THE ELDEST CHILD.
Hetty was sixteen that day. There were nine younger than she was. When
these words are said, coupled with the fact already told that Hetty was
the best child that ever was born, they may not throw much light upon
her character--and yet they will show with tolerable distinctness what
her external position was. She was the best little nurse, the best
housemaid, the most handy needle-woman, the most careful little
housekeeper in all Summerfield, which, as everybody knows, is a suburb
of the great town of Rollinstock, in the middle of England. She could
make beef-tea and a number of little invalid dishes, better, and more
quickly and more neatly, than any one else that ever was known, for,
naturally, her mother was often in a condition to want a little care;
and the children had every childish malady under the sun, all of them
together, in the most friendly, comfortable way, and never were any the
worse. Something defended them which does not defend little groups of
two or three in richer nurseries. They sickened and got well again, as a
matter of course, whenever there was any youthful epidemic about. They
were altogether quite an old-fashioned family, having all the complaints
that children ought to have, but remaining impervious to all the
imperfections of drainage and all the dangers of brain exhaustion. Their
blood was never poisoned, nor their nerves shattered. They got ill and
got well again, as children used to do in old days. And Hetty, without
ever setting foot in a hospital or having any instruction, was one of
those heaven-born little nurses who used to flourish in novels and
poetry, and who, as a matter of fact, were found in many families in
those days when it was the fashion to believe that it was a woman’s
first duty to serve and care for those who were her own. Hetty was not
aware of any individual existence of hers apart from her family. They
were all one, and she was the eldest, which is a fact confusing,
perhaps, to the arithmetical faculties, but quite easy to the heart.
The family, by this time, was at its fourth or fifth removal. Mr.
Asquith had not got the living when the invalid rector died to whom he
was _locum tenens_; and if his heart ever grew sick of his toils and
poorly rewarded labour, it was at the moment when the family had to turn
out of the nice old-fashioned rectory which they had been allowed to
occupy during that period of expectation. For one moment the curate had
asked himself what was the use of it all, and had said, in the
bitterness of his heart, that his work never had time to come to
anything, and that all the fond hopes of doing good, and bettering the
poor, and helping the weak, with which he had set out in life, had come
to nought. Women are perhaps not so apt to come to such a conclusion,
and though Mary was aware, too, of many a defeat and downfall, she did
her best to console him. “And then there are the children,” she said.
The poor man, at that moment, felt that the children were the last
aggravation of his trouble, so many helpless creatures to be dragged
after him wherever he had to go. He looked at the hand which his wife
had put upon his to comfort him. What a pretty hand it had once been!
and now how scarred and marked with work, its pretty whiteness gone, its
texture spoiled, the forefinger half sewed away, the very shape of it,
once so taper and delicate, lost. “Oh,” he said, “what a hard life I
have brought upon you, Mary! To think if I had only had more command of
myself, you might never have known any trouble!”
Mary replied with a shriek, “Do you mean if we had never married? I
think you have gone out of your senses, Harry.”
“I think I almost have, with trouble,” said the poor man. And yet,
after all, his trouble was not half hers. It was she who had to bear the
children, and nurse them, and have all the fatigue of them; it was she
who had to scheme about the boys’ shoes and their schooling, and how to
get warm things for the winter, and to meet the butchers and bakers when
they came to suggest that they had heavy payments to make: and to bear
all these burdens with a smile, lest _he_ should break down. When she
had sent him out, frightened into better spirits by the ridiculous
absurdity of the suggestion that they might never have married (which
was much the same as saying that this world might never have been
created; and that, no doubt, would have saved a great deal of trouble),
Mary made her little explosion in her turn. “It is much papa knows!” she
cried. “I wonder if he had our work for a day or two what he would think
of it. And now we shall have to pack into a small house again, where he
can have no quiet room for his study. Oh, Hetty, what shall we do? What
shall we do?”
Hetty kissed her mother, with soft arms round her neck. “We must just do
the best we can, mamma,” Twelve-years-old said, “and don’t you notice
nothing turns out so bad as it seems?” added the little philosopher.
Hetty, like her mother before her, had a wholesome love of change, and a
persistent hope in the unknown. And on the whole, barring their little
breakings down, they all appeared with quite cheerful faces in their new
place; and life turned out always to be livable wherever they went. The
spectacle of their existence was a much more wonderful one to spectators
than to themselves; for the lookers-on did not know the alleviations,
the dear love among them, which was always sweet, the play of the
children, which was never kept under by any misfortune, the household
jests and pleasantries. They got a joke even out of the visits of the
butcher and baker, those awful demands which it was so difficult to
meet, and called the taxman Mr. Lillyvick, and made fun of the
coal-merchant. And then, somehow or other, the kind heavens only knew
how, everybody was paid in the long run, and life was never unsweet.
And now Hetty was sixteen. She was growing out of the lankness of early
girlhood into a pretty creature--pretty with youth, and sweetness, and
self-unconsciousness, and that exquisite purity of innocence which does
not know what evil is. I am not aware that she had a single feature
worth any one’s notice. Her eyes were as clear as two little stars, but
so are most eyes at sixteen. She was not what her mother had been, but
rather what all good mothers would wish their children to be: something
a little more than her mother, mounted upon the stepping-stone of Mary’s
cheerful troubled existence to the next grade, with something in her
Mary had not, perhaps got from her father, perhaps, what I think most
likely, straight out of heaven. Mary had not been at all afraid of life,
out of sweet ignorance and want of thought; but Hetty knew it, and was
not afraid. She had her dreams, like every creature of her age, her
thoughts of what she would do and be when her hour came; but they never
involved the winning of anything, save perhaps rest and comfort for
those she loved. To Hetty life was a very serious thing. She knew
nothing at all of its pleasures,--probably the defect in her, if she had
a defect (and she must have had, for everybody has), was that she
despised these pleasures. When she read in her story-books of girls
whose dreams were of balls and triumphs, and who were angry with fate
and the world when they did not obtain their share of these delights,
Hetty would throw back her head with disdain. “I am sure girls are not
like that,” she would say.
“Oh yes, Hetty, girls are like that!” Mary would reply. “I remember
crying my eyes out because Anna and Sophie went to the hunt ball without
me.”
This would generally lead to recollections of the house which Mary now
called, with a sigh, “my dear old home,” and of all the Prescotts, “the
girls,” and dashing Percy, and “kind old John.” The children had all
heard of Cousin John: how his eyeglass was always dropping from his eye
(so well known was this trait in the family that little Johnny had got
into the trick of it, and would stick a piece of paste-board in his
little eye, which when it fell always produced a laugh), and his light
moustache drooping at the corners, and his lisp, and how he said “Write
to me,” if anything was ever wanted.
“And did you ever write to him, mamma?” the children would cry. And then
Mary would explain that she had never written so often as she ought, and
impress the lesson upon them always to keep on writing when they might
happen to be away, or they were sure to be sorry for it afterwards. “But
did you write when you wanted anything?” said Janey, the second
daughter, who was very inquisitive.
“No, of course mother didn’t. As if we were going to take things from
relations, like the Browns!” cried Harry, with a flush of scorn. Harry
was a very proud boy, who suffered by reason of the short sleeves of his
jacket and the short legs of his trousers, as none of the rest did.
Mary shook her head at this, and said there was nothing wrong in taking
things from relations when they were kind.
“But I never did,” she said. “Sometimes I have thought I ought to have
done it; but I never did. He married, and I never heard anything of him
afterwards, and _she_ was a stranger to me. It was that chiefly that
kept me back. I have not heard anything of him for about a dozen years.
And whether he has sold Horton, or what has become of it, I don’t know.
It is such a wrong thing not to write,” she said, returning to her
moral; “be sure you always keep up the habit of writing whenever you go
away.”
This, however, has kept us a long time from Hetty’s birthday. Mr.
Asquith had quite recently settled at Summerfield, the western suburb of
Rollinstock, at the time when Hetty completed her sixteenth year. I say
settled, for it was only now that our curate ceased to be a curate, and
became, not, alas! rector or vicar, but incumbent of the new district
church lately built in that flourishing place. It was a flourishing
church also, and everything promised well; but as the endowment was very
small, and the incumbent’s income was dependent upon a precarious
addition of pew-seats, offertories, etc., it was not a very handsome one
for the moment, though promising better things to come. And the fact
that he was independent, subject to no superior in his own parish, was
sweet to a man who had been under orders so long. This beginning was
very hopeful in every way. And Mr. Asquith had the character of being a
very fine preacher, likely to bring all the more intellectual residents
of the place, the great railway people--for the town was quite the
centre of an immense railway system--and all the engineers and persons
who thought something of themselves, to his church. This prospect
encouraged them all, though perhaps the income was not very much better
than that of a curacy. And there were good schools for the boys. The one
thing that Mary sighed after was something of the higher education, of
which everybody talks nowadays, for Hetty. But perhaps it is wrong to
call it the higher education. No Greek nor even Latin did Mary desire
for her daughter--these things were incompatible with her other
duties--but a little music, a little of what had been called
accomplishments in Mary’s own day! In all likelihood these things would
have done Hetty no manner of good,--no, nor the Latin either, nor even
Greek. There are some people to whom education, in the common sense of
the word, is unnecessary. But Mary had a mother’s little vanity for her
child. Hetty was but a poor performer on the piano; and her mother
thought she had a great deal of taste, if it could but be cultivated.
But music lessons are dear, especially in a town where rich mercantile
folk abound. Alas! the boys’ education was a necessity; the girls had to
go to the wall.
The schoolroom tea was a very magnificent meal on Hetty’s birthday.
Sixteen seemed a great age to the children. It was as if she had
attained her majority. Mary had got her a new white frock for the
occasion _made long_. It was her first long dress, her toga, her robe of
womanhood. And there was a huge cake, largely frosted over with sugar,
if not very rich inside, out of regard for the digestion of the little
ones. And they were all as happy over this tea as if it had been a
sumptuous meal, with champagne flowing. They had not finished when Mr.
Rossmore was announced, who was the Vicar of Rollinstock and a great
personage. Mr. Rossmore was very kind; he was fond of children, and
liked, as he said, to see them happy. And he sent a message from the
drawing-room (in which there were still lingerings of the old Horton
furniture), into which he had been ushered solemnly, to ask if he might
be allowed to share the delights of the children’s tea. He looked round
upon them all with eyes in which there were regrets (for he was that
strange thing a clergyman without any children of his own), and at the
same time that wonder, which is so general with the spectators of such
a sight, how it was that they could be happy on so little, and how the
parents could look so lighthearted with such a burden on their
shoulders--ten children, and the eldest sixteen to-day!
“It is very appropriate that it should be Miss Hetty’s little fête,”
said Mr. Rossmore, “for it is to her, or at least to you about her, that
my visit really is intended.”
“To Hetty!” her mother cried, with a voice which was half astonishment
and half dismay, Mr. Rossmore was a widower, and the horrible thought
crossed Mary’s mind, Could he have fallen in love with the child? could
he mean to propose to her? Awful thought! A man of fifty! She looked at
him with alarmed eyes.
“For Hetty?” said Mr. Asquith tranquilly. He thought of parish work, of
schools, or some of the minor charities, in which the Vicar might wish
Hetty to take a part. And the children, feeling in the midst of their
rejoicings that something grave had suddenly come in, looked up with
round eyes. Janey edged to the end of the table to listen; for whatever
was going on, Janey was always determined to know.
“Perhaps,” said Mary tremulously, “it would be better to bring Mr.
Rossmore his cup of tea to the drawing-room, now that he has seen you
all in the midst of your revels. For this noise is enough to make any
one deaf who is not used to it, like papa and me.”
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