Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Harvest/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
"God protect me from the man I trust, I will protect myself from him whom, I trust not."
Time, four o'clock. Scene, a level sweep of velvet-smooth lawn before The Towers, upon which are pacing up and down and sitting about some sixty or seventy men and women of every size, make, age, and appearance, and among them in festive raiment, like unto the rest, are—oh, wonder of wonders!—Dolly and I, sitting one on either side of Mrs. Skipworth. That lady, as a delicate compliment to the devouring heat of the day, wears a crimson-coloured silk gown, that makes one glow freshly every time one looks at her.
"You here?" exclaims a young man who is walking slowly by, but has now stopped short to stare at us, "Nell! Dolly!"
"Did you never see us before?" I ask, rather tartly. "Do you take us for ghosts?"
"Not exactly," he says, recovering himself, "only I did not expect to see you here."
He shakes hands with Mrs. Skipworth, and looks about for a chair, but as the supply of seats by no means comes up to the demand, after a little search he comes back.
"Would you not rather stroll about than sit still, Nell?"
"I think I would."
"Will you come, Dolly?"
But Dolly, bearing in mind the excellent lines that set forth that "two is company, three is trumpery," declines the honour, so we depart without her.
"May I ask why you looked so astonished just now when you saw us?" I ask. "Is there anything so very extraordinary in our coming here, pray?"
"Nothing," he says, coldly: "only you had not told me you were coming, that was all."
"And how could I tell you, when I have not seen you for three whole days? I will tell you the truth," I say, suddenly, my voice falling; "I hate being here; I hate it, but I could not get out of it. Mrs. Vasher asked the governor to let us come, without my knowing anything about it, of course, and papa said 'Yes,' and told us he had accepted the invitation. Dolly declared she would not come; she is a good hater. Mother got out of it in some wonderful manner, but all our manœuvres were unavailing, and—here we are."
"It was a pity your father never knew the truth," says George. "It seems altogether wrong that you should be the guest of a woman who played you so vile a part."
"Hush!" I whisper, as his voice rises in his excitement, for we are in the crowd now," and take care———" for with his head lifted skywards, and his thoughts busily engaged, he is taking no heed to his steps, which are encroaching on the train of a lady before us, who looks as though she had seized Fashion forcibly by the nose, and wrested a costume from her, so bizarre and outrageous and eye-offending are its properties. If it be true that the test of a perfect toilet is that one does not know of what it is composed, although one is distinctly aware that the person in it looks charming, then are those here present found seriously wanting, for the dress and the manner of it strikes the beholder first, the wearer of it after. And yet there are a few beauties, beautifully dressed; a few graceful women, with the grace that is almost as great a gift as beauty; a few grandes dames, who hold their own against fairness, wit, and youth, by merit of a certain air du faubourg and fascination, that it is hard to define, harder still to resist. I wonder why some women have so much chic, individuality, what you will, and others none at all? Hundreds and thousands of women are made on precisely the same pattern, but now and again you come across one who, by right of some sturdy strain of character or independence of thought, marks herself out from the rest, and is not merged in the common ruck, but leads it.
"Do you men never have any hankerings after your lost doublet, hose, velvet cloaks, and other smart trappings, George? I should if I were a man. Now I have no doubt that blue would be as becoming to some of you as it would be fatal to others; that some particular colour sets you off as well as it does particular women, and that the very ugliest of you might be furbished up into something uncommon-looking or picturesque."
"I can't say it ever bothers me," says George, laughing; "but there is one thing I should like to have back, and that is the good old days when a pretty woman was a pretty woman, and every one knew that; and the line between Madam Beauty and Madam Ugly was drawn hard and fast. It is all very different now. The plain women make themselves such excellent imitations of their lovely sisters with their dyed hair, painted cheeks, and artificial charms, that it is not always easy to separate the make-believes from the really handsome people—in fact, the only difference between them at a distance is that the former wear veils and the latter do not. Now, our grandfathers were not obliged to look close into a woman's face to find out whether she was beautiful or only pretending to be; they gave hearty honest admiration to the lass with the ropes of yellow hair, and the skin of cream and roses, and kindly pity to the one who possessed but scanty pepper-and-salt locks and a sallow skin. Now-a-days the latter would plump out her head with another woman's hair, and dye her own golden in imitation of the legitimate beauty's fairest adornment, and copy with pigments what the other possesses by nature's gift. So it often happens that a man, seeing the deceitfulness of the one, doubts the honesty of the other, and his mind gets into a horrible and disgusting jumble."
"Well done!" I say, with much astonishment, as he pauses for lack of breath. "I had no idea you were such an acute observer, Mr. George. There is a good deal of truth in what you say though, and there is a ghastly mixture of false and real beauty about; but for all that there is some contented ugliness wandering about the face of the earth, making no attempt at whitening itself. At any rate, you could not accuse that wreck yonder of being a sham?” and I nod towards a very old woman sitting a little in the background in a wheeled chair. She wears a false, black front, blue-bottle spectacles, and an enormous white bonnet; her mouth is grim as death, she does not move a muscle, or a finger, or an eyelash. No one speaks to her, and she speaks to nobody; she just sits there looking out at the gay scene before her, like a spectre who is silently noting the uselessness, the folly, and the evanescence of it all.
"Why do such people come out at all?" asks George, shuddering. "Pah!—they spoil the look of everything. It can be no pleasure to them to take their aching old bones abroad; they only give the blues to every one who looks at them, and yet they come with the rest until death taps them the shoulder and takes them away."
"Poor souls! perhaps they like the excitement—who knows?"
"Mrs. Bareacres is smacking her lips over something," says George. "Another reputation demolished no doubt. Those old women are perfect emporiums of scandal and venom, out of which a story, redounding to the discredit of every one present, may be fished at a moment's notice!"
"I wonder what mine is," I say, laughing.
"Heaven grant they may never have a chance of making you the subject of their talk," says the young man, soberly—so soberly that I stare at him for a moment in surprise. He used not to be so grave and thoughtful, or think so seriously about people and things. His philosophy is touched with somewhat more of bitter than it was three years ago.
A fat man and a lean woman vacate their chairs, so George and I promptly sit down on them and look about us. Several promising flirtations are in full swing; several lines are being thrown out by dexterous maidens to entice into their nets certain comely fish; there is a buzz of conversation, a flutter of fans, above which rises, sweet and clear, the music of the band hidden in the trees away to the left. In the assemblage the female sex, as usual, preponderates largely, and, beholding the number of petticoats as set against the infrequency of the lavender and grey legs, I feel slightly snubbed and rather small for is it not an unpleasant reflection that in Great Britain we are supposed to be three females against every male? No wonder men think so much of themselves; no wonder it is considered more honourable in a young woman to possess as betrothed, or lord, ever so pock-marked, broken-winded, weak-kneed, soft-brained a man, than none at all! And Fate, with her unfair fashion of lumping her favours, has a bad knack of giving two or three lovers to one girl who wants none of them, and never a one to another girl who would say thank you for any little mannikin.
"Dolly seems to be amusing herself very well," says George; and I look across to where she sits, soft and round and fresh as the pink roses that lie half on her brown hair, half on her white lace bonnet. Dolly has exquisite blue eyes, and out of them she is looking up, half shyly, half pleasantly, at a very tall, good-looking young man, whom one would, at a moderate guess, suppose to be a trifle shorter than Chang.
"He is a giant," I say looking at the man, not Dolly. "Why, he must be eight feet."
"Not quite," says George; "in fact, he is only six feet four and a half. He is Molyneux, of the Fifth."
"I wish they would stand up; I should like to see what they look like together," I say, with interest. "Dolly was measured yesterday, and she is exactly four feet eleven!"
"And she will bowl him over like a nine-pin," says George. "Those little bits of women always bewitch these big men."
"They would look very nice if they went to a fancy dress ball; he as Tom Thumb, and she as the Kentucky giantess, would they not? But I do hope he will not be falling in love with Dolly."
"Why not?"
"Because," I say, thoughtfully, "I have a plan in my head about Dolly; I have made up my mind whom I should like her to marry."
"And who may that be? I did not know Dolly had ever seen anybody!"
"George," I say, lowering my voice, "will you promise me not to be angry with me?"
"Don't try me too far."
"Well, then, don't you think Dolly is a little like me, George?'
"Not a bit! No one would ever know you were sisters!"
"Oh !" I say, disappointedly. "Don't you think, though, that on the whole blue eyes are prettier than green ones, and rosy cheeks than pale ones?"
"To some people's taste they may be."
"But not to yours?"
"No."
"Oh !" I say again, dismally.
"You have not told me yet what you are going to make me angry about."
"I can't tell you," I say, slowly. "Yes I will, though; I only thought, George (this in a prodigious hurry), that . . . . for she is very sweet, you know, and a hundred times as pretty as ever I was-that perhaps, after a bit, you might get to like her as well as you did me."
"Did? Was there ever any past tense in my love for you? You remind me, Nell," he goes on, looking at me with half-sad, half-bitter eyes, "of a story I once heard of a man who proposed for a young lady to her father, and on finding her to be already engaged, the suitor said he was not at all particular, any one of her sisters would do just as well; it didn't matter a pin to him which he married. Do you think I am so accommodating? There never was but one girl in the world that I wanted, and as I can't get her I'll have nobody."
"Dolly would never forgive me if she knew what I had done," I say, my cheeks crimson with vexation; "and I have wounded you too. I am very sorry, George———" and, forgetting the people all about us, I put my pale yellow hand into his straw coloured one, and give it a friendly squeeze; he holds mine for a moment, then I draw it away, and looking up see Paul Vasher standing before us.
I hope you are not feeling dull, Miss Adair?" he says; and, cold as are our ways and looks to each other always now, his voice strikes upon me like an unexpected douche of ice-cold water.
"Not at all, thank you, Mr. Vasher."
He moves away among his guests, and George and I look after him silently; between us Paul's name is never spoken. Dolly goes by with her tall cavalier, giving me a saucy, side-long look of triumph. She just reaches his elbow. Smiles follow them as they pass, but they are so taken up with each other that they do not see them. As the assemblage ebbs to and fro, scraps of conversation come to our ears. "Pity Adair quarrels so confoundedly with everybody," issues from a knot of men discussing the people present (apparently), "for he has the prettiest family of daughters I ever saw." And a minute later I hear a woman's voice exclaim, "That Helen Adair? Impossible! How she has gone off, poor thing!" George's eyes meet mine, and I smile.
"Hags!" cries George, in a fury. "I should like to knock all their spiteful, ugly heads together!"
"Am I so very much altered, George?" I ask, with a sharp pang. "I never was very pretty, you know; and if people say that, I must have grown absolutely ugly."
"You are altered," he says, scanning my face with his honest tender eyes; "but you have lost none of your good looks; to me you are always sweet and lovely, Nell. You are very pale now, and you do not smile a bit as you used to do, but I don't think you need be afraid of growing ugly, Nell."
"I don't see how I could go off!" I say, laughing, "for that pre-supposes the possession of more than ordinary good looks at some period or other of my existence, and I never was anything to speak of, except to you, and———" I stop abruptly.
"Have you seen my roses?" asks Silvia, coming up to us. Beautiful Silvia in a robe that is all gleaming yellow and blood-red knots of ribbon among her laces.
"No, not yet."
"Then will you come now, and Mr. Tempest?"
"I shall be most happy," he says, stiffly.
Silvia is his neighbour's wife; he cannot refuse to be her guest without folks wondering why, so he comes, but between the pair there is a steady, strong dislike.
"Have you seen Wattie?" she asks, as we are moving away; "I heard him calling out for you just now."
Silvia and I never speak to each other on any subject save the child; he is a link between us, and she knows it, but I think she often wonders with a certain pitying scorn at my love for him. Very rarely have I entered her doors, always against my will, but bound by the promise I made her on the day Paul fetched me to her side, and he thought her dying. Well, she looks strong enough to-day, and sometimes I wonder if it was all a trick from the very beginning; and yet the illness could not be a pretence.
"We are going to the rose garden," she says, tapping her husband lightly on the shoulder with her fan, as we pass where he stands talking to some gentlemen; "will you take care of Miss Adair?"
His face is very dark as he joins me, his wife and George walking on ahead. He does not speak, neither do I; then, for silence is often more dangerous than words, I say, lamely enough, "that the party is a pleasant one."
"Or rather, that you have been very pleasantly engaged!" he says, with a sudden, swift, jealous glance out of his brown eyes that makes my cheeks paler than ever.
I do not answer, and in another minute we are in Silvia's rose garden.
It is the month of roses, and this corner is a very feast of roses. From lily white to faintest cream-colour and amber and yellow, they melt by every exquisite gradation into richer, fuller tints, fainting away in voluptuous crimson and purple, paling from seashell pink to flesh-colour. How they mock at our narrow human capacity for enjoyment! How they fill the soul with one drenching, glorious wave of delight, and overflow it, only to be filled again and again!
"I always was so fond of roses," I say, nervously, as I lift my face out of a great golden splendour, with a breath as sweet as its own fairness. "Some people like lilies best, but I do not; they have only one scent, only one face always, and the rose has so many!"
"If you were dying," he says, "and had to choose the flowers to be laid in your coffin, which would you have?"
"Roses! I should like to be smothered in them! Don't you think dead people know the flowers are there, and smell them? I am sure I should. What made you think of my dying? You forget that I was always a coward about that."
"I had not forgotten . . . but a strange thought was passing through my mind . . . of how some people get their flowers in life and some in death, and of how cursed is the man who causes the life's flowers of another to wither."
"Only," I say, gently, "it is God who sends the blight, not man."
I look round, Silvia and George have vanished; there is no one here but Paul and I.
"You will allow me to give you a bunch of your favourites," he says.
"Another time, perhaps. We will follow the others now."
"No, I will pick them this minute," he says; and while I stand a little apart he gathers me a great glorious bouquet of yellow, crimson, gold, and scarlet. Clearing the thorns from the stalks, he gives it to me and goes away, returning shortly with one snow-white, stainless rose that has no fleck or flaw to dim its absolute purity. "Will you wear this one?" he says; and I take it from his hand and fasten it with my brooch against my throat.
"They are very lovely," I say, looking down on my roses. "We will take them and show them to Dolly."
"Nell!" he says, "Nell! are you growing at last to care for that yellow-haired lover of yours?"
"Hush!" I say, holding up my hand and listening A smile breaks over my face as a certain sound that I know well enough by now is heard in the distance—a scutter of little hurrying feet, a naughty little laugh of mischievous glee . . . and in another minute Wattie appears before us, his curls tumbled, his cheeks flushed, and the skirt of his frock full of daisies.
"Lallie! Lallie!" he calls out, and down we go on the grass side by side to make our daisy chain; not the first we have made together by any means. The nurse, seeing that he is with me, goes away. His father does not turn on his heel and go away as he did that first time he saw us together (shall I ever forget his face when he caught sight of us?) he stands looking down on us—on the rapt, intent face of the child, as he hands me daisy after daisy, on my busy hands as I thread them. As I look up from the son to the father, the extraordinary resemblance between the two faces strikes me with fresh surprise.
"You love him?" says Paul.
"Yes, I love him." Does he guess, I wonder, that I love this child above almost all things on earth?
"If you had been his mother," says Paul, jealously, "you would have loved him better than your husband."
"Should I?"
I bow my head over the child that he may not see my face; careless and impatient as I have been with children all my life, does he not know why I love his son so passionately, so deeply? The daisy chain is round Wattie's neck now, and he is nearly throttling me with his kisses and vigorously clinging arms. Gently I set him down and whisper something in his ear, giving him a little push; he hesitates a moment, this little son of not yet three years old, who is worse than fatherless, motherless, then (for he is as brave as he is beautiful) he goes with his little, short, unsteady steps to his father.
"Papa! papa!" he says, in his childish tender voice; and no hand being held out to greet him, he clasps his arms around Paul's knees. Paul stoops and unclasps them without a word, setting him aside, not roughly or hastily but inexorably. A piteous droop comes about the baby lips, and puckers up the baby brow, as Wattie stands alone, in disgrace as he thinks (a child cannot reason, but it knows when it is slighted and the tender little heart is grieved); then he runs across to me, and hides his head in my breast. Poor little desolate son! how many repulses have you not had from him before you could understand his ways so well?
"God forgive you!" I whisper to Paul with burning anger, as I lift Wattie in my arms and press my cheek against his, and so I carry him away through the blooming, fragrant alleys, and leave Paul standing in the midst of his rose garden alone.