MRS. MAJOR LENNARD.
Miss Barkham stared at her visitor with a look of mingled horror and
astonishment.
“You do not surely imagine, Miss Villars,” she said, “that anybody will
engage you in the responsible position of governess to their children
upon no better recommendation than your own, I must confess, rather
_confident_ assertion of your merits?”
“I never told a falsehood in my life, Miss Barkham,” Eleanor answered,
indignantly. “If I am without a friend whom I can ask to testify to my
respectability, it is on account of circumstances which——”
“To be sure,” exclaimed Miss Barkham; “that is the very thing we have
to contend against. This establishment is completely overrun by young
ladies who think there is nothing easier than to turn their backs upon
their friends and their homes, and go out into the world to become the
instructresses of the rising generation. You think me very punctilious
and strait-laced, I dare say, Miss Villars; but I don’t know what
would become of the rising generation if _somebody_ didn’t keep watch
and ward over the doors of the school-room. Young ladies who choose
to feel unhappy in the society of their parents; young ladies who are
disappointed in some sentimental affection; young ladies who fancy
themselves ill-used by their elder sisters; young ladies who, from the
very shallowness of their own minds, cannot be contented anywhere,
all come to us, and want to go out as governesses,—just for a change,
they say, in the hope of finding a little employment that will divert
their minds; as if they had any minds to be diverted! These are the
amateur hangers-on of a very grave and respectable profession, to which
hundreds of estimable and accomplished women have devoted the best and
brightest years of their lives. These are the ignorant and superficial
pretenders who bring their cheap and worthless wares into the market,
in order to undersell the painstaking and patient teachers who have
themselves learned the lessons they profess to teach. And these
amateurs will continue to flourish, Miss Villars, so long as ladies,
who would shudder at the idea of entrusting an expensive silk dress to
an incompetent dressmaker, are willing to confide the care of their
children to an instructress whose highest merit lies in the fact that
she is—cheap. I do not wish to wound your feelings, Miss Villars: but
I assure you I often feel sick at heart, when I see a lady who offers
thirty years’ experience, and all the treasures of a mind carefully and
sedulously cultivated, rejected in favour of some chit of nineteen who
can play one showy fantasia, and disfigure glass vases with scraps of
painted paper, and who will accept twenty pounds a year in payment of
services that are not worth five.”
Eleanor smiled at Miss Barkham’s energetic protest.
“I dare say you are often very much worried by incompetent people,”
she said; “but I assure you _I_ have made no attempt to deceive you. I
don’t profess to do much, you know. I believe I can play pretty well.
May I play you something?” she asked, pointing to an open pianoforte
at one end of the room, a handsome grand, with all Erard’s patent
improvements, on which governesses upon their promotion were in the
habit of showing off.
“I have no objection to hear you play,” Miss Barkham answered; “but
remember, I cannot possibly procure you a situation without either
references or testimonials.”
Eleanor went to the piano, took off her gloves, and ran her fingers
over the keys. She had played very little during the last few months,
for in the feverish preoccupation of her mind she had been unequal to
any feminine employment; too restless and unsettled to do anything but
roam about the house, or sit brooding silently with her hands lying
idle in her lap.
The familiar touch of the keys filled her with a strange pleasure: she
was surprised at the brilliancy of her execution, as good players often
are after an interval of idleness. She played one of Beethoven’s most
sparkling sonatas; and even Miss Barkham, who was perpetually listening
to such performances, murmured a few words of praise.
But before Eleanor had been seated at the piano more than five minutes,
a servant came into the room and presented a card to Miss Barkham, who
rose from her seat with some appearance of vexation.
“Really, I scarcely know what to do about it,” she muttered to herself.
“It’s almost impossible to arrange anything at such very short notice.
Excuse me, Miss Villars,” she added, aloud, to Eleanor; “I am obliged
to see a lady in the next room. Don’t go until I return.”
Eleanor bowed, and went on playing. She finished the sonata; and
then, suddenly catching sight of her wedding-ring and the thick band
of gold studded with diamonds that her husband had given her on her
wedding-day, she stopped to draw the two rings off her finger, and put
them into her purse amongst the few sovereigns that formed her whole
stock of worldly wealth.
She sighed as she did this, for it seemed like putting off her old life
altogether.
“It’s better so,” she said to herself; “I know now that Gilbert must
have thought me false to him from the very first. I can understand his
cold reserve _now_, though it used to puzzle me so much. He changed
almost immediately after our marriage.”
Eleanor Monckton grew very pensive as she remembered that she had been
perhaps herself to blame for the altered manner and no doubt equally
altered feelings of her husband. She had neglected her duty as a wife,
absorbed in her affection as a daughter; she had sacrificed the living
to the dead; and she began to think that Richard Thornton’s advice had
been wiser than she had believed when she refused to listen to it. She
had been wrong altogether. Classic vows of vengeance were all very well
in the days when a Medea rode upon flying dragons and slaughtered her
children upon principle; but a certain inspired teacher, writing a very
long time after that much-to-be-regretted classic age, has declared
that vengeance is the right of divinity alone, and far too terrible an
attribute to be tampered with by fallible mortals, blindly hurling the
belts of heaven against each other’s earthly heads.
She thought this, and grew very melancholy and uncomfortable, and began
to fancy that her impulses had been about the worst guides that she
could have chosen. She began to think that she had not acted so very
wisely in running away from Tolldale Priory in the first heat of her
indignation, and that she might have done better perhaps by writing
a temperate letter of justification to Gilbert Monckton, and quietly
abiding the issue. But she had chosen her path now, and must stand by
her choice, on pain of appearing the weakest and most cowardly of women.
“My letter is posted,” she said to herself. “Gilbert will receive it
to-morrow morning. I _should_ be a coward to go back; for, however much
I may have been to blame in the matter, he has treated me very badly.”
She wiped away some tears that had come into her eyes as she took the
rings from her wedding finger, and then began to play again.
This time she dashed into one of the liveliest and most brilliant
fantasias she could remember, a very _pot pourri_ of airs; a scientific
hodge-podge of Scotch melodies; now joyous, now warlike and savage, now
plaintive and tender, always capricious in the extreme, and running
away every now and then into the strangest variations, the most
eccentric cadences. The piece was one of Thalberg’s _chef-d’œuvres_,
and Eleanor played it magnificently. As she struck the final chords,
sharp and rapid as a rattling peal of musketry, Miss Barkham re-entered
the room.
She had the air of being rather annoyed, and she hesitated a little
before speaking to Eleanor, who rose from the piano and began to put on
her gloves.
“Really, Miss Villars,” she said, “it is most incomprehensible to me,
but since Mrs. Lennard herself wishes it, I——”
She stopped and fidgeted a little with the gold pencil-case hanging to
her watch-chain.
“I can’t at all understand this sort of thing,” she resumed; “however,
of course I wash my hands of all responsibility. Have you any objection
to travel, Miss Villars?” she asked, suddenly.
Eleanor opened her eyes with a look of astonishment at this abrupt
question.
“Objection to travel?” she repeated; “I——”
“Have you any objection to go abroad—to Paris, for instance,—if I could
obtain you a situation?”
“Oh, no,” Eleanor answered, with a sigh, “not at all; I would just as
soon go to Paris as anywhere else.”
“Very well, then, if that is the case, I think I can get you a
situation immediately. There is a lady in the next room who was here
yesterday, and who really gave me a most severe headache with her
fidgety, childish ways. However, she wants to meet with a young lady
as a companion _immediately_—that is the grand difficulty. She leaves
London for Paris by this evening’s mail, and she put off engaging the
person she required until yesterday afternoon, when she came to me in a
fever of anxiety, and wanted me to introduce her to a lady instanter.
She stopped all the afternoon in the next room, and I took ever so
many young ladies in to her, all of whom seemed well qualified for the
situation, which really demands very little. But not one of them would
suit Mrs. Lennard. She was very polite to them, and made all kinds
of affable speeches to them, and dismissed them in the most ladylike
manner; and then she told me afterwards that she didn’t take a fancy
to them, and she was determined not to engage any one she didn’t take
a fancy to, as she wanted to be very fond of her companion, and make
quite a sister of her. That was what she said, and good gracious me,”
cried Miss Barkham, “how am I to find her somebody she can take a fancy
to, and make a sister of, at a quarter-of-an-hour’s notice? I assure
you, Miss Villars, my head felt quite in a whirl after she went away
yesterday afternoon; and it’s beginning to be in a whirl again now.”
Eleanor waited very patiently while Miss Barkham endeavoured to collect
her scattered senses.
“I can scarcely hope this very capricious lady will take a fancy to
me,” she said, smiling.
“Why, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Barkham, “that’s the very thing I came
to tell you. She _has_ taken a fancy to you.”
“Taken a fancy to me!” repeated Eleanor; “but she has not seen me.”
“Of course not, my dear. But she really is the most confusing, I may
almost saw bewildering, person, I ever remember meeting with. I was
in the next room talking to this Mrs. Lennard, who is very pretty and
fashionable-looking, only a little untidy in her dress, when you began
to play that Scotch fantasia. Mrs. Lennard stopped to listen, and after
she had listened a few moments she cried out suddenly, ‘Now I dare say
that’s an old frump!’ I said, ‘What, ma’am?’ for upon my word, my dear,
I didn’t know whether she meant the piece, or the piano, or what. ‘I
dare say the lady who is playing is an old frump, she said. ‘Old frumps
almost always play well; in point of fact old frumps are generally very
clever. But I’m determined not to have any one I can’t make a sister
of; and I _must_ have one by three o’clock this afternoon, or Major
Lennard will be cross, and I shall go mad.’ Well, Miss Villars, I told
Mrs. Lennard your age, and described your appearance and manners,
that is to say, as well as I was able to do so after our very brief
acquaintance, and I had no sooner finished than she exclaimed, ‘That
will do; if she can play Scotch melodies like that, and is nice, I’ll
engage her.’ I then explained to Mrs. Lennard that you could give no
references; ‘and that, of course,’ I added, ‘would be an insuperable
objection;’ but she interrupted me in a manner that would have appeared
very impertinent in any one but her, and cried out, ‘Insuperable
fiddlesticks! If she’s nice I’ll engage her. She can play to me all
the morning, while I paint upon velvet;’ and you’re to come with me,
please, Miss Villars, and be introduced to her.”
Eleanor took up her muff and followed Miss Barkham on to the landing,
but at this moment three ladies appeared upon the top stair, and the
principal of the establishment was called upon to receive them.
“If you’ll go in by yourself, my dear,” she whispered to Eleanor,
pointing to the door of the back drawing-room, “I shall be much
obliged. You’ll find Mrs. Lennard a most affable person.”
Eleanor readily assented. She opened the door and went into the
primly-furnished back drawing-room. Mrs. Major Lennard was a little
woman, and she was standing on tiptoe upon the hearth-rug, in order
to survey herself in the chimney-glass while she re-arranged the pale
blue strings of her black velvet bonnet. Eleanor paused near the door,
waiting for her to turn round, and wondering what she was like, as the
face in the glass was not visible from where Mrs. Monckton stood.
The lady employed a considerable time in the important operation
of tying her bonnet-strings, then suddenly hearing the rustling of
Eleanor’s dress as she advanced a few paces, Mrs. Lennard uttered an
exclamation, and turned round.
“You naughty girl, you quite startled me,” she cried.
Not so much as she had startled Eleanor, who could not repress a cry
of surprise at the sight of her face. It was a very pretty face, very
young-looking, though Mrs. Major Lennard was nearly forty years of age.
A fair childish face, with pink cheeks, turquoise-blue eyes, and the
palest, softest bands of flaxen hair; rather an insipid, German kind of
beauty, perhaps, but very perfect of its kind.
But that which had startled Eleanor was not the babyish, delicate
prettiness of the face, but the strong resemblance which it bore to
Laura Mason. It was the same face after twenty years, not of wear and
tear, but of very careful preservation. This lady, in appearance and
manner, was exactly what Laura must most surely become if she lived to
be seven-and-thirty years of age.