“If it’s a madman he can’t get near us,” cried Julia, “for he’s in the wing.”
Janet came back into the school-room, still trembling with her fright. She dropped into a chair, unable to support herself.
“You know—you know what it is,” she said, faintly.
“I know—it’s something in the wing. It does no harm. Sometimes it will cry like that—oh, once in a year, perhaps. It can’t do any harm. Oh, Miss Summerhayes, do be reasonable when I tell you. What does it matter? I don’t know what you mean, to be so taken up with their squalling and shouting, and in such a state when you hear a cry. I don’t care either for one or the other,” Julia said.
It cannot be said that Janet showed much interest in the “squalling and shouting” of which her pupil was so contemptuous after this. The two changed their rôles completely for the rest of the evening, during which Julia, though not without a titter for her companion’s weakness, soothed and patronized Miss Summerhayes, and addressed to her many philosophical admonitions, which naturally were much more self-confident even than the exhortations of Janet, in themselves by no means deficient in the certainty of youth.
“What can it matter to us,” said Julia, “what a noise is?—unless you happen to like noises which people make, squalling at the top of their voices and call music. A noise can’t hurt you; it can’t do you any harm. You hear it, and that’s all—especially when it’s only like a voice. I am not fond of thunder, myself, for a thunderbolt might fall on the house or crush you; but a cry—what does it matter? People are always crying out, or making some nasty noise. You should pay no attention to it. I never pay any attention; it is not worth while. Why, you might spend your life thinking of such things, if you were to be disturbed by every sound you hear.”
This discourse did not satisfy Janet or even calm her mind, but she reflected after a while that it was not the part of a governess to put visionary terrors into the mind of her pupil, and so far recovered herself with an effort as to satisfy Julia that it was safe to go to bed and leave Miss Summerhayes. Poor little Janet, when left alone, felt for the first time how terrible it was to be so young, so impressionable, and among strangers. She dared not run downstairs, as a girl at home would, to shake off her terrors by confiding them to some one who could authoritatively calm and reassure her. Mrs. Harwood had been very kind to her governess, but to go down again after she had been dismissed, to meet Gussy’s astonished look turning round from the piano, and the mother’s suspicious glance which would ask what she wanted, why she came?—was impossible to Janet. She felt to-night, for the first time, what it was to be a governess, although to-night, for almost the first time, she had realized what she had expected when she came out into the world, how amusing it was to watch a story going on. How soon had all interest in the story disappeared from her mind in the face of this terror which froze her very blood! What was it?—was it a spirit or a living creature in pain? Where was it?—in this tranquil house, as Julia seemed to allow? And worst and most dreadful question of all—would it come again? This last thought was the one that kept all her faculties awake. Might it at any moment burst once more out of the quiet? Janet thought that if she had to undergo that moment of horror again she must go mad or die. She was afraid to go to bed—afraid to close her eyes—lest she should be awakened by that cry. The singing went on late downstairs, and Janet listened anxiously to the departing of the visitor, the bolting of the door behind him, the little bustle as Mrs. Harwood was wheeled to her room on the ground floor, and Gussy came upstairs. But she did not come as far as the school-room, which she sometimes did to see if all was well. It was too late to disturb any one—to wake up the sleepers. Janet heard Miss Harwood coming upstairs singing softly over to herself her part in one of the duets. Gussy was happy; no alarm or sense of desolation was in her.
“If I were happy like that I would come upstairs to see how the poor little governess, all alone, was getting on,” Janet said to herself, opening her eyes in the dark. But, indeed, she would have done nothing of the kind. She would have been perhaps more indifferent than Gussy was to the governess in causeless trouble, feeling “out of it”—or else in a visionary panic thinking that she had heard a ghost.
The night wore away gradually, and nothing happened. When it was between three and four, Janet, worn out, fell fast asleep. She slept till the breakfast-bell rang, and had to hurry her dressing and hasten downstairs with an apology, wondering at herself and her own foolish terror in the red light of the wintry morning. Gussy was very ready, it was evident, to be questioned about last night. She began her self by expressing her distress that Janet had been hastened away for “that child,” and narrated to her with subdued triumph how many “things” Mr. Meredith and she had gone through, and what good practice it was.
“The Harwoods generally are so unmusical,” Gussy said; “I never did get any encouragement at home. But fortunately mamma likes Charley, and he may do what he pleases. I do enjoy a musical evening so. Hasn’t he a delicious voice?”