Chapter 38

OLD HEAD ON YOUNG SHOULDERS.

How could I tell I should love thee to-day, Whom that day I held not dear? How could I know I should love thee away, When I did not love thee a near? --Jean Ingelow.

We must now see whither the vicissitudes of fortune have conducted Mrs. Dutton. Her pleasant home at the Markhams' was gone. They had lost heavily in the failure of a bank, and were living abroad to retrench, while Mr. Markham pursued his profession in London.

Bluebell was the first luxury to be cut off, though, as a home during Harry's absence was what she chiefly required, she would willingly have remained for nothing. It was unspeakable grief to part with Mrs. Markham, who alone understood how oppressively her secret weighed on her, and her incessant anxiety for news from the seat of war.

One day,--it was after the battle of Balaklava,--when shuddering over, in the _Times_, the ghastly "butcher's bill," Bluebell came upon Du Meresq's name among the killed, and the shock to nerves that had scarcely yet recovered their equilibrium nearly brought on a relapse of her former illness.

Yet, as her mind cleared from its first horror, she was amazed to find it was not Cecil she was most feeling for, and that the cry, "Thank Heaven, it is not Harry!" had arisen spontaneously to her heart. I suppose Bertie's neglect had effected its own cure; but certainly some secret influence was turning the tide of her affections into its legitimate channel.

Yet their correspondence was not only desultory, but constrained. Dutton, never convinced of possessing her heart, and angry with himself at the part he had acted, had no pleasure in writing; and Bluebell was as shy of her new-found feelings as though he were still an unacknowledged lover.

But whenever a ship came in without bringing a letter, she was filled with foreboding and dread. Still, there was always the consolation that he was public property, and as long as she did not see his death reported, might conclude him to be safe.

And he never did write anything to excite alarm. No more perils or hair-breadth escapes could be inferred from his letters than if he were merely residing abroad from choice.

Mrs. Markham obtained her another situation. She had never succeeded in discovering to whom Bluebell was married; but having persuaded herself it was unnecessary to let that stand in the way, simply recommended her in her maiden name.

"I look upon your governessing as a farce, you know, Bluebell, though any one would gladly snap you up for your music alone. But when this war is over, the mysterious husband will return, and you will pay me a visit in your true colours."

And so they parted, with many promises of correspondence.

Bluebell's next venture was at Brighton, and she drove to Brunswick Square one chilly afternoon in March, rather dejected at the prospect of being again thrown among strangers.

"Not at home," said the servant. "Mrs. Barrington is hout-driving."

"Oh, it's all right," said a pert maid, tripping downstairs. "This way, miss. I was to show you your room, and the children's tea will be ready directly."

So saying, she preceded Bluebell upstairs to a chilly, fireless apartment. Houses in Brighton are not generally very substantially built, and the room was furnished on the most approved governess pattern,--just what was barely necessary, no more. Bluebell was impressionable, perhaps fanciful, for hitherto her "lines had fallen in pleasant places," and she shivered a little at the forbidding exterior, but was somewhat cheered by a suggestion of welcome conveyed by a bunch of violets on the dressing-table. "There's some kind person in this house," thought she, yet lingering awhile in a purposeless manner, unwilling to walk alone into the school-room and face the strange children. While thus hesitating, a demure little person came to fetch her, with tight plaited hair, irreproachable pinafore, and stockings well drawn up. Two younger duplicates were in the school-room. The table was laid for the evening meal,--thick wedges of bread-and-butter, calculated to appease but not to allure the appetite, and a large Britannia-metal teapot, with not injuriously strong tea.

There were a couple of globes, an old piano, and book-cases well stocked with grammars and histories, and the fire was guarded by a high fender, effectually dissipating any frivolous notion of sitting with the feet on it. There was neither dog nor cat, nor even a stray doll, to distract attention from the serious business of education.

Such was the impression conveyed to Bluebell, who was instantly filled with well-grounded misgivings as to whether her qualifications might be quite up to the standard expected. Good gracious! those children looked capable of obtaining female scholarships, as they sat, with their keen impassive faces, calmly adding her up, so to speak.

Mrs. Barrington and her eldest daughter had just come in. "Oh, so Miss Leigh has arrived!" cried the former, observing Bluebell's box in the hall. "Dear me, what a bore new people are! I really must rest, as we dine out. Couldn't you go up, Kate, and say I hope she is comfortable, and will ring for the school-room maid whenever she wants anything, and all that?"

"That would console her immensely, I should think," said Miss Barrington, laughing. "Well, I will go and look her over, mamma, and report the result."

As Kate entered, her little set speech, that "mamma was lying down, but hoped," etc., was almost suspended on her lips, as she gazed with unfeigned curiosity at the new governess. Seated pensively behind the urn was a fair girl, dressed in black, with an Elizabethan ruff round a long white throat. Shining chestnut hair contrasted with a complexion of the purest pink and white, while a pair of dewy violet eyes looked shyly up at her. "Good heavens!" thought Kate, "she is the loveliest creature in Brighton at this moment."

"I have also come to ask for a cup of tea. No, thank you, Adela, none of that! What buttered bricks! Goodness, children! don't you ever have cake, or jam, or anything?"

"Miss Steele used to say it would give us muddy complexions, and spoil our digestion."

"Poor little victims! Never mind, you'll come out some day. I must make haste and get married, Mabel, if you grow like that. But Miss Leigh must be starved. Do you like eggs and bacon?" with her hand on the bell.

"Very much," said Bluebell, smiling back, more in gratitude for the good intentions than anything else.

"Poor thing!" cried Kate, impulsively, quite vanquished by the smile; "you will be so dull when the children go to bed. I wish we were not going out to-night. I'll collect the newspapers, and send you up a capital novel I got yesterday from the library."

Bluebell was cheered in a moment. "I am sure it was you whom I have to thank too, for those violets," said she, touching a few transferred to her waist-belt, and beaming up at her new acquaintance.

Kate nodded pleasantly. "Do you like flowers? I bought them in the King's Road this morning." A few minutes later she burst into her mother's room.

"Where does this _rara avis_ hail from? I never clapped eyes on such a beauty--Miss Seraphin is not a patch on her!"

"Don't be so noisy, dear--Miss Leigh? Yes I heard she was nice-looking."

"Nice-looking!" echoed Kate, contemptuously. "Just wait till you see her. She will be focused by every eye-glass in Brighton when she takes the children out for their constitutional."

"Dear me! I hope she is a proper kind of person."

"She looks rather in the Lady Audley style--and such a complexion! I could have sworn it was painted if it had not varied so. Now I think of it," said Kate, with _malice prepense_, "she is not at all unlike the photographs, of--,"--naming some one of whose existence she had no business to have been aware.

"It really is too bad of Mrs. Markham not having mentioned this," cried Mrs. Barrington, as if Bluebell had been convicted of a crime. "It is most unpleasant having so _voyante_ a person about the children!"

"Oh, what does it matter," said Kate, heedlessly; "you have no grown up sons. And she seems awfully nice. She has a face with a history in it, though. I shall try and make her out to-morrow. No one is ever so innocent as she looks."

Kate's admiration was still further excited next day as she listened to Bluebell's singing.

"You never heard anything like it, mamma--she could fill Covent Garden; and she composes too. I wonder if she has ever been on the stage?"

Less appreciative was the judgment of the erudite Mabel, who reported Miss Leigh unable to continue her arithmetic beyond the decimal fractions she had attained to with Miss Steele. "In fact," said the child, with deep contempt, "I don't believe she has ever-gone beyond the rule of three herself."

Indeed, the exact sciences were not Bluebell's _spécialite_, who now employed many a perplexed hour trying with Sievier's Arithmetic to work herself up a little ahead of this precocious pupil. Fortunately she was tolerably strong in history, having gone through a regular course with the little Markhams; but it was evident, notwithstanding, that Mabel and Adela pretty accurately gauged her acquirements, and held them proportionably cheap.

Kate, too, had become somewhat of a tease. I don't know what led her to suspect that the governess had something to conceal, but she was perpetually putting questions most difficult for her to answer; the incitement being the pleasure of watching, from an artistic point of view, the beauty of Bluebell's ever-ready blushes while essaying to parry her tormentor's inquisitorial efforts.

This cat-and-mouse game would go on till the victim, turning to bay, was on the point of desperately asking, "What she wished to find out?" Then Kate would veil her eyes, and look all innocent indifference. Observing the avidity with which she pounced on newspapers, Miss Barrington one day secreted them, much entertained by watching the governess circling round the room, glancing on every table or couch they were likely to have been thrown on.

"Try behind the sofa cushion, Miss Leigh."

Bluebell started, vexed at being observed, and also at this proof of _espionnage_ on her actions, but a little later she fell into more serious self betrayal. They were trying over songs in a locked manuscript book.

"Dear me, what is this air? I know it so well," she cried, incautiously humming it.

"A sea song of my cousin, Harry Dutton's. I had no idea any one else possessed a copy."

There was no answer. She looked up, the blood had rushed over Bluebell's cheek and brow, her lips were apart, and eyes wide open and bright with wonder. Before she could drop a mask over the too eloquent face, Kate's keen eyes were reading her off.

"You know him, I see," with emphasis.

Bluebell, recovering presence of mind, with a desperate effort, replied calmly,--"There was a Mr. Dutton, who came home in the same steamer. Probably I may have heard him whistling the air."--then sat down, and plunged into an instrumental piece, feeling quite unequal to endure further questioning.

But the notes all the time seemed incessantly repeating, "So this is the Cousin Kate he was always talking about."'

Miss Barrington's mind was equally busy.

"I bet Harry flirted with her all the way across, and he never told me a word of it--never so much as mentioned that there was a pretty girl in the ship, and yet she admitted knowing his favourite air 'so well.'"

Then Kate remembered the many unaccounted for weeks between his landing in England and arrival at "The Towers," and her former suspicion that some love affair had intervened.

At first she had only been provoked to curiosity by Bluebell's reserve, but now there really was food for imagination to work on, and perhaps the clue to much that was perplexing in Harry. How curiously it had come out!

The artless Kate smiled re-assuringly at her victim. She was on the track now, and the rabbit might have as much chance of ultimately evading the weasel hunting him by scent.

"What perverse fate has brought me here?" sighed Bluebell, laying her tormented head on the pillow that night. "Miss Barrington will be sure to find out everything. She was so friendly at first; but Harry always said he never trusted her. Then those children! I am sure they are more capable of teaching me. Whenever shall I be extricated from this false position?"

A night's rest did not allay Bluebell's perplexities; on the contrary, more and more complications suggested themselves. Harry must know where she was by this time, and would be frantic at her having dropped into such an ants'-nest. They would recognise his handwriting, too, if a letter came. To be sure that would also strike him. Nevertheless she got into the habit of calling for her letters at the post-office,--a proceeding which the children did not fail to mention, with the rider, "That they wondered at Miss Leigh taking the trouble when she never got any."

Kate was rather inclined to patronize Bluebell. She persuaded her mother to give a musical party for the exhibition of her wonderful voice, and was, on that occasion, quite as solicitous about the young artiste's toilette as her own; and, being not averse to having a girl of her own age to chatter to, bestowed a good deal of her society on Bluebell out of school-hours, which might have been more appreciated were it not for the excessive caution it entailed on the latter.

One day she heard that Mrs. and Miss Barrington were going to Bromley Towers for some theatricals and other gaieties. After her discovery of whose house she was in, that was only a matter of course, and she had only to conceal all interest in it.

Kate was to take a part in one of the plays, and passed the intervening time in getting it by heart, and rehearsing with Bluebell, while the necessary costume was animatedly discussed between them. The latter fancied she had attained sufficient self-command to listen unconcernedly to any conversation about Lord Bromley or "The Towers," but she could not quench the beaming delight in her eyes when Kate one day observed, carelessly,--

"I believe you will see the play, after all, Miss Leigh, as mamma has decided to take Mabel and Adela, which means you also; for Uncle Bromley has rather a horror of children, and would no more have any of the juveniles of the family without a keeper, than he would admit a pack of hounds into the house. Why, Miss Leigh, you look delightful! Do you really care to go?" Then her suspicions awakening, she set a trap like lightning.

"I wonder" (carelessly) "if poor Harry Dutton will get back in time. He is invalided home from Scutari."

Self-command--everything--vanished.

"How did you hear that?" with crimson cheeks and suspiciously dimmed eyes.

"How?" with marked emphasis. "Would it not be stranger if one had not heard it? Uncle Bromley named it in his letter. He was wounded," bringing out the words slowly, "and almost died in the hospital. I hope he will survive the voyage home."

"That girl's a fiend," thought Bluebell, rushing off to her own room in a paroxysm of terror. Then, as she tried to think it out, it became quite evident Harry could not be aware of her change of residence, perhaps had received no letters at the hospital, and would not even know where to find her when he returned. Still, she would be in the right direction, for no doubt he would go to Bromley Towers. But what a place to meet in! And, being ignorant of his address, she could not even send a line of warning.

Romantic notions of fascinating Lord Bromley, and thus facilitating confession when Harry returned, stole through her brain. Kate's play paled in dramatic interest to the possible "situations" that seemed impending. One drawback to taming the lion was the probability of scarcely being on speaking terms with him. Her mission, indeed, seemed to be to keep the children _out_ of his way. But there were the theatricals; children, servants, governesses even, would be privileged to look on that one night. The coquette nature, dormant from want of practice, awoke again. Lord Bromley was only a man! Why couldn't she make him like her?

Kate observed renewed smiles and animation, and set it down to the hope of seeing Dutton at "The Towers," especially as she also detected her doing what maids call "a little work for myself," and effecting wonders with a few yards of muslin and ruffling.