The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox.
That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the
summer, soon grew unbearable again. She had completely got the upper
hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume--who walked all the way from
Church Dykely and back again--and of nearly everyone else; and Captain
Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence--a resident
governess. Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to
a governess agency in London.
One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of
autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had
brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and
then looked about her.
"There!" she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation, "I have to cross
the street! and how am I to do it?"
Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to
crossing them alone. She did it, however, after a few false starts, and
so turned down a quiet side street and rang the bell of a house in it.
A slatternly girl answered the ring.
"Governess-agent--Mrs. Moffit? Oh, yes; first-floor front," said she
crustily, and disappeared.
The young lady found her way upstairs alone. Mrs. Moffit sat in state
in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily
dispensed joy or despair to her applicants. Several opened letters and
copies of the daily journals lay on the table.
"Well?" cried she, laying down her pen, "what for you?"
"I am here by your appointment, made with me a week ago," said the young
lady. "This is Thursday."
"What name?" cried Mrs. Moffit sharply, turning over rapidly the leaves
of a ledger.
"Miss West. If you remember, I----"
"Oh, yes, child, my memory's good enough," was the tart interruption.
"But with so many applicants it's impossible to be certain as to faces.
Registered names we can't mistake."
Mrs. Moffit read her notes--taken down a week ago. "Miss West. Educated
in first-class school at Richmond; remained in it as teacher. Very good
references from the ladies keeping it. Father, Colonel in India."
"But----"
"You do not wish to go into a school again?" spoke Mrs. Moffit, closing
the ledger with a snap, and peremptorily drowning what the applicant was
about to say.
"Oh, dear, no, I am only leaving to better myself, as the maids say,"
replied the young lady, smiling.
"And you wish for a good salary?"
"If I can get it. One does not care to work hard for next to nothing."
"Or else I have--let me see--two--three situations on my books. Very
comfortable, I am instructed, but two of them offer ten pounds a-year,
the other twelve."
The young lady drew herself slightly up with an involuntary movement.
"Quite impossible, madam, that I could take any one of them."
Mrs. Moffit picked up a letter and consulted it, looking at the young
lady from time to time, as if taking stock of her appearance. "I
received a letter this morning from the country--a family require a
well-qualified governess for their one little girl. Your testimonials as
to qualifications might suit--and you are, I believe, a gentlewoman----"
"Oh, yes; my father was----"
"Yes, yes, I remember--I've got it down; don't worry me," impatiently
spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. "So far you might
suit: but in other respects--I hardly know what to think."
"But why?" asked the other timidly, blushing a little under the intent
gaze.
"Well, you are very young, for one thing; and they might think you too
good-looking."
The girl's blush grew red as a rose; she had delicate features and it
made her look uncommonly pretty. A half-smile sat in her soft, dark
hazel eyes.
"Surely that could not be an impediment. I am not so good-looking as all
that!"
"That's as people may think," was the significant answer. "Some families
will not take a pretty governess--afraid of their sons, you see. This
family says nothing about looks; for aught I know there may be no sons
in it. 'Thoroughly competent'--reading from the letter--'a gentlewoman
by birth, of agreeable manners and lady-like. Salary, first year, to be
forty pounds.'"
"And will you not recommend me?" pleaded the young governess, her
voice full of entreaty. "Oh, please do! I know I should be found fully
competent, and promise you that I would do my best."
"Well, there may be no harm in my writing to the lady about you,"
decided Mrs. Moffit, won over by the girl's gentle respect--with which
she did not get treated by all her clients. "Suppose you come here again
on Monday next?"
The end of the matter was that Miss West was engaged by the lady
mentioned--no other than Mrs. Carradyne. And she journeyed down into
Worcestershire to enter upon the situation.
But clever (and generally correct) Mrs. Moffit made one mistake,
arising, no doubt, from the chronic state of hurry she was always in.
"Miss West is the daughter of the late Colonel William West," she wrote,
"who went to India with his regiment a few years ago, and died there."
What Miss West had said to her was this: "My father, a clergyman, died
when I was a little child, and my uncle William, Colonel West, the only
relation I had left, died three years ago in India." Mrs. Moffit somehow
confounded the two.
This might not have mattered on the whole. But, as you perceive, it
conveyed a wrong impression at Leet Hall.
"The governess I have engaged is a Miss West; her father was a military
man and a gentleman," spake Mrs. Carradyne one morning at breakfast to
Captain Monk. "She is rather young--about twenty, I fancy; but an older
person might never get on at all with Kate."
"Had good references with her, I suppose?" said the Captain.
"Oh, yes. From the agent, and especially from the ladies who have
brought her up."
"Who was her father, do you say?--a military man?"
"Colonel William West," assented Mrs. Carradyne, referring to the letter
she held. "He went to India with his regiment and died there."
"I'll refer to the army-list," said the Captain; "daresay it's all
right. And she shall keep Kate in order, or I'll know the reason why."
* * * * *
The evening sunlight lay on the green plain, on the white fields from
which the grain had been reaped, and on the beautiful woods glowing with
the varied tints of autumn. A fly was making its way to Leet Hall, and
its occupant, looking out of it on this side and that, in a fever of
ecstasy, for the country scene charmed her, thought how favoured was the
lot of those who could live out their lives amidst its surroundings.
In the drawing-room at the Hall, watching the approach of this same fly,
stood Mrs. Hamlyn, a frown upon her haughty face. Philip Hamlyn was
still detained in the West Indies, and since her reconciliation to her
father, she would go over with her baby-boy to the Hall and remain there
for days together. Captain Monk liked to have her, and he took more
notice of the baby than he had ever taken of a baby yet. For when Kate
was an infant he had at first shunned her, because she had cost
Katherine her life. This baby, little Walter, was a particularly forward
child, strong and upright, walked at ten months old, and much resembled
his mother in feature. In temper also. The young one would stand
sturdily in his little blue shoes and defy his grandpapa already, and
assert his own will, to the amused admiration of Captain Monk.
Eliza, utterly wrapt up in her child, saw her father's growing love for
him with secret delight; and one day when he had the boy on his knee,
she ventured to speak out a thought that was often in her heart.
"Papa," she said, with impassioned fervour, "_he_ ought to be the heir,
your own grandson; not Harry Carradyne."
Captain Monk simply stared in answer.
"He lies in the _direct_ succession; he has your own blood in his veins.
Papa, you ought to see it."
Certainly the gallant sailor's manners were improving. For perhaps the
first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to
his tongue--that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet
Hall--and stood in silence.
"_Don't_ you see it, papa?"
"Look here, Eliza: we'll drop the subject. When my brother, your uncle,
was dying, he wrote me a letter, enjoining me to make Emma's son the
heir, failing a son of my own. It was right it should be so, he said.
Right it is; and Harry Carradyne will succeed me. Say no more."
Thus forbidden to say more, Eliza Hamlyn thought the more, and her
thoughts were not pleasant. At one time she had feared her father might
promote Kate Dancox to the heirship, and grew to dislike the child
accordingly. Latterly, for the same reason, she had disliked Harry
Carradyne; hated him, in fact. She herself was the only remaining child
of the house, and her son ought to inherit.
She stood this evening at the drawing-room window, this and other
matters running in her mind. Miss Kate, at the other end of the room,
had prevailed on Uncle Harry (as she called him) to play a game at toy
ninepins. Or perhaps he had prevailed on her: anything to keep her
tolerably quiet. She was in her teens now, but the older she grew
the more troublesome she became; and she was remarkably small and
childish-looking, so that strangers took her to be several years
younger than she really was.
"This must be your model governess arriving, Aunt Emma," exclaimed Mrs.
Hamlyn, as the fly came up the drive.
"I hope it is," said Mrs. Carradyne; and they all looked out. "Oh, yes,
that's an Evesham fly--and a ramshackle thing it appears."
"I wonder you did not send the carriage to Evesham for her, mother,"
remarked Harry, picking up some of the nine-pins which Miss Kate had
swept off the table with her hand.
Mrs. Hamlyn turned round in a blaze of anger. "Send the carriage to
Evesham for the governess. What absurd thing will you say next, Harry?"
The young man laughed in good humour. "Does it offend one of your
prejudices, Eliza?--a thousand pardons, then. But really, nonsense
apart, I can't see why the carriage should not have gone for her. We are
told she is a gentlewoman. Indeed, I suppose anyone else would not be
eligible, as she is to be made one of ourselves."
"And think of the nuisance it will be! Do be quiet, Harry! Kate ought to
have been sent to school."
"But your father would not have her sent, you know, Eliza," spoke Mrs.
Carradyne.
"Then----"
"Miss West, ma'am," interrupted Rimmer, the butler, showing in the
traveller.
"Dear me, how very young!" was Mrs. Carradyne's first thought. "And what
a lovely face!"
She came in shyly. In her whole appearance there was a shrinking, timid
gentleness, betokening refinement of feeling. A slender, lady-like girl,
in a plain, dark travelling-suit and a black bonnet lined and tied with
pink, a little lace border shading her nut-brown hair. The bonnets in
those days set off a pretty face better than do these modern ones.
That's what the Squire tells us.
Mrs. Carradyne advanced and shook hands cordially; Eliza bent her
head slightly from where she stood; Harry Carradyne stood up, a
pleasant welcome in his blue eyes and in his voice, as he laughingly
congratulated her upon the ancient Evesham fly not having come to grief
en route. Kate Dancox pressed forward.
"Are you my new governess?"
The young lady smiled and said she believed so.
"Aunt Eliza hates governesses; so do I. Do you expect to make me obey
you?"
The governess blushed painfully; but took courage to say she hoped she
should. Harry Carradyne thought it the very loveliest blush he had ever
seen in all his travels, and she the sweetest-looking girl.
And when Captain Monk came in he quite took to her appearance, for he
hated to have ugly people about him. But every now and then there was a
look in her face, or in her eyes, that struck him as being familiar--as
if he had once known someone who resembled her. Pleasing, soft, dark
hazel eyes they were as one could wish to see, with goodness in their
depths.