Cousin Mary

by Mrs. Oliphant

Mary gave her husband a warning look.

“We knew it very well in our youth, oh, very well. It is startling to hear of it so suddenly. And what is the name of the people who are there now? It is long, long since I have heard.”

“Their name is Rotherham,” said Mr. Rossmore.

Mary gave her husband once more a look—of mingled relief and disappointment. And then it was decided that Hetty should be called in to hear what she thought of it, and then that Mr. Rossmore should write to his brother the lawyer to say that the wished-for girl had been found. It was all over so quickly, before any one could realise what had taken place. Hetty on being questioned had looked at her mother, and said, “If you can do without me, mamma,” with a flush of sudden excitement. She had not hesitated or expressed any alarm. For even Hetty was not impervious to that charm of novelty which is so delightful to youth. There rushed into her young soul all at once a desire to go out to these fresh fields and pastures new, to see the world, to judge for herself what life was like; and then there was the delightful thought that to her, Hetty, only a girl, whom nobody had thought of in that light, should come the privilege—to her the first of all the family—of earning money, of helping at home. Hetty’s dreams had taken that shape almost from her childhood, though she had never known how they were to be carried out. Her little romance had been to pay all the bills secretly, so that mamma, when she set out on that hard task of apportioning so much to each, should find, to her amazement, that all had been settled! She had told this dream to Janey, and the two had discussed it often, but never had hit upon a way in which it could be done. Hetty had thought she might perhaps have done it by writing stories, but her first attempt in that way had not been a success. And the girls had generally ended by dwelling on mamma’s wonder and joy when she found all the bills paid, and the unusual happiness that would succeed of having a little money and nothing to do with it, and being able to buy a hundred things which at present they had to do without. But now fifty pounds a year! Hetty, it must be allowed, did not take “the advantages” upon which Mr. Rossmore had laid so much stress, and which had been her mother’s inducement, much into account. She was not enthusiastic about the lessons. To play the piano better would be pleasant, but it was evident she was not a musician born, for she was without enthusiasm even about that. What she did think of was the glory of being able to help and the pleasure of the novelty: a sensation intensified by feeling, by the thrill of going out into the world like a girl in a novel, and tempered by a sinking of heart which would come upon her when she thought of going away. But at sixteen it is quite possible to get the good of the anticipated novelty and the sensation of going out upon the world, and yet forget the preliminary step, which notwithstanding is of the first necessity, of going away.

The arrangements were not long of being completed. It appeared that little Miss Rotherham lived something of a cloistered life in the great old house. Her mother was away at the other end of the world, and had business or something else to enforce her absence for a year or more, during which time her little girl was under very close regulations. She was not to go outside of the park, except now and then for a drive. She was never to be left alone. If Miss Hofland, the governess, was off duty, her young companion was to be with her, and no visitors or any communication from without were to be allowed. “Extraordinary precautions to be adopted for a child of ten,” Mr. Rossmore said. “My brother says there are sufficient family reasons, but does not explain. Except this mystery, I don’t know that there is anything to find fault with. The mother is an American. I don’t know that this fact affords any explanation. Still their manners are a little different from ours.”

“Not in the way of shutting up their children,” said Mr. Asquith thoughtfully.

Said Mary, “These regulations don’t trouble me. A child of ten is best at home. There is plenty of room for her to walk and play in the park, oh, plenty. You remember, Harry——” There is no telling what recollections might have been called up had not Mr. Rossmore’s presence checked them. She paused a little, musing, excited, seeing before her every glade and hollow. “Perhaps the lady is a woman with a system,” she said. “She may have some plan of her own for making children perfect. I wonder if Mr. Rossmore knows, Harry—if he knows whether she is related to the old family?”

Mary did not know why it was that she made this inquiry timidly through her husband, as it were at secondhand, instead of inquiring simply as otherwise she should have done. Mr. Rossmore could give no answer to the question. He knew nothing about the Prescotts. And it was so long since they had heard anything, and so much may happen in a dozen years. She said nothing of her relationship, nor that it was her home to which the child was thus going as a stranger. If all were strangers there now, what did it matter? To think that the family had thus disappeared out of Horton gave her a pang. Rotherham? She had never once heard the name before. They must be entirely strangers, foreigners, not even belonging to the neighbourhood. Since the old race had died away, perhaps it was better that it should be so. And it was just as well for Hetty that, since she was going to Horton, she should be kept in this almost monastic seclusion. For Asquith is not a common name, and people might inquire and insist on knowing who Miss Asquith was. It was better, certainly better, that Hetty should not run the risk of cross-examination from old friends. All things were for the best. And, after all, it was only for a year.

Only for a year! While it was a month off, Hetty thought a year nothing at all. She was even conscious of a thrill of eagerness to meet it, a desire to hurry on the time. A year in a romantic old house, in a sort of mediæval retirement, shut in like a princess in a fairy tale! She almost longed to feel the solitude encircle her, the wind blowing among the trees, which was the only sound she should hear. But as the time of her departure approached, Hetty began to change her mind, and the time of her absence to draw out and become larger and larger, till it took the proportions of a century. “They will be quite grown up before I come home,” she said to Mary, bending over the curly heads of the two youngest, as they lay in their little cribs side by side: and it took all Hetty’s power of self-control to prevent her from bedewing the pillows with her tears. Janey said all she could to comfort the exile. “I wish it was me,” Janey cried, whose eyes were dancing with eagerness. “Oh, I wish it was me!” The one dreadful thing, however, which made even Janey acknowledge a pang, was that in four months it would be Christmas, and Hetty would not be able to come home. What kind of Christmas could be possible without Hetty? and oh, what would Hetty do alone, with nobody but a strange little girl of ten and a governess, all by herself on Christmas Day?