The making of a woman

"God's silence on the outside of the house, And we who did not speak too loud within."—Aurora Leigh.

SHE sat at her window overlooking the wide and dreary expanse of marshland. A faint streak of light near the horizon was all that could be seen of the sea. No trees or buildings broke the monotonous scene, and Jean's deep inquiring blue eyes sought in vain for anything to brighten her landscape. She was young, she was vigorous and healthy, and her spirits were good as a rule; yet to-day she was in the depths of depression, and the grey mist that was slowly rolling in from the ocean and obliterating the russet-brown rushes and the coarse dank grass that stretched for so many miles in front of her, only seemed a fit emblem of the cloud over her soul.

She threw up her head at last with a weary sigh.

"He is my grandfather!" she exclaimed aloud. "My father's father! But oh! If he had been my mother's father, how differently I should feel!"

She looked round her room, which was a large one, though barely and insufficiently furnished. Her eyes fell on a small oil painting on the wall. It was the portrait of her mother. The broad white brow, the delicately chiselled little nose, and sweet tremulous lips with their pathetic droop, and the deep earnest, soul-searching eyes, all combined to portray a sweet and beautiful woman. Jean inherited her mother's brow and eyes; her nose and mouth were more decided in character, her chin round and determined, and humour lightened the corners of her closely-shut lips. As her eyes met the ones in the portrait, she suddenly saw a scene before her. It had been enacted in this very room many years ago. A tiny curly-headed girl in black frock and white pinafore stood hugging a picture to her breast, and defying a stern old man before her.

"You sha'n't have my mother's picture! You've tooked her away from me and locked her up in a box, and she made this picture for mine own self, and I sha'n't give it to you! I shall grow up a big girl and paint millions of pictures—more than any one else in the world!"

The old man made a step forward, and the much-prized picture was torn from the child's tiny grasp. It was a pretty sketch of an old Italian châlet with a group of children gathering flowers in the foreground. On the floor were various bits of paper and a box of paints. Mr. Desmond had surprised his little granddaughter in one of her first efforts to follow in the steps of her artist mother. She had been happy all the morning with one of her mother's paintings before her, and had with untiring zeal been attempting to reproduce it upon scraps of writing paper. Much paint on fingers and pinafore was the result, also certain daubs of colour on the paper that meant much to her small mind, but very little to any one else.

"Listen to me!" was the wrathful exclamation as the old man, picture in hand, towered above her. "My son disgraced himself by marrying your mother. He could have allied himself with the oldest family in the county, and he refused. He died a beggar in Italy, and sent me his wife and child to support. I took you in for his sake; you bore his name, and when your mother had the audacity to sell her paintings with my son's name upon them, I forbade her to touch a brush or pencil again as long as she was under my roof. She obeyed me, and now that she is dead, am I to stand still and see you strive to make yourself perfect in the art that bewitched and ruined my only son? Who dared to give you pencil and paints?"

The small child was not awed, as her mother had been.

"I shall draw pictures every day, and you're a wicked man, grandpapa! Nurse did buy a paintbox for me, and if you take it away, I shall paint out of your ink-pot! I will! I will paint pictures like mother did!"

Jean smiled as she thought of the small fury dancing up and down, but she frowned when she recollected the summary chastisement that followed, and the consequent collapse and penitence of the motherless little one.

And then her mind left the past and dwelt in her present.

It was a very grey monotonous one, but there were gleams of brightness in it. She lived alone with her grandfather in an old stone house on the border of the marsh. For five years, she had been to a small private school in the neighbouring town, about nine miles away, and then at seventeen, her education was supposed to be complete. She came back, and was installed as her grandfather's housekeeper and companion.

She was fond of music, but there was no piano in the house; a great reader, but the only room that contained any books was her grandfather's library, in which he sat and dared any one to molest him. Drawing and painting were forbidden pastimes. At school, she had envied her fellow pupils who used to attend an art school close by; but, though she had never had a lesson, and in spite of her grandfather's prohibition, she was seldom without a pencil and sketch-book. Beauty in any shape or form intoxicated her; her lesson-books had not a margin that was not covered with faces and forms of all descriptions. When she returned home, she never rested till she had copied her mother's portrait, and as she traced the delicate, pensive features, her whole heart went out in love to her young mother, whose spirit had been crushed and broken by the tyranny of her father-in-law. When that occupation was finished, Jean looked around her, wondering how she would pass her time.

Four elderly servants formed the household—two men and two women. John and Mary were husband and wife; John was butler and valet to Mr. Desmond, Mary the cook. Elsie was the housemaid, and was a soured, miserable woman through numerous misfortunes in her life—chiefly the iniquities and treachery of some of her early lovers. Rawlings was gardener, and was the most cheerful individual of the community.

"Are you feelin' low?" he would say. "Come into the open air and it will blow away your feelin's!"

It was in the garden that Jean eventually spent most of her time. She learnt the times and seasons of every plant and flower from the old man; she was initiated into the mysteries of grafting, potting, and pruning. There was not a big flower garden; the wind swept over the lawn, and the salt spray stunted and burnt the trees and shrubs. It stood in the front of the house, unprotected from the open marshland, but the kitchen garden behind was encircled by four high walls, and it was there that Jean and Rawlings talked and worked together.

But lately the stormy spring weather had laid Rawlings low with an attack of rheumatism, and Jean had shunned the garden.

She had taken the opportunity to steal into the library when her grandfather was interviewing a tenant of his in the servants' hall. And when he returned, she was too deep in a volume of Scott's poems to notice his approach.

He looked at the girl as she sat on the floor by his bookcase, her head resting against the books behind her, and her lap full of odd volumes she had been glancing at. And then, harshly, he brought her out of the stirring scenes of battle and of love in which her soul was feasting.

"Did I give you leave to touch my books?"

Jean started to her feet and faced her grandfather with sparkling eyes.

"No," she said with spirit, "but I am hoping every day that you will. Grandfather, I cannot live this life much longer. You are starving me whilst you are surrounded with plenty. Let me share some of your books with you."

Mr. Desmond stooped and took up the book that she had laid down.

"Poems!" he sneered. "When a woman surfeits herself on romances and poetry, she lays the foundation for worse to follow. No, Jean; keep to your own province and let me keep to mine. Books are for men, household tasks for women. Let Mary teach you to cook a dinner, and Elsie to mend the house-linen. And never let me find you in this room again, unless I send for you!"

"But," argued Jean, stung to the quick by the contempt expressed in her grandfather's tone, "I have a brain as well as you. You don't want two cooks in the house nor two women to mend the linen. I have nothing to do these wet days. If you will not let me read your books, give me money to buy some myself. You will hardly let me read the newspaper. I shall turn into an imbecile, if I am treated like this! Oh! If I had money, how different my life would be here!"

Passion was in her tone. He waved her away like a naughty child.

"I clothe you and feed you. You want no more."

But Jean would not be dismissed.

"Grandfather, if you do not let me read, I shall paint. I shall make it my occupation in life."

The old man glared at her.

"If I ever catch you at it," he roared in fury, "I'll cast you out of this house for ever!"

"Perhaps," muttered Jean, "that would be the best thing that could happen to me!"

She left him, and went up to her room.

Would life always be like this? she wondered, and sitting at her window, gloom descended on her soul. Then she went to her bookcase and discontentedly viewed its contents. A Bible, a prayer-book, and a dictionary, half a dozen children's story books, and Boswell's "Life of Johnson." The latter was the only prize she had earned at school, and she had read it through already five times.

"If only I had money of my own!" she sighed. "I wonder if I could by any possibility earn any!"

Then she started up. "I will go out," she resolved; "as Rawlings says, it will 'blow away my feelin's'!"

She put on her thick coat and hat, and in a few minutes was treading the flat dreary road that led by the side of the marsh to the nearest town.

It was already getting dusk; a flock of wild ducks suddenly rose close to her, and flew screaming over the marsh towards the sea. There was no wind; the croaking of frogs seemed the only sound that broke the monotonous silence. She looked around her with keen alert eyes, but her gaze fell on stunted gorse bushes, and beds of the green rushes that were so familiar a landmark in this part of the country.

"Oh!" she said impatiently to herself, as she threw back her head with a quick, imperious gesture, "I know this all so well, that I could paint it with my eyes shut! It's a deadening part of the world to live in. Stagnant life, and I am beginning to think that mine is like it!"