Red as a Rose is She: A Novel Page 13

  CHAPTER XIII.

  The Bazaar day has arrived; so likewise have Constance's chosenfriends, the Misses De Grey; so likewise has their brother, commonlycalled Dick De Grey, for no other reason that we wot of but that at hisbaptism he received the name of Charles. The large open carriage whichhad so impressed Esther on her first arrival at Brainton station, andSt. John's smart T.-cart, with his big, black horse, at whose head, orrather at some distance below whose nose, a cockaded infant stands trimand tidy, are at the door.

  "How are we to divide?" says Miss Blessington, coming out under theportico and unfurling her white Honiton parasol. "How many of us arethere? Adeline, Georgina, Miss Craven, and myself, four, and you twogentlemen six. St. John, will you drive Miss De Grey?"

  "I should be delighted," he answers, slowly and tardily, not lookingup from the gardenia which he is fastening on his coat; "but I believeI am under an old engagement to drive Miss Craven. You have never beenin a T.-cart, have you?" (looking at her imploringly, to back him up inthe ready lie to which, for love of her, he has just given vent.)

  "Never!" she answers, smiling coldly. "And now that I see to what aheight one has to climb, and in what close proximity one must be tothat huge quadruped's heels, I am in no hurry to make the experiment.I release you from your engagement, Mr. Gerard, if it ever existed; ifit is all the same to everybody, I prefer the--I never can recollectthe names of carriages--barouche, sociable, landau, which is it?"

  He stares at her for an instant in blank astonishment; then, turningaway quickly to hide the mortification which he knows to be legibleon his face, without a word or a groan helps the oldest, plainest,languidest of the Misses De Grey into the T.-cart and drives off withher. And Esther steps into the sociable, and tries to feel triumphantand dignified, contemplating, for a dozen miles, Miss Georgina DeGrey's gold-dusted hair and featureless face, and submitting meeklyto having the modest proportions of her own toilette covered up andsmothered in the abundance and volume of her _vis-a-vis_' laces andfrillings.

  "Since he means to throw me over, it is as well to be beforehand withhim," she says to herself, her eyes fixed pensively on the revolvingblack and yellow wheel; "in such cases it is always best to take theinitiative. It would have been very pleasant, so high up out of thedust; but what have I to do with aristocratic vehicles? A gig, awheelbarrow, a pig-tub--such are the only conveyances I am likely tohave experience of in after-life; why then inoculate myself with ataste for luxuries that are for my betters?"

  And meanwhile St. John holds dreary converse with himself, whilea river of sound, on which the words Nilsson, Romeo e Giulietta,Schneider, drums, Holland House, garden party float, pours into his earfrom the direction of his companion. "She is honest, at all events;does not relish my society, and does not affect to do so; tolerated meonly as long as I was useful, like a dog, in fetching and carrying. Whyam I so unpopular with women? Is it what I do, what I say, or what Iam, that makes me so? Is it anything mendable or unmendable?"

  * * * * *

  Precisely seventeen minutes past two of the clock, the Melfordtown-hall clock, and visitors are beginning to arrive pretty thickly;three or four barouches, seven or eight waggonettes, and nine or tenpony-carriages, are trotting and walking and crawling up the steepMelford street. Climbing the side of a house is child's play to theascent of that most perpendicular of high streets. The doctor's house,red, and with redder berries thick about its plate-glass windows,stands on your right as you go up the town. The Doctor and the Doctressare issuing from the brass-knockered hall door--she in a grey moireantique, that old Mrs. Evans' quinsy paid for, and gold bracelets thattook their rise from Mr. Watkin's decline and fall.

  The town-hall stands in its grey limestone respectability in themarket place, over against the Bell Inn; it has an arched doorway,and under this arch man, woman, and child go pacing in little, smarttulle bonnets and black hats, with their purses full of small change,and their hearts of that most excellent virtue--Christian charity.Round the hall counters are ranged, and behind these counters stand aphalanx of young women, prepared to exert their little abilities inoverreaching and circumventing their fathers, lovers, and brothers, tothe utmost.

  Miss Blessington's stall is next-door neighbour to poor Mrs. Tomkins',the Felton curate's fat, childridden wife--as, in some foreign city,they tell us that you may see marble palaces and mud hovels cheekby jowl; for, as is a mud hovel to a marble palace, so is poor Mrs.Tomkins in the Melford table of valuation to Miss Blessington.

  Mrs. Tomkins' main hope is in her sister, pretty, second-rate, pertMiss Smith, who, with a dog-collar round her waist, to demonstrate itstenuity, and two long, uncurled curls, vulgarly known as "Follow me,lads!" floating over her fat shoulders, has been kissing strawberriesand rose-buds, and selling them at half-a-crown apiece, to suchattorneys' clerks and doctors' assistants of weak intellect as inhabitMelford town.

  On Miss Blessington's other side the Misses Denzil hold sway--daughtersof a neighbour baronet, whom for twenty years past Sir Thomas has hatedwith the hate of hell, because he once beat him in a contest for thecounty. Belinda Denzil, an elderly young lady, tall and yellow andstately; likest to a dandelion among the flowers of the field; andPriscilla, a beady-eyed, brisk brune, of whom her admirers predicatethat she could talk the hind leg off a mule!

  Mr. Gerard and Mr. De Grey are strolling about together arm in arm;criticising the wares a little and the saleswomen a good deal. Theyare not particularly fond of one another; but no more was AlexanderSelkirk, I dare say, of his next-door neighbour, when he lived intown, if he ever did. All the same, if the said next-door neighbourhad happened to land on that most irreligious of desert islands,where the benighted valleys and rocks never heard the sound of thechurch-going bell, don't you suppose that he would have rushed intohis arms? So in this desert island of Melford, St. John and Dick, theonly two respectable fellows, as they think, among a savage horde ofsquireens, march about, hooked on together for mutual defence againstthe barbarians.

  "You seem to be driving a thriving trade," remarks St. John, who, afterhis wanderings, has at length come to anchor at Miss Blessington'sstall, addressing Esther, but addressing her diffidently, as onethat, after the severe and uncalled-for snubbing he had this morningreceived, was by no means sure of the reception his civilities mightmeet with, while three old women and a parson squeeze in besidehimself and his friend.

  "Perhaps you will kindly contribute towards making it more thriving,by buying something;" replies Miss Craven, coolly and drily. "Let merecommend this cigar case to your notice; it is rather ugly, and verydear, but one must not mind trifling drawbacks of that kind on anoccasion like the present."

  "Did you make it?"

  "Yes; but please don't be so polite as to buy it on that account, as,upon the same grounds, you would have to buy a large proportion of thebeautiful works of art before you."

  So speaking, she turns away from him to another customer, as if glad tobe rid of him.

  "May I ask what the price of this is?" asks Mr. De Grey, leaning withlanguid familiarity over Miss Smith's counter (everybody is familiarwith Miss Smith; that is one of her great charms), and holding up agorgeously-embroidered smoking cap between his finger and thumb.

  "One pound eleven and sixpence halfpenny," replies the young lady, withglib obsequiousness, all a-twitter with excitement at being addressedby an august being in a cutaway coat who is known throughout theroom to be a visitor at Felton Hall. "But, dear me!" (fussing aboutwith unnecessary _empressement_) "I have got a much more stylish onesomewhere, if I could but lay my hands on it--one that I made myself,if that is any recommendation! He! he!" (with a giggle.)

  "Can you doubt it?" retorts he, sucking the top of his cane, andstaring at her with lazy impertinence.

  Meanwhile the room is getting very crowded and stuffy: it is a verysmall town-hall, and all Melford and the southern half of ----shireare compressed into it--the result being much animal heat, someill-humour, and infinite g
rief over rent garments; which is reversingthe case of the ancients, who rent their garments in sign of grief.And in and through and about this warm throng, many girls, emissariesfrom different stalls, go pushing and elbowing to enlist unwillingsubscribers to raffles. Philanthropy has gone nigh to unsexing them; ithas turned modest, reserved ladies into forward importunate Maenads.

  Foremost, most energetic, most unrebuffable of these emissaries isMiss Priscilla Denzil. She flies about hither and thither, with herwhite gown all limp and tumbled, and her rough hair pushing its wayresolutely from under the blue ribbons which make a vain show ofconfining it _a la Grecque_. She is not thinking a bit of how she islooking; her whole soul is intent on doing a good stroke of business,and none can escape her.

  Sir Thomas Gerard has just entered the hall. Having ridden into Melfordon magisterial business, the idea has struck him of how much betterand more cuttingly he will be able to abuse the bazaar at dinner thisevening if he has had the advantage of seeing it. With a dog-whip inhis hand, and an intense desire to lay it about the shoulders of thecompany expressed in his cross face, he is pushing his way along whenattacked by the dauntless Priscilla.

  "Oh! Sir Thomas, please let me put you down in the raffle for afender-stool; _so_ handsome! white arums on a red ground; _do_ let me,_so_ handsome!"

  "A _what_, Miss Priscilla?"

  "A fender-stool."

  "Humph! the stupidest things that ever were invented," answers thebaronet, snarling. "If they had been made expressly to trip peopleup, and pitch them head-foremost into the fire, they could not haveanswered the purpose better."

  "Did they ever pitch you head-foremost into the fire?" asks MissPrissy, insinuatingly ("because [aside], if so, I wonder whoever wasfool enough to pick you out again!")

  "No, and they shall never have the chance as long as I can preventthem," replies the gracious elder, walking off.

  For a minute Priscilla stands still, rebuffed; but recovering herself,speedily rushes off again, charges with her fender-stool an old maidwho has one already, and a poor little whity-brown curate who has nohouse to put one in, &c., &c.

  "I am afraid I have not done them up very neatly," Esther is saying,as she gives a parcel into Mr. De Grey's hands--Miss Smith having atlength frightened that gentleman from her side by the rapid stridesto intimacy which she was making with him--"My fingers toil in vainafter the nimbleness with which shopmen whisk a parcel into shape andcompactness before you have time to look round."

  Mr. De Grey has spent a small fortune in pincushions, kettle-holders,dressed dolls, and many other such-like articles which no young man offashion should be without.

  "What have I done to be so neglected, Miss Craven?" asks Gerard,elevating his eyebrows plaintively. "Am I expected to put on theseslippers on the spot, that I am given no paper to pack them up in?"

  "Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought that Miss De Grey was attending toyou," answers Esther, in the most business-like, shop-woman voice,without smiling, or lifting her eyes.

  "I thought no one ever gave change at a bazaar," he says, trying tomake her look up at him, as she puts a few shillings into his hand.

  "I do not approve of such extortion," she answers, demurely; "honestyis the best policy."

  "That proverb must have been invented, as Whately justly observed, bysome one who had tried the other alternative."

  She smiles a little against her will. "I wish you two would go now,"she says, addressing both young men indifferently: "you are only makingme idle. Look! there are three old maids ready to storm the position,and only deterred by you."

  "Rhadamantha, Hebe, and Niobe!" says St. John, laughing.

  "Please go; I know you are not thinking of buying anything more."

  "Don Ferdinando can do no more than he can do, and at present he ispretty well cleaned out."

  At Miss Blessington's stall trade is certainly very brisk; it isconsidered a fitting mark of respect to the family to buy their goods,and so the honest burgesses of Melford make it a point of honour to buyMiss Blessington's and Miss De Grey's blotting books and babies' socksin preference to anyone else's, however superior in fabric and lessexorbitant in price anybody else's might be.

  Miss Blessington has just sunk upon a chair, with an affectation ofgreat fatigue, and is saying languidly, "If ever any one deserved themartyr's crown, that person is _I;_ within the last ten minutes I havesold nine cushions and fifteen pairs of muffetees."

  "There's plenty of cool tea and warm ices at the other end of the room,if you think they are likely to restore you," suggests Gerard, whois still leaning his elbow on the counter, and has not gone away ascommanded.

  "It makes one quite hot," pursues Miss Blessington, leaning back andfanning herself vigorously, "merely to look at Prissy Denzil rushingabout like a Maeenad, worrying every one to put into raffles."

  "Providence made a great mistake when it made that girl a lady," saysSt. John, following, with a look of half-disgust in his fastidiouseyes, Priscilla's little dishevelled figure; "she would have been muchhappier haggling for halfpence at a huckster's stall."

  The afternoon draws towards its close; people have come and bought,and raffled and gone again, carrying manifold ill-tied paper parcelswith them. The farmeresses and yeomen's wives of the Melford districthave departed, carrying with them, in their mind's eye, for imitationagainst next Sunday, the cut of Miss Blessington's skirt, and theprofuse curls and _bandeaux_ of Miss De Grey's intricate _coiffure_.The room is emptying, and the day's duty approaching its end.

  "I say, old fellow," remarks Mr. De Grey, touching St. John on theshoulder as he leans against the wall, gazing somewhat morosely at hisown boots, "don't you think we might as well be saying Ta-ta? I don'tknow what you have, but _I_ have had nearly enough of this gay andfestive scene."

  "All right," answers the other, shaking off dull care; "I have put intoexactly twenty-five raffles, and only got a christening robe and asquirt, so I think I may be supposed to have done my duty."

  At the door there is a little confusion--carriages driving up,carriages driving away; a small crowd gathered to see the smart ladies;two policemen.

  The Felton equipage and Mr. Gerard's T.-cart stand at some littledistance down the street. St. John offers Esther his arm, and she,having no decent excuse for declining, takes it. As they walk along, hespeaks to her hurriedly and not without temper. "If you have no specialground of quarrel against me--and Heaven knows why you should have--butfeel only that weariness to which most women seem, in my society, to bemore or less subject, be unselfish, and let me drive you home. I willnot speak, neither need you, if you will have it so; there are manythings more unsociable than absolute silence."

  "Why cannot you be satisfied with this morning's arrangements?" sheasks, demurring; the recollection of his reported insult rankling inher mind.

  He shrugs his shoulders expressively. "If you had had three fourthsof 'Le Follet' and half the _Morning Post_ poured into your reluctantears, as I have, you would not have asked that question."

  "If you have heard _half_ the _Morning Post_, is it not a thousandpities that you should not hear the other half?" she inquires, drily.

  They have reached the T.-cart, the big black horse, the baby-tiger; inthe low, red sun the new harness shines brightly.

  "I almost wish you could sprain your other ankle," Gerard says,recovering his good humour. "As long as you were lame, you were muchmore amiable."

  Ten minutes more, and the Melford steep street and railway bridge areleft behind them, they are trotting with smooth briskness betweenthe nutty, briary hedgerows. At first the silence which Gerard hadguaranteed threatens to remain unbroken; it is infringed at last byEsther, out of whose heart the fair late breeze, the happy yellowstillness, and lastly, the proximity to and solitude with the belovedone, are smoothing all angry creases. ("If he did speak lightly of me,"she thinks, sorrowfully, "we shall not have the chance of many moredrives together; whether he think ill or well, highly or meanly, of me,let me be happy with him whil
e I may!")

  "What a pleasant vehicle this would be to make a driving tour in!"

  "A tour of all the cathedral towns throughout England, as the Heir ofRedclyffe proposed spending his honeymoon in making!"

  She laughs.

  "I remember long ago the _Saturday Review_ saying of someshe-novelist's men, that they were like old governesses in trousers: itwas not a bad simile, was it?"

  Silence falls on them again; broken this time by Gerard, who, turningabruptly towards his companion, says, "You are _not_ bored by mysociety, Miss Craven? Unless you are cast in a mould different from therest of humanity, you _must_ be bored by the society of the Misses DeGrey. Why, then, were you so resolute this morning in rejecting the oneand accepting the other? This is the problem that has been puzzling mefor the last half mile."

  She hangs her head like a scolded school-child.

  "What _was_ your motive?"

  "A prudential one, partly," she answers, rallying her spirits. "I knewthat in after life I should have small experience of T.-carts and suchrich man's luxuries, so I thought it wiser not to run the risk ofcontracting a taste for them."

  "How do you know what the experience of your after life may be?"

  "One may argue from the known to the unknown; I can give a prettyshrewd guess."

  "And was that your sole motive?"

  "What does it matter to you whether it was or not?"

  "Nothing; except that, to a philosophical mind like mine, woman and hercaprices are an interesting psychological study. Did you ever hear ofan essay of Addison's entitled 'Dissection of a Coquette's Heart?'"

  "I am not a coquette," she cries, indignantly, answering the indirectaccusation directly.

  "I did not say you were. I hope you are not--I hope to God you arenot!" he answers, with more vehemence than the occasion seems to demand.

  "And yet," she says, feeling oppressed by the solemnity of his mannerand trying to speak lightly, "I have heard it said that no woman can bethoroughly attractive who is not something of a flirt."

  "I had rather that she should be thoroughly _un_attractive then," heanswers, shortly and grimly.

  "Men always wish to have a monopoly of all pleasant sins," she retorts,a little cynically.

  "If you think that the reason why I wish you not to flirt is thatI want a monopoly of that occupation, you are mistaken," he says,gravely; "it is an art that I have not either the will or the power topractise."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "Seriously?"

  "Seriously. Confess that, after that admission, your opinion of me isconsiderably lowered."

  No answer but a smile.

  "Confess that you feel for me as sovereign a contempt as the ladies ofthe last century felt for a man that never got drunk."

  "I feel," she says, averting her head and speaking under an impulsethat kindles her cheeks and makes her voice falter--"I feel a surprisethat the words you say and the words you are reported to say do _not_tally better together."

  "What am I reported to say?" (a little impatiently.) "A _rechauffe_of one's own stale speeches is not an appetising dish, but may bewholesome as an exhortation to consistency."

  "A person--I was told--" begins Esther, floundering in confusionamong different forms of speech--"I was told--by a person that oughtto have known--that you had spoken in a slighting, disparaging wayof--of--of--a person."

  "Who told you so?" (breathlessly.)

  "That can be of no consequence."

  "Without your telling me I know," he says, his face growing hot withthe red of indignant anger, not guilt. "God forgive her for such a lie!"

  "It was not true, then?" she asks, eagerly, lifting her eyes, brimfulof joyful relief, to his.

  "Such an accusation is not worth rebutting," he answers,contemptuously. "Is a man likely to speak slightingly of----" Hestops abruptly. ("Not yet! not yet! it is impossible that she canlike me yet. Am I an Antinous, to be loved as soon as seen? Let me bepatient--be patient!")