Chapter XV: In Bayswater

'Twenty years old to-day--twenty years!' murmured Alison, as she glanced at herself in the little mirror, and thought how pale and how much older than her age she looked in her plain black mourning dress, which was destitute of other ornament than smooth white cuffs and a ruche or frill of lace, or some such soft material, round her slender throat.

Vividly came back to the girl's memory her other birthdays, ere poverty fell upon her father, and ere she was--as now--alone in the world, and when each recurring anniversary found her loaded with caresses, congratulations, and pretty presents. And she could recall her fourth birthday at Essilmont, when she was a little child in a white embroidered frock, with a broad sash matching the colour of her dark blue eyes, with her brothers, Ranald and Ellon, eating strawberries off a huge salver held for them by Archie Auchindoir, who seemed an old Archie even then.

Never more would the kisses or caresses of father or mother touch her brow or cheek; and now she was in the ranks of those who have to earn their daily bread as a governess on thirty pounds per annum, teach French, English, and music to two little girls of the ages of nine and ten respectively.

And sadly on this day she thought of all that had befallen her, and how completely Bevil Goring had passed out of her life, apparently for ever! Wearily too her eye went round the bare school-room in that stately house in Pembridge Square, Bayswater--a long, low-ceiled apartment, with two windows that overlooked Westbourne Grove, a grove only in name now.

The vicar of Chilcote procured her this situation, and, beyond her name and his recommendation, her employer, Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, knew nothing of Alison Cheyne and cared not to inquire. The vicar had written lately to state that a handsome marble cross--a Celtic one he believed it was called--had lately been placed by a friend above her father's grave, and Alison's heart swelled with gratitude as she read of it.

It must have been done by Lord Cadbury, she thought. Who else could have done so?

She had now been two months in Pembridge Square--two whole months--and despite the unwonted drudgery of teaching, and the dreariness of routine--despite slights, almost insults, that were offered, perhaps unconsciously, by the cold-hearted and the underbred, the time had slipped quickly away.

Thus condemned to the dull drudgery of daily teaching a couple of troublesome, peevish, and ill-tempered brats in that bare and comfortless school-room, was Alison, a loving and passionate girl, made more passionate, loving, and tender by the sore griefs she had known, but all unsoured by these and the doubtful prospect--yea, the utter blank of her future.

Though the change of condition was not much to Alison, the change of _position_ and that vacuity of the future were frightful to the poor girl; and in taking the situation for the sake of her father's name and his old family pride, though he was now in his grave, she had besought the vicar of Chilcote, in recommending her to Mrs. S. De Jobbyns, to conceal what she had ever been--nay, was still--the daughter of a baronet of Nova Scotia, whose diploma dated from 1625.

The family of Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns consisted of three daughters, the eldest Miss Victoria, of whom more anon, was in her nineteenth year, and Alison's two pupils, Irene and Iseulte. Like the rest of the snobocracy of the metropolis she believed in double names, thus she figured in the royal Blue-Book as Mrs. Slumpkin De Jobbyns, a style of address which would have astonished her late husband, worthy old David or D. Jobbyns, as he called himself, when for many a year he was acquiring wealth as an industrious soap-boiler in Bow East, and when he married pretty little Sally Slumpkins, the barmaid at the 'Black Swan' in Mile-End Road, and when she little foresaw how wealthy a 'relict' she would be left.

Pretty Sally, who had, of course, preferred the worthy soap-boiler to his rival the potman, had now, amid ease and much good living, expanded into a stout, blousy, and coarsely-featured matron, greatly puffed up by wealth, success, pride, and vanity.

She always wore the richest materials and the most massive jewellery, and never omitted to figure in her open carriage in the Row, when weather permitted, and strove hard in everything to ape all the manners of the 'upper ten,' in which she was fully seconded by her eldest born, Miss Victoria S. De Jobbyns, a rather pretty, but very insipid girl, who wore her hair frizzed into her eyes, and had a nose more than retroussé, for though she was pretty, as we have said, her features were nevertheless of the genuine Cockney type.

Alison took all her meals in the schoolroom with the children, and at the early hours which were directed for them. She was never in the drawing-room--'the British drawing-room,' that sanctum sacred to Mrs. De Jobbyns and her 'swell' visitors, as she called them, and when she thought it was 'rather the thing' to have afternoon tea in dragon blue and white crockery on a beautiful Chippendale table.

And so, for thirty pounds per annum, Alison underwent this life of mortification.

'Thirty pound a-year, and her laundry work, my dear,' as Mrs. De Jobbyns informed her friend, Mrs. Popkins-Robbynson.

'That is very cheap for one evidently so accomplished,' said the latter.

'Very cheap, indeed; but she is such a good style for the children, you know; and really I think she must have been some one of--of--well, means once.'

'Why?'

'The richly laced under-garments she sends to the laundry would quite surprise you, my dear.'

'But won't her Scotch haccent spile the young 'uns?' observed Mr. Popkins-Robbynson.

'Not at all; and she seems to get on so nicely with the servants. They all adore her.'

'Indeed!'

'My last governess, Miss Smythe-Smythe was always at war with them.'

'How?'

'They never paid her sufficient deference. Oh, what a nuisance that woman was; yet we paid her forty pounds a year--actually what we pays the cook, my dear.'

To be near his young mistress, to watch over her, as he thought, and to be able to see her from time to time, old Archie had located himself in a humble lodging in Moscow Road, not far from the square, where he lived with the strictest frugality, fearing that a time might come when his 'three hunner pounds,' or what remained of them, might be of service to _her_, 'as hained gear helps weel,' and often, with more patience than even a lover might have had, he promenaded the square for hours, watching for a sight of her at the school-room windows, or till she came forth with her pupils to walk in Kensington Gardens--watching for her till he in turn was watched, as one bent on something nefarious, by the policeman at the corner.

And ere long the two little girls began to wonder who the funny old man was that so often hovered near them in their walks, who treated their governess with such profound deference and devotion, and was never unprovided with chocolate creams and so forth for them--'sweeties for the bairns,' as he called them.

But often Alison sat up in her little white bed, in her bare and rather comfortless room, in the darkness of the silent night, and, looking at the stars, would ask why she was so lonely in the world now--she who was born with the prospect of a very different state of existence! Then would come all her dream-memories of the past, with those other dreams of what _might be_, did fortune prove more kind. How long it seemed ago since she had her father to nurse and Cadbury to shun--longer still since she had known the joy of Bevil's love, and the stolen meetings under the solemn and whispering beeches of Chilcote.

Chilcote was lonely; but how lovely it seemed to her in memory now! She even found herself at times now indulging in the two conundrums--the modern pessimist's speculations--Is civilisation a failure, and is life worth living?

The monotony of the school-room was now occasionally broken by visits--few and far between, certainly--of the eldest daughter of the house, Miss De Jobbyns, who had returned from a sojourn with some friends at Hastings--a young lady rather loud in tone and fast in manner. She had early discovered that Alison was dexterous in the way of embroidering, and thus kept her little hands busy, when not otherwise occupied, in tracing out her monogram and crest--for she had that, of course--in the corners of handkerchiefs, interspersed with forget-me-nots, rose-sprays, and fern-leaves.

Miss Victoria De Jobbyns (she had originally been christened Sarah, but that name was dropped now as vulgar) had from the first felt an emotion of pique that her little sisters' governess should be so lady-like, so perfectly patrician in air and bearing, and, more than all, so uselessly handsome; for, of course, she thought, of what use is beauty to a governess?

Her mother's first idea had been, what a perilous inmate in a house if there had been a grown-up son; but, apart from her being a paid dependant, her very loveliness was an all-sufficient reason for secluding her in the school-room, and never permitting her to be seen by guests or visitors, especially of the male sex.

'You are Scotch?' said the young lady, abruptly and interrogatively, on the occasion of her first visit.

'Yes.'

'And yet you don't look a bit Scotch, or talk like them either.'

Alison smiled as she wondered what the young lady thought the natives of the North were like.

'Where do your people live--in the Highlands?'

'My family are--all dead.'

'I see you are in mourning--all dead--everyone?'

'Yes,' replied Alison, curtly.

'How funny!'

Alison stared at this peculiar remark.

'What was that you were playing when I came in?' asked her visitor.

'A mazurka of Chopin's.'

'_Shopang_--who is he? And how well you sing, too.'

'I am glad you think so,' replied Alison, who sometimes accompanied herself on the old, ill-tuned, and twangling school-room piano.

'Ma will be having you to play at her weekly receptions.'

Alison shivered at the bare idea of figuring thus among such people as were there.

'Were you trained for the stage, or was your father a professional? of course he was.'

'He was not' said Alison, sharply, and at this blunt remark her soft violet eyes seemed to become hard and blue as a steel sword-blade; the little colour she had died out of her face, and she looked ten years older; but her blunt visitor--she of the frizzed, sandy hair, and snub nose--mistook the cause of her emotion, and said,

'You have had private trouble, I suppose?'

Alison was silent.

'Tell me,' continued the irrepressible Miss De Jobbyns, 'have you ever been in love?'

'In truth--I have been.'

'And your young man--he is dead, too, I suppose?'

'He I refer to is dead, at least, to me,' replied Alison, wearily; 'but here come my pupils, so please to let me resume their tasks.'