THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY

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"So she is your fate?"

"Oh, yes, if there had been ten more engagements offered, I could not
have helped accepting hers, even if it had not been on the best terms
I have ever had."

"What?"

"Seventy--for the hours between nine and five. Pretty well for a
journeyman hack, is it not? Indeed, the pretty thing's only fear
seemed to be that she was requiring too much, and offering too
little. No, not her only fear, for there is some major in the
distance to whose approval everything must be subject--uncle or
guardian, I suppose, but he seemed to be rather an object of jealousy
to the younger Miss Curtis, for every hint of wishing to wait for the
Major made her press on the negotiations."

"Seventy! I hope you will make it do, Ailie. It would be a great
relief."

"And spare your brains not a little. Yes, I do trust to keeping it,
for Lady Temple is delightful; and as to the boys, I fancy it is only
taming they want. The danger is, as Miss Rachel told me, whether she
can bear the sight of the process. I imagine Miss Rachel herself has
tried it, and failed."

"Part amateur work," said Ermine, smiling. "It really is lucky you
had to turn governess, Ailie, or there would have been a talent
thrown away."

"Stay till I have tried," said Alison, who had, however, had
experience enough not to be much alarmed at the prospect. Order was
wont to come with her presence, and she hardly knew the aspect of
tumultuous idleness or insubordination to unenforced authority; for
her eye and voice in themselves brought cheerful discipline without
constraint, and upheld by few punishments, for the strong influence
took away the spirit of rebellion.

After her first morning's work she came home full of good auguries;
the boys had been very pleasant with her after the first ten minutes,
and Conrade had gained her heart by his attention to his mother.
He had, however, examined her minutely whether she had any connexion
with the army, and looked grave on her disavowal of any relationship
with soldiers; Hubert adding, "You see, Aunt Rachel is only a
civilian, and she hasn't any sense at all." And when Francis had
been reduced to the much disliked process of spelling unknown words,
he had muttered under his breath, "She was only a civilian." To
which she had rejoined that "At least she knew thus much, that the
first military duty was obedience," and Francis's instant submission
proved that she had made a good shot. Of the Major she had heard
much more. Everything was referred to him, both by mother and
children, and Alison was the more puzzled as to his exact connexion
with them. "I sometimes suspect," she said, "that he may have felt
the influence of those winsome brown eyes and caressing manner, as I
know I should if I were a man. I wonder how long the old general has
been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me. I don't
mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know
confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making
things in the world."

In pursuance of this principle Alison, or Miss Williams, as she was
called in her vocation, was always reserved and discreet, and though
ready to talk in due measure, Rachel always felt that it was the
upper, not the under current that was proffered. The brow and eyes,
the whole spirit of the face, betokened reflection and acuteness, and
Rachel wanted to attain to her opinions; but beyond a certain depth
there was no reaching. Her ways of thinking, her views of the
children's characters, her estimate of Mr. Touchett--nay, even her
tastes as to the Invalid's letters in the "Traveller's Review,"
remained only partially revealed, in spite of Rachel's best efforts
at fishing, and attempting to set the example.

"It really seemed," as she observed to Grace, "as if the more I talk,
the less she says." At which Grace gave way to a small short laugh,
though she owned the force of Rachel's maxim, that to bestow
confidence was the way to provoke it; and forbore to refer to a
certain delightful afternoon that Rachel, in her childhood, had spent
alone with a little girl whom she had never discovered to be deaf and
dumb. Still Rachel had never been able to make out why Grace, with
no theories at all, got so many more confidences than she did. She
was fully aware of her sister's superior attractiveness to common-
place people, and made her welcome to stand first with the chief of
their kindred, and most of the clergy and young ladies around. But
it was hard that where Rachel really liked and met half-way, the
intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon Grace, or even the
mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out a snail is not
to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to launch one's
self to the opposite starting point. Either her inquiries were too
point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own communications
absorbed her too much to leave room for a return. Thus she told Miss
Williams the whole story of the thrush's nest, and all her own
reflections upon the characteristics it betokened; and only
afterwards, on thinking over the conversation, perceived that she had
elicited nothing but that it was very difficult to judge in such
cases, not even any decided assent to her own demonstrations. It was
true that riots and breaches of the peace ceased while Miss Williams
was in the house, and learning and good manners were being fast
acquired; but until Conrade's duplicity should be detected, or the
whole disposition of the family discussed with herself, Rachel
doubted the powers of the instructress. It was true that Fanny was
very happy with her, and only regretted that the uncertainty of the
Major's whereabouts precluded his being informed of the newly-found
treasure; but Fanny was sure to be satisfied as long as her boys were
happy and not very naughty, and she cared very little about people's
minds.

If any one did "get on" with the governess it was Grace, who had been
the first acquaintance in the family, and met her often in the
service of the parish, as well as in her official character at the
Homestead. It so chanced that one Sunday afternoon they found
themselves simultaneously at the door of the school-house, whence
issued not the customary hum, but loud sounds of singing.

"Ah!" said Grace, "Mr. Touchett was talking of getting the choir
master from Avoncester, and giving up an afternoon to practice for
Easter, but he never told me it was to be to-day."

On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning,
but not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little
niece, and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out
of hearing. It was one of the little bits of bad management that
were sure to happen wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and
both ladies feeling it easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful
that it had not befallen Rachel. Alison Williams, thinking it far to
walk either to the Homestead or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to
Grace to come home with her, an offer that was thankfully accepted,
with merely the scruple whether she should disturb the invalid.

"Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get
more change and variety for her on Sunday."

"She is very self-denying to spare you to the school."

"I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me. She
says it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it
brings her fresh interests. She knows about all my class, and works
for them, and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for
her, though it leaves her more hours alone with Rose."

"And the Sunday services are too long for her?"

"Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches
unless two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and
there is not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday. It is the
greatest deprivation of all."

"It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic," said Grace,
using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel's hearing.

"You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has
found strength and courage for me through all the terrible
sutfering."

"Then does she suffer so much?"

"Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years."

"It was not always so."

"No, indeed! You thought it deformity! Oh, no, no! she was so
beautiful."

"That she is still. I never saw my sister so much struck with any
one. There is something so striking in her bright glance out of
those clear eyes."

"Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before--"

"The accident?"

"I burnt her," said Alison, almost inaudibly.

"You! you, poor dear! How dreadful for you."

"Yes, I burnt her," said Alison, more steadily. "You ought not to be
kind to me without knowing about it. It was an accident of course,
but it was a fit of petulance. I threw a match without looking where
it was going."

"It must have been when you were very young."

"Fourteen. I was in a naughty fit at her refusing to go to the great
musical meeting with us. We always used to go to stay at one of the
canon's houses for it, a house where one was dull and shy; and I
could not bear going without her, nor understand the reason."

"And was there a reason?"

"Yes, poor dear Ermine. She knew he meant to come there to meet her,
and she thought it would not be right; because his father had
objected so strongly, and made him exchange into a regiment on
foreign service."

"And you did not know this?"

"No, I was away all the time it was going on, with my eldest sister,
having masters in London. I did not come home till it was all over,
and then I could not understand what was the matter with the house,
or why Ermine was unlike herself, and papa restless and anxious about
her. They thought me too young to be told, and the atmosphere made
me cross and fretful, and papa was displeased with me, and Ermine
tried in vain to make me good; poor patient Ermine, even then the
chief sufferer!"

"I can quite imagine the discomfort and fret of being in ignorance
all the time."

"Dear Ermine says she longed to tell me, but she had been forbidden,
and she went on blaming herself and trying to make me enjoy my
holidays as usual, till this dreadful day, when I had worried her
intolerably about going to this music meeting, and she found
reasoning only made me worse. She still wrote her note of refusal,
and asked me to light the taper; I dashed down the match in a frenzy
of temper and--"

She paused for breath, and Grace squeezed her hand.

"We did not see it at first, and then she threw herself down and
ordered me not to come near. Every one was there directly, I
believe, but it burst out again and again, and was not put out till
they all thought she had not an hour to live. There was no pain, and
there she lay, all calmness, comforting us all, and making papa and
Edward promise to forgive me--me, who only wished they would kill me!
And the next day he came; he was just going to sail, and they thought
nothing would hurt her then. I saw him while he was waiting, and
never did I see such a fixed deathly face. But they said she found
words to cheer and soothe him."

"And what became of him?"

"We do not know. As long as Lady Alison lived (his aunt) she let us
hear about him, and we knew he was recovering from his wound. Then
came her death, and then my father's, and all the rest, and we lost
sight of the Beauchamps. We saw the name in the Gazette as killed at
Lucknow, but not the right Christian name nor the same rank; but
then, though the regiment is come home, we have heard nothing of him,
and though she has never spoken of him to me, I am sure Ermine
believes he is dead, and thinks of him as part of the sunshine of the
old Beauchamp days--the sunshine whose reflection lasts one's life."

"He ought to be dead," said Grace.

"Yes, it would be better for her than to hear anything else of him!
He had nothing of his own, so there would have been a long waiting,
but his father and brother would not hear of it, and accused us of
entrapping him, and that angered my father. For our family is quite
good, and we were very well off then. My father had a good private
fortune besides the Rectory at Beauchamp; and Lady Alison, who had
been like a mother to us ever since our own died, quite thought that
the prospect was good enough, and I believe got into a great scrape
with her family for having promoted the affair."

"Your squire's wife?"

"Yes, and Julia and Ermine had come every day to learn lessons with
her daughters. I was too young; but as long as she lived we were all
like one family. How kind she was! How she helped us through those
frightful weeks!"

"Of your sister's illness? It must have lasted long?"

"Long? Oh longer than long! No one thought of her living. The
doctors said the injury was too extensive to leave any power of
rallying; but she was young and strong, and did not die in the
torture, though people said that such an existence as remained to her
was not worth the anguish of struggling back to it. I think my
father only prayed that she might suffer less, and Julia stayed on
and on, thinking each day would be the last, till Dr. Long could not
spare her any longer; and then Lady Alison nursed her night after
night and day after day, till she had worn herself into an illness,
and when the doctors spoke of improvement, we only perceived worse
agony. It was eight months before she was even lifted up in bed, and
it was years before the burns ceased to be painful or the
constitution at all recovered the shock; and even now weather tells
on her, though since we have lived here she has been far better than
I ever dared to hope."

"Then you consider her still recovering?"

"In general health she is certainly greatly restored, and has
strength to attempt more, but the actual injury, the contraction, can
never be better than now. When we lived at Richmond she had
constantly the best advice, and we were told that nothing more could
be hoped for."

"I wonder more and more at her high spirits. I suppose that was what
chiefly helped to carry her through?"

"I have seen a good many people," said Alison, pausing, "but I never
did see any one so happy! Others are always wanting something; she
never is. Every enjoyment seems to be tenfold to her what it is to
other people; she sees the hopeful side of every sorrow. No burthen
is a burthen when one has carried it to her."

As Alison spoke, she pushed open the narrow green door of the little
lodging-house, and there issued a weak, sweet sound of voices: "The
strain upraise of joy and praise." It was the same that had met
their ears at the school-door, but the want of body in the voices was
fully compensated by the heartfelt ring, as if here indeed was
praise, not practice.

"Aunt Ailie! O Aunt Ailie!" cried the child, as the room-door opened
and showed the little choir, consisting of herself, her aunt, and the
small maid of the house, "you should not have come, you were not to
hear us till Trinity Sunday."

Explanations were given, and Miss Curtis was welcomed, but Alison,
still too much moved for ordinary conversation, slipped into the
bedroom adjoining, followed by her sister's quick and anxious eye,
and half-uttered inquiry.

"I am afraid it is my fault," said Grace; "she has been telling me
about your accident."

"Poor Ailie," said Ermine, "she never will receive kindness without
having that unlucky story out! It is just one of the things that
get so cruelly exaggerated by consequences. It was one moment's
petulance that might have caused a fright and been forgotten ever
after, but for those chemicals. Ah! I see, she said nothing about
them, because they were Edward's. They were some parcels for his
experiments, gun cotton and the like, which were lying in the window
till he had time to take them upstairs. We had all been so long
threatened with being blown up by his experiments that we had grown
callous and careless, and it served us right!" she added, stroking
the child's face as it looked at her, earnest to glean fresh
fragments of the terrible half-known tale of the past. "Yes, Rosie,
when you go and keep house for papa on the top of the Oural
Mountains, or wherever it may be, you are to remember that if Aunt
Ermine had not been in a foolish, inattentive mood, and had taken his
dangerous goods out of the way, she might have been trotting to
church now like other people. But poor Ailie has always helped
herself to the whole blame, and if every childish fit of temper were
the root of such qualities, what a world we should have here!"

"Ah! no wonder she is devoted to you."

"The child was not fifteen, had never known cross or care, but from
that moment she never was out of my room if it was possible to be in;
and when nurse after nurse was fairly worn out, because I could not
help being so distressing, there was always that poor child, always
handy and helpful, growing to be the chief dependence, and looking so
piteously imploring whatever was tried, that it really helped me to
go through with it. Poor Ailie," she added with an odd turn of
playfulness, "I always fancied those frowns of anxiety made her
eyebrows grow together. And ever since we came here, we know how she
has worked away for her old cinder and her small Rosebud, don't we?"
she added, playfully squeezing the child's cheeks up into a more
budding look, hiding deeper and more overcoming feelings by the
sportive action. And as her sister came back, she looked up and
shook her head at her, saying,--

"You gossiping Ailie, to go ripping up old grievances. I am going
to ask Miss Curtis not to let the story go any farther, now you have
relieved your mind of it."

"I did tell Lady Temple," said Alison; "I never think it right not
to let people know what sort of person they have to teach their
children."

And Grace, on feeling her way, discovered that Lady Temple had been
told the bare fact in Miss Williams's reserved and business-like
manner, but with nothing of the affair that had led to it. She
merely looked on it in the manner fully expressed by--"Ah, poor
thing; how sad for her!" as a shocking secret, never to be talked of
or thought about. And that voluntary detailed relation from Alison
could only be regarded as drawn forth by Grace's own individual power
of winning confidence, and the friendliness that had so long
subsisted between them. Nor indeed was the reserve regarding the
cause of the present reduced circumstances of the sisters at all
lessened; it was only known that their brother had ruined them by a
fraudulent speculation, and had then fled to the Continent, leaving
them burthened with the maintenance of his child, but that they
refused to believe in his guilt, and had thus incurred the
displeasure of other relatives and friends. Alison was utterly
silent about him. Ermine seemed to have a tender pleasure in
bringing in a reference to his ways as if all were well, and it were
a matter of course to speak of "Edward;" but it was plain that
Ermine's was an outspoken nature. This might, however, be only
because the one had been a guarded, sheltered invalid, while the
other had gone forth among strangers to battle for a livelihood, and
moreover, the elder sister had been fully grown and developed before
the shock which had come on the still unformed Alison.

At any rate, nobody but Grace "got on" with the governess, while the
invalid made friends with all who visited her, and most signally with
Rachel, who, ere long, esteemed her environment a good work, worthy
of herself. The charity of sitting with a twaddling, muffatee-
knitting old lady was indisputable, but it was perfectly within
Grace's capacity; and Rachel believed herself to be far more capable
of entertaining the sick Miss Williams, nor was she mistaken. When
excited or interested, most people thought her oppressive; but Ermine
Williams, except when unwell, did not find her so, and even then a
sharp debate was sometimes a cure for the nervous ailments induced by
the monotony of her life. They seemed to have a sort of natural
desire to rub their minds one against the other, and Rachel could not
rest without Miss Williams's opinion of all that interested her--
paper, essay, book, or event; but often, when expecting to confer a
favour by the loan, she found that what was new to her was already
well known in that little parlour, and even the authorship no
mystery. Ermine explained this by her correspondence with literary
friends of her brother's, and country-bred Rachel, to whom literature
was still an oracle unconnected with living agencies, listened, yes,
absolutely listened to her anecdotes of sayings and doings, far more
like clever memoirs than the experiences of the banks of the Avon.
Perhaps there was this immediate disadvantage, that hearing of a more
intellectual tone of society tended to make Rachel less tolerant of
that which surrounded her, and especially of Mr. Touchett. It was
droll that, having so long shunned the two sisters under the
impression that they were his protegees and worshippers, she found
that Ermine's point of view was quite the rectorial one, and that to
venerate the man for his office sake was nearly as hard to Ermine as
to herself, though the office was more esteemed.

Alison, the reserved, had held her tongue on his antecedents; but
Ermine was drawn into explaining that his father had been a minor
canon, who had eked out his means with a combination of chaplaincies
and parts of curacies, and by teaching at the school where his son
was educated. Indignant at the hack estimation in which his father
had been held, the son, far more justly viewing both the dignity and
duty of his office, was resolved to be respected; but bred up in
second rate society, had neither weight, talent, nor manners to veil
his aggressive self-assertion, and he was at this time especially
trying to the Curtises.

Cathedral music had been too natural to him for the endurance of an
unchoral service, and the prime labour of his life was to work up his
choir; but he was musical by education rather than nature, and having
begun his career with such mortal offence to the native fiddlers and
singers as to impel them into the arms of dissent, he could only
supply the loss from the school by his own voice, of which he was not
chary, though using it with better will than taste. The staple of
his choir were Rachel's scholars. Her turn had always been for boys,
and her class on Sunday mornings and two evenings in the week had
long been in operation before the reign of Mr. Touchett. Then two
lads, whose paternal fiddles had seceded to the Plymouth Brethren,
were suspended from all advantages by the curate, and Rachel was with
difficulty withheld from an explosion; but even this was less
annoying than the summons at the class-room door every Sunday
morning, that, in the midst of her lesson, carried off the chief of
her scholars to practise their chants. Moreover, the blame of all
imperfect lessons was laid on the "singing for the parson," and all
faults in the singing by the tasks for Miss Rachel; and one night,
the excellent Zack excused his failure in geography by saying that
Mr. Touchett had thrown away his book, and said that it was no better
than sacrilege, omitting, however, to mention that he had been caught
studying it under his surplice during the lessons.

At last, with his usual fatality, the curate fixed the grand practice
for the Saturday evenings that were Rachel's great days for
instruction in the three R's, and for a sort of popular lecture.
Cricket was to succeed the singing, and novelty carried the day, but
only by the desertion of her scholars did Rachel learn the new
arrangement, and she could hardly credit the assertion that the
curate was not aware that it was her day. In fact, it was the only
one when the fisher lads were sure not to be at sea, and neither
party would yield it. Mr. Touchett was determined not to truckle to
dictation from the great house; so when Rachel declared she would
have nothing to do with the boys unless the Saturdays were conceded
to her, he owned that he thought the clergyman had the first right to
his lads, and had only not claimed them before out of deference for
the feelings of a well-meaning parishioner.

Both parties poured out their grievances to the same auditor, for
Mr. Touchett regarded Ermine Williams as partly clerical, and Rachel
could never be easy without her sympathy. To hear was not, however,
to make peace, while each side was so sore, so conscious of the
merits of its own case, so blind to those of the other. One deemed
praise in its highest form the prime object of his ministry; the
other found the performance indevotional, and raved that education
should be sacrificed to wretched music. But that the dissension was
sad and mischievous, it would have been very diverting; they were
both so young in their incapacity of making allowances, their
certainty that theirs was the theory to bring in the golden age, and
even in their magnanimity of forgiveness, and all the time they
thought themselves so very old. "I am resigned to disappointments;
I have seen something of life."--"You forget, Miss Williams, that my
ministerial experience is not very recent."

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