Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/149

Rh ; nor were they shut up in their own narrow grooves, and petted as visions of fragile beauty, born to satisfy the caprice or whims of their lord. Still less did they hold the sad and degrading position of household slaves. The Hebrew woman was man's helpmate, the beloved wife of his home, the wise mother and first teacher of her children; but she was also ready to share his perils, and to incite him to noble deeds by her words and her example—to work for and, if need be, suffer for her country's good, as well as to minister to the happiness of the domestic hearth. Such was the ideal type of Hebrew womanhood.

 

" Miss Smith to send Miss Hatton and Miss Pleasance here," said Miss Cayley to the housemaid, who came in answer to her mistress's ring.

Miss Cayley spoke sharply, for she was a little sharp by nature, and she was rendered sharper by her profession. She was a schoolmistress—a little keen-eyed, intelligent-looking, not unladylike woman, wizened and worn by half a lifetime's struggle, not to make her bread alone—though that is sometimes hard enough to make—but with the contrarieties of pupils and pupils' parents, teachers, governesses, and servants. Miss Cayley fought them all single-handed, and she showed the brunt of the battle by not a little leanness, and not a few lines in her thin grey face. But she was not so worn as not to remain mistress of herself and of a painful situation.

Miss Cayley was in her drawing-room when she rang the bell. It was a pleasanter room than many such drawing-rooms. In the first place, Miss Cayley's school was situated in an old country-house, six miles beyond even the suburb of a large town. In the second, Miss Cayley had a character of her own, and managed to impress it on her belongings—on her favourite chair, her little reading-table, her stand of plants, her very knitting, and the magazine which she had been reading, and which lay open on the table before hen In the third, those essentials of a school drawing-room, which are almost as inevitable as the girls found practising on the best piano,—gifts and specimens of old pupils' work, crude performances in water-colours and embroidery, mingled as they were here with old solid furniture and home comforts, only lent a certain air of youthful, hopeful aspiration to the room.

Miss Cayley was not alone, she had a guest who had till that morning been a stranger to her, and who had during their short acquaintance made anything save a favourable impression on Miss Cayley's mind.

Unlike Miss Cayley, this guest was a large handsome woman. She had imposingly prominent and regular features, and a complexion which was still clear, red and white—contrasting in its clearness with the blackness of her hair, unsilvered by a single white thread. It had better be said at once that, though the lady's large person had so far outgrown the slenderness of youth, there was nothing in the unfading bloom and the unblanched locks, to suggest the idea of artificial substitutes to supply the thefts of time. On the contrary, this was a perfectly genuine woman, whose unimpaired vitality, if it needed any explanation, suggested only the German proverb that weeds do not wither.

The stranger was dressed well, in deep mourning. The depth of her crape and the dimness of her silk did not, however, prevent her having an obvious consciousness of the perfectly satisfactory style of her dress, and of the person on which the dress was fitted. There was an occasional glance at the fall of her skirt and the smoothness of her glove, with a droop of the long eyelashes, and a delicate modulation of the mouth—all probably tricks of habit, which, under the circumstances, were peculiarly exasperating to Miss Cayley. These were the only outward signs—and it required an observant eye to detect them—of under breeding, having its origin in more or less latent narrowness and meanness of nature.

There was a pause in the conversation after the mistress of the house sent the message with the servant. Miss Cayley leant back in her chair with a sense of weariness from past fatigues and (brave woman as she was) from coming trials. She knit the already furrowed brow under her little lace cap, and looked as if she did not care to make an observation.

"Why should I speak and smooth away