The way in which this tranquil ease of possession was disturbed was a very gentle and gradual one – at least, so I can see now, though at the time it appeared to me most abrupt and terrible. My idea of my father was that he was old, as a child’s ideas generally are; but he was not old. He was about five-and-forty when I was fifteen. He was not tall – and he stooped, which made him look still less so. At fifteen I was as tall as he was. He had a handsome, refined face, with very clear features, and a sort of ivory complexion. His hair was worn off his temples, and there were a great many lines in his face – partly with trouble, partly with work; but his smile was the sweetest smile I ever saw, and he had a way of captivating everybody. I have heard it said since that this power of fascination did not last, and that he grew melancholy and monotonous after the first few times you had seen him; and though I was very angry when I heard this first, I can with an effort believe that it might be true. I suppose it was the same faculty which showed itself at church, where there were always new people coming, who attended closely for a few weeks and then went away. He was like a man who gives you everything he has at once, and then has nothing more for you. At home he was silent, always kind, but never saying much. I scarcely recollect ever to have been scolded by him. Ellen scolded me, and so did old Mrs Tufnell, and even Mrs Stephens next door; but papa only said, “Poor child!” with the air of a compassionate spectator, when I was complained of to him. Our chief conversation was at meals, when he would sometimes talk a little, and tell me of things he had seen or heard; and it was at tea one evening that he first brought forward the name of the other person who was henceforward to stand between us. No such thought was in his mind then, I am sure; but he was more communicative than usual. He told me that he had seen a young lady on one of his visits, in a very strange place for such a person to be found – in the back parlour of a small grocer’s shop which I knew quite well. He told me quite a long story about her – how she was an orphan and had been left destitute, and had been obliged to go back to her mother’s family, who had been a governess in her day, and married much above her. Her father, too, was dead, having been of no use whatever in the world or to her, and there was no prospect before her but that of going out to be a governess – a thing which papa seemed to think a great hardship for her. I had been trained to believe that some such place would have to be mine as papa got older and I grew a woman; therefore I was not at all shocked by the suggestion. I said: “Has she heard of any nice situation, papa?” with the quietest matter-of-fact acceptance of his words.
“Heard of a situation! You talk very much at your ease, Mary, – but if you saw this elegant, accomplished, refined girl,” said my father. “Poor thing, I cannot bear to think that she should be driven to such a fate.”
I did not make any answer. I was surprised. It had never occurred to me that it was “such a fate.” Most girls, it seemed to me, who were not great ladies were governesses, both in the little real world with which I was acquainted and in books.
“Poor thing!” he said again. “Poor thing! how I wish there was any possible way of saving her. What a thing it is to be poor!”
“But any situation would be better than staying with the Spicers,” I said. “Think, papa – the Spicers! I should not mind being a governess – I suppose I shall be, some day or other – but I should hate living in a parlour behind a shop.”
“Well, Mary, I hope you will see her some time, and when you do see her you must be very kind to her,” said my father with a sigh; and that night he drew his chair to the fire and tried to talk, which was a thing that took me very much by surprise. But, unfortunately, I had a new book which was very interesting, and instead of responding to this unusual inclination, as I ought to have done, I kept on reading, making pettish and uncertain replies, until he grew tired of the attempt and gave it up, and got a book too, as usual. He sighed a little as he did so, with a sort of disappointed air; and through my reading and my interest in the story somehow I perceived this, and felt guilty and uncomfortable all the rest of the evening. When I had finished my volume I was very conciliatory, and tried all I could to bring him back to the point where he had given it up, but it was of no use. I have always found it exactly so in my experience. If you are too stupid, or too much occupied with yourself, to take just the right moment for explanations, you never can recover the thread which you have allowed to slip through your fingers. Even to this day I often wonder what papa would have said to me that night had I let him speak. I have invented whole conversations, but they never were much satisfaction to me. To think out what perhaps some one might have said is very different from hearing them say it. I was not at all pleased with myself that evening when I went to bed; but perhaps this was partly because I had finished my novel and it was not satisfactory, and seemed, now it was over, such a poor sort of thing to have preferred to a conversation with papa.
Nothing, however, happened for some time after this to put me on my guard. I went on in my old careless way. If he was out a little more than usual, I paid no attention. All that was quite natural. Of course he had his duties to attend to. He dined at Mrs Tufnell’s once during this time, and was very particular about his tie, and about having his coat brushed. “It is quite nice,” I said; “it was well brushed on Monday morning before it was put away. Why, papa, I thought you did not like a fuss: how you laughed at me for being so particular about my sash when we went to the party at Mrs Overend’s. Shouldn’t you like to have a sash too?”
He laughed, but he did not look like laughing; and I remember stopping short in the middle of my tea, and laying down my book to ask myself if anything could be the matter with him. One or two odd people whom I did not know had come to see him of late. Was it possible he could be ill? But no, he ate as usual, and he had looked quite ruddy when he went out. So I took up my novel again, and helped myself to jam, and thought no more of it. I believe the whole business was decided, or the next thing to decided, that night.
I could if I liked have heard a great deal of what was said in the study while I sat at work in the parlour, and this was a thing which Mrs Tufnell and Mrs Stephens had often remarked. They thought it “not quite nice:” for, to be sure, people might say things to papa as their clergyman which they did not wish to be overheard. But it could not well be helped, for there was no other room where I could sit. I have said too that I could have heard if I liked; but the fact was I did not care, and I never heard. When you are perfectly indifferent and used to everything, and know there is no mystery in it, it is astonishing how little you hear. I had got accustomed to the hum of voices from the study just as I had to the cries in the streets and the muffin-man’s bell. Sometimes, I suppose, a word must have caught my ear now and then, but I paid no attention, and heard as if I heard it not: I was thinking of such very different things. One day, however, I did catch a few words which surprised me. It was a summer day. The back-door into the little yard and all the windows everywhere were open. The noises in the street came into the house exactly as if we were living out of doors, but so softened by the warm air and the sunshine that they were pleasant instead of being disagreeable. The day was not hot, but only deliciously, genially warm. We had put up white curtains in the parlour, and the wind blew them softly about, flapping the wooden stretcher in the blind against the window-frame. I was in a muslin dress myself; and I was happy without any reason, not in the least knowing why. I came downstairs singing, as I had a way of doing, and went into the parlour and sat down in the window. I gave up singing when I sat down, partly because it might have disturbed papa, and partly because people stopped to listen as they were passing. I was running up the breadths of my new frock, a blue