Kitabı oku: «Some Persons Unknown», sayfa 10

THE GOVERNESS AT GREENBUSH

I

The coach was before its time. As the owner of Greenbush drove into the township, the heavy, leather-hung, vermilion vehicle was the first object to meet his eyes. It was drawn up as usual in front of The Stockman's Rest, and its five horses were even yet slinking round to the yards, their traces flung across their smoking backs. The passengers had swarmed on the hotel verandah; but the squatter looked in vain for the flutter of a woman's skirt. What he took for one, from afar, resolved itself at shorter range into the horizontal moleskins of a stockman who was resting amid the passengers' feet, a living sign of the house. The squatter cocked a bushy eyebrow, but whistled softly in his beard next moment. He had seen the governess. She was not with the other passengers, nor had she already entered the hotel. She was shouldering her parasol, and otherwise holding herself like a little grenadier, alone but unabashed in the very centre of the broad bush street.

The buggy wheels made a sharp deep curve in the sand, the whip descended – the pair broke into a canter – the brake went down – and the man of fifty was shaking hands with the woman of twenty-five. They had met in Melbourne the week before, when Miss Winfrey had made an enviable impression and secured a coveted post. But Mr. Pickering had half forgotten her appearance in the interim, and taking another look at her now, he was quite charmed with his own judgment. The firm mouth and the decided chin were even firmer and more decided in the full glare of the Riverina sun than in the half-lights of the Melbourne hotel; and the expression of the grave grey eyes, which he had not forgotten, was, if possible, something franker and more downright than before. The face was not exactly pretty, but it had strength and ability. And strength especially was what was wanted in the station schoolroom.

"But what in the world, Miss Winfrey, are you doing here?" cried Mr. Pickering, after a rather closer scrutiny than was perhaps ideal. "I'm very sorry to be late, but why ever didn't you wait in the hotel?"

"There is a man dead-drunk on the verandah," returned the new governess, without mincing her words, and with a little flash in each steadfast eye.

"Well, but he wouldn't have hurt you!"

"He hurts me as it is, Mr. Pickering. I know nothing quite so sad as such sights, and I've seen more of them on my way up here than ever in my life before."

"Come, come, don't tell me it's worse than the old country," said the squatter, laughing, "or we shall fight all the way back! Now, will you jump up and come with me while I get your luggage; or shall we meet at the post-office over yonder on the other side?"

The girl looked round, following the direction of the pointed whip. "Yes, at the post-office, I think," and then she smiled. "It may seem an affectation, Mr. Pickering, but I'd really rather not go near the hotel again."

"Well, perhaps you're right. I'll be with you in five minutes, Miss Winfrey."

He flicked his horses: and in those five minutes the new governess made a friend for life in poor Miss Crisp the little old post-mistress. It was an unconscious conquest; indeed, she was thinking more of her employer than of anything she was saying; but this Miss Winfrey had a way of endearing herself to persons who liked being taken seriously, due perhaps to her own habit of taking herself very seriously indeed. Nevertheless, she was thinking of the squatter. He was a little rough, though less so, she thought, in his flannel shirt and wide-awake, than in the high collar and frock-coat which he had worn at their previous interview in Melbourne. On the whole she liked him well enough to wish to bring him to her way of looking at so distressing a spectacle as that of a drunken man. And it so happened that no sooner had she taken her seat beside him in the buggy than he returned of his own accord to the subject which was uppermost in her mind.

"It was one of my own men, Miss Winfrey."

"The man on the verandah?"

"Yes. They call him Cattle-station Bill. He looks after what we call the Cattle Station – an out-station of ours where there are nothing but sheep, by the way – on the other side of the township. He has a pretty lonely life over there. It's only natural he should knock down a cheque now and again."

The governess looked puzzled. "What does it mean – knocking down a cheque?"

"Mean? Well, we pay everything by cheque up here, d'you see? So when a man's put in his six months' work, say, he rolls up his swag and walks in for his cheque. Twenty-six pounds it would be for the six months, less a few shillings, we'll say, for tobacco. And most of 'em take their cheque to the nearest grog shanty and drink it up in three or four days."

Miss Winfrey shuddered.

"And then?"

"Then they come back to work for another six months."

"And you take them back?"

"I should think I did – when they're good men like Cattle-station Bill! It's nothing. He'll be back at his hut by the end of the week. That's an understood thing. Then in another few months he'll want another cheque. And so on, year in and year out."

Miss Winfrey made no remark, but she turned her head and looked back. And the recumbent moleskins were still a white daub on the hotel verandah, for it was hereabouts that Pickering had mistaken them for the young woman's skirt. She watched them out of sight, and then she sighed.

"It's terrible!"

"You'll get used to it."

"Never! It's too awful. One ought to do something. You must let me see what I can do, Mr. Pickering. The poor men! The poor men!"

Mr. Pickering was greatly amused. He never meddled with his men. Their morals were not his concern. In the matter of their cheques his sense of responsibility ended with his signature. The cheques might come back endorsed by a publican who, he knew, must have practically stolen them from his men's pockets. But he never meddled with that publican.

It was none of his business; but to find a little bit of a governess half inclined to make it her business was a most original experience, and it was to Pickering's credit that he was able to treat the matter in a spirit of pure good-humour.

"I rather think our brats will take you all your time," said he, laughing heartily. "Still, I'll let you know next time Bill comes in for a cheque, and you shall talk to him like a mother. He's a very good-looking young fellow, I may tell you that!"

Miss Winfrey was about to answer, quite seriously, that she would be only too glad of an opportunity of speaking to the poor man; but the last remark made the rest, from her point of view, unanswerable. Moreover, it happened to hurt, and for a reason that need be no secret. Her own romance was over. She had no desire for another. That one had left her rather a solemn young woman with, however, a perfectly sincere desire to do some good in the world, to undo some of the evil.

The squatter repeated this conversation to his wife, who had not, however, his own good-nature. "I don't see what business it was of Miss Winfrey's," remarked Mrs. Pickering, who had not been with her husband when he selected the governess. "It was quite a presumption on her part to enter into such a discussion, and I should have let her know it had I been there. But I am afraid she is inclined to presume, James. Those remarks of hers about poetry were hardly the thing for her first meal at our table. Did you hear her correct me when I mentioned Lewis William Morris? She said they were two separate men!"

"She probably knew what she was talking about. I didn't go and engage a fool, my dear."

"It was a piece of impudence," said Mrs. Pickering hotly; "and after what you have told me now, James, I can't say I feel too favourably impressed with Miss Winfrey."

"Then I'm very sorry I told you anything," retorted Pickering with reflected warmth. "The girl's all right; but you always were ready to take a prejudice against anybody. Just you wait a bit! That girl's a character. I'll wager she makes your youngsters mind her as they've never minded anybody in their lives!"

The lady sighed; she had poor health and an irritable, weak nature; and her "youngsters" had certainly never "minded" their mother. She took her husband's advice; she waited; and such was the order that presently obtained among her band of little rebels, and so great and novel the relief and rest which crept into her own daily life, that for many weeks – in fact, until the novelty wore off – Miss Winfrey could do no wrong, and the children's mother had not words good enough for their new governess.

The children themselves were somewhat slower to embrace this optimistic view. They came to it at last, but only by the steep and stony path of personal defeat and humiliation. Miss Winfrey had the wit to avoid the one irretrievable mistake on the part of all such as would govern as well as teach. She never tried for an immediate popularity with her pupils, which she felt would be purchased at the price of all future influence and power. On the contrary, she was content to be hated for weeks and feared for months; but the fear gradually subsided in respect; and presently respect was joined by love. Now, love is the teacher's final triumph. And little Miss Winfrey won hers in the face of sufficiently formidable odds.

It was a case of four to one. Three of the four were young men, however, with whom the young woman who is worth her salt well knows how to deal. These young men were employed upon the station, and they had petted and spoilt the children pretty persistently hitherto. It had been their favourite relaxation after the day's work in the saddle or at the drafting yards. Miss Winfrey took to playing their accompaniments as they had never been played before, and very soon it was tacitly agreed among them that the good-will of the governess was a better thing than the adoration of her class. So the three gave very little trouble after all; but the fourth made up for their defection; and the fourth knew better how to fight a woman.

She was one herself.

Millicent Pickering was the children's half-sister, the only child of her father's first marriage. She was a sallow, weedy, and yet attractive-looking girl of nineteen, with some very palpable faults, which, however, were redeemed by the saving merit of a superlatively good temper. She loved a joke, and her idea of one was quite different from that of Miss Winfrey, who, to be sure, was not a little deficient in this very respect. Millicent found her sense of humour best satisfied by the enormities of her little brothers and sisters. She rallied them openly upon the punishments inflicted by their governess; she was in notorious and demoralising sympathy with the young offenders. Out of school she encouraged them in every branch of wickedness; and, for an obvious reason, was ever the first to lead them into temptations which now ended in disgrace. She was, of course, herself the greatest child of them all; and at last Miss Winfrey told her so in as many words. She would have spoken earlier, but that she feared to jeopardise her influence by risking a defeat. But when the great girl took to interrupting the very lesson with her overgrown buffooneries, in the visible vicinity of the open schoolroom door, the time was come to beat or be beaten once and for all.

"Come in, Miss Pickering," said the governess suavely, though her heart was throbbing. "I think I should have the opportunity of laughing too."

The girl strode in, and the laughter rose louder than before. But, however excruciatingly funny her antics might have been outside, they were not continued within.

"Well?" said Miss Winfrey at length.

"Well?" retorted Millicent with mere sauce.

"You great baby!" cried the governess, with a flush and a flash that came like lightning. "You deserve to have your hair taken down, and be put back into short dresses and a pinafore!"

"And sent to you?"

"And sent to me."

"Right you are! I'll come this afternoon."

And she did. When school began again, at three o'clock, Millicent led the way, with her hair down and her dress up, and in her hands the largest slate she could find; and on her face a kind of determined docility, exquisitely humorous to the expectant young eyes behind the desks. But Millicent had reckoned without her brains, and that in more senses than one. She was an exceedingly backward young person; she had never been properly taught, and no one knew this better than the little governess. First in one simple subject, then in another, the ignorance of the girl was mercilessly exposed; first by one child, then by another, she was corrected and enlightened on some elementary point; and finally, when they all stood up and took places, Miss Millicent sank to the bottom of the class in five minutes. The absurd figure that she cut there, however, with the next child no higher than her waist, quite failed to appeal to her usually ready sense of humour; seeing which, Miss Winfrey incontinently dismissed the class; but Millicent remained behind.

"I give you best," said she, holding out a large hand with a rather laboured smile. "Let's be friends."

"I have always wanted to," said the victor, with a suspicious catch in her voice. Next moment she burst into a flood of tears. And that war was won.

Millicent had long needed such a friend; but this new influence was a better thing for her than any one ever knew. She happened to be fond of somebody who was very fond of her; and having one of those impulsive natures which fly from one extreme to the other, she told Miss Winfrey that very night all about it. And Miss Winfrey advised. And on the next monthly visitation of a certain rabbit inspector to Greenbush Station the light-hearted Millicent succeeded in reconciling her sporting spirit to what she termed the "dry-hash" of a serious engagement.

But not for long. As the more solemn side of the matter came home to her, the light heart grew heavy with vague alarms, and so bitterly did the young girl resent her entirely natural apprehensions, that cause and effect became confounded in her soul, now calling, as she thought, for its surrendered freedom. Her depression was terrible, and yet more terrible her disappointment in herself. She could not be in love, or, if she were, then love was not what it was painted by all the poets whose works the sympathetic Miss Winfrey now put into her hands. Thus the first month passed. Then the man came again, and in his presence her doubt lay low in her heart; but when he was gone it rose up blacker than before, and the girl went near to madness with keeping it to herself. It was only the agony of an ignorant young egoism in the twilight state of the betrothed, looking backward with regret for yesterday's freedom, instead of forward faithfully to a larger life. But this never struck her until she brought her broodings to her friend Miss Winfrey, when one flesh could endure them no longer.

Miss Winfrey was surprised. She had not suspected so much soul in such a setting. She was also sorry, for she liked the man. He had kind eyes and simple ways, and yet some unmistakable signs of the sort of strength which appealed to the governess and would be good for Milly. And lastly, Miss Winfrey was strangely touched: for here was her own case over again.

The girl said that she could never marry him, that there was no love in her for any man, that she must break off the engagement instantly and for all time; the governess had said the same thing at her age, and had repented it ever since. The governess turned down the lamp, for it was late at night in the schoolroom, and she told the girl her own story. This had more weight than a hundred arguments. Half-way through, Millicent took Miss Winfrey's hand and held it to the end; at the very end she kissed the governess and made her a promise.

"Thank you, dear," said Miss Winfrey, kissing Milly. "That was all I wanted you to say. Only try for a time to think less of yourself and more of him! Then all will be well; and you may forget my contemptible little story. You're the first to whom I've ever told it as it really was."

"And you never saw him again?"

"Not from that day to this."

"But you may, dear Miss Winfrey. You may!"

"It isn't likely," said the governess, turning up the lamp. "I came out here to – forget. He is a full-blown doctor by now, and no doubt happily married."

"Never!" cried Millicent.

"Long ago," laughed Miss Winfrey. "The worse they take it at the time the sooner they marry. That is – men; and you can't alter them."

"I don't believe it's every man," said the young girl stoutly. "I don't even believe it's – yours."

Miss Winfrey bent her head to hide her eyes. "Sometimes," she whispered, "I don't believe so either."

"And if – you met – and all was right?"

The governess got to her feet. Her face was lifted, and the tears transfigured it. It was white and shining like the angel-faces in a little child's dream. And her lips trembled with the trembling words: "I should ask him to forgive me for the wrong I did him. I would humiliate myself as I humiliated him. It would be my pride. He might not care; but he should know that I had – all along!"

II

Miss Winfrey grew very fond of her schoolroom. There, as the young men told her, she was "her own boss," with a piano, though a poor one, all to herself; and a desk, the rather clumsy handiwork of the eldest boy, yet her very own, and full of her own things. She took an old maid's delight in orderly arrangement, and, for that matter, was not loath to own, with her most serious air, that she quite intended to be an old maid. But what she liked best about the schoolroom was its fundamental privacy. It formed a detached building, and had formerly been the station store. The old dining-room was the present store, which was entered by the "white verandah," so known in contradistinction to the deep, trellised shelter – which, however, Mrs. Pickering insisted on calling the "piazza" – belonging to a later building. The white verandah was narrow and bald by comparison. But the young men still burnt their evening incense upon it, while Millicent and the governess preferred it at all hours of the day. It was just opposite the schoolroom, for one thing; for another, Mrs. Pickering but seldom set foot on the white verandah, and the peevish lady was not a popular character in the homestead of which she was mistress.

She no longer approved of the new governess. Miss Winfrey's singular success with the children had been quite sufficient to alienate their mother's sympathies, or rather to revive her prejudices. Her feeling in the matter was not, perhaps, altogether inhuman. It is difficult to appreciate the expert manipulation of material upon which we ourselves have tried an ineffectual hand. It is odious to see another win through sheer discipline to a popularity which all one's own indulgence has failed to secure. These experiences were Mrs. Pickering's just deserts, but that did not lessen their sting. The lady became not unnaturally jealous of her children's friend, whose society they now obviously preferred to her own. With former governesses not a day had passed without one child or another coming to its mother with some whining tale. There were no such complaints now; but the mother missed them as she would have missed so many habitual caresses; for it made her feel that she was no longer everything to her children. It is easier to understand her feelings than to forgive their expression. She took to snubbing the governess in the pupils' presence. It is true that, as the young men said, Mrs. Pickering did not "get much change" out of little Miss Winfrey. The girl was well qualified to take care of herself. But she was more sensitive than she cared to show. Her whole soul shrank from the small contentions which were forced upon her; they hurt her equally whether she won or she lost. Still it was less horrid to win, and one little victory gave the governess distinct satisfaction.

Mrs. Pickering took it into her head that the children were worked too hard. So one afternoon she walked into the schoolroom and told them all that they might go – nearly an hour before the time. But not a child stirred.

"You may all run away," repeated their mother. "Do you hear me? Then why don't you move?"

The eldest boy shuffled awkwardly in his place. "Please, mother, it's poetry-hour, and we only have it once a week."

Mrs. Pickering, relying on the little ones, now called for a show of hands. But the very infants were against her; and she left the room with a bitter glance at the silent governess, who after a moment's consideration dismissed the class herself. Meantime the irate lady had gone straight to her husband.

"Miss Winfrey is becoming unendurable," she told him in the tone of personal reproach which had already made the unlucky squatter curse his choice of a governess. "The poor children are positively frightened to death of her! I went in to let them out of school; no one but an inhuman monster would keep them in on an afternoon like this; and actually, not one of them dared to move without Miss Winfrey's permission! Harry muttered something to the effect that they would rather finish the lesson, and the rest sat still, but you may be sure they knew it was either that or being punished afterwards. How I hate such severities! As for that woman herself, she sat like a mule without saying anything. Ah! I see she's thought better of it, and let them out herself; to show that her authority's superior to mine, I suppose! Really, that's the last straw!"

Pickering met his wife judiciously, but not by any means half-way. He knew what she meant; he was not himself entirely enamoured of Miss Winfrey. She had spoken to him about the boys seeing too much of the men out mustering on Saturdays, a point on which the father deemed himself the best judge. She had too many opinions of her own; but when all was said, she was an admirable governess. He dwelt upon the general improvement in the children under Miss Winfrey. He had the sense to ignore their very evident affection for that martinet. Another change might be a very good thing in a few months' time, but at present it would be a thousand pities. Christmas was coming on. It would be very easy to let Miss Winfrey see that her daily supervision was not required during the holidays. She could have the time to herself.

She did have the time to herself, and a very poor time it was. The parents gave out that they intended to see something of their young people while they had the chance. And to broaden the hint, as if that were necessary, they studiously refrained from inviting Miss Winfrey to join in the daily entertainment. Now it was a family visit to a neighbouring station, with four horses in the big trap; now a picnic in the scrub, now impromptu races on the township course. The governess spent the days in her own schoolroom, with little intervals on the white verandah. Millicent's rabbit inspector was at Greenbush, so Miss Winfrey saw nothing of Millicent either. All was now well between those two: on the day he went, she rode with him to the boundary fence, and then joined the picnic party in the Forest Paddock.

"Where's Miss Winfrey?" cried the girl, from her saddle, as she cantered up to the little group about the crackling fire.

The children looked unhappy.

"She's at home," said Harry.

Millicent asked why.

"Because it's holidays," answered Mrs. Pickering, looking up from the basket which she was unpacking. "Because we've come out to enjoy ourselves."

Millicent ran over the ring of little wistful faces, and a soft laugh curled her lips. She could hear her father gathering branches in the scrub, and talking to the only young man who had not gone away for his holidays. She wondered whether she should dismount at all; her heart went out to her friend all alone at the homestead; she, too, had neglected her these last few days.

"When did Miss Winfrey spoil a day's enjoyment?" the girl demanded. "She would have added to it."

"You may think so. I chose not to risk it."

"But surely you gave her a chance of coming?"

"Not I, indeed! The children see quite enough of their governess in school. Harry, darling, there's the water boiling at last."

But Millicent was boiling too. "That settles it," she exclaimed with a quick flush. "Good-bye, all of you!" And she was gone at a hand-gallop.

Little love was to lose between the girl and her step-mother. Millicent was rather glad than otherwise to turn her back upon a party which did not include the one daily companion who was now entirely congenial to her, while if anybody could fill at all the gaping blank left by her lover's departure, it was Miss Winfrey, who was always so sympathetic, so understanding. To that same sympathy the young girl felt that she owed her present abiding and increasing happiness, and again her heart went out to the counsellor who had known no such counsel in her own black hour of doubt and trepidation. Otherwise – and Milly sighed. She knew the whole story now. Her friend had spoken of it a second and a third time, and the speaking had seemed to do her good. It was five years ago. The young man had been a medical student then. And now his penitent false love could see him only as a thriving doctor – and a married man.

"I would give anything to find him," thought the girl who was happy, as she stooped to open the home-paddock gate. "I know – something tells me – that he is true!"

She cantered to the homestead, standing high and hot on its ridge of sand, with only a few dry pines sprouting out of the yard. The year was burning itself out in a succession of torrid days, of which this was the worst hitherto. The sky was prodigiously, ridiculously blue, with never a flake of cloud from rim to rim. The wind came from the north as from an open oven. And Millicent's dog was running under the very girths of her horse, whose noon-day shadow she could not see.

She watered both animals at the tank, and then rode on to the horse-yard; but, ere she reached it, was much struck by the sound of a sweet voice singing in the distance. It seemed a queer thing, but the young woman from England was standing the Riverina summer far better than those who had been born there. She could sit and sing on a day like this!

On her way on foot from the horse-yard to the schoolroom Millicent stood on her shadow to listen to the song. The governess sang very seldom; she liked better to play accompaniments for the young men, though she had a charming, trained voice of her own. Millicent had never heard her use it, as she was doing now, without a known soul within earshot save the Chinaman in the kitchen.

The heat of the sand struck through the young girl's boots. Yet still she stood, her head bent, and at last caught a few of the words:

 
"… in the lime-tree,
The wind is floating through:
And oh! the night, my darling, is sighing —
Sighing for you, for you."
 

A verse was finished. Millicent crept nearer. She had never heard such tender singing. Three or four simple bars and it began again:

 
"O think not I can forget you;
I could not though I would;
I see you in all around me,
The stream, the night, the wood;
The flowers that slumber so gently,
The stars above the blue.
Oh! heaven itself, my darling, is praying —
Praying for you, for you."
 

The voice sank very low, its pathos was infinite, yet the listener heard every word. There were no more. Millicent dried her eyes, and went tripping over her habit through the open schoolroom door. There sat the governess, with wrung face and grey eyes all intensity.

"My dear, it was divine!"

"You heard! I'm sorry."

"But why?"

"I never sing that song."

"Why, again?"

The fixed eyes fell. "It was – his favourite… The music is better than the words, I think; don't you? But then the words are a translation."

Complete change of tone forbade further questioning. But once more the younger girl felt horribly discontented with her own really adequate affection for the honest rabbit inspector. It seemed such a little thing beside the passion of her friend.

Not long after this Millicent was reclining on a deck-chair under shelter of the white verandah. The heat was still intense, and she was nearly asleep. It was a Saturday afternoon, the children were abroad in the paddocks, but their governess was in her own schoolroom, for once as enervated as Millicent herself, who could just see the hem of her frock through the open door.

Millicent had closed her eyes. A spur clinked on the verandah, but she was too lazy to lift a lid. A voice said, "Is Mr. Pickering about, please, miss?" with a good accent, but in a curious hang-dog tone. She answered, "You'll find him in the store," without troubling to see which of the men it was. Then came sleep … then her father, shaking her softly, and whispering in her ear.

"It's Cattle-station Bill," he said. "Wants another cheque – hasn't had one since the day Miss Winfrey came. Where is she, Milly? She seemed to think she'd like to try her hand at reforming our Bill, and now's her chance. He's only gone five months this time!"

"Miss Winfrey's in the schoolroom," replied Milly drowsily. "She won't thank you for disturbing her any more than I do."

Pickering stepped down into the sand and crossed over to the schoolroom, dragging a shadow like a felled pine. The man was meanwhile in the store, where presently his master rejoined him in fits of soft and secret laughter. And Millicent rubbed her eyes, because her nap had been ruined, and bent them upon the schoolroom door, in which the governess now stood reading a book.

The spurs clinked again on the verandah, the book dropped over the way, the governess disappeared from view; and Millicent glanced from the empty door to the wearer of the spurs. He was a handsome young fellow, with blue-black hair and moustache, and a certain indefinable distinction of which his rough clothes could not rid him. But his eyes were turned sullenly to earth, and as he snatched his horse's reins from the hook on the verandah-post with his right hand, his left crumpled up his cheque and rammed it into his pocket. And a wild suspicion flashed across Millicent at that moment, to be confirmed the next.