“What is it, Cousin John? Oh, I am in such a confusion——”
“Yes, you are in a great confuthion,” said John solemnly; and then he added after another pause, “if you should ever want anything down there,” pointing with his thumb vaguely over his shoulder, “write to me.”
“Oh, thank you, Cousin John; but we sha’n’t want anything, I hope. Oh, there’s the carriage,” Mary cried; “I hear it at last.”
John stood by gravely shaking his head, his mouth a little open, his moustache drooping. “Thingth are always wanted,” he said solemnly. “Write tome.”
Mary recounted this little incident to her husband after they had established themselves comfortably in the railway carriage, and had waved theirhands for the last time to the people assembled to bid them good-bye, and were dashing along over the country, a family detached and set afloat in the world, a new race setting forth to conquer the earth. A sort of atmosphere of excitement, of elation, of novelty, and enthusiasm was about them, so that they were a little sorry for the homelier people going about quietly, looking out of the windows of calm country houses, standing at cottage doors, all in their ordinary way. To be so far out of their ordinary way, in such a rush and whirl of unaccustomed sensation, seemed to them a superiority—an elevation such as the dwellers in every-day life might well be envious of. Mary told her husband about John, and they both laughed, in their superiority of happiness, at the awkward good fellow who had thought it right to make this overture, which it was so little likely they would ever take advantage of. Mary herself laughed, she could not help it: but she said “Don’t laugh at him, Harry; it was a kind thought, a little out of place, perhaps, but wemust not judge him by ordinary rules. He may be silly, but he is so kind. Don’t! It hurts me when you laugh at John;” but she laughed herself just a little, softly, under her breath.
“I am not laughing at him,” said the curate; “he is by far the best of the lot, and worth a dozen of that Percy you all make such a fuss about; but I don’t think you’ll write to him to ask his help—at least, I hope not.”
“Harry!” she said with indignation, as if the mere idea of wanting help at all, she his wife, and he the senior curate of St. John’s, Radcliffe, was a suggestion so ridiculous as almost to be an offence. And in this spirit they pursued their happy journey across England to the other side of the kingdom, with, not their flocks and herds, like the patriarchs, but what comes to the same thing, their furniture and their boxes and their children, to settle down in the well-watered plain, in the land flowing with milk and honey, in which their career and their surroundings were to be all their own.
I cannot follow all the details of their history step by step. St. John’s, Radcliffe, did not turn out to be paradise, nor did Mary find boundless capabilities in two hundred and fifty pounds a year. After the first twelvemonth, the cares of life began again to make themselves felt, and fatigue and occasional low spirits chequered their career which nevertheless they still felt to be a fine career. They stayed six years altogether in this place, and left it for what was supposed to be a much better position, with an increased number of children and considerable cheerfulness, though not perhaps with the same elation which had characterised their first setting out. The second post the curate obtained was that oflocum tenensto an invalid rector, and hopes were expressed, that in case of good service, if the rector should die, the patron’s choice would most probably fall upon the temporary incumbent. The prospect was delightful, though sufficiently tempered by doubt to make Mr. Asquith hesitate about relinquishing St. John’s. But then it is an understoodthing that curates should not consider themselves permanent incumbents; and there were evidences that the rector would like a change, though he would not send so deserving a man with so large a family away. The way the family went on increasing was wonderful, was almost criminal, some people said. Only poor people, and poor clergymen above all, permitted themselves such expansion; and what was to become of all those helpless little things, spectators asked who never attempted to solve their own question. Nevertheless, they got on somehow as large families do. Mary had always a smile and thanksgiving for every new-comer, considering it as a gift of God, and thinking it hard that the poor little intruder should not have a welcome. And that, I confess, is my idea too, though it is a little out of fashion. But life was not much of a holiday under such circumstances, as will be easily understood; and Mary learnt a great many lessons, and went on learning, and had to contradict herself and change her mind over and over again as the years wenton. She had begun bravely to write every week, as her aunt charged her; but gradually that good habit had fallen into disuse; and as the Asquiths moved from one place to another, they lost sight of their relations, hearing from them only once in a way, when anything remarkable happened, and at last coming to the pitch that they never heard at all. In sixteen years, which is the time at which I take up my curate and his Mary in their daily life again, a great many things had happened. “The girls” at Horton had both married, one a Frenchman, who took her to live abroad; another an officer in India. The old people at the Hall were both dead. Uncle Hugh was an invalid, living mostly in Italy for his health. And all that belonged to Mary’s youthful life had fallen out of sight. This was the state of affairs in the curate’s house, when Hetty, the eldest girl, the best child that ever was born, reached her sixteenth birthday: a day which was celebrated by a proposal at once exciting, fortunate, and painful, as shall be now set forth.
HETTY was sixteen that day. There were nine younger than she was. When these words are said, coupled with the fact already told that Hetty was the best child that ever was born, they may not throw much light upon her character—and yet they will show with tolerable distinctness what her external position was. She was the best little nurse, the best housemaid, the most handy needle-woman, the most careful little housekeeper in all Summerfield, which, as everybody knows, is a suburb of the great town of Rollinstock, in the middle of England. She could make beef-tea and a number of little invalid dishes, better, and more quickly and more neatly,than any one else that ever was known, for, naturally, her mother was often in a condition to want a little care; and the children had every childish malady under the sun, all of them together, in the most friendly, comfortable way, and never were any the worse. Something defended them which does not defend little groups of two or three in richer nurseries. They sickened and got well again, as a matter of course, whenever there was any youthful epidemic about. They were altogether quite an old-fashioned family, having all the complaints that children ought to have, but remaining impervious to all the imperfections of drainage and all the dangers of brain exhaustion. Their blood was never poisoned, nor their nerves shattered. They got ill and got well again, as children used to do in old days. And Hetty, without ever setting foot in a hospital or having any instruction, was one of those heaven-born little nurses who used to flourish in novels and poetry, and who, as a matter of fact, were found in many families in those days whenit was the fashion to believe that it was a woman’s first duty to serve and care for those who were her own. Hetty was not aware of any individual existence of hers apart from her family. They were all one, and she was the eldest, which is a fact confusing, perhaps, to the arithmetical faculties, but quite easy to the heart.
The family, by this time, was at its fourth or fifth removal. Mr. Asquith had not got the living when the invalid rector died to whom he waslocum tenens; and if his heart ever grew sick of his toils and poorly rewarded labour, it was at the moment when the family had to turn out of the nice old-fashioned rectory which they had been allowed to occupy during that period of expectation. For one moment the curate had asked himself what was the use of it all, and had said, in the bitterness of his heart, that his work never had time to come to anything, and that all the fond hopes of doing good, and bettering the poor, and helping the weak, with which he had set out in life, had come to nought. Women areperhaps not so apt to come to such a conclusion, and though Mary was aware, too, of many a defeat and downfall, she did her best to console him. “And then there are the children,” she said. The poor man, at that moment, felt that the children were the last aggravation of his trouble, so many helpless creatures to be dragged after him wherever he had to go. He looked at the hand which his wife had put upon his to comfort him. What a pretty hand it had once been! and now how scarred and marked with work, its pretty whiteness gone, its texture spoiled, the forefinger half sewed away, the very shape of it, once so taper and delicate, lost. “Oh,” he said, “what a hard life I have brought upon you, Mary! To think if I had only had more command of myself, you might never have known any trouble!”
Mary replied with a shriek, “Do you mean if we had never married? I think you have gone out of your senses, Harry.”
“I think I almost have, with trouble,” said thepoor man. And yet, after all, his trouble was not half hers. It was she who had to bear the children, and nurse them, and have all the fatigue of them; it was she who had to scheme about the boys’ shoes and their schooling, and how to get warm things for the winter, and to meet the butchers and bakers when they came to suggest that they had heavy payments to make: and to bear all these burdens with a smile, lestheshould break down. When she had sent him out, frightened into better spirits by the ridiculous absurdity of the suggestion that they might never have married (which was much the same as saying that this world might never have been created; and that, no doubt, would have saved a great deal of trouble), Mary made her little explosion in her turn. “It is much papa knows!” she cried. “I wonder if he had our work for a day or two what he would think of it. And now we shall have to pack into a small house again, where he can have no quiet room for his study. Oh, Hetty, what shall we do? What shall we do?”
Hetty kissed her mother, with soft arms round her neck. “We must just do the best we can, mamma,” Twelve-years-old said, “and don’t you notice nothing turns out so bad as it seems?” added the little philosopher. Hetty, like her mother before her, had a wholesome love of change, and a persistent hope in the unknown. And on the whole, barring their little breakings down, they all appeared with quite cheerful faces in their new place; and life turned out always to be livable wherever they went. The spectacle of their existence was a much more wonderful one to spectators than to themselves; for the lookers-on did not know the alleviations, the dear love among them, which was always sweet, the play of the children, which was never kept under by any misfortune, the household jests and pleasantries. They got a joke even out of the visits of the butcher and baker, those awful demands which it was so difficult to meet, and called the taxman Mr. Lillyvick, and made fun of the coal-merchant. And then, somehow or other, the kind heavensonly knew how, everybody was paid in the long run, and life was never unsweet.
And now Hetty was sixteen. She was growing out of the lankness of early girlhood into a pretty creature—pretty with youth, and sweetness, and self-unconsciousness, and that exquisite purity of innocence which does not know what evil is. I am not aware that she had a single feature worth any one’s notice. Her eyes were as clear as two little stars, but so are most eyes at sixteen. She was not what her mother had been, but rather what all good mothers would wish their children to be: something a little more than her mother, mounted upon the stepping-stone of Mary’s cheerful troubled existence to the next grade, with something in her Mary had not, perhaps got from her father, perhaps, what I think most likely, straight out of heaven. Mary had not been at all afraid of life, out of sweet ignorance and want of thought; but Hetty knew it, and was not afraid. She had her dreams, like every creature of her age, her thoughts of what she would do and bewhen her hour came; but they never involved the winning of anything, save perhaps rest and comfort for those she loved. To Hetty life was a very serious thing. She knew nothing at all of its pleasures,—probably the defect in her, if she had a defect (and she must have had, for everybody has), was that she despised these pleasures. When she read in her story-books of girls whose dreams were of balls and triumphs, and who were angry with fate and the world when they did not obtain their share of these delights, Hetty would throw back her head with disdain. “I am sure girls are not like that,” she would say.
“Oh yes, Hetty, girls are like that!” Mary would reply. “I remember crying my eyes out because Anna and Sophie went to the hunt ball without me.”
This would generally lead to recollections of the house which Mary now called, with a sigh, “my dear old home,” and of all the Prescotts, “the girls,” and dashing Percy, and “kind old John.” The children had all heard of Cousin John: howhis eyeglass was always dropping from his eye (so well known was this trait in the family that little Johnny had got into the trick of it, and would stick a piece of paste-board in his little eye, which when it fell always produced a laugh), and his light moustache drooping at the corners, and his lisp, and how he said “Write to me,” if anything was ever wanted.
“And did you ever write to him, mamma?” the children would cry. And then Mary would explain that she had never written so often as she ought, and impress the lesson upon them always to keep on writing when they might happen to be away, or they were sure to be sorry for it afterwards. “But did you write when you wanted anything?” said Janey, the second daughter, who was very inquisitive.
“No, of course mother didn’t. As if we were going to take things from relations, like the Browns!” cried Harry, with a flush of scorn. Harry was a very proud boy, who suffered by reason of the short sleeves of his jacket and theshort legs of his trousers, as none of the rest did. Mary shook her head at this, and said there was nothing wrong in taking things from relations when they were kind.
“But I never did,” she said. “Sometimes I have thought I ought to have done it; but I never did. He married, and I never heard anything of him afterwards, andshewas a stranger to me. It was that chiefly that kept me back. I have not heard anything of him for about a dozen years. And whether he has sold Horton, or what has become of it, I don’t know. It is such a wrong thing not to write,” she said, returning to her moral; “be sure you always keep up the habit of writing whenever you go away.”
This, however, has kept us a long time from Hetty’s birthday. Mr. Asquith had quite recently settled at Summerfield, the western suburb of Rollinstock, at the time when Hetty completed her sixteenth year. I say settled, for it was only now that our curate ceased to be a curate, and became, not, alas! rector or vicar, but incumbentof the new district church lately built in that flourishing place. It was a flourishing church also, and everything promised well; but as the endowment was very small, and the incumbent’s income was dependent upon a precarious addition of pew-seats, offertories, etc., it was not a very handsome one for the moment, though promising better things to come. And the fact that he was independent, subject to no superior in his own parish, was sweet to a man who had been under orders so long. This beginning was very hopeful in every way. And Mr. Asquith had the character of being a very fine preacher, likely to bring all the more intellectual residents of the place, the great railway people—for the town was quite the centre of an immense railway system—and all the engineers and persons who thought something of themselves, to his church. This prospect encouraged them all, though perhaps the income was not very much better than that of a curacy. And there were good schools for the boys. The one thing that Mary sighed after was somethingof the higher education, of which everybody talks nowadays, for Hetty. But perhaps it is wrong to call it the higher education. No Greek nor even Latin did Mary desire for her daughter—these things were incompatible with her other duties—but a little music, a little of what had been called accomplishments in Mary’s own day! In all likelihood these things would have done Hetty no manner of good,—no, nor the Latin either, nor even Greek. There are some people to whom education, in the common sense of the word, is unnecessary. But Mary had a mother’s little vanity for her child. Hetty was but a poor performer on the piano; and her mother thought she had a great deal of taste, if it could but be cultivated. But music lessons are dear, especially in a town where rich mercantile folk abound. Alas! the boys’ education was a necessity; the girls had to go to the wall.
The schoolroom tea was a very magnificent meal on Hetty’s birthday. Sixteen seemed a great age to the children. It was as if she had attainedher majority. Mary had got her a new white frock for the occasionmade long. It was her first long dress, her toga, her robe of womanhood. And there was a huge cake, largely frosted over with sugar, if not very rich inside, out of regard for the digestion of the little ones. And they were all as happy over this tea as if it had been a sumptuous meal, with champagne flowing. They had not finished when Mr. Rossmore was announced, who was the Vicar of Rollinstock and a great personage. Mr. Rossmore was very kind; he was fond of children, and liked, as he said, to see them happy. And he sent a message from the drawing-room (in which there were still lingerings of the old Horton furniture), into which he had been ushered solemnly, to ask if he might be allowed to share the delights of the children’s tea. He looked round upon them all with eyes in which there were regrets (for he was that strange thing a clergyman without any children of his own), and at the same time that wonder, which is so general with the spectators of such asight, how it was that they could be happy on so little, and how the parents could look so lighthearted with such a burden on their shoulders—ten children, and the eldest sixteen to-day!
“It is very appropriate that it should be Miss Hetty’s little fête,” said Mr. Rossmore, “for it is to her, or at least to you about her, that my visit really is intended.”
“To Hetty!” her mother cried, with a voice which was half astonishment and half dismay, Mr. Rossmore was a widower, and the horrible thought crossed Mary’s mind, Could he have fallen in love with the child? could he mean to propose to her? Awful thought! A man of fifty! She looked at him with alarmed eyes.
“For Hetty?” said Mr. Asquith tranquilly. He thought of parish work, of schools, or some of the minor charities, in which the Vicar might wish Hetty to take a part. And the children, feeling in the midst of their rejoicings that something grave had suddenly come in, looked up with round eyes. Janey edged to the end of thetable to listen; for whatever was going on, Janey was always determined to know.
“Perhaps,” said Mary tremulously, “it would be better to bring Mr. Rossmore his cup of tea to the drawing-room, now that he has seen you all in the midst of your revels. For this noise is enough to make any one deaf who is not used to it, like papa and me.”
THEY all sat down solemnly upon the old chairs, in their faded paint and gilding, with their old seats in fine embroidered work, which had been so handsome in their day, and still breathed of grandparents and an ancestral home. The Asquiths’ drawing-room had always been rather heterogeneous, with some things in it which money could not buy, and which they thought very little of, and some that were to be had cheap anywhere, for which, having acquired them by the sweat of their brow, they cared a great deal. They did not remark these contrarieties, having so many other things to think of, but Mr. Rossmore did, and wondered how certain articles came tobe there, sometimes asking himself how people with so many graceful old things about them could endure the vulgar new, sometimes what right the purchasers of the vulgar new could have to that beautiful old. He did not know anything about their history, but only that they had a very large family of nice children, and were in consequence poor. They did not themselves say much of their poverty, but the people about did, the chief people in the parish, and especially the district ladies, who were disturbed by it, and wondered, not inaudibly, whether it was possible for the poor Asquiths to give so many children enough to eat. It was this inquiry, very much urged upon him, that had brought Mr. Rossmore here to-day.
He was seized with a little timidity when he began to speak. Something in Mary’s look, he could not have told what, an air of dignity, a half-alarm lest something should be said to her which should be unpalatable or offensive, caught and startled him. He could see that the poor incumbent’s wife was afraid of being affronted or put in an uncomfortable position by what he was about to say: and in the little gleam of light that thus seemed to fall upon her, Mr. Rossmore began to perceive something more in Mrs. Asquith than the mere parson’s wife, with a large family, accustomed to all the shifts of poverty. He became in his turn a little alarmed and nervous, wondering if he should offend them, wondering if——. But he reflected that no reasonable person could have any right to be offended with such a proposal as that he was about to make, and further, that if the Asquiths preferred their pride to the real interests of their children, it was a very poor sort of pride, and not one to be respected. He took courage accordingly, and cleared his throat.
“I hope you will not think what I am going to say impertinent, Mrs. Asquith. I hope I may not be making a mistake. If I am, I am sure I may throw myself on your charity to forgive me—for I mean anything but offence.”
“Offence!” said Mr. Asquith. “I am certainof that: and my wife is not a touchy person to take offence.”
“I will tell you what it is without more ado,” Mr. Rossmore said. “I don’t know the people myself, but my brother, who has had to do with the lady in the way of business, has written to me about it. I may be making a mistake,” he repeated. “Perhaps you have no such intentions for your children. Miss Hetty perhaps——. But I must tell you what it is. Mrs. Asquith”—he faced towards Mary, for it was of her that he was afraid—“there is a young lady wanted to be with a child in the country—oh, not as a governess: dear me, no, not the least in the world as a governess. This is what it is. There is a little girl in the country, a great heiress, I believe, a little delicate—not queer—no, I don’t think she is at all queer. She has a governess with her, an excellent person, very accomplished, a good musician, and speaking all the languages. What they want is a young lady a little older, but not too old to be a companion to the child, whowould share all her lessons, and get every advantage, and a salary besides of fifty pounds a year. It is quite an unusual offer, quite a prize for any one who could accept it. I hope, Mrs. Asquith, that you will not think I am taking too much upon me. I thought if you ever contemplated—if, in short, you had thought of—of school or finishing lessons or anything of that sort——”
“Why should you apologise? You are making us the kindest offer. Mary, surely you must feel with me that Mr. Rossmore——”
“I am sure you are very kind,” cried Mary, “oh, very kind; nothing could be more kind.” There was a little confusion about her, as if she had received a blow: and she was flushed and uneasy. It was something of a shock. To think of Hetty going—to a situation: going—to be somebody’s companion! It gave Mary a little sick shock at her heart. But she was a sensible woman, and she had not come thus far on the path of life without learning that pride was a thing to be put at once under the foot of themother of a family. She regained after a moment entire possession of herself. “It is a little startling to think of Hetty, such a child as she is, going away, earning money,” she said, with a quiver of a smile. “It seems so strange, for a girl too. And to lose her out of the house will be something, something——. But, Mr. Rossmore, you are very, very kind. I take it as the greatest kindness. It sounds as if it might be—the very thing for Hetty. Harry, don’t you think——”
What with the sudden shock and all the complications of feeling involved, Mrs. Asquith had hard ado not to cry. She laughed a little instead, and looked towards her husband. It was the first time it had ever been suggested to her that her children were not to be always at her side. Mr. Asquith divined a good deal, but not all, that was in her mind.
“My dear,” he said, “you are the only person to decide such a matter. Nobody ever understands a girl like her mother. You were anxiousabout her music, and that she should learn something. To me it seems a wonderful chance, but it is you who must be the judge. Hetty,” he said, turning to his brother clergyman with a smile, “is part of herself.”
“I can well imagine that; one can see what she is; that is why I came here at once, for if it does not shock you to think of a separation at all, itisa wonderful chance. I never heard in my experience of anything better. The little girl is only ten, but very forward for her age; and Miss Hetty is so used to children.”
“And to get all we want for her, and be paid into the bargain;” cried Mary, with a nervous laugh. “We are very much obliged to you, Mr. Rossmore. I am sure Hetty will not hesitate for a moment; and neither do I.”
“And where is this wonderful child?” said Mr. Asquith, “and why is she in want of a companion? and where does she live?”
“I don’t know the whole story. My brother is in the law. All sorts of romances seem to comeinto his hands. So far as I can make out, both parents are living, the father mad, shut up in a lunatic asylum; the mother, who has all the money, is abroad. I fancy she’s an American, smitten with the love of an old family and an old house.”
“It is an old family, then, and an old house.”
“They say, one of the most perfect specimens of an old English house, a long way off, though—in Redcornshire—a place called Horton.”
Mary uttered a cry. She had thought somehow, she could not tell how, that this name was coming. Mr. Asquith, too, cried, “Horton!” with the wildest amazement, for no presentiment had visited his breast.
“You know the place?” their visitor said.
Mary gave her husband a warning look.
“We knew it very well in our youth, oh, very well. It is startling to hear of it so suddenly. And what is the name of the people who are there now? It is long, long since I have heard.”
“Their name is Rotherham,” said Mr. Rossmore.
Mary gave her husband once more a look—of mingled relief and disappointment. And then it was decided that Hetty should be called in to hear what she thought of it, and then that Mr. Rossmore should write to his brother the lawyer to say that the wished-for girl had been found. It was all over so quickly, before any one could realise what had taken place. Hetty on being questioned had looked at her mother, and said, “If you can do without me, mamma,” with a flush of sudden excitement. She had not hesitated or expressed any alarm. For even Hetty was not impervious to that charm of novelty which is so delightful to youth. There rushed into her young soul all at once a desire to go out to these fresh fields and pastures new, to see the world, to judge for herself what life was like; and then there was the delightful thought that to her, Hetty, only a girl, whom nobody had thought of in that light, should come the privilege—to her the first of all the family—of earning money, of helping at home. Hetty’s dreams had taken thatshape almost from her childhood, though she had never known how they were to be carried out. Her little romance had been to pay all the bills secretly, so that mamma, when she set out on that hard task of apportioning so much to each, should find, to her amazement, that all had been settled! She had told this dream to Janey, and the two had discussed it often, but never had hit upon a way in which it could be done. Hetty had thought she might perhaps have done it by writing stories, but her first attempt in that way had not been a success. And the girls had generally ended by dwelling on mamma’s wonder and joy when she found all the bills paid, and the unusual happiness that would succeed of having a little money and nothing to do with it, and being able to buy a hundred things which at present they had to do without. But now fifty pounds a year! Hetty, it must be allowed, did not take “the advantages” upon which Mr. Rossmore had laid so much stress, and which had been her mother’s inducement, much into account.She was not enthusiastic about the lessons. To play the piano better would be pleasant, but it was evident she was not a musician born, for she was without enthusiasm even about that. What she did think of was the glory of being able to help and the pleasure of the novelty: a sensation intensified by feeling, by the thrill of going out into the world like a girl in a novel, and tempered by a sinking of heart which would come upon her when she thought of going away. But at sixteen it is quite possible to get the good of the anticipated novelty and the sensation of going out upon the world, and yet forget the preliminary step, which notwithstanding is of the first necessity, of going away.
The arrangements were not long of being completed. It appeared that little Miss Rotherham lived something of a cloistered life in the great old house. Her mother was away at the other end of the world, and had business or something else to enforce her absence for a year or more, during which time her little girl was under veryclose regulations. She was not to go outside of the park, except now and then for a drive. She was never to be left alone. If Miss Hofland, the governess, was off duty, her young companion was to be with her, and no visitors or any communication from without were to be allowed. “Extraordinary precautions to be adopted for a child of ten,” Mr. Rossmore said. “My brother says there are sufficient family reasons, but does not explain. Except this mystery, I don’t know that there is anything to find fault with. The mother is an American. I don’t know that this fact affords any explanation. Still their manners are a little different from ours.”
“Not in the way of shutting up their children,” said Mr. Asquith thoughtfully.
Said Mary, “These regulations don’t trouble me. A child of ten is best at home. There is plenty of room for her to walk and play in the park, oh, plenty. You remember, Harry——” There is no telling what recollections might have been called up had not Mr. Rossmore’s presencechecked them. She paused a little, musing, excited, seeing before her every glade and hollow. “Perhaps the lady is a woman with a system,” she said. “She may have some plan of her own for making children perfect. I wonder if Mr. Rossmore knows, Harry—if he knows whether she is related to the old family?”
Mary did not know why it was that she made this inquiry timidly through her husband, as it were at secondhand, instead of inquiring simply as otherwise she should have done. Mr. Rossmore could give no answer to the question. He knew nothing about the Prescotts. And it was so long since they had heard anything, and so much may happen in a dozen years. She said nothing of her relationship, nor that it was her home to which the child was thus going as a stranger. If all were strangers there now, what did it matter? To think that the family had thus disappeared out of Horton gave her a pang. Rotherham? She had never once heard the name before. They must be entirely strangers,foreigners, not even belonging to the neighbourhood. Since the old race had died away, perhaps it was better that it should be so. And it was just as well for Hetty that, since she was going to Horton, she should be kept in this almost monastic seclusion. For Asquith is not a common name, and people might inquire and insist on knowing who Miss Asquith was. It was better, certainly better, that Hetty should not run the risk of cross-examination from old friends. All things were for the best. And, after all, it was only for a year.
Only for a year! While it was a month off, Hetty thought a year nothing at all. She was even conscious of a thrill of eagerness to meet it, a desire to hurry on the time. A year in a romantic old house, in a sort of mediæval retirement, shut in like a princess in a fairy tale! She almost longed to feel the solitude encircle her, the wind blowing among the trees, which was the only sound she should hear. But as the time of her departure approached, Hetty began to changeher mind, and the time of her absence to draw out and become larger and larger, till it took the proportions of a century. “They will be quite grown up before I come home,” she said to Mary, bending over the curly heads of the two youngest, as they lay in their little cribs side by side: and it took all Hetty’s power of self-control to prevent her from bedewing the pillows with her tears. Janey said all she could to comfort the exile. “I wish it was me,” Janey cried, whose eyes were dancing with eagerness. “Oh, I wish it was me!” The one dreadful thing, however, which made even Janey acknowledge a pang, was that in four months it would be Christmas, and Hetty would not be able to come home. What kind of Christmas could be possible without Hetty? and oh, what would Hetty do alone, with nobody but a strange little girl of ten and a governess, all by herself on Christmas Day?
“YOU will be sure to write regularly, Hetty, twice a week at the least? You must not forget; you must never forget.”
“Oh, never, mamma!” cried poor Hetty, with a quiver in her voice.
“And try if you can hear something about Cousin John. The clergyman is sure to know. Don’t ask right out, but try what you can discover. You can say that your mother knew that part of the country, and that you had heard of the Prescotts. Oh, how careless it was of me not to keep on writing! You must be very regular, Hetty—twice a week, at the very least.”
“I shall not forget, mamma.”
Hetty’s poor little face was very pale; her lips were trembling. The family had come, all but the very little ones, to the railway to see her off. But the boys were amused with the locomotive, and the girls with looking at the people; and Hetty felt herself forgotten already. What would it be when she was really away?
And then she relapsed into a spasm of weeping when the inevitable moment came, and the train got into motion. Poor little Hetty! They would all go back, go home, and the business of every day would go on as before, while she was flying away into the unknown, with that clang and wild tumult of sound. Hetty thought she had never realised what a railway journey was before, the clang as of giants’ hoofs going, the rush and sweep through the air, as if impelled by some horrible force that could not be appealed to to stop, or made to understand that you wanted to get out, to get out and go back again! This was the first thought of her little scared soul. Horses with a man driving could be made to stop, butthis engine never: and what if it should go on, on, to the end of the world? It seemed so likely, so probable that it might do so, in the first dreadful sense of the unescapable which overwhelmed the girl’s mind. Of course when she came to herself she was a quite reasonable little girl, and knew that this could not be so, and that, as exactly as is in human possibility, the train would arrive at Horton station, where she was bound, after stopping at many other stations on the way. And presently Hetty dried her eyes, and began to look at the country; and things went a little better with her, until she had another fit of panic and horror at the end of her journey, when she stepped out, trembling, all alone, and saw, half with terror, half with pride, the brougham waiting which was to carry her, behind two sleek and shining horses, in all the glory of a “private carriage” (a thing Hetty knew nothing of), to Horton. She had been driven to the station, she was aware, in the Horton carriage when she went away, a baby, with her parents, and this knowledge—for it was not a recollection—made everything seem all the stranger. It was her mother’s home she was going to, and yet such a strange, unknown place.
It seemed to Hetty as if she had known it all her life when the old house came into view. The two wings were a story lower than the centre of the house, which rose into a high roof, with mansard windows rising over the stone parapet; from the east wing the ground sloped away, leaving a rather steep bank of velvet lawn; the other was level with the flower-garden, and seemed partially inhabited. But the lower windows on the west side were all blank and closely shuttered. That was the picture-gallery, Hetty knew, raising its row of long windows above. She wondered if it still was as mamma had so often described it, with the Prescotts’ pictures all stately on the walls, her own ancestors, Hetty’s ancestors, though nobody knew. The carriage drove up to the door, which did not stand open now, as it had done in mamma’s time; only a large person, in ablack silk gown, came out, with a not very amiable look, to receive Hetty. “Oh, it’s only the young lady,” she said, with a slight toss of her head, and bade an attendant maid look after the little box and bag which contained the girl’s modest requirements. Then, with a wave of her hand, this grand personage bade Hetty follow, and led her through the hall and a long passage to a bright room behind, looking out upon the trimmest of artificial gardens, all cut out in flower-beds, and still blazing with colour, red geraniums and yellow calceolarias and asters in all colours, though it was October. The colour and the light almost dazzled Hetty, after the cool, subdued tones of the hall. Here a little girl, with her hair in a flood over her shoulders—dark hair, very muchcrêpé—sat at the piano, with a tall and slim figure, on which from top to toe the word “governess” seemed written, seated beside her. The child went on playing like a little automaton; but the lady rose when Hetty came timidly in, following the housekeeper. “Here’s the younglady, Miss Hofland,” that personage said, with little ceremony, and turned away without another word. Miss Hofland was very thin, very gentle, with a slightly deprecating air. She put out her hand to Hetty, and gave her an emphatic grasp, which seemed to mean an exhortation to silence as well as a greeting. “How do you do? Rhoda’s at her lesson,” she said in a half-whisper, signing to the girl to sit down, which Hetty, breathless with the oppressive sense of novelty and strangeness, was very glad to do. She sat down feeling as if she had fallen out of a different planet, out of another world, while the little girl went on playing her exercises, with the “One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,” of the governess’s half-whispering voice. What a curious scene it was! Hetty had time to note everything in the room, and to take in the red and yellow and blue of the flower-beds outside, and the pictures on the walls, and the trifles on the table, while the stumbling sound of the piano, now checked to have a passage played over again, now pounding
“‘HOW DO YOU DO, MISS ASQUITH?’”(p. 201.)
“‘HOW DO YOU DO, MISS ASQUITH?’”(p. 201.)
“‘HOW DO YOU DO, MISS ASQUITH?’”(p. 201.)
monotonously with that “One, two, three,” went on and on. Little Miss Rotherham’s hair was very dark, very much crimped, and standing out in a bush, very unlike the natural fair locks of the children at home. She was about the same size as little Mary, Hetty said to herself, but Mary played better, though she had never had any lessons, and her hair was so soft, falling with just a soft twist in it, which was natural. But oh, how much happier Mary must be with all her brothers and sisters. Hetty ended by saying, “Poor little thing!” to herself quite softly as the lesson went on.
When Rhoda got up from her lesson, she came, instructed by the governess, and gave Hetty her hand, and said, “How do you do, Miss Asquith?” She had a little dark face, quite in keeping with her dark hair, and a small person, very slight and straight, not round and plump, as the Asquiths were at that age. Hetty, who, by reason of her large family was truly maternal in her way, and knew all about children,regretted instinctively that this little thing was so thin, and wondered if she were delicate, or if she were getting better of something, which might account for it. At the same moment a footman brought in tea—a footman in livery, who seemed to Hetty’s unaccustomed eyes grotesque and out of place—and then the three proceeded to make acquaintance over their bread-and-butter.
“You have had rather a long journey. I fear you must be very tired,” the governess said.
“Oh no,” said Hetty. “It is not like walking. In the railway there is nothing to tire one.”
“Don’t you think so? But perhaps you have had a great deal of travelling?”
“I never,” said Hetty, the tears coming to her eyes, “was away from home before.”
“That is always rather a trial,” said Miss Hofland, sympathetically, “but I hope you’ll soon feel quite at home with Rhoda and me. We are all that is here, nothing but Rhoda and me, and the servants of course. We lead a very quiet life, but you heard of that, no doubt. We takeour walk in the park, and we pay great attention to our lessons, oh, great attention, Miss Asquith. We are working very hard in order to astonish mamma when she comes back. We think that when she sees the progress that has been made, she will be very much pleased.”
At this Rhoda lifted up a somewhat sharp little voice, and declared that she did not think mamma cared.
“Oh, how can you say so, my dear child? No one knows how much mothers care. Perhaps they may not say so to their little girls, but it is the first wish of their hearts to see their children get on. Isn’t that so, Miss Asquith? I am sure you know.”
“It is mamma’s first wish—oh, to have everything she can for the children,” cried Hetty, the tears, which were so very near her eyes, coming again.
“I told you so, Rhoda,” said Miss Hofland, with a little air of triumph.
Rhoda made no reply. Her soul apparentlywas filled with no thought but bread-and-butter. There was a precocious gravity and stiffness about her which half frightened Hetty. It appeared that it was Miss Hofland who was the nearest her own age, while Rhoda was years beyond them both in seriousness, learned in all the cares of earth. This impression did not diminish for the first week of Hetty’s sojourn at Horton. Familiarity dispelled it a little afterwards, and made her perceive that the child’s gravity was one of the many marks of shyness, and that the nature beneath was, after all, like child-nature in general, thoughtless and changeable, varying to natural gaiety when the sense of strangeness was overcome. But still there was a shadow upon the little face which not even shyness could account for. This was partly physical, for the little girl had immense dark eyes, with long eyelashes, which overshadowed her little countenance, and partly mental, as if some cloud hung over her, unknown to the rest of the world. It was not till Hetty had grown familiar with thestrange secluded life of the place that she knew anything more. It was a very strange life, the house full of servants, the imperious housekeeper managing everything as if no one but herself had to be consulted, and the three simple feminine creatures for whom, so far as appeared, all this costly household existed, living in their little spot of space—the morning room, which opened on the garden; the spare, nicely furnished place in which they dined; the set of bedrooms on the same side of the house—all these rooms were on the ground floor, one opening into another. Between Hetty’s room and that of Miss Hofland ran a passage, but this was the only division. Rhoda’s maid slept in the room beyond Hetty’s. They were thus altogether separated from the rest of the house. And so far as the bright tints of a cheerful garden could give animation, everything in their outlook was bright. Their sitting-room communicated with a conservatory. They had flowers in abundance, an aviary of birds among the flowers, and everything sweet and gracefulabout them. They were like princesses living in an enchanted garden, their little meals exquisitely cooked and served by the same magnificent man in livery, wonderful hothouse fruits always produced for their dessert. To Hetty the wealth seemed boundless that surrounded her. Was this, she wondered, how country houses were always kept up? Mamma had said the Prescotts were poor. To be sure, the Prescotts were here no longer. “But what a change,” she said to herself, “what a wonderful change for mamma, from Horton to that little house at home, overflowing with children. Oh, what a change!” Hetty did not remember that the children had come by degrees, and that gradually the sphere of existence and all its motives had changed for Mary. The wide greenness of the park, the giant trees, the pushing aside, as it were, of the world, so that breathing space and quiet might be secured for those favourites of fortune, produced a great effect upon Hetty. And to think that her mother had been brought up amid those shadyglades and wide stretches of tranquil greenness! “Oh,” thought Hetty, “what would she give only to have permission to walk in such a park with the children now?”
When she had become quite familiar with this strange life, and had begun to feel herself, as people say, “at home,” although it was so different, so very different, so much worse and better than home, Hetty acquired various scraps of information about the strange household. There were never any visitors at Horton except the doctor and the clergyman, the former a young man, very grave and sedate in appearance, who appeared frequently at the house, and was constantly met by the little party in their walks in the park, when he seemed to be going or coming from the Hall, but always stopped to explain that he was on his way to some distant place, and had taken advantage of the permission he had to take the short cut across the park. The clergyman, on the other hand, was old and very cheerful, a gay little white-haired old man, who took tea aboutonce a week with Miss Hofland and her charges, and whose visits were their brightest moments, Mr. Hayman, the rector, was always gay; the young doctor, whose name was Darrell, was always serious. Except these two, nobody ever came to the house. This roused little questions in the mind of Hetty, who was young enough to accept whatever happened as the common order of affairs. And it was only when Miss Hofland took the girl into her confidence that any question arose in her mind. Miss Hofland was older and more alive to the peculiarities of their cloistered life.
“Don’t you think it is a strange thing, my dear,” she said to Hetty suddenly, when she had been about a month at Horton, “that a mother should go away to the end of the world for a whole year, and leave her only little child all alone in a big house like this?”
They had been sitting together over the fire for a long time in silence. Rhoda had gone to bed, the great silence of the wintry park hadclosed over the house, and there was the darkness of a moonless night, which seemed somehow to creep into the rooms, and intensify the stillness and sense of seclusion from all the world. Hetty was much startled by this question. It took her some time to think what her companion could mean—a mother at the end of the world, and an only little child all alone! She looked up surprised, repeating almost unconsciously, “A mother—at the end of the world!”
“Yes,” said Miss Hofland; “don’t say you haven’t asked yourself the same——”
“Do you mean—Rhoda?” faltered Hetty, feeling as if the suggestion was in some sort a betrayal of trust.
“I mean Rhoda’s mother; who else could I mean? Did you ever hear of such a thing before? There are a great many things I don’t understand about this house.”
Hetty gazed once more, but put no answering question, nothing that could induce the governess to go on. The girl’s fine sense of good faith wasshocked. It seemed to be a sort of wickedness and treachery to discuss the circumstances of the place in which she was living. But all the same these questions liberated Hetty’s own thoughts. Now that it had been suggested to her, she too became aware of many wonderings on the eve of bursting forth. Why? and why? But there was no answer to be had.