Produced by Alicia Williams, D. Alexander and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE FIRST VIOLIN
_A NOVEL._
BY JESSIE FOTHERGILL,
_Author of "A March in the Ranks," Etc._
* * * * *
NEW YORK
THE FEDERAL BOOK COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
THE FIRST VIOLIN.
CHAPTER I.
MISS HALLAM.
"Wonderful weather for April!" Yes, it certainty was wonderful. I fully
agreed with the sentiment expressed at different periods of the day by
different members of my family; but I did not follow their example and
seek enjoyment out-of-doors--pleasure in that balmy spring air.
Trouble--the first trouble of my life--had laid her hand heavily upon
me. The world felt disjointed and all upside-down; I very helpless and
lonely in it. I had two sisters, I had a father and a mother; but none
the less was I unable to share my grief with any one of them; nay, it
had been an absolute relief to me when first one and then another of
them had left the house, on business or pleasure intent, and I, after
watching my father go down the garden-walk, and seeing the gate close
after him, knew that, save for Jane, our domestic, who was caroling
lustily to herself in the kitchen regions, I was alone in the house.
I was in the drawing-room. Once secure of solitude, I put down the
sewing with which I had been pretending to employ myself, and went to
the window--a pleasant, sunny bay. In that window stood a small
work-table, with a flower-pot upon it containing a lilac primula. I
remember it distinctly to this day, and I am likely to carry the
recollection with me so long as I live. I leaned my elbows upon this
table, and gazed across the fields, green with spring grass, tenderly
lighted by an April sun, to where the river--the Skern--shone with a
pleasant, homely, silvery glitter, twining through the smiling meadows
till he bent round the solemn overhanging cliff crowned with mournful
firs, which went by the name of the Rifted or Riven Scaur.
In some such delightful mead might the white-armed Nausicaa have
tossed her cowslip balls among the other maids; perhaps by some such
river might Persephone have paused to gather the daffodil--"the fateful
flower beside the rill." Light clouds flitted across the sky, a waft of
wind danced in at the open window, ruffling my hair mockingly, and
bearing with it the deep sound of a church clock striking four.
As if the striking of the hour had been a signal for the breaking of a
spell, the silence that had prevailed came to an end. Wheels came
rolling along the road up to the door, which, however, was at the other
side of the house. "A visitor for my father, no doubt," I thought
indifferently; "and he has gone out to read the funeral service for a
dead parishioner. How strange! I wonder how clergymen and doctors can
ever get accustomed to the grim contrasts amid which they live!"
I suffered my thoughts to wander off in some such track as this, but
they were all through dominated by a heavy sense of oppression--the
threatening hand of a calamity which I feared was about to overtake me,
and I had again forgotten the outside world.
The door was opened. Jane held it open and said nothing (a trifling
habit of hers, which used to cause me much annoyance), and a tall woman
walked slowly into the room. I rose and looked earnestly at her,
surprised and somewhat nervous when I saw who she was--Miss Hallam, of
Hallam Grange, our near neighbor, but a great stranger to us,
nevertheless, so far, that is, as personal intercourse went.
"Your servant told me that every one was out except Miss May," she
remarked, in a harsh, decided voice, as she looked not so much at me as
toward me, and I perceived that there was something strange about her
eyes.
"Yes; I am sorry," I began, doubtfully.
She had sallow, strongly marked, but proud and aristocratic features,
and a manner with more than a tinge of imperiousness. Her face, her
figure, her voice were familiar, yet strange to me--familiar because I
had heard of her, and been in the habit of occasionally seeing her from
my very earliest childhood; strange, because she was reserved and not
given to seeing her neighbors' houses for purposes either of gossip or
hospitality. I was aware that about once in two years she made a call at
our house, the vicarage, whether as a mark of politeness to us, or to
show that, though she never entered a church, she still chose to lend
her countenance and approval to the Establishment, or whether merely out
of old use and habit, I knew not. I only knew that she came, and that
until now it had never fallen to my lot to be present upon any of those
momentous occasions.
Feeling it a little hard that my coveted solitude should thus be
interrupted, and not quite knowing what to say to her, I sat down and
there was a moment's pause.
"Is your mother well?" she inquired.
"Yes, thank you, very well. She has gone with my sister to Darton."
"Your father?"
"He is well too, thank you. He has a funeral this afternoon."
"I think you have two sisters, have you not?"
"Yes; Adelaide and Stella."
"And which are you?"
"May; I am the second one."
All her questions were put in an almost severe tone, and not as if she
took very much interest in me or mine. I felt my timidity increase, and
yet--I liked her. Yes, I felt most distinctly that I liked her.
"May," she remarked, meditatively; "May Wedderburn. Are you aware that
you have a very pretty north-country sounding name?"
"I have not thought about it."
"How old are you?"
"I am a little over seventeen."
"Ah! And what do you do all day?"
"Oh!" I began, doubtfully, "not much, I am afraid, that is useful or
valuable."
"You are young enough yet. Don't begin to do things with a purpose for
some time to come. Be happy while you can."
"I am not at all happy," I replied, not thinking of what I was saying,
and then feeling that I could have bitten my tongue out with vexation.
What could it possibly matter to Miss Hallam whether I were happy or
not? She was asking me all these questions to pass the time, and in
order to talk about something while she sat in our house.
"What makes you unhappy? Are your sisters disagreeable?"
"Oh, no!"
"Are your parents unkind?"
"Unkind!" I echoed, thinking what a very extraordinary woman she was and
wondering what kind of experience hers could have been in the past.
"Then I can not imagine what cause for unhappiness you can have," she
said, composedly.
I made no answer. I repented me of having uttered the words, and Miss
Hallam went on:
"I should advise you to forget that there is such a thing as
unhappiness. You will soon succeed."
"Yes--I will try," said I, in a low voice, as the cause of my
unhappiness rose up, gaunt, grim and forbidding, with thin lips curved
in a mocking smile, and glittering, snake-like eyes fixed upon my face.
I shivered faintly; and she, though looking quickly at me, seemed to
think she had said enough about my unhappiness. Her next question
surprised me much.
"Are you fair in complexion?" she inquired.
"Yes," said I. "I am very fair--fairer than either of my sisters. But
are you near-sighted?"
"Near sight_less_," she replied, with a bitter little laugh. "Cataract.
I have so many joys in my life that Providence has thought fit to temper
the sunshine of my lot. I am to content myself with the store of
pleasant remembrances with which my mind is crowded, when I can see
nothing outside. A delightful arrangement. It is what pious people call
a 'cross,' or a 'visitation,' or something of that kind. I am not pious,
and I call it the destruction of what little happiness I had."
"Oh, I am very, very sorry for you," I answered, feeling what I spoke,
for it had always been my idea of misery to be blind--shut away from the
sunlight upon the fields, from the hue of the river, from all that "lust
of the eye" which meets us on every side.
"But are you quite alone?" I continued. "Have you no one to--"
I stopped; I was about to add, "to be kind to you--to take care of you?"
but I suddenly remembered that it would not do for me to ask such
questions.
"No, I live quite alone," said she, abruptly. "Did you think of offering
to relieve my solitude?"
I felt myself burning with a hot blush all over my face as I stammered
out:
"I am sure I never thought of anything so impertinent, but--but--if
there was anything I could do--read or--"
I stopped again. Never very confident in myself, I felt a miserable
sense that I might have been going too far. I wished most ardently that
my mother or Adelaide had been there to take the weight of such a
conversation from my shoulders. What was my surprise to hear Miss Hallam
say, in a tone quite smooth, polished, and polite:
"Come and drink tea with me to-morrow afternoon--afternoon tea I mean.
You can go away again as soon as you like. Will you?"
"Oh, thank you. Yes, I will."
"Very well. I shall expect you between four and five. Good-afternoon."
"Let me come with you to your carriage," said I, hastily. "Jane--our
servant is so clumsy."
I preceded her with care, saw her seated in her carriage and driven
toward the Grange, which was but a few hundred yards from our own gates,
and then I returned to the house. And as I went in again, my
companion-shadow glided once more to my side with soft, insinuating,
irresistible importunity, and I knew that it would be my faithful
attendant for--who could say how long?