The Clever Woman of the Family | Page 7

of pedant; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more because it was not so much the fear of her mother's authority as of her horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever since their father's death, which had taken place in Grace's seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel's superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing any of her clever daughter's schemes, never disputed either her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that she despised.
This twenty-fifth birthday had long been anticipated as the turning- point when this submissive girlhood ought to close, and the privileges of acting as well as thinking for herself ought to be assumed. Something to do was her cry, and on this very day that something seemed to be cast in her way. It was not ameliorating the condition of the masses, but it was educating those who might ameliorate them; and Rachel gladly hailed the prospect of a vocation that might be conducted without pain to her mother.
Young children of her own class were not exactly what her dream of usefulness had devised; but she had already a decided theory of education, and began to read up with all her might, whilst taking the lead in all the details of house taking, servant hiring, &c., to which her regular occupations of night school in the evening and reading to the lacemakers by day, became almost secondary. In due time the arrival of the ship was telegraphed, a hurried and affectionate note followed, and, on a bright east-windy afternoon, Rachel Curtis set forth to take up her mission. A telegram had announced the arrival of the Voluta, and the train which would bring the travellers to Avonchester. The Homestead carriage was sent to meet them, and Rachel in it, to give her helpless cousin assistance in this beginning of English habits. A roomy fly had been engaged for nurses and children, and Mrs. Curtis had put under the coachman's charge a parcel of sandwiches, and instructed him to offer all the appliances for making her own into an invalid carriage.
Full of warm tenderness to those who were to be dependent on her exertions, led by her good sense, Rachel paced the platform till the engine rushed up, and she looked along the line of windows, suddenly bewildered. Doors opened, but gentlemen alone met her disappointed eye, until close to her a soft voice said, "Rachel!" and she saw a figure in deep black close to her; but her hand had been hardly clasped before the face was turned eagerly to a tall, bearded man, who was lifting out little boy after little boy, apparently in an endless stream, till at last a sleeping baby was brought out in the arms of a nurse.
"Good-bye. Thank you, oh, thank you. You will come soon. Oh, do come on now."
"Do come on now," was echoed by many voices.
"I leave you in good hands. Good-bye."
"Good-bye. Conrade dear, see what Cyril is doing; never mind, Wilfred, the Major will come and see us; run on with Coombe." This last was a respectable military-looking servant, who picked up a small child in one hand and a dressing-case in the other, and awaited orders.
There was a clinging to the Major by all the children, only ended by his finally precipitating himself into the carriage, and being borne off. Then came a chorus--"Mamma, let me go with you;" "I'll go with mamma " "Me go with mamma;" according to the gradations of age.
While Coombe and mamma decided the question by lifting the lesser