Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ brown hair she ever saw. Then I was marshalled to the drawing-room. Jemima opened the door quietly, and I went in, seen, I believe, by nobody. It was a large room, of a three-cornered shape, quite full of bright furniture. Selina's grand piano was in the angle.

      Standing before the fire, talking, were the clergyman and Mr. Edwin Barley. A stranger might have taken one for the other, for the clergyman was in his sporting clothes, and Mr. Barley was all in black, with a white neckcloth. On a distant sofa, apparently reading a newspaper, sat Philip King; his features were handsome, but they had a very cross, disagreeable expression. He held the newspaper nearly level with his face, and I saw that his eyes, instead of being on it, were watching the movements of Mrs. Edwin Barley. She was at the piano, not so much singing or playing, as trying scraps of songs and pieces; Mr. Heneage standing by and talking to her. I went quietly round by the chairs at the back, and sat down on the low footstool at the corner of the hearth. The clergyman saw me and smiled. Mr. Barley did not; he stood with his back to me. He also seemed to be watching the piano, or those at it, while he spoke in a low, confidential tone with the clergyman.

      "I disagree with you entirely, Barley," Mr. Martin was saying. "Rely upon it, he will be all the better and happier for following a profession. Why! at Easter he made up his mind to read for the Bar!"

      "Young men are changeable as the wind, especially those whom fortune has placed at ease in the world," replied Mr. Barley. "Philip was red-hot for the Bar at Easter, as you observe; but something appears to have set him against it now."

      "You, as his guardian and trustee, should urge him to take it up; or, if not that, something else. A life of idleness plays the very ruin with some natures; and it strikes me that Philip King has no great resources within him to counteract the mischief of non-occupation. What is the amount of his property?" resumed Mr. Martin, after a pause.

      "About eighteen hundred pounds a year the estate brings in."

      "Nonsense! I thought it was only ten or twelve."

      "Eighteen, full. Reginald's was a long minority, you know."

      "Well, if it brought in eight-and-twenty, I should still say give him a profession. Let him have some legitimate work; occupy his hands and his head, and they won't get into mischief. That's sound advice, mind, Barley."

      "Quite sound," rejoined Mr. Barley; but there was a tone in his voice throughout that to me seemed to tell either of want of sincerity or else of a knowledge that to urge a profession on Philip King would be wrong and useless. At this period of my life people used to reproach me with taking up prejudices, likes, and dislikes; as I grew older, I knew that God had gifted me in an eminent degree with the faculty of reading human countenances and human tones.

      "I have no power to force a profession upon him," resumed Mr. Edwin Barley; "and I should not exercise it if I had. Shall I tell you why?"

      "Well?"

      "I don't think his lungs are sound. In my opinion, he is likely to go off as his brother did."

      "Of consumption!" hastily muttered the clergyman: and Mr. Edwin Barley nodded.

      "Therefore, why urge him to fag at acquiring a profession that he may not live to exercise?" continued Mr. Barley. "He looks anything but well; he is nothing like as robust as he was at Easter."

      Mr. Martin turned his head and attentively scanned the face of Philip King. "I don't see anything the matter with him, Barley, except that he looks uncommonly cross. I hope you are mistaken."

      "I hope I am. I saw a whole row of medicine phials in his room yesterday: when I inquired what they did there, he told me they contained steel medicine--tonics--the physician at Oxford had ordered them. Did you ever notice him at dinner--what he eats?"

      "Not particularly."

      "Do so, then, on the next opportunity. He takes scarcely anything. The commencement of Reginald's malady was loss of appetite: the doctors prescribed tonics for him. But they did not succeed in saving him."

      Once more Mr. Martin turned his eyes on Philip King. "How old was Reginald King when he died?"

      "Twenty-three. Three years older than Philip is now."

      "Well, poor fellow, I hope he will outlive his weakness, whatever may cause it, and get strong again. That money of his would be a nice windfall for somebody to drop into," added the clergyman, after a pause. "Who is heir-at-law?"

      "I am."

      "You!"

      "Of course I am," was the quiet reply of Mr. Edwin Barley.

      "Nurse him up, nurse him up, then," said the clergyman, jokingly. "Lest, if anything did happen, the world should say you had not done your best to prevent it; for you know you are a dear lover of money, Barley."

      There may have been a great deal more said, but I did not hear. My head had sought the wall for its resting-place, and sleep stole over me.

      What I felt most glad of, the next morning, was to get my purse. There were twenty-seven shillings in it; and old Betty had caused it to be put in one of the boxes, vexing me. "People in the train might rob me of it," she said.

      Jemima waited on me at dressing, and I had breakfast in Miss Delves's parlour. Afterwards I went up to Mrs. Edwin Barley in the drawing-room. She was in mourning, deep as mine.

      "I had been tempted to put it off for a cool dress yesterday evening," she said to me. "What with the dinner, and the fire they will have, though I am sure it is not weather for it, I feel melted in black. The fire is kept large to please Philip King. So Miss Delves informed me when I remonstrated against it the other day. He must be of a chilly nature."

      Remembering what I had heard said the previous night, I thought he might be. But the words had afforded the opportunity for a question that I was longing, in my curiosity, to put.

      "Selina, who is Miss Delves? Is she a lady or a servant?"

      "You had better not call her a servant, Anne; she would never forgive it," answered Selina, with a laugh. "She is a relative of Mr. Edwin Barley's."

      "Then, why does she not sit with you, and dine at table?"

      "Because I do not choose that she shall sit with me, and dine at table," was the resentful, haughty retort; and I could see that there had been some past unpleasantness in regard to Miss Delves. "When Mr. Edwin Barley's mother died, who used to live with him, Charlotte Delves came here as mistress of the house. That was all very well so long as there was no legitimate mistress, but ages went on, and I came to it. She assumed a great deal; I found she was planted down at table with us, and made herself my companion in the drawing-room at will. I did not like it; and one day I told my husband so in her presence. I said that I must be the sole mistress in my own house, and quitted the room, leaving them to settle it. Since then she has taken the parlour for her sitting-room, and looks to the household, as she did before. In short, Miss Delves is housekeeper. I have no objection to that; it saves me trouble, and I know nothing of domestic management. Now and then I invite her to take tea with us, or to a drive with me in the pony carriage, and we are vastly polite to each other always."

      "But if you do not like her----"

      "Like her!" interrupted Selina. "My dear child, we hate each other like poison. It was not in human nature, you know, for her not to feel my entrance to the house СКАЧАТЬ