He laughed for the first time. “You _are_ acute. Yes, she was in
love. That is, she had been. That came out--she couldn’t tell her
story without its coming out. I saw it, and she saw I saw it; but
neither of us spoke of it. I remember the time and the place--the
corner of the lawn, the shade of the great beeches and the long, hot
summer afternoon. It wasn’t a scene for a shudder; but oh----!” He
quitted the fire and dropped back into his chair.
“You’ll receive the packet Thursday morning?” I inquired.
“Probably not till the second post.”
“Well then; after dinner----”
“You’ll all meet me here?” He looked us round again. “Isn’t
anybody going?” It was almost the tone of hope.
“Everybody will stay!”
“_I_ will--and _I_ will!” cried the ladies whose departure had
been fixed. Mrs. Griffin, however, expressed the need for a little more
light. “Who was it she was in love with?”
“The story will tell,” I took upon myself to reply.
“Oh, I can’t wait for the story!”
“The story _won’t_ tell,” said Douglas; “not in any literal,
vulgar way.”
“More’s the pity, then. That’s the only way I ever understand.”
“Won’t _you_ tell, Douglas?” somebody else inquired.
He sprang to his feet again. “Yes--tomorrow. Now I must go to
bed. Good-night.” And quickly catching up a candlestick, he left us
slightly bewildered. From our end of the great brown hall we heard his
step on the stair; whereupon Mrs. Griffin spoke. “Well, if I don’t
know who she was in love with, I know who _he_ was.”
“She was ten years older,” said her husband.
“_Raison de plus_--at that age! But it’s rather nice, his long
reticence.”
“Forty years!” Griffin put in.
“With this outbreak at last.”
“The outbreak,” I returned, “will make a tremendous occasion of
Thursday night;” and everyone so agreed with me that, in the light of
it, we lost all attention for everything else. The last story, however
incomplete and like the mere opening of a serial, had been told; we
handshook and “candlestuck,” as somebody said, and went to bed.
I knew the next day that a letter containing the key had, by the first
post, gone off to his London apartments; but in spite of--or perhaps
just on account of--the eventual diffusion of this knowledge we quite
let him alone till after dinner, till such an hour of the evening,
in fact, as might best accord with the kind of emotion on which our
hopes were fixed. Then he became as communicative as we could desire
and indeed gave us his best reason for being so. We had it from him
again before the fire in the hall, as we had had our mild wonders of
the previous night. It appeared that the narrative he had promised
to read us really required for a proper intelligence a few words of
prologue. Let me say here distinctly, to have done with it, that this
narrative, from an exact transcript of my own made much later, is what
I shall presently give. Poor Douglas, before his death--when it was in
sight--committed to me the manuscript that reached him on the third of
these days and that, on the same spot, with immense effect, he began
to read to our hushed little circle on the night of the fourth. The
departing ladies who had said they would stay didn’t, of course,
thank heaven, stay: they departed, in consequence of arrangements made,
in a rage of curiosity, as they professed, produced by the touches with
which he had already worked us up. But that only made his little final
auditory more compact and select, kept it, round the hearth, subject to
a common thrill.
The first of these touches conveyed that the written statement took
up the tale at a point after it had, in a manner, begun. The fact to
be in possession of was therefore that his old friend, the youngest of
several daughters of a poor country parson, had, at the age of twenty,
on taking service for the first time in the schoolroom, come up to
London, in trepidation, to answer in person an advertisement that had
already placed her in brief correspondence with the advertiser. This
person proved, on her presenting herself, for judgment, at a house
in Harley Street, that impressed her as vast and imposing--this
prospective patron proved a gentleman, a bachelor in the prime of life,
such a figure as had never risen, save in a dream or an old novel,
before a fluttered, anxious girl out of a Hampshire vicarage. One could
easily fix his type; it never, happily, dies out. He was handsome
and bold and pleasant, off-hand and gay and kind. He struck her,
inevitably, as gallant and splendid, but what took her most of all and
gave her the courage she afterwards showed was that he put the whole
thing to her as a kind of favour, an obligation he should gratefully
incur. She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--saw him
all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks, of expensive habits, of
charming ways with women. He had for his own town residence a big house
filled with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase; but it
was to his country home, an old family place in Essex, that he wished
her immediately to proceed.
He had been left, by the death of their parents in India, guardian to
a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger, a military
brother, whom he had lost two years before. These children were,
by the strangest of chances for a man in his position,--a lone man
without the right sort of experience or a grain of patience,--very
heavily on his hands. It had all been a great worry and, on his own
part doubtless, a series of blunders, but he immensely pitied the poor
chicks and had done all he could; had in particular sent them down to
his other house, the proper place for them being of course the country,
and kept them there, from the first, with the best people he could
find to look after them, parting even with his own servants to wait
on them and going down himself, whenever he might, to see how they
were doing. The awkward thing was that they had practically no other
relations and that his own affairs took up all his time. He had put
them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure, and had placed
at the head of their little establishment--but below stairs only--an
excellent woman, Mrs. Grose, whom he was sure his visitor would like
and who had formerly been maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper
and was also acting for the time as superintendent to the little girl,
of whom, without children of her own, she was, by good luck, extremely
fond. There were plenty of people to help, but of course the young
lady who should go down as governess would be in supreme authority. She
would also have, in holidays, to look after the small boy, who had been
for a term at school--young as he was to be sent, but what else could
be done?--and who, as the holidays were about to begin, would be back
from one day to the other. There had been for the two children at first
a young lady whom they had had the misfortune to lose. She had done
for them quite beautifully--she was a most respectable person--till
her death, the great awkwardness of which had, precisely, left no
alternative but the school for little Miles. Mrs. Grose, since then,
in the way of manners and things, had done as she could for Flora; and
there were, further, a cook, a housemaid, a dairywoman, an old pony,
an old groom, and an old gardener, all likewise thoroughly respectable.
So far had Douglas presented his picture when someone put a
question. “And what did the former governess die of?--of so much
respectability?”
Our friend’s answer was prompt. “That will come out. I don’t
anticipate.”
“Excuse me--I thought that was just what you _are_ doing.”
“In her successor’s place,” I suggested, “I should have wished
to learn if the office brought with it----”
“Necessary danger to life?” Douglas completed my thought. “She
did wish to learn, and she did learn. You shall hear tomorrow
what she learnt. Meanwhile, of course, the prospect struck her as
slightly grim. She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of
serious duties and little company, of really great loneliness. She
hesitated--took a couple of days to consult and consider. But the
salary offered much exceeded her modest measure, and on a second
interview she faced the music, she engaged.” And Douglas, with this,
made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved me to throw
in--
“The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the
splendid young man. She succumbed to it.”
He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave
a stir to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to
us. “She saw him only twice.”
“Yes, but that’s just the beauty of her passion.”
A little to my surprise, on this, Douglas turned round to me. “It
_was_ the beauty of it. There were others,” he went on, “who
hadn’t succumbed. He told her frankly all his difficulty--that for
several applicants the conditions had been prohibitive. They were,
somehow, simply afraid. It sounded dull--it sounded strange; and all
the more so because of his main condition.”
“Which was----?”
“That she should never trouble him--but never, never: neither appeal
nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself,
receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and
let him alone. She promised to do this, and she mentioned to me that
when, for a moment, disburdened, delighted, he held her hand, thanking
her for the sacrifice, she already felt rewarded.”
“But was that all her reward?” one of the ladies asked.
“She never saw him again.”
“Oh!” said the lady; which, as our friend immediately left us
again, was the only other word of importance contributed to the subject
till, the next night, by the corner of the hearth, in the best chair,
he opened the faded red cover of a thin old-fashioned gilt-edged
album. The whole thing took indeed more nights than one, but on the
first occasion the same lady put another question. “What is your
title?”
“I haven’t one.”
“Oh, _I_ have!” I said. But Douglas, without heeding me, had begun
to read with a fine clearness that was like a rendering to the ear of
the beauty of his author’s hand.
I
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops,
a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising,
in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very
bad days--found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made
a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping,
swinging coach that carried me to the stopping-place at which I was
to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I was told,
had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June afternoon,
a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely
day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me
a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into
the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the
point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded,
something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I
remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its
open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out;
I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels
on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled
and cawed in the golden sky. The scene had a greatness that made it a
different affair from my own scant home, and there immediately appeared
at the door, with a little girl in her hand, a civil person who dropped
me as decent a curtsey as if I had been the mistress or a distinguished
visitor. I had received in Harley Street a narrower notion of the
place, and that, as I recalled it, made me think the proprietor still
more of a gentleman, suggested that what I was to enjoy might be
something beyond his promise.
I had no drop again till the next day, for I was carried triumphantly
through the following hours by my introduction to the younger of my
pupils. The little girl who accompanied Mrs. Grose appeared to me on
the spot a creature so charming as to make it a great fortune to have
to do with her. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen,
and I afterwards wondered that my employer had not told me more of
her. I slept little that night--I was too much excited; and this
astonished me too, I recollect, remained with me, adding to my sense
of the liberality with which I was treated. The large, impressive room,
one of the best in the house, the great state bed, as I almost felt it,
the full, figured draperies, the long glasses in which, for the first
time, I could see myself from head to foot, all struck me--like the
extraordinary charm of my small charge--as so many things thrown in. It
was thrown in as well, from the first moment, that I should get on with
Mrs. Grose in a relation over which, on my way, in the coach, I fear
I had rather brooded. The only thing indeed that in this early outlook
might have made me shrink again was the clear circumstance of her being
so glad to see me. I perceived within half an hour that she was so
glad--stout, simple, plain, clean, wholesome woman--as to be positively
on her guard against showing it too much. I wondered even then a little
why she should wish not to show it, and that, with reflection, with
suspicion, might of course have made me uneasy.
But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection
with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl,
the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything
else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several
times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and
prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look
at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to
listen, while, in the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter,
for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not
without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a
moment when I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child;
there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as
at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies
were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the
light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent
matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, “form”
little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful
life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first
occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small
white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had
undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this
last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for
my inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this
timidity--which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world,
had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign
of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed
of one of Raphael’s holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to
her and to determine us--I felt quite sure she would presently like
me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the
pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at
supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a
bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were
naturally things that in Flora’s presence could pass between us only
as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions.
“And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very
remarkable?”
One wouldn’t flatter a child. “Oh, Miss, _most_ remarkable. If you
think well of this one!”--and she stood there with a plate in her
hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other
with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us.
“Yes; if I do----?”
“You _will_ be carried away by the little gentleman!”
“Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I’m
afraid, however,” I remember feeling the impulse to add, “I’m
rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!”
I can still see Mrs. Grose’s broad face as she took this in. “In
Harley Street?”
“In Harley Street.”
“Well, Miss, you’re not the first--and you won’t be the last.”
“Oh, I’ve no pretension,” I could laugh, “to being the only
one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back
tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow--Friday, Miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach,
under care of the guard, and is to be met by the same carriage.”
I forthwith expressed that the proper as well as the pleasant and
friendly thing would be therefore that on the arrival of the public
conveyance I should be in waiting for him with his little sister; an
idea in which Mrs. Grose concurred so heartily that I somehow took
her manner as a kind of comforting pledge--never falsified, thank
heaven!--that we should on every question be quite at one. Oh, she was
glad I was there!
What I felt the next day was, I suppose, nothing that could be fairly
called a reaction from the cheer of my arrival; it was probably at
the most only a slight oppression produced by a fuller measure of
the scale, as I walked round them, gazed up at them, took them in,
of my new circumstances. They had, as it were, an extent and mass for
which I had not been prepared and in the presence of which I found
myself, freshly, a little scared as well as a little proud. Lessons,
in this agitation, certainly suffered some delay; I reflected that
my first duty was, by the gentlest arts I could contrive, to win the
child into the sense of knowing me. I spent the day with her out of
doors; I arranged with her, to her great satisfaction, that it should
be she, she only, who might show me the place. She showed it step by
step and room by room and secret by secret, with droll, delightful,
childish talk about it and with the result, in half an hour, of our
becoming immense friends. Young as she was, I was struck, throughout
our little tour, with her confidence and courage with the way, in
empty chambers and dull corridors, on crooked staircases that made
me pause and even on the summit of an old machicolated square tower
that made me dizzy, her morning music, her disposition to tell me so
many more things than she asked, rang out and led me on. I have not
seen Bly since the day I left it, and I dare say that to my older and
more informed eyes it would now appear sufficiently contracted. But as
my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue,
danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the
view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as
would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of
storybooks and fairy-tales. Wasn’t it just a storybook over which
I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big, ugly, antique,
but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still
older, half replaced and half utilised, in which I had the fancy of
our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting
ship. Well, I was, strangely, at the helm!