Janet’s life seemed to herself to change from this day, though no one
else seemed aware of any difference, and all its outward expressions
went on as before. For a few nights she was afraid to sit alone
upstairs, and hurried to bed in the hope of getting to sleep, and thus
avoiding any repetition of the cry which had so rung through and through
her on the night of Mr. Meredith’s first appearance; but, as the days
and nights passed in perfect tranquillity, this scare passed away from
her mind, and she began to be able to explain to herself that it must
have been some boy in the road outside, belated and anxious to make a
sensation in that still neighborhood, or perhaps that fancy had
exaggerated the fantastic wailings of a love-sick cat into something
portentous and terrible. Both these things were possible, but that
anything mysterious could exist in this comfortable, modern, respectable
house, where everything went as on velvet by carefully kept rule and
order, was an idea too ridiculous to be entertained. At night, it is
true, Janet had various fallings back from this confidence, and reminded
herself with renewed panic that Julia had heard and had not been
astonished as she was, but evidently was aware of some explanation which
she did not give. These grew fainter and fainter, however, as one week
passed after another, and nothing occurred.
There was one thing, however, which Janet only remarked after this
period, though she was afterwards assured that it was no secret, but
might have been seen from the first day, and that was the appearance of
a man-servant in the house where none but women ever waited upon the
family. She met him one day going across the hall, a respectable,
serious man of middle age, just such a butler as Mrs. Harwood ought to
have had. But the ladies had no butler; they had a highly-respectable
parlor-maid, just such as, failing the butler, a family in St. John’s
Wood, entirely _comme il faut_, must have had--tall, staid,
good-looking, but not too good-looking, well-dressed, and thirty-five.
The man, who had all the air of perfect familiarity with the house, and
who was in indoor dress, with noiseless shoes, went across the hall from
the servant’s quarters towards the side upon which was the wing, an
apparently unoccupied part of the dwelling.
After that first meeting, which startled her, Janet saw this man again
and again. There was no explanation of him, he was never seen but in
these chance encounters, yet he was no secret, nor was his presence in
any way concealed. What, after all, had a stranger to do with it? It was
nothing to Janet. But her strong sense of spectatorship, and the
curiosity of imagination which made her keen to find indications of a
story anywhere or everywhere, caused a half-conscious groping on the
part of the governess among unexplained incidents. It was some time,
however, before she began to associate the mysterious man-servant with
the alarming outcry which had almost, she thought, deprived her of her
wits, ringing as it did into the silence of the night. After a few weeks
had passed, she asked herself if, indeed, she ever had heard it at
all--whether it was not a delusion of her senses, the reverberation of
some well-known and vulgar sound. Needless to say that Janet had read
“Northanger Abbey,” and had been taught to smile at the investigations
of our dear little Catherine, and their amusing issue: though, to tell
the truth, her sympathy in Catherine Morland’s thirst for romantic
adventure had been more strong than her amusement in the result, which
disappointed her a little too.
However, not even a romantic imagination disposed towards discoveries
can survive the uneventful progress of weeks in which nothing happens.
And Janet meantime had the other story going on before her eyes which
she could study at her ease. Mr. Charles Meredith and his visits became
now the chief interest of life in the house in St. John’s Wood. He dined
once or twice, but only in company with another visitor; and on those
occasions Janet did not form one of the party. Gussy explained that it
would “put out the table.”
“If I were to invite gentlemen for you and Ju, it would make quite a
party, and mamma does not like parties when Dolff is away. And then Ju
is too young to dine when there is company,” said Miss Harwood.
“Oh, you must not think of me!” Janet would reply; but when she heard
the gentlemen arrive, and the increased sound of voices as the servants
went out and in of the dining-room, and the little cheerful commotion,
it is undeniable that Janet remembered Mrs. Bland’s little sermons about
the fate of a governess.
She did not like it. She had never been left out in her life before.
Janet was not shy; she had always been used to take a somewhat
privileged place in the little society she was acquainted with. She
could talk; she was not afraid of anybody who might drift into the
little world of Clover; and she loved variety, which is a thing not
permitted to governesses. On these occasions supper was brought up to
the school-room for Miss Summerhayes and her pupil. It was brought late,
and they had to wait and yawn on opposite sides of the table for the
cold and tardy meal. On such occasions it was difficult to make herself
amusing to Julia, or to find Julia amusing. It was dull. It produced a
certain mortification in Janet’s mind to find that she cared. She said
to herself, with a little bitterness of which she was ashamed, that she
had no doubt it was a very dull party, and that the two strangers were
not in the least interesting. She recalled to herself her previous
conviction, that to be left alone to do what she pleased, to read a
novel or write a letter, would be a pleasant relief. No, it was not so;
she wanted to be in the dining-room with the rest, hearing what was
said, even if she had to remember her own position and take little part.
She wanted to see how the drama was going on, and how the hero looked
when there was some one to compare him with. That scene would glide in
her imagination in front of her novel, with the attraction of a pleasure
out of reach. And Julia was a dull companion on these occasions. She
yawned and wondered when they would bring the supper.
“It’s disgusting to be kept so long waiting, and all the things like
stones when they do come,” Julia would say; “I shall complain to mamma.
If all the others are so busy, Vicars might bring it up, once in a way.”
“Who is Vicars?” said Janet.
“Oh, he is the man; he never goes into the dining-room except when Dolff
is here--but he might bring up our supper if all the rest are so busy.
As if there was any reason to make such a fuss! Two men to dinner! You
would think there were twenty, all fine ladies and gentlemen, to see how
Gussy goes on.”
“They are probably great friends, and more important than twenty ladies
and gentlemen,” said Janet, with her most correct governess air.
“Oh, you know well enough! It is Charley Meredith, and they will
caterwaul afterwards till it makes me quite ill to hear them. And Gussy
will look so silly. Oh, why does a woman look so silly when there is
nonsense like that going on?”
“It is generally the man who is supposed to look silly,” said Janet.
Involuntarily she thought of poor Dr. Harding and his proposal; and the
hard-hearted young woman laughed in spite of herself.
“What are you laughing at? You are remembering something. Tell me, tell
me, Miss Summerhayes! I suppose,” said Julia, with deep discrimination,
“that the man looks silly when it is he who wants it most. Now, here it
is Gussy who wants it most.”
“Julia, you have no right to discuss your sister.”
“Oh, but you can’t stop me doing it!” said Julia, with composure; “you
can stop me when--when I’m silly myself. I was a great fool, I know. I
thought once I could drive you away--no, I didn’t want to drive you
away. I wanted to get the upper hand; but you’ve got the upper hand of
me, and I don’t mind now. However, that’s quite different. This is a
free country, and I can say what I please of Gussy. I say that it’s
she----”
“As it is a free country, you can’t compel me to listen,” said Janet;
“but there is one thing in which it is not a free country, and that is
that you are not permitted to be ill-bred. It is not allowed to be
vulgar.”
“Oh!” cried Julia, coloring to her eyes, but affecting to laugh, “as if
there were not hundreds and thousands?”
Janet shrugged her little shoulders in a manner which her pupil,
rebellious, but admiring, thought irresistible.
“Out in the streets, perhaps: so are there applewomen, and people who
sell matches. But in good time here comes the tray, and something for
you to do.”
Janet, however, was not far from being of Julia’s opinion. Miss Harwood,
who had been so calm, who had explained that the quiet family life so
unbroken, the long evenings of needlework and talk, might appear dull to
Janet, but were never dull to her mother and herself, now went through
these evenings as in a dream. Meredith came twice, sometimes three
times, in a week, after dinner, as he had done on his first appearance.
He had privileges which were extended to no one else, and it was never
known on which evening he would appear. He even took pains, Janet
thought, to have no rule, to appear suddenly when he was not looked for.
But to this spectator, whose attention was fixed upon Gussy, as on the
heroine of the drama, it was very easily apparent that there was no
evening on which he was not expected. She worked, she talked, she made
her little disquisitions as usual, but there was a certain fixed
attitude of her head, a little almost imperceptible pause now and then
in the movements of her hands, which showed that she was listening for
the summons at the door, the step outside. In the quietness of the
semi-rural suburban road the step of the rare passenger was sometimes
heard even outside the garden wall. Sometimes Mrs. Harwood would say,
“I wonder if that is Charley Meredith?” to which Gussy would reply, with
beautiful composure,
“Oh, no; he is always engaged on Thursdays!” or, “This is never one of
his free nights.”
But it was not lost either upon Janet or Julia that her hands were for a
moment still, that her downcast eyes were fixed not on her work, and her
entire frame rigid with intent listening. The attitude relaxed in a
moment when the welcome sound of the bell pealed into the silence, a
little faint sigh of ease and happiness came from the bottom of her
heart, her head regained its easy poise. Whether the mother also saw
these indications of supreme suspense and then of delightful relief,
even Janet, whom no circumstance escaped, could not tell. Perhaps, like
Gussy, she thought that the visitor was of more account than the other
bystanders believed him to be.
A little of the same enchantment hung over Gussy through all the
ordinary affairs of life. There was a liquid softness in her eyes that
had not been there before; her want of color, which was her great
deficiency, seemed to be half compensated be the faintest rose-flush of
feeling and sensibility which had come to her, no one could tell how.
Was it a sign of better health, greater vigor, than her tranquil
temperament usually enjoyed? Her mother said so, rejoicing over the fact
that Gussy was “so well.”
“She has quite a color,” the visitors said. “What a good thing you went
to Malvern this year; it has quite set Augusta up.”
But the governess and her pupil knew it was not Malvern. The piano in
the larger drawing-room was always open now, the lights were always
prepared, and Gussy practiced her songs in the morning with a devotion
for which Janet, a little moved by the _esprit de corps_, and unwilling
that a woman should betray herself, blushed sometimes when the
unwearying watchfulness of Julia, to whom no such awakening had come,
pointed out the performance going on below.
“She’s practising again,” Julia would say, in the midst of a lesson.
“She knows how necessary it is,” cried quick-witted Janet. “I wish you
were half as sensible.”
But these little snubs, which were frequent, did not turn aside Julia’s
keen perceptions or break the unspoken sympathy of spectatorship that
was between the two.
Julia, however, made no further demonstration of her dislike to the
visitor, and Mrs. Harwood’s satisfaction with the “good influence” which
Miss Summerhayes had acquired over the rebellious girl went on
increasing.
“She looks no more than a girl herself--and so she is, quite young, and
never was out before--but her power over that unmanageable child is
something wonderful. You know, my dear, what poor Ju was.”
“Oh, yes, I know what Ju was!” replied, with fervor, the friend to whom
Mrs. Harwood confided her satisfaction. With too much fervor, perhaps;
for when the person we blame is our own child, we desire no warmth of
conviction, but rather a good-natured deprecation, as who should say, “I
never remarked it,” or a warmer assertion, “She was always very nice to
me.” But the mother’s confidant was not enlightened in this case. She
acknowledged her perfect consciousness of the demerits of Ju.
This checked Mrs. Harwood in full flow.
“She had always a great many defects of manner, but she was right in her
heart, poor child, and as soon as you could get to that---- Well! Miss
Summerhayes has just that knack. She divined my poor Julia’s warm heart,
and to see her now you never would believe there had ever been any
trouble. She was always more sensible than most girls, but self-willed
and too frank. Now, I think you would say there are few girls with
better manners, and all that little thing’s doing, who really sometimes
looks far more a child than Ju herself.”
“Dear me,” said the visitor; “but I am glad, with my houseful of sons,
that I have not got such a fascinating personage. What is so good for
the girls might be dangerous for the boys. When do you expect Dolff to
come back?”
“Not before Christmas,” said Mrs. Harwood; but she did not take the
good-natured insinuation; she was too full of her present subject. “He
will be so delighted with the improvement in his sister. Dolff is very
fond of his sister; he is so domestic. Sometimes it is a little
difficult to get him back from Oxford. They enjoy themselves so much in
their college with all their friends about them. But, when he does come
home, he is so good in taking Julia about and giving her treats. Julia
was always his favorite, even when she was most hard to deal with. He
will be quite delighted now.”
“And Miss Summerhayes will go away, I suppose, for her holidays?” said
the far-seeing friend.
Mrs. Harwood looked across the room at Gussy, with a half-alarmed,
half-inquiring glance. But Gussy, who was once so quick to perceive all
possible imbroglios--Gussy shook her head. She had been thinking with
satisfaction that Miss Summerhayes would amuse Dolff, that her own
pursuits need not be interrupted for the sake of her brother. She shook
her head in answer to her mother’s unspoken question.
“Oh, no; she never thought of wanting a holiday so soon,” Gussy said.
And so, unmoved by any warning, the Harwood family rushed on their fate.