The New Mistress: A Tale. Fenn George Manville

circumstances could excuse it, Hazel,” said Mrs Thorne with dignity. “Percy never speaks to me like that; and by-the-way, my dear, Percy says he must have a new suit: his mourning is getting so shabby, he is quite ashamed of it, and I’m sure my heart bleeds every time I see the poor boy go out.”

      “Yes, mamma, we will see what can be done,” said Hazel, suppressing a sigh.

      “And as to that national school business,” continued Mrs Thorne, “it is disgraceful. Write and tell cousin Jane and her husband that, however low we may be reduced by poverty, my daughter will never forget that she is a lady.”

      “But, mamma dear,” said Hazel gently; “it was entirely my idea, and I wrote for their help.”

      “You – you, Hazel – my child – propose to go to a common training school, and then accept a situation to teach a pack of dirty poor people’s children? Oh, what have I done – what have I done to be called upon to suffer this new – this pitiful degradation! What have I done?”

      It was hard work, but by degrees poor Mrs Thorne was brought round to think that perhaps – perhaps – she would go no farther – it might be less degradation to accept an honourable post and do a great duty therein of helping to make so many girls better women by careful training, than to live in indigence as a kind of respectable pauper, subsisting on the assistance of grudging friends.

      So the poor, weak, proud woman at last gave way, and the preliminaries being arranged, Hazel was about to leave home for the training institution full of hope, when there was a change in the state of affairs.

      All this had taken place unknown to Mr Geringer, who was quite startled when he heard the plans, for they ran counter to his own.

      It had been quite in keeping with his ideas that the Thornes should taste the bitters of poverty, and know what being impecunious really meant. The poorer they were the easier would be his task. Matters had gone on swimmingly. Their position had had its effect upon the Graves’s, and his rival, as he called Archibald Graves, had left the field; six months had passed, and Hazel had grown to look upon him as a very dear friend, though not as a lover, and he had come to the conclusion that the time was now ripe for asking her to be his wife; in fact, he had had thoughts of speaking at their last meeting, but had been put off! Now he had come to find Mrs Thorne alone, and after a certain amount of preliminary, was about to speak, when the lady fired off her views and took him by surprise.

      “Go – to a training institution – become a schoolmistress!” he cried. “My dear Mrs Thorne, it is impossible.”

      “Exactly my words,” said the lady. “‘Hazel, my dear child,’ I said, ‘such a degradation is impossible.’”

      “Quite impossible,” said Geringer; and then he drew nearer and talked for some time in a low voice to Mrs Thorne, who shed tears and sobbed greatly, and said that she had always looked upon him as their best and dearest friend.

      “I have waited, you see,” he continued, “for of course if I had felt that dear Hazel really cared for this young Graves I should have said nothing, and I fully know my deficiencies, my age, and such drawbacks; but I am tolerably wealthy, and I can give her all she has lost, restore her nearest and dearest to their proper place in society – almost to the position they formerly held in the world’s esteem.”

      Mrs Thorne thought they were words of gold, and at Geringer’s request she not only readily promised to prepare Hazel, but that all should be as he wished.

      L’homme propose, as the French proverb has it and things do not always turn out as he wishes. Mr Geringer, after the preparation Hazel received from Mrs Thorne, proposed and was refused. Hazel said it was impossible, and such was her obstinacy, as Mrs Thorne called it, she refused to become a rich man’s wife, and insisted upon going to the Whitelands training institution, condemning her unfortunate mother to a life of poverty and degradation, her brother to toil, and blasting her young sisters’ prospects, when she might have married, had her carriage, and all would have gone as merry as a marriage bell.

      That was Mrs Thorne’s view of the case, and she kept up her protests with tears and repining, winning Percy to her side till he was always ready to reproach his sister. Hazel bore all, worked with all the energy in her nature for the year of training, was fortunate in getting a school after a few months’ waiting, and was, as we found her, duly installed in the little schoolhouse, her brother being boarded with some humble friends in town.

      Chapter Five.

      Disturbing Influences

      Hazel Thorne felt giddy as she took her seat in the front of the gallery, the seat with a little square patchy cushion close to the red curtains in front of the organist’s pew. Beside and behind her the school children sat in rows, with ample room for three times the number; but the seats were never filled save upon the two Sundays before the annual school feast when somehow the Wesleyan and Congregational Sunday-schools were almost empty, and the church school thronged.

      It was precisely the same on Mr Chute’s side of the organ, with his boys beside and behind, and so situated that he could lean a little forward and get a glimpse of Hazel’s profile, and also so that he could leave his seat, go round by the back of the organ, and give the new mistress the hymn-book, and the music used, with all the hymns, chants, and tunes carefully turned down.

      It was a pleasant little attention to a stranger, and Hazel turned and thanked him with a smile that was not at all necessary, as Miss Rebecca who played the organ, and saw this through an opening in the red curtains, afterwards said to her brother the Reverend Henry Lambent, while at the time she said: —

      “Sh! sh!” For Ann Straggalls was fighting down a desire to laugh, consequent upon Feelier Potts whining sharply: —

      “Oh, Goody, me!”

      “Like her impudence,” Mr Chute said to himself, in allusion to Miss Rebecca’s interference with the duties of the new mistress. “She’d better not try it on with my boys,” and he went back to think of Hazel Thorne’s sweet sad smile.

      And all the time the object of his thoughts felt giddy.

      Archibald Graves down there, when she had believed that he had forgotten her; and the more she thought, the more agitated and indignant she grew. At times she felt as if she must leave the church, for there, plainly in view, sat the disturber of her peace, one whom she had put behind her with the past; and when at last they stood up to sing the first hymn, to her horror she found that it was the custom in the old country church for the audience all to turn and face the organ, when Archibald Graves stood gazing up at her, and, strive how she would, she could not help once or twice meeting his eyes.

      “It is cruel and unmanly,” she thought, as she resumed her seat, feeling half distracted by the flood of emotion that seemed to sweep away the present.

      Fortunately there was an audible “Sh! sh!” from behind the red curtains just then; and this drew Hazel’s attention to the fact that Feelier Potts was, if not “tiddling,” at all events making Ann Straggalls laugh, just when, in a high-pitched drawl, the Reverend Henry Lambent was going on with the service, as if he felt it a great act of condescension to make appeals on behalf of such a lower order of beings as the Plumtonites. What time the round smooth face of Mr William Forth Burge was looking over the edge of his pew, where he always knelt down standing up as Feelier Potts said, and always smelt his hat inside when he came into church. And while this gentleman forgot all about the prayers in his thoughtful meditation upon the face of one who he told himself had the face of an angel, Mr Chute kept forgetting the litany, and let the boys straggle in the responses, for he felt impelled to glance round the front of the organ pew at the soft white forehead he could just contrive to see.

      “Those girls never behaved worse,” said Miss Rebecca to herself. “If this is to be the way they are kept in order she will never do.”

      Miss Rebecca Lambent felt more sore than usual, for she was at heart aggrieved that the new schoolmistress should be so good-looking and ladylike – matters not at all in accordance with what was right for “a young person in her station in life;” and, to make matters worse, Jem Chubb, who