Part 12 (1/2)
”Mr. Randolph; he is one of the most stylish people I have ever met.
What are his tastes? Don't you know anything at all about him? Is he married, for instance?”
”I never saw Mr. Randolph before, and I know nothing about him,” I answered in a low, steady voice, which was in marked contrast to Miss Armstrong's buzzing, noisy whisper.
”Oh my!” said that young lady, returning again to the contemplation of her soup. Her plate was taken away, and in the interval she once more led the attack.
”He _is_ distingue,” she said, ”quite one of the upper ten. I wish you _would_ tell me where you met him before. You must have met him before, you know; he would not come to a house like this if he was not interested in you and your mother. He is a very good-looking man; I admire him myself immensely.”
”I don't care to make personal remarks at dinner,” I said, looking steadily at the young lady.
”Oh my!” she answered again to this; but as some delicious turbot was now facing her, she began to eat it, and tried to cover her mortification.
Presently my neighbour to my right began to speak, and Mrs.
Armstrong's manners were only a shade more intolerable than her daughter's.
”Marion has come up to London to study h'Art,” she said. She uttered the last word in a most emphatic tone. ”Marion has a great taste for h'Art, and she wants to attend one of the schools and become an h'artist. Do you think you could give us any advice on the subject, Miss Wickham?”
I answered gently that I had never studied Art myself, having no leaning in that direction.
”Oh dear: now I should have said you had the h'artist's h'eye,” said Mrs. Armstrong, glancing at my dress and at the way my hair was arranged as she spoke. ”You are very stylish, you know; you are a good-looking girl, too, very good-looking. You don't mind me giving you a plain compliment, do you, my dear?”
I made no reply, but my cheeks had never felt more hot, nor I myself more uncomfortable.
Mrs. Armstrong looked me all over again, then she nodded across my back at Miss Armstrong, and said, still in her buzzing half-whisper, for the benefit of her daughter--
”Miss Wickham has got the h'artist's h'eye, and she'll help us fine, after she's got over her first amazement. She's new to this business any one can see; but, Marion, by-and-by you might ask her if she would lend you that bodice to take the pattern. I like the way it is cut so much. You have got a good plump neck, and would look well in one made like it.”
Marion's answer to this was, ”O mother, do hush;” and thus the miserable meal proceeded.
I was wondering how my own mother was getting on, and at last I ventured to glance in her direction. She was seated at the head of the table, really doing nothing in the way of carving, for the dishes, except the joints, were all handed round, and the joints Jane Mullins managed, standing up to them and carving away with a rapidity and _savoir faire_ which could not but arouse my admiration. The upper part of the table seemed to be in a very peaceful condition, and I presently perceived that Mr. Randolph led the conversation. He was having an argument on a subject of public interest with Captain Furlong, and Captain Furlong was replying, and Mr. Randolph was distinctly but in very firm language showing the worthy captain that he was in the wrong, and Mrs. Furlong was laughing, and mother was listening with a pleased flush on her cheeks. After all the dear mother was happy, she was not in the thick of the storm, she was not a.s.sailed by two of the most terrible women it had ever been my lot to encounter.
The meal came to an end, and at last we left the room.
”Stay one minute behind, dear,” said Jane Mullins to me.
I did so. She took me into her tiny little parlour on the ground floor.
”Now then, Miss Wickham, what's the matter? You just look as if you were ready to burst into tears. What's up? Don't you think our first dinner was very successful--a good long table all surrounded with people pleased with their dinner, and in high good humour, and you were the cause of the success, let me tell you, dear. They will talk of you right and left. This boarding-house will never be empty from this night out, mark my words; and I never was wrong yet in a matter of plain common-sense.”
”But oh, dear!” I cried, and I sank into a chair, and I am sure the tears filled my eyes; ”the company are so mixed, Miss Mullins, so terribly mixed.”
”It takes a lot of mixing to make a good cake,” was Jane's somewhat ambiguous answer.
”Now, what do you mean?”
”Well, any one can see with half an eye that you object to Mrs. and Miss Armstrong, and I will own they are not the sort of folks a young lady like yourself is accustomed to a.s.sociate with; but all the same, if we stay here and turn this house into a good commercial success, we must put up with those sort of people, they are, so to speak, the support of an establishment of this sort. I call them the flour of the cake. Now, flour is not interesting stuff, at least uncombined with other things; but you cannot make a cake without it. People of that sort will go to the attics, and if we don't let the attics, my dear Miss Wickham, the thing won't pay. Every attic in the place must be let, and to people who will pay their weekly accounts regularly, and not run up bills. It's not folks like your grand Captain Furlong, nor even like Mr. Randolph, who make these sort of places 'hum,' so to speak. This establishment shall _hum_, my dear, and hum right merrily, and be one of the most popular boarding-houses in London. But you leave people like the Armstrongs to me. To-morrow you shall sit right away from them.”
”No, I will not,” I said stoutly, ”why should you have all the burden, and mother and I all the pleasure? You are brave, Miss Mullins.”
”If you love me, dear, call me Jane, I can't bear the name of Mullins.
From the time I could speak I hated it, and three times in my youth I hoped to change it, and three times was I disappointed. The first man jilted me, dear, and the second died, and the third went into an asylum. I'm Mullins now, and Mullins I'll be to the end. I never had much looks to boast of, and what I had have gone, so don't fret me with the knowledge that I am an old maid, but call me Jane.”