Annette : a novel

Front matter

MAG OIL

Strengthens the Hair.

Sold also in a GOLDEN OOLOTJB.

Chapter I

" S.S. Nawab," April 7th,

Homeward-hound.

'HANK God that, after fifteen years of hard work amongst those Hindoo women, work in which I have had help neither of father nor mother, sister nor brother, to cheer me on, I am able at last to write concerning myself, the good words, " Homeward-bound."

And yet, if I had been so minded, I might have placed these good words at the beginning, instead of the end, of those fifteen years. Indeed that was where some very excellent and well-meaning people thought I ought to have placed them when my brother Mark's death left me alone in a strange land. For, as they represented to me, I was too far advanced in life, being then on the shady side of thirty, to strike out for myself an independent career ; and I had no relative out there to make a home for me, if I wished to take employment as mission or zenana teacher ; and in a country like India, where everything goes by position and good looks, I, who was possessed of neither, might reasonably expect to find myself very much at a discount ; and therefore, as the most straightforward thing for myself, and possibly also the most convenient for them, they recommended me to return home at once, take lodgings in some tidy, respectable little town, and live on my means, which amounted then to the modest sum of a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

But I really did enjoy the work which, during poor Mark's life, I had tried to do, of visiting the native women in their homes, and dropping into their often ready minds a few words of thought, not always strictly religious, as the phrase goes, but such as I hoped might spring up and clothe the bare ground of their lives with something like beauty and freshness. Then, too, I had got through the most vexing difficulties of the language. The women were beginning to feel that I was their friend, and it did seem a pity to throw away that five years of foundation work, and start again as an idle woman in my own country.

For, though I was far on to thirty when Mark was gazetted chaplain, and I had decided to come out with him, I had as yet found nothing to do in our quiet little town of Abbotsby. The place was already swamped with well-disposed women of leisure, who did everything that could be done in the way of Sunday-school teaching, tract distribution, committees, and all that sort of thing. And I had no special talent of any kind, no artistic faculty, which, well cultivated, might have brought me either pleasure or profit. I had been educated up to the average standard of those days. I knew enough of music to lift up my voice in church, or sing an old-fashioned ballad to my father when he was weary with his day's work of clerkship ; enough of French to guide me successfully through a quotation, if I stumbled upon it ; and enough of drawing to sketch a cottage or a tree, a tumble-down windmill or an ivy-covered willowstump. But I knew not enough of anything to earn a living by it. My vocation was housekeeping ; my chief resource solid reading, especially of subjects connected with social economy, and from these I learned to mistrust the ordinary efforts of so-called charity, so that almost the only outlet for a woman's energies was shut out from me, common sense showing me that it was often more a luxury than a useful means to a profitable end.

So when my father and mother died, and my Aunt Miriam, who had always been accustomed to live by herself, proposed to occupy the house which my means would not allow me to keep up, what was there for me but to come out with my brother Mark ? And when he died, what was there for me but to remain in the station of which he had been chaplain, and go on with the work which was beginning to gather round me there ? More especially as one of the wealthiest residents, who took great interest in the native women, had offered me a sufficient salary for a certain number of hours spent daily in zenana teaching ; and the wife of Mr. Leslie, the Presbyterian chaplain, offered me a home in her house so long as they remained in the station, which fortunately has been to the end of my own stay. And then the kind of work which the wealthy civilian wanted me to do, was exactly that which I had most capacity for, being not direct religious teaching, that is, doctrinal, but social and moral education, gradually preparing the way for it. He did not wish me to pull down the house of these poor women's faith upon them, and drive them rudely forth into entirely strange conditions of life. Rather he wished that I should try to place some little shoot of divine truth within the crevices of the house, and leave it there until, like the sacred peepul planted by the porch of the Hindoo temple, it should silently grow, strengthen, and at last, by the unconscious force of its own life, undermine and drag down, stone by stone, the worn-out and useless fabric.

To do this seemed to me better, despite the recommendations mentioned before, than going home and adding one more to the army of unemployed women already there. So I have stayed on and on through all these fifteen years, discouraged sometimes in my work, but much oftener cheered in it by the growing confidence and expanded intelligence of those I was trying to teach, until, six months ago, the death of Aunt Miriam brought another change into my life. Her little property, which she held apart from her annuity, has fallen to me, and I must go home to attend to it, as I have no other relative in England, except my Cheltenham cousin Delia, who is almost a stranger to me. It seems to me, also, that twenty years of such work as I have had here, with only a yearly sea-voyage or trip to the hills, by way of holiday, is enough to give me a right to rest the remainder of my days, even if the addition to my income had not made it comparatively easy for me to do so. I say comparatively, for even a hundred and eighty pounds, with a house rent free, is not a magnificent income, and I daresay people would smile at me for proposing to live upon it ; but I mean to try, and perhaps do a little good, too, in my own quiet way, for I could not very well settle down to idleness all at once.

So in a month from this time I shall be at home again, and not only at home in the old country, but at home in the very house where all the sweetest years of my life were passed.

Sometimes I think that is the pleasantest part of all, for Aunt Miriam was very good. She would never have any change made in the place, not a window put out, nor a door blocked up, nor a piece of furniture sold, nor a tree cut down, nor a flower-bed altered. She knew how I loved everything belonging to my home life, and so she kept that home for me, that I might one day, without any pang of strangeness, return to finish my appointed time in it. Please God I shall do so now, and He only knows how sweet the rest will be, after these years of toil.

But, dear me ! I never meant to write all this, when, a couple of hours ago, I brought my things on deck and settled myself down on the shady side of the skylight, as far as possible from that dreadful scramble of quoit-playing, which is always going on amongst the gentlemen.

How naturally one takes to journalising on board ship. Though for that matter I have taken to it ever since I was a small child of seven, stitching blank halves of letter paper into little books, wherein to chronicle the most important events of life, what flowers came up in my garden, how many fish Mark and Gregory and I caught in the running stream at the bottom of the grassplot, the exact dates at which our silkworms began to spin their cocoons, or our white mice to make their nests, and the things mother gave us to make feasts of on our birthdays. As these interests died out, others arose which seemed to me worthy of being recorded in a properly bound sixpenny book, bought out of careful weekly savings. And when childhood had passed, and the period of girlish aspiration and romance set in, my journal, advanced then to a piece of morocco-covered extravagance with silver clasp, became a sort of soliloquy, in which I talked my views and opinions over to myself, having no one else to talk them over to.

So that the habit of writing about what interests me has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength. And then, of course, all through my Indian life I have been obliged to keep a daily record of visits paid, in order that Mr. Grant might see to what purpose his money was being employed. And a fifteen years' course of this has made journal-writing such a necessity to me that now I scarcely feel I have behaved properly to the day, unless I have done something towards shaping out its little story in pen and ink.

Then on board ship — at least, on board this ship — talking to oneself is almost the only resource left. Truth to tell, we seem at present, and I do not except myself, a very uninteresting set of passengers. I don't think five-and-twenty people could be picked out anywhere more heterogeneous, unsympathetic, commonplace than ourselves. Perhaps we have capabilities which have not yet been brought out. We may be a set of wind instruments, waiting for the breath to blow into us ; or we may be like the keys of a piano before the wires are got ready for them to strike upon ; or a box of marionettes, motionless until the big hand appears which shall jerk us into activity, and evolve a brisk little play from our dreary inaction ; but I am sure now no one would think we had any interests in common, except when the bell sounds for meals. That is the only force which, so far, has awakened a chord of united action amongst us.

Talk of angels, and you hear their wings. That bell has sounded just now for luncheon. I must put my things away.

CHAPTER II. Afternoon

OW curiously the law of association works. Coming up here, with the bag of miscellanies which I generally carry about, to avoid the trouble of frequent journeys to our cabin, and establishing myself, as before, on the quiet side of the skylight, there comes back to me exactly the same picture which was arranging itself before my mind's eye when the luncheon bell shivered it into fragments an hour ago.

I had said that we were all very uninteresting, and I was going to make a list of the passengers, and write down from day to day particulars of our voyage, because, in years to come, when I am sitting quietly by my own fireside, it will be pleasant to look back upon this curious little slice of my life.

We have only been at sea two days, therefore some of our company are still invisible, only manifesting themselves by groans and other sounds issuing from the closed doors of their cabins. For myself, I have never, since my first voyage, suffered for more than a few hours from sea-sickness, but my recollection of its horrors is vivid enough to give me deep sympathy with the utterers of those groans. I should like to be a sister of mercy, and go amongst them with cups of tea and doses of lemon-juice, only the stewardess would suspect me of an unworthy longing after her prospective half-sovereigns. And the victims themselves, who appeared at our first meal on board with smiling faces and well-arranged hair and toilettes, might reasonably object to being seen by a stranger in their present condition. So I refrain. But the will to help is present with me.

My cabin companion is a Miss Lislethorpe. I have scarcely seen anything of her yet, as she spends nearly all her time in the next cabin, which is occupied exclusively by Mrs. Marsham, the very rich wife of a very rich Colonel in the Punjaub. Mrs. Marsham is going home for " change," and I fancy, from the way in which she keeps sending Miss Lislethorpe about on one errand or other, that the poor girl is acting as a sort of paid companion to her.

Strangely different companionship that from what Miss Lislethorpe must have expected a year ago, when I saw her for the first time at Moorkee, where I had gone for my three months' holiday.

Indian society is like a coursed hare. It is continually turning and doubling upon its own path, so that wherever you go in the same coursing neighbourhood— that is, the same Presidency — you are sure to meet some one you have known or heard of somewhere else. No woman could lead a quieter life than I have been leading for the last fifteen years, yet at different hill stations which I have visited during my holiday times, I have come across five or six out of the eleven ladies on board. Miss Lislethorpe's father was chaplain of Moorkee. When I was there, she had but lately come out from England, with all the latest fashions in her outfit — bonnets and dresses which were the envy of the women and the wonder of the men, whilst the grace with which she wore them was the admiration of both.

She was then the pet of the station — one of those bright, pretty creatures who seem made to live on love and caresses, and of whom one cannot think in connection with anything uncomfortable. We never knew each other personally, for she was out when I made my duty-call at the parsonage, and I was out when she made hers. We never met, either, in society, for the balls and Badmintons at which she was so popular were quite out of my way. But I have sat in church many a time and watched her face through the firstly, secondly, and thirdly of her father's somewhat tedious sermons. It was a sweet face, with just a touch of sadness in its expression when quite at rest. Evidently balls and Badmintons could not fill up all her life, even supplemented by social success, and the distinction of an outfit good enough for a Lieutenant-Governor's lady, as every one said hers was.

But once I saw Annette Lislethorpe with no touch of sadness in her face. I was out collecting ferns and grasses on one of the little hillside paths of Moorkee, when she suddenly appeared round a bend in the road, on horseback, accompanied by Captain Asperton, a young officer whom I knew by sight. They were going leisurely along, absorbed in a conversation which gave them no leisure to espy the stout, middle-aged lady, with her basket of specimens, half hidden amongst the luxuriant foliage of the rising ground ; but I shall never forget the happy light in her eyes, and the rosy glow upon her cheeks, and the sweetness of her laugh as it rang out upon the stillness. I kept out of sight. They wanted no companionship of mine. I wonder if I felt a little touch of envy, to look upon a joy which, for me, was past and done with well on for thirty years before. Perhaps I did.

I went back to my work amongst the zenanas, and the next thing I heard was that Mr. Lislethorpe had died suddenly, leaving no provision whatever for his only child. Ill-natured people said that he had invested his capital in her education at a fashionable West-end school, and in the outfit which was so far beyond his means, hoping to realise a profitable return in her speedy and brilliant settlement. In that case Captain Asperton would scarcely have suited, having nothing beyond his pay ; but it could only have been a passing fancy — at least, I think so, or he would surely have claimed her when her father's death left her so desolate.

And the end of it is that she is the sharer of my cabin in the ship Nawab, working her passage home as companion to a selfish rich woman. Literally working it, for the demands Mrs. Marsham is constantly making leave scarcely time for rest or sleep. And only a year ago she was so happy that I, seeing her happiness afar off, felt the pang of being left out in the cold. Now for me there waits, close at hand, the warmth and sweetness of home ; and for her — what ? So the world goes.

I don't suppose she remembers me. There are too many Miss Browns in the world for the name, painted ever so neatly, in the whitest of letters, on my cabin luggage, to attract her notice. And as for my face, nobody has ever looked at that in church, or indeed anywhere else, for long and long enough. She shows no wish either for better acquaintance, though she has heard me talking to Mrs. Truro, one of the chaplains' wives on board, about Moorkee and the people I knew there. As her circumstances are so different now, I feel it would be a sort of impertinence on my part to refer to the days of her prosperity, unless she made some opening for it. As yet she is entirely reserved to me. We have advanced no further than the merest civilities necessary between people who are brought so closely into contact as we are.

But I feel sometimes a great longing to comfort her. I want to put my arms round her, and draw down to mine the thin cheek which was once so bright and rosy. I am sure I could make life a little pleasanter to her during this voyage, if she would only let me. Perhaps the way may open out by-and-by. I will wait my time.

But about the other passengers. Ladies are in the minority. Besides these two, Annette Lislethorpe and Mrs. Marsham, we have a Mrs. Aberall, also very rich and very important, between whom and Mrs. Marsham there exists a deadly feud on the subject of precedence. Then come three officers' wives, each taking home a pretty, pale-faced little girl ; then a Mrs. Flexon, who lost her husband a year and a half ago, and seems not inconsolable — I met her, too, at Moorkee last hot weather— then a civilian's widow, a quiet, ladylike woman ; and lastly, two chaplains' wives, with their husbands, going home on furlough. Though the chaplains, owing to my awkwardness in composition, make their appearance on the list of lady passengers, I do not therefore imply the slightest disrespect to them, because, so far as I am able to judge, they are both clever men, and with a good share of that common sense which is never so valuable as when one finds it in a clergyman.

Indeed, if they had not a great deal of good sense, and good temper too, they would be sorely tried by the onslaughts of Dr. Byte, our medical officer, who is continually endeavouring to draw them into religious discussions, apparently to air a certain flippant scepticism upon which he plumes himself. Another of the passengers is a Mr. Justin, a shrewd, clever, and, I should think, rather sarcastic sort of man. He listens to the discussions that go on, though he seldom takes any part in them, except when he finds that the brilliant sword-play of the doctor is becoming too much for the steadier but less adroit fencing of the chaplains. Once or twice he has swooped down upon them in the midst of a tough combat, and set the whole matter straight by sweeping away the arguments on both sides, and so making the disputants look rather foolish. On that account neither the chaplains nor the sceptics appear to like him very much, though his weight is always put into the scale for truth. I don't know who he is, though there is something in his face that seems curiously familiar to me. It was a little (Gregory Justin who used to fish with us, when wo were

B children, in the stream at the bottom of the garden. How strange if this should be the same ! I should like to ask him, but he seems to prefer keeping himself apart from the other people, especially the ladies. And when I come to ask myself what is that familiar something in his face, it fades away. I cannot get hold of it. Gregory was a very small child when we all used to play together, and Mark and I, who were three or four years older, used to patronise him, though often enough he showed himself cleverer than the two of us put together. It must be the remembrance of how our juvenile arguments used to be " squashed " by his sharper intellect, that makes me fancy he has some connection with this sceptic-and-chaplain-conquering Mr. Justin.

Then we have three young men, who came out expecting, as they told the captain last night, to " hit upon something," and not having hit upon it, are now going home again. What a comical way of seeking that life work which is a man's glory ! Well, I hope their next aim will reach the mark. Judging by the way those three young men go through the most impossible gymnastics on the lower deck, there must be any amount of physical toughness and endurance in them, and so they ought, by-and-by, to be of some use in the world — the sort of young men that, having " hit " upon the right thing, might make Balaclava heroes, and here they are playing quoits, and tying themselves into knots round a pole, for want of anything better to do.

There are several other gentlemen passengers, but I have not so much as learned their names yet. I hope before long I shall find out about Mr. Justin,

Chapter III

lQth.

;NNETTB LISLETHORPE and I are very good friends now, and this is how it has come about.

Soon after I finished my writing the other day, the dressing-bell rang, and I had to go down to our cabin to divest myself of the plain white linen cuffs and collar which are never allowed to make their appearance at the dinner-table. Annette was lying in her berth, looking the very picture of despair and misery. I have noticed ever since we sailed that the poor girl has been struggling with sickness. She eats nothing, takes interest in nothing, and drags herself about in a dreary sort of way, which is pitiful to behold. Mrs. Marsham does not appear to be conscious of this, or she would surely give the girl a little more rest. I don't think I have ever sat here on deck for an hour together without hearing that woman call out, in such sharp ringing tones :

" Miss Lislethorpe ! Miss Lislethorpe ! " And when the poor girl has made her appearance, pale with that incessant nausea which is so much worse than a downright attack of sickness, she has been sent

B 2 down again for a skein of wool, a reel of cotton, a missing handkerchief, or some other trifle, which the rubicund matron could much more easily have fetched for herself. But Mrs. Marsham belongs to the upper ten, who wish all the world to know that they are born to be waited upon.

Annette turned her face away as I went into the cabin. Evidently she did not wish me to speak or take any notice of her ill-health. Her tenacity of reserve shut me up. I went on with my dressing in silence, and had just finished when Mrs. Marsham's call was heard from the next cabin.

" Miss Lislethorpe ! Miss Lislethorpe ! "

Oh ! the utterly spent and hopeless look which came over the girl's face as she tried to raise herself to obey the summons.

" Lie still," I said, in a very quiet, matter-of-fact way. " I will go and see what Mrs. Marsham wants."

She let me go, for she was in that condition which cannot have respect any longer to reserves or scruples. When I went into Mrs. Marsham's cabin, first meekly knocking at the door, and receiving a somewhat tart summons to enter, that lady was standing in front of the looking-glass, with her back to me, vainly endeavouring to make a yard of belt ribbon meet round her capacious waist.

" Miss Lislethorpe," she said to me, in by no means the mildest of tones, " I do wish, when the dressing-bell sounds, you would make a point of coming to my cabin. Really, if I am to wait upon myself in this way, I might as well — -"

Here Mrs. Marsham turned and found me, Miss Hester Brown, a comfortable, jolly little woman, standing in the open doorway.

" I beg your pardon, Miss Brown."

" I beg your pardon, Mrs. Marsham."

Well, it iras an uncomfortable situation — 1 mean for Mrs. Marsham. When a lady appears in public all smiles, amiability, and condescension, the acknowledged hurra mem Sahib of the vessel, it is, to say the least of it, awkward to be surprised in her cabin, quite destitute either of smiles or amiability — destitute, too, of the Honiton lace and pink bows which supply its sole grace to her matronly head, and of the white teeth which produce such a charming effect when displayed in a good-tempered laugh. If Mrs. Marsham only ignored me before, I think from that time she must have begun to dislike me, though I am sure I knocked at the door, and coughed, and did everything that was necessary to make her aware of my presence.

" Can I assist you 1 " I asked politely, and, I hope, without the faintest touch of amusement in my face.

" Not in the least," Mrs. Marsham replied, with great dignity. " Pray do not let me detain you a moment longer. Will you be kind enough to send Miss Lislethorpe to me at once ? "

" Miss Lislethorpe is very ill, and not able to move from her berth," I said ; " and I came to see if I could do anything for you."

" I am excessively obliged, but I will not trouble you."

And Mrs. Marsham resumed her efforts to clasp the belt, looking redder and more ill-tempered than ever, whilst I returned to Annette, to find her half fainting from hunger and sickness. The girl had eaten scarcely anything since we came on board.

Without speaking to her, I got my little Etna stove, heated some water, made a cup of good strong tea, and insisted upon her drinking it. When she had finished it, I smoothed her pillows for her. As I was doing so, I could not help laying my hand with a sort of caressing touch upon her forehead. It is not my way to " fuss " over people, but she did look so wretched. I thought, if I had been in her case, I should have been glad for any one to do the same for me. And I began to feel, too, how much she must have gone through with that dreadful Mrs. Marsham.

I don't think I meant it ; but that little caress was the one thing which broke down the barrier of reserve between us. She threw her arms round my neck, and burst into such a passion of tears as I have never seen before ; and when I once took hold of her hand, she clutched mine deliberately, with a force I could scarcely have thought those little fingers had in them. Then I laid her quietly down and kissed her, and slipped into my place at the end of the dinner-table, in time for the third course.

Miss Lislethorpe and I, having no position on the Civil List, are relegated to the bottom of the first dinner-table. Our tea and toast, or beef and pudding, are often rather cold in consequence ; but we find the advantage of an end seat in being able to slip in and out whenever we like, a convenience, I think, the upper people must sorely envy us, who are obliged to sit through a long stately dinner and dessert, when they would thankfully exchange both for a mouthful of fresh air on deck, or a quiet little snooze in their respective berths.

Since then Annette and I have found our way into each other's heart. She knows that I would like to be kind to her, without in any way intruding upon her great sorrow, or prying into her prospects, whatever they may be. I cannot tell how pleasant it is to me, the feeling of watching over her and taking care of her. I never had it before with any one, for all through my Indian life, though I had to work hard enough, and manage my own affairs, and look after my own business matters, still I had no one dependent on me, no one who would greatly miss love" and care that I could give. Next to the sweetness of being cared for oneself by some one wiser, stronger, better, is that of having some one to whom you can give such care. It is like a new sense in my life. Only it will last such a little while.