"Is she not passing fair?"--_Two Gentlemen of Verona._
The day at length dawns when Miss Broughton chooses to put in an
appearance at Pullingham. It is Thursday evening on which she arrives,
and as she has elected to go to the vicarage direct, instead of to
Gowran, as Clarissa desired, nothing is left to the latter but to go
down on Friday to the Redmonds' to welcome her.
She (Clarissa) had taken it rather badly that pretty Georgie will not
come to her for a week or so before entering on her duties; yet in her
secret soul she cannot help admiring the girl's pluck, and her
determination to let nothing interfere with the business that must for
the future represent her life. To stay at Gowran,--to fall, as it
were, into the arms of luxury,--to be treated, as she knew she would
be, by Clarissa, as an equal, even in worldly matters, would be only
to unfit her for the routine that of necessity must follow. So she
abstains, and flings far from her all thought of a happiness that
would indeed be real, as Clarissa had been dear to her two years ago;
and to be dear to Georgie once would mean to be dear to her forever.
The vicar himself opens the door for Clarissa, and tells her Miss
Broughton has arrived, and will no doubt be overjoyed to see her.
"What a fairy you have given us!" he says, laughing. "Such a
bewildering child; all golden hair, and sweet dark eyes, and mourning
raiments. We are perplexed--indeed, I may say, dazed--at her
appearance; because we have one and all fallen in love with
her,--hopelessly, irretrievably,--and hardly know how to conduct
ourselves towards her with the decorum that I have been taught to
believe should be shown to the instructress of one's children. Now,
the last young woman was so different, and--"
"Young," says Miss Peyton.
"Well, old, if you like it. She certainly, poor soul, did remind one
of the 'sere and yellow.' But this child is all fire and life; and
really," says the vicar, with a sigh that may be relief, "I think we
all like it better; she is quite a break-in upon our monotony."
"I am so glad you all like her;" says Clarissa, quite beaming with
satisfaction. "She was such a dear little thing when last I saw her;
so gentle, too,--like a small mouse."
"Oh, was she?" says the vicar, anxiously. "She is changed a little, I
think. To me she is rather terrifying. Now, for instance, this morning
at breakfast, she asked me, before the children, 'if I didn't find
writing sermons a bore.' And when I said--as I was in duty bound to
say, my dear Clarissa--that I did not, she laughed out quite merrily,
and said she 'didn't believe me'! Need I say the children were in
raptures? but I could have borne that, only, when Mrs. Redmond forsook
me and actually laughed too, I felt the end of all things was come.
Clarissa," (severely), "I do hope I don't see you laughing, too."
"Oh, no!--not--not much," says Miss Peyton, who is plainly enjoying
the situation to its utmost. "It is very hard on you, of course."
"Well, it is," says the vicar, with his broad and rather handsome
smile, that works such miracles in the parish and among the mining
people, who look upon him as their own special property. "It is
difficult for a man to hope to govern his own household when his
nearest and dearest turn him into open ridicule. Your little friend is
a witch. What shall we do with her?"
"Submit to her," says Clarissa. "Where is she? I want to see her."
"Cissy will find her for you. I dare say they are together, unless
your 'Madam Quicksilver,' as I call her, has taken to herself wings
and flown away."
He turns, as though to go with her.
"No, no," says Clarissa; "I shall easily find her by myself. Go, and
do what you meant to do before I stopped you."
Moving away from him, she enters the hall, and seeing a servant, is
conducted by her to a small room literally strewn with work of all
kinds. Books, too, lie here in profusion, and many pens, and numerous
bottles of ink, and a patriarchal sofa that never saw better days than
it sees now, when all the children prance over it, and love it, and
make much of it, as being their very own.
On this ancient, friend a tiny fairy-like girl is sitting, smiling
sweetly at Cissy Redmond, who is chattering to her gayly and is
plainly enchanted at having some one of her own age to converse with.
The fairy is very lovely, with red-gold hair, and large luminous blue
eyes, soft and dark, that can express all emotions, from deepest love
to bitterest scorn. Her nose is pure Greek; her lips are tender and
mobile; her skin is neither white nor brown, but clear and warm, and
somewhat destitute of color. Her small head is covered with masses of
wavy, luxuriant, disobedient hair, that shines in the light like
threads of living gold.
She is barely five feet in height, but is exquisitely moulded. Her
hands and feet are a study, her pretty rounded waist a happy dream.
She starts from the sofa to a standing position as Clarissa enters,
and, with a low, intense little cry, that seems to come direct from
her heart, runs to her and lays her arms gently round her neck.
Once again Clarissa finds herself in Brussels, with her chosen friend
beside her. She clasps Georgie in a warm embrace; and then Cissy
Redmond, who is a thoroughly good sort, goes out of the room, leaving
the new governess alone with her old companion.
"At last I see you," says Miss Broughton, moving back a little, and
leaning her hands on Clarissa's shoulders that she may the more easily
gaze at her. "I thought you would never come. All the morning I have
been waiting, and watching, and longing for you!"
Her voice is peculiar,--half childish, half petulant, and wholly
sweet. She is not crying, but great tears are standing in her eyes as
though eager to fall, and her lips are trembling.
"I didn't like to come earlier," says Clarissa, kissing her again. "It
is only twelve now, you know; but I was longing every bit as much to
see you as you could be to see me. Oh, Georgie, how glad I am to have
you near me! and----you have not changed a little scrap."
She says this in a relieved tone.
"Neither have you," says Georgie: "you are just the same. There is a
great comfort in that thought. If I had found you changed,--different
in any way,--what should I have done? I felt, when I saw you standing
tall and slight in the doorway, as if time had rolled back, and we
were together again at Madame Brochet's. Oh, how happy I was then!
And now----now----"
The big tears in her pathetic eyes tremble to their fall, she covers
her face with her hands.
"Tell me everything," says Clarissa, tenderly.
"What is there to tell?--except that I am alone in the world, and very
desolate. It is more than a year ago now since----since----papa left
me. It seems like a long century. At first I was apathetic; it was
despair I felt, I suppose; indeed, I was hardly conscious of the life
I was leading when with my aunt. Afterwards the reaction set in; then
came the sudden desire for change, the intense longing for work of any
kind; and then----"
"Then you thought of me!" says Clarissa, pressing her hand.
"That is true. Then I thought of you, and how ready your sympathy had
ever been. When--when he died, he left me a hundred pounds. It was all
he had to leave." She says this hastily, passionately, as though it
must be gone through, no matter how severe the pain that accompanies
the telling of it. Clarissa, understanding, draws even closer to her.
This gentle movement is enough. A heart, too full, breaks beneath
affection's touch. Georgie bursts into tears.
"It was all on earth he _had_ to give," she sobs, bitterly, "and I
think he must have _starved_ himself to leave me even that! Oh, shall
I ever forget?"
"In time," whispers Clarissa, gently. "Be patient: wait." Then, with a
sigh, "How sad for some this sweet world can be!"
"I gave my aunt forty pounds," goes on the fair-haired beauty, glad to
find somebody in whom she can safely confide and to whom her troubles
may be made known. "I gave it to her because I had lived with her some
time, and she was not kind to me, and so I felt I should pay her
something. And then I put a little white cross on _his_ grave before I
left him, lest he should think himself quite forgotten. It was all I
could do for him," concludes she, with another heavy sob that shakes
her slight frame.
Her heart seems broken! Clarissa, who by this time is dissolved in
tears, places her arms round her, and presses her lips to her cheek.
"Try, _try_ to be comforted," entreats she. "The world, they tell me,
is full of sorrow. Others have suffered, too. And nurse used to tell
me, long ago, that those who are unhappy in the beginning of their
lives are lucky ever after. Georgie, it may be so with you."
"It may," says Georgie, with a very faint smile; yet, somehow, she
feels comforted.
"Do you think you will be content here?" asks Clarissa, presently,
when some minutes have passed.
"I think so. I am sure of it. It is such a pretty place, and so unlike
the horrid little smoky town from which I have come, and to which"
(with a heavy sigh), "let us hope, I shall never return."
"Never do," says Clarissa giving her rich encouragement. "It is ever
so much nicer here." As she has never seen the smoky town in question,
this is a somewhat gratuitous remark. "And the children are quite
sweet, and very pretty; and the work won't be very much; and--and I am
only just, an easy walking-distance from you."
At this termination they both laugh.
Georgie seems to have forgotten her tears of a moment since, and her
passionate burst of grief. Her lovely face is smiling, radiant; her
lips are parted; her great blue eyes are shining. She is a warm
impulsive little creature, as prone to tears as to laughter, and with
a heart capable of knowing a love almost too deep for happiness, and
as surely capable of feeling a hatred strong and lasting.
The traces of her late emotion are still wet upon her cheeks. Perhaps
she knows it not, but, "like some dew-spangled flower, she shows more
lovely in her tears." She and Clarissa are a wonderful contrast.
Clarissa is slight and tall and calm; she, all life and brightness,
eager, excited, and unmindful of the end.
Cissy Redmond, at this juncture, summons up sufficient courage to open
the door and come in again. She ignores the fact of Georgie's red
eyes, and turns to Clarissa. She has Miss Peyton's small dog in her
arms,--the terrier, with the long and melancholy face, that goes by
the name of Bill.
"_Your_ dog," she says to Clarissa, "and such a pet. He has eaten
several legs off the tables, and all my fingers. His appetite is a
credit to him. How do you provide for him at Gowran? Do you have an
ox roasted whole occasionally, for his special benefit?"
"Oh, he is a worry," says Clarissa, penitently. "Billy, come here, you
little reprobate, and don't try to look as if you never did anything
bad in your life. Cissy, I wish you and Georgie and the children would
all come up to Gowran to-morrow."
"We begin lessons to-morrow," says the new governess, gravely, who
looks always so utterly and absurdly unlike a governess, or anything
but a baby or a water-pixie, with her yellow hair and her gentian
eyes. "It will be impossible for me to go."
"But lessons will be over at two o'clock," says Cissy, who likes going
to Gowran, and regards Clarissa as "a thing of beauty." "Why not walk
up afterwards?"
"I shall expect you," says Clarissa, with decision; and then the two
girls tell her they will go with her as far as the vicarage gate, as
she must now go home.
There she bids them good-by, and, passing through the gate, goes up
the road. Compelled to look back once again, by some power we all know
at times, she sees Georgie's small pale face pressed against the iron
bars, gazing after her, with eyes full of lonely longing.
"Good-by, Clarissa," she says, a little sad imploring cadence
desolating her voice.
"Until to-morrow" replies Clarissa, with an attempt at gayety, though
in reality the child's mournful face is oppressing her. Then she
touches the ponies lightly, and disappears up the road and round the
corner, with Bill, as preternaturally grave as usual, sitting bolt
upright beside her.
The next morning is soft and warm, and, indeed, almost sultry for the
time of year. Thin misty clouds, white and shadowy, enwrap the fields
and barren ghost-like trees and sweep across the distant hills. There
is a sound as of coming rain,--a rushing and a rustling in the naked
woods. "A still wild music is abroad," as though a storm is impending,
that shall rise at night and shake the land the more fiercely because
of its enforced silence all this day.
"But now, at noon,
Upon the southern side of the slant hill,
And where the woods fence off the northern blast
The season smiles, resigning all its rage,
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue,
Without a cloud: and white without a speck,
The dazzling splendor of the scene below."
The frost has gone, for the time being; no snow fell last night;
scarcely does the wind blow. If, indeed, "there is in souls a sympathy
with sounds," I fear Georgie and Cissy and the children must be
counted utterly soulless, as they fail to hear the sobbing of the
coming storm, but with gay voices and gayer laughter come merrily over
the road to Gowran. Upon the warm sullen air the children's tones ring
like sweet silver bells.
As they enter the gates of Gowran, the youngest child, Amy, runs to
the side of the new governess, and slips her hand through her arm.
"I am going to tell you about all the pretty things as we go along,"
she says, patronizingly yet half shyly, rubbing her cheek against Miss
Broughton's shoulder. She is a tall, slender child, and to do this has
to stoop a little. "You fairy," she goes on, admiringly, encouraged
perhaps by the fact that she is nearly as tall as her instructress,
"you are just like Hans Andersen's tales. I don't know why."
"Amy! Miss Broughton won't like you to speak to her like that," says
Cissy, coloring.
But Georgie laughs.
"I don't mind a bit," she says, giving the child's hand a reassuring
pressure. "I am accustomed to being called that, and, indeed, I rather
like it now. I suppose I _am_ very small. But" (turning anxiously to
Cissy, and speaking quite as shyly as the child Amy had spoken a
moment since) "there is a name to which I am not accustomed, and I
hate it. It is 'Miss Broughton.' Won't you call me 'Georgie?'"
"Oh, are you sure you won't mind?" says the lively Cissy, with a deep
and undisguised sigh of relief. "Well, that is a comfort! it is all I
can do to manage your name. You don't look a bit like a 'Miss
Anything,' you know, and 'Georgie' suits you down to the ground."
"Look, look! There is the tree where the fairies dance at night,"
cries Amy, eagerly, her little, thin, spiritual face lighting with
earnestness, pointing to a magnificent old oak-tree that stands apart
from all the others, and looks as though it has for centuries defied
time and storm and proved itself indeed "sole king of forests all."
"Every night the fairies have a ball there," says Amy, in perfect good
faith. "In spring there is a regular wreath of blue-bells all round
it, and they show where the 'good folks' tread."
"How I should like to see them!" says Georgie, gravely. I think, in
her secret soul, she is impressed by the child's solemnity, and would
prefer to believe in the fairies rather than otherwise.
"Well, _you_ ought to know all about them," says Amy, with a transient
but meaning smile: "you belong to them, don't you? Well" (dreamily),
"perhaps some night we shall go out hand in hand and meet them here,
and dance with them all the way to fairy-land."
"Miss Broughton,--there--through the trees! Do you see something
gleaming white?" asks Ethel, the eldest pupil. "Yes? Well, there, in
that spot, is a marble statue of a woman, and underneath her is a
spring. It went dry ever so many years ago, but when Clarissa's great
grandfather died the waters burst out again, and every one said the
statue was crying for him, he was so good and noble and so well
beloved."
"I think you might have let me tell that story," says Amy,
indignantly. "You knew I wanted to tell her that story."
"I didn't," with equal indignation; "and, besides, you told her about
the fairies' ball-room. I said nothing about that."
"Well, at all events," says Georgie, "they were two of the prettiest
stories I ever heard in my life. I don't know which was the prettier."
"Now, look at that tree," breaks in Amy, hurriedly, feeling it is
honestly her turn now, and fearing lest Ethel shall cut in before her.
"King Charles the Second spent the whole of one night in that
identical tree."
"Not the whole of it," puts in Ethel, unwisely.
"Now, I suppose this is my story, at all events," declares Amy,
angrily, "and I shall just tell it as I like."
"Poor King Charles!" says Georgie, with a laugh, "If we are to
believe all the stories we hear, half his lifetime must have been
spent 'up a tree.'"
A stone balcony runs before the front of the house. On it stands
Clarissa, as they approach, but, seeing them, she runs down the steps
and advances eagerly to meet them.
"Come in," she says. "How late you are! I thought you had proved
faithless and were not coming at all."
"Ah! what a lovely hall!" says Georgie, as they enter, stopping in a
childishly delighted fashion to gaze round her.
"It's nothing to the drawing-room: that is the most beautiful room in
the world," says the irrepressible Amy, who is in her glory, and who,
having secured the unwilling but thoroughly polite Bill, is holding
him in her arms and devouring him with unwelcome kisses.
"You shall see the whole house, presently," says Clarissa to Georgie,
"including the room I hold in reserve for you when these children have
driven you to desperation."
"That will be never," declares Amy, giving a final kiss to the
exhausted Billy. "We like her far too much, and always will, I know,
because nothing on earth could make me afraid of her!"
At this they all laugh. Georgie, I think, blushes a little; but even
the thought that she is not exactly all she ought to be as an orthodox
governess cannot control her sense of the ludicrous.
"Cissy, when is your father's concert to come off?" asks Clarissa,
presently.
"At once, I think. The old organ is unendurable. I do hope it will be
a success, as he has set his heart on getting a new one. But it is so
hard to make people attend. They will pay for their tickets, but they
won't come. And, after all, what the--the _others_ like, is to see the
county."
"Get Dorian Branscombe to help you. Nobody ever refuses him anything."
"Who is Dorian Branscombe?" asks Georgie, indifferently, more from
want of something to say than an actual desire to know.
"Dorian?" repeats Clarissa, as though surprised; and then, correcting
herself with a start, "I thought every one knew Dorian. But I forgot,
you are a stranger. He is a great friend of mine; he lives near this,
and you must like him."
"Every one likes him," says Cissy, cordially.
"Lucky he," says Georgie. "Is he your lover, Clarissa?"
"Oh, no,"--with a soft blush, born of the thought that if he is not
the rose he is very near to it. "He is only my friend, and a nephew of
Lord Sartoris."
"So great as that?"--with a faint grimace. "You crush me. I suppose he
will hardly deign to look at _me_?"
As she speaks see looks at herself in an opposite mirror, and smiles a
small coquettish smile that is full of innocent childish satisfaction,
as she marks the fair vision that is given back to her by the friendly
glass.
"I hope he won't look at you too much, for his own peace of mind,"
says Cissy, at which Clarissa laughs again; and then, the children
getting impatient, they all go out to see the pigeons and the gardens,
and stay lingering in the open air until afternoon tea is announced.