——"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 passed; my birthday came and passed; 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 passed 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."
And so, with a humbled heart, I set myself to the "trivial round, the common task," that gave me, indeed, much room for self-denial and patience, but gave me, too, the peace that impatience and resistance never would have brought. Much there was, indeed, of error and folly, many mistaken steps and struggles of conscience, much sinning and repenting, but, on the whole, it was a straighter and a safer path than a pleasanter one would have been. There was, in truth, little danger of being in love with the world, seen from the stand-point I had been placed in.
Home continued pretty much as usual. Of my aunt and Josephine, we of the study and the nursery saw comparatively little. As the season advanced, and the gaiety increased, there was not much time, of course, at my aunt's command for any but the most imperative home duties; this being Josephine's first winter in New York, it was a thing of the highest moment to bring her out properly, and no sacrifice was considered too great. Not that she neglected her household, or regular duties; at whatever hour she may have returned home the night before, my Aunt Edith never failed to appear at breakfast punctually; never failed to hear Esther repeat her Collect, and glance over Grace's theme; never failed to overlook the grocer's, baker's, and butcher's accounts; to visit in person daily, kitchen, laundry, butler's pantry, nursery, and study; to keep, in short, that eye over her entire establishment that it required to preserve its matchless order and regularity. No wonder that my aunt looked haggard and worn; no wonder that unwelcome wrinkles were writing themselves on her brow, and that her rounded figure was fast losing its roundness. To serve one master is as much as one human being is capable of. In the miserable attempt to serve two, how many wrecks of soul and body are daily wrought.
I said we saw very little of my aunt; it seemed very little, for her daily visits to us, though regular, were of necessity hurried, and at meals she was generally either preoccupied and thoughtful, or busy with Phil in arrangements and plans for the pressing demands of society. Josephine, now-a-days, had her breakfast sent to her room, and was not ordinarily visible before twelve o'clock. Then came visiting hours; and at dinner, though, when they did not dine out, we enjoyed the society of my aunt, and Josephine, and Phil, still it seemed to me, they were all rather listless and stupid; but perhaps they were only reserving their energies for the evening. After study hours, sometimes, and just before my bed-time, I would go down to Josephine's room by particular request, and assist her at her toilette; her new maid, Frances, being, she declared, the clumsiest, stupidest thing that ever breathed, and having a most unbearable trick of bursting into tears whenever she was scolded, which, I suppose, deprived Josephine of all pleasure in her attendance. My services suited her better, and I often had the honor of superseding Frances. Not that I minded it at all; it was the only glimpse I had into the gay world that I was as yet so ignorant of. I liked to array Josephine in her elegant Parisian dresses, to arrange the drooping flowers in her glossy black hair, and to clasp the rich bracelets on her arms. Grace, on these occasions, was strictly forbidden the room; late hours, dissipation and fatigue had not materially improved Josephine's temper; and her pert young sister's allusions to bones, necks à la gridiron, etc., tried her beyond endurance; and mamma interposing, Grace, for once, was kept at bay. I will not deny a vague feeling of regret and longing, as I watched my cousin's floating drapery downstairs, and thought of the gay scene she was starting for; and as Phil wrapped her light cloak around her, and whispered his honest praises in her ear, as she followed her mother to the door, and I turned back to my lonely little room, it did seem to me that there was great need of faith to believe that her lot and mine were ordered by the same unerring and impartial Wisdom.
Our lessons went on pretty much as at first. With Mr. Olman, I was rather a check upon Grace, and the poor man began to regard me with something like gratitude. He was a good teacher, and gave me plenty of work, for which I, in my turn, was grateful. Our French lessons, it appeared to me, were rather a hollow mockery, Mdlle. Berteau, our preceptress, being a chatty little woman, who spent one-half her time in gossiping with Grace about Paris and pretty things, and the other half in helping her write the exercises she had been too lazy to prepare the night before. I also found later, that mademoiselle had been in the habit of supplying her young pupil surreptitiously with some rather questionable French literature. Upon a threat of disclosing this circumstance to mamma, Grace made me a solemn promise to renounce it; but I must confess I never felt any great security about its fulfillment.
Our German proved rather more satisfactory. Mr. Waschlager, a strapping, burly, bearded fellow, with a loud voice and considerable energy of manner, inspired Miss Grace with much greater respect than delicate Mr. Olman, with his nervousness and tremor. His imperfect knowledge of our mother-tongue, also, rendered any sly innuendoes quite powerless to annoy him, and Grace's very strikingly imperfect knowledge of his maternal mode of speech, put it quite out of her ability to insult him, if she had dared. So that, with the exception of having ordinarily to write her exercises for her, and give her the benefit of my researches in the dictionary at the last moment, I enjoyed my German lesson very much, and made quite rapid advances in that language.
A week or two before my arrival, Esther's daily governess (from all accounts a miserably weak and injudicious person) had been dismissed, having been found entirely incompetent to manage her young charge; and, till another should be procured, I had asked my aunt if I should not teach her for an hour or two every day. The offer had been very gladly accepted, and, somehow, after a week or two, all question of obtaining a new governess had died out, and Essie and her lessons had quietly devolved on me. I did not mind it very much; the child was good enough, and, with a little coaxing, got on tolerably well; but it was rather hard always to be tied down to that duty for the hours that I invariably felt most like reading or sewing, both of which occupations I found entirely incompatible with the due direction of Miss Esther's early mathematical efforts, and the proper supervision of her attempts at penmanship. I had the benefit of her society at other hours also; she kept pretty closely at my side during my leisure moments, favored by my vicinity to the nursery, and was my invariable companion in my walks: Grace never walked, except when ordered out under pain of her mother's displeasure, and Félicie was, of course, only too glad to shift the duty of exercising Miss Esther upon me. And as my aunt had a prejudice against full carriages, she and Josephine were generally considered a sufficient burden for the horses on Sunday, and Grace being commonly threatened with headache on that day, Esther and I were left to ourselves in the matter of church; and finding one not far distant, that had some free seats within its ample limits, we profited by the discovery, and pretty constantly filled two of them; Esther holding fast to my dress, never for a moment letting go of it through service or sermon; at times it seemed to me, as I caught her strange troubled eyes fixed on the rich colors of the chancel window, or the misty blue of the vaulted roof, that "her heart was envious of her eye," and she clung to me, uncertain and hesitating, as her one tie to earth. I never could quite make out the child; with all her pettishness, and very willful and trying naughtiness, there were moods and fancies about her that thoroughly puzzled me. The only way, I found, was to be as patient as possible with the one, and humor the other as far as was practicable.
I introduced her to her Prayer-book frequently at church, but to little effect; she would obey for the moment, then the book would drop unheeded from her hand, and she would presently be gazing dreamily before her again. Never letting go my dress, she would slip down on her knees when the others did, but when I glanced at her, it was always to find that strange wistful look on her upturned face, that always gave me a vague feeling of uneasiness. She was by no means a precocious child—rather a backward and undeveloped one; but sometimes she startled me with questions that were as much beyond what I had expected of her, as they were beyond me to answer lucidly.