Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Seed Time/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion."
My last little escapade has cost me dear. Not only have I been condemned to a week's imprisonment in the house and grounds, but the edict has gone forth that I shall be sent to school without loss of time. I have long ago wept my eyes dry. I do not think that I shall ever be able to cry any more, not even when I find myself set down in the midst of a crowd of nasty, spiteful, odious, chattering girls; if there were a few boys I would not mind, but to have nothing but petticoat company for five months, will, I am certain, drive me mad. If Dolly were coming, even, it would not be so bad, we could at least hold together and talk about home; I should not be so miserably lonely then; but no such luck, Amberley is still good for another two years' cultivation of that pretty little person's mind. How I shall hate the needlework and the bread and butter, and the making my own bed every morning! and oh! how I shall have to mend my manners and revise my vocabulary! Remarks that are merely spicy among ourselves may be regarded by a schoolmistress in a different light, and our freedom and ease of invective and retort be considered immoral.
Everybody is out this evening, papa and all, and I have not a soul to speak to but Paul Pry, who does not understand if I do talk to him. I cannot even make myself of use by playing gooseberry. How Alice will miss me when I am gone! The ghost of a tear comes into my eye at this touching thought (which is after all nothing but that pitié de soi-même that is at once so pitiful and so natural). They cannot choose but miss me, though, I befear me, the cause of my being so regretted will be but selfish. Love on, poor lovers! By Christmas your billings and cooings will be over, and you, Mr. Charles, will be sent to the right-about. How the governor's patience has lasted as long as it has done, I can't imagine. It is dull work marching about here all alone, with no fruit trees to rob, or sociable soul to exchange remarks with. I have not seen George since that fatal day, although he has been here two or three times. Somehow I cannot forgive him for having been a witness to my disgrace, and I owe him a grudge for having a nasty little father who did see Dolly and me when we bolted into the chemist's shop, and, meeting papa on the hill, told him, but with no malicious intent, that he had just seen us; hence the catastrophe. There never was anybody as unlucky as I am; everything has gone wrong with me ever since I was born, and everything will continue to do until my death, which is certain to take place in some unseemly, unexpected manner, at some unsuitable time and spot. I suppose my own bad conduct is at the bottom of most of my misfortunes, though. Now, that last fiasco was caused by love of blackberries, ergo greediness, which is distinctly a failing of my own, and nothing to do with an unlucky star! I wish I could commit my sins with my eyes shut. I know so perfectly well always when I am doing anything wrong, I see the good and the evil so clearly, the one on the right hand the other on the left, and yet, oh, shame! I nearly always choose the ill. Perhaps it is because I know my own wicked heart so well, that I, who am the merriest, noisiest, happiest of us all, have such deep, bitter fits of depression and misery now and then. In comparison with the keenness of enjoyment is the power of enduring pain, they say. If ever God sees fit to send me a great joy, I shall taste its sweetness to the uttermost; but if a great trouble come upon me, I shall bear every jot of its weight and hardness, and never seek to shift it to other shoulders, or contrive to bear it lightly. Clearly I am in a lachrymose and dismal frame of mind this evening; generally speaking, after a good howl, my spirits fly up to the skies, but this time I do not feel any the better, and if tears were forthcoming I would begin it all over again.
As I stroll along the coppice that divides our grounds from the high road, I hear a gay young voice whistling, "My love, she's but a lassie yet;" it sounds quite cheerful, and almost puts me in spirits. I hope he will not go away directly, for oh! I do hate to be all alone without a human voice within earshot. I have not looked upon the countenance of man, woman, or child for a whole hour; to see anybody would be company, so I mount the hedge preparatory to taking a small peep over it. Even a commercial traveller, or a rustic Lubin waiting for his sweetheart, would be nicer to look at than these still, straight trees and the stupid silent grass. Popping my head somewhat suddenly over the hedge, I find myself face to face with George Tempest. For a moment I stare speechlessly at him, then I drop the boughs, vanish from his sight, and run fleetly down the coppice. I hear his voice calling "Nell! Nell!" after me, and in another minute he has overtaken me, and stands in my path.
"Won't you speak to me, Nell?" he asks, rather blown and out of breath with his exertions.
"Can't stop now," I say, indistinctly, turning a scarlet countenance over my shoulder; "somebody is calling me."
"Nobody is calling you!" he says, quickly; "are you angry with me, Nell?"
"Angry!" I repeat, turning round a face which is, I think, assuming its normal tint, "why should I be angry?"
"Come back into the coppice for a little while then," he says; "you can't be going in yet, it is only seven o'clock."
For a moment I hesitate. I am ashamed to look him in the face, but will it not be intolerably dull all alone in the empty house yonder? I turn and walk beside him. "Do you know," he says, "that I have been looking out for you every day, and all day for the last fortnight, but I have never caught a single glimpse of you?"
"For the best of all reasons," I answer; "did you not know I was in punishment?"
"No!" he replies, indignantly. "What a shame! and pray whose doing was that?"
"There is only one person in the world who has the power to make us miserable," I say, "and you know who that is."
"But you have not been locked up," he says, looking puzzled, "for one day I was here with Jack, and I am certain 1 saw you in the distance, and went in hot pursuit, but you had vanished. When I got back I asked Jack why you ran away, and how it was I never saw you now, and he said he didn't know."
"Good boy!" I say, laughing, "he would not betray me. It is not nice, is it, when one is beginning to be grown up, to be kept prisoner for a fortnight?"
"He is a wretch," says George, vigorously, "how he can have the heart. . . ."
"I want to ask you a question," I say, looking up at his face, reassured by the unsmiling look it wears—" did you—did you—laugh much?"
"About what, dear?"
"That—that morning, when we went out blackberrying."
No," he says, gently, "I was far too angry for that."
"And Bobbie Silver?" I ask, with my head turned away, "did he laugh?"
"I don't think so," says George, with some slight confusion in his voice, that plainly tells me that whatever he did not do, the others did.
"I shall never forget it," I say, turning my red face full upon him—"never! You see I am just beginning to be grown up. . . ."
"Never mind!" he says, gently, "it is he who ought to be ashamed of himself, not you!"
"And you will promise," I say, anxiously, never to laugh, never even to think of it, or I could never feel comfortable with you?"
"I promise," he says, gravely; "and now tell me, is it true you are going to school?"
"Quite true!" I answer, "horribly true! To-day is Friday, and I am going next Wednesday." I thought I had no such things as tears about me, but somehow they have got into my voice, and as I turn my head away, George takes my hand with a gentleness that Jack never knew, and keeps it.
"I wish you were my brother," I say, with a sob; "of course I could never have loved any one so well as Jack, but you would have been kinder to me!"
"If I had had a little sister," he says (how soothing his voice is! how quiet his ways are! He is not like any one I have ever known before. Can it be because he has no brothers and sisters?), "I should have liked her to be just like you, and I should have loved her beyond everything; but it is too late to think of that now."
"Yes, it is too late," I say, releasing my hand to pluck a sorrel leaf that is close to my elbow (we are sitting down on the warm burnt grass); "but if you had only thought of it before, say ten years ago, you could have asked your father to marry again, could you not?"
"Yes," says George, looking rather puzzled.
"And then you know you would very likely have had a sister. Step-brothers and sisters are not the same as one's own, though; sometimes they quarrel dreadfully!"
"Nell," says George, bending his fair head to look me straight in the face, "Do you like me?"
"Very much," I answer promptly; "next to mother, Jack, Alice, and Dolly, I don't know any one I like so much." His face falls a little.
"I can't expect you to have much room in your heart for me," he says, "you have so many to fill it, while I have—nobody."
"You have the Mummy."
"Yes" (laughing), "but I have room for plenty more."
"So have I! Now I should not wonder if, in a year or two, when I get to know you better, you know, I were to like you very much indeed, almost as well as Jack; you are always so good to me!"
"Dear little Nell," he says heartily, "I only hope you will. You'll have plenty of opportunity of getting better acquainted with me, for my father talks of going to Silverbridge next midsummer, to live at The Chace."
"How delightful!" I say, clapping my hands, "but why not before midsummer?"
"We are going on our usual wild goose expedition round the continent," he says disgustedly, "and a lively time I shall have of it."
"It will be such fun," I say, following my own train of thought, "when I am grown up and come home for good, you and Jack and I will be such friends!"
"Nell," says the young man, leaning over towards me, "do you think you will ever care for me as much as Jack?"
"It is not likely," I say, smiling into his bright, eager, beautiful young face, "you are not my brother, you know!"
"And I am very glad of it," he says decidedly.
"Glad?" I say, opening my eyes, "and you said just now you should like a sister just like me!"
"Just like you, perhaps, but not you. Nell, do you think you will ever be married?"
"Oh! I suppose so," I answer indifferently; "everybody is sooner or later. It is wretched to be an old maid, with no one to stand up for you, is it not?"
"Very! Have you any notion of what your husband ought to be like, Nell?"
"My husband!" I repeat, breaking into a peal of laughter. "How droll it sounds; it is like playing at a feast; and yet mother knew a lady who was married at sixteen, her mother at fifteen, and her grandmother at fourteen!"
"Then it is high time you were married! But you have not told me what he must be like?"
"Dark," I say, pursing up my mouth, and looking at the sun who is passing away to his rest in such gorgeous pomp with his bright children, the clouds, thronging about him. "Very dark; and he must have black or very dark eyes, and a long black moustache that sweeps, but is not waxed."
"Yes."
"He must keep me in rare good order, and not let me get my own way, for though I love to have it, it is bad for me; but he must never slap me or call me names."
"Good heavens!" exclaims George, "does a gentleman ever do that?"
"Sometimes! And he must be very fond of my people, and have them to stay with us very often, and let me go and stop with them."
"And you are quite sure he must be dark?"
"I think so; but if he were very nice and kind, I should not mind so much about his complexion."
"Do you think that I should do, Nell?" asked the young man, half eagerly, half jestingly, "when you are quite grown up—eighteen or thereabouts?"
"You!" I say, staring at him. "Oh, George! do you mean it; are you joking?"
"Not a bit of it! You are the dearest little girl, and the nicest little girl, and the prettiest little girl I ever saw, and you'll only be dearer and nicer and prettier as you grow older, and I'm fonder of you than anything or anybody under the sun."
"Including the Mummy?" I ask, rallying from the shock his calling me pretty has caused me.
"Including him?"
"George!" I say, beginning to cackle again. "Don't think me very rude, but is it, is it a real offer you have made me?"
"I suppose so," he says, beginning to laugh too, "why?"
"Because not one of us, not even Alice, had an offer made her at the age of fourteen before. I am certain no one ever asked Milly to marry her, and I don't think any one ever did Jack."
"Highly improbable! But you have not answered my question yet."
"Papa could not send me to bed if I were married, could he? or set me chapters in the Bible, or box my ears?"
"Certainly not."
"And you would always live at Silverbridge, close to the Manor House, so that I could run in and out every day?"
"If you liked."
"Then," I say, stretching out my hand, "if you are quite sure that you will always be polite to Jack, and never call me names, or make a row about the housekeeping bills, or keep the key of the kitchen-garden! I will marry you' Not for years and years though, when I am twenty or so."
"That would be much too old to be married," says George. "It would be a pity not to come to The Chace while you are young and able to enjoy the fruit. Eighteen is the proper age!"
"Too soon," I say, shaking my head, "let us say eighteen and a half; but, of course, if I see any one I like better, you won't mind my having him?"
"Not mind?" he says blankly; "but I shall mind very much indeed! However, I'll take care that you never have the chance!"
You need not be afraid," I say, consolingly; no living man is ever seen in Silverbridge who is not married, or old, or a fright! Besides, who would be likely to fall in love with me?"
"Everybody!" he says warmly, "they couldn't help it!"
"I think," I say, disregarding this pretty compliment (of course he does not expect me to notice it, he only does it to please me!), "that it would be safer to promise conditionally. Most likely you will see some one or other who would just suit you, and then you might feel uncomfortable about me; and though it is very unlikely that any one else will ever want to marry me, for at home we see nobody, it is just possible that I might run up against somebody I liked better or I might not care about being married at all, you know; so we will leave it open until I am eighteen and a half!"
"And it is a promise?" he says, holding my hand between both his own, and looking very kindly into my face. (How his mother would have loved him if she had lived, he has such lovable ways.) "You will not forget?"
"No," I say promptly, "I always keep my promises: ask Jack if I do not—that is one reason why he says I ought to have been a boy! But look, how dusk it is growing! I must go. Good-night!"
"Good-night," he says, standing over me, tall and fair in the gathering shadows. "Perhaps this is the last time I shall have a chance of speaking to you alone before you go, dear?"
"I suppose so."
"Then, Nell, as you're going to be my little wife some day, and as I have no sister, you know—nobody to be good to me, won't you give me a kiss, just a little one, before you go?"
"Of course I will!" I say, touched to the heart by the allusion to his narrow, loveless home life; then, as he stoops his head, I lift myself on tiptoe and kiss his cheek as heartily as though it were Jack's. "I wish you were my brother," I say warmly—"I do wish it with all my heart!"