Part 27 (1/2)

Poor little Mrs. Palliser made strenuous efforts to keep the spa.r.s.ely furnished dusty house as clean and trim as it could be kept; but her life was a perpetual conflict with other people's untidiness.

The house was let furnished, and everything was in the third-rate French style--inferior mahogany and cheap gilding, bare floors with gaudy little rugs lying about here and there, tables with flaming tapestry covers, chairs cus.h.i.+oned with red velvet of the commonest kind, sham tortoisesh.e.l.l clock and candelabra on the dining-room chimney-piece, alabaster clock and candelabra in the drawing-room. There was nothing home-like or comfortable in the house to atone for the smallness of the rooms, which seemed mere cells to Ida after the s.p.a.ciousness of Mauleverer Manor and The Knoll. She wondered how her father and mother could breathe in such rooms.

That bed-chamber to which Mrs. Palliser introduced her step-daughter was even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old ill.u.s.trated newspapers, and torn toy-books.

'You won't mind Vernon's using the room in the day, dear, will you?' said Mrs. Palliser, apologetically. 'It shall be tidied for you at night.'

This meant that in the daytime Ida would have no place for retreat, no nook or corner of the house which she might call her own. She submitted meekly even to this deprivation, feeling that she was an intruder who had no right to be there.

'I should like to see my father soon,' she said, with a trembling lip, stooping down to caress Vernon, who had followed them upstairs.

He was a lovely, fair-haired boy, with big candid blue eyes, a lovable, confiding child, full of life and spirits and friendly feeling towards all mankind and the whole animal creation, down to its very lowest forms.

'You shall have your breakfast with him,' said Mrs. Palliser, feeling that she was conferring a great favour, for the Captain's breakfast was a meal apart. 'I don't say but what he'll be a little cross to you at first; but you must put up with that. He'll come round afterwards.'

'He has not seen me for two years and a half,' said Ida, thinking that fatherly affection ought to count for something under such circ.u.mstances.

'Yes, it's only two years and a half,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, 'and you were to have stayed at Mauleverer Manor three years. Miss Pew is a wicked old woman to cheat your father out of six months' board and tuition. He paid her fifty pounds in one lump when he articled you--fifty pounds--a heap of money for people in our position; and here you are, come back to us like a bad penny.'

'I am very sorry,' faltered Ida, reddening at that unflattering comparison. 'But I worked very hard at Mauleverer, and am tolerably experienced in tuition. I must try to get a governess's situation directly, and then I shall be paid a salary, and shall be able to give you back the fifty pounds by degrees.'

'Ah, that's the dreadful part of it all,' sighed Mrs. Palliser, who was very seldom in the open air, and had that despondent view of life common to people who live within four narrow walls. 'Goodness knows how you are ever to get a situation without references. Miss Pew says you are not to refer to her; and who else is there who knows anything of you or your capacity?'

'Yes, there is some one else. Bessie Wendover and her family.'

'The people you went to visit in Hamps.h.i.+re. Ah! there went another five pounds in a lump. You have been a heavy expense to us, Ida. I don't know whether anyone wanting to employ you as a governess would take such a reference as that. People are so particular. But we must hope for the best, and in the meantime you can make yourself useful at home in taking care of Vernon and teaching him his letters. He is dreadfully backward.'

'He is an angel,' said Ida, lifting the cherub in her arms, and letting the fair, curly head nestle upon her shoulder. 'I will wait upon him like a slave. You do love me, don't you, pet?'

'Ess, I love 'oo, but I don't know who 'oo is. _Connais pas_,' said Vernon, shaking his head vehemently.

'I am your sister, darling, your only sister.'

'My half-sister,' said Vernon. 'Maman said I had a half-sister, and she was naughty. _Dites donc_, would a whole sister be twice as big as you?'

Thus in his baby language, which may be easier imagined than described, gravely questioned the boy.

'I am your sister, dearest, heart and soul. There is no such thing as half-love or half-sisterhood between us. You should not have talked to him like that, mother,' said Ida, turning her reproachful gaze upon her step-mother, who was melted to tears.

'Your father was so upset by Miss Pew's letter,' she murmured apologetically. 'To pay fifty pounds for you, and for it to end in such humiliation as that. You must own that it was hard for us.'

'It was harder for me,' said Ida; 'I had to stand up and face that wicked woman, who knew that I had done no wrong, and who wreaked her malignity upon me because I am cleverer and better-looking than ever she was in her life.'

'I must go and make your father's omelette,' said the stepmother, 'while you tidy yourself for breakfast. I think there's some water on the washstand, and Vernon shall bring you a clean towel.'

The little fellow trotted out after his mother, and trotted back presently with the towel--one towel, which was about in proportion to the water-jug and basin. Ida shuddered, remembering the plent.i.tude of water and towels at The Knoll. She made her toilet as well as she could, with the scantiest materials, as she might have done on board s.h.i.+p; shook and brushed the shabby gray cashmere--her wedding gown, she thought, with a bitter smile--before she put it on again, and then went down the bare narrow deal staircase, superb in all the freshness of her youth and beauty, which neither care nor poverty could spoil.

Captain Palliser was pacing up and down his little dining parlour, looking flurried and anxious. He turned suddenly as Ida entered, and stood staring at her.

'By Jove, how handsome you have grown!' he said, and then he look her in his arms and kissed her. 'But you know, my dear, this is really too bad,'