"Had I chosen to wed,I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine."
"Had I chosen to wed,I had been wedded earlier, sweet Elaine."
"And you?" he asks, turning with an accent of playfulness toward me.
"Not yet," I answer, laughing, "and most likely I shall have to answer 'not yet' to that question as often as it is put to me till the end of the chapter."
"Why so?"
I shrug my shoulders.
"In moments of depression it strikes Barbara and me, that me and Tou Tou shall end by being three old cats together."
"Are you so anxious to be married?" he asks with an air of wonder, "in such a hurry to leave so happy a home?"
"Every one knows best where his own shoe pinches," I answer vernacularly. "I am afraid that it does not sound very lady-like, but since you ask me the question, Iamrather anxious. Barbara is not:Iam."
A shade of I cannot exactly say what emotion—itlookslike disappointment, but surely it cannot be that—passes across the sunshine of his face.
"All my plans hinge on my marrying," I continue, feeling drawn, I do not know how or why, into confidential communication to this almost total stranger, "and what is more, on my marrying a rich man."
"And what are your plans?" he asks, with an air of benevolent interest, but that unexplained shade is still there.
"Their name is Legion," I answer; "you will be very tired before I get to the end of them."
"Try me."
"Firstly then," say I, narratively, "my husband must have a great deal of interest in several professions—the army, the navy, the bar—so as to give the boys a helping hand; then he must have some shooting—good shooting for them; for them all, that is, except Bobby!nevershallhefire a gun in my preserves!"
My mind again wanders away to my vengeances, and I break off.
"Well!"
"He must also keep two or three horses for them to hunt: Algyloveshunting, but he hardly ever gets a day. He is so big, poor dear old boy, that nobody ever gives him a mount—"
"Yes?"
"Well, then, I should like to be able to have some nice parties—dancing and theatricals, and that sort of thing, for Barbara—father will never hardly let us have a soul here—and to buy her some pretty dresses to set off her beauty—"
"Yes?"
"And then I should like to have a nice, large, cheerful house, where mother could come and stay with me, for two or three months at a time, and getclearaway from the worries of house-keeping and—" the tyranny of father, I am about to add, but pull myself up with a jerk, and substitute lamely and stammeringly "and—and—others."
"Any thing else?"
"I should not at all mind a donkey-carriage for Tou Tou, but I shall notinsistupon that."
He is smiling broadly now. The shade has fled away, and only sunshine remains.
"And what for yourself? you seem to have forgotten yourself!"
"For myself!" I echo, in surprise, "I have been telling you—you cannot have been listening—all these things are for myself."
Again he has turned his face half away.
"I hope you will get your wish," he says shortly and yet heartily.
I laugh. "That is so probable, is not it? I am so likely to fall in with a rich young man of weak intellect who is willing to marry all the whole six of us, for that is what he would have to do, and so I should explain to him."
Sir Roger is looking at me again with an odd smile—not disagreeable in any way—not at all hold-cheap, or as if he were sneering at me for a simpleton, but merelyodd.
"And you think," he says, "that when he hears what is expected of him he will withdraw?"
Again I laugh heartily and rather loudly, for the idea tickles me, and, in a large family, one gets into the habit of raising one's voice, else one is not heard.
"I am so sadly sure that he will never come forward, that I have never taken the trouble to speculate as to whether, if he did, my greediness would make him retire again."
No answer.
"Now that I come to think of it, though," continue I, after a pause, "I have no manner of doubt that he would."
Apparently Sir Roger is tired of the subject of my future prospects, for he drops it. We have left the kitchen-garden—have passed through the flower-garden—have reached the hall-door. I am irresolutely walking up the stone steps that mount to it, not being able to make up my mind as to whether or no I should make some sort of farewell observation to my companion, when his voice follows me. It seems to me to have a dissuasive inflection.
"Are you going in?"
"Well, yes," I answer uncertainly, "I suppose so."
He looks at his watch.
"It is quite early yet—not near luncheon-time—would it bore you very much to take a turn in the park? I think" (with a smile) "that you are quite honest enough to say so if it would: or, if you did not, I should read it on your face."
"Would you?" say I, a little piqued. "I do not think you would: I assure you that my face can tell stories, at a pinch, as well as its neighbor."
"Well,wouldit bore you?"
"Not at all! not at all!" reply I briskly, beginning to descend again; "but one thing is very certain, and that is that it will boreyou."
"Why should it?"
"If I say what I was going to say you will think that it is on purpose to be contradicted," I answer, unlatching the gate in the fence, and entering the park.
"And if I do, much you will mind," he answers, smiling.
"Well, then," say I, candidly, looking down at my feet as they trip quickly along through the limp winter grass, "there is no use blinking the fact that I have no conversation—none of us have. We can gabble away among ourselves like a lot of young rooks, about all sorts of silly home jokes, that nobody but us would see any fun in; but when it comes to real talk—"
I pause expressively.
"I do not care forreal talk," he says, looking amused; "I likegabblefar, far better. I wish you would gabble a little now."
But the request naturally ties my tongue tight up.
"This is the tree that they planted when father was born," I say, presently, in a stiff,ciceronemanner, pointing to a straight and strong young oak, which is lifting its branchy head, and the fine net-work of its brown twigs, to the cold, pale sky.
Sir Roger leans his arms on the top of the palings that surround the tree.
"Ah! eight-and-forty years ago! eight-and-forty years ago!" he repeats to himself with musing slowness. "Hard upon half a century!"
I turn over in my own mind whether I should do well to make some observation of a trite and copy-book nature on the much greater duration of trees than men, but reflecting that the application of the remark may be painful to a person so elderly as the gentleman beside me, I abstain. However, he does something of the kind himself.
"To think that it should be such a stripling," he says, looking with a half-pensive smile at the straight young trunk, "hardly out of the petticoat age, andwe—he and I—such a couple of old wrecks!"
It never occurs to me that it would be polite, and even natural, to contradict him. Why should not he call himself an old wreck, if it amuses him? I suppose he only means to express a gentleman decidedly in the decline of life, which, in my eyes, he is; so I say kindly and acquiescingly—
"Yes, itisrather hard, is it not?"
"Forty-one—forty-two—yes, forty-two years since I first saw him," he continues, reflectively, "running about in short, stiff, white petticoats and bare legs, and going bawling to his mother, because he tumbled up those steps to the hall-door, and cut his nose open."
I lift my face out of my muff, in which, for the sake of warmth, I have been hiding it, and, opening my mouth, give vent to a hearty and undutiful roar of laughter.
"Cut his nose open!" repeat I, indistinctly. "How pleased he must have been, and what sort of a nose was it? already hooked? It nevercouldhave been the conventional button,thatI am sure of;yourswas, I dare say, buthis—never. Good Heavens!" (with a sudden change of tone, and disappearance of mirth) "here he is! Come to look for you, no doubt! I—I—think I may go now, may not I?"
"Go!" repeats he, looking at me with unfeigned wonder. "Why? It is more likelyyouthat he has missed,you, who are no doubt his daily companion."
"Not quite daily," I answer, with a fine shake of irony, which, by reason of his small acquaintance with me, is lost on my friend. "Two, you know, is company, and three none. Yes, if you do not mind, I think it must be getting near luncheon-time. I will go."
So I disappear through the dry, knotted tussocks of the park grass.
"Friends, Romans, and countrymen!" say I, on that same afternoon, strutting into the school-room, with my left hand thrust oratorically into the breast of my frock, and my right loftily waving, "I wish to collect your suffrages on a certain subject. Tell me," sitting down on a hard chair, and suddenly declining into a familiar and colloquial tone, "have you seen any signs of derangement in father lately?"
"None more than usual," answers Algy, sarcastically, lifting his pretty, disdainful nose out of his novel. "If, as the Eton Latin Grammar says,irais abrevis furoryou, will agree with me that he is pretty often out of his mind, in fact, a good deal oftener than he is in it."
"No, butreally?"
"Of course not. What do you mean?"
"Put down all your books!" say I, impressively. "Listen attentively. Bobby, stop see-sawing that chair, it makes me feel deadly sick. Ah! my young friend,youwill rue the day when you kept me sitting on the top of that wall—"
I break off.
"Go on! go on!" in five different voices of impatience.
"Well, then, father has sent a message by mother to the effect thatIam to dine with them to-night—I, if you please—I!—you must own" (lengthening my neck as I speak, and throwing up my untidy flax head) "that sweet Nancies are looking up in the world."
A silence of stupefaction falls on the assembly. After a pause—
"YOU?"
"Yes,I!"
"And how do you account for it?"
"I believe," reply I, simpering, "that our future benefac—, no! I really must give up calling him that, or I shall come out with it to his face, as Bobby did last night. Well, then, Sir Roger asked me why I did not appear yesterday. I suppose he thought that I looked soverygrown up, that they must be keeping me in pinafores by force."
Algy has risen. He is coming toward me. He has pulled me off my chair. He has taken me by the shoulders, and is turning me round to face the others.
"Allow me!" he says, bowing, and making me bow, too, "to introduce you to the future legatee!—Barbara, my child, you and I arenowhere. This depraved old man has clearly no feeling for symmetry of form or face; a long career of Begums has utterly vitiated his taste. To-morrow he will probably be clamoring for Tou Tou's company."
"Brat!" says Barbara, laughing, "where has the analogy between me and the man who pulled up the window in the train for the old woman gone to?"
"Mother said I was to look as nice as I could," say I, casting a rueful glance at the tea-board, at the large plum loaf, at the preparations for temperate conviviality. I have sat down on the threadbare blue-and-red hearth-rug, and am shading my face with a pair of cold pink hands, from the clear, quick blaze. "WhatamI to wear?" I say, gloomily. "None of my frocks are ironed, and there is no time now. I shall look as if I came out of the dirty clothes-basket! Barbara, dear, will you lend me your blue sash? Last time I wore mine the Brat upset the gum-bottle over my ends."
"Let us each have the melancholy pleasure of contributing something toward the decking of our victim," says Algy, with a grin; "have my mess-jacket!"
"Have as many beads as you can about you," puts in Bobby. "Begums always have plenty of beads."
A little pause, while the shifting flame-light makes small pictures of us on the deep-bodied teapot's sides, and throws shadowy profiles of us on the wall.
"Mother said, too, that I was to try and not say any of my unlucky things!" I remark, presently.
"Do not tell him," says Bobby, ill-naturedly, "as you told poor Captain Saunders the other day, that 'they always put the fool of the family into the army.'"
"I did not say so of myself," cry I, angrily. "I only told it him as a quotation."
"Abstain from quotations, then," retorts Bobby, dryly; "for you know in conversation one does not see the inverted commas."
"WhatshallI talk about?" say I, dropping my shielding hand into my lap, and letting the full fire-warmth blaze on eyes, nose, and cheeks. "Barbara, whatdidyou talk about?"
"Whatever I talked about," replies Barbara, gayly, "they clearly were not successful topics, so I will not reveal what they were."
Barbara is standing by the tea-table, thin and willowy, a tea-caddy in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling tea into the deep-bodied pot—a spoonful for each person and one for the pot.
"I will draw you up a list of subjects to be avoided," says Algy, drawing his chair to the table, and pulling a pencil out of his waistcoat-pocket. "Here, Tou Tou, tear a leaf out of your copy-book—imprimis,old age."
"You are wrong there," cry I, triumphantly, "quitewrong; he is rather fond of talking of his age, harps upon it a good deal. He said to-day that he was anold wreck!"
"Of course he meant you to contradict him!" says Bobby, cackling, "and, from the little I know of you, I am morally certain that you did not—didyou, now?"
"Well, no!" reply I, rather crestfallen; "I certainly did not. I would, though, in a minute, if I had thought that he wanted it."
"I wish," says Barbara, shutting the caddy with a snap, "that Providence had willed to send the dear old fellow into the world twenty years later than it did. In that case I should not at all have minded trying to be a comfort to him."
"He must have been very good-looking, must not he?" say I, pensively, staring at the red fire-caverns. "Very—before his hair turned gray. I wonder what color it was?"
Visions of gold yellow, of sunshiny brown, of warm chestnut locks, travel in succession before my mind's eye, and try in turn to adjust themselves to the good and goodly weather-worn face, and wide blue eyes of my new old friend.
"It is so nice and curly even now," I go on, "twice as curly as Algy's."
"Tongs," replies Algy, with short contempt, looking up from his list of prohibitions.
"Verygood-looking!" repeat I, dogmatically, entirely ignoring the last suggestion.
"Perhaps when this planet was young!" retorts he, with the superb impertinence of twenty.
"You talk as if he were eighty years old," cry I, with an unaccountablypersonalfeeling of annoyance. "He isonlyforty-seven!"
"Onlyforty-seven!"
And they all laugh.
"Well, I must be going, I suppose," cry I, leisurely rising, stretching, sighing, and beginning to collect the various articles of my wardrobe, scattered over the furniture. "Good-by, dear teapot! good-by, dear plum loaf!howI wish I was going to stay with you! It really is ten minutes past dressing-time, and father is always so pleased when one keeps him waiting for his soup."
"He would not say any thing to you to-day if youwerelate," says Bobby, astutely. "You might tumble over his gouty foot, and he would smile! Are we not the most united family in Christendom—when we have company?"
After all, I need not have disquieted myself; I am in very good time. When I open the drawing-room door, and make my entrance in the borrowed splendor of Barbara's broad blue-sash tails, and the white virginity of my own muslin frock, I find that neither of my parents have as yet made their appearance. Sir Roger has the hearth-rug to himself; at least he only shares it with Vick, and she is asleep; sitting very upright, it is true, with her thin tail round her toes, like a cat's, her head and whole body swaying from side to side in indisputable slumber. At sight of the chaste and modest apparition that the opened door yields to his gaze, an exclamation of pleasure escapes him—at least it sounds like pleasure.
"Ah! this is all right! You are here to-night at all events; but, by-the-by, what became of you yesterday?"
"What always becomes of me?" reply I, bluntly, lifting my grave gray eyes to his face, and to the hair which sweeps thick and waved above his broad brown forehead. (Tongs indeed!)
"I remember that you told me you had beencooking, but you cannot cookeverynight."
"Not quite," reply I, with a short smile, stretching my hands to the blaze.
"But do not you dine generally?"
"Never when I can possibly help it," I reply, with emphasis. And no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see that I have already transgressed my mother's commands, and given vent to one of "my unlucky things." I stand silent and ashamed, reflecting that no after-tinkering will mend my unfortunate speech.
"And to-night you could not help it?" he asks, after a slight, hardly perceptible pause.
I look up to answer him. He is forty-seven years old. He is a general, and a sir, and has been in every known land; has killed big and little beasts, and known big and little people, and I am nineteen and nobody, and have rarely been beyond our own park and parish, and my acquaintance is confined to half a dozen turnipy squires and their wives; and yet he is looking snubbed, and it is I that have snubbed him. Well, I cannot help it. Truth is truth; and so I answer, in a low voice:
"No, father said I was to."
"And you look upon it as a great penance?" he says, still with that half-disappointed accent.
"To be sure I do," reply I, briskly. "So does Barbara. Ask her if she does not. So would you, if you were I."
"And why?"
"Hush!" say I, hearing a certain heavy, well-known, slow footfall. "He is coming! I will tell you by-and-by—when we are by ourselves."
After all, how convenient an elderly man is! I could not have said that to any of the young squires!
His blue eyes are smiling in the fire-light, as, leaning one strong shoulder against the mantel-piece, he turns to face me more fully.
"And when are we likely to be by ourselves?"
"Oh, I do not know," reply I, indifferently. "Any time."
And then father enters, and I am dumb. Presently, dinner is announced, and we walk in; I on father's arm. He addresses me several times with greatbonhomieand I respond with nervous monosyllables. Father is always suavity itself to us, when we have guests; but, when one is not in the habit of being treated with affability, it is difficult to enter into the spirit of the joke. Several times I catch our guest's frank eyes, watching me with inquiring wonder, as I respond with brief and low-voiced hurry to some of my parent's friendly and fatherly queries as to the disposition of my day. And I sit tongue-tied and hungry—for, thank God, I have always had a large appetite—dumb as the butler and footman—dumb as the racing-cups on the sideboard—dumber than Vick, who, being a privileged person, is standing—very tall—on her hind-legs, and pawing Sir Roger's coat-sleeve, with a small, impatient whine.
"Why, Nancy, child!" says father, helping himself to sweetbread, and smiling, "what made you in such a hurry to get away this morning out of the park?"
(Why can't he always speak in that voice? always smile?—even his nose looks a different shape.)
"Near—luncheon-time," reply I, indistinctly, with my head bent so low that my nose nearly touches the little square of bare neck that my muslin frock leaves exposed.
"Not a bit of it—half an hour off.—Why, Roger, I am afraid you had not been making yourself agreeable! eh, Nancy?"
"No," say I, mumbling, "that is—yes—quite so."
"I wasveryagreeable, as it happened—rather more brilliant than usual, if possible, was not I? And, to clear my character, and prove that you thought so, you will take me out for another walk, some day, will not you?"
At the sound of his voice so evidently addressing me, I look up—look at him.
"Yes! with pleasure! when you like!" I answer heartily, and I neither mumble nor stutter, nor do I feel any disposition to drop my eyes. Iliketo look at him. For the rest of dinner I am absolutely mute, I make only one other remark, and that is a request to one of the footmen to give me some water. The evening passes. It is but a short one—at least, as regards the company of the gentlemen, for they sit late; father's port, I am told, not being to be lightly left for any female frippery. I retire to the school-room, and regale my brethren with lively representations of father's unexampled benignity. I also resume with Algy the argument abouttongs, at the very point where I had dropped it. It lasts till prayer-time; and its monotony is relieved by personalities. The devil in the boys is fairly quiescent to-night, and our evening devotions pass over with tolerable peace; the onlycontretempsbeing that the Brat, having fallen asleep, remains on his knees when "Amen" raises the rest of the company from theirs, and has to be privily and heavily kicked to save him from discovery and ruin. Having administered the regulation embrace to father, and heartily kissed mother—not but what I shall see her again; she always comes, as she came when we were little, to kiss us in bed—I turn to find Sir Roger holding open the swing-door for us.
"Are you quite sure about it to-night?" I say, stretching out my hand to him to bid him good-night. "Ourson the right—yourson the left—do you see?"
"Yourson the right—mineon the left," he repeats, "Yes—I see—I shall make no more mistakes—unless I make one on purpose."
"Do not come without telling us beforehand!" I cry, earnestly. "I meanreally: if you hold a vague threat of paying us a visit over our heads, you will keep us in a state of unnatural tidiness for days."
I make a move toward retiring, but he still has hold of my hand.
"And about our walk?"
The others—boys and girls—have passed us: the servants have melted out of sight; so has mother; father is speaking to the butler in the passage—we are alone.
"Yes? what about it?" I ask, my eyes calmly resting on his.
"You will not forget it?"
"Not I!" reply I, lightly. "I want to hear the end of the anecdote about father's nose! I cannot get over the idea of him in a stiff white petticoat: I thought of it at dinner, whenever I looked at him!"
At the mention of father, his face falls a little.
"Nancy," he says, abruptly, taking possession of my other hand also, "why did you answer your father so shortly to-day? Why did you look so scared when he tried to joke with you?"
"Ah, why?" reply I, laughing awkwardly.
"You are notafraidof him, surely?"
"Oh, no—not at all!"
"Why do you speak in that sneering voice? It is not your own voice; I have known you only twenty-four hours, and yet I can tell that."
"I will not answer any more questions," reply I, recovering both hands with a sudden snatch: "and if you ask me any more, I will not take you out walking! there!"
So I make off, laughing.
"A peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom," say I slowly next morning, as I stand by the window, trying to see clearly through the dimmed and tearful pane. "The king would have to do without his ransom to-day."
It is rainingmightily; strong, straight, earnest rain, that harshly lashes the meek earth, that sends angry runlets down the gravel walks, that muddies the gold goblets of the closed crocuses.
"And you without your walk!" says Barbara, lifting her face from her stitching. "Poor Miss Nancy!"
"There is not enough blue sky to make a cat a pair of breeches!" cries Bobby, despondently, and with his usual vulgarity.
Sometimes I am tempted to fear that Bobby is hopelessly ungenteel—ungenteel for life. He has now taken possession of another window, and is consulting the eastern sky.
"A ransomless king, and a trouserless cat! That is about the state of the case!" say I, turning away from the window with a grin.
After all, now I come to think of it, I am nearly as vulgar as Bobby. But I am right. Through the day, through the long, light, cold evening, the posture of the weather changes not. To-day, Barbara, Algy, and I, are all constrained to dine; for have not we a dinner-party, or rather a mild simulation of one?—a squire or two, a squiress or two, a curate or two—such odd-come-shorts as can be got together in a scattered country neighborhood at briefest notice. Barbara and I, as it happens, are both late. It is five minutes past eight, when with the minor details of our toilets a good deal slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack of necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and find all our guests already come together. Mother gives us an almost imperceptible glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied in bantering a strange miss—banter in which the gallant and the fatherly happily join to make that manner which is the envy and admiration of the neighborhood—that he seems unconscious of our entrance. An intuition, however, tells us that this is not the case, but that he is making a note of it. This depresses us so much that, until song and sherry have comforted and emboldened us, we have not spirits to make any effort toward the entertainment of our neighbors. We have been paired with a couple of curates. Mine is a strong-handed, ingenuous Ishmael, who tells everybody that he hates his trade, and that he thinks it is very hard that he may not get out of it, now that his elder brother is dead. I am thankful to say that his appetite is as vast as his shoulders; so, after I have told him that Iloveraw oysters, and that Barbara cannot sit in the room with a roast hare; and have heard in return that he does not care about brill, but worships John Dory, we slide into a gluttonous silence, and abide in it. Barbara's man of God is in a wholly different pattern to mine. He is a macerated little saint, with the eyes of a ferret and the heart of a mouse. As the courses pass by, in savory order, I, myself unemployed, watch my sister gradually reassuring, comforting, heartening him, as is her way with all weakly, maimed, and unhandsome creatures. She has succeeded in thawing him into a thin trickle of parochial talk, when mother bends her laced and feathered head in distant signal from the table-top, and off we go. We drink coffee, we drink tea, we pick clever little holes in our absent neighbors, in brisk duet and tortuous solo we hammer the blameless spinnet, we sing affecting songs about "fair doves," and "cleansing fires," and people "far away," and still our deliverers come not. Theymusthear our appealing melodies clearly through the walls and doors, but still they come not. Sunk in sloth and old port, still they come not. I seem to have said every possible thing that is to be said on every known subject to the young woman beside me, and now I am falling asleep. I feel it. Lulled by the warm glow diffused through the room, by the smell of the jonquils, lilies of the valley and daphnes, by the low even talk, I am slipping into slumber. The door opens, and I jump into wakefulness; Sir Roger to the rescue. I am afraid that I look at him with something not unlike invitation in my eyes, for he makes straight toward me.
"Wish me good-morning," say I, rubbing my eyes, "for I have been sweetly asleep. I fell asleep wondering which of you would come first—somehow I thought it would be you. Are you going to sit here? Oh! that is all right!" as he subsides into the next division of the ottoman to mine. "What have you been talking about?" I continue, with a contented, chatty feeling, leaning my elbow on the blue-satin ottoman-top; "any thing pleasant? Did not you hear our screams for help through the wall?"
"Have not we come in answer to them?"
Yes; they are all here now, at last; all, from father down to the curates; some sitting resolutely down, some standing uncertainly up. Barbara'sprotégé, with frightened stealth, is edging round the furniture to where she sits on a little chair alone. Barbara is locketless, braceletless, chainless, head-dressless! such was our unparalleled haste to abscond. Ornaments has she none but those that God has given her: a sweep of blond hair, a long, cool throat, and two smooth arms that lie bare and white as any milk on her lap. As he nervously draws near, she lifts her eyes with a lovely friendliness to his face. He is poor, slightly thought of, sickly, not over-clever; probably she will talk to him all the evening.
"Look at Barbara!" say I, with deep admiration, familiarly laying my hand on Sir Roger's coat-sleeve, to make sure of engaging his attention, "that is always her way! Did you ever see any thing so cruelly shy as that poor little man is? See! he is wriggling all over like an eel! He came to call the other day, and while he was talking to mother I watched him. He tore a pair of quite new tea-green gloves into thin strips, like little thongs! He must find it rather expensive work, if he makes many morning calls, must he not?"
"Rather!"
"I am sure that you and Barbara would get on," continue I, loquaciously, leaning my head on my hand, and talking in that low, comfortable voice that our proximity warrants; "I cannot understand how it was that you did not make great friends that first night! I suppose that you are not poor and ugly and depressed enough for her to make much of you! Shall I make a sign to her to come over and talk to us?"
Sir Roger does not accept my proposal with the alacrity I had expected.
"Do not you think that she looks very comfortable where she is?" he asks, rather doubtfully.
I am a little disappointed.
"I am sure she would like you," I say, with a dogmatic shake of the head. "I told her that you were—well, thatIgot on with you, and we always like the same people."
"That must be awkward sometimes?"
"What do you mean? Oh! not inthatway—" (with an unblushing heart-whole laugh). "Lucky for me that we do not."
"Lucky foryou?" (interrogatively).
"Whywillyou make me say things that sound mock-modest?" cry I, reddening a little this time. "You know perfectly well what I mean—it is not likely that any one wouldlookat me when Barbara was by—you can have no notion," continue I, speaking very fast to avoid contradiction, "how well she looks when she is dancing—never gets hot, or flushed, ormottled, as so many people do."
"Andyou? how doyoulook?"
"I grow purple," I answer, laughing—"a rich imperial purple, all over. If you had once seen me, you would never forget me."
"Go on: tell me something more about Barbara!"
He has settled himself with an air of extreme repose and enjoyment. We reallyarevery comfortable.
"Well," say I, nothing loath, for I have always dearly loved the sound of my own voice, "do you see that man on the hearth-rug?—do not look at him this very minute, or he will know that we are speaking of him. I cannot imagine why father has asked him here to-night—he wants to marry Barbara; he has never said it, but I know he does: the boys—we all, indeed—call himToothless Jack! he is not oldreally, I suppose—not more than fifty, that is; but for Barbara!—"
I think that Sir Roger is beginning to find me rather tiresome: evidently he is not listening: he has even turned away his head.
There is a movement among the guests, the first detachment are bidding good-night, the rest speedily do the like. Father follows his favorite miss into the hall, cloaks her with gallant care, and through the door I hear him playfully firing off parting jests at her as she drives away. Then he returns to the drawing-room. Sir Roger has gone to put on his smoking-coat, I suppose. Father is alone with his wife and his two lovely daughters. We make a faint movement toward effacing ourselves, but our steps are speedily checked.
"Barbara! Nancy!"
"Yes, father" (in a couple of very small voices).
"May I ask what induced you to keep my guests waiting half an hour for their dinner to-night?"
No manner of answer.Howhooked his nose looks! how fearfully like a hawk he has grown all in a minute!
"When you have houses of your own," he continues with iced politeness, "you may of course treat your visitors to what vagaries you please, but as long as you deign to honormyroof with your presence, you will be good enough to behave to my guests with decent civility, do you hear?"
"Well, Roger, how is the glass? up or down? What is it doing? Are we to have a fine day to-morrow?"
For Roger apparently has got quickly into his smoking-coat: at least he is here: he has heard all. Barbara and Icrawlaway with no more spring or backbone in us than a couple of torpid, wintery flies.
Five minutes later, "Do you wonder that we hate him?" cry I, with flaming cheeks, holding a japanned candlestick in one hand, and Sir Roger's right hand in the other.
"I do not care if hedoeshear me!—yes, I do, though" (giving a great jump as a door bangs close to me).
Sir Roger is looking down at me with an expression of most thorough discomfiture and silent pain in his face.
"He did not mean it, Nancy!" he says, hesitatingly, and with a sort of look of shamed wonder in his friendly eyes.
"Didnot he?" (ironically).
A little pause, the position of the japanned candlestick and of Sir Roger's hand still remaining the same. "HowI wish thatyouwere my father instead!" I say with a sort of sob. He does not, as I fully expect, say, "So do I!" and I go to bed, feeling rather small, as one who hasgushed, and whose gush has not been welcome to the recipient.
A fortnight has passed. Two Sundays, two Mondays, two Tuesdays, etc. Fourteen times have I sleepily laid head on pillow. Fourteen times have I yawningly raised it from my pillow. Fourteen times have I hungrily eaten my dinner, since the night when I stood in the hall with Sir Roger's hand in mine, raging against my parent. And Sir Roger is here still. After all, there is nothing like the tenacity of boyish friendship, is there?
I suppose that, to Sir Roger, father is still the manly, debonair youth that he remembers thirty years ago. In happy ignorance he slurs over the thirty intervening years of moroseness, and goes back to that blest epoch in which I have so much difficulty in believing, and about which he, walking beside me now and again through the tender, springing grass of the meadows, has told me many a tale. For our promised walk has come off, and so has many others like it.
Hemustbe dotingly fond of father. It is the 15th of April. I dare say, O reader, that it seems to you much like any other date, but to me, through every back-coming year, it seems to gain fresh significance—the date that marks the most important day—take it for all in all—of my life, though, whether for good or ill, who shall say, until I am dead, and my life's sum reckoned up. I awake on that morning with no forecast of what is coming? I tear myself from my morning dreams with as sleepy unwillingness as usual. I eat my bread-and-butter with as stolidly healthy an appetite. I run with as scampering feet, as evenly-beating a heart as is my wont, with little Vick along the garden-walks, in the royal morning sun. For one of God's own days has come—one that must have lost his way, and strayed from paradise.
It has the steady heat of June, though we are only in mid-April, and the freshness of the prune. The leaves on the trees are but tender and tiny, and through them the sun sends his might. The tulips are all a-blaze and a-stare, making one blink with the dazzle of their odorless beauty: the frolicsome young wind is shaking out their balm from the hyacinth-bells, and the sweet Nancies—my flowers—blowing all together, are swaying andcongéeingto the morning airs.
O wise men, who know all things, do you know this? Can you tell it me? Where does the flower hide her scent? From what full cup of hidden sweets does one suck it?
It is one of those days when one feels most convinced of being immortal—when the spirits of men stretch out longing arms toward the All-Good, the Altogether Beautiful—when souls thirst for God, yearn most deeply for the well of his unfathomed truth—when, to those who have lost, their dead come back in most pleasant, gentle guise. As for me, I have lost nothing and no one as yet. All my treasures are still about me; I can stretch out live hands, and touchthemalive; none of my dear names are yet to be spoken sparingly with bated breath, as too holy for common talk. And yet I, too, as I walk and bask, and bend to smell the hyacinth-blooms, feel that same vague and most unnamed yearning—a delicate pain that he who has it would barter for no boisterous joy. The clocks tick out the scented hours, and with loud singing of happy birds, with pomp of flowers and bees, and freaked butterflies, God's day treads royally past.
It is afternoon, and the morning wind, heaving with too much fragrance, has lain down to sleep. A great warm stillness is on the garden and house. The sweet Nancies no longer bow. They stand straight up, all a-row, making the whole place honeyed. The school-room is one great nosegay. Every vase and jug, and cup, and pot and pan and pipkin that we can command, is crammed with heavy-headed daffodils, with pale-cheeked primroses, with wine-colored gilly-flowers, every thing that spring has thrust most plentifully into our eager hands.
The boys have been out fishing.
Algy and Bobby have been humorously trying to drown the Brat.
He looks small and cold in consequence, and his little pert nose is tinged with a chilly pink. Half an hour ago, mother called me away to a private conference, exciting thereby a mighty curiosity not unmixed with envy in my brethren.
Our colloquy is ended now, and I am reëntering the school-room.
"Well, what was it? out with it," cries Algy, almost before I am inside the door again. Algy is sitting more than half—more than three-quarters out of the window, balancing himself with great nicety on the sill. He is in the elegantnégligéof a decrepit shooting-jacket, no waistcoat, and no collar.
"What have you been doing to your face?" says Bobby, drawing nigh, and peering with artless interest into the details of my appearance; "it is the color of this" (pointing to a branch of red rhibes, which is hanging its drooped flowers, and joining its potent spice to the other flower-scents).
"Is it?" I answer, putting both hands to my cheeks, to feel their temperature. "I dare say! so would yours be, perhaps, if you had, like me, been having a—" I stop suddenly.
"Having awhat?"
"I will not say what I was going to say," I cry, emphatically, "it was nonsensical!"
"But whathasshe told you, Nancy?" asks Barbara, who, enervated by the first hot day, is languishing in the rocking-chair, slowly see-sawing. "What could it have been that she might not as well have said before us all?"
"You had better try and guess," I reply, darkly.
"I will not, for one," says Bobby, doggedly, "I never made out a conundrum in my life, except, 'What is most like a hen stealing?'"
"It is not much like that," say I, demurely, "and, in fact, when one comes to think of it, it can hardly be called a conundrum at all!"
"I do not believe it is any thing worth hearing," remarks the Brat, skeptically, "or you would have come out with it long ago! you never could have kept in to yourself!"
"Not worth hearing!" cry I, triumphantly raising my voice, "is not it? That is allyouknow about it!"
"Do not wrangle, children," says Algy from the window; "but, Nancy, if you have not told us before the clock gets to the quarter" (looking impressively at the slowly-traveling hands), "I shall think it right to—"
What awful threats would have followed will never now be certainly known, for I interrupt.
"Iwilltell you! Imeanto tell you!" I cry, excitedly, covering my face with my hands, and turning my back to them all; "only do notlookat me! look the other way, or Icannottell you."
A little pause.
"You have only three minutes, Nancy."
"Will youpromise," cry I, with indistinct emphasis from under my hands, "none of you tolaugh—none, even Bobby!"
"Yes!"—"Yes!"—"Yes!"
"Will youswear?"
"What is the use of swearing?—you have only half a minute now. Well, I dare say it is nothing very funny. Yes, we will swear!"
"Well, then, Sir Roger—IhearBobby laughing!"
"He is not!"—"He is not!"—"I am not!—I am only beginning to sneeze!"
"Well, then, Sir Roger—"
I come to a dead stop.
"Sir Roger?What about him? There is not a smile on one of our faces: if you do not believe, look for yourself!—What about our future benefactor?"
"Heisnot our future benefactor," cry I, energetically, whisking swiftly round to face them again, and dropping my hands, "heneverwill be!—he does notwantto be! He wants to—to—tomarry me! there!"
The murder is out. The match is set to the gunpowder train. Now for the explosion!
The clock-hand reaches the quarter—passes it; but in all the assembly there is no sound. The westering sun shines in on four open mouths (the youthful Tou Tou is absent), on four pairs of stupidly-staring eyes. The rocking-chair has ceased rocking. Bobby's sneeze has stopped half-way. There is a petrified silence.
At length, "Marry you!" says the Brat, in a deeply-accented tone of low and awed disbelief. "Why, he was at school with father!"
"I wish to heavens that he had never been at school anywhere!" cry I, in a fury. "I am sick to death of hearing that he was at school with father. Will no one ever forget it?"
"He is for-ty-sev-en!" says Algy, at last closing his mouth, and speaking with slow impressiveness. "Nineteen from forty-seven! how many years older than you?"
"Do not count!" cry I, pettishly; "what is the use? not all the counting in the world will make him any younger."
"It is not true!" cries Bobby, with boisterous skepticism, jumping up from his seat, and making a plunge at me; "it is ahoax! she has been taking us all in! Really, Nancy, for a beginner, you did not do it badly!"
"It isnota hoax!" cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, simple truth."
Another pause. No sound but the monotonous, unemotional clock, and the woodpecker's fluty laugh from the orchard.
"And so youreallyhave a lover at last, Nancy?" says Algy, the corners of his mouth beginning to twitch in a way which looks badly for the keeping of his oath.
"Yes!" say I, beginning to laugh violently, but quite uncomfortably; "are you surprised? you know I always told you that if you half shut your eyes, and looked at me from a great way off, I really was not so bad-looking."
"You have distanced the Begums!" cries the young fellow, joining in my mirth, but with a good deal more enjoyment than I can boast.
"So I have!" I answer; and my sense of the ludicrous overcoming all other considerations, I begin to giggle with a good-will.
"Let us look at you, Nancy!" says the Brat, taking hold of me by both arms, and bringing the minute impertinence of his face into close neighborhood to mine. "I begin to think that there must be more in you than we have yet discovered! we never looked upon you as one of our most favorable specimens, did we?"
"Do not you remember old Aunt Williams?" reply I, merrily; "how she used to say 'I was not pretty, my dears, but I was a pleasant little devil!' perhaps I am a pleasant little devil!"
"Poor—dear—old fellow!" says Barbara, in an accent of the profoundest, delicatest, womanliest pity, "howsorry I am for him! Nancy, how will you break it to him most kindly? I am afraid he will be sadly hurt! will you speak to him, or do it by letter?"
Barbara has risen. We are all standing up, more or less; it is impossible to sit through such news; Barbara's garden-hat is in her hand. The warm and mellow sun that is making Africa's dreary expanse in the map on the wall, one broad fine sheet, is enkindling, too, the silk of her hair, the flower-petals of her cheeks, the blue compassion of her eyes. My pretty, tall Barbara! Let them say what they like, I am sure that somewhere—somewhere—you are pretty now!
"If you write," says Algy, still laughing, but with more moderation, "I should advise you to depute me to make a fair copy of the letter; else, from the extreme ambiguity of your handwriting, he will most likely mistake your drift, and imagine that you are saying yes."
"How do you know that I am not going to say yes?" I ask, abruptly.
Rivers of additional scarlet are racing to my cheeks, over my forehead—in among the roots of my hair—all around and about my throat, but I stand, looking the assembled multitude full in the face, fairly, well, and boldly.
"Listen!" I continue, holding up my right hand in deprecation, "let me speak!—do not interrupt me!—Bobby, I know that he was at school with father—Algy, I know that he is forty-seven—all of you, I know that his hair is gray, and that there are crows'-feet about his eyes—but still—but still—"
"Do you mean to say that you arein lovewith him?" breaks in Bobby, impressively.
Instances of enamored humanity have been rare in Bobby's experience. With the exception of Toothless Jack, he has never had a near and familiar view of an authentic specimen. I therefore see him now regarding me with a reverent interest, not unmixed with awe.
"I mean nothing so silly!" I answer, with lofty petulance. "I am a great deal too old for any such nonsense!"
"There I go with you," says Algy, not without grandeur. "I believe that it is the greatest humbug out, and that it rarely occurs between the ages of sixteen and sixty."
"Father's and mother's was a love-match," says Bobby, gravely. "Did not Aunt Williams tell us that they used always to sit hand-in-hand before they were married?"
A shout of laughter at our parents' expense greets this piece of information.
"Allmarried people grow to hate one another after a bit," say I, comprehensively; "it is only a question of time."
"But if you do not love himnow, and if you are sure that you will hate him by-and-by," says Barbara, looking rather puzzled, "what makes you think of taking him?"
"It would be such a fine thing for all the family: I could give all the boys such a shove," say I, with homely shrewdness.
"They killed seven hundred head of game on his big day last year; I heard him tell father so," says Bobby, with his mouth watering.
"He has a moor in Scotland," throws in the Brat.
"He must ride a stone heavier than I do," says Algy, thoughtfully, "his horses would certainly carry me: I wonder would he give me a mount now and then?"
"I would have youallstaying with mealways," I cry, warming with my theme, and beginning to dance, "all except father: he should come once a year for a week, if he was good, andnot at all, if he was not."
"What will you call him, Nancy?" asks the Brat, inquisitively. "What shallwecall him?"
"He will be Tou Tou'sbrother," cries Bobby, with a yell of delight.
"Hush!" says Barbara, apprehensively, "he will hear you."
"No he will not," I answer, composedly. "A person would have to bawl even louder than Bobby does, to make him hear: he has gone away for a week; he said he did not wish me to decide in a hurry: he has given me till this day week; I wish it were this day ten years—"
"This day week, then," says Algy, walking about with his hands in his pockets, and smiling to himself, "we may hope to see him return in triumph in a blue frock-coat, with the ring and the parson: at that age one has no time to lose."
"Haste to the wedding!" cries the Brat at the top of his voice, seizing me by both hands, and forcing me to execute an uncouth war-dance, in unwilling celebration of my approaching nuptials.
"I hope that there will be lots of almonds in the cake!" says Bobby, gluttonously.
The week's reprieve has ended; my Judgment Day has come. Never, never, surely, did seven days race so madly past, tumbling over each other's heels. Even Sunday—Sunday, which mostly contains at least forty-eight hours—has gone like a flash. Morning service, afternoon service, good looks, sermon to the servants, supper, they all run into one another like dissolving views. For the first time in my life, my sleep is broken. I fall asleep in a fever of irresolution. I awake in one. I walk about in one. I feed the jackdaw in one. I box Bobby's ears in one. My appetite (oh, portent!) flags. In intense excitement, who can eat yards of bread-and-butter, pounds of oatmeal-porridge, as has ever been my bucolic habit? Shall I marry Sir Roger, or shall I not? The birds, the crowing cocks, the church-bells, the gong for dinner, the old pony whinnying in the park, they all seem to say this. It seems written on the sailing clouds, on the pages of every book that I open. Armies ofproswage battle against legions ofcons, and every day the issue of the fight seems even more and more doubtful.
The morning of the day has arrived, and I am still undecided. I dress in a perfect storm of doubts and questionings. I put on my gown, without the faintest idea of whether it is inside out, or the reverse. I go slowly down-stairs, every banister marked by a fresh decision. I open the dining-room door. Father's voice is the first thing that I hear; father's voice, raised and rasping. He is standing up, and has a letter in his hand; from the engaging blue of its color, and the harmony of its shape, too evidently a bill.
"I regret to have to hurt your feelings," he is saying, in that awful civil voice, at which we all—small and great—quake, "but the next time thatthisoccurs" (pointing to the bill), "I must request you to find accommodation for yourself elsewhere, as really my poor house is not a fit place for a young gentleman with such princely views on the subject of expenditure."
The object of this pleasant harangue is Algy, who, also standing, with his face very white, his lips very much compressed, and his eyes flashing with a furious light, is fronting his parent on the hearth-rug.
Behind the tea-urn, mother is mingling her drink with tears, and making little covert signs to Algy, at all rates to hold his tongue.
My mind is made up, never to be unmade again. I will marry Sir Roger. He shall pay all Algy's debts, and forever dry mother's sad, wet eyes.
The weather of paradise is gone back to paradise. This day is very earthly. There has been a sharp, cold shower, and there is still a strong rain-wind, which has snapped a score of tulip-heads. Poor, braveJour ne sols! Prone they lie on the garden-beds, defiled, dispetalled. Even the survivors are stained and dashed, and the sweet Nancies look pinched and small. If you were to go down on your knees to them, they could not give you any scent. I am walking up and down the room, in a state of the utmost agitation. My heart is beating so as to make me feel quite sick. My fingers are very hot, but hardly so hot as my face.
"For Heaven's sake do not make me laugh! do not!" cry I, nervously, "it would betoodreadful if I were to receive his overtures with a broad grin, would not it? There! is it gone? Do I look quite grave?"
I take half a dozen hurried turns along the floor, and try to think of all our most depressing family themes—father; Algy's college-bills; Tou Tou's shrunk face and thin legs; nothing will do. When I stop before the glass and consult it, that hysterical smile is there still.
"Do you remember the day, when we were children, that we all went to the dentist?" says the Brat, chuckling, "and father gave Bobby a New Testament because he had his eye-tooth out? Does to-day at all remind you of it, Nancy?"
"I had far rather havebothmy eye-teeth out, and several of my double ones, too," reply I, sincerely.
A little pause.
"I must not keep him waiting any longer," cry I, desperately. "Tell me!" (appealing piteously to them all), "do I look all right? do I look pretty natural?"
"You do not lookmiddle-agedenough," says Bobby, bluntly.
"Put on your bonnet," suggests Algy. "You look twenty years older in that, particularly when you cock it well over your nose, as you did last Sunday."
"You are all very unkind!" say I, in a whimpering voice, walking toward the door.
"And if he becomes too demonstrative," says the Brat, overtaking me with a rush before I reach it, "say—