it was about a week after christmas, and we—my mother, my two sisters, and myself—were sitting, as usual, in the parlour of the little house at islington. tea was over, and jenny had possession of the table, where she was engaged in making a watercolour sketch of still life by the light of the lamp, whose rays fell effectively on her bent head with its aureole of titian-coloured hair—the delight of the slade school—and on her round, earnest young face as she lifted it from time to time in contemplation of her subject.
my mother had drawn her chair close to the fire, for the night was very cold, and the fitful crimson beams played about her worn, serene, and gentle face, under its widow's cap, as she bent over the sewing in her hands.
a hard fight with fortune had been my mother's[pg 8] from the day when, a girl of eighteen, she had left a comfortable home to marry my father for love. poverty and sickness—those two redoubtable dragons—had stood ever in the path. now, even the love which had been by her side for so many years, and helped to comfort them, had vanished into the unknown. but i do not think she was unhappy. the crown of a woman's life was hers; her children rose up and called her blest.
at her feet sat my eldest sister, rosalind, entirely absorbed in correcting a bundle of proof-sheets which had arrived that morning from temple bar. rosalind was the genius of the family, a full-blown london b.a., who occasionally supplemented her earnings as coach and lecturer by writing for the magazines. she had been engaged, moreover, for the last year or two, to a clever young journalist, hubert andrews by name, and the lovers were beginning to look forward to a speedy termination to their period of waiting.
i, elsie meredith, who was neither literary nor artistic, neither picturesque like jenny nor clever like rosalind, whose middle place in the family had always struck me as a fit symbol of my own mediocrity—i, alone of all these busy people, was sitting idle. lounging in the arm-chair which faced my[pg 9] mother's, i twisted and retwisted, rolled and unrolled, read and reread a letter which had arrived for me that morning, and whose contents i had been engaged in revolving in my mind throughout the day.
"well, elsie," said my mother at last, looking up with a smile from her work, "have you come to any decision, after all this hard thinking?"
"i suppose it will be 'yes,'" i answered rather dolefully; "mrs. gray seems to think it a quite unusual opportunity." and i turned again to the letter, which contained an offer of an engagement for me as governess in the family of the marchesa brogi, at pisa.
"i should certainly say 'go,'" put in rosalind, lifting her dark expressive face from her proofs; "if it were not for hubert i should almost feel inclined to go myself. you will gain all sorts of experience, receive all sorts of new impressions. you are shockingly ill-paid at miss cumberland's, and these people offer a very fair salary. and if you don't like it, it is always open to you to come back."
"we should all miss you very much, elsie," added my mother; "but if it is for your good, why, there is no more to be said."
"oh, of course we should miss her horribly,"[pg 10] cried rosalind, in her impetuous fashion, gathering together the scattered proof-sheets as she spoke; "you mustn't think we want to get rid of you." and the little thoughtful pucker between her straight brows disappeared as she laid her hand with a smile on my knee. i pressed the inky, characteristic fingers in my own. i am neither literary nor artistic, as i said before, but i have a little talent for being fond of people.
"i'm sure i don't know what i shall do without you," put in jenny, in her deliberate, serious way, making round, grey eyes at me across the lamplight. "it isn't that you are such a good critic, elsie, but you have a sort of feeling for art which helps one more than you have any idea of."
i received very meekly this qualified compliment, without revealing the humiliating fact that my feeling for art had probably less to do with the matter than my sympathy with the artist; then observed, "it seems much waste, for me, of all of us, to be the first to go to italy."
"i would rather go to paris," said jenny, who belonged, at this stage of her career, to a very advanced school of ?sthetics, and looked upon raphael as rather out of date. "if only some one[pg 11] would buy my picture i would have a year at julian's; it would be the making of me."
"for heaven's sake, jenny, don't take yourself so seriously," cried rosalind, rising and laying down her proofs; "one day, perhaps, i shall come across an art-student with a sense of humour—growing side by side with a blue rose. now, elsie," she went on, turning to me as jenny, with a reproachful air of superior virtue, lifted up her paint-brush, and, shutting one eye, returned in silence to her measurements—"now, elsie, let us have further details of this proposed expedition of yours. how many little brogi shall you be required to teach?"
"there is only one pupil, and she is eighteen," i answered; "just three years younger than i."
"and you are to instruct her in all the 'ologies?"
rosalind had taken a chair at the table, and, her head resting on her hand, was interrogating me in her quick, eager, half-ironical fashion.
"no; mrs. grey only says english and music. she says, too, that they are one of the principal families of pisa. and they live in a palace," i added, with a certain satisfaction.
"it sounds quite too delightful and romantic; if it were not for hubert, as i said before, i should insist[pg 12] on going myself. pisa, the leaning tower, shelley—a marchesa in an old, ancestral palace!" and rosalind's dark eyes shone as she spoke.
"ruskin says that the leaning tower is the only ugly one in italy," said jenny, not moving her eyes from the japanese pot, cleft orange, and coral necklace which she was painting.
"but the cathedral is one of the most beautiful, and the place is a mine of historical associations," answered rosalind, her ardour not in the least damped by this piece of information.
as for me, i sat silent between these two enthusiasts with an abashed consciousness of the limitations of my own subjective feminine nature. it was neither the beauties or defects of pisan architecture which at present occupied my mind, nor even the historical associations of the town. my thoughts dwelt solely, it must be owned, on the probable character of the human beings among whom i was to be thrown. but then it was i who was going to pisa, and not my sisters.
"does mrs. grey know the marchesa brogi personally?" asked my mother, who also was disposed to take the less abstract view of the matter.
"oh, no, it is all arranged through the friend of a friend."
[pg 13]
"i don't like the idea of your going so far, alone among strangers," sighed mother; "but, on the other hand, a change is just what you want."
"what a pity hubert is not here to-night—that horrid première at the lyceum! we must lay the plan before him to-morrow," struck in rosalind, who, hopeless blue-stocking as she was, consulted her oracle with all the faith of a woman who barely knows how to spell.
i went over to my mother and took the stool at her feet which my sister had just vacated.
"it's going to be: 'yes,' mother; i have felt it all along."
"my dear, i won't be the one to keep you back. but need you make up your mind so soon?"
"mrs. grey says that the sooner i can leave the better. they would like me to start in a week or ten days," i answered, suppressing as best i could all signs of the feeling of desolation that came over me at the sound of my own words.
"you will have to get clothes," cried rosalind; "those little mouse-coloured garments of yours will never do for ancestral palaces."
"oh, with some new boots and an ulster—i'm afraid i must have an ulster—i shall be quite set up."
[pg 14]
"you would pay very well for good dressing," observed jenny, contemplating me with her air of impartial criticism. "you have a nice figure, and a pretty head, and you know how to walk."
"'praise from sir hubert stanley,'" replied rosalind with some irony. "my dear elsie, i have seen it in your eyes—they are highly respectable eyes, by the bye—i have seen it in your eyes from the first moment the letter came, that you meant to go. it is you quiet women who have all the courage, if you will excuse a truism."
"well, yes, perhaps i did feel like going from the first."
"and, now that is decided, let me tell you, elsie, that i perfectly hate the idea of losing you," cried rosalind with sudden abruptness; then, changing her tone, she went on—"for who knows how or when we shall have you back again? you will descend upon that palazzo resplendent in the new boots and the new ulster; the combined radiance of those two adornments will be too much for some italian mr. rochester who, of course, will be lurking about the damask-hung corridors with their painted ceilings. jane eyre will be retained as a fixture, and her native land shall know her no more."
[pg 15]
"you forget that jane eyre would have some voice in the matter. and i have always considered mr. rochester the most unpleasant person that ever a woman made herself miserable over," i answered calmly enough, for i was accustomed to these little excursions into the realms of fancy on the part of my sister.
"i think there's a little stone, elsie, where the heart ought to be," and rosalind, bending forward, poked her finger, with unscientific vagueness, at the left side of my waist.
"'men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love,'" i quoted, while there flashed across my mind a vision of rosalind sobbing helplessly on the floor a month before hubert proposed to her.
"men; it doesn't say anything about women," answered rosalind, thoughtfully flying off, as usual, at a tangent.
"is it woman's mission to die of a broken heart?" i could not resist saying, for there had been some very confidential passages between us, once upon a time. "the headache is too noble for my sex; you think the heartache would sound pleasanter."
"elsie talking women's rights!" cried jenny, looking up astonished from her work.
[pg 16]
"yes; the effects of a daring and adventurous enterprise are beginning to tell upon her in advance."
"we have wandered a long way from pisa," i said; "but that is the worst of engaged people. whatever the conversation is, they manage to turn it into sentimental channels."
"i sentimental!" cried rosalind, opening wide her eyes; "i, who unite in my own person the charms of cornelia blimber and mrs. jellaby, to be accused of sentiment!"
i lay awake that night on my little iron bed long after rosalind was sleeping the sleep of happy labour. i was a coward at heart, though i had contrived to show a brave front to my little world.
at the thought of that coming plunge into the unknown, my spirit grew frozen within me, and i began to wish that the fateful letter from mrs. grey had never been written.
