Red as a Rose is She: A Novel, Page 4

  CHAPTER IV.

  Morning is come again. The sun cannot bear to be long away fromhis young sweetheart, the earth, so he has come back hasting, withroyal pomp, with his crown of gay gold beams on his head, with hisflame-cloak about his strong shoulders, and with a great troop oflight, flaky clouds--each with a reflex of his red smile on itscourtier face--at his back. He has come back to see himself in thelaughing blue eyes of her seas and streams, and to rest at noontide,like a sleepy giant, on her warm green lap.

  The daily miracle--the miracle that none can contest, to which allare witness, has been worked--the resurrection of the world. And thisresurrection is not partial, not limited to humanity, as that final oneis towards which the eyes of the Christian church have been lookingsteadfastly for eighteen centuries and a half; but every beast andbird and flower has shaken off Death's sweet semblance, his gentlecounterfeit, and is feeling, in bounding vein and rushing sap, theecstatic bliss of the mystery of life. If we never slept, we should notknow the joy of waking; if we never woke, we should not know the joy ofsleep. How, I marvel, shall we _feel_ the happiness of heaven, if wenever lose, and consequently regain it?

  The thrushes and blackbirds are already in the midst of their gleesand madrigals and part songs. They sing the same songs every day, sothat they are quite perfect in them; and they are all very joyful ones.In their sweet flute-language there are no words expressive of sorrowor pain; they know of no minor key. There were twenty roses born lastnight, and the flowers are all rejoicing greatly. They are smiling andwhispering and gossiping together; the sweet peas, like pink and purplebutterflies,

  ".....on tiptoe for a flight, With wings of delicate flush o'er virgin white,"

  each half-inclined to hover away with the young west wind that issighing such a little gentle story all about himself into their ears.The lambs, grown so big and woolly that one might almost mistake themfor their mothers, are leaping and racing and plunging about in thefield below the house, in the giddiness of youth, unprescient of thebutcher. Hated of Miss Craven's soul as much as ever were the blind andlame of King David's are those too, _too_ agile sheep. Grievously proneare they to ignore the low stone wall of partition, and work havoc anddevastation among the aster tops and cabbage shoots of her garden.

  "The king was in his counting-house, Counting out his money; The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey."

  The King of Glan-yr-Afon is not counting out his money, because he hasnot any to count, poor young fellow. He is sitting on a garden-chair,reading the _Times_, and thinking how much better he would rule theFatherland, how much less mean and shabby and selfish he would makeher in other nations' eyes, if he might but have the whip and reinsfor six months or so. Old Luath lies at his feet, with dim eyes halfclosed, snapping lazily at the flies, and catching on an average aboutone every quarter of an hour. Esther is in the stack-yard, holding alevy of ravenous fowls. She has tied a large white kitchen-apron roundher waist; with one hand she is holding it up, with the other sheis scattering light wheat among a mixed multitude. Baby Cochins, inprimrose velvet; hobbledehoy Cochins, _au naturel_, with not a stitchof clothes on their bare, indecent backs; adult Cochins, muffled andsmothered up to the chin in a wealth of cinnamon feathers, and withcinnamon stockings down to their heels; Rouen ducks, and scraggy-neckedturkeys. She is doing her very best to administer justice to hercommonwealth, to protect the weak, to prevent aggression and violence;but like many another lawgiver she finds it rather up-hill work. Striveas she may, the ducks get far the best of it. They have no sense ofshame, and can shovel up such a quantity at a time in their long yellowbills. The turkey-cock, on the other hand, gets much the worst, byreason of the long red pendant to his nose, that gets in his way andhinders him. They say that Nature never makes anything for ornamentalone, divorced from use; but I confess to being ignorant as to whatfunction that long flabby dangler has to fulfil. The stack-yard is allon the slant; it slopes down with its many stack-frames, to the oldrough grey barn that is stained all over--walls and roof and door--withthe stormy tears of a score of winters. There is no lack of voices allabout the farm to-day: voice of Sarah chattering in the drying ground,where she is hanging Esther's cotton gowns and Jack's shirts on thelines; voice of Evan Evans, the carter, talking friendly to his heavyteam in that deplorable tongue which, we trust, will soon be among theabuses of the past; voice of Seryn (Welsh for Star), from the pasture,lowing for her calf, which a day ago became veal, and a day hence (Ohblessed short memory! why cannot we take lessons from a cow?) shewill have forgotten utterly. Presently comes another voice, clearer,stronger, nearer than the others--comes sailing up through the July air.

  "Es--ther!"

  "Ye--es!" responds Esther at the tip-top of her voice, and consequentlynot particularly harmonious. It is only the lark that can talk at thetop of his voice and yet not be shrill.

  "Where are you?" (_Forte_.)

  "In the stack-yard." (_Fortissimo_).

  Obedient to this direction, in about two minutes the owner of thevoice, and of the excellent lungs which sent it out, makes hisappearance in loose cool clothes and a smile--Jack, in fact, lookingvery ugly and pleasant and good-natured.

  "Jack, dear boy, open the gate. Quick! Out of the way! Don't let himget under the stack-frame. Shoo!" cries Esther, in great excitement,rushing wildly about in her big apron, in pursuit of a large drake witha grasping soul, and a wonderful rainbow neck, who, with bill wideopen and wings half extended, is waddling, flying, quacking away fromNemesis as hard as his splay feet and his full crop will let him.

  Jack obeys. "There is a person in the drawing-room wanting to speak toyou," he says, leaning his arms on the top of the gate, and lookingrather malicious.

  "What sort of a person?" Esther asks abstractedly, craning her longneck round the corner of the barn, to see whether the drake showssymptoms of returning. "There he is again! Shoo!"

  "What was the name of Esther's husband? the man that bullied his firstwife so. Oh! I know; his name, oh Queen Esther, is Ahasuerus, which,being interpreted, is Bob."

  Esther's apron drops from her fingers and the wheat rolls down in ashower on to the broad backs of the Cochin householders. Fiercely thewar of chickens--the pushing, the fluttering, the pecking--rages abouther feet. "Already!" she says: and in her voice there is none of love'ssweet quiver, nor on her cheeks is there any sign of love's pretty flagbeing hung out, neither the red nor the white one. She only looks alittle blank--a little troubled.

  "Yes, already," says Jack, mercilessly; "and not only has he comehimself, but he has brought all his household gods with him. He hascome with a great company of old women at his back. I fancy they havebrought a notary or a scrivener, or what do you call it? with them, andthat there is to be a grand betrothal in form."

  "Nonsense!" says Esther, and she comes all over to the gate, and claspstwo little petitioning hands on his shoulder. "You will come with me,won't you, Jack?"

  "Not I!" says Jack, stoutly. "I would not trust myself with those oldmaids, in their present excited state, if you were to give me my nexthalf-year's rent: they would be employing the notary in my case toobefore I knew where I was."

  "Jack, is my hair pretty tidy?" stroking it down with the improvisedbrush and comb of her slim fingers.

  "Extremely so: it looks as if the chickens had got into it, and beenscratching there by mistake."

  Meanwhile Master Brandon and his old women, to wit, his mother, Mrs.Brandon, and his sisters, the two Misses Brandon, are posed about thedrawing-room, waiting. Waiting is always a painful process, from themodified form of suffering involved in the ten minutes before dinner,when every man's tongue is tied, and his wits congealed by the frostof expectant hunger; upward to the Gehenna of a dentist's antechamber.Robert is all on wires this morning: he cannot sit still; he keepsshuffling and twisting his long, awkward legs about, beating thedevil's tattoo on the floor with his nailed boots, and hammering anugly little tune with a paper knife on an old Book of Beauty
on thetable. "How you fidget, Bob!" cries his sister Bessy.

  Miss Elizabeth Brandon is ten years older and about ten feet shorterthan her brother; she is in process of souring, like cowslip wine thathas been kept too long, or small beer in thunder. She is not so verysour, after all, poor little virgin! only ten years ago she was, andten years hence she will be mellower than she is now.

  "All right!" says Bob, "I won't;" and he stops, only to commence, twoseconds later, a new noise, seven times worse than the first; a verydisagreeable sort of scraping with the hind legs of his chair. Is notit one of Miss Yonge's goody heroes, who, when he feels disposed to beimpatient, sits down and strums away at the "Harmonious Blacksmith?"Bob could not get through a bar of that soothing melody this morning.Mrs. Brandon is just beginning to say, "Do you think the servant couldhave told her?" when the door opens, and a little vision comes in withdelicate hair ruffling about her sweet, shining eyes; a little visionthat ought to be walking on rosy clouds, Bob thinks, with cherubim andseraphim holding up her train, instead of on shabby oil-cloth and fadedcarpet, dragging her train behind her.

  "I--I'm very sorry; I'm afraid I have kept you waiting: I did not" (didnot expect you so early is on the tip of her tongue, but she remembersjust in time that it would be about the impolitest remark she couldmake. Never, until the millennium, will the marriage of Truth andCivility be solemnized)--"did not know you were here till Jack came andtold me a moment ago," she substitutes so adroitly that none of herauditors perceive the rivet that joins the two halves of her sentencetogether.

  "I don't know what your brother will say to us for taking his house bystorm, but you must blame _him_, my dear, you must blame _him!_" saysMrs. Brandon, nodding her head towards Bob, and looking as if therewas something peculiarly humorous in the idea of Esther being in acondition to blame him for anything he could do or leave undone.

  Mrs. Brandon is an old woman, with a smooth, holy face, and avillainous black poke bonnet: she kisses Esther, and the Misses Brandonlikewise come forward and inflict a prim sisterly salute with theirthin old-maid lips, on the velvet rose-leaf of her cheek. They hadnever kissed her before, and she felt as if the manacles were beingfastened round her wrists, and the gyves about her ankles. She longs tocry out and say, "What are you all about? you are quite mistaken, everyone of you; Mrs. Brandon, I am not your daughter; Miss Bessy, I am notyour sister; I don't want to be: take back those kisses of yours, ifyou please, if they mean that!" Had she been alone with Robert, shewould probably have said this; have said it without much difficulty,but now the words seemed infinitely, impossibly hard to frame. There isupon her the shyness of a young woman with an old one; the shyness ofone against three. She feels, too, that it seems ungracious, churlish,when they are so glad to take her in to themselves, to adopt her astheir own, not to be very glad too. When a person says to one, ifnot in words, yet with looks and gestures, "Our people shall be thypeople, and our God thy God," it is not easy for a plastic, graciousnature to say "No, they shall not!" however little they may relish thearrangement. So, in her muteness, Esther accepts the Brandon God andpeople as hers.

  Wordless and demure, she sits down on a little low seat as far removedas may be from Robert. Esther will, no doubt, be an ugly old woman;she makes rather an ugly photograph; but who can deny that she is adelicious bit of colour as she sits there right in the eye of themorning sun, and not at all afraid of his strict scrutiny? So manywomen, now-a-days, are neutral-tinted, drabbish, greyish, as if thecolours that God painted with were not fast, but faded, like Reynolds'.Esther's colouring is as distinct, as decided, as clean and clear asthat on a flower's petal or a butterfly's wing. Nobody speaks, exceptthe clock with the short-waisted Minerva on it, and it does not sayanything particularly original. Then the old woman bends towards theyoung one, and says in a kind, low voice, "You see Robert has told ushis news, my dear." There is flowing in through the French window abroad river of yellow light from the great fountain in the sky; it isdeluging Mrs. Brandon's bonnet and Esther's hair. The bonnet is black,and the hair is black; but there are blacks and blacks. The May grassis green, and a beer bottle is green; but the resemblance between thetwo is not striking. Esther has not the remotest idea what answer tomake; so she chooses one of the shortest words she knows of, and says"Yes!" half-assentingly, half-interrogatively.

  "And we could not rest till we came and told you what good news wethought it," pursues the old lady, encouragingly.

  Esther says nothing. Her eyelids feel glued down to her cheeks; she isconscious, with inward rage and vexation, of looking blushing, bashful,everything that a young betrothed should look.

  "I'm an old woman," concludes Mrs. Brandon, rather moved by her owneloquence, "and I cannot expect a great many more years of life. Youknow what the Psalmist sweetly says, love; but I trust I may be sparedto see God bless both my children, and make them His happy servants forthis world and the next."

  As she speaks she lays one hand on Esther's head. Bob is happily toofar off, or she would lay the other on his, while the two littlevirgin clerks from the sofa cry "Amen!" in a breath. Esther ishalf-frightened. What with the serious words, with the three women'ssolemn faces, she half feels as if she were being married on the spot;her thoughts fly to Jack and the notary; after that "Amen!" she is notquite sure that her name is not Esther Brandon. She shrinks away alittle, but not at all rudely.

  "You are very kind," she says, in her gentle voice, "and it was so goodof you coming all through the wood--such a long walk for you, too; butI think--I'm afraid that there is some mistake about--this--about me;there is nothing settled--nothing at all, I assure you. I told your sonso yesterday quite plainly, only I'm afraid he did not understand me,"she concludes, looking rather reproachfully over at him.

  "I did understand you," protests poor Bob, eagerly, jumping up,upsetting his chair, and never thinking of picking it up again, "I did,indeed. I told mother your very words, only she would have it that theymeant--what we all wished they should mean," he ends, looking verydowncast and snubbed and disconsolate.

  There is another pause, then Mrs. Brandon rises and puts out her handto Esther--in farewell this time.

  "I'm afraid I've been in too great a hurry, my dear," she says, tryingnot to speak stiffly, and not succeeding quite so well as she deserved."But you'll forgive me, I'm sure; you see, mothers are apt to bepartial people, and I could not imagine any one trying to love my boy,and not succeeding."

  But Miss Craven can never let well alone. She would marry Old Nickhimself sooner than that his mother or sister should look askance ather, or seem hurt and grieved with her for expressing any want ofrelish for him, hoofs and tail and horns and all.

  "Oh no, you must not go!" she cries, in her quick, eager way, puttingup two anxious hands in deprecation; "you must not be vexed with me;I did not mean to be disagreeable. I shall like very much to belongto you, I'm sure. I was only afraid of your expecting more from methan I had to give _yet_," she ends, with head drooped a little, andcheeks reddened like a peach's that the sun has been kissing all theafternoon.

  The stiffness goes away: nobody can be stiff for long with EstherCraven, any more than a snow-ball can remain a snow-ball under thefire's warm gaze.

  "We don't want you to belong to us if you don't wish it yourself," theold woman says, very gravely, yet not ill-naturedly.

  "I hardly know what I wish," answers the girl, naively, in a sort ofbewilderment.

  Then they go, and Robert walks off with his old mother on his arm.He would walk down Pall Mall with her in that identical poke bonnet,and the two little dowdy vestals pottering behind in the most perfectunconsciousness and simplicity, even if he were to know that hisbrother officers, to a man, were looking out at him from the "Rag"windows.

  "Oh, my cheeks! my cheeks! will they ever get cool again!" criesEsther, flinging herself down on the oak bench in the porch, and layingher face against the cold ivy leaves.

  "You look rather as if you had been poking your countenance betweenthe bars of the kitch
en grate," responds Jack, with all a brother'scandour. Jack has been dodging behind the laurel bushes, after thefashion in which the English gentleman is fond of receiving his friendswhen they come to call on him.

  "Why did not you come to my rescue, you unnatural brother? What chancehad I, single-handed, against those three Gorgons? Pah! it makes myhead ache to think of mamma's coiffure."

  "When a person gets into a scrape themselves, I make it a rule to letthem get out of it themselves, as it makes them more careful for thefuture," replies Jack, with philosophy.

  "But I'm not getting out of it; I'm floundering deeper and deeper anddeeper in, like a man in an Irish bog," says Esther, ruefully. "Oh,Jack!" she concludes, laughing, yet vexed (laughter is as often theexponent of annoyance as of enjoyment, I think), "if you could haveheard the stories I was forced to tell, I'm sure I deserve to be woundup, carried out, and buried, as much as ever Ananias did."