Frederica and her Guardians Part 6

"Papa says he will send me home to England to school for a year or two, after I am done with Mrs Glencairn."

"And would you like that?"

"No, not at all. Mama would miss me so much, and Selina. But I don't intend to make myself unhappy about it. Very likely papa may forget all about it again."

"He forgets with ease some things," said Mr St. Cyr: "let us hope he may forget this."

"I should not like to go, because of mama," repeated Frederica.

"And that is a good reason why you will not come and stay with me. Ah, well! I do not blame you. This is not the place for a bright little flower like you to bloom in. I must still be alone, I suppose."

"But I will come sometimes and see you, and so will Tessie, if you would like us to do so," said Frederica, rising to go: "and I shall certainly come if I fall into any more troubles. You said I was to do so, did you not, Cousin Cyprien?"

"Surely, I shall expect you."

"And I have come already with these tiresome papers. And ah! I had forgotten. There were several things I wished to say about them."

"You need not say them," said Mr St. Cyr: "I shall understand them perfectly, I do not doubt, and they shall not trouble you any more, nor your mama either. I only wish all her troubles could be as easily ended as these shall be."

"But, Mr St. Cyr," said Frederica, pausing at the door, and growing very red, "mama does not wish that you should pay these things. Has not mama enough of money?"

"a.s.suredly, she has ample means. I have no thought of paying these debts. Do not alarm yourself."

"You are not angry with me, are you, Cousin Cyprien?" asked Frederica, wistfully.

"Angry! By no means, my little cousin. Why should I be angry? And now, remember you are to come again, you and your sister. Ah! how bright the suns.h.i.+ne is!" added he, as he opened the door.

Yes, it was almost dazzling at first, after the dimness within.

Frederica walked slowly home, not able, even in the bright suns.h.i.+ne, to shake _off_ the quieting influence of the old man's solitary home.

"I wonder why it seemed so strange?" said she to herself, "it must have been the silence. I wonder if any other voice is ever heard in that room. He must have visitors. And mama used to go there when she was a little girl, with grandpapa, I suppose. If I were to do anything wrong, or were afraid of an enemy, I think I would go there to hide myself.

But to live there always!--no, I could not do that; it is too silent and sad."

"Mama," she asked that night when she had told them of her visit, "was it always so still and gloomy at Cousin Cyprien's when you used to go there? Was he always alone in those days?"

"I do not remember it as gloomy or silent. Mr St. Cyr's mother lived there then, and there were a great many beautiful things in the house.

His brother was there too sometimes, but he was not a cheerful person."

"There are beautiful things there now. The cabinet is full of them, and there are the pictures on the walls," and she went on to name other things she had seen: "but still I wonder that he can content himself there, it is so solitary and silent."

"Mama," said Tessie, "I don't think it says much for Fred's good sense that she should talk in that way about Mr St. Cyr and his home. Very likely there are crowds of visitors there every night, though there was no one there then." Frederica shook her head. "No, you would not say so if you went there. Only very old people or shadows could ever be content there."

"Mama, listen to her! Is she sensible?"

"Well, perhaps it is foolish," said Frederica candidly. "But all the same I cannot help being sorry for Cousin Cyprien. What does he take pleasure in, mama?"

"My dear, a man like Mr St. Cyr has many sources of interest and pleasure that a young girl like you cannot be supposed to know anything about, or even to understand, if you knew them. I do not think he needs your pity or sympathy very much. He is very religious, I believe."

"And religion is enough to content some people," said Tessie flippantly.

"You know you told me the other day that Miss Baines' religion made her quite patient and happy, even when she was in great suffering, and not afraid even of death; and perhaps it suits Mr St. Cyr to be religious too."

"Yes; but then his religion must be quite different from Miss Baines'."

"Oh, well! it may be just as good, or it may suit him just as well. I think you are very foolish, and so does Selina."

But Selina said nothing. She listened always to her sister's talk, and "thought about it afterwards," as Tessie had said. Now she was repeating to herself, "Patient and happy even in great suffering; that must be a good and beautiful thing." And many thoughts did she give to Miss Baines and her sufferings, and her patience, before she saw her sisters again.

It was a beautiful sight, if there had been anyone to see it--the mother and her daughters as they sat there together on that last night before Frederica and Theresa went back to school. And yet it would have been a sorrowful sight to one who knew their history and their affairs, and who loved them and wished them well. For, except the dear love they bore to one another, there was not a single element of permanence in the happiness they enjoyed together.

That the hour of separation was drawing near, none who looked in Mrs Vane's face could fail to see. It was coming slowly, so slowly that she, who had almost forgotten what it was to be quite well and free from pain, had come to think that her illness was not of a kind that sooner or later ends in death. The thought that it might be so--that she must leave her children, young, without experience, every danger doubled by their own beauty and their grandfather's wealth, was a very painful one, but she put it from her, whenever it could be put away. Death was terrible to think of for their sakes. Yes, and terrible for herself too; for of the hope which sustains the Christian alike in life and in death, she knew nothing.

It is difficult to conceive of ignorance so utter as hers on all religious subjects. Her mother had not lived long enough to teach her the little that she herself understood of the religion of her people, and her father had had no religion. During the first years of her married life, she had sometimes gone to church with her husband, but she had never been much interested in what she heard, or tried to understand it. It had been a mere form with her; as indeed it had been always with her husband. She knew nothing of the way in which a sinner must be prepared for death, that must come some time, and which might be near, and there were times when the thought of this made her afraid.

Her daughters knew little more than she did. When the idea of sending them to school was first proposed, Mrs Ascot desired that it should be to one of the convents of the city, and probably there they would have been sent, had not Mr St. Cyr earnestly desired it too. His wish was enough to make Mr Vane decide against it, so bitter was his dislike, and they were sent to Mrs Glencairn's instead. Their religions teaching while there was, at their father's request, committed to the charge of the English teacher, Miss Pardie, and her instructions were not of a kind to make much impression on the minds of volatile girls, with whom she was not a favourite. The Scripture lessons which they shared with the other pupils, were too often learned and repeated as a task, and forgotten.

So neither the mother nor the children had any knowledge of the true way to find happiness, either in this world or the next. A vague dread and fear had come to Mrs Vane now and then during all the years of her illness, but she had tried to put them from her. They had come oftener of late, but she strove to put them from her still.

"Patient and happy in the midst of great suffering, and not afraid even of death." Many, many times in the days when the two girls had gone, and she was left to the quiet of their solitary days, did these words come back to her again.

CHAPTER SIX.

The reluctance with which the sisters always left home to return to school, was usually forgotten by them as soon as they found themselves among their companions, and busy with their lessons again. But this time it was not so with Frederica. She was restless and unhappy, finding it quite impossible to interest herself in her school-work, or to settle quietly to anything.

It was all the more difficult for her to do so, that she was in few regular cla.s.ses in the school. It was quite true as she had told her father, she had gone through and through all the books generally used by Mrs Glencairn's pupils. This was not saying much, for few of the girls stayed in school so long as they ought to have done--none had been so long as Frederica. Under the guidance of Miss Robina Glencairn, a clever and cultivated woman, she had gone far beyond the usual routine of school lessons, and had taken much pleasure in her reading, though she had read alone, but she could not interest herself in it now. It seemed foolish and wrong for her to be at school, learning things that she could very well do without, when her mother and Selina needed her so much at home. They _did_ need her, she was sure; and she grew irritable and impatient under the restraint that kept her from them, till she was in danger, her sister told her, of losing the reputation for politeness and amiability, which she had been all those years acquiring.

"And where is the good of fretting? If you can end it at the summer holidays, you may be very glad. You may be sure that p.r.i.c.kly Polly will not hear of your coming home just now. If I were you, I would learn the dictionary from the beginning to the end, or do something else to pa.s.s the time. Or you might ask Miss Robina for a story-book. She will give you one--you are such a pet of hers, I'm sure."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," said Frederica.

There was to be no walking that day, because of the rain, and her book would have been little pleasure to her in the large schoolroom, where the girls usually pa.s.sed the recreation hour on rainy days. But she knew where to find a refuge, to which, without special permission, even Tessie could not follow her. Frederica, because of Miss Robina's favour, and for some other reasons, was permitted to go to it if she chose, provided her presence was not required elsewhere. So she was soon knocking at the door of a room at the head of a dim staircase that led to no other room in the house.

"May I come in, Mistress Campbell?" said she, pausing on the threshold.

"Is it you, missy?" said a voice from behind a great basket of clothes that was standing on the floor. "Who would have expected to see you at this hour? Have you no' got the play? It canna be that you have a lesson to get over again!"

"No," said Frederica. "This is not a lesson book. But I have got a headache, and I am cross, and I can't be bothered with the girls; but I shall be very quiet and good, and not be in the way, if you will let me stay."

"Well, if you'll promise no' to fash me with your foolish talk while I am busy, you may stay."

"Shall I fash you here?" said Frederica, laughing, and springing up into the wide seat of one of the large dormer windows by which the room was lighted.

"Whisht now, and no' put me out of my count," said Mistress Campbell.

She was sitting on a low stool, sorting and laying out on large trays at her side the clothes of pupils and teachers that had just come up from the laundress, a work which needed both patience and care, and Frederica knew that she must not be disturbed. Instead of opening her book, she sat for a moment watching her. She was a small, bowed woman, crippled by rheumatism, with a thin brown face, and deep-set, sharp, grey eyes.

She wore a dark linsey gown, with a shawl of Campbell tartan over her shoulders, and she had a "mutch" with two or three rows of stiff borders on her head. She sung at her work, or rather chanted an old ballad which Frederica had heard before; but every now and then, as she counted and folded, and laid the different garments aside, she put their numbers and the names of their owners, and her thoughts about them, into the tune, without a pause; and Frederica knew by this that she had quite forgotten her presence in the room.

"A droll little person," she called her to herself, and then she thought how strange a being "old Eppie" would seem to her mama and Selina, and wondered how it was that she had never told them about her. She had mentioned her to them, but now she looked at her, and around the low, wide room, with eyes that meant to see everything for their benefit. It was a large room, which yet did not seem very large, because of the many things crowded into it, and because of the sloping roof which on three sides came almost to the floor. It was the attic of the wing in which the large cla.s.sroom and dining-room were. The walls were roughly plastered and whitewashed, and underneath were arranged old bureaux and boxes and chests of drawers, filled with such clothing as was not often needed, and under Eppie's particular care. Besides these, there were articles of furniture, broken or out of use, such as will acc.u.mulate in a house where many people live--chairs and tables, pictures, and faded ornaments of all kinds.