Meanwhile the Braithwaite carriage had reached the Grange, and, Miss
Lane’s timid remonstrances having been overcome, it had been arranged
that she was to stay to dine there, and a boy was sent to the Vicarage
with a message to that effect. Harry, who had gone to Beckham on
horseback, and had sent his horse home and returned in the carriage to
be near the pretty governess, was suffering from a certain sense of
disappointment. Miss Lane proved even prettier on closer inspection
than she had given promise at a distance of being. As he sat beside her
in the carriage, he thought to himself that there was a beauty in the
rich yet delicate tints of a brunette complexion which no lily fairness
could vie with, and that the sweep of long, dark eyelashes over a
girl’s cheeks was the loveliest thing in the world. But he saw too
much of those eyelashes and not enough of the eyes they shaded--only
a swift, shy look as she answered any question of his, and then they
fell again or turned to his sister, who chattered on fast about the
ceremony they had just passed through, and the people who had been in
the church.
Harry himself was less talkative than usual; he could not think of
anything to say worthy the attention of this beautiful, brave girl
with the soft voice and steady, brown eyes. He became impatient at
last, snubbed his sister for being a magpie, and told her gruffly to
“shut up,” when she made an angry reply. He was glad when they reached
the Grange and the ladies went up-stairs; then he strolled into the
stable-yard and met his eldest brother George.
“Who was that in the carriage?”
“Only little Miss Lane, the Mainwarings’ governess.”
“Eh? Oh, that was why you came home with the family-party! What is she
like?”
“Like? Oh, like--a governess! Stiff, prim--won’t talk, or can’t talk.
Awful mistake for her to have such a pretty face; it’s thrown away on a
girl like that.”
“Perhaps she’ll talk by and by. I think life at the Vicarage doesn’t
encourage liveliness much. Where is she now?”
“Up-stairs with mamma and Lil. I say, she’s my discovery; I brought her
here, and I won’t have you monopolizing her. I’ve seen you staring at
her in church, and wrinkling up your ugly face with annoyance because
she wouldn’t look at you; but----”
“My dear boy, you shall have undisturbed possession of your prize,
as far as I am concerned. I don’t look for my goddesses in the
Sunday-school. I admire your wisdom, though, all the same. She can do
you no possible harm, and will give you some excellent advice as a
reward for your attentions.”
“Hope she’ll give you a snub as a reward for yours!” said Harry, with a
heartiness which went beyond brotherly pleasantry.
Both faces were darkening into frowns when the dinner-bell rang. When
they entered the dining-room, as they did together a few minutes
later, they found little Miss Lane completely engrossed by their
youngest brother, a great overgrown lad of fifteen or sixteen, whose
usual shyness with women had been overcome in a quarter of an hour’s
_tête-à-tête_ with the governess in the drawing-room. He had placed her
in the seat between his own and his father’s; but, before he had had
time to sit down, George dropped quietly into the chair he was holding.
“That’s my place,” said he roughly.
“Mine for to-night, dear William,” answered his elder brother coolly,
bending his handsome face close to that of the girl by his side. “This
is a pleasure I have long wished for, Miss Lane,” he said, in the
tender tones of the experienced flirt.
She looked at him shyly, laughed and blushed.
“It is very unkind of you to laugh. Don’t you believe me?”
“Not quite, I think.”
“Somebody has been poisoning your mind against me already, I see,” he
said, with mock fierceness. “You would not pay any attention to what
the juvenile William might say. It must have been Harry. It was Harry,
was it not?”
“Which is ‘Harry’?”
“Harry is the grumpy-looking one over there--the one who came back in
the carriage with you. He would give the world at this moment to pitch
me out of the window.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. It is his nasty temper.”
“He wouldn’t find it so easy, I should think.”
“No. We should be always pitching each other out of the window if we
were not so well matched; as it is, when any of us are excited beyond
endurance, we pitch the child out.”
“The child?”
“Yes--that great gawky boy who thought he was going to have all
your conversation to himself by putting you between himself and my
father. He hasn’t come to his full strength yet. We can still do great
execution upon him if we take him unawares.”
The talk continued chiefly on his side until the general conversation
turned upon racing, and he hastened, with an eager interest which no
woman could excite in him, to join in the argument that was going
forward. When he again glanced at the girl by his side, she was looking
puzzled and rather prim.
“Our talk about horses and betting shocks you, I see,” he laughed. “You
think it very wicked.”
“No, indeed, I don’t. But I am not used to it. It is so new to me, at
least, since I have been a governess.”
“Since you have been a governess? Well, that can’t be very long. And
did you hear talk like ours before?”
“Not--quite like yours; but I have heard gentlemen talk about racing
and theaters, and--things like that, at home, before my father died.”
“Is that long ago?”
“No”--rather tremulously.
“Are you happy at the Vicarage?”
“Oh, yes, they are very kind to me!”
“So that now any conversation that is not serious surprises and
distresses you?”
“Oh, no; I like it!”
“You like our profane conversation? Then why were you looking so prim
just now? When I turned to you, you looked so solemn and severe, that
the first words that occurred to me froze on my lips. I hadn’t a word
to say.”
“That was because I can’t talk about horses.”
The little governess plucked up spirit enough to fire this shot under
cover of the rising of the ladies, and George Braithwaite followed the
small retreating figure with his eyes with more interest than he had
yet felt in her. In the talk with his father and brothers which now
went on unrestrainedly upon their favorite topics, Harry found occasion
to disagree with his eldest brother upon every point. George bore
this with a good-humor he seldom showed except when he wished to be
irritating. The younger was already almost at boiling-point when they
left the dining-room, where it had been unanimously decided that Miss
Lane was very pretty, but had no spirit, no “go,” and that the Vicarage
had crushed all the youth out of everything about her but her face.
George and Harry left the dining-room, the former by the door, the
latter by the French window; and they entered the drawing-room at the
same moment. Their mother and sister were at the piano looking for a
missing song, but the demure little figure in white was not in the
room. George merely asked if either of them had seen his cigar-case;
but Harry burst out:
“Where’s Miss Lane?”
“Oh, the child has taken her off somewhere to play with him!” said
Lilian. “You all seem very much excited about the governess,” she added
rather contemptuously.
But Harry left the room. Miss Lane was prim, certainly, and had nothing
to say for herself; but she was very pretty, and, moreover, he felt
bound to show George that he was not to have it all his own way, as he
had seemed at dinner to think he was doing.
He searched the billiard-room, the morning-room, opened the windows,
and looked out on to the lawn. At last he thought he heard the sound
of laughter up-stairs, and, mounting the staircase in a few bounds,
he was led by the excited cries of “the child!”--“Take care!”--“Well
done!”--“Caught, by Jove!”--and by girlish laughter and the scuffling
of feet toward the picture-gallery. On the inner side of the door by
which he entered it hung a heavy curtain; he pulled it aside just far
enough to peep through into the long half-lighted gallery.
There stood the grave, sedate, prematurely old governess of half an
hour before panting with laughter and exertion in the pause after a
game of shuttlecock. There was no mistaking the fact; for she still
held the battledoor in one hand while she rallied William on his
clumsiness.
“If you try to catch it so, you must miss it, and perhaps lose your
balance, besides exhibiting yourself in an extremely ungraceful
attitude;” and she threw out her arms in laughing imitation of him in
the act of saving himself from a fall. “Now try again. Are you ready?”
“Yes, I should think so! You sha’n’t laugh at me this time!”
The game began again. The shuttlecock was tossed from the one to the
other amid cries and more laughter, both combatants being nimble, quick
of eye and hand, and as much excited as if their very lives depended
on the keeping up of the flimsy thing of leather and feathers. Harry’s
own breath came and went as fast as theirs as he watched, not the game,
but the graceful, active little player in white, whose movements in the
_abandon_ of the game had a fascination such as no famous dancer he had
ever seen had exercised upon him; and when, as, once more pausing, the
shuttlecock fell to the ground, she stood panting under the soft light
of a Chinese lantern, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes sparkling, her
beautiful brown hair shining as her head moved, and her lips parted
with smiles, the blood mounted to his face, and he watched her, with
all the passionate admiration of his twenty years in his heart and in
his eyes. He dared not move; he would not for the world have broken the
charm by letting her know that the game had a spectator.
A minute later the shuttlecock was flying again. Opposite to the door
where Harry was standing hidden was another door; and, as, with her
eyes fixed upon the toy in the air above her head, Miss Lane tripped
backward against the curtain, her foot caught in its folds, she
stumbled, and might have fallen, had not an arm from behind the curtain
caught and saved her. It was George’s. He had taken up his position
just as his brother had taken his a few minutes later, at the opposite
door.
Quick as thought, Miss Lane had shrunk at the touch of the unexpected
hand into the shell of demure propriety she generally wore.
She showed not even surprise, only a little shame and confusion.
“Thank you. I am much obliged to you,” said she, modestly, without
raising her eyes, extricating herself gently from the obliging arm.
“I--I caught the curtain with my foot.”
“Are you sure you have not twisted your ankle?” asked George, bending
down over her with great solicitude.
“Quite, thank you.”
George bowed his handsome head still lower, and murmured mischievously.
“Now I see why I couldn’t amuse you at dinner. It was because I can’t
talk about shuttlecocks!”
She colored, but made no answer, except by a mischievous smile as she
raised her eyes to his face. Harry came out from behind his curtain.
“Will you come and have a game at billiards, Miss Lane? I’ll teach you.”
“I can play a little; but I musn’t now, thank you. I must go back to
the Vicarage.”
“How anxious you are to get away from us!” said George.
“Oh, indeed, it is not that! I haven’t been so happy for, oh, I don’t
know how long, as I have been here to-day!”
“Then why are you in such a hurry to get away?”
“I am not in a hurry; it is because I must go,” said she, the almost
child-like gayety quite gone out of her voice, which remained sweet,
but low and grave; “besides, I--I ought not to have enjoyed myself so
much. I had forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” said George, kindly.
“To-day--my confirmation. It was wrong, very wrong of me! Such an
example for my pupil Betty, too!”
George could not help smiling.
“I don’t think your bad example would do much harm to Betty, Miss Lane.
I dare say she wishes she had a chance of spending her evening in the
same way.”
“I am afraid she does,” said the governess, simply.
Then, hearing the voices of Lady Braithwaite and her daughter outside,
she went out to meet them, followed by “the child,” and leaving the two
elder brothers face to face.
“Charming little creature! That dash of the prig leaves her a delicious
spice of novelty,” said George, lighting a cigar, and seeming not to
notice his brother’s frowns.
“I thought ‘you didn’t choose your goddesses out of the Sunday-school’?
I thought I ‘was to have undisturbed enjoyment of my discovery, as far
as you were concerned’?”
“And so you might have had, if you had had the wit to forestall me. The
pleasure of her society was absolutely forced upon me, for I could not
leave a defenseless woman to be bored to death all through dinner by
William and Sir George.”
“Where are you going?” asked the other, sharply, for George had his
hand upon the door.
“To the stables, if you have no objection.”
“You are not going to see Miss Lane home?” shouted Harry.
“By Jove, I never thought of it! But it would be a good action to save
the poor little woman from a _tête-à-tête_ with such a cub.”
In his delight at tormenting his fiery-tempered brother, George had
gone a little too far. As he lounged against the doorway, a sudden blow
had sent him reeling back into the gallery, the door was slammed, and
his brother was at the other end of the corridor before he could say a
word. Harry met his sister in the corridor.
“Where’s Miss Lane?”
“Why? What do you want with Miss Lane?”
“Never mind. Where is she?”
But his sister was in a teasing mood. She had more than George’s
cruelty in her disposition, and, being a girl, she could give it freer
rein. She delighted in watching the excited working of Harry’s face as
she evaded his questions.
“My dear boy, I am not Miss Lane’s guardian-angel. You should ask ‘the
child’ where she is.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t torment me so! You met her outside the
picture-gallery a few minutes ago, and took her away with you.”
“Oh, so I did! But you see I’ve dropped her somewhere.”
Harry seized her arm and shook it roughly. But the action only roused
the girl’s spirit from idle teasing to hot defiance.
“Do you think you can make me tell you? If you were to kill me, I
wouldn’t tell you unless I chose!”--and she shook herself free with a
violence which sent him staggering a few paces.
He changed his tactics.
“Don’t be silly, Lil. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you; and, if we
did come to blows, you would be just as likely to hurt me. But do tell
me where Miss Lane is.”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone! Alone?”
“No. Stephen has gone with her; and it was I who sent him,” said she,
defiantly.
“Oh, to annoy me, I suppose?”
“Partly, perhaps--you and George. I thought there had been quite fuss
enough made about the little governess, and I thought that Stephen,
being a cripple, and, therefore, not quite so rough as you, would make
her a safer escort.”
Without a word in answer, Harry gave her a sharp box on the ear, and
swung himself into the hall over the balusters, dashed into the
garden, and plunging into a shrubbery to a short cut to the road, came
out scratched and breathless a few yards behind Miss Lane and Stephen.
“You had better go in, Stephen, or you’ll make your cold worse. I’ll
see Miss Lane safely home,” said he, abruptly.
A hot flush came over the cripple’s face.
“You’ve grown very considerate for me--for once,” he said, bitterly.
“Did Lilian send you?”
“No; it would have been better for her if she had.”
“What have you done to her?” cried Stephen, anxiously.
“I’ve only boxed her ears for impertinence,” said Harry, haughtily.
“You brute! How dared you? I wish George had seen you.”
“George was lying on his back in the picture-gallery, where I left him.”
A sharp cry escaped the lips of the little governess.
“What! You have hurt your brother--perhaps killed him!”
“I haven’t hurt him, Miss Lane,” said Harry, with an uncomfortable
blush. “I shouldn’t have touched him if he hadn’t wanted to prevent my
seeing you home. You will let me now, won’t you?” said he, with sudden
gentleness.
“Thank you. Mr. Lawler has offered to take me,” answered she,
freezingly.
“But Mr. Lawler has a bad cold, and ought not to be out at night.”
“Then I will go home alone.”
Harry turned white with rage. The handsome lad was not used to snubs
from women of any class, when he took the trouble to pay them any
attention. Stephen’s eyes gleamed maliciously.
“You won’t send me back? The air won’t hurt me in the least; I am out
in it every night,” said he, eagerly.
She could not refuse the cripple, and, bowing very coldly to Harry, she
went on with Stephen toward the Vicarage.
It was always a terrible ordeal to the sensitive little Southron to
shake four cold hands and smile “good-night” up into four cold faces
when, the day’s work over, she could run through the garden to the
cottage built in one corner of it, where she lived with an old servant
of the family to wait upon her. But to-night it was far more terrible
than it had ever been before. One degree more of frost in the manner of
papa, mamma, eldest girl, and second girl made her feel that her sin,
in letting herself be carried off by those worldlings, and possibly
enjoying their godless society, was grievous indeed. But they never
guessed the pain they were inflicting. Nay, they meant to be rather
kind about it; and Mrs. Mainwaring asked, not without veiled curiosity:
“Well, did you enjoy yourself at the Grange? I suppose they were very
kind to you?”
“Oh, yes, very kind.”
“You had a beautiful dinner, didn’t you?” asked Betty, who was rather a
_gourmand_.
“Yes, very nice,” answered Miss Lane, who had indeed not been
insensible to the difference between the cookery of the Grange and that
of the Vicarage.
“Did they all get tipsy?” asked Bertram, aged seven, very shyly.
“Oh, no! What makes you ask that, Bertram?”
“Ben said they did,” whispered he, sheepishly withdrawing--Ben was the
coachman, with a dash of gardener.
“Did you think them nice?” asked Joan, inquisitorially.
“They were all very kind; but, oh, they quarrel dreadfully!”
“You wouldn’t like to be governess there, I suppose?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Mainwaring!” answered Miss Lane, fervently and sincerely.
Yet, when she was once more alone, trying faithfully to banish outward
thoughts and prepare herself for her prayers, the admiration, the warm
kindliness of the wrong-headed Braithwaites would rush in and contrast
itself with the logical conduct of the Mainwarings, who hung about her
when she was in high spirits and neglected her when she was unhappy and
unwell.
“I do hope he is not hurt!” was her last thought.