Mrs Underhill was a devoted parent, but she had very little experience of illness, and could scarcely have been thought an ideal sickroom attendant. Like many fat and naturally placid persons, she became flustered in emergency; and as her sensibility was far greater than her understanding the sight of her daughter’s anguish upset her so much that she began to cry almost as much as Charlotte. An attempt to cradle Charlotte in her arms had been fiercely repulsed; her fond soothings had had no other effect than to make Charlotte hysterical; but thankful though she was to see Miss Trent come into the room she was quite indignant with her for showing so little sympathy, and for speaking to Charlotte so sternly.
“However, she did it for the best, and I’m bound to say she made Charlotte sit down in a chair, telling her that to be rampaging about the room, like she was doing, only served to make the pain worse. So then Nurse set a hot brick under her feet, and we wrapped a shawl round her, and Miss Trent told me she thought it was an abscess, and not a bit of use to put laudanum on her poor tooth, but better, if I would permit it, to give her some drops to swallow in a glass of water, so as to make her drowsy. Which it did, after a while, but such a work as it was to get Charlotte to open her lips, or even take the glass in her hand, you wouldn’t believe!”
“Poor child!” said Sir Waldo. “I expect she was half mad with pain.”
“Yes,—and all through her own fault! Well, I hope I’m not unfeeling, but when she owned to Miss Trent that she had had the toothache for close on a sennight, and getting worse all the time, and never a word to a soul, because she was scared to have it drawn,—well, I was so vexed, Sir Waldo, after all that riot and rumpus, that I said to her: ‘Let it be a lesson to you, Charlotte!’ I said.”
“I should think it would be, ma’am. I own I have every sympathy with those who dread having teeth drawn!”
“Yes,” agreed Mrs Underhill, shuddering. “But when it comes to letting things get to such a pass as last night, and still crying, and saying she wouldn’t go to Mr Dishforth, no matter what, it’s downright silly! Well, I don’t mind saying that it put me in a regular quake only to think of taking her to him, for I can’t but cry myself when I see her in such misery, and a nice thing that would have been—the pair of us behaving like watering-pots, and poor Mr Dishforth not knowing what to do, I daresay! Not but what I would have gone with her, only that Miss Trent wouldn’t have it, nor Courtenay neither. Miss Trent took her off first thing, and Courtenay went along with them, like the good brother he is. And just as well he did, for they were obliged to hold her down, such a state as she was in, and how Miss Trent would have managed without him I’m sure I don’t know. So then they brought her home, and Courtenay’s ridden off to fetch Dr Wibsey to her, for she’s quite knocked up, and no wonder!”
Decidedly it was not the moment for a declaration. Expressing an entirely sincere hope that Charlotte would soon be herself again, Sir Waldo took his leave.
He was not to see Miss Trent again for five days. Charlotte, instead of making the swift recovery to be expected of such a bouncing girl, returned from Harrogate only to take to her bed. Her feverish condition was ascribed by Dr Wibsey to the poison that had leaked into her system; but Mrs Underhill told Sir Waldo with simple pride that Charlotte was just like she was herself.
“It’s seldom I get a screw loose,” she said, “for, in general, you know, I go on in a capital way. But if there’s the least little thing amiss, such as a colicky disorder, it throws me into such queer stirrups that many’s the time when my late husband thought to see me laid by the wall for no more than an epidemic cold!”
Sir Waldo called every day at Staples to enquire after Charlotte, but not until the fifth day was he rewarded by the sight of Miss Trent, and even then it was under inauspicious circumstances. The invalid was taking the air on the terrace, seated in a comfortable chair carried out for her accommodation, with her mother on one side; and her governess, holding up a parasol to protect her from the sun, on the other; and with Mrs Mickleby and her two eldest daughters grouped round her. When Sir Waldo was ushered on to the terrace by Totton Mrs Mickleby had already learnt from her hostess that he had been a regular visitor to Staples. She drew her own conclusions, rejecting without hesitation the ostensible reason of his daily visits.
“So kind as he’s been you’d hardly credit!” Mrs Underhill told her, not without complacency. “Never a day passes but what he comes to enquire how Charlotte goes on, and it’s seldom that he don’t bring with him a book, or some trifle to amuse her, isn’t it, love? Well, Charlotte hasn’t any more of a fancy for reading than what I have, but she likes Miss Trent to read aloud to her, which she does beautifully, and as good as a play. Well, as I said to Sir Waldo only yesterday, it isn’t only Charlotte that’s very much obliged to him, for Miss Trent reads it after dinner to us, and I’m sure I couldn’t tell you which of us enjoys it the most, me, or Charlotte, or Tiffany. Well, it’s so lifelike that I couldn’t get to sleep last night for wondering whether that nasty Glossin would get poor Harry Bertram carried off by the smugglers again, or whether the old witch is going to save him—her and the tutor—which Tiffany thinks they’re bound to do, on account of its being near the end of the last volume.”
“Oh, a novel!” said Mrs Mickleby. “I must confess I am an enemy to that class of literature, but I daresay that you, Miss Trent, are partial to romances.”
“When they are as well-written as this one, ma’am, most certainly!” returned Ancilla.
“Oh, and he brought a dissected map!” Charlotte said. “I had never seen one before! It is all made of little pieces which fit into each other, to make a map of Europe!”
The Misses Mickleby had not seen one either, so Miss Trent, feeling that she had a score to pay, advised their mama, very kindly, to procure one for them. “So educational!” she said. “And quite exceptionable!”
Then Sir Waldo arrived, and although he did not single Miss Trent out for any particular attention Mrs Mickleby, who was just as quick as Mr Calver to recognize the signs of an affaire,was convinced that if she had not outstayed him he would have found an excuse to take Miss Trent to walk round the gardens, or some such thing.
“And it’s my belief, sorry though I am to think it, that she would have gone with him,” she told Mrs Banningham later. “I was watching her closely, and I assure you, ma’am, she coloured up the instant his name was announced. I never saw anyone look more conscious!”
“It doesn’t astonish me in the least,” replied Mrs Banningham. “There was always something about her which I couldn’t like. You,I know, took quite a fancy to her, but for my part I thought her affected. That excessive reserve, for instance, and her airs of gentility—!”
“Oh, as to that,” said Mrs Mickleby, a trifle loftily, “the Trents are a very good family! That is what makes it so distressing to see her showing such a want of delicacy. All those rides! Of course, she was said to be playing propriety, but I thought at the time it was very odd, very imprudent!”
“Imprudent!” said Mrs Banningham, with a snort. “Very sly, I call it! She has been on the catch for him from the outset. A fine thing it would be for her, without a penny to bless herself with! If he makes her an offer, which I don’t consider a certain thing at all. A carte blanche, possibly; marriage, no!”
“Someone should warn her that he is merely trifling. I should not wish her to be taken in, for however much I may deplore her conduct in luring him on to sit in her pocket, I do not think her fast.”
“If it isn’t fast to dance twice with him—the waltz, too!—besides going in to supper with him, and sending him to fetch her shawl, not to mention the way she looked up at him over her shoulder when he put it round her, which quite put meto the blush—!”