The Perils of Orphanhood.
The house in which the Vanes lived stood in a large and beautiful
garden, and both were enclosed by a high brick wall, over which only the
waving tops of the trees could be seen from the street. There were a
good many such houses in M. at the time my story opens. They were
originally built in the country, amid green fields and orchards, where,
on summer days, one might sit and look at country sights and listen to
country sounds, and quite forget that the hum and bustle of a great town
sounded close at hand.
As time went on, and commerce prospered, the town extended itself in all
directions. Houses, some large and some small, were built near those
pleasant country homes, and in a few years stretched far beyond them.
Sometimes the gardens were encroached upon, and streets were opened, and
building lots laid out and occupied close to the house itself, till only
a narrow strip of dusty lawn was left. But in some streets the high
brick garden-walls made a blank between great blocks of stores and
terraces of dwellings for a good many years, and in some streets there
are high brick garden-walls still.
The house in which the Vanes lived was a long time before it yielded up
a foot of its large garden which the wall shut in. This wall was broken
on two sides by gates. In a narrow street which led down towards the
river were two heavy wooden doors, one large enough to admit a carriage,
the other smaller, for the convenience of those who entered on foot. On
another side, from one of the great thoroughfares of the city, the
grounds were entered by handsome iron gates. A clump of evergreens and
ornamental shrubs in part hid the house, even when the gates, were open,
and a low cedar hedge and a fence of iron network separated the lawn and
the carriage-drive from the more extensive grounds behind the house.
The house itself had no particular claim to be called handsome, except
that it was large and well built of grey hewn stone. It was high and
square, and on one side a wing had been thrown out, which rather spoiled
the appearance of the original building; but, standing back from the
bustle and dust of the street, behind the green, lawn and pebbly
carriage-drive, and partly hidden by the trees and shrubs, it looked a
very pleasant and pretty place for a home.
This house was built and occupied many years by Mr St. Hubert, an
immigrant from France, and at his death it was left to his only child,
Mrs Vane, with a condition that neither it nor a foot of the land about
it should be sold during her life-time. A great many tales might be
told of what happened in that house from first to last--most of them
sorrowful tales enough--but it is only the story of poor Mrs Vane and
her children that is to be told here.
Almost every one spoke of this lady as "poor Mrs Vane." Her friends
had all said, "Poor Theresa," when it was first known that she was to be
married to Mr Vane; for he was a poor man, and a widower with three
children, who, they all said, wished to marry her because she was the
daughter of a man who was supposed to be rich. Her father would have
given half of what he possessed, rather than that she should have
married Mr Vane; but he had never crossed a wish of hers during all the
eighteen years of her life, and it was too late to begin then. So,
though he did not like him, he gave his consent to the marriage, on
condition that he should leave the army, and accept a situation in a
public office, which he, being a man of wealth and influence, was able
to obtain for him. It did not cost Mr Vane much self-denial to do
this--though he used afterwards to declare that it did--for he was a man
who first of all considered what was for his own ease and pleasure. Nor
did it trouble him much to send his children from him. His eldest
daughter was adopted by his first wife's mother, who resided in the town
of M.; and his other children--a boy and girl--were sent home to be
cared for and educated by their father's friends in England; and he took
up his residence in the luxurious home of his father-in-law with very
good will.
It did not prove a happy marriage. It might have done so, perhaps, if
after a few years Mrs Vane's health had not failed. If she could have
continued the gay life to which she had been introduced, and could have
shone a belle among her husband's friends, as she had done in her own
smaller circle while a girl, she might have had a sort of happiness,
while it lasted, and so might he. But after awhile her health failed,
and at the time of her father's death, which happened when her eldest
child was thirteen years of age, she was a confirmed invalid.
She was "poor Mrs Vane" indeed then. A suffering, solitary, forsaken
woman she felt herself to be the day her dead father was carried away
from the house he had built. Not that her husband had ever been unkind
to her, or even openly neglectful. But he had never cared for her as
she had cared for him; and it was not in his nature to understand the
wants or cravings of a sick unsatisfied heart like hers, much less to
minister to them. He was sorry that she could no longer go into the
society she had always adorned, and he often told her so; but he never
gave up a pleasure which society could offer to him for her sake. He
grieved for her sufferings, and did what might be done during a brief
visit or two each day to relieve them; but long before her father's
death she had come to feel that his grief was of a kind that could very
well be left in her chamber when he went away. After a time the vain
craving for his sympathy, which made the first years of her illness so
miserable, wore away, and a kind of dull content, growing gradually out
of an interest in other things, took its place; but she was "poor Mrs
Vane" still to the few friends who had not forgotten her already in her
enforced retirement.
And her husband was "poor Mr Vane" to himself and everybody else when
Mr St. Hubert died. The old man had treated him shamefully, he thought
and declared, for his name was not mentioned in his will. The house and
a certain income was insured to his wife while she lived, and at her
death all the property was to be divided between the children, and given
up to them as each came of age. But he had nothing; and even his wife's
income was not allowed to pass through his hands.
It was not a very large income. It would not have sufficed for her and
her children, had they been living in the gay world, entertaining and
being entertained. But living quietly, as her health obliged them to
live, it might be considered ample for them all. At any rate, she knew
it would have to suffice; for Mr Vane, having always spent his own
income on his own pleasures, was ill prepared to give up any part of it.
They did not grow happier together after this. Some time before Mr St.
Hubert's death the care of household affairs had been committed by him
into the hands of a relative of his own--a widow of the name of Ascot;
and during his life-time nothing transpired to occasion any doubt as to
her entire fitness for the position he had given her. She was a French
woman by birth, and spoke English very imperfectly, though her deceased
husband had been an Englishman. She was a very quiet, firm person,
faithful in the performance of all her duties, and careful and exact in
the management of the household expenses. She never presumed on her
relationship in any way that was disagreeable to Mr St. Hubert, and, by
her attention to himself and her kindness to Mrs Vane, won his
confidence entirely; and his anxiety as to the future of his daughter
and her children was in a great measure allayed by the promise she made
never to leave them while they needed her care.
But after his death matters were not so well managed. At least, they
were not managed to the satisfaction of poor Mrs Vane. In a very short
time an entire change was effected in the household. Mr Vane found it
an improvement as far as _his_ comfort was concerned, or probably Mrs
Ascot's stay in the house would have been short. But it was not so with
Mrs Vane. Mrs Ascot was very quiet, very reasonable, and, above all,
very firm. "Nothing was so necessary for Mrs Vane as entire quiet,"
she declared; and the poor mother had not the strength or courage to
carry on a battle with her stronger will. So her two little daughters
were sent to school, and her two little sons, with their nurse, were
banished to the part of the house most distant from their mother's room,
and were only permitted to visit it at certain times. They would have
been sent to school, too, if Mrs Ascot could have accomplished it; but,
as the eldest was only four years of age at the time of his
grandfather's death, this she could hardly do.
Only one thing saved Mrs Vane from falling into hopeless fretfulness or
helpless imbecility--this was the constant presence of her eldest and
dearest child, Selina. Even Mrs Ascot's cold-heartedness could not
separate these two. Even Mr Vane's selfishness was not equal to
planning or permitting anything that could come between the mother and
her child. For the little girl was blind,--had been blind from her
seventh year, and since that time she had never once been beyond the
sound of her mother's voice.
A great many of God's best blessings come to us disguised as sorrows.
It seemed to this mother, when she could no longer doubt that the light
of heaven was to be denied to her child, that God could deal no harder
blow, and in her wild angry way she prayed that the little creature
might die. She thought of all that had made life sweet to herself, from
all which her child must be shut out for ever, and she utterly refused
to be comforted.
And yet, as the years went on, the affliction of the child did more for
the mother than all the blessings that had been showered on her youth,
than all the trials that had fallen on her later years--it made her
forget herself. In seeking to brighten her little daughter's life, her
own was brightened. She suffered herself to be beguiled into exertions
for her sake, that would have seemed impossible for her own. She
welcomed the few visitors that came, because Selina liked to hear new
voices and make new friends. The daily walk in the garden or the drive
in the carriage sometimes seemed a weariness to her; but they deepened
the rose on the little girl's cheek, and she went for her sake. She
recalled the little songs and tales of her childhood for her pleasure,
and took pains to learn such simple fancy work as the blind child could
be taught to do.
In her little daughter the mother found solace for many a sorrow. She
was a fair, slender child, more like her father than her mother, but
like neither in disposition. She was sweet and cheerful always, even
merry in her quiet way. She knew her blindness was a great misfortune,
but it did not press upon her as such. She never repined under it, nor
murmured that she was not like the rest; but rather comforted herself
and her mother, saying that no schools nor visits could ever take her
from her and from home; and after a time her mother was comforted and
reconciled to her affliction.
"For after all," she thought, "what has life to give to any one? Far
better that she should live here always, safe, and ignorant of the world
and its ways, than that she should taste of pleasure only to have it
turn to bitterness on her lips, as it has done on mine. If she could
only be always a child! What will become of my darling when I must go
and leave her?"
Poor Mrs Vane! She sought refuge in the present, from the griefs of
the past, and the fears for the future; for she was one of those who
have no safe place to which they can flee from trouble. She had
scarcely even a form of religion. She had been altogether untaught as
regards sacred things. Her mother had been a Jewess, and had died
young, and her father had had no religion. Her husband troubled himself
very little about these things, either for her or himself. He had
chosen godfathers and godmothers for his children, and had them
baptised, and then his duty was done. And the poor, solitary, suffering
mother knew not where to betake herself in her time of need. Her fears
for the future of all her children pressed on her heavily often, and she
longed sadly and earnestly for some true friend to whom she might trust
them.
And so the months and years passed, with nothing to break the monotony
of their life but the monthly visits of the two school girls, Frederica
and Theresa. Very pleasant breaks they were. The girls always came
into the still sunshine of their mother's pretty room like a fresh sweet
breeze from the outer world, bringing health and fragrance on its wings.
They were bright days indeed. Selina lived another life in the tales
told by the school girls; and even their mother forgot her cares and
ailments for the time as she listened to their merry talk. They were
not at all alike: Selina was growing up tall and fair, like an English
girl, her blind beautiful eyes clear and cloudless as the summer heaven;
Frederica was small and dark, as much a Jewess in appearance as ever her
grandmother had been; Theresa was more like Frederica than Selina, but
plainer than either. But they were all alike in one thing: they loved
each other and their mother dearly, and longed earnestly for the time
when their school days should be over, and they should be happy
together.
So poor Mrs Vane, who had comfort in so few things, had much comfort in
her daughters and their love. And she needed all their comfort, poor
soul! for some troubles, hard to bear, fell to her lot at this time--
troubles which she could not let them share with her, and which need not
be told here.