George Fenn - Lady Maude's Mania

“Yes, my dear,” said Lord Barmouth, in a troubled way, as he offered the lady his arm. “Tom, my boy, don’t speak so rudely to your mamma,” he continued, looking back, and they moved slowly towards the open drawing-room window.

As her ladyship left the garden, Joby came slowly up from under the laurels, and laid his head on Tom’s knee, for that gentleman had thrown himself on a garden seat.

“Hallo, Joby,” he said “you here? I tell you what, old man, if you would go and stick your teeth into Wilters’ calf – Bah! he hasn’t got a calf! – into his leg, and give him hydrophobia, you’d be doing your master a good turn.”

From that hour a gloom came over the scene. Lady Barmouth was scrupulously polite, but Charley Melton remarked a change. There were no more rides out with Maude; no more pleasant tête-à-têtes : all was smiles carefully iced, and he turned at last to Tom for an explanation.

“I can’t understand it,” he said; “a few days ago my suit seemed to find favour in her eyes; now her ladyship seems to ridicule the very idea of my pretentions.”

“Yes,” said Tom savagely; and he bit his cigar right in half.

“But why, in heaven’s name?”

“Heard you were poor.”

“Well, I never pretended otherwise.”

“No,” said Tom, snappishly; “but I suppose some one else did.”

“Who?” cried Melton, angrily.

“Shan’t tell,” cried Tom; “but mind your eye, my boy, or she’ll throw you over.”

“She shall not,” cried Melton, firmly, “for though there is no formal engagement, I hold to your sister, whom I love with all my heart.”

That evening Charley Melton was called away to see his father, who had been taken seriously ill.

“So very sorry,” said her ladyship, icily. “But these calls must be answered. Poor Mr Melton, I am so grieved. Maude, my darling, Sir Grantley is waiting to play that game of chess with you.”

The consequence was, that Charley Melton’s farewell to Maude was spoken with eyes alone, and he left the house feeling that he was doomed never to enter it again as a staying guest, while the enemy was in the field ready to sap and mine his dearest hopes.

Lady Maude Diphoos sat in her dressing-room in Portland Place with her long brown hair let down and spread all around her like some beautiful garment designed by nature to hide her soft white bust and arms, which were crossed before her as she gazed in the long dressing-glass draped with pink muslin.

For the time being that dressing-glass seemed to be a framed picture in which could be seen the sweet face of a beautiful woman, whose blue eyes were pensive and full of trouble. It was the picture of one greatly in deshabille; but then it was the lady’s dressing-room, and there was no one present but the maid.

The chamber was charmingly furnished, enough showing in the glass to make an effective background to the picture; and to add to the charm there was a delicious odour of blended scents that seemed to be exhaled by the principal flower in the room – she whose picture shone in the muslin-draped frame.

There is nothing very new, it may be presumed, for a handsome woman to be seated before her glass with her long hair down, gazing straight before her into the reflector; but this was an exceptional case, for Maude Diphoos was looking right into her mirror and could not see herself. Sometimes what she saw was Charley Melton, but at the present moment the face of Dolly Preen, her maid, as that body stood half behind her chair, brushing away at her mistress’ long tresses, which crackled and sparkled electrically, and dropping upon them certain moist pearls which she as rapidly brushed away.

Dolly Preen was a pretty, plump, dark girl, with a certain rustic beauty of her own such as was found sometimes in the sunny village by the Hurst, from which she had been taken to become young ladies’ maid, a sort of moral pincushion, into which Mademoiselle Justine Framboise, her ladyship’s attendant, stuck venomed verbal pins.

But Dolly did not look pretty in the glass just now, for her nose was very red, her eyes were swollen up, and as she sniffed, and choked, and uttered a low sob from time to time, she had more the air of a severely punished school-girl than a prim young ladies’ maid in an aristocratic family.

Dolly wept and dropped tears on the beautiful soft tangled hair at which Sir Grantley Wilters had often cast longing glances. Then she brushed them off again, and took out her handkerchief to blow her nose – a nose which took a great deal of blowing, as it was becoming overcharged with tears.

“Oh, Dolly, Dolly,” said her mistress at last, “this is very, very sad.”

At this moment through the open window, faintly heard, there floated, softened by distance, that delicious, now forgotten, but once popular strain – “I’m a young man from the country, but you don’t get over me.”

Dorothy Preen, Sussex yeoman’s daughter, was a young woman from the country, and was it because the air seemed apropos that the maiden suddenly uttered an ejaculation which sounded like Ow ! and dropping the ivory-backed brush, plumped herself down upon the carpet, as if making a nursery cheese, and began to sob as if her heart would break? Was it the appropriate nature of the air? No; it was the air producer.

“Oh, Dolly, Dolly, I don’t know what to say,” said Lady Maude gently, as she gave her hair a whisk and sent it all flying to one side. “I don’t want to send you back home.”

“No, no, no, my lady, please don’t do that,” blubbered the girl.

“But her ladyship is thinking very seriously about it, Dolly, and you see you were found talking to him.”

“Ye – ye – yes, my lady.”

“But, you foolish girl, don’t you understand that he is little better than a beggar – an Italian mendicant?”

“Ye-ye-yes, my lady.”

“Then how can you be so foolish?”

“I – I – I don’t know, my lady.”

“You, a respectable farmer’s daughter, to think of taking up with a low man who goes about the streets turning the handle of an organ. Dolly, Dolly, my poor girl, what does it mean?”

“I – I – I don’t know, my lady. Ow! I am so miserable.”

“Of course you are, my good girl. There, promise me you’ll forget it all, and I’ll speak to her ladyship, and tell her you’ll be more sensible, and get her to let you stay.”

“I – I can’t, my lady.”

“Cannot what?”

“Forget him, my lady.”

“Why not?”

“Be-be-because he is so handsome.”

“Oh, Dolly, I’ve no patience with you.”

“N-n-no, my lady, because you – you ain’t – ain’t in love,” sobbed the girl with angry vehemence, as she covered her face with her hands and rocked herself to and fro.

“For shame, Dolly,” cried Maude, with her face flamingly red. “If a woman is in love that is no reason for her degrading herself. I’m shocked at you.”

“Ye-ye-yes, my lady, bu-bu-but you don’t know; you – you – you haven’t felt it yet. Wh-wh-when it comes over you some day, you – you – you’ll be as bad as I am. Ow! ow! ow! I’m a wretched, unhappy girl.”

“Then rouse yourself and think no more of this fellow. For shame of you!”

“I – I can’t, my lady. He – he – he’s so handsome, and I’ve tried ever so to give him up, but he takes hold of you like.”

“Takes hold of you, Dolly? Oh, for shame!”

“I – I d-d-d-don’t mean with his hands, my lady, b-b-but with his great dark eyes, miss, and – and he fixes you like; and once you’re like I am you’re always seeing them, and they’re looking right into you, and it makes you – you – you feel as if you must go where he tells you to, and – and I can’t help it, and I’m a wretched, unhappy girl.”