Miss Mohun came back in the dark after a long day, for once in her life
quite jaded, and explaining that the health-officer and the landlord had
been by no means agreed, and that nothing could be done till Sir Jasper
came home and decided whether to retain the house or not.
All that she was clear about, and which she had telegraphed to Aden,
was, that there must be no going back to Silverfold for the present,
and she was prepared to begin lodging-hunting as soon as she received an
answer.
‘And how have you got on?’ she asked, thinking all looked rather blank.
‘We haven’t been to see Fly,’ broke out Valetta, ‘though she went out on
the beach, and Mysie must not stay out after dark, for fear she should
cough.’
‘Mysie says they are afraid of excitement,’ said Gillian gloomily.
‘Then you have seen nothing of the others?’
‘Yes, I have seen Victoria, said Aunt Adeline, with a meaning smile.
Miss Mohun went up to take off her things, and Gillian followed her,
shutting the door with ominous carefulness, and colouring all over.
‘Aunt Jane, I ought to tell you. A dreadful thing has happened!’
‘Indeed, my dear! What?’
‘I have had a valentine.’
‘Oh!’ repressing a certain inclination to laugh at the bathos from the
look of horror and shame in the girl’s eyes.
‘It is from that miserable Alexis! Oh, I know I brought it on myself,
and I have been so wretched and so ashamed all day.’
‘Was it so very shocking! Let me see--’
‘Oh! I sent it back at once by the post, in an envelope, saying, “Sent
by mistake.”’
‘But what was it like? Surely it was not one of the common shop things?’
‘Oh no; there was rather a pretty outline of a nymph or muse, or
something of that sort, at the top--drawn, I mean--and verses written
below, something about my showing a lodestar of hope, but I barely
glanced at it. I hated it too much.’
‘I am sorry you were in such a hurry,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘No doubt it
was a shock; but I am afraid you have given more pain than it quite
deserved.’
‘It was so impertinent!’ cried Gillian, in astonished, shame-stricken
indignation.
‘So it seems to you,’ said her aunt, ‘and it was very bad taste; but you
should remember that this poor lad has grown up in a stratum of society
where he may have come to regard this as a suitable opportunity of
evincing his gratitude, and perhaps it may be very hard upon him to have
this work of his treated as an insult.’
‘But you would not have had me keep it and tolerate it?’ exclaimed
Gillian.
‘I can hardly tell without having seen it; but you might have done the
thing more civilly, through his sister, or have let me give it back to
him. However, it is too late now; I will make a point of seeing Kalliope
to-morrow, but in the meantime you really need not be so horribly
disgusted and ashamed.’
‘I thought he was quite a different sort!’
‘Perhaps, after all, your thoughts were not wrong; and he only fancied,
poor boy, that he had found a pretty way of thanking you.’
This did not greatly comfort Gillian, who might prefer feeling that she
was insulted rather than that she had been cruelly unkind, and might
like to blame Alexis rather than herself. And, indeed, in any case, she
had sense enough to perceive that this very unacceptable compliment
was the consequence of her own act of independence of more experienced
heads.
The next person Miss Mohun met was Fergus, lugging upstairs, step by
step, a monstrous lump of stone, into which he required her to look and
behold a fascinating crevice full of glittering spar.
‘Where did you get that, Fergus?’
‘Up off the cliff over the quarry.’
‘Are you sure that you may have it?’
‘Oh yes; White said I might. It’s so jolly, auntie! Frank Stebbing is
gone away to the other shop in the Apennines, where the old boss lives.
What splendiferous specimens he must have the run of! Our Stebbing says
‘tis because Kally White makes eyes at him; but any way, White has got
to do his work while he’s away, and go all the rounds to see that things
are right, so I go after him, and he lets me have just what I like--such
jolly crystals.’
‘I am sure I hope it is all right.’
‘Oh yes, I always ask him, as you told me; but he is awfully slow and
mopy and down in the mouth to-day. Stebbing says he is sweet upon
Gill; but I told him that couldn’t be, White knew better. A general’s
daughter, indeed! and Will remembers his father a sergeant.’
‘It is very foolish, Fergus. Say no more about it, for it is not nice
talk about your sister.’
‘I’ll lick any one who does,’ said Fergus, bumping his stone up another
step.
Poor Aunt Jane! There was more to fall on her as soon as the door was
finally shut on the two rooms communicating with one another, which the
sisters called their own. Mrs. Mount’s manipulations of Miss Adeline’s
rich brown hair were endured with some impatience, while Miss Mohun
leant back in her chair in her shawl-patterned dressing-gown, watching,
with a sort of curious wonder and foreboding, the restlessness that
proved that something was in store, and meantime somewhat lazily
brushing out her own thinner darker locks.
‘You are tired, Miss Jane,’ said the old servant, using the pet name in
private moments. ‘You had better let me do your hair.’
‘No, thank you, Fanny; I have very nearly done,’ she said, marking the
signs of eagerness on her sister’s part. ‘Oh, by the bye, did that hot
bottle go down to Lilian Giles?’
‘Yes, ma’am; Mrs. Giles came up for it.’
‘Did she say whether Lily was well enough to see Miss Gillian?’
Mrs. Mount coughed a peculiar cough that her mistresses well knew to
signify that she could tell them something they would not like to hear,
if they chose to ask her, and it was the younger who put the question--
‘Fanny, did she say anything?’
‘Well, Miss Ada, I told her she must be mistaken, but she stuck to it,
though she said she never would have breathed a word if Miss Gillian had
not come back again, but she thought you should know it.’
‘Know what?’ demanded Jane.
‘Well, Miss Jane, she should say ‘tis the talk that Miss Gillian, when
you have thought her reading to the poor girl, has been running down to
the works--and ‘tis only the ignorance of them that will talk, but they
say it is to meet a young man. She says, Mrs. Giles do, that she never
would have noticed such talk, but that the young lady did always seem in
a hurry, only just reading a chapter, and never stopping to talk to
poor Lily after it; and she has seen her herself going down towards the
works, instead of towards home, ma’am. And she said she could not bear
that reading to her girl should be made a colour for such doings.’
‘Certainly not, if it were as she supposes,’ said Miss Mohun, sitting
very upright, and beating her own head vigorously with a very prickly
brush; ‘but you may tell her, Fanny, that I know all about it, and that
her friend is Miss White, who you remember spent an evening here.’
Fanny’s good-humoured face cleared up. ‘Yes, ma’am, I told her that I
was quite sure that Miss Gillian would not go for to do anything wrong,
and that it could be easy explained; but people has tongues, you see.’
‘You were quite right to tell us, Fanny. Good-night.’
‘People has tongues!’ repeated Adeline, when that excellent person had
disappeared. ‘Yes, indeed, they have. But, Jenny, do you really mean to
say that you know all about this?’
‘Yes, I believe so.’
‘Oh, I wish you had been at home to-day when Victoria came in. It really
is a serious business.’
‘Victoria! What has she to do with it? I should have thought her
Marchioness-ship quite out of the region of gossip, though, for that
matter, grandees like it quite as much as other people.’
‘Don’t, Jane, you know it does concern her through companionship for
Phyllis, and she was very kind.’
‘Oh yes, I can see her sailing in, magnificently kind from her
elevation. But how in the world did she manage to pick up all this in
the time?’ said poor Jane, tired and pestered into the sharpness of her
early youth.
‘Dear Jenny, I wish I had said nothing to-night. Do wait till you are
rested.’
‘I am not in the least tired, and if I were, do you think I could sleep
with this half told?’
‘You said you knew.’
‘Then it is only about Gillian being so silly as to go down to Miss
White’s office at the works to look over the boy’s Greek exercises.’
‘You don’t mean that you allowed it!’
‘No, Gillian’s impulsiveness, just like her mother’s, began it, as a
little assertion of modern independence; but while she was away that
little step from brook to river brought her to the sense that she had
been a goose, and had used me rather unfairly, and so she came and
confessed it all to me on the way home from the station the first
morning after her return. She says she had written it all to her mother
from the first.’
‘I wonder Lily did not telegraph to put a stop to it.’
‘Do you suppose any mother, our poor old Lily especially, can marry a
couple of daughters without being slightly frantic! Ten to one she never
realised that this precious pupil was bigger than Fergus. But do tell me
what my Lady had heard, and how she heard it.’
‘You remember that her governess, Miss Elbury, has connections in the
place.’
‘“The most excellent creature in the world.” Oh yes, and she spent
Sunday with them. So that was the conductor.’
‘I can hardly say that Miss Elbury was to be blamed, considering that
she had heard the proposal about Valetta! It seems that that High School
class-mistress, Miss Mellon, who had the poor child under her, is her
cousin.’
‘Oh dear!’
‘It is exactly what I was afraid of when we decided on keeping Valetta
at home. Miss Mellon told all the Caesar story in plainly the worst
light for poor Val, and naturally deduced from her removal that she was
the most to blame.’
‘Whereas it was Miss Mellon herself! But nobody could expect Victoria
to see that, and no doubt she is quite justified in not wishing for the
child in her schoolroom! But, after all, Valetta is only a child; it
won’t hurt her to have this natural recoil of consequences, and her
mother will be at home in three weeks’ time. It signifies much more
about Gillian. Did I understand you that the gossip about her had
reached those august ears?’
‘Oh yes, Jane, and it is ever so much worse. That horrid Miss Mellon
seems to have told Miss Elbury that Gillian has a passion for low
company, that she is always running after the Whites at the works, and
has secret meetings with the young man in the garden on Sunday, while
his sister carries on her underhand flirtation with another youth, Frank
Stebbing, I suppose. It really was too preposterous, and Victoria said
she had no doubt from the first that there was exaggeration, and had
told Miss Elbury so; but still she thought Gillian must have been to
blame. She was very nice about it, and listened to all my explanation
most kindly, as to Gillian’s interest in the Whites, and its having been
only the sister that she met, but plainly she is not half convinced.
I heard something about a letter being left for Gillian, and really, I
don’t know whether there may not be more discoveries to come. I never
felt before the force of our dear father’s saying, apropos of Rotherwood
himself, that no one knows what it is to lose a father except those who
have the care of his children.’
‘Whatever Gillian did was innocent and ladylike, and nothing to be
ashamed of,’ said Aunt Jane stoutly; ‘of that I am sure. But I should
like to be equally sure that she has not turned the head of that poor
foolish young man, without in the least knowing what she was about. You
should have seen her state of mind at his sending her a valentine, which
she returned to him, perfectly ferociously, at once, and that was all
the correspondence somebody seems to have smelt out.’
‘A valentine! Gillian must have behaved very ill to have brought that
upon herself! Oh dear! I wish she had never come here; I wish Lily could
have stayed at home, instead of scattering her children about the world.
The Rotherwoods will never get over it.’
‘That’s the least part of the grievance, in my eyes,’ said her
sister. ‘It won’t make a fraction of difference to the dear old cousin
Rotherwood; and as to my Lady, it is always a liking from the teeth
outwards.’
‘How can you say so! I am sure she has always been most cordial.’
‘Most correct, if you please. Oh, did she say anything about Mysie?’
‘She said nothing but good of Mysie; called her delightful, and
perfectly good and trustworthy, said they could never have got so well
through Phyllis’s illness without her, and that they only wished to keep
her altogether.’
‘I dare say, to be humble companion to my little lady, out of the way of
her wicked sisters.’
‘Jane!’
‘My dear, I don’t think I can stand any more defence of her just now!
No, she is an admirable woman, I know. That’s enough. I really must go
to bed, and consider which is to be faced first, she or Kalliope.’
It was lucky that Miss Mohun could exist without much sleep, for she was
far too much worried for any length of slumber to visit her that night,
though she was afoot as early as usual. She thought it best to tell
Gillian that Lady Rotherwood had heard some foolish reports, and that
she was going to try to clear them up, and she extracted an explicit
account as to what the extent of her intercourse with the Whites had
been, which was given willingly, Gillian being in a very humble frame,
and convinced that she had acted foolishly. It surprised her likewise
that Aunt Adeline, whom she had liked the best, and thought the most
good-natured, was so much more angry with her than Aunt Jane, who, as
she felt, forgave her thoroughly, and was only anxious to help her out
of the scrape she had made for herself.
Miss Mohun thought her best time for seeing Kalliope would be in the
dinner-hour, and started accordingly in the direction of the marble
works. Not far from them she met that young person walking quickly with
one of her little brothers.
‘I was coming to see you,’ Miss Mohun said. ‘I did not know that you
went home in the middle of the day.’
‘My mother has been so unwell of late that I do not like to be entirely
out of reach all day,’ returned Kalliope, who certainly looked worn and
sorrowful; ‘so I manage to run home, though it is but for a quarter of
an hour.’
‘I will not delay you, I will walk with you,’ and when Petros had been
dismissed, ‘I am afraid my niece has not been quite the friend to you
that she intended.’
‘Oh, Miss Mohun, do you know all about it? It is such a relief! I have
felt so guilty towards you, and yet I did not know what to do.’
‘I have never thought that the concealment was your fault,’ said Jane.
‘I did think at first that you knew,’ said Kalliope, ‘and when I found
that was not the case, I suppose I should have insisted on your being
told; but I could not bear to seem ungrateful, and my brother took
such extreme delight in his lessons and Miss Merrifield’s kindness,
that--that I could not bear to do what might prevent them. And now,
poor fellow, it shows how wrong it was, since he has ventured on that
unfortunate act of presumption, which has so offended her. Oh, Miss
Mohun, he is quite broken-hearted.’
‘I am afraid Gillian was very discourteous. I was out, or it should
not have been done so unkindly. Indeed, in the shock, Gillian did not
recollect that she might be giving pain.’
‘Yes, yes! Poor Alexis! He has not had any opportunity of understanding
how different things are in your class of life, and he thought it would
show his gratitude and--and--Oh, he is so miserable!’ and she was forced
to stop to wipe away her tears.
‘Poor fellow! But it was one of those young men’s mistakes that are got
over and outgrown, so you need not grieve over it so much, my dear. My
brother-in-law is on his way home, and I know he means to see what can
be done for Alexis, for your father’s sake.’
‘Oh, Miss Mohun, how good you are! I thought you could never forgive us.
And people do say such shocking things.’
‘I know they do, and therefore I am going to ask you to tell me exactly
what intercourse there has been with Gillian.’
Kalliope did so, and Miss Mohun was struck with the complete accordance
of the two accounts, and likewise by the total absence of all attempt
at self-justification on Miss White’s part. If she had in any way
been weak, it had been against her will, and her position had been an
exceedingly difficult one. She spoke in as guarded a manner as possible;
but to such acute and experienced ears as those of her auditor, it
was impossible not to perceive that, while Gillian had been absolutely
simple, and unconscious of all but a kind act of patronage, the youth’s
imagination had taken fire, and he had become her ardent worshipper;
with calf-love, no doubt, but with a distant, humble adoration, which
had, whether fortunately or unfortunately, for once found expression in
the valentine so summarily rejected. The drawing and the composition
had been the work of many days, and so much against his sister’s protest
that it had been sent without her knowledge, after she had thought
it given up. She had only extracted the confession through his
uncontrollable despair, which made him almost unfit to attend to his
increased work, perhaps by his southern nature exaggerated.
‘The stronger at first, the sooner over,’ thought Miss Mohun; but she
knew that consolation betraying her comprehension would not be safe.
One further discovery she made, namely, that on Sunday, Alexis, foolish
lad, had been so wildly impatient at their having had no notice from
Gillian since her return, that he had gone to the garden to explain, as
he said, his sister’s non-appearance there, since she was detained by
her mother’s illness. It was the only time he had ever been there,
and he had met no one; but Miss Mohun felt a sinking of heart at the
foreboding that the mauvaises langues would get hold of it.
The only thing to be decided on was that there must be a suspension
of intercourse, at any rate, till Lady Merrifield’s arrival; not in
unkindness, but as best for all. And, indeed, Kalliope had no time to
spare from her mother, whose bloated appearance, poor woman, was the
effect of long-standing disease.
The daughter’s heart was very full of her, and evidently it would have
been a comfort to discuss her condition with this kind friend; but no
more delay was possible; and Miss Mohun had to speed home, in a quandary
how much or how little about Alexis’s hopeless passion should be
communicated to its object, and finally deciding that Gillian had better
only be informed that he had been greatly mortified by the rude manner
of rejection, but that the act itself proved that she must abstain from
all renewal of the intercourse till her parents should return.
But that was not all the worry of the day. Miss Mohun had still to
confront Lady Rotherwood, and, going as soon as the early dinner was
over, found the Marchioness resting after an inspection of houses in
Rockquay. She did not like hotels, she said, and she thought the top of
the cliff too bleak for Phyllis, so that they must move nearer the sea
if the place agreed with her at all, which was doubtful. Miss Mohun was
pretty well convinced that the true objection was the neighbourhood of
Beechcroft Cottage. She said she had come to give some explanation of
what had been said to her sister yesterday.
‘Oh, my dear Jane, Adeline told me all about it yesterday. I am very
sorry for you to have had such a charge, but what could you expect of
girls cast about as they have been, always with a marching regiment?’
‘I do not think Mysie has given you any reason to think her ill brought
up.’
‘A little uncouth at first, but that was all. Oh, no! Mysie is a dear
little girl. I should be very glad to have her with Phyllis altogether,
and so would Rotherwood. But she was very young when Sir Jasper
retired.’
‘And Valetta was younger. Poor little girl! She was naughty, but I do
not think she understood the harm of what she was doing.’
Lady Rotherwood smiled.
‘Perhaps not; but she must have been deeply involved, since she was the
one amongst all the guilty to be expelled.’
‘Oh, Victoria! Was that what you heard?’
‘Miss Elbury heard it from the governess she was under. Surely she was
the only one not permitted to go up for the examination and removed.’
‘True, but that was our doing--no decree of the High School. Her own
governess is free now, and her mother on her way, and we thought she had
better not begin another term. Yes, Victoria, I quite see that you might
doubt her fitness to be much with Phyllis. I am not asking for that--I
shall try to get her own governess to come at once; but for the child’s
sake and her mother’s I should like to get this cleared up. May I see
Miss Elbury?’
‘Certainly; but I do not think you will find that she has exaggerated,
though of course her informant may have done so.
Miss Elbury was of the older generation of governesses, motherly, kind,
but rather prim and precise, the accomplished element being supplied
with diplomaed foreigners, who, since Lady Phyllis’s failure in health,
had been dispensed with. She was a good and sensible woman, as Jane
could see, in spite of the annoyance her report had occasioned, and it
was impossible not to assent when she said she had felt obliged, under
the circumstances, to mention to Lady Rotherwood what her cousin had
told her.
‘About both my nieces,’ said Jane. ‘Yes, I quite understand. But, though
of course the little one’s affair is the least important, we had better
get to the bottom of that first, and I should like to tell you what
really happened.’
She told her story, and how Valetta had been tempted and then bullied
into going beyond the first peeps, and finding she did not produce the
impression she wished, she begged Miss Elbury to talk it over with the
head-mistress. It was all in the telling. Miss Elbury’s young cousin,
Miss Mellon, had been brought under rebuke, and into great danger of
dismissal, through Valetta Merrifield’s lapse; and it was no wonder
that she had warned her kinswoman against ‘the horrid little deceitful
thing,’ who had done so much harm to the whole class. ‘Miss Mohun was
running about over the whole place, but not knowing what went on in her
own house!’ And as to Miss White, Miss Elbury mentioned at last, though
with some reluctance, that it was believed that she had been on the
point of a private marriage, and of going to Italy with young Stebbing,
when her machinations were detected, and he was forced to set off
without her.
With this in her mind, the governess could not be expected to accept as
satisfactory what was not entire confutation or contradiction, and Miss
Mohun saw that, politely as she was listened to, it was all only treated
as excuse; since there could be no denial of Gillian’s folly, and it was
only a question of degree.
And, provoking as it was, the disappointment might work well for
Valetta. The allegations against Gillian were a far more serious affair,
but much more of these could be absolutely disproved and contradicted;
in fact, all that Miss Mohun herself thought very serious, i.e. the
flirtation element, was shown to be absolutely false, both as regarded
Gillian and Kalliope; but it was quite another thing to convince people
who knew none of the parties, when there was the residuum of truth
undeniable, that there had been secret meetings not only with the girl,
but the youth. To acquit Gillian of all but modern independence and
imprudent philanthropy was not easy to any one who did not understand
her character, and though Lady Rotherwood said nothing more in the form
of censure, it was evident that she was unconvinced that Gillian was not
a fast and flighty girl, and that she did not desire more contact than
was necessary.
No doubt she wished herself farther off! Lord Rotherwood, she said,
was coming down in a day or two, when he could get away, and then they
should decide whether to take a house or to go abroad, which, after all,
might be the best thing for Phyllis.
‘He will make all the difference,’ said Miss Adeline, when the
unsatisfactory conversation was reported to her.
‘I don’t know! But even if he did, and I don’t think he will, I won’t
have Valetta waiting for his decision and admitted on sufferance.’
‘Shall you send her back to school?’
‘No. Poor Miss Vincent is free, and quite ready to come here. Fergus
shall go and sleep among his fossils in the lumber-room, and I will
write to her at once. She will be much better here than waiting at
Silverton, though the Hacketts are very kind to her.’
‘Yes, it will be better to be independent. But all this is very
unfortunate. However, Victoria will see for herself what the children
are. She has asked me to take a drive with her to-morrow if it is not
too cold.’
‘Oh yes, she is not going to make an estrangement. You need not fear
that, Ada. She does not think it your fault.’
Aunt Jane pondered a little as to what to say to the two girls, and
finally resolved that Valetta had better be told that she was not to
do lessons with Fly, as her behaviour had made Lady Rotherwood doubt
whether she was a good companion. Valetta stamped and cried, and said
it was very hard and cross when she had been so sorry and every one had
forgiven her; but Gillian joined heartily with Aunt Jane in trying
to make the child understand that consequences often come in spite of
pardon and repentance. To Gillian herself, Aunt Jane said as little
as possible, not liking even to give the veriest hint of the foolish
gossip, or of the extent of poor Alexis White’s admiration; for it was
enough for the girl to know that concealment had brought her under a
cloud, and she was chiefly concerned as to how her mother would look
on it. She had something of Aunt Jane’s impatience of patronage, and
perhaps thought it snobbish to seem concerned at the great lady’s
displeasure.
Mysie was free to run in and out to her sisters, but was still to do
her lessons with Miss Elbury, and Fly took up more of her time than the
sisters liked. Neither she nor Fly were formally told why their
castles vanished into empty air, but there certainly was a continual
disappointment and fret on both sides, which Fly could not bear as well
as when she was in high health, and poor Mysie’s loving heart often
found it hard to decide between her urgent claims and those of Valetta!
But was not mamma coming? and papa? Would not all be well then? Yes,
hearts might bound at the thought. But where was Gillian’s great thing?’
Miss Vincent’s coming was really like a beginning of home, in spite
of her mourning and depressed look. It was a great consolation to the
lonely woman to find how all her pupils flew at her, with infinite
delight. She had taken pains to bring a report of all the animals for
Valetta, and she duly admired all Fergus’s geological specimens, and
even undertook to print labels for them.
Mysie would have liked to begin lessons again with her; but this would
have been hard on Fly, and besides, her mother had committed her to the
Rotherwoods, and it was better still to leave her with them.
The aunts were ready with any amount of kindness and sympathy for the
governess’s bereavement, and her presence was a considerable relief in
the various perplexities.
Even Lady Rotherwood and Miss Elbury had been convinced, and by no means
unwillingly, that Gillian had been less indiscreet than had been their
first impression; but she had been a young lady of the period in her
independence, and was therefore to be dreaded. No more garden trystes
would have been possible under any circumstances, for the house and
garden were in full preparation for the master, who was to meet Lord
Rotherwood to consult about the proposed water-works and other designs
for the benefit of the town where they were the chief landowners.