“Yes, that is the right way to look at it,” said the governess. She understood well enough, having seen it so often, the little sudden access of home-sickness, the heroic childish resolution to bear up to the end and get the money, which so often means far more than money to the young creature who earns it. Miss Hofland patted Hetty’s shoulder, and soothed her with genuine feeling; and then she fell into the tone of one far older than Hetty, and which she truly called governessy. “Besides, my dear,” she said, “you must recollect that if you are to be from home at all, you couldn’t be in a more comfortable house. It’s a little queer, and I can’t help thinking that some day or other something will be found out to account for it: but they treat us very well; that can’t be denied. In some places they don’t allow you a fire in your room, and the schoolroom dinners are like nursery meals, only not so plentiful. It is a great addition to all the other things you have to put up with when that’s the case. But here everything is very comfortable. Your mother would be quite pleased if she saw how everything is arranged for us here.”
Hetty’s sobs died away under the influence of this speech—whether it was the good sense in it, or that the mode of consolation adopted was so entirely unfitted to the trouble, a thing which sometimes has quite a good effect.
“And then, you know,” said Miss Hofland, “there’s the satisfaction of knowing that whatever there may be that is strange and out of the way, it doesn’t concern us. They say that other people’s misfortunes make you enjoy your own comforts the more. I wouldn’t go quite so far as that: but it is a great gratification to reflect, when you are in a house where there is evidently a skeleton somewhere or other, that it is no business of yours. There’s no telling the comfort there is in that.’
“But, Miss Hofland,” said Hetty, “do you think that just to lock your door, and never to mind whatever may happen to the house, as Mrs. Mills says——”
“Is that what she says?” said the governess, quickly. “Oh, you may be sure that’s not her way; she would be at the bottom of it. I’m confident, whatever it was, they couldn’t conceal anything from her! But she’s got a good deal in her, that woman, though I don’t like her, my dear. I shouldn’t say but it would be the wisest thing, on the whole. For what could you do? You can’t clear up their mysteries or put things straight, so why should you give yourself any trouble? If you thought there were signs of fire, indeed, why then of course you should give the alarm at once; for we all should suffer from that, we poor ladies who have nothing to do with it, and the servants and all. Yes, I should always give the alarm, whatever it cost you, in case of a fire; but for other things I am not sure that she did not give you the very best advice. A man, if he heard a noise, would have to get up and see what it was; but a lady may always lock her door. I do it invariably wherever I am, my dear. In the first place, it’s safer, for you never know who might come blundering into your room, as I told you this morning; and then it frees you from a great deal of responsibility. As a rule, at the outset of your career, I should say that Mrs. Mills gave you very good advice.”
Hetty’s attention failed while Miss Hofland ran on. She lost reckoning of the motives presented to her, the rule of conduct which her companion would have been the first to call governessy. Another subject was foremost in Hetty’s thought—her own room, into which she was about to be taken as into a prison, where all would be black again, as before, and the doors locked, everybody’s door locked, so that if any stronger horror should seize her, there was nowhere she could fly to, no one to whom she could escape and be safe. She was glad the governess should talk, in order to put off that evil hour as long as possible. Miss Hofland sat over the fire, quietly flowing forth in that philosophy of the dependent, how to keep safest in a sort of camp by yourself in the midst of an ungenial, if not unfriendly, world, how to avoid responsibility and secure calm, however those around you might be agitated. This was the code of things expedient which had been fixed in her mind by years of experience. The girl listened very vaguely at first, and then went off altogether into her own individual alarms. Her pretty, comfortable room, with its pleasant fire, that luxury which was not always allowed, had once more become a dark prison-house to Hetty. How was she to go through such another night?
There was a glimmer of comfort in the fact that Miss Hofland accompanied her there, to see that her hot footbath was ready, and her hot drink. “You must just jump into bed and cover yourself up warm, and never budge till morning; and you’ll see your cold will be ever so much better,” she said, tapping Hetty upon the cheek affectionately. “Now, my clear, don’t be a little goose.” And then Hetty, with anguish which she could scarcely contain, heard her go into her room and turn the key. “It frees you from a great deal of responsibility,” she had said. And how was she to know the miserable panic that was in the poor little girl’s heart, left thus alone with her consciousness of wanderers outside and mysteries within, and the sense of darkness and imprisonment, and no one within call, whatever might happen? Hetty’s first wild idea was that it would be better to sit up all night, and thus cheat the black gloom and silence that lay in wait for her. But she was very obedient and quite unused to act for herself; and there seemed to her something guilty, something dreadful, in thus disregarding all the usages of life. She sat down by her fire and read for as long a time as she could keep her attention to her novel, and then, trembling to find it was midnight, she stole to bed at last. Happily, she was so worn out that she slept immediately, as if there had been no panics or mysteries in the world, or as if her mother’s room—that shelter from all harm—had been open to her next door.