“That is always rather a trial,” said Miss Hofland, sympathetically, “but I hope you’ll soon feel quite at home with Rhoda and me. We are all that is here, nothing but Rhoda and me, and the servants of course. We lead a very quiet life, but you heard of that, no doubt. We take our walk in the park, and we pay great attention to our lessons, oh, great attention, Miss Asquith. We are working very hard in order to astonish mamma when she comes back. We think that when she sees the progress that has been made, she will be very much pleased.”
At this Rhoda lifted up a somewhat sharp little voice, and declared that she did not think mamma cared.
“Oh, how can you say so, my dear child? No one knows how much mothers care. Perhaps they may not say so to their little girls, but it is the first wish of their hearts to see their children get on. Isn’t that so, Miss Asquith? I am sure you know.”
“It is mamma’s first wish—oh, to have everything she can for the children,” cried Hetty, the tears, which were so very near her eyes, coming again.
“I told you so, Rhoda,” said Miss Hofland, with a little air of triumph.
Rhoda made no reply. Her soul apparently was filled with no thought but bread-and-butter. There was a precocious gravity and stiffness about her which half frightened Hetty. It appeared that it was Miss Hofland who was the nearest her own age, while Rhoda was years beyond them both in seriousness, learned in all the cares of earth. This impression did not diminish for the first week of Hetty’s sojourn at Horton. Familiarity dispelled it a little afterwards, and made her perceive that the child’s gravity was one of the many marks of shyness, and that the nature beneath was, after all, like child-nature in general, thoughtless and changeable, varying to natural gaiety when the sense of strangeness was overcome. But still there was a shadow upon the little face which not even shyness could account for. This was partly physical, for the little girl had immense dark eyes, with long eyelashes, which overshadowed her little countenance, and partly mental, as if some cloud hung over her, unknown to the rest of the world. It was not till Hetty had grown familiar with the strange secluded life of the place that she knew anything more. It was a very strange life, the house full of servants, the imperious housekeeper managing everything as if no one but herself had to be consulted, and the three simple feminine creatures for whom, so far as appeared, all this costly household existed, living in their little spot of space—the morning room, which opened on the garden; the spare, nicely furnished place in which they dined; the set of bedrooms on the same side of the house—all these rooms were on the ground floor, one opening into another. Between Hetty’s room and that of Miss Hofland ran a passage, but this was the only division. Rhoda’s maid slept in the room beyond Hetty’s. They were thus altogether separated from the rest of the house. And so far as the bright tints of a cheerful garden could give animation, everything in their outlook was bright. Their sitting-room communicated with a conservatory. They had flowers in abundance, an aviary of birds among the flowers, and everything sweet and graceful about them. They were like princesses living in an enchanted garden, their little meals exquisitely cooked and served by the same magnificent man in livery, wonderful hothouse fruits always produced for their dessert. To Hetty the wealth seemed boundless that surrounded her. Was this, she wondered, how country houses were always kept up? Mamma had said the Prescotts were poor. To be sure, the Prescotts were here no longer. “But what a change,” she said to herself, “what a wonderful change for mamma, from Horton to that little house at home, overflowing with children. Oh, what a change!” Hetty did not remember that the children had come by degrees, and that gradually the sphere of existence and all its motives had changed for Mary. The wide greenness of the park, the giant trees, the pushing aside, as it were, of the world, so that breathing space and quiet might be secured for those favourites of fortune, produced a great effect upon Hetty. And to think that her mother had been brought up amid those shady glades and wide stretches of tranquil greenness! “Oh,” thought Hetty, “what would she give only to have permission to walk in such a park with the children now?”
When she had become quite familiar with this strange life, and had begun to feel herself, as people say, “at home,” although it was so different, so very different, so much worse and better than home, Hetty acquired various scraps of information about the strange household. There were never any visitors at Horton except the doctor and the clergyman, the former a young man, very grave and sedate in appearance, who appeared frequently at the house, and was constantly met by the little party in their walks in the park, when he seemed to be going or coming from the Hall, but always stopped to explain that he was on his way to some distant place, and had taken advantage of the permission he had to take the short cut across the park. The clergyman, on the other hand, was old and very cheerful, a gay little white-haired old man, who took tea about once a week with Miss Hofland and her charges, and whose visits were their brightest moments, Mr. Hayman, the rector, was always gay; the young doctor, whose name was Darrell, was always serious. Except these two, nobody ever came to the house. This roused little questions in the mind of Hetty, who was young enough to accept whatever happened as the common order of affairs. And it was only when Miss Hofland took the girl into her confidence that any question arose in her mind. Miss Hofland was older and more alive to the peculiarities of their cloistered life.
“Don’t you think it is a strange thing, my dear,” she said to Hetty suddenly, when she had been about a month at Horton, “that a mother should go away to the end of the world for a whole year, and leave her only little child all alone in a big house like this?”
They had been sitting together over the fire for a long time in silence. Rhoda had gone to bed, the great silence of the wintry park had closed over the house, and there was the darkness of a moonless night, which seemed somehow to creep into the rooms, and intensify the stillness and sense of seclusion from all the world. Hetty was much startled by this question. It took her some time to think what her companion could mean—a mother at the end of the world, and an only little child all alone! She looked up surprised, repeating almost unconsciously, “A mother—at the end of the world!”
“Yes,” said Miss Hofland; “don’t say you haven’t asked yourself the same——”