The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. Yonge (the mitten read aloud txt) 📕

Spinster's Needles, with the rescue of Don as the type of female heroism. Nor did he tell how carefully he had questioned both her and Rachel as to the date of that interesting adventure.


CHAPTER XVII. THE SIEGE.


"The counterfeit presentment."--Hamlet.

Christmas came, and Rachel agreed with Mr. Mauleverer that it was better not to unsettle the children at the F. U. E. E. by permitting them to come home for holidays, a decision which produced much discontent in their respective families. Alison, going to Mrs. Morris with her pupils, to take her a share of Christmas good cheer, was made the receptacle of a great lamentation over the child's absence; and, moreover, that the mother had not been allowed to see her alone, when taken by Miss Rachel to the F. U. E. E.

"Some one ought to take it up," said Alison, as she came home, in her indignation. "Who knows what may be done to those poor children? Can't Mr. Mitchell do something?"

But Mr. Mitchell was not sufficiently at home to interfere. He was indeed negotiating an exchange with Mr. Touchett, but until this was effected he could hardly meddle in the matter, and he was besides a reserved, prudent man, slow to commit himself, so that his own impression of the asylum could not be extracted from him. Here, however, Colonel Keith put himself forward. He had often been asked by Rachel to visit the F. U. E. E., and he surprised and relieved Alison by announcing his intention of going over to St. Norbert's alone and without notice, so as to satisfy himself as far as might be as to the treatment of the inmates, and the genuineness of Mauleverer's pretensions. He had, however, to wait for weather that would not make the adventure one of danger to him, and he regarded the cold and rain with unusual impatience, until, near the end of January, he was able to undertake his expedition.

After much knocking and ringing the door was opened to him by a rude, slatternly, half-witted looking charwoman, or rather girl, who said "Master was not in," and nearly shut the door in his face. However, he succeeded in sending in his card, backed by the mention of Lady Temple and Miss Curtis; and this brought out Mrs. Rawlins, her white streamers floating stiff behind her, full of curtsies and regrets at having to refuse any friend of Miss Curtis, but Mr. Mauleverer's orders were precise and could not be infringed. He was gone to lecture at Bristol, but if the gentleman would call at any hour he would fix to morrow or next day, Mr. Mauleverer would be proud to wait on him.

When he came at the appointed time, all was in the normal state of the institution. The two little girls in white pinafores sat upon their bench with their books before them, and their matron presiding over them; Mr. Mauleverer stood near, benignantly attentive to the children and obligingly so to the visitor, volunteering information and answering all questions. Colonel Keith tried to talk to the children, but when he asked one of them whether she liked drawing better than lace-making her lips quivered, and Mrs. Rawlins replied for her, that she was never happy except with a pencil in her hand. "Show the gentleman, my dear," and out came a book of studios of cubes, globes, posts, etc., while Mr. Mauleverer talked artistically of drawing from models. Next, he observed on a certain suspicious blackness of little Mary's eye, and asked her what she had done to herself. But the child hung her head, and Mrs. Rawlins answered for her, "Ah! Mary is ashamed to tell: but the gentleman will think nothing of it, my dear. He knows that children will be children, and I cannot bear to check them, the dears."

More briefly Mr. Mauleverer explained that Mary had fallen while playing on the stairs; and with this superficial inspection he must needs content himself, though on making inquiry at the principal shops, he convinced himself that neither Mr. Mauleverer nor the F. U. E. E. were as well known at St. Norbert's as at Avonmouth. He told Rachel of his expedition, and his interest in her work gratified her, though she would have preferred being his cicerone. She assured him that he must have been very much pleased, especially with the matron.

"She is a handsome woman, and reminds me strongly of a face I saw in India."

"There are some classes of beauty and character that have a remarkable sameness of feature," began Rachel.

"Don't push that theory, for your matron's likeness was a very handsome Sepoy havildar whom we took at Lucknow, a capital soldier before the mutiny, and then an ineffable ruffian."

"The mutiny was an infectious frenzy; so that you establish nothing against that cast of countenance."

Never, indeed, was there more occasion for perseverance in Rachel's championship. Hitherto Mrs. Kelland had been nailed to her pillow by the exigencies of Lady Keith's outfit, and she and her minions had toiled unremittingly, without a thought beyond their bobbins, but as soon as the postponed orders were in train, and the cash for the wedding veil and flounces had been transmitted, the good woman treated herself and her daughters to a holiday at St. Norbert's, without intimating her intention to her patronesses; and the consequence was a formal complaint of her ungrateful and violent language to Mrs. Rawlins on being refused admission to the asylum without authority from Mr. Mauleverer or Miss Curtis.

Rachel, much displeased, went down charged with reproof and representation, but failed to produce the desired effect upon the aunt.

"It was not right," Mrs. Kelland reiterated, "that the poor lone orphan should not see her that was as good as a mother, when she had no one else to look to. They that kept her from her didn't do it for no good end."

"But, Mrs. Kelland, rules are rules."

"Don't tell me of no rules, Miss Rachel, as would cut a poor child off from her friends as her mother gave her to on her death-bed. 'Sally,' says she, 'I know you will do a mother's part by that poor little maid;' and so I did till I was over persuaded to let her go to that there place."

"Indeed you have nothing to regret there, Mrs. Kelland; you know, that with the kindest intentions, you could not make the child happy."

"And why was that, ma'am, but because her mother was a poor creature from town, that had never broke her to her work. I never had the trouble with a girl of my own I had with her. 'It's all for your good, Lovedy,' I says to her, and poor child, maybe she wishes herself back again."

"I assure you, I always find the children well and happy, and it is very unfair on the matron to be angry with her for being bound by rules, to which she must submit, or she would transgress the regulations under which we have laid her! It is not her choice to exclude you, but her duty."

"Please, ma'am, was it her duty to be coming out of the house in a 'genta coloured silk dress, and a drab bonnet with a pink feather in it?" said Mrs. Kelland, with a certain, air of simplicity, that provoked Rachel to answer sharply--

"You don't know what you are talking about, Mrs. Kelland."

"Well, ma'am, it was a very decent woman as told me, an old lady of the name of Drinkwater, as keeps a baker's shop on the other side of the way, and she never sees bread enough go in for a cat to make use of, let alone three poor hungry children. She says all is not right there, ma'am."

"Oh, that must be mere gossip and spite at not having the custom. It quite accounts for what she may say, and indeed you brought it all on yourself by not having asked me for a note. You must restrain yourself. What you may say to me is of no importance, but you must not go and attack those who are doing the very best for your niece."

Rachel made a dignified exit, but before she had gone many steps, she was assailed by tearful Mrs. Morris: "Oh, Miss Rachel, if it would not be displeasing to you, would you give me an order for my child to come home. Ours is a poor place, but I would rather make any shift for us to live than that she should be sent away to some place beyond sea."

"Some place beyond sea!"

"Yes, ma'am. I beg your pardon, ma'am, but they do say that Mr. Maw-and-liver is a kidnapper, ma'am, and that he gets them poor children to send out to Botany Bay to be wives to the convicts as are transported, Miss Rachel, if you'll excuse it. They say there's a whole shipload of them at Plymouth, and I'd rather my poor Mary came to the Union at home than to the like of that, Miss Rachel."

This alarm, being less reasonable, was even more difficult to talk down than Mrs. Kelland's, and Rachel felt as if there wore a general conspiracy to drive her distracted, when on going home she found the drawing-room occupied by a pair of plump, paddy-looking old friends, who had evidently talked her mother into a state of nervous alarm. On her entrance, Mrs. Curtis begged the gentleman to tell dear Rachel what he had been saying, but this he contrived to avoid, and only on his departure was Rachel made aware that he and his wife had come, fraught with tidings that she was fostering a Jesuit in disguise, that Mrs. Rawlins was a lady abbess of a new order, Rachel herself in danger of being entrapped, and the whole family likely to be entangled in the mysterious meshes, which, as good Mrs. Curtis more than once repeated, would be "such a dreadful thing for poor Fanny and the boys."

Her daughters, by soothing and argument, allayed the alarm, though the impression was not easily done away with, and they feared that it might yet cost her a night's rest. These attacks--absurd as they were--induced Rachel to take measures for their confutation, by writing to Mr. Mauleverer, that she thought it would be well to allow the pupils to pay a short visit to their homes, so as to satisfy their friends.

She did not receive an immediate answer, and was beginning to feel vexed and anxious, though not doubtful, when Mr. Mauleverer arrived, bringing two beautiful little woodcuts, as illustrations for the "Journal of Female Industry." They were entitled "The free maids that weave their thread with bones," and one called "the Ideal," represented a latticed cottage window, with roses, honeysuckles, cat, beehives, and all conventional rural delights, around a pretty maiden singing at her lace-pillow; while the other yclept the "Real," showed a den of thin, wizened, half-starved girls, cramped over their cushions in a lace-school. The design was Mr. Mauleverer's, the execution the children's; and neatly mounted on cards, the performance did them great credit, and there was great justice in Mr. Manleverer's view that while they were making such progress, it would be a great pity to interrupt the preparation of the first number by sending the children home even for a few hours. Rachel consented the more readily to the postponement of the holiday, as she had now something to show in evidence of the reality of their doings, and she laid hands upon the cuts, in spite of Mr. Mauleverer's unwillingness that such mere essays should be displayed as specimens of the