A hard lesson

CHAPTER I. “ Helen !”

There was no answer. Miss Fairbrother glanced up at the old French clock on the high mantelshelf, then back at the crouching figure in the window-seat; but the bent brown head never moved. Miss Fairbrother waited a moment, and then she spoke again — in that quiet, well-balanced voice that was part of herself.

“ Helen, my dear, if you are going to the station to meet Frederick, it is quite time for you to get ready.”

The girl lifted her head with a start. Her gray eyes were dazed and dreamy, her lips parted vaguely. Her mind was evidently far away, still wrapped up in the fortunes of the heroine of her book.

“ I — I beg your pardon, Miss Fairbrother. Did you speak to me?”

“ I called your attention to the hour, my dear. It is time for you to get your hat. I spoke twice,” added the old lady, with a gentle reproach.

Helen Dacre flushed a little guiltily, and rose hastily to her feet. She was a tall girl — tall and slight — with a small, thoroughbred head and a slender neck. There was something fine and distinguished about her ; it was not exactly beauty, for her features were far from perfect, but there was a subtle grace in her movements,

A HARD LESSON.

and that nameless charm called fascination, which it is always difficult to define, but which produces often a more distinct effect, in its own way, than does actual beauty. For the rest, her eyes, which were her best point, were large, and of a deep shadowy gray, whilst her mouth was essentially womanly — that is to say, it was tender and tremulous, but a thought weak and irresolute in outline — a sweet mouth, with no very decided character about it.

As she rose hastily to her feet the novel she had been reading slipped with a little clatter on to the polished floor at her feet, whilst her hands — long-fingered, blueveined hands, such as Sir Joshua Reynolds would have loved to paint — went up half nervously to smooth her ruffled, nut-brown locks.

“ My dear, you have dropped your book,” said the old schoolmistress, reposingly. “ Pray be more careful. How often I have told you. ”

“I am sorry, Miss Fairbrother,” said Helen, almost mechanically, as she stooped to pick up the fallen volume. It was necessary to be “sorry” very often in Miss Fairbrother’s company; there were so many little things which jarred all daylong against the good lady’s principles of order and propriety.

“I did not see that it was so late,” she continued, apologetically, as she came forward out of the window corner. “ I will go at once.”

“ I very much regret the infirmity which prevents my accompanying you in your walk, my love. Were it not for that, I should not, of course, allow you to go alone across the Common. It may, indeed, be an actual dereliction of duty on my part,” added the old lady, doubtfully; but Helen broke in quickly with a bright little smile —

A HARD LESSON.

“ Pray do not distress yourself, dear Miss Fairbrother. I know you would come if you were a better walker ; as it is, no harm can possibly happen to me.”

“ No, that is true, and then Frederick is so steady, so superior — so unlike all other young men — that I feel there can in this case be no impropriety in permitting you to walk alone with him.”

“None whatever, I should think,” replied Helen, somewhat drily, as she left the room.

When she was outside the door she laughed outright.

“ Poor dear Miss Fairbrother!” she said, half aloud. “ For two whole years she has said the same thing every time that Frederick is coming down! I suppose it is a salve to her conscience! But as to Frederick. Oh! could Frederick Warne say or do anything improper, under any provocation whatever, I wonder?”

Outside — beyond the high, red-brick walls, mellow with age and lichen, which shut in Miss Fairbrother’s old-fashioned Georgian mansion within its peaceful garden precincts — lay the wide, breezy Common, glowing like a land of gold in the slanting rays of the setting sun. The gorse bushes were still powdered over with yellow blossom, whilst half-withered bracken fronds, of every shade, from deepest browns and crimsons to palest saffron, clothed the broad level space with the glory of the September coloring. All around the Common, but so far away in the tender evening light as not to be inharmonious to the landscape, circled a fringe of houses. Some, indeed, were smart new villas, with trim gardens in front of them, and white painted gates and railings, but mostly they were quiet old houses, nestling soberly amongst tufted trees, or hiding themselves in dignified seclusion behind old walls that had stood about them for a cen-

A HARD LESSON.

tury or more. Crossing the Common from north to south ran a fine white line — the high road that led from great London, not ten miles away, down into the peaceful heart of the country beyond ; whilst at the far eastern corner of the heath, an incongruous blot upon the peaceful scene, was the railway station and its outbuildings.

It was something to be out of doors and to be free ! — away from the shadow of the old red-brick house with its gray stone copings, and beyond its high walls and ponderous iron gates. Helen had never loved it. It had been her home for seven years ; yet she had never ceased to regard it as a prison.

She remembered well the day when she had first come to it. Her father was dead. Her guardian, who was almost a stranger to her, and whom she had never seen since, had brought her down in a cab from London, and had delivered her over into Miss Fairbrother’s charge. She was only thirteen — a lanky, awkward girl, with big, sad eyes, and a pale, solemn face. She had not shed a single tear — not one — only as the high wrought-iron gates had clanged harshly together behind her she had said to herself, in her desolate child’s heart, that they were prison doors which were shutting her in for evermore from the stir and bustle and life of the world outside.

In all the years that had gone by she had never entirely lost that feeling — not even now, when she was twenty and no longer Miss Fairbrother’s pupil, but her right hand and lieutenant in the school ; when too, she was engaged to be married, and might reasonably expect to have a home of her own before very long.

Yet somehow freedom was the dream she still dreamt of — freedom to do as she liked, and go where she

A HARD LESSON.

pleased — to see the world as others did, to taste of its joys and its pleasures, of its sorrows even — so long only as she might extend her sphere of knowledge.

And this freedom after which she yearned so intensely did not seem likely to come to her in any fashion, or from any direction that she could possibly descry ; no, not even through the door of marriage and through Frederick Warne.

Helen, when she got out upon the Common, well away from the shadow of Aberdare House, did not hurry herself in any way. On the contrary, she walked slowly and dreamily, as one who seeks to prolong the moments that are passing and is in no haste to squander them away. Her eyes were bent upon the ground, and all her thoughts were still full of that happy heroine of her story-book whose lot — full of tragic excitement as it was — seemed to her to be so infinitely enviable.

And yet she must have known that the train which was bringing Frederick Warne was even now due at the station.

Assuredly there was very little of the keenness of a woman who is beloved, and who goes forth eagerly to meet her lover, in her lagging footsteps !

It was the last day of the summer holidays. To-morrow all the girls were coming back, and Aberdare House would be full of noise and chatter from attic to cellar. Then good-by to peace and to dreamy musings — to story-books and castles in the air! Helen sighed a little as she thought of it.

The evening sun behind her threw a long shadow of her tall figure in front of her, and so absorbed was she in her own thoughts as she walked slowly along, with her eyes bent upon its fantastic bickerings preceding

A HARD LESSON.

her along the grassy footpath, that it was with quite a start that, upon reaching the high road, she looked up suddenly to find herself within a few hundred yards of a very whirlwind of noise and commotion — a brilliant vision out of that unknown world of life and pleasure into which her lonely feet so often longed to enter.

A coach was coming rapidly along the road towards her. The yellow wheels whirled in the sunshine ; a cloud of dust filled the air behind it ; the four chestnut horses groomed into the shine of satin came trotting smartly along; there was a sound of clanking bars and bits, and of jingling harness, the even ring of hoofs and the rumbling of the heavy vehicle behind them, and, above all, the sound of merry voices and light laughter from the gay group of men and women who were seated together upon it.

Helen Dacre, upon the edge of the dusty road, stood still to watch this beautiful sight as it passed by. Gazing intently up into the faces above her, she saw a handsome man with blue eyes and an auburn mustache upon the box, and beside him a small, fair woman in a shining white dress, and a smart hat covered with pink roses. Behind them sat other happy-looking and well-dressed men and women, but these she did not see so well ; it was the man who was driving and the lady by his side that filled her eyes in that brief moment which they flashed by her, and then the man, glancing carelessly aside, saw her too, and their eyes met.

In the days that were to come Gilbert Nugent was destined to remember that moment. The level Common, the golden glow of the sunset, and the slender, solitary figure of the girl in her shabby dress standing up, tall and graceful, in strong relief against the red light of the evening sky behind her formed a picture

A HARD LESSON.

I I

whose strange and curious charm never quite faded form his memory.

In another moment the vision was over; the vague glimpse into an unknown future had vanished. The coach, with its spanking horses and gay load, was gone ; and Helen, in her gray frock, stood alone by the roadside, looking somewhat sadly after the cloud of dust in which it was whirled away from her sight.

And she never even saw another lowlier vehicle which followed it along the road — a hansom cab with an elderly gentleman sitting inside it. And yet of the two, if she had but known it, the hansom ought to have been by far the most interesting to her.

By the time it passed Helen was away on the heath again, and a man carrying a Gladstone bag in his hand was advancing rapidly towards her along the grassy path.

“You are late, my dear. I was quite disappointed not to find you waiting upon the platform.”

Somehow the voice, the tone, the implied reproof were all exactly like Miss Fairbrother.

“ I am here at any rate now,” answered the girl carelessly, as she shook hands and turned round with him.

Frederick Warne was Miss Fairbrother’ s nephew — her dead sister’s son, and in the eyes of his aunt, at any rate, he was a very prince amongst men. Whatever might be the virtues of his character — and no doubt they were inestimable — as a man he was not much to look at. A pale, freckled complexion, sandy hair and eyebrows, and a short, ginger-colored beard and mustache, behind which the thin lips of a somewhat mean and obstinate mouth were but scantily concealed ; narrow, stooping shoulders and a hollow chest ; and that sort of shambling gait and figure upon which

A HARD LESSON.

a first-rate West-end tailor might have expended his whole energies in vain. Such was the outward appearance of the man whom Helen Dacre had promised to take for her lord and master! When they stood, as now, side by side, Warne was shorter than she was, and a casual passer-by would scarcely have taken them to belong to the same rank of life. And yet Frederick Warne was placidly and serenely unconscious of any shadow of disparity between himself and his promised wife. Indeed, if he had given any thought at all to the matter, it would have been unhesitatingly to pronounce the balance in his own favor. Helen, as his aunt was always telling him, was young and unformed. Her mind was ill-balanced, and all her good impulses came by fits and starts. But what a fortunate girl she was to be the chosen wife of such a one as Frederick Warne — so high-principled, so steady, and so richly endowed with all the cardinal virtues! Under such guidance, and with such a life’s companion, Helen’s faults must surely become eradicated, and her character derive strength and elevation. Miss Fairbrother often enlarged on this theme to him ; indeed, she frequently told him that in a measure he was undoubtedly throwing himself somewhat away.

It was no wonder, perhaps, that the young man, in spite of half-hearted denials, really believed it to be the case. But he made excuses for Helen, and flattered himself that he was gifted with a mission — the mission to mould and to perfect the faulty nature of this attractive young girl who had confided her future to his hands.

Frederick Warne was a schoolmaster. In that statement, perhaps, lies the whole explanation of his character. A schoolmaster is by training, by habit, by the

A HARD LESSON.

I 3 natural force of the circumstances of his existence, more dictatorial, and more imbued with a sense of his own importance, and of the inferiority of other people, than any other man on earth.

It is perhaps unavoidable that he should be so. The constant habit of teaching, of correcting, and of suppressing those under his charge imparts to his whole moral nature an unconscious tinge of self-sufficiency. He feels himself to be a superior being, sent into the world purposely to set other people to rights. Being unaccustomed to contradiction, he is unable to brook it ; that anybody should dare to differ from him, or to set up opinions in opposition to his own, strikes him as an impertinence — as a sacrilege almost ; and it follows very often that the world, that is about to take us at our own valuation, smiles in its sleeve, and good-naturedly allows him to believe himself to be infallible.

Chapter II

Frederick Warne was classical master at a large middle-class grammar school in the north of London. When his duties at St. Matthew’s permitted him to do so — that is, on the two half holidays of the week — he had been in the habit of coming down to his aunt’s school on Cleares Common, in order to instruct the young ladies of her high-class establishment in the rudiments of the Latin language.

It was, perhaps, quite natural under the circumstances that Warne should have fallen in love with the tall, dark-eyed pupil-teacher, who shared the Latin lessons of the upper class, and whom he had watched grow from a shy child into a graceful, self-possessed woman. As far as in him lay he was honestly and genuinely in love with her. He admired her dark gray eyes and the turn of her well-shaped head. He said to himself, in his fatuous, underbred mind, that she “looked quite the lady,” and that she would do him credit. And there were other things besides. She knew how to teach. She might help him in his career, and she had forty pounds a year of her own ! Forty pounds regarded as an annual income is not perhaps much, but it is better than nothing. Very decidedly better ! It would pay for her clothes, it would help to keep the domestic pot boiling. All things considered, he might go farther and fare worse.

For certain, in all his limited experience the poor young man had never come across anything half so

A HARD LESSON.

sweet and fair as Helen Dacre. It was small wonder that he should have coveted her for his own.

What was wonderful about the matter was that Helen should ever have been brought to consent to his proposal. The prospects he had to offer her were not brilliant. His annual earnings were scarcely larger than her own small pittance ; he could not afford to marry her at once ; it had to be a waiting engagement, and the marriage was to be indefinitely deferred until his position in the world should be bettered. He had nothing, therefore, to offer her save his own dull and ungainly self, and most assuredly she did not love him.

When he had made his proposal in due form, correctly and decorously, through the medium of his aunt — an event which had happened now nearly two years ago — a great many small things put together had induced Helen to give a reluctant consent to his offer. She was very tired of teaching. She fancied that marriage would mean an escape from her prison, and from Miss Fairbrother’s incessant admonitions. The good lady herself was loud in expressions of delighted amazement at her wonderful good fortune, and urged her to accept so unspeakable a blessing as Frederick Warne’s affections promptly, and with heartfelt gratitude. In fact, she refused even to listen to the small doubts which poor Helen attempted timidly to put forward, shutting her eyes and shaking her head in horror over them, as though they had been actual sins of the deepest dye. After she had spoken the fatal word Helen had certainly felt many degrees happier concerning her future, but did not experience much alteration in the conditions of her present.

Frederick Warne was not an ardent lover. His court-

1 6 ship was conducted upon the most matter-of-fact principles ; and if passion ever found a place in his sluggish soul he was careful, from a sense of duty, to suppress every outward exhibition of it. After the few first days of bewildered surprise Helen learnt to be very grateful indeed that it was so.

The lovers met invariably, as they had met upon the Common to-day, with a quiet handshake and a few conventional inquiries after each other’s health.

To-day, however, Frederick had something new to say to his ladylove — a great piece of news, which he proceeded in his slow and pedantic way to communicate to her.

“ I have something of great importance to tell you, my dear Helen ; something that may materially alter my whole future prospects,” he began.

“ Indeed!” There was but a faint curiosity in her mind.

“ I have been offered an appointment as classical master in the South London High School for Girls.”

“ Really? Is it a good thing?”

“ It would mean an increase of fifty pou’nds a year on my present income,” answered Frederick, with importance, “and a lodging free of rent attached to the building.”

“ Should you live there, then ?” inquired Helen, absently, with her eyes fixed upon the red-gold clouds in the western sky. Frederick Wame stopped short and faced her.

“ I do not think you apprehend the importance of what I am saying, Helen. I had expected you to take a greater interest in my career, and to appreciate with keener intelligence the honor as well as the lucrative advantage which is to be given to me. With this

A HARD LESSON.

appointment I shall be in a position to marry and offer you a home next Christmas. ”

“Oh!” Helen was awake enough now. She turned on him two startled eyes. “Surely,” she stammered, “ surely that is very soon?”

“ Soon ! When our engagement has lasted two years ! I thought you would have been glad,” he continued, in a voice of mild reproach; “you do not seem glad at all. ”

“Forgive me,” she murmured, confusedly. “I — I — was surprised. I am glad — I suppose.” For the moment she felt genuinely penitent.

Frederick Warne looked at her coldly. “ You express yourself badly,” he said, in his formal schoolmaster voice, “ and without self-control. It is wise always to reflect before uttering meaningless and broken remarks. We will talk of this matter again, when you are calmer, with my aunt.”

He pushed open the iron gates for her, and Helen went in silently.

It is time to return to Miss Fairbrother. Soon after Helen had met her lover on the Common, the old schoolmistress, who had somehow fallen into a little doze by the chimney corner, suddenly became very wide awake and sat bolt upright in her chair as the maid-servant opened the door behind her and announced in a voice of due importance —

“The Earl of Bainton, m’am.”

No more startling name could possibly have broken in upon her repose. It was now seven years ago since Lord Bainton had brought to her the little girl whom his old friend Colonel Dacre had left to his most reluctant guardianship. Years ago, when Miss Fairbrother was still brisk and active, and comparatively young, 2 i8

A HARD LESSON.

she had been governess to Lord Bainton’s sister; and when Lady Camilla Greyson heard that her bachelor brother had been saddled with a ward— a ward, too, with only forty pounds a year ! — she had said to him in her off-hand way —

“ Oh, take the child down to old Fairbrother’s — she keeps a school now on Cleares Common. She will educate her for her forty pounds a year, and when she is old enough she can turn her into a pupil teacher, and she will earn her own living. In that way you need never be bothered with her any more.”

Lord Bainton had thankfully taken his sister’s advice. Although a kind-hearted man, he was somewhat selfish and indolent. He liked his own ways and his own life, and anything more disconcerting to him than to find himself the guardian of a female child it would be difficult to imagine. He thought it, privately, very inconsiderate of poor Dacre to saddle him with such a bequest. Nevertheless, being a man of honor and of conscience, he felt himself compelled to do his duty by the child. He took Helen himself down to Aberdare House and confided her to the care of his sister’s old governess.

Once a year he received a letter from Miss Fairbrother reporting his ward’s progress, to which he invariably wrote an answer filled with polite and suitable, if somewhat meaningless, sentences; and when the time came for the girl to become a teacher instead of a pupil in the school, he notified his consent and approval of the change in her position. In addition, he administered her small fortune carefully and judiciously, and invariably sent her a five-pound note at Christmas-time as a present from hi'mself. Lord Bainton could not conceive that his duties as a guardian

A HARD LESSON.

could possibly have been more conscientiously fulfilled.

That he should go down to Cleares Common and personally inspect his ward had never entered into the scheme of his obligations towards her. Nor would he for a moment have imagined that he would be benefiting her by doing so. Her position in life was bound to be a lowly one. She was probably happy where she was. Miss Fairbrother, at any rate, assured ‘ him that she was. Of what advantage, therefore, to unsettle her by visits which could necessarily lead to nothing? She could have nothing to say to him, and, most assuredly, he could have nothing to say to her. As he remembered her she had been awkward and ungainly ; there had been nothing attractive at all about her. She had been a plain and dull child then ; she was probably a plain and dull young woman now.

He had no desire whatever to renew his acquaintance with her. But now something totally unforeseen had occurred — something which had most materially altered the whole complexion of the case.

A great many years before the date of this history, there had been three friends together at Eton and at Oxford who had been absolutely inseparable in their devotion to each other. When they left college, and entered upon the battle of life, their paths had, as is generally the case, widely diverged from each other. Dacre went into the army and was ordered abroad, where he married a penniless girl, who died in her first confinement. Bainton in due course succeeded to his father’s title and estates. George Ashworth, the third of the trio, went out to seek his fortune in Australia, purchased for a song a small property there, upon which he lived and prospered, and became eventually a rich man.

A HARD LESSON.

Of the three, James Dacre was the only one who married ; and when Ash wort n returned, broken in health, to England to enjoy such pleasures as his wealth might still bring to him, he returned only in time to be present at Colonel Dacre ’s funeral, and to shake Lord Bainton’s hand once more across the open grave of their mutual old friend. After that the two friends met often, and Ashworth was such a complete recluse, owing to the fatal disease which had already undermined his life, that he scarcely saw any one else. He had one nephew — the son of a sister who was dead — and to this nephew he conceived an unconquerable dislike. Yet those about him took it for granted that this nephew would necessarily become his heir. Perhaps the young man himself took it for granted, too, and showed that he did so too plainly. Anyhow, when the end came, as, after seven years of a long and painful illness, it came at last, George Ashworth’s will was a complete surprise to everybody save his solicitor. The Earl of Bainton was named his sole executor, with a legacy of two valuable Gainsboroughs and some sketches by Turner, which he had always admired. To the nephew was left five hundred pounds and a portrait of his mother by an inferior artist. The whole of the rest of his fortune was devised, unconditionally and unreservedly, to a person whom he had heard of — but had never seen — Colonel James Dacre’s orphan daughter. Now this was the astonishing news which Lord Bainton had driven down all the way from town in a hansom to impart to the schoolmistress at Aberdare House.

The story, wonderful as it was, took but a very few minutes to tell, and soon Miss Fairbrother was in possession of the main facts of the case.

A HARD LESSON.

Somebody — the good lady hardly knew who, save that he was an old friend of her father’s — had died and left Helen thirty thousand pounds.

Poor Miss Fairbrother gasped for breath over the news.

“But — but,” she panted, “how is it possible — when he never saw her — never heard of her ?”

“ Pardon me ; he had heard of her often. He used to inquire about her from me.”

“ And yet you left her here, Lord Bainton ! A pupil-teacher in my school! You never informed me that she would require special teaching and training, so that she might be rendered fit to become the possessor of a large fortune ?”

“You misjudge me, Miss Fairbrother. Naturally, I knew nothing whatever of my poor friend’s intentions with regard to his money. Had I been aware of them I should certainly not have left Helen here so long. However, I am persuaded that my ward will do credit to your care and training ” — this Lord Bainton added with a bow and a polite smile — “ and so now that it has become my duty to remove her to a wider sphere of life I shall do so with all confidence in you, and in any case her future is before her, and no harm has been done. ”

Chapter III

It was at this moment that Miss Fairbrother suddenly recollected Frederick Warne.

By a singular omission in her letter to Helen’s guardian she had never informed him of his ward’s engagement. Lord Bainton had taken apparently so little interest in the girl, and had evidently desired to have so little personally to do with her, that she had always supposed when the time came he would be glad enough to learn she had found a respectable and suitable husband who would take her entirely off his hands. Somehow she had kept the little secret religiously from him, not knowing quite, perhaps, at the very bottom of her heart, how he might take it, and yet not doubting, either, that it would be easy to obtain his consent when Frederick’s prospects should enable him to fix a date for his marriage.