Court Royal/Chapter XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII.
LADY GRACE.
The words of commendation spoken by the Marquess were sufficient to make Mrs. Probus think of Joanna with more favour than before. She had recovered from her panic, Joanna had cleverly taken all the blame on herself, so the old woman’s face was wreathed with smiles, and she professed her readiness to show the girl whatever she desired. The Marquess had pronounced on her abilities—a word of commendation from him was enough for Mrs. Probus.
‘I daresay, my dear,’ said she, confidentially, ‘that Mr. Blomfield, the butler, will let you see the plate.’
‘I am a judge of plate,’ said Joanna, gravely. ‘I know the hall marks on silver as I do those on china.’
‘You do? Lord bless me!’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘Well, what is education coming to? That shows his lordship was right. He said you had brains.’
‘Did he? Then he can judge people as I judge china. I should very much like to see the plate.’
Mr. Blomfield did not require much pressing; he was proud to show the splendour of the house in his department. He allowed Joanna to enter the plate room, and he opened for her the iron doors of the cupboards in the wall, and exhibited the shelves, lined with green cloth, on which shone centre-pieces, goblets, urns, tea and coffee pots, spoons and forks, salvers large and small, candlesticks and candelabra. All were in perfect order, shining brilliantly.
‘This,’ said Mr. Blomfield, opening another case, ‘contains very old family plate. It is only brought out on the grandest state occasions. Here is a silver gilt ewer, magnificently chased, said to be three hundred years old; the present Duke was baptized out of it, but I believe it was a punchbowl formerly. Much of this is admired, but I cannot say I like it. The forks have but two prongs, and the spoons are rat-tailed. There is no accounting for the taste that can admire such things as these.’
‘I suppose, sir, you have an inventory of all the plate,’ said Joanna timidly, raising her large dark eyes to those of the butler.
‘Of course, miss, I have; and I go over it with the steward on occasions. Very proper it should be so, though a mere matter of form. You will not find many mansions where there is such choice of plate. There is a great salver which was presented to Field-Marshal John, Duke of Kingsbridge, when he was Lord Saltcombe, in King George’s reign, by the mayor and citizens of Ghent. I’ve heard,’ continued the butler, ‘that in some of your parvenu families there is a lot of plate, a great and vulgar display—but the quality is not there. All this is old and fine, and in good style. The new plate looks to-dayish; there is not the character about it that our ancestral store possesses.’
‘Do you know, sir, what you have got in each cupboard?’
‘Of course I do, miss. Do you not see that a list of the contents of each is pasted against the iron door, inside? And with the list is the weight in silver and gold.’
‘What is the weight of the whole amount of silver, Mr. Blomfield?’ asked the housekeeper.
‘I have never counted,’ was his reply. ‘It is easily done; sum the totals affixed to each list on the doors.’
‘I should dearly like to know,’ said Joanna. ‘Where I was before I came here there was a good deal of plate; but nothing like this, oh, nothing!’
‘I suppose not,’ said Mr. Blomfield with dignity. ‘No one with a title, I suppose?’
‘Oh dear no. What about now, do you think, sir, is the weight?’
‘I will take the numbers down and add them up,’ said Mrs. Probus good-naturedly.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Joanna; ‘you have a very beautiful bread-basket there. Might I look at it more closely, and see the hall mark?’
‘Certainly.’ He handed the basket to her. Joanna looked at the handle. ‘It belongs to the reign of William and Mary. The year I cannot say without a book.’
‘Dear, now! To think you have found that out! I have had to do with plate all my life, and know nothing more of the marks than to look for the lion and the head.’
‘Here is the sum of the weight of plate,’ said Mrs. Probus.
‘The silver in this column, the gold in that.’
‘All that?’ exclaimed Joanna. ‘Why, the silver at six-and-six an ounce, without allowing anything for workmanship, is—five thousand ounces—sixteen hundred and twenty-five pounds; but it would sell at a pound an ounce. Five thousand pounds’ worth of plate at the lowest.’
‘You can calculate pretty quickly,’ laughed the butler.
‘The Marquess said she had brains,’ said Mrs. Probus aside to Mr. Blomfield; ‘he was quite taken with her cleverness.’ Then to Joanna, ‘Now I will show you over the conservatories. You may keep the sum of the plate if you like.’
‘Thank you,’ answered Joanna. ‘I shall like it very much.’
Joanna was one of those children of this century, and of town civilisation, in whom shrewdness and simplicity, precocity and childishness, are strangely mixed together. When in the house among the furniture, china, and plate, she was reserved, observant, calculating, storing her observations in her retentive memory, prizing everything she saw; but when she entered the greenhouses, that calculating spirit left her, and she was an unspoiled girl, overflowing with fresh delight, full of exuberant spirits. In the house, amidst the artistic valuables, she was in a world with which she was acquainted; in the conservatories she had passed to another and unfamiliar sphere. She had been reared in the midst of manufactured goods, apart from nature; now she was introduced to nature’s best creations. Mrs. Probus was amused at the girl’s expressions of rapture at the beauty of what she saw. Grapes she saw for the first time hanging from the vines, and oranges shining among the glossy leaves of the trees, side by side with silvery flowers. The dwarf apricots and nectarines were still burdened with fruit.
When she saw the flowers her excitement was unbounded. She laughed and cried at once. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled, hands and feet were in incessant agitation. The primulas, the cyclamen, were in full, delicate bloom. The wax-like camellias, white and crimson, were in flower; chrysanthemums, screened from frost, were in tufts of every colour. The air was scented with white Roman hyacinths.
‘Oh!’ cried Joanna, with hands uplifted, ‘I would that the Barbican and all the world would sink into the ocean, and leave me alone here, to be happy with the flowers, for ever.’
At that moment the door from the next, the orchid house, opened, and Lady Grace Eveleigh appeared, dressed in silvery grey, with a quiet, close bonnet on her head. She looked at the excited girl with a sweet, confidence-inspiring smile, and came forward.
‘Dear alive, my lady!’ exclaimed Mrs. Probus, ‘I am a most unfortunate body to-day. I took the liberty of taking this young woman through the conservatories, without a thought that your ladyship was here. I have been unfortunate, indeed, this afternoon.’
‘Not at all, not at all, Probus,’ said Lady Grace, ‘I am always delighted that others should enjoy our pretty flowers. You like flowers,’ she added, turning to Joanna, her voice soft as the cooing of a dove.
‘I love them,’ said the girl, clasping her hands together.
‘What were you saying as I came in?’ asked Lady Grace.
Joanna answered, half laughing, half crying, ‘I said that I wished the world would sink under the sea and leave me alone with the flowers.’
‘That was rather a selfish wish,’ said Lady Grace. ‘Do you not care that others should share your pleasure?’
‘No, not at all,’ answered Joanna, bluntly.
‘Excuse her, my lady,’ put in Mrs. Probus, with a frightened look, ‘she doesn’t mean really to differ from your ladyship: she doesn’t understand what she says.’
‘I do! hold your tongue,’ said Joanna, turning sharply on the housekeeper.
‘Do not trouble yourself, dear Probus. Whoever loves flowers has a kindred feeling with me. I love them with all my heart.’ She looked at Joanna, who stood undecided what to say or do. Then, turning to Mrs. Probus, she said, ‘Will you do me a favour, and yield your place to me, nurse? Let me take her round the houses. You do not know the pleasure it gives me to show the flowers to one who can feel towards them like myself.’
‘Very well, my lady,’ said the old woman, ‘but you must not take it amiss—if this young person——’
‘I shall take it greatly amiss,’ interrupted the lady, ‘if she does not admire what I admire. I can see in her bright eyes that she is happy with my pets. Leave us alone together; we shall perfectly understand each other. We flower fanciers have a language of our own, understandable among ourselves, sealed to outsiders.’
When Mrs. Probus was gone, Lady Grace, looking kindly into the girl’s excited face, asked, ‘Will you tell me what is your name?’
‘Joanna.’
‘Joanna!’ repeated Lady Grace. ‘That name is uncommon. It is pretty, very pretty, and quaint. I like it.’
The girl flushed with pleasure and pride.
‘I am glad you like it,’ she said; ‘I never thought a button about my name before. Now I shall like it.’
‘I hope you like Probus,’ said the lady. ‘She was my nurse long, long ago. She used to scold me a little and caress me a great deal.’
‘Please, my lady,’ Joanna spoke timidly, ‘may I go very, very slowly along, because all this is so new and so beautiful that I cannot bear to miss anything. Mrs. Probus walked so fast, and was afraid of staying long anywhere.’
‘I will go as slow as you like, and stop as long as suits you beside any flower. That is a yellow primula; look, under the leaves is white flour, it comes off on your finger, and that gives the plant its Latin name. It has a sweet scent. Whence do you come from, Joanna?’
The girl pointed downwards.
The questioner looked at her with surprise, not understanding the significance of the indication.
‘Out of the depths. Picked out of the mud—true as my word unvarnished,’ explained Joanna.
‘So is it with the water-lily,’ said Lady Grace, ‘one of the purest and most glorious of flowers. Its roots are in the basest slime, its flowers in the sunshine without soil. I am sure, Joanna, you will grow up as the water-lily.’
The girl shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. I am not a flower, but a grub.’
‘And the grub becomes a butterfly, that soars far above the garbage on which it crawled and fed.’
‘I can never be a butterfly.’
‘You can rise.’
‘I am rising,’ said Joanna, firmly; ‘I intend to rise. But you think your way and I think mine. You rise your way, which I cannot understand or copy, and I rise mine as I may, in whatever direction chance gives me an opening.’
Lady Grace looked into the girl’s face and tried to decipher its language. She saw that the mind was full of intelligence, precociously developed. She saw that ideas were working which Joanna was powerless to express. The girl misunderstood the intent look of the lady, and said, ‘I have made you angry. Everyone here is taught to agree with you. I say what I think. Whether it jumps or jars with the opinions of others matters little to me.’
‘I like you to speak out of your heart freshly what you think.’
‘Then,’ said Joanna, eagerly, ‘I think there is not a flower in all this place so sweet and so beautiful as you, lady.’
‘You must not say that.’ Lady Grace coloured.
‘Why not? It is true.’
‘No, it is not true.’
‘I think it.’
‘Never mind. Do not speak such things. I do not like them, and they will make me distrust you.’
Both were silent for a few minutes, and then Joanna said, ‘How very, very happy you must be here, my lady.’
‘Yes,’ answered the lady, in her soft, sweet voice, in which was a tone of sadness, ‘I am happy.’
Joanna noticed the omission.
‘Why do you not say very happy?’
‘I am indeed happy and thankful.’
Joanna now looked at her as intently as Lady Grace had previously observed her. The expression on Joanna’s face was one of perplexity. At last she said, ‘I don’t understand, and I can’t understand.’
‘What, Joanna?’
‘My lady, you do not and you cannot understand me, and I do not, and try as I may I cannot, understand you. We belong to different worlds.’
‘And are forgetting the bond between us—the flowers.’
Presently Lady Grace pointed to an arcade, where, against the wall, oranges, limes, and citrons were growing.
‘Do you notice these trees?’ she said; ‘they are very ancient, one or two of them are as much as two hundred years old.’
‘What a pity!’ answered Joanna; ‘they must be worn out. You should stub them out and plant new, improved sorts.’
Lady Grace went into the vinery, and brought thence a large bunch of green Muscatel grapes on a leaf. She presented it, smiling, to Joanna.
‘It is a pleasure,’ she said, ‘to have grapes for the sick and those who have no vineries of their own. They do enjoy them so greatly.’
‘Do you give grapes away?’
‘Yes, of course we do.’
‘But you might sell them and make a lot of money—enough to pay the gardener’s wage.’
Lady Grace coloured and laughed. ‘We couldn’t possibly do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘For one reason, because then we should have no grapes to give away.’
‘But you are not obliged to give them away?’
‘To the sick, of course we are.’
‘Why of course?’
‘Why, because they are sick.’
‘They should buy grapes for themselves if they require them.’
‘They are poor, and cannot do so.’
‘Then let them do without. You are not bound to them, nor they to you.’
Lady Grace, with a little sadness on her brow, but a smile on her lips, said, observing her, ‘It is a pleasure to give them what they cannot get themselves. There, it is a greater pleasure to me to watch you enjoying that bunch of Muscatel than if I were eating it myself.’
Joanna shook her head. ‘We belong to different worlds,’ she said. ‘If these greenhouses were mine I would keep everyone out but myself, and I would spend my life in them, looking at the flowers and eating the grapes.’
‘You would not spare me a bunch?’
‘I would give you everything,’ said Joanna, vehemently.
‘Why?’
‘Because I love you, and would want to make you love me.’
‘You ought to love the sick, the suffering, and the needy, and be ready to relieve them.’
‘They are nothing to me. They can do nothing for me.’
‘We are all one family, tied together by common blood, bound by mutual duties, members of one body; and the hand cannot say to the foot, “I have no need of you,” nor the head to the hand, “I have no need of you.”’
‘We are individuals,’ answered Joanna. ‘To look out for self is the law of life and of progress. I have heard Laz—I mean my late master—say that this it is which makes the United States so great and prosperous, that every man lives as an unit, cares nothing for his fellows, and beats his way through and over all who stand in his path. This it is which makes the old order fail, that every man under it was entangled in responsibilities to every man around him, above, below, and on his level, and was not free. The old order must give way to the new. That is what my master said.’
‘I do not like your theory, Joanna. It grates with my notions of right and wrong.’
‘I daresay not, my lady. You have been reared under the old principle of social life, I under the new. Each man for himself, my master said, is the motto of the coming age, and those who are hampered with the old doctrines of mutual responsibilities must go down.’
‘You are a very extraordinary girl.’
‘No, my lady, I am not. I am merely the child of the period, a representative of the coming age; there are thousands and tens of thousands like me, trained in the same school. To us belongs the future.’
Lady Grace Eveleigh sighed, and put her hand to her brow, unconsciously. ‘I have no doubt you are right,’ she said; ‘I feel rather than see that it is so. Yes—perhaps it is well. I do not know. I suppose I am prejudiced. I like the old order best.’
Joanna was frightened. She had spoken too boldly; not insolently, but confidently. She feared she had hurt her guide. When Lady Grace put her hand to her brow, it was as though she had received a blow. Joanna touched her.
‘Was I rude? Have I pained you? I am very, very sorry. I would die rather than hurt you.’ She caught Lady Grace’s hand and kissed it.
‘No, not a bit,’ answered the lady. ‘It does one good to know the truth. Sooner or later it must be brought home to us, and rather from your lips than from a ruder tongue. We go on in a dream, with the poor always about and with us, and will wake up with surprise to find them above us. I hear my father and uncles forecasting the future, with dismal faces; I did not expect to hear the same forecast animating the rising power. Do not let us talk of that longer. Let us consider the flowers. By the way, I suppose you will be at our Christmas tenants’ ball. We give one in the winter to the farmers and their families, and to the servants and their friends. Of course you will be there.’
‘Oh what a pity, what a pity, what a pity!’
Lady Grace was unable to refrain a laugh at the girl’s exclamations and droll consternation.
‘What is such a pity?’ she asked.
‘I was to have learned to dance, but my coming here interfered with my lessons, so I can only look on and not be able to take a part.’
‘You shall have some lessons,’ said Lady Grace Eveleigh, with a sweet, kind smile. ‘I will see to that. Miss Worthivale will arrange what times will suit best, and you shall be taught by me, in my own room. Miss Worthivale is so good and sweet that she will help me.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ exclaimed Joanna; ‘that is prime!’
‘There is one thing more,’ said the lady; ‘as you are fond of flowers, I suppose you must have something like a garden at home.’
‘I have five pots—one cracked, and an old teapot without a spout.’
‘What grow in them?’
‘Fuchsias, Guernsey lilies, geranium, and wild heath.’
‘Will you accept this from me? It is nothing to look at now; only a crowd of little horns poking out of the earth; but they will expand in time into lilies of the valley, full of beauty and fragrance. Keep them as a remembrance of me.’
‘I will never, never part with them,’ said Joanna. ‘This is the second present I have had to-day. Look here! Your brother gave me this.’ She showed the porcelain cup and saucer.
‘Lord Saltcombe gave you that! What—have you been talking to and astonishing him?’
‘Yes,’ said the girl, ‘I did astonish him a bit. He gave me this; but I like your flowers best.’
‘I must leave you now; I saw my father return in the carriage.’ Lady Grace hesitated a moment, looked questioningly at Joanna, and then touched her, drew her to her, and pressed a light kiss on her brow. ‘We are travellers over one pass. Some ascend as others go down; as they meet and pass, they salute,’ she said, and slipped away.