The Story of a Governess. Mrs. Oliphant
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as the servants went out and in of the dining-room, and the little cheerful commotion, it is undeniable that Janet remembered Mrs. Bland’s little sermons about the fate of a governess.
She did not like it. She had never been left out in her life before. Janet was not shy; she had always been used to take a somewhat privileged place in the little society she was acquainted with. She could talk; she was not afraid of anybody who might drift into the little world of Clover; and she loved variety, which is a thing not permitted to governesses. On these occasions supper was brought up to the school-room for Miss Summerhayes and her pupil. It was brought late, and they had to wait and yawn on opposite sides of the table for the cold and tardy meal. On such occasions it was difficult to make herself amusing to Julia, or to find Julia amusing. It was dull. It produced a certain mortification in Janet’s mind to find that she cared. She said to herself, with a little bitterness of which she was ashamed, that she had no doubt it was a very dull party, and that the two strangers were not in the least interesting. She recalled to herself her previous conviction, that to be left alone to do what she pleased, to read a novel or write a letter, would be a pleasant relief. No, it was not so; she wanted to be in the dining-room with the rest, hearing what was said, even if she had to remember her own position and take little part. She wanted to see how the drama was going on, and how the hero looked when there was some one to compare him with. That scene would glide in her imagination in front of her novel, with the attraction of a pleasure out of reach. And Julia was a dull companion on these occasions. She yawned and wondered when they would bring the supper.
“It’s disgusting to be kept so long waiting, and all the things like stones when they do come,” Julia would say; “I shall complain to mamma. If all the others are so busy, Vicars might bring it up, once in a way.”
“Who is Vicars?” said Janet.
“Oh, he is the man; he never goes into the dining-room except when Dolff is here—but he might bring up our supper if all the rest are so busy. As if there was any reason to make such a fuss! Two men to dinner! You would think there were twenty, all fine ladies and gentlemen, to see how Gussy goes on.”
“They are probably great friends, and more important than twenty ladies and gentlemen,” said Janet, with her most correct governess air.
“Oh, you know well enough! It is Charley Meredith, and they will caterwaul afterwards till it makes me quite ill to hear them. And Gussy will look so silly. Oh, why does a woman look so silly when there is nonsense like that going on?”
“It is generally the man who is supposed to look silly,” said Janet. Involuntarily she thought of poor Dr. Harding and his proposal; and the hard-hearted young woman laughed in spite of herself.
“What are you laughing at? You are remembering something. Tell me, tell me, Miss Summerhayes! I suppose,” said Julia, with deep discrimination, “that the man looks silly when it is he who wants it most. Now, here it is Gussy who wants it most.”
“Julia, you have no right to discuss your sister.”
“Oh, but you can’t stop me doing it!” said Julia, with composure; “you can stop me when—when I’m silly myself. I was a great fool, I know. I thought once I could drive you away—no, I didn’t want to drive you away. I wanted to get the upper hand; but you’ve got the upper hand of me, and I don’t mind now. However, that’s quite different. This is a free country, and I can say what I please of Gussy. I say that it’s she——”
“As it is a free country, you can’t compel me to listen,” said Janet; “but there is one thing in which it is not a free country, and that is that you are not permitted to be ill-bred. It is not allowed to be vulgar.”
“Oh!” cried Julia, coloring to her eyes, but affecting to laugh, “as if there were not hundreds and thousands?”
Janet shrugged her little shoulders in a manner which her pupil, rebellious, but admiring, thought irresistible.
“Out in the streets, perhaps: so are there applewomen, and people who sell matches. But in good time here comes the tray, and something for you to do.”
Janet, however, was not far from being of Julia’s opinion. Miss Harwood, who had been so calm, who had explained that the quiet family life so unbroken, the long evenings of needlework and talk, might appear dull to Janet, but were never dull to her mother and herself, now went through these evenings as in a dream. Meredith came twice, sometimes three times, in a week, after dinner, as he had done on his first appearance. He had privileges which were extended to no one else, and it was never known on which evening he would appear. He even took pains, Janet thought, to have no rule, to appear suddenly when he was not looked for. But to this spectator, whose attention was fixed upon Gussy, as on the heroine of the drama, it was very easily apparent that there was no evening on which he was not expected. She worked, she talked, she made her little disquisitions as usual, but there was a certain fixed attitude of her head, a little almost imperceptible pause now and then in the movements of her hands, which showed that she was listening for the summons at the door, the step outside. In the quietness of the semi-rural suburban road the step of the rare passenger was sometimes heard even outside the garden wall. Sometimes Mrs. Harwood would say,
“I wonder if that is Charley Meredith?” to which Gussy would reply, with beautiful composure,
“Oh, no; he is always engaged on Thursdays!” or, “This is never one of his free nights.”
But it was not lost either upon Janet or Julia that her hands were for a moment still, that her downcast eyes were fixed not on her work, and her entire frame rigid with intent listening. The attitude relaxed in a moment when the welcome sound of the bell pealed into the silence, a little faint sigh of ease and happiness came from the bottom of her heart, her head regained its easy poise. Whether the mother also saw these indications of supreme suspense and then of delightful relief, even Janet, whom no circumstance escaped, could not tell. Perhaps, like Gussy, she thought that the visitor was of more account than the other bystanders believed him to be.
A little of the same enchantment hung over Gussy through all the ordinary affairs of life. There was a liquid softness in her eyes that had not been there before; her want of color, which was her great deficiency, seemed to be half compensated be the faintest rose-flush of feeling and sensibility which had come to her, no one could tell how. Was it a sign of better health, greater vigor, than her tranquil temperament usually enjoyed? Her mother said so, rejoicing over the fact that Gussy was “so well.”
“She has quite a color,” the visitors said. “What a good thing you went to Malvern this year; it has quite set Augusta up.”
But the governess and her pupil knew it was not Malvern. The piano in the larger drawing-room was always open now, the lights were always prepared, and Gussy practiced her songs in the morning with a devotion for which Janet, a little moved by the esprit de corps, and unwilling that a woman should betray herself, blushed sometimes when the unwearying watchfulness of Julia, to whom no such awakening had come, pointed out the performance going on below.
“She’s practising again,” Julia would say, in the midst of a lesson.
“She knows how necessary it is,” cried quick-witted Janet. “I wish you were half as sensible.”
But these little snubs, which were frequent, did not turn aside Julia’s keen perceptions or break the unspoken sympathy of spectatorship that was between the two.
Julia, however, made no further demonstration of her dislike to the visitor, and Mrs. Harwood’s satisfaction with the “good influence” which Miss Summerhayes had acquired over the rebellious girl went on increasing.
“She looks no more than a girl herself—and so she is, quite young, and never was out before—but her power over that unmanageable child is something wonderful. You know, my dear, what poor Ju was.”
“Oh, yes, I know what Ju was!” replied, with fervor, the friend to whom Mrs. Harwood confided her satisfaction. With too much fervor, perhaps; for when the person we blame is our own child, we desire no warmth