“I should like to live here,” said Desirée, looking out of the window of
the manse parlor, with a little sigh.
Katie Logan looked up at her with some little doubt. She had come by
herself to the manse, in advance of Joanna, who had been detained to
accompany her sister. The two girls had been invited some time before to
“take tea” at the manse--and Desirée had been very curious and
interested about her first visit to her white house on the hill. Now
that she had accomplished it, however, it subdued her spirit a little,
and gave the little Frenchwoman for once a considerable inclination to
get “low,” and cry. The house and the room were very unlike any house
she had ever known--yet they were so homelike that Desirée’s thoughts
grew tender. And Katie Logan looked at her doubtfully. Desirée’s
impulsive little heart had clung to Katie every time she saw her. She
was so sweet and neat--so modest and natural--so unlike Patricia and
Joanna, and all the womankind of that sloven house of Melmar. The girl,
who had a mother and an elder sister, and was far from home, yearned to
Katie--but the little mistress of the manse looked with doubt upon the
French governess--principally, to tell the truth, because she was
French, and Katie Logan, with all her good sense, was only a country
girl, and had but a very, very small experience of any world beyond
Kirkbride.
“Mamma came from this country,” said Desirée, again, softly. She had a
letter in her pocket--rather a sentimental letter--from mamma, which
perhaps a wiser person might have smiled at a little--but it made
Desirée’s heart expand toward the places which mamma too had seen in her
youth, and remembered still.
“Indeed! then you are a little bit Scotch, you are not all French,” said
Katie, brightening a little; “is it very long since your mamma went
away?--is she in France now? Is she likely to come back again?”
Desirée shook her head.
“I should like to be rich, and buy this house, and bring her here--I
love this house,” cried the girl.
A little cloud came upon Katie’s face. She was jealous of any inference
that some time or other the manse might change hands. She could not bear
to think of that--principally because Katie had begun to find out with
painful anxiety and fear, that her father was growing old, that he felt
the opening chill of winter a great deal more than he used to do--and
that the old people in the village shook their heads, and said to
themselves that the minister was “failing” every time he passed their
doors.
“This house can never be sold,” said Katie, briefly--even so briefly as
though the words were rather hard to say.
“It is not like Melmar,” said Desirée. “I want the air and the sun to
come into that great house--it can not breathe--and how the people
breathe in it I do not know.”
“But they are very kind people,” said Katie, quickly.
Desirée lifted her black eyes and looked full at her--but Katie was
working and did not meet the look.
“Joanna is fond of you,” said Desirée, “and I like her--and I am fond of
the old lady whom they call Aunt Jean.”
This distinct summary of the amount of her affection for the household
amused Katie, who was half afraid of a governess-complaint against her
employers.
“Do you like to be so far from home?” she said.
“Like!” Desirée became suddenly vehement. “I should like to live with
mamma--but,” cried the girl, “how could you ask me?--do not _you_ know?”
“I have no mother,” said Katie, very quietly; “boys are always eager to
leave home--girls might sometimes wish it too. Do you know Cosmo
Livingstone, whom you saw in Edinburgh, has gone abroad for no reason at
all that I know--and his brothers have both gone to work, and make their
fortunes if they can--and my little brothers speak already of what they
are going to do when they grow men--they will all go away.”
“In this country, people always talk of making fortunes. I should like
to make a fortune too,” said Desirée, “but I do not know what to do.”
“Girls never make fortunes,” said Katie, with a smile.
“Why?” cried the little governess, “but I wish it--yes, very
much--though I do not know how to do it; here I have just twenty pounds
a year. What should you do if you had no papa, and had to work for
yourself.”
Katie rose from her chair in trouble and excitement.
“Don’t speak so--you frighten me!” she cried, with an involuntary pang.
“I have all the children. You do not understand it--you must not speak
of _that_.”
“Of what?” asked Desirée, with a little astonishment. But she changed
the subject with ready tact when she saw the painful color on Katie’s
face. “I should like mamma to see you,” she said in a vein of perfectly
natural and sincere flattery. “When I tell her what kind of people I
live among, I do not speak of mademoiselle at Melmar, or even of
Joanna--I tell her of you, and then she is happy--she thinks poor little
Desirée is very well where she is with such as these.”
“I am afraid you are too good to me,” said Katie, with a half conscious
laugh--“you don’t know me well enough yet--is it Patricia whom you call
mademoiselle?”
Desirée shrugged her little shoulders slightly; she gave no other
answer, but once more looked out from the window down the pretty brae of
Tyne, where all the cottages were so much the clearer from the winterly
brown aspect of the trees, stripped of their foliage. It was not like
any other scene familiar to Desirée, still it did seem familiar to
her--she could not tell how--as if she had known it all her life.
“Does Cosmo Livingstone, whom you spoke of, live near?” asked Desirée,
“and will you tell me of _his_ mother? Is she by herself, now that all
her boys are gone?--is she a lady? Are they great people or are they
poor? Joanna speaks of a great old castle, and I think I saw it from the
road. They must be great people if they lived there.”
“They are not great people now,” said Katie, the color warming in her
cheek--“yet the castle belonged to them once, and they were different.
But they are good people still.”
“I should like to hear about them,” said Desirée, suddenly coming up to
Katie, and sitting down on a stool by her feet. Katie Logan was slightly
flattered, in spite of herself. She thought it very foolish, but she
could not help it. Once more a lively crimson kindled in her cheek. She
bent over her work with great earnestness, and never turned her eyes
toward the questioning face of the girl.
“I could not describe the Mistress if I were to try all day,” said Katie
at last, in a little burst, after having deliberated. Desirée looked up
at her very steadily, with grave curiosity.
“And that is what I want most,” said the little Frenchwoman. “What! can
you not tell if she has black eyes or blue ones, light hair or dark
hair?--was she pretty before she grew old--and does she love her
boys--and did her husband love her? I want to know all that.”
Desirée spoke in the tone of one who had received all these questions
from another person, and who asked them with a point-blank quietness and
gravity, for the satisfaction of some other curiosity than her own; but
the investigation was half amusing, half irritating to Katie. She shook
her head slightly, with a gesture expressing much the same sentiment as
the movement of her hand, which drew away the skirts on which Desirée
almost leaned. Her doubt changed into a more positive feeling. Katie
rather feared Desirée was about to fulfill all her unfavorable
anticipations as to the quality of French governesses.
“Don’t go away,” said Desirée, laying her little white hand upon the
dress which Katie withdrew from her touch. “I like to sit by you--I like
to be near you--and I want to hear; not for me. Tell me only what you
please, but let me sit here till Joanna comes.”
There was a little pause. Katie was moved slightly, but did not know
what to say, and Desirée, too, sat silent, whether waiting for her
answer or thinking, Katie could not tell. At last she spoke again with
emotion, grasping Katie’s dress.
“I like Joanna,” said Desirée, with tears upon her eyelashes--“but I am
older than she is--a great deal older--and no one else cares for me. You
do not care for me--it is not likely; but let me sit here and forget all
that house and every thing till Joanna comes. Ah, let me! I am far away
from home--I am a little beggar girl, begging at your window--not for
crumbs, or for sous, but for love. I am so lonely. I do not think of it
always--but I have thought so long and so often of coming here.”
“You must come oftener then,” said Katie, who, unused to any
demonstration, did not quite know what to say.
“I can not come often,” said Desirée, softly, “but let me sit by you and
forget all the others--only for a very, very little time--only till
Joanna comes. Ah, she is here!”
And the little Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders, and ran to the window
to look out, and came back with a swift gliding motion to take Katie’s
hand out of her work and kiss it. Katie was surprised, startled, moved.
She did not half understand it, and she blushed, though the lips which
touched her hand were only those of a girl; but almost before she could
speak, Desirée had sprung up again, and stood before her with a smile,
winking her pretty long eyelashes to clear them of those wayward April
tears. She was very pretty, very young, with her little foreign graces.
Katie did not understand the rapid little girl, who darted from one
thought to another, so quickly, yet with such evident truthfulness--but
her heart was touched and surprised. Joanna came in immediately, to put
an end to any further confidences. Joanna, loudly indignant at
Patricia’s selfishness, and making most audible and uncompromising
comparisons between Melmar and the manse, which Desirée skillfully
diverted, soothed, and gradually reduced to silence, to Katie’s much
amazement. On the whole, it was a very pleasant little tea-party to
everybody concerned; but Katie Logan, when she stood at the door in the
clear frosty moonlight, looking after her young guests, driving away in
the double gig which had been sent for them, still doubted and wondered
about Desirée, though with a kindly instead of an unfavorable sentiment.
What could the capricious little foreigner mean, for instance, by such
close questions about Norlaw?