When Leila entered the school-room Selina was reading, but Matilda stood
gazing out at the window with rather a disturbed expression of
countenance. “Well, Cousin Leila,” she said, “we have news for you, and
not very good news either. Now all the day long it will be,--‘Hold up
your head, Miss Leila,’ ‘Why do you walk in that awkward way, Miss
Matilda?’ ‘How troublesome you are; I wish you would take example by
your elder sister--one awkward trick after another--I really must
complain of you to Mrs. Stanley.’ Yes, Selina, you need not shake your
head at me and look so grave; Leila will look grave also when she knows
the truth. Yes, Leila, I was quite right, it is all settled, we are to
have a governess; so no more pleasant days for us. Botheration,
botheration.”
Leila had not been able to resist laughing at first; but she checked
herself, and remained silent.
Selina spoke. “Oh, Matilda! how can you speak in this way, and after all
mamma has been just saying? and you seemed to feel it so.”
“Yes, I know I am wrong; and when mamma was speaking to me I felt very
sorry, and I resolved I would try to please this Mrs. Roberts, or rather
mamma, for I would rather please mamma than any one in the whole world;
but, Leila, you looked when you came in as if you had something joyful
to say; if you have, please to say it, for we need good news very much
to-day.”
But no sooner had Leila communicated the pleasant intelligence of the
proposed visit to Woodlands, than all traces of sorrow were banished
from Matilda’s face; she was in ecstasies, and, flying across the room,
she dashed the book from Selina’s hands, and throwing her arms round her
neck, she exclaimed,--“Now no more reading to-day, if you please, _Mrs.
Demure_; this is what I call the right kind of a holiday--how merry we
shall be! Well, I do think Uncle Howard makes most delightful plans; how
do you manage, Leila, to get him to do so many nice things?”
“I don’t manage,” Leila answered; “he is always thinking of doing kind
things to me and every body, and he has told me all about our governess,
and made me like having one more than I did at first; I will tell you
about it as we go along, for we are to walk, you know, and we must make
haste and get ready, that papa and uncle and aunt may not be there long
before us.”
The walk proved every way delightful. The sky so brightly blue, the
sunshine splendid, and the woods, now tinted with the glowing hues of
autumn, gave additional beauty to the scene. Here and there a solitary
unprotected tree, standing out from the others, might have given warning
to more contemplative minds that winter and its storms were approaching;
but there was no winter in their young hearts--all was fresh, gay, and
green, and withered leaves brought to them no memory of blighted hopes,
and of a world of many sorrows.
The distance could not be two miles, they all agreed, though Matilda and
Alfred did their best to lengthen it, by continuing, during every few
yards of their progress, to run up a little bank by the side of the road
and down again, assuring the others that it was by far the quickest way
of getting on, but Leila greatly preferred walking quietly straight
forward with Selina; it was always a particular pleasure to her to have
Selina entirely to herself. She now related to her all her papa had told
her of Mrs. Roberts, and many were the good resolutions made by both,
that they would do all they could to make her situation pleasant to her.
As they came in sight of a pretty-looking house, standing in a small
garden, Leila stopped.
“Look, Selina,” she said, “I think that must be Woodlands, had we not
better ask some one if it is?”
A countryman came up to them at that moment, walking very quickly, and
was about to pass on before. Leila ran forward.
“Pray do stop,” she said, “if you are not very busy, and tell us if that
is Woodlands?”
The man turned back and looked at her with astonishment.
“Dear heart, young lady, but you must be a stranger in these parts--that
Woodlands, _that_? It would be but a humble post indeed to open the park
gates to them good people, a very decent family too, I mean to say
nothing disrespectful, but Woodlands, bless your heart, Woodlands is one
of the _principalest_ houses in the whole countryside. Do you see that
beautiful great house standing on the height there, with the broad
terrace and the pleasure-grounds sloping down to the river, and them
grand woods on each side, shutting out the summer’s sun and the winter’s
blasts?--_that’s_ Woodlands, and it’s not every day you will see its
like; but you are pleasant-looking young ladies to my mind, and if you
have a fancy to see Woodlands, though it’s not to every one I would say
as much, I have no objections to unlock the gates for you, for once and
away.”
“And are the gates always locked?” Leila timidly inquired; then added,
“papa told us to go there.”
“No, no, my young lady; it’s not papas or mammas either that can give
that permission. As long as my head’s above ground, there shall no
promiscuous company enter there; but never vex your sweet heart,” he
continued, more mildly, (observing Leila’s expression of blank dismay,)
“never vex your heart; you shall see the place for all that;” then added
with a sigh, “but Woodlands has gotten a new master, one Squire Howard,
they tell me--a fine man from the Indies. Heaven send he may be a kind
one; but they tell queer stories about him too. It was I that showed the
two gentlemen that came to settle about it all over the place, and they
said something of his having lived in a desert island, a Robinson Crusoe
sort of an affair that I could not make out at all; but if we are to
have a master from a desert island, I hope he will keep more company
about him than his man Friday, or Woodlands will be a changed place.”
“My papa had no man Friday with him in the island,” Leila meekly
answered; “but we do not live there now. We came into the world last
May, and our man-servant’s name is John; in the island we had only
Nurse--look, she is coming up to us now, and she is to be my papa’s
housekeeper at Woodlands.”
The ruddy face of the countryman became actually pale, as he pulled off
his hat, and stood immovable before Leila.
“My master’s daughter; it’s not possible. Surely----”
Matilda, who from the moment she had joined them, had continued walking
with the others, and had hitherto remained wonderfully silent, could now
no longer restrain herself.
“You may indeed look surprised,” she said, “for you have made a fine
mistake. Yes, it is quite true: you have all this time been speaking to
Miss Howard. She is the young mistress of Woodlands. And now will you
open the gates?”
“Don’t, Matilda, pray don’t,” Leila exclaimed in a voice of entreaty;
“do you not see how sorry he looks?” then turning with a smile to the
poor man, who still remained uncovered before them, “Do put on your
hat,” she said; “the sun is hurting your eyes, and you need not be the
least sorry for what you have said. I dare say you were told to take
care of it; that was just the way Nurse used to watch over every thing
in the island, only there we had no gates to lock.”
In a few minutes longer they had reached the lodge, a pretty small
thatched house in the cottage style, with a profusion of China roses and
honeysuckles on its white walls. Leila instantly thought how
delightfully it would have suited Peggy Dobie, but she did not say so.
The gates were no longer shut, they stood most invitingly open; a tidy,
pleasant-looking young woman seemed to have been watching for them at
the door of the cottage.
“Oh, Bill, Bill,” she exclaimed, “you have been long, and to have been
away to-day of all days in the year, and a fine lady and gentleman away
up the approach in the carriage, and the squire himself, and a kind,
civil-spoken gentleman he seems to be.”
But the young people were too impatient to listen to further details;
the moment they entered the gates they bounded forward. The windings of
the approach, though calculated to show the finest trees on the
property, they thought much too long, and by the time they reached the
house they were breathless with impatience. Mr. Howard, who had been
watching them from the window, was at the door to meet them. “Welcome to
all of you,” he said, and he stooped down and kissed Leila repeatedly;
“welcome to your future home, my Leila; may it be a happy home to you,
my dearest child.”
Leila seemed at first quite bewildered; the entrance hall seemed to be
so large, the drawing-room larger _still_. The windows of the
drawing-room opened on a trellised balcony, festooned with creeping
plants, and filled with rare and beautiful flowers; a broad flight of
steps, with stone balustrades on each side, and large vases, scarlet
pomegranate and pink oleander in full bloom, led from this balcony to
the terrace below; and beyond this terrace the velvet turf, interspersed
with beds of gay and fragrant flowers, sloped down to the edge of the
broad river, on which many little boats were gliding up and down;
happily no steamboat being in sight on this first-favoured moment.
All were loud in their expressions of admiration; they had never seen
any thing more beautiful; but though Leila admired, she seemed still
bewildered, and almost more oppressed than pleased.
“It is very beautiful; but how shall I ever be able to manage such a
house as this?”
Selina whispered, “Don’t distress yourself, Leila, it is not till you
are grown up that you will have to manage; your papa will do it now, and
my mamma will help him.”
Leila brightened a little, but still looked anxiously around the room:
“Surely it is very large,” she said.
It was Matilda’s observation, “Young mistress of Woodlands,” that had
done all this; poor Leila was weighed down to the ground with a sudden
sense of her responsibilities; to common observers she was a simple
child, young, even for her years; but there was often a deep
under-current of thought about her, to be discovered only in the changes
of her expressive countenance, and in the hesitating, varied tones of
her voice.
Mr. Howard understood her: “We will manage all for you very nicely,” he
said; “so, my dear Leila, do not be afraid; and this room will not look
so large when it is furnished, and we have sofas, and chairs, and large
tables, and little tables, and all sorts of pretty things in it; and it
certainly will not be too large if we succeed in having all the kind
friends around us at Christmas whom I hope we shall have. Your aunt,
uncle, and cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, and Maria, and perhaps the
Selbys, with Louisa, who knows?”
Leila, from the moment of entering the house, had been working herself
up, and struggling against comfort; but comfort, in the shape of such a
Christmas party as this, who could resist? She quickly gave herself up
to all its happy influences, and when her papa led her into the
adjoining breakfast-room, which was small, and leading into a spacious
conservatory, she was in ecstasies.
“My birds, my birds,” she exclaimed, “my turtle-doves, my parrots, how
they will enjoy it. They will think this more beautiful than their green
parlour.”
All was sunshine to her again; it was a moment of exquisite happiness,
such happiness as is only to be felt in very early life, before the sad
memories of the past, “and the shadows of coming evils, have dimmed its
brightness.”
The young people returned home in high spirits; Leila forgetting every
care in the remembrance of the beautiful conservatory, and in the
anticipation of the enjoyment of her birds in taking possession of it;
and Matilda far too much excited to allow any of them to rest, even for
a moment.
“Come,” she said, “we will act a play now;” and flying into the passage,
she seized her papa’s hat, placed it on one side on her head, tied over
her dress a green linen pinafore of Alfred’s to imitate a blouse, and
returning into the room, “Now,” she said, “I will be Bill; you, Cousin
Leila, are to be talking very gravely with Selina, consulting her how
you are to order the dinner at Woodlands when I come up to you; and
you, Alfred, are to be the pit, and stamp with your feet, and call out
very loud.”
“But why,” Leila exclaimed, “should poor Alfred be in the pit? I don’t
like that, it puts me in mind of such melancholy things,--Joseph and his
wicked brothers, you know,--and he called out and they would not listen;
and the cruel thing we did ourselves; we put the poor goats into the
pit; but papa said that was a necessary evil.”
Matilda laughed: “You are so odd,” she said; “it is not that sort of a
pit at all. I never saw it myself, but Lydia told me about it,--it is a
place where all the gentlemen sit in rows to see the play, and they
stamp very loud with their feet, and call out encore; encore means--say
it again; don’t forget that, Alfred.”
Leila was quite relieved and satisfied, and the play proceeded; and so
admirably did Matilda imitate Bill’s voice and manner, and so complete
was the picture when she drew off the hat, and stood with a face of mute
dismay before them, that Selina and Leila were convulsed with laughter;
as to little Alfred, he stamped so loud, and called _encore_ so often,
that even Matilda, with all her love of amusement, was fairly exhausted.
“Now,” she said, “we have had enough of this; let us play at Nurse’s
play now, let us play at being rational beings, and sit down quietly to
our work; now there’s a proposal for you, Selina, what do you say to
that? I am going to turn over an entirely new leaf, and I will begin
with putting back this hat into its right place, and folding up this
crumpled pinafore so very nicely that Nurse will say it is fresh out of
the fold. Now it is all done, and I declare you have got out your work
already; well, here is mine, and we can sit down comfortably and
converse about our future lives.”
“Yes,” Leila said, “that will be a delightful subject.”
“I don’t know that,” Matilda replied; “you are forgetting about the
governess; she is to be here very soon, if she can come. Mamma wrote to
her this morning; she bid me hold the taper when she was sealing the
letter, and I could not help thinking how nice it would be if I could
give a little push and set the letter on fire.”
“Oh, Matilda,” Selina exclaimed, “how sorry you make me; why do you talk
in this way and why should your future life not be happy because we are
to have a governess to save mamma trouble; you know she is not very
strong, and she is not able to manage us herself.”
“To manage _me_, you should say, Selina; but how can my future life be
happy, when she will be for ever finding fault with me?”
“But why do you think so? It is quite in your own power to go on happily
with her; she will not find fault with you unless you deserve it, and
surely you would not wish to grow up in your faults; you could not have
a happy future life if you are not good, for you have a conscience,
Matilda, and after a little you are always sorry when you do wrong.”
“I am, Selina; you know me very well; but then I am so often bad, and so
often sorry, that there is no great happiness about my life after all,
even though I have not a governess. Well, we shall see if she makes this
great change.”
“She cannot make the _change_, Matilda, she can only tell you what is
right; and you cannot do it either, of yourself. You must pray for the
Spirit of God to come into your heart, and to make you really sorry for
your faults, and really anxious to do what is right.”
“But I am really anxious,” Matilda answered; “and I am always wishing I
could be as good as you are.”
“I wish you would not say that so often; I am not good.”
“Oh, if _you_ are not good, and you expect me to be better than you are,
it is a bad business! I need not try.”
“Why do you talk in that way? You do not know all the foolish things I
think of and wish to do; but remember, Matilda, the lesson I have had,
and the great blessing God has given me. Before I had made up my mind to
be always dumb, I used often to pray to Him, and promise that if He
would open my lips, I would try to be more and more His child, and
praise Him with my life as well as with my heart; and when I read of
Jesus Christ opening the eyes of the blind, and making the dumb to
speak, I used to have such deep sorrow, that sometimes I could scarcely
bear it; I used to shut myself up alone and say to myself, Why did I not
live then? Surely if I had asked Him myself, and He had seen my sorrow,
He would have listened. Oh, it was a sinful thought.”
“But why was it sinful?” Matilda asked.
“It was sinful, because it was doubting His wisdom, for He knew what was
best for me; it was also doubting his power, for in heaven He equally
hears our prayers and sees our sorrows; and the miracles He worked on
earth are not greater than those which are every where around us. The
spring and summer coming again, and bringing up the flowers, and making
the dead earth so green and beautiful, are miracles of His power; and
the very miracle I asked for was granted--granted in a moment--my lips
were opened; from that time I made my resolution----” She stopped and
coloured.
“What resolution?” Matilda eagerly asked.
“The resolution that I would try to think of Him more than I had ever
done before; that I would be part of every day alone, not to ask for
more worldly blessings, but to thank Him for giving me more than I ever
can deserve.”
“And so this is the reason,” Matilda said, “why you go away in the
forenoon and lock your door. I never could find out what you were doing;
once I thought I would look through the keyhole, and I went on tip-toe,
but then I remembered mamma saying that was a mean, low habit, and I did
not. But you do another thing, Selina, which you never used to do
before; in the morning, after you have read the Bible, you turn over and
over the pages, as if you were looking for something. What are you doing
then, for you cannot be reading?”
“I am finding out texts. Every day I search for a text, and an answer to
it, and I get them by heart; it helps to keep good thoughts in my mind
during the day.”
“And you never told me a word of all this,” Matilda said, reproachfully;
“and if you had, it might have made me better, and I could have learned
texts also. Why did you not tell me?”
Selina looked distressed, and coloured. “I believe I was wrong, but I
always feel ashamed to talk on those subjects before any one; I fear it
is a false shame.”
“No, Selina, no,” Leila said quickly: “my papa explained to me about
that; to be sure, to Matilda or to me you might have said it, for he
told me that with a very dear friend it was a delightful subject, but
that in the world I must not talk about God as I used to do in the
island; I must try to think of Him constantly just the same, and always
ask myself how He would wish me to act, but I must not say so before
indifferent people (that means worldly people). He says before worldly
people it may do harm, for their minds may not be in a good frame at the
moment, and it might make them worse, and might make them turn away; and
even before good people I should not talk in this way, for good people
may be shocked, and think it too sacred a subject to be talked of before
many; but, Selina, I would like to do all that you have been telling me
you do; I would like to find out texts also, and try to keep them in my
mind, for it is not so easy to be good here as in the island, so many
new things come into my mind here. What was the text you found out for
to-day?”
“It was from the Psalms: ‘Blessed be God which hath not turned away my
prayer, nor his mercy from me.’”
“And what answer did you find?” Leila inquired.
“My answer was also from the Psalms: ‘I sought the Lord and he heard me,
and delivered me from all my fears.’”
“And it was an excellent answer,” Leila observed, “and very comforting.
I am so glad, Selina, you have told me of this plan. I know a great many
texts, for you know in the island I had no other book to read but the
Bible, but I never thought of this plan; I wish I had.”
Tears stood in Matilda’s eyes: “I do not know the Bible by heart as
Leila does,” she said; “but you, Selina, will find out a text to suit
me, and I will learn it,” and she rose and left the room.
“I must go to her,” Selina said; “she is a dear, kind sister to me, and
always so sorry when she does wrong.”
Leila was left alone. “Such a happy home preparing for me, and so many
to love,” she whispered to herself; and clasping her hands together, she
looked up for a moment, then left the room to seek her father.