‘Words would but wrong the gratitude I owe you;
Should I begin to speak, my soul’s so full
That I should talk of nothing else all day.’
‘Now, Miss Manning,’ says Wyndham, in his quick, alert, business-like
way. He steps back, and motions her to go through the gateway that Mrs.
Denis had opened about three inches a minute ago.
Miss Manning, a tall, thin, rather nervous-looking lady of very decided
age, steps inside the gate, and glances from Wyndham to Mrs. Denis and
back again interrogatively.
‘This is Miss Moore’s housekeeper, cook, and general factotum,’ says
Wyndham, making a hasty introduction, and with a warning glance towards
Mrs. Denis, who has dropped a rather stiff curtsy. ‘Yours too. She will
remove all troubles from your shoulders, and will take excellent care of
you, I don’t doubt.’ He pauses to give Mrs. Denis—who is looking glum,
to say the least of it—room for one of her always only too ready
speeches, but nothing comes. ‘Eh?’ says he, in a sharp metallic voice
that brings Mrs. Denis to her senses with a jump.
‘Yes, sir,’ says she, and no more—no promises of obedience.
Wyndham hurries Miss Manning past her.
‘The other maid you can manage,’ says he, in a low tone, ‘and no doubt
Mrs. Denis after awhile. She is a highly respectable woman, if a little
unreasonable, and a little too devoted to your pupil. About the
latter’—hastily—‘you know everything—her whole history—that is, so far
as I know it—even to her peculiarities. You quite understand that she
refuses to leave these grounds, and you know, too, her reasons for
refusing—reasons not to be combated. They seem absurd to me, as I don’t
believe that fellow has the slightest claim upon her; but she thinks
otherwise. And—well, they are her reasons’—he pauses—‘and therefore to
be respected.’
‘Certainly,’ says Miss Manning, in a low, very gentle voice, ‘and I
shall respect them.’ Her voice is charming. Wyndham tells himself that
he could hardly have made a better choice of a companion for this
strange girl who has been so inconveniently flung into his life. Miss
Manning’s face, too, is one to inspire instant confidence. Her eyes are
earnest and thoughtful; her mouth kind, if sad. That she has endured
much sorrow is written on every feature; but troubles have failed to
embitter a spirit made up of Nature’s sweetest graces. And now, indeed,
joy is lighting up her gentle eyes, and happy expectancy is making warm
her heart. A month ago she had been in almost abject poverty—scarce
knowing where to find the next day’s bread—when a most merciful God had
sent her Paul Wyndham to lift her from her Slough of Despond to such a
state of prosperity as she had never dared to dream of since as a child
she ran gaily in her father’s meadows.
‘I am sure of that,’ says Wyndham heartily. ‘I am certain I can give her
into your hands in all safety. I know very little of her, but she seems
a good girl, not altogether tractable, perhaps, but I hope you will be
able to get on with her. If, however, the dulness, the enforced
solitude, becomes too much for you, you must let me know.’
‘I shall never have to let you know that,’ says Miss Manning, in a low,
tremulous tone. ‘A home in the country, a young companion, a garden to
tend—for long and very sad years I have dreamt of such things, but never
with a hope of seeing them. And now, if I have seemed poor in my thanks,
Paul—’
She breaks off, turning her head aside.
‘Yes, yes; I understand,’ says Wyndham hurriedly, dreading, yet feeling
very tenderly towards her emotion. Once again he congratulates himself
on having thought of this sweet woman in his difficulty.
‘And for myself,’ says she, calmly now again, ‘I should never like to
stir from this lovely garden.’ They are walking by one of the paths
bordered with flowers. ‘I have been so long accustomed to solitude that,
like my pupil, I shrink from breaking it. To see no one but her
and’—delicately—‘you occasionally, I hope, is all I ask.’
‘You may perhaps have to see the Barrys now and then—the Rector’s
people. They live over the way,’ says Wyndham, pointing towards where
the Rectory trees can be seen. ‘I found the last time I was here that
Susan, the eldest girl, had come in, or been brought in here by Miss
Moore, so that there is already a slight acquaintance; and with girls,’
says the barrister, somewhat contemptuously, ‘that means an immediate,
if not altogether undying, friendship.’
‘Yes,’ says Miss Manning. She feels a faint surprise. ‘It is not so
much, then, that she does not desire to know people, as that she refuses
to stir out of this place?’
‘That is how I take it. I wanted her very much to move about, to let
herself be known. Honestly’—colouring slightly—‘it is rather awkward for
me to have a tenant so very mysterious as she seems bent on being. I
urged her to declare herself at once as my tenant and wait events; but
she seemed so terrified at the idea of leaving these four walls that I
gave up the argument. Perhaps you may bring her to reason, or perhaps
the Rector and his youngsters may have the desired effect of putting an
end to this morbidity. By-the-by, I am going over to the Rectory after I
have introduced you to—’
‘Ella’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he substitutes ‘Miss Moore’ in
time.
The very near slip renders him thoughtful for a moment or two. Why
should he have called her Ella? Had he ever thought of her as Ella? Most
positively never.
He is so absorbed in his introspection that he fails to see a slight,
timid figure coming down the steps of the Cottage. Miss Manning touches
his arm.
‘Is this Miss Moore?’ cries she, in an excited whisper. ‘Oh, what a
charming face!’
And, indeed, Ella is charming as she now advances—very pale, as if
frightened, and with her dark eyes glancing anxiously from Wyndham to
the stranger and back again. She has no hat on her head, and a sunbeam
has caught her chestnut hair and turned it to glistening gold.
‘I hope you received my letter last night,’ says Wyndham, calling out to
her and hastening his footsteps. ‘You see’—awkwardly—‘I have
brought—brought you—’ He stops, waiting for Miss Manning to come up, and
growing hopelessly embarrassed.
‘Your friend, my dear, I trust,’ says Miss Manning gently, taking the
girl’s hand in both her own and regarding her with anxious eyes.
Ella flushes crimson. She has so dreaded, so feared, this moment, and
now this gentle, sad-eyed woman, with her soft voice and pretty
impulsive speech! Tears rise to the girl’s eyes. Nervously, yet eagerly,
she leans forward and presses her lips to Miss Manning’s fair, if
withered, cheek.
Wyndham, congratulating himself on the success of his latest enterprise,
takes himself off presently to inspect a farm five miles farther out in
the country, that had been left to him by his mother, with the Cottage.
He has determined on taking the Rectory on his way back to meet the
evening train—to enlist further Mr. Barry’s sympathy for his tenant. He
tells himself, with a glow of self-satisfaction, that he is uncommonly
good to his tenant; but so, of course, he ought to be, that dying
promise to the Professor being sacred; and if it were not for the
affection he had always felt for that great dead man, he would beyond
doubt never have thought of her again.... There is much moral support in
this conclusion.
Yes, he will spend half an hour at the Rectory. He can get back from the
farm in plenty of time for that, and Miss Manning being an old friend of
the Rector’s, the latter will be even more inclined to take up her
pupil, which will be a good thing for the poor girl. He repeats the
words ‘poor girl,’ and finds satisfaction in them. They seem to show how
entirely indifferent he is to her and her fortunes. That mental slip of
his awhile ago had alarmed him slightly. But ‘poor girl,’ to call her
that precludes the idea of anything like—pshaw!
He dismisses the ‘poor girl’ from his mind forthwith, and succeeds
admirably in getting rid of her, whilst blowing up his other tenants on
the farm. But on his way back again to Curraghcloyne her memory once
more becomes troublesome.
To-day, so far, things have gone well. She has seemed satisfied with
Miss Manning, and Miss Manning with her. And as for the fear of an
immediate scandal, that seems quite at rest. But in time the old worry
is sure to mount to the surface again. For example, when Mrs. Prior
hears of her—he wishes now, trudging grimly over the uneven road, that
he had not led that astute woman to believe his tenant was a man—as she
inevitably must, there will be a row on somewhere that will make the
welkin ring; and after that, good-bye to his chances with Lord
Shangarry, who has very special views about the right and the wrong.
If only this silly girl could be persuaded to come out of her shell and
mingle with her kind, all might be got over after a faint wrestle or
two. But no! Angrily he tells himself that there is no chance of that.
Soft as she looks, and gentle, and lov—h’m—he kicks a stone out of his
way—and pleasant-looking, and all that, he feels absolutely sure that
nobody will be able to drag her out of her self-imposed imprisonment.
* * * * *
After this diatribe, it is only natural that he should, on entering the
Rectory garden, feel himself a prey to astonishment on seeing, amongst a
turbulent group upon the edges of the tennis-court, the ‘poor girl’
laughing with all her heart.
He stands still, within the shelter of the laurels, to ask himself if
his eyesight has failed him thus early in life. But his eyesight still
continues excellent, and when he sees the ‘poor girl’ pick up Tommy and
plant him on her knee, he knows that all is well with his visual organs.
The fact is that, almost as he left the Cottage by the front-gate, Susan
had run across the road and hammered loudly at the little green one.
This primitive knocking had become a signal now with the Barrys and
Ella, and soon the latter had rushed to open the door. There had been
entreaties from Susan that she would come over now—now, at once—and have
a game of tennis with them. She did not know tennis. All the more reason
why she should begin to learn; and Aunt Jemima was quite pining to know
her.
‘Yes, do come!’
‘No—no, I can’t. I have said I would never leave this place.’
‘Oh, that, of course; but—oh!—’
Here Susan breaks off abruptly. Who is that pretty, tall lady coming
down the path? It is Miss Manning, and Ella very shyly introduces Susan
to her.
‘Miss Manning, tell her to come and play tennis with us this afternoon,’
says Susan. ‘Not a soul but ourselves, and she’s very lonely here.
Father says she ought to see people.’
‘I think as your father does,’ says Miss Manning gently.
‘And will you come too?’ asks Susan. ‘Aunt Jemima’—with born
courtesy—‘will come and see you to-morrow, but in the meantime—’
‘I am afraid I have some unpacking to do,’ says Miss Manning, smiling,
having fallen in love with Susan’s soft, flushed face and childish air.
‘But if you can persuade Ella—I know, my dear’—to Ella, who has turned a
sad face to hers, a face that has yet the longing for larger life upon
it—‘that you wish never to leave this place. But to go just across the
road.... And there is no one there, Miss Barry tells you; and it is only
a step or two, and’—smiling again—‘if you wish it, I’ll go over in an
hour and bring you back again.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ says Ella. ‘You are tired.’ She hesitates, then
looks out of the gateway, and up and down the lane. It is quite empty.
‘Well, I’ll come,’ says she, giving her hand to Susan.
It is evidently a desperate resolve. Even as she says it, she makes a
last drawback, but Susan clings to her hand, and pulls her forward, and
together the girls run down the lane to the Rectory gate and into it,
Ella all the time holding Susan tightly, as if for protection.
This was how it happened that Ella first left the shelter of the
Cottage. She was most kindly received by the Rector, who spared a moment
from his precious books to welcome her—and even agreeably by Aunt
Jemima. Ella had gone through the ordeal of these two introductions
shyly but quietly. She had, however, been a little startled at finding
that, added to the Barrys congregated on the lawn (a goodly number in
themselves), there was a strange gentleman. Crosby struck her at first
sight as being formidable—an idea that, if the young Barrys had known
it, would have sent them into hysterics of mirth.
Crosby had strolled down early in the afternoon, and now Wyndham,
standing gazing amongst the shrubberies, can see him turn from Susan to
say something or other to Ella.
Wyndham, in his voluntary confinement, feels a sharp pang clutch at his
breast. He stands still, as if unable to go on, watching the little
pantomime.
Tommy is speaking now. The child’s voice rings clear and low.
‘I’ll tell you a story.’ He has put up a little fat hand, and is
pinching Ella’s cheek. Ella has caught the little hand, and is kissing
it. How pretty!
‘Silence!’ cries Crosby gaily. ‘Tommy is going to tell Miss Moore a
story.’
There seems something significant to Wyndham in his tone. Why should he
demand silence in that imperative manner, just because Miss Moore wishes
a story to be told to her? He hesitates no longer. He comes quickly
forward and up to the group.