_Lady Alice_.
When the bell rang for dinner, I managed to find my way to the
drawing-room, where were assembled Lady Hilton, her only daughter, a
girl of about thirteen, and the two boys, my pupils. Lady Hilton would
have been pleasant, could she have been as natural as she wished to
appear. She received me with some degree of kindness; but the
half-cordiality of her manner towards me was evidently founded on the
impassableness of the gulf between us. I knew at once that we should
never be friends; that she would never come down from the lofty
table-land upon which she walked; and that if, after being years in the
house, I should happen to be dying, she would send the housekeeper to
me. All right, no doubt; I only say that it was so. She introduced to me
my pupils; fine, open-eyed, manly English boys, with something a little
overbearing in their manner, which speedily disappeared in relation to
me. Lord Hilton was not at home. Lady Hilton led the way to the
dining-room; the elder boy gave his arm to his sister, and I was about
to follow with the younger, when from one of the deep bay windows glided
out, still in white, the same figure which had passed me upon the lawn.
I started, and drew back. With a slight bow, she preceded me, and
followed the others down the great staircase. Seated at table, I had
leisure to make my observations upon them all; but most of my glances
found their way to the lady who, twice that day, had affected me like an
apparition. What is time, but the airy ocean in which ghosts come and
go!
She was about twenty years of age; rather above the middle height, and
rather slight in form; her complexion white rather than pale, her face
being only less white than the deep marbly whiteness of her arms. Her
eyes were large, and full of liquid night--a night throbbing with the
light of invisible stars. Her hair seemed raven-black, and in quantity
profuse. The expression of her face, however, generally partook more of
vagueness than any other characteristic. Lady Hilton called her Lady
Alice; and she never addressed Lady Hilton but in the same ceremonious
style.
I afterwards learned from the old house-keeper, that Lady Alice’s
position in the family was a very peculiar one. Distantly connected with
Lord Hilton’s family on the mother’s side, she was the daughter of the
late Lord Glendarroch, and step-daughter to Lady Hilton, who had become
Lady Hilton within a year after Lord Glendarroch’s death. Lady Alice,
then quite a child, had accompanied her stepmother, to whom she was
moderately attached, and who had been allowed to retain undisputed
possession of her. She had no near relatives, else the fortune I
afterwards found to be at her disposal would have aroused contending
claims to the right of guardianship.
Although she was in many respects kindly treated by her stepmother,
certain peculiarities tended to her isolation from the family pursuits
and pleasures. Lady Alice had no accomplishments. She could neither
spell her own language, nor even read it aloud. Yet she delighted in
reading to herself, though, for the most part, books which Mrs. Wilson
characterised as very odd. Her voice, when she spoke, had a quite
indescribable music in it; yet she neither sang nor played. Her habitual
motion was more like a rhythmical gliding than an ordinary walk, yet she
could not dance. Mrs. Wilson hinted at other and more serious
peculiarities, which she either could not, or would not describe; always
shaking her head gravely and sadly, and becoming quite silent, when I
pressed for further explanation; so that, at last, I gave up all
attempts to arrive at an understanding of the mystery by her means. Not
the less, however, I speculated on the subject.
One thing soon became evident to me: that she was considered not merely
deficient as to the power of intellectual acquirement, but in a quite
abnormal intellectual condition. Of this, however, I could myself see no
sign. The peculiarity, almost oddity, of some of her remarks, was
evidently not only misunderstood, but, with relation to her mental
state, misinterpreted. Such remarks Lady Hilton generally answered only
by an elongation of the lips intended to represent a smile. To me, they
appeared to indicate a nature closely allied to genius, if not identical
with it-a power of regarding things from an original point of view,
which perhaps was the more unfettered in its operation from the fact
that she was incapable of looking at them in the ordinary common-place
way. It seemed to me, sometimes, as if her point of observation was
outside of the sphere within which the thing observed took place; and as
if what she said, had a relation, occasionally, to things and thoughts
and mental conditions familiar to her, but at which not even a definite
guess could be made by me. I am compelled to acknowledge, however, that
with such utterances as these mingled now and then others, silly enough
for any drawing-room young lady; which seemed again to be accepted by
the family as proofs that she was not _altogether_ out of her right
mind. She was gentle and kind to the children, as they were still
called; and they seemed reasonably fond of her.
There was something to me exceedingly touching in the solitariness of
this girl; for no one spoke to her as if she were like other people, or
as if any heartiness were possible between them. Perhaps no one could
have felt quite at home with her but a mother, whose heart had been one
with hers from a season long anterior to the development of any
repulsive oddity. But her position was one of peculiar isolation, for no
one really approached her individual being; and that she should be
unaware of this loneliness, seemed to me saddest of all. I soon found,
however, that the most distant attempt on my part to show her attention,
was either received with absolute indifference, or coldly repelled
without the slightest acknowledgment.
But I return to the first night of my sojourn at Hilton Hall.