DUNMARA

CHAPTER XXXV

A PAGE OUT OF ELLEN'S DIARY

ELLEN has had three months' trial of her London life. It is mid-winter and late in the night, and she sits alone at the table in her Kensington attic. She has had a letter from Maud this evening, handed to her over the banisters whilst she stood on the stairs in the dark, where she always stands for a few breathless moments, whenever the postman comes to the door, She has hurried up-stairs again to her room, and read the letter, and ever since she has been very grave. Not that there was any sad news, but the familiar mention of the old names has thrown her into a reverie of long duration. She has sat idly in her chair, with her hands clasped loosely in her lap, and her eyes on a certain spot in the paper of the wall.

"I visit Dunsurf sometimes," Maud wrote, "and the boys often. The doctor is very kind and examines them on what they have been learning. We are very busy at lessons. Nancy takes good care of us, and we are all very happy. We have had great fun on the snow. Dunthorla bridge was blocked up last week. You should see how fine the mountains look. I enclose you a letter from Randie to let you see how well he gets on. I hope they will really send him abroad, since it will be so good

for him.

"I have not seen Mrs. Kirker for a long time. From all I hear, Dunmara must be a dreadful house at present. Miss Elswitha is in wretched health I believe, and the only inhabitant of the place, besides the servants. They say she is greatly changed, and that she may die without seeing her brother again. They tell all kinds of stories of him here,-that he has gone abroad, and will never return. The country people blame Miss Elswitha's harsh temper. They say he went off after a quarrel at the time of Miss Rowena's death. Mrs. McDawdle is as kind as ever. She has a super-excellent supply of jam this year. She is always coaxing us to Dunsurf to eat some,

and you may be sure we have no objection to go. Another piece of news which will surprise you, is, that the doctor goes to visit Miss Elswitha very often. This throws 'Lucinda' into agonies of curiosity, with which she has infected me a little, but you know how slow the doctor is about talking. He never tells us anything, except that she is in ill health. If we ask questions, he seizes his pipe and takes refuge in a cloud of smoke.”

Ellen brushes her hair in preparation for bed, but changes her mind and lights a new candle, brings out her portfolio and turns over her sketches, studying them, and sighing over them, and flinging them aside impatiently. Then she gathers them all again into the portfolio, and ties them up and puts them away. Now she takes a pencil and block, and begins to draw; lays that aside, too, and leans wearily on the table, and looks at the candle.

At last she fetches a pen and ink and a book of blank white paper, dips the pen in the ink, marks the day of the month, and writes, slowly at first, stopping abruptly, balancing her pen on her fingers, and looking again at the candle. But, byand-by, she writes more steadily; she gives up her languid attitude and slips into one more wide-awake. Her eyes brighten, her cheeks gain a better colour.

“I have finished my copy of Murillo's Spanish boy in the National Gallery. I took it to a shop in Piccadilly, and the man graciously condescended to allow me to leave it with him on the chance of a customer. I think it is a good copy. Felicia Rothwell does not flatter, and she thought so, and I love my little brown beggar. What shall I go to work upon next?— I think those exquisite heads of our Saviour and St. John, by Guido. Ah! I fear copying is not profitable work, and money, money-I must get money. I have got a book of nursery rhymes to illustrate. It came about thus- Little Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet.' A terrible knock came to the door, and a pair of hands brought up a letter. Miss Muffet opened the letter and a shower of farthings fell about her ears. The letter was from a great ogre with long hair who lives away in the mountains, and inside there was an awful thing called a cheque. Little Miss Muffet cries out, 'Oh! here is this great ogre pelting ne with farthings, and I already owe him a great debt. I must VOL. XXXIV.-No. 392.

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pay off this great debt. And she seals up the cheque again and sends it back straight to the mountains. Then she draws on her seven-league boots, and provides herself with some blocks of wood, and walks all round London twelve times. She goes up many pairs of steep stairs, and into rooms where awful giants, with pens behind their ears, are making faces at large books behind a counter, and she curtseys and offers her blocks for sale. These gentlemen don't order Miss Muffet downstairs, because they are Jack Esquire, and John Esquire, and she is little Miss Muffet, but they bow her politely to the door and go on making faces at their books. And poor little Miss Muffet cries out as she goes down the steep stairs

If I'd as much money as I could spend,

I never would cry old chairs to mend.

"Next morning she gets a brown paper parcel, with a request for some of her blocks of wood, and it does not come from Jack Esquire, nor John Esquire, but from one plain old person who lives away in a corner somewhere. And this is the story of how I got a book of nursery rhymes to illustrate.

"Felicia Rothwell has discovered that I lived in Spain, and am working for my bread, and that she is the daughter of a wealthy mother, living in Onslow Square. One day she said to me,—

"You are very happy who understand Spanish. I want to read Calderon, and I don't know a syllable. Can you recommend a good teacher ?'

"I hesitated to offer my own services.

"I suppose,' she said, 'you would be too proud to think of condescending to give lessons yourself.'

"I am proud of nothing but my own self-respect.'

"She bent over her work, and I bent over mine. After some time I happened to rise my head, and found her sitting idle, looking at me. She stretched forth her fair, pink hand, and I stretched forth mine and touched it, and then we both went on with our work in silence. That day, as we put on our hats in the dressing-room, it was arranged that I was to go two evenings each week to Onslow Square, to give lessons in Spanish to Miss Rothwell. Whether her anxiety to read Calderon is real or pretended, I have not yet discovered.

“I am quite at home in the school now, and though school work is tedious, I get on. Nevertheless, terribly desponding periods divide my seasons of hope. Gentle Miss Lowndes, perhaps, gives me a word of approbation, albeit she is hard to please in her superiority, as a teacher should be. She presents me with a little rose of contentment, which I complacently smell, and place in my belt. But next day is Mr. Fairburn's day, and, lo! he appears, rushing through the school. And perhaps he comes and studies my work, from under his eyebrows; takes my surrendered charcoal from my crestfallen fingers, and scores here, and scores there, and he tears up my complacent little rose, and scatters its pleasant little petals under his feet. Then my hopes are made to bleed inwardly by a sharp-pointed reminder that all roses are weeds-that all such sweet-scented climbers are rubbish, and that the only root worth my cultivation-though still below the ground -is hedged round with nettles, and other things prickly and uncomfortable. And then, when the scarifying process has been satisfactorily gone through, and my wounds are wide and sore enough, then a little balsam is carefully doled out, which is supposed to be all-powerful for healing purposes. I am told that that hidden root may sprout and become in time a laurel tree-fifty years hence, perhaps. But, then, think of it; a laurel tree whole and entire, for one's own garden, to have and to hold, for ever and for ever, with per mission to be buried underneath it when you die! Who thinks of roses? Who cares for the evanescent perfume, and the brief bloom? A laurel tree to dwell under while you live, and to be buried under when you die, and a hedge of nettles to guard you round. Oh! student, does not your heart beat to think of so unique a prize?

"Good master, you may take your laurels and bend them round your own loose locks, mine are braided, and would not become them; or give them to my neighbour, Miss Rothwell, who cultivates nettles in her conservatory, and has space in the centre for your tree. Do what you will, but do not leave it with me, lest, perhaps, you groan to see the sacred leaves stripped off, and dropped into a silver stewpan to flavour custards. Give me, instead, if you can, a modest bush that will bear blossoms of beauty, which may, in turn, produce a moderate

crop of fruit. The blossoms I will have for the joy and purification of my own soul and the souls of others; with the fruit I will feed the hungry, and if the sap of my bush be worn out with over-much bearing, and the root die with me, even so : let the withered boughs be buried in my coffin. I do not want any tree standing sentinel over my grave. At Judgment-day the Angel will know his way there without the aid of any such forlorn sign-post.

"Our academy is a pleasant place. I feel it so when, after daring to rough it for a day in my poor little boat on the jostling sea of London, I take down my sails and cast anchor in this calm little bay, where we are all playing at making voyages, and trying to learn to swim. It is pleasant to come in of a morning, to get friendly smiles in the passage, to smooth one's hair, and tie one's working apron in the dressing-room, exchanging a blithe word, now with one, and now with another, and forgetting that there are such things in the world as broken boots, or such things in the world as debts to be paid. In the Greek Room where I am placed now, we are a pleasant little company, seldom invaded by masters or mistresses. We chat in groups of two or three over our work, or, occasionally, we all join in a keen piece of fun, or a grand discussion; or we keep silence en masse, and count the degrees of shadow on the foot of Germanicus, or take a plumb-line from somebody else's chin, whilst in the stillness our thoughts are free to go where they please.

"I have the good will of many. Good-natured Miss Paynter, whose father is an artist, gives me kind advice about 'that reflected light on the extended forefinger.' The travelled young lady, resplendent in blue silk, who stands in an attitude before her drawing of an alabaster jar with a stream of muddy shadow spilt down the side, refreshes me with gushing raptures about the glories of the Louvre, and sprinkles my stay-at-home ignorance with the mild essence of her pity. Little Miss Vane, who is the beauty and genius of the school, pats me (to speak figuratively) on the head, and says I shall do very well. And then she screws up her little red mouth, and shakes her pretty head, with its little fuss of golden curls all glittering in the sun, and trips off, rustling in her dainty toilette, to her seat, where she begins, in a stage whisper, to inform her next neighbour of how