CHAPTER II.
“Forsome moments the silence threatens to remain unbroken between us; for some moments the subdued sound of father’s and mother’s talk from among the rosebeds and the piercing clamour of the canaries—fish-wives among birds—are the only noises that salute our ears. Noise we make none ourselves. My eyes are reading the muddled pattern of the Turkey carpet; I do not know what his are doing. Small knowledge have I had of men saving the dancing-master at our school; a beautiful new youth is almost as great a novelty to me as to Miranda, and I ama good deal gawkier than she was under the new experience. I think he must have made a vow that he would not speak first. I feel myself swelling to double my normal size with confusion and heat; at last, in desperation, I look up, and say sententiously, ‘You have been wounded, I believe?’
“‘Yes, I have.’
“He might have helped me by answering more at large, might not he? But now that I am having a good look at him, I see that he is rather red too. Perhaps he also feels gawky and swollen; the idea encourages me.
“‘Did it hurt very badly?’
“‘N—not so very much.’
“‘I should have thought that you ought to have been in bed,’ say I, with a motherly air of solicitude.
“‘Should you, why?’
“‘I thought that when people broke theirlimbs they had to stay in bed till they were mended again.’
“‘But mine was broken a week ago,’ he answers, smiling and showing his straight white teeth—ah, the miniature was silent aboutthem! ‘You would not have had me stay in bed a whole week like an old woman?’
“‘I expected to have seen you muchiller,’ say I, beginning to feel more at my ease, and with a sensible diminution of that unpleasant swelling sensation. ‘Father said in his note that we were to nurse you well again; that sounded as if you werequiteill.’
“‘Your father always takes a great deal too much care of me,’ he says, with a slight frown and darkening of his whole bright face. ‘I might be sugar or salt.’
“‘And very kind of him, too,’ I cry, firing up. ‘What motive beside your own good can he have for looking after you? I call you rather ungrateful.’
“‘Do you?’ he says calmly, and without apparent resentment. ‘But you are mistaken. I am not ungrateful. However, naturally, you do not understand.’
“‘Oh, indeed!’ reply I, speaking rather shortly, and feeling a little offended, ‘I daresay not.’
“Our talk is taking a somewhat hostile tone; to what further amenities we might have proceeded is unknown; for at this point father and mother reappear through the window, and the necessity of conversing with each other at all ceases.
“Father staid till evening, and we all supped together, and I was called upon to sit by Bobby, and cut up his food for him, as he was disabled from doing it for himself. Then, later still, when the sun had set, and all his evening reds and purples had followed him, when the night flowers were scenting all the garden, and the shadows lay about, enormouslylong in the summer moonlight, father got into the post-chaise again, and drove away through the black shadows and the faint clear shine, and Bobby stood at the hall-door watching him, with his arm in a sling and a wistful smile on lips and eyes.
“‘Well, we are not leftquitedesolate this time,’ says mother, turning with rather tearful laughter to the young man. ‘You wish that we were, do not you, Bobby?’
“‘You would not believe me, if I answered “No,” would you?’ he asks, with the same still smile.
“‘He is not very polite to us, is he, Phœbe?’
“‘You would not wish me to be polite in such a case,’ he replies, flushing. ‘You would not wish me to begladat missing the chance of seeing any of the fun?’
“But Mr. Gerard’s eagerness to be back at his post delays the probability of his being able to return thither. The next day he hasa feverish attack, the day after he is worse; the day after that worse still, and in fine, it is between a fortnight and three weeks before he also is able to get into a post-chaise and drive away to Plymouth. And meanwhile mother and I nurse him and cosset him, and make him odd and cool drinks out of herbs and field-flowers, whose uses are now disdained or forgotten. I do not mean any offence to you, my dear, but I think that young girls in those days were less squeamish and more truly delicate than they are nowadays. I remember once I read ‘Humphrey Clinker’ aloud to my father, and we both highly relished and laughed over its jokes; but I should not have understood one of the darkly unclean allusions in that French book your brother left here one day.Youwould think it very unseemly to enter the bedroom of a strange young man, sick or well; but as for me, I spent whole nights in Bobby’s,watching him and tending him with as little false shame as if he had been my brother. I can hearnow, more plainly than the song you sang me an hour ago, the slumberous buzzing of the great brown-coated summer bees in his still room, as I sat by his bedside watching his sleeping face, as he dreamt unquietly, and clenched, and again unclenched, his nervous hands. I think he was back in theThunderer. I can seenowthe little close curls of his sunshiny hair straggling over the white pillow. And then there came a good and blessed day, when he was out of danger, and then another, a little further on, when he was up and dressed, and he and I walked forth into the hayfield beyond the garden—reversing the order of things—he, leaning onmyarm; and a good plump solid arm it was. We walked out under the heavy-leaved horse-chestnut trees, and the old and rough-barked elms. The sun was shining allthis time, as it seems to me. I do not believe that in those old days there were the same cold unseasonable rains as now; there were soft showers enough to keep the grass green and the flowers undrooped; but I have no association of overcast skies and untimely deluges with those long and azure days. We sat under a haycock, on the shady side, and indolently watched the hot haymakers—the shirt-sleeved men, and burnt and bare-armed women, tossing and raking; while we breathed the blessed country air, full of adorable scents, and crowded with little happy and pretty-winged insects.
“‘In three days,’ says Bobby, leaning his elbow in the hay, and speaking with an eager smile, ‘three days at the furthest, I may go back again; may not I, Phœbe?’
“‘Without doubt,’ reply I, stiffly, pulling a dry and faded ox-eye flower out of the odorous mound beside me; ‘for my part, I do not seewhy you should not go to-morrow, or indeed—if we could send into Plymouth for a chaise—this afternoon; you are so thin that you look all mouth and eyes, and you can hardly stand, without assistance, but these, of course, are trifling drawbacks, and I daresay would be rather an advantage on board ship than otherwise.’
“‘You are angry!’ he says, with a sort of laugh in his deep eyes. ‘You look even prettier when you are angry than when you are pleased.’
“‘It is no question of my looks,’ I say, still in some heat, though mollified by the irrelevant compliment.
“‘For the second time you are thinking me ungrateful,’ he says, gravely; ‘you do not tell me so in so many words, because it is towards yourself that my ingratitude is shown; the first time you told me of it it was almost the first thing that you ever said to me.’
“‘So it was,’ I answer quickly; ‘and if the occasion were to come over again, I should say it again. I daresay you did not mean it, but it sounded exactly as if you were complaining of my father for being too careful of you.’
“‘Heistoo careful of me!’ cries the young man, with a hot flushing of cheek and brow. ‘I cannot help it if it make you angry again; Imustsay it, he is more careful of me than he would be of his own son, if he had one.’
“‘Did not he promise your mother that he would look after you?’ ask I eagerly. ‘When people make promises to people on their death-beds they are in no hurry to break them; at least, such people as father are not.’
“‘You do not understand,’ he says, a little impatiently, while that hot flush still dwells on his pale cheek; ‘my mother was the last person in the world to wish him to take care of my body at the expense of my honour.’
“‘What are you talking about?’ I say, looking at him with a lurking suspicion that, despite the steady light of reason in his blue eyes, he is still labouring under some form of delirium.
“‘Unless I tell you all my grievance, I see that you will never comprehend,’ he says sighing. ‘Well, listen to me and you shall hear it, and if you do not agree with me, when I have done, you are not the kind of girl I take you for.’
“‘Then I am sure I am not the kind of girl you take me for,’ reply I, with a laugh; ‘for I am fully determined to disagree with you entirely.’
“‘You know,’ he says, raising himself a little from his hay couch and speaking with clear rapidity, ‘that whenever we take a French prize a lot of the French sailors are ironed, and the vessel is sent into port, in the charge of one officer and several men; there issome slight risk attending it—for my part, I thinkveryslight—but I suppose that your father looks at it differently, for—I have never been sent.’
“‘It is accident,’ say I, reassuringly; ‘your turn will come in good time.’
“‘It isnotaccident!’ he answers, firmly. ‘Boys younger than I am—much less trustworthy, and of whom he has not half the opinion that he has of me—have been sent, butI,never. I bore it as well as I could for a long time, but now I can bear it no longer; it is not, I assure you, my fancy; but I can see that my brother officers, knowing how partial your father is to me—what influence I have with him in many things—conclude that my not being sent is my own choice; in short, that I am—afraid.’ (His voice sinks with a disgusted and shamed intonation at the last word.) ‘Now—I have told you the sober facts—look me in the face’ (putting his handwith boyish familiarity under my chin, and turning round my curls, my features, and the front view of my big comb towards him), ‘and tell me whether you agree with me, as I said you would, or not—whether it is not cruel kindness on his part to make me keep a whole skin on such terms?’
“I look him in the face for a moment, trying to say that I do not agree with him, but it is more than I can manage. ‘You were right,’ I say, turning my head away, ‘Idoagree with you; I wish to heaven that I could honestly say that I did not.’
“‘Since you do then,’ he cries excitedly—‘Phœbe! I knew you would, I knew you better than you knew yourself—I have a favour to ask of you, agreatfavour, and one that will keep me all my life in debt to you.’
“‘What is it?’ ask I, with a sinking heart.
“‘Your father is very fond of you——’
“‘I know it,’ I answer curtly.
“‘Anything that you asked, and that was within the bounds of possibility, he would do,’ he continues, with eager gravity. ‘Well, this is what I ask of you: to write him a line, and let me take it, when I go, asking him to send me home in the next prize.’
“Silence for a moment, only the haymakers laughing over their rakes. ‘And if,’ say I, with a trembling voice, ‘you lose your life in this service, you will have to thank me for it; I shall have your death on my head all through my life.’
“‘The danger is infinitesimal, as I told you before,’ he says, impatiently; ‘and even if it were greater than it is—well, life is a good thing, very good, but there are better things, and even if I come to grief, which is most unlikely, there are plenty of men as good as—better than—I, to step into my place.’
“‘It will be small consolation to the people who are fond of you that some one better thanyou is alive, though you are dead,’ I say, tearfully.
“‘But I do not mean to be dead,’ he says, with a cheery laugh. ‘Why are you so determined on killing me? I mean to live to be an admiral. Why should not I?’
“‘Why indeed?’ say I, with a feeble echo of his cheerful mirth, and feeling rather ashamed of my tears.
“‘And meanwhile you will write?’ he says with an eager return to the charge; ‘andsoon?Do not look angry and pouting, as you did just now, but Imustgo! What is there to hinder me? I am getting up my strength as fast as it is possible for any human creature to do, and just think how I should feel if they were to come in for something really good while I am away.’
“So I wrote.