CHAPTER VII.

Curls are on her brow, not clouds, Smiles are in her eye, Simple, brave, ’mong worldly crowds Looks she to the sky. Joy dwells with her every day, Sorrows touch her as they pass, Fearless goes she on her way O’er the springing grass, Daunting evil passengers With those clear brave eyes of hers.--BALLAD.

Mr George Oswald of Fendie was very proud of his daughter Hope; and Hope, as we have already seen, was very fond of ponies. Young, large animals of all kinds, indeed, were favourites with the favourite of the banker. A great tawny fellow of a dog, with large, disjointed, youthful limbs, whose uncouth gambols had as much fun and as little grace in them as could be desired, was Hope’s especial playmate, counsellor, and friend. She called him Merry--(gentle playfellow of mine, over whom I could yet weep tears, so named I thee!) it was not a very musical name; but there was nothing in the least æsthetic about the happy, clumsy, kindly animal who bore it. This poor fellow fell under Mrs Oswald’s displeasure sometimes, when it was discovered that Hope’s new gloves had been in the great innocent mouth, or that the big paw had left its print upon Hope’s garments too legibly; but the banker amply tolerated Merry.

On the morning of Hope’s intended visit to Mount Fendie, her father led her proudly away to the vicinity of the stable where his own horses were kept, and where, at its door, stood the red-headed Oswald Thomson, son of a retainer of the family, holding by the bridle a handsome pony, apparelled as became the steed of a lady, and arching its fine brown neck in conscious pride, under the eye of its future mistress.

“Oh, father, is it for me?” exclaimed the delighted Hope; “is it to be mine; is it to be all mine?”

And it was; and at that moment in Hope’s little chamber at home, her mother, with some secret smiles over her husband’s unmeasured indulgence, and some misgivings as to the youthful limbs which this new mode of conveyance might expose to danger, was carefully spreading out a new riding-habit, companion gift to the beautiful pony. Mr Oswald had intended to bring his daughter quietly home with him, to assume the appropriate garb before she began to be an equestrian; but that did by no means suit Hope. So at dire risk to the bright muslin frock donned in unspotted purity this morning, she sprang upon the new saddle and arrived at the door radiant with laughter and exultation while her father still panted in the rear, half running in spite of his years and dignity.

Hope could not take her dog with her to Mount Fendie--it was her sole regret as she cantered away happily alone, on the quiet familiar road. One of Merry’s mighty paws would have extinguished Mrs Fendie’s lap-dog for ever; the gambols of a young elephant could not have been more detrimental to the trim gardens at the Mount. She was compelled to leave her favourite behind.

But never did Hope salute passing acquaintances so joyously; and Hope’s list of friends was as large as it was miscellaneous, extending from Mrs Maxwell of Firthside, in her carriage, down to Robbie Carlyle, the fisherman, with the creel on his shoulders full of flounders which he had captured this morning, knee-deep in the waters of the Firth. Just before the gate of Mount Fendie was a toll--a toll which Hope paid triumphantly in presence of an admiring congregation of John Tasker’s children. It was the crowning glory of her ride.

“Oh, Hope, when did you get your pony?” cried Victoria Fendie. “What a pretty one!--but it’s not so pretty as Fred’s either--is it, Adelaide?”

“I don’t know what you call Fred’s,” said Adelaide, “for Fred is too little to have a pony, but I am sure yours is very pretty, Hope. Were you not afraid?”

Fred, a little spoiled, pale, ill-conditioned boy of eight stood on a bench in the garden, plucking the blossoms off an apple-tree. He paused to pull Adelaide’s hair--it was invitingly near him--and then resumed his profitable occupation.

“I thought you would be afraid; but yours is a very pretty one, Hope,” repeated the steady Adelaide, “and Fred is too little yet to have a pony.”

Hope was so engrossed with the pony, its beauties and good qualities, that she had almost forgotten the object of her visit. She recollected herself at last.

“Adelaide, you have not told me, has the young lady come?”

“The young lady!--she means the governess,” said Victoria.

“Oh, yes--we’re all to go in now, to begin school, and you may come with us, Hope. She came yesterday.”

“And do you like her?” said Hope, out of breath.

“I don’t know; we’re all to begin school to-day, and you’re to come with us. But you’re always so quick, Hope Oswald!--how can people know in a day?”

“I know,” said Victoria loudly, “I don’t like her at all. She is so pale, and she speaks so low, and--I don’t like her.”

“Young ladies,” said a clear voice behind them, “your mother desires that you will come in.”

Hope turned quickly round. A tall, pale girl stood behind, evidently endeavouring to assume a firmness and authority which she did not possess. Her deep mourning dress, and shadowy stooping figure, and singular paleness touched the girlish romance which lay dormant in the blythe spirit of Hope. Adelaide Fendie looked at the new governess hazily out of her dull blue eyes, and did not speak. The dyspeptic little tyrant Fred said “I won’t,” and the shrewish Victoria laughed.

Hope had learned the stranger’s name, and knew her own power over Adelaide when she chose to exert it.

“If you please, Miss Maxwell,” said the prompt young lady, “I’m Hope Oswald; and Adelaide was just coming in; and we’ll all go together.”

Whereupon Hope seized the arm of Adelaide, and brought her, docile and obedient, into the rear of the new governess.

A very little matter was enough to overset the composure of the orphan who held that unenviable place. Her eyes filled and her lip quivered; she had fancied it impossible that children could be anything but loveable, and in the early power and bitterness of her grief to have these petty indignities put upon her, overwhelmed her inexperienced spirit. So she went in with the elder girls, painfully repressing bitter tears, and with the gasp of young woe convulsively swelling in her breast, “to flee away, and be at rest.”

Mrs Fendie sat in her morning room, before a table covered with embroideries and patterns for the same. She was a tall, thin, chill woman of the _genus_ clever, who had persevered so long in calling herself an excellent manager, and a person of very intellectual tastes, that public opinion had at length succumbed under the constant iteration, and with only the emphatic protest of John Brown, who in his own circle declared her “an evendown gowk wi’ a tongue like the happer of a mill,” Mrs Fendie was pronounced a very clever woman. The natural-born Fendies were all dull. The last head of the house had been fretted and chafed out of his easy life by the fatal cleverness of his yoke-fellow; and even she, their mother, had been quite unable to strike any sort of fire from the leaden natures of his children.

Beside Mrs Fendie, stretched in an easy chair, with a worked footstool supporting the worked slipper, with which her mother’s industry had endowed her, reclined the Reverend Mrs Heavieliegh, Mrs Fendie’s eldest daughter. She was like Adelaide in her soft, large, not uncomely features, and in the passive good humour of their expression; but Mrs Heavieliegh’s development of the family character was indolence, comfortable, lazy, luxurious repose; and in her gay-coloured ample draperies, and lounging attitude, and slumbrous face, she formed a good foil to the keen, sharp, steel-like mother, who worked indefatigably by her side. Mrs Heavieliegh had no admiration of work; she played with the long ears of the lap-dog on her knee, and was perfectly comfortable.

“How do you do, Hope Oswald?” said Mrs Fendie; “how’s your mamma? Sit down, children, I have something to say to you. Fred, don’t pull my frame; Victoria, be quiet. Sit down, Miss Maxwell, I wish particularly to address myself to you.”

Mrs Fendie arranged her work; she was copying a French lithograph like Maggie Irving, but she was copying it with the needle and not with the pencil, and cleared her voice oratorically. Lilias Maxwell with some apparent timidity took the chair pointed to her, and sat down to listen, the great tears gathering under her eyelids. Hope placed herself very near the new governess, in instinctive sympathy. She was not so “pretty-looking” as Adelaide had predicted. She was singularly pale, and had very dark hair, and large deep-blue eyes--blue eyes so dark that Hope, to whom blue eyes always suggested the slumbrous orbs of Adelaide Fendie, gave Miss Maxwell’s credit for being black. The dark mass of hair and the mourning dress made the young orphan look still more ethereal and shadowy. She was not like Hope’s model, Helen Buchanan; she was not nearly so life-like, and seemed to want altogether the nervous impulsive strength of Helen. Sudden flushes indeed did sometimes pass over her colourless cheek for a moment--flushes painfully deep and vivid; but there was nothing on this face like the constantly varying colour, which wavered on Helen’s cheek like the coming and going of breath. Nevertheless, there was a similarity in the age, and perhaps in the circumstances, which made Hope associate the stranger with her friend.

“You will understand, Miss Maxwell,” said Mrs Fendie, “that I consider it a very important charge which I, as a mother, give into your hands, when I delegate to you the care of these children. Such wonderful interests at stake! such extraordinary effects your humble teachings may help to produce! When I look at that boy,” and Mrs Fendie cast a sentimental glance at the dyspeptic Fred, “it quite overwhelms me. Oh, Fred! you wicked child, what have you been doing!”

Mrs Fendie had chosen an unfavourable moment for her sentimental glance, the young gentleman being busily employed opening the eyes of a scriptural personage in one of the aforesaid patterns for embroidery, by thrusting a pencil through them. On being thus pathetically appealed to Master Fred threw down the paper, and exclaimed,--“It’s not me, it’s Vic.”

Mrs Fendie restrained Victoria’s self-defence, by a majestic wave of her hand, and resumed,--“In the first place, concerning Miss Fendie--hold up your head, Adelaide.” Adelaide fixed her eyes upon the wall, awkwardly conscious of being looked at, and blushed, a dull, gradual blush,--“you will need rather to direct the young lady’s studies than to enter on the drudgery of teaching--and I am sure to a well-regulated mind nothing could be more delightful. I shall expect you to read with Miss Fendie, to direct her to those subjects which most call for a lady’s attention; to attend to her deportment and carriage, to superintend her work, to see that her wardrobe is kept in proper order, and that she does not get slovenly in her dress; besides--”

“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Victoria, “yonder’s old Mr Graeme of Mossgray riding along the avenue;--what will he want, I wonder? oh goodness, mamma, isn’t it strange? let me go to see.”

“Old Mr Graeme of Mossgray!” exclaimed Mrs Fendie, rising; “be quiet, Victoria, how dare you interrupt me? A very strange visitor certainly:--you have not seen him since your marriage, Charlotte:--perhaps he has heard you are here, and intends to be like other people for once in his life.”

Mrs Heavieliegh lifted her eyelids with some apparent difficulty and looked a little ashamed; to tell the truth, she had been dozing during her mother’s _preche_, and did not at all know what this commotion was about. Mrs Fendie’s address was broken short, but Hope perceived Lilias Maxwell still trembling in her chair.

There was a deep bow-window in the end of the room; the new governess, unnoticed in the little bustle of interest with which the Fendie family awaited their unusual visitor, stole by degrees into its recess. Hope Oswald followed her; it was scarcely quite delicate perhaps; but Hope was anxious to express something of her sympathy.

Lilias leaned upon the window--she shook so much that she needed it--and the sympathetic girl beside her saw how thin and transparent the long white fingers were, which tremblingly supported her brow. “If you please, Miss Maxwell,” said Hope compassionately, “I am afraid you are not well; and I wish my mother were only here, for she would know--and, Miss Maxwell, if you please, do not look so sad.”

The stranger could not bear this; she turned her head away, and shrank further into the shadow of the curtains, and pressed her thin fingers upon her eyes, but the tears would be restrained no longer, and Hope hastily placed herself in front of the window, that no eyes but her own might perceive the agony of silent weeping, which the unfriended, solitary girl could not control. She had borne as she best could the foolish levity and inconsiderate rudeness of the children, and half bewildered with the long stretch of endurance, had silently suffered the chill unpitying lectures of Mrs Fendie, but the first touch of kindness made the full cup overflow. All the simple philosophies with which Lilias had tried to subdue the natural strength of her feelings, could not make her grief less green and recent; and Hope stood reverently by, in silence, while the tears poured down like rain, and the shadowy figure before her shook with suppressed sobs. The child Hope had become the benefactor of the orphan, for there was healing in those tears.