myself I’m afraid this was becoming a habit since I had come here and murmured:
” That might be Alice … apart from the face.” Then I half closed my eyes and let the face become blurred while I imagined a different face there.
Oh yes, it must have been a shock for Celestine.
And I was not to say anything. I was very willing to agree to this. I wondered what Connan TreMellyn would say if he knew that I was going about in his wife’s clothes and frightened practical people like Celestine Nansellock when they saw me in dim places.
I felt he would not wish me to continue to look so like Alice. So, since I needed Alice’s clothes for my riding lessons with Alvean, and since I was determined they should continue, that I might have the pleasure of saying, I told you so! to Alvean’s father, I was as anxious as Celestine Nansellock that nothing should be said about our encounter on the landing.
A week passed and I felt I was slipping into a routine. Lessons in the schoolroom and the riding field progressed favourably. Peter Nansellock came over to the house on two occasions, but I managed to elude him. I was deeply conscious of Connan TreMellyn’s warning and I knew it to be reasonable. I faced the fact that I was stimulated by Peter Nansellock and that I could very easily find myself in a state of mind when I was looking forward to his visits. I had no-intention of placing myself in that position for I did not need Connan TreMellyn to tell me that Peter Nansellock was a philanderer.
I thought now and then of his brother Geoffry, and I concluded that Peter must be very like him; and when I thought of Geoffry I thought also of Mrs. Polgrey’s daughter of whom she had never spoken; Jennifer with the ” littlest waist you ever saw,” and a way of keeping herself to herself until she had lain in the hay or the gillyflowers with the fascinating Geoffry—the outcome of which had been that one day she walked into the sea.
I shivered to contemplate the terrible pitfalls which lay in wait for unwary women. There were unattractive ones like myself who depended on the whims of others for a living; but there were those even more unfortunate creatures, those who attracted the roving eyes of philanderers and found one day that the only bearable prospect life had to offer was its end.
My interest in Alvean’s riding lessons and her father’s personality had made me forget little Gillyflower temporarily. The child was so quiet that she was easily forgotten. Occasionally I heard her thin reedy voice, in that peculiar off-key singing out of doors or in the house. The Polgreys’ room was immediately below my own, and Gillyflower’s was next to theirs, so that when she sang in her own room her voice would float up to me.
I used to say to myself when I heard it: If she can learn songs she can learn other things.
I must have been given to day-dreams, for side by side with that picture of Connan TreMellyn, handing his daughter the first prize for horse-jumping at the November horse show and giving me an apologetic and immensely admiring and appreciative glance at the same time, there was another picture. This was of Gilly sitting at the schoolroom table side by side with Alvean, while I listened to whispering in the background:
” This could never have happened but for Miss Martha Leigh. You see she is a wonder with the children. Look what she has done for Alvean . and now for Gilly.”
But at this time Alvean was still a stubborn child and Gilly flower elusive and, as the Tapperty girls said: ” With a tile loose in the upper story.”
Then into those more or less peaceful days came two events to disturb me.
The first was of small moment, but it haunted me and I could not get it out of my mind.
I was going through one of Alvean’s exercise books, marking her sums, while she was sitting at the table writing an essay;
and as I turned the pages of the exercise book a piece of paper fell out.
It was covered with drawings.
” That might be Alice … apart from the face.” Then I half closed my eyes and let the face become blurred while I imagined a different face there.
Oh yes, it must have been a shock for Celestine.
And I was not to say anything. I was very willing to agree to this. I wondered what Connan TreMellyn would say if he knew that I was going about in his wife’s clothes and frightened practical people like Celestine Nansellock when they saw me in dim places.
I felt he would not wish me to continue to look so like Alice. So, since I needed Alice’s clothes for my riding lessons with Alvean, and since I was determined they should continue, that I might have the pleasure of saying, I told you so! to Alvean’s father, I was as anxious as Celestine Nansellock that nothing should be said about our encounter on the landing.
A week passed and I felt I was slipping into a routine. Lessons in the schoolroom and the riding field progressed favourably. Peter Nansellock came over to the house on two occasions, but I managed to elude him. I was deeply conscious of Connan TreMellyn’s warning and I knew it to be reasonable. I faced the fact that I was stimulated by Peter Nansellock and that I could very easily find myself in a state of mind when I was looking forward to his visits. I had no-intention of placing myself in that position for I did not need Connan TreMellyn to tell me that Peter Nansellock was a philanderer.
I thought now and then of his brother Geoffry, and I concluded that Peter must be very like him; and when I thought of Geoffry I thought also of Mrs. Polgrey’s daughter of whom she had never spoken; Jennifer with the ” littlest waist you ever saw,” and a way of keeping herself to herself until she had lain in the hay or the gillyflowers with the fascinating Geoffry—the outcome of which had been that one day she walked into the sea.
I shivered to contemplate the terrible pitfalls which lay in wait for unwary women. There were unattractive ones like myself who depended on the whims of others for a living; but there were those even more unfortunate creatures, those who attracted the roving eyes of philanderers and found one day that the only bearable prospect life had to offer was its end.
My interest in Alvean’s riding lessons and her father’s personality had made me forget little Gillyflower temporarily. The child was so quiet that she was easily forgotten. Occasionally I heard her thin reedy voice, in that peculiar off-key singing out of doors or in the house. The Polgreys’ room was immediately below my own, and Gillyflower’s was next to theirs, so that when she sang in her own room her voice would float up to me.
I used to say to myself when I heard it: If she can learn songs she can learn other things.
I must have been given to day-dreams, for side by side with that picture of Connan TreMellyn, handing his daughter the first prize for horse-jumping at the November horse show and giving me an apologetic and immensely admiring and appreciative glance at the same time, there was another picture. This was of Gilly sitting at the schoolroom table side by side with Alvean, while I listened to whispering in the background:
” This could never have happened but for Miss Martha Leigh. You see she is a wonder with the children. Look what she has done for Alvean . and now for Gilly.”
But at this time Alvean was still a stubborn child and Gilly flower elusive and, as the Tapperty girls said: ” With a tile loose in the upper story.”
Then into those more or less peaceful days came two events to disturb me.
The first was of small moment, but it haunted me and I could not get it out of my mind.
I was going through one of Alvean’s exercise books, marking her sums, while she was sitting at the table writing an essay;
and as I turned the pages of the exercise book a piece of paper fell out.
It was covered with drawings.
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