Marcella | Page 7

wife remarked
shortly, when he complained to her, that Marcella seemed to her as well
off as the daughter of persons of their means could expect to be. But Mr.
Boyce stuck to his point. He had just learnt that Harold, the only son of
his widowed brother Robert, of Mellor Park, had recently developed a
deadly disease, which might be long, but must in the end be sure. If the
young man died and he outlived Robert, Mellor Park would be his; they
would and must return, in spite of certain obstacles, to their natural
rank in society, and Marcella must of course be produced as his
daughter and heiress. When his wife repulsed him, he went to his eldest
sister, an old maid with a small income of her own, who happened to be
staying with them, and was the only member of his family with whom
he was now on terms. She was struck with his remarks, which bore on
family pride, a commodity not always to be reckoned on in the Boyces,
but which she herself possessed in abundance; and when he paused she
slowly said that if an ideal school of another type could be found for
Marcella, she would be responsible for what it might cost over and
above the present arrangement. Marcella's manners were certainly
rough; it was difficult to say what she was learning, or with whom she
was associating; accomplishments she appeared to have none.
Something should certainly be done for her--considering the family
contingencies. But being a strong evangelical, the aunt stipulated for
"religious influences," and said she would write to a friend.
The result was that a month or two later Marcella, now close on her
fourteenth birthday, was transferred from Cliff House to the charge of a
lady who managed a small but much-sought-after school for young
ladies at Solesby, a watering place on the east coast.
* * * * *
But when in the course of reminiscence Marcella found herself once
more at Solesby, memory began to halt and wander, to choose another
tone and method. At Solesby the rough surroundings and primitive
teaching of Cliff House, together with her own burning sense of

inferiority and disadvantage, had troubled her no more. She was well
taught there, and developed quickly from the troublesome child into the
young lady duly broken in to all social proprieties. But it was not her
lessons or her dancing masters that she remembered. She had made for
herself agitations at Cliff House, but what were they as compared to the
agitations of Solesby! Life there had been one long Wertherish
romance in which there were few incidents, only feelings, which were
themselves events. It contained humiliations and pleasures, but they
had been all matters of spiritual relation, connected with one figure
only--the figure of her schoolmistress, Miss Pemberton; and with one
emotion only--a passion, an adoration, akin to that she had lavished on
the Ellertons, but now much more expressive and mature. A tall slender
woman with brown, grey-besprinkled hair falling in light curls after the
fashion of our grandmothers on either cheek, and braided into a classic
knot behind--the face of a saint, an enthusiast--eyes overflowing with
feeling above a thin firm mouth--the mouth of the obstinate saint, yet
sweet also: this delicate significant picture was stamped on Marcella's
heart. What tremors of fear and joy could she not remember in
connection with it? what night-vigils when a tired girl kept herself
through long hours awake that she might see at last the door open and a
figure with a night-lamp standing an instant in the doorway?--for Miss
Pemberton, who slept little and read late, never went to rest without
softly going the rounds of her pupils' rooms. What storms of contest,
mainly provoked by Marcella for the sake of the emotions, first of
combat, then of reconciliation to which they led! What a strange
development on the pupil's side of a certain histrionic gift, a turn for
imaginative intrigue, for endless small contrivances such as might
rouse or heighten the recurrent excitements of feeling! What agitated
moments of religious talk! What golden days in the holidays, when
long-looked-for letters arrived full of religious admonition, letters
which were carried about and wept over till they fell to pieces under the
stress of such a worship--what terrors and agonies of a stimulated
conscience--what remorse for sins committed at school--what zeal to
confess them in letters of a passionate eloquence--and what
indifference meanwhile to anything of the same sort that might have
happened at home!
Strange faculty that women have for thus lavishing their heart's blood

from their very cradles! Marcella could hardly look back now, in the
quiet of thought, to her five years with Miss Pemberton without a
shiver of agitation. Yet