Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 2.djvu/584

8 in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to “overhaul” something mysterious in the garden.

The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we knew, was, if any one’s room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it. Christmas came, and we had noble Christmas fare (“all hands” had been pressed for the pudding), and Twelfth Night came, and our store of mincemeat was ample to hold out to the last day of our time, and our cake was quite a glorious sight. It was then, as we all sat round the table and the fire, that I recited the terms of our compact, and called, first, for



cousin, John Herschel, turned rather red, and turned rather white, and said he could not deny that his room had been haunted. The Spirit of a woman had pervaded it. On being asked by several voices whether the Spirit had taken any terrible or ugly shape, my cousin drew his wife’s arm through his own, and said decidedly, “No.” To the question, had his wife been aware of the Spirit? he answered, “Yes.” Had it spoken? “Oh clear, yes!” As to the question, “What did it say?” he replied apologetically, that he could have wished his wife would have undertaken the answer, for she would have executed it much better than he. However, she had made him promise to be the mouthpiece of the Spirit, and was very anxious that he should withhold nothing; so, he would do his best, subject to her correction. “Suppose the Spirit,” added my cousin, as he finally prepared himself for beginning, “to be my wife here, sitting among us:”

I was an orphan from my infancy, with six elder half-sisters. A long and persistent course of training imposed upon me the yoke of a second and diverse nature, and I grew up as much the child of my eldest sister, Barbara, as I was the daughter of my deceased parents.

Barbara, in all her private plans, as in all her domestic decrees, inexorably decided that her sisters must be married; and, so powerful had been her single but inflexible will, that each of them had been advantageously settled, excepting myself, upon whom she built her highest hopes.

Most people know a character such as I had grown a mindless, flirting girl, whose acnowledged vocation was the hunting and catching of an eligible match; rather pretty, lively, and just sentimental enough to make me a very pleasant companion for an idle hour or two, as I exacted and enjoyed the slight attentions an unemployed man is pleased to offer. There was scarcely a young man in the neighbourhood with whom I had not coquetted, j. had served my seven years’ apprenticeship to my profession, and had passed my twenty-fifth birthday without having achieved my purpose, when Barbara’s patience was wearied, auid she spoke to me wit a decision and explicitness we had always avoided; for, on some subjects, it is better to have a silent understanding than an expressed opinion.

“Stella,” she said, solemnly, “you are now five-and-twenty, and every one of your sisters were in homes of their own before they were your age; yet none of them had your advantages or your talents. But I must tell you frankly your chances are on the wane, and, unless you exert yourself, our plans must fail. I have observed an error into which you have fallen, and which I have not mentioned before. Besides your very open and indiscriminate flirtations which young men regard only as an amusing pastime you have a way with you of rallying and laughing at any one who begins to look really serious. Now your opportunity rests upon the moment when they begin to be earnest in their manner. Then you should seem confused and silenced; you ought to lose your vivacity, and half avoid them; seeming almost frightened and quite bewildered by the change. A little melancholy goes a deal further than the utmost cheerfulness; for, if a man believes you can live without him, he will not, give you a second thought. I could name half a dozen most eligible settlements you have lost by laughing at the wrong minute. Mortify a man’s self-love, Stella, and you can never heal the wound.”

I paused for a minute or two before I answered; for the original suppressed nature that I had inherited from my unknown mother, was stirring unwonted feeling in my heart.

“Barbara,” I answered, with timidity, “among all the people I have known, I never saw one whom 1 could reverence, and look up to; nor, I am half ashamed to use the word, whom I could love.”

“I do not wonder yon are ashamed,” said Barbara, severely. “At your age, you cannot expect to fall in love like a girl of seventeen. But I tell you, definitely and distinctly, it is necessary that you should marry; and we had better work in concert now. So, if you will decide upon any one, I will give you every assistance in my power, and, if you will only concentrate your wishes and abilities, you cannot fail. Propinquity is all you require, if you once make up your mind.”

“I do not like any one I know,” I replied, moodily; “and I have no chance with those who have known me; so I decide upon besieging Martin Eraser.”

Barbara received this announcement with a snort of derisive anger.

The neighbourhood in which we lived was a populous iron district, where, though there were