I cannot undertake to say how it was, but it is certain that Bertie
Hardwick met Kate next day, as she took her walk into the village,
accompanied by Miss Blank. At the sight of him, that lady’s countenance
clouded over; but Kate was glad, and the young man took no notice of
Miss Blank’s looks. As it happened, the conversation between the
governess and her pupil had flagged--it often flagged. The conversation
between Kate and Miss Blank consisted generally of a host of bewildering
questions on the one side, and as few answers as could be managed on the
other. Miss Blank no doubt had affairs of her own to think of; and then
Kate’s questions were of everything in heaven and earth, and might have
troubled even a wise counsellor. Mr. Courtenay was still at Langton, but
had sent out his niece for her usual walk--a thing by which she felt
humiliated--and she had met with a rebuff in the village in consequence
of some interference. She was in low spirits, and Miss Blank did not
mind. Accordingly, Bertie was a relief and comfort to her, more than can
be described.
‘Why don’t your sisters like me?’ said Kate. ‘I wonder, Mr. Bertie, why
people don’t like me? If they would let me, I should like to be friends;
but you saw they would not.’
‘I don’t think--perhaps--that they quite understood----’
‘But it is so easy to understand,’ said Kate, with a little impatient
sigh. She shook her head, and tossed back her shining hair, which made
an aureole round her. ‘Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said; ‘but you
understood from the very first?’
Bertie was pleased, he could not have told why. The fact was, he, too,
had been extremely puzzled at first; but now, after three meetings, he
felt himself an old friend and privileged interpreter of the strange
girl whom his sisters were so indignant with, and who certainly was a
more important personage at Langton-Courtenay than any other
fifteen-year-old girl in England. Both Mr. Hardwick and Bertie had to
some extent made themselves Kate’s champions, moved thereto by that
strange predisposition to take the side of a feminine stranger (at
least, when she is young and pleasant) against the women of their own
house, which almost all men are moved by. Women take their father’s,
their husband’s, their brother’s side through thick and thin, with a
natural certainty that their own must be in the right; but men
invariably take it for granted that their own must be wrong. Thus, not
only Bertie, who might be moved by other arguments, but even Mr.
Hardwick, secretly believed that ‘the girls’ had taken offence
foolishly, and maintained the cause of Kate.
‘They have seen nothing out of their own sphere,’ their brother said,
apologetically--‘they don’t know much--they are very much petted and
spoiled at home.’
‘Ah!’ said Kate, feeling as if a chilly _douche_ had suddenly been
administered in her face. She drew a long, half-sobbing breath, and then
she said, with a pathetic tone in her voice, ‘Oh! I wonder why people
don’t like me!’
‘You are wrong, Miss Courtenay--I am sure you are wrong,’ said Bertie,
warmly. ‘Not like you!--that must be their stupidity alone. And I can’t
believe, even, that any one is so stupid. You must be making a mistake.’
‘Oh! Mr. Bertie, how can you say so? Why, your sisters!’ cried Kate,
returning to the charge.
‘But it is not that they--don’t like you,’ said Bertie. ‘How could you
think it? It is only a misunderstanding--a--a--want of knowing----’
‘You are trying to save my feelings,’ said Kate; ‘but never mind my
feelings. No, Mr. Bertie, it is quite true. I do not want to deceive
myself--people do not like me.’ These words she produced singly, as if
they had been so many stones thrown at the world. ‘Oh! please don’t say
anything--perhaps it is my fate; perhaps I am never to be any better.
But that is how it is--people don’t like me; I am sure I don’t know
why.’
‘Miss Courtenay----’ Bertie began, with great earnestness; but just
then the man-of-all-work from the Rectory, who was butler, and footman,
and valet, and everything combined, made his appearance at the corner,
beckoning to him; and as the servant was sent by his father, he had no
alternative but to go away. When he was out of sight, Kate, whose eyes
had followed him as far as he was visible, breathed forth a gentle sigh,
and was going on quietly upon her way, silent, until the mood should
seize her to chatter once more, when an event occurred that had never
been known till now to happen at Langton--the governess, who was
generally blank as her name, opened her mouth and spoke.
‘Miss Courtenay,’ she said, for she was not even sufficiently interested
in her pupil to care to speak to her by her Christian name--‘Miss
Courtenay, if this sort of thing continues, I shall have to go away.’
Kate, who was not much less startled than Balaam was on a similar
occasion, stopped short, and turned round with a face of consternation
upon her companion. ‘If what continues?’ she said.
‘This,’ said Miss Blank--‘this meeting of young men, and walking with
them. It is hard enough to have to manage _you_; but if this goes on, I
shall speak to Mr. Courtenay. I never was compromised before, and I
don’t mean to be so now.’
Kate was so utterly unconscious of the meaning of all this, that she
simply stared in dismay. ‘Compromised!’ she said, with big eyes of
astonishment; ‘I don’t know what you mean. What is it that must not go
on? Miss Blank, I hope you have not had a sunstroke, or something that
makes people talk without knowing what they say.’
‘I will not take any impertinence from you, Miss Courtenay,’ said Miss
Blank, going red with wrath. ‘Ask why people don’t like you,
indeed!--you should ask me, instead of asking a gentleman, fishing for
compliments! _I’ll_ tell you why people don’t like you. It is because
you are always interfering--thrusting yourself into things you have no
business with--taking things upon you that no child has a right to
meddle with. That is why people hate you----’
‘Hate me!’ cried Kate, who, for her part, had grown pale with horror.
‘Yes; hate you--that is the word. Do you think any one would put up with
such a life who could help it? You are an heiress, and people are
obliged to mind you; but if you had been a poor girl, you would have
known the difference. Nobody would have put up with you then; you would
have been beaten, or starved, or done something to. It is only your
money that gives you the power to trample others under your feet.’
Kate was appalled by this address. It stupefied her, in the first place,
that Miss Blank should have taken the initiative, and launched forth
into speech, as it were, on her own account; and the assault took away
the girl’s breath. She felt as one might feel who had been suddenly
saluted with a shower of blows from an utterly unsuspected adversary.
She did not know whether to fight or flee. She walked along mechanically
by her assailant’s side, and gasped for breath. Her eyes grew large and
round with wonder. She listened in amaze, not able to believe her ears.
‘But I won’t be kept quiet any longer,’ said Miss Blank--‘I will speak.
Why should I get myself into trouble for you? I will go to Mr.
Courtenay, when we get back, and I will tell him it is impossible to go
on like this. It was bad enough before. You were trouble enough from the
first day I ever set eyes on you; but I have always said to myself, when
_that_ commences, I will go away. My character is above everything, and
all the gold in England would not tempt me to stay.’
Kate listened to all this with a bewilderment that took from her the
power of speech. What did the woman mean?--was she ‘in a passion,’ as,
indeed, other governesses, to Kate’s knowledge, had been; or was she
mad? It must be a sunstroke, she decided at last. They had been walking
in the sun, and Miss Blank’s bonnet was too thin, being made of flimsy
tulle. Her brain must be affected. Kate resolved heroically that she
would not aggravate the sufferer by any response, but would send for the
housekeeper as soon as they got back, and place Miss Blank in her hands.
People in her sad condition must not be contradicted. She quickened her
steps, discussing with herself whether a dark room and ice to the
forehead would be enough, or whether it would be necessary to cut off
all her hair, or even shave her head. This pre-occupation about Miss
Blank’s welfare shielded the girl for some time against the fiery,
stinging arrows which were being thrown at her; but this immunity did
not last, for the way was long, and Miss Blank, having once broken out,
put no further restraint upon herself. It was clear now that her only
hope was in laying Kate prostrate, leaving no spirit nor power of
resistance in her. By degrees the sharp words began to get admittance at
the girl’s tingling ears. She was beaten down by the storm of
opposition. Was it possible?--could it be true? Did people _hate_ her?
Her imagination began to work as these burning missiles flew at her.
Miss Blank had been her companion for a year, and hated her! Uncle
Courtenay was her own uncle--her nearest relative--and he, too, hated
her! The girls at the Rectory, who looked so gentle, had turned against
her. Oh! why, why was it? By degrees a profound discouragement seized
upon the poor child. Miss Blank was eloquent; she had a flow of words
such as had never come to her before. She poured forth torrents of
bitterness as she walked, and Kate was beaten down by the storm. By the
time they reached home she had forgotten all about the sunstroke, and
shaving Miss Blank’s head, and thought of nothing but getting
free--getting into the silence--being alone. Maryanne put a letter into
her hand as she ran upstairs; but what did she care for a letter!
Everybody hated her--if it were not that she was an heiress everybody
would abandon her--and she had not one friend to go to, no one whom she
could ask to help her in all the dreary world. She was too far gone for
weeping. She sat down before her dressing-table and looked into the
glass with miserable, dilated eyes. ‘I am just like other people,’ Kate
said to herself; ‘there is no mark upon me. Cain was marked; but that
was because he was a murderer; and I never killed anybody, I never did
any harm to anybody, that I know of. I am only just a girl, like other
girls. Oh! I suppose I am dreadfully wicked! But then everybody is
wicked--the Bible says so; and how am I worse than all the rest? I don’t
hate any one,’ said Kate, aloud, and very slowly. Her poor little mouth
quivered, her eyes filled, and right upon the letter on her table there
fell one great blob of a tear. This roused her in the midst of her
distress. To Kate--as to every human being of her age--it seemed
possible that something new, something wonderful might be in any letter.
She took it up and tore it open. She was longing for comfort, longing
for kindness, as she had never done in her life.
The letter which we are about to transcribe was not a very wise one,
perhaps not even altogether to be sworn by as true--but it opened an
entire new world to poor Kate.
MY DEAREST UNKNOWN DARLING NIECE,
‘You can’t remember me, for I have never seen you since you were a
tiny, tiny baby in long clothes; and you have had nobody about you
to remind you that you had any relations on your mother’s side. You
have never answered my letters even, dear, though I don’t for a
moment blame you, or suppose it is your fault. But now that I am in
England, darling, we must not allow ourselves to be divided by
unfortunate feelings that may exist between different sides of the
family. I must see you, my dear only sister’s only darling child! I
have but one child, too, my Ombra, and she is as anxious as I am. I
have written to your guardian, asking if he will let you come and
see us. I do not wish to go to your grand house, which was always
thought too fine for us, but I must see you, my darling child; and
if Mr. Courtenay will not let you come to us, my Ombra and I will
come to Langton-Courtenay, to the village, where we shall no doubt
find lodgings somewhere--I don’t mind how humble they are, so long
as I can see you. My heart yearns to take you in my arms, to give
you a hundred kisses, my own niece, my dear motherless child. Send
me one little word by your own hand, and don’t reject the love that
is offered you, my dearest Kate. Ombra sends you her dear love, and
thinks of you, not as a cousin, but as a sister; and I, who have
the best right, long for nothing so much as to be a mother to you!
Come to us, my sweet child, if your uncle will let you; but, in the
meantime, write to me, that I may know you a little even before we
meet. With warmest love, my darling niece, your most affectionate
aunt and, if you will let her be so, mother,
‘JANE ANDERSON.’
Now poor Kate had only two or three times in her whole life received a
letter before. Since, as she said, she had ‘grown up,’ she had not heard
from her aunt, who had written her, she recollected, one or two baby
epistles, printed in large letters, in her childhood. Her poor little
soul was still convulsed with the first great, open undisguised shock of
unkindness, when this other great event came upon her. It was also a
shock in its way. It made such a tempest in her being as conflicting
winds make out at sea. The one had driven her down to the depths, the
other dashed her up, up to a dizzy height. She felt dazed, insensible,
proud, triumphant, and happy, all at once. Here was somebody of her own,
somebody of her very own--something like the mother at the Rectory.
Something new, close, certain--her own!
She dashed the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief, seized upon her
letter, her dear letter, and rushed downstairs to the library, where
Uncle Courtenay sat in state, the judge, and final tribunal for all
appeals.