that Mr. Rochester had returned.
"I'll see you out—this way," she went on very quickly. "I'll tell my aunt, and I'm sure she will be very pleased, but she's an old lady and rather deaf. Mind the step. Yes—it's a beautiful day. It's been a lovely summer. (Thank goodness I've got you out of the drawing-room!) Oh no—it's no trouble, I should love to see you to the gate. Aren't the evergreen oaks a nice shape? Yes, my aunt will be sure to be in this evening. Good-bye."
Jane, having watched the trim, grey figure out of sight, ran like a rabbit to the library.
"You've come to hear the secret?" cried Rochester, jumping up.
"Oh, nonsense!" said Jane. "Look here—the most awful thing's happened. No, don't look like that—nobody's dead yet—but your mother's been here."
"My mother?"
"Yes. She came to see about a Miss Antrobus coming as a P.G."
"Miss Antrobus?"
"Don't," said Jane—and I am sorry to record that she stamped her foot—"for goodness' sake don't keep repeating everything I say! Your mother called—and I thought she was Lucilla dressed up—and I crept up behind her and clumped her on the back, and said"
"What did you say?"
"I said, 'Oh no, you don't, old girl!'—just like that. Oh, don't laugh—don't!"
But Rochester had to. And when he laughed, he laughed thoroughly. Jane looked at him with suppressed fury, but suddenly something in her seemed to give way, and the next moment she too was laughing—and laughing, she felt, with far too much heartiness and abandon. Mr. Rochester, she was convinced, would not like her—not really like her—to be laughing at a scene, however comic, in which his mother had been assaulted and battered; and how was Jane to explain to him that it had been just a toss-up whether she should laugh or cry?
"Oh, don't!" she said at last. "You oughtn't to laugh—and I'm sure I oughtn't. I behaved like a bull in a china-shop, and your mother so sweet and gentle"—(Jane?)—"and besides, there's no time to laugh. I want you to do something for me."
"Anything," he said, wiping his eyes.
"You said we were friends," said Jane. "I can't explain now, because your mother's gone down to your uncle's house looking for you, but do you mind telling her, if she asks you, that we have a great aunt living with us? Aunt—Aunt Harriet, I think; an old lady, rather deaf. I don't want you to say so unless you're asked, you know. Oh, how awful everything is! Now I'm asking you to tell lies to your own mother."
"I don't mind," he said truthfully. "And look here, don't you worry. I believe one has a perfect right to tell lies if people ask questions they have no right to ask."
"I'm sure that's wrong," she said, "but I can't argue. You must fly after your mother and head her off, or she'll be coming back to look for you here. But before you go you must tell me where to go to get wigs and things."
He named Hugo's. "But look here," he said. "I don't want to ask any questions, but don't do anything that—that'll be difficult to keep up."
To wring the hands is not usual off the stage, but Jane came near it.
"I can't help myself," she said, standing there with her straight frock and her pigtail like a forlorn child in a school scrape. "I said there was an aunt, and there's got to be an aunt. I was quite mad when I said it, of course, but I can't face your mother and tell her there isn't any aunt—I really can't."
"Let me tell her," he said, coming nearer to her; "let me tell her that a—and tell her something else as well. . . . Jane . . ."
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" said Jane, edging away round the table. "There's nothing to tell her. Don't tell her anything unless she asks. And don't come with her this evening. Because if you do I shall laugh—or else I shall scream."
"Well, don't worry," he said; "everything will be all right. And Miss Antrobus, I can head her off if you don't want her."
"Oh no, you can" said Jane. "I tried that. I said five guineas a week, and I thought your mother would say it was too much, but she never turned a hair—I mean she didn't mind a bit. And Miss Antrobus is coming to-morrow to stay. Oh, here she is back again—whatever shall we do?"
But it wasn't Mrs. Rochester, it was Lucilla.
"Thank goodness!" said Jane. "Now go. I know you'll never respect me again now you know what a liar I am, but I can't help what you think of me. It's Fate."
"I only wish you'd let me tell you what I think of you—you must know . . ."
But Jane had fled.
••••••
And now behold two agitated young women with money in their purses on their way to seek the help of Mr. Hugo.
"I can't help it, I tell you," Jane kept saying. "I was driven into it. I said there was an aunt, and there must be an aunt. You know you can do it, Luce. If you could take me in you could take anyone in. You must dress exactly as you did that day."
"But I can't appear in a bonnet, in my own house, in the evening!"
"Caps, dear—there must be caps."
"I wish you wouldn't. Couldn't the aunt be suddenly ill? Not able to see anyone?"
"Then Mrs. Rochester would keep on coming till the aunt was better. And bring flowers. And grapes. And leave cards. And pump the servants. No, we've got to go through with it."
"What shall we say to Mr. Hugo?"
"Tell him the truth—say we're doing it for a lark. So we are."
"Yes," said Jane, and the third-class railway carriage rang to the music of young laughter.
"That's what it means in books when it says 'hollow mirth,'" said Jane.
"Or the laughter of despair," suggested Lucilla; "but I call it a jolt-head jest myself."
"There aren't," said Jane, "any polite words for what I call it. And yet it's a sort of lark too, after all, isn't it?" she ended appealingly.
"Very sort-of," said Lucilla.