The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories
week; but it is a very good one. Little things which should be noticed
may slip the memory at a longer period. Besides, it is a useful
reminder; it shows how the money is going, and if the tradesmen find
you are careful, it makes them so.
Following this plan, a quarter of an hour every morning sees the
housekeeping affairs settled for the day, leaving the mistress at
leisure to pursue her own avocations, and the cook to do her business
in the kitchen. It is simply a glance at the larder, and then to write
down all that will be required until that time on the morrow; the
dinner and breakfast orders on a slate, and the other articles in the
books appropriated to them. After a little while it will be found that
the labour is purely mechanical; in a quiet family the consumption is
so regular that the weekly bills will scarcely vary, and the
mistress’s eye will detect the least increase, and find out for what
it has been incurred.
At the close of each month the debit and credit accounts should be
balanced, and then, if the allowance is at any time exceeded, it will
generally be proved that it has gone on the superfluities before
mentioned, and not on the actual expense of maintaining the household.
When people talk of the difficulties of “living”, the thoughts of
their listeners invariably fly to the cost of bread and meat, and they
unite in abusing the tradespeople, who send their children to
fashionable schools on the profits which they extort from us. But
there are various ways in which men and women can save, besides
dispensing with unnecessary eatables.
What woman, for instance, in these days, buying a dress, does not pay
twice as much for its being made and trimmed ready for her use as she
did for the original material? And who that has feet and fingers, and
a sewing machine, could not sit down and make it in a few hours for
herself?
But she will tell you, most likely, that she cannot cut out properly,
that she has not the slightest taste for trimming, and that she was
not brought up to dressmaking like a dressmaker. Ah, my dear sisters!
are not these the days when we should all learn? _Men_ may go through
life with the knowledge but of one thing--for if they are acquainted
with the duties of their profession, they succeed--but women need to
know _everything_, from putting on a poultice to playing the piano;
and from being able to hold a conversation with the Lord Chancellor,
to clear-starching their husbands’ neckties.
I don’t say we must _do it_, but I maintain that we should know how.
Men are really needed but in one place, and that is, public life; but
we are wanted everywhere. In public and in private, upstairs and
downstairs, in the nursery and the drawing-room,--nothing can go on
properly without us; and if it does, if our husbands and our servants
and our children don’t need us, we cannot be doing our duty.
Above all, we have the training of the mistresses of future
households, and the mothers of a coming generation--the bringing up,
in fact, of the “girls of the next period.”
If we cannot amend the faults we see in ourselves (an assertion which
should be paradoxical to anyone gifted with the least energy), if we
think it is too late to sit down in our middle age, and learn to rub
the rust off our brains, and to work our heads with our fingers, we
can rear them in a different fashion.
If we are wasteful and extravagant and useless--deserving of all the
hard things which have been said of us lately, let us at least take
heed that our daughters are not the same.
“MOTHER.”
It was close upon Easter. The long, dark days of Lent, with their
melancholy ceremonials, were nearly over, and, as if in recognition of
the event, the sun was shining brightly in the heavens. The hawthorn
bushes had broken into bloom, and the wild birds were bursting their
little throats in gratitude. The boys were almost as wild and joyous
as the birds, as they rushed about the playground, knocking each other
over in the exuberance of their glee, and forgetting to be angry in
the remembrance that the next day would be Holy Thursday, when they
should all go home to their fathers and mothers to spend the Easter
holidays. I alone of the merry throng sat apart under the quick-set
hedge, joining in neither game nor gaiety, as I wondered, with the
dull, unreasoning perception of childhood, why I had been the one
selected, out of all that crowd of boys, to have no part in their
anticipation or their joy. Even poor, lame Jemmy, who had no
remembrance of his father or his mother, and who had been, in a way,
adopted by our schoolmaster, and lived all the year round, from
January to December, in the same dull house and rooms, looked more
cheerful than I did. He was incapacitated by his infirmity from taking
part in any one of the noisy games that were going on around us, yet
he smiled pleasantly as he came limping up towards me on his crutches,
and told me that Mrs. Murray (who bestowed on him all the mother’s
care he would ever know) had promised, if he were good, to give him a
donkey ride during Easter week, and some seeds to plant in his strip
of garden.
“What’s the matter with you, Charlie?” he asked presently; “aren’t you
glad to be going home?”
“Oh! I don’t care,” I answered, listlessly.
“Don’t _care_ about seeing your father and mother again?”
“I haven’t got a mother,” I rejoined, quickly.
“Is your mother dead, like mine? Oh, I _am_ sorry! But your father
loves you for them both, perhaps.”
“No, he doesn’t! He doesn’t care a bit about me. He never asks to see
me when I do go home; and he frightens me. I wish I might stay all the
holidays with Mrs. Murray, like you do.”
“That _is_ bad,” quoth the lame child. “Well, maybe they’ll forget to
send for you, Charlie, and then we’ll have fine times together, you
and I.”
I had not the same hope, however. I knew that if by any oversight my
father forgot to send the servant for me, that my schoolmaster would
take the initiative and despatch me home himself.
How I dreaded it. The gloomy, half-closed house, the garden paths,
green with damp and thick with weeds, the servants acting entirely
upon their own authority, and the master querulous, impatient, and
unjust, either shut up in his own room brooding over the past and
present, or freely distributing oaths, complaints, and sometimes even
blows, amongst the unfortunate inmates of his household. As for
myself, I seldom came within the range of his arm without being
terrified away, and it had been a great relief to me when I returned
home for the previous Christmas holidays to find that he was absent,
and the term of my penance passed peacefully, if nothing else. But now
he was at home again, so my master informed me, my father had never
dreamt of writing to me, and I looked forward to the coming visit with
dread. A strange, unnatural state of things for a child of eight years
old, who had never known a mother’s love nor care, had never even
heard her name mentioned by any one with whom he was connected.
“What was your mother like?” continued Jemmy, after a few minutes’
pause, during which we two unfortunates had been ruminating upon our
lot. “Had she light-coloured hair, like Mrs. Murray, or dark, like the
cook?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, sadly. “I never saw her, that I remember.”
“Haven’t you got a likeness of her at home?” he demanded with
surprise. “Wait till I show you mine.”
He fumbled about in his waistcoat, and produced a much faded
daguerreotype of an ordinary-looking young woman in old-fashioned
habiliments.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” he exclaimed, with weak enthusiasm as he
pressed the miniature to his lips.
“Oh, how I wish she hadn’t died! I know I should have loved her so
much!”
I made no reply. Poor Jemmy’s imagination did not run so fast as mine.
If my mother had lived to side with my father, where should I have
been between them? I turned my face away, and sighed.
It was strange that I had no idea of what my mother had been like. I
have never even formed one, neither had I any relation to whose memory
I might have appealed on the subject. My father lived a solitary,
aimless life in the old neglected house I have alluded to, seldom
leaving his own apartments, except at meal times, and certainly never
asking any friend to enter them to bear him company. The servants had
their parents, or lovers, or brothers, to visit them by stealth in the
kitchen, but the master sat by himself, gloomy and preoccupied, and
irritable almost to frenzy when provoked. No wonder I wished that I
could have spent the Easter holidays with Mrs. Murray. But a great
surprise was in store for me. The boys had hardly concluded the game
of football they had been carrying on during my colloquy with Jemmy,
when Mrs. Murray came smiling down the playground in search of me.
“I’ve a piece of news for you, Master Vere,” she exclaimed. “Some one
is waiting to see you in the parlour.”
“Not papa!” I said, quickly.
“No; not your papa,” replied Mrs. Murray, laying her hand
compassionately on my shoulder, “but a new friend--a lady whom you
will like very much indeed.”
“A _lady!_” I repeated, in utter bewilderment, whilst my schoolmates
crowded round Mrs. Murray, with the question, “Is she come to take
Vere home?”
“Perhaps! most probably,” was her answer, whilst exclamations of, “Oh,
I say, that’s a jolly shame. It isn’t fair. School doesn’t break up
till to-morrow. _We_ sha’n’t get off to-day, try as hard as we may,”
greeted her supposition from every side, and I, trembling like a
culprit, affirmed that I would much rather not be introduced to the
pleasures of home one hour earlier than was needful.
“Come into the parlour, dear, and see the lady,” Mrs. Murray replied,
“and we will decide what to do afterwards.”
So my face and hair were hurriedly washed and arranged, and I
sheepishly followed my master’s wife to the formal little apartment
dedicated to the reception of visitors, where we found the lady she
had alluded to.
Shall I ever forget her face as she rose to greet me, and drew me into
her arms! Such a fair, sweet, fresh face as it was, but with an amount
of sorrowful thought pictured in the serious eyes.
“And so this is Charlie Vere,” she said, as she gazed into my
features. “I should have known you anywhere, my darling, from your
likeness to your father! And now do you guess who I am?”
“No!” I answered, shyly; for Mrs. Murray had slipped away and left me
all alone with the stranger.
“I am your mother, dear; your new mother who means to love you very
dearly, and I have come to take you home!”
Mother and Home! How sweet the dear familiar words sounded in my ears;
familiar, alas! to everyone but me. The hawthorn blossoms in the
playground seemed to smell sweeter than they had done before, as she
pronounced them, and the birds’ chorus rang out harmoniously.
“Will papa be there?” I asked, nervously.
“Papa! of course! What would home be without your father?”
I had found it much pleasanter without him than with him hitherto, but
some instinct made me hold my tongue.
“Don’t you love papa, dear?” the lady went on softly. “Don’t you think
that he loves you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, picking my fingers.
“Poor child! Perhaps you have thought not, but that will all be
altered now. But you have not yet told me if you will like to have me
for a mother!”
“I think I shall like you very much!”
“That’s right, so we will go home together and try to make each other
happy. You want a mother to look after you, dear child, and I want a
little boy to love. We will not part again, Charlie, now I have found
you, not for the present, at all events. You have been too long away
from home as it is. That is why I came to-day. I could not wait till