Miss Crawley at HomeAbout this time there drove up to an exceedingly snug and well-appointed house in Park Lane, a travelling chariot with a lozenge on the panels, a discontented female in a green veil and crimped curls on the rumble, and a large and confidential man on the box.It was the equipage of our friend Miss Crawley, returning from Hants.The carriage windows were shut; the fat spaniel, whose head and tongue ordinarily lolled out of one of them, reposed on the lap of the discontented female.When the vehicle stopped, a large round bundle of shawls was taken out of the carriage by the aid of various domestics and a young lady who accompanied the heap of cloaks.That bundle contained Miss Crawley, who was conveyed upstairs forthwith, and put into a bed and chamber warmed properly as for the reception of an invalid.Messengers went off for her physician and medical man.They came, consulted, prescribed, vanished.The young companion of Miss Crawley, at the conclusion of their interview, came in to receive their instructions, and administered those antiphlogistic medicines which the eminent men ordered.
Captain Crawley of the Life Guards rode up from Knightsbridge Barracks the next day; his black charger pawed the straw before his invalid aunt's door.He was most affectionate in his inquiries regarding that amiable relative.There seemed to be much source of apprehension.
He found Miss Crawley's maid (the discontented female) unusually sulky and despondent; he found Miss Briggs, her dame de compagnie, in tears alone in the drawing-room.She had hastened home, hearing of her beloved friend's illness.She wished to fly to her couch, that couch which she, Briggs, had so often smoothed in the hour of sickness.She was denied admission to Miss Crawley's apartment.A stranger was administering her medicines--a stranger from the country--an odious Miss...--tears choked the utterance of the dame de compagnie, and she buried her crushed affections and her poor old red nose in her pocket handkerchief.
Rawdon Crawley sent up his name by the sulky femme de chambre, and Miss Crawley's new companion, coming tripping down from the sick-room, put a little hand into his as he stepped forward eagerly to meet her, gave a glance of great scorn at the bewildered Briggs, and beckoning the young Guardsman out of the back drawing-room, led him downstairs into that now desolate dining-parlour, where so many a good dinner had been celebrated.
Here these two talked for ten minutes, discussing, no doubt, the symptoms of the old invalid above stairs; at the end of which period the parlour bell was rung briskly, and answered on that instant by Mr.Bowls, Miss Crawley's large confidential butler (who, indeed, happened to be at the keyhole during the most part of the interview);and the Captain coming out, curling his mustachios, mounted the black charger pawing among the straw, to the admiration of the little blackguard boys collected in the street.He looked in at the dining-room window, managing his horse, which curvetted and capered beautifully --for one instant the young person might be seen at the window, when her figure vanished, and, doubtless, she went upstairs again to resume the affecting duties of benevolence.
Who could this young woman be, I wonder? That evening a little dinner for two persons was laid in the dining-room--when Mrs.Firkin, the lady's maid, pushed into her mistress's apartment, and bustled about there during the vacancy occasioned by the departure of the new nurse--and the latter and Miss Briggs sat down to the neat little meal.
Briggs was so much choked by emotion that she could hardly take a morsel of meat.The young person carved a fowl with the utmost delicacy, and asked so distinctly for egg-sauce, that poor Briggs, before whom that delicious condiment was placed, started, made a great clattering with the ladle, and once more fell back in the most gushing hysterical state.
"Had you not better give Miss Briggs a glass of wine?"said the person to Mr.Bowls, the large confidential man.
He did so.Briggs seized it mechanically, gasped it down convulsively, moaned a little, and began to play with the chicken on her plate.
"I think we shall be able to help each other," said the person with great suavity: "and shall have no need of Mr.Bowls's kind services.Mr.Bowls, if you please, we will ring when we want you." He went downstairs, where, by the way, he vented the most horrid curses upon the unoffending footman, his subordinate.
"It is a pity you take on so, Miss Briggs," the young lady said, with a cool, slightly sarcastic, air.
"My dearest friend is so ill, and wo--o--on't see me," gurgled out Briggs in an agony of renewed grief.
"She's not very ill any more.Console yourself, dear Miss Briggs.She has only overeaten herself--that is all.
She is greatly better.She will soon be quite restored again.
She is weak from being cupped and from medical treatment, but she will rally immediately.Pray console yourself, and take a little more wine.""But why, why won't she see me again?" Miss Briggs bleated out."Oh, Matilda, Matilda, after three-and-twenty years' tenderness! is this the return to your poor, poor Arabella?""Don't cry too much, poor Arabella," the other said (with ever so little of a grin); "she only won't see you, because she says you don't nurse her as well as I do.
It's no pleasure to me to sit up all night.I wish you might do it instead.""Have I not tended that dear couch for years?"Arabella said, "and now--"
"Now she prefers somebody else.Well, sick people have these fancies, and must be humoured.When she's well I shall go.""Never, never," Arabella exclaimed, madly inhaling her salts-bottle.
