There was one chance left. Miss Scott might be a musician. There had been one governess of that sort, too, and the girls had enjoyed long hours of sweetest liberty while she was hammering away at the piano in the schoolroom.
“Do you play?” asked Evelyn in a sweet low voice.
“Oh, no,” answered Miss Scott. “I don’t know one note from another.”
The last ray of hope was extinguished, the gloom deepened, and Evelyn relapsed into mournful silence after exchanging a depressed glance with Gwendolen.
These fateful forebodings soon proved to be only too well grounded, and before two days had passed Lady Jane was thoroughly convinced that she had found the long-sought treasure; her own face grew more and more serene, and she motored with a light heart, undisturbed by the tormenting suspicion that a lovely creature with violet eyes might be at that very time telling the story of her life to the Colonel, or sympathising with Lionel’s difficulties in pursuit of learning, or blushing under Jocelyn’s nose, or possibly being taught to ride in the paddock by Claude. Not one of them all would go near Miss Scott if he could help it, not one would so much as speak to her unless it were absolutely necessary.
And yet the undesirable governess seemed quite happy in her surroundings, and even smiled sometimes, when she spoke to the girls. It was a pleasant smile, and she had good teeth; and possibly, if any of the men had thought of looking at her face, it would have occurred to them that, if it had not been for her one blotchy cheek, and her red nose, and her way of putting her hair straight back from her forehead that made her look like a skinned rabbit, her face might not have been ugly. But if such a thought had crossed Lady Jane’s mind, she would have consoled herself by reflecting on poor Miss Scott’s lameness and her slightly deformed shoulder. There was that wandering eye, too, which was another source of comfort; and then there was the undeniable fact that the girls were kept in the schoolroom in the morning, and that Miss Scott was always with them when they went out.
With the inhuman cruelty of youth, the two girls deliberately tried to walk the lame governess off her feet; but to their amazement and mortification she kept pace with them without difficulty, and was at least as fresh as they were after a tramp of seven or eight miles over the moor. They were still further astonished when they found that she could beat them out and out at tennis, with no apparent effort. They had always supposed that a lame person could not run; but Miss Scott ran like a deer, and, indeed, she seemed less lame then than when she was only walking.
It was not often that her eye wandered when she was with them, but when it did they felt sure that she was watching them both at the same time, though they were on opposite sides of her; and the sensation was most unpleasant.
They asked her questions about herself, particularly when they were at their lessons, because a little conversation was always a pleasant change; and though she answered very briefly at such times, she did not seem to mind talking of her life at home when they were out for a walk. There was nothing mysterious about Miss Scott: her mother had died when she was very young, and her father was a learned man and a student, who spent his life among books; they lived in Kensington; he had taught her till she had gone to the college, where she had worked hard because she knew that she must earn her living, but had been very happy because she had made friends; that was where she had learnt to play tennis so well, and she told the girls all about the life there, with a great many amusing little stories. In fact, except during lessons, or when, in the wickedness of their hearts, they tried to get away from her for such illicit purposes as worm-fishing, snaring hares, or popping at rooks with their brothers’ guns, they found her a pleasant companion.
“I shall be glad,” said Lady Jane at the end of the first week, and with a really friendly smile, “if you will stay on. I see that you have a very good influence on the girls.”
“Thank you,” answered Miss Scott, and her eye wandered unmistakably.
Lady Jane informed the Colonel of her decision, and he had rarely seen her in a more delightful humour. Miss Scott, she said, was really the ideal governess in every way. She knew her business, she was quiet, modest, and unassuming. All previous governesses had possessed three sets of manners: one for the drawing-room, and of a kind which Lady Jane considered perfectly odious; the second manner was for the schoolroom, and had usually been unsatisfactory; the third was the way they had with the servants, which was of such a nature that the whole household detested them. But Miss Scott was quite different in that respect. By means known to herself, Lady Jane had ascertained that the household approved of her; that the butler included her in what might be called “the clause of favoured nations,” by bestowing his best attention on her small wants at table; that any of the footmen would have cheerfully blacked her shoes; that the housemaids brought her hot water as often as if she had been one of the family, and that Lady Jane’s own maid considered her a “perfect lady.”
“I am glad that you are satisfied at last, my dear,” answered the Colonel thoughtfully. “She’s not much to look at, but she can’t help that, poor soul.”
“Precisely,” answered Lady Jane, with evil glee; “she can’t help it.”
In due time Lionel came back, having been absent nearly a fortnight. He arrived not long before dinner, when Miss Scott was not about, having disappeared to her own quarters for the evening, as usual.
When he had almost finished dressing, Claude dropped in on his way down. Lionel had always been more intimate with him than with Jocelyn. —
“The Lady has done it this time,” observed the younger brother, sitting on the arm of an easy-chair before the fire.
“Has the new governess come?” asked Lionel absently.
“Yes, and I rather think she has come to stay for life. Avoid looking at her if you meet her, my dear chap. The Gorgon wasn’t in it with her. She would turn a Bengal tiger to stone.”
Lionel looked at his brother with curiosity, for he had not often heard him express himself so strongly. “What’s the matter with her?” —
“I forget all the things,” answered Claude; “but I know that she has a big blotch on one cheek and a red nose, and she looks like a skinned hare, and she’s got a hump on one shoulder, and she’s lame, and —— —”
“Good gracious!” Lionel’s jaw had positively dropped at the description, and he was staring at his brother in a most unusual way.
“I forgot,” continued Claude: “one eye wanders —— — —”
“I say,” interrupted Lionel, in a tone of irritation, now that his first astonishment had subsided, “it’s not good enough, you know. My credulity was badly injured when I was young. What’s the new governess’s name?”
“Miss Scott,” answered Claude; “and I really don’t think I’ve exaggerated. The Governor is awfully depressed about it. The worst of the thing is that she is turning out to be the long-sought treasure, and the Lady is in the seventh heaven.”
“It’s very odd,” observed Lionel thoughtfully. “Is there any one stopping?”
“The Trevelyans are coming to-morrow, and I believe there is to be a big end party this Saturday.”
“What Trevelyans?” asked Lionel. “Is it the mad lot, or their ballooning cousins?”
“The balloonists,” answered Claude. “They are quite as crazy as the others, though.”
“I think I prefer them to the mad ones, myself. The Lincolnshire ones make me rather nervous. I always expect to hear that another of the family has had to be locked up, and it might happen to be the one I had just been talking to. I suppose Miss Scott doesn’t come to dinner, does she?”
“Rather not!”
The two brothers went down together, and during dinner Lionel, who still distrusted Claude’s description of the new governess, asked questions about her of the others, and though no one said anything very definite before the servants, the fact that she was lame and far from good-looking was made quite clear to him, as also that his mother was thoroughly satisfied wit
h her services. Indeed, Lady Jane enlarged upon the subject in a way that was almost tiresome.
Lionel was not usually the most punctual member of the household, but on the following morning he was the first in the breakfast-room, and was standing before the fire reading a newspaper, when the door opened quietly and Miss Scott entered alone, closing it after her. She came forward towards Lionel with her beginning of a smile, as if they had met before. He held out his hand to her mechanically, but his eyes were staring at her with a startled look, and he grew visibly paler every moment.
“How do you do?” she asked quite naturally, as they shook hands.
Lionel could hardly speak. “Ellen!” he cried, “in Heaven’s name what has happened?”
Before she could answer both heard the handle of the door moving, and when the two girls entered the room the governess was standing by her own place, waiting for them, and Lionel had turned his back and was poking the fire to hide his emotion.
CHAPTER III
AS HAS ALREADY appeared, there were two families of Trevelyans among the Follitts’ friends. The Lincolnshire branch was usually described as the mad lot, because at least two members of the family had disappeared suddenly from society, and as it had never been said that they were dead, it was quite easy to say that they were insane. There were numerous more or less idle tales about these two and concerning their property, of which the sane members were supposed to be enjoying the income.
The ballooning branch, which Lionel thought rather the madder of the two, was represented by old Major Trevelyan, who had invented an airship that would not move, his married son, and his daughter Anne, who were enthusiastic aeronauts, but had no belief at all in the old gentleman’s invention; on the other hand, their confidence in their own methods was boundless, and several rather serious accidents had left it quite undiminished.
Young Mrs. Trevelyan sided with her father-in-law, for in her heart she was a dreadful coward in the air, though she feared nothing on land or water; and she found that the best way to be left at home was to quarrel with her husband and sister-in-law about ripping-lines, safety-valves, detachable cars, and other gear. When an ascent was not far off, and her husband, as usual, showed signs of wishing her to accompany him, the wise little lady would get the old gentleman to coach her thoroughly in his own views, which she then proceeded to air and defend till her husband lost his temper and flatly refused to take her with him, which was precisely the end she desired to gain.
There had lately been one of those ascents which, in the ordinary course of things, had been followed by a descent with some of those results that are frequent in ballooning, if not inevitable. When the three younger members of the family appeared, Anne Trevelyan’s handsome nose was decorated with a fine strip of court plaster and her brother had a sprained wrist, which obliged him to carry his arm in a sling. But they all seemed very happy and united, for young Mrs. Trevelyan was the last person in the world to say “I told you so.”
Lady Jane approved of ballooning, in principle, because it was distinctly “sporting,” but she thought it dangerous compared with motoring.
“It’s all very well,” retorted Anne Trevelyan, “but you could count on your fingers the people you have ever heard of who have been killed by balloons, whereas every one I know has either killed or been killed by motors.”
“I am quite sure I never killed a human being,” answered Lady Jane; “and I’m quite alive myself.”
“Yes, but how long will it last?” inquired Miss Anne cheerfully.
“And as for danger,” answered Lady Jane, “whenever I see you, you have just escaped with your life! It’s quite needless to ask why you have a large piece of court plaster on your beautiful nose, my dear, isn’t it?”
“Oh, quite!”
As no new ascent was being talked of, Mrs. Trevelyan did not take Lady Jane’s side, and the subject was soon dropped. Moreover, in the course of the afternoon a thing so new and surprising happened that it drove all other questions out of the field of interest in the Follitt family. Lionel actually went for a walk with his sisters and the new governess. He made no secret of it, and his start with the girls and Miss Scott was witnessed by the assembled party soon after luncheon. They were all in a large room which was neither a hall, nor a library, nor a drawing-room, nor anything else directly definable. In the days when the children had been much smaller, but not quite small enough to be kept out of the way, it had been their general place of meeting, and the Colonel had christened it the “mess-room,” because, as he explained, it was always in such a mess. Each member of the family had a place in it which was regarded as his or her own — a particular chair, a particular table or a corner of a table, with a place for books and newspapers. Lady Jane often wrote her letters there instead of in her morning room, and the Colonel had a small desk before a window, which he preferred to the much more luxurious arrangements in his study; the three young men often lounged there on rainy days, and even the girls kept what they called their work in an old-fashioned work-basket-table before a small sofa which was their coign of vantage; for by keeping very quiet they sometimes made their elders forget their presence, and they heard many interesting things.
Ordinary acquaintances were never asked into the mess-room, and were not likely to find their way to it uninvited, as it was not in direct communication with the other large rooms on the ground floor, and could only be reached by a small dark passage which was entered from the hall by a halfconcealed door. But the Trevelyans had lately been promoted out of acquaintanceship to the rank of friends — partly, perhaps, because Lady Jane hoped that Lionel might take it into his head to fall in love with Anne, who had always shown, or pretended to show, an unaccountable preference for him. His mother could not imagine why in the world a handsome and rather dashing sort of girl, who was almost too fond of society, should be attracted by that one of the brothers whom almost every one thought the least attractive; but since it was so, and since Anne was a thoroughly nice young woman, and since it was evidently the eldest son’s duty to marry, Lady Jane did all she could to bring the two together; and she was not at all pleased when she heard her husband’s exclamation of surprise on seeing that Lionel was actually going for a walk with his sisters and the governess.
“Upon my word, my dear, I never expected to see that.”
Lady Jane was near him, and looked out; the others heard, and went to different windows to see what was the matter.
“In a long and misspent life,” said Claude, who was not twenty-two, “I have never seen anything more extraordinary.”
“I say, governor,” asked Jocelyn, “there’s no insanity in our family, is there?”
“I’m not sure,” answered the Colonel. “I believe I once paid your debts, my boy. That’s always a bad sign.”
Jocelyn did not smile. “Taken in connection with the fact that I never made any more,” he answered, “it certainly looks as if we were threatened with softening of the brain.”
“And this settles it,” put in Claude, watching the fast disappearing figures of Lionel and Miss Scott, who were already walking side by side behind the two girls.
“It’s a safe and harmless madness, at all events,” laughed Anne Trevelyan, who was close behind Jocelyn and looking over his shoulder.
But the surprise of the party in the mess-room was nothing to the amazement of Evelyn and Gwendolen, who could not believe their eyes and ears. Their taste for forbidden amusements and sports, and their intimate alliance and mutual trust during a long career of domestic crime, had given them an almost superhuman power of concealing their emotions at the most exciting moments. When they saw that Lionel was coming with them, they behaved as naturally as if it were an everyday occurrence; but as soon as they were half a dozen paces in front of the other two they exchanged glances of intelligence and suspicion, though Evelyn only said in an unnecessarily loud tone that it was “a capital day for a walk,” and Gwendolen answered that it was “ripping.” They remembered
that they had more than once derived great advantage from not altogether dissimilar circumstances; for although none of their brothers had exhibited such barefaced effrontery as to go to walk with them and the governess of the moment, nevertheless it had often happened that their former tormentors had disappeared from the schoolroom, or during the afternoon, for as much as an hour at a time, during which the girls left undone those things which they ought to have done and did a variety of other things instead.
On the present occasion they were surprised, but they never lost their nerve, and by the time they were six paces in front they were both already intent on devising means for increasing the distance to a quarter of a mile. Having been allowed to lead the way, it was natural that they should take the direction of the moor, where escape would be easy and pursuit difficult; besides, once there, it was easy to pretend that there was a cat in sight, and a cat on a grouse moor is anathema maranatha, with a price on its head, and to chivvy it is a worthy action in the eyes of all sportsmen. Cats were scarce, it was true, but Lionel and Miss Scott would be talking together, and how could either of them swear that there was no cat? As a preliminary measure, the two increased their speed at the first hill, and Lionel, who was in extreme haste to ask questions of his companion, refused to walk any faster than before. In a few moments, Evelyn and Gwendolen, though well in sight, were out of earshot.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1319