CHAPTER XIV.
MUSHROOMS.
"In what will all this ostentation end?"
A NEW house had been built lately not very far from Misrule, a grand, showy-looking place, or red brick, in the Elizabethan style, which the suburbs of Sydney are just beginning to affect largely.
The grounds were laid out by a landscape gardener, and there were velvet lawns, carpet beds, and terraces reaching down to the river, where at Misrule there was only a wilderness of a garden with broken palings, and a couple of sloping paddocks where long rank grass and poppies flourished. Then the carriage drive,—such a grand, smooth, red sweep, serpentining up to the great porch. The Misrule drive was hardly red at all; the gravel had mostly vanished, the dead leaves were generally of Vallambrosian thickness, and weeds raised cheerful heads at intervals. The name of the people who had built the new house was Browne,—Fitzroy-Browne, with a hyphen and an e.
Mr. Fitzroy-Browne was a railway contractor, and had builded himself an ample fortune out of a Government that not yet had need to cheese-pare.
There were three or four Misses Fitzroy-Browne, that fashionable boarding-schools, dressmakers, and several seasons had done their best for. There was a Mr. Fitzroy-Browne junior, who waxed his moustache, wore clothes of chessboard device, and kept racehorses. And there was Mamma Fitzroy-Browne, who was fat and good-natured, and said "Bless yer 'art" with a cheeriness refreshing in these days of ceremony, and then pulled herself up short and looked unhappy.
Poor Mamma Browne! who sometimes thought wistfully of the long-dead days when Papa had been only an honest navvy, and her little girls and boy too small to snub and suppress her, and order her about.
Mamma Browne, who had liked her little old "best" room, with its big round table, holding the Bible, three gilt-edged books, and some wax grapes under a glass shade, far better than her grand new drawing-room, that was like a furniture show-place, all mirrors and cabinets, and green and gold.
How many Mamma Brownes there are in Australia! It is quite pitiful. Good dear creatures, with their bones too set to adapt themselves to the change the golden days have brought; poor simple-minded things, who, having consistently left "h" out of their language for forty or fifty years, cannot remember it now till an embarrassed cough or a blush and sneer from a Miss Hyphen Browne makes their old hearts ache for shame of themselves.
Dear housewives, who wasted not their husbands' substance in the old days, and now bring down vials of contempt from the daughters for anxious watchfulness over reckless servants! Sociable old bodies, to whom a cup of tea in the kitchen with a gossiping friend had been happiness, but "At Homes," thronged with stylish people whose speech fairly bristled with h's and g's, bewildering misery.
Comfortable women who have weaknesses for violet, crimson, and bright brown, with large bonnets heavily trimmed, and are sternly arrayed in fashionable no colours, and for bonnets forced to wear a bit of jet, a flyaway bow and strings, that they say piteously feels as if they had no head covering at all.
I should like to build a Home for them, these dear, fat, snubbed orphans of society that is altogether too fine for them—I said fat, because if you notice it is always the fat ones who get into trouble: the thin ones can shape themselves into place better,—to build a Home full of small cosy rooms, with centre tables, and chairs, not artistically arranged but set straight against the walls, with vases (pronounced vorses) in pairs everywhere, waxen fruit and flowers under glass, and china animals that never were on sea or land. There should always be a tea-pot, warmly cosied, cups big enough to hold more than one mouthful and not sufficiently precious to make one uncomfortable, plates of cake, cut, not in finikin finger strips, but in good hearty wedges.
These to be in readiness for all the dear old vulgar friends who had not got to fortune yet and loved to "drop in."
And if I had a uniform at all for my orphans it should be of a good warm purple, with plenty of fringe and plush and buttons; and the standard weight of the bonnets should be thirteen ounces.
All this because of Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne!
Captain Woolcot had told Esther she need not call when the new people came to the district: he said he "hated mushroom growths, especially when they were so pretentiously gilt-edged,"—which was rather a mixed metaphor, by the way but no one could tell him so.
For some time therefore all the young Woolcots saw of the "mushrooms" was on Sundays, when a pew that had belonged to two sweet old maids—grey-clad always, sisters and lovers, never apart even in their recent deaths—blossomed out into a gay dressmaker's showroom, from which all the congregation could during sermon time take useful notes for the renovation of their wardrobes.
Nellie's hats were good signs of the times. The boys chaffed and scorned her unmercifully, but the poor child had such a weakness for having things "in fashion" that for her very life, when the Misses Fitzroy-Browne's trimmings were all severely at the back of their hats, she could not leave hers at the front. Or if their frills crept up into the middle of their skirts and had an insertion heading, how could she be strong-minded enough to let hers remain on the hem with only a gathering thread at the top?
Poor Nellie! she had a great, secret hankering for the flesh-pots of Egypt. The love of pretty things amounted to a passion with her, and the shabby carpets, scratched furniture, and ill-kept grounds of Misrule were a source of real trouble to her.
Privately, she took a great interest in the rich Brownes, and envied them not a little. Their grand house and beautiful grounds, their army of trained servants, their splendid carriages and horses, and their heaps of dresses and jewellery seemed to the half-grown girl the most desirable things on earth.
But if you had put it to the test whether she would change Esther's beautiful, quiet grace of manner for Mrs. Browne's nervous fussiness; her soldierly, upright father for little, mean-looking Mr. Browne; handsome, careless Pip, who looked like a king in his flannels and old cricket cap, for Mr. Theodore Fitzroy-Browne of the careful toilets and bold eyes; or sweet, gracious Meg, who always said the right thing at the right time, for one of the over-dressed, gushing Miss Brownes, I think—even with all the money thrown in—she would have clung to Misrule.
For their part, the Brownes took a great interest in the Woolcot family, and felt themselves much aggrieved that, with all their shabbiness, they had been too "stuck-up" to call upon them.
They would have liked Pip for their "At Homes" and dances; and the young, grave-faced doctor, who was always turning in at the Misrule gate; Meg, who looked "such a lady"; and Nellie, whose beautiful face would be so great an attraction to—at any rate—the masculine portion of their guests.
When, after some five or six months, no cards from Captain, Mrs., and Miss Woolcot had been deposited at the shrine of their wealth, they began to make overtures themselves.
[Illustration: "MEG AND NELLIE HAD BEEN HELPING TO DECORATE THE CHURCH ONE AFTERNOON."]
Meg and Nellie had been helping to decorate the church one afternoon,—it was Easter-time,—when two of the Misses Browne came in, followed by a man in livery, bearing a great basket of exquisite white roses, and kosmea. Mrs. Macintosh, the clergyman's wife, introduced the girls to each other, since they were so close, and they hammered their fingers and exchanged civilities together for the next hour.
Miss Browne at the end of that time wanted to know if they were not passionately fond of tennis. "Oh yes—very," said Nellie. "We love it!"
"Of course you have a court?"
"Only a chip one the boys made; but it does very well."
It was Meg's answer. Nellie grew red, and wondered why her sister could not have contented herself with "Yes, of course!" seeing there was small chance the Fitzroy-Brownes would ever be asked inside the gates of Misrule.
Miss Browne was silent a minute, then she said,—
"We have three beautiful grass courts. I wish, Miss Woolcot, you would come up and have a game with us sometimes—and your sister, of course; we should be glad to see your brother as well, if he would care to come."
Meg tried not to look surprised, and did her best to find "the right word for the right place."
"Thank you very much," she said; "but our afternoons are very much filled, I am afraid we should not be able to."
"Then come in the morning," urged Miss Browne. "We always practise in the morning—it fills the time, for, of course, there is nothing else for us to do."
"I am always busy in the morning, and my brother is at lectures," Meg said; "thank you all the same."
"Well, your sister," said Miss Browne. "Won't you come, Miss Nellie? You can't be busy as well."
Nell looked at Meg as much as to say, "Why can't we?" but Meg was somewhat annoyed at the persistency.
"I am very sorry, but Nellie still studies in the morning," she said, just a little stiffly; "she is not old enough to be emancipated yet."
"Well, I think it's very mean of you, you know," was Miss Browne's answer; but she had not taken offence, for Meg's tone had been pleasant. "Still, if ever you can find time, we shall be delighted to see you; we are always at home on Tuesdays and Fridays, evenings as well as afternoons; or if you just sent me a little note to say you were coming I would stay in."
Again Meg thanked her politely, if not warmly, and managed not to commit herself to a promise. She moved away, however, from the danger of it as soon as she could, and helped Mrs. Macintosh to decorate the chancel with kosmea and asparagus grass.
But the Misses Browne kept the not unwilling Nellie close to them, chattering to her, flattering her adroitly, altogether treating her as if she were quite grown up, instead of not yet sixteen.
She was much easier to get on with than Meg, although she was a little shy. They found out from her, by dint of much questioning, that the young man with earnest eyes was Dr. Alan Courtney, and that—"yes, he was engaged to Meg." They learnt that Pip was in his second year, and went out a great deal; also that he played tennis splendidly, and had won the singles tournament at the University, but that he liked football much better. That the thin boy with brown, rough hair was John, and the little bright-faced girl who wore big hats and always sat next to him was Winifred. How Poppet would have smiled to hear her baptismal name! That Pete—Rupert and Essie were the "second family," and that the tall, beautiful girl they at first had thought was the eldest Miss Woolcot was the step-mother. Meg intimated to Nellie it was glove-putting-on time, and tried to draw her away, but Mrs. Courtney came up at the moment and engaged her attention.
"I wish you could have come to tennis," the eldest Miss Browne said, "or to our evenings; we have such awfully jolly ones."
Nellie admitted, half hesitatingly, that she should like to "very much indeed."
"It's a shame for a pretty girl like you to stay at home," Miss Isabel said. "It isn't fair to the poor men, my dear."
Nellie blushed exquisitely, and both the Misses Browne thought she was the sweetest-looking girl they had ever seen.
"I'm not out yet, of course," she said shyly. "I suppose I shall go to places when I'm as old as Meg."
But they seemed to think that was a very old-fashioned notion. When they were fifteen, and even younger, they said, they had gone to parties and no end of things.
"I don't suppose you could just run up to us one day next week by yourself, and have a game with us?" insinuated Miss Browne, who would fain show the glories of Trafalgar House to this young girl, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide her well-worn gloves from their gaze.
Nellie was "afraid not," but the "not" was very dubious; she was wondering if she could not manage it in some way, and when Meg, released from Mrs. Courtney, came down the church for her, the first seeds of the intimacy had been sown.