What Necessity Knows Part 18

"No--not all."

"Well, what else?" Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on the girl's hot one.

"I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs.

Rexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a servant, Miss Sophia?"

"You are very childish and foolish," said Sophia. "If I had not been just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would, because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to tell me all your difficulties."

"Will you help me? Why are you so kind?"

"Because--" said Sophia. Then she said no more.

Eliza showed herself cheered.

"You're the only one I care to talk to, Miss Sophia. The others haven't as much sense as you, have they?"

As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with her own estimate of the state of the case.

"Eliza, what are you talking of--not of my father and mother surely?"

"Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a deal of sense--do you?"

"My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and--" Sophia broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing.

"Miss Sophia," said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, "there's one thing--you know that young man they were talking about to-night?"

"What of him?"

"Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars.

The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you?"

"I've told you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What has that young man to do with it?"--with some severity.

"It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'."

Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and reached her own room.

CHAPTER XVI.

Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Rexford on the sofa that stood with its back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned, but fashioned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large, and low; it was cushioned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully mixed with Indian gra.s.s that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light washing stuff as women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother were darning stockings. The homesickness of the household was rapidly subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands, had been dismissed into the large outside.

The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of bright prismatic rays across the floor and through the door on to the rag carpet under the dining-room table. Ever and anon, as the ladies sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer, then near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they pa.s.sed the house, then again more distant. The dining-room window faced the road, but one could not see through it without standing upright.

"Mamma," said Sophia, "it is quite clear we can never make an ordinary servant out of Eliza; but if we try to be companionable to her we may help her to learn what she needs to learn, and make her more willing to stay with us."

It was Mrs. Rexford's way never to approach a subject gradually in speech. If her mind went through the process ordinarily manifested in introductory remarks it slipped through it swiftly and silently, and her speech darted into the heart of the subject, or skipped about and hit it on all sides at once.

"Ah, but I told her again and again, Sophia, to say 'miss' to the girls.

She either didn't hear, or she forgot, or she wouldn't understand. I think you're the only one she'll say 'miss' to. But we couldn't do without her. Mrs. Nash was telling me the other day that her girl had left in the middle of the washing, and the one they had before that for a year--a little French Romanist--stole all their handkerchiefs, and did not give them back till she made confession to her priest at Easter. It was very _awkward_, Sophia, to be without handkerchiefs all winter." The crescendo emphasis which Mrs. Rexford had put into her remarks found its fortissimo here. Then she added more mildly, "Though I got no character with Eliza I am convinced she will never pilfer."

Mrs. Rexford was putting her needle out and in with almost electric speed. Her mind was never quiet, but there was a healthy cheerfulness in her little quick movements that removed them from the region of weak nervousness. Yet Sophia knit her brow, and it was with an effort that she continued amicably:

"Certainly we should be more uncomfortable without her just now than she would be without us; but if she left us there's no saying where her ambition might lead her."

Mrs. Rexford bethought her that she must look at some apples that were baking in the kitchen oven, which she did, and was back in time to make a remark in exchange without causing any noticeable break in the conversation. She always gave remarks in exchange, seldom in reply.

"Scotchmen are faithful to their kinsfolk usually, aren't they, Sophia?"

"You think that the uncle she wrote to will answer. He may be dead, or may have moved away; the chances are ten to one that he will not get the letter. I think the girl is in our hands. We have come into a responsibility that we can't make light of."

"Good gracious, Sophia! it's only the hen with one chicken that's afraid to take another under her wing."

"I know you want to do your best for her--that's why I'm talking."

"Oh, _I_--it's you that takes half the burden of them all."

"Well, _we_ want to do our best--"

"And you, my dear, could go back whenever you liked. _You_ have not burned the bridges and boats behind you. There's _one_ would be glad to see you back in the old country, and that lover of yours is a good man, Sophia."

A sudden flush swept over the young woman's face, as if the allusion offended her; but she took no other notice of what was said, and continued: "I don't suggest any radical alteration in our ways; I only thought that, if you had it in your mind to make a companion of her, the pains you take in teaching her might take a rather different form, and perhaps have a better result."

"I think our own girls grow more giddy every day," said Mrs. Rexford, exactly as if it were an answer. "If Blue and Red were separated they would both be more sensible."

The mother's mind had now wandered from thought of the alien she had taken, not because she had not given attention to the words of the daughter she thought so wise, but because, having considered them as long as she was accustomed to consider anything, she had decided to act upon them, and so could dismiss the subject with a good conscience.

The conversation ceased thus, as many conversations do, without apparent conclusion; for Sophia, vexed by her step-mother's flighty manner of speech, hid her mood in silence. Anything like discussion between these two always irritated Sophia, and then, conscious that she had in this fallen below her ideal, she chafed again at her own irritation. The evil from which she now suffered was of the stuff of which much of the pain of life is made--a flimsy stuff that vanishes before the investigation of reason more surely than the stuff of our evanescent joys. There was nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of Mrs. Rexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well; and yet it might have been easier for Sophia Rexford to have lived in external peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view the relative importance of her ideas.

Meantime Mrs. Rexford went on talking. She was generally unconscious of the other's intellectual disdain. Pretty soon they heard bells and horses' feet that slackened at the gate. Sophia stood up to look.

There was a comfortable sleigh, albeit somewhat battered and dingy, turning in at the gate. A good-looking girl was driving it; a thin, pale lady sat at her side. Both were much enveloped in faded furs. Over the seats of the sleigh and over their knees were spread abundant robes of buffalo hide. The horse that drew the vehicle was an old farm-horse, and the hand that guided the reins appeared more skilful at driving than was necessary. The old reins and whip were held in a most stylish manner, and the fair driver made an innocent pretence of guiding her steed up the road to the back-yard with care. The animal the while, having once been shown the gate, trotted quietly, with head down, up the middle of the sleigh track, and stopped humbly where the track stopped, precisely as it would have done had there been no hand upon the rein.

Sophia, standing in the middle of the sitting-room, watched the visitors through the windows of that room and of the kitchen, with unwonted animation in her handsome face. The girl, who was now evidently coming with her mother to call upon them, had been named to her more than once by discriminating people as the most likely person in the neighbourhood to prove a friend and companion to herself, and Sophia, in her present situation, could not be at all indifferent to such a prospect. She had already observed them in church, wondering not a little at that scrupulous attention to ceremony which had made them ignore the existence of the newcomers till their acquaintance should have been made in due form.

"Mamma," said she, "this is Mrs. Bennett and her daughter."

"Something to do with an admiral, haven't they?" cried Mrs. Rexford.

It proved to be an unnecessary exertion of memory on Mrs. Rexford's part to recollect what she had heard of the relatives of her visitors, for not long after Mrs. Bennett had introduced herself and her daughter she brought her uncle, the admiral, into the conversation with considerable skill.

She was a delicate, narrow-minded woman, with no open vulgarity about her, but simply ignorant of the fact that bragging of one's distinguished relatives had fallen into disuse. Her daughter, was like her in manner, with the likeness imposed by having such a mother, but much more largely made in mind and body, pleasant-looking, healthy, high-browed. Sophia liked her appearance.

Mrs. Rexford, her mind ever upon some practical exigency, now remembered that she had also heard that the Bennetts managed their dairy excellently, and, having a large craving for help on all such subjects, she began to bewail her own ignorance, asking many and various questions; but, although she did not perceive it, it soon became apparent to her more observant daughter that the visitors, having come out to make a call of ceremony, preferred to talk on subjects more remote from their daily drudgery, on subjects which they apparently considered more elegant and becoming. Unable to check the flow of her mother's talk, Sophia could only draw her chair cosily near to Miss Bennett and strike into a separate conversation, hoping for, and expecting, mental refreshment.

"I suppose there are no good lending libraries in any of the towns near here," she began. "How do you get new books or magazines?"