ELEANOR CARSON
A picnic! Eleanor was conscious of a sudden feeling of pity for her newly
made acquaintance. She called this meal, partaken of in the dusty, dingy
little waiting-room of a noisy junction in company with a girl whom an
hour ago she had never met, a picnic.
Memories of gay, delightful river picnics, of mountain picnics, of
picnics in ruined castles shared with numerous boy and girl friends
flashed through Eleanor's mind. And this girl whose lot she had found it
in her heart to envy a short time back had known none of these things.
"And had I not met you," Margaret was saying confidingly when Eleanor
came out of the sombre mood into which she had suddenly fallen, "I should
never have had the courage even to open my lunch, at least I could not
have eaten it in a railway carriage with every one staring at me. Could
you have eaten your lunch under such circumstances?"
"Oh, yes, I think I could," Eleanor returned with some amusement.
Probably their ages were very much the same, but what a child Margaret
was compared to her! To make up for that, however, she certainly used
much longer words.
"How did your grandfather come to allow you to travel alone?" she asked
suddenly. "From what you have told me about him I should have thought it
was the very last thing he should have allowed you to do."
"He was very reluctant to give me permission to travel without an
escort," Margaret answered, "but he was unable to avoid doing so." And
then she related how the housekeeper who was to have brought her had
broken her leg, and how a sudden epidemic of scarlet fever in the village
had made it advisable for her departure not to be delayed.
"Of course," she added, "my grandfather was not aware that I should miss
the train and be obliged to wait here, or else I am quite sure he would
not have allowed me to come by myself. But please, please do not let us
talk about me any longer. I want to hear about you now and, except that
your name is Eleanor Kathleen Carson, I do not know anything at all about
you."
"There is not much to tell," returned Eleanor; "and what there is is not
particularly interesting; but fair is fair, as the children say. Know,
then, to begin with, that I have even fewer relations in the world than
you, for I have none at all."
"None!" Margaret exclaimed incredulously. "Then with whom do you live?
Where is your home?"
"I have no home. I have been earning my living for the last three years,"
Eleanor answered.
"Earning your own living. But are you not too young to do that? In what
manner do you earn it?"
"As a governess. I have been an instructor of the young for the last four
years," Eleanor said, laughing a little at the expression of boundless
amazement which this statement brought to Margaret's face. Indeed, for a
moment the latter suspected her new acquaintance of joking. She found it
hard to believe that a girl of her own age should actually be a
governess. She had thought that all governesses were of Miss Bidwell's
age, and like her, too, in appearance.
"I wish you had been my governess, then," she said earnestly.
"It would have been rather a farce if I had been," Eleanor retorted, "for
I have an idea that you know very much more than I do; not that that
would be difficult, for I know nothing. Listen, now, and I will tell you
all about myself. I am Irish. My father died when I was four, and two
years later my mother married again."
"Oh!" said Margaret, with intense interest and sympathy in her voice;
"and then they cast you adrift to earn your own living?"
"No," said Eleanor, with some amusement in her voice, "they did nothing of
the sort. Besides, you can't very well cast a small person of six adrift,
as you call it, to earn her own living. On the contrary, my stepfather
was as kind to me as if I had been his own child, and I could not have
loved him more if he had been my own father whom I scarcely remember. We
were so happy together, we three. My stepfather just adored my mother,
she worshipped him, and they both spoiled and petted me. My stepfather
was a very rich man. He was English, I must tell you, but he had come to
Ireland on a visit, and there it was he met my mother; and to please her
when they were married he bought a lovely estate in Kerry, which was her
county, and became an Irishman, as he used to say. Until I was fifteen I
did exactly as I liked all day. I rode, of course, and hunted, and lived
an outdoor life, and though I had a governess and was supposed to do
lessons occasionally, it was only very occasionally that I showed my nose
in the schoolroom. And then, when I was fifteen, our happy life came to
an end. One morning my stepfather got a letter at breakfast to say that
the solicitor who had charge of all his money had committed suicide two
or three days before, and that it had been found that he had made away
with huge sums belonging to his clients. We were absolutely ruined.
"The news was such an awful shock to my stepfather that it brought on an
attack of the heart, to which he was subject, and he died that night; and
my mother died a few weeks later. She could not, she told me, face life
without him, and she pined away and died simply of a broken heart."
Eleanor's voice had become rather husky as she spoke the last few
sentences, but she did not cry, she only sat and stared rather fixedly
at the various timetables with which the table was strewn.
Margaret put out her hand and touched her timidly on the arm, and the
silent token of sympathy pleased Eleanor who could not have borne her to
have spoken just then.
There was a moment or two of silence, during which the rain splashed
steadily, drearily against the dusty window panes. It had settled now
into a thoroughly wet afternoon, and there seemed very little prospect of
its clearing before nightfall.
"I have often wondered since what would have become of me then," Eleanor
resumed after those few moments of silence, "had it not been for Miss
McDonald. She was an old governess of my mother's and had a girls' school
in Hampstead, and when she heard how I was left she wrote and offered me
a home with her until I was old enough to earn my own living. I was to be
a sort of pupil teacher, if you know what that means--to do lessons with
the elder girls and to teach the younger ones--and in that way my
services were supposed to pay for my board and teaching. But I am quite
sure that at first, at any rate, Miss McDonald was a loser by the
transaction. I was woefully ignorant to begin with, and knew scarcely
more than a child of nine, and I was so miserable that I did not care
what became of me or what I did. Looking back now on that time I see that
Miss McDonald was wonderfully kind and patient, and that it was for my
own good that she insisted upon my working. But for a long time I don't
suppose there was a more unhappy girl in the whole of England than
myself. I hated England and the school and everything, and, of course, it
was a tremendous contrast to my former life, for it wasn't even as though
the school were a good school; it was quite second class, and the girls
were hopelessly common. And then all of a sudden consolation came to me,
and poor little drudge of a pupil teacher that I was, snubbed by the
elder girls and bored to death by the younger ones, I became happy again,
though in quite a different way to any happiness I had ever known
before."
"How?" said Margaret, who had been listening to this narrative with
parted lips and eager eyes.
After this, Eleanor Humphreys' conversation would seem tame indeed, for
at the bottom of her heart Margaret knew that, pretend to the contrary as
much as she liked, nothing that Eleanor Humphreys said ever came as a
surprise to her! But conversation with this Eleanor was quite another
matter. It was impossible to have the least idea beforehand of what she
was going to say.
"How?" she asked again, quivering with impatience, for Eleanor, instead
of answering her immediately, was looking at her with a teasing smile on
her lips evidently enjoying the prospect of keeping her for a moment or
two longer on the tip-toe of expectation.
"Well, before I tell you," she said, "I will give you three guesses. Now,
put yourself in my place and think what you would have liked to have had
happen to you if you had been me."
"I should have liked some kind, lovely lady to have come and adopted me,
and taken me away to a beautiful home in the country, where I should have
had lots and lots of brothers and sisters," said Margaret, faithful to
the idea that the companionship of other young people was the greatest
delight a girl of her age could enjoy.
But Eleanor shook her head. "I shouldn't have liked that a bit," she
said. "I should have been sure to have quarrelled with a whole ready-made
family of brothers and sisters, and they would not have loved me at all,
and the kind, lovely lady would have been jolly sorry she ever adopted
me, and would have turned me out of her lovely home pretty smartly. Guess
again. I can tell you that the good fortune that came to me was ever so
much more worth having than being adopted."
"I cannot imagine any occurrence that would have caused me more
pleasure," said Margaret in a hesitating fashion. "Was it, perhaps,
discovered that the solicitor who lost your stepfather's money had
not lost it quite all, and that there was some left for you?
"Better than that," said Eleanor; "much better. Guess again. I forgot
to mention that I do get a little money from the wreck of our fortunes,
about twenty pounds a year, but I shall never get more than that, and I
know it."
"Did some one fall in love with you, then?" said Margaret rather shyly.
"Gracious, no!" said Eleanor. "No men except one or two old professors
were ever allowed inside Waterloo House. And if a prince on a coal-black
horse, as handsome and as rich as a prince in a fairy tale, had come
riding up to the front door, and begged for my hand on bended knee, I
would have said 'No, thank you' if by saying 'Yes, please,' I must have
lost this wonderful thing that is mine. Have you ever heard of Melba or
Patti?"
"Certainly," answered Margaret, rather wondering at the apparently
irrelevant turn the conversation had suddenly taken.
"Well, then, in me you behold a future Melba and a Patti rolled into
one."
"Do you mean that you are a singer?" asked Margaret.
"A future Melba--Patti--Tetrazzini, I should have said," Eleanor returned
gravely. "But I see from your bewildered expression that you haven't
very much idea what I am talking about, so I will explain. As a child at
home I did not care much about music, chiefly, I think, because I did not
want to be made to practice too much, and when I first went to Waterloo
House I felt I liked it still less. The pianos there were mostly cracked
and old, the girls, very few of whom had a note of music in their
composition, thumped them all day long until I grew fairly sick of the
sound, and as I had to superintend the practising of the younger ones,
you may guess how much I enjoyed myself. But last Christmas holidays,
during which I was left by myself as usual, for Miss McDonald always went
away for a change, and she was so delicate, poor thing, that unless she
had gone away to the country or to the seaside two or three times a year
she could never have got through the terms, I took to practising a good
deal. It may sound horribly conceited, but I fell in love with my own
voice on the spot, and there, in the cold drawing-room, I used to sit and
sing all sorts of rubbishy, sentimental songs until my voice was husky
with mingled emotion and fatigue. Then I thought I would go to a few
concerts and find out if any of the great singers had such a lovely voice
as mine."
"And had they?" queried Margaret, as Eleanor, who had been talking at a
great rate, paused for breath.
"Had they?" repeated Eleanor with a little laugh. "They had. I came home
that evening quite out of love with my own voice, and before those
holidays were over I spent my half-yearly allowance, which I had only
just got, as well as my last quarter's salary, in tickets for concerts
and operas. It was the best time I had had since I left Ireland. In the
afternoons and evenings I used to go to concerts, and the mornings I
spent practising. But I gave up the songs and went in for scales only,
and I could hear my voice improving every day. I longed for some one who
really knew to tell me if my voice was any good, but I didn't know who to
ask. Miss Marvel, the school singing mistress, had no more voice than a
mouse, and what was worse, no ear. She would let a whole class sing out
of tune and never turn a hair. She did not like me because I had once
pointed this out to her, and I knew that if I asked for her opinion of my
voice she would only run it down. Then a daring idea came to me. Can you
guess what it was?"
"No, I cannot," said Margaret quickly, warned by her last experiment, "I
have never been taught to guess. Please continue."
"Very well," said Eleanor, smiling a well-pleased smile, for Margaret's
impatience was a tribute to the interest she was imparting to her tale.
"Have you ever heard of Signor Vanucci? No," as Margaret shook her head.
"He was one of the greatest singing masters in London, and a professor of
I don't know how many academies and schools of music in London. My great
idea was to go straight to him and to ask him if he would hear my voice,
and tell me if it was worth training. And on the very last day of the
holidays, when I had only about enough money left to pay my fare into
town and back, I went to his house. The servant didn't want to admit me
when she heard I had no appointment, but I told her what I wanted, and
begged so hard that she hadn't the heart to refuse, although she told me
that she would be pretty sure to get into trouble afterwards with her
master. But I don't believe he was cross with her, for he was a dear old
man, and didn't look as though he could be angry with any one. Of course,
I began by apologising for having ventured to come, and said I was afraid
he must be very much astonished at my having dared to do such a thing as
to force my way into his house. He looked at me quite gravely, and said,
did I think, then, that I was the first young lady who had conceived the
idea of coming to him to be told whether her voice was most like Patti's
or Melba's. I said I had thought so; and then he said that I was the
nine-hundredth-and-thirty-seventh that week. 'And Martha lets them all
in, every one,' he said, with such a comical look of despair that I could
not help laughing outright. 'And she thinks that I have only to hear them
sing, and they straightway become famous on the spot. Well, well,' he
went on, 'you did not come here to hear me talk, but to listen to
yourself singing, is it not so? There is the piano. Take your seat.
Where are your songs?'"
"And then he yawned, and walked away to the window, and stood there
humming a little tune. I could see that he was already getting tired of
me, and sorry that he had let me in, and though the thought that he was
looking upon me as an awful nuisance would have made me awfully nervous
if I had let it, I just said to myself, 'here is your opportunity, seize
it. What does it matter about any one else?' And I sat down and sang a
scale, beginning with the lowest note I could manage, and going up, up,
up, and ending with a long shake on the two top notes."
"Bravo! bravo!" he said when I had finished, and he was no longer
standing at the window humming a tune, but he was at my side clapping his
hands and patting my shoulder. "Do you know," Eleanor said, her eyes
aglow with triumph at the recollection of that moment, "I had come in
hoping that he would give me five minutes of his time, and he kept me for
an hour, although two pupils were waiting for him in the ante-room."
"And what did he say?" queried Margaret, with an interest that was
positively breathless.
Eleanor suddenly sprang to her feet and began restlessly to pace the
room. The glow of triumph had faded from her face, and had been replaced
by a look of impatient despair that was almost fierce in its intensity.
"Oh, I can't bear to think of what he said!" she burst out. "I feel as
though I should go wild sometimes when I remember, when I know that I
have a gift which is given to few, and that it is wasted on me, locked
away, unless--for do you know what Signor Vanucini said to me?" she asked,
coming to an abrupt pause by the table. "He told me that I ought to be
the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a splendid future
before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities, but that, of course,
it was utterly untrained, and that years of hard work and study lay in
front of me. That I must work, and work, and learn, and learn, and above
all have the best training from the first. And then he said that I had
better enter my name as a student at one of the colleges where he was a
professor, and that he himself would give me lessons. And, oh! the
bitterness of the moment when I had to say that I had no money, no
friends to pay for my education, and that I was earning my living as a
pupil teacher in a third-rate school in the suburbs. Do you know he
seemed almost as much upset as I was. He said it was a great pity, that a
voice like mine ought not to be thrown away, and he asked me a lot of
questions about Miss McDonald and the school. Did I think she would
continue to let me live with her, and come up to town three or four times
a week, and he would give me lessons for nothing. I said I was afraid
not, for I knew the school was in rather low water, and that Miss
McDonald, so far from being able to keep me for nothing, had dismissed
the junior governess, and that I was to fill the vacant post.
"'Nevare mind,' he said, 'we vill find ze way. I, Giorgi Vanucci, to you
make ze assurance.'
"Then he took down my name and address very carefully in a note-book and
sent me away. I was so excited that I walked the whole way from Berners
Street to Hampstead, and felt all the time not as though I were walking
on hard pavement, but as though I were treading on air. I knew from his
manner that Signor Vanucci meant to help me, and that it would be all
right for me to accept his kindness, for I could pay him back afterwards
when I became a famous singer. The next day Miss McDonald came back, and
the day after the girls returned, and the old, dull, insufferably stupid
round began again. But all the time I was thinking, 'This won't last long
for me; in a few days Signor Vanucci will write and tell her the
wonderful news about me.' Miss McDonald noticed how happy I was, and told
me that she was glad that I was at last showing more interest in my work
as a teacher. 'For, my dear,' she said, rather sadly, 'it is no use your
quarrelling with your bread-and-butter. You may not like teaching, but it
appears to me the only opening possible to you.' I only laughed and
danced about the room and hugged her. Wait, I thought, until that letter
comes from Signor Vanucci, and you will see that you will be nothing to
the man who cut bread-and-butter with a razor, for you will have been
guilty of the enormity of setting a Melba and a Patti down to teach
children their Sol-re-fa.
"But that letter never came; and about ten days later I knew why, for I
saw in the papers that the famous musician, Signor Vanucci, had been
knocked down by a motor-car when crossing a street near his house, and
though not much injured, had died a few hours after from the shock."
"And what did you do?" asked Margaret, feeling very much inclined to cry
when she heard how Eleanor's high hopes had thus been laid low.
"Do?" said Eleanor sadly; "there was nothing to be done. I grieved for
the dreadfully sudden death of the old man, and I shall never forget his
kindness, and I shall always feel as grateful to him as though he had
lived to carry out his generous intentions towards me. But, of course,
his death was an awful disappointment.
"All my hopes of getting my voice trained vanished, and it seems as if
what Miss McDonald said were true, and that I have no chance of being
anything but a teacher all my life. To have had so much almost in my
grasp, and then to have had it snatched away, was rather hard luck," she
ended gloomily. "However, I simply would not let myself despond. For one
thing, I hadn't time; I was being worked to death. One or two of the
governesses were down with influenza, including the music mistress, and I
took her singing class, and, I promise you, I made them sit up. I told
them I had never yet heard them sing five consecutive bars in tune, and
then I imitated them in rather an exaggerated way, and even the big ones
who adored Miss Marvel and detested me could not help laughing. But on
the whole I was glad when Miss Marvel was well again and could take over
her own class, and within two days they were singing as flat as ever.
Then I filled up any spare moments I had during the day by studying on my
own account. One of the things Signor Vanucci had impressed on me was
that if I wanted to be a great artist instead of merely being a great
singer, I must not be content with training my voice only, but must
educate my mind, and that nothing in the way of learning would ever come
amiss, for I could put it all in my music. So though I could not get the
singing lessons I pined for, I remembered his advice and set to work to
learn all I could. Among other things, he had asked me if I knew Italian,
and had seemed sorry when I said 'No, and very little French or German
either.' So as a beginning I bought an Italian grammar and a dictionary,
and started to study the language. There they are now," she said, nodding
towards the two books with which she had been so busy a short time
before. "It is wonderful what a lot one can get done in odd moments, if,"
she added with a smile, "one is not led away to waste one's time, and
other people's too, by detailing to them at great length one's life's
history."
"You know you are not wasting my time," Margaret replied with great
earnestness, "and I am most grateful to you for telling me about
yourself. I shall never, never forget it or you," she added wistfully;
"but I shall remember every word you have said, long after you have
forgotten you ever met me."
"But I am not going to forget you either," Eleanor said, and was touched
to see the quick look of almost pathetic gratitude that sprang to
Margaret's face at this answer. "You mustn't go away with the idea that I
tell everybody I meet about myself. You may not believe it after the way
I have taken you into my confidence, but you are the very first person to
whom I have ever mentioned my home or my parents since I said good-bye to
Ireland six years ago, and that you are the only person in the whole wide
world who knows of my visit to Signor Vanucci and what he told me, for I
have kept that a secret from every one. I could not even bring myself to
tell Miss McDonald about it--not that she would have been unsympathetic,
but simply because it was such a bitter disappointment that I could not
have borne to hear it discussed. Besides, she could not, however willing
to do so, have helped me in any way. I told you the school was in low
water. It had not been paying properly for some time, and that term Miss
McDonald decided that unless she got a great many more pupils at Easter
she would give it up altogether at the end of the summer term.
"Well, at Easter no fresh pupils applied to come, and so many left that
scarcely any remained in the school. I don't know what poor Miss McDonald
would have done, for I don't think she had saved much money, if a brother
that she had not seen for years had not written from Australia to say
that after many years of struggling he was now a rich man, and that he
hoped she would go out there and make her home with him. And she sailed
for Melbourne last week."