“YOU will be sure to write regularly, Hetty, twice a week at the least? You must not forget; you must never forget.”
“Oh, never, mamma!” cried poor Hetty, with a quiver in her voice.
“And try if you can hear something about Cousin John. The clergyman is sure to know. Don’t ask right out, but try what you can discover. You can say that your mother knew that part of the country, and that you had heard of the Prescotts. Oh, how careless it was of me not to keep on writing! You must be very regular, Hetty—twice a week, at the very least.”
Hetty’s poor little face was very pale; her lips were trembling. The family had come, all but the very little ones, to the railway to see her off. But the boys were amused with the locomotive, and the girls with looking at the people; and Hetty felt herself forgotten already. What would it be when she was really away?
And then she relapsed into a spasm of weeping when the inevitable moment came, and the train got into motion. Poor little Hetty! They would all go back, go home, and the business of every day would go on as before, while she was flying away into the unknown, with that clang and wild tumult of sound. Hetty thought she had never realised what a railway journey was before, the clang as of giants’ hoofs going, the rush and sweep through the air, as if impelled by some horrible force that could not be appealed to to stop, or made to understand that you wanted to get out, to get out and go back again! This was the first thought of her little scared soul. Horses with a man driving could be made to stop, but this engine never: and what if it should go on, on, to the end of the world? It seemed so likely, so probable that it might do so, in the first dreadful sense of the unescapable which overwhelmed the girl’s mind. Of course when she came to herself she was a quite reasonable little girl, and knew that this could not be so, and that, as exactly as is in human possibility, the train would arrive at Horton station, where she was bound, after stopping at many other stations on the way. And presently Hetty dried her eyes, and began to look at the country; and things went a little better with her, until she had another fit of panic and horror at the end of her journey, when she stepped out, trembling, all alone, and saw, half with terror, half with pride, the brougham waiting which was to carry her, behind two sleek and shining horses, in all the glory of a “private carriage” (a thing Hetty knew nothing of), to Horton. She had been driven to the station, she was aware, in the Horton carriage when she went away, a baby, with her parents, and this knowledge—for it was not a recollection—made everything seem all the stranger. It was her mother’s home she was going to, and yet such a strange, unknown place.
It seemed to Hetty as if she had known it all her life when the old house came into view. The two wings were a story lower than the centre of the house, which rose into a high roof, with mansard windows rising over the stone parapet; from the east wing the ground sloped away, leaving a rather steep bank of velvet lawn; the other was level with the flower-garden, and seemed partially inhabited. But the lower windows on the west side were all blank and closely shuttered. That was the picture-gallery, Hetty knew, raising its row of long windows above. She wondered if it still was as mamma had so often described it, with the Prescotts’ pictures all stately on the walls, her own ancestors, Hetty’s ancestors, though nobody knew. The carriage drove up to the door, which did not stand open now, as it had done in mamma’s time; only a large person, in a black silk gown, came out, with a not very amiable look, to receive Hetty. “Oh, it’s only the young lady,” she said, with a slight toss of her head, and bade an attendant maid look after the little box and bag which contained the girl’s modest requirements. Then, with a wave of her hand, this grand personage bade Hetty follow, and led her through the hall and a long passage to a bright room behind, looking out upon the trimmest of artificial gardens, all cut out in flower-beds, and still blazing with colour, red geraniums and yellow calceolarias and asters in all colours, though it was October. The colour and the light almost dazzled Hetty, after the cool, subdued tones of the hall. Here a little girl, with her hair in a flood over her shoulders—dark hair, very much crêpé—sat at the piano, with a tall and slim figure, on which from top to toe the word “governess” seemed written, seated beside her. The child went on playing like a little automaton; but the lady rose when Hetty came timidly in, following the housekeeper. “Here’s the young lady, Miss Hofland,” that personage said, with little ceremony, and turned away without another word. Miss Hofland was very thin, very gentle, with a slightly deprecating air. She put out her hand to Hetty, and gave her an emphatic grasp, which seemed to mean an exhortation to silence as well as a greeting. “How do you do? Rhoda’s at her lesson,” she said in a half-whisper, signing to the girl to sit down, which Hetty, breathless with the oppressive sense of novelty and strangeness, was very glad to do. She sat down feeling as if she had fallen out of a different planet, out of another world, while the little girl went on playing her exercises, with the “One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,” of the governess’s half-whispering voice. What a curious scene it was! Hetty had time to note everything in the room, and to take in the red and yellow and blue of the flower-beds outside, and the pictures on the walls, and the trifles on the table, while the stumbling sound of the piano, now checked to have a passage played over again, now pounding
“‘HOW DO YOU DO, MISS ASQUITH?’” (p. 201.)
monotonously with that “One, two, three,” went on and on. Little Miss Rotherham’s hair was very dark, very much crimped, and standing out in a bush, very unlike the natural fair locks of the children at home. She was about the same size as little Mary, Hetty said to herself, but Mary played better, though she had never had any lessons, and her hair was so soft, falling with just a soft twist in it, which was natural. But oh, how much happier Mary must be with all her brothers and sisters. Hetty ended by saying, “Poor little thing!” to herself quite softly as the lesson went on.
When Rhoda got up from her lesson, she came, instructed by the governess, and gave Hetty her hand, and said, “How do you do, Miss Asquith?” She had a little dark face, quite in keeping with her dark hair, and a small person, very slight and straight, not round and plump, as the Asquiths were at that age. Hetty, who, by reason of her large family was truly maternal in her way, and knew all about children, regretted instinctively that this little thing was so thin, and wondered if she were delicate, or if she were getting better of something, which might account for it. At the same moment a footman brought in tea—a footman in livery, who seemed to Hetty’s unaccustomed eyes grotesque and out of place—and then the three proceeded to make acquaintance over their bread-and-butter.
“You have had rather a long journey. I fear you must be very tired,” the governess said.
“Oh no,” said Hetty. “It is not like walking. In the railway there is nothing to tire one.”
“Don’t you think so? But perhaps you have had a great deal of travelling?”
“I never,” said Hetty, the tears coming to her eyes, “was away from home before.”
“That is always rather a trial,” said Miss Hofland, sympathetically, “but I hope you’ll soon feel quite at home with Rhoda and me. We are all that is here, nothing but Rhoda and me, and the servants of course. We lead a very quiet life, but you heard of that, no doubt. We take our walk in the park, and we pay great attention to our lessons, oh, great attention, Miss Asquith. We are working very hard in order to astonish mamma when she comes back. We think that when she sees the progress that has been made, she will be very much pleased.”
At this Rhoda lifted up a somewhat sharp little voice, and declared that she did not think mamma cared.
“Oh, how can you say so, my dear child? No one knows how much mothers care. Perhaps they may not say so to their little girls, but it is the first wish of their hearts to see their children get on. Isn’t that so, Miss Asquith? I am sure you know.”
“It is mamma’s first wish—oh, to have everything she can for the children,” cried Hetty, the tears, which were so very near her eyes, coming again.
“I told you so, Rhoda,” said Miss Hofland, with a little air of triumph.
Rhoda made no reply. Her soul apparently was filled with no thought but bread-and-butter. There was a precocious gravity and stiffness about her which half frightened Hetty. It appeared that it was Miss Hofland who was the nearest her own age, while Rhoda was years beyond them both in seriousness, learned in all the cares of earth. This impression did not diminish for the first week of Hetty’s sojourn at Horton. Familiarity dispelled it a little afterwards, and made her perceive that the child’s gravity was one of the many marks of shyness, and that the nature beneath was, after all, like child-nature in general, thoughtless and changeable, varying to natural gaiety when the sense of strangeness was overcome. But still there was a shadow upon the little face which not even shyness could account for. This was partly physical, for the little girl had immense dark eyes, with long eyelashes, which overshadowed her little countenance, and partly mental, as if some cloud hung over her, unknown to the rest of the world. It was not till Hetty had grown familiar with the strange secluded life of the place that she knew anything more. It was a very strange life, the house full of servants, the imperious housekeeper managing everything as if no one but herself had to be consulted, and the three simple feminine creatures for whom, so far as appeared, all this costly household existed, living in their little spot of space—the morning room, which opened on the garden; the spare, nicely furnished place in which they dined; the set of bedrooms on the same side of the house—all these rooms were on the ground floor, one opening into another. Between Hetty’s room and that of Miss Hofland ran a passage, but this was the only division. Rhoda’s maid slept in the room beyond Hetty’s. They were thus altogether separated from the rest of the house. And so far as the bright tints of a cheerful garden could give animation, everything in their outlook was bright. Their sitting-room communicated with a conservatory. They had flowers in abundance, an aviary of birds among the flowers, and everything sweet and graceful about them. They were like princesses living in an enchanted garden, their little meals exquisitely cooked and served by the same magnificent man in livery, wonderful hothouse fruits always produced for their dessert. To Hetty the wealth seemed boundless that surrounded her. Was this, she wondered, how country houses were always kept up? Mamma had said the Prescotts were poor. To be sure, the Prescotts were here no longer. “But what a change,” she said to herself, “what a wonderful change for mamma, from Horton to that little house at home, overflowing with children. Oh, what a change!” Hetty did not remember that the children had come by degrees, and that gradually the sphere of existence and all its motives had changed for Mary. The wide greenness of the park, the giant trees, the pushing aside, as it were, of the world, so that breathing space and quiet might be secured for those favourites of fortune, produced a great effect upon Hetty. And to think that her mother had been brought up amid those shady glades and wide stretches of tranquil greenness! “Oh,” thought Hetty, “what would she give only to have permission to walk in such a park with the children now?”
When she had become quite familiar with this strange life, and had begun to feel herself, as people say, “at home,” although it was so different, so very different, so much worse and better than home, Hetty acquired various scraps of information about the strange household. There were never any visitors at Horton except the doctor and the clergyman, the former a young man, very grave and sedate in appearance, who appeared frequently at the house, and was constantly met by the little party in their walks in the park, when he seemed to be going or coming from the Hall, but always stopped to explain that he was on his way to some distant place, and had taken advantage of the permission he had to take the short cut across the park. The clergyman, on the other hand, was old and very cheerful, a gay little white-haired old man, who took tea about once a week with Miss Hofland and her charges, and whose visits were their brightest moments, Mr. Hayman, the rector, was always gay; the young doctor, whose name was Darrell, was always serious. Except these two, nobody ever came to the house. This roused little questions in the mind of Hetty, who was young enough to accept whatever happened as the common order of affairs. And it was only when Miss Hofland took the girl into her confidence that any question arose in her mind. Miss Hofland was older and more alive to the peculiarities of their cloistered life.
“Don’t you think it is a strange thing, my dear,” she said to Hetty suddenly, when she had been about a month at Horton, “that a mother should go away to the end of the world for a whole year, and leave her only little child all alone in a big house like this?”
They had been sitting together over the fire for a long time in silence. Rhoda had gone to bed, the great silence of the wintry park had closed over the house, and there was the darkness of a moonless night, which seemed somehow to creep into the rooms, and intensify the stillness and sense of seclusion from all the world. Hetty was much startled by this question. It took her some time to think what her companion could mean—a mother at the end of the world, and an only little child all alone! She looked up surprised, repeating almost unconsciously, “A mother—at the end of the world!”
“Yes,” said Miss Hofland; “don’t say you haven’t asked yourself the same——”
“Do you mean—Rhoda?” faltered Hetty, feeling as if the suggestion was in some sort a betrayal of trust.
“I mean Rhoda’s mother; who else could I mean? Did you ever hear of such a thing before? There are a great many things I don’t understand about this house.”
Hetty gazed once more, but put no answering question, nothing that could induce the governess to go on. The girl’s fine sense of good faith was shocked. It seemed to be a sort of wickedness and treachery to discuss the circumstances of the place in which she was living. But all the same these questions liberated Hetty’s own thoughts. Now that it had been suggested to her, she too became aware of many wonderings on the eve of bursting forth. Why? and why? But there was no answer to be had.
