IN BAYSWATER.
'Twenty years old to-day--twenty years!' murmured Alison, as she
glanced at herself in the little mirror, and thought how pale and how
much older than her age she looked in her plain black mourning dress,
which was destitute of other ornament than smooth white cuffs and a
ruche or frill of lace, or some such soft material, round her slender
throat.
Vividly came back to the girl's memory her other birthdays, ere
poverty fell upon her father, and ere she was--as now--alone in the
world, and when each recurring anniversary found her loaded with
caresses, congratulations, and pretty presents. And she could recall
her fourth birthday at Essilmont, when she was a little child in a
white embroidered frock, with a broad sash matching the colour of her
dark blue eyes, with her brothers, Ranald and Ellon, eating
strawberries off a huge salver held for them by Archie Auchindoir,
who seemed an old Archie even then.
Never more would the kisses or caresses of father or mother touch her
brow or cheek; and now she was in the ranks of those who have to earn
their daily bread as a governess on thirty pounds per annum, teach
French, English, and music to two little girls of the ages of nine
and ten respectively.
And sadly on this day she thought of all that had befallen her, and
how completely Bevil Goring had passed out of her life, apparently
for ever! Wearily too her eye went round the bare school-room in
that stately house in Pembridge Square, Bayswater--a long, low-ceiled
apartment, with two windows that overlooked Westbourne Grove, a grove
only in name now.
The vicar of Chilcote procured her this situation, and, beyond her
name and his recommendation, her employer, Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, knew
nothing of Alison Cheyne and cared not to inquire. The vicar had
written lately to state that a handsome marble cross--a Celtic one he
believed it was called--had lately been placed by a friend above her
father's grave, and Alison's heart swelled with gratitude as she read
of it.
It must have been done by Lord Cadbury, she thought. Who else could
have done so?
She had now been two months in Pembridge Square--two whole
months--and despite the unwonted drudgery of teaching, and the
dreariness of routine--despite slights, almost insults, that were
offered, perhaps unconsciously, by the cold-hearted and the
underbred, the time had slipped quickly away.
Thus condemned to the dull drudgery of daily teaching a couple of
troublesome, peevish, and ill-tempered brats in that bare and
comfortless school-room, was Alison, a loving and passionate girl,
made more passionate, loving, and tender by the sore griefs she had
known, but all unsoured by these and the doubtful prospect--yea, the
utter blank of her future.
Though the change of condition was not much to Alison, the change of
_position_ and that vacuity of the future were frightful to the poor
girl; and in taking the situation for the sake of her father's name
and his old family pride, though he was now in his grave, she had
besought the vicar of Chilcote, in recommending her to Mrs. S. De
Jobbyns, to conceal what she had ever been--nay, was still--the
daughter of a baronet of Nova Scotia, whose diploma dated from 1625.
The family of Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns consisted of three daughters,
the eldest Miss Victoria, of whom more anon, was in her nineteenth
year, and Alison's two pupils, Irene and Iseulte. Like the rest of
the snobocracy of the metropolis she believed in double names, thus
she figured in the royal Blue-Book as Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, a
style of address which would have astonished her late husband, worthy
old David or D. Jobbyns, as he called himself, when for many a year
he was acquiring wealth as an industrious soap-boiler in Bow East,
and when he married pretty little Sally Slumpkins, the barmaid at the
'Black Swan' in Mile-End Road, and when she little foresaw how
wealthy a 'relict' she would be left.
Pretty Sally, who had, of course, preferred the worthy soap-boiler to
his rival the potman, had now, amid ease and much good living,
expanded into a stout, blousy, and coarsely-featured matron, greatly
puffed up by wealth, success, pride, and vanity.
She always wore the richest materials and the most massive jewellery,
and never omitted to figure in her open carriage in the Row, when
weather permitted, and strove hard in everything to ape all the
manners of the 'upper ten,' in which she was fully seconded by her
eldest born, Miss Victoria S. De Jobbyns, a rather pretty, but very
insipid girl, who wore her hair frizzed into her eyes, and had a nose
more than retroussé, for though she was pretty, as we have said, her
features were nevertheless of the genuine Cockney type.
Alison took all her meals in the schoolroom with the children, and at
the early hours which were directed for them. She was never in the
drawing-room--'the British drawing-room,' that sanctum sacred to Mrs.
De Jobbyns and her 'swell' visitors, as she called them, and when she
thought it was 'rather the thing' to have afternoon tea in dragon
blue and white crockery on a beautiful Chippendale table.
And so, for thirty pounds per annum, Alison underwent this life of
mortification.
'Thirty pound a-year, and her laundry work, my dear,' as Mrs. De
Jobbyns informed her friend, Mrs. Popkins-Robbynson.
'That is very cheap for one evidently so accomplished,' said the
latter.
'Very cheap, indeed; but she is such a good style for the children,
you know; and really I think she must have been some one
of--of--well, means once.'
'Why?'
'The richly laced under-garments she sends to the laundry would quite
surprise you, my dear.'
'But won't her Scotch haccent spile the young 'uns?' observed Mr.
Popkins-Robbynson.
'Not at all; and she seems to get on so nicely with the servants.
They all adore her.'
'Indeed!'
'My last governess, Miss Smythe-Smythe was always at war with them.'
'How?'
'They never paid her sufficient deference. Oh, what a nuisance that
woman was; yet we paid her forty pounds a year--actually what we pays
the cook, my dear.'
To be near his young mistress, to watch over her, as he thought, and
to be able to see her from time to time, old Archie had located
himself in a humble lodging in Moscow Road, not far from the square,
where he lived with the strictest frugality, fearing that a time
might come when his 'three hunner pounds,' or what remained of them,
might be of service to _her_, 'as hained gear helps weel,' and often,
with more patience than even a lover might have had, he promenaded
the square for hours, watching for a sight of her at the school-room
windows, or till she came forth with her pupils to walk in Kensington
Gardens--watching for her till he in turn was watched, as one bent on
something nefarious, by the policeman at the corner.
And ere long the two little girls began to wonder who the funny old
man was that so often hovered near them in their walks, who treated
their governess with such profound deference and devotion, and was
never unprovided with chocolate creams and so forth for
them--'sweeties for the bairns,' as he called them.
But often Alison sat up in her little white bed, in her bare and
rather comfortless room, in the darkness of the silent night, and,
looking at the stars, would ask why she was so lonely in the world
now--she who was born with the prospect of a very different state of
existence! Then would come all her dream-memories of the past, with
those other dreams of what _might be_, did fortune prove more kind.
How long it seemed ago since she had her father to nurse and Cadbury
to shun--longer still since she had known the joy of Bevil's love,
and the stolen meetings under the solemn and whispering beeches of
Chilcote.
Chilcote was lonely; but how lovely it seemed to her in memory now!
She even found herself at times now indulging in the two
conundrums--the modern pessimist's speculations--Is civilisation a
failure, and is life worth living?
The monotony of the school-room was now occasionally broken by
visits--few and far between, certainly--of the eldest daughter of the
house, Miss De Jobbyns, who had returned from a sojourn with some
friends at Hastings--a young lady rather loud in tone and fast in
manner. She had early discovered that Alison was dexterous in the
way of embroidering, and thus kept her little hands busy, when not
otherwise occupied, in tracing out her monogram and crest--for she
had that, of course--in the corners of handkerchiefs, interspersed
with forget-me-nots, rose-sprays, and fern-leaves.
Miss Victoria De Jobbyns (she had originally been christened Sarah,
but that name was dropped now as vulgar) had from the first felt an
emotion of pique that her little sisters' governess should be so
lady-like, so perfectly patrician in air and bearing, and, more than
all, so uselessly handsome; for, of course, she thought, of what use
is beauty to a governess?
Her mother's first idea had been, what a perilous inmate in a house
if there had been a grown-up son; but, apart from her being a paid
dependant, her very loveliness was an all-sufficient reason for
secluding her in the school-room, and never permitting her to be seen
by guests or visitors, especially of the male sex.
'You are Scotch?' said the young lady, abruptly and interrogatively,
on the occasion of her first visit.
'Yes.'
'And yet you don't look a bit Scotch, or talk like them either.'
Alison smiled as she wondered what the young lady thought the natives
of the North were like.
'Where do your people live--in the Highlands?'
'My family are--all dead.'
'I see you are in mourning--all dead--everyone?'
'Yes,' replied Alison, curtly.
'How funny!'
Alison stared at this peculiar remark.
'What was that you were playing when I came in?' asked her visitor.
'A mazurka of Chopin's.'
'_Shopang_--who is he? And how well you sing, too.'
'I am glad you think so,' replied Alison, who sometimes accompanied
herself on the old, ill-tuned, and twangling school-room piano.
'Ma will be having you to play at her weekly receptions.'
Alison shivered at the bare idea of figuring thus among such people
as were there.
'Were you trained for the stage, or was your father a professional?
of course he was.'
'He was not' said Alison, sharply, and at this blunt remark her soft
violet eyes seemed to become hard and blue as a steel sword-blade;
the little colour she had died out of her face, and she looked ten
years older; but her blunt visitor--she of the frizzed, sandy hair,
and snub nose--mistook the cause of her emotion, and said,
'You have had private trouble, I suppose?'
Alison was silent.
'Tell me,' continued the irrepressible Miss De Jobbyns, 'have you
ever been in love?'
'In truth--I have been.'
'And your young man--he is dead, too, I suppose?'
'He I refer to is dead, at least, to me,' replied Alison, wearily;
'but here come my pupils, so please to let me resume their tasks.'