Countess Kate. Yonge Charlotte Mary

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СКАЧАТЬ Kate did get a private run and leap whenever she could, but never with a safe conscience; and that spoilt the pleasure, or made it guilty and alarmed.

      All she could do really in peace was reading or drawing, or writing letters to Sylvia.  Nobody had interfered with any of these occupations, though Kate knew that none of them were perfectly agreeable to Aunt Barbara, who had been heard to speak of children’s reading far too many silly story-books now-a-days, and had declared that the child would cramp her hand for writing or good drawing with that nonsense.

      However, Lady Jane had several times submitted most complacently to have a whole long history in pictures explained to her, smiling very kindly, but not apparently much the wiser.  And one, at least, of the old visions of wealth was fulfilled, for Kate’s pocket-money enabled her to keep herself in story-books and unlimited white paper, as well as to set up a paint-box with real good colours.  But somehow, a new tale every week had not half the zest that stories had when a fresh book only came into the house by rare and much prized chances; and though the paper was smooth, and the blue and red lovely, it was not half so nice to draw and paint as with Sylvia helping, and the remains of Mary’s rubbings for making illuminations; nay, Lily spoiling everything, and Armyn and Charlie laughing at her were now remembered as ingredients in her pleasure; and she would hardly have had the heart to go on drawing but that she could still send her pictorial stories to Sylvia, and receive remarks on them.  There were no more Lady Ethelindas in flounces in Kate’s drawings now; her heroines were always clergymen’s daughters, or those of colonists cutting down trees and making the butter.

      At three o’clock the carriage came to the door; and on Mondays and Thursdays took Lady Caergwent and her governess to a mistress who taught dancing and calisthenic exercises, and to whom her aunts trusted to make her a little more like a countess than she was at present.  Those were poor Kate’s black days of the week; when her feet were pinched, and her arms turned the wrong way, as it seemed to her; and she was in perpetual disgrace.  And oh, that polite disgrace!  Those wishes that her Ladyship would assume a more aristocratic deportment, were so infinitely worse than a good scolding!  Nothing could make it more dreadful, except Aunt Barbara’s coming in at the end to see how she was getting on.

      The aunts, when Lady Jane was well enough, used to take their drive while the dancing lesson was in progress, and send the carriage afterwards to bring their niece home.  On the other days of the week, when it was fine, the carriage set Mrs. Lacy and Kate down in Hyde Park for their walk, while the aunts drove about; and this, after the first novelty, was nearly as dull as the morning walk.  The quiet decorous pacing along was very tiresome after skipping in the lanes at home; and once, when Mrs. Lacy had let her run freely in Kensington Gardens, Lady Barbara was much displeased with her, and said Lady Caergwent was too old for such habits.

      There was no sight-seeing.  Kate had told Lady Jane how much she wished to see the Zoological Gardens and British Museum, and had been answered that some day when she was very good Aunt Barbara would take her there; but the day never came, though whenever Kate had been in no particular scrape for a little while, she hoped it was coming.  Though certainly days without scrapes were not many: the loud tones, the screams of laughing that betrayed her undignified play with Josephine, the attitudes, the skipping and jumping like the gambols of a calf, the wonderful tendency of her clothes to get into mischief—all were continually bringing trouble upon her.

      If a splash of mud was in the street, it always came on her stockings; her meals left reminiscences on all her newest dresses; her hat was always blowing off; and her skirts curiously entangled themselves in rails and balusters, caught upon nails, and tore into ribbons; and though all the repairs fell to Josephine’s lot, and the purchase of new garments was no such difficulty as of old, Aunt Barbara was even more severe on such mishaps than Mary, who had all the trouble and expense of them.

      After the walk, Kate had lessons to learn for the next day—poetry, dates, grammar, and the like; and after them came her tea; and then her evening toilette, when, as the aunts were out of hearing, she refreshed herself with play and chatter with Josephine.  She was supposed to talk French to her; but it was very odd sort of French, and Josephine did not insist on its being better.  She was very good-natured, and thought “Miladi” had a dull life; so she allowed a good many things that a more thoughtful person would have known to be inconsistent with obedience to Lady Barbara.

      When dressed, Kate had to descend to the drawing-room, and there await her aunts coming up from dinner.  She generally had a book of her own, or else she read bits of those lying on the tables, till Lady Barbara caught her, and in spite of her protest that at home she might always read any book on the table ordered her never to touch any without express permission.

      Sometimes the aunts worked; sometimes Lady Barbara played and sang.  They wanted Kate to sit up as they did with fancy work, and she had a bunch of flowers in Berlin wool which she was supposed to be grounding; but she much disliked it, and seldom set three stitches when her aunts’ eyes were not upon her.  Lady Jane was a great worker, and tried to teach her some pretty stitches; but though she began by liking to sit by the soft gentle aunt, she was so clumsy a pupil, that Lady Barbara declared that her sister must not be worried, and put a stop to the lessons.  So Kate sometimes read, or dawdled over her grounding; or when Aunt Barbara was singing, she would nestle up to her other aunt, and go off into some dreamy fancy of growing up, getting home to the Wardours, or having them to live with her at her own home; or even of a great revolution, in which, after the pattern of the French nobility, she should have to maintain Aunt Jane by the labour of her hands!  What was to become of Aunt Barbara was uncertain; perhaps she was to be in prison, and Kate to bring food to her in a little basket every day; or else she was to run away: but Aunt Jane was to live in a nice little lodging, with no one to wait on her but her dear little niece, who was to paint beautiful screens for her livelihood, and make her coffee with her own hands.  Poor Lady Jane!

      Bed-time came at last—horrible bed-time, with all its terrors!  At first Kate persuaded Josephine and her light to stay till sleep came to put an end to them; but Lady Barbara came up one evening, declared that a girl of eleven years old must not be permitted in such childish nonsense, and ordered Josephine to go down at once, and always to put out the candle as soon as Lady Caergwent was in bed.

      Lady Barbara would hardly have done so if she had known how much suffering she caused; but she had always been too sensible to know what the misery of fancies could be, nor how the silly little brain imagined everything possible and impossible; sometimes that thieves were breaking in—sometimes that the house was on fire—sometimes that she should be smothered with pillows, like the princes in the Tower, for the sake of her title—sometimes that the Gunpowder Plot would be acted under the house!

      Most often of all it was a thought that was not foolish and unreal like the rest.  It was the thought that the Last Judgment might be about to begin.  But Kate did not use that thought as it was meant to be used when we are bidden to “watch.”  If she had done so, she would have striven every morning to “live this day as if the last.”  But she never thought of it in the morning, nor made it a guide to her actions; or else she would have dreaded it less.  And at night it did not make her particular about obedience.  It only made her want to keep Josephine; as if Josephine and a candle could protect her from that Day and Hour!  And if the moment had come, would she not have been safer trying to endure hardness for the sake of obedience—with the holy verses Mr. Wardour had taught her on her lips, alone with her God and her good angel—than trying to forget all in idle chatter with her maid, and contrary to known commands, detaining her by foolish excuses?

      It is true that Kate did not feel as if obedience to Lady Barbara was the same duty as obedience to “Papa.”  Perhaps it was not in the nature of things that she should; but no one can habitually practise petty disobedience to one “placed in authority over” her, without hurting the whole disposition.

      CHAPTER IV

      “Thursday morning!  Bother—calisthenic СКАЧАТЬ