The Village.
The next afternoon was appointed by Lady Mary as the time at which Edgar
should accompany her to Harbour Green, and be made acquainted with at
least a portion of his future pupils. As I have said, this was a safe
sort of resource, and he could not but feel that a compassionate
understanding of his probable feelings, and difficulties of a more
intimate kind, had something to do with Lady Mary’s effort to enlist him
so promptly and thoroughly in the service of her scheme. Both husband
and wife, however, in this curious house were so thoroughly intent upon
their philanthropical schemes, that it was probably mere supererogation
to add a more delicate unexpressed motive to the all-sufficing
enthusiasm which carried them forward. Shortly, however, before the hour
appointed, a little twisted note was brought to him, postponing till the
next day the proposed visit to the village, and Edgar was left to
himself to pursue his own studies on Phil’s behalf, whose education he
felt was quite enough responsibility for one so little trained in the
art of conveying instruction as he was. Phil had already favoured him
with one of those engrossing and devoted attachments which are so
pleasant, yet sometimes so fatiguing to the object. He followed Edgar
about wherever he went, watched whatever he did with devout admiration,
and copied him in such minute matters as were easily practicable, with
the blindest adoration. The persistence with which he quoted Mr.
Earnshaw had already become the joke of the house, and with a devotion
which was somewhat embarrassing he gave Edgar his company continually,
hanging about him wherever he was. As Edgar read Lady Mary’s note which
the boy brought to him, Phil volunteered explanations.
“I know why mamma wrote you that note,” he said, “it’s because Aunt
Augusta is there. I heard them saying--
“Never mind what you heard them saying,” said Edgar; and then he yielded
to a movement of nature. “Was your aunt alone, Phil?” he asked--then
grew crimson, feeling his weakness.
“How red your face is, Mr. Earnshaw, are you angry? No, I don’t think
she was alone; some of the girls were with her. Mamma said she was
engaged to you, and they made her give it up.”
“Naturally,” said Edgar, “any day will do for me. What do you say now,
Phil, as I am free for the afternoon, to a long walk?”
“Hurrah!” cried the boy, “I wanted so much to go up to the gamekeeper’s,
up through the woods to see the last lot of puppies. Do you mind
walking that way? Oh, thanks, awfully! I am so much obliged to Aunt
Augusta for stopping mamma.”
“Come along then,” said Edgar. He was glad to turn his back on the
house, though he could not but look back as he left, wondering whether,
at any moment at any door or window, the face might appear which he had
not seen for so long--the face of his little love, whom he had once
loved but lightly, yet which seemed to fix itself more vividly in his
recollection every day. He could not sit still and permit himself to
think that possibly she was in the same house with him, within reach,
that he might hear at any moment the sound of her voice. No, rather,
since he had given his voluntary promise to her mother, and since he was
so far separated from her by circumstances, rather hurry out of the
house and turn his back upon a possibility which raised such a tumult in
his heart. He breathed more freely when he was out of doors, in the damp
wintry woods, with Phil, who kept close by his side, carrying on a
monologue very different in subject, but not so different in character
from his father’s steady strain of talk. There is a certain charm in
these wintry woods, the wet greenness of the banks, the mournful
stillness of the atmosphere, the crackle of here and there a dropping
branch, the slow sailing through the air now and then of a leaf, falling
yellow and stiff from the top of a bough. Edgar liked the covert and the
companionship of trees, which were denuded like himself of all that had
made life brave and fair. The oaks and beeches, stiffening in their
faded russet and yellow, stood against the deep green of the pine and
firs, like forlorn old beauties in rustling court dresses of a worn-out
fashion; the great elms and spare tall poplars spread their intricate
lacework of branches against the sky; far in the west the sun was still
shining, giving a deep background of red and gold to the crowded groups
of dry boughs. The rustle of some little woodland animal warmly furred
among the fallen leaves and decaying husks, the crackling of that branch
which always breaks somewhere in the silence, the trickle of water,
betraying itself by the treacherous greenness of the mossy grass--these
were all the sounds about, except their own footsteps, and the clear
somewhat shrill voice of the boy, talking with cheerful din against
time, and almost making up for the want of the birds, so much did his
cheerful aimless chatter resemble their sweet confusion of song and
speech, the ordinary language of the woods.
“I could hit that squirrel as easy as look at him. I bet you a shilling
I could! only just look here, cocking his shining eye at us, the cheeky
little brute! Here goes!”
“Don’t,” said Edgar, “how should you like it if some Brobdingnagian
being took a shot at you? What do you think, Phil--were those ladies
going to stay?”
“Those ladies?” cried Phil in amazement, for indeed they were dragged in
without rhyme or reason in the middle of the woods and of their walk.
“Do you mean Aunt Augusta and the girls? Oh, is that all? No, I don’t
suppose so. Should you mind? They’re jolly enough you know, after all,
not bad sort of girls, as girls go.”
“I am glad you give so good an account of them,” said Edgar, amused in
spite of himself.
“Oh, not half bad sort of girls! nicer a great deal than the ones from
the Green, who come up sometimes. But, I say, Myra Witherington’s an
exception. She _is_ fun; you should see her do old Jones, or the Rector;
how you would laugh! Once I saw her do papa. I don’t think she meant it;
she just caught his very tone, and the way he turns his head, all in a
moment; and then she flushed up like fire and was in such a fright lest
we should notice. Nobody noticed but me.”
“Your cousins, I suppose, are not so clever as that,” said Edgar,
humouring the boy, and feeling himself as he did so, the meanest of
household spies.
“It depends upon which it is. Mary is fun, the one that’s going to be
married,” said Phil, “I suppose _that_ will spoil her; and Bee is not
bad. She ain’t so clever as Mary, but she’s not bad. Then there’s Gussy,
is a great one for telling stories; she’s capital when it rains and one
can’t get out. She’s almost as good as the lady with the funny name in
the Arabian Nights.”
“Does she often come here?” said Edgar with a tremble in his voice.
“They say she’s going to be a nun,” said Phil; “how funny people are! I
can’t fancy Cousin Gussy shut up in a convent, can you? I’d rather
marry, like Mary, some great swell; though they are never any fun after
they’re married,” Phil added parenthetically with profound gravity. As
for Edgar he was in no humour to laugh at this precocious wisdom. He
went straight on, taking the wrong way, and scarcely hearing the shouts
of the boy who called him back. “This is the way to the gamekeeper’s,”
cried Phil, “Mr. Earnshaw, where were you going? You look as if you had
been set thinking and could not see the way.”
How true it was; he had been set thinking, and he knew no more what road
he was going than if he had been blindfolded. Years after, the damp
greenness of the fading year, the songless season, the bare branches
against the sky, would bring to Edgar’s mind the moment when he shot off
blankly across the path in the wood at Tottenham’s, not knowing and not
caring where he went.
Next day Lady Mary fulfilled her promise. She drove him down in her own
pony carriage to the village, and there took him upon a little round of
calls. They went to the Rectory, and to Mrs. Witherington’s, and to the
Miss Bakers who were great authorities at Harbour Green. The Rector was
a large heavy old man, with heavy eyes, who had two daughters, and had
come by degrees (though it was secretly said not without a struggle) to
be very obedient to them. He said, “Ah, yes, I dare say you are right,”
to everything Lady Mary said, and gave Edgar a little admonition as to
the seriousness of the work he was undertaking. “Nothing is more
responsible, or more delicate than instructing youth,” said the Rector,
“for my part I am not at all sure what it is to come to. The maids know
as much now as their mistresses used to do, and as for the mistresses I
do not know where they are to stop.”
“But you would not have us condemned to ignorance, papa,” said one of
his daughters.
“Oh, no, I should not take it upon me to condemn you to anything,” said
the old man with his quavering voice, “I hope only that you may not find
you’ve gone further than you had any intention of going, before you’ve
done.”
This somewhat vague threat was all he ventured upon in the way of
remonstrance; but he did not give any encouragement, and was greatly
afraid of the whole proceeding as revolutionary, and of Lady Mary
herself, as a dangerous and seditious person sowing seeds of rebellion.
Mrs. Witherington, to whom they went next, was scarcely more
encouraging. Her house was a large Queen Anne house, red brick, with a
pediment surmounting a great many rows of twinkling windows. It fronted
to the Green, without any grassplot or ornamental shrubs in front; but
with a large well-walled garden behind, out of which rich branches of
lilac and laburnum drooped in spring, and many scents enriched the air.
The rooms inside were large, but not very lofty, and the two
drawing-rooms occupied the whole breadth of the house, one room looking
to the Green and the other to the garden. There were, or ought to have
been folding doors between, but these were never used, and the opening
was hung with curtains instead, curtains which were too heavy, and
over-weighted the rooms. But otherwise the interior was pretty, with
that homely gracefulness, familiar and friendly, which belongs to the
dwelling of a large family where everyone has his, or rather her,
habitual concerns and occupations. The front part was the most cheerful,
the back the finest. There a great mirror was over the mantelpiece, but
here the late Colonel’s swords, crossed, held the place of honour. The
visitors entered through this plainer room, which acted as ante-chamber
to the other, and where Mrs. Witherington was discovered, as in a scene
at the theatre, seated at a writing table with a pile of tradesmen’s
books before her. She was a tall spare woman, having much more the
aspect which is associated with the opprobrious epithet, old maid, than
that which traditionally ought to belong to the mother of nine
children--all except the four daughters who remained at home--out and
about in the world. She had three sons who were scattered in the
different corners of the earth, and two daughters married, one of whom
was in India, and the other a consul’s wife in Spain. The young ladies
at home were the youngest of the family, and were, the two married
daughters said to each other when they met, which was very seldom, “very
differently brought up from what we were, and allowed a great deal too
much of their own way.” Neither of these ladies could understand what
mamma could be thinking of to indulge those girls so; but Mrs.
Witherington was by no means an over-indulgent person by nature, and I
think she must have made up her mind that to indulge the vagaries of
the girls was safest on the whole and most conducive to domestic peace.
Fortunately each of these young women had a “way” of her own, except
Myra, the youngest, who was the funny one, whom Phil and most boys
admired. The others were--Sissy, who was understood to have a suspended
love affair, suspended in consequence of the poverty of her lover, from
which she derived both pain and pleasure, so to speak; for her sisters,
not to speak of the other young ladies of the Green, undoubtedly looked
up to her in consequence, and gave her a much more important place in
their little world than would have been hers by nature; and Marian, who
was the musical sister, who played “anything” at sight, and was good for
any amount of accompaniments, and made an excellent second in a duet;
and Emma, who was the useful one of the family, and possessed the
handsome little sewing-machine in the corner, at which she executed
yards upon yards of stitching every day, and made and mended for the
establishment. Sissy, in addition to having a love affair, drew; so that
these three sisters were all well defined, and distinct. Only Myra was
good for nothing in particular. She was the youngest, long the baby, the
pet of the rest, who had never quite realized the fact that she was no
longer a child. Myra was saucy and clever, and rather impertinent, and
considered a wit in her own family. Indeed they all had been accustomed
to laugh at Myra’s jokes, almost as long as they could recollect, and
there is nothing that establishes the reputation of a wit like this.
Mrs. Witherington was alone in the ante-room, as I have said, when Lady
Mary entered, followed by Edgar. She rose somewhat stiffly to meet her
visitors, for she too being of the old school disapproved of Lady Mary,
who was emphatically of the new school, and a leader of all innovations;
though from the fact of being Lady Mary, she was judged more leniently
than a less distinguished revolutionary would have been. Mrs.
Witherington made her greetings sufficiently loud to call the attention
of all the daughters, who came in a little crowd, each rising from her
corner to hail the great lady. One of them drew the cosiest chair near
the fire for her, another gave her an embroidered hand-screen to shield
her face from its glow, and the third hung about her in silent
admiration, eagerly looking for some similar service to render. Myra
followed last of all, rushing audibly downstairs, and bursting into the
room with eager exclamations of pleasure.
“I saw the pony-carriage at the Rectory gate, and I hoped you were
coming here,” cried Myra; who stopped short suddenly, however, and
blushed and laughed at sight of the stranger whom she had not perceived.
“This is Mr. Earnshaw, Myra,” said Lady Mary, “whom I told you of--who
is going to be so good as to teach us. I am taking him to see some of
the ladies whom he is to help to educate.”
“Please don’t convey a false impression,” said Edgar. “You are all a
hundred times better educated than I am. I don’t make any such
pretensions.”
“We are not educated at all,” said Sissy Witherington, folding her
hands, with a soft sigh. She said it because Lady Mary said it, and
because soft sighs were the natural expression of a young heart
blighted; but I don’t think she would have liked to hear the same
sentiment from any one else.
“Indeed, I think it is extremely disagreeable of you all to say so,”
said Mrs. Witherington, “and a reflection on your parents, who did the
very best they could for you. I am sure your education, which you
despise so, cost quite as much, at least for the last year or two, as
the boys’ did. I beg your pardon, Lady Mary--but I do think it is a
little hard upon the older people, all these fine ideas that are being
put into the girls’ heads.”
“But, dear Mrs. Witherington, how could you help it?” said the rebel
chief. “The very idea of educating women is a modern invention; nobody
so much as thought of it in the last generation. Women have never been
educated. My mother thought exactly the same as you do. There was
absolutely _no_ education for women in her day.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Witherington, more erect than ever, “I had an idea
once that I myself was an educated person, and I daresay so had the
countess--till my children taught me better.”
“I declare it is hard on mamma,” cried Myra; “the only one among us who
can write a decent hand, or do anything that’s useful.”
“Of course nobody means that,” said Lady Mary. “What I say is that every
generation ought to improve and make progress, if there is to be any
amelioration in the world at all; and as, fortunately, there has sprung
up in our day an increased perception of the advantages of education--”
Here Emma’s sewing-machine came to a little knot, and there was a sharp
click, and the thread broke. “Oh, that comes of talking!” said Emma, as
she set herself to pull out the ravelled thread and set it right again.
She was not accustomed to take much share in the conversation, and this
was her sole contribution to it while the visitors remained.
“Well, a sewing-machine is a wonderful invention,” said Mrs.
Witherington; “don’t you think so, Mr. Earnshaw? Not that I like the
work much myself. It is always coarse and rough on the wrong side, and
you can’t use it for fine things, such as baby’s things, for instance;
but certainly the number of tucks and flounces that you can allow
yourself, knowing that the machine will do dozens in a day, is
extraordinary. And in a house where there are so many girls!--Emma does
a great deal more with her machine, I am sure, than ever Penelope did,
who was one of your classical friends, Lady Mary.”
“And she can undo her work still more quickly,” cried Myra, with an
outburst of laughter, “as it’s only chain-stitch. What a pity Penelope
did not know of it.”
“But then the question is,” said Sissy, “whether we are so very much
the better for having more tucks and flounces. (By the way, no one wears
tucks now, mamma.) The good of a sewing machine is that it leaves one
much more time for improving one’s mind.”
“In my day,” said Mrs. Witherington, going on with her private argument,
“we had our things all made of fine linen, instead of the cotton you
wear now, and trimmed with real lace instead of the cheap imitation
trash that everybody has. We had not so much ornament, but what there
was, was good. My wedding things were all trimmed with real Mechlin
_that_ broad--”
“That must have been very charming,” said Lady Mary; “but in the
meantime we must settle about our work. Mr. Earnshaw is willing to give
us an hour on Tuesdays. Should you all come? You must not undertake it,
if it will interfere with other work.”
“Oh yes, I want to know German better,” said Sissy. “It would be very
nice to be able to speak a little, especially if mamma goes abroad next
summer as she promises. To know a language pretty well is so very
useful.”
Lady Mary made a little gesture of despair with her pretty hands. “Oh,
my dear girls,” she said, “how are you ever to be thoroughly educated if
you go on thinking only of what’s useful, and to speak a little German
when you go abroad? What is wanted is to make you think--to train your
minds into good methods of work--to improve you altogether mentally, and
give you the exactness of properly cultivated intellects; just the
thing that we women never have.”
Myra was the only one who had courage enough to reply, which she did
with such a good hearty ringing peal of laughter as betrayed Edgar out
of the gravity becoming the situation. Myra thought Lady Mary’s address
the best joke in the world.