Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 1
SUMMER.
CHAPTER I.
Cordelia.—So young, my lord, and true."
I am eighteen years old. It sounds a good deal, does it not? It seems only yesterday that I was quite little, scrambling about in short frocks and leaving bits of the same on every railing, hedge, and gate the place contains: now I am in "tails," real downright tails; limited, it is true, as to length and width, but still tails which come in useful when I want to snub Dorley or the boys; but on the other hand, hamper me sadly when some forlorn remnant of my active youth prompts me to scale the trees, or go bird's nesting. On the whole I am sorry to have reached that broad flat table-land of grown-upness that is so easy to ascend, but can be stepped down from never again. If one's young days might only be pushed farther, if we might be given thirty years of growing instead of sixteen, surely the forty beyond, that are allotted as the period of man's existence, would be enough for us to be grown-up, and steady, and sad in? I hate to part with my merry insouciant young years. I dread to let them go, and feel the old tastes and loves slipping away from me, and the new fancies and pursuits taking their place. I am sorry that I shall never grow any more—never measure my back against the school-room wall to see if my head is any nearer the notch that marks Jack's height—never look anxiously in the glass to see if time brings me less ugliness as she brings more inches (for at eighteen one is able to form a pretty tolerable estimate of what one is going to be like for the rest of one's days)—never go donkey riding, or pig-nut hunting, or shrimp getting, any more—never love bull's-eyes, blackberries, and treacle tarts with the exceeding love that I knew for them of yore. I can even get over a gate without feeling any over-mastering impulse to vault or leap it. I can see Pepper taking an ecstatic roll in the grass without straightway longing to cast myself down and roll too.
The kitchen-garden has lost some of its charm in my eyes, for, thanks to my being so old, other affairs than gooseberries and currants occupy my mind, very much against my will. I am the eldest daughter at home now, and obliged to mind my morals and manners to a maddening extent; for every sin of omission and commission of my brothers and sisters is laid to my charge, and said to be the fruit of my example. It is dismal at the Manor House now many are away. Jack is in London. He is going to be a barrister, and I call it mean of him; for if he had only elected to be a fat gentleman farmer, I could have gone and lived with him in a little house, and been as happy——— Well! brothers never love their sisters quite as their sisters love them.
Milly has been "woo'd an' married an' a'" over a year and a half, and the family has not done gasping over the miraculous event yet. How it fell out that papa's unwilling consent was wrung from him; and how she never ran away at all, but stood up to be married, in a white satin gown and trimmings; and how papa gave her away with an ineffable hitch of his nose; and how up to the very last moment every one believed that he did not mean her to be married at all, but intended to turn the whole affair into a joke; and how he disappointed us all, as he always does—are not these things writ in the chronicles of the house of Adair?
After so far forgetting himself as to make two people happy, he gave it to be understood in the family that nothing else of the kind would be permitted to take place for another century or so, and that this lapse of authority on his part was not to be taken as a precedent, but regarded in the light of a comet, a plague, or any other irresponsible appearance for which there is no accounting. About two years ago Alice was formally forgiven, and invited to stay here, with her little son; but the sight of her perfect liberty of speech and action, the amplitude of her petticoats, the abundance of her pin-money, were too much for him, and the flag of truce came down with a run. If the governor could put his thoughts into rhyme, I think he would say:—
Would I had whacked them more!"
It must be hard to know that they have got safely out of his clutches; and that he may have nothing in the future to reproach himself with on my account, he makes my existence an uncommonly pleasant thing.
Sometimes I feel that I must run away, or that it would be better to marry anything than live the life I lead. Common sense, however, whispers that a spinster's troubles are but passing ones; but, once married, she must sit down under her misfortunes, and bear them to her life's end. For married folks have their troubles, have they not? just like single ones. Oh! what a black bitter hour that must be, when a woman lifts her eyes, and looking at her husband, sitting opposite her, realizes for the first time that she has made a mistake! "Men," says Madame Scudéri, "should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut after." Surely women may very safely say the same?
I wonder why I have fallen on the subject of matrimony this afternoon? I am wandering alone through the garden, bright with its late July pomp of geraniums and verbenas, and across the orchard, into the wide hot fields. There is no shade anywhere, but, my big sun-bonnet is tipped over my nose, so I may defy sunstroke; and in "my mind's hi," as I once heard a man, of more worth than letters, remark, I see a cool, shady, green little chamber, of which the ceiling is woven branches, and the carpet of mossy grass, while the walls are made of the sturdy brown bodies of the oak and the beech. It is not far away, but it is shut in so deftly that a stranger might pass it by close, and never see it though he went through the field of rye that stretches out to its left in a whitely ruffled sea of light. "After all," I say to myself, as I turn out of the last big field into a cool, shady alley through which a brook runs, "what does it matter if the governor is troublesome? He can't take away any of God's gifts from us; and all the tempers and hard words in creation could not take the glow out of this summer afternoon, or the colour out of the sky, no, never!"
Thus moralizing, I sit down by the brook to rest for a moment before sallying forth into the sun-flooded fields of grain; and it seems to answer "Never!" as it hurries along over the clear stones, not knowing when it is well off, sighing to lose itself in the wide river. Its babble sounds very pretty, as though it were talking to the fragrant meadowsweet that borders its banks like foam, or the yellow milfoil that Jack and I call ladies'-slippers—a frivolous substitute for the grand old name of lotus, of which there are three species, and this common unbeautiful yellow is one. Lotus! what an exquisite name it is! and what exquisite visions it brings up before us! The river is a rare sun-worshipper: almost all his flowers are either yellow or gold-coloured: look at those brazen marigolds yonder, and those handsome irises a yard away: and farther down, where he deepens into a mimic lake, lie more yellow flowers, great sleepy, languid lilies, to do him honour and deck his breast. It is a relief to look away at the forget-me-nots, with their innocent candid eyes, that look straight into mine, saying as plain as they can speak, "Do not forget me!"
A bee-orchis lifts itself out of the hedge, straight and tall, with its absurd resemblance to the insect, as though it had alighted freshly on the flower, and been frozen there, retaining its own vivid colours. Hard by, the foxgloves rise with a ragged yet stately stoop. I wonder if ever at night their speckled bells ring out a dainty peal of music learned in Foxglove land? The reeds stand round, tall and bare; with their long stalks and olive-brown spikes, they look too obstinate to shiver and shake; yet a curse lies upon them—for was not one of their number placed in the Victim's hand in direct mockery as a sceptre? Yonder, in the pale blue blossoms of the ivy-leaved bell-flower, lies a naughty, sleepy little insect which Linnæus named Florissimus, from its love of sleeping in flowers. He must be a luxurious dainty little Sybarite and a happy, to be able to choose his couch of red, white, pink, or blue, at will; while we, poor mortals, have to seek our dull four-posters night after night.
I pick up my sun-bonnet, put it on, and lean over the stile that lies between me and the corn-field, that is turning brighter and more golden day by day under the sun's fierce beams. The scarlet poppy-heads, gorgeous vagrants, with their leaves as freshly crinkled as though they had but just left Nature's laundry, and imperiously at me, saying, "Gather me! gather me!" The corn-cockle, pride of the harvest-field, and abomination of the farmer, cries, "I am handsomest, pick me!" The field knautia lifts her insolent head high above the corn, seeming to say, "See how much higher a parasite can climb than her master!" The pheasant's-eye, or the flower of Adonis (over which, as the story runs, the life-blood of Adonis gushed, staining its white petals crimson) looks up invitingly; the pansies, "three faces under one hood," as the country folk call them, from their lowly seat at the roots of the corn, please the eye with their modest velvet-eyed beauty. And, since I know and love them every one, I dash in amongst the corn and gather my hands full. A scentless, bright-hued, vagabond cluster they make; for they are but saucy parasites, that love to creep about and hamper the knees of the strong, beneficent grain, as all useless, gaudy things, ever do about the stalwart and brave. Already the scarlet pimpernel—the only wild flower that dares dispute the poppy's pre-eminence in colour, has closed its leaves, for it is past three o'clock. I wonder how it always knows the time so exactly, when human people's watches are so often out of gear? The intolerable heat stops my somewhat unreasonable speculations, so I hastily retreat to the brook, and there weave my flowers into a garland, with many a nodding grass and leaf between, idly, carelessly, for no other reason than that my hands are idle, and the flowers are pretty playthings. When I have finished it I turn it round and round, and marvel whether Ophelia's could by any possibility, have looked any madder? Poor lost Ophelia!
Which bewept to the grave did go,
With true-love showers."
Whose drowned face comes to us so freshly across the dead centuries, while the echo of her sweet voice singing, "Lord, we know what we are; but we know not what we may be," lives in our hearts with all our household words and treasures. I always think of Ophelia as a slender maiden, with far-away dreamy grey eyes, that saw Death beckoning to her, in strange and lovely guise, down among the rushes, and to whom she went gaily decked with flowers, as a bride to her bridegroom. I wonder if Ophelia had long hair, and whether it was golden, or yellow, or brown like mine? It ought to have been yellow—every woman should be fair, every man should be dark, in my opinion. I don't think many young women could drown themselves with decency now-a-days: their locks are not ample enough, unless eked out with pilferings from the impecunious living and helpless dead. And if they tied any false curls and tails on for the occasion, it would somewhat take the edge off our pity to see the hapless maiden lying in one place, and her back hair in another. We Adairs are well off in the respect of head coverings, rather too well off in fact; for in hot weather our abundant manes are no joke, and we are inclined to envy our more lightly crowned neighbours who appear at church in chignons, that are the most innocent of deceptions, and provoke mirth, not admiration. Only last Sunday a disastrous casualty occurred to a farmer's wife sitting in the pew exactly before us. Her chignon parted its moorings, and, suspended by a single wisp, hung down her back and over our pew, bobbing up and down in a horribly active manner, causing lively fear in our ranks; for in the too probable event of its falling into our midst, who among us would be found to possess sufficient aplomb to hand it to the denuded lady?
I pull off my sun-bonnet, for no one is likely to see me, and the cows yonder will tell no tales; and putting my wreath upon my head bend over the brook to try and see my own reflection. Close to the edge there is a little shallow, fenced about with sticks and stones, and in it I see my face, framed in its poppy wreath and loose veil of brown hair.
"Not bad!" I say aloud. "Now if your nose were a little longer, and your mouth a little smaller, you wouldn't be an ill-looking young person, as girls go; but as it is, you are precisely what your amiable papa says you are, the———"
"Prettiest little girl in Christendom," says a man's voice behind me, making me start so violently that I nearly topple over into the brook
"Did I not tell you," I say, without turning my head, "that I was tired to death of the very sight of you; and that you were not to come near me for three whole days?"
"The three whole days will be up to-morrow, Nell."
"To-morrow is not to-day," I say, turning round. "Now I wonder what you would say if you were followed everywhere by a tiresome, teazing shadow, that never left you alone for a single moment, and the more you told it to go away, the more it stopped?"
"Everybody has a shadow," he says, "I among the rest."
"Does your shadow make love to you?" I ask, stamping my foot on the soft grass. "Whether you will or no, does it?"
"No, it does not," he says shortly. "Go on, Nell; don't be afraid of hurting my feelings!"
"Then you should not worry me so. Now I have had quite a little holiday the last two days, and of course you have come this afternoon to spoil it all! If you would only talk to me sensibly, as Jack does———"
"Only I am not Jack," he says—"worse luck. You would like me if I were."
"I like you now," I say quickly: "next to mother and the rest of them, I do not know any one I like so well. Why can't you be satisfied with that?"
"Nell," says the young man, standing before me, straight and tall and fair in the sunlight, with a vexed look in his blue eyes, and restless fingers that tug at his yellow moustache, "what did you promise me four years ago?"
"That when I was eighteen and six months old I would marry you, if I had not seen any one I liked better."
"And you are going to break your promise?"
"No," I say, looking up into his honest face. "Did I not tell you once that I never broke my promises? But you must give me time, George; you must not hurry me. I am not very old yet, you know; and love isn't easy to learn all at once. I wouldn't promise you anything I did not mean to stick to; but if I said to-day that I loved you, and would marry you, it would be wrong, for I do not think I am the least in the world in love with you, do you?"
"No," he says, with a rueful sigh, "there can't be very much doubt on that score!"
"So," I say with alacrity, "I will wait till I am in love with you before we settle it all. Don't you think it would be much pleasanter?"
"For you, perhaps," he says, "but I know my own heart."
"Do you know," I say diffidently, "that sometimes I think you don't go the right way to work to make me love you? If you were to be cross sometimes, or—or shake me—or something—I don't exactly know what. Perhaps if you made me jealous now, for a girl hates any one else to have her lover, even if she does not want him herself, you know———"
I pause. After all it is not easy to instruct a young man how to woo you; but I am so really anxious to fall in love with George, and so sorry for him, that I would take any pains to cultivate the gentle passion.
"I don't think you meant that," says George, with as much scorn as his manly, pleasant voice will borrow; "or if you did, I can't follow you. I know there are women who don't care a rap for a man as long as he is entirely their own, but directly he turns up his nose at them they are head over heels in love with him; but I never thought you were one of that sort, Nell. Now, when a man loves a girl he doesn't like her any the better, I can tell you, for staring at and hankering after this man and that. All her value is gone in his eyes if she does not stick to him in thought, word, and deed. Her flirtations with any one else provoke disgust, not love; and she makes him feel not so much piqued as small."
"And that a man hates to look," I say, slyly. "Touch any man's or woman's self-conceit, and they never forgive you!"
"It is not self-conceit," he says, stoutly; "it is self-respect."
"I wish you were not so honest a man," I say, looking at him wistfully; perhaps if you were not so good I should like you better."
I wonder what it is that George lacks, and which holds me back from acknowledging him lover and master? He is the best bred, best mannered, best grown man I ever saw; he is likable, true, admirable in every way; and if he does not find favour in my eyes it is hard to say who will. And yet I feel that I could love—ay, and well too—when the right man came, but I may never meet my Prince Charming, and as years go by dawdle into a comfortable, safe, friendly affection for my yellow-haired lover yonder. Perhaps if we had begun with a little aversion," it might have been more hopeful, our exchange of words would have been heartier, brisker. In squabbles there is some heat, and I always think the people who quarrel the most fiercely love each other best; they must have power to move each other, or they would not bandy so many useless words.
Long ago I took off my poppy wreath, and now I am swinging it slowly backwards and forwards.
"George," I say, looking at him thoughtfully, "were you ever very wicked?"
"Why?"
"Nothing," I say; "only to be wicked gives experience. I have heard experience is nice, is it not?"
"That depends on the sort a man gets."
"Did any one ever jilt you?" I ask. "Have you ever made love to any one before me?"
The young man looks at me with a queer kind of half shame on his face.
"And if I had," he asks, "would you mind?"
"I should be delighted!" I say quickly. "If you had made love to people, and been thrown overboard, you know, and people had made love to you, you would be so much better qualified to make love to me! I should like to have a lover who had been in love hundreds of times, but considered me the nicest, and liked me the best of all! That would be something to be proud of, would it not?"
"You don't understand about these things, dear," he says sadly.
"If you cared for me you would wish to be the first girl I had ever loved. You would begrudge those other women having known me before you did."
"I wonder what it is to care," I say, drawing a long tress of hair through my fingers, and looking down at the water flowing at our feet. "If to care for you is to like you very much when you are not making love to me, then I care for you very much indeed!"
But George does not answer; he is looking straight away over my head at the distant hills, thinking hard and deep, and the misery in his blue eyes hurts me. I never could bear to see anything, even a worm, suffer.
"George," I say, slipping my hand into his, "don't fret about it; perhaps it will come in time, you know, and———"
"Have you ever seen the man you could care about?" he asks, stroking my hand gently between his own.
"In my dreams, perhaps," I say, laughing. "Where else could I have met him?"
"You have never been away from home," he goes on, "save to school; and you could not see any one there. But do you know Nell, sometimes I have thought that the reason you don't love me is because you have a fancy for somebody else? A silly notion, is it not?"
"Very!" I say, taking my hand away. "Did you suspect me of an unlawful love of Skippy?"
"God forbid!" he says, laughing. "No! I did not suspect you of that misplaced tenderness! Do you know, Nell, that I think you are the coldest little thing I ever saw! I don't believe any one would ever move you."
"I am not tender," I say, making a grimace; "none of us are—we all had that nonsense knocked out of us in our youth; but I am true!"
"Are you?" he cries eagerly. "Then when these six months are up———"
"I shall keep my promise," I say, my heart sinking; "only (reviving) don't make too sure of me, for six months is a long time, and there is no knowing whom I may see in it!"
"I am not afraid," says George, smiling. How happy he looks! "No one ever comes to Silverbridge, and you never go away, so how can any one see you."
"Don't forget," I say, by way of damping his exhilaration, "that papa will have to be asked."
And for the first time in my life, my parent's little prejudices on the subject of marriage commend themselves favourably to my eyes.
"That doesn't matter," says George. "Mrs. Lovelace ran away!"
"But there were exceptional circumstances in that case," I say with dignity. Besides, it would never do for that sort of thing to become a habit in the family. They were properly engaged for a long while!"
"And why may not you and I be?"
"Because he would never hear of it!" I say, looking forward with dismay to that dreadful engaged period of "pecking " that I have until now successfully evaded.
"Your governor and mine get on splendidly," says George, in a hopeful voice. "That would surely go for something?"
"That is one of those things no one can understand," I say, shaking my head. "My father has known your father for four years, and they have not quarrelled yet! Mr. Tempest must have the temper of an angel, or papa has never kicked him, because he thought he was so little, and old, and frail!"
"Which redounds to Colonel Adair's credit," says George, laughing; "but I have often wondered he does not take a turn at me!"
"Don't be afraid," I say, nodding. "As soon as he knows you are anxious to have him for a father-in-law, he will be good for any amount of that. Is it not droll that parents should see things going on under their very noses, and then be so surprised and disgusted when anything comes of it?"
"I suppose their fathers were before them," says George; "and some day we shall be the same! I say, Nell, what a little duck you look, to be sure!" he says, as after stooping over the water, I turn round with my wreath set jauntily on my head.
"You have not half admired me yet!" I say, holding out my dress; "now do you know what I am going to do?"
"Stay with me."
"I am going to walk across the field of corn, and then the field of rye, just as I am, and then———"
"Well, and then?"
"———I am going to sit down," I say, guardedly. Not for worlds would I have George know of my little green parlour. He would spend half his days in it!
"And I shall come with you," he says, promptly, "in case you meet anybody with that wreath on your head."
"No, you will not," I say, decidedly. "What good would you be to me, pray? and who am I likely to meet, except a ploughman, whose looks I should mind about as much as the stare of that cow yonder? I am going by myself."
"Very well," he says, sitting down on the stile, "I will wait here until you come back!"
Now, if there be anything harassing, it is to know that some one is waiting for you round the corner, and counting the minutes to your arrival. To enjoy one's self is impossible—some of his discomfort is passed on to you, and the result is nasty.
"I always thought," I say, with dignity, "that when a person was not wanted, he generally went."
"Thank you!" says George, jumping up with alacrity. "I won't require you to say that twice."
And away he stalks, his head well up, while take the seat Le has just left vacant, and congratulate myself on the success of that last shot. Really I never saw him go away so quickly before! What a nice back he has! How well he walks! he ought to have been a soldier! He is really cross this time, for he does not turn his head once.
And now for a rush across that burning, broiling, expanse of grain. I fly along so fast, my feet scarcely touch the ground, and as I go I sing a verse of the old, old song—
And a body kiss a body, need a body cry?"
I never could sing a bit, but there is no one by to hear me, and I feel so unaccountably joyously happy, as though I must make a noise. With my head bent to avoid the level glare of the sun, I see nothing approaching me, and rush head foremost into a black something. . . . "I beg your pardon!" I say, as I hastily recoil, and put up my hand to tear off my ridiculous wreath. "I beg your pardon." (And then I lift my eyes and see that this something is Paul Vasher. And I stand staring at him with my poppy wreath in my hand, mute as a stock-fish—I, who have the longest, glibbest tongue in Christendom—with never a word to say for myself. Although I know him, he does not know me. There is no recognition in his glance, only an alert sort of surprise; but, thank heaven, no amusement, which is under the circumstances simply angelic in him. My heart is crying over and over again, "He has come back! He has come back!” with a glad, breathless hurry that amazes me; but my lips are dumb, my hand does not steal out in friendly greeting, and if ever a young woman looked an awkward, gaping, silly bit of rusticity, that young woman is me. For the first time in all my life, perhaps, I do not take the first word, and he speaks.
"I am trying to find my way to the Manor House, but I am not sure if I am in the right path. Can you direct me?"
His voice breaks the spell, my tongue begins to wag again.
"I am going that way, and will show you."
I turn my back upon him, for the path is narrow, wondering heartily whether he is relieving his feelings by having a good grin at my back! Such a figure as I look! though on the whole I fancy my back view is not quite as disreputable as my front. Shall I turn and ascertain? No, for it is always more bearable to suspect people are making fun of you than to know it. Arrived at the stile I find myself in a dilemma: to scramble over it anyhow by myself is one thing, to be delicately assisted over it by a gentleman another; for it consists of a single upright slab of stone that affords no foothold whatever, and the only legitimate means of surmounting it is to take it in your stride or vault it. In the present instance I can do neither, so I look in sore perplexity from Mr. Vasher to the stile, and from the stile to him, until, he probably seeing the difficulty, we catch each other's eye and go off into sudden laughter.
"I never saw anything in the least like that before," he says. "Was it erected for acrobats?"
"I think so!" I say, recovering. "But please do not attempt to help me over, or we shall infallibly roll into the brook! Now, if you would not mind walking on and turning your back I can manage it quite well by myself!" He walks on, for he is a man of sense—a fool would stand on the other side of the stile and argue the matter for half an hour—and I am over it, and after him like a shot.
"Do you know," he says, as I join him, "that when I saw you come dancing towards me I could not believe you were mortal? I thought (laughing) that you must be the goddess of joy dropped out of a cloud, you looked so happy."
"And may not one be happy?" I ask, looking at him in surprise. "Are not all folks sometimes?"
"Sometimes," he says; "but moderately, not so overflowingly as you were."
"Ah! if you only knew all my troubles," I say, shaking my head, "you would wonder I could ever laugh at all! And yet I do, morning, noon, and night. I often think I shall be punished some day for having such a light heart."
"Fuller says, 'An ounce of contentment is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with,' so I don't think you will be heavily judged!"
"By the bye," I say, turning very red and dropping my voice, "when you met me just now you did not hear me singing, did you?"
"Of course! Why?"
"And you did not laugh?"
"There was nothing to laugh at!"
"I will tell you a secret," I say smiling. (May I not be confidential with him, since I knew him so many years ago, when I was quite little and childish?) "I would give the world to be able to sing, but I never could. It seems so natural to sing when one is happy, does it not! Just as a bird breaks out into song, because he feels that life is good and he loves it. I had singing lessons at Pimpernel once, and the man did his very best with me, but at last he gave it up. One must be bad, must one not, before a singing master washes his hands of you? About two years ago, Milly (my sister, you know) and I were at a little party at the Vicarage, and I stood up to sing a duet with her. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but I had practised it for weeks; and when I opened my mouth there was not a sound to be heard—literally not a sound. Perhaps it was as well—but oh! I was so bitterly ashamed. I think I sat down and turned my face to the wall and wept."
"And did your sister sing it alone?" asks Mr. Vasher, laughing.
"She sang another instead!"
"It is very odd," says Paul, "but I know your voice quite well—I am sure I have heard it before; and your face seems familiar to me."
"People are so alike," I say evasively, turning my head away from his keen regard. Somehow I do not want him to recollect me just yet. "Nature makes all her people in sets, aud mine is a common pattern."
"I think not," he says slowly; "for I never saw but one person a bit like you before, and that was Helen Adair."
I see his mind trembling on the brink of a discovery, so I hastily hold up my poppy wreath for bis inspection.
"Look!" I say, "is it not bizarre, extraordinary? Did not that make you smile?"
He takes it from my hand and turns it round. "It looked very pretty on," he says. "Did you make it, yourself, Nell?"
"You know who I am: you knew it all along ?" I say, starting back.
"Only since a moment ago," he says smiling. "And now, after all these years, have you not a welcome for me?"
I hold out both my hands with a deep sigh. "If you only knew how glad I am you have come back!" I say—"how I have wished for you to come back! You have been away four whole years."
"And you remembered me all that while?" he says, looking down into my face eagerly—"you missed me?"
"So much," I say gravely, "that often I have said to Jack, that if I knew where you were I should write and ask you if you had forgotten your promise about the fruit garden."
"And that was the only reason you wanted to see me back?"
"Oh, no! I wanted to see you too."
He seems to have forgotten he is holding my hands, so I take them away.
"Are you married?" I ask, looking up at the dark strong face, that is altered no whit, save that the restless expression has fallen away from it, and a better, nobler look grown upon it.
"No."
"I am so glad," I say, clapping my hands; so glad, do not be angry with me, but after you went away I used always to think that when I saw you next you would be married to———"
I stop short, I had forgotten he does not know that I know that he loved Silvia Fleming; my cheeks turn scarlet as my poppies at my stupidity.
"Yes," he says, "and to whom?"
"No one in particular," I say, looking down at the grass; "it was only a ridiculous fancy of mine."
We walk on again, and there is a little pause in our brisk conversation; perhaps he is remembering, and I am recalling Silvia Fleming's vow, and marvelling if she has tried to wind him again, or forgotten her wild love in sober, respectable marriage.
"It was lucky I came through these fields," says Mr. Vasher "for I was going to the Manor House to see you."
"If you want to find me of afternoons," I say, laughing, "you must scour the country and look under every hedge and tree; I live out of doors in the summer. And were you coming to see me so soon? That was good of you."
"Will you believe," he says, looking down on me (my head barely reaches his shoulder, and yet I am a very decent height, five feet four inches), "that you were the first person I thought of when I came back to England? I only arrived at The Towers yesterday, and, as you see, have set out to visit you to-day. And, after all, you are a disappointment," he says, with a queer smile. "Somehow I always thought of finding you a bright, frank-faced, honest little girl, just as I left you, and now———" (he scans me slowly from head to foot) "I find you grown up and———"
"I wish you had come back sooner," I say, interrupting, "for do you know, I am getting beyond gooseberries, and can exist without apples!"
We are passing through the orchard now, and several of the fry are standing about in the distance, distinctly marvelling who on earth sister Nell has got hold of. In the garden we meet the governor, and, to my amazement, instead of Mr. Vasher being ignominiously ordered off the premises, papa welcomes him with much politeness, speaks with respect of Mr. Vasher's defunct father, and finally floats him away in a stream of amicable conversation. Verily, this is a world of change!