Читать книгу His Excellency's English Governess - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 3

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It was Presentation-day at the University of London. The date was somewhere in the latter half of the present century,—not this year, nor last year, nor the year before that, when you, dear reader, or your brother or cousin, may have graced the scene in cap and gown—but so long ago that the graduates and undergraduates of to-day were still in the nursery taking practical lessons as to the value of tactual perception, or forcing an undesired entrance into the realms of knowledge by way of the spelling-book and the Latin Primer. The day was a lovely one in May, and the spring sunshine poured in through the high windows of the theatre on the Chancellor in his Court suit and gold-embroidered gown, on the members of the Senate in their crimson and scarlet robes, and on the reporters scribbling away for dear life at their table. There was the usual throng of admiring friends and relations in the gallery and the back seats, and the usual inner semicircle of presentees, looking like a bed of gorgeous and not always harmonious flowers, from the vivid colours of their gowns and hoods. A modern observer would have noted only one point of marked difference from a similar scene to-day, and this was the absence of the serried ranks of lady graduates. There were only two or three women to be presented, and they looked pale and nervous, but dauntlessly resolved to do their duty to the end. In those days it was an achievement to gain possession of a London degree, and these girls felt that the eyes of England and of the world were upon them. They were conscious also of furnishing the sensation of the day, for a woman had obtained the prize for French in the B.A. Final, and the second place in Honours for Mental and Moral Science, for the first time on record, and the friends of female education were jubilant. Miss Arbuthnot, the principal of the South Central High School, in which Cecil Anstruther had received her education, looked fully two inches taller than usual as she led her pupil up to the Chancellor’s dais, and the little knot of friends and teachers in the gallery applauded frantically, while even the men who had been ignominiously left behind in the race were magnanimous enough to do their share of clapping. The parliamentary representative of the University referred especially to Miss Anstruther in his regulation speech, and the noble Chancellor himself pressed her hand and congratulated her with even more than his ordinary paternal suavity of manner. As for Cecil’s own feelings, she was so much embarrassed by the cheering, the publicity, and the difficulty of carrying her cap, her diploma, and her prize, and finding a hand to give the Chancellor at the same time, that she did not breathe freely until she was safely back in her seat, with her companions in misfortune eagerly inspecting her new possessions.

A little later, and the grand function was over. The Chancellor and the members of the Senate had filed off solemnly, like the chorus of a Greek play, the reporters had closed their note-books and decamped with much less ceremony, and the theatre was deserted, save by a few presentees who were displaying their medals and diplomas to impatient friends. Cecil paused at the door on her way to the robing-room with Miss Arbuthnot.

“I’m quite sorry to say good-bye to the dear old place,” she said; “I have been here for the Matriculation, the Intermediate, and the B.A., and now again to-day, and I know the pattern of the ceiling and all the mouldings on the walls by heart.”

“I only wish you would come here again for the M.A. and the D.Lit.,” said Miss Arbuthnot. “That is my one sorrow with regard to you, Cecil, that you are ending your academical course at this point.”

“But, you see, I have really no choice,” said Cecil. “The children at home are getting older, and I must either teach them myself or earn money to help with their education. And you know, Miss Arbuthnot, I do so much dread going among strangers, and I want to stay at home if I possibly can. If I could have got a post in the School, of course——”

“That would not be good enough,” replied Miss Arbuthnot with decision. “Public opinion has yet to be roused on the subject of High School teachers’ salaries. No, Cecil, what I should like for you would be something quite different. As for teaching your little brothers and sisters, I believe it is a task at once beyond and beneath your powers. You are much better fitted to instruct older children, and you are not at all suited to cope with very naughty ones, such as I understand them to be. I can’t prophesy success for you.”

“But what could I do?” asked Cecil.

“I think you should try for a post as finishing governess in some good family, where you would be properly treated,” said Miss Arbuthnot. “Abroad, perhaps; I believe the Russians treat their governesses very well. You are not a specialist, Cecil—that is another thing I regret, you would have gained the University scholarship for Mental and Moral Science if you had been—but you are good all round. Well, we mustn’t stay talking here. I will see you to Victoria, and then I must hurry back to the School. Only remember, if you do not succeed with the children, let me know. I am often asked to recommend thoroughly first-class governesses, and I will do my best for you, dear child.”

Miss Arbuthnot’s voice trembled a little as she concluded, for she had grown very fond of her head pupil, and honestly believed that she could have done anything she liked in the way of passing examinations. It had been a great pleasure to the elder lady to have this ardent young disciple always at hand, to sympathise with her plans and to become imbued with her views, nor was Miss Arbuthnot at all unmindful of the honour reflected on the School by the girl’s success. The cause of female education in general, and the South Central High School in particular, were the objects to which Miss Arbuthnot’s life was devoted, and the cause gained no small lustre from the ovation Cecil had received at the Presentation, and the comments which had been made thereon in the various speeches, and which might be looked for from the Press.

The principal’s expectations in this respect were not disappointed. The London dailies remarked on Cecil’s success in a style half-flattering, half-contemptuous, and at greater or less length according to their interest in the subject, and the country papers took up the strain, and carried it on in their several ways. In particular, the ‘Whitcliffe Argus,’ the chief organ of Cecil’s native place, devoted nearly half a column to setting forth, rather late in the day, in a dialect of journalese peculiarly its own, the honours gained by the “daughter of our esteemed fellow-townsman the much respected Vicar of St Barnabas’.” The paper was pounced upon, and the paragraph read aloud in a stentorian voice by one of Cecil’s younger brothers, a particularly rampant specimen of that troublesome race, when the ‘Argus’ was delivered at St Barnabas’ Vicarage. No subject had been further from Cecil’s mind as she sat at the head of the dinner-table, with flushed cheeks and rather dishevelled hair, and a worried look which contrasted sadly with the hopeful aspect she had worn when she bade farewell to Miss Arbuthnot little more than a month before. Mrs Anstruther was away on a visit, and to Cecil had fallen a task sufficient to appal the stoutest heart, that of keeping in order the seven small half-brothers and sisters who sat round the table, and whom no one but their own genial, boisterous Irish mother had ever succeeded in managing.

The Anstruther children were the terror of Whitcliffe. Their mother said that they had excellent hearts, and this was very possibly true, but it was also painfully evident that they had no manners, and a very small amount of conscience. Add to this the possession of tremendous animal spirits, splendid lungs, and most inventive brains, and it will be seen that the life of a conscientious elder sister, who held pronounced views of her own on the subject of education, was not likely to be an easy one among them. Of all those who tried to govern them Cecil was perhaps the least successful, for she was gentle, methodical, and somewhat old-maidish in her ways, and each of these tendencies militated strongly against her. She got on very well with Mrs Anstruther (indeed, no one who knew that stout, untidy little lady, with her blue-grey eyes and her soft, drawling brogue, could do otherwise), and loved her almost as much as if she had been her own mother, but the children did not take to her. Even now, after a morning spent in wild efforts to clear away the things they left about, undo the mischief they had done, and efface generally the traces of their baleful existence, she could not eat her dinner in peace. Patsy was spilling his pudding on the carpet, Loey feeding the cat from his plate, and when Cecil leaned across the table to rescue Eily’s glass of water from imminent peril of destruction, Terry seized the opportunity of pulling out all her hair-pins. And all this time Fitz was roaring out the paragraph from the ‘Argus’ in his loudest tones.

“Fitzgerald!” came in a stern voice from the lower end of the table, where sat Mr Anstruther, with a book propped up against the dish in front of him; “don’t make that noise. Why don’t you keep the children quiet, Cecil? My dear!” and Mr Anstruther’s eye-glasses went slowly up, to be focussed on Cecil’s dishevelled tresses, “what have you been doing to your hair? It is in a most disgraceful state. What is all this row about?”

“Why, daddy,” cried Loey, otherwise Owen, “it’s what we’ll do with Cissie’s money we’re talking about.”

“You will do nothing with it,” returned Mr Anstruther, severely, for the point was rather a sore one with him. “Your sister will spend the money as she likes, without consulting a set of little dunces like you.”

“Oh, papa, but I mean to do something for them,” cried Cecil. “I have been so glad ever since I heard I had got the prize to think that I should be able to help you with it. The money will pay the boys’ fees for one term, or help with their books, at any rate.”

“You are very good, my dear child, in wishing to be of use, but what can fifteen pounds do towards educating four boys, who have not brains enough among them all to get a ten-pound scholarship, nor steadiness and sense of honour enough to go to and from the Grammar-School like gentlemen? What with their school-fees, and the bills I have to pay for the damage they do, it needs a millionaire to look after them.”

And Mr Anstruther rose abruptly from his seat, said grace, and departed to his study. It was a constant disappointment to him that only his eldest daughter had inherited his own scholarly tastes, and that his younger children, although dowered with their mother’s splendid bodily health, had inherited also her distaste for steady mental work. Sometimes the disparity made him a little unjust to Cecil, as if his disappointment were her fault, and the sense of this struck her to-day so keenly that, worn-out and discouraged, she pushed back her chair from the table and burst into tears. The children stood around in impotent alarm; then, their consciences no doubt pricking them, one after another crept softly from the room. For a little while Cecil sobbed hopelessly; then a sudden resolution came to her, and she started up. Miss Arbuthnot’s words had returned to her memory, and she saw that if she could not be useful with the children at home, she might at any rate help to provide the money necessary to give them the education they so greatly needed. With ferocious haste she twisted her soft auburn hair into a rough knot, secured it by sticking in the pins in handfuls, and dashed away the tears from her brown eyes, now blurred and piteous with crying. Without giving herself time to repent, she sat down at the writing-table in the window, and began to write. The chair and table shook with her sobs as she did so, but she scrambled through her letter as fast as she could, sealed and stamped it, and then, snatching up her hat, rushed across the road to the pillar-box with the important missive, determined not to trust any of the boys.

All this afternoon Cecil, to use Biblical language, “went softly in the bitterness of her soul,” for the step she had just taken marked the downfall of many hopes. Throughout her school career, which had cost her father very little, owing to the number of prizes and scholarships she had won, her aim had been to make use of her knowledge in instructing her half-brothers and sisters. Recollections of past failure in holiday-times had not deterred her from setting to work again with enthusiasm, but after rather less than a month’s trial she was compelled to admit that the result was unsatisfactory. She knew that under ordinary circumstances she was an interesting teacher and a good disciplinarian,—experience in teaching classes at the South Central School had assured her of this,—and she had not reckoned on the opposing influence which was to render all her efforts nugatory. The children were the only subject on which Mrs Anstruther and Cecil were gravely divided in opinion, but on this one point they differed exceedingly. Mrs Anstruther insisted that Cecil was trying to break the children’s spirits, and she made it her business to rescue them from this untoward fate on every possible occasion. Derided by her pupils and unsupported by their mother, her rules set aside, and her punishments continually remitted, it is little wonder that Cecil decided to give up the contest in despair. There seemed to be something in her that aroused all the wickedness of which the children were capable; and only this morning a final touch had been put to her misery by a remark of her father’s, to the effect that he wished Cecil would leave her brothers and sisters alone, for they were always far worse with her than with any one else. That Mr Anstruther should say this was the most unkindest cut of all, and Cecil felt that her last support in the home was gone.

The next morning, just as breakfast was over at St Barnabas’ Vicarage, great excitement was caused among the children by the sight of a telegraph-boy coming up to the house. Six of them met him at the door, and conveyed the missive in triumph to Cecil, to whom it was addressed, offering meanwhile various suggestions as to the nature of the contents. It was with some difficulty that she succeeded in rescuing the envelope untorn, and in acquainting herself with the message.

“M. Arbuthnot to C. Anstruther.

“Come to me at once for two or three days. Have heard of something for you.”

Cecil read the words in astonishment, with all the children dancing and yelling round her like wild Indians. They were still in the hall, and Cecil was too much engrossed by the telegram to try to calm them, until the study door opened, and her father’s tired face looked out.

“Really, Cecil,” he began, “I think, when you know I am preparing my sermon, you might——” But his voice was drowned by the children.

“Daddy, Cissie’s got a telegram. We wouldn’t go to school until she would tell us what it was. She’s going to London, isn’t she?”

“What does all this mean, Cecil?” asked Mr Anstruther, wearily, and his daughter put the telegram into his hand.

“Well,” he said, when he had read it, “you have asked Miss Arbuthnot to find you a situation, I suppose? After all, perhaps it is the best thing you can do.”

“And you must let me help with the boys then, papa,” said Cecil, eagerly. “I think I am pretty sure to get a good salary, you know, and I can take one of them, at any rate, off your hands.”

“Very well, my dear. It is impossible not to feel grateful for such a proposal. Patrick, leave off teasing that cat, and go to school with your brothers. If you can get your things ready for the 11.55 train, Cecil, I will walk down to the station with you.”

Cecil dashed up-stairs, and spent the next hour in wild efforts to get her box packed, which was a work of difficulty, with Eily, Norah, and Geraldine standing around, advising, touching, criticising, meddling in a way that nearly drove her mad. Happily Mrs Anstruther was to return before lunch, and she therefore felt less compunction than she would otherwise have done in leaving her flock to their own devices. By dint of superhuman exertion she managed to be ready by the appointed time, and kissed the children all round, admonished them not to quarrel, rushed into the nursery to remind the nurse to put on their clean pinafores before their mother’s return, and gave hasty parting directions about lunch to the cook. Then there was a hurried walk down to the station, in which she endeavoured vainly to keep up with her father’s long strides, and a brief farewell on the platform. Cecil shook hands with Mr Anstruther (he had an invincible objection to being kissed in public, principally owing to the fact that his wife and younger children were especially given to the practice), and he put her into a ladies’ carriage just as the train was about to start.

Leaning back in her place, Cecil spent her time during the journey in speculations as to the situation found for her. Was she to be principal of some newly-founded High School, where the extent and freshness of her acquirements would counterbalance the defects of her youth and comparative inexperience? Or was she to be governess in a private family, possibly on the Continent, possibly in some stately English home, where she would be treated with frigid courtesy, and shunned and criticised as a “learned lady”? She sighed as she revolved these possibilities in her mind, and wished once more that she might have remained at home. But regrets were vain, the train was nearing Victoria, and on the platform stood Miss Arbuthnot, to whom Mr Anstruther had telegraphed from Whitcliffe that Cecil was on her way.

“I am glad you have come at once, Cecil,” she said, as they left the station in a cab, “for I can give you a rare treat for to-night. What do you think of tickets for both of us for the Conversazione at Burlington House, to meet all the great people?”

“How splendid!” cried Cecil, with sparkling eyes. “And the situation, Miss Arbuthnot?”

“Oh—ah—the situation. Of course that is the chief thing, after all. Well, you and I are to meet the lady and gentleman at Daridge’s Hotel to-morrow, and lunch with them afterwards.”

“Oh, then it is a private family?” asked Cecil.

“Private? Oh, well—yes. Not a school at all.”

Miss Arbuthnot seemed not to wish to say anything more, but presently she began to question Cecil as to her dress for the evening, betraying a solicitude as to her appearance which surprised the girl.

“Of course, I ought to have told you to bring your best evening gown,” she said, “but I never thought of it, and it would have been rather awkward to mention it in a telegram. What have you? the black velvet with your mother’s lace? It is rather old for you, but after all that is no drawback. You see, Cecil,” smiling at her pupil’s puzzled face, “we are all very proud of you. You have done the School great credit, and I should not wonder if you were to find yourself a little bit of a celebrity in a small way to-night. So you see why I want you to look well, that you may uphold the honour of the South Central.”