The Three Miss Kings 9

The Three Miss Kings 9

CHAPTER VIII.

 

 

AN INTRODUCTION TO MRS. GRUNDY.

 

 

Patty and her sisters very nearly had their first quarrel over Paul

Brion. Patty said he was impertinent and patronising, that he presumed

upon their friendless position to pay them insulting attentions--that,

in short, he was a detestable young man whom she, for one, would have

nothing more to do with. And she warned Elizabeth, in an hysterical,

high-pitched voice, never to invite him into their house unless

she wished to see her (Patty) walk out of it. Elizabeth, supported

by Eleanor, took up the cudgels in his defence, and assured Patty,

kindly, but with much firmness, that he had behaved with dignity

and courtesy under great provocation to do otherwise. They also

pointed out that he was his father's representative; that it would be

ungracious and unladylike to reject the little services that it was

certainly a pleasure to him to render, and unworthy of them to assume

an independence that at present they were unable to support. Which was

coming as near to "words" as was possible for them to come, and much

nearer than any of them desired. Patty burst into tears at last, which

was the signal for everything in the shape of discord and division to

vanish. Her sisters kissed and fondled her, and assured her that they

sympathised with her anxiety to be under obligations to nobody from the

bottom of their hearts; and Patty owned that she had been captious and

unreasonable, and consented to forgive her enemy for what he hadn't

done and to be civil to him in future.

 

And, as the days wore on, even she grew to be thankful for Paul Brion,

though, of course, she would never own to it. Their troubles were many

and various, and their helpless ignorance more profound and humiliating

than they could have believed possible. I will not weary the reader

by tracing the details of the process by which they became acquainted

with the mode and cost of living "as other people do," and with the

ways of the world in general; it would be too long a story. How Patty

discovered that the cleverest fingers cannot copy a London bonnet

without some previous knowledge of the science of millinery; how she

and her sisters, after supplying themselves grudgingly with the mere

necessaries of a modern outfit, found that the remainder of their

"furniture money," to the last pound note, was spent; how, after weary

trampings to and fro in search of a habitable house in a wholesome

neighbourhood, they learned the ruinous rates of rent and taxes and

(after much shopping and many consultations with Mrs. M'Intyre) the

alarming prices of furniture and provisions; how they were driven to

admit, in spite of Patty, that that landlady on the premises, whom

Eleanor had declared was not to be thought of, might be a necessary

safeguard against worse evils; and how they were brought to ask each

other, in surprise and dismay, "Is it possible that we are poor people

after all, and not rich, as we supposed?"--all these things can be

better imagined than described. Suffice it to say, they passed through

much tribulation and many bitter and humbling experiences during the

early months of their sojourn in Melbourne; but when at last they

reached a comparatively safe haven, and found themselves once more

secure under their own control, able to regulate their needs and

their expenditure, and generally to understand the conditions and

possibilities of their position, Elizabeth and Eleanor made a solemn

declaration that they were indebted for this happy issue to the good

offices and faithful friendship of Paul Brion alone, and Patty--though

she turned up her nose and said "Pooh!"--though she hated to be

indebted to him, or to anybody--agreed with them.

 

They settled down to their housekeeping by very slow degrees. For

some time they stayed with Mrs. M'Intyre, because there really seemed

nothing else to do that was at all within their means; and from

this base of operations they made all those expeditions of inquiry

into city habits and customs, commercial and domestic, which were

such conspicuous and ignominious failures. As the sense of their

helplessness grew upon them, they grudgingly admitted the young man

(who was always at hand, and yet never intruded upon or pestered

them) to their counsels, and accepted, without seeming to accept, his

advice; and the more they condescended in this way the better they

got on. Gradually they fell into the habit of depending on him, by

tacit consent--which was the more easy to do because, as his father

had promised, he did not presume upon their confidence in him. He was

sharp and brusque, and even inclined to domineer--to be impertinent, as

Patty called it--when they did submit their affairs to his judgment;

but not the smallest suspicion of an unauthorised motive for his

evident devotion to their interests appeared in his face, or voice, or

manner, which were those of the man of business, slightly suggesting

occasionally the imperious and impartial "nearest male relative."

They grew to trust him--for his father's sake, they said, but there

was nothing vicarious about it; and that they had the rare fortune

to be justified in doing so, under such unlikely circumstances, made

up to them for whatever ill luck they might otherwise have seemed to

encounter in these days. It was he who finally found them their home,

after their many futile searches--half a house in their own street and

terrace, vacated by the marriage and departure to another colony of the

lady who played the piano that was out of tune. No. 6, it appeared,

had been divided into flats; the ground floor was occupied by the

proprietor, his wife, and servant; and the upper, which had a gas stove

and other kitchen appliances in a back room, was let unfurnished for

£60 a year. Paul, always poking about in quest of opportunities, heard

of this one and pounced upon it. He made immediate inquiries into the

character and antecedents of the landlord of No. 6, the state of the

drains and chimneys, and paint and paper, of the house; and, having

satisfied himself that it was as nearly being what our girls wanted

as anything they would be likely to find, called upon Elizabeth, and

advised her to secure it forthwith. The sisters were just then adding

up their accounts--taking stock of their affairs generally--and coming

to desperate resolutions that something must be done; so the suggested

arrangement, which would deliver them from bondage and from many of

their worst difficulties, had quite a providential opportuneness about

it. They took the rooms at once--four small rooms, including the

improvised kitchen--and went into them, in defiance of Mrs. M'Intyre's

protestations, before they had so much as a bedstead to sleep upon;

and once more they were happy in the consciousness that they had

recovered possession of themselves, and could call their souls their

own. Slowly, bit by bit, the furniture came in--the barest necessaries

first, and then odds and ends of comfort and prettiness (not a few

of them discovered by Paul Brion in out-of-the-way places, where he

"happened" to be), until the new little home grew to look as homelike

as the old one. They sent for the bureau and the piano, which went

a long way towards furnishing the sitting-room; and they bought a

comfortable second-hand table and some capacious, cheap, wickerwork

chairs; and they laid a square of matting on the floor, and made some

chintz curtains for the window, and turned a deal packing-case into

an ottoman, and another into a set of shelves for their books; and

over all these little arrangements threw such an air of taste, such

a complexion of spotless cleanliness and fastidious neatness, as are

only seen in the homes of "nice" women, that it takes nice people to

understand the charm of.

 

One day, when their preparations for regular domestic life were fairly

completed, Patty, tired after a long spell of amateur carpentering,

sat down to the piano to rest and refresh herself. The piano had

been tuned on its arrival in Melbourne; and the man who tuned it had

stared at her when she told him that it had been made to her mother's

order, and showed him the famous name above the key-board. He would

have stared still more had he heard what kind of magic life she could

summon into the exquisite mechanism boxed up in that poor-looking

deal case. All the sisters were musicians, strange to say; taught by

their mother in the noble and simple spirit of the German school, and

inheriting from her the sensitive ear and heart to understand the

dignity and mystery, if not the message (which nobody understands) of

that wonderful language which begins where words leave off. To "play

the piano" was no mere conventional drawing-room performance with them,

as they themselves were no conventional drawing-room misses; a "piece"

of the ordinary pattern would have shocked their sense of art and

harmony almost as much as it might have shocked Mozart and Mendelssohn,

and Schubert and Schumann, and the other great masters whose pupils

they were; while to talk and laugh, either when playing or listening,

would have been to them like talking and laughing over their prayers.

But, of the three, Patty was the most truly musical, in the serious

meaning of the word, inasmuch as her temperament was warmer than those

of her sisters, her imagination more vivid, her senses generally more

susceptible to delicate impressions than theirs. The "spirits of the

air" had all their supernatural power over her receptive and responsive

soul, and she thrilled like an Æolian harp to the west wind under the

spell of those emotions that have no name or shape, and for which no

imagery supplies a comparison, which belong to the ideal world, into

which those magic spirits summon us, and where the sacred hours of our

lives--the sweetest, the saddest, the happiest--are spent.

 

To-day she sat down, suddenly prompted by the feeling that she was

fagged and tired, and began to play mechanically a favourite Beethoven

sonata; but in five minutes she had played her nerves to rest, and was

as steeped in dreams as the great master himself must have been when

he conceived the tender passages that only his spiritual ears could

hear. Eleanor, who had been sewing industriously, by degrees let her

fingers falter and her work fall into her lap; and Elizabeth, who had

been arranging the books in the new book-shelves, presently put down

her duster to come and stand behind the music-stool, and laid her

large, cool hands on Patty's head. None of them spoke for some time,

reverencing the Presence in their quiet room; but the touch of her

sister's palms upon her hair brought the young musician out of her

abstractions to a sense of her immediate surroundings again. She laid

her head back on Elizabeth's breast and drew a long sigh, and left off

playing. The gesture said, as plainly as words could have said it, that

she was relieved and revived--that the spirit of peace and charity had

descended upon her.

 

"Elizabeth," she said presently, still keeping her seat on the

music-stool, and stroking her cheek with one of her sister's hands

while she held the other round her neck, "I begin to think that Paul

Brion has been a very good friend to us. Don't you?"

 

"I am not beginning," replied Elizabeth. "I have thought it every

day since we have known him. And I have wondered often how you could

dislike him so much."

 

"I don't dislike him," said Patty, quite amiably.

 

"I have taken particular notice," remarked Eleanor from the hearthrug,

"and it is exactly three weeks since you spoke to him, and three weeks

and five days since you shook hands."

 

Patty smiled, not changing her position or ceasing to caress her cheek

with Elizabeth's hand. "Well," she said, "don't you think it would be

a graceful thing to ask him to come and have tea with us some night?

We have made our room pretty"--looking round with contentment--"and

we have all we want now. We might get our silver things out of the

bureau, and make a couple of little dishes, and put some candles about,

and buy a bunch of flowers--for once--what do you say, Nelly? He has

_never_ been here since we came in--never farther than the downstairs

passage--and wouldn't it be pleasant to have a little house warming,

and show him our things, and give him some music, and--and try to make

him enjoy himself? It would be some return for what he has done for us, and his father would be pleased."