my first letter to my father was the work of several days, and as my penmanship was not of a rapid order, it cost me a good deal of trouble. when it was finished it ran thus:
my dear papa,
i hope you are quite well. i am quite well. rubens is here and he is quite well. we dont no how he got here but i am verry glad. ant maria said well he cant be sent back now so he sleeps on my bed and i like london it is a kweer place the houses are very big and i like my cussens pretty well they are all gals their nozes are very big i like polly.
nurse is quite well so good-bye.
i am your very loving son,
reginald dacre.
though i cannot defend the spelling of the above document, i must say that it does not leave much to be added to the portrait of my cousins. but it will be more polite to introduce them separately, as they were presented to me.
i heard them, by the bye, before i saw them. it was whilst i was dressing, the morning after my arrival, that i heard sounds in the room below,[32] which were interpreted by nurse as being "miss maria doing her music." the peculiarity of miss maria's music was that after a scramble over the notes, suggestive of some one running to get impetus for a jump, and when the ear waited impatiently for the consummation, miss maria baulked her leap, so to speak, and got no farther, and began the scramble again, and stuck once more, and so on. and as, whilst finding the running passage quite too much for one hand, she struggled on with a different phrase in the other hand at the same time, instead of practising the two hands separately, her chances of final success seemed remote indeed. then i heard the performance in peculiar circumstances. nurse bundle had opened my window, and about two minutes after my cousin commenced her practice, an organ-grinder in the street below began his. the subject of poor maria's piece knew no completion, as she stuck halfway; but the organ-grinder's melodies only stopped for a touch to the mechanism, and black-eyed susan passed into the old hundredth, awkwardly, but with hardly a perceptible pause. the effect of the joint performance was at first ludicrous, and by degrees maddening, especially when we had come to the old hundredth, which was so familiar in connection with the words of the psalm.
"three and four and—" began poor maria afresh, with desperate resolution; and then off she went up the key-board; "one and two and three and four and, one and two and three and four and—"
"—joy—his—courts—un—to," ground the organ in the inevitable pause. and then my cousin took courage and made another start[33]—"three and four and one and two and," etc.; but at the old place the nasal notes of the other instrument evoked "al—ways," from my memory; and maria pausing in despair, the old hundredth finished triumphantly, "for—it—is—seemly—so—to—do."
at half-past eight maria stopped abruptly in the middle of her run, and nurse took me down to the school-room for breakfast.
the school-room was high and narrow, with a very old carpet, and a very old piano, some books, two globes, and a good deal of feminine rubbish in the way of old work-baskets, unfinished sewing, etc. there were two long windows, the lower halves of which were covered with paint. this mattered the less as the only view from them was of backyards, roofs, and chimneys. living as i did, so much alone with my father, i was at first oppressed by the number of petticoats in the room—five girls of ages ranging from twelve to six, and a grown-up lady in a spare brown stuff dress and spectacles.
as we entered she came quickly forward and shook nurse by the hand.
"how do you do, mrs. bundle? very glad to see you again, mrs. bundle."
nurse bundle shook hands first, and curtsied afterwards.
"i'm very well, thank you, ma'am, and hope you're the same. master reginald dacre, ma'am. this lady is miss blomfield, master reginald; and i hope you'll behave properly, and give the lady no trouble."
"i'm the governess, my dear," said miss blomfield, emphatically. (she always "made a point" of announcing her dependent position to strangers.[34] "it is best to avoid any awkwardness," she was wont to say; and i saw glances and smiles exchanged on this occasion between the girls.) miss blomfield was very kind to me. indeed she was kind to every one. her other peculiarities were conscientiousness and the fidgets, and tendencies to fine crochet, calomel, and calvinism, and an abiding quality of harassing and being harassed, which i may here say is, i am convinced, a common and most unfortunate atmosphere of much of the process of education for girls of the upper and middle classes in england.
"bless me, there's that dog!"
"bless me, there's that dog!"
[35]
at this moment my aunt came in.
"good morning, miss blomfield."
"good morning, mrs. ascott," the governess hastily interposed. "i hope you're well this morning."
"good morning, girls. good morning, nurse. how do you, regie? all right this morning? bless me, there's that dog! what an extraordinary affair it is! mr. ascott says he shall send it to the 'gentleman's magazine.' well, he can't be sent back now, so i suppose he'll have to stop. and you must keep him out of mischief, regie. remember, he's not to come into the drawing-room. mrs. bundle, will you see to that? miss blomfield, will you kindly speak to signor rigi when he comes to-morrow—"
"certainly, mrs. ascott," interposed the governess.
"—about that piece of maria's? she doesn't seem to get on with it a bit."
"no, mrs. ascott."
"and i'm sure she's been practising it for a long time."
"yes, mrs. ascott."
"mr. ascott says it makes his hand quite unsteady when he's shaving in the morning, to hear her always break off at one place."
the lines of harass on miss blomfield's countenance deepened visibly, and her crochet-needle trembled in her hand, whilst a despondent stolidity settled on maria's face.
"certainly, mrs. ascott. i'm very glad you've spoken. thank you for mentioning it, mrs. ascott. it has distressed me very greatly, and been a great trouble on my mind for some time. i spoke very seriously to maria last sabbath on the subject" (symptoms of sniffling on poor maria's part). "i believe she wishes to do her duty, and i may say i am anxious to do mine, in my position. of course, mrs. ascott, i know you've a right to expect an improvement, and i shall be most happy to rise half an hour earlier, so as to give her a longer practice than the other young ladies, and only consider it my duty as your governess, mrs. ascott. i've felt it a great trouble, for i cannot imagine how it is that maria does not improve in her music as jane does, and i give them equal attention exactly; and what makes it more singular still is that maria is very good at her sums—i have no fault to find whatever. but i regret to say it is not the case with jane. i told her on wednesday that i did not wish to make any complaint; but i feel it a duty, mrs. ascott, to let you know that her marks for arithmetic are not what you have a right to expect."
here miss blomfield paused and wiped her eyes. not that she was weeping, but over and above her short-sightedness she was troubled with a dimness of vision, which afflicted her more at some times than others. as she was in the habit of endeavour[36]ing to counteract the evils of a too constantly laborious and sedentary life, and of an anxious and desponding temperament, by large doses of calomel, her malady increased with painfully rapid strides. on this particular morning she had been busy since five o'clock, and neither she nor the girls (who rose at six) had had anything to eat, and they were all somewhat faint for want of a breakfast which was cooling on the table. meanwhile a "humming in the head," to which she was subject, rendered maria mercifully indifferent to the proposal to add an extra half-hour to her distasteful labours; and miss blomfield corrugated her eyebrows, and was conscientiously distressed and really puzzled that mother nature should give different gifts to her children, when their mother and teachers according to the flesh were so particular to afford them an equality of "advantages."
"signor rigi told me that maria has not got so good an ear as jane," said mrs. ascott. "however, perhaps it will be well to let maria practise half an hour, and jane do half an hour at her arithmetic on saturday afternoons."
"certainly, mrs. ascott."
"and now," said my aunt, "i must introduce the girls to reginald. this is maria, your eldest cousin, and nearly double your age, for she is twelve. this is jane, two years younger. this is helen; she is nine, and as tall as jane, you see. this is harriet, eight. and this is mary—polly, as papa calls her—and she is nineteen months younger than you, and a terrible tomboy already; so don't make her worse. this is your cousin, girls, reginald dacre. you must amuse him among you, and don't tease him, for he is not used to children."[37]
we "shook hands" all round, and i liked polly's hand the best. it was least froggy, cold, and spiritless.
then mrs. ascott departed, and maria (overpowered by the humming) "flopped" into her chair after a fashion that would certainly have drawn a rebuke from miss blomfield if an access of eye-dimness had not carried her to her own seat with little more grace.
uncle ascott had a large nose, and my cousins were the image of him and of each other. they were plain, lady-like, rather bouncing girls, with aquiline noses, voices with a family twang that was slightly nasal, long feet terribly given to chilblains, and long fingers, with which they all by turns practised the same exercises on the old piano on successive mornings before breakfast. when we became more intimate, i used to keep watch on the clock for the benefit of the one who was practising. at half-past eight she was released, and shutting up the book with a bang would scamper off, in summer to stretch herself, and in winter to warm her hands and toes. i used to watch their fingers with childish awe, wondering how such thin pieces of flesh and bone hit such hard blows to the notes without cracking, and being also somewhat puzzled by the run of good luck which seemed to direct their weak and random-looking skips and jumps to the keys at which they were aimed. i have seen them in tears over their "music," as it was called, but they were generally persevering, and in winter (so i afterwards discovered) invariably blue.
it was not till we had finished breakfast that miss blomfield became fairly conscious of the presence of rubens, and when she did so her alarm was very great.[38]
considering what she suffered from her own proper and peculiar worries, it seemed melancholy to have to add to her burdens the hourly expectation of an outbreak of hydrophobia.
in vain i testified to the sweetness of rubens' temper. it is undeniable that dogs do sometimes bite when you least expect it, and that some bites end in hydrophobia; and it was long before miss blomfield became reconciled to this new inmate of the school-room.
the girls, on the contrary, were delighted with my dog; and it was on this ground that we became friendly. my particular affection for polly was also probably due to the discovery that with an incomparably stolid expression of countenance she was passing highly buttered pieces of bread under the table to rubens at breakfast.
polly was my chief companion. the other girls were good-natured, but they were constantly occupied in the school-room, and hours that were not nominally "lesson time" were given to preparing tasks for the next day. by a great and very unusual concession, polly's lessons were shortened that she might bear me company. for the day or two before this was decided on i had been very lonely, and cousin polly's holiday brought much satisfaction both to me and to her; but it filled poor miss blomfield's mind with disquietude, scruples, and misgivings.
in the middle of the square where my uncle and aunt lived there was a garden, with trees, and grass, and gravel-walks; and here polly and i played at hide and seek, and ran races, and chased each other and rubens.
the garden was free to all dwellers in the square, and several other children besides ourselves were[39] wont to play there. one day as i was strolling about, a little boy whom i had not seen before came down the walk and crossed the grass. he seemed to be a year or two older than myself, and caught my eye immediately by his remarkable beauty, and by the depth of the mourning which he wore. his features were exquisitely cut, and, in a child, one was not disposed to complain of their effeminacy. his long fair hair was combed—in royal fashion—down his back, a style at that time most unusual; his tightly-fitting jacket and breeches were black, bordered with deep crape; not even a white collar relieved his sombre attire, from which his fair face shone out doubly fair by contrast.
"polly! polly!" i cried, running to find my companion and guide, "who is that beautiful boy in black?"
"that's little sir lionel damer," said polly. "good-morning, leo!" and she nodded as he passed.
the boy just touched his hat, bent his head with a melancholy and yet half-comical dignity, and walked on.
"who's he in mourning for?" i asked.
"his father and mother," said polly. "they were drowned together, and now he is sir lionel."
i looked after him with sudden and intense sympathy. his mother and his father too! this indeed was sorrow deeper than mine. surely his mother, like mine, must have been fair and beautiful, so much beauty and fairness had descended to him.
"has he any sisters, polly?" i asked.
polly shook her head. "i don't think he has anybody," said she.
then he also was an only son!
