I CANNOT undertake to say how it was, but it is certain that Bertie Hardwick met Kate next day, as she took her walk into the village, accompanied by Miss Blank. At the sight of him, that lady’s countenance clouded over; but Kate was glad, and the young man took no notice of Miss Blank’s looks. As it happened, the conversation between the governess and her pupil had flagged—it often flagged. The conversation between Kate and Miss Blank consisted generally of a host of bewildering questions on the one side, and as few answers as could be managed on the other. Miss Blank no doubt had affairs of her own to think of; and then Kate’s questions were of everything in heaven and earth, and might have troubled even a wise counsellor. Mr. Courtenay was still at Langton, but had sent out his niece for her usual walk—a thing by which she felt humiliated—and she had met with a rebuff in the village in consequence of some interference. She was in low spirits, and Miss Blank did not mind. Accordingly, Bertie was a relief and comfort to her, more than can be described.
‘Why don’t your sisters like me?’ said Kate. ‘I wonder, Mr. Bertie, why people don’t like me? If they would let me, I should like to be friends; but you saw they would not.’
‘I don’t think—perhaps—that they quite understood——’
‘But it is so easy to understand,’ said Kate, with a little impatient sigh. She shook her head, and tossed back her shining hair, which made an aureole round her. ‘Don’t let us speak of it,’ she said; ‘but you understood from the very first?’
Bertie was pleased, he could not have told why. The fact was, he, too, had been extremely puzzled at first; but now, after three meetings, he felt himself an old friend and privileged interpreter of the strange girl whom his sisters were so indignant with, and who certainly was a more important personage at Langton-Courtenay than any other fifteen-year-old girl in England. Both Mr. Hardwick and Bertie had to some extent made themselves Kate’s champions, moved thereto by that strange predisposition to take the side of a feminine stranger (at least, when she is young and pleasant) against the women of their own house, which almost all men are moved by. Women take their father’s, their husband’s, their brother’s side through thick and thin, with a natural certainty that their own must be in the right; but men invariably take it for granted that their own must be wrong. Thus, not only Bertie, who might be moved by other arguments, but even Mr. Hardwick, secretly believed that ‘the girls’ had taken offence foolishly, and maintained the cause of Kate.
‘They have seen nothing out of their own sphere,’ their brother said, apologetically—‘they don’t know much—they are very much petted and spoiled at home.’
‘Ah!’ said Kate, feeling as if a chilly douche had suddenly been administered in her face. She drew a long, half-sobbing breath, and then she said, with a pathetic tone in her voice, ‘Oh! I wonder why people don’t like me!’
‘You are wrong, Miss Courtenay—I am sure you are wrong,’ said Bertie, warmly. ‘Not like you!—that must be their stupidity alone. And I can’t believe, even, that any one is so stupid. You must be making a mistake.’
‘Oh! Mr. Bertie, how can you say so? Why, your sisters!’ cried Kate, returning to the charge.
‘But it is not that they—don’t like you,’ said Bertie. ‘How could you think it? It is only a misunderstanding—a—a—want of knowing——’
‘You are trying to save my feelings,’ said Kate; ‘but never mind my feelings. No, Mr. Bertie, it is quite true. I do not want to deceive myself—people do not like me.’ These words she produced singly, as if they had been so many stones thrown at the world. ‘Oh! please don’t say anything—perhaps it is my fate; perhaps I am never to be any better. But that is how it is—people don’t like me; I am sure I don’t know why.’
‘Miss Courtenay——’ Bertie began, with great earnestness; but just then the man-of-all-work from the Rectory, who was butler, and footman, and valet, and everything combined, made his appearance at the corner, beckoning to him; and as the servant was sent by his father, he had no alternative but to go away. When he was out of sight, Kate, whose eyes had followed him as far as he was visible, breathed forth a gentle sigh, and was going on quietly upon her way, silent, until the mood should seize her to chatter once more, when an event occurred that had never been known till now to happen at Langton—the governess, who was generally blank as her name, opened her mouth and spoke.
‘Miss Courtenay,’ she said, for she was not even sufficiently interested in her pupil to care to speak to her by her Christian name—‘Miss Courtenay, if this sort of thing continues, I shall have to go away.’
Kate, who was not much less startled than Balaam was on a similar occasion, stopped short, and turned round with a face of consternation upon her companion. ‘If what continues?’ she said.
‘This,’ said Miss Blank—‘this meeting of young men, and walking with them. It is hard enough to have to manage you; but if this goes on, I shall speak to Mr. Courtenay. I never was compromised before, and I don’t mean to be so now.’
Kate was so utterly unconscious of the meaning of all this, that she simply stared in dismay. ‘Compromised!’ she said, with big eyes of astonishment; ‘I don’t know what you mean. What is it that must not go on? Miss Blank, I hope you have not had a sunstroke, or something that makes people talk without knowing what they say.’
‘I will not take any impertinence from you, Miss Courtenay,’ said Miss Blank, going red with wrath. ‘Ask why people don’t like you, indeed!—you should ask me, instead of asking a gentleman, fishing for compliments! I’ll tell you why people don’t like you. It is because you are always interfering—thrusting yourself into things you have no business with—taking things upon you that no child has a right to meddle with. That is why people hate you——’
‘Hate me!’ cried Kate, who, for her part, had grown pale with horror.
‘Yes; hate you—that is the word. Do you think any one would put up with such a life who could help it? You are an heiress, and people are obliged to mind you; but if you had been a poor girl, you would have known the difference. Nobody would have put up with you then; you would have been beaten, or starved, or done something to. It is only your money that gives you the power to trample others under your feet.’
Kate was appalled by this address. It stupefied her, in the first place, that Miss Blank should have taken the initiative, and launched forth into speech, as it were, on her own account; and the assault took away the girl’s breath. She felt as one might feel who had been suddenly saluted with a shower of blows from an utterly unsuspected adversary. She did not know whether to fight or flee. She walked along mechanically by her assailant’s side, and gasped for breath. Her eyes grew large and round with wonder. She listened in amaze, not able to believe her ears.
‘But I won’t be kept quiet any longer,’ said Miss Blank—‘I will speak. Why should I get myself into trouble for you? I will go to Mr. Courtenay, when we get back, and I will tell him it is impossible to go on like this. It was bad enough before. You were trouble enough from the first day I ever set eyes on you; but I have always said to myself, when that commences, I will go away. My character is above everything, and all the gold in England would not tempt me to stay.’
Kate listened to all this with a bewilderment that took from her the power of speech. What did the woman mean?—was she ‘in a passion,’ as, indeed, other governesses, to Kate’s knowledge, had been; or was she mad? It must be a sunstroke, she decided at last. They had been walking in the sun, and Miss Blank’s bonnet was too thin, being made of flimsy tulle. Her brain must be affected. Kate resolved heroically that she would not aggravate the sufferer by any response, but would send for the housekeeper as soon as they got back, and place Miss Blank in her hands. People in her sad condition must not be contradicted. She quickened her steps, discussing with herself whether a dark room and ice to the forehead would be enough, or whether it would be necessary to cut off all her hair, or even shave her head. This pre-occupation about Miss Blank’s welfare shielded the girl for some time against the fiery, stinging arrows which were being thrown at her; but this immunity did not last, for the way was long, and Miss Blank, having once broken out, put no further restraint upon herself. It was clear now that her only hope was in laying Kate prostrate, leaving no spirit nor power of resistance in her. By degrees the sharp words began to get admittance at the girl’s tingling ears. She was beaten down by the storm of opposition. Was it possible?—could it be true? Did people hate her? Her imagination began to work as these burning missiles flew at her. Miss Blank had been her companion for a year, and hated her! Uncle Courtenay was her own uncle—her nearest relative—and he, too, hated her! The girls at the Rectory, who looked so gentle, had turned against her. Oh! why, why was it? By degrees a profound discouragement seized upon the poor child. Miss Blank was eloquent; she had a flow of words such as had never come to her before. She poured forth torrents of bitterness as she walked, and Kate was beaten down by the storm. By the time they reached home she had forgotten all about the sunstroke, and shaving Miss Blank’s head, and thought of nothing but getting free—getting into the silence—being alone. Maryanne put a letter into her hand as she ran upstairs; but what did she care for a letter! Everybody hated her—if it were not that she was an heiress everybody would abandon her—and she had not one friend to go to, no one whom she could ask to help her in all the dreary world. She was too far gone for weeping. She sat down before her dressing-table and looked into the glass with miserable, dilated eyes. ‘I am just like other people,’ Kate said to herself; ‘there is no mark upon me. Cain was marked; but that was because he was a murderer; and I never killed anybody, I never did any harm to anybody, that I know of. I am only just a girl, like other girls. Oh! I suppose I am dreadfully wicked! But then everybody is wicked—the Bible says so; and how am I worse than all the rest? I don’t hate any one,’ said Kate, aloud, and very slowly. Her poor little mouth quivered, her eyes filled, and right upon the letter on her table there fell one great blob of a tear. This roused her in the midst of her distress. To Kate—as to every human being of her age—it seemed possible that something new, something wonderful might be in any letter. She took it up and tore it open. She was longing for comfort, longing for kindness, as she had never done in her life.
The letter which we are about to transcribe was not a very wise one, perhaps not even altogether to be sworn by as true—but it opened an entire new world to poor Kate.
MY DEAREST UNKNOWN DARLING NIECE,
‘You can’t remember me, for I have never seen you since you were a tiny, tiny baby in long clothes; and you have had nobody about you to remind you that you had any relations on your mother’s side. You have never answered my letters even, dear, though I don’t for a moment blame you, or suppose it is your fault. But now that I am in England, darling, we must not allow ourselves to be divided by unfortunate feelings that may exist between different sides of the family. I must see you, my dear only sister’s only darling child! I have but one child, too, my Ombra, and she is as anxious as I am. I have written to your guardian, asking if he will let you come and see us. I do not wish to go to your grand house, which was always thought too fine for us, but I must see you, my darling child; and if Mr. Courtenay will not let you come to us, my Ombra and I will come to Langton-Courtenay, to the village, where we shall no doubt find lodgings somewhere—I don’t mind how humble they are, so long as I can see you. My heart yearns to take you in my arms, to give you a hundred kisses, my own niece, my dear motherless child. Send me one little word by your own hand, and don’t reject the love that is offered you, my dearest Kate. Ombra sends you her dear love, and thinks of you, not as a cousin, but as a sister; and I, who have the best right, long for nothing so much as to be a mother to you! Come to us, my sweet child, if your uncle will let you; but, in the meantime, write to me, that I may know you a little even before we meet. With warmest love, my darling niece, your most affectionate aunt and, if you will let her be so, mother,
‘JANE ANDERSON.’
Now poor Kate had only two or three times in her whole life received a letter before. Since, as she said, she had ‘grown up,’ she had not heard from her aunt, who had written her, she recollected, one or two baby epistles, printed in large letters, in her childhood. Her poor little soul was still convulsed with the first great, open undisguised shock of unkindness, when this other great event came upon her. It was also a shock in its way. It made such a tempest in her being as conflicting winds make out at sea. The one had driven her down to the depths, the other dashed her up, up to a dizzy height. She felt dazed, insensible, proud, triumphant, and happy, all at once. Here was somebody of her own, somebody of her very own—something like the mother at the Rectory. Something new, close, certain—her own!
She dashed the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief, seized upon her letter, her dear letter, and rushed downstairs to the library, where Uncle Courtenay sat in state, the judge, and final tribunal for all appeals.