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UNGENEROUS BENEVOLENCE.
As the time went on, and Letty saw nothing more of Tom, she began
to revive a little, and feel as if she were growing safe again.
The tide of temptation was ebbing away; there would be no more
deceit; never again would she place herself in circumstances
whence might arise any necessity for concealment. She began, much
too soon, alas! to feel as if she were newborn; nothing worthy of
being called a new birth can take place anywhere but in the will,
and poor Letty's will was not yet old enough to give birth to
anything; it scarcely, indeed, existed. The past was rapidly
receding, that was all, and had begun to look dead, and as if it
wanted only to be buried out of her sight. For what is done is
done, in small faults as well as in murders; and, as nothing can
recall it, or make it not be, where can be the good in thinking
about it?--a reasoning worse than dangerous, before one has left
off being capable of the same thing over again. Still, in the
mere absence of renewed offense, it is well that some shadow of
peace should return; else how should men remember the face of
innocence? or how should they live long enough to learn to
repent? But for such breaks, would not some grow worse at full
gallop?
That the idea of Tom's friendship was very pleasant to her, who
can blame her? He had never said he loved her; he had only said
she was lovely: was she therefore bound to persuade herself he
meant nothing at all? Was it not as much as could be required of
her, that, in her modesty, she took him for no more than a true,
kind friend, who would gladly be of service to her? Ah! if Tom
had but been that! If he was not, he did not know it, which is
something to say both for and against him. It could not be other
than pleasant to Letty to have one, in her eyes so superior, who
would talk to her as an equal. It was not that ever she resented
being taught; but she did get tired of lessons only, beautiful as
they were. A kiss from Mrs. Wardour, or a little teasing from
Cousin Godfrey, would have done far more than all his
intellectual labor upon her to lift her feet above such snares as
she was now walking amid. She needed some play--a thing far more
important to life than a great deal of what is called business
and acquirement. Many a matter, over which grown people look
important, long-faced, and consequential, is folly, compared with
the merest child's frolic, in relation to the true affairs of
existence.
All the time, Letty had not in the least neglected her
houseduties; and, again, her readings with her cousin Godfrey,
since Tom's apparent recession, had begun to revive in interest.
He grew kinder and kinder to her, more and more fatherly.
But the mother, once disquieted, had lost no time in taking
measures. In every direction, secretly, through friends, she was
inquiring after some situation suitable for Letty: she owed it to
herself, she said, to find for the girl the right thing, before
sending her from the house. In the true spirit of benevolent
tyranny, she said not a word to Letty of her design. She had the
chronic distemper of concealment, where Letty had but a feverish
attack. Much false surmise might have been corrected, and much
evil avoided, had she put it in Letty's power to show how gladly
she would leave Thornwick. In the mean time the old lady kept her
lynx-eye upon the young people.
But Godfrey, having caught a certain expression in the said eye,
came to the resolution that thenceforth their schoolroom should
be the common sitting-room. This would aid him in carrying out
his resolve of a cautious and staid demeanor toward his pupil. To
preserve his freedom, he must keep himself thoroughly in hand.
Experience had taught him that, were he once to give way and show
his affection, there would from that moment be an end of teaching
and learning. And yet so much was he drawn to the girl, that, at
this very time, he gave her the manuscript of his own verses to
which I have referred--a volume exquisitely written, and
containing, certainly, the outcome of the best that was in him:
he did not tell her that he had copied them all with such care
and neatness, and had the book so lovelily bound, expressly and
only for her eyes..
News of something that seemed likely to suit her ideas for Letty
at length came to Mrs. Wardour's ears, whereupon she thought it
time to prepare the girl for the impending change. One day,
therefore, as she herself sat knitting one sock for Godfrey, and
Letty darning another, she opened the matter.
"I am getting old, Letty," she said, "and you can't be here
always. You are a thoughtless creature, but I suppose you have
the sense to see that?"
"Yes, indeed, aunt," answered Letty.
"It is high time you should be thinking," Mrs. Wardour went on,
"how you are to earn your bread. If you left it till I was gone,
you would find it very awkward, for you would have to leave
Thornwick at once, and I don't know who would take you while you
were looking out. I must see you comfortably settled before I
go."
"Yes, aunt."
"There are not many things you could do."
"No, aunt; very few. But I should make a better housemaid than
most--I do believe that."
"I am glad to find you willing to work; but we shall be able, I
trust, to do a little better for you than that. A situation as
housemaid would reflect little credit on my pains for you--would
hardly correspond to the education you have had."
Mrs. Wardour referred to the fact that Letty was for about a year
a day--boarder at a ladies' school in Testbridge, where no
immortal soul, save that of a genius, which can provide its own
sauce, could have taken the least interest in the chaff and
chopped straw that composed the provender.
"It is true," her aunt went on, "you might have made a good deal
more of it, if you had cared to do your best; but, such as you
are, I trust we shall find you a very tolerable situation as
governess."
At the word, Letty's heart ran half-way up her throat. A more
dreadful proposal she could not have imagined. She felt, and was,
utterly insufficient for--indeed, incapable of such an office.
She felt she knew nothing: how was she to teach anything? Her
heart seemed to grow gray within her. By nature, from lack of
variety of experience, yet more from daily repression of her
natural joyousness, she was exceptionally apprehensive where
anything was required of her. What she understood, she
encountered willingly and bravely; but, the simplest thing that
seemed to involve any element of obscurity, she dreaded like a
dragon in his den.
"You don't seem to relish the proposal, Letty," said Mrs.
Wardour. "I hope you had not taken it in your head that I meant
to leave you independent. What I have done for you, I have done
purely for your father's sake. I was under no obligation to take
the least trouble about you. But I have more regard to your
welfare than I fear you give me credit for."
"O aunt! it's only that I'm not fit for being a governess. I
shouldn't a bit mind being dairymaid or housemaid. I would go to
such a place to-morrow, if you liked."
"Letty, your tastes may be vulgar, but you owe it to your family
to look at least like a lady."
"But I am not scholar enough for a governess, aunt."
"That is not my fault. I sent you to a good school. Now, I will
find you a good situation, and you must contrive to keep it."
"O aunt! let me stay here--just as I am. Call me your dairymaid
or your housemaid. It is all one--I do the work now."
"Do you mean to reflect on me that I have required menial offices
of you? I have been to you in the place of a mother; and it is
for me, not for you, to make choice of your path in life."
"Do you want me to go at once?" asked Letty, her heart sinking
again, and her voice trembling with a pathos her aunt quite
misunderstood.
"As soon as I have secured for you a desirable situation--not
before," answered Mrs. Wardour, in a tone generously protective.
Her affection for the girl had never been deep; and, the moment
she fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she
became to her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but
was she bound to harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are
who never learn to see anything except in its relation to
themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves;
and, this being a withering habit of mind, they keep growing
drier, and older, and smaller, and deader, the longer they live--
thinking less of other people, and more of themselves and their
past experience, all the time as they go on withering.
But Mrs. Wardour was in some dread of what her son would say when
he came to know what she had been doing; for, when we are not at
ease with ourselves, when conscience keeps moving as if about to
speak, then we dread the disapproval of the lowliest, and Godfrey
was the only one before whom his mother felt any kind of awe.
Toward him, therefore, she kept silence for the present. If she
had spoken then, things might have gone very differently: it
might have brought Godfrey to the point of righteous resolve or
of passionate utterance. He could not well have opposed his
mother's design without going further and declaring that, if
Letty would, she should remain where she was, the mistress of the
house. If not the feeling of what was due to her, the dread of
the house without her might well have brought him to this.
Letty, for her part, believed her cousin Godfrey regarded her
with pity, and showed her kindness from a generous sense of duty;
she was a poor, dull creature for whom her cousin must do what he
could: one word of genuine love from him, one word even of such
love as was in him, would have caused her nature to shoot
heavenward and spread out earthward with a rapidity that would
have astonished him; she would thereby have come into her
spiritual property at once, and heaven would have opened to her--
a little way at least--probably to close again for a time. Now
she felt crushed. The idea of undertaking that for which she knew
herself so ill fitted was not merely odious but frightful to her.
She was ready enough to work, but it must be real, not sham work.
She must see and consult Mary! This was quite another affair from
Tom! She would take the first opportunity. In the mean time there
was nothing to be done or said; and with a heavy heart she held
her peace--only longed for her own room, that she might have a
cry. To her comfort the clock struck ten, and all that now lay
between her and that refuge was the usual round of the house with
Mrs. Wardour, to see all safe for the night. That done, they
parted, and Letty went slowly and sadly up the stair. It was a
dark prospect before her. At best, she had to leave the only home
she remembered, and go among strangers.
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