Red as a Rose is She: A Novel Page 3

  CHAPTER III.

  "It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whispered word--"

  As saith that most delicious of love poems that makes us all feelimmoral as we read it. It is the hour when chanticleer retires to hisperch in the henhouse, lowers his proud tail, sinks his neck into hisbreast, and goes to sleep between his two fattest wives. It is the hourwhen animal life and wild humanity retire to bed; the hour when tamedhumanity sits down to dinner. The more we advance in civilisation thefarther back we push the boundaries of sleep and forgetfulness. Whenwe reach our highest point of culture, I suppose we shall hustle theblessed, the divine Nepenthe, off the face of the earth altogether.

  The dining-room at Glan-yr-Afon is, like the rest of the house,rather small and rather pleasant. It will not dine more than twelvecomfortably; it is seldom asked to dine more than two; and these two,being young and void of gluttony, do not spend much of their time init. In youth the dining-room is not our temple, our sanctuary, ourholy of holies, as it often is in riper years. In youth our souls aregreat, and our bodies slender; in old age our bodies are often greatand our souls slender. The one wide open window looks on the gay littlegarden--the window, all around and about which the climbing convolvulusis blowing great white trumpets. There are two or three pictures onthe walls; good ones, though dim and dusty. Thomas Wentworth, LordStrafford, very dark and haughty and saturnine, in blue grey armour,scowling at whosoever looks at him, as he might have scowled at Pymand Hollis. Erasmus, astute and lean, in a black skull cap: and Mary,Queen of Scots, very pale and peaky and indistinct, for time haswashed and scrubbed all the carmine out of the cheeks and lips thatsent Europe mad three centuries ago. An old sheep-dog is lying on thehearth-rug, with his wise old eyes fixed on his master, licking hischops every now and then when he sees some morsel more tempting thanordinary conveyed to another mouth than his.

  This evening Lord Strafford is scowling, Mary Stuart simpering, downupon two people dining together, and on a third person whisking aboutin a clean cap and an aggressively well-starched print dress inattendance upon them. There is a great pot, full and brimming over withroses--a beanpot our forefathers would have called it--in the middleof the table. They were plucked but half an hour ago, and their faceswere still wet with the dew-tears that they wept at being torn awayfrom their brothers and sisters on the old gnarled rose trees up thekitchen-garden walk.

  But the freshest, the sweetest, the largest of the roses is not inthe beanpot with the others; it is on a chair by itself; there are nodew-tears on its cheeks, it has no prickles, and its name is Esther.

  "Have some roast chips, Essie? I cannot offer you any roast mutton,because there isn't any; I dare say there was an hour ago, but therecertainly isn't now."

  This speech is made by Jack. Jack is a young person with not a singlegood feature in his face; with a baby moustache, which, like thedaguerreotypes of fifteen or sixteen years ago, is only visible at rareintervals in one particular light; and with cheeks and nose and chinand throat all as brown as any berry that ever ripened under the mellowautumn sun.

  "It's a fault on the right side, dear boy; it's better than quiveringand being purple," says Esther, with a pout which a lover would havethought entrancing, but which a prosaic brother, if he perceived it atall, considered rather a distortion than otherwise.

  "I wish that people would remember that there is a time to call and atime to dine, and that the two times are not the same," he grumbles, alittle crossly.

  A man may bear the untimely cutting off of his firstborn, thedisposition evinced by the wife of his bosom to love his neighbouras himself, the sinking of his little all in the Agra Bank, withresignation and fortitude truly Christian; but what hero, what sage,what archbishop, can stand the over-roasting or under-boiling of hismutton, the burning of his soup, or the wateriness of his potatoes, andbear an _aequam mentem?_

  Esther looks rather conscious, purses up her pink mouth into the shapeof a noiseless "Hush!" and says "_Pas avant_," which idiomatic phraseis intended to convey to her brother the indiscreetness of makingcomments in Sarah's presence on Mr. Brandon's enormities.

  From long familiarity with the sound, Sarah has become entirelyacquainted with Esther's specimen of Parisian French, and always pricksup her ears when it appears on the scene.

  Then they are silent for a little space. One is not apt to say verybrilliant things in one's family circle; it requires the friction ofmind with mind before bright sayings spring into being, as the flintand the steel must be married before the spark leaps into life.

  "How long the days are now!" Jack says presently, as he looks out onthe evening light lying like a great bright cloak all over the land.

  The earth is so very fair, all pranked with "smalle flowres" and greenleaves, that the sun is grievously loth to leave her. Fair-weatherfriend as he is, he cannot be in too great a hurry to desert her, whenshe lies poor and bare and faded in the dull November days.

  "One always says that this time of year," Esther says, smiling. "Itwould be much more worthy remark if they didn't get longer; if one kepta journal of one's remarks for a year, what an awful tautology therewould be in them! What a pity that one cannot say a thing once for all,and have done with it!"

  "If you resolved never to say anything that anybody had said before,you would make mighty few observations, I take it," Jack answers, alittle drily. "Most remarks have been pretty well aired in the courseof the last six thousand years, I fancy."

  So, with a little flagging talk, the dinner passes, and the modestdessert appears: scarlet pyramids of strawberries, great bag-shapedBritish Queens, and little racy, queer-tasted hautbois.

  Sarah retires, and the embargo is taken off Esther's speech.

  "Is she gone--finally gone?" she cries, very eagerly. "Heaven bepraised for that! I thought she would never have done clattering thosespoons. Oh, Jack, what a heavy weight a piece of news is to carry! HowI sympathise with the woman who had to whisper to the rushes aboutMidas' ears! I have been dying all through dinner for some rushes towhisper to."

  "To whisper _what_ to?" asks the boy, his eyes opening very wide andround.

  "Jack, do I look taller than usual to-night?"

  "No."

  "Broader?"

  "Not that I perceive."

  "More consequential?"

  "Much as usual. You never are a woman with 'a presence.'"

  "Is it possible that there's no difference at all in me?"

  "None whatever; except that, now I look at you, your cheeks are, ifpossible, redder than usual. Why should there be any?"

  "Because" (drawing herself up) "I have to-day passed a turning-point inmy history. I have had--a proposal."

  "Who from?--one of the haymakers?"

  "No. That would not have surprised me much more, though. Let me getit out as quick as I can, now that the string of my tongue is loosed.Robert Brandon was here to-day."

  "As I know to my cost," says Jack, with rather a rueful face at therecollection of his unpalatable dinner.

  "And--and--how shall I word it prettiest?--asked me to be his."

  "The devil he did!" exclaims Jack, surprised into strong, language.

  "Yes, the devil he did! as you epigrammatically remark."

  "And you, what answer did you give?" asks the boy, quickly, his mouthemulating the example of his eyes, and opening wide, too.

  "I said I was much obliged, but that, for the present, I preferredbeing my own."

  "You said 'No,' of course?"

  "Yes, I did; ever so many 'Noes.' I did not count them, but I'm suretheir name was Legion."

  Jack gives a sigh of relief, and throws a biscuit to the ceaselesslyattent sheep-dog. "Poor beggar!" he says. "Here, Luath, old man.You old muff! why did you not catch it? He is as good a fellow asever I came across, and now, I suppose, it will be all different anddisagreeable. Hang it! what a plague women are!"

  "But, Jack----
"

  "Well, Essie, not done yet? Any more unlucky fellows sent off withtheir tails between their legs?"

  "No, no; but, Jack" (looking down, and staining her fingers with thehenna of the strawberries), "I--I'm not quite sure that, after allthose 'Noes,' I did not say something that was not quite 'No.'"

  "That was 'Yes?'"

  "No, not 'Yes' either; not positive, actual 'Yes;' something betwixtand between; a sort of possible, hypothetical 'Yes.'"

  "More fool you!" said Jack, briefly.

  "Don't scold me, you bad boy!" she cries, running over to him andputting her gentle arms about his neck in the caressing way whichsisters affect so much, and which brothers, in general, disrelish sohighly, "or I vow I'll cry, and you know you hate that."

  "I hate your making a fool of yourself worse," growls Jack, mollified,but struggling. "I say, you need not strangle a fellow."

  "Wait till I do make a fool of myself," she says, very gaily. "I'm onlytalking about it as yet, and there's a good wide ditch between sayingand doing."

  "More shame for you to say what you don't mean."

  "Jack, dear boy, don't you know that I hate saying things that vex aperson? I never had a faculty for telling people home-truths; I'd farsooner tell them any amount of stories; and I got so tired of saying'No,' and he seemed to take it so much to heart, that I said 'Yes,'just for a change--just for peace. In fact, 'anything for a quiet life'is my motto."

  "And may I ask what you intend to live upon?" asks Jack (the romanticside of whose mind lies at present fallow and uncultivated, and whosethoughts, Briton-like, speedily turn from "love's young dream" to thepound, shilling, and pence aspect of the matter).

  "On love, to be sure. On--what is it?--6s. 6d. a day; and perhaps I maytake in soldiers' washing," Esther says, bursting out into a violentfit of laughing.

  "Uncommonly funny, no doubt!" Jack says, laughing too, but sorelyagainst his will. "And do you mean to tell me that you like Brandon allof a sudden enough to be such an abject pauper with him for the restof your days? Why it was only yesterday that you were laughing at him,saying he danced like a pair of tongs."

  Esther has slidden down to the floor, and sits there tailor-fashion.

  "I don't mean to tell you anything of the kind," she answers, gravely."Poor dear fellow!--it is very odious of me--but between you and me Ithink I should survive it if I were to know that I should never see himagain; only, please don't tell him I said so."

  "Love, who to none beloved to love again remits----"

  she repeats softly, musing to herself; "that is a very lovely line, butit is horribly untrue."

  "What do you mean to do then, if it is not an impertinent question?"asks Jack, throwing back his young head, and looking in aninquisitorial manner at the penitent at his feet from under hiseyelids. "Marry a man that you don't like, and who has not a farthingto keep you on, merely because he is the first person that asked you?"

  "Nothing is farther from my intentions," says Esther, getting ratherred. "And how unkind of you to twit me with my dearth of admirers. Imean _you_ to interpose your parental authority and forbid the banns; Iintend to shift the odium of the transaction on to your shoulders," shesays, relapsing into levity,--"poor, dear shoulders!" (patting themvery fondly) "they are not very wide, but they are broader than mine,at all events; to them I transfer my difficulties."

  "_That_ you shan't!" cries Jack, with animation, shaking off her hand,and looking very indignant and honest. "You are to do shabby things,and I am to have the credit of them! Thanks, very much, but I don'tadmire that division of labour. I don't think I ever heard a meanerproposition."

  Esther's little head, rich in a soft plenitude of dusky love-locks,sinks low down towards her lap; she is very easily snubbed, especiallyby Jack.

  "A nice name you'll make for yourself, Miss Essie," pursues the youngSolomon, severely, still brandishing the metaphorical birch-rod overhis sister. "I expect you'll make the country too hot to hold us in ashort time."

  Esther lifts up two sudden, tearful eyes, that look like great jewelsseen through running water, and says, piteously, "But, Jack, you know,as you said just now, it was the first time; one never does things wellthe first time one tries; one is always clumsy at them; I shall knowbetter next time."

  "I don't see what 'next time' you are likely to have," says Jack,inexorable in his young severity. "It will be rather late in the dayfor people to propose to you when you are Bob Brandon's half-starved orwhole-starved wife."

  "But I'm not, Jack," cries Esther, very eagerly.

  She looks grave enough now; rather alarmed at the little gay sketch herbrother has drawn of her future destiny.

  "I'm not going to marry him or any one else, _ever_. Do you think I'dleave you to marry the Angel Gabriel, if he came down from heaven onpurpose to ask me?"

  "Why did you tell Brandon that you would then?" asks the young fellow,not a bit disarmed by her sweet flattery.

  "I did not tell him so; I said I would try; but even if I do try, Ineed not succeed; and even if I do manage to get up a sort of likingfor him, I need not _marry_ him. You are in such a hurry to jump atconclusions; _there's_ the beauty of his being so poor, don't you see?He cannot expect me to marry him, when he has no bread and butter toput into my mouth."

  "Then why be engaged to him at all, my good girl?" asks honest Jack,rather bewildered by these new lights--these subtleties on the subjectof betrothal.

  "Why do people give babies gin?--it is not good for them, but it keepsthem quiet; _that_ is precisely my principle. Being engaged to me maynot be good for Robert, but it is _gin_ to him; it keeps him quiet,"answers Esther, on the battle-field of whose small face smiles andtears are fighting.

  Her brother does not seem to see the beauty of this ingenious mode ofreasoning in a very strong light.

  "I won't have you playing fast and loose with him," he says, verydecisively, shaking a stern young head--stern, despite its curlinessand its total dearth of those care-lines that are supposed to beWisdom's harsh footprints. "He is much too good a fellow to be playedtricks with; mind that, Miss Esther!"

  "I have not the slightest desire in life to play tricks with him; ifI ever do play tricks, I hope it will be with some one more amusing,"answers Essie, very pettishly, looking excessively mutine andill-humoured. "I don't care if I never hear his ugly name again; hehas spoilt the dinner and made you as cross as two sticks; and--and--Iwish he was _dead, that_ I do!" concludes happy Mr. Brandon's _fiancee_weeping.