“I say anything against her! I adore her! but she is governessy, how can she help it, poor old darling? Her mind is full of the girls’ little ways, and what they mean by this and by that, Lucy,” said the girl, stopping short to give greater emphasis to her words. “If we ever see each other when I am an old governess like mademoiselle—be sure you remember to tell me when you see me worrying, that the girls mean nothing by it—nothing! This is the 21st of February. It is my birthday— I am nineteen. Tell me to recollect that I said they meant nothing—and that it’s true.”
“Are you really nineteen to-day?” said Lucy. “Older than I—”
“More than a year older. I wonder,” said Katie, with that patronage and superiority which the poor often show to the rich, “whether, when you are fifty, you will know as much of the world as I do now?”
Lucy’s companion was the governess-pupil, the one among the band of girls whose society her father had counseled her not to seek. Perhaps there was something of the perversity of youth in the preference which, notwithstanding this advice, Lucy felt for the girl whose friendship old Mr. Trevor had decided could be of no use whatever to her. Lucy was not nearly so clever as Katie Russell, who was already a great help in the school, and earning the lessons which she shared with the more advanced pupils. But Lucy was by no means so sure of her inferiority in point of experience as her companion was. She knew, if not the expedients of poverty, yet of economy through Mrs. Ford’s example, and she knew many details of a lower level of existence, lower than anything Katie was acquainted with; and even the shadow of her own future power which had lain upon her from her childhood had stood in the stead of knowledge to Lucy, teaching her many things; but she was a quiet person, thinking much more than she spoke; and she made no reply to this imputation of ignorance, though she thought it a mistake. She replied, with a little closer pressure of her friend’s arm, “Why are you so sure of being an old governess? You will marry—most likely the first of all of us.”
“Oh, no, no; don’t you know there are a million more women in England than men? It is in all the papers. Some of us will marry—you, for instance; but there must be a proportion—say five out of twenty, that’s not much,” said Katie, knitting her soft brows, “who never will, and I shall be one of them. For fun,” she said, throwing gravity to the winds, “let us guess who the other four will be.”
“Me,” said Lucy, with a gentle composure and indifference alike to matrimony and to grammar. “I think that is what papa would like best—”
“That is absurd,” said Katie; “you! You will have a hundred proposals before you are out a year. You will be the very first.”
“Put me down, however,” Lucy repeated. “It will be rather a good thing to be kept from getting married, if it is as you say. It will help to set the balance straight. There will be my gentleman for one of you.”
“You do not mean that you are to be kept from marrying,” Katie cried, aghast. This made a still greater impression on her mind than it had done on Miss Southwood’s, and it suggested to her a sudden chivalrous idea of rescue. Katie too had a Frank, a cousin, between whom and herself there had existed from the earliest tiny a baby tenderness. If ever she was married, Katie had tacitly concluded that he would be “the gentleman.” They might set up a school together; they might work together in various ways. It was a vague probability, yet one in which most of the light of Katie’s future lay. But suddenly it flashed upon her, all in a moment, what a chance, what an opening was this for any man. Frank was poor; they were all poor; but if he could be persuaded to step in and save Lucy from the celibacy to which she seemed to think herself condemned, Frank’s fortune would be made. It was the basest calculation in the world; and yet nothing could have been more innocent—nay, generous. It blanched Katie’s cheeks for the moment, but filled her mind with a whirl of thoughts. What a thing it would be for him and all the family! If the dream should come to pass, Katie felt that she herself might give in at once, and make up her mind to grow old and governessy like mademoiselle; but what did that matter, she asked herself heroically. For a second, indeed, she paused to think whether her brother Bertie might not answer the purpose without costing herself so much; but anticipated sacrifice is the purest delight of misery at nineteen, and she rather preferred to think that this great advantage to her cousin and her friend would be purchased at the cost of her happiness. And Frank himself might not like the idea at first; her great consolation was that it was almost certain Frank would not like it. But he must learn to subdue his inclinations, she thought, proudly; would not she do so for his sake? If other people were content to make that sacrifice, why should not he? And what a difference it would make, if a stream of comfort—of money and all that money can buy, ease of mind and freedom from debt, and power to do what one would—came suddenly pouring into the family, setting everything right that was wrong, and smoothing away all difficulties! To despise money is a fine thing; but how few can do it! Katie did not despise it at all. She forgot her companion while she walked on dreamily by her side, thinking of her fortune. Mercenary little wretch, the moralist would say; and yet she was not mercenary at all.
The girls were walking across the common by themselves. It was part of Mrs. Stone’s enlightened system that she allowed them to do so, in cases where the parents did not interfere. And so far as these two were concerned, even the consent of the parents was unnecessary; for was not Katie Russell, though only eighteen, a governess in the bud? and, accordingly, quite capable of acting as chaperon when necessary. Poor little Katie! this was one of the mild indignities of her lot that she felt most. Her lot was not at all a bad one at Mrs. Stone’s, where the head of the establishment backed her up quietly as indeed the one of her inmates with whom she was most in sympathy—and when the girls were “nice.” Girls are not all “nice,” any more than any other class of the community, and Katie had known what it was to be snubbed and scorned, and even insulted. But happily this was not the fashion at the White House. Still one mark of her inferior position remained in the fact that Katie, though so young, and one of the prettiest, of the band, was, being half a governess, qualified to accompany her peers in the character of chaperon. It was not quite clear that she might not be at that moment taking care of Lucy, who was less than a year her junior; but happily this idea had not crossed her mind. It was Sunday, which was a day of great freedom at the White House—a day given over (after due attention to all religious duties, need it be said? for Mrs. Stone knew what was expected of her, and you may be sure took all her doves to church with the most undeviating regularity) to confidences, to talks, to letter-writings. Some of the girls were covering sheets of note-paper with the most intimate revelations, some were chattering in corners, some reading story-books. Story-books are not necessarily novels— Mrs. Stone made a clever distinction. There was nothing in three volumes upon her purified and dignified shelves; but a book in one volume had a very good chance of coming within her tolerant reading of the word story. And some were out, perambulating about the garden, where the first crocuses were beginning to bloom, or crossing the common by those devious little paths half hidden in heather and all kinds of wild plants which were bad for boots and dresses, but very pleasant otherwise. It was along one of these that Lucy Trevor and her companion were wandering. The mossy turf was very green, betraying the moisture beneath; and the great bushes of heather, with all the withered bloom stiffened upon them, stood up like mimic forests from the treacherous grass. Wild bushes of gorse, with here and there a solitary speck of yellow, a premature bud upon them, interspersed their larger growth here and there. The frost had all melted away. In the little marshy pools, the water was clear and caught glimpses of a sky faintly blue. One willow on the very verge of the common had hung out its tassels, those prophecies of coming life.