Part 6 (1/2)

Then at last the door opened.

CHAPTER V.

AN UNPROMISING BEGINNING.

My first sight of Miss Ledbury was a sort of agreeable disappointment.

She was not the least like what I had imagined, though till I did see her I do not think I knew that I had imagined anything! She had been much less in my thoughts than her pupils; it was the idea of companions, the charm of being one of a party of other girls, with a place of my own among them, that my fancy had been full of. I don't think I cared very much what the teachers were like.

What I did see was a very small, fragile-looking old lady, with quite white hair, a black or purple--I am not sure which, anyway it was dark--silk dress, and a soft fawn-coloured cashmere shawl. She had a white lace cap, tied with ribbons under her chin, and black lace mittens. Looking back now, I cannot picture her in any other dress. I cannot remember ever seeing her with a bonnet on, and yet she must have worn one, as she went to church regularly. Her face was small and still pretty, and the eyes were naturally sweet, sometimes they had a twinkle of humour in them, sometimes they looked almost hard. The truth was that she was a gentle, kind-hearted person by nature, but a narrow life and education had stunted her power of sympathy, and she thought it wrong to give way to feeling. She was conscious of what she believed to be weakness in herself, and was always trying to be firm and determined.

And since her niece had come to live with her, this put-on sternness had increased.

Yet I was never really afraid of Miss Ledbury, though I never--well, perhaps that is rather too strong--almost never, I should say, felt at ease with her.

I was, I suppose, a very shy child, but till now the circ.u.mstances of my life had not brought this out.

This first time of seeing my future school-mistress I liked her very much. There was indeed something very attractive about her--something almost ”fairy-G.o.dmother-like” which took my fancy.

We did not stay long. Miss Ledbury was not without tact, and she saw that the mention of the approaching parting, the settling the day and hour at which I was to come to Green Bank to _stay_, were very, very trying to mamma. And I almost think her misunderstanding of me began from that first interview. In her heart I fancy she was shocked at my coolness, for she did not know, or if she ever had known, she had forgotten, much about children--their queer contradictory ways of taking things, how completely they are sometimes the victims of their imagination, how little they realise anything they have had no experience of.

All that the old lady did not understand in me, she put down to my being spoilt and selfish. She even, I believe, thought me forward.

Still, she spoke kindly--said she hoped I should soon feel at home at Green Bank, and try to get on well with my lessons, so that when my dear mamma returned she would be astonished at the progress I had made.

I did not quite understand what she said--the word ”progress” puzzled me. I wondered if it had anything to do with the pilgrim's progress, and I was half inclined to ask if it had, and to tell her that I had read the history of Christian and his family quite through, two or three times. But mamma had already got up to go, so I only said ”Yes” rather vaguely, and Miss Ledbury kissed me somewhat coldly.

As soon as we found ourselves outside in the street again, mamma made some little remark. She wanted to find out what kind of impression had been left on me, though she would not have considered it right to ask me straight out what I thought of the lady who was going to be my superior--in a sense to fill a parent's place to me.

And I remember replying that I thought Miss Ledbury must be very, very old--nearly a hundred, I should think.

”Oh dear no, not nearly as old as that,” mamma said quickly. ”You must not say anything like that, Geraldine. It would offend her. She cannot be more than sixty.”

I opened my eyes. I thought it would be very nice to be a hundred.

But before I had time to say more, my attention was distracted. For just at that moment, turning a corner, we almost ran into the procession I was so eager to join--Miss Ledbury's girls, returning two and two from their morning const.i.tutional.

I felt my cheeks grow red with excitement. I stared at them, and some of them, I think, looked at me. Mamma looked at them too, but instead of getting red, her face grew pale.

They pa.s.sed so quickly, that I was only able to glance at two or three of the twenty or thirty faces. I looked at the smallest of the train with the most interest, though one older face at the very end caught my attention almost without my knowing it.

When they had pa.s.sed I turned to mamma.

”Did you see that little girl with the rosy cheeks, mamma? The one with a red feather in her hat. _Doesn't_ she look nice?”

”She looked a good-humoured little person,” said mamma. In her heart she thought the rosy-faced child rather common-looking and far too showily dressed, but that was not unusual among the rich Mexington people, and she would not have said anything like that to me. ”I did notice one _very_ sweet face,” she went on, ”I mean the young lady at the end--one of the governesses no doubt.”

I had, as I said, noticed her too, and mamma's words impressed it upon me. Mamma seemed quite cheered by this pa.s.sing glimpse, and she went on speaking.