Miss Smith was a governess. She was not one of those beautiful young
governesses so popular in romance, who live in the families of earls or
millionaires and suffer all sorts of persecutions. Though young, Miss
Smith was not exactly beautiful, and certainly she was not persecuted.
On the contrary, the Pattersons were kind to her and thought very highly
of her.
She was a brisk, sensible little thing, neat as a new pin, with crisp,
curling black hair, clear blue eyes, and a lovely, healthy color. Her
dress, her manner, her smile, were brisk and neat and sensible.
Everything about her was pleasant--except for one great black shadow at
the back of her mind, which she bravely pretended to ignore.
Sometimes, however, this lurking shadow refused to be ignored and crept
out, clouding her clear blue eyes, troubling her nice, sensible
thoughts, and making her, all in an instant, pale and downcast and
dismayed. The shadow was a fear--fear of poverty, fear of defeat and
failure, fear, above all, of romance.
Miss Smith’s charming mother and father had been a romantic couple, and
she remembered what had happened to them. They had both been too poor
and too young and too charming. They had had no business to get married,
but they had got married, and their daughter remembered--
She remembered her mother putting a piece of cardboard inside her
slipper, because of a great hole in the sole, and her father going down
on one knee to kiss the slender little foot. It was very romantic, but
Miss Smith had seen tears in her father’s eyes and in her mother’s.
She remembered a terrible quarrel over a boiled egg. There had been only
two eggs. She, a little girl, had got one of them for her breakfast, and
the other had been set before her father; but he wouldn’t have it. He
said that Nora positively needed it; and Nora--her mother--said that she
didn’t need it, didn’t want it, and wouldn’t have it.
In the end Mr. Smith had thrown the egg out of the window, where it lay
in the mud, with the summer rain beating down on it. He had shouted
bitterly that he was no good, because he couldn’t make enough money to
buy enough eggs for his family; and the little girl had cried, and her
mother had cried, and their poor devoted little servant--their servants
were always devoted--had cried, too. It had ended with her father
sitting on the arm of her mother’s chair, tenderly stroking that
wonderful black hair, and herself sitting on her mother’s lap, while the
little servant stood in the doorway, drying her eyes on her apron.
Everybody begged everybody else’s pardon, and, after a while, they all
laughed; and that very morning a devoted neighbor--for their neighbors
were generally devoted, too--sent them a dozen new-laid eggs.
That was the sort of thing which was always happening to them; but Miss
Smith remembered, not the gay ending, but the storm itself. Her mother
had said, often and often, that her life had been a beautiful one, that
she had been blessed above any woman she knew in the love and
comradeship of her husband; but Miss Smith remembered too many tears,
too many anxieties. She sometimes added, at the end of her prayers:
“And please, dear Lord, don’t let me do anything like _that_!”
She would not have made that particular prayer with such particular
earnestness if she had not known how easy it would be for her to do
something like that; but she did know. She knew that the germs of that
fatal disease called romance were in her blood, and she had to take
frequent doses of a bitter sort of moral quinine to keep them inactive.
One of the best of these cures was in repeating to herself her full
name--her poor, pathetic, dreadful name, which she never let any one
know. Mr. and Mrs. Patterson were middle-aged and very serious, and
Gladys Patterson, though only ten in years, was quite a settled and
responsible character; and the life in that sedate West Side house was
so calm, so orderly, that there was much time for idle, foolish
thoughts. When any such came drifting through her mind, Miss Smith would
repeat her name to herself with a stern smile, and would be deeply
thankful for the “Smith” part of it, which was so thoroughly unromantic
and sensible.
She tried to be thankful all the time. Before going to sleep she would
tell herself how thankful she was for this nice, dignified, safe
position, where she could probably remain five years longer, if she
continued to do her duty. The very thought of having to leave the
Pattersons and go out to look for a new position dismayed her; but she
comforted herself by the thought that in five years’ time she would be
twenty-nine--which is almost thirty--and that she would probably be much
more sensible then than she was now.
In the meantime all she asked was that life should let her alone, and
she would let it alone. She couldn’t bear the idea of change.
When Mr. Patterson first began talking about a trip to Bermuda, she was
so much delighted with the idea that she knew it must be wrong, and
became frightened, and hoped and hoped that that wonderful and dangerous
thing would never happen. When the trip was definitely settled upon, she
was increasingly miserable. Of course it wasn’t her business to give
advice to Mr. Patterson, and she never said a word, but she knew that it
was foolish. She knew how much better it would be to stay at home and be
safe.
When Mr. Patterson talked about crystal caves and sapphire water and
angel fishes, when he spoke of blue skies and palm trees and roses in
December, she was ready to cry. She knew it was perfectly impossible for
such things to exist, and still more impossible that she could ever see
them. It was a dream, and dreams are terribly dangerous. She would not
buy any new clothes for the trip, and she would not believe in it.
That is how matters stood on that dreadful Saturday morning when Miss
Smith cried:
“Oh, I’ve forgotten my ticket!”