‘Twas the day before I left the old Manor House. I was packing my box in my bedroom, and thinking it would be rather hard to leave the kind sisterhood, and my little Maggie, and turn out into the world alone, when the door opened and Maggie came in with an open letter in her hand.
“Oh, May,” she said, “what do you think? Claude Ellis is going to be married!”
My heart beat so loudly that I was afraid Maggie would hear it, and I trembled so much that I was obliged to sit down on a chair by the bed.
“May, dear,” said Maggie, “what is the matter? You look so pale and ill. Shall I get you anything? I am afraid I startled you, coming in like that.”
“Oh no,” I said, trying to smile, “I am all right. Read me your letter, Maggie—from whom is it?”
“It is from Fanny, May” (Fanny was Maggie’s bosom friend and confidante). “Shall I read it all, or only the part about Claude?”
“Read the part about Claude first, dear,” I said, “and I will lie down on my bed whilst you read; I feel a little tired with packing, and I mean to take half an hour’s rest before dinner.” So I lay on my bed and turned my face to the wall whilst Maggie read as follows: “‘And now I must tell you the news. Who do you think is engaged? You will never guess, if you guess all night. It is Claude Ellis! I will tell you how I heard about it. Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk with Dash to the Endle Farm. As we were coming home, down that hilly part of the road where you and I played hide-and-seek amongst the furze bushes, I saw two people sitting on a stile at the bottom of the hill. One was Claude Ellis, and the other was a young lady. They did not see me until I was very near to them, and then Claude pretended not to see me and got up, and they both walked down the lane, and I followed them only a little way behind, so that I could see the young lady very well. She was prettily dressed, and was tall and very good looking. She had the loveliest hair I ever saw, done in a number of most wonderful plaits. I am sure she could not have done it herself. Claude was bending over her and talking to her; and he looked very happy, and so did she. They turned in at the Parsonage gate, and I went home wondering very much who she was. But I had not to wait very long, for that evening papa came in with the news that Claude was engaged, and that the young lady was staying at the Parsonage. Mr. Ellis had told him, so there could be no mistake about it. She is the sister of one of Claude’s Oxford friends; and he has been staying with them in Scotland the last few weeks. Her name is Alice Fitzgerald, and she is very rich indeed. Papa says she is quite a prize for Claude, and that he will be a very rich man now, with her money and his own money put together. And papa says, that is a very good thing, for he has heard that Claude spent a great many hundred pounds at Oxford, and that poor Mr. Ellis would have been almost ruined if Claude’s uncle had not died just then and left him the money. Papa thinks Claude is very extravagant, and he says he rather pities his wife. But I am sure Claude is very fond of her, and he looked so happy today I could not help feeling glad for him. He seemed so miserable the last time he came home. Do you remember when we met him in Bush Lane, how cross he was, and how he contradicted everything we said, and looked as if he had just heard all his relations were dead? Well, it’s getting late, and I must end my letter.’ That’s all about Claude, May,” said Maggie, as she stopped reading; “wouldn’t you like to see Miss Alice Fitzgerald?”
When Maggie had gone downstairs, taking her new writing case with her, that she might begin at once to answer her little friend’s letter, I got up and locked my door, and then sat down to think over what I had heard.
The news of Claude’s engagement had come upon me like a thunderclap. I tried to reason with myself that I ought to be very glad that Claude was engaged, and that as I could not be his wife he had found someone else to make him happy. And yet it was so soon, so very soon, for Claude to forget his love for me. I had thought that he cared for me more than that. I had thought that he held my love too dear, so quickly and so easily to exchange it for another’s.
I suppose it was my pride that was wounded, and that the tears which came, in spite of myself, and rolled down my cheeks, were tears of mortification. I felt very vexed with myself that it should be so. I called myself all sorts of hard names, and wiped my eyes, and tried to think how nice it was that all was so comfortably settled for me; how delightful it was that I could feel that I had done the right thing, and yet that I had not brought a gloom over the whole of Claude’s life. And yet, at the bottom of my heart, I detected a secret hope, which had been hidden there the last few weeks, that, some day or other, Claude might give up his infidel notions and become a real Christian, and that then we might meet again and become to each other what he had so earnestly wished us to be. I had even thought that perhaps this trouble might be the means of making Claude look into the reality of religion, and believe in that Saviour who is the only true source of comfort, and that thus the great obstacle to our union might be taken away.
Not that Claude was by any means my beau-ideal of all that a man and a husband should be. But then he was, after all, the nicest man I had ever met, and it might be that my ideal was a thing of imagination, never met with in real life.
And on this particular day I was feeling very lonely and desolate. I was about to turn out into the world alone—alone amongst strangers. I was going to a great and fashionable household, where, no doubt, I should be looked down upon, and despised as poor, and a dependent.
I had no one to take care of me, or to shield me from the rough places which I should be sure to come across. There was no one in the world that really belonged to me except my sister Maggie, and she was but a child. I felt very unprotected, desolate, and forsaken. I took up my Bible and turned wearily over the pages, if, perchance, my eyes might fall upon some words of comfort. And the words which caught my attention were these, in the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel: “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
“Unto the end,” an unchanging, an unvarying, an untiring love. I had chosen that love in preference to Claude’s. Had I made a bad exchange? I had given up a love which had proved itself, at the best, but fickle and shallow, and I had chosen Christ’s love, the love of Him of whom it was written, that having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
“His own.” Did that indeed mean me? or did it only apply to the few disciples gathered round Him in these last hours of His life on earth? Was it only these whom He loved unto the end? Or could I take up the words, and make them my star of comfort? Could I make them apply to myself now, as they applied to the apostles then?
Was it true now that I was His—His own? Was it true that I was in the world—in the wide, desolate world, alone, just as these apostles were so soon to be, and was it true that He would love me in spite of all my failings and all my sins, and that He would love me unto the end? Could it be true?
Another text came into my mind: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.”
These words surely gave me the right to take the other words and make them mine. What Jesus was then, in the yesterday of the past, so He is now, today; what He was to the apostles, so He is to me, and so He ever will be—the same in love, the same in sympathy, the same in constancy.
But I am so cold to Him, I thought, so ungrateful, so sinful. My love is so changeable and fluctuating. Surely He will not, He cannot, in spite of all this, go on loving me—loving me unchangeably. And yet, I knew that Christ’s love for us, if it exists at all, must exist quite independently of anything in us, for what can He see in the very best of men to win His love?
And I remembered that these very apostles, of whom this was written, were very faulty and imperfect in their love to Him. Only the very next day one of them, the one who had professed the most love for Him, denied Him with oaths and curses, saying, again and again, “I know not the man;” and every one of them, even the disciple whom Jesus loved, forsook Him in His hour of need and fled.
And yet of these very men, with all their failings and imperfections, it was written; “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
My heart grew light again, and I went downstairs quite comforted and happy, and without a single wish in my heart to change places with Miss Alice Fitzgerald.
The next morning I left the Manor House soon after breakfast. I was followed to the door by Miss Jane bidding me, in her calm, decided way, to be sure to choose a carriage with at least two elderly ladies in it, “because, my dear, one reads of such awful robberies and murders taking place in railway carriages!”—followed also by Miss Hannah, entreating me to remember what Miss Jane had said, and also to be quite sure that the guard had fastened the door well before the train started—followed even by Miss Louisa, suggesting the advisability of always having both windows closed, and both ventilators securely fastened, lest any draft should enter the carriage—followed, not only to the door but as far as the garden gate, by my little Maggie, sobbing as if her heart would break, and refusing to be comforted.
It was very hard to leave them all, and especially to leave my little sister, and to go forth alone into the world; but the words which had been my comfort yesterday were my strength now, and the language of my heart was, “I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
How much I wondered, as I was traveling that day, what Miss Evelyn Trafford would be like, and of what my duties, as companion, would consist. But it was of no use wondering; that evening I should know.
I had a long, tiring journey, having to change my train no less than four times, and to wait at cold, cheerless junctions for several hours.
But in spite of the sisters’ oft-repeated predictions of the reverse, I and my luggage arrived safe and sound at the little station of Alliston.
As soon as I left the carriage a footman came up to me, and, touching his hat, inquired if I was Miss Lindsay. When I answered in the affirmative, he took charge of my luggage, and led the way to a carriage which was waiting for me outside the station.
We drove on in the darkness for some distance, through what seemed to be country roads and lanes, for I could see no lights by the wayside, and nothing to break the darkness of the night.
After a long time the carriage stopped in front of a small house, which I saw must be a lodge, for by means of the light which came from a diamond-paned window I could see a woman opening some large iron gates for the carriage to go through.
When we had passed the lodge I expected every moment to reach the house, and my heart beat faster and faster in expectation of my arrival. But we went on and on and on for at least a mile before the lights of the great house appeared, and we stopped before the door.
The footman got down from the carriage and rang the bell. The door was opened by a grave and solemn butler, and I went inside, feeling as if I were walking in my sleep, so tired and confused was I with my long journey.
I was ushered through a spacious hall, filled with stags’ horns and old swords, and stuffed birds and foreign curiosities, and old oak cabinets, up a very wide staircase to a room at the top of the house. It was not a large room, but it was very pretty and comfortable, and a cheerful fire was blazing in the grate.
The maid who had shown me my room told me that Miss Trafford would be glad to see me as soon as I was ready, so I hastened to take off my dusty traveling dress, and to make myself ready to go downstairs.
After about half an hour the maid came back again to conduct me. We went through several long passages, past a number of doors, until we arrived at Miss Evelyn Trafford’s room.
The maid opened the door and I went in. The gas was not lighted, but the fire was blazing brightly, and by its light I could see a young lady lying on a low couch on one side of it. She was very pretty, with small, delicate features, and a beautiful fair complexion, and appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen years of age. On the sofa beside her were lying two kittens curled up on a velvet cushion, and in front of the fire was a little spaniel fast asleep on the hearth-rug.
As soon as the door opened Miss Trafford held out her hand to me.
“Come in, Miss Lindsay,” she said; “come to the fire; you must be tired and cold; it’s dreadfully cold out, is it not? There, Flossy, get up and let Miss Lindsay come to the fire.”
She had a pretty, childish manner, which was very winning and pleasant. “I am so glad you have come,” she said, when I was seated, “and you look so nice. Do you know I thought you would be dreadful, before you came! When papa said one day that it was so dull for me up here alone he must get me a companion, I actually cried, Miss Lindsay. It was very silly of me, I know, but then I always am a silly child. I pictured to myself what this companion would be like, and I thought she would have gray curls, and spectacles, and a brown alpaca dress, and always talk as if she were talking out of a book.”
I could not help laughing heartily when she said this.
“Oh, I am so glad you can laugh,” said Miss Trafford; “the companion, in the picture I made of her, never laughed—she only smiled, as if she was thinking, How foolish everyone in the world is, and especially this weak-minded child I have to take care of.”
This, of course, made me laugh again, to Miss Trafford’s great satisfaction.
“Papa said he would get me somebody young and charming if he could, and he told me when he was writing about you how old you were, but I didn’t think I should like you a bit, and I didn’t want you to come at all.”
“I hope you will change your mind soon, Miss Trafford,” I said; “I will try not to be very disagreeable.”
“Oh, I have changed my mind,” she said, quickly; “I changed it as soon as you came in at the door. I always judge by first sight. If I love people when I first see them, I always love them; and if I hate them, I always hate them. I never change my mind afterward.”
“Do you think that is a good plan?” I said; “don’t you think it is rather an unfair way of judging?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said; “it always answers very well for me. I liked you when you came in at the door, and I mean always to like you. I wish Ambrose would bring the dinner, the gong sounded long since. I am sure it is time for it, and you must be so hungry. Miss Lindsay, will you please ring the bell?”
One of the footmen soon appeared with a small round table, which he placed between Miss Trafford’s couch and my chair. The table was already prepared for dinner, with everything in its proper place.
“Oh, it is so nice to have you here,” said Miss Trafford. “Do you know, I haven’t been downstairs to dinner for five months. Isn’t that dreadful? And I have always had dinner quite alone, except twice, when there was no one staying here, and then papa came up to my room and had dinner here. It was such fun; he and I had this little table, and Ambrose came in here to wait. I laughed all the time, and so did papa; it seemed such a little room after the dining room, and the three men did not at all know where to stand, because there was no room for them to come close to the table.”
“Then you have only been ill five months?” I said.
“Only five months! as if that were not long enough,” she said; “it seems more like five years to me!”
“Yes, it is a long time,” I said; “but I was afraid you might have been ill longer still. I do not know what made you ill.”
“Didn’t papa tell you? How funny of him! Now, if I had been writing to you, I should have told you the whole story. What did he tell you?”
“He only said that he wanted a companion for his daughter, and asked for my references.”
“That was just like papa,” said Evelyn; “he always does everything in what he calls a business-like way, which I always say means never telling anybody anything.”
“Will you tell me what made you ill?” I asked.
“Yes, it was that young horse,” she said; “such a beauty! you must see him, Miss Lindsay; he is quite black, and has a white star on his forehead, and his name is Wildfire, because he flies along so fast. Papa said he was too young for me to ride; but I was not a bit afraid, and Cousin Donald asked me to go out with him for an hour. Cousin Donald is very fond of me,” she said, laughing; “he would like me to marry him; but that would never do, you know. Papa says he is very poor, and he would not hear of such a thing. But Cousin Donald is very good-looking, and I like riding with him, he rides so well, and we had a splendid ride that day; but then Wildfire threw me, and all my fun was over.”
“Were you much hurt?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said; “the doctors said my spine was injured; only a little though,” she added, quickly, “and if I keep very, very still, and never walk about for a year, they think I shall be quite well again. Oh dear! I wish the year was over now! But it will be much nicer now you have come.”
“You must tell me, please, Miss Trafford, what my duties are,” I said.
“Oh, don’t talk about duties,” she said, pretending to stop her ears; “I can’t bear the word. I never could do anything because it was a duty. That’s just the sort of word the companion in my picture used to say. She used to draw up her head and look through her spectacles, and say, solemnly, ‘Miss Evelyn, remember your duties.’”
“But you will tell me what my work is to be here,” I repeated; “Sir William did not mention it in his letter.”
“You won’t have any work,” she said, “except to amuse me; you are to be my friend, if you like to call that work—to read to me, and talk to me, and have meals with me, and make the year go a little quicker.”
“That isn’t very hard work,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she answered; “you’ll find me a very tiresome child sometimes, and if you had been the brown alpaca dress, and gray curls, and spectacles, I would have led you such a life that in less than a week you would have said to papa, ‘Sir William Trafford, I must beg to resign the charge of your flippant and willful daughter.’ Before you came, papa said we were to have some profitable reading in a morning, and storybooks only after luncheon; but I hate profitable reading, and papa never makes me do what I hate.”
“What kind of reading do you mean?” I inquired.
“Oh, history and geography, and all such things; I never could bear them. What is the good of knowing who Henry VIII.’s wives were, and which of them he beheaded; and nearly giving oneself brain fever in trying to remember what relation John of Gaunt was to everybody else.”
“I am very fond of history,” I said; “I think some parts are quite as interesting as a story-book.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” she said; “you are talking just like the brown alpaca dress! I shall expect you to pull the spectacles out of your pocket in a minute.” And then I could do nothing but laugh, and in a moment she had changed the conversation, and was rattling on about something else.
“There are not many visitors here just now,” she said; “you’ll see them all by and by. They generally pay me a visit after dinner. And mind you stop when they come; I want you to see them all. The brown alpaca dress always got up when anyone came in, and made a very stiff bow, and went away and shut herself up in her bedroom. So mind you don’t do the same; you must look at all the people well, and tell me what you think of them, when they are gone.”
“Oh, I should not like to do that,” I said.
“Why not?” she said, laughingly; “I don’t mind telling you what I think of anyone. There is Lady Eldridge; she is very grand and stately, and I don’t like her a bit; and there is Lord Moreton—he never has a word to say, and is very stupid; but he has a quantity of money and a splendid estate, and papa is always saying what a nice young man he is. And so he may be, perhaps, in some ways; at least he is very harmless, but then he squints, and I never could marry anyone who squinted—could you, Miss Lindsay?”
“I don’t know,” I said, laughing; “I never thought about it.”
“Well, I couldn’t, it would drive me mad. And then there is Alicia Hay—papa’s old maid cousin—and if you ask me what I think of her, I think she is trying very hard to get married and never will. And then there is Lilla—but I won’t tell you about them all now, you will see them for yourself by and by.”