The Other House

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BOOK FIRST

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I

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MRS. BEEVER OF EASTMEAD, AND of Beever and Bream, was a close, though not a cruel observer of what went on, as she always said, at the other house. A great deal more went on there, naturally, than in the great clean, square solitude in which she had practically lived since the death of Mr. Beever, who had predeceased by three years his friend and partner, the late Paul Bream of Bounds, leaving to his only son, the little godson of that trusted associate, the substantial share of the busi ness in which his wonderful widow she knew and rejoiced that she was wonderful now had a distinct voice. Paul Beever, in the bloom of eighteen, had just achieved a scramble from Win chester to Oxford: it was his mother’s design that he should go into as many things as possible before coming into the Bank. The Bank, the pride of Wilverley, the high clear arch of which the two houses were the solid piers, was worth an expensive education. It was, in the talk of town and county, hundreds of years old, and as incalculably good as a subject of so much infallible arithmetic could very well be. That it enjoyed the services of Mrs. Beever herself was at present enough for her and an ample contentment to Paul, who inclined so little to the sedentary that she foresaw she should some day be as anxious at putting him into figures as she had in his childhood been easy about putting him into breeches. Half the ground moreover was held by young Anthony Bream, the actual master of Bounds, the son and successor of her husband’s colleague.

She was a woman indeed of many purposes; another of which was that on leaving Oxford the boy should travel and inform himself: she belonged to the age that regarded a foreign tour not as a hasty dip, but as a deliberate plunge. Still another had for its main feature that on his final return he should marry the nicest girl she knew: that too would be a deliberate plunge, a plunge that would besprinkle his mother. It would do with the question what it was Mrs. Beever’s inveterate household practice to do with all loose and unarranged objects it would get it out of the way. There would have been difficulty in saying whether it was a feeling for peace or for war, but her constant habit was to lay the ground bare for complications that as yet at least had never taken place. Her life was like a room prepared for a dance: the furniture was all against the walls. About the young lady in question she was perfectly definite; the nicest girl she knew was Jean Martle, whom she had just sent for at Brighton to come and perform in that character. The performance was to be for the benefit of Paul, whose midsummer return was at hand and in whom the imagination oi alternatives was to be discouraged from the first. It was on the whole a comfort to Mrs. Beever that he had little imagination of anything.

Jean Martle, condemned to Brighton by a father who was Mrs. Beever’s second cousin and whom the doctors, the great men in London, kept there, as this lady opined, because he was too precious wholly to lose and too boring often to see Jean Martle would probably some day have money and would possibly some day have sense: even as regards a favoured candidate this marked the extent of Mrs. Beever’s somewhat dry expectations. They were addressed in a subordinate degree to the girl’s playing, which was depended on to become brilliant, and to her hair, which was viewed in the light of a hope that it would with the lapse of years grow darker. Wilverley, in truth, would never know if she played ill; but it had an old-fashioned prejudice against loud shades in the natural cover ing of the head. One of the things his cousin had been invited for was that Paul should get used to her eccentric colour a colour of which, on a certain bright Sunday of July, Mrs. Beever noted afresh, with some alarm, the exaggerated pitch. Her young friend had arrived two days before and now during the elastic interval from church to luncheon had been despatched to Bounds with a message and some preliminary warnings. Jean knew that she should find there a house in some confusion, a new-born little girl, the first, a young mother not yet up, and an odd visitor, somewhat older than herself, in the person of Miss Armiger, a school-friend of Mrs. Bream, who had made her appearance a month before that of the child and had stayed on, as Mrs. Beever with some emphasis put it, right through everything.

This picture of the situation had filled, after the first hour or two, much of the time of the two ladies, but it had originally included for Jean no particular portrait of the head of the family an omission in some degree repaired, however, by the chance of Mrs. Beever’s having on the Saturday morning taken her for a moment into the Bank. They had had errands in the town, and Mrs. Beever had wished to speak to Mr. Bream, a brilliant, joking gentleman, who, instantly succumbing to their invasion and turning out a confidential clerk, had received them in his beautiful private room. Shall I like him? Jean, with the sense of a widening circle, had, before this, adventurously asked. Oh, yes, if you notice him! Mrs. Beever had replied in obedience to an odd private prompting to mark him as insignificant. Later on, at the Bank, the girl noticed him enough to feel rather afraid of him: that was always with her the foremost result of being noticed herself. If Mrs. Beever passed him over, this was in part to be accounted for by all that at Eastmead was usually taken for granted. The queen-mother, as Anthony Bream kept up the jest of calling her, would not have found it easy to paint off-hand a picture of the allied sovereign whom she was apt to regard as a somewhat restless vassal. Though he was a dozen years older than the happy young prince on whose behalf she exercised her regency, she had known him from his boyhood, and his strong points and his weak were alike an old story to her.

His house was new he had on his marriage, at a vast expense, made it quite violently so. His wife and his child were new; new also in a marked degree was the young woman who had lately taken up her abode with him and who had the air of intending to remain till she should lose that quality. But Tony himself this had always been his name to her was intensely familiar. Never doubting that he was a subject she had mastered, Mrs. Beever had no impulse to clear up her view by distributing her impressions. These impressions were as neatly pigeon-holed as her correspondence and her accounts neatly, at least, save in so far as they were besprinkled with the dust of time. One of them might have been freely rendered into a hint that her young partner was a possible source of danger to her own sex. Not to her personally, of course; for herself, somehow, Mrs. Beever was not of her own sex. If she had been a woman she never thought of herself so loosely she would, in spite of her age, have doubtless been conscious of peril. She now recognised none in life except that of Paul’s marrying wrong, against which she had taken early measures. It would have been a misfortune therefore to feel a flaw in a security otherwise so fine. Was not perhaps the fact that she had a vague sense of exposure for Jean Martle a further motive for her not expatiating to that young lady on Anthony Bream? If any such sense operated, I hasten to add, it operated without Jean’s having mentioned that at the Bank he had struck her as formidable.

Let me not fail equally to declare that Mrs. Beever’s general suspicion of him, as our sad want of signs for shades and degrees condemns me to call it, rested on nothing in the nature of evidence. If she had ever really uttered it she might have been brought up rather short on the question of grounds. There were certainly, at any rate, no grounds in Tony’s having, before church, sent a word over to her on the subject of their coming to luncheon. Dear Julia, this morning, is really grand, he had written. " We’ve just managed to move to her downstairs room, where they’ve put up a lovely bed and where the sight of all her things cheers and amuses her, to say nothing of the wide immediate outlook at her garden and her own corner of the terrace. In short the waves are going down and we’re beginning to have our meals ‘ regular.’ Luncheon may be rather late, but do bring over your charming little friend. How she lighted up yesterday my musty den! There will be another little friend, by the way not of mine, but of Rose Armiger’s, the young man to whom, as I think you know, she’s engaged to be married. He’s just back from China and comes down till tomorrow. Our

Sunday trains are such a bore that, having wired him to take the other line, I’m sending to meet him at Plumbury. Mrs. Beever had no need to reflect on these few lines to be comfortably conscious that they summarised the nature of her neighbour down to the dashed sociability, as she had heard the poor fellow, in sharp reactions, himself call it, that had made him scribble them and that always made him talk too much for a man in what, more than he, she held to be a position." He was there in his premature bustle over his wife’s slow recovery; he was there in his boyish impatience to improvise a feast; he was there in the simplicity with which he exposed himself to the depredations, to the possible avalanche, of Miss Armiger’s belong ings. He was there moreover in his free-handed way of sending six miles for a young man from China, and he was most of all there in his allusion to the probable lateness of luncheon. Many things in these days were new at the other house, but nothing was so new as the hours of meals. Mrs. Beever had of old repeatedly dined there on the stroke of six. It will be seen that, as I began with declaring, she kept her finger on the pulse of Bounds.

II

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WHEN JEAN MARTLE, ARRIVING WITH her message, was ushered into the hall, it struck her at first as empty, and during the moment that she supposed herself in sole possession she perceived it to be showy and indeed rather splendid. Bright, large and high, richly decorated and freely used, full of corners and communications, it evidently played equally the part of a place of reunion and of a place of transit. It contained so many large pictures that if they hadn’t looked somehow so recent it might have passed for a museum. The shaded summer was in it now, and the odour of many flowers, as well as the tick from the chimney-piece of a huge French clock which Jean recognised as modern. The colour of the air, the frank floridity, amused and charmed her. It was not till the servant had left her that she became aware she was not alone a discovery that soon gave her an embarrassed minute. At the other end of the place appeared a young woman in a posture that, with interposing objects, had made her escape notice, a young woman bent low over a table at which she seemed to have been writing. Her chair was pushed back, her face buried in her extended and supported arms, her whole person relaxed and abandoned. She had heard neither the swing of the muffled door nor any footfall on the deep carpet, and her attitude denoted a state of mind that made the messenger from Eastmead hesitate between quickly retreating on tiptoe or still more quickly letting her know that she was observed. Before Jean could decide her com panion looked up, then rapidly and confusedly rose. She could only be Miss Armiger, and she had been such a figure of woe that it was a surprise not to see her in tears. She was by no means in tears; but she was for an instant extremely blank, an instant during which Jean remembered, rather to wonder at it, Mrs. Beever’s having said of her that one really didn’t know whether she was awfully plain or strikingly handsome. Jean felt that one quite did know: she was awfully plain. It may immediately be mentioned that about the charm of the apparition offered meanwhile to her own eyes Rose Armiger had not a particle of doubt: a slim, fair girl who struck her as a light sketch for some thing larger, a cluster of happy hints with nothing yet quite put in but the splendour of the hair and the grace of the clothes clothes that were not as the clothes of Wilverley. The reflection of these things came back to Jean from a pair of eyes as to which she judged that the extreme lightness of their grey was what made them so strange as to be ugly a reflection that spread into a sudden smile from a wide, full-lipped mouth, whose regular office, obviously, was to produce the second impression.

In a flash of small square white teeth this second impression was produced and the ambiguity that Mrs. Beever had spoken of lighted up an ambiguity worth all the dull prettiness in the world. Yes, one quite did know: Miss Armiger was strikingly handsome. It thus took her but a few seconds to repudiate every connection with the sombre image Jean had just encountered.

Excuse my jumping out at you, she said. I heard a sound I was expecting a friend. Jean thought her attitude an odd one for the purpose, but hinted a fear of being in that case in the way; on which the young lady protested that she was de lighted to see her, that she had already heard of her, that she guessed who she was. And I dare say you’ve already heard of me.

Jean shyly confessed to this, and getting away from the subject as quickly as possible, produced on the spot her formal credentials.

Mrs. Beever sent me over to ask if it’s really quite right we should come to luncheon. We came out of church before the sermon, because of some people who were to go home with us. They’re with Mrs. Beever now, but she told me to come straight across the garden the short way.

Miss Armiger continued to smile. No way ever seems short enough for Mrs. Beever!

There was an intention in this, as Jean faintly felt, that was lost upon her; but while she was wondering her companion went on:

Did Mrs. Beever direct you to inquire of me?

Jean hesitated. O! anyone, I think, who would be here to tell me in case Mrs. Bream shouldn’t be quite so well.

She isn’t quite so well.

The younger girl’s face showed the flicker of a fear of losing her entertainment; on perceiving which the elder pursued:

But we shan’t romp or racket shall we? We shall be very quiet.

Very, very quiet, Jean eagerly echoed.

Her new friend’s smile became a laugh, which was followed by the abrupt question: Do you mean to be long with Mrs. Beever?

Till her son comes home. You know he’s at Oxford, and his term soon ends.

And yours ends with it you depart as he arrives?

Mrs. Beever tells me I positively shan’t, said Jean.

Then you positively won’t. Everything is done here exactly as Mrs. Beever tells us. Don’t you like her son? Rose Armiger asked.

I don’t know yet; it’s exactly what she wants me to find out.

Then you’ll have to be very clear.

But if I find out I don’t? Jean risked.

I shall be very sorry for you!

I think then it will be the only thing in this love of an old place that I shan’t have liked.

Rose Armiger for a moment rested her eyes on her visitor, who was more and more conscious that she was strange and yet not, as Jean had always supposed strange people to be, disagreeable. Do you like me? she unexpectedly inquired.

How can I tell at the end of three minutes?

I can tell at the end of one! You must try to like me you must be very kind to me, Miss Armiger declared. Then she added: Do you like Mr. Bream?

Jean considered; she felt that she must rise to the occasion. Oh, immensely! At this her interlocutress laughed again, and it made her con tinue with more reserve: Of course I only saw him for five minutes yesterday at the Bank.

Oh, we know how long you saw him! Miss Armiger exclaimed. He has told us all about your visit.

Jean was slightly awe-stricken: this picture seemed to include so many people. Whom has he told? Her companion had the air of being amused at everything she said; but for Jean it was an air, none the less, with a kind of foreign charm in it. Why, the very first person was of course his poor little wife.

But I’m not to see her> am I? Jean rather eagerly asked, puzzled by the manner of the allu sion and but half suspecting it to be a part of her informant’s general ease.

You’re not to see her, but even if you were she wouldn’t hurt you for it, this young lady replied. She understands his friendly way and likes above all his beautiful frankness.

Jean’s bewilderment began to look as if she too now, as she remembered, understood and liked these things. It might have been in confirmation of what was in her mind that she presently said: He told me I might see the wonderful baby. He told me he would show it to me himself.

I’m sure he’ll be delighted to do that. He’s awfully proud of the wonderful baby.

I suppose it’s very lovely, Jean remarked with growing confidence.

Lovely! Do you think babies are ever lovely?

Taken aback by this challenge, Jean reflected a little; she found, however, nothing better to say than, rather timidly: I like dear little children, don’t you?

Miss Armiger in turn considered. Not a bit! she then replied. It would be very sweet and attractive of me to say I adore them; but I never pretend to feelings I can’t keep up, don’t you know? If you’d like, all the same, to see Effie, she obligingly added, I’ll so far sacrifice myself as to get her for you.

Jean smiled as if this pleasantry were contagious. You won’t sacrifice her?

Rose Armiger stared. I won’t destroy her.

Then do get her.

Not yet, not yet! cried another voice that of Mrs. Beever, who had just been introduced and who, having heard the last words of the two girls, came, accompanied by the servant, down the hall. The baby’s of no importance. We’ve come over for the mother. Is it true that Julia has had a bad turn? she asked of Rose Armiger.

Miss Armiger had a peculiar way of looking at a person before speaking, and she now, with this detachment, delayed so long to answer Mrs. Beever that Jean also rested her eyes, as if for a reason, on the good lady from Eastmead. She greatly admired her, but in that instant, the first of seeing her at Bounds, she perceived once for all how the differ ence of the setting made another thing of the gem. Short and solid, with rounded corners and full supports, her hair very black and very flat, her eyes very small for the amount of expression they could show, Mrs. Beever was so early Victorian as to be almost prehistoric was constructed to move amid massive mahogany and sit upon banks of Berlin-wool. She was like an odd volume, sensibly bound, of some old magazine. Jean knew that the great social event of her younger years had been her going to a fancy-ball in the character of an Andalusian, an incident of which she still carried a memento in the shape of a hideous fan. Jean was so constituted that she also knew, more dimly but at the end of five minutes, that the elegance at Mr. Bream’s was slightly provincial. It made none the less a medium in which Mrs. Beever looked superlatively local. That indeed in turn caused Jean to think the old place still more of a love.

I believe our poor friend feels rather down, Miss Armiger finally brought out. But I don’t imagine it’s of the least consequence, she im mediately added.

The contrary of this was, however, in some degree foreshadowed in a speech directed to Jean by the footman who had admitted her. He re ported Mr. Bream as having been in his wife’s room for nearly an hour, and Dr. Ramage as having arrived some time before and not yet come out. Mrs. Beever decreed, upon this news, that they must drop their idea of lunching and that Jean must go straight back to the friends who had been left at the other