I SAY NO

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Emily made room for her with the dazed look of a girl in a dream.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Jethro, one of the things I can't endure
is being puzzled. If you don't mean to report us, why did you
come in and catch me with the light?"

Miss Jethro's explanation was far from relieving the perplexity
which her conduct had caused.

"I have been mean enough," she answered, "to listen at the door,
and I heard you talking of your father. I want to hear more about
him. That is why I came in."

"You knew my father!" Emily exclaimed.

"I believe I knew him. But his name is so common--there are so
many thousands of 'James Browns' in England--that I am in fear of
making a mistake. I heard you say that he died nearly four years
since. Can you mention any particulars which might help to
enlighten me? If you think I am taking a liberty--"

Emily stopped her. "I would help you if I could," she said. "But
I was in poor health at the time; and I was staying with friends
far away in Scotland, to try change of air. The news of my
father's death brought on a relapse. Weeks passed before I was
strong enough to travel--weeks and weeks before I saw his grave!
I can only tell you what I know from my aunt. He died of
heart-complaint."

Miss Jethro started.

Emily looked at her for the first time, with eyes that betrayed a
feeling of distrust. "What have I said to startle you?" she
asked.

"Nothing! I am nervous in stormy weather--don't notice me." She
went on abruptly with her inquiries. "Will you tell me the date
of your father's death?"

"The date was the thirtieth of September, nearly four years
since."

She waited, after that reply.

Miss Jethro was silent.

"And this," Emily continued, "is the thirtieth of June, eighteen
hundred and eighty-one. You can now judge for yourself. Did you
know my father?"

Miss Jethro answered mechanically, using the same words.

"I did know your father."

Emily's feeling of distrust was not set at rest. "I never heard
him speak of you," she said.

In her younger days the teacher must have been a handsome woman.
Her grandly-formed features still suggested the idea of imperial
beauty--perhaps Jewish in its origin. When Emily said, "I never
heard him speak of you," the color flew into her pallid cheeks:
her dim eyes became alive again with a momentary light. She left
her seat on the bed, and, turning away, mastered the emotion that
shook her.

"How hot the night is!" she said: and sighed, and resumed the
subject with a steady countenance. "I am not surprised that your
father never mentioned me--to _you_." She spoke quietly, but her
face was paler than ever. She sat down again on the bed. "Is
there anything I can do for you," she asked, "before I go away?
Oh, I only mean some trifling service that would lay you under no
obligation, and would not oblige you to keep up your acquaintance
with me."

Her eyes--the dim black eyes that must once have been
irresistibly beautiful--looked at Emily so sadly that the
generous girl reproached herself for having doubted her father's
friend. "Are you thinking of _him_," she said gently, "when you
ask if you can be of service to me?"

Miss Jethro made no direct reply. "You were fond of your father?"
she added, in a whisper. "You told your schoolfellow that your
heart still aches when you speak of him."

"I only told her the truth," Emily answered simply.

Miss Jethro shuddered--on that hot night!--shuddered as if a
chill had struck her.

Emily held out her hand; the kind feeling that had been roused in
her glittered prettily in her eyes. "I am afraid I have not done
you justice," she said. "Will you forgive me and shake hands?"

Miss Jethro rose, and drew back. "Look at the light!" she
exclaimed.

The candle was all burned out. Emily still offered her hand--and
still Miss Jethro refused to see it.

"There is just light enough left," she said, "to show me my way
to the door. Good-night--and good-by."

Emily caught at her dress, and stopped her. "Why won't you shake
hands with me?" she asked.

The wick of the candle fell over in the socket, and left them in
the dark. Emily resolutely held the teacher's dress. With or
without light, she was still bent on making Miss Jethro explain
herself.

They had throughout spoken in guarded tones, fearing to disturb
the sleeping girls. The sudden darkness had its inevitable
effect. Their voices sank to whispers now. "My father's friend,"
Emily pleaded, "is surely my friend?"

"Drop the subject."

"Why?"

"You can never be _my_ friend."

"Why not?"

"Let me go!"

Emily's sense of self-respect forbade her to persist any longer.
"I beg your pardon for having kept you here against your will,"
she said--and dropped her hold on the dress.

Miss Jethro instantly yielded on her side. "I am sorry to have
been obstinate," she answered. "If you do despise me, it is after
all no more than I have deserved." Her hot breath beat on Emily's
face: the unhappy woman must have bent over the bed as she made
her confession. "I am not a fit person for you to associate
with."

"I don't believe it!"

Miss Jethro sighed bitterly. "Young and warm hearted--I was once
like you!" She controlled that outburst of despair. Her next
words were spoken in steadier tones. "You _will_ have it--you
_shall_ have it!" she said. "Some one (in this house or out of
it; I don't know which) has betrayed me to the mistress of the
school. A wretch in my situation suspects everybody, and worse
still, does it without reason or excuse. I heard you girls
talking when you ought to have been asleep. You all dislike me.
How did I know it mightn't be one of you? Absurd, to a person
with a well-balanced mind! I went halfway up the stairs, and felt
ashamed of myself, and went back to my room. If I could only have
got some rest! Ah, well, it was not to be done. My own vile
suspicions kept me awake; I left my bed again. You know what I
heard on the other side of that door, and why I was interested in
hearing it. Your father never told me he had a daughter. 'Miss
Brown,' at this school, was any 'Miss Brown,' to me. I had no
idea of who you really were until to-night. I'm wandering. What
does all this matter to you? Miss Ladd has been merciful; she
lets me go without exposing me. You can guess what has happened.
No? Not even yet? Is it innocence or kindness that makes you so
slow to understand? My dear, I have obtained admission to this
respectable house by means of false references, and I have been
discovered. _Now_ you know why you must not be the friend of such
a woman as I am! Once more, good-night--and good-by."

Emily shrank from that miserable farewell.

"Bid me good-night," she said, "but don't bid me good-by. Let me
see you again."

"Never!"

The sound of the softly-closed door was just audible in the
darkness. She had spoken--she had gone--never to be seen by Emily
again.

Miserable, interesting, unfathomable creature--the problem that
night of Emily's waking thoughts: the phantom of her dreams.
"Bad? or good?" she asked herself. "False; for she listened at
the door. True; for she told me the tale of her own disgrace. A
friend of my father; and she never knew that he had a daughter.
Refined, accomplished, lady-like; and she stoops to use a false
reference. Who is to reconcile such contradictions as these?"

Dawn looked in at the window--dawn of the memorable day which
was, for Emily, the beginning of a new life. The years were
before her; and the years in their course reveal baffling
mysteries of life and death.

CHAPTER IV.

MISS LADD'S DRAWING-MASTER.

Francine was awakened the next morning by one of the housemaids,
bringing up her breakfast on a tray. Astonished at this
concession to laziness, i n an institution devoted to the
practice of all virtues, she looked round. The bedroom was
deserted.

"The other young ladies are as busy as bees, miss," the housemaid
explained. "They were up and dressed two hours ago: and the
breakfast has been cleared away long since. It's Miss Emily's
fault. She wouldn't allow them to wake you; she said you could be
of no possible use downstairs, and you had better be treated like
a visitor. Miss Cecilia was so distressed at your missing your
breakfast that she spoke to the housekeeper, and I was sent up to
you. Please to excuse it if the tea's cold. This is Grand Day,
and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence."

Inquiring what "Grand Day" meant, and why it produced this
extraordinary result in a ladies' school, Francine discovered
that the first day of the vacation was devoted to the
distribution of prizes, in the presence of parents, guardians and
friends. An Entertainment was added, comprising those merciless
tests of human endurance called Recitations; light refreshments
and musical performances being distributed at intervals, to
encourage the exhausted audience. The local newspaper sent a
reporter to describe the proceedings, and some of Miss Ladd's
young ladies enjoyed the intoxicating luxury of seeing their
names in print.

"It begins at three o'clock," the housemaid went on, "and, what
with practicing and rehearsing, and ornamenting the schoolroom,
there's a hubbub fit to make a person's head spin. Besides
which," said the girl, lowering her voice, and approaching a
little nearer to Francine, "we have all been taken by surprise.
The first thing in the morning Miss Jethro left us, without
saying good-by to anybody."

"Who is Miss Jethro?"

"The new teacher, miss. We none of us liked her, and we all
suspect there's something wrong. Miss Ladd and the clergyman had
a long talk together yesterday (in private, you know), and they
sent for Miss Jethro--which looks bad, doesn't it? Is there
anything more I can do for you, miss? It's a beautiful day after
the rain. If I was you, I should go and enjoy myself in the
garden."

Having finished her breakfast, Francine decided on profiting by
this sensible suggestion.

The servant who showed her the way to the garden was not
favorably impressed by the new pupil: Francine's temper asserted
itself a little too plainly in her face. To a girl possessing a
high opinion of her own importance it was not very agreeable to
feel herself excluded, as an illiterate stranger, from the one
absorbing interest of her schoolfellows. "Will the time ever
come," she wondered bitterly, "when I shall win a prize, and sing
and play before all the company? How I should enjoy making the
girls envy me!"

A broad lawn, overshadowed at one end by fine old trees--flower
beds and shrubberies, and winding paths prettily and invitingly
laid out--made the garden a welcome refuge on that fine summer
morning. The novelty of the scene, after her experience in the
West Indies, the delicious breezes cooled by the rain of the
night, exerted their cheering influence even on the sullen
disposition of Francine. She smiled, in spite of herself, as she
followed the pleasant paths, and heard the birds singing their
summer songs over her head.

Wandering among the trees, which occupied a considerable extent
of ground, she passed into an open space beyond, and discovered
an old fish-pond, overgrown by aquatic plants. Driblets of water
trickled from a dilapidated fountain in the middle. On the
further side of the pond the ground sloped downward toward the
south, and revealed, over a low paling, a pretty view of a
village and its church, backed by fir woods mounting the heathy
sides of a range of hills beyond. A fanciful little wooden
building, imitating the form of a Swiss cottage, was placed so as
to command the prospect. Near it, in the shadow of the building,
stood a rustic chair and table--with a color-box on one, and a
portfolio on the other. Fluttering over the grass, at the mercy
of the capricious breeze, was a neglected sheet of drawing-paper.
Francine ran round the pond, and picked up the paper just as it
was on the point of being tilted into the water. It contained a
sketch in water colors of the village and the woods, and Francine
had looked at the view itself with indifference--the picture of
the view interested her. Ordinary visitors to Galleries of Art,
which admit students, show the same strange perversity. The work
of the copyist commands their whole attention; they take no
interest in the original picture.

Looking up from the sketch, Francine was startled. She discovered
a man, at the window of the Swiss summer-house, watching her.

"When you have done with that drawing," he said quietly, "please
let me have it back again."

He was tall and thin and dark. His finely-shaped intelligent
face--hidden, as to the lower part of it, by a curly black
beard--would have been absolutely handsome, even in the eyes of a
schoolgirl, but for the deep furrows that marked it prematurely
between the eyebrows, and at the sides of the mouth. In the same
way, an underlying mockery impaired the attraction of his
otherwise refined and gentle manner. Among his fellow-creatures,
children and dogs were the only critics who appreciated his
merits without discovering the defects which lessened the
favorable appreciation of him by men and women. He dressed
neatly, but his morning coat was badly made, and his picturesque
felt hat was too old. In short, there seemed to be no good
quality about him which was not perversely associated with a
drawback of some kind. He was one of those harmless and luckless
men, possessed of excellent qualities, who fail nevertheless to
achieve popularity in their social sphere.

Francine handed his sketch to him, through the window; doubtful
whether the words that he had addressed to her were spoken in
jest or in earnest.

"I only presumed to touch your drawing," she said, "because it
was in danger."

"What danger?" he inquired.

Francine pointed to the pond. "If I had not been in time to pick
it up, it would have been blown into the water."

"Do you think it was worth picking up?"

Putting that question, he looked first at the sketch--then at the
view which it represented--then back again at the sketch. The
corners of his mouth turned upward with a humorous expression of
scorn. "Madam Nature," he said, "I beg your pardon." With those
words, he composedly tore his work of art into small pieces, and
scattered them out of the window.

"What a pity!" said Francine.

He joined her on the ground outside the cottage. "Why is it a
pity?" he asked.

"Such a nice drawing."

"It isn't a nice drawing."

"You're not very polite, sir."

He looked at her--and sighed as if he pitied so young a woman for
having a temper so ready to take offense. In his flattest
contradictions he always preserved the character of a
politely-positive man.

"Put it in plain words, miss," he replied. "I have offended the
predominant sense in your nature--your sense of self-esteem. You
don't like to be told, even indirectly, that you know nothing of
Art. In these days, everybody knows everything--and thinks
nothing worth knowing after all. But beware how you presume on an
appearance of indifference, which is nothing but conceit in
disguise. The ruling passion of civilized humanity is, Conceit.
You may try the regard of your dearest friend in any other way,
and be forgiven. Ruffle the smooth surface of your friend's
self-esteem--and there will be an acknowledged coolness between
you which will last for life. Excuse me for giving you the
benefit of my trumpery experience. This sort of smart talk is
_my_ form of conceit. Can I be of use to you in some better way?
Are you looking for one of our young ladies?"

Francine began to feel a certain reluctant interest in him when
he spoke of "our young ladies." She asked if he belonged to the
school.

The corners of his mouth turned up again. "I'm one of the
masters," he said. "Are _you_ going to belong to the school,
too?"

Francine bent her head, with a gravity and condescension intended
to keep him at his proper distance. Far from being discouraged,
he permitted his curiosity to t ake additional liberties. "Are
you to have the misfortune of being one of my pupils?" he asked.

"I don't know who you are."

"You won't be much wiser when you do know. My name is Alban
Morris."

Francine corrected herself. "I mean, I don't know what you
teach."

Alban Morris pointed to the fragments of his sketch from Nature.
"I am a bad artist," he said. "Some bad artists become Royal
Academicians. Some take to drink. Some get a pension. And some--I
am one of them--find refuge in schools. Drawing is an 'Extra' at
this school. Will you take my advice? Spare your good father's
pocket; say you don't want to learn to draw."

He was so gravely in earnest that Francine burst out laughing.
"You are a strange man," she said.

"Wrong again, miss. I am only an unhappy man."

The furrows in his face deepened, the latent humor died out of
his eyes. He turned to the summer-house window, and took up a
pipe and tobacco pouch, left on the ledge.

"I lost my only friend last year," he said. "Since the death of
my dog, my pipe is the one companion I have left. Naturally I am
not allowed to enjoy the honest fellow's society in the presence
of ladies. They have their own taste in perfumes. Their clothes
and their letters reek with the foetid secretion of the musk
deer. The clean vegetable smell of tobacco is unendurable to
them. Allow me to retire--and let me thank you for the trouble
you took to save my drawing."

The tone of indifference in which he expressed his gratitude
piqued Francine. She resented it by drawing her own conclusion
from what he had said of the ladies and the musk deer. "I was
wrong in admiring your drawing," she remarked; "and wrong again
in thinking you a strange man. Am I wrong, for the third time, in
believing that you dislike women?"

"I am sorry to say you are right," Alban Morris answered gravely.

"Is there not even one exception?"

The instant the words passed her lips, she saw that there was
some secretly sensitive feeling in him which she had hurt. His
black brows gathered into a frown, his piercing eyes looked at
her with angry surprise. It was over in a moment. He raised his
shabby hat, and made her a bow.

"There is a sore place still left in me," he said; "and you have
innocently hit it. Good-morning."

Before she could speak again, he had turned the corner of the
summer-house, and was lost to view in a shrubbery on the westward
side of the grounds.

CHAPTER V.

DISCOVERIES IN THE GARDEN.

Left by herself, Miss de Sor turned back again by way of the
trees.

So far, her interview with the drawing-master had helped to pass
the time. Some girls might have found it no easy task to arrive
at a true view of the character of Alban Morris. Francine's
essentially superficial observation set him down as "a little
mad," and left him there, judged and dismissed to her own entire
satisfaction.

Arriving at the lawn, she discovered Emily pacing backward and
forward, with her head down and her hands behind her, deep in
thought. Francine's high opinion of herself would have carried
her past any of the other girls, unless they had made special
advances to her. She stopped and looked at Emily.

It is the sad fate of little women in general to grow too fat and
to be born with short legs. Emily's slim finely-strung figure
spoke for itself as to the first of these misfortunes, and
asserted its happy freedom from the second, if she only walked
across a room. Nature had built her, from head to foot, on a
skeleton-scaffolding in perfect proportion. Tall or short matters
little to the result, in women who possess the first and foremost
advantage of beginning well in their bones. When they live to old
age, they often astonish thoughtless men, who walk behind them in
the street. "I give you my honor, she was as easy and upright as
a young girl; and when you got in front of her and looked--white
hair, and seventy years of age."

Francine approached Emily, moved by a rare impulse in her
nature--the impulse to be sociable. "You look out of spirits,"
she began. "Surely you don't regret leaving school?"

In her present mood, Emily took the opportunity (in the popular
phrase) of snubbing Francine. "You have guessed wrong; I do
regret," she answered. "I have found in Cecilia my dearest friend
at school. And school brought with it the change in my life which
has helped me to bear the loss of my father. If you must know
what I was thinking of just now, I was thinking or my aunt. She
has not answered my last letter--and I'm beginning to be afraid
she is ill."

"I'm very sorry," said Francine.

"Why? You don't know my aunt; and you have only known me since
yesterday afternoon. Why are you sorry?"

Francine remained silent. Without realizing it, she was beginning
to feel the dominant influence that Emily exercised over the
weaker natures that came in contact with her. To find herself
irresistibly attracted by a stranger at a new school--an
unfortunate little creature, whose destiny was to earn her own
living--filled the narrow mind of Miss de Sor with perplexity.
Having waited in vain for a reply, Emily turned away, and resumed
the train of thought which her schoolfellow had interrupted.

By an association of ideas, of which she was not herself aware,
she now passed from thinking of her aunt to thinking of Miss
Jethro. The interview of the previous night had dwelt on her mind
at intervals, in the hours of the new day.

Acting on instinct rather than on reason, she had kept that
remarkable incident in her school life a secret from every one.
No discoveries had been made by other persons. In speaking to her
staff of teachers, Miss Ladd had alluded to the affair in the
most cautious terms. "Circumstances of a private nature have
obliged the lady to retire from my school. When we meet after the
holidays, another teacher will be in her place." There, Miss
Ladd's explanation had begun and ended. Inquiries addressed to
the servants had led to no result. Miss Jethro's luggage was to
be forwarded to the London terminus of the railway--and Miss
Jethro herself had baffled investigation by leaving the school on
foot. Emily's interest in the lost teacher was not the transitory
interest of curiosity; her father's mysterious friend was a
person whom she honestly desired to see again. Perplexed by the
difficulty of finding a means of tracing Miss Jethro, she reached
the shady limit of the trees, and turned to walk back again.
Approaching the place at which she and Francine had met, an idea
occurred to her. It was just possible that Miss Jethro might not
be unknown to her aunt.

Still meditating on the cold reception that she had encountered,
and still feeling the influence which mastered her in spite of
herself, Francine interpreted Emily's return as an implied
expression of regret. She advanced with a constrained smile, and
spoke first.

"How are the young ladies getting on in the schoolroom?" she
asked, by way of renewing the conversation.

Emily's face assumed a look of surprise which said plainly, Can't
you take a hint and leave me to myself?

Francine was constitutionally impenetrable to reproof of this
sort; her thick skin was not even tickled. "Why are you not
helping them," she went on; "you who have the clearest head among
us and take the lead in everything?"

It may be a humiliating confession to make, yet it is surely true
that we are all accessible to flattery. Different tastes
appreciate different methods of burning incense--but the perfume
is more or less agreeable to all varieties of noses. Francine's
method had its tranquilizing effect on Emily. She answered
indulgently, "Miss de Sor, I have nothing to do with it."

"Nothing to do with it? No prizes to win before you leave
school?"

"I won all the prizes years ago."

"But there are recitations. Surely you recite?"

Harmless words in themselves, pursuing the same smooth course of
flattery as before--but with what a different result! Emily's
face reddened with anger the moment they were spoken. Having
already irritated Alban Morris, unlucky Francine, by a second
mischievous interposition of accident, had succeeded in making
Emily smart next. "Who has told you," she burst out; "I insist on
knowing!"

"Nobod y has told me anything!" Francine declared piteously.

"Nobody has told you how I have been insulted?"

"No, indeed! Oh, Miss Brown, who could insult _you?_"

In a man, the sense of injury does sometimes submit to the
discipline of silence. In a woman--never. Suddenly reminded of
her past wrongs (by the pardonable error of a polite
schoolfellow), Emily committed the startling inconsistency of
appealing to the sympathies of Francine!

"Would you believe it? I have been forbidden to recite--I, the
head girl of the school. Oh, not to-day! It happened a month
ago--when we were all in consultation, making our arrangements.
Miss Ladd asked me if I had decided on a piece to recite. I said,
'I have not only decided, I have learned the piece.' 'And what
may it be?' 'The dagger-scene in Macbeth.' There was a howl--I
can call it by no other name--a howl of indignation. A man's
soliloquy, and, worse still, a murdering man's soliloquy, recited
by one of Miss Ladd's young ladies, before an audience of parents
and guardians! That was the tone they took with me. I was as firm
as a rock. The dagger-scene or nothing. The result is--nothing!
An insult to Shakespeare, and an insult to Me. I felt it--I feel
it still. I was prepared for any sacrifice in the cause of the
drama. If Miss Ladd had met me in a proper spirit, do you know
what I would have done? I would have played Macbeth in costume.
Just hear me, and judge for yourself. I begin with a dreadful
vacancy in my eyes, and a hollow moaning in my voice: 'Is this a
dagger that I see before me--?'"

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