CHAPTER LI.MRS. MAJOR LENNARD.
Miss Barkhamstared at her visitor with a look of mingled horror and astonishment.
“You do not surely imagine, Miss Villars,” she said, “that anybody will engage you in the responsible position of governessto their children upon no better recommendation than your own, I must confess, ratherconfidentassertion of your merits?”
“I never told a falsehood in my life, Miss Barkham,” Eleanor answered, indignantly. “If I am without a friend whom I can ask to testify to my respectability, it is on account of circumstances which——”
“To be sure,” exclaimed Miss Barkham; “that is the very thing we have to contend against. This establishment is completely overrun by young ladies who think there is nothing easier than to turn their backs upon their friends and their homes, and go out into the world to become the instructresses of the rising generation. You think me very punctilious and strait-laced, I dare say, Miss Villars; but I don’t know what would become of the rising generation ifsomebodydidn’t keep watch and ward over the doors of the school-room. Young ladies who choose to feel unhappy in the society of their parents; young ladies who are disappointed in some sentimental affection; young ladies who fancy themselves ill-used by their elder sisters; young ladies who, from the very shallowness of their own minds, cannot be contented anywhere, all come to us, and want to go out as governesses,—just for a change, they say, in the hope of finding a little employment that will divert their minds; as if they had any minds to be diverted! These are the amateur hangers-on of a very grave and respectable profession, to which hundreds of estimable and accomplished women have devoted the best and brightest years of their lives. These are the ignorant and superficial pretenders who bring their cheap and worthless wares into the market, in order to undersell the painstaking and patient teachers who have themselves learned the lessons they profess to teach. And these amateurs will continue to flourish, Miss Villars, so long as ladies, who would shudder at the idea of entrusting an expensive silk dress to an incompetent dressmaker, are willing to confide the care of their children to an instructress whose highest merit lies in the fact that she is—cheap. I do not wish to wound your feelings, Miss Villars: but I assure you I often feel sick at heart, when I see a lady who offers thirty years’ experience, and all the treasures of a mind carefully and sedulously cultivated, rejected in favour of some chit of nineteen who can play one showy fantasia, and disfigure glass vases with scraps of painted paper, and who will accept twenty pounds a year in payment of services that are not worth five.”
Eleanor smiled at Miss Barkham’s energetic protest.
“I dare say you are often very much worried by incompetent people,” she said; “but I assure youIhave made no attempt to deceive you. I don’t profess to do much, you know. I believe I can play pretty well. May I play you something?” she asked, pointing to an open pianoforte at one end of the room, a handsomegrand, with all Erard’s patent improvements, on which governesses upon their promotion were in the habit of showing off.
“I have no objection to hear you play,” Miss Barkham answered; “but remember, I cannot possibly procure you a situation without either references or testimonials.”
Eleanor went to the piano, took off her gloves, and ran her fingers over the keys. She had played very little during the last few months, for in the feverish preoccupation of her mind she had been unequal to any feminine employment; too restless and unsettled to do anything but roam about the house, or sit brooding silently with her hands lying idle in her lap.
The familiar touch of the keys filled her with a strange pleasure: she was surprised at the brilliancy of her execution, as good players often are after an interval of idleness. She played one of Beethoven’s most sparkling sonatas; and even Miss Barkham, who was perpetually listening to such performances, murmured a few words of praise.
But before Eleanor had been seated at the piano more than five minutes, a servant came into the room and presented a card to Miss Barkham, who rose from her seat with some appearance of vexation.
“Really, I scarcely know what to do about it,” she muttered to herself. “It’s almost impossible to arrange anything at such very short notice. Excuse me, Miss Villars,” she added, aloud, to Eleanor; “I am obliged to see a lady in the next room. Don’t go until I return.”
Eleanor bowed, and went on playing. She finished the sonata; and then, suddenly catching sight of her wedding-ring and the thick band of gold studded with diamonds that her husband had given her on her wedding-day, she stopped to draw the two rings off her finger, and put them into her purse amongst the few sovereigns that formed her whole stock of worldly wealth.
She sighed as she did this, for it seemed like putting off her old life altogether.
“It’s better so,” she said to herself; “I know now that Gilbert must have thought me false to him from the very first. I can understand his cold reservenow, though it used to puzzle me so much. He changed almost immediately after our marriage.”
Eleanor Monckton grew very pensive as she remembered that she had been perhaps herself to blame for the altered manner and no doubt equally altered feelings of her husband. She had neglected her duty as a wife, absorbed in her affection as a daughter; she had sacrificed the living to the dead; and she began to think that Richard Thornton’s advice had been wiser than she had believed when she refused to listen to it. She had been wrong altogether. Classic vows of vengeance were all very well in the days when a Medea rode upon flying dragons andslaughtered her children upon principle; but a certain inspired teacher, writing a very long time after that much-to-be-regretted classic age, has declared that vengeance is the right of divinity alone, and far too terrible an attribute to be tampered with by fallible mortals, blindly hurling the belts of heaven against each other’s earthly heads.
She thought this, and grew very melancholy and uncomfortable, and began to fancy that her impulses had been about the worst guides that she could have chosen. She began to think that she had not acted so very wisely in running away from Tolldale Priory in the first heat of her indignation, and that she might have done better perhaps by writing a temperate letter of justification to Gilbert Monckton, and quietly abiding the issue. But she had chosen her path now, and must stand by her choice, on pain of appearing the weakest and most cowardly of women.
“My letter is posted,” she said to herself. “Gilbert will receive it to-morrow morning. Ishouldbe a coward to go back; for, however much I may have been to blame in the matter, he has treated me very badly.”
She wiped away some tears that had come into her eyes as she took the rings from her wedding finger, and then began to play again.
This time she dashed into one of the liveliest and most brilliant fantasias she could remember, a verypot pourriof airs; a scientific hodge-podge of Scotch melodies; now joyous, now warlike and savage, now plaintive and tender, always capricious in the extreme, and running away every now and then into the strangest variations, the most eccentric cadences. The piece was one of Thalberg’schef-d’œuvres, and Eleanor played it magnificently. As she struck the final chords, sharp and rapid as a rattling peal of musketry, Miss Barkham re-entered the room.
She had the air of being rather annoyed, and she hesitated a little before speaking to Eleanor, who rose from the piano and began to put on her gloves.
“Really, Miss Villars,” she said, “it is most incomprehensible to me, but since Mrs. Lennard herself wishes it, I——”
She stopped and fidgeted a little with the gold pencil-case hanging to her watch-chain.
“I can’t at all understand this sort of thing,” she resumed; “however, of course I wash my hands of all responsibility. Have you any objection to travel, Miss Villars?” she asked, suddenly.
Eleanor opened her eyes with a look of astonishment at this abrupt question.
“Objection to travel?” she repeated; “I——”
“Have you any objection to go abroad—to Paris, for instance,—if I could obtain you a situation?”
“Oh, no,” Eleanor answered, with a sigh, “not at all; I would just as soon go to Paris as anywhere else.”
“Very well, then, if that is the case, I think I can get you a situation immediately. There is a lady in the next room who was here yesterday, and who really gave me a most severe headache with her fidgety, childish ways. However, she wants to meet with a young lady as a companionimmediately—that is the grand difficulty. She leaves London for Paris by this evening’s mail, and she put off engaging the person she required until yesterday afternoon, when she came to me in a fever of anxiety, and wanted me to introduce her to a lady instanter. She stopped all the afternoon in the next room, and I took ever so many young ladies in to her, all of whom seemed well qualified for the situation, which really demands very little. But not one of them would suit Mrs. Lennard. She was very polite to them, and made all kinds of affable speeches to them, and dismissed them in the most ladylike manner; and then she told me afterwards that she didn’t take a fancy to them, and she was determined not to engage any one she didn’t take a fancy to, as she wanted to be very fond of her companion, and make quite a sister of her. That was what she said, and good gracious me,” cried Miss Barkham, “how am I to find her somebody she can take a fancy to, and make a sister of, at a quarter-of-an-hour’s notice? I assure you, Miss Villars, my head felt quite in a whirl after she went away yesterday afternoon; and it’s beginning to be in a whirl again now.”
Eleanor waited very patiently while Miss Barkham endeavoured to collect her scattered senses.
“I can scarcely hope this very capricious lady will take a fancy to me,” she said, smiling.
“Why, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Barkham, “that’s the very thing I came to tell you. Shehastaken a fancy to you.”
“Taken a fancy to me!” repeated Eleanor; “but she has not seen me.”
“Of course not, my dear. But she really is the most confusing, I may almost saw bewildering, person, I ever remember meeting with. I was in the next room talking to this Mrs. Lennard, who is very pretty and fashionable-looking, only a little untidy in her dress, when you began to play that Scotch fantasia. Mrs. Lennard stopped to listen, and after she had listened a few moments she cried out suddenly, ‘Now I dare say that’s an old frump!’ I said, ‘What, ma’am?’ for upon my word, my dear, I didn’t know whether she meant the piece, or the piano, or what. ‘I dare say the lady who is playing is an old frump, she said. ‘Old frumps almost always play well; in point of fact old frumps are generally very clever. But I’m determined not to have any one I can’t make a sister of; and Imusthaveone by three o’clock this afternoon, or Major Lennard will be cross, and I shall go mad.’ Well, Miss Villars, I told Mrs. Lennard your age, and described your appearance and manners, that is to say, as well as I was able to do so after our very brief acquaintance, and I had no sooner finished than she exclaimed, ‘That will do; if she can play Scotch melodies like that, and is nice, I’ll engage her.’ I then explained to Mrs. Lennard that you could give no references; ‘and that, of course,’ I added, ‘would be an insuperable objection;’ but she interrupted me in a manner that would have appeared very impertinent in any one but her, and cried out, ‘Insuperable fiddlesticks! If she’s nice I’ll engage her. She can play to me all the morning, while I paint upon velvet;’ and you’re to come with me, please, Miss Villars, and be introduced to her.”
Eleanor took up her muff and followed Miss Barkham on to the landing, but at this moment three ladies appeared upon the top stair, and the principal of the establishment was called upon to receive them.
“If you’ll go in by yourself, my dear,” she whispered to Eleanor, pointing to the door of the back drawing-room, “I shall be much obliged. You’ll find Mrs. Lennard a most affable person.”
Eleanor readily assented. She opened the door and went into the primly-furnished back drawing-room. Mrs. Major Lennard was a little woman, and she was standing on tiptoe upon the hearth-rug, in order to survey herself in the chimney-glass while she re-arranged the pale blue strings of her black velvet bonnet. Eleanor paused near the door, waiting for her to turn round, and wondering what she was like, as the face in the glass was not visible from where Mrs. Monckton stood.
The lady employed a considerable time in the important operation of tying her bonnet-strings, then suddenly hearing the rustling of Eleanor’s dress as she advanced a few paces, Mrs. Lennard uttered an exclamation, and turned round.
“You naughty girl, you quite startled me,” she cried.
Not so much as she had startled Eleanor, who could not repress a cry of surprise at the sight of her face. It was a very pretty face, very young-looking, though Mrs. Major Lennard was nearly forty years of age. A fair childish face, with pink cheeks, turquoise-blue eyes, and the palest, softest bands of flaxen hair; rather an insipid, German kind of beauty, perhaps, but very perfect of its kind.
But that which had startled Eleanor was not the babyish, delicate prettiness of the face, but the strong resemblance which it bore to Laura Mason. It was the same face after twenty years, not of wear and tear, but of very careful preservation. This lady, in appearance and manner, was exactly what Lauramust most surely become if she lived to be seven-and-thirty years of age.