The Third Miss St Quentin

“Ah, yes – travelling or visiting there is charming no doubt. But to be a governess is very different. One has to put up with a good deal in such cases, but of course when it is a question of acquiring the language, one doesn’t mind anything, does one?”

“I can’t say,” replied Ella rather loftily. “I can speak French quite well. I don’t care about going abroad on that account.”

She rather resented the “rowing in the same boat” tone of her new acquaintance.

“Oh, I thought some one said you were going to Germany – to Wahlbrunn, I know about the place —au pair, as they say.”

“Perhaps I am,” said Ella dryly. Her companion glanced at her half curiously. She could not quite “make her out.”

“I wonder you go abroad if you don’t care about the language,” she said. “You’ll have to rough it you may be sure, and I don’t fancy you’ll like that.”

“I dare say not, but that part of it can’t be helped,” said Ella smiling a little. “But it won’t be worse for me than for others.”

“I don’t know that,” the girl replied. “You look as if you had had a nice home and all that kind of thing. I’ve never had a home; I was an orphan as a baby – that makes a difference.”

“My mother died when I was three years old —that makes a difference,” said Ella. Her companion nodded her head as if to say she “understood,” and a picture of a harsh and unloving stepmother turning this pretty young creature out of her home crossed her mind’s eye. But she was too delicate-minded to ask any questions, and the conversation drifted off to less personal subjects. The girl was leaving England the next day; Ella never saw her again, but her words had left their impression. It was with a little shiver that lying awake in the middle of the night she recalled them. “Roughing it,” what might that not mean? Rough words and looks and tones, as well as more practical physical discomfort – nobody to care about her, whether she were happy or miserable – nobody to love her – “and I have so longed to be loved,” thought Ella. “But except poor aunty, and – yes, I believe my godmother does love me, or did, she will probably give me up in disgust now – except those two I hardly think any one has ever really loved me. Oh, Madelene, if you had only been a little loving, I would have turned to you now and – perhaps if I had been able to confide in you I would not have been so easily taken in by him, by his manner, which meant nothing when I thought it meant everything. For Madelene was wise – she did warn me; if only she had cared for me a little. But it is too late now. Such as it was, it was my home, but I have thrown it away. What would that poor girl think if she could see it? Fancy her never having had any home – ”

Ella’s pillow was wet with tears the next morning when she woke. She dreaded and yet hoped for a letter – but there was none. Mrs Ward noticed her anxious face.

“There has hardly been time for an answer from Fräulein Braune,” she said kindly, though in her heart not sorry that the girl was beginning to realise the full bearing of her rash step. “You would be the better for a little air, I think. Would you not like to go out?”

Ella glanced down the long breakfast-table.

“Is there any one who could go with me, do you think?” she asked timidly. Mrs Ward looked up rather sharply.

“Are you afraid of going out alone?” she said. “You must get used to it, my dear. You will never get on if you are so dependent.”

“I am not afraid,” replied Ella, growing very red as she spoke. “But it is just that I have never had to go out alone.”

“Ah, well – perhaps I can get some one to go with you for once. But you know we are all very busy people here.”

She spoke to one of the elder ladies, who undertook to accompany Ella. For Mrs Ward felt it right to take special care of the girl in her peculiar position. Yet she knew that it was well for her to have the practical side of the future she had chosen brought home to her. “If her people really care for her,” thought Mrs Ward, “they can easily get her to go home again. She is tiring of it already.”

But she scarcely understood the character she had to deal with.

Ella went out with Miss Lister, and though the walk was only to a music shop where her companion had to choose a large selection of “pieces” for her pupils, and though the day was so cold and gloomy as to suggest impending fog, the mere fact of being out of doors and walking quickly raised her impressionable spirits again. She was in a decidedly less conciliatory mood than before going out, and it was with a heightened colour and resolutely compressed lips that she received the parlour-maid’s announcement that a lady had come to see her, and was waiting in the drawing-room.

“Madelene, no doubt,” thought Ella with a rush of curiously mingled feeling, among which considerably to her own surprise she was conscious that there vibrated a thrill of something very like delight.

“Do I care for her, after all?” she thought. But before she had time to answer the question, other sensations followed. Madelene had come to urge her return, Madelene who knew, or at least suspected the root of her bitterest suffering; Madelene who had planned and schemed for Ermine regardless of the poor little half-sister! Ella hardened her heart.

“No,” she thought, “I will not go home. No. She may beg and pray me to do so, I will not. Not at least for a long, long time, till I have got accustomed to it all – to Ermine and Philip – or at least till I have learnt to hide what I feel. And when they see how firm I am they will have to give in and let me go to that German place. I don’t care what it is or how rough it is if only I can get away.”

She looked and felt cool and determined enough, as, after a moment’s pause outside the drawing-room door, she turned the handle and entered. Only the two bright red spots on her cheeks betrayed any inward disturbance.

“Madelene,” she began at once, before her eyes had taken in any details of the figure that rose from the sofa at the sound of the door opening. But in an instant she stopped, the words on her lips died away as a keen dart of disappointment sped through her.

“No, no, my darling, not Madelene. Only your poor old auntie,” and in a moment she was enfolded in Mrs Burton’s embrace. “Oh, Ella, my dear, I have been so miserable about you ever since Sir – ever since your sister sent to me! Oh, my child, you see how it has ended. Why did you leave me as you did? All might have been happy and peaceful. Mr Burton’s heart is really such a kind one – it is only manner, my dear. You will get to see it is only manner, I can assure you – ”

But Ella calmly disengaged herself from Mrs Burton, with an unreasonable feeling of irritation and impatience.

“I thought it was Madelene,” she said. “I thought – ”

“You were nervous about meeting her, my darling. Of course it was only natural. She has never understood you – that is clear. But it is all going to be happy now; you will see – all’s well that ends well, you know Ellie.”

“Have they sent you for me? Do they want me to go home?” she exclaimed. “For I – I had reason for what I did – I am not a child. I cannot consent to go back – I – ”

“No, no, of course not. How could you wish to go back, where I can see and feel you have been so misunderstood and unhappy? Oh, no, dear, you may make your mind quite easy on that score. You don’t think your poor auntie would have come on such an errand – to persuade you to go back to prison again, for prison indeed it must have been. Oh, no, even Madelene saw that – there was no question of your returning there.”

No question of her returning there! She had cut the bonds then only too effectually – a sharp, yet chill pain seemed for an instant to take the girl’s breath away.

“They don’t want me back again, then?” she said. And then without giving her aunt time to speak, she answered her question herself. “No, of course not – how could they? I heard it with my own ears; they wanted to be rid of me.”

But the last few words were too low for her aunt to catch.

“How could they indeed, knowing how unhappy they had made you, my darling?” said Mrs Burton. “No, no, I would never have come on such an errand!”

Ella looked up.

“Then did they not send you? How did you know? I don’t understand,” she said in a dull, bewildered way. “I am tired, I think, aunty, and the not expecting to see you, you know. Please tell me all about it; I will sit here quietly and listen.”

“My darling,” Mrs Burton repeated, possessing herself of Ella’s hand as she spoke. It lay passive in her grasp for a minute or two, but before long the girl managed to draw it away.

“Tell me, aunt, please,” she repeated. “I have got out of those petting sort of ways, I suppose,” she said to herself. “I wish aunt Phillis wasn’t quite so caressing.”

Chapter Nineteen

“A Marriage is Arranged.”

This was what Mrs Burton had to tell. On the evening her niece had left Coombesthorpe she had been startled by a telegram from Madelene, inquiring if Ella were with her, to which of course she was obliged to reply in the negative.

“I was not so very frightened as I would have been had I not that very morning got your letter asking me to invite you for a visit. Fortunately Mr Burton was out when the telegram came,” she went on, “so I did not need to tell him about it – it is just as well – I don’t think he need hear more than that you are coming on a visit – oh, but I am running on without explaining,” seeing Ella raise her eyebrows with a look of surprise. “I must tell you that all the next day and the day after, I kept thinking you would walk in, my dear, and when you did not come and there was no letter I began to be really frightened. I was just making up my mind to tell Mr Burton all about it and start for Coombesthorpe when last night to my astonishment there came a message – ”

“A telegram?” Ella interrupted.

“No, neither a telegram nor a letter. A message brought by a messenger from your sister Madelene,” said Mrs Burton, with a little confusion of manner which did not escape Ella’s sharp eyes, “as she could not come herself – ”

“And why could she not come herself? If she had really cared – ” interrupted Ella with a little choke in her voice.

“And your father so ill! You forget, Ella.”

“Papa ill – he was much better?” Ella exclaimed with a little start.

“But he had a sort of attack the evening you left. Did you not know? Oh, no of course, how could you. He had had a good deal to agitate him that day, it appears, and at first they were very much alarmed, but it was more nervousness than anything else, and he is better now, but he won’t hear of Madelene leaving him. She must have had rather a time of it, I fancy – what with the fright about you and all. But I dare say it will do her no harm to be shaken out of her apathy a little.”

Ella’s face had grown very grave. Poor Madelene! Had she been frightened about her – Ella – then, and Ermine away?

“Was it about my – about me that papa was upset, do you think, aunt?” she asked.