Gillian felt lonely, for though she got on better with her younger than her elder aunt, and had plenty of surface intercourse of a pleasant kind with both, it was a very poor substitute for her mother, or her elder sisters, and Valetta was very far from being a Mysie.
The worst time was Sunday, when the children had deserted her for Mrs. Hablot, and Aunt Ada was always lying down in her own room to rest after morning service. She might have been at the Sunday-school, but she did not love teaching, nor do it well, and she did not fancy the town children, or else there was something of opposition to Aunt Jane.
It was a beautiful afternoon, of the first Sunday in October, and she betook herself to the garden with the ‘Lyra Innocentium’ in her hand, meaning to learn the poem for the day. She wandered up to the rail above the cliff, looking out to the sea. Here, beyond the belt of tamarisks and other hardy low-growing shrubs which gave a little protection from the winds, the wall dividing the garden of Beechcroft Cottage from that of Cliff House became low, with only the iron-spiked railing on the top, as perhaps there was a desire not to overload the cliff. The sea was of a lovely colour that day, soft blue, and with exquisite purple shadows of clouds, with ripples of golden sparkles here and there near the sun, and Gillian stood leaning against the rail, gazing out on it, with a longing, yearning feeling towards the dear ones who had gone out upon it, when she became conscious that some one was in the other garden, which she had hitherto thought quite deserted, and looking round, she saw a figure in black near the rail. Their eyes met, and both together exclaimed—
‘Kalliope!’—‘Miss Gillian! Oh, I beg your pardon!’
‘How did you come here? I thought nobody did!’
‘Mr. White’s gardener lets us walk here. It is so nice and quiet. Alexis has taken the younger ones for a walk, but I was too much tired. But I will not disturb you—’
‘Oh! don’t go away. Nobody will disturb us, and I do so want to know about you all. I had no notion, nor mamma either, that you were living here, or—’
‘Or of my dear father’s death!’ said Kalliope, as Gillian stopped short, confused. ‘I did write to Miss Merrifield, but the letter was returned.’
‘But where did you write?’
‘To Swanage, where she had written to me last.’
‘Oh! we were only there for six weeks, while we were looking for houses; I suppose it was just as the Wardours were gone to Natal too?’
‘Yes, we knew they were out of reach.’
‘But do tell me about it, if you do not mind. My father will want to hear.’
Kalliope told all in a calm, matter-of-fact way, but with a strain of deep suppressed feeling. She was about twenty-three, a girl with a fine outline of features, beautiful dark eyes, and a clear brown skin, who would have been very handsome if she had looked better fed and less hardworked. Her Sunday dress showed wear and adaptation, but she was altogether ladylike, and even the fringe that had startled Aunt Ada only consisted of little wavy curls on the temples, increasing her classical look.
‘It was fever—at Leeds. My father was just going into a situation in the police that we had been waiting for ever so long, and there were good schools, and Richard had got into a lawyer’s office, when there began a terrible fever in our street—the drains were to blame, they said—and every one of us had it, except mother and Richard, who did not sleep at home. We lost poor little Mary first, and then papa seemed to be getting better; but he was anxious about expense, and there was no persuading him to take nourishment enough. I do believe it was that. And he had a relapse—and—’
‘Oh, poor Kalliope! And we never heard of it!’
‘I did feel broken down when the letter to Miss Merrifield came back,’ said Kalliope. ‘But my father had made me write to Mr. James White—not that we had any idea that he had grown so rich. He and my father were first cousins, sons of two brothers who were builders; but there was some dispute, and it ended by my father going away and enlisting. There was nobody nearer to him, and he never heard any more of his home; but when he was so ill, he thought he would like to be reconciled to “Jem,” as he said, so he made me write from his dictation. Such a beautiful letter it was, and he added a line at the end himself. Then at last, when it was almost too late, Mr. White answered. I believe it was a mere chance—or rather Providence—that he ever knew it was meant for him, but there were kind words enough to cheer up my father at the last. I believe then the clergyman wrote to him.’
‘Did not he come near you?’
‘No, I have never seen him; but there was a correspondence between him and Mr. Moore, the clergyman, and Richard, and he said he was willing to put us in the way of working for ourselves, if—if—we were not too proud.’
‘Then he did it in an unkind way,’ said Gillian.
‘I try to think he did not mean to be otherwise than good to us. I told Mr. Moore that I was not fit to be a governess, and I did not think they could get on without me at home, but that I could draw better than I would do anything else, and perhaps I might get Christmas cards to do, or something like that. Mr. Moore sent a card or two of my designing, and then Mr. White said he could find work for me in the mosaic department here; and something for my brothers, if we did not give ourselves airs. So we came.’
‘Not Richard?’ said Gillian, who remembered dimly that Richard had not been held in great esteem by her own brothers.
‘No; Richard is in a good situation, so it was settled that he should stay on there.’
‘And you—’
‘I am in the mosaic department. Oh, Miss Gillian, I am so grateful to Miss Merrifield. Don’t you remember her looking at my little attempts, and persuading Lady Merrifield to get mother to let me go to the School of Art? I began only as the girls do who are mere hands, and now I have to prepare all the designs for them, and have a nice little office of my own for it. Sometimes I get one of my own designs taken, and then I am paid extra.’
‘Then do you maintain them all?’
‘Oh no; we have lodgers, the organist and his wife,’ said Kalliope, laughing, ‘and Alexis is in the telegraph office, at the works; besides, it turned out that this house and two more belong to us, and we do very well when the tenants pay their rents.’
‘But Maura is not the youngest of you,’ said Gillian, who was rather hazy about the family.
‘No, there are the two little boys. We let them go to the National School for the present. It is a great trial to my poor mother, but they do learn well there, and we may be able to do something better for them by the time they are old enough for further education.’
Just then the sound of a bell coming up from the town below was a warning to both that the conversation must be broken off. A few words—‘I am so glad to have seen you,’ and ‘It has been such a pleasure’—passed, and then each hastened down her separate garden path.
‘Must I tell of this meeting?’ Gillian asked herself. ‘I shall write it all to mamma and Alethea, of course. How delightful that those lessons that Kalliope had have come to be of so much use! How pleased Alethea will be! Poor dear thing! How much she has gone through! But can there be any need to tell the aunts? Would it not just make Aunt Ada nervous about any one looking through her sweet and lovely wall? And as to Aunt Jane, I really don’t see that I am bound to gratify her passion for knowing everything. I am not accountable to her, but to my own mother. My people know all about Kalliope, and she is prejudiced. Why should I be unkind and neglectful of an old fellow-soldier’s family, because she cannot or