“Miss Summerhayes! why did you laugh as we came upstairs?” “Oh!” said Janet, quite restored from that momentary impression. “I don’t know. Because it is curious to come into the middle of a story; it is like beginning a book, as you do sometimes, at the third volume. One wonders what has happened before, as well as what is going to happen now.”
“You think that’s a story!” cried Julia, with scorn; “be{55}cause Gussy’s a fool, and that man—I can’t endure that man.”
“You make that too easy for anyone to see. I think you made a sound like what they do in the theatre.”
“I hissed him,” said Julia, her lowering eyebrows closing down over her eyes. “I always do. He can’t bear to be hissed. He is just like an actor: it makes him mad, and that is why I do it, and I always shall. I don’t care what anyone says.”
“That is a pity,” said Janet; “for it will not harm him, but you. You forget that people care very little for the opinion of a girl at your age, especially when it is rudely expressed.”
“They don’t care much for your opinion,” said Julia, furiously.
“No; I did not expect it; and I have no opinion, except that you must learn to be a gentlewoman—if that can be learnt—or else I must go away.”
Julia received this, as she usually did Janet’s remonstrances, with a look of rage, a flush of shame, and then a sudden self-subdual.
“You want to go away,” she said. “You are the only nice one that has ever been here; and you want to go and leave me. I know you do. You’ll go before Dolff comes home, and then he’ll never know you, and will think—will just think I am a stupid and don’t know anything, as they all do!”
“Well, my dear child,” said Janet, who understood this broken speech perfectly well, and knew that she was being represented to “Dolff” in the brightest colors, a thing by no means indifferent to her, “they are not very far wrong if they think so; for a girl who hisses—even in the theatre——”
“I did once,” cried Julia, “in the theatre! They had a hideous ballet in the pantomime like what one reads of in books—a woman making a show of herself—oh!” The girl’s cheeks blazed crimson at the thought. “And I hissed—like this.” Here Julia uttered a sound, in comparison with which a whole serpent-house in highest exasperation would have retired defeated, with the whole force of her youthful energy and breath. “Gussy pinched me black and blue to stop me, and I wouldn’t. They never would take me to the theatre again.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Janet “So now you hiss the people who come to call.”
“Only Charley Meredith,” said Julia. “And,” she added, subduing her tones, “if he came in the morning I should not mind: but he comes at night without being invited, with his music, as if mamma was obliged to have him whether she liked{56} or not. And he gives himself such airs, as if he knew that Gussy—you think I don’t care for Gussy, Miss Summerhayes—but I do. I could kill her when she looks silly like that! A woman! to let a man see that she——oh! I could kill her when she looks at him like that!”
“That is a pleasant way of showing how much you care for her,” said Janet. “It is quite natural that at fourteen you should think you know best; but if I hear you hiss again,”—the governess kissed the tips of her fingers—“good-bye, my dear; that’s all that there will be to say.”
“You say that to beat me down,” cried Julia. “You don’t really care, not a bit, whether I behave myself or not. I am not sure that you are any better than Charley Meredith. I don’t know that there is not just a pair of you. Well, then, do it if you like, there! take him away from Gussy, break everybody’s heart, make Dolff think me a stupid for all I’ve said. I can see in your eyes that’s what you’d like to do.”
“You have made me out a very pretty programme,” said Janet, laughing. “I think I shall begin by looking over your exercises, and giving you double black marks for everything. We need not have come upstairs so early but for that pretty habit of yours; and, for my part, I would rather listen to the music than to a little girl storming. Oh, yes, my dear, I know you are taller than I am, but that makes no difference. Be quiet; we can hear it mounting up now that I’ve opened the window a little. Ah! bravo! that was well done.”
“Do you really care for that squalling?” Julia demanded, with a mixture of wonder and scorn.
Janet was standing by the window which she had opened. The school-room was over the drawing-room, though on the second floor, and in the quiet of the night Mr. Meredith’s fine voice came out like the blast of a silver trumpet. The night was mild and very still, and perhaps Janet’s youthful bosom was still a little fluttered by that sudden surprise which had made her heart beat. She leaned a little out, listening, with a natural self-pity that she was not there, and realization of the different fate of Gussy, to whom music and love and all the softnesses of life were open, while she was sent away out of sight with a naughty child. Janet had far too much strength to give in or permit anyone to see that she suffered from this, nor, indeed, did she suffer more than the vague and momentary sensation of being at a disadvantage. But she leaned out to listen with a little wistfulness, impatient of the childish vehemence, and as yet but little awakened to the deeper nature of her unmanageable pupil. This pensive mood, however, was{57} soon to be interrupted. In the very midst of the liquid notes ascending from below, there came suddenly, as if it rent the air, a wild and wailing cry—the cry as of a spirit in pain. It seemed to Janet to rise almost from her side, close by. She started back from the window and turned round with a scared and terrified exclamation,
“What is that? What is that?”
For a moment it occurred to her that some terrible accident or hurt must have happened to the girl by her side.
“I—don’t know,” said Julia, stammering as if she could not get out the words. But she was not terrified as Janet was. The governess did not notice this at first in her own panic. She ran to the door of Julia’s room, from which direction the sound seemed to come, and flung it open crying, “Who is there? Who is there?” then shut it again in terror of what she might see.
“Oh, run and fetch some one! oh, go and alarm the house, Julia! there must be something dreadful in there.”
“There’s nothing,” said Julia. “What are you making such a fuss about? It’s—a boy outside—they make such hideous noises—it’s——”
She stopped, for the same sound was repeated, this time lower and further off, as it seemed—a cry of pain dropping into a low prolonged wail. Janet rushed to the school-room door and out upon the staircase, calling for help, for some one to come. She was wild with alarm. There was no doubt in her mind that some wretched creature, a madman, probably, had got into the rooms.
But all was quiet in the house below, the doors all shut, everybody occupied with their own business, singing going on in the drawing-room, talk in the servants’ apartments downstairs—nothing it would seem had been disturbed but Janet alone.
“It’s nothing,” repeated Julia. “Oh, Miss Summerhayes, come back, please, and don’t make a fuss. Mamma is so angry if there’s any fuss made. If I go into my room and look all round, and convince you there’s nobody, will that do? There’s nobody, I know. It’s either a boy passing outside, or it’s an owl or something that lives under the ivy in the wing............