Kitty Alone. Baring-Gould Sabine
why he did not come upstairs to see her.
“Your father is on Dartmoor,” answered Zerah. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she added, “I reckon it is Jan Pooke. He has taken on terribly about you. He comes every day to inquire.”
Whenever Mrs. Pepperill had a little spare time, she clambered up the steep staircase to see that her niece lacked nothing, to give her food, to make her take medicine, to shake up her bed. And every time that she thus mounted, she muttered, “So, I am killing her with cruelty! The only suitable quarters for me is Exeter gaol; the proper end for me is the gallows! I have put her into one of the atmospheric engine-towers and have pumped the life out of her! And yet, I’m blessed if I’m not run off my legs going up and down these stairs! If I ain’t a ministering angel to her; if she doesn’t cost me pounds in doctor’s bills; I don’t begrudge it--but I’m a murderess all the same!”
Certain persons are mentally incapable of understanding a simile; a good many are morally unwilling to apply one to themselves. Whether, when it was spoken, Mrs. Pepperill comprehended or not the bearing of the rector’s simile relative to the exhausting engine, in the sequel she came to entirely misconceive it, and to distort it into something quite different from what the speaker intended. That was easily effected. She was quite aware that much that the parson had said was true; her conscience tingled under his gentle reproof; but no sooner was that unfortunate simile uttered, than her opportunity came for evading the cogency of his reproach, and for working herself up into resentment against him for having charged her falsely. That is one of the dangers that lurk in the employment of hyperbole, and one of the advantages hyperbole gives to those addressed in reprimand with it. Zerah had sufficient readiness of wit to seize on the opportunity, and use her occasion against the speaker, and in self-vindication.
The rector had not said that Zerah was depriving her niece of vital air; that mattered not--he had said that she was depriving her of what was as essential to life as vital air.
“It is my own blessed self that I am killing,” said Mrs. Pepperill; “running up these stairs ten hundred times in the day, my heart jumping furiously, and pumping all the vital air out of my lungs. I’m sure I can’t breathe when I get up into Kate’s room. And he don’t call that love! He ought to be unfrocked by the bishop.”
She came into the girl’s chamber red in the face and puffing, and went direct to her.
“There, now; I’m bothered if something does not come of it to your advantage and mine, Kate, for I’m tired of having to care about you. Jan Pooke has been here again. That’s the second time to-day; of course asking after you. There is no one in the family but Jan and his sister, and she is about to be married. The Pookes have a fine farm and money in the bank. If you manage matters well, you’ll cut out that conceited minx, Rose, who has marked him down. Come, you are a precious!”
She stooped to kiss Kate, but the girl suddenly turned her face with a flaming cheek to the wall.
Zerah tossed her head and said to herself, “Love? she won’t love! I was about to kiss her, and she would not have it.”
Then she got her needlework and seated herself at the window. Kate turned round at once to look at her. She had shrunk from her aunt involuntarily; not from her kiss, but from her words, which wounded her.
A strange child Kate was. If not asking questions with her lips, she was seeking solutions to problems with her eyes. She had fixed her great solemn orbs on her aunt, and they remained on her, not withdrawn for a moment, till Zerah Pepperill became uneasy, fidgeted in her seat, and said sharply, “Am I a murderess or an atmospheric pump that you stare at me? Can’t you find something else to look at?”
Kate made no reply, but averted her face. Ten minutes later, nevertheless, Zerah felt again that the eyes were on her, studying her features, her expression, noting everything about her, seeming to probe her mind and search out every thought that passed in her head.
“Really, if this is going on, I cannot stay,” she said, rose and folded up the sheet she was hemming. “There’s such a thing as manners. I hate to be looked at--it is as if slugs were crawling over me.”
As Zerah descended, she muttered, “The girl is certainly born without a heart. I would have kissed her but that she turned from me. I wish the parson had seen that!”
The weather changed, the edge was taken off the east wind, the sun had gained power. The rooks were in excitement repairing their nests and wasting sticks about the ground under the trees, making a mess and disorder of untidiness. The labourers begged a day from their masters, that they might set their potatoes; after work hours on the farms they were busy in their gardens.
In spring the sap of health rises in young arteries as in plants, and Kate recovered, not perhaps rapidly, but nevertheless steadily. She continued to be pale, with eyes preternaturally large.
She was able to leave her chamber, and after a day or two assist in light housework.
CHAPTER X
THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER
One day, when her uncle was at home busy about his accounts, which engaged him frequently without greatly enlightening him, but serving rather to involve his mind in confusion, Kate was assisting her aunt in preparing for the early dinner, when a tap at the door announced a caller.
Pasco shouted to the person outside to come in, and a young man entered--tall, with fair hair, and clear, steady grey eyes.
“I am the new schoolmaster,” said he frankly. “I have thought it my duty to come and see you, as you are church-warden and one of the managers of the National School.”
“Quite right; sit down. I have been busy. I am a man of the commercial world. This is our meal-time. I am disengaged from my accounts; you can sit and eat, and we will converse whilst eating.”
Mrs. Pepperill entered, and her hard eye rested on the young man.
“The new schoolmaster,” she said. “Do you come from these parts?”
“No; I am a stranger to this portion of England.”
“That’s a misfortune. If you could be born again, and in the west country, it would be a mercy for you. From where do you come?”
“From Hampshire.”
“That’s right up in the north.”
The schoolmaster raised his eyebrows. “Of course--in the south of England.”
“It doesn’t follow,” said Zerah; “by your speech I took you to be foreign.”
“And what may your name be,” said Pasco, “if I may be so bold as to ask? I have heard it, but it sounded French, and I couldn’t recollect it.”
“My name is very English--Walter Bramber.”
“Never heard anyone so called before. Brambles, and Bramptons, and Branscombes. It don’t sound English to our ears. I may as well tell you--sit down, and take a fork--that we liked our last schoolmaster uncommon much. He was just the right sort of man for us; but the rector took against him.”
“I thought he was rather given to the”--
“Well, what of that? We have, all of us, our failings. A trout is an uncommon good fish, but it has bones like needles. You have your failings, my wife has hers. I will say this for Mr. Solomon Puddicombe--he never got tight in our parish. When he was out for a spree, he went elsewhere--to Newton, or Teignmouth, and sometimes to Ashburton. He couldn’t help it. Some folks have fits, others have bilious attacks. When he wasn’t bad, he was very good; the children liked him, the parents liked him. I liked him, and I’m the churchwarden. He had means of his own, beside the school pence and his salary. A man has a right to spend his money as he chooses. If he had got tight on the school pence, I can understand that there might have been some kind of objection;