“Does she often come here?” said Edgar with a tremble in his voice.
“They say she’s going to be a nun,” said Phil; “how funny people are! I can’t fancy Cousin Gussy shut up in a convent, can you? I’d rather marry, like Mary, some great swell; though they are never any fun after they’re married,” Phil added parenthetically with profound gravity. As for Edgar he was in no humour to laugh at this precocious wisdom. He went straight on, taking the wrong way, and scarcely hearing the shouts of the boy who called him back. “This is the way to the gamekeeper’s,” cried Phil, “Mr. Earnshaw, where were you going? You look as if you had been set thinking and could not see the way.”
How true it was; he had been set thinking, and he knew no more what road he was going than if he had been blindfolded. Years after, the damp greenness of the fading year, the songless season, the bare branches against the sky, would bring to Edgar’s mind the moment when he shot off blankly across the path in the wood at Tottenham’s, not knowing and not caring where he went.
Next day Lady Mary fulfilled her promise. She drove him down in her own pony carriage to the village, and there took him upon a little round of calls. They went to the Rectory, and to Mrs. Witherington’s, and to the Miss Bakers who were great authorities at Harbour Green. The Rector was a large heavy old man, with heavy eyes, who had two daughters, and had come by degrees (though it was secretly said not without a struggle) to be very obedient to them. He said, “Ah, yes, I dare say you are right,” to everything Lady Mary said, and gave Edgar a little admonition as to the seriousness of the work he was undertaking. “Nothing is more responsible, or more delicate than instructing youth,” said the Rector, “for my part I am not at all sure what it is to come to. The maids know as much now as their mistresses used to do, and as for the mistresses I do not know where they are to stop.”
“But you would not have us condemned to ignorance, papa,” said one of his daughters.
“Oh, no, I should not take it upon me to condemn you to anything,” said the old man with his quavering voice, “I hope only that you may not find you’ve gone further than you had any intention of going, before you’ve done.”
This somewhat vague threat was all he ventured upon in the way of remonstrance; but he did not give any encouragement, and was greatly afraid of the whole proceeding as revolutionary, and of Lady Mary herself, as a dangerous and seditious person sowing seeds of rebellion. Mrs. Witherington, to whom they went next, was scarcely more encouraging. Her house was a large Queen Anne house, red brick, with a pediment surmounting a great many rows of twinkling windows. It fronted to the Green, without any grassplot or ornamental shrubs in front; but with a large well-walled garden behind, out of which rich branches of lilac and laburnum drooped in spring, and many scents enriched the air. The rooms inside were large, but not very lofty, and the two drawing-rooms occupied the whole breadth of the house, one room looking to the Green and the other to the garden. There were, or ought to have been folding doors between, but these were never used, and the opening was hung with curtains instead, curtains which were too heavy, and over-weighted the rooms. But otherwise the interior was pretty, with that homely gracefulness, familiar and friendly, which belongs to the dwelling of a large family where everyone has his, or rather her, habitual concerns and occupations. The front part was the most cheerful, the back the finest. There a great mirror was over the mantelpiece, but here the late Colonel’s swords, crossed, held the place of honour. The visitors entered through this plainer room, which acted as ante-chamber to the other, and where Mrs. Witherington was discovered, as in a scene at the theatre, seated at a writing table with a pile of tradesmen’s books before her. She was a tall spare woman, having much more the aspect which is associated with the opprobrious epithet, old maid, than that which traditionally ought to belong to the mother of nine children—all except the four daughters who remained at home—out and about in the world. She had three sons who were scattered in the different corners of the earth, and two daughters married, one of whom was in India, and the other a consul’s wife in Spain. The young ladies at home were the youngest of the family, and were, the two married daughters said to each other when they met, which was very seldom, “very differently brought up from what we were, and allowed a great deal too much of their own way.” Neither of these ladies could understand what mamma could be thinking of to indulge those girls so; but Mrs. Witherington was by no means an over-indulgent person by nature, and I think she must have made up her mind that to indulge the vagaries of the girls was safest on the whole and most conducive to domestic peace.
Fortunately each of these young women had a “way” of her own, except Myra, the youngest, who was the funny one, whom Phil and most boys admired. The others were—Sissy, who was understood to have a suspended love affair, suspended in consequence of the poverty of her lover, from which she derived both pain and pleasure, so to speak; for her sisters, not to speak of the other young ladies of the Green, undoubtedly looked up to her in consequence, and gave her a much more important place in their little world than would have been hers by nature; and Marian, who was the musical sister, who played “anything” at sight, and was good for any amount of accompaniments, and made an excellent second in a duet; and Emma, who was the useful one of the family, and possessed the handsome little sewing-machine in the corner, at which she executed yards upon yards of stitching every day, and made and mended for the establishment. Sissy, in addition to having a love affair, drew; so that these three sisters were all well defined, and distinct. Only Myra was good for nothing in particular. She was the youngest, long the baby, the pet of the rest, who had never quite realized the fact that she was no longer a child. Myra was saucy and clever, and rather impertinent, and considered a wit in her own family. Indeed they all had been accustomed to laugh at Myra’s jokes, almost as long as they could recollect, and there is nothing that establishes the reputation of a wit like this. Mrs. Witherington was alone in the ante-room, as I have said, when Lady Mary entered, followed by Edgar. She rose somewhat stiffly to meet her visitors, for she too being of the old school disapproved of Lady Mary, who was emphatically of the new school, and a leader of all innovations; though from the fact of being Lady Mary, she was judged more leniently than a less distinguished revolutionary would have been. Mrs. Witherington made her greetings sufficiently loud to call the attention of all the daughters, who came in a little crowd, each rising from her corner to hail the great lady. One of them drew the cosiest chair near the fire for her, another gave her an embroidered hand-screen to shield her face from its glow, and the third hung about her in silent admiration, eagerly looking for some similar service to render. Myra followed last of all, rushing audibly downstairs, and bursting into the room with eager exclamations of pleasure.
“I saw the pony-carriage at the Rectory gate, and I hoped you were coming here,” cried Myra; who stopped short suddenly, however, and blushed and laughed at sight of the stranger whom she had not perceived.
“This is Mr. Earnshaw, Myra,” said Lady Mary, “whom I told you of—who is going to be so good as to teach us. I am taking him to see some of the ladies whom he is to help to educate.”