Fay’s remark was recorded to Mrs. Fausset as the indication of a discontented spirit.
Not being able to learn anything about Fay’s history from her mistress, Bell had tried to obtain a little light from the girl herself, but without avail. Questioned about her school, Fay had replied that she hated her school, and didn’t want to talk of it. Questioned about her mother, she answered that her mother’s name was too sacred to be spoken about to a stranger; and on a subtle attempt to obtain information about her father, the girl flushed crimson, started up angrily from her chair, and told the highly respectable Bell that she was not in the habit of chattering to servants, or being questioned by them.
After this it was war to the knife on Martha Bell’s part.
Miss Colville, the expensive morning governess, was in somewise above prejudice, and was a person of liberal mind, allowing for the fact that she had lived all her life in other people’s houses, looking on at lives of fashionable frivolity in which she had no share, and had been obliged to study Debrett’s annual volume as if it were her Bible, lest she should commit herself in every other speech, so intricate are the ramifications and intermarriages of the Upper Ten Thousand. Miss Colville was not unkind to Fay Fausset, and was conscientious in her instructions; but even she resented the mystery of the girl’s existence, and felt that her presence blemished the respectability of the household. By and by, when she should be seeking new employment, and should have occasion to refer to Mrs. Fausset, and to talk of her pupils in Upper Parchment Street, there would be a difficulty in accounting for Fay. A ward of Mr. Fausset’s, a distant connection: the whole thing sounded improbable. An heiress who had come to the house with torn embroidery upon her under-linen. A mystery—yes, no doubt a mystery. And in Miss Colville’s ultra-particular phase of life no manner of mystery was considered respectable; except always those open secrets in the very highest circles which society agrees to ignore.
In spite of these drawbacks, Miss Colville was fairly kind to her new charge. Fay was backward in grammar and geography; she was a dullard about science; but she could chatter French, she knew a little Italian, and in music she was highly gifted. In this she resembled Mildred, who adored music, and had taken her first lessons on the piano as a water-fowl takes to a pond, joyously, as to her native element. Fay was not advanced in the technique of the art, but she played and sang charmingly, for the most part by ear; and she used to play and sing to Mildred in the summer twilight, till Bell came like a prison-warder and insisted upon Mildred’s going to bed.
“I nursed your mamma, miss,” she would say, “and I never allowed her to spoil her complexion with late hours as Miss Fay is leading you on to do.”
At seven Mildred cared neither for health nor complexion in the abstract, and she loved Fay’s music and Fay’s stories. Fay would tell her a fairy tale, with musical accompaniments, improvised to suit the story. This was Beauty’s father groping through the dark wood. Then came the swaying of branches, the rustling of summer leaves, the long, long sigh of the night wind, the hoot of the owl, and the roll of distant thunder. Here came Fatima’s brothers to the rescue, with a triumphant march, and the trampling of fiery steeds, careering up and down the piano in presto arpeggios, bursting open the gates of Bluebeard’s Castle with a fortissimo volley of chords.
“I never heard any one make such a noise on a piano,” said Bell, bristling with indignation.
At eight o’clock Fay’s day and evening were done. Mildred vanished like the setting of the sun. She would like to have had Fay to sit beside her bed and tell her stories, and talk to her, till she dropped to sleep; but this happiness was sternly interdicted by Bell.
“She would keep you awake half the night, Miss Mildred, over-exciting you with her stories; and what would your pa and the doctors say to me?” exclaimed Bell.