The day had been rainy, some time after these occurrences, and the governess and her pupil were taking their needful exercise in the garden—up one side and down the other under the bare trees. They trudged along, making a sharp noise upon the wet gravel with their heels, occasionally very fast when they thought of it in the true spirit of a constitutional, occasionally lingering when they got into a discussion, and their tongues went faster than their feet. Things had fallen into comparative tranquillity, and Janet, though far from at ease in more respects than one, was drawn on from day to day with the force of the current, and had no idea, whatever mysteries there might lie under the surface or troubles might be to come, of packing up in a hurry and rushing away. She wanted to see what was going to happen—very curious, a little disturbed, with more things going on in her little mind than were known to any philosophy. Julia was the greatest talker when the two were alone, and Janet carried on her thoughts and the thread of many a reflection through the girl’s chatter at her ease—for Julia answered her own questions in a great many cases, or forgot that she asked any, and a very small response on the part of Janet sufficed to keep her satisfied.
What had happened, however, on this particular afternoon was that Dolff had seen them from a window, and had sallied forth to join them. Dolff had a very comfortable little study to which he retired for certain hours in the day “to work”—as everybody said. Perhaps in her heart Mrs. Harwood had not very much more confidence than other people in Dolff’s work. But she liked to say she had—to deceive, perhaps, a family friend now and then, or, what was more likely, herself.
Dolff, however, smoking a cigarette over his work—which in this case was an old French novel—saw the two figures in the garden, and threw aside his book with as much alacrity as if it had been Aristotle. He did not much care even for a French novel: literature of any kind was not his forte. And it was the afternoon, in which no man, nor woman either, has any call to work. It is going against the very rules of Providence to work between four and five o’clock, and you cannot disregard these laws with impunity. Nothing that is done between these hours is ever good. If it is reading, it runs out of your{130} memory as fast as you put it in; if it is writing, it is so bad that next morning you tear the paper across and throw it into the fire. Dolff was deeply sensible of this penalty of untimely labor. He threw his book aside, picked up his cap, and went downstairs. A walk in the garden before tea, which was a refreshment his mother liked him to share, was exactly what was needed to keep him up to the mark.
It is difficult to say how these things happen; but after Dolff joined the pair, Julia separated herself with an instinct which need not be defined. She found that two was company and three was none. She was a little impatient at the sight of her brother when he first appeared, but afterwards accepted the situation, and began to find that she had a great many things to distract her attention. She wanted to speak to the gardener. She wanted to see whether the snowdrops were appearing which grew in the grass under the trees. She wished to look how the primulas were coming on in the little conservatory. It was well, on the whole, that Dolff had appeared to leave her free, for she could not have allowed Janet to walk alone, and yet she had all these things to do.
Dolff was not very great at conversation, as the reader may imagine; and it was very seldom that he had found a chance of talking to Janet alone, or so nearly alone as they were now. He began with the weather, as was natural. It had been very cold. That night he went to the ball he thought he should have been frozen walking home, coming out of the hot rooms after dancing all night. It was a beautiful moonlight night, indeed, as Miss Summerhayes remarked—but dreadfully cold.
“I hope it was a nice ball?” said Janet.
“Oh, yes; it was a nice enough ball, but I did not know very many people. I wish you had been there, Miss Summerhayes; but perhaps you don’t care for that sort of thing?”
“Indeed I do,” said Janet. “I am very fond of dancing. At least, I used to be when I was in the way of it.”
“I hope you are not out of the way of it now. We must have a dance at Christmas. I am sure you dance to perfection, Miss Summerhayes.”
“Oh, no,” said Janet, with a laugh. “I don’t do anything to perfection, but I confess I am fond of dancing.”
“And of music, too,” said the grateful Dolff. “I know you are—good music, not my sort. And yet you are so very kind as to play for me.”
“Oh, please don’t speak so. I am very glad to play—for anyone. Everybody is very kind to me. I am here to be of any use I can.{131}”
“I hope, Miss Summerhayes,” said Dolff, growing very red, “that you don’t think I would presume to ask you—on that ground.”
“I don’t mean anything disagreeable,” said Janet. “I am sure you don’t ask me because I am the governess. But if your mother makes me like one of the family in other things, I must be so in this too.”
“How strange it is!” cried Dolff; and then he added, growing redder, “Don’t be angry with me, Miss Summerhayes. To think that being one of our family should be anything to you!”
“Why not?” said Janet. “It is always a great thing for a governess to have such a kind home.”
“A governess!” he said. “It hurts me to hear you call yourself a governess. Don’t, oh, don’t, please!”
“Why not?” she said again, and laughed. “It does not hurt me at all. I have no objection to being a governess. You need not be so careful of my feelings. I am quite contented to be what I am.”
“That is because you are——” Dolff murmured something in his young moustache, and grew redder than ever.
Janet was not sure that it was not ‘an angel’; and she was very much amused—not displeased either. There is no harm in being well thought of. She liked it on the whole.
“It is because I had—nothing else to look for,” she said; “and I am not a discontented person. One can always get a little fun out of everything. It was rather fun coming out like this upon the world, not knowing what sort of place one might find oneself in. It is the nearest to beginning a brand-new life of anything I know.”
“Well, about fun I can’t tell,” said Dolff, a little abashed. “I—I hope you think there is a little more in us than that.”
“There is a great deal more,” said Janet, “oh, a great deal more. You have all been so good. I mean before I came that it was fun imagining what my new family would be like, and how I should get on, and what sort of a pupil I should have, and all that.”
“I daresay,” said Dolff, “you never thought there would be a cub of a brother to bother you with his vulgar songs—oh, I know they’re vulgar—at least, I know now. A set of men, you know, is different. We bellow them out at each other’s rooms, and make an awful row in the chorus, and think them jolly.”
“And so they are, I suppose,” said Janet, with a smile.
“I assure you,” said Dolff, “I don’t think so now. I have been getting more and more ashamed of them, Miss Summer{132}hayes. I’ve gone on singing them just for the pleasure of your playing. But I’ll not do it any more.”
“I cannot see why you should give up what is a pleasure to you,” said Janet. “If you think I dislike playing for you, it is not so at all.”
“That’s because you’re so good and charitable; they’re not fit for you to touch. I can see that now. In a roomful of men that are thinking of nothing but noise and diversion, such things are all very well; but for your hands to touch, no, no—I see it all now.”
There was in Dolff’s voice a tone of touching regret. H............