Ernest Dalton was nearly twenty-five years my senior!
It is now an old and respected adage that "coming events cast their shadows before," and had I only been at all alive to the growing changes in the routine of our daily life, I might easily have detected the outline of some hovering shadow which was heralding the advent of some strange, and hitherto undreamt of interruption, into the questionably peaceful monotony of my early career.
One fine August morning, some weeks after my tragic interview with Mr. Dalton, I sat on the step of the outer kitchen stairway, which led into an artistically cultivated vegetable patch at the rear of the house, absorbed in the intensely interesting occupation of cutting some elegantly-coloured ladies out of a superannuated fashion-plate.
On the step above me was my garden hat, inverted, into which I deposited my paper "swells" according as I trimmed them: on the step below me sat old Hannah, scraping some new potatoes, according to her established principles of economy. We both worked diligently and silently for awhile, and then old Hannah, pausing with a half cleaned potatoe in one hand and a knife dripping with water in the other, looked at me seriously for a moment and said half meditatively:
"Well now; arn't you the baby, Miss Amelia, to spend your time over that foolish stuff; fitter for you be knitting a little garter, or hemming a little handkerchief for yourself."
I smiled, and without raising my eyes from the critical curve of my paper lady's bustle, which I was then rounding most carefully, I answered:
"I suppose I might do better with my time, Hannah, if I knew how, but as I don't, I'd rather be doing this than nothing."
"It says a lot for Miss Forty, then," Hannah put in indignantly, "to think you're goin' into your teens before long and that's all you know how to do!"
"Miss de Fortier did not come to teach me sewing and knitting, Hannah. She taught me lessons."
"Lessons how are you! And what's become of them if she did? Oh, its a fine way children are brought up in this country," the old woman went on half in soliloquy; "a bit of this and a bit of that and not much of either. I pity the housekeepers ye'll make yet. God help the poor men that are waiting for ye. Many's the missing button and broken sock they'll have to put up with!"
"Well, Hannah," I interrupted, beginning an impromptu justification and defence—but Hannah was destined never to have her conviction shaken, for just then I heard a sharp rapping at the library window, and gathering up the fragments of my fashion-plate in my linen pinafore, I ran outside and looked towards that end of the house. My father was standing at the open casement, and beckoned me to go to him. Whether from the novelty of the occurrence, or the instinctive awe in which I stood of my father, I immediately let go the margin of my pinafore, dropping scissors and ladies and all, in a most brusque and heedless manner, and hastened into the library, while I was smoothing out the wrinkled folds of my clean, starched apron.
In my excitement I had forgotten to wonder at the strange circumstance, but when my little hand clutched the great knob of the library door and turned it, and when the placid countenance of my step-mother looked up at me from a comfortable easy-chair at the opposite side of the room, I felt that some awful moment had dawned on my existence. With as much nerve and self-control as a child usually displays on such an occasion, I closed the door behind me and walked towards the window where my father was standing.
He was clad in a gown of ruby cashmere, and wore an expensive cap and slippers to match; the girdle was untied, leaving the rich chenille tassels to trail almost upon the ground, and the velvet fronts so elaborately embroidered were crushed rudely aside by his hands, which were thrust into his breeches pockets.
When I came up to where he stood, he turned slowly around and viewed me in my diminutive entirety from head to foot. Unable to restrain her love of interference any longer, my step-mother here advised me parenthetically to "stand up straight," sustaining her reasons for thus counselling me by the cheerful intelligence that "I was disposed to be round-shouldered any way, and should do my best to check the deformity." I raised my head and lowered my shoulders in silent obedience to this meek injunction, preparing myself inwardly for an attack of a much less generous and still more personal nature than this. What was my surprise when my father, taking a step towards me, and placing one hand half affectionately on my head, remarked in a rather playful and, for him, quite a frivolous tone:
"Oh, we none of us go straight to Heaven, do we, Amey? We must bend our shoulders and droop our heads a little first."
I was grateful to him for coming thus to my rescue, although I understood neither the meaning of his ambiguous words, nor the motives which prompted him to use them. I see more clearly through them now, however.
"But," he continued, taking me by the hand and leading me towards the lounge behind him, "this is not exactly what I want to talk to you about; I admit that you are backward in many respects, but that is not altogether your fault."
I was looking at him with riveted attention while he spoke, sublimely innocent of the import of a single word he uttered.
"And," he added, in a slower and more directly communicative tone, as he disengaged his hand from mine and leaned his arm on the back of the lounge behind me, "I have decided to send you to a first-rate school, Amey, where you will have a chance to perfect yourself in every way; do you think you will like to go away to school?" he asked, so timidly that one would have thought my opinion on the matter could have some little value.
Before I had time to master this question with all its ponderous possibilities, my step-mother observed obligingly,
"Of course she would like it, Alfred, and even if she wouldn't you know she ought to go; Amelia herself knows," she continued, without looking at me, "that she is quite a dunce for her age, and will need to work very hard in order to make up for lost time. So, your father and I have decided," she added conclusively, "that you shall go to boarding-school, Amelia, as early next month as you can be got ready."
The word "boarding-school" was to me, perhaps, the vaguest and most indefinite in the English language. I knew that such places existed, but it had never entered into my juvenile conception of things to associate them in any way with my present or future career. In my dreamings I had often pictured myself as grown up and matured; I had even pictured my womanhood so far as tying two of Hannah's long aprons about my waist, one in front and the other behind, and with a shawl thrown cornerwise over my shoulders, to fancy myself a lady in "long dresses" like the "Miss Hartmanns" that called upon my step-mother.
I had wished to be the wife of a great, rich man, that I might do as I pleased with myself, and be "somebody" with my airs and graces, but I had never met such an obstacle in the long rambles of my reverie as "going to school." When, therefore, the subject was thrust upon me without any preparation, I felt as if I had seen a ghost and was told to go and speak to it, that it wouldn't harm me; and, lest the reader should attribute my emotion to a more natural, and, I dare say, becoming sentiment, I will confess that it was owing purely to the nervous shock which I sustained at the unexpected mention of so important a change in my life, that my eyes filled up with tears, and that I gave way to other ambiguous signs of appropriate agitation.
All this, however, was neither here nor there, so far as the fixed intention of my parents was concerned to dispose of me for an indefinite period of time, and within three weeks of that day when the announcement was first made to me, I was crying myself to sleep in a narrow little bed, hundreds of miles away from my father's house.
Perhaps there was not another girl among the three hundred boarders of Notre Dame Abbey, that had such little reason to be home-sick as Amey Hampden; and yet—God help us! into what strange moods we are prone to fall! When a wide-spreading distance had thrust itself between me and the home of my early days, I could not help feeling that, after all, my heart had tendrils like other people's, and that this separation had torn them rudely away from the objects, few or many, worthy or unworthy, around which they had twined with a clinging firmness.
The bare, white-washed walls of this strange dormitory brought out in touching relief the cosy corners of my own little room at home, and the strict and rigid discipline, to which I felt I never could conform, made me look back with a hopeless regret upon the wandering, aimless hours I had spent unfettered, before I became a pupil of this bleak institution.
I did not know then, as I know now, that it is not the house which makes the home; that white-washed walls and painted floors may melt into artistic beauty, where glows the never smouldering fire of Christian love; and I have searched the world in vain for many a year, among riches and luxuries and comforts, but I have never had the smallest glimpse of that same abiding, enduring and self-sacrificing love which presided over me, waking or sleeping, smiling or weeping, during my happy, yet transient sojourn, in that distant Abbey of Notre Dame.
Within its walls my childhood melted into girlhood, and my girlhood into womanhood, and still, when I look out over the tree-tops, away beyond the misty mountains in the west, towards the spot where this my truly happiest home lies nestled, when with one sweeping stroke of my active pen I cancel twenty years of my life, and am back again a laughing, careless girl among my school companions, what is time to me? Only a huge and ugly shadow flitting between me and all that I have ever loved or cherished! A shadow, however, that flickers and bounds away, when, with her magic lantern, memory floods the vista of the past, with the light of "other days."
When I returned to my father's house to spend a short vacation among my earliest friends, I had entered upon my sixteenth year. I had of course, in the interval, been visited alternately by my father and step-mother, who kept me quiteau courantof all that transpired in their fashionable world in my absence.
I had received photographs of my interesting half brother, which made me familiar with the changes wrought in him physically, by time; but all this had no satisfaction for me, who would rather one glimpse of old Hannah's frilled cap, or one peep through the narrow panes of Ella Wray's humble cottage, than all the spicy intelligences of the doings and sayings of possibly great people, for whom, however, I cared but very little.
At the close of our summer session of that year my father brought me home for a visit of three months. I had grown considerably, and for a person of tolerably good health, was very slender, which gave me the appearance of being yet taller than I was, and I felt an instinctively spiteful satisfaction in the consciousness that I had quite overcome any tendencies I might ever have had towards being round-shouldered; the regular calisthenic exercises which we went through at the convent had made a decided change for the better in my personal appearance.
I was not long at home before I detected a resolution on the part of my step-mother to adopt a new, and altogether plausible, attitude towards me. I was no longer a child; that was a self-evident fact: neither was I yet what society calls a "young lady," but now-a-days an interesting medium has been established and acknowledged; it is the first grade wherein the embryo society belles are initiated into all the intricacies of high life. It has its own peculiarities, its flutters of excitement, its rounds of pleasures, and distractions of every kind, aye—it has even its gossip, although the whisperers are but budding misses with golden or raven locks floating down their backs.
It is the adolescent stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their older and more sophisticated sisters, when they learn "dauncing" and "tennis" and "riding," and go to small-and-earlies where a few grown couples are also invited to amuse them, or rather I should say instruct them.
Quite unconscious of any such prescribed routine being the "thing" among my family circle, I was almost stupefied by the look of distracted horror which flashed over my step-mother's face, when, the week after my arrival, I shocked her sensitive good breeding by a coarse betrayal of my unpardonable ignorance.
It was a perfect June day, flooded with a bright but not overwarm sunshine; the young leaves on the maple boughs outside my bed-room window were swaying gently against the lattice, and below in the freshly trimmed garden the flowers were unfolding their early beauty to the summer warmth.
I had sought the safe retreat of my room, that I might, as I had promised, write long and loving letters to some of my much-regretted school-friends. When all my preparations were ready, and I had dated the first of these effusions, I was disturbed by a timid knock at the door. I laid down my pen resignedly and went to open: it was the pert housemaid, who delivered "Mrs. Hampden's request that Miss Amelia would kindly begin to dress."
"Dress for what?" said I, in impatient surprise. "This is Tuesday, Miss," the pampered maid answered insinuatingly, "Mrs. Hampden will be at home."
"So will I, Janet," I interrupted hastily, "and my present toilet is quite good enough for the house."
With this rejoinder I closed the door a little forcibly, and went back to my writing. I had only time to trace—"My darling Ruby,"—when, without intimation or announcement of any kind, my step-mother burst into my room, with her hair half dressed, and her toilet jacket flying loosely about her,—
"Do you want to disgrace us in the eyes of these prattling servants, Amelia Hampden?" she began in a hoarse undertone, beckoning towards the hall outside: "the idea of not understanding my message any better than that," she went on in a whisper of reproachful despair. "Anyone would know, that when you've been away so long, you will be sure to have people calling on you, so put away that"—she added imperatively, pointing disdainfully to my treasured writing materials—"and dress yourself. The Merivale girls, and the Hunters, and all those others will be here before you are half ready."
I obeyed in placid silence; this was not the first hint which circumstances had thrown out of what was before me, while I remained at home. We were very stylish, very fashionable people, it seemed, although I was so unworthy of sustaining my part of the reputation, in my insignificant opinion we were very silly and very empty-minded creatures, and it was with this very encouraging conviction that I proceeded to stow away my pen and paper, to renounce the rare pleasure I had counted upon for two days before that, and to prepare myself for the possible intrusion of some juvenile Merivales and Hunters.
Janet came in to dress my hair and fasten my new kid boots, and otherwise bore me with endeavors to beautify me for my reception. It was a task, however, that was soon ended, and half an hour later I was seated in the drawing room below listening passively to the small talk of some very well dressed girls who had opened the list of my ceremonious callers.
Having never seen them before, my demeanor was naturally timid and restrained, they were two sisters, and the younger one did all or most of the talking. They were very well dressed, and altogether non-committal, as far as speech and manners were concerned, but our vocabulary of drawing-room chat very soon became exhausted, and with a quiet "good afternoon" they arose and passed out.
As they left the drawing-room they were met at the door by two other young misses who, at sight of them, raised their chins considerably above their natural level, and swept in without condescending to bestow even an accidental glance upon them. From where I sat I observed all this quietly, and with an effort to suppress a smile of bland amusement, I arose and greeted my new-comers—the Merivales! Alice glided towards me with an air of imposing consciousness, and thrust a tiny, gloved hand into mine, and then with a graceful gesture she turned towards her companion and murmured faintly, "my cousin, Miss Holgate—Miss Hampden."
I bowed and smiled, and directed them to convenient seats, the situation was becoming more and more trying to my inclination to laugh outright. When we were all three comfortably deposited in our chairs, Alice Merivale turned her beaming countenance languidly towards me and remarked that "it was a perfectly lovely aufternoon," and while I smiled my eager corroboration, her cousin surreptitiously observed, that it was "fairly delicious."
Then followed exclamations over my long absence, and questions too numerous ever to require answers, they were much more finished talkers than their predecessors, and when I thought we had touched upon every subject which could interest us mutually, Alice asked in a most insinuating tone if I had "known Florrie Grant before I went away to to school?"
Florrie and Carrie Grant were the slighted heroines who had just gone out. Fully alive to the import of her question, I affected a most placid expression of countenance and voice, and answered that I had not.
"I thought so," she remarked with an incisive smile, looking significantly at her cousin, then changing her tone to one of most provoking haughtiness, she drooped her white lids over a daintily plush satchel she held between her hands and drawled out a languid
"How do you like her?"
I felt that I was taking in Miss Merivale's tone and words and meaning with a wincing suspicious glance. I was being initiated, and the sensation was so utterly different from anything I had ever experienced before, that my self-control suffered a momentary suspension, when words came to me I used them with a particular emphasis.
"I think I shall like her very much," I answered, "when I have seen more of her. I never like to judge people according to early impressions," I continued, looking straight at the ottoman before me, "because people so often appear to disadvantage at first," but my arrow fell flat to the ground. Miss Merivale had not enough acumen to detect anything personal in the innuendo; resuming her incisive smile she exclaimed quietly
"Oh, butsomepeople you know, Miss Hampden, are always the same, they have only one set of manners, of course I don't mean to say that the Grants are any of these, indeed Inever dosayanythingagainstanyone. Florrie, I believe, is a very nice little girl, in her set, of course I don't know much about her asIhave never met her anywhere."
"Oh, no! None ofourfriends know her," Miss Holgate broke in with a relish.
The elder girl frowned at this indiscreet remark, and interrupted it with grave remonstrance, saying
"Hush, Edith! You shouldn't talk quite so plainly," then with a wonderful tact in one so young she lit up her face with a happy expression, appropriate to her change of subject, and asked:
"Where does Mrs. Hampden think of spending the summer, this year?"
I could vouch no information on this point, as, I had not troubled to put the question to my step-mother myself, and so, after relating to me in a somewhat confidential tone, all the plans and projects which her Mama and her Aunt Ada had arranged for their holiday season, and their strong temptation to try Riviere du Loup, where so many fashionable people were said to be retiring just then, she finally arose, and with an emphasized request that I would "run in" without the least ceremony, to see her at any time, she bowed herself most gracefully out of the room, followed by her younger and less sophisticated relative.
I need hardly say what turn the rising tide of my impressions and opinions took about this time. To one who had passed from the cheerless, loveless guardianship of a worldly step-mother, into the tender hands of patient and devoted sisters, to become, instead of a wandering, uncared for waif, the object of the truest and holiest solicitude that ever animated Christian hearts, this hollow mockery of fashionable life was nothing more than a matchless absurdity.
Had I grown up to this, in the unpropitious atmosphere of my own home, I daresay such phases of existence would have come upon me quite naturally, and without my ever stopping to question their real or relative solidity. But the "twig" had been differently inclined, by hands more worthy of training tender, susceptible off-shoots. Where can frail young innocence find a safe, secure and profitable refuge, from the destroying influence of evil, if not within convent walls? It is there, or nowhere, that girlhood, growing, aspiring girlhood, ripens into a glorious womanhood. There, go hand in hand the development of mind, and what is more necessary, if possible for a woman, the cultivation of heart. Everyone who looks about him in the social world, and gives a moment of calm consideration to what he sees and hears, cannot but admit, that though surrounded by a vast field for active and profitable labour, and with multiplied favours of circumstances thrown in their way, our girls lead comparatively useless lives, as if they were a recremental fraction of the human race, than which, indeed, many are no better, since they choose to lead such lives as can be fruitful of no direct benefit to themselves or their fellow-mortals.
It is not because a woman is excluded (rightly or not) from the more public arena of active life, that her energies need become paralyzed and wasted. It is not because the popular idea of propriety would deny her the right or opportunity to do great things for society or for the state, in the same way as men are expected to do them, that she cannot work her own great or little wonders in a quieter, but yet more direct manner.
It is acknowledged that hers is the mission of the heart; it is admitted that her sphere is in the family, and what is the mightiest commonwealth in the world, but a family of families. Ah me! It is a dark day with humankind when the sphere of a woman's action lies rigidly between her toilet table and the drawing-room.
The proof that such limits as these are both unlawful and unnatural, is, that our women who are confined within them, are conscious in their hearts of the wrong they are doing the world and themselves. Conscience is not yet an extinct, though it is fast becoming an unpopular and unfashionable faculty, and men and women play the Pharisee with a deep sense of their own worthlessness and littleness gnawing at their spirit all the while.
I had been taught all this in time, and as early as my first vacation at home, among the fashionable juveniles of my step-mother's circle, I had begun to submit my valuable precepts to profitable practice. My first callers taught me a very wholesome lesson which I have held upon the surface of my memory through all these years.
Whenever I have witnessed a repetition of that early experience, the past has come forcibly back to me, with all the golden admonitions of my school-days, and I have felt myself stimulated anew, towards the steady pursuit of those social virtues which are the outgrowth of Christian charity, and a generous, impartial discrimination.
I have met many Alice Merivales, since my youth, who cast their stylish shadows ominously over the lives of many a Florrie Grant, and I have tried to sustain the weaker one, whenever it was in my power, the evil, I regret to see, is unabating. A new generation of little maidens is springing up around us, are they, too, destined to follow the beaten track their elders have trodden so unworthily? Will they be taught these nice discriminations between wealth and no wealth? Must they, too, meet a struggling gentility with a haughty, overbearing carriage, and elbow out less independent aspirants, whom some capricious fortune has brought within their contact? Does one little star in the vault above shine less brightly or twinkle less gladly because myriads of others do likewise? After all, what vainglory need there be in accidents of birth or fortune. They are not virtually ours, they have been given to us, and rest upon a changing wind that, to-morrow, may waft them far out of our Reach or sight forever.
"All flesh is grass; and all its glory fades Like the fair flowerdishevelled in the wind, Riches have wings, and grandeur is adream!"
To attack this evil, at its root, is to expose one of the most powerful defects of our times, for no one can deny that this spirit which prevails among so-called well-bred people, is the evident result of that "little learning" which is "a dangerous thing." Of this I became more strongly convinced as I grew older.
My summer vacation was not long in coming to an end. I had whiled away some happy hours, and days and weeks, forming fleeting pleasures and seeing novel sights. My brother Freddie had entered very sparingly into my pleasures, as our tastes were vastly different, and his health on the whole rather delicate, he was a pretty boy in a sailor costume, when I saw him after our long separation, with mild blue eyes and a pallid countenance. He was sickly looking, with an expression of helpless peevishness about his otherwise pleasing mouth; his hair was wavy and of a golden colour, and his hands were thin and white, like those of a baby girl.
His mother persuaded herself that in multiplying and dwelling upon his complaints, she was caring for him with affectionate solicitude, and to be told that he was not looking well, was enough to convince Freddie that his life was hanging upon a thread, and that he must swallow powders and pills without a question or a grimace.
One morning towards the end of August, about a fortnight before my return to school, I heard my step-mother remark in a fretful tone that "Freddie's old symptoms" were "beginning to threaten him again," and that she "must send for Dr Campbell to come and see him."
I looked up with some astonishment from the book which I was reading, and ventured to ask.
"Cannot papa cure him?"
"I suppose he could," she answered, "if he were not his father, but Freddie won't listen to his papa's directions, and cannot be persuaded to take the remedies he prescribes—besides," she continued apologetically, "when your father was away last fall and Freddie had a very miserable attack, I called in Dr. Campbell, and he cured him in a fortnight, he is very clever," she added with slow emphasis, straightening a fancy panel on the mantelpiece by which she stood. There was silence for a few moments, as I went on reading.
"And he is by far the most popular person in the city," my step-mother broke forth again, sinking into a seat near the window and folding her arms I looked up, but did not close my book.
"Who?" I asked indifferently.
"Dr. Campbell, to be sure," she answered a little snappishly, piqued that I had not paid more attention to her favorite subject. Still unwilling to drop the topic without having done it fuller justice, she went on, half in soliloquy.
"He is not married either, and has the best practice here; besides being courted by everybody who is anything. I am confident that the Hunters, and those people, call him in for mere trifles, just to cultivate his friendship. I know that Laura Hunter is fairly wild about him—and she is a chronic dyspeptic, luckily," my step-mother added with a malicious chuckle.
"Poor girl!" I exclaimed with well feigned sympathy, "I should think she would not care to see any one she liked under such trying circumstances."
"Neither does she—except Dr Campbell—she digests him so well that her family would like to see her live upon him altogether."
I began to see that I was serving as a target for my step-mother's ridicule of something which wounded her jealous tendencies, she knew that I could make no retort for or against the absent ones at whom these sly missiles were being aimed. I knew nothing of the circumstances so broadly treated by her, and I therefore kept silent, and applied myself to my book with renewed interest, and left my step-mother mistress of the field—there was no glory in the conquest, to speak of.
Towards four o'clock of the same afternoon Freddie and I were seated upon the library floor, matching some very irregular blocks that, when rightly fitted together, would display to our eager eyes the vividly coloured representations of that classic and time-honoured tale known as the "Death and burial of Cock Robin."
We were progressing slowly, and had reached that very important part where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and straightforward evidence. I had a little narrow block between my fingers, and was glancing carefully among the unused pieces for its mate, repeating abstractedly all the while:
"I, said the fly, With my little eye I saw him die."
"I, said the fly, with my little"—here the library was thrown open, and my step-mother, accompanied by a strange gentleman, walked laughingly into the room.
"Here are both my babies!" she exclaimed with a well feigned air of proud maternity, as she came towards us. "Are they not good little children?" she asked in grand condescension, looking up into the stranger's face, then turning abruptly around she said in her formal tone
"Amelia, this is Dr. Campbell."
I had sprung to my feet at sight of the intruders and stood distantly in the shadow of the window curtains. I was conscious of looking flushed and indignant, and did not relish the situation from any stand point. The sing-song testimony of the fly was still ringing in my ears, and I knew how very undignified and ridiculous it must have sounded to an uninterested stranger coming in suddenly upon us in this way.
Instead of going forward, therefore, with the careless simplicity becoming my years, I merely inclined my head from where I stood, and got perceptibly redder in the face. I must have looked up, since I afterwards remembered the tall serious man standing like a dark shadow in the doorway, but this was the only impression of him I could recall. While he was bending over Freddie in professional solicitude, I effected a stealthy retreat by the door that led into the garden and saw no more of him.
In less than a month afterwards I was bending over my Algebra in the study hall of the dear old Abbey, striving most perseveringly to master an obstinate, unknown quantity that baffled me considerably. I did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an algebraic equation.
I had worked at my task with a steady perseverance for nearly an hour, but other things distracted me and I could not succeed with it. I laid one cheek pensively in the palm of my idle hand and with the other, which held my busy pencil, I played a random tattoo on my desk. Before me on my paper was a confused multitude of a's and y's and z's which I had failed to master with any satisfaction, although I had repeated many a patient effort with placid, hopeful, good-humor.
Other thoughts quite alien to the subject I was then studying, began to suggest themselves as a sort of refreshment to my mind. My vacation at home among worldly people and pursuits seemed to have thrown open before my eyes the hitherto undreamt of arena of active experience, and whether I willed it or not my memory dwelt persistently at intervals upon all I had seen, and heard, and done during the fleeting summer months.
In a few moments I was far outside the limits of Notre Dame Abbey, hovering in spirit around the neighborhood of my home, calling up those faces and forms that had impressed me more than others. I went back to the embarassing meeting with Dr Campbell in the library, and as I thought over it I felt the warm blood rising within me and suffusing both my cheeks, as it is wont to do when any of the blunders of my life come back to me in my reverie.
What was most vexing to all in this case was that I could not resolve my floating memories of him into any definite outline or form, he was a mere shadow to me, that had flitted across my way for a short moment and then left me bewildered and wondering.
I was rudely awakened from my reflections by the loud unmusical summons of the class bell which set up a prolonged and monotonous ringing just as I was struggling with all my vaguest and most uncertain recollections of the much talked-of Dr Campbell.
I arose with my task undone and went listlessly down to the class-room. I could not help the dissatisfied mood which crept over me as I strolled lazily along the corridors and down the winding stairway. I felt myself suspended between two distinct lives since my return to school, two lives that ran as widely apart as the streams of the old and new world. The common-place reality of one was a constant and rather unwelcome intruder upon the dreamy uncertainty of the other, and I stood midway between the powers and attractions of both, a neutral, passive, and helpless victim.
As might be expected I was one of Sister Andre's "black sheep" or dilatory pupils that morning. When our Algebra class was called I felt humbled and fallen. It was the first time for many years that Amey Hampden had been backward in her lessons, and what was worse, there were girls in my section who had looked forward with an eager desire to a day when my conquering spirit would be baffled.
I could detect a gathering expression of the meanest gratification on more faces than one as I stood up to accuse myself, without any justification whatever, of having brought my task unprepared to the school-room. The words almost stifled me. I fain would have pleaded illness or some other false reason for my transgression. Nothing seemed so dreadful as to provoke a sneer from my unworthy rivals.
I could feel myself losing ground even at that moment, I, who had felt myself so secure in my superiority, now saw myself threatened with a most inglorious downfall—a mere trifle in the eyes of the matured and sophisticated worldling who has had to do battle with some of the most merciless freaks of fate, but every ambitious student knows that such a crisis as this, under circumstances such as these, tries his moral endurance, which is yet necessarily very limited, as severely as a like turning-point, on a grander scale, tested that of a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
I had made my own little conquests, and had established myself as a leading power among my fellow-students, in a way, maybe, I took a vain pleasure in my own successes which, after all, were only the lawful performances of my duty, but then, it is a very plausible thing for people to do what is expected of them now-a-days, and I had reaped a bountiful harvest of recompense for my diligence and assiduity.
However, I now saw plainly the truth of the proverbial warning that "Pride must have a fall," and I resolved to bear up as bravely and worthily as my self-control would allow me. It seemed to me that Sister Andre's tone had never been so encouraging, or so partial, as she said:
"I see these examples are very intricate, young ladies; I am afraid I will have to call upon Miss Hampden to solve them for us."
Some of my rivals exchanged sarcastic glances. My hour had arrived! I stood boldly up and turned towards the dais upon which our mistress was seated.
"I have not prepared them, Sister Andre," I answered, in a clear, steady voice. Just then a tall, slender girl, with dark eyes and hair, who was seated opposite to me, and whom I had never seen in our class before, rose from her seat and went up to Sister Andre's throne. She spoke to her in a low, inaudible tone for a few short moments, and then went back as quietly, and resumed her place.
Sister Andre followed the stranger with a wistful glance, and then turned her eyes upon me.
"It is all right, Amey," she said, gently, "to-morrow will do."
I sat down in a state of dumb confusion, feeling dazed and mystified. Something urged me to affirm I had no valid reason for being excused, and looking across towards my apparent benefactor for some vague explanation of her conduct, I saw a re-assuring, encouraging expression in her eyes as they met mine, so I merely smiled and said nothing.
That evening when supper was over and the hour of recreation had arrived, I walked to the end of the pillared hall, where our new pupil stood gazing aimlessly out of a window that looked into our summer play-ground, at the rear of the convent, she did not hear my approaching step, apparently, for she never moved until I slipped my arm gently within her own and whispered:
"I have come to thank you for the great service you have done me to-day."
She started suddenly and looked up at me with the loveliest brown eyes I ever saw, a smile crept into the corners of her rich red lips, which broke asunder quietly and somewhat sadly, revealing, as they did so, two rows of pretty, even teeth. Whether or not, I was partially disposed to admire her on account of the sentiments with which I approached her, I must admit that I thought I never saw such a vision of sparkling, feminine beauty in my life as she presented at that moment.
"Oh, Miss Hampden," she exclaimed, with a suspicion of a pretty foreign accent "don't speak of it, please, I realized your trying situation, and thought I knew something of the cause that provoked it."
She had turned from the window and was toying familiarly with the blue badge which, as a member of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, I have always worn, her words surprised me, and I asked with an undisguised curiosity.
"What did you know, Miss. ——?"
"NotMiss" she interrupted, while I stopped, not knowing what name to call her by, "Hortense," she emphasized, "Hortense de Beaumont, that is my name."
"Well, Hortense, then," I repeated, "what did you know about me?"
She lifted her fine, lustrous eyes to mine, but this time they were wistful and penetrating; then, taking my hand impulsively, she led me to a bench that stood a little away from us, saying:
"Come and I will tell you, Amey—for I am going to call you Amey," she put in parenthetically. We sat down, and without preamble my interesting friend went on in her pretty foreign way to tell me the following.
"You see, Amey," she began, "I arrived only last night at this convent and I have come from such a long way. Oh! I was tired andennuyeewhen I reached here, and then every face was so strange. Oh! it was dreadful" she exclaimed ardently, clasping her small white hands and looking eagerly into my face. "I could not sleep at all, you may imagine," she continued, resuming the thread of her narrative, "and this morning I felt fatigued again and quite lonesome. I went into the study-hall because I had nothing to do with myself, and, do you know, Amey," she said with renewed earnestness, "when I saw you, it was so queer, I felt sure that I knew you already. Your face was so familiar. I looked at you all the time, while you sat bending over your task, but you never looked at me. I was asking questions to myself about you; I thought I should remember you, and while I was noticing you like that, you halted suddenly in your work and began to think, and then—oh! your facewaslike one that I have seen somewhere, and that I cannot now remember I knew that your thoughts had changed quickly, and dwelt no longer on your books," she said smiling and laying her hand gently on my two that were folded in my lap, "They were far away, perhaps with mine, and Amey, I liked you so much then, I did want to speak to you, but the bell just rang, and we went down to the class-room. When Sister Andre asked for the algebra class, I knew you would not be pleased, and looking at you eagerly, I saw disappointment and vexation in your face. I went up then to Sister Andre, and said 'Do not blame Miss Hampden if she is backward this morning, it is hardly her fault. I will explain it to you better by-and-bye, Sister,' I said, and indeed" Hortense concluded, gesticulating prettily with both her slender hands, "it was not your fault, as Sister Andre agreed with me when I told her of it after."
Her eyes sparkled with apiquantebrightness as she finished her interesting little story. There was a rich crimson spot on each dusky cheek, and her red lips were parted in a bewitching smile. I was enraptured, and told her, without the slightest reserve, the whole prospect which was looming up so darkly before me had she not come to my rescue.
"At the same time, Hortense," I argued, "I think you like me and sympathize with me, under a false conviction. You have surely never seen me before, and I most certainly have never laid eyes upon you until now. If I had, I should not be likely to forget it," I said, insinuating something of the profound admiration, with which her ravishing beauty inspired me, in my tone as I did so.
"O you will make me too proud, Amey!" she exclaimed so innocently, that I leaned over and touched her peach-like cheek with my lips. She coloured still more, as I did so. I noticed it, and I said:
"I will never tell you anything but the truth Hortense, will we be friends enough for this?"
"Oh, yes! Surely we will be friends," she answered warmly, "not now only, but always, will we not?" she urged warmly. I need not say how readily I agreed, and from that moment Hortense de Beaumont and I were all in all to each other.
That there is some subtle sweetness in a true and stable friendship, no one can dare deny. It is divinely ordained that men's and women's lives will cross each other at certain stations on the long and oftentimes tedious journey of experience, and independent of either of them, a secret and mysterious influence, the exponent of an inherent Christian sympathy, will work its changes on their human hearts as the moulder on the yielding substance between his able fingers. I hold that the friendship of which I speak is fruitful of more real happiness in the world than any other influence of which we mortals are susceptible, and I am well sustained in my belief.
But though so wide a field is granted to our friendship, and though it may reveal itself under a plurality of aspects to those who seek it, strange to say, the world knows very little about it. We speak of it as of some regretted treasure that has been long lost to humanity. We are half convinced that the lightning speed of modern civilization has been too much for it, and that it is destined for time to come, to creep on apace within the range of our backward glance, but never within reach of our grasp.
And all the while we are only building up an opaque and dreary barrier that will shut out much of the summer sunshine from our daily lives of toil and trouble. Men and women who could make each other's burdens of sorrow fewer and lighter by a mutual sympathy and devotedness, look above each other's heads in the hurrying crowd and pass by each other, shoulder to shoulder, wearing a mask of calm and cold neutrality over hearts that are glowing with an unspoken kindness and affection.
"A woman," says Bulwer, "if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor and repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing, for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you. She is," he further observes, "to manpresidium et dulce decus, bulwark, sweetness, ornament of his existence."
And indeed his words and their import are most rational and self-sustaining. It is no longer a matter of private or personal opinion to decide whether the friendship of a truly good woman benefits the man upon whom she bestows it or not. There are too many striking arguments in her favor, thrown by the surging tide of circumstances upon the surface of life's agitated waters, to allow a doubt to assail her. Too often, within our own memory even, has the slender yet firm hand of a woman been seen outstretched to snatch the life of a brother, husband or friend from the sluggish and perilous stream which runs slowly but surely on towards a hopeless ruin. "The mere idea," says George Eliot, "that a woman had a kindness towards him, spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers" and "there are natures," she tells us, "in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration; they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us, and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altars of trust. If you are not good, none is good. Those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse." Will anyone dispute it? Moreover, it is the teaching of the only true philosophy by which men should regulate their interior selves: that we "love one another," that we mutually assist and encourage one another, that we sympathise with each other in our joy and sustain one another in sorrow. Now, where a natural sympathy paves the way for the practice of this lesson of charity, how easy it is for men to bestow a beautiful living interpretation upon the Divine ordination concerning our mutual relationships.
The idea that a staunch and unswerving friendship is capable of existing between two women has become quite obsolete and exploded in our day. It is generously admitted that the frivolous tendencies which are innate in us have too much of the upper hand to sanction any sentiment which pre-supposes a self abnegation or exalted disinterestedness on our part. This is a serious heresy which may possibly be accounted for simply enough.
It is a well-attested fact, especially since the sacred precincts of established truth have been raided by every puerile pedant and sciolist who can handle a pen, that any absurdity whatever, so long as it is clad "in the lion's skin" and no matter how loudly it brays, has some fatal claim upon the rambling credulity of the multitude. And a method of reasoning, though resting upon a general assertion which is utterly false, has won its own disciples time and again with an easy effort.
Even in this trifling stigma which denies us women the privilege of being faithful to one another it is easy to see how a fraction of truth has been led astray. It is the outgrowth of a high-sounding syllogism, which deduces the sweeping general assertion that "all women are traitors" from the more limited one, which is unfortunately true and deplorable, that some women are traitors. Nevertheless, I fail to see what relationship can possibly exist between the two parts of the syllogism. The general is as undeniably false as the particular is undeniably true.
I cannot conceive what pleasure human beings can derive from a conviction into which they have coaxed themselves by earnest labor, which has for its object the total destruction of their natural and simple faith in their fellow creatures. We are all of us innocent until by our words or deeds we are branded guilty And we have an unquestionable right to the respect of other men so long as it has not been forfeited by such actions as are reckoned misdemeanors in the social world.
Hortense de Beaumont and I signed our treaty of friendship before we had, either of us, awakened to a suspicion of those probable impediments which the world is so fond of bringing face to face with any established mutual attachment of ardent hearts. It was enough for me that a sweet, confiding simplicity looked trustfully out of the depths of her brown eyes and hovered with unconscious witchery around her pretty red lips. The very way in which she raised her beautiful chin, so hopefully, so winningly, when she talked, would have conquered me, independent of her other attractions. Although there were no fascinating depths to my grey eyes, and no witchery, natural or artificial, in the smile my lips afforded, Hortense, I venture to say, fully reciprocated the love and trust which I so earnestly bestowed upon her. There was no uncertainty about our friendship, no wavering, no questioning, no doubt. The embers glowed with a strong and steady and cheerful intensity, and we sat before them basking in their comfortable warmth, and sheltering our hearts from the chilling coldness of the world without. Oh! these were happy days that compensated for all the loneliness I had endured in my childhood. After all, I had only been treasuring up my desire for companionship and not sacrificing it, which made my sentiments only the more ardent when an opportunity came at last to indulge them. Looking back from that sunlit eminence upon the shadowy years of my previous life, I was able to smile and forget everything, in the blissful consciousness that a rare, undreamt-of happiness had overtaken me after all, and had flooded my lot with its dazzling loveliness; and even now I see it standing prominently above all the other varied epochs of my life I can follow with a distinct remembrance, one day after another as they merged into a riper period of my existence, the spot where a shadow first came over the sunshine of our lives has never been a past to me.
I remained at Notre Dame Abbey pursuing my studies devotedly until I was upon the threshold of my twentieth year. A letter from my father then arrived, bidding me make whatever preparations my departure would necessitate, that at the end of the autumn session he would come to take me home for good. This was a sad and unexpected surprise for me. I had just begun to be fascinated by my studies, which were now of quite a dignified nature. I might as well add, since it cannot but provoke a bland and suggestive smile from masculine erudition, that I had actually taken up moral philosophy, and aspired to distinguish myself later as a metaphysician of some repute. But alas! for the vanity of human purposes and desires, this empty little note of my father's came like the chillest wintry blast and smothered the small creeping flame of my newly awakened ambition. I pleaded and prayed for an extension of time, but the ultimate explanation was a rather lengthy epistle from my step-mother, in which she adduced most persuasively that "there was no help for it, that I must come home." Canada had changed administrators, and somebody very distinguished was expected to replace the old Governor-General. It was a most propitious and opportune occasion for me to make mydebutin society, and, all things considered, I had had quite enough instruction now to fit me for an honorable position in the world.
How foolishly and vainly assiduous I had been! An honourable position, according to that respectable authority, was literally no position at all. Its preliminary stage was that of an idle pleasure-seeker; its more progressive, that of an artful husband hunter, and its summit—ah! its summit was where she stood herself, and where a deplorable percentage of our society wives and mothers are standing or strutting about with their brilliant plumage expanded, airing their silly pride and lisping out in self-laudatory accents the story of their empty achievements in society.
Yes, it was true for her that I had received plenty of instruction for the mission which she had reserved for me, but in spite of her, now, I was far outside the limit of her power over me. Not that I was predisposed to cross her plans and wishes with an obstinate perversity as of old. I had grown too sensible for that now; but I knew that education always carries an unquestionable independence about with it, which asserts itself firmly, though calmly, in the lace of polished ignorance. I felt that I was now superior to my step-mother by right of that cultivation, more even of heart than of mind, which had never been bestowed upon her. The good Sisters of Notre Dame had lifted me out of the chaos of fashionable ignorance, and had given me a forcible impetus towards that rising hill of knowledge, whence I could look down upon the fate I had escaped, with a proud and tender gratitude. Without further ado, therefore, I wrote back a reply declaring that I would be ready to leave my happy convent home at the period indicated, and, inserting an artfully-worded hope that they would not be disappointed with the fruits of my scholastic labors, I signed myself their most obedient and respectful daughter.
In three months from that eventful date the gas-light of the Canadian Senate Chamber was falling upon my white brocaded Watteau train, as I advanced towards the throne where our courteous Governors stand every winter, with a patience and forbearance worthy of a better cause. An officer in glistening regimentals looked at my card through his eyeglass, and dutifully called out "Miss Hampden," while I bowed, and followed the motley procession of young and old, that were wending their way to the galleries above.
I was no longer a child, no longer a school-girl in the eyes of the world, but a "young lady" with ambitions and desires attributed to me whether I thought of them or not.
It was late in November when I bade farewell to Notre Dame Abbey, never more to darken its hallowed threshold as a pupil. That parting was one of the saddest recollections which my memory treasures. Every hall and stairway, every nook and corner of that solemn old building, were bound to my heart by closest ties. It is strange how much deep love we have to spare for places and things that enter largely into our lives. For my part, I know that the dear old Abbey has a claim upon my affections which no power on earth can lessen or destroy.
I left Hortense after me, and while she remained I was always with her—not in flesh and blood indeed, but, better still, in heart and mind and soul, shadowing her wherever she went, and revelling in the same sweet companionship still, though a great distance stretched between us.
Hortense and I said our first good-bye on the 25th of November, the feast of the glorious Saint Catherine. The evening meal was over, and the long procession of happy, laughing girls had passed out of the refectory into the spacious recreation hall, where first I spoke to my dear little friend. Hortense and I lingered behind. I had only one hour more to spend with her, and it seemed that a great deal yet remained unsaid. From where we stood we could plainly hear the buzz of ringing voices in the crowded room beyond. There was unusual rejoicing to-night, for it was acongein honor of Saint Catherine, but the joyful confusion seemed only to throw our mutual sadness into more pronounced relief, and for awhile we stood in silence, hand in hand, half-shrouded in the darkness of the outer doorway. Then Hortense said, in a tremulous whisper.
"Let us go into the chapel."
I took her arm tenderly, and we passed quietly along the dimly lit corridor that led into the main portion of the building. A single gas jet burned in the large square hall outside. We hurried across it, for the glare was unwelcome to the tear-stained faces of both, all was silent and still as death. Hortense opened the chapel door noiselessly, and we glided in. Darkness here too, and yet not darkness, for great giant shadows leaped over the vacant pews, and chased one another over the cold, white keys of the organ. The sanctuary light was flickering fitfully in its crystal bowl, and peopling the holy precincts with phantom worshippers. Gleams of silvery moonlight flooded the farther end, and brought out to advantage every hoary blade and tree and flower that lay upon the glistening window panes. If we had needed inspiration from external things at this moment, how easily we could have received it. But there was not a fibre within us that was not already awake to such soul-stirring influences. We went on tiptoe towards the altar-rail, and knelt upon the topmost step. To tell what followed would be to intrude upon the sacredness of the soul's privacy. Suffice it to say that for some solemn moments we knelt and prayed together, each knowing well what to ask from Him who has promised that they who "ask shall receive." When my petition was ended I turned and looked at Hortense. She was praying still, her thin white hands were clasped and rested on the rail before her. Her eyes were raised towards the Crucifix that stood over the Tabernacle, her lips were slightly parted, and a deep crimson spot glowed on each beautiful cheek. I became spell-bound for a moment, wondering whether in Heaven she could look any lovelier; but as I gazed upon her she raised her slender hand and blessed herself. Her prayer was over and it was surely heard.
Half an hour after this I stood robed in my warm furs awaiting my father's arrival. I had said my adieux to teachers and school-mates, and was now drying my eyes for the hundredth time in expectation of a summons to leave hurriedly. At last there was a stamping of horses' hoofs on the cold, frozen ground outside, followed by a violent ringing of the door-bell. The hour had come.
I stood hastily up. Now that the end was near where was the use of delay. I took Hortense's tearless face between my trembling hands and stooped to kiss her for the last time. I had determined to be brave at this moment but I said "good-bye" in a broken sob and two large tears fell upon her pale cheeks from my quivering lashes. She did not brush them away but looking earnestly into my eyes said in a low eager voice as though she were finishing her thought aloud.
"And we will always be friends like this, Amelia, in spite of distance or anything?"
"Always," I answered as her lips lay upon mine and then we parted.
From the quiet, peaceful routine of a convent life I was whirled into the maddest and wildest confusion, at least such did it seem to me then, when I was unsophisticated, and ignorant of the ways in which fashionable womanhood develops itself.
My step-mother went through my wardrobe making incredible additions and alterations, informing me as she did so that I would be the cynosure of many searching eyes when I appeared in the drawing-rooms which she frequented. I also received many graceful hints as to what was expected of me in conversation and demeanour, and I did not need any assistance whatever to realize that I was a sort of speculation, that I would carry an insinuation of my father's wealth and my mother's position about with me wherever I went. I was not given to understand or to fear that my own intrinsic worth would likely be the object of any serious consideration. My step-mother encouraged me by saying that "Alice Merivale was out before me and was quite a success, and all I had to do was to renew my early friendship with her" or in other words to play the parasite as prettily as I knew how. About this, however, I had made up my mind before I appeared in the busy arena of fashionable society. Twice a week now I put on some of my expensive new toilets and went with my step-mother in our handsome conveyance to make calls. I was presented to every one of any note, and drank tea in the best drawing-rooms the Capital could boast of. So far my step-mother looked happy. I had not been awkward at introductions, nor dull in conversations. I had even made some very pithy remarks where they could do me most service, and knew the name of a historic personage to whom Lady Pendleton alluded vaguely, forgetting his title. I was invaded in my turn on our reception day by all the wealth and beauty of the capital. Great, pompous dames in heavy mantles and rustling robes sat themselves down in imposing condescension beside me to discuss the last dinner party at Government House, or recite a series of domestic woes brought on by that refractory necessity—the cook. Simpering young ladies, and simpering ladies that were no longer young, greeted me with a pretty, patronizing courtesy, and smiled upon my remarks as sweetly as we grown people do at the crude observances of a prattling child.
There was a time I must admit when I was only a child in the eyes of some of these maidens. When I was ten and they were twenty how far apart we stood in sympathies and tastes? But it is astonishing how rapidly youth overtakes maturity. Although the inevitable disparity of years can never be altered or overcome, the material differences which necessarily accrue from it are easily mastered.
So far, the course of my new life ran smoothly and calmly on, but an impediment was looming up in the near distance. Mrs. Hartmann's cards were out for her annual brilliant "At Home." Every one was whispering about and speculating in a hopeful way, as people do when a grand social event of this nature is on thetapis. My step-mother spent the whole of the day before among her fragments of small finery, re-arranging tumbled laces and trimmings, and sorting her handsome jewels. I gave my afternoon leisure to Hortense, writing her a most minute and graphic account of my initiation into fashionable life, my progress and its probable result.
When the eventful night came and the gas was lighted all was hurry and flurry and confusion in our home. My step-mother and I repaired to our rooms in quiet walking costumes which we had worn in the afternoon, and an hour or so later we emerged in the fullest ball-toilet. I was ready first, and gathering up my expensive train of satin and oriental lace, I glided across the hall and tapped at my step-mother's bedroom.
In answer to a faint "come in," I admitted myself just in time to see the faithful Janet bestowing her attention upon the bare, plump shoulders of her mistress, who stood before her cheval glass in silent self-contemplation.
She had only to fasten a necklet of diamonds at her throat, to gather up her gloves and lace hand-kerchief and allow Janet to wrap her up in her downy opera cloak, and she was ready. As she turned from the glass her gaze fell fully upon me. I could see that she was not disappointed, but her generous admiration in no way interfered with the consciousness which filled her of her own superior dignity and grace. She may have envied me my youth, for she was loth to grow old among these gay distractions, however, she only said "you'll do nicely Amelia" and we left the room.
We went down to the dimly-lit drawing-room where a cheerful fire burned in the polished grate, and my stepmother rang for tea. The little French parlor maid appeared a moment later and laid the tiny table beside us. Two steaming cups stood invitingly on the tray, but before taking hers my step-mother suddenly remembered she had left her jewel case unlocked, and she hurried out of the room in a state of anxious excitement. I turned my back to the fire and in utter abstraction riveted my gaze upon the butterfly handles of the teacups. I was thinking. Such circumstances as these always brought back my simple yesterdays with a renewed force to my memory. I was thinking so profoundly that I neither heard nor saw my father, who had appeared in the doorway and was standing on the sheep-skin rug looking strangely at me.
I must have felt the power of his steady gaze, for suddenly and almost involuntarily, I raised my eyes and beheld him leaning against the polished casement, the heavy red curtain over the entrance hanging loosely and gracefully behind him, making an effective background for his white hair and pensive face.
Seeing my reverie broken, he strode noiselessly across the room and stood beside me at the fire. The thought crossed my mind that there was something unusual in his manner and expression to-night. He passed his hand wearily over his brow and eyes, and as if in helpless obedience to some uncontrollable impulse he leaned forward and touched his firm dry lips to my cheek.
I started, and why should'nt I? It was the first time my father had ever kissed me, at least so long as I could remember. I felt a deep blush creeping up to my very ears; in fact I was stupidly agitated, and he saw it. With a tenderness such as his voice had not known for many a year he said:
"Amey, you are a living, breathing vision of my happy past, to-night. I never saw such a likeness before." His words sank into a whisper as my step-mother's footfall sounded on the stairs outside. He heard it, and turning away left the room abruptly. I drank my cup of tea and prepared to leave as one moving about in a dream. This was one of the strangest experiences I had ever had; some secret spring seemed to have been magically touched within me, and all the pent-up love and devotion of a life-time now flowed freely through my veins. I was attracted most powerfully towards the cold, distant man whom I had dreaded all along, and whom I could have hated ardently had it not been a sin against nature.
His words, though vague, had a clear and holy meaning for me. He must then have loved my dear dead mother, I thought fondly, when twenty years of separation have not effaced her memory from his heart and mind.
I was busy with these reflections as we drove through the streets of the city towards the Hartmann's residence, and I alighted at their door with my eyes full of unshed tears. How strangely at odds we can be with the circumstances of our daily lives.
Very soon, however, I was obliged to dispel all such personal and intimate ruminations. I was no longer my own property to dispose of as I willed. I was standing in the doorway of the spacious ball-room with a circle of new-made gentlemen acquaintances around me; my father and his wife stood a short distance from me and watched the proceedings without looking at them.
"May I have the fifth Miss Hampden," the very good-looking Mr. Haliburton was asking with a smile.
"What is the dance?" I interrupted as he was about to scribble his initials.
"A polka," he replied with sweet urbanity. I shook my head negatively and tried to look pleasantly sorry. He raised his perfect dark eye-brows in thorough astonishment and put in an exclamatory "Why?"
"No fast dances," I said in a seriously playful tone, "I will give you the sixth, it is a lancers."
"Oh, this is too bad," he argued earnestly, "however," he continued with his peculiar, winning smile, "I am thankful for any." He wrote his name very badly on my programme, and mine on his, then with a most graceful bow made way for a new petitioner.
I had nearly the same little dialogue with each hero that addressed me, and as there were but four slow dances on the programme for the evening, I was soon in a trying dilemma. Amiable and courteous as these fashionable lions were acknowledged to be, they could not get themselves to sacrifice the pleasure, great or small, which they found in a waltz or polka, to sit the dance out quietly with a girl of scruples and principles.
I had to be satisfied, therefore, with the conviction that I was doomed to spend the greater part of the evening alone; and what was more consoling still, this being my first appearance at a ball, I was sure to be closely watched by many a fair rival. Already the music for the opening dance was sounding. I was engaged for this one, and had for my vis-a-vis my step-mother and an imposing gentleman in heavy regimentals. My partner was an ordinary man of the period, of medium height, with common-place moustache and neatly trimmed side-whiskers, who made several differently worded remarks of the same meaning upon the same subject.
I was disposed not to enjoy this evening for many reasons, and I was conscious of going through the figures of the dance automatically and tastelessly. I came back after each lady's chain to my tiresome partner, wishing earnestly that it would soon be over. My step-mother detected my listless manner, and came to me later, when the dance was ended and I had been left by the amiable Mr. Fawcett standing before a picture of Siddons which I was ostensibly admiring with enthusiasm. There was a becoming smile on the lace of my step-mother, as there always was in fashionable company, but there was no sweetness in the anger which was interpreted by the quick, impatient words that flashed from behind the glittering plumes of her splendid fan into my ear:
"Don't make an idiot of yourself," she said, hoarsely, coming up to me, and standing in a well-studied attitude before the picture I was looking at. "It is unpardonable vulgar and rude of you to take exception to any dances on the programme, as if Mrs. Hartmann would allow any impropriety where her own daughters are concerned." She went on fanning herself briskly, showing nothing of her indignation in her face.
Without raising my eyes I answered quietly: "Do not excite yourself for nothing, you may be sure I shall not disgrace you, but I am determined not to get into the arms of any of these men to-night."
She moved away while I was speaking and I saw no more of her until we were preparing to leave. During the dances that intervened between the quadrille and the lancers, that I had given to Mr. Haliburton, I had amused myself as best I could, talking to some prosy relatives of the family who stood around the walls, and turning over the leaves of an artistic scrap-book that lay upon the broad window-sill at one end of the room.
I was grateful when Mr. Haliburton came and took me away into the crowd. I was beginning to feel tired of the situation and to wish I were safely at home.
The second dance, however, was livelier than the first. My partner was a vivacious flirt who made every one feel merry for a while, and I began to enjoy it after we had gone through the first figure. We were slower than the dancers next to us, who had finished and were waiting for us, to change the music. I was advancing to my vis-a-vis, looking around the room at the same time, when my eyes suddenly fell. I saw someone in the distance watching my movements, someone who had evidently just come in. He was not a young man, and yet he was hardly old. I had not time to take further notice of his appearance, for the music ceased and we began the last frolicsome figure of our dance. As I passed into the conservatory later on Mr. Haliburton's arm I stole a glance towards the end of the room where this "somebody" had been standing, but he was gone. I need not have felt concerned and yet I did. More than that, I was disappointed, and it was with an unfeigned weariness and impatience that I threw myself into the low, basket rocking-chair under a canopy covered with ivy to which Mr. Haliburton conducted me.
I was glad to see him go from me, though it was but for a moment; I would have time to reason with myself before he came back with the ices.
When I found myself alone, I no longer checked the heavy sigh that had lain heavy in my breast all night. I leaned my head back against the vine-clad pillar behind me and almost sobbed. I was feeling miserable. A footfall somewhere made me spring into an erect, sitting posture again. I took an ivy leaf between my fingers and toyed nervously with it I waited for a confirmation of my worst fears, that my step-mother had followed me and heard me sigh, but there was no one. When all was quiet again I ventured to look carefully around. The secret was out, on a rustic bench at the other side of my graceful canopy "somebody" was sitting alone. His profile met my full view, his pensive half-sad profile. I looked at it for a moment and, springing up, I moved aside my rocking chair and rushed towards him.
"Mr. Dalton!" I cried out impulsively, and then stopped suddenly short—what if it were not he at all?
He turned and caught me in my attitude of suppressed excitement, the bench was between us. He held out both hands over its curved back saying:
"Amey, is it you?"
There was a strange look as of a misty uncertain pleasure in his eyes. I gave him my small hands, for they were small when he had gathered them into his, and we looked at one another in silence for a few moments.
"Come here and sit down beside me little one," he said in his old affectionate way. "How you have grown!" he exclaimed, moving one end of the rustic seat to let me pass. I had forgotten all about Mr. Haliburton or any one else but Mr. Dalton; the glad surprise of seeing him absorbed every other consideration.
"Yes, but not changed, am I?" I put in, eagerly, sitting down beside him and looking earnestly into his gravely glad face.