Red as a Rose is She: A Novel Page 2
CHAPTER II.
"Jack and I got in our last hayload to-day, without a drop of rain; thefirst bit of good luck that has come to us, I don't know when. If wehad any land, I should imagine that we must have a bit of consecratedground among it, to account for our ill-fortune; but as we have notof our own enough to pasture a goose upon, that cannot be it. Such anodd thing happened to-day--Robert Brandon proposed to me: it is thefirst offer I ever had, though I was seventeen last month. If it isnever a more pleasant process than it was to-day, I hope sincerely itmay be the last. I said 'Yes,' too; at least, a species of Yes afterhalf-a-dozen Noes; I cannot imagine why, for I certainly did not feelYes. I suppose I must have been pleased at any one wishing for mycompany during the term of his natural life."
The name on the fly-leaf of this journal-book is Esther Craven,Glan-yr-Afon, and the date July 10, 186-. July is very often a ratherwet month--not so this year; all through its one-and-thirty days thesky was like brass, as it looked to Elijah (the Seer's) eyes on the topof Carmel, when, by his faith, he brought up the tarrying rain from thesea's chambers. London is pouring out her noble army of haberdashersand greengrocers into Ramsgate and Margate, and Scarborough andLlandudno. The John Gilpins of to-day are not satisfied with a modestouting to the "Bell" at Edmonton, "all in a chaise and pair."
Armies of schoolboys are devouring arid sandwiches and prime old bunsin railway refreshment rooms--schoolboys emptied out of every schooland seminary and college all over the country. Highly paid instructorsof youth are stretching their cramped legs up the steep sides ofHelvellyn and Mont Blanc, and surveying the "frozen hurricane" of theglaciers through their academic spectacles. And young Craven's (ofGlan-yr-Afon) last hayload is safely stacked, as you heard from hissister's diary. This morning the highest lying of the upland fields washilly with haycocks: to-night it is as flat as Salisbury Plain. Allday long the waggons have gone grinding and crunching up and down therocky mountain road between field and rick-yard. All day long Evan andHugh and Roppert (_sic_) with their waistcoats open and their brownarms bared, aided and abetted by various Cambrian matrons, with bonnetsstanding upright on their heads, and pitchforks in their lily hands,have been tossing the scented bundles--sweeter in death than in life,like a good man's fame--into the carts; loading them till of the shafthorse nought but ears and nose and forelegs appeared, save to the eyeof faith. All day long Esther has been sitting under a haycock, as onemight fancy Solomon's wise woman doing, "looking well to the ways ofher household." The hay moulds itself pliably into a soft arm-chair forher young, slight figure, and the big hay-spiders walk up her back attheir leisure, and explore the virgin forests of her thick dusk hair.She has had her luncheon brought out to her there--bread and milk in awhite bowl. It is unsocial, surly work, eating alone; one feels reducedto the level of a dog, cracking bones, and lapping up gravy out of histrencher, all by himself, with tail well down, like a pump handle, anda growl and a snap for any brother dog who may approach to share hisfeast.
The haymakers were much cheerier--"couched at ease" under the nuttyhedgerow; bringing slices of unnaturally fat bacon out of blue andwhite spotted pocket-handkerchiefs, gabbling to one another in theWelsh tongue, which, to one who occupies the room of the unlearned, hasalways a querulous, quarrelsome, interrogative sound; and digging theirclasp knives into the ground to clean them, when their services were nolonger required. Jack is out for the day, and the place feels stupidwithout him. There is not much melody in "I paddle my own canoe," butone misses it when one is accustomed to hear it echoing gaily over thecrofts and through the farm-yard and orchard. It would be impossibleto talk more dog-Welsh than Jack does to his workmen; but even themellifluous tongue of the Cymri, with its three or four consonantsstanding together, undissevered by any vowel, is made harmonious,enunciated by a young, clear voice, that sounds as if it had never beenthe vehicle for sorrowful words.
"The village seems asleep or dead, Now Lubin is away,"
and Esther, though she has entered upon her eighteenth year (an agewhich a century ago would have been rather overripe--Chloe and Cynthiaand Phyllis being considered in their prime at fifteen, and toastedaccordingly), has as yet no Lubin but her brother. Now and again, Gwenthe cook, and Sarah the housemaid, came panting up the hill in lilaccotton gowns and trim white aprons, bearing beer in every jug andmug and tin pipkin that Glan-yr-Afon affords, as Evangeline broughtthe nut-brown ale to the reapers of the village of Grand Pre. Andthe haymakers drink insatiably, and wipe the thirsty mouth upon theconvenient sleeve as artless Nature bids. By-and-by artless Naturemakes them rather unsteady on their legs. As they lead the heavy-ladencart to the last remaining haycock, the one on which their mistresssits enthroned, I am not at all sure that they do not see two haycocks,two wide-leaved white hats, two Esthers. Perceiving their condition,though too old an inhabitant of Wales to be in any degree surprisedat what is, after all, the normal condition of the Welsh, Miss Cravenrises precipitately. Driven from her fortress, she picks up her needlesand threads, and Jack's shirt, from which, as usual, the frequentbutton is missing, and runs lightly down the mountain path in herstrong country boots, which bid defiance to the sharp stones that cropout at every step through the limestone soil. At the hall door--alittle arched door like a church's, with a trellised porch and benches,such as one sees Dutch boors sitting on with their beer and schnapps,in Teniers' pictures---Sarah meets her. Sarah is an Englishwoman.
"Mr. Brandon is in the parlour, 'm."
"Parlour! My good Sarah, how many times shall I adjure you, by all youhold most sacred, to say drawing-room?"
"He has been there best part of half-an-hour, 'm."
"Poor man! how lively for him! why on earth didn't you come and callme?"
"He said as he wasn't in no partikler hurry, and he'd as lieve as notwait till you come in. Stop a bit, Miss Esther, you have got some hayon your frock behind."
"People of seventeen wear gowns, not frocks, Sarah. Oh! there, thatwill do. If I had a haystack disposed about my person, he would neverbe a bit the wiser."
Half-an-hour passes, and Mr. Brandon is still in the "parlour." Itis seven o'clock, and dinner-time. Would you like to know what it isthat Mr. Brandon takes so long in saying, and whether it is anythinglikely to reconcile Miss Craven to the loss of her dinner? A littleroom that looks towards the sun-setting; a little room full of eveningsunshine and the smell of tea-roses; a light paper, with small, brightflower-bunches on the walls; white muslin curtains; a general air ofcrisp freshness, as of a room that there are no climbing, crawling,sticky-fingered children to crumple and rumple. A young woman, ratherred in the face, standing in one corner. She has been driven thitherapparently by a young man, who is standing before her, and who is stillredder. At a rough calculation, you would say that the young man wasseven feet high; but put him with his back against the wall, with hisheels together, and his chin in, and you will find that he is exactlysix feet four; that is, four inches taller than any man who wishes todo work in the world, and find horses to carry him, ought to be. Hisclothes are rather shabby, and he looks poor; but, from the crown ofhis close-clipped head to the sole of his big feet, a gentleman, everyinch of him, though he has no "gude braid claith" to help to make himso. His features may be Apollo's or Apollyon's, for all you can see ofthem, so thickly are they planted out with a forest of yellow hair; buttears do not seem to be at any immense distance from eyes blue as thesky between storm clouds, fearless as a three-years' child's.
"Don't you think that we do very well as we are?" says the young woman,suggestively.
"I don't know about you, I'm sure. I know I've lost a stone and a halfwithin the last year," replies the young man, very ruefully.
Esther laughs. "There is some little of you left still," she says, withrather a mischievous glance up at the two yards and a half of enamouredmanhood before her.
This is what has been over-roasting the mutton. He has been askingher to take his heart, his large hand, and the half of one hundredand twenty pounds a year (the
exorbitant pay of a lieutenant in HerMajesty's infantry), of an old hunting watch, and a curly retrieverdog; and she has been declining these tempting offers, one and all.The minute hand of the gilt clock, on which Minerva sits in a helmetand a very tight gown, with her legs dangling down, has travelled from6.30 to 7.5, and within these five-and-thirty minutes Miss Cravenhas refused three proposals, all made by the same person: the first,very stoutly and mercilessly, from Jack's arm-chair, where she hadoriginally taken up her position; the second, decisively still, butwith less cruelty, from the music-stool, to which she had next retired;and the third, in a hasty and wavering manner, from the corner, inwhich she has taken final refuge, in a strong, fortified entrenchmentbehind the writing-table.
"But--but--" says Esther, her rebellious mouth giving littletwitches every now and then as at some lurking thought of theridiculous--"it's--it's such a very _odd_ idea! I don't think I everwas more surprised in my life. When Sarah told me that you were here,I thought that, of course, you had come to say something about thatbone-dust. Why, you never said anything at all tending this way before."
"Didn't I?" answers the young giant, with a crestfallen look. "I triedseveral times, but I don't think that you could have understood what Imeant, for you always began to laugh."
"I always do laugh at civil speeches," answers the girl simply. "Idon't know how else to take them: I suppose it is because I have had sofew addressed to me; they always sound to me so _niais_."
"I'm not a bit surprised at your not liking me," he says, withhumility. "I don't see how any one could at first. I know that I'm uglyand awkward, and don't understand things quick----"
"I don't _dis_-like you," interrupts Esther, with magnanimity, quiteaffected by her lover's description of his own undesirability."Why should I? There is nothing in you to dislike; you are verygood-natured, I'm sure," damning with faint praise, in the laudableeffort not to be unqualifiedly uncomplimentary.
"I know what an unequal exchange it is that I am offering,"says Brandon, too humble to resent, and yet with a dim sense ofmortification at the quantity and quality of praise bestowed upon him."I know of how much more value you are than I!"
She does not contradict him; her own heart echoes his words. "I am ofmore value than he; I shall find it out practically some day."
"That was why I was in such a hurry to speak," he says eagerly. "I feltsure that if I did not, you would be snapped up directly by some oneelse."
She laughs rather grimly. "You might have laid aside your alarms onthat head, I think. I don't know who there is about here to snap me up."
Silence for a few minutes: Esther takes up a penwiper, fashioned intoa remote resemblance to a chimney sweep, and studies its anatomyattentively. "Shall I upset the writing-table and make a rush pasthim? No, the ink would spoil the carpet, and he would only come againto-morrow, and hunt me into the other corner. Poor fellow! I hope he isnot going to cry, or go down on his knees!"
Whether mindful or not of the fate of Gibbon the historian, who, havingthrown himself on his knees before his lady-love, was unable, throughextreme fat, to get up again, Brandon does not indulge in either of thedemonstrations that Esther apprehended. He stands quiet, cramming halfa yard of yellow beard into his mouth, and says presently:
"Well, I suppose I must not worry you any more; it is not good manners,is it? A man ought to be satisfied with one No; I have given you thetrouble of saying three."
"It's very disagreeable, I'm sure," says Esther, wrinkling up herforehead in an embarrassed fashion, "and I hate saying No to any one: Idon't mean in this way, because nobody ever asked me before, but aboutanything; but what can I do?"
"Try me!" he says very eagerly, stretching out his hand across thenarrow table (all but upsetting the standish _en route_). "I don't wantto threaten you, saying that I should go to the dogs if you threw meover, for I should not; that always seemed to me a cowardly sort ofthing to do; and, besides, I should have my mother left to live for ifthe worst came to the worst; but you must see that it is everythingin the world to a fellow to have one great hope in it to keep himstraight."
Soft music in the distance; some one whistling "I paddle my owncanoe" somewhere about the house; Esther, in an agony between thefear of subversing the table, and the hundredfold worse fear of beingdiscovered by Jack in an unequivocally sentimental position, of whichshe would never hear the last. "Very well, very well, I'll--I'll_think_ about it; could you be so very kind as to loose my hand?"
He complies reluctantly, and she, that there may be no furtherdiscussion about it, hides it discreetly away in her jacket pocket. "Ipaddle my own canoe" dies away in the distance; apparently it was onits way to dress for dinner. Esther draws a sigh of relief. "I thoughtthat some one was coming."
"And if they had?"
"Why, I did not relish the idea of being found driven into a corner,like a child at a dame's school, and you, like the dame, standingover me," answers she, abandoning the struggle with the corners ofher mouth, and bubbling over with the facile laughter of seventeen.Utterly unable to join in her merriment, he stands leaning in awkwardmisery against the wall; all other griefs are at least respectable;love-sorrows, alone, are only ludicrous.
"It really is so silly," says Esther, presently, compassionate butimpatient. "Do try and get the better of it!"
"Easier said than done," he answers ruefully. "I might as well adviseyou to get the better of your affection for Jack."
"I don't see the parallel," rejoined she, coldly, feeling as if therewas sacrilege in the comparison. "My love for Jack is a naturalinstinct, built too upon the foundation of lifelong obligations,endless benefits, countless kindnesses. What kindness have I ever shownyou? I sewed a button on your glove once, and once I pinned a rose onyour coat."
"I have the rose still."
She says "Pshaw!" pettishly, and turns away her head.
"Perhaps you are afraid of marrying on small means?" suggests Brandon,diffidently, after a while.
The gentle clatter and click of dishes carried into the dining-roomenters faintly through the shut door. Esther's heart sinks withinher. Is he going to begin all over again?--round and round, like athunderstorm among hills?
"I am afraid of marrying on _any_ means," she says, comprehensively."I particularly dislike the idea; marriage seems to me the end ofeverything, and I am at the beginning."
"But I don't want you to marry me _now_," cries Robert, stammering.
"Don't you? You told me just now that you did."
"For pity's sake, Esther, don't laugh! it may be play to you, but it isdeath to me."
"I'm not laughing."
"Perhaps some day you will feel what I am feeling now."
"Perhaps" (doubtfully).
"And you will find then that it is no laughing matter."
"Perhaps" (still more doubtfully).
The clamour of a fresh cohort of plates shaking noisily upon a traywarns Brandon that his time is short.
"Esther!" with a sort of despair in his voice, clashing the ridiculouswith the pathetic--they are always twin sisters--"I could live uponsuch a little hope."
"What would you have me say?" she cries, standing with flutteringcolour, tapping feet, and irritated eyes. "I have told you the plaintruth, and it does not please you; must I dress up some prettyfalsehood, and tell you that I fell in love with you at first sight, orthat after all I find that you are the only man in the world that canmake me really happy?"
"Say nothing of the kind!" he answers, wincing under her irony. "Ihave not much to recommend me, we all know that, and I start with thedisadvantage of your thinking me rather a bore than otherwise; butother men have overcome even greater obstacles; why should not I? Giveme at least a trial!"
She is silent.
"Say that you will _try_ to like me; there need be no untruth in that."
"But if I fail!" says Esther, wavering--partly in sheer weariness ofthe contest, partly in womanly pity for sufferings which owe their riseto the excess of her own charms.
"And you will console yourself by telling all your friends what a flirtI am, and how ill I treated you." Apparently he does not think thissuggestion worthy of refutation; at least he does not refute it. "Or,if you don't, your mother will."
"Not she" (indignantly).
"Or, if she does not, your sisters will."
"Not they" (less indignantly).
"And if--if--after a long while--a very long while--I succeed in likingyou a little--mind, I don't say that I shall; on the contrary, I thinkit far more probable that I shall not--but if I do, you won't expect meto _marry_ you?"
He smiles, despite himself. "I can hardly promise that."
"I mean not for many years, till Jack is married, and I am quite,_quite_ old--five-and-twenty or so?"
"It shall be as you wish."
"And if, as is most likely, I continue not to care about you, and amobliged to tell you so, you will not think the worse of me."
"No."
"You are certain?"
"Certain. Whatever you do, I shall love you to-day, and to-morrow, andalways," says the young fellow, very solemnly; and his eyes go awaypast her, through the window, and up to the blue sky overhead, as ifcalling on the great pale vault to be witness between him and her.
As for her, her prosaic soul has wandered back to the mutton; she takesthe opportunity of his eyes being averted to steal a glance at theclock. Apparently, however, he has eyes in the back of his head, for hesays hastily, with rather a pained smile: "You are longing for me togo."
"No--o."
"I ought not to have come at this time of night. I ought to have waitedtill to-morrow, I know."
"It is rather late."
"But to-morrow seemed such a long time off, that I thought I must knowthe worst or the best before the sun came up again. I don't quite knowwhich it is now; which is it, Esther?"
"It's neither the one nor the other; it's the second best," sheanswers, all smiles again at seeing some prospect of her admirer'sdeparture, and forgetting, with youthful heedlessness, the price atwhich that departure has been bought. "It is that I really am very muchobliged, though, all the same I wish you would think better of it, andthat I'll try; I will, really; don't look as if you did not believe me."
So with this half-loaf he goes, passes away through the little woodenporch, that is so low it looks as if it were going to knock his tallhead, past the stables, and through the oak woods, home.