“Certainly. You should have told me before. Go, now, and take off your bonnet. You have walked too quickly home on this hot night.”
Another lady entered the room just as Gabrielle was leaving it, and addressed her almost as the first had done:
“You are late, Gabrielle. What has kept you out so long?”
“Joanna will tell you,” Gabrielle answered. “I have only been finding some work for you, sister,” and with a smile she went away.
They were two stern, cold women—Joanna and Bertha Vaux. They lived together—they two and Gabrielle—in a dark old-fashioned house, close to a little village, in one of the southern counties of England. It was a pretty picturesque village, as most English villages are, with little clusters of white-washed, rose-twined cottages sprinkled through it, and a little rough-stone country church, covered to the very top of the spire so thickly with ivy, that it looked like a green bower. Here and there were scattered a few pleasant houses of the better sort, standing apart in sunny gardens, and scenting the air around with the smell of their sweet flowers.
But the house in which Joanna and Bertha and Gabrielle lived was always gloomy and dark and cold. It was a square brick house, with damp, unhealthy evergreens planted in front, upon which the sun never shone—summer or winter; the flags which paved the front of the door and the steps of the door, were greened over with cheerless moss; and fungi grew up in the seams of the pavement. The windows, with their thick, black, clumsy frames, almost all faced the north, so that the cold, dark rooms were never lighted up with sunshine; but looked even more dreary in the summer time, with the empty fireless grates, than on winter days. Yet the house seemed to suit well the tastes of the two elder of the Misses Vaux.
It had stood empty for some years before they took it; for its last occupier had committed suicide in one of the rooms—it was just the house for such a thing to have happened in—and the superstitious horror which the event created in neighborhood coupled with the dark and cheerless appearance of the house, were the causes why it remained so long unlet and so much neglected.
About six years ago, the Misses Vaux had come quite strangers to the village; and, in a short time were settled as tenants of the lonely house. They were young women then—not more than three and four-and-twenty; but already grave, severe, and stern. They dressed always in mourning, and rarely was a smile seen on their cold lips; but they spent their time almost entirely in performing acts of charity, in visiting the sick, and in making clothes for the poor. For miles round they were known and looked up to with mingled reverence and awe. But theirs was a strange, soulless charity—more like the performance of heavy penance than of acts of love.
There was a mystery about their antecedents. No one knew whence they came, or who they were; they had neither relations nor friends; they lived alone in their gloomy house, and only at long intervals—sometimes of many months—did they receive even a single letter. They were two sad, weary women, to whom life seemed to bring no pleasure, but to be only a burden, which it was their stern duty to bear uncomplainingly for a certain number of years.
Gabrielle—the beautiful, sunny-natured Gabrielle—was not with them when they first came to the village; but three years ago she had joined them, and the three had lived together since. She was then about fifteen;—a bright, joyous, beautiful creature, without a thought of sadness in her, or the faintest shadow of the gloom that rested on her sisters. Even now, although she had lived for three years in the chilling atmosphere that surrounded them, she was still unchanged, almost even as much a child—as gay, thoughtless, and full of joy, as when she first came. It reminded one of a snowdrop blooming in the winter, forcing itself through the very midst of the surrounding snow, to see how she had grown up with this cold, wintry environment. But the gloomy house looked less gloomy now that Gabrielle lived in it. There was one little room with a window looking to the south (one of three that had a sunny aspect,) which she took to be her own, and there she would sit for many hours, working by the open window, singing joyously, with the sunlight streaming over her, and the breath of the sweet flowers that she had planted in a garden as close under her window as the sun would come, stealing deliciously into the room. It was quite a pleasant little nook, with a view far over green undulating hills and yellow waving corn-fields, which sparkled and glittered like plains of moving gold in the deep bright rays of the setting sun. And Gabrielle, sitting here and gazing on them, or roaming alone amongst them, was quite happy and light-hearted. Even her stern sisters were thawed and softened by her presence; and, I think, felt as much love for her as it was in their nature to feel for any one; for, indeed, it was impossible to resist altogether her cheering influence, which spread itself over every thing around her with the warmth of sunshine.