For some weeks after his wife's death Squire Norman was overwhelmed with
grief. He made a brave effort, however, to go through the routine of his
life; and succeeded so far that he preserved an external appearance of
bearing his loss with resignation. But within, all was desolation.
Little Stephen had winning ways which sent deep roots into her father's
heart. The little bundle of nerves which the father took into his arms
must have realised with all its senses that, in all that it saw and heard
and touched, there was nothing but love and help and protection.
Gradually the trust was followed by expectation. If by some chance the
father was late in coming to the nursery the child would grow impatient
and cast persistent, longing glances at the door. When he came all was
joy.
Time went quickly by, and Norman was only recalled to its passing by the
growth of his child. Seedtime and harvest, the many comings of nature's
growth were such commonplaces to him, and had been for so many years,
that they made on him no impressions of comparison. But his baby was one
and one only. Any change in it was not only in itself a new experience,
but brought into juxtaposition what is with what was. The changes that
began to mark the divergence of sex were positive shocks to him, for they
were unexpected. In the very dawn of babyhood dress had no special
import; to his masculine eyes sex was lost in youth. But, little by
little, came the tiny changes which convention has established. And with
each change came to Squire Norman the growing realisation that his child
was a woman. A tiny woman, it is true, and requiring more care and
protection and devotion than a bigger one; but still a woman. The pretty
little ways, the eager caresses, the graspings and holdings of the
childish hands, the little roguish smiles and pantings and flirtings were
all but repetitions in little of the dalliance of long ago. The father,
after all, reads in the same book in which the lover found his knowledge.
At first there was through all his love for his child a certain
resentment of her sex. His old hope of a son had been rooted too deeply
to give way easily. But when the conviction came, and with it the habit
of its acknowledgment, there came also a certain resignation, which is
the halting-place for satisfaction. But he never, not then nor
afterwards, quite lost the old belief that Stephen was indeed a son.
Could there ever have been a doubt, the remembrance of his wife's eyes
and of her faint voice, of her hope and her faith, as she placed her baby
in his arms would have refused it a resting-place. This belief tinged
all his after-life and moulded his policy with regard to his girl's
upbringing. If she was to be indeed his son as well as his daughter, she
must from the first be accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways.
This, in that she was an only child, was not a difficult matter to
accomplish. Had she had brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would
soon have found their own level.
There was one person who objected strongly to any deviation from the
conventional rule of a girl's education. This was Miss Laetitia Rowly,
who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be taken, that of
the child's mother. Laetitia Rowly was a young aunt of Squire Rowly of
Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some sixteen years his own
senior. When the old Squire's second wife had died, Laetitia, then a
conceded spinster of thirty-six, had taken possession of the young
Margaret. When Margaret had married Squire Norman, Miss Rowly was well
satisfied; for she had known Stephen Norman all her life. Though she
could have wished a younger bridegroom for her darling, she knew it would
be hard to get a better man or one of more suitable station in life. Also
she knew that Margaret loved him, and the woman who had never found the
happiness of mutual love in her own life found a pleasure in the romance
of true love, even when the wooer was middle-aged. She had been
travelling in the Far East when the belated news of Margaret's death came
to her. When she had arrived home she announced her intention of taking
care of Margaret's child, just as she had taken care of Margaret. For
several reasons this could not be done in the same way. She was not old
enough to go and live at Normanstand without exciting comment; and the
Squire absolutely refused to allow that his daughter should live anywhere
except in his own house. Educational supervision, exercised at such
distance and so intermittently, could neither be complete nor exact.
Though Stephen was a sweet child she was a wilful one, and very early in
life manifested a dominant nature. This was a secret pleasure to her
father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and
daughter, took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation of her
imperial will. The keen instinct of childhood, which reasons in feminine
fashion, and is therefore doubly effective in a woman-child, early
grasped the possibilities of her own will. She learned the measure of
her nurse's foot and then of her father's; and so, knowing where lay the
bounds of possibility of the achievement of her wishes, she at once
avoided trouble and learned how to make the most of the space within the
limit of her tether.
It is not those who 'cry for the Moon' who go furthest or get most in
this limited world of ours. Stephen's pretty ways and unfailing good
temper were a perpetual joy to her father; and when he found that as a
rule her desires were reasonable, his wish to yield to them became a
habit.
Miss Rowly seldom saw any individual thing to disapprove of. She it was
who selected the governesses and who interviewed them from time to time
as to the child's progress. Not often was there any complaint, for the
little thing had such a pretty way of showing affection, and such a
manifest sense of justified trust in all whom she encountered, that it
would have been hard to name a specific fault.
But though all went in tears of affectionate regret, and with eminently
satisfactory emoluments and references, there came an irregularly timed
succession of governesses.
Stephen's affection for her 'Auntie' was never affected by any of the
changes. Others might come and go, but there no change came. The
child's little hand would steal into one of the old lady's strong ones,
or would clasp a finger and hold it tight. And then the woman who had
never had a child of her own would feel, afresh each time, as though the
child's hand was gripping her heart.
With her father she was sweetest of all. And as he seemed to be pleased
when she did anything like a little boy, the habit of being like one
insensibly grew on her.
An only child has certain educational difficulties. The true learning is
not that which we are taught, but that which we take in for ourselves
from experience and observation, and children's experiences and
observation, especially of things other than repressive, are mainly of
children. The little ones teach each other. Brothers and sisters are
more with each other than are ordinary playmates, and in the familiarity
of their constant intercourse some of the great lessons, so useful in
after-life, are learned. Little Stephen had no means of learning the
wisdom of give-and-take. To her everything was given, given bountifully
and gracefully. Graceful acceptance of good things came to her
naturally, as it does to one who is born to be a great lady. The
children of the farmers in the neighbourhood, with whom at times she
played, were in such habitual awe of the great house, that they were
seldom sufficiently at ease to play naturally. Children cannot be on
equal terms on special occasions with a person to whom they have been
taught to bow or courtesy as a public habit. The children of
neighbouring landowners, who were few and far between, and of the
professional people in Norcester, were at such times as Stephen met them,
generally so much on their good behaviour, that the spontaneity of play,
through which it is that sharp corners of individuality are knocked off
or worn down, did not exist.
And so Stephen learned to read in the Book of Life; though only on one
side of it. At the age of six she had, though surrounded with loving
care and instructed by skilled teachers, learned only the accepting side
of life. Giving of course there was in plenty, for the traditions of
Normanstand were royally benevolent; many a blessing followed the little
maid's footsteps as she accompanied some timely aid to the sick and needy
sent from the Squire's house. Moreover, her Aunt tried to inculcate
certain maxims founded on that noble one that it is more blessed to give
than to receive. But of giving in its true sense: the giving that which
we want for ourselves, the giving that is as a temple built on the rock
of self-sacrifice, she knew nothing. Her sweet and spontaneous nature,
which gave its love and sympathy so readily, was almost a bar to
education: it blinded the eyes that would have otherwise seen any defect
that wanted altering, any evil trait that needed repression, any lagging
virtue that required encouragement--or the spur.