CHAPTER XXIII.“BRAVO, ATALANTA!”
Phillis received quite an ovation as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her calm elder-sisterly way, and put her arm round her, and hoped she was not so very tired, and there was so much to say, and so much to do, and she wanted her advice, and so on.
And on Nan’s forehead lay a thoughtful pucker; and on the centre-table were sundry breadths of green silk, crisp-looking and faintly bronzed, like withered leaves with the sun on them.
“Oh, dear! has Miss Drummond been here in my absence?” asked Phillis, with the overwhelmed feeling of a beginner, who has not yet learned to separate and classify, or the rich value of odd moments. “Three dresses to be done at once!”168
“One at a time. But never mind Miss Drummond’s this moment. Mother is safe in the store-cupboard for the next half-hour, and we want to know what you mean by your ridiculous message, ‘Trimmings, not Squails.’ Dulce is dying of curiosity, and so am I.”
“Yes; but she looks so hot and tired that she must refresh herself first.” And Dulce placed on her sister’s lap a plate of yellow plums, perfectly bedded in moss, which had come from the vicarage garden. And as Phillis enjoyed the dainty repast and poured out her morning’s experiences in the ears of her astonished auditors, lo, the humiliation and the sting were forgotten, and only an intense sense of the humor of the situation remained.
It was Dulce whose pink cheeks were burning now.
“Oh, Phillis! how could you? It is too dreadful even to think about! That fat old thing, too! Why, she is twice as big as Mrs. Squails!”
“Beggars cannot be choosers, my dear,” replied Phillis, airily; for rest was pleasant, and the fruit was good, and it was so delicious to feel all that was over and she was safe in her nest again; and then the pleasure of talking it all over! “Do you know—?” she began, in a disconnected manner, and then sat and stared at her sisters with luminous gray eyes, until they begged to know what the new idea was.
“Oh, nothing,” she replied, and colored a little. And then she blurted out, in an oddly-ashamed way, “it was talking to you two dears that put it in my head. But I could not help thinking that moment that if one is ever good enough to get to heaven, one of the greatest pleasures will be to talk about all our past miseries and difficulties, and how the angels helped us! and, though you may laugh at me,”—they were doing nothing of the kind, only admiring her with all their might,—“I have a kind of fancy that even my ‘Trimmings, not Squails’ episode may have a different look up there!”
“My dear,” returned Nan, gently, for she loved all speeches of this sort, being a devout little soul and truly pious, “nothing was further from my thoughts than to laugh at you, for the more we think in this way the grander our work will appear to us. Mrs. Trimmings may be fat and vulgar, but when you were measuring her and answering her so prettily—and I know how nicely you would speak, Phil—I think you were as brave as one of those old knights—I cannot remember their names—who set out on some lofty quest or other!”
“I suppose the child means Sir Galahad,” observed Phillis, with a groan at Nan’s ignorance. “Oh, Nannie, I wish I could say,—
“‘My strength is as the strength of ten,Because my heart is pure;’”
and then she softly chanted,—for quotation never came amiss169to her, and her head was crammed with choice selections from the poets,—
“‘All armed I ride, whate’er betide,Until I find the Holy Grail.’”
“Yes, the Sangreal, or the Quest. It does not matter what, for it was only an allegory,” returned Nan, who had plenty of ideas, only she confused them sometimes, and was not as clever in her definitions as Phillis. “It only meant that those grand old knights had some holy purpose and aim in their lives, for which they trained and toiled and fought. Don’t you see?—the meaning is quite clear. We can have our Quest too.”
“Bless her dear heart, if she is not travelling thousands of years and miles from Mrs. Trimmings!” exclaimed Phillis, who never could be serious long. “Well, Nannie, I understand you, though you are a trifle vague. We will have our Quest and our unattainable standard; and I will be your maiden knight—yours and Dulce’s.
“‘How sweet are looks that ladies bendOn whom their favors fall!For them I’ll battle till the end,To save from shame and thrall.’”
And when she had repeated this she rose, laughing, and said they were all a little demented; and what did they mean by wasting their time when there were three dresses to be cut out? and Dulce must have the work fixed for the sewing-machine.
For the next hour there was little talk, only the snipping sound of scissors and the rustling of silken breadths, and sometimes the swish and the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning and tappings of Dulce’s sewing machine, like a dozen or two of woodpeckers at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads were full of business.
But in the afternoon, when things were in progress and looked promising, and Mrs. Challoner had had her nap, and was busy over some sleeves that they had given her to keep her quiet and satisfy her maternal conscience that she was helping her girls, Phillis did hear a little about Miss Drummond’s visit. The sewing machine, which they worked by turns, had stopped for a time, and they were all three round the table, sewing and fixing as busily as possible: and Phillis, remembering Sir Galahad, dared not say she was tired, only she looked out on the lengthening shadows with delight, and thought about tea and an evening walk just to stretch her cramped muscles. And if one day seemed so long, how would a week of days appear before the blessed Sunday gave them a few hours of freedom?
It was at this moment that Nan, with fine tact, broke the silence that was good for work, but was apt to wax drowsy in time:170
“Miss Milner’s dress is getting on well. How fast you two girls work! and mammie is doing the sleeves beautifully. Another afternoon you must let the work rest, mammie, and read to us, or Phillis will get restive. By the bye, Dulce, we have not told her a word about Miss Drummond’s visit.”
“No, indeed: was it not good of her to come so soon?” exclaimed Dulce. “She told us she wanted to be our first customer, and seemed quite disappointed when we said that we were bound in honor and mere gratitude to send Miss Milner’s dress home first. ‘Not that I am in a hurry for my dress, for nobody cares what I wear,’ she said, quite cheerfully; ‘but I wanted to be the first on your list.’ I wish we could oblige her, for she is a nice, unaffected little thing, and I am beginning to like her, though she is a little fussy.”
“But she was as meek as a lamb about her dress,” added Nan, who was a first-rate needle-woman, and could work rapidly while she talked. “Just fancy, Phil! she wanted to have a jacket with tabs and loose sleeves, just for comfort and coolness.”
“Loose sleeves and a jacket!” almost gasped Phillis, for the princess skirts were then worn, and jackets were consigned to oblivion for the time being. “I hope you told her, Nan, that we had never worked for Mrs. Noah, neither had Mrs. Shem ever honored us by her custom.”
“Well, no, Phillis; I was not quite so impertinent, and clever speeches of that sort never occur to me until you say them. But I told Miss Drummond that I could not consent to spoil her lovely dress in that way; and then she laughed and gave in, and owned she knew nothing about fashions, and that her sister Grace always ordered her clothes for her, because she chose such ugly things. She sat and chatted such a long time with us; she had only just gone when you came home.”
“And she told us such a lot about this wonderful Grace,” went on Dulce: “she says Archie quite worships her.—Well, mammie,” as Mrs. Challoner poised her needle in mid-air and regarded her youngest daughter with unfeigned astonishment, “I am only repeating Miss Drummond’s words; she said ‘Archie.’”
“But, my dear, there was no need to be so literal,” returned Mrs. Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school, and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young daughters: to speak of any young man except Dick without the ceremonious prefix was a heinous misdemeanor in her eyes. Dulce would occasionally trespass, and was always rebuked with much gravity. “You could have said ‘her brother,’ could you not?”
“Oh, mammie, I am sure Providence intended you for an old maid, and you have not fulfilled your destiny,” retorted Dulce, who was rarely awed by her mother’s solemnity. “All that171fuss because I said ‘Archie!’ Oh, I forgot, that name is sacred: the Rev. Archibald Drummond adores his sister Grace.”
“And she must be very nice,” returned Mrs. Challoner with an indulgent smile at her pet Dulce. “I am sure, from what Miss Drummond told us this morning, that she must be a most superior person. Why, Phillis, she teaches all her four younger sisters, and one of them is sixteen. Miss Drummond says she is never out of the school-room, except for an hour or two in the evening, when her father and brothers come home. There are two more brothers, I think she said. Dear what a large family! and Miss Drummond hinted that they were not well off.”
“I should like to know that Grace,” began Phillis; and then she shook her head reflectively. “No, depend upon it, we should be disappointed in her: family paragons are generally odious to other folk. Most likely she wears spectacles, and is a thin thread-papery sort of person.”
“On the contrary, she is a sweet-looking girl, with large melancholy eyes; for Miss Drummond showed us her photograph. So much for your imagination, Phil?” and Dulce looked triumphant. “And she is only twenty-two, and, though not pretty, just the sort of face one could love.”
“Some people’s swans turn out to be geese in the end,” remarked Phillis, provokingly; but she registered at the same time a mental resolve that she would cross-examine Mr. Drummond on the earliest opportunity about this wonderful sister of his. Oh, it was no marvel if he did look down on them when they had not got brains enough to earn their living except in this way! and Phillis stuck her needle into Miss Milner’s body-lining so viciously that it broke.
The sharp click roused Nan’s vigilance, and she looked up, and was at once full of pity for Phillis’s pale face.
“You are tired, Phil, and so are we all,” she said, brightly; “and, as it is our first day of work, we will not overdo ourselves. Mammie, if you will make the tea, we will just tidy up, and look out the patterns for you to match the trimmings and buttons to-morrow;” for this same business of matching was rather hailed by Mrs. Challoner as a relief and amusement.
Phillis grumbled a little over this additional labor, though, at the same time, no one worked harder than she; but she was careful to explain that it was her right, as a freeborn Britoness, to grumble, and that it was as much a relief to her peculiar constitution as a good long yawn is to some people.
“And it answers two purposes,” as she observed; “for it airs the lungs, and relieves the mind, and no one takes any more notice than if I set the wind blowing. And thankful I am, and every mother’s child of us, that Dorothy is approaching this room with her dust-pan and brush. Dorothy, I have a nice little sum for you to do. How many snippets of green and black silk go to a dust-pan? Count them, and subtract all the tacking-thread, and Dulce’s pins.”172
“Phillis, you are just feverish from overfatigue and sitting so long in one place, for you are used to running about.” And Nan took her by the shoulders, and marched her playfully to the small parlor, where Mrs. Challoner was waiting for them.
“Come, girls!” she said, cheerfully. “Dorothy has baked your favorite little cakes, and there are new-laid eggs for those who are hungry; and I am sure you all earned your tea, darlings. And, oh, Phillis! how tired you look!” And Mrs. Challoner looked round on each face in turn, in the unwise but loving way of mothers.
This was too much for Phillis; and she interlaced her fingers and put them suddenly and sternly over her mother’s eyes.
“Now, mammie, promise.”
“Phillis, my dear, how can you be so absurd!” but Mrs. Challoner strove in vain to release herself. Phillis’s fingers had iron tenacity in them when she chose.
“A thing like this must be nipped in the bud,” pronounced Phillis, apostrophizing her laughing sisters. “You must not look at us in that fashion every evening, as though we were sheep in a pen, or rabbits for sale. You will be weighing us next; and my nerves will not stand it. No, mother; here I strike. I will not be looked at in that manner.”
“But, Phillis—Oh, you nonsensical child!”
“Personal remarks are to be tabooed from this moment. You must not say, ‘How tired you look!’ or ‘How pale you are!’ It is not manners at the Friary, and it is demoralizing. I am ten times more tired this minute than I was before you told me so.”
“Very well, Phillis; but you must let me pour out the tea.” And then Phillis subsided. But she had started the fun, and Dulce soon took it up and set the ball rolling. And Dorothy, working hard with her dust-pan and brushes, heard the merriment, and her old face lighted up.
“Bless their sweet faces!—pretending to be happy, just to cheer up the mistress, and make believe it is only a game they are having!” muttered the old woman, as she paused to listen. “But, if I am not mistaken, Miss Phillis, poor dear, is just ready to drop with fatigue. Only to hear her, one would think she was as perky as possible.”
When the evening meal was over, Mrs. Challoner leaned back in her chair and made a little speech to her daughters:
“Thank you, my dears. You have done me so much good. Now, if you want to please me, you will all three put on your hats and take a nice long walk together.”
The girls looked at each other, and every pair of eyes said, as plainly as possible, “What a delicious idea! But only two can go, and I intend to be the filial victim.” But Mrs. Challoner was too quick for them. “I said all three,” she remarked, very decidedly. “If one offers to stay with me, I shall just put myself to bed and lock the door; but if you will be good, and enjoy173this lovely evening, I will take my book in the garden and be quite happy until you come back to me.” And when they saw that she meant it, and would only be worried by a fuss, they went off as obediently as possible.
They walked very sedately down the Braidwood Road, and past the White House; but when they got into the town, Phillis hurried them on a little: “I don’t want people. It is air and exercise and freedom for which I am pining.” And she walked so fast that they had some trouble to keep up with her.
But when they had left every trace of human habitation behind them, and were strolling down the rough, uneven beach, towards a narrow strip of sand, that would soon be covered by the advancing tide, Phillis said, in an odd, breathless way, “Nan, just look round and see if there be any one in sight, before, behind, or around us;” and Nan, though in some little surprise, did at once as she was bidden, in the most thorough manner. For she looked up at the sky first, as though she were afraid of balloons or possible angels; and then at the sea, which she scanned narrowly, so that not even a fish could escape her; and after that she beat the boundaries of the land.
“No, there is not a creature in sight except ourselves and Laddie,” she answered.
“Very well,” answered Phillis promptly. “Then, if it be all safe, and the Hadleigh wits are away wool gathering, and you will not tell mother, I mean to have a race with Dulce, as far as we can run along the shore; and if I do not win––” And here she pursed up her lips and left her sentence unfinished, as though determined to be provoking.
“We shall see about that,” returned Dulce, accepting the challenge in a moment; for she was always ready to follow a good lead.
“Oh, you foolish children?” observed Nan, in her staid fashion. But she did not offer the slightest remonstrance, knowing of old that unless Phillis found some safety-valve she would probably wax dangerous. So she called Laddie to her, and held him whining and struggling, for he wanted to stretch his little legs too; thinking a race was good for dogs as well as for girls. But Nan would not hear of it for a moment: he might trip them up and cause another sprained ankle.
“Now, Nan, you must be umpire, and say, One, two, three!” And Nan again obeys, and then watches them with interest. Oh, how pretty it was, if only any one could have seen it, except the crabs and the star-fish, and they never take much notice: the foreground of the summer sea coming up with little purple rushes and a fringe of foam; the yellow sand, jagged, uneven, with salt-water pools here and there; the two girls in their light dresses skimming over the ground with swift feet, skirting the pools, jumping lightly over stones, even climbing a breakwater, then running along another level piece of sand,—Dulce a little behind, but Phillis as erect and sure-footed as Atalanta.174
Now Nan has lost them, and puts Laddie down and prepares to follow. In spite of her staidness, she would have dearly loved a run too; only she thinks of Dick, and forbears.
Dulce, who is out of breath, fears she must give up the race, and begins to pant and drop behind in earnest, and to wish salt water were fresh, and then to dread the next breakwater as a hopeless obstacle; but Phillis, who is still as fresh as possible, squares her elbows as she has seen athletes do, and runs lightly up to it, unmindful and blissfully ignorant of human eyes behind a central hole.
Some one who is of a classical turn has been thinking of the daughter of Iasus and Clymene, and cries out, “Bravo, Atalanta! but where is Milanion, that he has forgotten the golden apples?” And Phillis, stricken dumb by the question and the sudden apparition of a bearded face behind the breakwater, remains standing as though she were carved in stone.
CHAPTER XXIV.MOTHERS ARE MOTHERS.
“Mr. Drummond! Oh dear! is one never to be free from pastoral supervision?” muttered Phillis, half sulkily, when she roused from her stupefaction and had breath to take the offensive. And what would he think of her? But that was a question to be deferred until later, when nightmares and darkness and troublesome thoughts harass the unwary soul. “Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,” she might have said to herself, quoting from “Locksley Hall.” But she did nothing of the kind,—only looked at the offending human being with such an outraged dignity in her bearing that Mr. Drummond nearly committed himself by bursting out laughing.
He refrained with difficulty, and said rather dryly,—
“That was a good race; but I saw you would win from the first; and you jumped that stone splendidly. I suppose you know the story of Atalanta?”
“Oh, yes,” responded Phillis, gloomily; but she could not help showing off her knowledge all the same; and she had always been so fond of heathen mythology, and had even read translations of Homer and Virgil. “She had a she-bear for a nurse, and was eventually turned into a lion; and I always thought her very stupid for being such a baby and stopping to pick up the golden apple.”
“Nevertheless, the subject is a charming one for a picture,” returned Archie, with admirable readiness, for he saw Phillis was greatly hurt by this untoward accident, and he liked the girl all the better for her spirit. He would not have discovered175himself at all, only in another moment she must have seen him; and if she would only have believed how fully he entered into the fun, and how graceful and harmless he thought it, there would have been no pang of wounded self-esteem left. But girls, especially if they be worthy of the name, are so sensitive and prickly on such matters.
Dulce had basely deserted her sister, and, at the sight of the clerical felt hat, had fled to Nan’s side for protection.
“Oh, never mind,” Nan had said, consoling her: “it is only Mr. Drummond. And he will know how it was, and that we thought there was not a creature in sight.” Nevertheless, she felt a little sorry in her heart that such a thing had happened. It would spoil Phillis’s mirth, for she was very proud; and it might shock their mother.
“Oh, he will think us such tomboys for grown-up young ladies!” sighed Dulce, who was only just grown up.
“Never mind what he thinks,” returned Nan, walking fast, for she was anxious to come to Phillis’s relief. She joined them very quietly, and held out her hand to Archie as though nothing had happened.
“Is this a favorite walk of yours, Mr. Drummond? We thought we had it all to ourselves, and so the girls had a race. They will be dreadfully troubled at having a spectator; but it might be worse, for you already know us well enough not to misconstrue a little bit of fun.”
“I am glad you judge me so truly,” returned Archie, with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes. Phillis certainly looked uncommonly handsome, as she stood there, flushed and angry. But how sweet and cool Nan looked!—not a hair ruffled nor a fold of her dress out of order; whereas Dulce’s brown locks were all loose about her shoulders, shaken down by the exercise. Nevertheless, at that moment Phillis looked the most striking.
“I am afraid my sudden appearance has put your sister out dreadfully. I assure you I would have made myself into thin air if I could,” went on Archie, penitently; “but all the same it was impossible not to applaud the winner. I felt inclined to wave my hat in the air, and cry, ‘Bravo, Atalanta!’ half a dozen times. You made such pretty running, Miss Challoner; and I wish Grace could have seen it.”
The last word acted like magic on Phillis’s cloudy brow. She had passed over two delicately-implied compliments with a little scorn. Did he think her, like other girls, to be mollified by sugar-plums and sweet speeches? He might keep all that for the typical young lady of Hadleigh. At Oldfield the young men knew her better.
It must be owned that the youth of that place had been slightly in awe of Phillis. One or two had even hinted that they thought her strong-minded. “She has stand-off ways, and rather laughs at a fellow, and makes one feel sometimes like a fool,” they said; which did not prove much, except that176Phillis showed herself above nonsense, and had a knowledge of shams, and would not be deceived, and, being the better horse of the two, showed it; and no man likes to be taken down in his class.
As Phillis would not flirt,—not understanding the art, but Dulce proved herself to be a pretty apt pupil,—they left off trying to make her, and talked sensibly to her instead, which she liked better. But, though more than one had admired her, no one had ventured to persuade himself or her that he was in love; but for that there was plenty of time, Phillis not being the sort of girl to remain long without a lover.
So when she heard Grace’s name she pricked up her ears, and the proud look left her face; and she said, a little archly, but in a way that pleased Mr. Drummond,—
“All the same, I am glad your sister was not here, for she would think Dulce and me such tomboys!” using Dulce’s very expression.
Archie shook his head very decidedly at this.
“Ah! you do not know Grace, and how she loves a bit of fun; only she never gets it, poor girl!” sighing in a marked manner, for he saw how interested Phillis looked. “If you could only hear her laugh; but please sit down a moment and rest yourselves,” continued the artful young man, who had not dared to purpose such a thing before.
Nan hesitated; but a glance at Phillis’s hot face decided her.
“Just for five minutes,” she said, “and then we must go back to mother;” for she had already determined that they must cut their walk short for the purpose of getting rid of Mr. Drummond.
And then they sat down on the beach, and Dulce retired behind the breakwater to take off her hat and tuck up her hair; while Archie, taking no notice, leaned against the other side, and felt well contented with his position,—three such pretty girls, and all the world well away!
“Is Grace your favorite sister?” asked Phillis, suddenly, as she menaced Laddie with a small pebble.
This was a lucky opening for Archie. He was never seen to more advantage than when he was talking about Grace. There was no constraint or consciousness about him at such times, but he would speak with a simple earnestness that made people say, “What a good fellow he is!”
“Oh, she has always been that, you know,” he said, brightly, “ever since she was a little thing, and I used to carry her about in my arms, and string horse-chestnuts for her, when she was the funniest, merriest little creature, and so clever. I suppose when a man has seven sisters he may be allowed to have a favorite among them? and there is not one of them to compare with Grace.”
“Seven sisters!” repeated Nan, with a smile; and then she added “you are very lucky, Mr. Drummond.”177
Archie shrugged his shoulders at this: he had never quite recognized his blessings in this respect. Isabel and Dottie might be tolerated, but he could easily have dispensed with Susie and Laura and Clara; he had a knack of forgetting their existence when he was absent from them, and when he was at home he did not always care to be reminded of their presence. He was one of those men who are very exacting to their women-kind, who resent it as a personal injury if they fail in good looks or are not pleasant to the eye. He did not go so far as to say to himself that he could dispense with poor Mattie too, but he certainly acted on most occasions as though he thought so.
“Are you not fond of all your sisters?” asked Phillis, rather maliciously, for she had remarked the shrug.
“Oh, as to that,” replied the young man, coloring a little, “one cannot expect to be interested in a lot of school-girls. I am afraid I know very little about the four youngest, except that they are working Grace to death. Just fancy, Miss Challoner!” he continued, addressing Nan, and quite disregarding Phillis’s sympathetic looks. “Grace has actually no life of her own at all; she teaches those girls, sits with them, walks with them, helps them mend their clothes, just like a daily or rather a nursery governess, except that she is not paid, and has no holidays. I cannot think how my mother can find it in her heart to work her so hard!” finished Archie, excited to wrath at the remembrance of Grace’s wrongs.
“Well, do you know,” returned Nan, thoughtfully, as he seemed to expect an answer to this, and Phillis for a wonder was silent, “I cannot think your sister an object of pity. Think what a good and useful life she is leading! She must be a perfect treasure to her mother; and I dare say they all love her dearly.”
“The girls do,” was the somewhat grudging response: “they follow her about like four shadows, and even Isabel can do nothing without her advice. When I am at home I can scarcely get her for a moment to myself; it is ‘Grace, come here,’ and ‘Grace, please do this for me,’ until I wonder she is not worn out.”
“Oh, how happy she must be!” responded Nan, softly, for to her no lot seemed sweeter than this. To be the centre and support of a large family circle,—the friend and trusted confidante of each! What a wonderful creature this Grace must be! and how could he speak of her in that pitying tone? “No life of her own!” Well, what life could she want better than this? To be the guide and teacher of her younger sisters, and to be loved by them so dearly! “Oh, I think she is to be envied! her life must be so full of interest,” she said, addressing the astonished Archie, who had certainly never taken this view of it. And when she had said this, she gave a slight signal to her sisters, which they understood at once; and then178they paced slowly down the beach, with their faces towards the town, talking as they went.
They did not walk four abreast, as they used to do in the Oldfield lanes; but Nan led the way with Mr. Drummond, and Phillis and Dulce dropped behind.
Archie was a little silent; but presently he said, quite frankly, as though he had known her for years,—but from the first moment he had felt strangely at home with these girls,—
“Do you know, you have thrown a fresh light on a vexed subject? I have been worrying myself dreadfully about Grace. I wanted her to live with me because there was more sympathy between us than there ever will be between my sister Mattie and myself. We have more in common, and think the same on so many subjects; and I knew how happy I could have made her.”
“Yes, I see,” returned Nan; and she looked up at him in such an interested way that he found no difficulty in going on:
“We had planned for years to live together; but when I accepted the living, and the question was mooted in the family council, my mother would not hear of it for a moment. She said Grace could not possibly be spared.”
“Well, I suppose not, after what you have told me. But it must have been a great disappointment to you both,” was Nan’s judicious reply.
“I have never ceased to regret my mother’s decision,” he returned, warmly; “and as for Grace, I fear she has taken the disappointment grievously to heart.”
“Oh, I hope not!”
“Isabel writes to my sister Mattie that Grace is looking thin and pale and has lost her appetite, and she thinks the mother is getting uneasy about her; and I cannot help worrying myself about it, and thinking how all this might have been averted.”
“I think you are wrong in that,” was the unexpected answer. “When one has acted rightly to the very best of one’s power, it is of no use worrying about consequences.”
“How do you mean?” asked Archie, very much surprised at the decided tone in which Nan spoke. He had thought her too soft in manners to possess much energy and determination of character; but he was mistaken.
“It would be far worse if your sister had not recognized her duty and refused to remain at home. One cannot find happiness if one moves out of one’s allotted niche; but of course you know all this better than I, being a clergyman. And, oh! how beautifully you spoke to us last Sunday!” finished Nan, remembering all at once that she was usurping his place and preaching a little sermon of her own.
“Never mind that,” he replied, impatiently: “tell me what you mean. There is something behind your speech: you think I am wrong in pitying poor Grace so much?”179
“If you ask me so plainly, I must say yes, though perhaps I am not competent to judge; but, from what you tell me, I think you ought not to pity her at all. She is fulfilling her destiny. Is she not doing the work given her to do? and what can any girl want more? You should trust your mother, I think, Mr. Drummond; for she would not willingly overwork her. Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid,” said Nan, looking up in her clear honest way.
“Thank you; you have taken a weight off my mind,” returned Archie, more moved by this than he cared to own. That last speech had gone home: he must trust his mother. In a moment scales seemed to fall from the young man’s eyes as he walked along gravely, and silently by Nan. “Why, what manner of girls could these be?” he thought; “frolicsome as kittens, and yet possessing the wisdom of mature womanhood?” And those few simple words of Nan abided long with him.
What if he and Grace were making a mistake, and there was no hardship in her case at all, but only clear duty, and a most high privilege, as Nan hinted? What if his mother were right, and only they were wrong?
The idea was salutary, but hardly pleasant; for he had certainly aided and abetted Grace in her discontent, and had doubtless increased her repinings at her dull surroundings. Surely Grace’s talents had been given her for a purpose; else why was she so much cleverer than the others,—so gifted with womanly accomplishments? And that clear head of hers,—she had a genius for teaching, he had never denied that. Was his mother, a sensible large-sighted woman in her way, to be secretly condemned as a tyrant, and wanting in maternal tenderness for Grace, because she had made use of this gifted daughter for the good of her other children, and had refused to part with her at Archie’s request?
Archie began to feel uncomfortable, for conscience was waxing warm within him; and there had been a grieved hurt tone in his mother’s letters of late, as though she had felt herself neglected by him.
“Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid,” Nan had said, with simple wholesome faith in the instincts of motherhood; and the words had come home to him with the strongest power.
His poor harassed mother,—what a hard life hers had been! Archie began to feel his heart quite tender towards her; perhaps she was a little severe and exacting with the girls, but they none of them understood her in the least, “for her bark was always worse than her bite,” thought Archie; and girls, at least the generality of them, are sometimes aggravating.
He thought of the weary times she must have had with his father,—for Mr. Drummond could make himself disagreeable to his wife when things went wrong with him, and the sullen fortitude with which he bore his reversal of fortune gave small180opening to her tenderness; the very way in which he shirked all domestic responsibilities, leaving on her shoulders the whole weight of the domestic machinery and all the home-management, had hardened and embittered her.
A large family and small means, little support from her husband,—who interfered less and less with domestic matters,—all this had no doubt fostered the arbitrary will that governed the Drummond household. If her husband had only kept her in check,—if he had supported her authority, and not left her to stand alone,—she would have been, not a better woman, for Archie knew his mother was good, but she would have been softer and more lovable, and her children would have seen deeper into her heart.
Some such thoughts as these passed through Archie’s mind as he walked beside Nan; but he worked them out more carefully when he was alone that night. Just before they reached the Friary, he had started another subject; for, turning to Phillis and Dulce, whom he had hitherto ignored, he asked them whether he might enroll one or all of them among his Sunday-school teachers.
Phillis’s eyes sparkled at this.
“Oh, Nan, how delightful! it will remind us of Oldfield.”
“Yes, indeed:” chimed in Dulce, who had left her infant-class with regret; but, to their surprise, Nan demurred.
“At Oldfield things were very different,” she said, decidedly: “we played all the week, and it was no hardship to teach the dear children on Sunday; but now we shall have to work so hard that we shall be glad of one day’s rest.”
“But surely you might spare us one hour or two in the afternoon?” returned Archie, putting on what Grace called “his clerical face.”
“In the afternoons mother will be glad of our company, and sometimes we shall indulge in a walk. No, Mr. Drummond, our week-days are too full of work, and we shall need all the rest we can get on Sunday.” And, with a smile, Nan dismissed the subject.
Phillis spoke regretfully of it when he had left them.
“It would have been so nice,” she pleaded; but Nan was inexorable.
“You can go if you like, Phil; but I think mother is entitled to that one afternoon in the week, and I will not consent to any parish work on that account; and then I am sure we shall often be so tired.” And Nan’s good sense, as usual, carried the day.
After that they all grouped round the window in the little parlor, and repeated to their mother every word of their conversation with Mr. Drummond.
Mrs. Challoner grew alarmed and tearful in a moment.
“Oh, my darlings, promise me to be more careful for the future!” she pleaded. “Of course it was only fun, Phillis181and he will not think anything of it. Still, in a strange place, where no one knows you––”
“Dulce and I will never run a race again, I think I can promise you that,” replied Phillis, very grimly, who felt that “Bravo, Atalanta!” would haunt her in her dreams.
“And—and I would not walk about with Mr. Drummond, though he is our clergyman and a very gentlemanly person. People might talk: and in your position, my poor dears”—Mrs. Challoner hesitated, for she was very nice in her scruples, and not for worlds would she have hinted to her daughters that Mr. Drummond was young and unmarried, and a very handsome man in the bargain: “You see, I cannot always be with you, and, as you have to work for your living, and cannot be guarded like other girls, you have all the more need to be circumspect. You don’t think me over strict, do you, darlings?”
“No, dear mother, you are perfectly right,” returned Nan, kissing her. “I knew how you would feel, and so we came home directly to get rid of him: it would never do for the vicar of the parish to be seen walking about with dressmakers.”
“Don’t, Nan!” exclaimed Phillis, with a shudder. Nevertheless, as she turned away she remembered how she had enjoyed that walk down the Braidwood Road that very morning, when he offered to carry home Mrs. Trimmings’s dress and she would not let him.
CHAPTER XXV.MATTIE’S NEW DRESS.
The remainder of the week passed harmlessly and without any special event to mark it, and, thanks to Nan’s skilful management and Phillis’s pride, there were no furthercontretempsto shock Mrs. Challoner’s sense of propriety. The work progressed with astonishing rapidity: in the mornings the young dressmakers were sufficiently brisk and full of zeal, and in the afternoons, when their energies flagged and their fingers grew weary, Dulce would sing over her task, or Mrs. Challoner would read to them for the hour together; but, notwithstanding the interest of the tale, there was always great alacrity manifested when the tea-bell gave them the excuse for putting away their work.
On one or two evenings they gardened, and Mrs. Challoner sat under the mulberry-tree and watched them; on another occasion they took a long country walk, and lost themselves, and came back merry and tired, and laden with primrose-roots and ferns: they had met no one, except a stray laborer,—had seen glow-worms, picked wild flowers, and declared themselves182mightily refreshed. One evening Phillis, who was not to be repressed, contrived a new amusement.
“Life is either a mill-pond or a whirlpool,” she said, rather sententiously: “we have been stagnant for three days, and I begin to feel flat. Races are tabooed: besides, we cannot always leave mother alone. I propose we go out in the garden and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock;” for this had been a winter pastime with them at the cottage.
Nan, who was always rather sober-minded now, demurred to this. She would have preferred gardening a little, or sitting quietly with her mother under the mulberry-tree; but Phillis, who was in a wild mood, overruled all her objections, and by and by the battle began, and the shuttlecocks flew through the air.
The week’s work was finished, and the three dresses lay in their wrappers, waiting for Dorothy to convey them to their several owners. Nan who was really anartisteat heart, had called her mother proudly into the room to admire the result of their labors. Mrs. Challoner was far too accustomed to her daughter’s skilfulness to testify any surprise, but she at once pronounced Miss Drummond’s dress thechef-d’œuvre. Nan’s taste was faultless; and the trimmings she had selected harmonized so well with the soft tints of the silk.
“They are all very nice; and Mrs. Trimmings will be charmed with her blue silk,” observed Mrs. Challoner, trying to throw a little interest into her voice, and to suppress a sigh; and then she helped Nan to adjust the wrappers, and to pin the neatly-written bills inside each.
“I am sure that is business-like,” said Nan, with a satisfied nod, for she never could do anything by halves; and she was so interested in her work that she would have been heart-broken if she thought one of the dresses would be a misfit; and then it was that Phillis, who had been watching her very closely, brightened up and proposed a game.
It was a very pretty sight, the mother thought, as she followed her girls’ movements; the young figures swayed so gracefully as they skimmed hither and thither over the lawn with light butterfly movements, the three eager faces upturned in the evening light, their heads held well back.
“Two hundred, two hundred and one, two hundred and two—don’t let it drop, Dulce!” panted Phillis, breathlessly.
“Oh, my darlings, don’t tire yourselves!” exclaimed Mrs. Challoner, as her eyes followed the white flutter of the shuttlecocks.
This was the picture that Mr. Drummond surveyed. Dorothy, who was just starting on her round, and was in no mood for her errand, had admitted him somewhat churlishly.
“Yes, the mistress and the young ladies were in; and would he step into the parlor, as her hands were full?”
“Oh, yes, I know the way,” Mr. Drummond had returned, quite undaunted by the old woman’s sour looks.183
But the parlor was empty, save for Laddie, who had been shut up there not to spoil sport, and who was whining most piteously to be let out. He saluted Archie with a joyous bark, and commenced licking his boots and wagging his tail with mute petition to be released from this durance vile.
Archie patted and fondled him, for he was good to all dumb creatures.
“Poor little fellow! I wonder why they have shut you up here?” he said; and then he took him up in his arms, and stepped to the window to reconnoitre.
And then he stood and looked, perfectly fascinated by the novel sight. His sisters played battledore and shuttlecock in the school-room sometimes, or out in the passages on a winter’s afternoon. He had once caught Susie and Clara at it, and had laughed at them in no measured terms for indulging in such a babyish game. “I should have thought Dottie might have played at that,” he had said, rather contemptuously. “I suppose you indulge in skipping-ropes sometimes.” And the poor girls had paused in their game, feeling ashamed of themselves. Archie would think them such hoydens.
He remembered his reprimand with a strange feeling of compunction, as he stood by the window trying vainly to elude Laddie’s caresses. What a shame of him to have spoiled those poor children’s game with his sneer, when they had so little fun in their lives! and yet, as he recalled Clara’s clumsy gestures and Susie’s short-sighted attempts, he was obliged to confess that battledore and shuttlecock wore a different aspect now. Could anything surpass Phillis’s swift-handed movements, brisk, graceful, alert, or Nan’s attitude, as she sustained the duel? Dulce, who seemed dodging in between them in a most eccentric way, had her hair loose as usual, curling in brown lengths about her shoulders. She held it with one hand, as she poised her battledore with the other. This time Archie thought of Nausicaa and her maidens tossing the ball beside the river, after washing the wedding-garments. Was it in this way the young dressmakers disported themselves during the evenings?
It was Phillis who first discovered the intruder. The shuttlecocks had become entangled, and fallen to the ground. As she stooped to pick them up, her quick eyes detected a coat-sleeve at the window; and an indefinable instinct, for she could not see his face, made her call out,—
“Mother, Mr. Drummond is in the parlor. Do go to him, while Dulce puts up her hair.” And then she said, severely, “I always tell you not to wear your hair like that, Dulce. Look at Nan and me; we are quite unruffled; but yours is always coming down. If you have pretty hair, you need not call people’s attention to it in this way.” At which speech Dulce tossed her head and ran away, too much offended to answer.
When Archie saw Mrs. Challoner crossing the lawn with the184gait of a queen, he knew he was discovered: so he opened the window, and stepped out in the coolest possible way.
“I seem always spoiling sport,” he said, with a mischievous glance at Phillis, which she received with outward coolness and an inward twinge. “Bravo, Atalanta!” sounded in her ears again. “Your maid invited me in; but I did not care to disturb you.”
“I am glad you did not open the window before,” returned Nan, speaking with that directness and fine simplicity that always put things to rights at once: “it would have startled us before we got to the five hundred, and then Phillis would have been disappointed. Mother, shall we bring out some more chairs instead of going into the parlor? It is so much pleasanter out here.” And as Mrs. Challoner assented, they were soon comfortably established on the tiny lawn; and Archie, very much at his ease, and feeling himself unaccountably happy, proceeded to deliver some trifling message from his sister, that was his ostensible reason for his intrusion.
“Why does she not deliver her messages herself?” thought Phillis; but she kept this remark to herself. Only, that evening she watched the young clergyman a little closely, as though he puzzled her. Phillis was the man of the family; and it was she who always stood upon guard if Nan or Dulce needed a sentinel. She was beginning to think Mr. Drummond came very often to see them, considering their short acquaintance. If it were Miss Mattie, now, who ran in and out with little offerings of flowers and fruit in a nice neighborly fashion! But for this very dignified young man to burden himself with these slight feminine messages,—a question about new-laid eggs, which even Nan had forgotten.
Phillis was quite glad when her mother said,—
“You ought to have brought your sister, Mr. Drummond: she must be so dull all alone,”—forgetting all about the dressmaking, poor soul! but Phillis remembered it a moment afterwards, with a rush of bitter feeling.
Perhaps, after all, that was why he came in so often, because he was so sorry for them, and wished to help them, as he said. A clergyman has more privileges than other men: perhaps she was wrong to suspect him. He might not wish his sister to visit them, except in a purely business-like way; but with him it was different. Most likely he had tea with Mrs. Trimmings sometimes, just to show he was not proud; he might even sit and chat with Mrs. Squails, and not feel compromised in the least. Oh, yes! how stupid she was to think he admired Nan, because she had intercepted a certain glance! That was her mania, thinking every one must be after Nan. Things were different now.
Of course he would be their only link with civilized society,—the only cultivated mind with which they could hold converse; and here Phillis ceased to curl her lip, and her gray eyes185took a sombre shade, and she sighed so audibly that Archie broke off an interesting discussion on last Commemoration, and looked at her in unfeigned surprise.
“Oh, yes! we were there,” returned Nan, innocently, who loved to talk of those dear old times; “and we were at thefêteat Oriel, and at the concert at Magdalen also. Ah! do you remember, Dulce?” And then she faltered a little, and flushed,—not because Mr. Drummond was looking at her so intently but at certain thoughts that began to intrude themselves, which entwined themselves with the moonlighted cloisters.
“I was to have been there too, only at the last moment I was prevented,” replied Archie; but his tone was inexplicable to the girl, it was at once so regretful and awe-struck. Good heavens! if he had met them, and been introduced to them in proper form! They had mentioned a Mr. Hamilton: well, Hamilton had been a pupil of his; he had coached him during a term. “You know Hamilton?” he had said, staring at her; and then he wondered what Hamilton would say if he came down to stay with him next vacation.
These reflections made him rather absent; and even when he took his leave, which was not until the falling dews and the glimmer of a late dusk drove Mrs. Challoner into the house, these thoughts still pursued him. Nothing else seemed to have taken so strong a hold on him as this.
“Good heavens!” he kept repeating to himself, “to think that the merest chance—just the incidental business of a friend—prevented me from occupying my old rooms during Commemoration! to think I might have met them in company with Hamilton and the other fellows!”
The sudden sense of disappointment, of something lost and irremediable in his life, of wasted opportunities, of denied pleasure, came over the young man’s mind. He could not have danced with Nan at the University ball, it is true: clergymen, according to his creed, must not dance. But there was thefêteat Oriel, and the Magdalen concert, and the Long Walk in the Christchurch meadows, and doubtless other opportunities.
He never asked himself if these girls would have interested him so much if he had met them first in ordinary society: from the very first moment they had attracted him strangely. Had he only known them a fortnight? Good heavens! it seemed months, years, a lifetime! These revolutions of mind are not to be measured by time. It had come to this that the late fellow of Oriel, so aristocratic in his tastes, so temperate in his likings, had entered certain devious paths, where hidden pitfalls and thorny enclosures warn the unwary traveller of unknown dangers, and in which he was walking, not blindfold, but by strongest will and intent, led by impulse like a mere boy, and not daring to raise his eyes to the future. “And what Grace would have said!” And for the first time in his life Archie felt that in this case he could not ask Grace’s advice. He was186loath to turn in at his own gate; but Mattie was standing there watching for him. She ran out into the road to meet him, and then he could see there were letters in her hand.
“Oh, dear, Archie, I thought you were never coming home!” she exclaimed. “And I have such news to tell you! There is a letter for you from Grace, and mother has written to me; and there is a note from Isabel inside, and she is engaged—really and truly engaged—to Mr. Ellis Burton; and the wedding is to be in six weeks, and you and I are to go down to it, and—oh, dear––” Here Mattie broke down, and began to sob with excitement and pleasure and the longing for sympathy.
“Well, well, there is nothing to cry about!” returned Archie, roughly; and then his manner changed and softened in spite of himself; for after all, Isabel was his sister, and this was the first wedding in the family, and he could not hear such a piece of news unmoved. “Let me hear all about it,” he said, by and by; and then he took poor hysterical little Mattie into the house, and gave her some wine, and was very kind to her, and listened to his mother’s letter and Isabel’s gushing effusion without a single sneer. “Poor little Belle; she does seem very happy!” he said, quite affectionately, as he turned up the lamp still more, and began Grace’s letter.
Mattie sat and gazed at him in a sort of ecstasy; but she did not venture to ask him to read it to her. How nice he was to-night, and how handsome he looked! there never was such a brother as Archie. But suddenly, as though he was conscious of being watched, he sat down by the table, and shaded his face with his hand.
No, Mattie, was right in her surmise: he would not have cared to show that letter to any one.
The first sheet was all about Isabel. “Dear little Isabel has just left me,” wrote Grace. “The child looks so pretty in her new happiness, you would hardly know her. She has just been showing me the magnificent hoop of diamonds Ellis has given her. She says we must all call him Ellis now. ‘Chacun a son gout:’ Poor Ellis is not very brilliant, certainly: I remember we used to call him clownish and uncultivated. But he has a good heart, and he is really very fond of Isabel; and as she is satisfied, I suppose we need not doubt the wisdom of her choice. Mother is radiant, and makes so much of the little bride-elect that she declares her head is quite turned. The house is quite topsy-turvy with the excitement of this first wedding in the family. Isabel is very young to be married, and I tell mother six weeks is far too short for an engagement; but it seems Ellis will not listen to reason, and he has talked mother over. Perhaps I am rather fastidious, but, if I were Isabel, I should hate to receive my trousseau from my lover; and yet Ellis wants his mother to get everything for hisfiancee. I believe there is to be a sort of compromise, and Mrs. Burton is to select heaps of pretty things,—dresses and mantles and Paris bonnets. They187are rolling in riches. Ellis has taken a large house in Sloane Square, and his father has bought him a landau and a splendid pair of horses; everything—furniture, plate and ornaments—is to be as massive and expensive as possible. If I were Isabel I should feel smothered by all these grand things but the little lady takes it all quite coolly.
“When I get a moment to myself I sit down and say, ‘In six weeks I shall see Archie!’ Oh, my darling! this is almost too good news to be true! Only six weeks, and then I shall really see you! Now do you know, I am longing for a good clearing-up talk? for your letters lately have not satisfied me at all. Perhaps I am growing fanciful, but I cannot help feeling as though something has come between us. The current of sympathy seems turned aside, somehow. No, do not laugh, or put me off with a jest, for I am really in earnest; and but for fear of your scolding me I should own to being just a little unhappy. Forgive me, Archie, if I vex you; but there is something, I am thoroughly convinced of that. You have some new interest or worry that you are keeping from me. Is this quite in accordance with our old compact, dear? Who are these Challoners Mattie mentions in her letters? She told me a strange rigmarole about them the other day,—that they were young ladies who had turned dressmakers. What an eccentric idea! They must be very odd young ladies, I should think, to emancipate themselves so completely from all conventionalities. I wish they had not established themselves at Hadleigh and so near the vicarage. Mattie says you are so kind to them. Oh, Archie! dear brother! do be careful! I do not half like the idea of these girls; they sound rash and designing, and you are so chivalrous in your notions. Why not let Mattie be kind to them instead of you? In a parish like Hadleigh you need to be careful. Mother is calling me, so I will just close this with my fondest love.
“Grace.”
Archie threw down the letter with a frown. For the first time he was annoyed with Grace.
Nan and her sisters rash and designing! “Odd young ladies”! She was sorry they had established themselves at Hadleigh! It was really too bad of Grace to condemn them in this fashion. But of course it must be Mattie’s fault: she had written a pack of nonsense, exaggerating things as much as possible.
Poor Mattie would have had to bear the brunt of his wrath as usual, only, as he turned to her with the frown black on his forehead, his eyes caught sight of her dress. Hitherto the room had been very dimly lighted; but now, as he looked at her in the soft lamplight, his anger vanished in amazement.
“Why, Mattie, what have you done to yourself? We are not expecting company this evening: it is nearly ten o’clock.”
Mattie blushed and laughed, and then she actually bridled with pleasure:188
“Oh, no, Archie; of course not. I only put on my new dress just to see how it would fit; and then I thought you might like to see it. It is the one uncle gave me; and is it not beautifully made? I am sure Mrs. Cheyne’s dresses never fit better. You and Grace may say what you like about the Challoners, but if they can make dresses like this, it would be tempting Providence not to use such a talent, and just because they were too fine ladies to work.”
“I do believe you are right, Mattie,” returned Archie, in a low voice. “Turn round and let me look at you, girl. Do you mean—that she—that they made that?”
Mattie nodded as she slowly pivoted on one foot, and then revolved like the figures one used to see on old-fashioned barrel-organs; then, as she stood still, she panted out the words,—
“Is it not just lovely, Archie?” for in all the thirty years of her unassuming life Mattie had never had such a dress, so no wonder her head was a little turned.
“Yes, indeed; I like it excessively,” was Archie’s comment; and then he added, with the delicious frankness common to brothers, “It makes you look quite a different person, Mattie: you are almost nice-looking to-night.”
“Oh, thank you, dear!” cried poor Mattie, quite moved by this compliment; for if Archie thought her almost nice-looking he must be pleased with her. Indeed, she even ventured to raise herself on tiptoe and kiss him in gratitude, which was taking a great liberty; only Archie bore it for once.
“She really looked very well, poor little woman!” thought Archie, when Mattie had at last exhausted her raptures and bidden him good-night. “She would not be half so bad-looking if some one would take her in hand and dress her properly. The women must be right, after all, and there is a power in dress. Those girls do nothing by halves,” he continued, walking up and down the room. “I would not have believed they had made it, if Mattie had not told me. ‘Rash and designing,’ indeed! just because they are not like other girls,—because they are more natural, more industrious, more courageous, more religious in fact.” And then the young clergyman softly quoted to himself the words of the wise old king, words that Nan and her sisters had ever loved and sought to practise:
“Whatsoever thy hands findeth to do, do it with thy might.”