CHAPTER XX.—AS GOVERNESS.

The establishment at High Tor was by no means on so sumptuous a scale as that which the much larger revenues of Sir Sykes Denzil maintained at Carbery Chase. Indeed, while for a baronet Sir Sykes was rich, for an earl Lord Wolverhampton was almost poor. There are poorer earls than he, no doubt, dwelling in cheap watering-places or in outlying London squares, and exhibiting their pearl-studded coronets on no more pretentious equipage than a brougham. But for a man of his degree, and a De Vere withal, the Earl was not wealthy. It was much to his credit that he was popular in spite of the comparative slenderness of his annual rent-roll, since a poor lord, like an impoverished government, is apt to be regarded with a sort of unreasoning contempt by those who are very likely worse off, but in a less conspicuous station.

To be rich is, after all, a very uncertain distinction; that which is opulence to the Squire implying mere substantial comfort when it belongs to Sir John, and but a moderate income when it has to meet the calls which charity, duty, and custom make on ‘my lord’s’ bank balance. Are there not nobles of princely rank who declare that they are stinted of pocket-money, of actual jingling sovereigns and rustling notes, by the prudent administrators of their vast nominal fortunes? And have we not heard of mighty financiers who feel a positive pang at any encroachment on the colossal capital on which is reared the fabric of a world-wide credit?

Lord Wolverhampton had been known to say more than once among his intimate friends, that a step in the peerage would to him prove a ruinous boon; and that to keep his head above water, difficult as an Earl, would be impossible were that honest head overweighted by the strawberry-leaved coronet of a Marquis. Such expensive promotion was, however, unlikely, for High Tor now sent forth no legislators to the more stirring of the Houses of Parliament. Some two years before, Lord Harrogate had been returned for a west-country borough, and had earned some praise and much good-will during the brief tenure of his seat. But the session came to a close, and with it the corporate life of the moribund House of Commons; and the Earl could not bring himself again to face the costly struggle of a contested election, even on behalf of a son so promising as his heir.

Thus the fine old house of High Tor, though lacking no adjuncts or appliances that should appertain to the mansion of a plain country gentleman who happened to have a handle to his name (such was the Earl’s favourite way of describing himself among those who knew him well, though it may be doubted whether any patrician in Europe cherished in secret a stronger sentiment of family pride), was not kept up with quite so ostentatious a lavishness as the neighbouring dwelling of Carbery, the red gables of which gleaming in the westering sun, never met Lord Wolverhampton’s eyes without suggesting the remembrance that it had been built and, till recently, owned by a De Vere.

There was space enough and to spare in the picturesque old mansion; and the chamber which had been assigned to Ethel Gray, and which had been formerly tenanted by that Miss Grainger whose desertion of her post as governess to try the experiment of wedded life we have heard the Countess deplore, and which was next to the great rambling school-room, commanded a noble prospect over hill and dale, over wood and water. From the ivy-framed windows, in clear weather, Dartmoor might be seen for miles and leagues, rolling away in giant waves of purple heather and gray and green; while here and there rose up defiantly the naked crags, known locally as Tors, frowning like natural fortresses on the invader of the wilderness.

Nearer, the two parks were visible, with all their wealth of huge old trees and matchless turf, browsed by hereditary deer, that couched contentedly amid the tall fern that had screened the antlered herds for centuries past, and the red roof and gleaming vanes of stately Carbery, and the peaceful waters of its ornamental lake, in which the silver-white swans that floated there were imaged back as from the polished surface of a mirror. It was a pretty room this, wherein Miss Grainger, its last occupant, had passed perhaps the happiest years of her governess-life; and now it had received a new tenant in the person of Ethel Gray. A new tenant, but for how long? That was a question which Ethel asked herself, without being able to give a satisfactory answer to her own query. The school-house of High Tor, with the modest dwelling of its mistress, lay in ugly heaps of blackened ruin; and it must be long before the little flock of scholars could again be gathered together in any building large enough to hold them, and longer before the village instructress could have a home to replace that which the fire had made desolate. There were at the best of times no lodgings in High Tor fit for the abode of an educated girl such as Ethel, and now every house that remained unharmed was overcrowded by the burned-out inhabitants of those which the conflagration had swept away.

It so chanced, however, that on the very day following Ethel’s arrival the question as to the prolongation of her sojourn at High Tor House was conclusively settled. Lady Alice, a quick-witted impulsive child, came swiftly down-stairs to the room where her mother and sisters were sitting. ‘Pray, come, Maud!’ she said breathlessly; ‘Gladys, you come too; and you, mamma. It’s worth while, indeed it is, only to listen for a moment!’

‘What is to be listened to?’ asked the Countess, amused at the eager manner of her youngest child.

‘Miss Gray’s singing, her wonderful, wonderful singing!’ returned the child impetuously. ‘I heard it by accident as I passed the door of the school-room, where she is all alone at the piano; and I could hardly tear myself away that I might tell you not to lose the treat.’

The Countess laughed good-humouredly.

‘All Alice’s geese are swans,’ she said; ‘and I am too old to climb so many stairs on the strength of this young lady’s recommendation. You are young, Maud, yourself, and I see you cannot resist the temptation; nor you either, Gladys.’

And indeed the two elder of the Ladies De Vere had allowed themselves to be convinced, or at least rendered compliant, by the pleading eyes and the energetic ‘Do come, please,’ of their child-sister. It was some little time before they returned.

‘Mamma, Alice was right; and you have lost a treat worth a longer pilgrimage than that,’ said frank Lady Gladys, coming down, with Alice, radiant with delight, skipping at her side. ‘This Miss Gray (Maud, who is really getting fond of her, addresses her as “Ethel” already) has a voice that might make her fortune if she were less timid, and so sweet and liquid that one might fancy it the carol of a bird. Such a touch too on the keys! That jangling wheezy old school-room piano, on which excellent Miss Grainger used to pound so distressingly, gives out real music beneath those fingers of hers, and becomes full-toned and mellow. What a shame to throw away talent such as that upon the A B C work of teaching urchins the rudiments of knowledge!’

‘I never heard of these high musical attainments of Miss Gray’s, I am sure,’ said the puzzled Countess; ‘and I am almost as certain that your father never heard of them either. She was strongly recommended, I know, by an old college friend of my lord, a clergyman somewhere, and that is all I have learned concerning her. But if she is such a performer as you describe, I should like to hear her too.’

Lady Gladys shook her head. ‘I am not sure,’ she said, ‘whether so shy a song-bird can be coaxed into warbling before an audience of strangers. She really did seem quite startled and distressed when Alice began to clap her hands and Maud and I broke in upon her. She had no notion, she said, that her singing could be heard by any of us in that out-of-the-way corner of so large a house, and seemed to think she had taken a great liberty and infringed rules of social decorum. And it was all that even Maud, whom she likes, could do to persuade her to sing again, only a little bit of a ballad; but it all but brought tears into my eyes, hackneyed girl of the world as I am, you know.’

In explanation of which last speech, it may be mentioned that Lady Gladys, the beauty of the family, had gone through two London seasons under the chaperonage of her mother’s sister, the Marchioness of Plinlimmon, and that it was supposed that if she had remained unmarried still, it was not for want of offers matrimonial.

‘I was thinking, mamma,’ said Lady Maud, who had lingered longer with Ethel than her sister had done, ‘that you could scarcely do better than to engage Miss Gray, if it suits her, as a governess for Alice, instead of writing to every point of the compass in hopes that some friend will recommend some treasure. It’s not only that Ethel Gray is really too good for the routine of plodding tuition in a village school, but that she knows everything, or nearly everything, that Miss Grainger knew, and French and German quite as well as it is possible to acquire them in England. Gladys has told you, I am sure, what a musician she is. I do not know how you could do better.’

The Countess too did not know how she could do better than to engage such a successor to the oft-quoted Miss Grainger, provided she possessed the accomplishments with which she was credited, and were willing—which Lady Wolverhampton could scarcely doubt—to exchange her rustic pupils for the post of governess at High Tor House. And as, on inquiry, it seemed that Ethel’s acquirements had not been overrated, and that her magnificent voice and musical proficiency fully merited the encomiums of the girls, while Alice was a vehement partisan of the governess-elect, the Countess was ready to propose the formal installation of Ethel in that capacity, subject to ‘my lord’s’ approval, when he should return from some magisterial business at Pebworth.

It was, however, necessary, in the Countess’s opinion, to ask a question or two on other matters than that of competence to teach. The office of mistress of the village school was one thing; that of governess to an Earl’s youngest daughter was another. It would be satisfactory, the Countess thought, to know a little more of Miss Gray’s birth, parentage, and antecedents than any of the De Vere family did as yet know. Ethel’s simple frankness saved Lady Wolverhampton—who did not like to put direct questions, and was eminently unfit for the delicate operation of extracting by subtle talk and veiled inquiry what she wished to learn—a great deal of trouble.

‘My father is in Australia,’ she said, raising her clear eyes to meet those of the Countess. ‘He is, I believe, a merchant there; but even that I do not know with any certainty, though he has been living there for many years, and I have always been told that I was born in the colony. I came with him to England, I know, when I was a little child, and he returned there; and I have not seen him since then, and cannot remember him at all.’

Ethel’s story was a brief one. She had little to relate, save of her early youth, spent at Sandston, a minor bathing-place on the Norfolk coast, where Mr Gray, a widower, who had paid but a short visit to his native country, had left his only child under the care of an excellent woman, one Mrs Linklater, a widow and mistress of a lodging-house. Ethel’s eyes grew dim as she spoke of good motherly Mrs Linklater, at whose death, three years before, she had been received into the house of the clergyman, who had been a college friend of the Earl, and to whose wife she had been a sort of companion.

‘Dear Mrs Keating,’ said Ethel simply, ‘quite, I am afraid, spoiled me. For years and years, when Mrs Linklater was alive, I spent much of my time at the vicarage; and Mrs Keating, who was herself very accomplished, taught me almost all the little that I know. She was fond of music, and understood it as few understand it, and it is through her kindness that I learned to sing and play. She had no children living except the three sons who were making their way in the world; and I believe that she thought I was like a little daughter she had lost, and whose name, like mine, was Ethel, and so’——

‘And so she took you to live with her, when this worthy Mrs—yes, Linklater died,’ said the Countess encouragingly. ‘But how came you to leave her?’

Ethel’s explanation of that was clear enough. Mrs Keating’s health, always frail, had given way, and she had been ordered to a warmer climate. Dr Keating, who had accompanied his wife to Mentone and Bellaggio, had a curate to pay and heavy expenses to meet. It was necessary that Ethel should get her own living; and it was at her own suggestion that Dr Keating had sought for her that appointment as mistress of a village school which his acquaintance with the Earl had enabled him to obtain for her at High Tor.

‘But your father?’ said the Countess, full of sympathy, for she liked the girl better and better for all that she saw or heard of her. Ethel smiled somewhat sadly. Mr Gray, it appeared, seldom wrote, and then very curtly, from Australia. For nearly two years the customary remittance, sufficient to defray the cost of his daughter’s maintenance, had not reached Sandston. That he would one day come back to England, Ethel hoped. He had been, she feared, of late less prosperous in his affairs than was formerly the case. Dr Keating held the address in Sydney to which letters to the widower had been hitherto addressed.

The matter was settled; the proposal that Ethel should become governess to Lady Alice, and as such should be permanently domiciled at High Tor, was graciously made and gratefully accepted.

‘I shall have to look out for another schoolmistress, it seems,’ said the good-natured old Earl; ‘but never mind that. Alice is pleased, and Maud is pleased; and as Miss Gray seems to like it too, I think we may say that some good came of our luckless fire, after all.’