Happily the habits of isolation and unsociability are more prevalent in some places than in others. Those who have travelled most will readily admit that they have frequently found themselves amongst a circle of individuals whose freedom from conventionalities, and whose unconstrained and hearty mode of intercourse, made them forget for the time being that they were in the company of strangers. It is possible that some readers of these words may almost shudder at the idea of such freedom, such a want of decorum on the part of people who had never met before, and had not gone through the formality of a proper introduction. And yet there may be decorum without painful fastidiousness. Who has not met with unsociable railway travellers, some in whose company he has been for many weary hours, and with whom he may have succeeded, after supreme effort, in breaking the ice, only to receive a solitary monosyllable in response! Such an experience is certainly not the rule, for sometimes we meet with those, the incessant wag of whose tongue may be such as to compel us to leave unread both our newspaper and any favourite book that we may have promised ourself to get through. And yet it is well on such occasions to go on the principle of give and take. Anything rather than the company of an individual who looks suspiciously at you should you be venturesome enough to express to him an opinion on so commonplace a topic as the state of the weather.
As a valuable element in connection with our social life, music does not occupy the position which it might and ought to do. The rapid growth during recent years of a knowledge of this charming solace is out of all proportion to the extent of its social enjoyment. It is unfortunately too often treated as a mere accomplishment. The friendly and informal musical parties such as were enjoyed years ago, do not receive much encouragement. It is of course indisputable that as a concert-giving power, rapid strides have been made in music; but what we contend for is the propagation of home harmony; the social glee, the favourite ballad, the instrumental quartette, with no objection to an occasional sonata for the pianoforte.
It is no less amusing than disagreeable to see so many otherwise worthy people possessed of such a paramount sense of gentility and importance as to make themselves and their surroundings uncomfortable, and often miserable. The great desideratum is that people should appear more like themselves than somebody else. We hear and read a good many sermons on ‘Morality;’ but, excellent in their way as these are, a series of lectures on ‘Reality’ are quite as necessary.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER IX.—SIR SYKES’S WARD.
There may be pleasanter positions in life than that of a dependant, especially when the claim to make one of the household rests on conditions which it is impossible to define. The governess, who is so often held up by moralists as an object for our conventional pity, needs not, surely, to forfeit her self-respect, inasmuch as she earns her salary and its contingent benefits by honest labour. The companion too gives valuable consideration in the shape of a perpetual offering up of her own time, tastes, and wishes, for her pay and maintenance. There are others sometimes however, kindred strangers within the rich man’s gates, who have no ostensible tasks to perform, who cannot give monthly or quarterly notice and go away, and yet whose bread is sometimes made very bitter to them—white slaves who get no compassion from the world at large.
Miss Willis at Carbery Chase was oddly situated. An orphan, she found herself domiciled amongst those who were allied to her neither by blood nor by the still more tenacious tie of common and early associations. She was exempt of course under that roof from many of the annoyances which fall to the lot of the motherless elsewhere. There was no domineering mistress of the house to resent every attention shewn to the interloper as something deducted from the rightful due of her own matchless girls; no niggard to grudge her every meal of which she partook at the stinted family table; or tyrant to pile upon her submissive shoulders the never-ending load of petty cares, which some genteel drudges perform unthanked.
At Carbery there was plenty and to spare. Sir Sykes was a gentleman bland and courteous; the girls as kind good girls as could easily be met with; and the servants sufficiently well trained to take their cue from their employers, and to be civil to one who was smiled on by the higher powers. Yet a sensitive young lady in the position which Sir Sykes’s ward now occupied, might well have been excused if her heart at times was somewhat heavy. All her old habits of life had been in a moment uprooted. She had been suddenly transferred from familiar scenes and people whose ways she understood, to a country every feature of which must have been strange and new to her. Under the circumstances and in spite of the good-nature of those around her, it is not surprising if Ruth Willis at times looked sad and pensive.
‘You cannot think how wonderful it seemed to me at first,’ she said one day to the younger Miss Denzil, ‘not to hear the drums beat tattoo at sundown, or how often I have started from my pillow in the early morning, fancying that I heard again the bugles sounding for the parade. Then the trumpeting of the elephants beside the tank, and the shrill voices of the dusky children at play beneath the peepul trees, and all the sights and sounds about my old home in India—I can’t forget them yet.’