A Woman's Burden: A Novel

When she came up with them, Dicky was a mediæval knight, and Gerald his war steed. Miriam could not forbear admiring the kindly nature of the man. But his kindliness and love of play were characteristic of Gerald Arkel. He was gay, indolent, and of a sunny disposition; everybody else's best friend and his own worst enemy. He had never done a stroke of work, and apparently never intended to, since he regarded himself as his uncle's heir. Handsome and light-hearted, overflowing with animal spirits, full of exuberant vitality, he was one of those rare beings who seem created to enjoy life. Yet he was weak and self-indulgent, and without the necessary will or self-control to guide his wayward course. Miriam learned those weaknesses later – learned them, pitied and tolerated them by the love which grew up in her heart. As yet she admired him only. Young Apollo, young Hercules, a splendid specimen of manhood; but love came in the end, and with it much sorrow. Not that Miriam would have minded the sorrow so much; her life from her cradle had been one long trouble, and she was well seasoned to it. The wonder was that her evil fortunes had left no shadow, no line on her brow; for now as she walked beside Mr. Arkel, and found him so pleasant and sympathetic a character, she chatted gaily, and was, to all appearance, every whit as light-hearted as he, whose life had been one long flood of sunshine.

"I am afraid you will find this place dull, Miss Crane," said Gerald.

"I find it peaceful, Mr. Arkel, and that is enough for me."

"You have had trouble?" he asked with quick sympathy.

"My parents died while I was in my teens," explained Miriam, "and I was left a penniless orphan. Yes, I have had trouble. Shadow has been as much my portion as sunshine appears to have been yours."

Gerald set down Dicky, and took his hand.

"Oh, I have had my troubles too," said he easily, "but I don't feel them much. Perhaps my nature is too shallow."

"Or too sunny, Mr. Arkel – if a nature can be too sunny. Did you ever read Hawthorne's 'Marble Faun'? – I believe it is called 'Transformation' in the English edition."

"No." Gerald stared at the apparent irrelevancy of this question. "Why?"

"Because you are so very much like one of the characters in it – a child of nature, called Donatello. You are just the kind of man children love and animals trust."

"Oh, I get on pretty well with everyone," cried Gerald, tossing back his bright hair, "and everyone gets on with me."

"Ah, you are 'simpatico,' as the Italians say."

Arkel turned an expressive eye on Miriam. He was very sympathetic, especially towards pretty women; and with one exception, this governess was the prettiest he had ever seen. Yet the adjective was not one he would have chosen deliberately as adequately descriptive of Miss Crane. He would have said beautiful rather – imperious, regal; the word "pretty" was but the outcome of his habit of loose expression. He knew quite well that it could not correctly be applied to her. She was no white-frocked, pink and white miss, with coquetry in every step she took over the cobble stones of the village street. Such a one though, was now close upon them, and as Arkel recognised her, he raised his hat, and his eyes and lips smiled in greeting.

"Miss Marsh, where are you going?"

"Home," replied Hilda, swiftly glancing at the speaker and the governess. "How are you, Miss Crane? Dicky, don't wink, it's vulgar. I didn't know you were here, Mr. Arkel."

"Arrived yesterday," responded that young gentleman. "Uncle Barton asked me down for a week. Why, I don't know! but I was glad to come." He fixed his bright eyes on Hilda, and a colour came into his cheeks. "I was very glad to come," he repeated.

"Of course, I know how fond you are of Mr. Barton."

"If you will excuse me," said Miriam, unwilling to be an inconvenient third, "I will go – come, Dicky."

"I must go too. I will leave you with Mr. Arkel," and before either Arkel or Miriam could parry so very pointed a thrust, Hilda tripped away with a smiling face and – it must be confessed – an angry heart. Although, of course, she knew nothing of the episode which had been the means of bringing them together, her instinct told her that Gerald and Miss Crane were in strong sympathy one with the other.

Like an ass between two bundles of hay – the simile, though uncomplimentary, will serve – Gerald looked after Hilda, and then glanced at the governess. She had already moved away, and was walking on rather fast with Dicky dancing beside her. Courtesy demanded that he should follow her, but a tugging at his heart-strings drew him in Hilda's direction. With characteristic self-indulgence, Mr. Arkel obeyed his own inclination rather than the other thing, and tried to catch up with Hilda. But a side-glance informing her of this pursuit, Miss Marsh thereupon resolved to punish this young man for his all too-patent admiration of the governess – "that red-haired minx," as she called her.

Just as Gerald came up with her, and was on the point of speaking, Hilda, in pretended ignorance of his presence, shot into a broken-down gate, through a desolate garden, and into a dilapidated house. From behind a torn curtain which partially veiled a dirty window, she had the satisfaction of seeing him retreat with a somewhat sulky expression on his usually bright face.

"Serve you right," she said to herself. "You'll find I am not the one to take you from that carroty horror;" which remark was vulgar, unjust, and spiteful – so spiteful that it could only be prompted by one feeling.

Hilda's home was a tumble-down old house set in a neglected garden. Mr. Marsh was a physician – that is to say he was allowed by the laws of his country to prescribe drugs and generally to administer in a medical way to a small practice. Things were so with him that he had long since given up any idea of a peaceful existence; and it was always a matter of supreme amazement to him that his patients sought to prolong their lives at the cost of swallowing the doses he prescribed for them. For himself, he paid an infinitesimal sum yearly by way of rent for Poverty Hall, as his residence was dubbed in the village; earned enough to feed and clothe those dependent upon him in the most penurious way, and managed, as he phrased it, "to drag them up somehow." Two of the boys were doing for themselves in London, and had dropped out of ken, since they neither sent money nor wrote to their father; three were at school, where Dr. Marsh found it hard work to keep them, and since someone must pay, the four sisters remained at home, and were furnished by Hilda with a scratch education, she being the only one of the girls who had received a good one. Hilda detested teaching her sisters, and gave them as little of her time as she well could without falling foul of her father. For the rest she was like a lily of the fields, and neither toiled nor spun. Mrs. Marsh – she was of ample habit – did the toiling and the spinning, with the assistance of the exhausted menial aforesaid. When not scrubbing, or baking, or mending, she indulged in the most mawkish class of fiction, and complained querulously of her lot the while. Yet even the Marsh family had their idea of a millennium – when Hilda would marry a rich man, and the rich man would rain gold on Poverty Hall. That was why Hilda was pampered and much was pardoned to her. She was the Circassian beauty destined for the seraglio of some millionaire sultan; and the proceeds of her sale was to set up the family for life.

"Where have you been, Hilda?" asked her mother, looking up from a novel. The room was a chaos of dirt and dust, and in the midst of it all sat Mrs. Marsh, a very she-Marius amongst the ruins of Carthage, placidly but thoroughly enjoying the sentimentality of her hero and heroine. The carpet was ragged, the blind was askew; the table was littered with plates dirty from the mid-day meal, and the furniture was more or less dilapidated. Thus did Mrs. Marsh, in an old dressing-gown, with hair unkempt, delight to read of the erratic course of true love and Belgravian luxury, oblivious utterly to her surroundings.

"I'm sure, Hilda, I wish you hadn't gone out," she lamented. "Who is to clear the table if you're not here?"

"Oh, bother!" cried Hilda all graciously, "where are the girls?"

"They took some bread and jam and went out with the boys," said Mrs. Marsh vaguely. "I don't know exactly where – they were going to have a picnic, I think. You really must help, Hilda. Gwendoline" (Mary Jane was not to be tolerated) "has too much to do as it is. Your father will soon be home, and will want something; and I'm that tired! Oh dear me, how tired I am!"

"Well, I can't help it, mother. You will have to manage with Gwendoline as best you can. I must get my blue dress cleaned and altered. Mrs. Darrow has asked me to dinner to-morrow night."

"Who is to be there?" asked Mrs. Marsh with a ray of interest in her tired blue eyes.

"Mr. Barton, Mr. Arkel, and Major Dundas. I suppose that horrid governess will be there too. She was with Mr. Arkel just now."

"How did she come to know him?"

"Oh, she's a sly creature. She has managed to make his acquaintance somehow, and I can see the fool is quite taken already with her airs and graces."

"Hilda!" said her mother apprehensively, for Mr. Arkel was the second string to Hilda's bow, and it was supposed would inherit the Manor House. "That must not be."

"Oh, so far as I am concerned, they can please themselves. If Mr. Arkel prefers red hair and freckles, he can do so. Major Dundas may have better taste."

"But he is not rich, dear – he will never be."

"How do you know that?" retorted Hilda, who made a rule of contradicting her mother on principle. "Mr. Barton may make him his heir instead of Gerald Arkel. Or for that matter, I shouldn't be surprised if the horrid old thing left his money to an asylum."

"Be sure of that before you marry either of them," said the anxious mother. "Unless," with a touch of romance, "you are in love with – "

"Love!" Hilda echoed the word with fine contempt. "I want money, not love. Either Major Dundas or Gerald would make a good enough husband. I like Gerald the best – he is better looking and not so dull as the Major. But I'd marry anyone – even old Barton, much as I hate him, to get out of this pig-sty."

"It is your only home," said Mrs. Marsh with dignity.

"That's exactly why I want to get out of it, mother. If that red-haired governess tries any of her pranks, trust me, I won't spare her."

"Whatever do you mean, Hilda?"

"Never you mind, mother," Miss Marsh nodded mysteriously. "I've been talking with Mrs. Darrow, and she says – well, don't bother about it just now. But Miss Crane – if that is what her name is – is no saint, believe me. I'm not altogether sure that she's respectable."

"Hilda!" Mrs. Marsh's middle-class virtue was up in arms. "If that is so, you must not associate with her. Our house is lowly (she might have added dirty), lowly, but genteel."

"Now don't you bother, ma. Leave the governess to me. If you talk you'll spoil all."

"All what?" cried Mrs. Marsh, frantic with curiosity.

"H'm, h'm," Hilda nodded again. "Come upstairs, ma, and look over my dresses. I must look particularly well to-morrow night."

"But the clearing and washing-up, Hilda?"

"Oh, the girls can do that when they come in; pigs! It's little enough they do!"

"Your father will want something hot," suggested Mrs. Marsh with compunction.

"Will he! Well, there's cold corned beef and pickles; he can warm them if he likes."