The Mrs. Gaskell Girl

by Constance Smedley and Pearl Humphrey

 

The MRS. GASKELL GIRL

 

BY CONSTANCE SMEDLEY

AND PEARL HUMPHREY

 

NELLY came into the drawing-room and found Mrs. Martin leaning back in one of the many comfortable armchairs, and all alone. Nelly had changed her dress since luncheon, and wore an unusually simple gown, while her coiffure was as pastoral as a two-day's-old Marcel wave would permit.

“What is the matter with your shoulders?” asked Mrs. Martin, of her somewhat early Victorian niece.

“I have taken off the fichu,” said Nelly; “it made this dress look so studied. Where is Millie?”

Mrs. Martin allowed the subject to be changed, merely altering the angle of a silver mirror on the table near her so that Nelly could occasionally catch glimpses of her banded hair. Mrs. Martin knew that things seen are mightier than things heard.

“Millie went back to her room after lunch without waiting for coffee. I cannot imagine why she should come to stay with me, and then immure herself in her bedroom for a whole day,” volunteered Mrs. Martin placidly.

“She may be making things,” rejoined Nelly, a little vaguely. “She is the kind of girl who loves sewing or any useful work. She is just like a Mrs. Gaskell girl, so quiet and dutiful, and full of thought for others. Did you see how she collected the plates for Spratt at luncheon? It brought home to me how careless we are of servants' trouble.”

“Did you happen to glance at Spratt?” asked Mrs. Martin in an expressionless tone.

“Yes,” said Nelly, “but I do not think he noticed. He was looking at you in a most perplexed way. Perhaps he had forgotten something.”

Mrs. Martin's lips parted in an inscrutable smile, but she made no remark. Nelly kept the silence inviolate for one second. Then she plunged into a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm.

“Oh, I do admire Millie so much! If she had been a minister's daughter, or the wife of a poor curate, she would have raised domesticity into a positive heroism. I should like to write a book about her,” cried Nelly, warming into further flame. “She would always be quite cheerful darning stockings or making blouses, and would never grumble at having to wear useful, ugly clothes instead of frilly pink things. Talking of pink things, Elise was chattering most excitedly about your pink frock—the one you are going to open the Flower Show in to-morrow. I heard her as I crossed the hall. You never heard such a noise. She was positively shrieking. She really shouldn't.”

“I tore it yesterday,” returned Mrs. Martin. “I am sorry, for I was so fond of that frock, but I caught it in a door, and made such a rent that I have had to give it to Elise. She was so full of joy that I think she must be going to wear it on her day out to-morrow. Probably she was enlarging on her future grandeur to the others.”

“She didn't sound pleased,” answered Nelly. “What a pity, a sweet frock like that!”

At that moment the door opened, and Millie entered. Her quiet figure and face were animated by unusual eagerness, and on her arm was carefully folded the frock in question.

“Dear Mrs. Martin,” explained Millie, “I saw this pretty frock hanging over a chair just outside your door last night. I had heard you say it could not be mended, but I thought I saw how it could be done, so I took it to my room. I got up early this morning, and I have just finished it. I don't think it shows much.”

It was an exquisite piece of sewing, as even Elise would have had to admit had she been asked. Mrs. Martin could not find it in her heart to say she had given the dress away. She thanked Millie very much, and Nelly gazed at her aunt's guest with admiring affection.

“I will put it on this afternoon,” said Mrs. Martin.

“No,” replied Millie. “I have set my heart on your wearing it at the Flower Show, as you were going to.”

Mrs. Martin hesitated. But Nelly's voice rose up.

“Of course she will,” she said cordially.

Mrs. Martin took the frock from Millie, and beheld the neat but unmistakable darn across the front width with appreciation, in which she tried hard to infuse a genuine note.

“I must go and find a frock for Elise,” she said, with a sigh. “I have promised her one.”

Nelly's enthusiasm was slightly dashed by the fresh aspect put upon the affair by this remark; but it soon recovered the little douche, and Mrs. Martin on her return found her niece eagerly imbibing the admirable doctrine that one should try to be a daughter to one's hostess.

“Should not that depend,” suggested Mrs. Martin, “to some extent on whether the hostess wishes it? Her domestic affairs may be so organized as to be quite independent of any quantity of daughters.”

“Oh, but,” said Nelly, “there are a thousand and one little graceful, thoughtful acts one can perform. One can always try and be a helpful influence everywhere.” She beamed affectionately at Millie; and Mrs. Martin, without further speech, sat down to mourn for the sweet silk frock with which it had been necessary to solace Elise.

Several visitors came in later, bringing a cold breath of autumn in with them, for the afternoon had turned chilly. Spratt, the venerable and venerated butler, entering with the tea-tray, beheld Nelly on her knees, vigorously blowing up a newly lighted fire, while Millie staggered across the room with a heavy table, which she placed ready for the tray by Mrs. Martin's chair, bestowing a bright smile on Spratt, which he did not return, Clouds of acrid smoke filled the room, and one set of callers had already beaten a hasty retreat. The rest sat behind the haze, coughing vigorously and with indignation.

“Oh, Spratt,” said Nelly, “I didn't want to bring you up to light the fire, so I've done it. But it doesn't seem to be burning up very well. Can you do anything?”

Spratt met Mrs. Martin's eyes above her handkerchief. After one glance at her trusted retainer, she disappeared entirely behind the fragment of cambric and lace, and her coughs became slightly hysterical. Meanwhile, Spratt performed the operation of raising the register, and retired with dignity through the now clearing atmosphere.

The evening passed on the same plane. Millie's thoughtfulness and Nelly's emulation kept things humming; the atmosphere was stimulating if a trifle strenuous. Millie said that method was a great simplifier of existence, and Nelly promptly began to draw up an elaborate plan for having regular hours for practising, watering the flowers (“to save Spratt,” she said), and even dusting her bedroom, with a further ambitious plan of reading right through Gibbon's “Fall of Rome.”

The rosy atmosphere had clouded a little by breakfast-time. Mrs. Martin and Nelly met each other in the dining-room with unsmiling faces.

“I have a most hateful headache,” said Nelly, without perfect good-humor.

Mrs. Martin accorded her somewhat absent-minded sympathy. “Sanders has given notice, after thirty years!” she said. “The best gardener in Suffolk. And all because of Millie. It appears she took a little basket last night and lightly culled all the gardenias he was going to show this afternoon.”

“Then that accounts for it,” said Nelly, somewhat incoherently. “I found a wretched bowl of them in my fender this morning. I couldn't think what the horrid, stuffy, close smell was all night. What awful cheek!”

“To say nothing of the insult to the way I run my house,” added Mrs. Martin. “The thoughtful girl is not invariably a blessing. Where is she?”

“Out in the garden.” Nelly indicated the sunny lawn. “She's digging dandelions with a pair of scissors.”

“Saunders mustn't meet her!” said Mrs. Martin, rising in some alarm. Nelly went to the window and called out, somewhat bruskly, that breakfast was ready.

“Remember we mustn't say a word about this,” cautioned her aunt.

“I suppose not,” agreed Nelly, heavily and reluctantly.

To this resolution of courtesy they kept, even when Millie commented on Nelly's headachy appearance, and offered an unfailing panacea in the shape of mental effort. But throughout the morning Nelly made no reference to her planned time-schedule. She nursed her headache till it was time to dress for the Flower Show, and then kept Mrs. Martin and Millie waiting.

“Come along, Nelly,” called her aunt. “We shall miss the train.”

An angry kind of gurgle was audible in the distance. Millie ran up to offer her assistance, but was met with a most decided statement that she couldn't do anything, thank you.

A few minutes later Nelly came down flushed, puzzled, and gloveless.

“I can't find a single pair of gloves,” she stated. “Elise and I have searched the whole room through. I don't know who's been in my room, but everything's been cleared away. It looks like burglars. Yet I know my gloves were on the bed at nine o'clock this morning!”

Mrs. Martin glanced at the clock hopelessly.

“Oh!” said Millie in an illuminated tone, and ran up-stairs, returning in a minute with a wash-stand drawer full of neatly mended and folded gloves.

Nelly, livid with rage, did not trust herself to speak, but grabbed a pair and walked out to the carriage. Her aunt remarked politely:

“We have missed our train, and every one will be waiting at that Flower Show for me to open it.” And she looked down at the darn, conspicuous in the sunlight.

Millie left next morning in a somewhat chastened frame of mind. (Mrs. Martin had a fancy that Nelly's courtesy might have given way to plain-speaking in private.) An hour later, Nelly was found by her aunt lying on a sofa, reading Gyp.

“You might fetch me a handkerchief,” was her greeting. Mrs. Martin gave her a firm and explanatory refusal, but when Nelly left the room to run her own errand, she smiled at “Bijou,” and murmured devoutly: “Thank Heaven!”