Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/375

. 27, 1862.] she does well it is in the best manner possible—a pretty woman who isn’t ladylike is nobody; a rich woman who isn’t is worse, she’s vulgar; but a ladylike woman, be she even poor, is in good taste, and be she rich, she’s charming, perfect, fascinating—that’s what you have to be, Amyce Cloyse!”

My uncle paused, for he was breathless with his exertions; his speech may be taken as a fair sample of one of my everyday persecutions. I listened to him at first with a shivering sensation, but at the conclusion I almost smiled. I saw a distorted reflection of myself on the polished base of the nearest candlestick. Think of any one expecting me to be fascinating!

Sir John’s keen eyes rapidly detected the change in my countenance, but the expression somehow puzzled him. His wiry voice was doubly peevish as he inquired, “what I was grinning about now?”

Of course I coloured up furiously; of course I hesitated for a reply. I was a stranger to equivocation or excuses, and there seemed to me no course but to tell the honest truth.

“Nothing, Uncle John, only it was so odd to think I could ever be fascinating—I—I’m too ugly.”

“Ugly!” he shouted in the excited tone a mother might have used in defending her offspring.

Uncle John with a groan at his self-inflicted pain, pulled himself upright from the heap of shawls and pillows, and began blustering ferociously.

“Ugly; who says you are ugly? who dare say anything of the kind? You’re not ugly, you’ve fine eyes, Cloyse eyes, and your complexion’s good. If you’d only hold yourself properly, you’d be a striking-looking woman. Plague take ’em, who dare talk about your being ugly. I’ll tell you what, Amyce Cloyse, you will have what would buy up half the pretty women in Christendom. I’ll take care it does! Ugly, indeed!” and he bent forward indignantly and peered straight into my face.

I cannot say his excitement pained me now. If the colour deepened on my cheek, it was only from pleasure at finding my looks a source of interest to anyone. Surely Uncle John must care about me in some degree when he defended me so eagerly even from myself!

He was back again amongst the pillows grumbling and peevish; he had discovered that my white muslin dress was neither well made nor becoming, and he worked himself up into a rage because I did not pay more attention to my appearance.

“Where’s Butterworth—ring for Butterworth. If you can’t see after your own dress, others must do it for you. And yet Butterworth hasn’t much taste.” (Uncle John was doubtless thinking of old nurse’s green merino and the yellow ribbons in her black cap.) “Is there no lady you could consult? I want particularly to have you look your best next week.”

“I might ask Rose Carmichael.”

“Rose Carmichael be hung! Amyce, I won’t have you go near Rose Carmichael; she’s a very objectionable girl, a great deal too pert and forward. I mistrust her, I always did. I don’t like her great rolling black eyes; she’s deep, I’m sure of it. You may believe me, for old dogs don’t bark at nothing,—I had rather see you in rags than decked off by Rose Carmichael!”

“Oh, Uncle John!”

I was as indignant as it is in my nature to be. Rose Carmichael was the only person whom I had ever accounted my friend. She was five years my senior: but for all that we had played together in childhood, that is to say, she had duly carried away the toys I was only too happy to give her, and she had been fonder of eating sweetmeats, saying affectionate things, and kissing people, than anyone I had ever met. Even now-a-days, she made a great many professions of love and regard which I believed to be genuine, and she came to Cloyse Towers whenever I could gain admittance for her, even venturing into my uncle’s sitting-room on a pretence of messages from her father, the rector, and striving to make herself popular with Sir John by unceasing efforts to please him. She offered to sing to him, to read to him, to arrange his cushions, to run his errands; she was always good-tempered, obliging, and charming; and being an exceedingly handsome woman, it was rather singular that she should be such an object of aversion to an old man. Are not old men generally flattered by the attentions of pretty girls? Be that as it may, Sir John took an invincible dislike to her, locked the library door when she was at hand, and all but forbade my receiving her. This had been one of the latest and bitterest grievances of my life.

“Ring for Butterworth,” my uncle reiterated fiercely, and I hastily complied.

Ere the bell could be answered, his tone changed, half shyly, half excusively! Very curiously he asked if I had any idea who the company was to be.

How could I, when never in my memory had a stranger crossed the threshold of the Towers?

For a minute or two he sat silent, strangely disregarding my negative, and I was almost disappointed, for I fancied by his manner he had been going to tell me something about the coming visitor. And even when he spoke again, it was on a topic apparently far removed from the subject in hand. He asked me if I remembered what I had been reading about.

I was caught. I had been getting through my task of leading articles in a monotonous, unthinking way, rendering the words slowly and clearly to suit my uncle’s impaired hearing, but all the while secretly regaling myself with surmises regarding the fate of the dramatis personæ in the novel which I had in hand.

I stammered—hesitated—thought it was something about the beer question. Oh, dear, politics were never in my line.

But either my answer satisfied Sir John, or he paid no regard to it, for he pursued in an animated tone:

“You remember that fine speech, excellent speech it was, clear, concise, forcible reasoning, worthy of the first statesman going. You read it twice over to me, Amyce; you liked it, didn’t