Of the difference between their position and hers she could not help thinking, but she had been so long accustomed to realize it that she did not dwell upon it much. Miss Davis was the person on whom her eyes were fixed as an image of what she ought to hope to become.
To be exactly like Miss Davis. To look like her, think like her, be as well informed, as independent, as much respected; to teach as well, speak as wisely, be called an admirable woman who had fought her own way against poverty in the world, this was what Hetty had been assured by Mr. and Mrs. Enderby ought to be the object of her ambition and the end of all her hopes. And Hetty tried honestly to will as they willed for her good. But her face was not less sad on that account.
Things were in this state when one day, a day never to be forgotten by her, Hetty was feeling more than usually unhappy. Only the evening before Mr. Enderby had examined her on several subjects, and had found her wanting. He had spoken to her with a little severity, and at the same time looked at her pityingly, and the girl had felt more miserable than can be told at having disappointed him. To-day she was left to spend a long afternoon by herself, as Miss Davis had taken Phyllis and Nell to visit some friends, and, though her morning's work ought to have been over, she still sat at her lessons, labouring diligently. At last becoming thoroughly tired she closed her book and raised her eyes wearily, when they fell on a jar of wild flowers which yesterday she had arranged and placed upon a bracket against the wall. It was spring, and in the jar was a cluster of pale wood-anemones with some sprays of bramble newly leafed. Hetty's eyes brightened at the sight of these flowers, and noted keenly every exquisite outline and delicate hue of the group. It seemed to her at the moment that she had never seen anything so beautiful before. Mechanically she took up her pencil and began to imitate on a piece of paper the waving line of the bramble wreath, and the graceful curves of the leaves. To her own great surprise something very like the bramble soon began to appear upon the paper. A sharp touch here, a little shadow there, and her drawing looked vigorous and true. After working in great excitement for some time Hetty got up and pinned her drawing to the wall, and stood some way off looking at it. Where had it come from? she asked herself. She had never learned to draw. She had not known that she could draw. Oh, how delightful it would be if she could reproduce the flowers as they grew! Not quite able to believe in the new power she had discovered in herself, she set again to work, altering the arrangement of the flowers in the jar, and taking a larger sheet of paper. It was only ruled exercise paper, but that did not seem to matter when the flowers blossomed all over it. The second drawing was even better than the first; and Hetty stood looking at it with flushed cheeks and throbbing heart, wondering what was this new rapture that had suddenly sprung up in her life.
As her work was done, and the afternoon was all her own, she was able to give herself up to this unexpected delight, and spent many hours composing new groups of flowers, and arranging them in fanciful designs. When a maid brought up her solitary tea she lifted her flushed face and murmured, "Oh, can it be tea-time?" and then spread out all her drawings against the wall, and stared at them while she ate her bread and butter.
She felt nervous at the thought of letting anybody see them, and locked them up in her desk before Miss Davis and the other girls came home.
In earliest dawn of the next morning, however, she was out of bed and studying the drawings as she stood in her night-dress and with bare feet. Were they really good, she asked herself, or were her eyes bewitched; and would Mr. Enderby laugh at them if he saw them? Anguish seized on her at the thought, and she dressed herself with trembling hands. A new idea, striving in her mind, seemed to set all nature thrilling with a meaning it had never borne for her before. There had been great painters on the earth, as she knew full well, whose existence had been made beautiful and glorious by their genius; and there were artists living in the present day, small and great, who must surely be the happiest beings in the world. Their days were spent, not in drudgery, and lecturing, and primness, but in the study and reproduction of the beauty lying round them. Oh, if God should have intended her to be one of these!
When the maids came to dust the school-room they found Hetty hard at work upon a new wreath of ivy which she had hastily snatched from the garden wall and hung against the curtain, and they thought she was doing some penance at Miss Davis's bidding. By eight o'clock the drawings were hid away, the flowers and wreaths disposed of in the jars, and Hetty was sitting at the table with a book in her hand. No one need know, she thought, of how she spent those early hours when everybody else was in bed. And so day after day she worked on steadily with her pencil, and there was a strange and unutterable hope in her heart, and a new light of happiness in her eyes.
After some time she became more daring and attempted to bring colour into her designs. Using her school-room box of paints, the paints intended only for the drawing of maps, she placed washes of colour on her leaves and along her stems, making the whole composition more effective and complete. Day by day she improved on her first ideas, till she had stored up a collection of really beautiful sketches.
With this new joy tingling through her young veins from morning till night, and from night till morning again, Hetty began to look so glad and bright that everyone remarked it. Miss Davis looked on approvingly, thinking that her own excellent discipline of the girl was having an effect she had scarcely dared to hope for. Nell was full of curiosity to know why Hetty had become so gay.
"May I not have the liberty to be gay as well as you?" said Hetty laughing.