“For I would lonely stand
Uplifting my white hand,
On a mission, on a mission,
To declare the coming vision.”
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
“Well, Grace, all things considered, perhaps I had better walk down with
you to Mackarel Lane, and then I can form a judgment on these Williamses
without committing Fanny.”
“Then you do not intend to go on teaching?”
“Not while Conrade continues to brave me, and is backed up by poor
Fanny.”
“I might speak to Miss Williams after church, and bring her in to
Myrtlewood for Fanny to see.”
“Yes, that might do in time; but I shall make up my mind first. Poor
Fanny is so easily led that we must take care what influences fall in
her way.”
“I always wished you would call.”
“Yes, and I would not by way of patronage to please Mr. Touchett, but
this is for a purpose; and I hope we shall find both sisters at home.”
Mackarel Lane was at right angles to the shore, running up the valley
of the Avon; but it soon ceased to be fishy, and became agricultural,
owning a few cottages of very humble gentility, which were wont to hang
out boards to attract lodgers of small means. At one of these Grace
rang, and obtained admittance to a parlour with crazy French windows
opening on a little strip of garden. In a large wheeled chair, between
the fire and the window, surrounded by numerous little appliances for
comfort and occupation, sat the invalid Miss Williams, holding out her
hand in welcome to the guests.
“A fine countenance! what one calls a fine countenance!” thought Rachel.
“Is it a delusion of insipidity as usual? The brow is good, massive, too
much for the features, but perhaps they were fuller once; eyes bright
and vigorous, hazel, the colour for thought; complexion meant to be
brilliant brunette, a pleasant glow still; hair with threads of grey.
I hope she does not affect youth; she can’t be less than one or two and
thirty! Many people set up for beauties with far less claim. What is
the matter with her? It is not the countenance of deformity—accident, I
should say. Yes, it is all favourable except the dress. What a material;
what a pattern! Did she get it second-hand from a lady’s-maid? Will
there be an incongruity in her conversation to match? Let us see. Grace
making inquiries—Quite at my best—Ah! she is not one of the morbid
sort, never thinking themselves better.”
“I was afraid, I had not seen you out for some time.”
“No; going out is a troublesome business, and sitting in the garden
answers the same purpose.”
“Of air, perhaps, but hardly of change or of view.”
“Oh! I assure you there is a wonderful variety,” she answered, with an
eager and brilliant smile.
“Clouds and sunsets?” asked Rachel, beginning to be interested.
“Yes, differing every day. Then I have the tamarisk and its inhabitants.
There has been a tom-tit’s nest every year since we came, and that
provides us with infinite amusement. Besides the sea-gulls are often so
good as to float high enough for me to see them. There is a wonderful
charm in a circumcribed view, because one is obliged to look well into
it all.”
“Yes; eyes and no eyes apply there,” said Rachel.
“We found a great prize, too, the other day. Rosie!”
At the call a brown-haired, brown-eyed child of seven, looking like a
little fawn, sprang to the window from the outside.
“My dear, will you show the sphynx to Miss Curtis?”
The little girl daintily brought a box covered with net, in which a huge
apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides,
and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace
asked if she was going to keep it. “Yes, till it buries itself,” said
the child. “Aunt Ermine thinks it is the elephant sphynx.”
“I cannot be sure,” said the aunt, “my sister tried to find a figure of
it at Villars’, but he had no book that gave the caterpillars. Do you
care for those creatures?”
“I like to watch them,” said Grace, “but I know nothing about them
scientifically; Rachel does that.”
“Then can you help us to the history of our sphynx?” asked Miss
Williams, with her pleasant look.
“I will see if I have his portrait,” said Rachel, “but I doubt it. I
prefer general principles to details.”
“Don’t you find working out details the best way of entering into
general principles?”
It was new to Rachel to find the mention of a general principle received
neither with a stare nor a laugh; and she gathered herself up to answer,
“Naming and collecting is not science.”
“And masonry is not architecture, but you can’t have architecture
without it.”
“One can have broad ideas without all the petty work of flower botanists
and butterfly naturalists.”
“Don’t you think the broad ideas would be rather of the hearsay order,
at least to most people, unless their application were worked out in the
trifle that came first to hand?”
“Experimental philosophy,” said Rachel, in rather a considering tone,
as if the notion, when presented to her in plain English, required
translation into the language of her thoughts.
“If you like to call it so,” said Miss Williams, with a look of arch
fun. “For instance, the great art of mud pie taught us the porous nature
of clay, the expansive power of steam, etc. etc.”
“You had some one to improve it to you?”
“Oh dear no. Only afterwards, when we read of such things we remembered
how our clay manufactures always burst in the baking unless they were
well dried first.”
“Then you had the rare power of elucidating a principle?”
“No, not I. My brother had; but I could only perceive the confirmation.”
“This reminds me of an interesting article on the Edgeworth system of
education in the ‘Traveller’s Review.’ I will send it down to you.”
“Thank you, but I have it here.”
“Indeed; and do you not think it excellent, and quite agree with it?”
“Yes, I quite agree with it,” and there was an odd look in her bright
transparent eyes that made Grace speculate whether she could have heard
that agreement with the Invalid in the “Traveller’s Review” was one of
the primary articles of faith acquired by Rachel.
But Grace, though rather proud of Rachel’s falling under the spell of
Miss Williams’ conversation, deemed an examination rather hard on her,
and took the opportunity of asking for her sister.
“She is generally at home by this time; but this is her last day at
Cliff Cottages, and she was to stay late to help in the packing up.”
“Will she be at home for the present?” asked Grace.
“Yes, Rose and I are looking forward to a festival of her.”
Grace was not at all surprised to hear Rachel at once commit herself
with “My cousin, Lady Temple,” and rush into the matter in hand as if
secure that the other Miss Williams would educate on the principles of
the Invalid; but full in the midst there was a sound of wheels and a
ring at the bell. Miss Williams quietly signed to her little attendant
to put a chair in an accessible place, and in walked Lady Temple, Mrs.
Curtis, and the middle brace of boys.
“The room will be too full,” was Grace’s aside to her sister, chiefly
thinking of her mother, but also of their hostess; but Rachel returned
for answer, “I must see about it;” and Grace could only remove herself
into the verandah, and try to attract Leoline and Hubert after her, but
failing in this, she talked to the far more conversible Rose about the
bullfinch that hung at the window, which loved no one but Aunt Ermine,
and scolded and pecked at every one else; and Augustus, the beloved
tame toad, that lived in a hole under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Curtis,
considerate and tender-hearted, startled to find her daughter in the
field, and wishing her niece to begin about her own affairs, talked
common-place by way of filling up the time, and Rachel had her eyes free
for a range of the apartment. The foundation was the dull, third-rate
lodging-house, the superstructure told of other scenes. One end of
the room was almost filled by the frameless portrait of a dignified
clergyman, who would have had far more justice done to him by greater
distance; a beautifully-painted miniature of a lady with short waist and
small crisp curls, was the centre of a system of photographs over the
mantel-piece; a large crayon sketch showed three sisters between the
ages of six and sixteen, sentimentalizing over a flower-basket; a pair
of water-colour drawings represented a handsome church and comfortable
parsonage; and the domestic gallery was completed by two prints—one of
a middle-aged county-member, the other one of Chalon’s ladylike matrons
in watered-silk aprons. With some difficulty Rachel read on the one the
autograph, J. T. Beauchamp, and on the other the inscription, the Lady
Alison Beauchamp. The table-cover was of tasteful silk patchwork, the
vase in the centre was of red earthenware, but was encircled with
real ivy leaves gummed on in their freshness, and was filled with wild
flowers; books filled every corner; and Rachel felt herself out of the
much-loathed region of common-place, but she could not recover from her
surprise at the audacity of such an independent measure on the part of
her cousin; and under cover of her mother’s civil talk, said to Fanny,
“I never expected to see you here.”
“My aunt thought of it,” said Fanny, “and as she seems to find the
children too much—”
She broke off, for Mrs. Curtis had paused to let her introduce the
subject, but poor Fanny had never taken the initiative, and Rachel did
it for her by explaining that all had come on the same errand, to ask
if Miss Williams would undertake the lessons of her nephews; Lady
Temple softly murmured under her veil something about hopes and too much
trouble; an appointment was made for the following morning, and Mrs.
Curtis, with a general sensation of an oppressive multitude in a small
room, took her leave, and the company departed, Fanny, all the way home,
hoping that the other Miss Williams would be like her sister, pitying
the cripple, wishing that the sisters were in the remotest degree
military, so as to obtain the respect of the hoys, and wondering what
would be the Major’s opinion.
“So many ladies!” exclaimed little Rose. “Aunt Ermine, have they made
your head ache?”
“No, my dear, thank you, I am only tired. If you will pull out the rest
for my feet, I will be quiet a little, and be ready for tea when Aunt
Ailie comes.”
The child handily converted the chair into a couch, arranging the dress
and coverings with the familiarity of long use, and by no means shocked
by the contraction and helplessness of the lower limbs, to which she had
been so much accustomed all her life that it never even occurred to
her to pity Aunt Ermine, who never treated herself as an object of
compassion. She was thanked by a tender pressure on her hair, and then
saying—
“Now I shall wish Augustus good night; bring Violetta home from her play
in the garden, and let her drink tea, and go to bed.”
Ah, Violetta, purchased with a silver groat, what was not your value
in Mackarel Lane? Were you not one of its most considered inhabitants,
scarcely less a child of Aunt Ermine and Aunt Alison than their Rosebud
herself?
Murmur, murmur, rippled the child’s happy low-toned monologue directed
to her silent but sufficient playmate, and so far from disturbing the
aunt, that more than one smile played on her lips at the quaint fancies,
and at the well of gladness in the young spirit, which made day after
day of the society of a cripple and an old doll, one constant song of
bliss, one dream of bright imaginings. Surely it was an equalization
of blessings that rendered little lonely Rose, motherless and well nigh
fatherless, poor, with no companion but a crippled aunt, a bird and a
toad, with scarcely a toy, and never a party of pleasure, one of the
most joyous beings under the sun, free from occasions of childish
troubles, without collisions of temper, with few contradictions, and
with lessons rather pleasure than toil. Perhaps Ermine did not take
into account the sunshiny content and cheerfulness that made herself
a delightful companion and playfellow, able to accept the child as her
solace, not her burthen.
Presently Rose looked up, and meeting the bright pleasant eyes,
observed—“Violetta has been very good, and said all her lessons quite
perfect, and she would like to sit up till her Aunt Ailie comes home. Do
you think she may?”
“Will she not be tired to-morrow?”
“Oh, then she will be lazy, and not get up when she is called, till I
pull all the clothes off, and that will be fun.”
“Or she may be fretful now?”
A series of little squeaks ensued, followed by “Now, my love; that is
taking a very unfair advantage of my promise. You will make your poor
Aunt Ermine’s head ache, and I shall have to send you to bed.”
“Would not a story pass away the time?”
“You tell it, Aunt Ermine; your stories are always the best. And let
there be a fairy in it!”
The fairy had nearly performed her part, when the arrival took place,
and Rose darted forward to receive Aunt Ailie’s greeting kiss.
“Yes, Rosie—yes, Violetta; what do you think I have got for you?”
And out came a doll’s chair with a broken leg, condemned by the
departing pupils, and granted with a laugh to the governess’s request
to take it to her little niece; but never in its best days had the chair
been so prized. It was introduced to Violetta as the reward of virtue
for having controlled her fretfulness, and the repair of its infirmity
was the first consideration that occupied all the three. After all,
Violetta’s sitting posture was, as Alison observed, an example of the
inclined plane, but that was nothing to Rose, and the seance would
have been indefinitely prolonged, but for considerations for Violetta’s
health.
The sisters were alike, and Alison had, like her elder, what is
emphatically called countenance, but her features were less chiselled,
and her dark straight brows so nearly met that, as Rose had once
remarked, they made a bridge of one arch instead of two. Six years
younger, in full health, and daily battling with the world, Alison had a
remarkable look of concentration and vigour, her upright bearing, clear
decided speech, and glance of kindness won instant respect and reliance,
but her face missed the radiant beamy brightness of her sister’s; her
face was sweet and winning, but it was not habitual with her, and there
was about her a look as if some terrible wave of grief or suffering
had swept over her ere yet the features were fully fixed, and had thus
moulded her expression for life. But playfulness was the tone that
reigned around Ermine’s couch at ordinary moments, and beside her the
grave Alison was lively, not with effort, but by infection.
“There,” she said, holding up a cheque; “now we’ll have a jubilee,
and take you down under the East cliff, and we’ll invest a shilling in
‘Ivanhoe,’ and Rose and Violetta shall open their ears!”
“And you shall have a respectable Sunday mantle.”
“Oh, I dare say Julia will send us a box.”
“Then you will have to put a label on your back, ‘Second-hand!’ or
her velvet will be a scandal. I can’t wear out that at home like this
flagrant, flowery thing, that I saw Miss Curtis looking at as rather
a disreputable article. There’s preferment for you, Ailie! What do you
think of a general’s widow with six boys? She is come after you. We
had a great invasion—three Curtises and this pretty little widow, and
various sons!”
“Will she stay?”
“Most likely, for she is a relation of Mrs. Curtis, and comes to be near
her. You are to call for inspection at eleven o’clock tomorrow, so I
fear your holiday will be short.”
“Well, the less play the less anxiety. How many drives will the six
young gentlemen be worth to you?”
“I am afraid it will be at the cost of tough work to you; she looked to
me too sweet a creature to have broken her sons in, but I should think
she would be pleasant to deal with.”
“If she be like Miss Curtis, I am sure she will.”
“Miss Curtis? My old friend you mean. She was rather suppressed today,
and I began to comprehend the reason of the shudder with which Mr.
Touchett speaks of the dogmatical young lady.”
“I hope she did not overwhelm you!”
“Oh, no! I rather liked her; she was so earnest and spirited, I could
fancy enjoying a good passage at arms with her if these were old times.
But I hope she will not take the direction of your school-room, though
she is an admirer of the educational papers in the ‘Traveller.’”
And here the discussion was ended by the entrance of little Rose with
the preliminaries of the evening meal, after which she went to bed, and
the aunts took out books, work, and writing materials.
Alison’s report the next day was—“Well, she is a very sweet creature.
There is something indescribably touching in her voice and eyes, so soft
and wistful, especially when she implores one not to be hard on those
great scrambling boys of hers.”
“So she is your fate?”
“Oh, yes, if there had been ten more engagements offered, I could not
have helped accepting hers, even if it had not been on the best terms I
have ever had.”
“What?”
“Seventy—for the hours between nine and five. Pretty well for a
journeyman hack, is it not? Indeed, the pretty thing’s only fear seemed
to be that she was requiring too much, and offering too little. No, not
her only fear, for there is some major in the distance to whose approval
everything must be subject—uncle or guardian, I suppose, but he seemed
to be rather an object of jealousy to the younger Miss Curtis, for
every hint of wishing to wait for the Major made her press on the
negotiations.”
“Seventy! I hope you will make it do, Ailie. It would be a great
relief.”
“And spare your brains not a little. Yes, I do trust to keeping it, for
Lady Temple is delightful; and as to the boys, I fancy it is only taming
they want. The danger is, as Miss Rachel told me, whether she can bear
the sight of the process. I imagine Miss Rachel herself has tried it,
and failed.”
“Part amateur work,” said Ermine, smiling. “It really is lucky you
had to turn governess, Ailie, or there would have been a talent thrown
away.”
“Stay till I have tried,” said Alison, who had, however, had experience
enough not to be much alarmed at the prospect. Order was wont to come
with her presence, and she hardly knew the aspect of tumultuous idleness
or insubordination to unenforced authority; for her eye and voice in
themselves brought cheerful discipline without constraint, and upheld
by few punishments, for the strong influence took away the spirit of
rebellion.
After her first morning’s work she came home full of good auguries; the
boys had been very pleasant with her after the first ten minutes, and
Conrade had gained her heart by his attention to his mother. He had,
however, examined her minutely whether she had any connexion with
the army, and looked grave on her disavowal of any relationship with
soldiers; Hubert adding, “You see, Aunt Rachel is only a civilian, and
she hasn’t any sense at all.” And when Francis had been reduced to the
much disliked process of spelling unknown words, he had muttered under
his breath, “She was only a civilian.” To which she had rejoined
that “At least she knew thus much, that the first military duty was
obedience,” and Francis’s instant submission proved that she had made a
good shot. Of the Major she had heard much more. Everything was referred
to him, both by mother and children, and Alison was the more puzzled as
to his exact connexion with them. “I sometimes suspect,” she said, “that
he may have felt the influence of those winsome brown eyes and caressing
manner, as I know I should if I were a man. I wonder how long the old
general has been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me.
I don’t mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know
confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making things
in the world.”
In pursuance of this principle Alison, or Miss Williams, as she was
called in her vocation, was always reserved and discreet, and though
ready to talk in due measure, Rachel always felt that it was the upper,
not the under current that was proffered. The brow and eyes, the whole
spirit of the face, betokened reflection and acuteness, and Rachel
wanted to attain to her opinions; but beyond a certain depth there
was no reaching. Her ways of thinking, her views of the children’s
characters, her estimate of Mr. Touchett—nay, even her tastes as to the
Invalid’s letters in the “Traveller’s Review,” remained only partially
revealed, in spite of Rachel’s best efforts at fishing, and attempting
to set the example.
“It really seemed,” as she observed to Grace, “as if the more I talk,
the less she says.” At which Grace gave way to a small short laugh,
though she owned the force of Rachel’s maxim, that to bestow confidence
was the way to provoke it; and forbore to refer to a certain delightful
afternoon that Rachel, in her childhood, had spent alone with a little
girl whom she had never discovered to be deaf and dumb. Still Rachel had
never been able to make out why Grace, with no theories at all, got so
many more confidences than she did. She was fully aware of her sister’s
superior attractiveness to common-place people, and made her welcome to
stand first with the chief of their kindred, and most of the clergy and
young ladies around. But it was hard that where Rachel really liked and
met half-way, the intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon
Grace, or even the mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out
a snail is not to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to
launch one’s self to the opposite starting point. Either her
inquiries were too point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own
communications absorbed her too much to leave room for a return. Thus
she told Miss Williams the whole story of the thrush’s nest, and all
her own reflections upon the characteristics it betokened; and only
afterwards, on thinking over the conversation, perceived that she had
elicited nothing but that it was very difficult to judge in such cases,
not even any decided assent to her own demonstrations. It was true that
riots and breaches of the peace ceased while Miss Williams was in the
house, and learning and good manners were being fast acquired; but until
Conrade’s duplicity should be detected, or the whole disposition of
the family discussed with herself, Rachel doubted the powers of the
instructress. It was true that Fanny was very happy with her, and only
regretted that the uncertainty of the Major’s whereabouts precluded his
being informed of the newly-found treasure; but Fanny was sure to be
satisfied as long as her boys were happy and not very naughty, and she
cared very little about people’s minds.
If any one did “get on” with the governess it was Grace, who had been
the first acquaintance in the family, and met her often in the service
of the parish, as well as in her official character at the Homestead.
It so chanced that one Sunday afternoon they found themselves
simultaneously at the door of the school-house, whence issued not the
customary hum, but loud sounds of singing.
“Ah!” said Grace, “Mr. Touchett was talking of getting the choir master
from Avoncester, and giving up an afternoon to practice for Easter, but
he never told me it was to be to-day.”
On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning, but
not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little niece,
and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out of hearing.
It was one of the little bits of bad management that were sure to happen
wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and both ladies feeling it
easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful that it had not befallen
Rachel. Alison Williams, thinking it far to walk either to the Homestead
or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to Grace to come home with her, an
offer that was thankfully accepted, with merely the scruple whether she
should disturb the invalid.
“Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get more
change and variety for her on Sunday.”
“She is very self-denying to spare you to the school.”
“I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me. She says
it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it brings
her fresh interests. She knows about all my class, and works for them,
and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for her, though it
leaves her more hours alone with Rose.”
“And the Sunday services are too long for her?”
“Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches unless
two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and there is
not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday. It is the greatest
deprivation of all.”
“It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic,” said Grace,
using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel’s hearing.
“You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has found
strength and courage for me through all the terrible sutfering.”
“Then does she suffer so much?”
“Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years.”
“It was not always so.”
“No, indeed! You thought it deformity! Oh, no, no! she was so
beautiful.”
“That she is still. I never saw my sister so much struck with any one.
There is something so striking in her bright glance out of those clear
eyes.”
“Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before—”
“The accident?”
“I burnt her,” said Alison, almost inaudibly.
“You! you, poor dear! How dreadful for you.”
“Yes, I burnt her,” said Alison, more steadily. “You ought not to be
kind to me without knowing about it. It was an accident of course, but
it was a fit of petulance. I threw a match without looking where it was
going.”
“It must have been when you were very young.”
“Fourteen. I was in a naughty fit at her refusing to go to the great
musical meeting with us. We always used to go to stay at one of the
canon’s houses for it, a house where one was dull and shy; and I could
not bear going without her, nor understand the reason.”
“And was there a reason?”
“Yes, poor dear Ermine. She knew he meant to come there to meet her, and
she thought it would not be right; because his father had objected so
strongly, and made him exchange into a regiment on foreign service.”
“And you did not know this?”
“No, I was away all the time it was going on, with my eldest sister,
having masters in London. I did not come home till it was all over, and
then I could not understand what was the matter with the house, or why
Ermine was unlike herself, and papa restless and anxious about her. They
thought me too young to be told, and the atmosphere made me cross and
fretful, and papa was displeased with me, and Ermine tried in vain to
make me good; poor patient Ermine, even then the chief sufferer!”
“I can quite imagine the discomfort and fret of being in ignorance all
the time.”
“Dear Ermine says she longed to tell me, but she had been forbidden, and
she went on blaming herself and trying to make me enjoy my holidays as
usual, till this dreadful day, when I had worried her intolerably about
going to this music meeting, and she found reasoning only made me worse.
She still wrote her note of refusal, and asked me to light the taper; I
dashed down the match in a frenzy of temper and—”
She paused for breath, and Grace squeezed her hand.
“We did not see it at first, and then she threw herself down and ordered
me not to come near. Every one was there directly, I believe, but it
burst out again and again, and was not put out till they all thought
she had not an hour to live. There was no pain, and there she lay,
all calmness, comforting us all, and making papa and Edward promise to
forgive me—me, who only wished they would kill me! And the next day he
came; he was just going to sail, and they thought nothing would hurt her
then. I saw him while he was waiting, and never did I see such a fixed
deathly face. But they said she found words to cheer and soothe him.”
“And what became of him?”
“We do not know. As long as Lady Alison lived (his aunt) she let us hear
about him, and we knew he was recovering from his wound. Then came her
death, and then my father’s, and all the rest, and we lost sight of the
Beauchamps. We saw the name in the Gazette as killed at Lucknow, but
not the right Christian name nor the same rank; but then, though the
regiment is come home, we have heard nothing of him, and though she has
never spoken of him to me, I am sure Ermine believes he is dead, and
thinks of him as part of the sunshine of the old Beauchamp days—the
sunshine whose reflection lasts one’s life.”
“He ought to be dead,” said Grace.
“Yes, it would be better for her than to hear anything else of him! He
had nothing of his own, so there would have been a long waiting, but his
father and brother would not hear of it, and accused us of entrapping
him, and that angered my father. For our family is quite good, and we
were very well off then. My father had a good private fortune besides
the Rectory at Beauchamp; and Lady Alison, who had been like a mother
to us ever since our own died, quite thought that the prospect was good
enough, and I believe got into a great scrape with her family for having
promoted the affair.”
“Your squire’s wife?”
“Yes, and Julia and Ermine had come every day to learn lessons with her
daughters. I was too young; but as long as she lived we were all like
one family. How kind she was! How she helped us through those frightful
weeks!”
“Of your sister’s illness? It must have lasted long?”
“Long? Oh longer than long! No one thought of her living. The doctors
said the injury was too extensive to leave any power of rallying; but
she was young and strong, and did not die in the torture, though people
said that such an existence as remained to her was not worth the anguish
of struggling back to it. I think my father only prayed that she might
suffer less, and Julia stayed on and on, thinking each day would be the
last, till Dr. Long could not spare her any longer; and then Lady
Alison nursed her night after night and day after day, till she had worn
herself into an illness, and when the doctors spoke of improvement,
we only perceived worse agony. It was eight months before she was even
lifted up in bed, and it was years before the burns ceased to be painful
or the constitution at all recovered the shock; and even now weather
tells on her, though since we have lived here she has been far better
than I ever dared to hope.”
“Then you consider her still recovering?”
“In general health she is certainly greatly restored, and has strength
to attempt more, but the actual injury, the contraction, can never be
better than now. When we lived at Richmond she had constantly the best
advice, and we were told that nothing more could be hoped for.”
“I wonder more and more at her high spirits. I suppose that was what
chiefly helped to carry her through?”
“I have seen a good many people,” said Alison, pausing, “but I never did
see any one so happy! Others are always wanting something; she never is.
Every enjoyment seems to be tenfold to her what it is to other people;
she sees the hopeful side of every sorrow. No burthen is a burthen when
one has carried it to her.”
As Alison spoke, she pushed open the narrow green door of the little
lodging-house, and there issued a weak, sweet sound of voices: “The
strain upraise of joy and praise.” It was the same that had met their
ears at the school-door, but the want of body in the voices was fully
compensated by the heartfelt ring, as if here indeed was praise, not
practice.
“Aunt Ailie! O Aunt Ailie!” cried the child, as the room-door opened and
showed the little choir, consisting of herself, her aunt, and the small
maid of the house, “you should not have come, you were not to hear us
till Trinity Sunday.”
Explanations were given, and Miss Curtis was welcomed, but Alison,
still too much moved for ordinary conversation, slipped into the
bedroom adjoining, followed by her sister’s quick and anxious eye, and
half-uttered inquiry.
“I am afraid it is my fault,” said Grace; “she has been telling me about
your accident.”
“Poor Ailie,” said Ermine, “she never will receive kindness without
having that unlucky story out! It is just one of the things that get so
cruelly exaggerated by consequences. It was one moment’s petulance that
might have caused a fright and been forgotten ever after, but for those
chemicals. Ah! I see, she said nothing about them, because they were
Edward’s. They were some parcels for his experiments, gun cotton and
the like, which were lying in the window till he had time to take them
upstairs. We had all been so long threatened with being blown up by his
experiments that we had grown callous and careless, and it served
us right!” she added, stroking the child’s face as it looked at her,
earnest to glean fresh fragments of the terrible half-known tale of the
past. “Yes, Rosie, when you go and keep house for papa on the top of the
Oural Mountains, or wherever it may be, you are to remember that if Aunt
Ermine had not been in a foolish, inattentive mood, and had taken his
dangerous goods out of the way, she might have been trotting to church
now like other people. But poor Ailie has always helped herself to the
whole blame, and if every childish fit of temper were the root of such
qualities, what a world we should have here!”
“Ah! no wonder she is devoted to you.”
“The child was not fifteen, had never known cross or care, but from that
moment she never was out of my room if it was possible to be in; and
when nurse after nurse was fairly worn out, because I could not help
being so distressing, there was always that poor child, always handy and
helpful, growing to be the chief dependence, and looking so piteously
imploring whatever was tried, that it really helped me to go through
with it. Poor Ailie,” she added with an odd turn of playfulness, “I
always fancied those frowns of anxiety made her eyebrows grow together.
And ever since we came here, we know how she has worked away for her old
cinder and her small Rosebud, don’t we?” she added, playfully squeezing
the child’s cheeks up into a more budding look, hiding deeper and more
overcoming feelings by the sportive action. And as her sister came back,
she looked up and shook her head at her, saying,—
“You gossiping Ailie, to go ripping up old grievances. I am going to ask
Miss Curtis not to let the story go any farther, now you have relieved
your mind of it.”
“I did tell Lady Temple,” said Alison; “I never think it right not to
let people know what sort of person they have to teach their children.”
And Grace, on feeling her way, discovered that Lady Temple had been told
the bare fact in Miss Williams’s reserved and business-like manner, but
with nothing of the affair that had led to it. She merely looked on it
in the manner fully expressed by—“Ah, poor thing; how sad for her!”
as a shocking secret, never to be talked of or thought about. And that
voluntary detailed relation from Alison could only be regarded as drawn
forth by Grace’s own individual power of winning confidence, and the
friendliness that had so long subsisted between them. Nor indeed was the
reserve regarding the cause of the present reduced circumstances of the
sisters at all lessened; it was only known that their brother had ruined
them by a fraudulent speculation, and had then fled to the Continent,
leaving them burthened with the maintenance of his child, but that they
refused to believe in his guilt, and had thus incurred the displeasure
of other relatives and friends. Alison was utterly silent about him.
Ermine seemed to have a tender pleasure in bringing in a reference to
his ways as if all were well, and it were a matter of course to speak of
“Edward;” but it was plain that Ermine’s was an outspoken nature. This
might, however, be only because the one had been a guarded, sheltered
invalid, while the other had gone forth among strangers to battle for
a livelihood, and moreover, the elder sister had been fully grown and
developed before the shock which had come on the still unformed Alison.
At any rate, nobody but Grace “got on” with the governess, while the
invalid made friends with all who visited her, and most signally with
Rachel, who, ere long, esteemed her environment a good work, worthy of
herself. The charity of sitting with a twaddling, muffatee-knitting old
lady was indisputable, but it was perfectly within Grace’s capacity; and
Rachel believed herself to be far more capable of entertaining the sick
Miss Williams, nor was she mistaken. When excited or interested, most
people thought her oppressive; but Ermine Williams, except when unwell,
did not find her so, and even then a sharp debate was sometimes a cure
for the nervous ailments induced by the monotony of her life. They
seemed to have a sort of natural desire to rub their minds one against
the other, and Rachel could not rest without Miss Williams’s opinion of
all that interested her—paper, essay, book, or event; but often, when
expecting to confer a favour by the loan, she found that what was new
to her was already well known in that little parlour, and even the
authorship no mystery. Ermine explained this by her correspondence with
literary friends of her brother’s, and country-bred Rachel, to whom
literature was still an oracle unconnected with living agencies,
listened, yes, absolutely listened to her anecdotes of sayings and
doings, far more like clever memoirs than the experiences of the banks
of the Avon. Perhaps there was this immediate disadvantage, that hearing
of a more intellectual tone of society tended to make Rachel less
tolerant of that which surrounded her, and especially of Mr. Touchett.
It was droll that, having so long shunned the two sisters under the
impression that they were his protegees and worshippers, she found that
Ermine’s point of view was quite the rectorial one, and that to venerate
the man for his office sake was nearly as hard to Ermine as to herself,
though the office was more esteemed.
Alison, the reserved, had held her tongue on his antecedents; but Ermine
was drawn into explaining that his father had been a minor canon, who
had eked out his means with a combination of chaplaincies and parts
of curacies, and by teaching at the school where his son was educated.
Indignant at the hack estimation in which his father had been held, the
son, far more justly viewing both the dignity and duty of his office,
was resolved to be respected; but bred up in second rate society,
had neither weight, talent, nor manners to veil his aggressive
self-assertion, and he was at this time especially trying to the
Curtises.
Cathedral music had been too natural to him for the endurance of an
unchoral service, and the prime labour of his life was to work up his
choir; but he was musical by education rather than nature, and having
begun his career with such mortal offence to the native fiddlers and
singers as to impel them into the arms of dissent, he could only supply
the loss from the school by his own voice, of which he was not chary,
though using it with better will than taste. The staple of his choir
were Rachel’s scholars. Her turn had always been for boys, and her
class on Sunday mornings and two evenings in the week had long been
in operation before the reign of Mr. Touchett. Then two lads, whose
paternal fiddles had seceded to the Plymouth Brethren, were suspended
from all advantages by the curate, and Rachel was with difficulty
withheld from an explosion; but even this was less annoying than the
summons at the class-room door every Sunday morning, that, in the midst
of her lesson, carried off the chief of her scholars to practise their
chants. Moreover, the blame of all imperfect lessons was laid on the
“singing for the parson,” and all faults in the singing by the tasks for
Miss Rachel; and one night, the excellent Zack excused his failure in
geography by saying that Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and said
that it was no better than sacrilege, omitting, however, to mention that
he had been caught studying it under his surplice during the lessons.
At last, with his usual fatality, the curate fixed the grand practice
for the Saturday evenings that were Rachel’s great days for instruction
in the three R’s, and for a sort of popular lecture. Cricket was to
succeed the singing, and novelty carried the day, but only by the
desertion of her scholars did Rachel learn the new arrangement, and she
could hardly credit the assertion that the curate was not aware that it
was her day. In fact, it was the only one when the fisher lads were sure
not to be at sea, and neither party would yield it. Mr. Touchett was
determined not to truckle to dictation from the great house; so when
Rachel declared she would have nothing to do with the boys unless the
Saturdays were conceded to her, he owned that he thought the clergyman
had the first right to his lads, and had only not claimed them before
out of deference for the feelings of a well-meaning parishioner.
Both parties poured out their grievances to the same auditor, for Mr.
Touchett regarded Ermine Williams as partly clerical, and Rachel could
never be easy without her sympathy. To hear was not, however, to make
peace, while each side was so sore, so conscious of the merits of its
own case, so blind to those of the other. One deemed praise in its
highest form the prime object of his ministry; the other found the
performance indevotional, and raved that education should be sacrificed
to wretched music. But that the dissension was sad and mischievous,
it would have been very diverting; they were both so young in their
incapacity of making allowances, their certainty that theirs was the
theory to bring in the golden age, and even in their magnanimity of
forgiveness, and all the time they thought themselves so very old. “I
am resigned to disappointments; I have seen something of life.”—“You
forget, Miss Williams, that my ministerial experience is not very
recent.”
There was one who would have smoothed matters far better than any, who,
like Ermine, took her weapons from the armoury of good sense; but that
person was entirely unconscious how the incumbent regarded her soft
eyes, meek pensiveness, motherly sweetness, and, above all, the refined
graceful dignity that remained to her from the leading station she had
occupied. Her gracious respect towards her clergyman was a contrast as
much to the deferential coquetry of his admirers as to the abruptness of
his foe, and her indifference to parish details had even its charm in a
world of fussiness; he did not know himself how far a wish of hers would
have led him, and she was the last person to guess. She viewed him, like
all else outside her nursery, as something out of the focus of her eye;
her instinct regarded her clergyman as necessarily good and worthy, and
her ear heard Rachel railing at him; it sounded hard, but it was a pity
Rachel should be vexed and interfered with. In fact, she never thought
of the matter at all; it was only part of that outer kind of dreamy
stage-play at Avonmouth, in which she let herself he moved about at her
cousin’s bidding. One part of her life had passed away from her,
and what remained to her was among her children; her interests
and intelligence seemed contracted to Conrade’s horizon, and as to
everything else, she was subdued, gentle, obedient, but slow and obtuse.
Yet, little as he knew it, Mr. Touchett might have even asserted his
authority in a still more trying manner. If the gentle little widow had
not cast a halo round her relatives, he could have preached that sermon
upon the home-keeping duties of women, or have been too much offended
to accept any service from the Curtis family; and he could have done
without them, for he had a wide middle-class popularity; his manners
with the second-rate society, in which he had been bred, were just
sufficiently superior and flattering to recommend all his best
points, and he obtained plenty of subscriptions from visitors, and of
co-operation from inhabitants. Many a young lady was in a flutter at the
approach of the spruce little figure in black, and so many volunteers
were there for parish work, that districts and classes were divided and
subdivided, till it sometimes seemed as if the only difficulty was to
find poor people enough who would submit to serve as the corpus vile for
their charitable treatment.
For it was not a really poor population. The men were seafaring, the
women lacemaking, and just well enough off to make dissent doubly
attractive as an escape from some of the interfering almsgiving of the
place. Over-visiting, criticism of dress, and inquisitorial examinations
had made more than one Primitive Methodist, and no severe distress had
been so recent as to render the women tolerant of troublesome weekly
inspections. The Curtis sisters were, however, regarded as an exception;
they were viewed as real gentlefolks, not only by their own tenants, but
by all who were conscious of their hereditary claims to respect; they
did not care whether hair were long or short, and their benefits were
more substantial and reliable than could be looked for from the casual
visitors and petty gentry around, so that sundry houses that were
forbidden ground to district visitors, were ready to grant them a
welcome.
One of these belonged to the most able lacemaker in the place, a
hard-working woman, who kept seven little pupils in a sort of cupboard
under the staircase, with a window into the back garden, “because,” said
she, “they did no work if they looked out into the front, there were so
many gapsies;” these gapsies consisting of the very scanty traffic of
the further end of Mackarel Lane. For ten hours a day did these children
work in a space just wide enough for them to sit, with the two least
under the slope of the stairs, permitted no distraction from their
bobbins, but invaded by their mistress on the faintest sound of tongues.
Into this hotbed of sprigs was admitted a child who had been a special
favourite at school, an orphan niece of the head of the establishment.
The two brothers had been lost together at sea; and while the one
widow became noted for her lace, the other, a stranger to the art, had
maintained herself by small millinery, and had not sacrificed her little
girl to the Moloch of lace, but had kept her at school to a later age
than usual in the place. But the mother died, and the orphan was at once
adopted by the aunt, with the resolve to act the truly kind part by her,
and break her in to lacemaking. That determination was a great blow to
the school visitors; the girls were in general so young, or so stupefied
with their work, that an intelligent girl like Lovedy Kelland was no
small treasure to them; there were designs of making her a pupil teacher
in a few years, and offers and remonstrances rained in upon her aunt.
But they had no effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had
been spoilt by learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory
scholar; she was too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind
was too much awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had
not been brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt
her thread, and Mrs. Kelland decided that “she’d never get her bread
till she was broke of her buke;” which breaking was attempted by a
summary pawning of all poor Lovedy’s reward books. The poor child
confided her loss to her young lady teacher at the Sunday school; the
young lady, being new, young, and inflammable, reproached Mrs. Kelland
with dishonesty and tyranny to the orphan, and in return was nearly
frightened out of her wits by such a scolding as only such a woman as
the lace mistress could deliver. Then Mr. Touchett tried his hand, and
though he did not meet with quite so much violence, all he heard was
that she had “given Lovedy the stick for being such a little tod as to
complain, when she knew the money for the bukes was put safe away in
her money-box. She was not going to the Sunday schule again, not she,
to tell stories against her best friends!” And when the next district
visitor came that way, the door was shut in her face, with the tract
thrown out at the opening, and an intimation in Mrs. Kelland’s shrill
voice, that no more bukes were wanted; she got plenty from Miss Curtis.
These bukes from Miss Curtis were sanatory tracts, which Rachel was
constantly bestowing, and which on Sundays Mrs. Kelland spelt through,
with her finger under the line, in happy ignorance whether the subject
were temporal or spiritual, and feeling herself in the exemplary
discharge of a Sunday duty. Moreover, old feudal feeling made Rachel
be unmolested when she came down twice a week, opened the door of
the blackhole under the stairs, and read aloud something religious,
something improving, and a bit of a story, following it up by mental
arithmetic and a lesson on objects, which seemed to Mrs. Kelland the
most arrant nonsense in the world, and to her well-broken scholars was
about as interesting as the humming of a blue-bottle fly; but it was
poor Lovedy’s one enjoyment, though making such havoc of her work that
it was always expiated by extra hours, not on her pillow, but at it.
These visits of Rachel were considered to encourage the Kelland
refractoriness, and it was officially intimated that it would be wise to
discontinue them, and that “it was thought better” to withdraw from Mrs.
Kelland all that direct patronage of her trade, by which the ladies
had enabled her to be in some degree independent of the middle-men,
who absorbed so much of the profit from the workers. Grace and Rachel,
sufficiently old inhabitants to remember the terrible wreck that had
left her a struggling widow, felt this a hard, not to say a vindictive
decision. They had long been a kind of agents for disposing of her wares
at a distance; and, feeling that the woman had received provocation,
Grace was not disposed to give her up, while Rachel loudly averred that
neither Mr. Touchett nor any of his ladies had any right to interfere,
and she should take no notice.
“But,” said Grace, “can we run counter to our clergyman’s direct
wishes?”
“Yes, when he steps out of his province. My dear Grace, you grew up in
the days of curatolatry, but it won’t do; men are fallible even when
they preach in a surplice, and you may be thankful to me that you and
Fanny are not both led along in a string in the train of Mr. Touchett’s
devotees!”
“I wish I knew what was right to do,” said Grace, quietly, and she
remained wishing it after Rachel had said a great deal more; but
the upshot of it was, that one day when Grace and Fanny were walking
together on the esplanade, they met Mr. Touchett, and Grace said to him,
“We have been thinking it over, and we thought, perhaps, you would not
wish us not to give any orders to Mrs. Kelland. I know she has behaved
very ill; but I don’t see how she is to get on, and she has this child
on her hands.”
“I know,” said Mr. Touchett, “but really it was flagrant.”
“Oh,” said Lady Temple, gently, “I dare say she didn’t mean it, and you
could not be hard on a widow.”
“Well,” said Mr. Touchett, “Miss Brown was very much put out,
and—and—it is a great pity about the child, but I never thought myself
that such strong measures would do any good.”
“Then you will not object to her being employed?”
“No, not at all. From a distance, it is not the same thing as close at
home; it won’t be an example.”
“Thank you,” said Grace; and “I am so glad,” said Lady Temple; and
Mr. Touchett went on his way, lightened of his fear of having let his
zealous coadjutors oppress the hard-working, and far more brightened by
the sweet smile of requital, but all the time doubtful whether he had
been weak. As to the victory, Rachel only laughed, and said, “If it made
Grace more comfortable, it was well, except for that acknowledgment of
Mr. Touchett’s jurisdiction.”
A few days after, Rachel made her appearance in Mackerel Lane, and
announced her intention of consulting Ermine Williams under seal of
secrecy. “I have an essay that I wish you to judge of before I send it
to the ‘Traveller.’”
“Indeed!” said Ermine, her colour rising. “Would it not be better—”
“Oh, I know what you mean, but don’t scruple on that score. At my age,
with a mother like mine, it is simply to avoid teasing and excitement
that I am silent.”
“I was going to say I was hardly a fair—”
“Because of your different opinions? But those go for nothing. You are
a worthy antagonist, and enter into my views as my mother and sister
cannot do, even while you oppose them.”
“But I don’t think I can help you, even if—”
“I don’t want help; I only want you to judge of the composition. In
fact, I read it to you that I may hear it myself.”
Ermine resigned herself.
“‘Curatolatry is a species—’”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Curatolatry. Ah! I thought that would attract attention.”
“But I am afraid the scholars would fall foul of it.”
“Why, have not they just made Mariolatry?”
“Yes; but they are very severe on hybrids between Latin and Greek.”
“It is not worth while to boggle at trifles when one has an expressive
term,” said Rachel; “if it turns into English, that is all that is
wanted.”
“Would it not be rather a pity if it should turn into English? Might it
not be hard to brand with a contemptuous name what does more good than
harm?”
“That sickly mixture of flirtation and hero worship, with a religious
daub as a salve to the conscience.”
“Laugh it down, and what do you leave? In Miss Austen’s time silly girls
ran to balls after militiamen, now, if they run to schools and charities
more for the curate’s sake than they quite know, is not the alternative
better?”
“It is greater humbug,” said Rachel. “But I knew you would not agree, at
least beforehand, it is appreciation that I want.”
Never did Madame de Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of
the Genius Phanor’s tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd
as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian
academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of the
remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is redeemed
by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of Truth being the
author reading his own works. Ermine was thinking of him all the time.
She was under none of the constraint of Phanor’s auditors, though she
carried a perpetual palace of truth about with her; she would not have
had either fears or compunctions in criticising, if she could. The paper
was in the essay style, between argument and sarcasm, something after
the model of the Invalid’s Letters; but it was scarcely lightly touched
enough, the irony was wormwood, the gravity heavy and sententious, and
where there was a just thought or happy hit, it seemed to travel in a
road-waggon, and be lost in the rumbling of the wheels. Ermine did
not restrain a smile, half of amusement, half of relief, at the
self-antidote the paper contained; but the smile passed with the
authoress as a tribute to her satire.
“In this age,” she said, “we must use those lighter weapons of wit, or
no one will attend.”
“Perhaps,” said Ermine, “if I approve your object, I should tell you you
don’t use them lightly.”
“Ah! but I know you don’t approve it. You are not lay woman enough to be
impartial, and you belong to the age that was trying the experiment of
the hierarchy modified: I to that which has found it will not do. But at
least you understand my view; I have made out my case.”
“Yes, I understand your view; but—”
“You don’t sympathize. Of course not; but when it receives its full
weight from the printer’s bands, you will see that it will tell. That
bit about the weak tea fumes I thought of afterwards, and I am afraid I
did not read it well.”
“I remember it; but forgive me if I say first I think the whole is
rather too—too lengthy to take.”
“Oh, that is only because manuscript takes long to read aloud. I counted
the words, so I can’t be mistaken, at least I collated twenty lines,
and multiplied; and it is not so long as the Invalid’s last letter about
systematic reading.”
“And then comes my question again, Is good to come of it?”
“That I can’t expect you to see at this time; but it is to be the
beginning of a series, exposing the fallacies of woman’s life as at
present conducted; and out of these I mean to point the way to more
consistent, more independent, better combined exertion. If I can make
myself useful with my pen, it will compensate for the being debarred
from so many more obvious outlets. I should like to have as much
influence over people’s minds as that Invalid for instance, and by
earnest effort I know I shall attain it.”
“I—I—” half-laughing and blushing, “I hope you will, for I know you
would wish to use it for good; but, to speak plainly, I doubt about the
success of this effort, or—or if it ought to succeed.”
“Yes, I know you do,” said Rachel. “No one ever can judge of a
manuscript. You have done all I wished you to do, and I value your
sincerity. Of course I did not expect praise, since the more telling
it is on the opposite side, the less you could like it. I saw you
appreciated it.”
And Rachel departed, while Rose crept up to her aunt, asking, “Aunt
Ermine, why do you look so very funny? It was very tiresome. Are not you
glad it is over?”
“I was thinking, Rose, what a difficult language plain English is
sometimes.”
“What, Miss Rachel’s? I couldn’t understand one bit of her long story,
except that she did not like weak tea.”
“It was my own that I meant,” said Ermine. “But, Rose, always remember
that a person who stands plain speaking from one like me has something
very noble and generous in her. Were you here all the time, Rosie? I
don’t wonder you were tired.”
“No, Aunt Ermine, I went and told Violetta and Augustus a fairy tale out
of my own head.”
“Indeed; and how did they like it?”
“Violetta looked at me all the time, and Augustus gave three winks, so I
think he liked it.”
“Appreciated it!” said Aunt Ermine.