Several things at this time seemed to conspire to effect it. The St. Quentins were going on long leave, and Miss Airlie would go with them. This was a heavy blow. Then we heard of this school after Miss Airlie had left Riflebury, a fact so opportune as to be (so Aunt Theresa said) “quite providential.” If we were to go to school, sending us to this one would save the trouble of making personal inquiries, and perhaps a less wise selection, for Major Buller had confidence in Mr. Arkwright’s good judgment. The ladies to whose care his daughter was confided were probably fit to teach us.
“It would save a great deal of trouble,” my guardian confessed, and it must also be confessed that Major Buller was glad to avoid trouble when he could conscientiously do so.
I think it was his warm approval of Eleanor which finally clinched the question. He thought that she would be a good companion for poor Matilda.
Why I speak of her as “poor Matilda” demands some explanation.
Before I attempt to give it I must say that there is one respect in which our biographies must always be less satisfactory than a story that one might invent. When you are putting down true things about yourself and your friends, you cannot divide people neatly into the good and the bad, the injurers and the injured, as you can if you are writing a tale out of your head. The story seems more complete when you are able either to lay the blame of the melancholy events on the shoulders of some unworthy character, or to show that they were the natural punishment of the sufferer’s own misconduct. But in thinking of Matilda and Aunt Theresa and Major Buller, or even of the Doctor and Mrs. Buller’s lady friends, this is not possible.
The morbid condition—of body and mind—into which Matilda fell for some time was no light misfortune either as regards her sufferings or the discomfort it produced in the household, and I am afraid she was both mismanaged and in fault herself.
It is safe, at any rate, to take the blame for one’s own share, and I have often thought, with bitterness of spirit, that, child as I was, I might have been both forbearing and helpful to Matilda at a time when her temper was very much tried by ill-health and untoward circumstances. We had a good many squabbles about this period. I piqued myself upon generally being in the right, and I did not think then, as I do now, that it is possible to be most in the right in a quarrel, and at the same time not least to blame for it.
Matilda certainly did by degrees become very irritable, moody, and perverse, and her perversity developed itself in ways which puzzled poor Aunt Theresa.
She became silent and unsociable. She displayed a particular dislike to the privileges of being in the drawing-room with grown-up “company,” and of accompanying Aunt Theresa when she paid her afternoon calls. She looked very ill, and stoutly denied that she was so. She highly resented solicitude on the subject of her health, fought obstinately over every bottle of medicine, and was positively rude to the doctors.
For her unsociability, I think, Miss Perry’s evil influence was partly to blame. Poor Matilda clung to her belief in our late governess when she was no more to us than a text upon which Aunt Theresa and her friends preached to each other against governesses in general, and the governesses each had suffered from in particular. Our lessons with Major Buller, and the influence of Miss Airlie’s good breeding and straightforward kindness, gave a healthier turn to our tastes; but when Miss Airlie went away and Major Buller proclaimed a three weeks’ holiday from the Latin grammar, and we were left to ourselves, Matilda felt the want of the flattery, the patronage, and the small excitements and mysteries about nothing, to which Miss Perry had accustomed her. I blush to think that my companionship was less comfort to her than it ought to have been. As to Aunt Theresa, she was always too busy to give full attention to anything; and this does not invite confidence.