Part 27 (1/2)
”As mademoiselle pleases,” answered Felicie, with a very wicked look, and a very sweet voice.
Esther at length accepted my overtures, and consented to heal her bosom's woe with a picture-book and a bon-bon out of my trunk. I shut the door between my room and the nursery very tight, and gradually Essie's fretful unhappiness relaxed into something like childish enjoyment, in the comparative cheerfulness of my room, and the exertions I made for her entertainment. She possessed the characteristic, very rare and invaluable among children, of being easily amused, and also of continuing amused for a long while, with the same thing. So it happened, that the picture-book did not pall upon her taste, nor the bon-bon lose its charm, for two full hours, and she was still sitting demure as a kitten beside me, while I worked and occasionally explained to her the pictures, when Aunt Edith entered. She had evidently forgotten the occurrence of the morning, and seemed very well pleased to find us both so well provided for. After looking about the room, and ascertaining that I had everything that I needed, she sat down by the fire, and resumed the estimate she had been interrupted in making up last night.
The conscious blood dyed my cheeks, the faltering words found only awkward and constrained utterance; the more my aunt tried to read me, the more blurred and unreadable did I become. She tried me upon all possible questions--school, and its studies and routine; Rutledge, and my visit there; the journey, and my escort. Upon all points, I was equally unsatisfactory, and the interview had but one decisive result, which I attained only by great effort. I had determined that whenever I should have a chance, I would ask a favor of my aunt; and this appearing a fitting opportunity, with many misgivings and much trepidation, I propounded it to her; and was unspeakably relieved and surprised to find that she not only acquiesced in, but most cordially approved of the motion. It was to the effect, that for this winter, I should be excused from going at all into society, and might be allowed to study and improve myself.
The proposal, I saw, relieved my aunt's mind from some weight that had enc.u.mbered it. She agreed with me most heartily in considering it much the most judicious course. I was really too young to go into society; she had never ceased to regret having brought out Josephine so early; next winter I should be so much better fitted to enjoy it, etc. The plans for the employment of my time were very soon arranged. I was to share Grace's French and German lessons, and to read history and philosophy with her, under the guidance of one Mr. Olman, a young and inexpensive professor of literature and the belles-lettres, who came three times a week. My hours of study and recitation were all distinctly marked out, and it was agreed I should begin that very day. Grace was sent to bring me her French grammar and show me the lesson, and after lunch, we were summoned to the study (a small front room on the second story), to meet Mr. Olman, our literary professor.
Certainly, if I had looked upon Grace as a marvel of sharpness last night, my respect for her in that regard, suffered no diminution after seeing the manner in which she slipped through Mr. Olman's literary fingers, and came out triumphant at the end of the two hours, without the vaguest idea of what he had been laboring at. She hated history, philosophy, and the belles-lettres, and never thought of preparing the abstracts and reviews that he requested; and as he was unspeakably afraid of her himself, she found no difficulty in eluding the detested tasks. He was a slim young man, dressing in black and wearing spectacles--very nervous and very much given to blus.h.i.+ng. Indeed, his face, at the end of the lesson, was ordinarily of a violent _rose de chine_ color, and his hands so trembling and cold, that it was a great relief to me when he succeeded in collecting his books and papers and getting on his overcoat. I never saw so merciless a persecution; the slyest, ”cutest,” and the most nave way of tripping him up in the full tide of his discourse, and then bewailing her mistake; never by any chance omitting an opportunity of making him blush and putting him in an agony of nervousness. I am certain, so acutely did he suffer at her hands, that if in an unguarded moment he had been brought to acknowledge who of all others he most detested and dreaded, he would have answered, unhesitatingly, ”my pupil, from two to four, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”
Indignant as I felt at Grace, it was no easy matter to keep from laughing at the results of her pertness and _aplomb;_ and notwithstanding Mr. Olman was evidently a well-read and cultivated scholar, I antic.i.p.ated in these lessons more of pain than of pleasure; and although I determined to apply myself thoroughly to all he directed, still, four o'clock was, and would, I feared, continue to be, a release.
At dinner, that evening, Grace gave the bulletin of ”Mr. Olman's latest,” and though her mother reproved her, no one thought it necessary to discourage her by not laughing. Phil's ”Ha! ha!” was honest and unequivocal; he meant, he declared, some day to secrete himself under the piano, and see Grace put the professor to rout and confusion. He hated professors, for his part, and he'd like to see 'em all put to rout and confusion.
”Professors arn't in your line, are they, Phil?” said Grace, with a laugh.
”I beg, Phil,” exclaimed Josephine, ”that you'll never present yourself unexpectedly to that wretched man. I am sure he'd swoon at the sight of your breadth of shoulder and length of limb. You'd make at least three of him.”
”Say four,” put in Grace. ”The professor doesn't weigh an ounce over thirty-five pounds. I asked him, the other day, apropos of ancient weights and measures, if he'd ever been weighed, and what the result was.”
”You saucy child,” said Phil, ”I wonder he didn't box your ears.”
”No danger of that,” responded Grace, complacently. ”The professor knows better than to quarrel with his bread and b.u.t.ter; he knows that pupils don't grow on every bush, and it would take a great deal more than that to provoke him into a retort. He only bites his lips, and grows red in the face, and says, 'This is irrelevant, Miss Churchill.'”
”Upon my word,” said Josephine, with a sneer, ”by the time the poor man finishes your education, I think he'll be fit to be translated to his reward, without any further sojourn in the church militant. No honest council would deny him canonization after such a fiery trial.”
”Poor old Mabire must have a high place by this time, if his reward is at all proportioned to his sufferings,” said Grace, slily. ”You remember, Josephine, how sweet you used to be to that old man? I liked to listen at the study door, and hear him walk up and down the floor, and grind his teeth and gasp, 'C'est trop, c'est trop!' I suppose the bread-and-b.u.t.ter question prevented his speaking to mamma; but, really, you must confess, he was a victim! Now _I_ never go the lengths of biting and scratching, but always confine myself to”----
”Grace, _mon ange_,” cried Josephine, flus.h.i.+ng up angrily, ”if you don't want to be sent to take your meals in the nursery, you had better learn to be less pert and”----
”Truthful's the word you want, dear,” drawled Grace, unconcernedly.
”It's the last word I should think of applying to you,” retorted her sister.
”_Tout doucement, cherie!_” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Grace, squeezing up her mouth.
But at this juncture, mamma, who had been engaged in opening some notes and cards of invitation that John had brought in, now becoming aroused to a sense of the impending storm, came to the rescue, and in a few cutting words used up everybody present, Phil and myself included, and restored a forced peace; and during the remainder of the meal, Josephine sulked, Phil looked heartily distressed, and I felt miserably uncomfortable, Grace alone preserving an unmoved and complacent demeanor. It was just as we had finished dessert, that there came a ring at the bell that made me start. Foolish as it was, I had been listening to the bell all day, with a vague kind of hope that it would prove of interest to me; and when John presented a card to my aunt, which contained the only familiar name to me in this strange place, and, in fact, the only name I cared to see, I really feared that Grace's quick ear would catch the loud throbbing of my heart, as she surely did catch the quick blush on my cheeks.
”It is Mr. Rutledge,” said my aunt. ”Josephine, will you go into the parlor, and I will join you in a moment? Phil, may I ask you to look over that deed we were speaking of this morning? The library is vacant; I suppose you do not want to be interrupted. And you, young ladies (to Grace and me), will find a good fire in the study, and an excellent chance for preparing your German for to-morrow. Mr. Waschlager, you know, comes at ten on Thursdays.”
Josephine, with a coquettish look in the gla.s.s, hurried off to the parlor; Phil accepted his lot with a resigned sigh; Grace grumblingly obeyed, and I followed her, biting my lips, and struggling to keep back the tears of disappointment, as I heard, through the half open door, a familiar voice and laugh, that my homesick ear had been longing for all day.
CHAPTER XIX.
----”Sweet heaven, she takes me up As if she had fingered me, and dog-eared me, And spelled me by the fire-side, half a life!
She knows my turns, my feeble points.”
E.B. BROWNING.
Christmas came and pa.s.sed; my birthday came and pa.s.sed; the holidays were ”over and done,” and we were busily at work again with our various professors; and, in my heart, I acknowledged that I liked work better than play in my new home. Sundays and holidays were the times that tried my soul. I do not mean in church; Christmas anthems, Christmas hopes and aspirations had never before touched me so deeply as now, when there was so much of dullness and coldness in the world outside. In church I did not feel my loneliness so much, but it was the coming back to the frivolity and uncongeniality of home that left the greatest blank. I do not mean to suggest, that during all these weeks I had been as pining and heartsick as I had been on the first day of my initiation. That day, it is true, had been a fair index of the rest, but the acute disappointment and pain had worn off, and I had learned to make the best of it, and to go through my daily routine with a less heavy, but perhaps an emptier and less hoping heart. ”The ox, when he is weary, treads surest.” I was weary and unhopeful, and so, perhaps, trod more safely the somewhat devious and perplexing path that lay before me. If the subduing effect of a keenly felt and unkind disappointment, and a miserable loneliness and want of sympathy, had not kept my impetuosity and self-will in check, I perhaps should not have pa.s.sed with so little injury through scenes that were quite new and bewildering to me. As it was, I was sad enough to think, sober enough to choose, and yet young and elastic enough not to be crushed by the weight of my trial, but to bow and fit myself to the yoke. I reasoned in a way that was childish in its simplicity, and yet wise in its unworldliness.
”I have been very presumptuous and vain,” I thought. ”I have fancied myself the companion and friend of one who, by forgetting me, has shown me my mistake, while there was yet time to correct it. I have been indulging in a very foolish, though a very happy, dream; but as long as he knows nothing of it, I am certain I can conquer it in time, and be more humble for the rest of my life. I have not found much sympathy or love in the only home I shall probably ever have; I don't suppose I shall ever be particularly happy again, but there is something higher than mere happiness that I can try to gain, and make myself worthy of that communion of saints in which I have been taught to believe; stretching through earth and heaven, of all kindreds and peoples and tongues, among whom I have no present comrade, it is true, but there is one saint at rest, who has no other care than her child's peace--who loved me better than all the world beside, when she was here--who will not forget her love and tenderness in the rest that she has entered into.”