Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart: no woman's heart
So big to hold so much. . ."
It is nearly a month since Mr. Vasher paid his flying visit to Silverbridge, and we are drawing very near that illustrious First, which is the one day of the year to all Englishmen, from the keen sportsman and crack shot to the aimless booby who never goes out with a gun save at the risk of his own and his neighbours' lives. Although the partridges on the Vasher estate may be supposed to have long ago taken to eating each other, as there is no one, save poachers, to shoot them, their owner will not be here to sally forth with his friends, and send them to kingdom come; on the contrary, he is bound over to appear in S———shire at that date, and will not be among his own stubble until the second week of the month. After that he is going to settle down in his own house, and become, he says, a respectable country gentleman. I wonder why the words "country gentleman" always bring up a vision of a red-faced, fox-hunting, ample-bodied, mutton-chop-whiskered, rather vulgar-looking man, who loves beer and doubtful jokes, and has a weakness for kissing the pretty Maries at road-side inns?
He seemed very sorry to go away, Paul Vasher. Papa says he was absolutely obliged to go, business affairs accumulated, etc., etc. He made a pleasant change; I hope he will come back soon. At the present moment I am walking along the passage that leads to mother's room, with a fresh nosegay of flowers in my hand for her table.
"Come in!" she says, as I knock; and entering, I find her sitting by the open window, smoothing the primrose-coloured locks of her youngest born with a brush as soft as swans' down.
I have never written very much about mother, but she is as much the life of her children as the air they breathe; whoever or whatever we love we always place them "after mother." As I give her a hearty hug, I become aware of a pleased smile on her face, that not only lurks in every pretty corner, but covers it as with a garment in a most unequivocal manner.
"Jack," I say, with a sudden leap of joy through my veins," he is coming home?"
"No," says mother, "it is not Jack. It is an invitation."
"An invitation!" I repeat. "Are any of our neighbours mad enough, or forgiving enough, to try that on again?"
"It is from Milly. She wants you to go on the 30th to stay with her for a month."
"Lovely!" I say, with a deep gasp; "but he will not let me go."
"It is just possible that he may," says mother, "although he has refused all Alice's invitations for you. You would like it, dear?"
"Like it," I say, sighing; "did not the country mouse love to go and stay with the town one, even though he came to terrible grief? But mother, mother, I have no clothes. Running wild here is one thing, but footing it at Luttrell another."
"What have you got?" asks mother, setting down her darling, who speedily accomplishes his one object in life, which is to overturn himself.
"One black silk, which is skimpy and rusty, and tight and green; two decent white dresses, and one indecent one; a few prints that look passable enough in the dim vista of a woodland, but are not quite, ahem! the thing for visiting. Have you got anything at all left in the wardrobe?"
Mother's wardrobe is a kind of museum of dead and gone fashions and garments, among which she always rummages when any of us are particularly ragged or naked. Unfortunately, the rummaging of twenty years has left it very bald and miserable indeed; and as everything of any value has been taken out long ago, I stand but a poor chance of fishing up a garment fit to go visiting in.
"There is the yellow satin," says mother, “but then you don't like yellow satin."
Especially when my great grandmother upset a dish of gravy down its front," I say, grimacing. "Would you have me like the serving-man in 'L'Avare,' who was bidden by his master to hold his hat over his clothes, that the company might not see the rents and stains?"
"And there is the plum-coloured paduasoy," says mother, unheeding my flippant interjections, "and you don't like that."
"No, I do not! If I can't have one or two moderately respectable gowns, I must stay at home."
"I don't know what your papa will say," says mother, with a sigh.
"If he only says 'Yes,'" I say, kissing her, "I'll forgive all the rest. Is that other letter from Dolly?"
"Yes, she likes it very much at Charteris, but she seems rather home-sick."
"Poor Dolly!" I say, "I wish she were back again. I do miss her so. Mother, mother, why did you not have more girls?"
"Nell," says the Bull of Basan, rushing in, "the governor says you're to go down directly; the Tempests are in the garden."
"Bother!" I say, crossly; for would I not a hundred times rather be up here talking of new gowns with mother, than trotting round the hot garden and fields with George, talking of love? I know those little morning walks round the estate well enough; and as to the Mummy's being an invalid, I don't believe a word of it; his legs are made of cast iron. I follow my sturdy young brother, who has earned his nickname by the extraordinary power and volume of his bellow (when papa is out of the way), downstairs very unwillingly.
The gentlemen are all standing together in the porch, and I say, "How do you do?" to the father, and lay my fingers in the warm grasp of the son; and after that little formula we all stroll forth together, the two old souls in front, and we young ones behind.
"Do you know," I say, lowering my voice cautiously, for in our family we all firmly believe that papa has not only eyes but ears in the back of his head, "that perhaps something most delightful is going to happen to me? That there is a chance of my going away?"
"Going away," he repeats blankly, and a pale dashed look comes over his face; "do you mean it, Nell!"
"Why should I not?" I ask in astonishment, tipping my sunbonnet a little farther forward; "is there anything so very astonishing in that, pray?"
"It would not be in some people, but it is in you; I thought you never went away."
"That is just why I am so anxious to begin," I say, briskly. 'Do you think he will let me go? do you think he will?"
"I don't know," says George, switching at the grass with his stick; "do you want to go so very much?"
"I think I should break my heart if I did not!" I say with conviction. "You see I have never been anywhere really; and think of what it would be to go to, perhaps, a ball (Do you think they will dance at Luttrell?) and have a real ball dress, and a real———"
"Lover!" puts in George, with a pale smile; for you are as sure to have the one as the other!"
"You silly boy!" I say, patting his coat sleeve, "have you not got over that ridiculous notion yet? I wish you were coming too; yes I do, with all my heart!"
"Are you sure of that?" he asks, looking into my eyes with those blue ones that have never met mine yet without their warm love-light burning steadily.
"Quite sure!" I say, smitten with a quick compunction; for am I not devoutly glad at the prospect of going away from him? and when did he ever leave me without regret? "You ought to be there to take care of me, ought you not?"
"If you go away this time, Nell," he says, some other man will fall in love with you, and you will never come back to me any more. I can see it all quite plainly. Will you not stay, dear, and try to put up with a poor, rough fellow, who loves you?"
"There is no fear of any one I shall see there," I say softly; "besides, who is likely to fall in love with me there or anywhere else? Every eye hath its own Naboth's vineyard (Did not some one or other say that?) and I am yours, but I'm not likely to be anybody else's. I shall come back again like a bad penny, never fear." I stoop to pluck a handful of small bind-weed, whose pale pink cups are opening to the sunshine with a dim faint fragrance.
"If only I were sure of you," says the young man; "if only these wretched months were up!"
"Poor George!" I say gently. Alas! that I should have to say, Poor George! When a woman pities her lover, she is a long, long way from loving him. I think he knows it, for he shakes his shoulders back impatiently; he looks as nearly wretched as his blonde, sunny, good looks permit. These fair men never manage to look as disconsolate and woe-begone over their misfortunes as do the black-eyed, black-haired, funereal lovers.
In these morning rambles, we always visit every outbuilding and corner, clean or unclean. We have now arrived at the pigsty, and the two papas are inside, prodding the fat sides of the porkers, and disputing loudly over the superiority of this breed or that. "Poor Chucky!" I say, resting my elbows on the top of the stone wall that overlooks his unsweet dwelling, "you must have disagreed very seriously with our ancestors before they decided that your savoury body was unfit for food. Do you think," I ask, turning to George, "that they had trichinosis in those days?"
"Probably, only they called it by a less grand name!"
"The pigs must have had an excellent time of it when there was no one to eat them, you know; not that I will ever believe the Irish abjured the sweet creatures. I got into such a scrape here once," I continue, looking across to where the Mummy and the governor are waxing warm over their discussion. (After all, a pigsty is not a very dignified place to quarrel in.) "Dorley used to milk a particularly vicious cow just in this corner; and one afternoon I popped my sun-bonneted head suddenly over the wall, and away went the cow, kicking over the stool, milk-pail, and Dorley, who lay on his back, with the milk all sweeling over him, never offering to move or get up, but just turned up the whites of his eyes, and murmured, "Ow could 'ee do it, Miss Ullen? 'ow could 'ee do it?' What a row there was about it to be sure!"
I go off into a fit of laughter, in which George joins, and the two old people, having settled their dispute without coming to fisticuffs, move on, and we follow. How miserable it all is without Jack! Going over these old haunts without him, I feel almost as ancient as the "oldest inhabitant" does when he toddles round the house where he was born. It seems quite a century since we sat, one at each end of yonder plank, see-sawing, and tumbling flat on our noses five times in every minute. "I wonder what poor dear Jack is doing?" I say aloud; "working himself to death, I dare say! It was very inconsiderate of him, choosing a profession: there was no need, as he is the eldest son!"
"Jack is a lucky fellow," says George, with a quick envy in his voice; "don't be sorry that he is not here idling his time away! He is out in the world making his life or marring it; he has the chance of proving himself to be of good stuff or bad; he is not laid on a shelf like an old maid's gown, with sprigs of lavender between. Pythagoras says that, 'in this theatre of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on;' and Arnold exclaims 'Have we not all eternity to rest in? Depend on it, Nell, every man ought to work."
"But what could you do?" I ask gently, for do I not know how this purposeless, idle life chafes him. "I don't think you are clever enough to cut a good figure in Parliament; and you would not care to be a clergyman or a doctor? If you had gone into the army as you intended, your time would have been filled up, but it would only have been like playing at being busy, for we never have any real fighting now, you know; we only make faces at our enemies, and show them that we are ready, and they never come on." George laughs.
"There are other things in the world besides fighting," he says, "plenty of good work to be done; but, however, it is no good talking about it. If ever I say anything to my father, he asks me if I shall not have time enough to do as I please after he is dead. Pleasant that!"
"After a certain age," I say gravely,"old people ought to go off; all that have any sense of propriety do, and make room for the young ones. They have had their day, cracked their jokes, drunk their wines; and when their lives are flat, stale, and unprofitable, they ought to make their bow and vanish."
'Only they don't think so," says George, laughing; "and Debrett chronicles many a depraved and inconsiderate old man, at a good deal past the orthodox three-score years and ten, and whose heir will have suffered the sickness of hope deferred, and have grown-up sons and a purple nose before he comes into his inheritance!"
"At any rate, George, you may be thankful that you are not a woman, shunted on to a siding, and bound to remain there for the rest of your life, unless some one has a fancy for murdering you, or you distinguish yourself in some discreditable way!"
"Women ought to be seen, but never heard of," says George, decidedly; you don't want to scream on hustings, do you, Nell?"
"No, indeed, women possess far too much power to wish to wrest the semblance of it from man. A woman's rights! by gaining them woman always seems to me to have lost all the privileges of her own sex, while obtaining none of the dignity of the other."
"Well done!" says George; "I'm glad you're not bitten like all the rest."
"That is because I am not clever," I say, laughing. "I should cut but a sorry figure among those highly cultivated females, and no one likes to look small!" (I turn aside to gather a spray or two of sweet woodruff that has no scent in life, but when dried possesses the fragrance of new-mown hay.) "Do you see that vervain, George? It is said to make the company it is in gay and jocund; had we not better take some home for our fathers?"
"I don't think you want any," he says, looking at me; "I never saw such a merry little soul as you are; and the way you laugh!"
"I read somewhere the other day, that every laugh is a nail out of your coffin," I say gaily; "if that is true there cannot be one left in mine, can there? Don't try and take from me my poor little cheerfulness; trouble will come fast enough; it always does to very happy people. It is the croaking, grumbling, ill-used folk who get through life comfortably and make other people bear their burdens!"
"You would never laugh as you do if you were in love," says George; "you couldn't."
"I do laugh very loud," I say, considering; "almost as loud as the Bull of Basan?" George does not answer, he appears to be thinking; so if I expect to be assured that my laughter is always low and sweet, I am mistaken.
"Do you know," I say, feeling rather ruffled, "that you never pay me any compliments now? No one ever paid me any but you, and besides amusing me, I got quite to like them!"
"When a man is profoundly in love he does not make pretty speeches," says George; "he feels them, but he does not speak them. It would be like saying to the sun, 'How warm you are!' when he is warmed through and through with its rays. I don't think I ever paid you compliments."
"George," I say presently, as we walk noiselessly over the close-cropped, sweet meadows, "do you not think that a woman may have several fancies and only one heart? or do you believe her heart and her fancy always go together?"
"What put that into your head?" he asks, opening his eyes.
"Nothing!" I answer dreamily; "only I can understand a man and woman falling out terribly, because he thought she loved some one better than she did him, when in reality her heart belonged perfectly to that man, although a fleeting fancy for some one else had for the time being obscured her vision: there would be misery and confusion come, would there not? But after all, it is the heart that stands, the fancy dies away like a puff of summer wind."
"Have a fancy for who you like, dear," says George; "only keep your heart for me!"
"If ever I had a fancy for any one," I say, looking out at the far away, blooming hills, "I think it must have been in dreamland. Bah! we are talking nonsense. Do you know that I shall look such an old guy, if I go away? look at this frock!" And I hold out the skirt of my modest garment for inspection.
"Well! and what is the matter with it?"
"Everything! material, fashion, cut, and age!"
"Never you mind!" he says, looking at my face, not my gown "People will look at you, not your dress!"
"Not they!" I say, shaking my head. "Women look at your dress first, and your face after; men look first at a woman's general turn out; they would rather be seen with an ugly but perfectly appointed woman, than ever such a pretty one in a bonnet out of date and ill gloved and booted."
"I should prefer the pretty woman with the out-of-date bonnet," says George; "but surely you can have everything you require for a visit?"
"I ought, but ought is an ill-used word that never gets its rights. Papa's daughters are never supposed to require anything so superfluous as clothes."
"If you would only marry me, you should have a new silk dress for every day in the year," says the young man, with masculine ignorance of the number of yards every well-brought-up young woman considers it necessary to cram into a skirt.
"You would not have me marry you for the sake of silk dresses, would you?" I ask reproachfully, feeling somewhat allured, nevertheless, at the notion of trailing about in black, white, green, blue, lilac, cream colour, or pink attire every day. I could not enjoy them all, though; and perhaps, after a bit, I should even get as used to them as I am to my cotton ones; and it would be no pleasure to choose a new one. Heigho!" I sigh; "well, there is one comfort, I shall not have any of the women abusing me for my smart toilettes; a woman will forgive another one for being better looking than herself—that is Nature's fault, not her own—but she will never forgive her for being better dressed."
"That is true," says George, "and I believe that numbers of people do not dare to be stylish, or they would lose all their friends. There is to some folks a species of immorality in a perfectly fitting dress, or a becoming bonnet; it is a snare, a lust of the eye, and as such to be shunned by honest, sober people! I have often seen a man looking with positive pleasure at his dowdy, ill-dressed wife; it gives him a comfortable feeling of safety, to think that he can put her down in the middle of a crowded public room, and be certain to find her there unmolested when he comes back. In fact, too much style is the devil (they think), and men are often afraid to marry a very pretty or elegant girl, because they think her morals cannot be quite what they should be, or that she will take too much trouble in looking after!"
"And I have heard that a girl can have no higher compliment than the dispraise of her own sex, and that when you hear them abusing and picking to pieces some particular woman, and assuring each other that she has not a good feature in her face, that her figure is padded, her complexion kept in a box, and that not even her eyelashes are her own, you may be quite sure she is good-looking, or fascinating, or uncommon: on the other hand, if you hear them praising some girl to the skies, you may be perfectly sure that she is meek, insipid, and tame, too uninteresting to be a rival, and too vapid to attract the attention of any one's lover, husband, or brother. Is that true?"
"Perfectly."
"Well, I can't understand that feeling. When I see anything beautiful, I love to look at it. I never used to weary of looking at Alice or Silvia Fleming."
"Silvia Fleming!" he exclaims, "where did you ever see her!”
"At Charteris."
"At the time Vasher was there?"
"Yes."
"Whew!" whistles George; "why he was in love with her; engaged to her some years ago; no one ever knew why the match was broken off. Vasher must be getting an old fellow by now."
"Old!" I say in astonishment. "Old! did you say? He cannot be much past thirty."
"That is a good deal," says George, with all a young man's impertinence; "why, you were only a child when you first knew him, Nell?"
"Yes, I was only a child!"
"And I can't imagine how you recollected him when you ran up against him in that field."
"It is not a face one could possibly forget," I say, rather tartly; "Paul Vasher is the handsomest man I ever saw!"
George stares at me blankly; he does not mind my not appreciating his good looks, but it cuts him for me to place another man before him.
"You always admired dark men," he says, with a fall in his voice.
"Always!" I say, beginning to laugh. "Do you know what I am laughing at?"
"No."
"I was thinking of that day when you were so angry, and walked off in a huff, and never turned your head once. I have so often thought since, that—that if you had only looked round, you would have seen how silly I looked when I ran into Mr. Vasher, and the moral I deduced was, 'never turn your back on your friends, but keep your eyes wide open to see when they make fools of themselves!" And I laugh heartily; I always had a bad knack of laughing more amusedly at my own small jokes than those of anybody else.
We are in the orchard now, and the Mummy is beckoning from afar to George to accompany him home to luncheon, for above all earthly considerations does he place his stomach and the comfort thereof.
"Good-bye," says George, standing bare-headed under the trees, through which the sunlight flickers lovingly on to his fair, bright locks. "If you do go, which I devoutly hope you will not, Nell, there will be plenty of time for another nice long talk, will there not?"
"Plenty!" I say, my heart sinking, for I know he will try and win an unconditional promise from me before I go, and that I never will give. "Good-bye, George!"
And so he goes away, through the light and shadow, a stalwart, knightly figure that many a proud woman might look after with glad eyes of love and pleasure.
"Oh, love, love!" I say to myself as I go on towards the house, "that some people eat their hearts out in trying to win, and others take as thanklessly as though it were dirt; why do you not go where you would be welcomed with eager, grateful hands, instead of beating at a fast-shut door that can never be opened to you, never, ah! never!"