“Miss Summerhayes! why did you laugh as we came upstairs?”
“Oh!” said Janet, quite restored from that momentary impression. “I
don’t know. Because it is curious to come into the middle of a story; it
is like beginning a book, as you do sometimes, at the third volume. One
wonders what has happened before, as well as what is going to happen
now.”
“You think that’s a story!” cried Julia, with scorn; “because Gussy’s a
fool, and that man--I can’t endure that man.”
“You make that too easy for anyone to see. I think you made a sound like
what they do in the theatre.”
“I hissed him,” said Julia, her lowering eyebrows closing down over her
eyes. “I always do. He can’t bear to be hissed. He is just like an
actor: it makes him mad, and that is why I do it, and I always shall. I
don’t care what anyone says.”
“That is a pity,” said Janet; “for it will not harm him, but you. You
forget that people care very little for the opinion of a girl at your
age, especially when it is rudely expressed.”
“They don’t care much for your opinion,” said Julia, furiously.
“No; I did not expect it; and I have no opinion, except that you must
learn to be a gentlewoman--if that can be learnt--or else I must go
away.”
Julia received this, as she usually did Janet’s remonstrances, with a
look of rage, a flush of shame, and then a sudden self-subdual.
“You want to go away,” she said. “You are the only nice one that has
ever been here; and you want to go and leave me. I know you do. You’ll
go before Dolff comes home, and then he’ll never know you, and will
think--will just think I am a stupid and don’t know anything, as they
all do!”
“Well, my dear child,” said Janet, who understood this broken speech
perfectly well, and knew that she was being represented to “Dolff” in
the brightest colors, a thing by no means indifferent to her, “they are
not very far wrong if they think so; for a girl who hisses--even in the
theatre----”
“I did once,” cried Julia, “in the theatre! They had a hideous ballet in
the pantomime like what one reads of in books--a woman making a show of
herself--oh!” The girl’s cheeks blazed crimson at the thought. “And I
hissed--like this.” Here Julia uttered a sound, in comparison with which
a whole serpent-house in highest exasperation would have retired
defeated, with the whole force of her youthful energy and breath. “Gussy
pinched me black and blue to stop me, and I wouldn’t. They never would
take me to the theatre again.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Janet “So now you hiss the people who come to
call.”
“Only Charley Meredith,” said Julia. “And,” she added, subduing her
tones, “if he came in the morning I should not mind: but he comes at
night without being invited, with his music, as if mamma was obliged to
have him whether she liked or not. And he gives himself such airs, as
if he knew that Gussy--you think I don’t care for Gussy, Miss
Summerhayes--but I do. I could kill her when she looks silly like that!
A woman! to let a man see that she----oh! I could kill her when she
looks at him like that!”
“That is a pleasant way of showing how much you care for her,” said
Janet. “It is quite natural that at fourteen you should think you know
best; but if I hear you hiss again,”--the governess kissed the tips of
her fingers--“good-bye, my dear; that’s all that there will be to say.”
“You say that to beat me down,” cried Julia. “You don’t really care, not
a bit, whether I behave myself or not. I am not sure that you are any
better than Charley Meredith. I don’t know that there is not just a pair
of you. Well, then, do it if you like, there! take him away from Gussy,
break everybody’s heart, make Dolff think me a stupid for all I’ve said.
I can see in your eyes that’s what you’d like to do.”
“You have made me out a very pretty programme,” said Janet, laughing. “I
think I shall begin by looking over your exercises, and giving you
double black marks for everything. We need not have come upstairs so
early but for that pretty habit of yours; and, for my part, I would
rather listen to the music than to a little girl storming. Oh, yes, my
dear, I know you are taller than I am, but that makes no difference. Be
quiet; we can hear it mounting up now that I’ve opened the window a
little. Ah! bravo! that was well done.”
“Do you really care for that squalling?” Julia demanded, with a mixture
of wonder and scorn.
Janet was standing by the window which she had opened. The school-room
was over the drawing-room, though on the second floor, and in the quiet
of the night Mr. Meredith’s fine voice came out like the blast of a
silver trumpet. The night was mild and very still, and perhaps Janet’s
youthful bosom was still a little fluttered by that sudden surprise
which had made her heart beat. She leaned a little out, listening, with
a natural self-pity that she was not there, and realization of the
different fate of Gussy, to whom music and love and all the softnesses
of life were open, while she was sent away out of sight with a naughty
child. Janet had far too much strength to give in or permit anyone to
see that she suffered from this, nor, indeed, did she suffer more than
the vague and momentary sensation of being at a disadvantage. But she
leaned out to listen with a little wistfulness, impatient of the
childish vehemence, and as yet but little awakened to the deeper nature
of her unmanageable pupil. This pensive mood, however, was soon to be
interrupted. In the very midst of the liquid notes ascending from below,
there came suddenly, as if it rent the air, a wild and wailing cry--the
cry as of a spirit in pain. It seemed to Janet to rise almost from her
side, close by. She started back from the window and turned round with a
scared and terrified exclamation,
“What is that? What is that?”
For a moment it occurred to her that some terrible accident or hurt must
have happened to the girl by her side.
“I--don’t know,” said Julia, stammering as if she could not get out the
words. But she was not terrified as Janet was. The governess did not
notice this at first in her own panic. She ran to the door of Julia’s
room, from which direction the sound seemed to come, and flung it open
crying, “Who is there? Who is there?” then shut it again in terror of
what she might see.
“Oh, run and fetch some one! oh, go and alarm the house, Julia! there
must be something dreadful in there.”
“There’s nothing,” said Julia. “What are you making such a fuss about?
It’s--a boy outside--they make such hideous noises--it’s----”
She stopped, for the same sound was repeated, this time lower and
further off, as it seemed--a cry of pain dropping into a low prolonged
wail. Janet rushed to the school-room door and out upon the staircase,
calling for help, for some one to come. She was wild with alarm. There
was no doubt in her mind that some wretched creature, a madman,
probably, had got into the rooms.
But all was quiet in the house below, the doors all shut, everybody
occupied with their own business, singing going on in the drawing-room,
talk in the servants’ apartments downstairs--nothing it would seem had
been disturbed but Janet alone.
“It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back,
please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss
made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s
nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing
outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the
wing. Mamma knows. If you ask her to-morrow she’ll tell you; but, oh,
for goodness’ sake, Miss Summerhayes, don’t make a fuss to-night.”
“Your mother knows? Do you mean that--it has been heard before?”
“You look as if you thought it was a ghost,” said Julia, who, however,
was very pale. “We have no ghosts in our house.”
“It was like the cry of a mad creature--it was----Julia, if it comes
again I can’t bear it. It must be some madman who has got in.”
“If it’s a madman he can’t get near us,” cried Julia, “for he’s in the
wing.”
Janet came back into the school-room, still trembling with her fright.
She dropped into a chair, unable to support herself.
“You know--you know what it is,” she said, faintly.
“I know--it’s something in the wing. It does no harm. Sometimes it will
cry like that--oh, once in a year, perhaps. It can’t do any harm. Oh,
Miss Summerhayes, do be reasonable when I tell you. What does it matter?
I don’t know what you mean, to be so taken up with their squalling and
shouting, and in such a state when you hear a cry. I don’t care either
for one or the other,” Julia said.
It cannot be said that Janet showed much interest in the “squalling and
shouting” of which her pupil was so contemptuous after this. The two
changed their _rôles_ completely for the rest of the evening, during
which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness,
soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many
philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident
even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient
in the certainty of youth.
“What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?--unless you
happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their
voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm.
You hear it, and that’s all--especially when it’s only like a voice. I
am not fond of thunder, myself, for a thunderbolt might fall on the
house or crush you; but a cry--what does it matter? People are always
crying out, or making some nasty noise. You should pay no attention to
it. I never pay any attention; it is not worth while. Why, you might
spend your life thinking of such things, if you were to be disturbed by
every sound you hear.”
This discourse did not satisfy Janet or even calm her mind, but she
reflected after a while that it was not the part of a governess to put
visionary terrors into the mind of her pupil, and so far recovered
herself with an effort as to satisfy Julia that it was safe to go to bed
and leave Miss Summerhayes. Poor little Janet, when left alone, felt for
the first time how terrible it was to be so young, so impressionable,
and among strangers. She dared not run downstairs, as a girl at home
would, to shake off her terrors by confiding them to some one who could
authoritatively calm and reassure her. Mrs. Harwood had been very kind
to her governess, but to go down again after she had been dismissed, to
meet Gussy’s astonished look turning round from the piano, and the
mother’s suspicious glance which would ask what she wanted, why she
came?--was impossible to Janet. She felt to-night, for the first time,
what it was to be a governess, although to-night, for almost the first
time, she had realized what she had expected when she came out into the
world, how amusing it was to watch a story going on. How soon had all
interest in the story disappeared from her mind in the face of this
terror which froze her very blood! What was it?--was it a spirit or a
living creature in pain? Where was it?--in this tranquil house, as Julia
seemed to allow? And worst and most dreadful question of all--would it
come again? This last thought was the one that kept all her faculties
awake. Might it at any moment burst once more out of the quiet? Janet
thought that if she had to undergo that moment of horror again she must
go mad or die. She was afraid to go to bed--afraid to close her
eyes--lest she should be awakened by that cry. The singing went on late
downstairs, and Janet listened anxiously to the departing of the
visitor, the bolting of the door behind him, the little bustle as Mrs.
Harwood was wheeled to her room on the ground floor, and Gussy came
upstairs. But she did not come as far as the school-room, which she
sometimes did to see if all was well. It was too late to disturb any
one--to wake up the sleepers. Janet heard Miss Harwood coming upstairs
singing softly over to herself her part in one of the duets. Gussy was
happy; no alarm or sense of desolation was in her.
“If I were happy like that I would come upstairs to see how the poor
little governess, all alone, was getting on,” Janet said to herself,
opening her eyes in the dark. But, indeed, she would have done nothing
of the kind. She would have been perhaps more indifferent than Gussy was
to the governess in causeless trouble, feeling “out of it”--or else in a
visionary panic thinking that she had heard a ghost.
The night wore away gradually, and nothing happened. When it was between
three and four, Janet, worn out, fell fast asleep. She slept till the
breakfast-bell rang, and had to hurry her dressing and hasten downstairs
with an apology, wondering at herself and her own foolish terror in the
red light of the wintry morning. Gussy was very ready, it was evident,
to be questioned about last night. She began her self by expressing her
distress that Janet had been hastened away for “_that_ child,” and
narrated to her with subdued triumph how many “things” Mr. Meredith and
she had gone through, and what good practice it was.
“The Harwoods generally are so unmusical,” Gussy said; “I never did get
any encouragement at home. But fortunately mamma likes Charley, and he
may do what he pleases. I do enjoy a musical evening so. Hasn’t he a
delicious voice?”
“It is a charming voice,” said Janet.
“And he is so well trained. To sing with him it is like getting a
lesson. He wanted to know whether you were musical, but I said I
feared----”
“I used to be thought pretty good for accompaniments,” said Janet.
“Oh, really!” but Gussy did not receive this statement with much
delight. “Perhaps you’ll help me to practise my part,” she said, and
returned to sound the praises of Charley.
Janet would not introduce the subject of her own terrors, and if she had
been ever so intent upon doing so, there was no opportunity, for Charley
and his songs and his perfections left no room for any other discourse.
And when Mrs. Harwood appeared matters were not much better. The old
lady remarked that Janet was pale, and feared that she had not been able
to sleep for the singing.
“The fact is that Mr. Meredith has not been in London for a long time,
and I could not cut them short, could I, the first night?”
To describe the impatience with which Janet heard all this would not be
easy. She said to herself, what was Mr. Meredith to her? What were his
songs, his attentions, the grief of his absence, the joy of his return?
She listened with a great eagerness to interrupt, to break through this
eternal burden of the self-occupied to whom their own little affairs
were everything, with her own questions. But when Mrs. Harwood’s voice
stopped Janet did not find hers. What could she say?
“I heard a dreadful cry last night. What was it? You know what it was!”
It seemed to her when she turned this question in her mind that it was a
thing impossible to say. “I heard--last night,” she began.
“Ah, the singing!” cried both ladies together. “I hope it did not keep
you from your sleep, my dear,” said Mrs. Harwood. And, “I’m sure you
could not hear me, and Charley’s voice is always a pleasure,” cried
Gussy.
Janet’s mouth was closed, and she could say no more.