ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Miss Osric arrived at the Castle on the afternoon following Sydney’s
expedition to Dacreshaw.
A carriage was sent to meet the 4 o’clock train, and Sydney, in spite of
an uncomfortably shy sensation at the bottom of her heart, begged leave
to go and meet her governess.
“Certainly not! it would be most unsuitable!” said Lady Frederica, in
her most decided manner, and she walked away, leaving Sydney to wonder
why everything she wished to do was either unsuitable or absurd. The
words were unknown at No. 20, in that dull old square not far from Euston
Station, which was home.
Still, Miss Osric should have a welcome at the Castle if she could not at
the station, and Sydney hung up the pictures she had bought at Dacreshaw,
and coaxed some lovely hot-house flowers out of the head-gardener,
Macintosh, to fill the vases in her governess’s room.
St. Quentin was rather amused by her extensive preparations. “But you
see,” Sydney remarked, when he made a laughing comment on them, “Miss
Osric may be feeling just as shy and wretched as I did when I came here,
and it will make a difference if somebody is really pleased to see her.”
“Didn’t you think we were pleased to see _you_?” asked her cousin.
“You were all very kind,” Sydney said doubtfully, “but, you didn’t
exactly _want_ me, did you? It is only at home one is really wanted.”
She stopped, remembering his snub on the subject of calling the
Chichesters’ house home; but he only said, with a little smile, “Well,
go and make your governess welcome in your own way, child. I hear wheels
now.” And, as the girl flew out, her long hair streaming behind her, he
said half aloud, “I wonder how it would feel to have anyone to care if
one were wretched or no!”
Sydney was on the steps to receive Miss Osric, and certainly her shy but
eager welcome made a good deal of difference to the feelings of the young
governess, bewildered by this plunge into the outside world, made for the
sake of the younger ones at home, who needed better education than her
father’s means allowed. Mary Osric, just returned from a brilliant career
at Lady Margaret Hall, had begged to be allowed to help towards providing
some of the advantages she had herself enjoyed for her juniors; and a
friend had mentioned her name to Lady Frederica as that of a clever girl,
likely to fill suitably the double post of governess and companion to
Miss Lisle.
Miss Osric had been considered shy at College, despite her cleverness,
and the idea of teaching a strange girl in an absolutely strange place
was terrible to her. But she always declared afterwards that the worst
was over when Sydney came running out into the hall to welcome her.
“You must be cold!” the girl cried. “Would you like to come straight to
your room and take your hat off before tea? Let me carry your umbrella.
Be careful how you walk; the floors are very slippery.”
“It is lovely—just like a picture,” said Miss Osric, beginning suddenly
to feel less homesick. There was something very winning about Sydney’s
tone.
The room where the new arrival was to sleep bore traces also of the
same care for her comfort. A bright fire burnt in the grate, a vase of
hot-house flowers was on the writing-table, the pictures from Dacreshaw
looked charming on the walls, and a little book-case was filled with a
selection of Sydney’s best-loved books.
“What a charming room!” the young governess exclaimed, and Sydney,
colouring a little, murmured she “was glad Miss Osric liked it.” She
stayed with her governess while she took off coat, hat, and fur, and then
brought her to the morning-room, where the shaded lamp shed a delicate
rose glow over everything and the little tea-table was drawn up to the
fire.
“I am so very glad you have come,” said Sydney, as she poured out tea and
handed muffins, and Miss Osric began to realise that the duty she had set
herself need not necessarily prove a hard one.
“Well, do you like the mentor?” asked St. Quentin, as Sydney came into
the library to wish him good-night. “Are you going to be quite happy now
you have another girl to play with?”
And Sydney, meeting the real anxiety in his eyes, said “Yes.”
“But she _is_ still hankering after those confounded Chichesters!” her
cousin said to himself, when the girl had left him, in which conclusion
he was not far wrong.
With the coming of Miss Osric, the “do as you please” system ceased.
Lady Frederica might be lax as regarded solid education. “There’s no
need whatsoever to behave as though you are to be a governess, my
dear,” she said to Sydney, but she was horrified by the girl’s lack of
accomplishments.
“The one and only thing the child can do is to look pretty,” his aunt
complained to St. Quentin, “and beauty without style is very little good.
Of course, we must be thankful for small mercies—one seldom has big
ones to be thankful for—and she might have been fat and podgy! But what
in the world those doctor people were about not to give her drill and
calisthenic lessons, I can’t think!”
“There were herds of them, I fancy,” said her nephew. “Whenever Sydney
mentions them, which isn’t seldom, she springs a new one upon me. They
would make an excellent third volume to the _Pillars of the House_. I
don’t suppose there was overmuch cash to spare for accomplishments.”
“I never can think why it is that those people who cannot afford it
always have such enormous families,” pursued the lady.
“If we had done our duty by Sydney as we should, there would have been
one less all these eighteen years,” her nephew suggested, and Lady
Frederica changed the subject, as she always did when St. Quentin had
what she called a “conscientious craze.”
“It’s your health makes you talk like that, my dear boy,” she declared.
“You are really getting quite ridiculous about Sydney!”
The round of accomplishments now began in good earnest.
Sydney and Miss Osric breakfasted at eight-thirty, after which, when
the weather was at all possible, Sydney took her ride on her new mare
“Bessie,” a charming creature, whom she learned to love! Even Lady
Frederica owned that, after a few lessons from old Banks, who had taught
the present marquess to ride long ago, Sydney passed muster well enough
on horseback. She and Bessie understood each other, and she bade fair to
make a graceful and a fearless horsewoman.
“Of course she can ride; all the Lisles can ride anything that has a back
to it,” St. Quentin said, when Lady Frederica condescended to approve
the girl’s horsemanship; but, though his tone was careless, there was no
doubt he was gratified by the fact that his young cousin took after the
family in that respect.
On three mornings in the week Sydney had masters from Donisbro’ for
French, piano, and singing, and every Saturday a sergeant with a huge
black moustache came to teach her fencing in the long “Gallery-at-Arms,”
where the third marquess of St. Quentin was said to have fought a duel
with the famous Duke of Marlborough one wild morning when a stormy dawn
peered through the mullioned windows, and to have spared his life as
being host.
Sydney came to enjoy her lessons, as soon as she had grown used to the
strange sensation of having every bit of instruction to herself, with
only Miss Osric sitting by to chaperone her pupil.
She had a fresh young voice of no special power, nor was her playing in
the least above the average. She longed that Dolly, who would do her
teachers so much more credit, might enjoy these music lessons in her
stead; but the wish was futile.
She and Miss Osric lunched at two with Lady Frederica, and, if possible,
managed a brisk walk before lunch. Miss Osric was as energetic as Sydney
herself, and always ready to go out, whatever the weather. Sometimes
they had only time for a stroll in the Park, but often extended it to the
picturesque little village, where the broken-down cottages, with their
moss-covered thatch and ivied walls, made Miss Osric long for the summer
and time for sketching.
In the afternoon Lady Frederica generally liked a companion on her drive
and took Sydney, but the girl always managed to find a few minutes to run
into the library to see her cousin; who, except on his worst days, was
wheeled from his bedroom to the library next door about two o’clock.
After the drive there was tea, then usually another visit to St. Quentin,
followed by practice, preparation for her masters, and finishing, not
infrequently, with something she and Miss Osric were reading together.
They dined at eight with Lady Frederica, and afterwards sat in one of the
drawing-rooms till 9.30, when Sydney was despatched to bed.
This was rather a come-down after ten o’clock bed-time at home, but Lady
Frederica was firm on that point.
“I am here to turn you into the right kind of girl for your position,”
she explained to Sydney, “and one of the most important things for it is
a good complexion. I went to bed at seven every night of my life till
I was seventeen and came out, and I don’t think there was a complexion
to match mine in London. Yours will never equal it, my dear, though St.
Quentin does say silly things about you. Yes, my complexion was perfect,
and so was my way of entering a room (you poke, rather!) and getting in
and out of a carriage; and though I never could remember why Romeo wrote
Juliet, or whether Chaucer or Pope was the author of ‘In Memoriam,’ I
married Tim Verney, the millionaire, at the end of my first season!”
Poor Sydney used to listen to such conversations with a vague and
increasing sense of discomfort. Was this to be her life, only this? Was
this where all the accomplishments were leading? Was this, only this,
what mother had meant by “making the best in every sense of this new
life”?
Sydney felt quite sure that it was not!
She grew graver and distinctly more homesick; St. Quentin noticed the
change in her, and put it down to rather too many lessons. By his decree
the ride was lengthened; but it was something more than mere amusement
that poor Sydney wanted. Perhaps the want she was most conscious of
herself was mother.
The drill and fencing lessons were supposed to give the girl that
“deportment” of which Lady Frederica spoke so constantly, but she was
herself Sydney’s most effective teacher. The girl grew very weary of
the constant instructions. “Don’t run downstairs, Sydney!—never seem in
a hurry. My dear, don’t shake hands that way. Miss Osric, kindly give
her your hand again. No, that’s not right! Dear me! I think they might
have taught you such a simple thing as to shake hands gracefully at your
doctor’s.”
If Sydney failed in any way, Lady Frederica was surprised that she had
not been taught better at “the doctor’s.” It made the girl grow hot with
indignation for the dear home people, but she was quite aware that Lady
Frederica would only raise her eyebrows and say, “Gracious, child, don’t
be absurd!” if she expressed a tithe of what she felt.
The bi-weekly calisthenic lessons came as a welcome relaxation. The drive
to Donisbro’ was in itself a pleasure, for, after the first novelty had
worn off, Lady Frederica sent Miss Osric with her pupil.
The class comprised only about a dozen girls between the ages of fourteen
and nineteen, who met at a private house and were taught by a master who
bestowed instructions upon royalty.
It felt like meeting an old friend to Sydney to see Katharine Morrell’s
clear-cut face and calm eyes among the mothers and governesses, and she
enjoyed introducing Miss Osric and telling eagerly the unimportant little
details of her daily life to an ear which was always sympathetic.
She began to look forward to Tuesdays and Fridays as the best days in the
week, and save up the nicest bits of news to tell Miss Morrell—Hugh’s
last success—Madge’s Latin prize at the High School—or some kindness
shown her by St. Quentin.
Katharine Morrell seemed interested in all and everything that Sydney had
to tell, _even_ in the news of the Castle, which seemed to its teller
so infinitely less worth hearing than the doings of the Chichesters and
home.