Julia took not the slightest notice of these remarks. She sat with both elbows on the tablecloth, eating bread-and-butter at an elevation of many inches over her neglected plate.
“I have heard,” said Janet, “that the people who are called smart people do that now. It has become the fashion: so Julia is in advance of us instead of being behind, as you think.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Harwood, shaking her head, “bad manners are the fashion, and that is a dreadful thing to say. I remember in my young days—but fortunately we don’t know anything about smart people here.”
Julia’s elbows had disappeared with the rapidity of magic. She would not have it supposed that she meant to be smart or in the fashion whatever anyone might say.
CHAPTER VIII.
Janet found after this experience was over that she had perhaps discounted too quickly the excitement of her position. She had gone too fast, as was the impulse of her nature. Julia Harwood, who had been used to continued “nagging,” which never came to anything, a continual and frivolous demand to which obedience was never exacted, had been taken entirely by surprise by the rapid movements of the little governess. Reason, which had never before been applied to her case, had made a considerable impression upon her; but still more the conviction that Miss Summerhayes would “stand no nonsense,” the wholesome sense of a force which she could not overcome: and between the two the temporary effect produced had been great. And a certain amount of order had followed in the school-room. When the two were alone, Julia replied when she was spoken to, and did more or less what she was told. There was a frame-work created of lessons and rules which helped the hours along, and to which the girl gave a sort of submission. But apart from this, which occupied the mornings of her new existence, poor Janet found herself immersed, submerged, drowned in a sort of tepid bath of Harwoodism which was an experience quite unlooked-for and unthought-of.
Some families, and those perhaps the most amiable in existence, have this tendency so strong that there is no escape from it; they compare everything, judge everything, estimate everything by the rule of their own case—“in our family we do,” or “we don’t do,” so and so, were words continually on Augusta Harwood’s lips. She was a very good, considerate, kind young woman, trying to make everybody comfortable about her, eager to anticipate every want, to see that the stranger was warm enough, cool enough, had just the right amount of sugar in her tea, was not over-tired, did not have damp feet or wear too thin a dress, or get the sun or the firelight in her eyes. Gussy achieved the difficult feat of making a dependent perfectly at her ease, and obliterating almost every trace of that embarrassment which attends the position of a governess. It was not that she fell into one of those sudden enthusiastic friendships which sometimes unites the daughter of the house with the stranger in it, but only that she was constitutionally kind, thoroughly good-hearted and good-natured. It would seem difficult to say any more in her favor than this. And yet, from her gentle, amiable, and good-humored sway there arose one fixed impression: and in her pleasant person there breathed out, embracing all things, one mild, universal atmosphere of the family.
It was as if she knew nothing but Harwoods in the world. Church—even Church!—and State, and laws and governments, and business and books were outside of the oasis in which she dwelt—the universe in general lay beyond, as great London lay beyond the brick walls of the garden in St. John’s Wood. London existed for the advantage of that house, and so did the universe in which London is but a point. But they were outside, and of secondary importance. The Harwoods, their habits, their ways, their ancestors, their relationships, and, above all, their characteristics were within, and everything without took a tinge from this prevailing atmosphere.
It might be some time before the spectators found out what it was. It was like the transparent veil of tarlatan which is sometimes stretched between a drawing-room assembly of spectators and an exhibition of tableaux vivants, to give distance and softness to the mimic scene; it was like the tint sometimes supposed to be becoming to the complexion, which faintly rose-colored glass gives to the air of a boudoir: it was a medium, an atmosphere, all pervading, something from which there was no escape.
Janet had been prepared, as has been seen, for many of the deprivations of a governess, none of which she was called upon to bear. The letters she received from her old friends at Clover, to whom she had narrated her first experiences, were almost enthusiastic in their congratulations.