"Hush, Janie; these are not things in which to interfere."
"Then," quoth Jane sententiously, "I am not astonished at the
dissipation of the university."
And away she flounced in tears of wrath. Her mother went after her,
and we laughed a little, it was impossible to help it, at the bathos
of the chocolate creams; but, as Mr. Methuen said, she was really
right, the amusement was undesirable, as savouring of evil. Edith,
to my vexation, saw no harm in it; but Horace said very decidedly he
hoped it would not happen again; and Margaret presently returned,
saying she hoped that she had pacified Jane, and shown her that to
descend as if there were an uproar in the school would only do much
more harm than was likely to happen in that one evening; and she
said to me afterwards, "I see what has been wanting in our training.
We have let children's loyalty run into intolerance and rudeness."
But Meg was quite innocent of there being any harm in it, and only
needed reproof for being too much charmed by the pleasure for once
to obey her dictatorial sister.
13, TEN A.M.--Horace has had it out with sundry of the young ladies,
so as to prevent any more betting. Several had regretted it. "Only
they did so want to get rid of the bon-bons! And Jane did make such
an uproar." After all, nobody did really bet but Charley and the
young Elwood, and Pica only that once. Jane candidly owns that a
little gentleness would have made a difference.
Again I see this obtuseness to courtesy towards strangers. Our
despised church has become popular, and so many of the young folks
choose to accompany us that they overflowed into the free seats in
the aisle, where I had a full view of them from above. These
benches are long, and I was sorry to see the girls planting
themselves fast at the outer end, and making themselves square, so
as to hinder any one else from getting in, till the verger came and
spoke to them, when Charley giggled offensively; and even then they
did not make room, but forced the people to squeeze past. Isa could
not help herself, not being the outermost; but she was much
distressed, and does not shelter herself under Charley's plea that
it was so hot that the verger should have been indicted for cruelty
to animals. Certainly they all did come home very hot from walking
back with the pupils.
Pica and Avice were not among them, having joined the Druces in
going to Hollyford, where Horace preached this morning. Their gray
serges and sailor hats were, as they said, "not adapted to the town
congregation."
"It is the congregation you dress for?" said their uncle dryly,
whereupon Pica upbraided him with inconsistency in telling his poor
people not to use the excuse of 'no clothes,' and that the heart,
not the dress, is regarded. He said it was true, but that he should
still advocate the poor man's coming in his cleanest and best.
"There are manners towards God as well as towards man," he said.
I was too much tired by the heat to go to church again this evening,
and am sitting with my mother, who is dozing. Where the young
people are I do not know exactly, but I am afraid I hear Charley's
shrill laugh on the beach.
14.--Who do you think has found us out? Our dear old Governor-
General, "in all his laurels," as enthusiastic little Avice was
heard saying, which made Freddy stare hard and vainly in search of
them. He is staying at Hollybridge Park, and seeing our name in the
S. Clements' list of visitors, he made Lady Hollybridge drive him
over to call, and was much disappointed to find that you could not
be here during his visit. He was as kind and warm-hearted as ever,
and paid our dear mother such compliments on her son, that we tell
her the bows on her cap are starting upright with pride.
Lady Hollybridge already knew Edith. She made herself very
pleasant, and insisted on our coming EN MASSE to a great garden
party which they are giving to-morrow. Hollybridge is the S.
Clements' lion, with splendid grounds and gardens, and some fine old
pictures, so it is a fine chance for the young people; and we are
going to hire one of the large excursion waggonettes, which will
hold all who have age, dress, and will for gaieties. The pupils, as
Mr. Methuen is a friend of the Hollybridge people, will attend us as
outriders on their bicycles. I am rather delighted at thus catching
out the young ladies who did not think it worth while to bring a
Sunday bonnet. They have all rushed into S. Clements to furbish
themselves for the occasion, and we are left to the company of the
small Druces. Neither Margaret nor Emily chooses to go, and will
keep my mother company.
I ventured on administering a sovereign apiece to Isa and Jane
Druce. The first blushed and owned that it was very welcome, as her
wardrobe had never recovered a great thunderstorm at Oxford. Jane's
awkwardness made her seem as if it were an offence on my part, but
her mother tells me it made her very happy. Her father says that
she tells him he was hard on Avice, a great favourite of his, and
that I must ask Jane to explain, for it is beyond him. It is all
right about the Oxford girl. I have engaged her, and she goes home
to-morrow to prepare herself. This afternoon she is delighted to
assist her young ladies in their preparations. I liked her much in
the private interview. I was rather surprised to find that it was
'Miss Avice,' of whom she spoke with the greatest fervour, as having
first made friends with her, and then having constantly lent her
books and read to her in her illness.
15.--S. Swithun is evidently going to be merciful to us to-day, and
the damsels have been indefatigable--all, that is to say, but the
two Londoners, who have lawn tennis dresses, and their mother's maid
to turn them out complete. Isa brought home some tulle and white
jessamine with which she is deftly freshening the pretty compromise
between a bonnet and a hat which she wears on Sunday; also a
charming parasol, with a china knob and a wreath of roses at the
side. She hopes I shall not think her extravagant, but she had a
little money of her own.
Jane Druce displays two pairs of gloves and two neckties for herself
and her sister; and after all Meg will not go; she is so uncouth
that her mother does not like her to go without her own supervision;
and she with true Bourne Parva self-appreciation and exclusiveness
says--
"I'm sure I don't want to go among a lot of stupid people, who care
for nothing but fine clothes and lawn tennis."
There was a light till one o'clock last night in the room where
Avice sleeps with Charley and the dog; and I scarcely saw either of
the Oxford sisters or Jane all this morning till dinner-time, when
Pica appeared very appropriately to her name, turned out in an old
black silk dress left behind by her mother, and adorned with white
tulle in all sorts of folds, also a pretty white bonnet made up by
Avice's clever fingers, and adorned with some soft gray sea-birds'
feathers and white down. Isa and Metelill were very well got up and
nice. Metelill looks charming, but I am afraid her bouquet is from
one of those foolish pupils. She, as usual, has shared it with Isa,
who has taken half to prevent her cousin being remarkable. And,
after all, poor Avice is to be left behind. There was no time to
make up things for two, and being in mourning, she could not borrow,
though Metelill would have been too happy to lend. She says she
shall be very happy with the children, but I can't help thinking
there was a tear in her eye when she ran to fetch her dress cloak
for Jane, whom, by the bye, Avice has made wonderfully more like
other people. Here is the waggonette, and I must finish to-morrow.
16.--We have had a successful day. The drive each way was a treat
in itself, and the moon rising over the sea on our way home was a
sight never to be forgotten. Hollybridge is charming in itself.
Those grounds with their sea-board are unique, and I never saw such
Spanish chestnuts in England. Then the gardens and the turf! One
must have lived as long in foreign parts as we have to appreciate
the perfect finish and well-tended look of such places. Your dear
old chief does not quite agree. He says he wants space, and is
oppressed with the sense of hedges and fences, except when he looks
to the sea, and even there the rocks look polished off, and treated
by landscape gardeners! He walked me about to see the show places,
and look at the pictures, saying he had been so well lionised that
he wanted some one to discharge his information upon. It was great
fun to hear him criticising the impossibilities of a battle-piece--
Blenheim, I think--the anachronisms of the firearms and uniforms,
and the want of discipline around Marlborough, who would never have
won a battle at that rate. You know how his hawk's eye takes note
of everything. He looked at Metelill and said, "Uncommonly pretty
girl that, and knows it," but when I asked what he thought of
Isabel's looks, he said, "Pretty, yes; but are you sure she is quite
aboveboard? There's something I don't like about her eyes." I wish
he had not said so. I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling
towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and
Charley. I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have
thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps
jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed
is often the consequence of living in an uncongenial home.
Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no
acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into
games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to
explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out.
After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she
said, "Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I
mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to
wear but her round hat. It is because she and Pica spent all they
had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home. They
had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly
done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always
growling about ladies' luggage, they thought it would be a capital
plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another
quarter is due. Avice never thought of its not being right to go to
Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command
to "have power on her head" really may apply to that sort of
fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could
not be done in time for to-day. Besides, she had no dress but a
serge."
"She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself," I answered;
and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear
old Bird is. The little money she had, she added to Pica's small
remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister
out.
"I suppose," I said, "that Isa manages better, for she does not seem
to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less
allowance than her cousins."
"She has exactly the same. I know it." And Jane caught herself up,
evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which
made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was
perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this
disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to
Avice. "A lesson? I should think so," said Jane bluntly. "A
lesson not to lend her money to Isa"; and then, when I asked what
she meant, she blurted out that all Isa's so-called share of the
subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice--Pica had
told her so, with comments on her sister's folly in lending what she
well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only
defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl. It
was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have
given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that
proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.
I will at least give her the benefit of the doubt, and I would not
encourage Jane to say any more about her. Indeed, the girl herself
did not seem so desirous of dwelling on Isa as of doing justice to
Avice, whom, she told me very truly, I did not know. "She is always
the one to give way and be put aside for Pie and Isa," said Jane.
And now I think over the time we have had together, I believe it has
often been so. "You are very fond of her," I said; and Jane
answered, "I should _THINK_ so! Why, she spent eight months with us
once at Bourne Parva, just after the great row with Miss Hurlstone.
Oh, didn't you know? They had a bad governess, who used to meet a
lover--a German musician, I think he was--when they were out
walking, and bullied Avice because she was honest. When it all came
to light, Pica came out and Isa was sent to school, but Avice had
got into a low state of health, and they said Oxford was not good
for her, so she came to us. And papa prepared her for Confirmation,
and she did everything with us, and she really is just like one of
ourselves," said Jane, as the highest praise imaginable, though any
one who contrasted poor Jane's stiff PIQUE (Miss Dadsworth's turn-
out) with the grace even of the gray serge, might not think it a
compliment. Jane was just beginning to tell me that Avice always
wrote to her to lay before her father the difficulties about right
and wrong faith and practice that their way of life and habits of
society bring before the poor child, when Isa descended upon us with
"Oh! Aunt Charlotte, I could not think what had become of you, when
I saw the great man without you."
I begin to wonder whether she is really so very fond of me, or
whether she does not like to see me with one of the others.
However, I shall be able to take Jane's hint, and cultivate Avice,
for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most
kindly insisted on her going over to-day. The carriage is taking
some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us
to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back. So
I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come
yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured
of Metelill, they begged for her likewise. Avice looks very well in
the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning,
the identity will only be natural. She is very much pleased and
very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares
about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps
'really hear the hero talk.' And Uncle Horace says, "True, you
Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear
themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once." "Oh!"
said saucy Pica, "now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own
conversations with father!" By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home
to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on
the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible,
except Charley's smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of
young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it. Edith does
not seem to mind what her daughters do. Margaret has no occasion to
be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while
the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted
Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening
excursions. Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred
being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe
her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only
put fancies in her head. So they have only prohibited learning to
smoke, staying out later than nine o'clock, and shrieking louder
than a steam whistle!
17.--Yesterday was a great success. Avice was silent at first, but
Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before
we arrived. You would have been enchanted to see how much was made
of our dear mother. Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her
his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall. The good
old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice's eyes
shone all the time. After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that
dear mother should have half an hour's perfect rest, in a charming
little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two
little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I
walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the
former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its
way. Avice, who has seen scores of FETES in college grounds, much
preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of
strangers. The young people took possession of the two girls, and
when we all met for the five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady
Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the
subject of 'that picture.' It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite,
of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in
contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies
stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers--irises, anemones,
violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy.
A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some
obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an
expert. Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah
and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante's
PURGATORIO, with the mystic griffin car in the distance. Our hosts
were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she
very quietly and modestly pointed out the details. A Dante was
hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew
any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the
names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord
Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage,
which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good
fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much
that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were
hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by
Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark
both it and Dante.
"I like that girl," said the old Governor-General, "she is
intelligent and modest both. There is something fine about the
shape of her head."
When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible
at what she called the Bird's triumph; but Avice did not seem at all
elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary
Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque,
came naturally. And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her
corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole
question of Action and Contemplation. At least Metelill asked the
explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I
talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the
old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made
her my sister for those two happy years, and--Well, it is no use
paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there
was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young
namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of
companionship before you came on the scene. And to think what a
jewel I have missed all this time!
18.--I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have
to tell you. I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and
Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming
in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open
French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice--
"I tell you it was no joke. It's no use saying so," and I beheld
Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel. "I've looked on
at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken
out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my
sister I will speak out."
By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley's very
improper tone, and asking what was the matter. Isa sprang to me,
declaring that it was all Charley's absurd suspicion and
misconstruction. At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found
that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill
keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young
Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon
the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.
Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until
she could return it. Charley broke out. "As if I did not know
better than that! Didn't you make him give you that parasol and
promise him your photo? Ay, and give it him in return? You thought
he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like
a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun
over him. And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and
think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are
sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts.
I'm not strait-laced. I wouldn't mind having the photos of a
hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all
just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is--is--well--a regular old maid
about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on
purpose to upset Metelill's chances."
Isa clung to me in floods of tears, desiring me not to believe
anything so cruel and false. Every one always was so hard upon her,
she said, and she had only put the thing inadvertently there, to get
it out of sight, into the first book she saw, but unfortunately she
did not know I had heard her trying to pass it off to Charley as a
jest. However, as there was no proof there, I asked about the
parasol. While the shopping was going on, she and young Horne had
been in another street, and this was the consequence! I was
perfectly confounded. Receive presents from young men! It seemed
to me quite impossible. "Oh, Isa thinks nothing of that!" said
Charley. "Ask her where she got those bangles, and that bouquet
which she told you was half Metelill's. You think me awful, I know,
Aunt Charlotte, but I do draw a line, though I would never have said
one word about it if she had not played this nasty trick on
Metelill." Isa would have begun some imploring excuse, but our two
gentlemen were seen coming up towards the window, and she fled,
gasping out an entreaty that I would not tell Uncle Martyn.
Nor did I then and there, for I needed to understand the matter and
look into it, so I told Martyn and Horace not to wait for me, and
heard Charley's story more coolly. I had thought that Mr. Horne was
Metelill's friend. "So he was at first," Charley said, "but he is
an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic
poverty-stricken orphan! That's the way she gets so many presents!"
Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne's love
affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she,
being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given
the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the
truth by teasing his friend. "But I never meant to have told," said
Charley, "if you had not come in upon us, when I was in the midst of
such a wax that I did not know what I was saying"; and on my
demanding what she meant by the elegant expression she had used
about Isa and me, she explained that it was the schoolboy's word for
currying favour. Every one but we stupid elders perceived the game,
nay, even the Druces, living in full confidence with their children,
knew what was going on. I have never spoken, but somehow people
must read through one's brains, for there was a general conviction
that I was going to choose a niece to accompany us. I wonder if
you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith. It is what men
always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret
themselves, and say, "Nothing is safe with these women."
Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their
ESPRIT DE CORPS, I do not know which to call it; for though they
looked on at Isa's manoeuvres and my blindness with indignant
contempt, they never attempted to interfere. Jane Druce was seized
with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father
withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably
find out the girl's true disposition, and that it would be wrong to
deprive Isa of a chance of coming under a fresh influence.
Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant
wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really,
as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but
the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was
very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice. I see now that it
has been her effort to keep the others away from me. This spiteful
trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on
Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival. Avice always
yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any
such opportunity.
When I talked to Mary, she said, "Oh yes, I always knew she was a
horrid little treacherous puss. Nature began it, and that governess
worked on a ready soil. We sent her to school, and hoped she was
cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be
more plausible. But what can one do? One could not turn out an
orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm.
I'm sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing
I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little
manoeuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will
do, I can't think, unless you and Edward will take her off our
hands. I believe you might do her good. She is an unfathomable
mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks
much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the
world" (fancy that). "Besides, she is really religious in a sort of
a way; much good you'll say it does her, but, as you know, there's a
certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people's
conduct."
It seems to be the general desire of the family that we should take
this unfortunate Isabel off their hands. Shall we? Cruelly as I
have been disappointed in the girl, I can't help liking her; she is
obliging, pleasant, ladylike in manners, very affectionate, and I
can't help thinking that with the respect and fear for you she would
feel she might be restrained, and that we could be the saving of
her, though at the same time I know that my having been so
egregiously deceived may be a sign that I am not fit to deal with
her. I leave it to your decision altogether, and will say no more
till I hear. Metelill is a charming girl, and I fancy you prefer
her, and that her mother knows it, and would send her for at least a
winter; but she gets so entirely off her balance whenever a young
man of any sort comes near, that I should not like to take charge of
her. It might be good for the worthy Jane, but as she would take a
great deal of toning down and licking into shape, and as she would
despise it all, refer everything to the Bourne Parva standard, and
pine for home and village school, I don't think she need be
considered, especially as I am sure she would not go, and could not
be spared. Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities,
and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to
study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who
did not talk like Oxford dons. Probably the E. E. would be the only
people she would think fit to speak to. Avice is the one to whom I
feel the most drawn. She is thoroughly thoughtful, and her religion
is not of the uninfluential kind Mary describes. Those distresses
and perplexities which poor Isa affected were chiefly borrowed from
her genuine ones; but she has obtained the high cultivation and
intelligence that her Oxford life can give in full measure, and
without conceit or pretension, and it is her unselfish, yielding
spirit that has prevented me from knowing her sooner, though when
not suppressed she can be thoroughly agreeable, and take her part in
society with something of her mother's brilliancy. I think, too,
that she would be spared, as Oxford does not agree with her, and a
southern winter or two would be very good for her. Besides, the
others might come and see her in vacation time. Could we not take
both her and Isabel at least for the first winter?
19.--A stormy wet day, the first we have had. Poor Isa has made an
attempt at explanation and apology, but lost herself in a mist of
words and tears. I suppose I was severe, for she shrinks from me,
and clings to Avice, who has stood her friend in many a storm
before, and, as Jane indignantly tells me, persists in believing
that she is really sorry and wishes to be good. She is very
attentive and obliging, and my dear mother, who is in happy
ignorance of all this uproar, really likes her the best of all the
girls.
21.--We have had a great alarm. Last evening we went to the parish
church; Horace Druce had been asked to preach, and the rain, which
had fallen all the morning, cleared off just in time for the walk.
Emily, Margaret, two of her children, and I sat in the gallery, and
Avice and Isa in the free seats below. Avice had been kept at home
by the rain in the morning, but had begged leave to go later.
Darkness came on just as the first hymn was given out, and the
verger went round with his long wand lighting the gas. In the
gallery we saw plainly how, at the east end, something went wrong
with his match, one which he thought had failed, and threw aside.
It fell on a strip of straw matting in the aisle, which, being very
dry, caught fire and blazed up for a few seconds before it was
trampled out. Some foolish person, however, set the cry of 'Fire!'
going, and you know what that is in a crowded church. The vicar, in
his high old-fashioned desk with a back to it, could not see.
Horace in a chair, in the narrow, shallow sanctuary, did see that it
was nothing, but between the cries of 'Fire!' and the dying peal of
the organ, could not make his voice heard. All he could do was to
get to the rear of the crowd, together with the other few who had
seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they
could, getting them out through the vestry. But the main body were
quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling
into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a
complicated trap meant to keep out draughts. We in the gallery
tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd,
and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any
rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but the cries and
shrieks drowned everything, and there was a most terrible time, as
some 600 people jammed themselves in that narrow space, fighting,
struggling, fainting.
You may suppose how we watched our girls. They had let themselves
be thrust up to the end of the seat by later comers: Avice the
innermost. We saw them look up to us, with white faces. To our
joy, Avice seemed to understand our signs and to try to withhold
Isa, but she was too wild with fright not to try to push on to the
end of the pew. Avice held her dress, and kept her back. Then, as
the crowd swayed, the two girls stood on the seat, and presently I
saw Avice bend down, and take from some one's arms a little child,
which she seated on the edge of the pew, holding it in her arms, and
soothing it. I don't know how long it all lasted, Horace says it
was not ten minutes before he had got men and tools to break down
the obstruction at the door, and pull out the crowded, crushed
people, but to us it seemed hours. They were getting calmer too in
the rear, for many had followed the lead through the vestry door,
and others had found out that there was no fire at all.
Wonderful to tell, no one was killed. There were some broken arms,
three I think, and some bad bruises. Many people were fainting, and
much hurt by the horrible heat and crush, but when at last the way
was free, we saw Horace come into the church, looking about in great
anxiety for the two girls, whom he had failed to find in the
trampled multitude. Then Avice came up to him, with the child in
her arms, and Isa followed, quite safe! How thankful we all were!
Avice says she remembered at once that she had been told of the
American fireman's orders to his little girl always to keep still in
such an alarm, for the crowd was a worse peril than the fire. By
the time we had come down the stairs and joined them, the child's
father had come for it in great anxiety, for its sister had been
trampled down fainting, and had just only revived enough to miss it!
I shall never forget what it was to see people sucked down in that
surging mass, and the thankful thrill of seeing our girls standing
there quietly with the child between them, its little fair head on
Avice's breast. We went home quietly and thankfully. Horace took
Avice to the hotel that he might explain all to her parents, and let
them know how well she had behaved; Isabel was shaken and tearful,
and her voice sounded weak and nervous as she bade her cousin good-
night and embraced her with much agitation. So I went to her room
to see whether she needed any doctoring, but I found Metelill
soothing her nicely, so I only kissed her (as I had not done these
two nights). "Ah, dear aunt, you forgive me!" she said. The tone
threw me back, as if she were making capital of her adventure, and I
said, "You have not offended _ME_." "Ah! you are still angry, and
yet you _DO_ love me still a little," she said, not letting me go.
"The more love, the more grief for your having done wrong," I said;
and she returned, "Ah! if I always had you." That chilled me, and I
went away. She does not know the difference between pardon and
remission of consequences. One must have something of the spirit of
the fifty-first Psalm before that perception comes. Poor dear
child, how one longs for power to breathe into her some such
penitence!
Avice is quite knocked up to-day, and her mother has kept her in
bed, where she is very happy with her Jane. I have been to see her,
and she has been thanking me for having suggested the making way for
fresh comers in a pew. Otherwise, she says, she could not have
withstood the rush.
SIR EDWARD FULFORD TO MISS FULFORD
22D JULY.
My Dear Charlotte,--I decidedly object to the company of a young
lady with such a genius for intrigue as Isabel Fulford seems to
possess. If we had only ourselves to consider, no doubt it would be
well for you to take her in hand, but in the sort of house ours will
be, there must be no one we cannot depend upon in our own family.
I suppose I am guilty of having betrayed my thoughts to Edith. I
had certainly wished for Metelill. She is an engaging creature, and
I am sorry you take so adverse a view of her demeanour; but I
promised to abide by your judgment and I will not question it. We
will ask Arthur and Edith to bring her to visit us, and then perhaps
you may be better satisfied with her.
The learned young lady is out of the question, and as Avice is my
dear wife's godchild as well as mine, I am very glad she has
deserved that your choice should fall upon her. It seems as if you
would find in her just the companionship you wish, and if her health
needs the southern climate, it is well to give her the opportunity.
You had better propose the scheme at once, and provide what she will
need for an outfit. The last touches might be given at Paris. I
hope to get time to run down to New Cove next week, and if you and
the niece can be ready to start by the middle of August, we will
take Switzerland by the way, and arrive at Malta by the end of
September.
I shall be curious to hear the result of your throwing the
handkerchief.--Your affectionate brother,