Chapter VI: At Wayatford

_June 10th, Monday._

HERE I have been ever since Saturday evening, and I might have been here for weeks, judging from my own feelings. It seems "ages" since I said good-bye to them all, and yet I am not unhappy, as I expected, only everything is strange. I mean, it is strange to think of spending three months in this house. It would not be strange if I were here for just a week or two.

Wayatford is a country town, more of a town than I fancied as to size, but so sleepy, oh, so sleepy! The people look drowsy, and the houses and shops as if nothing could ever wake them. Nothing goes on, I am told, and nothing happens, except the little everyday round of meals and house-doings and Parish-work.

"Why should anything happen?" uncle Basil asks. But I don't agree with him. I like things to happen; and I like a stir. If one is utterly buried in a tiny village, as we are at home for a year, why one makes up one's mind to it, and one doesn't look for anything else. But if one lives in a town as large as Wayatford, one does look for something a little different. "I" should not care to be in Wayatford year after year, with nothing to look back upon and nothing to look forward to. Unless of course I were obliged. I suppose one can do or bear anything, if one is absolutely obliged.

Uncle Basil's house is in the main street all among the principal shops, only it stands well back in its own garden, among masses of evergreens. It is the oddest little low house, with queer little low rooms, any and no sort of shape; and each room has at least three doors. One can perform the tour of all the ground-floor rooms, without once passing through the passage or once turning back. The garden is old-fashioned; and there are two middle-aged old-fashioned prim maid-servants, and an old-fashioned talkative gardener. I cannot imagine for my part why my uncle and aunt live here at all, except that the house happens to belong to them. But if I were they, I would let it, and go somewhere else,—somewhere a little more lively. I don't see that uncle Basil has anything whatever to do except to read books, and to take walks, and to look after aunt Marian. But he seems to count himself a desperately busy person, none the less.

He is not exactly the same uncle Basil who paid us a visit; I mean, he does not seem the same to me. I do not quite know how or why; I only feel that he is different. Not better or worse, but just unlike. Are people always so when one sees them first in somebody else's house, and then in their own? I like him more in some ways, and less in others. In fact, I can't quite make up my mind about him; and I am sure he cannot make up his mind about me.

And why should he? I do not understand myself; and I am perpetually puzzled at things I do and say, not knowing at all why I have done or said them. And if I cannot fully understand myself after all these years, is it likely that uncle Basil should have managed to get to the bottom of my character in just two or three weeks?

As for aunt Marian, I have an idea that she knows a great deal more about everybody than most people do; all the more, because she is not one of those people who are always making believe to read everybody, and to know what others are thinking about. If she began in that sort of way, one would know directly how little it meant.

I have never seen her before. It is fifteen years—not more—since uncle married her; and almost directly afterwards, she had a frightful accident which injured her spine, and laid her aside for several years. Though rather better now, she can never get over it. She never leaves home, and uncle seldom leaves her.

She is very small and thin, and her figure is quite crooked. Most of her time is spent lying on a particular kind of couch, near the window of the drawing-room, where she writes letters, and keeps accounts, and gives household orders, and sees people, and does no end of work with her poor little bony hands. She has a rather pretty small wedge-shaped face, pink and white like a girl's, with a big forehead, and eyes that look at you straight and steadily, in a curious quiet way, as if she meant to find out every single thing, before making up her mind whether to like or dislike you. Not that I think she ever dislikes anybody really—I mean as I do,—but only pities them.

When I first came, I thought she would never get to the end of her prelim. exam. Not that she stared in a horrid unblinking way, as some people do, but only that I "felt" her to be reading me. Somehow I did not very much mind. Only she seemed rather a cold sort of person, and I began to wonder how we should manage to get on together for three whole mouths.

But presently there came a little smile into her eyes, which changed the whole face. I don't mind saying to you, old journal, though I wouldn't say it to anyone else, that it was a look which made me think of somebody who should once in her life have taken a tiny peep inside the gates of heaven, and brought away a glimmer of the light for all her life after! And she said,—

"We shall contrive to rub on together somehow, shall we not?"

It was exactly as if she had known what I was thinking of. And I was so much taken by surprise that I all but said so outright. I only just stopped myself in time.

"I intend to make you useful," she went on. "This may be a Sleepy Hollow kind of place,—yes, I see you think that; but even in the sleepiest of Sleepy Hollows people have to be clothed and fed, and occasionally to be nursed."

"I shouldn't think you could do much nursing, aunt Marian."

"If not, I may pull some of the strings which set others to work. And if I cannot lift a sick person out of bed, I may make him a vest or a nightingale to wear in bed."

"I should like to be useful—if I can!" I said, with a rather melancholy glance back upon the last few weeks.

"Your mother told me that she was sure you would wish it."

I wondered if my mother had said any more. But of course, if she had not, it would make no difference. Uncle Basil will have said more. He seems to have quite given up any idea of setting me to rights. Perhaps he has handed over to aunt Marian the responsibility of me. He has not once attempted any lecturing since I arrived.

_June 11th, Tuesday._

I find no end of things to write about already.

A walk with my uncle is the first thing after breakfast; and then aunt Marian keeps me busy for a full hour over letters and accounts. She makes me work in good earnest, and yet somehow I like it. "New broom!" Juliet would say. Is that it?

To-day, after lunch, in came the Rector, Mr. Farrars, and his eldest daughter. I had heard him in Church on Sunday, and I knew his face again directly, a kind face but rather anxious and absent, as if he had a lot to think about. But it was not so much he as the girl that interested me. This was my first glimpse of her, because on Sunday she was not in the pew with the Rectory children. In the morning, she had to take the place of some absent teacher with the school-children, and in the evening she was not there at all.

When she came in with her father, I could hardly attend to anybody else. She is about my height or a shade taller, and slight, with a pale face, not in the least pretty. I cannot think what there is about her, so unlike the common run of girls; but certainly there is something. It is not good looks, though I found myself going back again and again to her face. I don't think it is exactly what people call "sweetness" either. There is a kind of composure, almost like middle-age, and a want of lightness, a want of spring, as if she had lived through so much already as to have grown old before her time.

Perhaps she has; for ever since Millicent was seventeen, and that is four years ago, she has been head of the household, and has had to manage everything. Yes, really to manage everything, and to think of everything; because her father is very busy in the Parish, and is rather a forgetful man, and he leaves all the home arrangements to her, exactly as he used to leave them to his wife.

Only think! Ever since she was seventeen, just my age, to have had the whole household upon her shoulders, and her father to see to, and all those children to arrange for, and Parish doings besides, and nobody to be any help. Four years of it; and before that for a whole year and more, her mother was slowly dying; and Millicent did the chief part of the nursing. So I don't see how she "can" be young still. I do not wonder that at twenty-one, she has the look of thirty or forty,—in her expression, I mean.

It is such a patient face, with its soft pale skin, and such quiet gentle brown eyes, that I think I fell in love with it and her straight off. And if she is not pretty, she is far better than pretty. I would rather, oh, much rather, be like Millicent than like Clarissa and Juliet, even though they are counted so handsome by almost everybody; and I suppose nobody would count Millicent in the least good-looking. She is "good," not good-looking, and is not that the best?

"Millicent is a much occupied person," aunt Marian said; "but I want you two girls to be together sometimes."

"I should like it, too," Millicent added.

There the matter stood still. Nothing was arranged, as I had hoped. Perhaps aunt Marian waited to see first what I should wish. After the two were gone, she told me some of what I have written down about Millicent's past, and then went on,—"The child has had a severe life, so far. She is the pivot upon which everything turns at the Rectory. Mr. Farrars depends upon her utterly."

"She must be very clever."

"That depends on what you mean by 'clever.' She has the gift of resolute concentration of purpose to each duty in succession, and it goes a long way."

"And she must be very strong."

"Strong in will, and strong in self-forgetfulness. Not strong at all in body."

"I like her face very much. She is a girl I could make a friend of."

Aunt Marian looked so much amused, that I could not help saying, "You mustn't think I can make friends quickly with anybody and everybody. I don't make friends like other girls; only I think I could make a friend of Millicent Farrars."

"Why not make friends like other girls?"

"Why,—I don't! It isn't my way. People have different ways. I can't take to most people."

"The 'taking' must of course be mutual."

It was said so very quietly, that just at the moment, I really did not see all that she meant. Since then, I have been thinking a great deal. Did she mean that people do not take to me? Am I such a disagreeable girl? Would my mother say so? But of course Mother loves me; and she would love me whatever I might be like, in spite of everything. Other people would not. Do I really make few friends, because others do not take particularly to "me?" I always thought it was just the other way, because I was slow in liking other people.

Some day I will ask aunt Marian, but not yet. She does not really know me yet, and perhaps when she does, she will have a rather better opinion. I mean to make her like me if I can, in spite of all that I suppose the girls have said to uncle Basil about my ways. And I mean to make Millicent like me too.

_June 14th, Friday._

Yesterday uncle Basil and I called at the Rectory, to find nobody at home. And to-day a message came, asking me to go in to tea at five o'clock. So at five I went.

There are eight brothers and sisters younger than Millicent; no, I mean seven brothers and one sister. The three biggest boys are away at school, but the four at home make quite noise enough for anything and anybody. All the four are exactly alike, except in size; I could not see a shadow of difference. As for learning their names, one might of course do that, but to pin the right names to the right boys seems hopeless. The little girl is only eight years old, so she is no help to Millicent. A governess comes every day for four hours to teach the little girl and the two youngest boys; and the two elder go to school, and Millicent overlooks their preparation.

Besides that, there is the housekeeping,—no easy matter, because they are not at all well off,—and there are the accounts, and the mending, and the Parish, and Mr. Farrars. And worst of all, there must be the feeling of responsibility, the knowing that "she" has to do everything, and think of everything, and to keep everything going, with no one to help or remind her.

I never could have believed in any one girl getting through such an amount. And yet Millicent makes no fuss.

"It isn't always quite easy," she said, when I exclaimed at it all, "but if one is methodical, one can manage pretty well."

It slipped out, just by the merest accident, that she is always up and dressed by seven o'clock every morning, and that she hardly ever gets into bed before twelve o'clock. No wonder she looks pale. But when I said so, she answered, "The things have to be done, you see!" and then let the question drop, as if there were nothing more to be said.

She is really good, I am sure of that, not with show goodness, but true genuine goodness. I know it, not so much from what she says, as from what she does not say. And I know already that I shall like to have Millicent for my very particular friend. I shall like to tell her everything, and to do whatever she advises. She is not full of fun and laughter like some girls, and perhaps some people might even count her a little dull, but I do not, and I never shall. Even though she seems so quiet and gentle, and inclined to be silent, and almost as if she hardly cared for a joke, still that makes no difference. Or rather, I like her all the better for it. Any commonplace sort of girl can joke and laugh, and say silly things, but very few girls could ever do what Millicent does.