THEY all sat down solemnly upon the old chairs, in their faded paint and gilding, with their old seats in fine embroidered work, which had been so handsome in their day, and still breathed of grandparents and an ancestral home. The Asquiths’ drawing-room had always been rather heterogeneous, with some things in it which money could not buy, and which they thought very little of, and some that were to be had cheap anywhere, for which, having acquired them by the sweat of their brow, they cared a great deal. They did not remark these contrarieties, having so many other things to think of, but Mr. Rossmore did, and wondered how certain articles came to be there, sometimes asking himself how people with so many graceful old things about them could endure the vulgar new, sometimes what right the purchasers of the vulgar new could have to that beautiful old. He did not know anything about their history, but only that they had a very large family of nice children, and were in consequence poor. They did not themselves say much of their poverty, but the people about did, the chief people in the parish, and especially the district ladies, who were disturbed by it, and wondered, not inaudibly, whether it was possible for the poor Asquiths to give so many children enough to eat. It was this inquiry, very much urged upon him, that had brought Mr. Rossmore here to-day.
He was seized with a little timidity when he began to speak. Something in Mary’s look, he could not have told what, an air of dignity, a half-alarm lest something should be said to her which should be unpalatable or offensive, caught and startled him. He could see that the poor incumbent’s wife was afraid of being affronted or put in an uncomfortable position by what he was about to say: and in the little gleam of light that thus seemed to fall upon her, Mr. Rossmore began to perceive something more in Mrs. Asquith than the mere parson’s wife, with a large family, accustomed to all the shifts of poverty. He became in his turn a little alarmed and nervous, wondering if he should offend them, wondering if——. But he reflected that no reasonable person could have any right to be offended with such a proposal as that he was about to make, and further, that if the Asquiths preferred their pride to the real interests of their children, it was a very poor sort of pride, and not one to be respected. He took courage accordingly, and cleared his throat.
“I hope you will not think what I am going to say impertinent, Mrs. Asquith. I hope I may not be making a mistake. If I am, I am sure I may throw myself on your charity to forgive me—for I mean anything but offence.”
“Offence!” said Mr. Asquith. “I am certain of that: and my wife is not a touchy person to take offence.”
“I will tell you what it is without more ado,” Mr. Rossmore said. “I don’t know the people myself, but my brother, who has had to do with the lady in the way of business, has written to me about it. I may be making a mistake,” he repeated. “Perhaps you have no such intentions for your children. Miss Hetty perhaps——. But I must tell you what it is. Mrs. Asquith”—he faced towards Mary, for it was of her that he was afraid—“there is a young lady wanted to be with a child in the country—oh, not as a governess: dear me, no, not the least in the world as a governess. This is what it is. There is a little girl in the country, a great heiress, I believe, a little delicate—not queer—no, I don’t think she is at all queer. She has a governess with her, an excellent person, very accomplished, a good musician, and speaking all the languages. What they want is a young lady a little older, but not too old to be a companion to the child, who would share all her lessons, and get every advantage, and a salary besides of fifty pounds a year. It is quite an unusual offer, quite a prize for any one who could accept it. I hope, Mrs. Asquith, that you will not think I am taking too much upon me. I thought if you ever contemplated—if, in short, you had thought of—of school or finishing lessons or anything of that sort——”
“Why should you apologise? You are making us the kindest offer. Mary, surely you must feel with me that Mr. Rossmore——”
“I am sure you are very kind,” cried Mary, “oh, very kind; nothing could be more kind.” There was a little confusion about her, as if she had received a blow: and she was flushed and uneasy. It was something of a shock. To think of Hetty going—to a situation: going—to be somebody’s companion! It gave Mary a little sick shock at her heart. But she was a sensible woman, and she had not come thus far on the path of life without learning that pride was a thing to be put at once under the foot of the mother of a family. She regained after a moment entire possession of herself. “It is a little startling to think of Hetty, such a child as she is, going away, earning money,” she said, with a quiver of a smile. “It seems so strange, for a girl too. And to lose her out of the house will be something, something——. But, Mr. Rossmore, you are very, very kind. I take it as the greatest kindness. It sounds as if it might be—the very thing for Hetty. Harry, don’t you think——”
What with the sudden shock and all the complications of feeling involved, Mrs. Asquith had hard ado not to cry. She laughed a little instead, and looked towards her husband. It was the first time it had ever been suggested to her that her children were not to be always at her side. Mr. Asquith divined a good deal, but not all, that was in her mind.
“My dear,” he said, “you are the only person to decide such a matter. Nobody ever understands a girl like her mother. You were anxious about her music, and that she should learn something. To me it seems a wonderful chance, but it is you who must be the judge. Hetty,” he said, turning to his brother clergyman with a smile, “is part of herself.”
“I can well imagine that; one can see what she is; that is why I came here at once, for if it does not shock you to think of a separation at all, it is a wonderful chance. I never heard in my experience of anything better. The little girl is only ten, but very forward for her age; and Miss Hetty is so used to children.”
“And to get all we want for her, and be paid into the bargain;” cried Mary, with a nervous laugh. “We are very much obliged to you, Mr. Rossmore. I am sure Hetty will not hesitate for a moment; and neither do I.”
“And where is this wonderful child?” said Mr. Asquith, “and why is she in want of a companion? and where does she live?”
“I don’t know the whole story. My brother is in the law. All sorts of romances seem to come into his hands. So far as I can make out, both parents are living, the father mad, shut up in a lunatic asylum; the mother, who has all the money, is abroad. I fancy she’s an American, smitten with the love of an old family and an old house.”
“It is an old family, then, and an old house.”
“They say, one of the most perfect specimens of an old English house, a long way off, though—in Redcornshire—a place called Horton.”
Mary uttered a cry. She had thought somehow, she could not tell how, that this name was coming. Mr. Asquith, too, cried, “Horton!” with the wildest amazement, for no presentiment had visited his breast.
“You know the place?” their visitor said.
Mary gave her husband a warning look.
“We knew it very well in our youth, oh, very well. It is startling to hear of it so suddenly. And what is the name of the people who are there now? It is long, long since I have heard.”
“Their name is Rotherham,” said Mr. Rossmore.
Mary gave her husband once more a look—of mingled relief and disappointment. And then it was decided that Hetty should be called in to hear what she thought of it, and then that Mr. Rossmore should write to his brother the lawyer to say that the wished-for girl had been found. It was all over so quickly, before any one could realise what had taken place. Hetty on being questioned had looked at her mother, and said, “If you can do without me, mamma,” with a flush of sudden excitement. She had not hesitated or expressed any alarm. For even Hetty was not impervious to that charm of novelty which is so delightful to youth. There rushed into her young soul all at once a desire to go out to these fresh fields and pastures new, to see the world, to judge for herself what life was like; and then there was the delightful thought that to her, Hetty, only a girl, whom nobody had thought of in that light, should come the privilege—to her the first of all the family—of earning money, of helping at home. Hetty’s dreams had taken that shape almost from her childhood, though she had never known how they were to be carried out. Her little romance had been to pay all the bills secretly, so that mamma, when she set out on that hard task of apportioning so much to each, should find, to her amazement, that all had been settled! She had told this dream to Janey, and the two had discussed it often, but never had hit upon a way in which it could be done. Hetty had thought she might perhaps have done it by writing stories, but her first attempt in that way had not been a success. And the girls had generally ended by dwelling on mamma’s wonder and joy when she found all the bills paid, and the unusual happiness that would succeed of having a little money and nothing to do with it, and being able to buy a hundred things which at present they had to do without. But now fifty pounds a year! Hetty, it must be allowed, did not take “the advantages” upon which Mr. Rossmore had laid so much stress, and which had been her mother’s inducement, much into account. She was not enthusiastic about the lessons. To play the piano better would be pleasant, but it was evident she was not a musician born, for she was without enthusiasm even about that. What she did think of was the glory of being able to help and the pleasure of the novelty: a sensation intensified by feeling, by the thrill of going out into the world like a girl in a novel, and tempered by a sinking of heart which would come upon her when she thought of going away. But at sixteen it is quite possible to get the good of the anticipated novelty and the sensation of going out upon the world, and yet forget the preliminary step, which notwithstanding is of the first necessity, of going away.
The arrangements were not long of being completed. It appeared that little Miss Rotherham lived something of a cloistered life in the great old house. Her mother was away at the other end of the world, and had business or something else to enforce her absence for a year or more, during which time her little girl was under very close regulations. She was not to go outside of the park, except now and then for a drive. She was never to be left alone. If Miss Hofland, the governess, was off duty, her young companion was to be with her, and no visitors or any communication from without were to be allowed. “Extraordinary precautions to be adopted for a child of ten,” Mr. Rossmore said. “My brother says there are sufficient family reasons, but does not explain. Except this mystery, I don’t know that there is anything to find fault with. The mother is an American. I don’t know that this fact affords any explanation. Still their manners are a little different from ours.”
“Not in the way of shutting up their children,” said Mr. Asquith thoughtfully.
Said Mary, “These regulations don’t trouble me. A child of ten is best at home. There is plenty of room for her to walk and play in the park, oh, plenty. You remember, Harry——” There is no telling what recollections might have been called up had not Mr. Rossmore’s presence checked them. She paused a little, musing, excited, seeing before her every glade and hollow. “Perhaps the lady is a woman with a system,” she said. “She may have some plan of her own for making children perfect. I wonder if Mr. Rossmore knows, Harry—if he knows whether she is related to the old family?”
Mary did not know why it was that she made this inquiry timidly through her husband, as it were at secondhand, instead of inquiring simply as otherwise she should have done. Mr. Rossmore could give no answer to the question. He knew nothing about the Prescotts. And it was so long since they had heard anything, and so much may happen in a dozen years. She said nothing of her relationship, nor that it was her home to which the child was thus going as a stranger. If all were strangers there now, what did it matter? To think that the family had thus disappeared out of Horton gave her a pang. Rotherham? She had never once heard the name before. They must be entirely strangers, foreigners, not even belonging to the neighbourhood. Since the old race had died away, perhaps it was better that it should be so. And it was just as well for Hetty that, since she was going to Horton, she should be kept in this almost monastic seclusion. For Asquith is not a common name, and people might inquire and insist on knowing who Miss Asquith was. It was better, certainly better, that Hetty should not run the risk of cross-examination from old friends. All things were for the best. And, after all, it was only for a year.
Only for a year! While it was a month off, Hetty thought a year nothing at all. She was even conscious of a thrill of eagerness to meet it, a desire to hurry on the time. A year in a romantic old house, in a sort of mediæval retirement, shut in like a princess in a fairy tale! She almost longed to feel the solitude encircle her, the wind blowing among the trees, which was the only sound she should hear. But as the time of her departure approached, Hetty began to change her mind, and the time of her absence to draw out and become larger and larger, till it took the proportions of a century. “They will be quite grown up before I come home,” she said to Mary, bending over the curly heads of the two youngest, as they lay in their little cribs side by side: and it took all Hetty’s power of self-control to prevent her from bedewing the pillows with her tears. Janey said all she could to comfort the exile. “I wish it was me,” Janey cried, whose eyes were dancing with eagerness. “Oh, I wish it was me!” The one dreadful thing, however, which made even Janey acknowledge a pang, was that in four months it would be Christmas, and Hetty would not be able to come home. What kind of Christmas could be possible without Hetty? and oh, what would Hetty do alone, with nobody but a strange little girl of ten and a governess, all by herself on Christmas Day?
