Let no maiden think, however fair,
She is not fairer in new clothes than old.
TENNYSON.
Miss Fanny Willoughby, when the unseen Allonby saw her pass on the
terrace, had just come from feeding her fowls. The poultry-yard was
quite a feature at Edge, as the house was always called for brevity's
sake, though its full name was Edge Willoughby. This year had been a
very fortunate one for Miss Fanny's pigeons, and her mind was full of
happy and contented thoughts as she carried back her empty tin dishes
and deposited them carefully, along with her gardening gloves, in the
little room known as the gardening-room.
Beside her walked the very bird whose call had attracted the artist's
attention. Jacky was a Cornish chough, coal-black in plumage, with
brilliant orange-tinted beak. He strutted along sideways and with great
dignity, casting looks of exultant triumph at the imprisoned cockatoo,
who was his sworn foe. Puck, the stout and overfed terrier, solemnly
accompanied them, as was his invariable habit, walking very close to the
neat box-border, and now and then sniffing at the glowing geraniums.
"Dear me!" said Miss Fanny, "how warm it is--quite oppressive."
She would not for worlds have said that it was hot, but her dear little
face was pink with her exertions, and her small plump hands so moist
that to pull off the gloves was quite a business.
The sound of a piano was loudly audible--a jingly piano, very much out
of tune, up and down which scales were being rattled lightly and evenly.
"I really think I shall tell the child not to practise any more," said
Miss Fanny. "Charlotte is certainly a trifle exacting this warm
weather."
So saying, she opened a door to her right, and entered a room which was
evidently sacred to the purposes of education--the education of a former
day. A reclining-board and two large globes were its principal features.
The book-shelves were stocked with such works as "Mangnall's Questions,"
"Child's Guide," "Mrs. Markham's England," and the like. On the square
table in the window was a slate full of sums, and what used to be known
as a "copy slip"--bearing a statement of doubtful veracity:
"Truth is better than flattery."
This sentence comprised exactly the system on which Elaine Brabourne's
aunts had brought her up.
They loved her very dearly, but they would have thought it a criminal
weakness to tell her so. They acted always on that strange system which
was in vogue when they were young--namely, that you always would be
naughty if you could, and that the only thing to keep you under was a
constant atmosphere of repression. If you learned your lesson, you were
given to understand that the fact was due to the excellence of the
manner in which you were taught--not to any effort of your own. If you
did not learn it, you were conscious that this deficiency on your part
was only to be expected from one who habitually made so small a use of
such exceptional advantages. You were never encouraged to form an
opinion of your own. It was an understood thing that you accepted that
of your elders. For example: "A plate basket," said Miss Charlotte,
"should always be kept in the parlor closet;" and her niece Elaine would
have regarded the woman who ventured to keep hers elsewhere as out of
the pale of civilization.
This plan of education had answered very well for the Misses Willoughby,
whose lives had been peaceful and secluded as modern lives rarely are,
and who passed their days always in the same place, and in nobody's
society but their own. Their delightful unanimity of opinion was the
great bond of peace between them; but they had never reflected that
Elaine Brabourne could not pass her life in Avilion as they had done,
nor paused to consider what would be the result when this girl, who had
never been allowed to think for herself, even in such a matter as the
color of her gowns, should be suddenly precipitated into London life as
the eldest daughter of a rich man.
Elaine did not cease her scales, nor look round as her aunt entered. The
metronome's loud ticks were in her ear, and she dared not halt; but
sweet-tempered little Miss Fanny crossed the room with light step, and
stopped the instrument of torture with a smile.
"Oh, Aunt Fanny! Aunt Char said I was to play scales for an hour!"
"My dear, it is so excessively warm," said Miss Fanny, apologetically,
"I feel sure you should lie down till the luncheon-bell rings. It is
really quite exceptional weather; I am so glad for the hay-makers."
Elaine, like a machine, had busied herself in closing the piano and
putting away her music. Now she rose, and followed her aunt to the table
by the window.
She was such a very odd mixture of what was pleasing and what was not,
that it was hard to say what was the impression she first conveyed.
She was a head taller than her aunt, and looked like an overgrown child.
She wore a hideous green and white cotton frock, and a black holland
apron. The frock had shrunk above her ankles, and was an agonising
misfit. Of the said ankles it was impossible to judge, for their
proportions were shrouded in white cotton stockings and cashmere boots
without heels.
She was quite a blonde, and her hair was abundant. It was combed back
very tightly from a rather high forehead, plaited and coiled in a lump
behind, which lump, in profile, stuck straight out from the head.
The eye seemed to take in and absorb these details before one realised
the brilliancy of the complexion, the delicate outline of the short
nose, the fine grey eyes, perhaps a shade too light in color, but
relieved by heavy dark lashes, and the almost faultless curve of the
upper lip.
Such was Miss Brabourne at nineteen. A child, with a mind utterly
unformed, and a person to match. The dull expression of the pretty face
when at rest was quite noticeable. It looked as if the girl had no
thoughts; and this was sometimes varied by a look of discontent, which
was anything but an improvement. She felt, vaguely, that she was dull;
and that her life bored her; but her mind had not been trained enough to
enable her to realise anything.
She had read astonishingly little. There was a deeply-rooted conviction
in the minds of her aunts Fanny, Charlotte and Emily that reading was a
waste of time,--except it were history, read aloud.
It was hard to see wherein the great charm of this reading aloud lay; it
had sometimes occurred to Elaine to wonder why she was made to read
"Markham's France" aloud to her aunts by the hour together, yet, if
found perusing the same book to herself in the corner, it was taken
away, and she was told to "get her mending."
She did not care conspicuously for reading. She did not care for
anything much, so far as she knew. The only thing which evoked any warm
interest was music, and the one piece of restraint which she deeply
resented was the being forbidden to play on the beautiful grand piano in
the drawing-room. It never occurred to her aunts for a moment that their
pupil could play far better than her teachers; it never dawned upon them
that she was fifty times more able to do justice to the grand piano than
they were. Elaine was the child--under their authority. It stood to
reason that she must not play on the best piano, any more than she might
loll in arm-chairs, stand on the hearthrug, or go up and down the front
staircase. And so, at an age when most girls are going out to balls,
admiring and being admired, Elaine was playing her scales, getting up at
half-past six, going to bed at half-past nine, not happy, but quite
ignorant of what she needed to make her so.
There was one aunt who did not quite agree with the plans adopted for
their niece's education, but she was far too gentle to tell her sisters
so. This was Aunt Ellen, the eldest, and Elaine's god-mother.
She was far the most intellectual of the four sisters, but had resigned
any active part in her god-daughter's education because of her
ill-health. She reserved to herself the task of amusing the child, and
this she wished to do by teaching her fancy-work, and occupations for
the fingers. But if there was one thing Elaine disliked, it was
fancy-work, or occupation of any sort for the fingers. In fact, it
puzzled them to know what she did like, though it never occurred to them
to think how narrow was their range of interests--so narrow as to make
it quite likely that the girl might have a thousand, and they not
discover them. Miss Ellen was a great reader, and would have dearly
liked Elaine to read the books she read; but out of deference
to her sisters' theories she lent her only such books as they
approved--memoirs, essays and biographies; and Elaine hated memoirs,
essays and biographies.
She did not decline to read them, any more than she declined to do
fancy-work--she was too well-trained for that. Her individuality was not
powerful enough to resist that of her aunts, three of whom were women of
strong character, accustomed to be obeyed. And so the days went on, and
she passed from child to woman, no one but Aunt Ellen being aware of the
fact; and Ellen Willoughby dreaded unspeakably the day, which she felt
certain must come soon, when the girl would awake to all the
possibilities of life, and find her present existence intolerable.
It might have been a presentiment which made her mind so full of this
thought on this hot, beautiful summer's day, when she lay on her low
couch beside the great window, gazing out at the glowing valley, and
watching the shadows change as the sun slowly advanced.
Presently there was a tap at the door, and Elaine came in. She brought
fresh roses for the invalid's glasses, and, as she crossed the room, her
godmother watched her keenly. The girl shut the door quietly and crossed
the carpet, neither stamping nor scuffling. Her manners had been well
attended to, but as she advanced it struck Miss Willoughby that her step
lacked the elasticity which one associates with youth; she thought at
that moment she would have preferred to see Elaine hurl herself into the
room, and skip and dance for joy of the beautiful weather.
The niece kissed her aunt in her usual methodical fashion, and then,
fetching the vases, began the duty of putting fresh flowers and water,
much as she would have begun to fold a hem or stitch a seam. This done,
she sat still for some few minutes, thinking apparently of nothing, and
with her dull, handsome eyes fixed on the distance.
At last she said:
"Martha's field is being cut to-day, and they say, if we get some rain
by-and-by, there ought to be a fine aftermath."
"Dear me! Martha's field being cut already! How the years fly!" said
Miss Ellen, with a sigh.
"Oh, do you think so? I think they drag," said Elaine, rather suddenly;
and then repeated, as if to herself, "They drag for me."
Miss Willoughby felt for the girl, but her sense of what was fitting
compelled her to utter a platitude.
"Time always passes more slowly for the young," she said. "When you are
my age--"
"That will be in twenty-two years," said Elaine.
She said no more, but somehow her tone implied that she did not wish to
live twenty-two years, and to the elder woman it sounded very sad.
She looked wistfully at her niece, wondering if it would be possible to
get her sisters to see that some amusement beyond the annual
school-feast and tea at one or two farmhouses was necessary for the
young.
She longed to say that youth seemed so long because of the varied
emotions and experiences crowded into it--emotions which were lifelong,
minutes of revelation which seemed like years, hours in which one lived
an age. But she knew Charlotte would feel it most unfitting to talk of
emotions to a child, and dimly she began to feel sure that Charlotte
must be wrong, or that somebody was wrong, that Elaine's was not a happy
nor a normal state of girlhood.
Just then Miss Emily Willoughby entered the room. She was the youngest
of the four, and rather handsome, though her style of hair was
unbecoming, and her dress an atrocity.
"Is Elaine here? Oh, yes, I see she is. Elaine, Jane is ready for your
walk, and I should like you to go along the valley to Poole, and tell
Mrs. Battishill to send up twenty pounds of strawberries for preserving,
as soon as they are ripe."
Elaine rose, with a face expressing neither displeasure nor distaste.
She merely said, "Yes, Aunt Emily;" and, taking up her tray of dead
flowers, left the room and closed the door behind her.
Miss Ellen's eyes followed her anxiously, and, as the footsteps died
away along the passage, she lay back among her cushions and a slight
flush rose in her white face.
"Emily," she said, "I should like to have a little talk with you."
"That is just what I have come up for," said her sister, seating herself
in Elaine's vacated chair, and taking out her knitting. "About this work
from Helbronner's, isn't it? Well, my dear, we have just been discussing
it among ourselves, and have come to the conclusion to send back the
design. It will not do, my dear Ellen, as I know you will agree. It
would be considered quite Popish by the villagers, and, as Mr. Hill
would not like to object to it if it were our work, it would be placing
him in a _most_ awkward position."
Miss Ellen fixed her soft, questioning eyes on her sister's face, but
soon removed them, with a sigh of resignation. Emily's mind was full of
the design for the new altar-cloth, and it would be useless at such a
moment to appeal to her on the subject of her niece's future. She could
but lie still and hear the pros and cons respecting a design of cross
intertwined with lilies, which design Miss Emily, for some inscrutable
reason, seemed to consider appropriate only to the Church of Rome.
Presently, through the open window could be heard Elaine and the maid
setting out for their walk, and again Miss Willoughby caught herself
wishing that the girl's footfall had had more of girlish buoyancy about
it.