‘Quaint little white-capped objects! The St. Wulstan’s girls marching to St. Paul’s! Ah! the banner I helped to work! How well I remember the contriving that crozier upon it! How well it has worn! Sweet Honey must be in London; it was the sight she most grudged missing!’

So thought Lucilla Sandbrook as a cab conveyed her through the Whittingtonian intricacies.

Her residence with Mrs. Willis Beaumont was not a passage in her life on which she loved to dwell. Neither party had been well content with the other, though deference to Mrs. Prendergast had held them together. The lady herself was worthy and kind-hearted, but dull and tedious; and Lucilla, used to animation and intellect, had wearied excessively of the platitudes which were meant as friendly conversation, while her keen remarks and power of drollery and repartee were just sufficiently perceived to be dreaded and disliked. The children were like their mother, and were frightened and distressed by her quickness and unreasonable expectations. Their meek, demure heaviness and complacency, even at their sports, made her positively dislike them, all but one scapegrace boy, in favour with no one, and whom she liked more from perverseness and compassion than from any merits of his own. Lady Acton’s good offices gave the widow a tangible cause, such as was an absolute satisfaction, for her antipathy, and shook the implicit trust in Mrs. Prendergast’s recommendation that had hitherto overridden her private sentiments; yet still, habitual awe of her sister-in-law, and her own easiness and dread of change, left things in the same state until a crisis caused by a grand disturbance among the children. In the nice matter of meting out blame, mamma’s partiality and the children’s ungenerosity left an undue share upon the scapegrace; his indignant partisan fought his battles ‘not wisely but too well,’ lost temper, and uttered sarcastic home truths which startled and stung the lady into the request for which she could hardly have nerved herself in cooler moments, namely, that they might part.

This settled, each secretly felt that there was something to be regretted, and both equally wished that a new engagement should be made before the termination of the present should be made known at Southminster. For this purpose, every facility had been given for Miss Sandbrook’s coming to town personally to answer two ladies to whom she had been mentioned. A family in the neighbourhood had already been tried, but had declined her, and Mrs. Beaumont had shown her the note; ‘so stylish, such strange stories afloat.’ Lucilla felt it best to break upon new ground, and wounded and depressed, had yet resentment enough to bear her through boldly. She wished to inspect Owen’s child, and wrote to ask Mrs. Murrell to give her a bed for a couple of nights, venturing on this measure because, in the old woman’s monthly report, she had mentioned that Mr. Fulmort had gone abroad for a fortnight.

It had not been an exhilarating evening. Small children were not much to Lucilla’s taste, and her nephew was not a flattering specimen. He had the whitened drawn-up appearance of a child who had spent most of his life in a London cellar, with a pinched little visage and preternatural-looking black eyes, a squeaky little fretful voice, and all the language he had yet acquired decidedly cockney. Moreover, he had the habits of a spoilt child, and that a vulgar one, and his grandmother expected his aunt to think him a prodigy. There was a vacant room where Lucilla passed as much of her time as she could without an assumption of superiority, but she was obliged to spend the evening in the small furniture-encumbered parlour, and hear by turns of her nephew’s traits of genius, of the merits of the preachers in Cat-alley, and the histories of the lodgers. The motherly Mrs. Murrell had invited any of the young men whose ‘hearts might be touched’ to attend her ‘simple family worship;’ and to Lucilla’s discomfiture and her triumph, a youth appeared in the evening, and the young lady had her doubts whether the expounding were the attraction.

It was a relief to quit the close, underground atmosphere even for a cab; and ‘an inspecting lady must be better than that old woman,’ thought poor Lucy, as, heartily weary of Mrs. Murrell’s tongue and her own graciousness, she rattled through the streets. Those long ranks of charity children renewed many an association of old. The festival which had been the annual event of Honor Charlecote’s youth, she had made the same to her children, and Cilla had not despised it till recently. Thoughts of better days, of home-feelings, of tenderness, began to soften her. She had spent nearly two years without the touch of a kindred hand, and for many months past had been learning what it was to be looked at by no loving eye. She was on her way to still greater strangers! No wonder her heart yearned to the gentle voice that she had once spurned, and well-nigh in spite of herself, she muttered,

‘Really I do think a kiss of poor Honor’s would do me good! I have a great mind to go to her when I come back from Kensington. If I have taken a situation she cannot suppose that I want anything from her. It would be very comfortable; I should hear of Owen! I will go! Even if she be not in town, I could talk to Mrs. Jones, and sit a quarter of an hour in the cedar room! It would be like meeting Owen; it would be rest and home!’

She felt quite happy and pleased with herself under this resolution, but it was late before she could put it in practice. The lady at Kensington rather started on entering the room where she had been waiting nearly an hour. ‘I thought—’ she said, apologetically, ‘Did my servant say Miss Sandbrook?’

Lucilla assented, and the lady, a little discomposed, asked a few questions, furtively surveying her all the time, seemed confused, then begged her to take some luncheon. It was so long since Mrs. Murrell’s not very tempting breakfast, that the invitation was welcome, even though the presence of a gentleman and an elderly lady showed that it was a pretext for a family inspection, and again she detected the same start of surprise, and a glance passing round the circle, such as made her glad when afterwards an excuse was made for leaving her alone, that she might apply to the glass to see whether anything were amiss in her dress.

Then first she remarked that hers was not the governess air. She had long felt very virtuous for having spent almost nothing on her clothes, eking out her former wardrobe to the utmost; and the loose, dove-coloured jacket over her black silk skirt betrayed Parisian make, as did the exquisite rose, once worn in her hair, and now enlivening the white ribbon and black lace of the cheap straw bonnet, far back upon the rippling hair turned back from her temples, and falling in profuse ringlets. It was her ordinary unpremeditated appearance, but she perceived that to these good people it was startlingly stylish, and she was prepared for the confused intimation that there was no need for entering upon the discussion of terms.

She had been detained too late to make her other call, and the processions of tired children showed her that the service at St. Paul’s was over. The depression of disappointment inclined her the more to the loving old face; and she caused herself to be set down at the end of Woolstone-lane, feeling as if drawn by a magnet as she passed the well known warehouse walls, and as if it were home indeed when she reached the court door.

It would not yield to her intimate manipulation of the old latch—a bad sign, and the bell re-echoed in vacancy. Again and again she rang, each moment of exclusion awakening a fresh yearning towards the cedar fragrance, every stare of passer-by making her long for the safe shelter of the bay-windowed parlour. At last a step approached, and a greeting for the friendly old servant was on her tongue’s end. Alas! a strange face met her eye, elderly, respectable, but guarded. Miss Charlecote was not at home, not in town, not at Hiltonbury—gone abroad, whither was not known. Mrs. Jones? Dead more than a year ago. Every reply was followed by an attempt to close the door, and it needed all Lucy’s native hardihood, all her ardent craving for her former home, to venture on an entreaty to be admitted for a few minutes. She was answered, that the house might be shown to no one without orders from Mr. Parsons.

Her heart absolutely fainted within her, as the heavy door was closed on her, making her thoroughly realize her voluntary renunciation of home and protection, and the dreariness of the world on which she had cast herself. Anxiety on Honor’s behalf began to awaken. Nothing but illness could have induced her to leave her beloved Holt, and in the thought of her sick, lonely, and untended by the children she had fostered, Cilla forgave her adoption, forgave her forgiveness, forgave everything, in the impulse to hasten to her to requite the obligation by the tenderest care.

She had actually set off to the parsonage in quest of intelligence, when she recollected that she might appear there as a discarded governess in quest of her offended patroness; and her pride impelled her to turn back, but she despatched Mrs. Murrell’s little maid with a note, saying that, being in town for a day, and hearing of Miss Charlecote’s absence on the continent, she could not help begging to be certified that illness was not the cause. The reply was brief and formal, and it only altered Lucilla’s uneasiness, for Mrs. Parsons merely assured her of Miss Charlecote’s perfect health, and said she was gone abroad with the Fulmort family, where there had been a good deal of illness.

In her displeasure and desire to guard Honora from becoming a prey to the unworthy Sandbrooks, Mrs. Parsons never guessed at the cruelty of her own words, and at the conclusion drawn from them. Robert Fulmort likewise absent! No doubt his health had broken down, and Honor was taking Phœbe to be with him! She examined Mrs. Murrell, and heard of his activity, indeed, but of his recent absences from his parish, and by and by the good woman bethought her of a report that Mr. Fulmort was from home on account of his health. Oh, the misery of not daring to make direct inquiry!

But the hard practical world was before her, and the new situation was no longer a matter of wilful choice, but of dire necessity. She would not be hastily thrust from her present post, and would be lovingly received at Southminster in case of need, but she had no dependence save on her own exertions, and perverse romance had died away into desolateness. With strange, desperate vehemence, and determination not again to fail, she bought the plainest of cap-fronts, reduced her bonnet to the severest dowdiness, hid, straightened, tightened the waving pale gold of her hair, folded her travelling-shawl old-womanishly, cast aside all the merely ornamental, and glancing at herself, muttered, ‘I did not know I could be so insignificant!’ Little Owen stared as if his beautiful aunt had lost her identity, and Mrs. Murrell was ready to embrace her as a convert to last night’s exposition.

Perhaps the trouble was wasted, for the lady, Mrs. Bostock, did not seem to be particular. She was quite young, easily satisfied, and only eager to be rid of an embarrassing interview of a kind new to her; the terms were fixed, and before many weeks had passed Lucilla was settled at a cottage of gentility, in sight of her Thames, but on the Essex side, where he was not the same river to her, and she found herself as often thinking that those tainted waters had passed the garden in Woolstone-lane as that they had sparkled under Wrapworth Bridge.

It was the greatest change she had yet undergone. She was entirely the governess, never the companion of the elders. Her employers were mercantile, wrapped up in each other, busy, and gay. The husband was all day in London, and, when the evenings were not given to society, preferred spending them alone with his wife and children. In his absence, the nursery absorbed nearly all the time the mother could spare from her company and her household. The children, who were too old for playthings, were consigned to the first-rate governess, and only appeared in the evening. Lucilla never left her schoolroom but for a walk, or on a formal request to appear in the drawing-room at a party; a solitude which she at first thought preferable to Mrs. Willis Beaumont’s continued small chatter, especially as the children were pleasant, brisk, and lovable, having been well broken in by their Swiss bonne.

Necessity had trained Cilly in self-restraint, and the want of surveillance made her generous nature the more scrupulous in her treatment of her pupils; she taught them diligently, kept good order, won their affection and gave them some of her own, but nothing could obviate her growing weariness of holding intercourse with no mind above eleven years old. Trouble and anxiety she had known before, and even the terrible heartache that she carried about with her might have failed to wear down a being constituted as she was, without the long solitary evenings, and the total want of companionship. The first shock had been borne by the help of bustle and change, and it was only as weeks passed on, that care and depression grew upon her. Lessons, walks, children’s games were oppressive in turn, and though the last good-night was a welcome sound, yet the solitude that ensued was unspeakably forlorn. Reading she had never loved, even had this been a house of books; the children were too young to need exertion on her part to keep in advance of them, and their routine lessons wore out her energies too much for her to turn to her own resources. She did little but repair her wardrobe, work for the boy in Whittington-street, and let thoughts drift through her mind. That death-bed scene at Hyères, which had so often risen unbidden to her mind as she lay on her crib, was revived again, but it was not her father whose ebbing life she watched. It was one for whom she durst not ask, save by an inquiry from her brother, who had never dropped his correspondence with Honora; but Owen was actively employed, and his locality and habits were so uncertain that his letters were often astray for long together. His third year of apprenticeship had begun, and Lucilla’s sole hope of a change from her present dreary captivity was in his either returning with Mr. Currie, or finding employment and sending for her and his child to Canada. ‘By that time,’ she thought, ‘Europe will contain nothing to me. Nay, what does it contain that I have a right to care for now? I don’t delude myself. I know his look and manner. His last thought will be for his flock at St. Matthew’s, not for her who drove him to the work that has been killing him. Oh, no, he won’t even forgive me, for he will think it the greatest service I could have done him.’ Her eyes were hot and dry; what a relief would tears have been!

CHAPTER XXIV

Enid, my early and my only love,
I thought, but that your father came between,
In former days you saw me favourably,
And if it were so, do not keep it back,
Make me a little happier, let me know it.

—Tennyson

The foreign tour proved a great success. The summer in the Alps was delightful. The complete change gave Bertha new life, bodily strength first returning, and then mental activity. The glacier system was a happy exchange for her ego, and she observed and enjoyed with all the force of her acute intelligence and spirit of inquiry, while Phœbe was happy in doing her duty by profiting by all opportunities of observation, in taking care of Maria and listening to Mervyn, and Miss Charlecote enjoyed scenery, poetry, art, and natural objects with relish keener than even that of her young friends, who were less impressible to beauty in every shape.

Mervyn behaved very well to her, knowing himself bound to make the journey agreeable to her; he was constantly kind to Bertha, and in the pleasure of her revival submitted to a wonderful amount of history and science. All his grumbling was reserved for the private ear of Phœbe, whose privilege it always was to be his murmuring block, and who was only too thankful to keep to herself his discontents whenever his route was not chosen (and often when it was), his disgusts with inns, railroads, and sights and his impatience of all pursuits save Bertha’s. Many a time she was permitted to see and hear nothing but how much he was bored, but on the whole the growls were so mitigated compared with what she had known, that it was almost contentment; and that he did not absolutely dislike their habits was plain from his adherence to the ladies, though he might have been quite independent of them.

Bertha’s distortion of eye and hesitation of speech, though much modified, always recurred from fatigue, excitement, or meeting with strangers, or—still worse—with acquaintance. The difficulty of utterance distressed her far more than if she had been subject thereto from infancy, and increased her exceeding repugnance to any sort of society beyond her own party. The question whether she were fit to return home for the winter was under debate, when at Geneva, early in September, tidings reached the travellers that produced such a shock as to settle the point.

Juliana Acton was dead! It had been a very short attack of actual illness, but disease had long been secretly preying on her—and her asperity of disposition might be accounted for by constant unavowed suffering. It was a great blow. Her unpleasant qualities were all forgiven in the dismay of learning what their excuse had been; for those who have so lived as to make themselves least missed, are perhaps at the first moment the more mourned by good hearts for that very cause.

Augusta was so much terrified on her own account, that she might almost have been made a hydropathist on the spot; and Robert wrote that poor Sir Bevil was perfectly overwhelmed with grief and self-reproach, giving himself no credit for his exemplary patience and forbearance, but bitterly accusing himself of hardness and neglect. These feelings were shared in some degree by all the others, and Mervyn was especially affected. There had been much to soften him since his parents’ death, and the sudden loss of the sister with whom he had always been on terms of scorn and dislike, shocked him excessively, and drew him closer to the survivors, sobering him, and silencing his murmurs for the time in real grief and awe. Bertha likewise was thoroughly overcome, not so much by these feelings, as by the mere effect of the sudden tidings on her nervous temperament, and the overclouding of the cheerfulness that had hitherto surrounded her. This, added to a day of over-fatigue and exposure, brought back such a recurrence of unfavourable symptoms, that a return to an English winter was not to be thought of. The south of France was decided upon at once, and as Lucilla had truly divined, Honor Charlecote’s impulse led them to Hyères, that she might cast at least one look at the grave in the Stranger’s corner of the cypress-grown burial-ground, where rested the beloved of her early days, the father of the darlings of her widowed heart—loved and lost.

She endured her absence from home far better than she had expected, so much easier was it to stay away than to set off, and so completely was she bound up with her companions, loving Phœbe like a parent, and the other two like a nurse, and really liking the brother. All took delight in the winter paradise of Hyères, that fragment of the East set down upon the French coast, and periodically peopled with a motley multitude of visitors from all the lands of Europe, all invalids, or else attendants on invalids.

Bertha still shrank from all contact with society, and the ladies, for her sake, lived entirely apart; but Mervyn made acquaintance, and sometimes went out on short expeditions with other gentlemen, or to visit his mercantile correspondents at Marseilles, or other places on the coast.

It was while he was thus absent that the three sisters stood one afternoon on the paved terrace of the Hotel des Isles d’Or, which rose behind them, in light coloured stone, of a kind of Italian-looking architecture, commanding a lovely prospect, the mountains on the Toulon side, though near, melting into vivid blue, and white cloud wreaths hanging on their slopes. In front lay the plain, covered with the peculiar gray-tinted olive foliage, overtopped by date palms, and sloping up into rounded hills covered with dark pines, the nearest to the sea bearing on its crest the Church de l’Ermitage. The sea itself was visible beyond the olives, bordered by a line of étangs or pools, and white heaps of salt, and broken by a peninsula and the three Isles d’Or. It was a view of which Bertha seemed never able to have enough, and she was always to be found gazing at it when the first ready for a walk.

‘What are you going to sketch, Phœbe?’ she said, as the sisters joined her. ‘How can you, on such a day as this, with the air, as it were, loaded with cheiranthus smell? It makes one lazy to think of it!’

‘It seems to be a duty to preserve some remembrance of this beautiful place.’

‘It may be a pity to miss it, but as for the duty!’

‘What, not to give pleasure at home, and profit by opportunities?’

‘It is too hard to carry about an embodiment of Miss Fennimore’s rules! Why, have you no individuality, Phœbe?’

‘Must I not sketch, then?’ said Phœbe, smiling.

‘You are very welcome, if you would do it for your pleasure, not as an act of bondage.’

‘Not as bondage,’ said Phœbe; ‘it is only because I ought that I care to do so at all.’

‘And that’s the reason you only make maps of the landscape.’

It was quite true that Phœbe had no accomplished turn, and what had been taught her she only practised as a duty to the care and cost expended on it, and these were things where ‘all her might’ was no equivalent for a spark of talent. ‘Ought’ alone gave her the zest that Bertha would still have found in ‘ought not.’

‘It is all I can do,’ she said, ‘and Miss Fennimore may like to see them; so, Bertha, I shall continue to carry the sketchbook by which the English woman is known like the man by his “Murray.” Miss Charlecote has letters to write, so we must go out by ourselves.’

The Provençal natives of Hyères had little liking for the foreigners who thronged their town, but did not molest them, and ladies walked about freely in the lovely neighbourhood, so that Honor had no scruple in sending out her charges, unaccompanied except by Lieschen, in case the two others might wish to dispose of Maria, while they engaged in some pursuit beyond her powers.

Poor Lieschen, a plump Prussian, grown portly on Beauchamp good living, had little sympathy with the mountain tastes of her frauleins, and would have wished all Hyères like the shelf on the side of the hill where stood their hotel, whence the party set forth for the Place des Palmiers, so called from six actual palms bearing, but not often ripening, dates. Two sides were enclosed by houses, on a third an orange garden sloped down the descent; the fourth, where the old town climbed straight up the hill, was regarded by poor Lieschen with dread, and she vainly persuaded Maria at least to content herself with joining the collection of natives resting on the benches beneath the palms. How willingly would the good German have produced her knitting, and sought a compatriot among the nurses who sat gossiping and embroidering, while Maria might have played among their charges, who were shovelling about, or pelting each other with the tiny white sea-washed pebbles that thickly strewed the place.

But Maria, with the little Maltese dog in her arms, to guard him from a hailstorm of the pebbles, was inexorably bent on following her sisters; and Bertha had hurried nervously across from the strangers, so that Lieschen must pursue those light steps through the winding staircase streets, sometimes consisting of broad shallow steps, sometimes of actual flights of steep stairs hewn out in the rock, leading to a length of level terrace, where, through garden gates, orange trees looked out, dividing the vantage ground with houses and rocks—up farther, past the almost desolate old church of St. Paul—farther again—till, beyond all the houses, they came forth on the open mountainside, with a crest of rock far above, surmounted by the ruins of a castle, said to have been fortified by the Saracens, and taken from them by Charles Martel. It was to this castle that Phœbe’s sketching duty was to be paid, and Maria and Bertha expressed their determination of climbing up to it, in hopes, as the latter said, of finding Charles Martel’s original hammer. Lieschen, puffing and panting already, looked horrified, and laughingly they bade her sit down and knit, whilst they set out on their adventure. Phœbe smiled as she looked up, and uttered a prognostic that made Bertha the more defiant, exhilarated as she was by the delicious compound of sea and mountain breeze, and by the exquisite view, the roofs of the town sloping rapidly down, and the hills stretching round, clothed in pine woods, into which the gray olivettes came stealing up, while beyond lay the sea, intensely blue, and bearing on its bosom the three Isles d’Or flushed with radiant colour.

The sisters bravely set themselves to scramble among the rocks, each surface turned to the sea-breeze exquisitely and fantastically tinted by coloured lichens, and all interspersed with the classical acanthus’ noble leaves, the juniper, and the wormwood. On they went, winding upwards as Bertha hoped, but also sideways, and their circuit had lasted a weary while, and made them exhausted and breathless, when looking round for their bearings, they found themselves in an enchanted maze of gray rocks, half hidden in myrtle, beset by the bristly battledores of prickly pear, and shaded by cork trees. Above was the castle, perched up, and apparently as high above them as when they began their enterprise; below was a steep descent, clothed with pines and adorned with white heaths. The place was altogether strange; they had lost themselves; Bertha began to repent of her adventure, and Maria was much disposed to cry.

‘Never mind, Maria,’ said Bertha, ‘we will not try to go any higher. See, here is the dry bed of a torrent that will make a famous path down. There, that’s right. What a picture it is! what an exquisite peep of the sea between the boughs! What now, what frightens you?’

‘The old woman, she looks so horrid.’

‘The witch for the lost children? No, no, Maria, she is only gathering fir cones, and completing the picture in her red basquine, brown jacket, and great hat. I would ask her the way, but that we could not understand her Provençal.’

‘Oh, dear! I wish Phœbe was here! I wish we were safe!’

‘If I ever come mountain-climbing again with you at my heels! Take care, there’s no danger if you mind your feet, and we must come out somewhere.’

The somewhere, when the slope became less violent, was among vineyards and olivettes, no vestige of a path through them, only a very small cottage, picturesquely planted among the rocks, whence proceeded the sounds of a cornet-à-piston. As Bertha stood considering which way to take, a dog flew out of the house and began barking. This brought out a man, who rudely shouted to the terrified pair that they were trespassing. They would have fled at once up the torrent-bed, bad as it was for ascent, but there was a derisive exclamation and laugh, and half-a-dozen men, half-tipsy, came pouring out of the cottage, bawling to Colibri, the rough, shaggy white dog, that seemed disposed to spring at the Maltese in Bertha’s arms.

The foremost, shouting in French for the sisters to stop, pointed to what he called the way, and Bertha drew Maria in that direction, trusting that they should escape by submission, but after going a little distance, she found herself at the edge of a bare, deep, dry ravine, steep on each side, almost so as to be impassable. The path only ran on the other side. There was another shout of exultation and laughter at the English girls’ consternation. At this evident trick of the surly peasants, Maria shook all over, and burst into tears, and Bertha, gathering courage, turned to expostulate and offer a reward, but her horrible stammer coming on worse than ever, produced nothing but inarticulate sounds.

‘Monsieur, there is surely some mistake,’ said a clear voice in good French from the path on the other side, and looking across, the sisters were cheered by an unmistakable English brown hat. The peasants drew back a little, believing that the young ladies were not so unprotected as they had supposed, and the first speaker, with something like apology, declared that this was really the path, and descending where the sides were least steep, held out his hand to help Bertha. The lady, whose bank was more practicable, came down to meet them, saying in French, with much emphasis, that she would summon ‘those gentlemen’ to their assistance if desired; words that had considerable effect upon the enemy.

Poor Maria was in such terror that she could hardly keep her footing, and the hands both of Bertha and the unknown friend were needed to keep her from affording still more diversion to the peasants by falling prostrate. The lady seemed intuitively to understand what was best for both, and between them they contrived to hush her sobs, and repress her inclination to scream for Phœbe, and thus to lead her on, each holding a hand till they were at a safe distance; and Bertha, whose terror had been far greater than at the robbery at home, felt that she could let herself speak, when she quivered out an agony of trembling thanks. ‘I am glad you are safe from these vile men,’ said the lady, kindly, ‘though they could hardly have done anything really to hurt you!’