THE HANDSOME GOVERNESS
BLIND-MAN’S BUFF--AN UNCEREMONIOUS INTRODUCTION--THE
MUSIC-MISTRESS--A CATHEDRAL TOWN--THE YOUNG LADIES’
SEMINARY--MARY DELAVAL AND HER ADMIRER--AN ATTACK REPULSED--THE
MILITARY ROUTED--A PRECARIOUS LIVELIHOOD
Little, indeed, do one half the world know how the other half live.
Fortunate is it for us all, that we have neither the invisible cap,
nor the shoes of swiftness, that did their owner such good service in
the fairy tale. We might be astonished, not to say disgusted, could we
follow our nearest and dearest for one short half-hour after they have
left our sight; could we see them, when they think no mortal eye is
upon their actions, we might smile or we might weep, according as our
temperament bordered upon the sentimental or the cynical. Yet is there
One that always watches. How comes it that when we hide ourselves from
man, we think no shame to expose our follies to man’s Creator? Will a
day come when everything shall be made known? when there will be no
more hypocrisy--no more respectability--no more difference between
vice on the house-top and vice in the corner? There will be some
strange shifting of places when that day does come--much shrinking and
wincing from the general Show-up--much scarlet shame, and livid
remorse, when the brow can no more be covered, nor the past undone.
’Tis a pity we should think so little of payment till the bill comes
due;--in the meantime we go blindly on, deceiving and deceived--we
know but little of our neighbour, and we trust in heaven our neighbour
knows nothing whatever about us; so we grope about in the dark, and
call it Life.
Mrs. Kettering, on the sofa, knew nothing of what Blanche was thinking
about, not six feet from her--knew nothing about Charlie, struggling
convulsively for life half-a-mile out at sea--knew nothing about the
woman she had left to take charge of her town-house--a pattern of
respectability, sobriety, and trustworthiness, then reeling out of
“The Feathers,” as drunk as Chloë, to use an old Eton expression,
highly derogatory to the character of Horace’s young and tender love,
she who bounded from the bard’s classical advances like a frightened
kid. Our Chloë, meanwhile, was grasping a door-key, and calling for
gin, regardless that she had left a tallow-candle flaring close to a
heap of shavings in the back scullery, that “the airy-gate,” as she
called it, was “on the latch,” and there was nobody to answer the
front door. This last piece of carelessness was the means of
inflicting an additional disappointment on one who had already in her
short life known troubles and disappointments more than enough. Mary
Delaval had walked up to the grim lion-headed knocker with a weary
step and heavy heart; but when her summons was again and again
unheeded, and the chance of finding out even Mrs. Kettering’s address
became hopeless, she moved away with the heavy, listless air of one
who has shot the last arrow from the quiver without attaining the
mark, and begins to doubt if courage and energy are indeed qualities
of the slightest advantage to our welfare, and whether blind fortune
is not the controller of all here below.
The sun beat fiercely upon the pavement, and there was not a breath of
air to refresh those arid gardens in the parched and dusty square--yet
Mary put her thick, suffocating veil down before her face and
quickened her pace as she went home from her hopeless errand; for to
these inconveniences she was obliged to submit, because in the freest
country in the world, and the most civilised capital in Europe, she
was walking on foot, without a companion or a man-servant.
“Gad, that’s a good-looking woman!” said Captain Lacquers to his
friend, Sir Ascot Uppercrust; “fine-ish goer, too, but tires over the
pavement. If it was not so cursedly hot, ‘Uppy,’ we might cross over
and get a look at her.”
“Women rather bore me,” replied Sir Ascot, who, being very young and a
Body-guardsman, was of course _blasé_; “but I don’t mind, to oblige
you,--only promise you won’t let her speak to me.” So, as Captain
Lacquers turned up his moustaches, Sir Ascot went through the same
pantomime, for practice against the time when his own should grow; and
the couple sauntered carelessly on, and, by a dexterous manœuvre,
came “right across the bows” of Mary Delaval.
We may be asked what two such undeniable dandies as good-looking
Lacquers, of the Lancers, and Sir Ascot Uppercrust, of the Body-guard,
should be doing in London at this time of the year. We cannot tell;
for love or money probably--a redundancy of the one and a deficiency
of the other being the two causes that generally drive young gentlemen
to the metropolis, when their confiding companions are all “faded and
gone.” Be it how it may, there they were, and Mary Delaval wished them
anywhere else, as, following in her wake, they made sundry
complimentary remarks upon her figure, ankles, and general appearance,
which might have been gratifying if overheard casually, but which,
under the circumstances, were doubtless extremely impertinent and
reprehensible.
“I think I’ll get forward, and ask her if she’s going home,” said
Lacquers; and, curling his great black moustaches, he quickened his
pace to add this crowning insult to an unprotected woman.
Mary’s blood boiled in her veins--she was a soldier’s daughter, and
her father’s spirit swelled her heart till it felt as if it would
choke her--she clenched her long slender hand, and thought, almost
aloud: “Oh, if I were but a man to strike the coward to the
earth!--oh, if I were but a man to shoot him as he stands!” In such a
mood women have shed blood ere now, but the excitement cannot
last--the reaction too surely arrives; and, alas for woman’s pride and
woman’s weakness! Mary returned the bold insolent stare with the
defiant glance and the lofty carriage of a queen, and then--she burst
into tears. It was too much; fatigue, anxiety, and disappointment had
overcome her nerves, and she could have killed herself for the
weakness, but she sobbed like a child.
Lacquers was a good-natured man, and a good fellow, as it is called,
at heart--he was pained and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He took his
hat off as if she had been a duchess, and with a readiness that argued
this was not a first offence, and did more credit to his ingenuity
than his candour, he begged her pardon, and assured her he thought she
was “his cousin”--“Quite a mistake, ma’am, I assure you--pray forgive
me--good-morning;” and so bowed himself off arm-in-arm with his
companion, who had preserved an immovable stoicism, almost
preternatural in one so young, during the whole interview.
As Mary Delaval walked on, and gradually recovered her composure, she
reflected somewhat bitterly on her lot, and looked back upon her life
with a feeling of discontent, that for a moment seemed almost to
upbraid Providence that she had not had a fair chance. It was but for
a moment--Mary had been schooled in adversity, and had profited by its
lessons. In some situations of life such a temperament as hers might
have been prone to grow fastidious and uncharitable. Her ideal of good
would have been very high, and she would have looked down with
contempt upon the grovelling spirits that constituted the mass of her
fellow-creatures. But poverty and dependence had taught her many a
lesson, hard to learn, but harder to forget. What had she to do with
pride?--a question to be asked, if you contemplated her tall, graceful
figure, with its majestic sweep and lofty gestures--her goddess-like
head, set on as if the Greek had carved its proportions with his
unerring chisel--her dark, deep-set grey eye, with its long lashes,
veiling a world of penetration, reflection, ay, and sentiment, for the
happy man who could bid it kindle into love--her faultless profile and
firm determined mouth, her father’s legacy, with the courage it
betokened--her low, lovable brow, with its masses of thick, dark brown
hair plainly braided on each side of that pale, haunting face,
beautiful in the deep expression which arrives only with the maturity
of womanhood; with all this she might have been a queen, yet what had
she to do with pride?--a question not to be asked of a friendless,
desolate woman, trudging along the streets in the dreary isolation of
loneliness in London, wasting her beauty in the strife for bread,
wearing her talents threadbare in the drudgery of a daily
music-mistress. What a lot if there were nothing beyond! To rise early
in that dingy atmosphere--to breakfast hurriedly on such a spare meal
as the lady’s-maid next door would deem insufficient for her
mistress’s poodle--to leave the dreary lodging for the scarce less
dreary street; day after day to make the same round, waiting upon
vulgar parents and stupid children--day after day to bend rebellious
fingers over the soul-breathing chords--to dissect the harmony of
heaven into “one--two--three--four,” “one--two--three--four,”--and
day after day to return, wearied out in body and mind, to the solitary
room which cannot be called a home, and the rent of which, dear on
account of _the situation_, swallows up the hard-earned coins that
should decorate and supply its vacuity; with nothing to cheer, nothing
to amuse, nothing to console, not even the consciousness of that
beauty which is only a cause of annoyance and remark; and, above all,
with nothing to love--what a lot would this be, were there not a
something to look forward to--a humble hope that this is but a state
of trial and probation--a humble confidence that the reward is sure to
come at last!
And who was Mary Delaval? One of the many instances of a child
suffering for the sins of its parents. We have said her father was a
soldier, but, alas! her mother never was, properly speaking, Mrs.
Delaval. Poor woman, she committed her one fault, and dearly she
atoned for it. She shut the door upon herself, and her sex took good
care that it should never again show a chink open to let her in. Trust
them for that! she was not a proper person to be visited, and she
remained outside. Captain Delaval would have married her, had he
thought such a sacrifice on his part would have improved her position,
for he loved her dearly; but he knew it could be of no use, in a
worldly point of view, the only one in which he considered the
subject, so he put it off and put it off, till too late. She never
complained of the injustice done her, but it broke her heart. Rich in
beauty and accomplishments, she had run away with the handsome, young
artillery officer rather than be forced into a match which she
detested, by a step-mother she despised. She had but one child, and on
that child, it is needless to say, she doted foolishly. Delaval was a
curious fellow, easy-tempered to a fault, careless of the world’s
opinion, and of everything but his own comfort and indulgences; a
gallant soldier, notwithstanding, as brave as a lion, and a perfect
authority in the code of honour adopted by his profession. Yet, for
all this, he allowed the mother of his child to go upon the stage,
under a feigned name, that he might live in luxury upon her earnings.
Fortunately, it may be, for all parties, the artillery officer caught
cold out duck-shooting, and was honoured with a military funeral some
ten days afterwards. He left all he had, a small pittance, to the
woman he had so deeply injured, and she retired with her daughter into
a humble cottage in the West of England, where, for a time, they lived
as happy as the day is long. Her whole energies were devoted to the
education of her child. She taught her all she had herself learned--no
mean list of acquirements--and young Mary Delaval (for, by the
deceased officer’s wish, they always bore his name) was skilled far
beyond other girls of her age in the graceful accomplishments of
womanhood, as well as in those deeper studies which strengthen the
mind and form the character of youth. But Mary’s girlhood had an
advantage, in which her mother’s was deficient. That mother, with the
earnestness of one into whose soul the iron had deeply entered,
impressed upon her daughter the lesson she had herself so painfully
learned: “Put not your trust in man,” was the substance of many a
tearful entreaty, many a sage homily, from the repentant sinner to her
innocent child; and, though the girl’s faith was sadly shaken in the
integrity of the creature, it was anchored all the more firmly in
reliance on his Creator. The mother’s health was but precarious. Often
she thought, “What will become of Mary when I must leave her alone in
the world?” and, having little else to bestow, she bequeathed to her
darling that best legacy of all, the heritage of an immortal soul.
Poor thing! her own constitution had been sadly broken by anxiety and
disappointment, and the heart-wearing conviction that she had given up
home, comfort, friends, good fame, everything, to fasten her young
pure love on an unworthy object. Oh! the sickening misery of that
moment, when first the idol’s shrine is found to be a blank! when
first the dreary misgiving dawns upon us, that the being for whom we
have sacrificed our earthly all, and offered it with a smile--whom we
have endued with all the attributes for which our own heart
yearns--whom we have clothed with the gorgeous colouring of fancy, and
decked in the false glitter of our own imagination--whom we have
raised upon a pedestal, to place our neck beneath its feet, is but a
stock or a stone, after all! Poor idolaters! are we not rightly
punished? Have we not exalted man to be our God? and shall we worship
the thing of clay with impunity? No; the very crime is made to bear
its own atonement. Better that we should bow down to the dust, with
crushed and empty hearts, than live on in the vain mockery of a false
worship, in the degradation of a soul’s homage to a mortal deity.
Poor Mrs. Delaval (for as such was the penitent lady known) bore her
punishment without a murmur; but it was a sad task to leave Mary among
strangers, when failing strength and wasting limbs warned her that she
must soon depart. The girl was in the first lovely bloom of womanhood,
bright and beautiful as if she had never known sorrow or self-denial;
and must she leave her now, when most she wants a mother’s care? God’s
will be done! There is a humble grave, in the corner of a retired
churchyard, far away in the West, marked by a plain grey stone, and
the initial letters of a name--nothing more; and there the spring
daisies are growing over the head of one who loved not wisely--who
erred, and was forgiven, but not here.
Mary Delaval was left to fight single-handed against the world. A hard
battle it is for those who are not furnished with the sinews of war.
The small sum bequeathed to her by her mother’s care was invested in a
savings bank, _which failed_. By the way, the failure was casually
mentioned in the morning papers, and trustees of savings banks, as
they sipped their coffee, remarked, “Ah! another of these concerns
broke: gross rascality somewhere, no doubt.” We hope it proved a
warning to them, to look a little carefully into affairs which they
had pledged themselves to superintend, and not to grudge
half-an-hour’s labour, when such a trifling effort might ward off the
direst calamities from their humble neighbours. What was Mary to do?
Besides her beauty and the mourning on her back, she had literally
nothing. And yet the girl’s heart never sank for a moment; she was
possessed of that invincible Anglo-Saxon resolution, for which there
is no better name than the colloquial one of “pluck.” Had she been a
man, she would have distinguished herself; as it was, perhaps the
humble part she had to play required more courage, self-command, and
self-reliance than the career of many a hero. One advantage she had
over many others equally indigent--her talents were brilliant, her
education had been excellent, and the natural conclusion at which she
arrived was, that she must be a governess or teacher in a school. The
former situation there was much difficulty in attaining, qualities
which are prized in a lady being considered great drawbacks to a
governess; but youth and good looks are not so much out of place in
the latter; and Mary, after considerable difficulty, and a voluminous
correspondence, found herself installed as second assistant in one of
those strongholds of innocence and propriety, termed a young ladies’
seminary.
How different the life on which the orphan now embarked from all her
previous experience of the world! She had been a merry little girl, in
barracks, petted by officers from every regiment in the service
(soldiers are all fond of children), and spoilt by papa, who thought
nothing in the world equal to his little pet. She had grown into
womanhood in the closest retirement of a small out-of-the-way village,
associating only with her refined and cultivated mother, and preparing
for a life of difficulty by study and reflection; and now she found
herself the inmate of a house in which there were thirty pupils, and
where she had not even a room of her own, to escape from the gossiping
chatter of the girls, or the solemn platitudes of Miss Primrose, the
venerable Calypso who presided over these isolated nymphs. There never
was such a place for ladies’ schools as the cathedral town of
Bishops’-Baffler; but, as we believe all these repositories of beauty
and education are conducted upon the same principles, it is needless
to describe them. Health and morals are studiously attended to, and
the use of the back-board inflexibly insisted on, the male sex, of
course, strictly prohibited, and the arts and sciences, giving the
former the preference, impartially administered. Young ladies are
likewise taught to lie perfectly flat on their backs for several
hours, we may say, literally, on a stretch, though of the object and
intention of this feat, whether it is viewed in the light of a dreary
penance, an innocent recreation, or a time-honoured institution, it
does not become us, in our ignorance, to give an opinion.
But Bishops’-Baffler, with all its advantages of salubrious air,
constant bell-ringing, and redundancy of ecclesiastics, has one
considerable drawback to those who take upon themselves the
responsible charge of young ladies in the vicinity of a cavalry
barracks. The morals of a cathedral town are not very easily
deteriorated; but an order from the Horse Guards, determining that a
certain number of jaunty forage-caps, jingling spurs, and dyed
moustaches, should be continually swaggering up and down the principal
thoroughfares of any city, though it adds to the liveliness, is not
supposed to conduce much to the general respectability of the place;
and with all our terrors of invasion, and our admiration, as
civilians, of the military character--particularly the mounted arm--we
confess to a partiality for it chiefly when removed beyond flirting
distance from our dwelling-house, and acknowledge with grief and shame
that its vicinity, in our own experience, has invariably over-roasted
our mutton, multiplied our cobwebs, and placed our female
establishment generally at sixes and sevens. But if we, an independent
bachelor, are thus fain to be removed from the insidious sounds of
“stable-call” and “watch-setting,” from the fascinating sights of
“watering-order” and “guard-mounting,” what must have been good Miss
Primrose’s care and anxiety to preserve her tender fledgelings from
the roving glances of those dashing serjeant-majors, far more
brilliant warriors than the very lieutenants and captains of the sober
foot regiment that preceded them; or the dangerous proximity of those
good-looking officers in their braided frock-coats and their
well-cultivated moustaches, which serve equally as an amusement to
themselves and a terror to their foes--a defence in war and an
occupation in peace? Miss Primrose was a large woman; but she ought to
have been a giantess to cover her brood as she would have wished,
when, walking two-and-two along the pavement, they were continually
encountering “the Loyal Hussars,” mounted and dismounted, or
entangling in the very sheep-fold of their innocence some wolf in
undress uniform, who would persist in taking the wrong side of the
“trottoir,” and then jingling his spurs together in feigned apologies;
merely, Miss Primrose well knew, as a pretext for peeping under their
parasols and “uglies” at the pretty faces, blushing not in anger
beneath those defences.
But what made the principal of the establishment, as she called
herself, more wrathful than anything else, was to perceive that the
figure on whom these warlike glances rested with the greatest marks of
approval and admiration was not one of the young ladies upon whom she
“lavished a mother’s care, and conferred a gentlewoman’s education”
(see advertisement)--not one of the lady pupils for whom she felt, as
she expressed it, “she was responsible, body and soul,” but the
majestic person, and the sweet, sad face, of the junior assistant,
Mary Delaval! “Had it been myself, for instance,” thought Miss
Primrose, drawing up her ample frame with a proud consciousness that,
twenty years ago, she, too, had a lover, “or even Miss Meagrim” (the
senior assistant, a gaunt and forbidding damsel), “who certainly has a
‘genteel’ figure, or little Miss Dashwood, or rosy Miss Wright, I
could have understood it; but the idea of that dowdy thing, with her
pale face and her shabby mourning! it only shows the extraordinary
tastes men have, and the unaccountable creatures they are from
beginning to end.”
And so poor Miss Primrose fell to ruminating on certain passages of
her own early career, and a blight which nipped her young affections
in the bud through the inconstancy of man.
“Have you served?” says a Frenchman to his acquaintance. “Have you
suffered?” might women as well ask of each other; and there are few
amongst them, we fancy, but at one time of their lives have gone
through the freemasonry of sorrow.
Miss Primrose did not look like a heroine; yet she, too, had had her
romance. Well, it had softened her character, for naturally she was a
strong-minded woman; and the pretty gipsies over whom she presided
little thought how much that austere lady sympathised with all the
innocent “_espiègleries_” and girlish follies she thought it right to
rebuke so severely.
Now, even Miss Primrose could not help remarking that, notwithstanding
the open admiration Mary Delaval everywhere excited, no London beauty
of half-a-dozen seasons could have accepted the homage due to her
charms with greater coldness and carelessness than did the junior
assistant. The girl seemed to live in a separate world of her own,
apart from the common pleasures and foibles of her sex. She was kind
and courteous to all, but she made no confidences, and had no female
friend. She continued to wear her mourning-dress for years after the
usual term that filial affection imposes, and with that mourning she
seemed to bear about with her the continual memory, almost the
companionship, of her dead mother. Even Miss Meagrim, whom she nursed
through the jaundice, and who, with returning health, and a fresh
accession of hideousness, confessed she owed her life to Miss
Delaval’s care, owned that she could not make her out; and truth to
tell, both that inquisitive lady and the formidable Miss Primrose
herself, were a little afraid of their stately assistant, with her
classical beauty and her calm, sad face.
Years rolled on, and Mary Delaval, now in the mature bloom of
womanhood, was still junior assistant at Miss Primrose’s, and might
have remained there till her glorious figure was bent, and her glossy
braids were grey, had it not been for that order from the Horse
Guards, mentioned above, which moved the head-quarters of the “Loyal
Hussars” from Waterbridge to Bishops’-Baffler. Much commotion was
there in the town when this regiment of “_Cupidons_” in pelisses
marched in with all the honours of war; nor were the chaste retreats
of our academical sanctuary entirely free from the excitement that
pervaded the neighbourhood. Miss Primrose had her “front” freshly
oiled, curled, and submitted to a process which, we believe, is termed
“baking”; Miss Meagrim appeared with new ribbons in her cap, of a hue
strangely unbecoming to her complexion; whilst a general feeling
amongst the pupils in favour of “a walk,” whenever the weather
afforded an opportunity, argued that the attraction, whatever it might
be, was decidedly out-of-doors. Mary Delaval alone seemed supremely
indifferent to the movements of the military, and yet her destiny it
was that the arrival of these gaudy warriors influenced in a manner
she of all people could least have foreseen.
We have said that of the usual pleasures of her kind she was utterly
careless; but there was one enjoyment of which Mary never wearied, and
in which she lost no opportunity of indulging when she could do so
without attracting observation. This was, listening to a military
band. It reminded her of her childhood--it reminded her of her
mother--and she could stand entranced by its sounds for hours. In the
gardens where the band played there used to be a porter’s lodge kept
by an old fruit-woman, much patronised by the Primrose establishment,
and with this ancient Pomona Mary made interest to occupy her little
secluded parlour, and listen to the music, whenever her school duties
permitted the indulgence. Now it happened that one sunny afternoon,
when Mary, in her usual sombre attire, was snugly enjoying from her
hiding-place the harmonious efforts of “the Loyals,” a certain wealthy
manufacturer’s lady was seized with a _physical_ giddiness as she
promenaded in the gardens, and Captain D’Orville, _the_ great card of
the regiment, came clanking into the porter’s lodge to get a glass of
water for the dame, upon whom he was in close attendance. Mary was
eager to assist in a case of distress, and the Captain, an avowed
admirer of beauty, was completely staggered by the apparition he
encountered in place of the grimy old woman he had expected to find
within. D’Orville was a gentleman of experience, and, as became a man
of war, fertile in resources. He spilt half the tumbler of water over
Mary’s black gown, which _coup-de-main_ gave him an opportunity of
excusing himself at length for his awkwardness, and prolonging his
interview with the beautiful woman he had so unexpectedly fallen in
with. The next day came a magnificent dress, and a note full of
apologies, couched in the most respectful language, and addressed
_Mrs._ Delaval. “I wonder how he found me out,” thought Mary, “and why
he did not put _Miss_.” There was no signature to the note, and it was
impossible to send the dress back, so she folded it in her drawer, and
wondered what she ought to do, and what her mother would have advised.
After this, wherever Mary went, there was Captain D’Orville; at
church, in her school walks, when she went out with Miss Primrose--he
seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of her movements, and never to
lose an opportunity of gazing at her. Mary was a woman, after all; she
thought it was “very disagreeable,” yet was the excitement not
altogether unpleasing. Gaston D’Orville was strikingly handsome; in
fact, generally considered “the best-looking fellow in the Loyals,”
with a peculiar charm of manner, and a thorough knowledge of the whole
art, method, and practice of war as carried on against the weaker sex.
What chance had the friendless teacher’s heart against such a
conqueror? This--there was no treachery in the citadel--there was no
gratified vanity to be the enemy’s best auxiliary, no trifling pique
nor unworthy jealousy to make a conquest valuable merely as a
conquest. Mary was one of the few women who can see things as they
are, and not through the glasses of their own imagination or
prejudice; and when she came to know him better, she perceived the
hollow selfishness of the hardened man of the world, with a
perspicuity of which he would have supposed “the handsome governess”
totally incapable. That she _should_ know him better he took good
care, but his advances were so well timed, so respectful, and in such
thoroughly good taste, that it was impossible to take umbrage at them,
and Mary found herself, she scarce knew how, meeting Captain D’Orville
_by accident_, walking with him as far as the end of the street,
amused by his conversation, and interested in his character, before
she had time to think where or how she had made his acquaintance, and
in what manner such an acquaintance was likely to end. And D’Orville
himself was really in love, in his own way, with “the handsome
governess.”
“There is no fool like an old one,” he confided to his friend
Lacquers, of the Lancers, in an epistle addressed to that philosopher
at Brussels. “If I were a ‘marrying man,’ which you well know I am
_not_, I should spend the rest of my life, unjust as would be the
monopoly, with this glorious Mrs. Delaval. I always call her by that
matronly title; it is so much more respectful, and must make her feel
so much more independent. She is only a teacher, my dear fellow, a
teacher in a girls’ school; and yet, for dignity and grace, and real
‘high-bred’ manner, she might be a duchess. Such a foot and hand! I
can take my oath she has good blood in her veins. Altogether, she
reminds me of your old mare, Sultana--as beautiful as a star--and
looks as if she would die rather than give in. I never in my life saw
a woman I admired half so much; you know I am generally pretty
hard-hearted, but upon my word I begin to fear I have a soft place in
me somewhere. And then, my dear Lacquers, what makes the thing so
exciting is this--I do not believe she cares one toss of a halfpenny
for me after all, and that if I were fool enough to offer to marry her
to-morrow, she would quietly balance the advantages and disadvantages
of the plan, and accept, or very likely _refuse_ me, with her calm,
condescending dignity, extremely unflattering as it is, and without
moving a muscle of her beautiful, placid countenance. Don’t she wish
she may have the chance? and yet, absurd as it sounds, I am horribly
in love with her. You will laugh at me ‘consumedly,’ and sometimes I
feel half inclined to laugh at myself, dodging about the stupidest of
places, as deeply smitten as if I were a cornet, regretting I ever
came here, and yet not man enough to leave and go on detachment, which
I have the option of doing. I shall see her again this evening, and
come to a decision one way or the other, for this can’t go on. In the
meantime, don’t show me up to a soul, and believe me,” etc.
That very evening, a tall, good-looking man, in undress uniform,
might have been seen, as indeed he was seen, by Miss Primrose’s
housemaid, walking a magnificent grey charger, with its bridle over
his arm, close to the foot-pavement in Crozier Street, deep in what
seemed an interesting conversation with a beautiful woman in black.
“So you don’t believe we unfortunates ever _are_ disinterested, Mrs.
Delaval? I am afraid you have a very bad opinion of the whole sex,”
said the gentleman, with a slight tremor in his voice, extremely
unusual to him, and contrasting strangely with the steady, measured
tones of his companion. “I cannot give an opinion where I have so
little knowledge, Captain D’Orville,” was the reply; she began to know
him well now, and liked to talk _out_ with him, as a woman never does
with a man for whom she cares; “I can only judge by what I see. It
appears to me that you all live wholly and entirely for yourselves.
If you are clever, you pervert your talents to get the better of
your friends in every allowable species of dishonesty; if you are
brave, your courage is but made subservient to your vanity and
self-aggrandisement; if you are rich, your money is devoted to your
own indulgence and your own purposes. I never hear, now-a-days, of
anything noble, anything disinterested, such as I have read of. But I
am talking great nonsense,” said Mary, checking herself, and smiling
at her own enthusiasm, unconscious of the burning admiration with
which the hussar’s eyes were riveted on her face. Like all _fast_
reckless men, there was a spice of romance about D’Orville, and he
liked to bring out the latent powers of a mind somewhat akin to his
own daring intellect, more particularly when that mind belonged to
such a person as his companion.
“I could prove that men _may_ be disinterested, even in the nineteenth
century,” said he, and again his voice trembled as it sank almost to a
whisper--“that there _are_ men who would give up station, profession,
ambition, everything,--the present they enjoy, and the future they
look forward to,--for the sake of one whom they esteemed--admired--in
short, whom they _loved_.” She would not understand him, and the calm
brow was as calm as ever while she answered, “I cannot think so. I have
seen quite enough as a child, for you know I am half a soldier
myself, to give me no inclination to prosecute my studies in human
nature. And yet I have my ideal of a hero too, but in these days there
is no such character as a Leonidas, a Curtius (you know, we
governesses must not forget our history), a William Tell, or a
Montrose.”
“I’ll wear thy colours in my cap, thy picture next my heart,” muttered
D’Orville; and then, carried away by the impulse of the moment, and
forgetful of all his worldly prudence and good resolutions, he hurried
impetuously on--“Listen to me, Mrs. Delaval; I may be presumptuous to
speak thus to you on such short acquaintance, but you must have seen
my regard--my attention--my devotion; I cannot bear to see you wasted
here, thrown away in such a place as this--you who are meant for
society and brilliancy, and everything that is worth having in life.
Will you rely upon _me_? will you suffer me to rescue you from this
obscure lot? will you consider?” Mary stopped dead short, drew herself
up, and looked her admirer full in the face: “I am so unused to this
sort of language, Captain D’Orville,” she observed, without a vestige
of emotion, “that I do not clearly understand you. If what you have to
say is fit for me to hear, pray explain yourself; if not, I wish you a
good evening;” and pausing for an instant while she kept him, as it
were, “chained in her eye,” she turned round, and walked calmly and
deliberately straight home to Miss Primrose’s.
The hussar was completely taken aback by the simplicity with which his
attack had been repulsed. There he stood, opposite the grey horse,
utterly confounded, and not knowing whether to advance or retreat.
Should he laugh the thing off, and descend to the meanness of
pretending he had been in jest? He could not--no, he _dared_ not meet
that calm, contemptuous eye. What an eye it was, and how he felt its
influence even now! Should he hurry after her, and make a _bonâ fide_
proposal of marriage, such as no woman could receive but as a
compliment? Psha! what! marry a governess? What would the mess say,
and Lacquers, and his brother profligates? No, the good grey horse was
galloped back to barracks, and D’Orville was the life and soul of the
supper-party, which he returned just in time to join. What a
contrast it was, with its brilliant lights, flushed countenances,
noise, excitement, and revelry, to the still summer evening, and the
pure, sweet face of Mary Delaval.
[Illustration: “She turned round and walked calmly and deliberately
home.”
_Page 56_]
The wealthy manufacturer’s lady thought Captain D’Orville very absent
and _distrait_ next day in the gardens; but from that time till he
went on leave he devoted himself exclusively to her service, and she
never dreamed that there was such a being in the world as the handsome
governess at Miss Primrose’s, or the loss that establishment had
sustained in its junior assistant’s departure.
And now Mary had been long dragging on her weary existence as a
music-mistress in London. Miss Primrose’s severe comments on the
impropriety of evening walks with cavalry officers led to a dignified
rejoinder from her teacher, and the conversation terminated in a small
arrear of salary being paid up, and Mary’s wardrobe (with the
exception of a certain very handsome dress, afterwards sold cheap as
“returned”) being packed for travelling. In London she obtained
sufficient employment to keep her from starving, and that was about
all. A situation as “Governess in a private family” was advertised
for, and again and again she was disappointed in obtaining one, till
at length hearing accidentally that Mrs. Kettering was in want of a
“finishing governess” for Blanche, Mary Delaval proceeded to the
town-house to make inquiries, and failing to obtain even the
wished-for address, was returning in hopeless despondency, when she
encountered the impertinences we have already detailed, and which were
alone wanting to fill the bitter cup of dependency to overflowing.
Poor Mary! hers was “a black cloud” through which it was indeed
difficult to see “the silver lining.”