Married or single?, Vol. 1 (of 3)

The above, engraved in bold characters on a highly-polished brass plate, may be read on the gate of an imposing mansion situated in the far-spreading suburbs of Riverside, one of the principal mercantile towns in England. “Harperton” is a solid and secluded residence, standing in its own grounds (of two acres, one perch). It is planned to resemble a country house of some pretensions, but the symmetry of its proportions is spoiled by a long, low building jutting out at the side, that may be taken for anything from a stable to a billiard-room, but is, in fact, the scene of Mrs. Harper’s scholastic labours, erected at her own cost—in other words, the schoolroom. This apartment is illuminated by six windows, the lower halves of which are, of course, of muffled glass. The floor is carpeted here and there, as it were, in squares or plots, and in the midst of each square there is a desk and a comfortable cushioned chair. These indicate the localities of the various classes. The schoolroom walls are covered with maps, book-cases, lists of rules, and practising hours, and lined with narrow desks and benches. A worn piano, a prim, white-faced clock, and a high wire fender comprise most of the furniture—ornamental and otherwise; unless we include the two young ladies who are sitting at one of the far desks, making the most of their time whilst the boarders are out for their usual walk. One of these damsels has mendaciously pleaded ear-ache in order to escape the hateful daily promenade. The other—that nondescript character, a pupil-teacher—is fulfilling a part of her duties, and diligently darning the “little ones’” stockings, whilst her companion, with both elbows on the desk, and both hands in her ruffled hair, watches her and talks.

“This must be perfectly awful for you, Maddie dear,” she was saying. “Don’t you loathe it all, and wish you could run away? I should, if I were in your shoes.”

“Run away! What nonsense, Flo! Where could I run to, even supposing such an insane idea had entered my head, which it never has done? You forget that I have no friends in England; and, after all, I am not such an object of pity as you seem to imagine,” darning steadily all the time.

“If you are not, I should like to know who is!” demanded her schoolfellow, emphatically. “You are one day at the top of the tree, the head of the first class, the best pupil Herr Kroot ever had, adored by the Harpies”—here Miss Blewitt alluded to her respected instructress and daughters—“always exquisitely dressed, with heaps of pocket-money, sleeping in the best room, allowed a fire in winter, every extra—claret and coffee—and I don’t know what! After years and years of this style of thing, and when you are seventeen, and almost finished, your father suddenly stops supplies, you are not paid for for three whole terms, and the hateful Harpies make you into a regular drudge—a pupil-teacher, a nursery governess, a servant! You sleep in the attic with those odious little Smiths—wash, dress, and teach them; you go messages to the shops, and even into Riverside—you, who were never allowed to stir one yard alone; you mend and darn and teach.”

She paused, not from lack of words, but from want of breath.

“And a very good thing that I can do something to pay for my living,” remarked the other, with composure. “If I could not sew and mend and teach, what would become of me, I should be glad to know? I could scarcely expect the Harpers to go on keeping me at their own expense; and now I take the fifth class, the little ones’ music, and I save a servant for those Indian children, I work for my bread—and I am worth it.”

“I should rather think you were,” rejoined her listener, sarcastically. “You are worth a hundred a year to them as teacher, besides being dressmaker and nursery-maid. It makes me wild—I feel quite crazy—when I see all that they get out of you, early and late, and the shameful way they treat you! Once upon a time you were ‘darling Madeline’—their ‘dear, bright-faced girl,’ their ‘model pupil,’ now you are ‘Madeline West,’ or ‘Miss West,’ and you are ‘slow,’ ‘awkward,’ ‘lazy,’ and ‘impertinent.’ Oh dear me! dear me! sometimes I feel as if I should like to fly at Miss Selina and bite a piece out of her, I am so savage.”

“I hope to goodness you will restrain your feelings,” said Madeline, with a smile, as she threaded a long needleful of black wool, and commenced on a gaping heel. “The Harpers are only human, after all! It was very hard on them, my father having failed; and all my music-lessons, and painting, and singing, and German, for two terms, had to be paid for out of their own pockets. Signor Squaletti charges half a guinea an hour. Then there were my clothes. I feel hot all over when I remember the quantity of money I laid out, believing that it would be all settled, as usual, by father’s cheque at Christmas. There was that white dress for the breaking-up party——”

“In which you made such an impression on the Wolfertons’ friend, young Mr. Wynne,” interrupted Florence, with a meaning nudge. “Oh yes, I remember the white dress!”

“Don’t, Flo! Your elbow is like a knife,” expostulated her friend, with some discernible increase of colour. “As to Mr. Wynne, what you say is nonsense, and you know Mrs. Harper forbids us to speak of—of—such things.”

“I know that Mrs. Harper was most uneasy in her mind when she saw him dancing four times with you running—yes, dance after dance—and she came up and introduced him to Julia Flowers’ two red-haired sisters, and said that gentlemen were so scarce, and her girls were not out, and all that sort of rubbish; and she sent him down to supper with old Mrs. Browne, and she sent you to bed because you looked pale! Oh yes, I saw it all—all. I saw that Mr. Wynne never danced again, but stood with his back to the wall for the rest of the evening, looking as cross as two sticks. Very likely he would never have given you a thought, if you had not been so plainly and openly banished: absence makes the heart grow fonder! Mrs. Harper put the idea into his head by making such a stupid fuss—and she has only herself to thank. He sent you those flowers, he came to our church, and Miss Selina took it all to herself—the ridiculous old cat! As if he would look at her! She closed on the flowers: much good may they do her!”

“Now, Flo, how do you know that they were not for her?” asked her companion with a smile. “But, don’t let us talk about them. It is an old story.”

“But I will talk about them,” persisted Flo, angrily. “I’ll talk about your nice green tailor-made, and your winter coat trimmed with fur, and your opera cloak, and your white dress—the white dress, which they took away from you!”

“Well, they had paid for them, you see,” rejoined Madeline quietly. “I am glad they did take them—I owe them the less.”

“Thank goodness your gloves and boots were too small,” continued Flo, in a tone of fervent congratulation, “otherwise they would have gone also. They are rather different from the Harpers’ chaussure, which is of the canal-boat type and size. Now I know what pedestrians mean when they talk of ‘covering’ miles of ground.”

“Well, my dear excited Flo, they did not make their own feet,” said the other coolly.

“How philosophical you are becoming! Quite an old head on young shoulders! Who made their tempers, I should be glad to know?—or their tongues? Thank goodness, this is my last half! Good-bye to early rising, lectures, scoldings, resurrection pies, milk and water, and rice puddings. Good-bye to Harperton—penitentiary and prison. Good-bye to Harpies, and hurrah for home!”—throwing, as she spoke, a dictionary up to the ceiling; failing to catch which, it fell open, face downwards, with a bang.

“That is May’s dictionary, Flo,” remonstrated the other. “You will not improve its poor back.”

“If you stay here long, Madeline, you will certainly become just as preaching and particular as one of the Harpies themselves. You are tremendously sobered as it is. Who would think, to look at you darning away so industriously, that this time last year you were the queen and moving spirit of the school; always getting up charades, dances, and concerts, and carrying your point on every question, and figuratively snapping your fingers at the Harpies if they interfered with your schemes—which, to do them justice, was very seldom! Ah! my poor Maddie, since then what a change has come o’er the spirit of your dream! It is terrible. If you had always been a pupil-teacher it would be another matter, or if you had gone to another school, where no one knew that you had fallen from your high estate; but here, the scene of your triumphs, to make the descent to the very foot of the ladder, is—is frightful. I often wonder how you can bear it so well.”

“I often wonder too,” said Madeline shortly, winking her tears back with a great effort. “You are not going the best way to work to help me to endure my lot, Flo, raking up all these things. Bad or good, I must submit. I have no alternative—nowhere to go, until my father comes home. The best thing I can do is to be patient, and try and repay the Harpers for some of the money they have expended on me.”

“Repay them!” echoed Miss Blewitt, scornfully. “They made a very good thing out of you for nine years—large profits and quick returns. Now, although your father has not sent his usual remittance—is not that the word?—and they have heard that he is in business difficulties, yet I think they might have given you a little more law—a longer day. They might have exercised some patience. You have not heard of your father for more than a year, have you?” she added bluntly.

“No, not for sixteen months,” answered the pupil-teacher.

“But even if he were dead,” proceeded Flo, with a fine disregard of her friend’s feelings, and an open defiance of the laws of good breeding, such as is occasionally to be found in girls of her age, “you could not honestly pretend to be very much cut up! You have not seen him since you were a small child. You left Australia when you were seven years old. He is a stranger to you.”

“A stranger, certainly, in one way; but still he is my father, and I have a presentiment that we shall meet again, and before long,” rolling up a pair of stockings as she spoke, and averting her eyes from her outspoken schoolfellow.

“Pooh! I don’t believe in presentiments. I had a presentiment that father was going to give me a cart and cob last holidays, and it ended in smoke. If your father had been in the land of the living, surely you would have heard. I know I am saying this very baldly and plainly, but there is no use in beating about the bush—is there? You must face the position sooner or later.”

“You mean the position of being an orphan?” said Madeline, tremulously. “But I refuse to accept that until I have not one grain of hope left. It is easy for you, who have your father and mother and five brothers at home, to talk in this way. Remember, I have only one relation in the world, and when I lose him I lose all.”

“Well, all I can say is, that I hope your presentiment will turn out better than mine! Oh, here are the girls coming back!” she exclaimed peevishly, as a long file of figures appeared, passing the windows two and two. “What a bore they are! They seem to have only been out a quarter of an hour, and here they come marching in, disturbing our nice comfortable little talk.”

Florence Blewitt, who so successfully practised the art of plain speaking and trampling on other people’s susceptibilities—people were welcome to trample on hers, she declared; she had none—was a short, squarely-built girl of sixteen, with a sharp nose, thick brown hair, intelligent grey eyes, and a very dark skin—a skin that betrayed no soupçon of foreign blood, but was, nevertheless, more brown than white. She was brusque, eccentric, clever, and indolent. Florence could—if she would—but she so seldom would. She preferred the ease of an undisturbed seat at the very bottom of the class to ambitious battlings and feverish strivings for the first place. She was the spoiled only daughter of a wealthy merchant and shipowner, and, being deferred to and made much of at home, was disposed to be both arbitrary and independent at school. Moreover, she was selfish, which is not a taking trait in a young woman’s character, and was anything but a popular idol. She would borrow readily, but hated to lend; and the only thing with which she was generous was her advice; the sole present she was ever known to make was her opinion—gratis. Few were honoured by her liking, and if she had a friend at Harperton, it was the girl who sat beside her, conscientiously mending a basketful of most hopeless-looking stockings.

“I wonder what your fate will be, Maddie?” said Flo, staring at her meditatively, and studying her delicate profile, her pencilled eyebrows, her shining hair.

“I wonder too,” echoed Madeline, with a profound sigh.

Madeline West had been born in Melbourne, and sent home at the age of seven to Mrs. Harper’s establishment, where she had remained for ten years. From a skinny, elf-like, wildly excitable child, she had grown up into an extremely pretty girl, with what the drawing-master termed “wonderful colouring.” Her hair, eyebrows, and lashes were dark, her eyes two shades lighter, but it was in her complexion and the exquisite modelling of her head and features that her chief beauty lay. Her head was small, and beautifully set upon her shoulders; her skin was of creamy fairness, with a faint shade of carmine in her cheeks—a colour so delicate that it went and came at a look or word. She was tall, slight, and wonderfully graceful; full of vivacity, activity, versatility and resource, ready to throw herself warmly into any scheme for amusement or mischief—that was to say, twelve months previously. She was by far the most striking-looking and admired of Mrs. Harper’s forty boarders, and, notwithstanding this drawback to feminine goodwill, was a great favourite with pupils, teachers, and servants. Her popularity had even survived that terrible test of altered circumstances—that dire fall from the wealthy Australian heiress to the unpaid slavey of the establishment. She changed, of course, her ringing laugh and her happy air; her merry repartee and snatches of songs had disappeared with the pretty frocks and hats and shoes which she had loved so well. She was developing a staid, grown-up manner, according to her fellow-pupils; she held back from their advances—abdicated of her own accord, and her place as queen of the school was filled, after a decent interregnum, by a rich Cockney, who was as lavish of her shillings, as she was frugal in the matter of h’s, and who, according to Flo Blewitt, was “a harmless, good-natured, vulgar, poor creature.”

It must not be supposed that Madeline West did not keenly feel her altered position. Many a bitter tear she shed in secret; many a sleepless hour she lay awake, when all her companions—with only to-morrow’s lessons on their minds—were slumbering peacefully in the arms of Morpheus. Every small indignity, every slighting speech and sharp glance entered as an iron into her soul, but she made no remonstrance or reply; her swiftly changing colour was the sole index to her feelings, and what were a school-girl’s—a pauper school-girl’s—feelings to Mrs. Harper? To tell the truth, Madeline had never asserted herself even in her days of sunshine. She never could face an unpleasant situation; she put aside a crisis with a laugh or a gay word; her sensitive, luxurious nature shrank instinctively from all unpleasant things. She was a moral coward, though no one suspected it.

The present clouds on her sky had brought out, in an unexpected manner, unexpected depths in her character. Madeline, the humble semi-nursemaid, was an industrious, prudent, self-possessed person, who laboured gravely, doggedly from morning to night, a totally different girl to the extravagant, generous, easy-going Madeline, the butterfly who had fluttered the happy hours away for nine whole years. She was now at another seminary. Adversity is said to be an excellent school, and offers a fine test of character. Anomalous as it sounds, Madeline West had risen to the state of life into which she had fallen.