Chapter 1

"Oh, Edna, I am so tired! And this is the very dullest place in all the world!"

"Do you think so, dear? And yet it was the place you specially wanted to go to."

Edna spoke in the soothing, yet cheerful, tone which all people — • that is , people like Edna Ken- derdine — instinctively use toAvards an invalid-, and, laying down her work — she rarely was without some sort of work in her tiny hands — looked ten- derly and anxiously at her sfster. For they were twin-sisters: though, as sometimes happens with twins, so excessively unlike that they would scarcely have been supposed akin at all.

"You know, Letty, dear, that as soon as you began to get better,, the Isle of Wight was the place you fancied for a change."

"Yes: but we might have found many a nicer spot in the Isle of Wight than this — Ryde, for in- stance, where there are plenty of houses, and a good pier, and probably an esplanade. Oh, how I used to enjoy the Brighton Esplanade in the days when I was a little girl, and we were rich and happy!"

8 THE woman's kingdom.

"Were we happy then? I don't remember. But I know I have been quite as hajjpy since."

"You always are happy," returned the invalid, with a vexed air. "I think nothing in the world would make you miserable."

Edna winced a little, but she Avas sitting in the shadow of the window-curtain, and Avas not seen. "Come, come," she said, "it is of no use quarrelling with me because I will not see the black side of things; time enough for that when we go home to Kensington. Here we are, out on a holiday, with beautiful weather, comfortable lodgings, no school to teach, and nothing in the Avide world to do but to amuse ourselves."

"Amuse ourselves! How can we? We don't know a soul here. Indoors there is nothing to do, and nobody to come and see us: and out of doors there is not a creature to look at or to speak to."

"I thought we Avanted to get out of the way of our fellow-creatures. Besides, they would not care for us just now. It is not CA'cry lodging-house, even, that Avould have taken us in, and Ave lately out of scarlet-fever."

"We need not have told that."

"Oh, Letty! we must have told."

"Edna, you are so ridiculously conscientious! I have no patience with you!"

Edna made no reply; indeed, it was useless replying to the poor convalescent, whose thin face betrayed that she Avas at the precise stage of re- covery when everything jars against the irritable nerves, and the sickly, morbid fancy changes its

THE WOMAN S KINGDOM, U

moods twenty times a-day. Otherwise, to jjeojile in the somewliat dreary position of these two young" schoohnistresses — driven from their labours in the midst of the half-year by a dangerous fever, which had compelled the shutting iip of tlie school, brought the one sister nearly to death's door, and the other not far from it by the fatigue of sick-nursing — even to them, the parlour they sat in Avas not un- cheerful. It Avas very neat and clean, and it had a large bay-window looking out on a verandah; be- yond that a little garden; farther, a narrow strip of bright, green, grassy cliff, fringed with a low hedge, where the "white-blossomed sloe" was in full glory, and a pair of robin-redbreasts were building and singing all the day long. Below, at the cliffs foot, the unseen sea was heard to tumble and roll with a noisy murmur-, but fjxr away in the distance it spread itself out in sleepy stillness, shimmering and glancing in the sunshine of early spring. The sight of it might well have gladdened many a dull heart, and tlie breath of it, wliich came in salt and fresh, though not cold, through the half-open Avindow, might have given health to many a sick soul, as well as body — granting that soul to be one of those whom Nature can comfort. It is not every one Avhom she can.

Poor Letty was not of those thus comforted. Her eyes looked as sad as ever, and there was a sharp metallic ring in her A'oice as she said —

"I can't imagine, Edna, Avhy you make so much fuss about the fever. You Avould drive everybody away from us as if we had had the plague. This

10 THE woman's kingdom.

morning I overheard you insisting that the gen- tleman who wants the opposite parlour should be told distinctly what had been the matter with me. It is very foolish, when I am quite well now."

"Yes, dear, quite well, thank God!" returned Edna, soothingly, "And the gentleman said he was not in the least afraid; besides, he was a doctor."

"Was he, indeed! A real gentleman, then?"

"Supposing that a doctor is — and he certainly ought to be — a real gentleman."

"Nonsense! I mean a professional man; not one of those horrid shopkeepers whose children we have to teach — how I hate them all! And Ave must go back and begin again after mid-siunmer. Oh, Edna, I wish I were dead!"

"I don't, and I doubt if you do — not just this very minute. For there is your dinner coming in — and you like fisli, and you declared you were so frightfully hungry."

"You are always making fun of me," said the sick sister, half plaintively. Nevertheless she yielded to the influence of that soft, caressing, and yet encouraging tone: her gloomy looks relaxed into a faint smile, and she fell to her simple invalid meal of fried sole and rice-pudding, witli an appetite that proved she was really getting Avell, in spite of her despondency and fretfulness. Edna sat by her, and ate her own cold mutton with an equal relijih: and then the sisters began to talk again.

"So, after to-dty, we shall not be the only lodgers in the house. How very annoying!"

"I don't think the new-comers will harm us

THE woman's kingdom. 11

mucli. Tliey are likely to be as quiet as ourselves. Besides, they vnll liave a fellow-feeling for us. One of them is also an invalid, and a great deal worse than you, Letty."

"The doctor?"

"No: his brother, whom he has brought here for change of air."

"Did you see them? Eeally, you might have told me all this before. I should have been so glad of anything to interest me. And you seem to have inquired all about them."

"Of course I did. It was very important to us whom we had in the next parlour, and probably to them also, in the young man's sickly state. I dare- say the brother took as much pains as I did to find out all about his opposite neighbours."

"Did you see him?"

"No; except his back, which was rather round, and the coat very shabby at the shoulders."

"He isn't a gentleman, then?"

"I can't tell. If he happened to be a poor gentleman, why should not his coat be shabby at the shoulders?"

"I don't like poverty," said Letty, with a slight shrug-, and drawing round her the soft rich shawl, relic of the "happy" days she i-egretted, when the little twins were expected to be co-heiresses, and not schoolmistresses. Those days were dim enough now. The orphans had been brought up for gover- nesses, and had gone out as governesses, until dif- ficulties, arising from Letty's extreme beauty on the one hand, and Edna's fond clinging to her sister on

12 THE woman's kingdom.

the otlier, tliey had resolved to make themselves a home, by setting up one of those middle-class day- schools which are so plentiful in the immediate suburbs of London. It had done well on the whole; at least it had sufficed to maintain them. They were still young women — only twenty-six — though both, Edna es^jecially, had a certain air of formality and authority which all schoolmistresses seem gradu- ally to acquire. But they were, as could be seen at a glance, well-bred, well-educated women: and, besides, Letitia was one of those remarkably hand- some persons of whom one scarcely sees half-a- dozen in a lifetime, and about whose beauty there cannot be two opinions. You might not fancy her style, you might have some ideal of your own quite contrary to it, but if you had eyes in your head you must acknoAvledge that she was beautiful, and woidd remain so, more or less, to the last day of her life. Hers Avas a combination very rarely to be met witlr, of form and colour, figure and face — enough com- pletely to satisfy the artist-eye, and indicate to the poetical imagination plenty of loveliness spiritual beneath the hjvelincss external. Even her illness had scarcely clouded it; and with her tall figure slirouded in shawls, lier magnificent broAvn hair cut sliort under a cap, and her graceful hands, white and wasted, lying on her lap, she was "interesting" to the last degree.

Indeed, to tell tlie truth, Letty Kenderdine's beauty had been the real liindrancc to her governess- ship. Wliercvcr she Avcnt everybody fell in love Avith lier. Mothers dreaded her for their groAA^n-up

THK woman's kingdom. 13

sons; weak-minded wives were uneasy concerning their husbands. Not that Letty was in the least to blame; slie was so used to admiration that she took it all quite calmly. Too cold for passion, too practi- cal for philandering, there Avas no fear of her ex- citing any unlawful jealousies; and as for regular love-affairs, though she generally had one or more on hand, it was a very mild form of the article. She never "committed" herself. She might have married twenty times over — poor tutors, country clergymen, and struggling men of business; even a few younger sons of good families; but she had, as she said, a dislike to poverty, especially matrimonial poverty.

"Will tlie flame that you're so rich in Light a fire iu the kitchen, Or the little god of love turn the spit , spit, spit?"

was the burthen of her sweet, smiling refusals, which sent her lovers away twice as mad as they came. But though she smiled, Letty never relented. So, though she had been once or twice on the brink of an engagement, she had never fallen over the precipice; and as she confided all her difficulties to Edna, and Edna (who had never any of her oAvn) helped her out of them, they came to nothing worse than "difficulties." True, they had lost her a situa- tion or two, and, indeed, had determined Edna to the point which she carried out — as she did most of her determinations, in her oAvn quiet way — the setting up of a school; but they never weighed seriously upon either sister's mind. Only some- times, when the school duties Averc hard, Letty

14 THE woman's kingdom.

would sigh over the comparatively easy days when she was residing in "high" families, well treated, as somehow she always had been, for there were a grace and dignity in her which compelled respectful treatment. She Avould regret the lost luxuries — a carriage to drive in and a park to walk in with her pupils; large rooms, plenty of servants, and dainty feeding; recapitulating all the good things she used to have, balancing them against the ill things she had now, until she fancied she had made a change for the worse; complained that her present life was not half so pleasant as that of a resident governess, and lamented pathetically over the cause of all — what she called "my unfortunate appearance."

Still the fact was patent — neither to be sighed down or laughed down — and it had a laughable side — Letty was much too handsome for a governess. Too handsome, indeed, for most of the useful pur- poses of life. She could not pass anywhere un- noticed; to send her out shopping was a thing diffi- cult enougli, and as for her taking a walk alone in pleasant Kensington Gardens, or the lonely Brompton Road, it was a thing quite impossible. Edna often said, with a queer mixture of pcr2)lcxity and pride, that her beautiful sister was as much trouble to her as any baby. And, invalid as Letty now was, it must be confessed that not without a secret alarm had Edna heard of and made inquiries about the im])eiiding lodgers.

Letty half guessed this, tlioiigh she was not very vain; for slic had long become used to her "unr<)r(iuiate appearance:" and besides, your super-

THE woman's kingdom. 15

latively liandsome people generally take tlieir uni- versally acknowledged honours as comj^osedly as a millionnaire takes his money, or a poet-laureate his crown. When, after Edna's communication respecting the gentleman's shabby shoulders, the two sisters' eyes met, Letty broke into an actual smile.

"How old is he? Are you afraid that some- thing will happen?"

"Perhajjs. Something of that sort always is happening, you know," said Edna, dolefully, and then both sisters burst out laughing, which quite restored Letty's good humoixr.

"Come, dear, don't be alarmed. He will not fall in love with me — I'm getting too ugly and too old. And as for myself, no harm will come to me. I don't like shabbiness, and of all people alive the person I should least like to marry would be a doctor. Only fancy, having one's husband at every- body's beck and call — out at all hours , day and night. Never able to take me to a party — or give me a party at home, without being fetched away in the middle of it. Going to all sorts of nasty places, and nasty people — bringing home fevers, and small- pox, and the like — oh! what a dreadful life!"

"Do you think so?" said Edna. "Why, when I was a girl I used to fancy that had I been a boy, and could choose my profession, of all professions I should choose a doctor's. There is something in it so grand, and yet so useful. He has so much poAver in his hands. Such unlimited influence over souls as well as bodies. Of course it would be a hard life — nothing smooth or pleasant about it — but it

16 THE woman's kingdom.

would be a life full of interest, witli endless opportu- nities of usefulness. I don't mean merely of saving people's lives, but of putting their lives right, both mentally and physically, as nobody but a doctor can do. Hardly even a clergyman coiild come so near my ideal of the perfect existence — 'he went about doing good.'"

Edna spoke earnestly, as sometimes, though not often, she was roused to speak, and then her plain little face lighted up, and her tiny form took an un- wonted grace and dignity. Plain as she was — as noticeably so as her sister was handsome — there was a certain character about her, in her small, firm mouth, and babyish, yet determined little chin — in her quick motions and active ways, and especially in her hands, the only decided beauty she possessed — which though they flitted hither and hither, light as snow-flakes, and pretty as rose- leaves, had an air of strength, purpose, and practi- cability, Avhich indicated fully what she was — this merry, busy, bee-like little woman — who

" Gathered honey all the day

From every openiug flower;"

but yet, on occasions, could be (lie very soul of the household — the referee, and judge, and decisive voice in all matters, great or small.

"Edna, you are preaching me quite a sermon," said Tjotty, yawning. "And I really don't deserve it. Did 1 ever say I wouldn't marry a doctor? — even this very doctor of yours, if he Avishos it parti- cularly. I am sure," she added, plaintively, with

THE woman's kingdom. 17

an anxious glance towards the mirror, "it is time I should make up my mind to marry somebody. Another illness like the last would altogether de- stroy my appearance."

"What nonsense you talk!"

"No, it isn't nonsense," said Letty, with a queer humility. "It is all very well for you, who are clever and can talk, and do things prettily and ]>ractically, and make yourself happy in your own way, so that, indeed, it is little matter whether you are ever married or not. But if anybody marries me, it will be only for my appearance. I must make my hay while the sun shines. Heigho! I wish something would happen — something to amuse us in this dull place. Do tell me a little more about the new lodgers."

"I have nothing to tell; and besides — there they are!"

At that moment, coming round the corner of the house (the Misses Kenderdine's parlour window had to be passed in reaching the front door), ap- ])eared a porter and two portmanteaus, and immedi- ately afterwards a bath-chair. Therein sat a figure, so muffled up, in spite of the sunshiny day, as to awaken a feeling of compassion in any beholder.

"Do come away, Letty. It is the sick brotlier. He may not like to be looked at."

"But I must look at him. I have not had the least thing to interest me all day. Don't be cross. He shall not see me. I will hide behind the window- curtains."

The Woman's Kinjdum. 1, a

18 THE woman's kingdom.

And curiosity quite overcoming lier languor, slie left her easy chair, and crouched down in a very uncomfortable attitude to watch the proceedings outside.

"Do come and look too, Edna. I wonder — is he a man or a boy? He has got no whiskers, and he is so very thin. He looks a walking skeleton beside his stout brother. Do say if that big, awkward man is the brother, the doctor, I mean, whom you are so extremely anxious for me to marry."

"Letty, what foolishness!"

"Well, I'll promise to think about him if he ever gives me the chance. He does look like a gentleman, in sjiite of his shabby coat. But, as for the other, you need not be alarmed about him. He seems to have one foot in the grave already. Just come and peep at him. No one can see you, I am sure."

Edna looked — she hardly knew why, unless out of pure compassion. It was a face that any woman's heart, old or yo^^ng', would have melted over — white, wan, with heavy circles under the large eyes; and a drawn look of jiermanent pain round the mouth. One of those faces, so delicately outlined, so almost feminine in contour, as to make one say instinctively, "He must be very like his mother," and to wish likewise that he might always have his motlier or his wife close at hand to take care of him. For it was undoiibtedly one of those sensitive yet passionate faces, which indicate a temperament that requires incessant taking care of — the care that only a woman can take. Though

THE AYOMAn's kingdom. 19

tlie big brother seemed tender enough. He wrapped him, and lifted him, and talked to him gently, as if he had been a child. Something tonchiugly child- like — the poetic natitre is ahvays young — was in the poor fellow's looks, as he wearily obeyed; doing all he was told to do, though every movement seemed a pain.

"I wonder what his illness has been," said Edna, won into a sympathy that deadened even her sense of propriety. "Not consumption, I fancy. I should rather say he was just recovering from rheumatic fever."

"Never mind his illness. What do you think of himself?"

"I think it is one of the most interesting faces I ever saw. But if ever I saw death written in a face — Poor fellow — ■ and so young too ! "

"Not much above twenty, certainly."

"There, he has turned, and is looking right in at our window. Come away — you must come, or he will certainly see you, Letty."

It was too late. He had seen her; for the poor sensitive youth started violently, and a sudden flush came over his wan cheek. He di-ew back hastily, and pulled his fur cap closer down over his face.

Edna rose q\iickly, and shut the Venetian blind. "It is cruel — absolutely cruel — to stare at a jjerson who is in that sickly, nervous state. How angry I should have been if anybody had done it to you when you were ill; and I am certain he saw you."

"Never mind; the sight is not so very dreadful;

2*

20 THE woman's kingdom.

it won't kill him, probably," laughed Letty, whose spirits had quite risen under this unwonted excite- ment. "Perhaps it will even do him good, if he wants amusement as much as I do: and he need not excite your sisterly fears: he won't fall in love with me. He is too ill to think of anybody but himself"

"Poor fellow!" again said Edna, with a sigh.

She was too well accustomed to her sister's light talk to take it seriously, or indeed to heed it at all. People cease to notice the idiosyncrasies of those they have been accustomed to all their lives. Pro- bably if any other young woman had talked as Letty did, Edna woixld have disliked it extremely; but she did not mind Letty — it was her way. Besides, she was her sister — her own flesh and blood, and the two loved one another dearly.

Shortly the slight bustle in the hall subsided, the bath-chair was wheeled empty away, and a con- fusion of footsteps outside indicated that the sick man was being carried upstairs by the brother; then the house sank into silence.