The Governess’s Story

In the year 1850 I was living as governess in the small watering-place S., on the south coast of England.  Amongst my friends was a young doctor, B., who had recently come to the town.  He had not bought a practice, but his family was known to one or two of the principal inhabitants, and he had begun to do well.  He deserved his success, for he was skilful, frank, and gentle, and he did not affect that mystery which in his elder colleagues was already suspected to be nothing but ignorance.  He was one of the early graduates of the University of London, and representative of the new school of medical science, relying not so much upon drugs as upon diet and regimen.  I was one of his first patients.  I had a severe illness lasting for nearly three months; he watched over me carefully and cured me.  As I grew better he began to talk on other matters than my health when he visited me.  We found that we were both interested in the same books: he lent me his and I lent him mine.  It is almost impossible, I should think, for a young man and a young woman to be friends and nothing more, and I confess that my sympathy with him in his admiration of the Elizabethan poets, and my gratitude to him for my recovery passed into affection.  I am sure also that he felt affection for me.  He became confidential, and told me all his history and troubles.  There was one peculiarity in his conversation which was new to me: he never talked down to me, and he was not afraid at times to discuss subjects that in the society to which I had been accustomed were prohibited.  Not a word that was improper ever escaped his lips, but he treated me in a measure as if I were a man, and I was flattered that he should put me on a level with himself.  It is true that sometimes I fancied he was so unreserved with me because he was sure he was quite safe, for I was poor, and although I was not ugly I was not handsome.  However, on the whole, I was very happy in his society, and there was more than a chance that I should become his wife.

After six months of our acquaintanceship had passed, M., an old schoolfellow of mine, took lodgings near me for the summer.  She was a remarkable girl.  If she was not beautiful, she was better-looking than I was, and she possessed a something, I know not what, more powerful than beauty to fascinate men.  Perhaps it was her unconstrained naturalness.  In walking, sitting, standing—whatever she did—her movements and attitudes were not impeded or unduly masked by artificial restrictions.  I should not have called her profound, but what she said upon the commonest subjects was interesting, because it was so entirely her own.  If she disliked a neighbour, she almost always disliked her for a reason which we saw, directly it was pointed out to us, to be just, but it was generally one which had not been given before.  Her talk upon matters externally trivial was thus much more to me than many discourses upon the most important topics.  On moral questions she expressed herself without any regard to prejudices.  She did not controvert the authenticity of the ordinary standards, but nevertheless behaved as if she herself were her only law.  The people in R., her little native borough, considered her to be dangerous, and I myself was once or twice weak enough to wonder that she held on a straight course with so little help from authority, forgetting that its support, in so far as it possesses any vital strength, is derived from the same internal source which supplied strength to her.

When she came to S. she was unwell, and consulted my friend B.  He did not at first quite like attending her, and she reported to me with great laughter how she had been told that he had made some inquiries about her from one of her neighbours at home with whom he happened to be acquainted, and how he had manœuvred in his visits to get the servants or the landlady into the room.  I met him soon afterwards, and he informed me that he had a new patient.  When he heard that I knew her—I did not say how much I knew—he became inquisitive, and at last, after much beating about the bush, knitting his eyebrows and lowering his voice, he asked me whether I was aware that she was not quite—quite above suspicion!  My goodness, how I flamed up!  I defended her with vehemence: I exaggerated her prudence and her modesty; I declared, what was the simple truth, that she was the last person in the world against whom such a scandalous insinuation should be directed, and that she was singularly inaccessible to vulgar temptation.  I added that notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only remarkably sensitive to any accusation of bad manners, but that upon certain matters she could not endure even a joke.  The only quarrel I remember to have had with her was when I lapsed into some commonplace jest about her intimacy with a music-master who gave her lessons.  The way in which she took that jest I shall never forget.  If I had made it to any other woman, I should have passed on, unconscious of anything inconsistent with myself, but she in an instant made me aware with hardly half a dozen words that I had disgraced myself.  I was ashamed, not so much because I had done what was in the abstract wrong, but because it was something which was not in keeping with my real character.  I hope it will not be thought that I am prosing if I take this opportunity of saying that the laws peculiar to each of us are those which we are at the least pains to discover and those which we are most prone to neglect.  We think we have done our duty when we have kept the commandments common to all of us, but we may perhaps have disgracefully neglected it.

Oh, how that afternoon with B. burnt itself into my memory for ever!  I was sitting on my little sofa with books piled round me.  He removed a few of the books, and I removed the others.  He sat down beside me, and, taking my hand, said he hoped I had forgiven him, and that I would remember that in such a little place he was obliged to be very careful, and to be quite sure of his patients, if they were women.  He trusted I should believe that there was no other person in the world (the emphasis on that word!) to whom he would have ventured to impart such a secret.  I was appeased, especially when, after a few minutes’ silence, he took my hand and kissed it, the first and last kiss.  He said nothing further, and departed.  The next time I saw him he was more than usually deferential, more than ever desirous to come closer to me, and I thought the final word must soon be spoken.

M. remained in S. till far into the autumn, but I did not see much of her.  My work had begun again.  B. continued to call on me as my health was not quite re-established.  We had agreed to read the same author at the same time, in order that we might discuss him together whilst our impressions were still fresh.  Somehow his interest in these readings began to flag; he informed me presently that I had now almost, entirely recovered, and weeks often passed without meeting him.  One afternoon I was surprised to find M. in my room when I returned from a walk with my pupils.  She had been waiting for me nearly half an hour, and I could not at first conjecture the reason.  Gradually she drew the conversation towards B. and at last asked me what I thought of him.  Instantly I saw what had happened.  What I imagined was once mine had been stolen, stolen perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless stolen, my sole treasure.  She was rich, she had a father and mother, she had many friends and would certainly have been married had she never seen B.  I, as I have said, was almost penniless; I was an orphan, with few friends; he was my first love, and I knew he would be my last.

I was condemned, I foresaw, henceforth to solitude, and that most terrible of all calamities, heart-starvation.  What B. had said about M. came into my mind and rose to my lips.  I knew, or thought I knew, that if I revealed it to her she would be so angry that she would cast him off.  Probably I was mistaken, but in my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost irresistible.  I struggled against it, however, and when she pressed me, I praised him and strove in my praise to be sincere.  Whether it was something in my tone, quite unintentional, I know not, but she stopped me almost in the middle of a sentence and said she believed I had kept something back which I did not wish her to hear; that she was certain he had talked to me about her, and that she wished to know what he had said.  I protested he had never uttered a word which could be interpreted as disparaging her, and she seemed to be content.  She kissed me a little more vehemently than usual, and went away.  We ought always, I suppose, to be glad when other people are happy, but God knows that sometimes it is very difficult to be so, and that their happiness is hard to bear.

The Elizabethan studies had now altogether come to an end.  In about a couple of months I heard that M. and B. were engaged.  M. went home, and B. moved into a larger town.  In a twelvemonth the marriage took place, and M. wrote to me after her wedding trip.  I replied, but she never wrote again.  I heard that she had said that I had laid myself out to catch B. and that she was afraid that in so doing I had hinted there was something against her.  I heard also that B. had discouraged his wife’s correspondence with me, no other reason being given than that he would rather the acquaintanceship should be dropped.  The interpretation of this reason by those to whom it was given can be guessed.  Did he fear lest I should boast of what I had been to him or should repeat his calumny?  Ah, he little knew me if he dreamed that such treachery was possible to me!

I remained at the vicarage for three years.  The children grew up and I was obliged to leave, but I continued to teach in different families till I was about five-and-forty.  After five-and-forty I could not obtain another situation, and I had to support myself by letting apartments at Brighton.  My strength is now failing; I cannot look after my servant properly, nor wait upon my lodgers myself.  Those who have to get their living by a lodging-house know what this means and what the end will be.  I have occasionally again wished I could have seen my way partially to explain myself to M., and have thought it hard to die misrepresented, but I am glad I have not spoken.  I should have disturbed her peace, and I care nothing about justification or misrepresentation now.  With eternity so near, what does it matter?

Inscription On The Envelope.

“To my niece Judith,—You have been so kind to your aunt, the only human being, at last, who was left to love her, that she could not refrain from telling you the one passage in her history which is of any importance or interest.”