And this: “I took Sibyl to the library yesterday morning when her father was sitting there alone. It was her birthday — her third birthday — and I thought I might presume upon that. I opened the door a little way and looked in. He was sitting at his desk writing. I ought to have waited till he was disengaged. I whispered to her to go to him and give him a big birthday kiss, and she ran in, toddling across the room in her pretty blue shoes, so busy, so happy, and she caught hold of his arm as he wrote, and lifted herself up on tiptoe, and said, ‘Papa, big birsday tiss,’ in her funny little baby talk. He put down his pen, and he stooped down to kiss her; but a moment after he rang his spring bell, two or three times, and called out, ‘What is this child doing here, roaming about the house alone? Where is her nurse?’ He was very kind and polite when he looked round and saw me standing at the door, and when I begged his pardon for having disturbed him; but I could see that he was bored, and I took Sibyl away directly. We met Mr. Danby in the corridor with an armful of toys. What a useful good soul he is, and how sorry I shall be when he has left us to go to the Duchess at Endsleigh.”
There were many entries of the same nature — womanly regrets, recorded again and again. “‘I wonder why he married me.” “I wonder whether he once loved somebody very dearly and couldn’t marry her.”
“I think there must be some reason for his not earing for me. I ought not to complain, even to this stupid old book — but the book is like an old friend. I sit staring at my name and the date, written by my old governess at the Manor House, and recalling those careless, thoughtless days when my sisters and I used to think our Ollendorff exercises the worst troubles we had in this world — before mother began to be an invalid — before father used to confide all his difficulties to us girls — the debts, the tenants that wouldn’t pay, the roofs that wanted new slating. Oh, how long ago it all seems! I have no money troubles now. Father has had legacies, and everything is going smoothly at home. And yet I feel sometimes as if my heart were slowly turning to ice.
“Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That time has shaken into frost.”
Sir John Penlyon never forgot the reading of that diary. He remembered the very day and hour when looking for a missing list of family jewels — jewels which his dead wife had worn on state occasions, and which were to go back to the bank, and to lie in darkness, like her who had worn them — he had come upon that old German copy-book, rolled up and thrust far back in the secret drawer, tied with a shabby old ribbon. He remembered sitting by the tireless hearth, in the prettily furnished dressing-room, disused since his wife’s death. He remembered the dull grey autumn sky, and the rain drifting across the leaden sea, and the shags standing on the rocks, drenched and drooping, all nature in low spirits.
The reading of that record of unhappiness, so meekly borne, was not without one good result. Sir John took more notice of his two girls than he had ever done in their mother’s lifetime. Sibyl, the younger, contrived more particularly to find her way into his heart, She was stronger and more vivacious than her elder sister. She was full of daring, a romp, and a tomboy. Lilian was like her mother, and was gentle, and shrinking, and subdued as her mother had been in the presence of the husband she loved and feared. Sibyl had a nature unacquainted with fear; and her father fancied he saw in her all the highest qualities of the Penlyons — beauty, strength, courage.
“If she had but been a boy,” he sometimes said to himself, with a profound sigh.
It seemed a hard thing that such a splendid creature must needs be cheated out of the heritage of her father and grandfather, and of many generations before them, only because she happened to be a daughter instead of a son. The Penlyon estate had been growing in wealth and importance while all those generations of the past were growing from youth to age, through life to death. The Penlyons had developed a great mining district, far off yonder southward towards Truro. They had added farm to farm between Boscastle and Bodmin. Everything had prospered with this proud and ancient race: and from Launceston to Tintagel and Tintagel to Bude there was no such family as the Penlyons of Penlyon Castle.
Sir John was foolishly indulgent to his motherless daughters during the first four or five years of his widowhood, making amends to them for all that had been wanting in his conduct to their mother. His remorse was not for sins of commission, but for sins of omission. He knew that he had not been unkind to his wife. He had only failed to understand her. The poor little diary in the German exercise book had told him how dearly he had been beloved, and how dull and ungrateful he had been.
For nearly five years after his wife’s death Sir John lived at Penlyon Castle, managed his estates, hunted and shot, and in summer did a little yachting along that wild north coast, and southward by Penzance and Falmouth, and as far as the Start Point. In all those five years he had his two children much about him, took them on his yacht, taught them to ride, and was enraptured with the pluck and the endurance shown by the younger, whether on sea or land. She rode a pony that her elder sister dared not mount. Her father took her with him when he went out with the harriers, and she rode up and down those wild hills with a dash and cleverness that enchanted the squires and farmers of the district.
During all this time the girls were in a manner running-wild. They had a nursery governess to look after them whose authority was of the smallest, and who soon came to understand that Sir John Penlyon’s daughters were to do as they liked; and that Loth learning and elegant accomplishments counted for very little at Penlyon Castle.
“Look after their health, Miss Peterson, and see that they change their shoes when they come in from walking,” said Sir John. All the rest is leather and prunella.”
Miss Peterson, who had never read Pope, took this for an allusion to the shoes.
The two girls would have got the better of their governess in any case; but Sir John being avowedly on the side of ignorance, the poor young lady had no chance of making them take kindly to education. They loved the gardens and the hills and the wild sea-beach, and those narrow walks which looked to Miss Peterson like mere ledges on the face of the cliff, and where she could hardly stand for a minute without feeling giddy. They were strong and bold, and free in every movement of their young limbs, while she was London-bred, a weakling, and a very bad walker. Her feet used to ache on those grand moorland roads, and her poor sick soul long for a Royal Blue, or any other friendly omnibus, to take her in and carry her homewards. She was one of those people who say they are very fond of the country in summer. The breezy October days, the white mists of winter, filled her with sadness and dejection.
The two little girls were kind to her after their free-and-easy fashion; but they treated her with a good-natured contempt, She was afraid of a horse; she was afraid of the sea; she was afraid of being blown off the cliff when the wind was high; and she could not walk two miles without feeling tired. She confessed to being troubled with corns.
“Miss Peterson has corns,” cried Sibyl; “isn’t it funny? I thought it was only old people who had corns,”
This free-and-easy life went on for five years. The children throve and grew apace — did what they liked, ate what they liked, and were as idle as they liked. The effect of this indulgence upon their physical health was all that the fondest father could desire. The doctor from Boscastle complained laughingly that the Penlyon nursery wasn’t worth a five-pound note to him from year’s end to year’s end.
“You never have anything the matter with you,” he said, as the children skipped round him in the road, fond of him in their small way, as one of the funny personages of the district.
“I don’t believe I have earned seven and sixpence out of either of you since I lanced your gums.”
“Did you lance my gums?” cried Sibyl. “How funny!”
“You didn’t think it funny then, I can tell you.” said the doctor, grimly.
“Didn’t I? What’s it like? Lance them now,” said Sibyl, curling up her red lips and opening her
mouth very wide.
“No, thank you. You’d bite. You look as if you could bite!” laughed the doctor. “I tell you what it is, I believe Miss Peterson is a witch — one of our ancient Cornish witches who has turned herself into a nice-looking young woman.” Mr. Nicholls could not so far perjure himself as to say pretty. “ Miss Peterson has bewitched you both. She has charmed away the measles and the whooping-cough. She has cheated me out of my just rights.”
Miss Peterson heard him with a pale smile, shifting her weight from the more painful foot to the foot that pained her a little less. The children went leaping and bounding along the road, the embodiment of healthy, high-spirited childhood.
Sir John praised Miss Peterson for her care of them, and rewarded her, as the school-board mistresses are rewarded, according to results; only the results in this case were physical and not mental, and Sir John’s Christmas present of a silk gown or a ten-pound note was given because his daughters were healthy and happy, rather than because they made any progress with their education. In sober truth, they knew a little less than the village children of the same age at the parish school.
At the end of those five years that pleasant life came to an abrupt close. North Cornwall found out all at once that it could not continue to prosper and to hold its own in the march of progress unless it were represented by Sir John Penlyon. Radical influences were abroad in the land. The Church was in danger, was indeed being fast pushed to the wall by the force of Dissent, its superior in numerical strength. North Cornwall must no longer be given over to the Radical party. It was time that a stand should be made, and a battle should be fought. Sir John Penlyon, said the newspapers, was the man to make that stand, and to fight that battle. He was rich; he had a stake in the country; he was influential; he was fairly popular. He had sat in Parliament fourteen years before for a Cornish borough that was now among the things of the past, a sop long since flung by Conservative Reformers to the Democratic Cerberus. He could never again sit for Blackmount, the hereditary seat of his ancestors, with a constituency of three and twenty; but he could sit for North Cornwall, and North Cornwall claimed him for its own.
Perhaps Sir John Penlyon was getting tired of rusticity. In any case he consented to be nominated in the Conservative interest; and the result of the contest was a triumph for the good old family and the good old cause. Sir John took a small house in Queen Anne’s Gate, gave himself up to politics, and almost deserted his Cornish domain. Except for a month or six weeks in the autumn, he was scarcely seen in the West during the seven years that followed his election as Member for the Western Division of North Cornwall. He was re-elected during those seven years without opposition, for it was now felt that the Western Division had become a pocket-borough of the Penlyons, just as Blackmount had been. There was no use in fighting Sir John Penlyon in his stronghold of the west.
Before settling himself in his comfortable bachelor quarters by St. James’s Park, Sir John invited his only sister, Mrs. Hawberk, to Penlyon Place, with a view to taking counsel with her as to the education of his daughters. The time had doubtless come when Lilian and Sibyl must cease to run wild. Mrs. Hawberk’s husband was the younger son of a peer, and she gave herself some airs on the strength of that connection. She was very fond of talking of Allerton, the family seat, where she usually spent a somewhat dismal six weeks in September and October while her husband was going about the country speaking at political meetings, and wearing himself out, as he declared, in support of the cause.
Mrs. Hawberk came. She had not seen her nieces since their mother’s death. She took them in hand at once in a masterful way; and after spending a single afternoon with them and their governess, she informed her brother that his children were monsters of ignorance.
“The sooner you get rid of that young woman the better,” she said of poor Miss Peterson, who had done all in her power to make herself agreeable to the great lady. “She has taught them nothing, and she has not the slightest authority over them.”
“She has looked after their health,” replied Sir John, apologizing for the governess’s shortcomings, “and they are very fond of her.”
“One wouldn’t wish them to be fond of her. It is a very bad sign when children are fond of their governess. It means that she spoils them and allows them to be idle.”
“They have been idle at my desire. I told Miss Peterson to cultivate their bodies and leave their minds alone.”
“And she has obeyed you to the letter. I never met with such ignorant children. They pretend to be fond of flowers, yet they know no more of botany than my maid Rogers. They have made no progress with the piano. They know no French. They are backward in everything.”
“They are splendid children,” said Sir John, doggedly. “No doubt; and if you allow them to grow up with Miss Peterson they will be splendid savages; and you will be put to shame by them when they go into society. It does not do for girls to be ignorant and unaccomplished nowadays. You will want them to marry well, I suppose, by-and-by?”
“I shan’t want them to marry badly.”
“Of course not; and to make good matches they will have to be accomplished as well as good-looking. They are very sweet girls,” added Mrs. Hawberk, not wishing to offend her only brother, and a wealthy brother; “ but they have been dreadfully indulged.”
“I wanted them to be happy.”
“No doubt they have had a fine time of it. You were not so weak about them in their poor mother’s time.”
“No; I wish I had been a little weaker.”
“How do you mean?”
“I think Mary would have liked me to take more notice of them.”
“Nonsense, John; you were perfect in your conduct to poor Mary. No young woman could have had a more chivalrous husband. I hope you don’t reproach yourself for having been wanting in any respect towards poor Mary?”
“Well, we needn’t talk about that, Nobody can mend the past, I want you to do what is best for the girls now I am to be so much in London. If Miss Peterson is not governess enough for them she must have a superior person to help her. She can stay to look after their health, and see that they change their shoes.”
“My dear John, a maid will do all that. If you want me to be of use to them you must let me have a free hand.”
“Certainly; you shall have a free hand for the next five years, till they have finished their education. Lilian is nearly thirteen. Five years hence she will be old enough to enter society.”
“And it shall be my care that she is fitted for her position as your eldest daughter,” said Mrs. Hawberk, decisively.
CHAPTER II.
SIR JOHN went to London, and left Mrs. Hawberk mistress of the field. She began her work of reform by dismissing meek little Miss Peterson, who was so much afraid of her that she was almost glad to go; yes, even to exchange the fleshpots of Penlyon Castle for the meagre fare of a lodging in Camden Town. Miss Peterson loved her pupils, and wept at parting from them; but the scornful domination of the fashionable lady had cowed her spirits. She cried bitterly on the last morning at the Castle, but found few words to express either her love or her sorrow.
Sibyl, the impulsive one, clung round Miss Peterson’s neck, and abused her aunt for sending this faithful friend away.
“I shall hate the new governess, and I shall always love you,” she said.
“My dear, you mustn’t hate any one. We have been very happy together, and I hope some day Sir John will let me see you and Lilian again.”
“Let you see us!” exclaimed Sibyl; “I should think so, indeed! You shall come and live with me again the minute I am grown up. She will have no power over us then.”
She was Mrs. Hawberk, who had not left her room at this early hour. The carriage was at the door to take Miss Peterson to the coach, and the coach was to take her to the station at Launceston, whence it would be a long, long journey to Camden Town.
Lilian and Sibyl had packed a picnic basket for her with provisions that would have laste
d for a week if the train had been snowed lip on the moorland above Okehampton.
“I’ll go to Victoria with you,” cried Sibyl.
Victoria was the point where the coach stopped to pick up passengers from Penlyon.
“No, no, my darling, your aunt wouldn’t like—”
But Sibyl jumped into the carriage before the sentence was finished. The footman shut the door, and the coachman drove off. There was no time to spare, if the coach was to swallow up poor little Miss Peterson that morning.
The coach did swallow her; and Sibyl, without either hat or jacket, alighted from the brougham half an hour afterwards to find her aunt standing in the porch awaiting her return.
“You are the most undisciplined child I ever had to do with,” said Mrs. Hawberk.
The new governess arrived three days after Miss Peterson’s departure. She, too, was young in years; but she was old in culture and accomplishments. She was a model governess. She had taken prizes and certificates, and had passed examinations of all kinds. She was strong in mathematics and in natural science. She knew a respectable amount of Latin, and had a useful smattering of Greek — enough to make her oppressively erudite about the derivation of words. Sibyl and Lilian began by hating her, and though hatred soon simmered down to toleration, they never became fond of her. She had indifferent health, and suffered from neuralgic headaches; and indeed it seemed as if she introduced headaches into Penlyon Place, for her pupils very soon began to suffer from aching temples, and to look dark and heavy about the eyes, and to lose those fine appetites for indiscriminate food which they had enjoyed under the Peterson régime, in the old happy time when they used to go down to dessert every evening and sit on each side of their father, and eat as much fruit and cake, chow-chow, guava jelly, and preserved pine-apple as ever they liked, while Sir John nibbled an olive or two, and sipped his claret.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1036