E-text prepared by MWS, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/missmeredith00levy
MISS MEREDITH.
by
AMY LEVY,
Author of "A Minor Poet," "Reuben Sachs," etc.
London:
Hodder and Stoughton,
27, Paternoster Row.
MDCCCLXXXIX.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
A FAMILY OF FOUR 7
CHAPTER II.
A GREAT EVENT 17
CHAPTER III.
NEW AND STRANGE EXPERIENCES 27
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW GOVERNESS AND HER PUPIL 39
CHAPTER V.
MAKING FRIENDS 45
CHAPTER VI.
COSTANZA MARCHETTI 52
CHAPTER VII.
THE HOME-COMING OF THE REBEL 61
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ITALIAN BALL 70
CHAPTER IX.
"WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?" 84
CHAPTER X.
"AS GOOD AS GOLD" 89
CHAPTER XI.
"WILL YOU MAKE ME VERY HAPPY?" 98
CHAPTER XII.
THE BREAKING OF THE STORM 104
CHAPTER XIII.
A SKILFUL DIPLOMATIST 110
CHAPTER XIV.
RELEASED FROM HER VOW 117
CHAPTER I.
A FAMILY OF FOUR.
It was about a week after Christmas, and we--my mother, my two sisters,
and myself--were sitting, as usual, in the parlour of the little house
at Islington. Tea was over, and Jenny had possession of the table,
where she was engaged in making a watercolour sketch of still life by
the light of the lamp, whose rays fell effectively on her bent head
with its aureole of Titian-coloured hair--the delight of the Slade
school--and on her round, earnest young face as she lifted it from time
to time in contemplation of her subject.
My mother had drawn her chair close to the fire, for the night was very
cold, and the fitful crimson beams played about her worn, serene, and
gentle face, under its widow's cap, as she bent over the sewing in her
hands.
A hard fight with fortune had been my mother's from the day when, a
girl of eighteen, she had left a comfortable home to marry my father
for love. Poverty and sickness--those two redoubtable dragons--had
stood ever in the path. Now, even the love which had been by her side
for so many years, and helped to comfort them, had vanished into the
unknown. But I do not think she was unhappy. The crown of a woman's
life was hers; her children rose up and called her blest.
At her feet sat my eldest sister, Rosalind, entirely absorbed in
correcting a bundle of proof-sheets which had arrived that morning
from _Temple Bar_. Rosalind was the genius of the family, a full-blown
London B.A., who occasionally supplemented her earnings as coach and
lecturer by writing for the magazines. She had been engaged, moreover,
for the last year or two, to a clever young journalist, Hubert Andrews
by name, and the lovers were beginning to look forward to a speedy
termination to their period of waiting.
I, Elsie Meredith, who was neither literary nor artistic, neither
picturesque like Jenny nor clever like Rosalind, whose middle
place in the family had always struck me as a fit symbol of my own
mediocrity--I, alone of all these busy people, was sitting idle.
Lounging in the arm-chair which faced my mother's, I twisted and
retwisted, rolled and unrolled, read and reread a letter which had
arrived for me that morning, and whose contents I had been engaged in
revolving in my mind throughout the day.
"Well, Elsie," said my mother at last, looking up with a smile from her
work, "have you come to any decision, after all this hard thinking?"
"I suppose it will be 'Yes,'" I answered rather dolefully; "Mrs. Gray
seems to think it a quite unusual opportunity." And I turned again
to the letter, which contained an offer of an engagement for me as
governess in the family of the Marchesa Brogi, at Pisa.
"I should certainly say 'Go,'" put in Rosalind, lifting her dark
expressive face from her proofs; "if it were not for Hubert I should
almost feel inclined to go myself. You will gain all sorts of
experience, receive all sorts of new impressions. You are shockingly
ill-paid at Miss Cumberland's, and these people offer a very fair
salary. And if you don't like it, it is always open to you to come
back."
"We should all miss you very much, Elsie," added my mother; "but if it
is for your good, why, there is no more to be said."
"Oh, of course we should miss her horribly," cried Rosalind, in her
impetuous fashion, gathering together the scattered proof-sheets as she
spoke; "you mustn't think we want to get rid of you." And the little
thoughtful pucker between her straight brows disappeared as she laid
her hand with a smile on my knee. I pressed the inky, characteristic
fingers in my own. I am neither literary nor artistic, as I said
before, but I have a little talent for being fond of people.
"I'm sure I don't know what I shall do without you," put in Jenny, in
her deliberate, serious way, making round, grey eyes at me across the
lamplight. "It isn't that you are such a good critic, Elsie, but you
have a sort of feeling for art which helps one more than you have any
idea of."
I received very meekly this qualified compliment, without revealing the
humiliating fact that my feeling for art had probably less to do with
the matter than my sympathy with the artist; then observed, "It seems
much waste, for me, of all of us, to be the first to go to Italy."
"I would rather go to Paris," said Jenny, who belonged, at this stage
of her career, to a very advanced school of æsthetics, and looked upon
Raphael as rather out of date. "If only some one would buy my picture
I would have a year at Julian's; it would be the making of me."
"For heaven's sake, Jenny, don't take yourself so seriously," cried
Rosalind, rising and laying down her proofs; "one day, perhaps, I shall
come across an art-student with a sense of humour--growing side by side
with a blue rose. Now, Elsie," she went on, turning to me as Jenny,
with a reproachful air of superior virtue, lifted up her paint-brush,
and, shutting one eye, returned in silence to her measurements--"now,
Elsie, let us have further details of this proposed expedition of
yours. How many little Brogi shall you be required to teach?"
"There is only one pupil, and she is eighteen," I answered; "just three
years younger than I."
"And you are to instruct her in all the 'ologies?"
Rosalind had taken a chair at the table, and, her head resting on her
hand, was interrogating me in her quick, eager, half-ironical fashion.
"No; Mrs. Grey only says English and music. She says, too, that they
are one of the principal families of Pisa. And they live in a palace,"
I added, with a certain satisfaction.
"It sounds quite too delightful and romantic; if it were not for
Hubert, as I said before, I should insist on going myself. Pisa, the
Leaning Tower, Shelley--a Marchesa in an old, ancestral palace!" And
Rosalind's dark eyes shone as she spoke.
"Ruskin says that the Leaning Tower is the only ugly one in Italy,"
said Jenny, not moving her eyes from the Japanese pot, cleft orange,
and coral necklace which she was painting.
"But the cathedral is one of the most beautiful, and the place is a
mine of historical associations," answered Rosalind, her ardour not in
the least damped by this piece of information.
As for me, I sat silent between these two enthusiasts with an abashed
consciousness of the limitations of my own subjective feminine nature.
It was neither the beauties or defects of Pisan architecture which
at present occupied my mind, nor even the historical associations of
the town. My thoughts dwelt solely, it must be owned, on the probable
character of the human beings among whom I was to be thrown. But then
it was I who was going to Pisa, and not my sisters.
"Does Mrs. Grey know the Marchesa Brogi personally?" asked my mother,
who also was disposed to take the less abstract view of the matter.
"Oh, no, it is all arranged through the friend of a friend."
"I don't like the idea of your going so far, alone among strangers,"
sighed mother; "but, on the other hand, a change is just what you want."
"What a pity Hubert is not here to-night--that horrid _première_ at the
Lyceum! We must lay the plan before him to-morrow," struck in Rosalind,
who, hopeless blue-stocking as she was, consulted her oracle with all
the faith of a woman who barely knows how to spell.
I went over to my mother and took the stool at her feet which my sister
had just vacated.
"It's going to be: 'Yes,' mother; I have felt it all along."
"My dear, I won't be the one to keep you back. But need you make up
your mind so soon?"
"Mrs. Grey says that the sooner I can leave the better. They would like
me to start in a week or ten days," I answered, suppressing as best I
could all signs of the feeling of desolation that came over me at the
sound of my own words.
"You will have to get clothes," cried Rosalind; "those little
mouse-coloured garments of yours will never do for ancestral palaces."
"Oh, with some new boots and an ulster--I'm afraid I must have an
ulster--I shall be quite set up."
"You would pay very well for good dressing," observed Jenny,
contemplating me with her air of impartial criticism. "You have a nice
figure, and a pretty head, and you know how to walk."
"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,'" replied Rosalind with some
irony. "My dear Elsie, I have seen it in your eyes--they are highly
respectable eyes, by the bye--I have seen it in your eyes from the
first moment the letter came, that you meant to go. It is you quiet
women who have all the courage, if you will excuse a truism."
"Well, yes, perhaps I did feel like going from the first."
"And, now that is decided, let me tell you, Elsie, that I perfectly
hate the idea of losing you," cried Rosalind with sudden abruptness;
then, changing her tone, she went on--"for who knows how or when
we shall have you back again? You will descend upon that _palazzo_
resplendent in the new boots and the new ulster; the combined radiance
of those two adornments will be too much for some Italian Mr. Rochester
who, of course, will be lurking about the damask-hung corridors with
their painted ceilings. Jane Eyre will be retained as a fixture, and
her native land shall know her no more."
"You forget that Jane Eyre would have some voice in the matter. And I
have always considered Mr. Rochester the most unpleasant person that
ever a woman made herself miserable over," I answered calmly enough,
for I was accustomed to these little excursions into the realms of
fancy on the part of my sister.
"I think there's a little stone, Elsie, where the heart ought to be,"
and Rosalind, bending forward, poked her finger, with unscientific
vagueness, at the left side of my waist.
"'Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love,'" I
quoted, while there flashed across my mind a vision of Rosalind sobbing
helplessly on the floor a month before Hubert proposed to her.
"_Men_; it doesn't say anything about women," answered Rosalind,
thoughtfully flying off, as usual, at a tangent.
"Is it woman's mission to die of a broken heart?" I could not resist
saying, for there had been some very confidential passages between us,
once upon a time. "The headache is too noble for my sex; you think the
heartache would sound pleasanter."
"Elsie talking women's rights!" cried Jenny, looking up astonished from
her work.
"Yes; the effects of a daring and adventurous enterprise are beginning
to tell upon her in advance."
"We have wandered a long way from Pisa," I said; "but that is the worst
of engaged people. Whatever the conversation is, they manage to turn it
into sentimental channels."
"I sentimental!" cried Rosalind, opening wide her eyes; "I, who unite
in my own person the charms of Cornelia Blimber and Mrs. Jellaby, to be
accused of sentiment!"
I lay awake that night on my little iron bed long after Rosalind was
sleeping the sleep of happy labour. I was a coward at heart, though I
had contrived to show a brave front to my little world.
At the thought of that coming plunge into the unknown, my spirit grew
frozen within me, and I began to wish that the fateful letter from Mrs.
Grey had never been written.