Chapter III

In the beginning Miss Durgon had given the children their lessons. But now her dignity, generated in the warm air of leisure and comparative luxury, and sunned by certain other things that lay beyond the walls of Mr. Bruno's home (and beyond the walls of his knowledge), was, if anything, given a sharper outline by Daphne's insolent rebellion. Transformed from an impecunious gentlewoman who sought a housekeeper's situation into a lady of social graciousness, who consented to take over the reins of a distinguished writer's home, she began to think it unreasonable that she should be asked to play nursery governess to a brace of obstreperous children. So, on Mr. Tenter Bruno's return from the East, she laid before him a project that had long been maturing in her mind. He looked up from his easy chair and his book, desirous only of being relieved as quickly as possible from this visit of a domestic problem.

"Yes, by all means, tell me, Miss Durgon. By all means...."

She explained. She felt that the engagement of a daily governess for her charges would be well worth the small outlay entailed. The children were getting older and should have longer time for lessons than she could give them. She was worried by the feeling that she was hardly doing justice to the two departments of her work: the management of his household and the education of his children.

"Forgive me," smiled Mr. Bruno. "The market in governesses is a thing I've so little studied that I've no conception what they cost. Are they quoted these days at two figures or three? ... H'm," he added, seeing his housekeeper uncomfortably bewildered. "Their salaries, I mean."

"Forty pounds a year, with lunch and tea, should secure us a really good governess."

Mr. Bruno had a restive feeling that if he could purchase the right to continue his present chapter for forty pounds a year, it had best be done.

"Oh, well, we could afford that much," he said.

"Yes," confirmed Miss Durgon, "and then I should be at liberty to devote myself entirely to the management of the house and the moral care of Daphne and Owen--with, of course, the oversight of their studies."

Mr. Bruno's hand turned a page of his book, and Miss Durgon therefore stepped obligingly towards the door. It was as she had foreseen; he would edge away from any long thinking on a theme unrelated to his books.

"Of course, you'll do all the advertising and interviewing necessary," he tendered over the tops of his reading spectacles, now happily replaced. "I cannot possibly be besieged by young governesses."

Miss Durgon assured him that she would certainly undertake all that.

And few undertakings could have given her more pleasure. It was a serene satisfaction to be on the luxurious employing side of an advertisement in the _Warden_, after inhabiting the meagre country on the employee's side. She saw herself sitting with some state in the dining-room and giving an audience to nervous applicants. She would be impressively dressed for them.

There were but two replies to her advertisement for a "governess, young, bright, willing," of which she had only ordered one insertion, since it was being paid for out of the housekeeping money. To these two applicants she wrote instructions for them to call at given hours. The first was a lady unmistakably older than Miss Durgon herself, and quite unsuitable, because it would be difficult to order her about; besides, the creature was offensively careful to parade the plumes of a fallen gentlewoman. The second, who called an hour later that morning, seemed far more suitable, and her suitability received adventitious increase from the contrast with her predecessor. She was a little spare sprig of a girl who could be easily planted and trained, and would never, one imagined, dare to be "superior" with such a long-rooted and graceful tree as her lady employer. Her round cheeks, slightly flushed, her simple frock, her hair the tint of a harvest field, and her shy, escaping eyes were the likely efflorescence of a nature ingenuous and pliable.

When Miss Durgon floated into the dining-room, wearing the majesty of a prospective employer, this little Miss Carrell rose respectfully and remained standing; and it was not till Miss Durgon had taken her chair and rested leisured and well-to-do hands on her lap that Miss Carrell, in response to a hint, sat on the edge of an arm-chair, holding her little handbag on her knees. And yet she was not nervous, Miss Durgon saw; it was simply good manners.

"I am Miss Durgon, who wrote to you, you know. I am the--er--the guardian of Mr. Tenter Bruno's children; in fact, I've managed everything for him since his dear wife died in giving birth to the younger child." Miss Durgon paused, thinking that perhaps this slip of a girl understood none of these things. "Well, Miss--er----"

"Carrell," breathed the girl.

"Of course, of course. Well, Miss Carrell, I want to do my best for these children--in fact, hitherto I've felt I ought to teach them the elements myself; no one can do it so well as their parent or guardian; but now they're getting bigger and demanding too much of my time, and Mr. Bruno's household is a large and increasing charge, and my social engagements forbid me doing full justice to the children's needs."

"I quite see," was wafted from the easy chair.

"Yes. Well, I imagine you would arrive in the morning, soon after breakfast, and give them lessons till one o'clock, having lunch with them--and then perhaps a walk in the afternoon, and tea. And after that Hollins will take care of them till bedtime. Hollins, I should tell you, is of her kind, an excellent person, whom I retain in the service of the house, though I must say she's not very loyal to me, and I've reason to believe is not above speaking against me; but she's been with the family since before her mistress died, and you know these old servants--they never do take to, or admit any good in a new--er----"

"New regime," supplied the easy chair understandingly. "Yes, I know. They're always like that."

"Yes, admit any good in a new regime. Well, I suppose you've had some experience."

"Oh, yes." Miss Carrell bowed her pale hair over her hand-bag and produced an envelope. "I can show you this testimonial. I have been for three years a mistress at Hemans House."

She said this (unfolding the testimonial) as though she expected any well-informed woman to know Hemans House by repute; and Miss Durgon, in knowing nothing about the place, felt in danger of a social fall.

"Oh, were you? That's interesting. But you hardly look old enough for----"

"I am twenty-two," interrupted Miss Carrell.

"You went as junior mistress, I imagine."

"Yes. But later on Miss Vidella entrusted the elder girls to me quite a lot. You see, I'd been there over two years, which was longer than any of the other mistresses----"

"This Miss--Verdella, did you say?--must have been difficult to get on with."

Miss Carrell shrugged.

"Well, she was rather quaint." A blush rushed over her face, as if she had unthinkingly let some little monkeyish animal, deliberately battened underground, peep out its nose. "I don't think the other mistresses tried to understand her and shape themselves to her ways."

"And why did you leave, if you were so helpful to Miss Verdella?" asked Miss Durgon, who, not having noticed the peep, was thinking, "This girl is just what I want," and imagining herself making of Miss Carrell a pleasant companion, though a properly subservient one.

"Oh, mother was not at all well, and I felt I ought to get daily employment and live at home. Here is Miss Vidella's testimonial."

The sheet of notepaper accepted by Miss Durgon showed, beneath the name, "Hemans House" and a crest, a paragraph written in an inordinately neat and punctilious hand:

Miss Vidella has pleasure in testifying that Miss Mary Carrell was an assistant mistress at this school for nine terms, during which she gave every satisfaction, discharging her very responsible duties with propriety and considerable ability.

AMY VIDELLA.

Miss Durgon handed it back.

There was further question and answer, much of which amounted to saying again, in a different shade or with new accompaniments, what had been said before; and then Miss Durgon hinted:

"Well, I shall be interviewing other applicants, so I will let you know my decision later."

Miss Carrell rose obediently.

"Thank you very much indeed. I feel I could do all you want. Though I'm afraid I can't let you know finally till the day after to-morrow, as I am seeing some other parents to-morrow, and one the following day."

It was said so gently that Miss Durgon could suspect neither impertinence nor guile. And directly she heard of these other prospective employers she desired to secure at once this only suitable girl. And really, too, despite her vesture of an employer's ease, she had no experience of engaging governesses.

"Hum. That's a nuisance. I'm particularly anxious to know definitely by this time to-morrow. I think--yes, I think that, for my part, I could definitely say that I should be prepared to offer you the--the post. Is it at all likely that you could decide definitely now? Are the other situations likely to be more attractive than this one?"

"No, I don't think so," said Miss Carrell, her bag in her hand, and prepared to leave. "Only--only one of them is worth fifty pounds a year--and, for mother's sake, I feel I ought to consider it."

"Fifty pounds a year! That seems a large salary for so young a woman. I don't think Mr. Bruno would be prepared to give that."

"No," agreed Miss Carrell, "and I've no doubt you will get somebody equally suitable for a less amount. Thank you so much for considering----"

"Yes, but wait a minute. Mr. Bruno entrusts most of these affairs to me, and I feel I can commit him to fifty pounds a year. I am so anxious to have things settled early. Would you say definitely that you would come if I offered that?"

Miss Carrell smiled brightly and gratefully.

"Yes, I think so. I don't like to force you up in that way--but I have my mother to consider."

By now Miss Durgon could picture the mother in her shabby room, and felt a pity, mixed with inevitable contempt, for the indigent lady.

"Precisely. Then you will come?"

Miss Carrell nodded and smiled.

Daphne was excited about the arrival of a new governess, and Owen pretended to the same enthusiasm, though, to tell the truth, he could not see that it was matter for congratulation. But Daphne had ascertained from Hollins that the approaching Miss Carrell was little and pretty and fair-haired. "Almost a child herself, you might say, and likely to be as much a playfellow, so to put it, as a governess. I don't often take to people first go-off, as the saying is, but there, she fair got me."

"Well, she'll be better than old Durgon," answered Daphne, who liked abusing the housekeeper to Hollins, perceiving that, though the "sauce" was properly condemned, it was not unsavoury.

"Now, then, Miss Daphne, you're getting that rude and bold, I don't know what's coming over you."

"Well, she is a beast, and you know you think it."

Owen, who was listening, looked alarmed at such a plain statement of fact.

"I know I never said such a thing in my life," affirmed Hollins. "You know I never."

"Saying's one thing, and thinking's another."

"And saucing's one thing, and getting out of my way when I'm busy's another. So you be gone, miss, or it'll be idling's one thing and bed's another."

It was early evening, before bedtime, and Daphne, hardly knowing why she did it, ran into her father's study. She forgot to knock, and was only checked half-way across the carpet by a mutter of protest from the lips of Mr. Bruno, who, sitting in his easy chair, dropped his book a few inches, but no farther.

"The idea embodied in a closed door, Miss Cataract, is that it should be nervously knocked at--even apologetically knocked at--by mere idle children. Also, should it admit them on sufferance, that they must tread delicately across the privacy beyond."

Since his return from India he had been aware of something in his daughter's large, sparkling eyes and unrestrained naturalness that always compelled him to adopt with her a gnomic tone, highly civilised. He liked to dazzle her with a Roman candle of words, or reduce her to temporary immobility with some massive period. His skill at the game pleased him.

"Well, can I come in?"

"On a rapidly expiring lease--yes."

Daphne stood there and wondered what she had come for.

"We've got a new governess, papa."

"I should have thought a lion-tamer was more what was wanted."

"She's coming on Monday."

"Well, it seems hardly an occasion for turbulent rejoicing. A task-mistress who will (I hope) press your nose firmly on a grindstone is not a new doll or a new dress."

"I hate dolls."

"I forgot. Let us say, then, she's not a new football. Why this strange frenzy?"

"Oh, it'll be fun."

"I haven't gathered from Miss Durgon that you saw much humour in your tasks with her."

"I hate Miss Durgon."

"Hush, mænad! What you hate is restraint and healthy discipline. I hope this new governess swishes you often and soundly."

The subject of whipping always fascinated Daphne. She was accustomed to ask her friends in a lowered voice if their fathers and mothers whipped them, and to read over and over again all stories where such execution was done on refractory boys and girls. It was a subject that gave a curious exaltation similar to that provided by pictures of little black savages disappearing into the maw of a crocodile.

"Were you ever whipped, papa?"

"Most certainly. And by its gracious effect I am what I am."

"Well, why don't you ever whip me and Owen?"

She sat on the table to hear his explanation.

"I am a very busy man, Duffy; and though the task you suggest is important and honourable, and of real service to society--even one to which no artist need be ashamed to lend a hand--I yet presume to think that the work on which I am at present engaged"--he significantly replaced his glasses--"is even more important. Besides, I can remember past occasions when----"

Daphne changed her position, lying along the table so that she rested on her elbow and one foot hooked itself over the table's edge.

"Oh, yes, you've spanked us sometimes, but I don't call that the real thing."

"Let us hope, then, that this governess will be made of heavier metal. What did you say her name was?"

"Carrell."

"It doesn't sound promising. I can hardly hear the swish of a rod in such musical syllables. But we must hope for the best." He lifted up his book. "Well, are you sure you have not outstayed your tenancy?"

With a half-sulky "All right!" Daphne departed, but her father did not immediately continue his book. This slight change in Daphne, noticeable after a long absence! It was as if she had crossed a first boundary line. With her long, narrow limbs, her figure like a boy's, and her unconsciously sinuous movements--yes, already feminine and alluring--she had a power to ruffle the still pool of his complacency. It would need, after such a glimpse of her, to be calmed again. He protruded his under-jaw as he faced a problem, and his thinking ran along courses such as these: "What more could I have done for her? While she was a baby, I could only trust her to these women, and was surely wise in getting on with my work for her sake and her brother's. But now--now that her mind is like a sponge, and a good quality sponge, too, I fancy, ready to soak up all things--what can I do? I have brains and ideas, both of which are probably absent in all these women. Ought I to leave her entirely to them, content that my love should be nothing more than an expansive emotion? But what can I do? I must work and read, and talk with stimulating minds, and her little mind has nothing to give me in the way of stimulus."

The question what he could do was so difficult to answer that Mr. Bruno turned again to his book.

But after a line or two he found himself analysing Daphne's enthusiasm about her governess and diagnosing it as a child's delight at playing at schools. Well, no better approach to studies could be imagined, and at least he could encourage it. A pleasing resolution occurred to him, and as it eased his conscience, he was able to get on with his book.

The next afternoon there arrived in a van two huge packages, wrapped in straw and sacking, and addressed to Miss D. D. T. Bruno and O. T. Bruno, Esq. To tearing fingers and searching eyes they revealed two school-desks in highly polished yellow wood, with sloping lids that covered deep interiors smelling like school-rooms. In the chair-back was an adjustable boss which could be raised up and down; it fitted the small of the sitter's back, and was designed to prevent stooping. Daphne soon raised hers to the right position, and Owen's to his, hers being several inches higher than her brother's.

Not till the following day could they watch the amusing process of turning the lower end of the nursery upstairs into a schoolroom. The two desks were put with their backs to the fire-place, and opposite them a table for Miss Carrell. An empty book-case was carried to a side wall, its shelves to be used for school-books and the earthenware bottle of ink. Daphne devoted the afternoon to stocking her desk with all the old exercise books, atlases, pencil boxes with sliding lids, freehand drawing books, rulers, sketch blocks and paint boxes she had used in the past. Always it was to be as tidy. Owen joined in the game, echoing her merriment, though he still found the preparations depressing enough.

On the Monday morning Miss Carrell arrived, and was shown by Miss Durgon into the schoolroom where the two children stood, somewhat sheepishly. But, as she removed her hat and patted her hand over her fair hair and smiled merrily at her pupils, Daphne recovered her ease and prepared to like her.

"You see," said Miss Durgon, who was particularly stately during this introduction of an employee to the scene of her labours, "I have prepared everything for you--desks for each pupil--so that your work may be as congenial as possible."

With a child's quick condemnation in elders of the fibs and brag that children sometimes employ, Daphne thought: "It wasn't you, it was papa." Mentally she said this to Miss Durgon's long back as it passed through the door, which shut rather quietly. They were in school.

Miss Carrell was going to be a great success. That was proved in the next few days. That was seen of all. What was not seen was the working of the lively, if somewhat unlettered brain beneath that innocent hair. It was Miss Carrell's policy just at present to win the enthusiastic appreciation of her pupils; and the same imagination which out of and during school hours was occupied with schemes for getting on could convert lessons, were the effort worth while, from dull tasks into captivating games. In these games Daphne was always given the lead, for Daphne, being manifestly the more important factor, was the one to be favoured. Sums, then, were done as races. Geography was a series of imaginary travels and trading expeditions. History was stories and make-believe, when Daphne would be Cœur-de-Lion or Warwick or Henry VIII, and Owen played the second lead, such as Anne Boleyn. "You ought to have been a boy, and he the girl," said Miss Carrell. "But then, of course, his mother wasn't quite so well when he was born."

They had exchanged history for some less interesting arithmetic when Miss Carrell offered this remark, and Daphne thought that compound division might well be held up while they pursued its bearings further.

"Why should that make any difference?" she asked.

The subject was palatable to Miss Carrell, even though it could only be discussed with children in a pretence of teaching them propriety.

"Because it does, and there's an end of it."

"But why?"

"You why on with your work, as your friend Hollins would say."

This remark, implying a criticism of Hollins, was designed to impress her pupil with the governess's intellectual superiority to the servant, and certainly achieved its end. "You'll understand these things when you are older."

"How much older must I be?"

"Oh, a lot older."

"Must I be sixteen?"

"Much older than that."

"Twenty?"

"Twenty-one at least."

"Do you understand these things?"

"Certainly I do. Now get on."

"But don't you have to be married before you understand?"

Owen was looking from one to the other as if he doubted whether the conversation were all right.

"Maybe I'm married; maybe I'm not."

"You're _not_!" triumphed Daphne. "You're _Miss_ Carrell."

"Well, I understand what I'm talking about, so there!"

"What--how we were born, and all that?"

"Certainly."

"You have to be married, don't you, before you get children?"

"Yes." Her lips trembled a little.

"Can you get them without being married?"

"It has been done, but don't you get talking."

There was a knock at the door, and Mr. Bruno entered. Miss Carrell flushed brilliantly from throat to brow, not in fear of her pupils' father, but in fear lest he had heard their current studies.

Mr. Bruno, misunderstanding the flush, was gratified by it.

"You'll forgive this intrusion," bowed he, "but I thought I should like to see the children in surroundings to which they have so looked forward.... Dear, dear, this is real school. It revives memories of many fears and many disgraces. I hope you find them studious, Miss--Miss--er----"

It was Daphne who supplied her father with the missing name.

"Carrell."

"Silence, child. Don't you know you must not talk in school without having first raised your hand? ... Are they all they ought to be, Miss Carrell?"

"They're progressing very well. Daphne is especially promising."

"Yes, I have always said that it's a relief she has brains, since she has neither beauty nor goodness."

"She would naturally have brains."

Miss Carrell turned away as she offered the compliment; and Mr. Bruno covered his embarrassment by asking, "And what were you studying when I interrupted you?"

Miss Carrell flushed again, and hoping the sharp eyes of Daphne observed no guilt or prevarication, said:

"Let's see. Yes, we were doing multiplication and division."

"Multiplication and division," smiled Mr. Bruno. "Well, that is the whole of life. There's scope for you to point a fine moral, Miss Carrell. There's the multiplication and aggregation of gaseous matter to form the solar worlds, and its division again. There's the multiplication in childhood of ideas and impressions for their division later. And the multiplication of pounds, shillings and pence all through life, for their division and disintegration as fast as you can multiply them. It's the whole of life and the whole of knowledge. H'm----" Seeing that he had fogged everybody in the room, Mr. Bruno came to earth. "You will be sure to tell us what you want, will you not? I do not see a birch anywhere."

Daphne tittered delightedly, and Mr. Bruno felt he could depart without loss of reputation.

In the afternoons, the governess and children went walking to Brook Green; or to the towing path by the river, in the hope of seeing the practice of the Oxford and Cambridge crews; or towards the police station near S. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, in the hope of seeing a Black Maria. The conversation was mainly in the management of Miss Carrell and Daphne. Miss Carrell admitted that she was Cambridge, having learned that Daphne was Cambridge. And finding that the child loved to listen to stories, she often told stories all the way out and all the way back; terribly pathetic stories of her own invention, for she had not only written stories, but even sent them to editors, and could tell of one that had been detained fully seven months before the editor had decided that he must regretfully decline it.

In brief, Miss Carrell, by such methods and by subtle endearments and gentle touchings, was striving to insinuate in Daphne's mind the idea that she could love her governess, and love her passionately. And it rooted and blossomed with surprising quickness. Hating Miss Durgon, Daphne was ready to adore Miss Carrell; and adoring, to love the feeling of adoration. Motions came beneath her breast which made her want to hold Miss Carrell's hand, or lean against her on a seat; and she saw at once how ill they partnered with her fancied boyishness. But it was so lovely, the fact of loving, that she decided to suspend her masculinity for a while, trusting that if her demonstrations of affection were not too public, no one but Miss Carrell would observe the temporary change.

The greater tracts of lesson-time now were occupied by the subjects which were popular. Arithmetic and grammar were allotted a grudging half-hour, and then preceptress and students leapt the fence into the broad pleasances of history and literature. History had degenerated into "stories from history," when the picturesque incidents were collected from Dickens' "Child's History of England," or into "history from stories," when Miss Carrell retold such romances as Lytton's "Last of the Barons," or "Harold," or actually read to them some new sensational novel which she felt would entertain herself as much as her charges. Literature, which Miss Carrell, being a craftsman, considered her great subject, consisted in the governess's reading of the more delightful parts--that is, the more sentimental parts--of Dickens (High Literature and Dickens being, in the mind of Miss Carrell, almost synonymous).

The death of Little Nell and Paul Dombey and Poor Joe were held up before Daphne as the perfection of beauty. She listened with staring eyes, ambition running fast in her brain: "I should like to write like that. I should like to tell people beautiful things. I should like to create characters that are beautiful, and scenes that make your eyes all hot and your throat lumpy like this...." And even while Miss Carrell was still reading and she listening, ambition had shown her a triumphant career, and a death and burial that a nation mourned, and the people visiting her tomb for generations afterwards. Her wet eyes were Miss Carrell's delightful reward.

At the sound of any words that were called beautiful Daphne fluttered her wings to fly.

Poetry was hardly attempted. "You cannot be expected to develop a taste for poetry yet; it'll come later," explained Miss Carrell, knowing that she herself was still waiting for it. Just a few of the easier poems of Tennyson and Longfellow she had taught them (Great Poetry being almost synonymous with Tennyson and Longfellow): "The Schooner Hesperus," "Break, Break, Break," and "The Legend Beautiful," with its lovely line "Do thy duty, that is best. Leave unto thy Lord the rest." For Miss Carrell, like all completely self-centred women, loved noble thoughts.

At last, in her devotion, Daphne confided as a great secret to the understanding governess that she was resolved to write.

"Oh, well, it's easy in your case," said Miss Carrell. "You've got influence. Your father'll get all your stories published."

Such an idea had never presented itself to Daphne, but now, lingering and growing in her mind, it one day impelled her into Mr. Bruno's study for an examination of its worth.

"Papa," began she, a little shy of revealing her secret, "if I was to write books, would you be able to get publishers to publish them for me?"

"Me? No!" laughed her father. "I'm a critic. My business isn't to persuade publishers to produce the work of a young writer, but to discourage them from ever doing it again."

Daphne, as often when her father bantered her, looked confused and beaten back; and he felt sorry for her.

"Write, my little one. Write, if you feel the urge. I should be proud to think of you as a creative artist. But anything that you write, if it's to be stuff for pride, must have a quality that will get it through the doors, without a helpful kick from your father." He stared at her, standing there. "One day we must talk it all over. I can help you much, I dare say. But you're too young yet."

And he took up his book again.