The Third Miss St Quentin

“Perhaps not,” said Madelene. “Still, she is not like her mother – she has not that transparent look.” She did not say more, reserving to herself her private opinion that Ella was and always had been, her slight make notwithstanding, a most sturdy little person, for which indeed there was every precedent, as young Mrs St Quentin had been the only delicate member of her own family. “It may perhaps soften papa to think her not strong,” she said to herself.

“Like her mother,” repeated Colonel St Quentin, “no, indeed. Ellen was the simplest, most gentle creature. I don’t suppose she ever gave two thoughts to herself in any way – appearance or anything else. Yet – oh Madelene, I do wish I had not married again!” he burst out with a sigh.

“Papa?” said Madelene, and her tone sounded almost as if she were a little shocked. “I can’t quite understand how you can say so, or feel so, dear papa,” she went on, more softly. “When you say yourself, how perfectly sweet and gentle Ellen was – and not only sweet, sturdily true, and high-principled, even for our sakes, Ermie’s and mine, you should be glad we had such an influence as hers for the six or seven years she lived. I often think we don’t know how much we owe her.”

“Yes,” said her father, “that is true, and I thank you for reminding me of it. If her own child had had the same advantage all might have been well. It has all gone wrong; the having to part with her for so long – and then my losses. Of course but for that I would probably have had her home sooner, but I could not bear you girls to have all the expenses of her education, and the running about with her to mild climates if the winter happened to be severe, as well as your poor old father on your hands!”

“Papa – I did not know you had thought of it that way,” said Madelene, rather sadly. “It makes me feel as if we really have something to make up for to poor little Ella.”

“No – don’t begin fancying that,” he said quietly. “There were other reasons, too – my health for a time; and then Phillis was able and willing. I wish I hadn’t said it. For of all things I dread your spoiling Ella. And don’t sacrifice yourselves to her for my sake in any way, I entreat you, my dear child.”

He looked up anxiously.

Madelene smiled as she replied, though in her heart she sighed. Colonel St Quentin was not a selfish man, in intention even less so than in deed. And the sacrifice, a sacrifice of some years’ duration already, which his eldest daughter had made to him, he suspected as little as she desired that he should.

“You needn’t be afraid, papa,” she said. “For her own sake it would be wrong to spoil her.”

“But there’s spoiling and spoiling,” he went on. “In her place now, she should go on studying for some time. You know, Madelene, she should be prepared for contingencies. She may have to work for her living; there is no saying.”

“Only in case of both Ermine and me dying,” said Madelene calmly. “And that, to say the least, is not probable. Besides – we might easily increase our life insurance, papa?”

“No, no, nothing of the kind,” said Colonel St Quentin excitedly. “I won’t have you crippling your income any more – do you hear, Madelene? If such an awful catastrophe happened as your both dying before me – well, surely it would kill me?” he said. “Though such things don’t kill! But there would be enough for me, as much as I have deserved, after mismanaging my own money.”

“It wasn’t your fault, papa. Everybody says so,” his daughter replied. “I do wish you wouldn’t speak of it that way.”

“But besides that,” Colonel St Quentin went on, “there are other and less terrible possibilities. If you married, Madelene, you and Ermine, and of course that may happen any day, though I know you are both of you rather, what the French call difficile– your husbands might not, naturally enough – care about being saddled with a little half-sister-in-law, even if he consented to the pensioning off of the old man himself.”

“Papa,” said Madelene again, but this time her tone was really stern, “you pain me indescribably, really indescribably, by speaking so. Anything reasonable —anything, really for Ella’s good, you may depend on our carrying out. But you cannot expect us to sympathise with you when you become, I must say, really morbid on this subject.”

Colonel St Quentin was silent for a moment or two. He sat, shading his face with his hand, so that Madelene could not judge as to his expression.

“There is another view of the case, too,” said Madelene. “Ella is very attractive. Why should she not marry? Surely there are some few men in the world who don’t look out for heiresses.”

“Perhaps,” said her father. “Well yes, I suppose we may allow that is a possibility. Still – that brings in complications too – there must be no sailing under false colours, and it would be so natural for her to be credited with her share of your fortunes by strangers. No, Madelene, till she is old enough to understand the whole – and I agree with you that till she has come really to know you and Ermine, it may be best to avoid explanations – I think the less society she sees the better. And one outlay I will not object to for her – let her have a few thoroughly good lessons, the best you can get; it will give her occupation, and at the same time fit her to be independent – should the worst come to the worst so to speak?”

“Very well,” said Madelene. “I agree with you, that it will be good for her to have occupation – ”

“And make her useful – practically useful, so far as you possibly can,” interrupted her father again.

“Very well,” she said again. “But, papa dear, as far as ‘the worst’s coming’ in any sense except that Ermie and I might die – is to be taken into account, do dismiss it for ever. We couldn’t marry men who would look at things in the way you put it. You wouldn’t wish us to marry selfish brutes, papa?”

And Colonel St Quentin was forced to smile.

Then Madelene and he joined the two others in the drawing-room.

“Can we not have a little music?” said Colonel St Quentin, a minute or two latter. “Ella, my dear, you play I suppose – or do you sing?”

His tone was kindlier again. Madelene’s spirits rose. She thought her talk with her father had done good. She went towards the piano and opened it, glancing smilingly at her young sister.

Ella was seated on a low chair in a corner of the room – the light of a lamp fell on her face and bright hair. It struck Madelene that she looked paler than on her first arrival.

“Will you play something, Ella?” she said, “or are you perhaps too tired?”

“I am not the least tired, thank you,” the girl replied, “but I hate playing. I never practise, on that account.”

“Upon my word,” muttered Colonel St Quentin.

“Do you sing then?” Ermine interposed, quickly. Ella hesitated.

“Your mother – mamma,” said Madelene, using purposely the old name for her stepmother, “mamma sang beautifully.”

Ella turned towards her.

“Do you mean my own mother?” she asked coldly.

“Of course,” Madelene replied. “I said so.” Colonel St Quentin moved impatiently.

“Why can you not answer Ermine’s question simply, Ella?” he said. “And why do you speak to Madelene in that tone? It is, to say the least, very questionable taste to accentuate in that way the fact that you and your sisters had not the same mother. And – if no one has told you so before, I tell you now that your mother, my second wife, loved my two elder daughters as if they had been her own, and her best wish for you was that you might resemble them. Where you have got these vulgar notions about half-sisters and so on – I see you are full of them – I can’t conceive. Is it from your Aunt Phillis?”

“No-o,” Ella replied, a little startled apparently by her father’s vehemence. “I did not intend to say anything to annoy you,” she added.

“But about the singing?” Ermine said again.

“Yes,” said Ella, “I do sing a little. I like it better than playing. I will try to sing if you – if papa wishes it.”

Her tone was humble – almost too much so. There was a kind of obtrusive dutifulness about it that was rather irritating. Still Madelene gave her credit for having put some force on herself to keep down her temper.

“Shall I play a little in the first place?” Miss St Quentin said, seating herself at the piano as she spoke.

Madelene played beautifully, though her style was very quiet. Ella rose gently from her seat and came nearer her; she stood silent and motionless till the last soft notes had died away.

“That is lovely, most lovely,” she said, her whole face and manner changing. “I should love the piano if I could play like that.”

“You must love music, I suspect,” Madelene replied. “Perhaps it is the actual mechanical part of playing that has discouraged you.”

“I have bad hands for it,” said Ella, looking at her very little fingers, as she spoke.

“You have peculiarly small ones,” said her sister; “that is like mamma. Still she managed to play very charmingly. Now what will you sing? I dare say we have some of your songs.”

Ella opened a book of songs and ran through its contents.

“Yes,” she said, “there are one or two of mine here. Perhaps,” she added more timidly, “they are some that mamma sang, as Aunt Phillis chose them. I will try this if you like,” and she pointed to what had been in fact one of Mrs St Quentin’s special favourites.

It was a simple enough song, calling for no great execution, still, though the observation may sound absurd, it was a song depending for its beauty on the voice of the singer. And Ella’s young voice suited it perfectly. There was complete silence till she ended. Then a slight sigh from her father made her glance at him.

“I remember that well,” he said. “It is very sweet, very sweet. Thank you, my dear.”

“You have been very well taught it seems to me, Ella,” said Madelene, “and you have a charming voice. It is a pleasure to accompany you. Still it would be well for you to accompany yourself sometimes – you must keep up your playing too.”

“She must have lessons in both,” said Colonel St Quentin decidedly.

Ella pouted.

“I hate playing,” she repeated.

“Don’t be childish,” said her father sharply. “The question is not of your likes or dislikes. It is of what your capacities are. It seems to me you have taste for music and it is only common-sense in your – for everybody to cultivate their best powers.”

“I like singing,” Ella said. “But I don’t see that I need be forced to play if I don’t want to go on with it. It isn’t as if I were going to be a governess.”

“You would probably get to like it better after a while,” said Ermine. “No one could have had more difficulty with the mechanical part of it than I, for though my hands are not small, my fingers are what is called ‘tight.’ But I am so glad now that I didn’t give it up, for though I can’t play like Maddie, I can join her in duets.”

“Much more than that,” said Madelene. “But, Ella, I am sure you are tired. Don’t you think you had better go to bed? It is nearly ten. I feel rather tired myself, somehow.”

Ella rose, with again her air of obtrusive submissiveness. The truth was she was desperately tired – and longing to go to bed, but she would have thought it beneath her dignity to allow it.

“I am not at all sleepy, thank you,” she said, “but of course I am quite ready to go.”

And she turned to bid her father good-night, with a little formal manner that would have been amusing had it not, under the circumstances, been very irritating.

“Good-night, papa. Come, Ermine, you are not to sit up any longer either. We are all rather tired,” said Madelene with a little intentional peremptoriness which Ermine understood, though Ella glanced at her with surprise.

“I wouldn’t be ordered about like that, at her age,” thought the youngest sister.

Colonel St Quentin kissed his elder daughters in silence, but just as Madelene, who was the last to leave the room, got to the door, she heard him sigh, and despite her resolution of not talking things over any more that night, she could not resist turning back for a moment.

“What is it, papa?” she said gently.

“Oh, nothing much, my dear,” he replied. “I am only afraid we are going to have trouble with that child. I don’t understand her. You and Ermine never were like that – yet she is lovable too if she would allow herself to be so.”

“Yes – I think so too, but, papa, don’t think so much about her. She will fall into her place.”

“She should never have been out of it. It is that I am blaming myself for,” he replied.

Madelene hurried up stairs after her sisters. They were just at the door of Ella’s room – “the nursery” – when she overtook them. Ermine opened it – the candles were already lighted and Stevens was arranging some of Ella’s belongings. It looked a pleasant and cosy room now, even the slightly faded air of the furniture rather added to its comfort. No one, save a most perversely prejudiced person could have found any reason to complain of such quarters. But a very perversely prejudiced person Ella was, it is to be feared, fast becoming.

She sat down in the capacious, old-fashioned armchair, covered with the same faded chintz as that of the window-curtains, and looked about her.

“Well,” she ejaculated, “I wonder what Aunt Phillis would say, if she saw me here. Here in the old nursery! After eleven years’ exile from my rightful home, this is the best they can give me.”

Her glance fell on the toilet-glass – it was a large, handsome one, which Madelene had directed the housemaids to put in place of the smaller one really belonging to the room. The candles were lighted, two on the mantelpiece not far from where Ella was sitting, and two on the dressing-table, and the girl’s face and surroundings were clearly reflected. She had loosened her hair and put on a little white jacket – and as she caught sight of herself, her face in the glass, looking even paler than in reality, her eyes sad and wistful, she wondered what her own reflection reminded her of. Suddenly she started —

“I know,” she thought, “I know what it is. I look exactly like that picture of Cinderella in the musée at Nantes that aunt and I went to see last year. I didn’t think I could ever look so pretty,” and she smiled with a little inward satisfaction. But the smile faded, and a look of perplexity replaced it. The sight of the old room, once so familiar, though since so entirely forgotten, was beginning to vaguely awaken memories of her past childhood. And the association of the pretty French picture helped to bring one special scene to her recollection.

“Yes,” she said to herself, “I do remember – Harvey was sitting on this very chair, I do believe, with me on her knee, and there were picture books strewed about. And she told me the story of Cinderella, that was it, and there is a confused remembrance in my mind of thinking I was like her, the third sister, though at that time, of course, I knew nothing of half-sisters or stepmothers. Still, after all, I haven’t a stepmother – Madelene and Ermine had that, but they don’t seem to have suffered from it. I suppose my mother was a gentle, angelic sort of – goose – ” Here Ella, to do her justice, felt a little shocked at herself. “I shouldn’t say that exactly. But she must have given in to them in everything – about sending me away after her death no doubt, for she couldn’t have wished me to be expatriated Poor mamma. It would have been better for me, no doubt, if I had had more of her nature, but as I haven’t – ”

Then she sighed and glanced round the room again, while her mind reverted to her sisters’ spacious quarters.

“It is very queer,” she thought, “that I should have remembered about Harvey and the picture to-night. It was like a sort of vision of my life and position – only – I fear there is no chance of the prince ever finding his way to me. Madelene and Ermine wouldn’t let him! I wonder why they are not married themselves, for they are very good-looking. But Madelene’s manner is so forbidding, and most likely she wouldn’t allow Ermine to marry before her. Ermine is quite under her thumb. Ah, well – it is rather melancholy to feel so lonely in my own home. I wish I could have found poor old Harvey here again.”

For Ella cherished roseate remembrances of her former nurse, whom, in point of fact, she could only recollect as a name. Harvey had left Mrs Robertson’s service, happily for the child she had the care of, very few months after Ella went to live with her aunt.

Miss St Quentin and Ermine, the former’s protestations of fatigue notwithstanding, had not been able to resist a few minutes’ confidential talk.

“You are not to stay, Ermie, you really mustn’t,” said Madelene. “I am tired – it is not nonsense, and I want to be as bright and fresh as possible to-morrow morning, for I foresee papa is going to be rather – worried – about Ella. And it is so bad for him.”

“It will be very stupid of him if he really takes it that way,” said Ermine. “He will say, of course, that it is for our sakes, whereas the only part of it we really – or, at least, principally – mind is his feeling it painfully. And after all, it’s wrong, really wrong to make a trouble out of it – of having our own sister to live with us, where she should always have been.”

“That’s the whole trouble in the matter,” said Madelene. “If she had always been here it would have been all right and natural.”

“She’s very pretty,” said Ermine, after a moment or two’s silence, “and she has evidently a good deal of character.”

“Witness her running away from her aunt’s,” interrupted Madelene.

“Well, after all, I confess to some sympathy with her there,” Ermine went on. “But I am afraid she has a very fiery temper, Maddie.”

“Fiery, perhaps, but I hope not sulky or ungenerous,” said Madelene. “The difficulty will be to carry out papa’s wishes without rousing her ill-will. He is so determined that we are not to spoil her, and, in some ways, no doubt, she is spoilt already, and it will make it much more difficult to – at all put her back, as it were. I quite agree with papa about giving her plenty of occupation; she has lots of energy and I fancy she is clever.”

“She sings so sweetly,” said Ermine musingly; “indeed, she is charming in many ways, or might be, if she would. I could love her very much if she would be nice and sensible. But there is truth in papa’s view of it – it is an awkward position. Madelene,” she exclaimed suddenly, “an idea has just struck me. Why shouldn’t Ella marry Philip?”

“That child!” Madelene replied. “My dear Ermie – ”

“She won’t always be a child – indeed, she is not one now. Lots of girls marry at eighteen – we ourselves haven’t married young, but that is no rule for Ella.”

“No – I didn’t mean that,” said Madelene. “I don’t quite know what I meant. The person that Philip should marry has always seemed a sort of myth, and to turn her into little Ella, somehow – ”

“Struck you all of a heap,” said Ermine laughing. “You are not given to inspirations like me, Maddie. I have great faith in my inspirations. Think this one over, now. Why shouldn’t it do? It would perfectly delight papa, it would put her in a position such as neither you nor I expect for ourselves – and we would not be jealous, would we? I should love to think mamma’s child was safe and happy – and – ”

“But the wealth and the position would not make her either safe or happy,” began Madelene —

“Of course not,” Ermine interrupted with some impatience. “It is Philip himself I am thinking the most of, you might know. Where could she have a better husband?”

“Yes,” said Madelene, though doubtfully still, “I know Philip is as good and reliable as he can be. But – he is lazy, Ermie, and laissez aller in some ways. I have always hoped he would marry some one who would have great influence on him and bring out the best of him – some woman of real character and energy.”

“Philip wouldn’t marry that kind of person,” said Ermine, smiling. “I can see her in my mind’s eye – a sort of Gertrude Winchester, only better-looking, I hope.”

“I was thinking of no one in particular,” said Madelene in a slightly aggrieved tone.

“Or if he did,” Ermine went on, “it would be the worst possible thing for him. He would leave everything to her and let her manage his affairs, and he would grow lazier than ever.”

“Aunt Anna manages his affairs as it is,” said Madelene.

“But in quite a different way. She keeps him as well as them up to the mark, and she is always anxious to put more and more into his hands. And I think a young wife would rouse him and make him feel his responsibilities better than anything. And I am sure Ella is clever, and energetic – her energy we have already seen some proof of. Oh, I do wish they would fall in love with each other!”

“Yes,” said Madelene, “it’s just as well you have remembered to put that unimportant detail in at the end. I thought you were leaving it out altogether.”

“Maddie, you’re rather cross, and you’re not fair on me. You know I am only too romantic in my ideas I think it is frightful for people to marry if they don’t care for each other. And Philip I am sure would not do such a thing, and I don’t think little Ella would.”

Madelene sat thinking.

“It might be very nice,” she said at last. “I think perhaps you’re right about Philip’s character – only – Ermie, I’m afraid Ella has really a bad temper,” and she looked up anxiously.

“Not bad, quick and hot perhaps, but that’s different, and she is in many ways very young still.”

“Well – ” said Madelene, getting up as she spoke “we must go to bed, Ermie. And – I certainly don’t want anything of the kind just yet; papa would be horrified. We must do as he wishes, and try to make Ella please him. I shall have to see about masters for her. I wonder if Viénot still comes over to Weevilscoombe? – Philip certainly can scarcely help admiring Ella.”