The Story of a Governess - Mrs. Oliphant

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blood! What was it?—was it a spirit or a living creature in pain? Where was it?—in this tranquil house, as Julia seemed to allow? And worst and most dreadful question of all—would it come again? This last thought was the one that kept all her faculties awake. Might it at any moment burst once more out of the quiet? Janet thought that if she had to undergo that moment of horror again she must go mad or die. She was afraid to go to bed—afraid to close her eyes—lest she should be awakened by that cry. The singing went on late downstairs, and Janet listened anxiously to the departing of the visitor, the bolting of the door behind him, the little bustle as Mrs. Harwood was wheeled to her room on the ground floor, and Gussy came upstairs. But she did not come as far as the school-room, which she sometimes did to see if all was well. It was too late to disturb any one—to wake up the sleepers. Janet heard Miss Harwood coming upstairs singing softly over to herself her part in one of the duets. Gussy was happy; no alarm or sense of desolation was in her.

      “If I were happy like that I would come upstairs to see how the poor little governess, all alone, was getting on,” Janet said to herself, opening her eyes in the dark. But, indeed, she would have done nothing of the kind. She would have been perhaps more indifferent than Gussy was to the governess in causeless trouble, feeling “out of it”—or else in a visionary panic thinking that she had heard a ghost.

      The night wore away gradually, and nothing happened. When it was between three and four, Janet, worn out, fell fast asleep. She slept till the breakfast-bell rang, and had to hurry her dressing and hasten downstairs with an apology, wondering at herself and her own foolish terror in the red light of the wintry morning. Gussy was very ready, it was evident, to be questioned about last night. She began her self by expressing her distress that Janet had been hastened away for “that child,” and narrated to her with subdued triumph how many “things” Mr. Meredith and she had gone through, and what good practice it was.

      “The Harwoods generally are so unmusical,” Gussy said; “I never did get any encouragement at home. But fortunately mamma likes Charley, and he may do what he pleases. I do enjoy a musical evening so. Hasn’t he a delicious voice?”

      “It is a charming voice,” said Janet.

      “And he is so well trained. To sing with him it is like getting a lesson. He wanted to know whether you were musical, but I said I feared——”

      “I used to be thought pretty good for accompaniments,” said Janet.

      “Oh, really!” but Gussy did not receive this statement with much delight. “Perhaps you’ll help me to practise my part,” she said, and returned to sound the praises of Charley.

      Janet would not introduce the subject of her own terrors, and if she had been ever so intent upon doing so, there was no opportunity, for Charley and his songs and his perfections left no room for any other discourse. And when Mrs. Harwood appeared matters were not much better. The old lady remarked that Janet was pale, and feared that she had not been able to sleep for the singing.

      “The fact is that Mr. Meredith has not been in London for a long time, and I could not cut them short, could I, the first night?”

      To describe the impatience with which Janet heard all this would not be easy. She said to herself, what was Mr. Meredith to her? What were his songs, his attentions, the grief of his absence, the joy of his return? She listened with a great eagerness to interrupt, to break through this eternal burden of the self-occupied to whom their own little affairs were everything, with her own questions. But when Mrs. Harwood’s voice stopped Janet did not find hers. What could she say?

      “I heard a dreadful cry last night. What was it? You know what it was!” It seemed to her when she turned this question in her mind that it was a thing impossible to say. “I heard—last night,” she began.

      “Ah, the singing!” cried both ladies together. “I hope it did not keep you from your sleep, my dear,” said Mrs. Harwood. And, “I’m sure you could not hear me, and Charley’s voice is always a pleasure,” cried Gussy.

      Janet’s mouth was closed, and she could say no more.

       Table of Contents

      Janet’s life seemed to herself to change from this day, though no one else seemed aware of any difference, and all its outward expressions went on as before. For a few nights she was afraid to sit alone upstairs, and hurried to bed in the hope of getting to sleep, and thus avoiding any repetition of the cry which had so rung through and through her on the night of Mr. Meredith’s first appearance; but, as the days and nights passed in perfect tranquillity, this scare passed away from her mind, and she began to be able to explain to herself that it must have been some boy in the road outside, belated and anxious to make a sensation in that still neighborhood, or perhaps that fancy had exaggerated the fantastic wailings of a love-sick cat into something portentous and terrible. Both these things were possible, but that anything mysterious could exist in this comfortable, modern, respectable house, where everything went as on velvet by carefully kept rule and order, was an idea too ridiculous to be entertained. At night, it is true, Janet had various fallings back from this confidence, and reminded herself with renewed panic that Julia had heard and had not been astonished as she was, but evidently was aware of some explanation which she did not give. These grew fainter and fainter, however, as one week passed after another, and nothing occurred.

      There was one thing, however, which Janet only remarked after this period, though she was afterwards assured that it was no secret, but might have been seen from the first day, and that was the appearance of a man-servant in the house where none but women ever waited upon the family. She met him one day going across the hall, a respectable, serious man of middle age, just such a butler as Mrs. Harwood ought to have had. But the ladies had no butler; they had a highly-respectable parlor-maid, just such as, failing the butler, a family in St. John’s Wood, entirely comme il faut, must have had—tall, staid, good-looking, but not too good-looking, well-dressed, and thirty-five. The man, who had all the air of perfect familiarity with the house, and who was in indoor dress, with noiseless shoes, went across the hall from the servant’s quarters towards the side upon which was the wing, an apparently unoccupied part of the dwelling.

      After that first meeting, which startled her, Janet saw this man again and again. There was no explanation of him, he was never seen but in these chance encounters, yet he was no secret, nor was his presence in any way concealed. What, after all, had a stranger to do with it? It was nothing to Janet. But her strong sense of spectatorship, and the curiosity of imagination which made her keen to find indications of a story anywhere or everywhere, caused a half-conscious groping on the part of the governess among unexplained incidents. It was some time, however, before she began to associate the mysterious man-servant with the alarming outcry which had almost, she thought, deprived her of her wits, ringing as it did into the silence of the night. After a few weeks had passed, she asked herself if, indeed, she ever had heard it at all—whether it was not a delusion of her senses, the reverberation of some well-known and vulgar sound. Needless to say that Janet had read “Northanger Abbey,” and had been taught to smile at the investigations of our dear little Catherine, and their amusing issue: though, to tell the truth, her sympathy in Catherine Morland’s thirst for romantic adventure had been more strong than her amusement in the result, which disappointed her a little too.

      However, not even a romantic imagination disposed towards discoveries can survive the uneventful progress of weeks in which nothing happens. And Janet meantime had the other story going on before her eyes which she could study at her ease. Mr. Charles Meredith and his visits became now the chief interest of life in the house in St. John’s Wood. He dined once or twice, but only in company with another visitor; and on those occasions Janet did not form one of the party. Gussy explained that it would “put out the table.”

      “If I were to invite gentlemen for you and Ju, it would make quite a party, and mamma does not like parties when Dolff is away. And then Ju is too young to dine when there is company,” said Miss Harwood.

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