CHAPTER XXXI.
‘My love is like the sky—As distant and as high.Perchance she’s fair and kind and bright,Perchance she’s stormy, tearful quite—Alas! I scarce know why.’
‘My love is like the sky—As distant and as high.Perchance she’s fair and kind and bright,Perchance she’s stormy, tearful quite—Alas! I scarce know why.’
‘My love is like the sky—As distant and as high.Perchance she’s fair and kind and bright,Perchance she’s stormy, tearful quite—Alas! I scarce know why.’
‘My love is like the sky—
As distant and as high.
Perchance she’s fair and kind and bright,
Perchance she’s stormy, tearful quite—
Alas! I scarce know why.’
‘Is this Susan?’
Crosby, standing at the little gate leading into the Rectory garden, feels a spasm of doubt. He has come down this morning to make it up with her, as the children say, after that slight quarrel of yester eve—a quarrel that was all on her side. Her remorseless refusal to bid him good-bye had left him a little desolate.
Is that really the sedate Susan, that slender nymph flying over there in the distance—racing, rather—with Tommy, as a willing prey, running before her?
Crosby has, through time, grown accustomed to think of Susan as a demure maiden, slightly Puritan in type, though no doubt with a latent wilfulness lying beneath the calm exterior. But now that the latent wilfulness has broken loose, he finds himself unprepared for it. Susan running there in the sunshine, with her hair, apparently just out of the tub and hardly yet dry, floating behind her, is another creature altogether. And such hair, too! Such glorious waves on waves glinting golden in the sun’s bright rays, with Susan’s face peeping out of it now and then. How wild, how mad, how soft, the bright hair looks, and how sweet are the ringing cries that come from Susan’s parted lips!
‘The bear has you, Tommy. He’s coming. He’—making a dab at the excited Tommy—‘will have you soon. In another moment he’ll be on you, tearing you—’ Quite a sprint here on the part of Tommy, and increased speed accordingly on Susan’s part. ‘And his claws are sharp—sharp!’
Tommy, in his flight, turns terrified eyes on Susan over his shoulder.
‘Oh, Susan, don’t, don’t!’ shrieks he, filled with joy and terror. The terror constitutes three-fourths of the joy. And now he flies again for his life, the deadly bear, the ruthless pursuer, dashing after him with relentless energy.
Crosby, watching, tells himself, with a somewhat grim smile, that it is Tommy alone who would flee from such a delightful enemy. Perhaps his thoughts are touched with a tinge of disappointment at finding Susan in this mad mood. Yesterday she had seemed to him angered and disturbed when she left him so abruptly; and he had gone home with a growing sense of contrition strong upon him. It had been strong enough to bring him down this morning with half a dozen apologies, to find that she has forgotten all about this offence and—him.
Here lies the real sting. The Susan he had imagined as being a little out of joint with her world—just a very little daintilyoffended with him—is not the Susan who is here now, and who is running round the garden in merry pursuit of her little brother, with her eyes gleaming like diamonds, and evidently as gay as a lark.
She is close on Tommy now. She has put out a hand to grasp him, but Tommy is full of enterprise, doubles like a hare, and is now rushing frantically towards the gate on which Crosby is leaning.
This brings Susan, who is still in hot pursuit of him, with her face towards Crosby. Now more distinctly he can see her. What a lovely, perfect child she is, with her loose hair floating behind her, like that of the immortal ‘Damosel,’ and the little soft gasping laughs coming from her open lips!Joie de vivreis written in every line of her face and every curve of her lissom body.
All at once, even as he watches her, this joy dies out of her face. ‘She has seen me,’ says Crosby to himself; and forthwith he opens the gate and advances towards her. Tommy, in his race, has reached him, andnow, breathless, flings himself into his arms, turning to look, with affected fright, at the coming of Susan.
It is a very slow coming, and has evidently something to do with her hair—as can be seen through the branches of a big escallonia on Crosby’s left. He determines to give her time to struggle with that beautiful hair. ‘Tommy, you ought to fall on the gravel and embrace your preserver’s knees,’ says he. ‘I have evidently saved you from an untimely death, if all I heard was true. I think, however, that you might have warned me that bears were about.’
He is quite conscious, whilst speaking, that Susan is still making frantic, but ineffectual, efforts to do up her hair; so he goes on.
‘Where’s your particular bear?’ asks he.
‘Here,’ says Susan, as she steps in the most unexpected fashion from behind the tree. He can see that she is greatly disconcerted, and that she would never have come from behind it if remaining there was any longer possible. But she had seenand heard him, as he had seen and heard her.
She advances now, her expression cold and unkindly, and her hands still struggling with her hair, in her desire to reduce it to some sort of reason.
‘Why trouble yourself about it?’ says Crosby. ‘It is the prettiest thing I ever saw as it is.’
‘It is not pretty to me,’ says Susan crushingly. Her arms are still above her head, and, as she speaks to him, she weaves into a superb coil the loose strands of her soft hair. In spite of this, however, the little locks around her brows, loosened and softened by the late washing, are straying wildly, flying here and there of their own sweet will, and making an aureole round Susan’s head, out of which her eyes gleam at Crosby with anything but friendship in them.
‘How d’ye do?’ says he blandly.
‘How d’ye do?’ says Susan in return. She lets her hand rest in his for the barest moment, then withdraws it.
Crosby regards her reproachfully. ‘You are angry with me still,’ says he. ‘And after a whole night of reflection.’
‘I am not angry at all,’ says Susan. ‘Why should you think so?’
‘Yes, you are,’ says Crosby. ‘I can see it in your eyes. Your very hair is bristly. And all because—’ He stops, as if afraid to go on.
‘Because what?’ asks Susan, with a touch of severity.
‘Because I once got sixpence out of you!’ He is not able to resist it.
‘Tommy,’ says Susan, ‘your collar is dirty, and you must come back to the house with me to get another.’ As she speaks she catches Tommy, who has not yet got to the years of civilization, and who hates clean collars, and prepares to march him off.
‘Tommy,’ says Mr. Crosby, ‘wait a minute; your sister won’t, but perhaps you will. There is a photographer in town to-day; he has come down from Dublin. And your aunt says she would like to have some of youphotographed.’ Here there is a distinct slowing in Susan’s march past, though she disdains to turn her head, or show further mark of interest. ‘Don’t you want to be photographed, Tommy? I do, badly.’
‘What is it?’ asks Tommy, whose views of amusement as a rule mean lollipops, and those only, and who has no knowledge of cameras or kodaks.
‘It’s painful, as a rule,’ says Crosby. ‘But children seldom suffer. It’s only people of my age who come out with their noses twisted. Did you ever have your nose twisted, Tommy? It hurts awfully, I can tell you. But’—with a glance at Susan—‘other things hurt worse. You ought to speak to Susan, Tommy—to tell her that prolonged cruelty sometimes ends in the death of the victim.’
At this Susan faces round. ‘What I think is,’ says she, ‘that you ought to give me back that horrid sixpence.’
‘It isn’t horrid.’
‘You should give it back, at all events.’
‘Oh, Susan, anything but that—my life even.’
‘What’—with mounting indignation—‘can you want it for, except to annoy me?’
‘Is thy servant a slave? I want it as a memento of the only occasion on record on which I was called a “kind, kind man,” and a “good” and an “honest” one besides. You did call me all that, Susan. And yet, now—’
Heaven alone knows what would have been the end of all this, but for the providential appearance of Miss Barry and Betty upon the scene.
‘My dear Susan, have you heard? But, of course, Mr. Crosby has told you. Good gracious! what is the matter with your head, child?’
And, indeed, Susan’s hair has again found freedom, and is flowing down her back in happy, shining waves.
‘I have just washed it,’ says Susan shamefacedly.
‘An admirable deed,’ says Miss Barry, whois in too great a state of delight to lecture with her usual fluency, and who, indeed, feels inclined to be lenient. ‘But you should not come into publicity, my dear child, until it is dry and carefully dressed again. However’—beaming upon Crosby, who begins to quite like her—‘youth will be youth, you know. And what do you think, Susan? There is a man down from the best photographer’s in Dublin—from Chancellor’s, I believe. And I am thinking of having our pictures taken, if only to send some copies to your uncle in Australia—my brother, you know, my dear. He will be so pleased to get them; and, really, it is a grand opportunity. Of course, you, Mr. Crosby, have had yours taken in every quarter of the globe, but we country mice seldom get the chance of seeing ourselves as others see us.’
‘I haven’t been photographed for quite ten years,’ says Crosby, ‘and I feel now as if it were my duty to sit again. Miss Barry, if you are going to be photographed to-day, will you take me under your wing?’
‘I shall be pleased indeed,’ says Miss Barry, with much dignity.
‘Won’t it be fun!’ cries Betty, clapping her hands.
‘And the hour?’ asks Crosby.
‘About two. What do you think, Susan? Two would be a good hour, eh?’
‘Yes, a good hour,’ says Susan, without interest. Then, suddenly: ‘Is—are you going to have Bonnie taken?’
‘My dear Susan’—Miss Barry flushes the dull pink of the old when shamed—‘why should we send all our pictures to your uncle at once? It—it would probably confuse him. Another time we may think of that,’ says Miss Barry, who has counted up all her available shillings this morning, to see if it would be possible to send all the children, but had found they fell decidedly short. She would have died, however, rather than confess this to a stranger. ‘Just mine and yours, and—but I am afraid your father will never consent to be taken—and Betty’s and Carew’s—just the eldest ones. You can see, Mr.Crosby, that just the eldest ones will be those most acceptable to their uncle.’
‘Yes, I see,’ says Crosby. He has seen it all, indeed. As if in a dream, Miss Barry’s purse has been laid open to him and the contents made bare. The two shillings for herself, and the two for Susan, and for Betty, and for Carew—eight shillings in all—and after that nothing. He has seen, too, the pride of the poor lady, who would not acknowledge the want of means wherewith to provide photos of the younger children for their uncle abroad, but put her objection to their being taken on the grounds of their youth. He has seen, too, Susan’s face as she hears that Bonnie is not to be taken. Oh, the quick, pained disappointment of it!
‘At two, then,’ says he, ‘we shall meet at the photographer’s.’
‘Yes; two sharp,’ says Miss Barry, who seems quite excited. ‘Susan, I think I shall wear my new lace cap.’
‘I think you ought to wear your hair just as it is now,’ says Crosby to Susan in a lowtone, as he bids her good-bye. It is impossible for her to refuse him her hand with her aunt looking on; and though Crosby is aware of this, it is to his shame, I confess, that he takes it and holds it in a warm clasp before he lets it go.