Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII.
As sweetly in a beggar as a king."
Do what I will, I cannot get used to the fact that I may run up and downstairs, sing, laugh, talk at the top of my voice, not only in the school-room, but in the passages and in the drawing-room; sit nose and knees into the fire if I please, instead of looking at it from afar off with blue cheeks and pinched nose; give my opinion with a pleasant conviction that it will be treated with consideration; in short, conduct myself generally as a human being and independent member of society, whereas, until now, I have been but a miserable and insignificant atom gravitating around that tremendous magnet, the governor.
I don't suppose that he would be considered a very great man out of his family. Folks might call him a handsome little man, or a cross little man; and if he tried on his pranks in society, no doubt society would show him the door. (Happy thought! perhaps that is why he has eschewed it; and unhappy we, who are made to act as buffers between him and the outer world.) But to us he is Queen Victoria and the Emperor of all the Russias, and anything else that can be suggested as important, awe-inspiring, and not to be set at nought.
It is all very different now. The house echoes from morning to night with gay young voices, doors bang, not compelled thereto by a wrathful hand, but naturally; dogs bark, the parrot struts about at its leisure, conversation goes on briskly and evenly "upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady's chamber;" our meals are no longer served up and eaten by steam.
Simpkins has made a long farewell to all his greatness in impromptu slides and races against time, subsiding into a dignified demeanour that is far more convenable in a man of his years and size.
And Paul Vasher comes and goes. Never were two such lucky lovers as we are. Mother is the most absent of duennas, the children the most invisible of pickles (Basan is at school), and we have the garden and school-room to ourselves; and, oh! we are not unthankful for our good luck! Life can give us no fairer, sweeter, days than she gives us now. Are we not more fortunate than our fellows, in that we can gather up so many precious hours, and say, "They were wholly satisfying; there was no speck of alloy mixed with their pure gold?" Perhaps, if we only knew it, this is the one green spot in our lives, to which, in days to come, we shall look back with a keen longing. If only this golden time might remain with us a little! But it may not.
"Move on!" cries the inexorable voice, "move on! Take up your chain or your garland where you laid it down, and go your way life gives no time for dallying or sitting still." It is moving on until we reach the grave; and, oh, spirits! can you tell me this—Is it not moving on after?
The desolate old Persian proverb comes into my mind: "It is better to kneel than to stand, it is better to sit than to kneel, it is better to lie than to sit, and it is better to be dead than lying." I think the man who wrote that must have been a cowardly, half-hearted fellow, who had not enough pluck to take up his burden and bear it. It is an ignoble longing to wish to lay down the weapons of life, and rust away in stirless, helpless sleep.
My thoughts seem to be taking a dismal turn; but I feel dismal. For the first time in my life I am waiting for Paul. He is delayed, I suppose, by some more of those tiresome people who have been flocking to call upon him since his return has been made known. He has seen a few, escaped a great many, but this morning, I Imagine, he has been fairly caught, to his own disgust, no doubt, as much as to mine. I have not seen his home yet; mother would not allow me to go there, and he does not want me to see it just directly, he is getting a surprise ready for me, he says. I have not told Alice and Milly a word about him. Mother did not wish it until papa's return, neither have I mentioned Paul's name to Jack, who did not come home in October after all. Christmas he is to spend with the Lovelaces, and Alice thinks I am going to accompany him there. But indeed I am not; Paul is going to be here, and where he is I shall be.
"It is quite certain," I say aloud, "that he is not coming for ages; he will very likely not be here till luncheon time, and then, of course, mamma and Simpkins will be there, and I shall not be able to speak to him, and———" Here my fortitude gives way, and tears run down my cheeks. "How wasted every minute does seem that I spend away from him!"
"They are something worse than wasted to Paul," says my lover's voice behind me, and as I turn my forlorn countenance to him, he catches me up in his arms, and lifts me from the ground.
When he has wiped my tears away—and it takes a very long while, although I have not shed a single one since he came in—he puts my hat straight, and we go out into the garden, and stroll up and down the gravelled walks, talking the silly, selfish stuff that is vastly entertaining, important, and absorbing to us, but would be flat enough to anybody else.
The world (says Alice and Milly) calls Paul Vasher haughty, cold, proud; if they could only see him now, planning out our married life with all the zest and abandon of a schoolboy out for a holiday!
He is going to teach me to ride, he says; it is to be hoped that his efforts will be crowned with more success than were those of the governor. Not that he took any pains with me, he used to gallop away, and leave me to follow as best I might, and follow I did—over my animal's nose. How often have I not sat at my ease on the dusty road, weeping plentifully, while my steed refreshed himself from the hedge, waiting till Providence should send somebody to put me into the saddle again! Altogether it was a failure: and after my pony had walked me in at the open door of the village public, and was forced to be backed therefrom, to papa's rage and disgust, he washed his hands of me, and I was left in peace. "You won't be very angry if I break the horse's knees," I ask, anxiously; "that was what unnerved me so when I was out with the governor; my own would not have mattered half as much!"
"Poor little sweetheart!" he says; "well, I don't know that I should care particularly for a stable of broken-kneed horses, but I would far rather they came to grief than you did."
"I can stick on pretty well," I say, with modest pride, "but you will never be able to teach me to trot! You will be so ashamed of me when you see me shaking up and down in the saddle, with my hat at the back of my neck, and my hair tumbling down—you should only hear Jack talk about it! Poor fellow! how I have forgotten him lately! All your fault, sir."
We stand still among the cabbages to make ourselves ridiculous, and then go on again.
"Do you know, Paul, that there is one thing I shall not like at the Towers?"
"What is that?"
"The visitors! Don't you think it would be much better to quarrel with our neighbours all round, as papa does? We never should have had this glorious time here, if callers had been popping in at all hours! Now, if visitors only came when they were asked, or when they had something nice to say, or because they knew they were welcome, there would be some sense in their coming; but when they only call as a duty, and don't care twopence for you, and you only receive them as a duty, and do not care twopence for them, is it not a great waste of time and trouble?"
"I don't think it would do to quarrel with them all," says Paul, laughing, "but we will keep as clear of them as we can. You won't be always here; we shall go to town in May, for you to be presented."
"Presented!" I repeat, stopping short, and staring at him; "do you mean it?"
"Of course I do, child; why not?"
"Why not?" I repeat again ; "oh! the very idea! why—why—" I say, going off into a hearty roar, "the Queen would laugh in my face! Oh dear! oh dear! only think of me, in a tail three yards long; me, in white feathers; me, walking out of a room backwards—why, I should turn a somersault as sure as fate!" And I go off again into a louder explosion than the first. "Papa would never get over it," I say, wiping my eyes; "he always called me a peacock, and if I went to court, I should be—be one; tail, feathers, strut, and all!"
"Nell," says Paul gravely, "I am afraid you will not make a very dignified Mrs. Vasher."
"Do you mind my being so noisy?" I ask, suddenly sobered. "Would you rather I were quieter? Only I am so happy, you know, and I never was quiet over that! And if you really mean me to go to court, Paul (I check myself on the edge of another outburst), I will promise you not to smile even, or turn a somersault—if I can help it; I will be as sober as a judge."
"Will you?" he asks; "I don't think I should know my Nell if she moved slowly and spoke seldom."
"Did you ever think your wife would ever be a bit like me dear?"
"Did you ever think your husband would be a bit like me, Nell?"
"No," I say absently; "for I always thought I should have to marry George."
"Don't say that," he says, frowning; "it sounds as though it did not matter much to you whether you married him or me; and I suppose if I had not come you would have married him?"
"I suppose so, sooner or later!"
"You are very cool over it," he says, giving me a little impatient shake; "I do believe that after a while you would have got a comfortable sort of a liking for him, and never found out that you were capable of feeling anything different."
"Of course I should! And when you came back to The Towers later on, we should have looked upon you as a sort of benevolent elderly gentleman, whom we should have prevailed on to intercede with the governor to obtain his consent to our marriage, and we should have become very fond of you."
"Would you, indeed?" he says. "Let me tell you, child, that if you had been betrothed wife or wedded wife when I came back, it would have been just the same, you would have loved me as I should have loved you—instinctively."
"Would you?" I ask slowly.
"Ay! that would I! And your heart would have come to me as mine would have gone to you, across everything."
"No, Paul, it would not. If I had belonged to George, and, too late, met and loved you, you should never have known it. You praised me once for being honest. . . ."
We are in a remote corner of the garden now, and we stand still with the dull, sodden ground at our feet, and the grey, blank skies overhead, and he takes me in his arms.
"Sweet and honest, fair and true!" he says; "was ever any one like my sweetheart? Thank God that no other man has a shadow of right over you, Nell; who is there, indeed, of all the living world, that could come between us and make our love a sin?"
And the chill wintry wind that is moaning and creeping about the leafless trees, echoes eerily, "Who?"
"If you please, Miss Ullen," says Dorley, appearing, "I've got a nosegay for 'ee."
I take the scanty little bouquet with a very red face, and a not very gracious "Thank you."
"Mebbe that's your young man, Miss Ullen?" he says, in a stage whisper. "An' it seems ony yesterday I saw you a-dangling from that quarinder tree with yer pantaloons———"
"That will do, Dorley!" I say hastily, and he shuffles away.
"What was the end of the story?" asks Paul, inquisitively; "your———"
"Dorley does not know his manners!" I say with dignity; we will not talk about him!"
We go and look at the rabbits, Basan's now, not Jack's, soft, helpless, pretty creatures, whose bodies, alas! we too often nourish to feed our greedy cat.
"I should like a good many pets at The Towers," I say, as we move on again. "Will you read prayers, Paul?"
"I!" says my lover, looking considerably astonished; "well, no, I think not, Nell."
"Then I must. What made me think of it was the canaries."
"The canaries! what on earth have they got to do with it?"
"When papa begins to read they begin to sing, and then he gets in a rage, and altogether———"
"Hum!" says Paul, "prayers and temper seem to go together. Don't you think we had better do without both?"
"Oh, Paul!"
"Look here, little woman!" he says, "I may as well tell you now, to save bother hereafter, that I don't believe any amount of praying by rote does a man a vestige of good. Let him set to work to mend his morals and weed his heart first, and keep the outward observances of religion after. Many a man who makes a great parade of religion is at heart ten times more sinful than he whom the world calls infidel, yet has throughout his whole life been true to every generous, noble instinct, doing his duty to his neighbour without shrinking, asking and expecting no approval, save that which is given by his own conscience. Such a man's life is, to my thinking, a far truer worship of his Creator than any amount of empty prayer ascending daily from a selfish, presumptuous soul, that glorifies self in his Maker, and believes that words, not acts, are reckoned up above."
"Then you would abolish prayer?" I ask; "you would do away with a man's going to church?"
"No," he says; I believe in the efficacy of the one and the good of the other, if he seeks them because he feels the need of them; not from custom or habit, or because the omission will be observed of his fellow-men. Do you believe that prayer is of any use to a man who takes his every-day thoughts with him to worship and, outwardly observant, hugs himself in the consciousness that he is doing something at once pleasant and profitable, making his peace with God and mankind at the same moment?"
I shake my head. "You would sweep away all the old landmarks, Paul. How would you teach a child to understand this?"
"I would say, 'Be good, for goodness' own sake, and because it is honest and right,' not 'Be good, and you shall go to heaven; be naughty and you shall go to hell.' I call that plan one of lollipops and terrorism. The child is too young to take in all the things that are poured into its mind; it gets a vague idea that being good is a very hard thing, but to be rewarded by something nice, and that to be naughty is very pleasant, but will be followed in due course by something uncommonly nasty; and, between the two, the poor little wretch loses its head and gets an entirely false idea of religion. Now, if the instinct of right were implanted in that child's mind, and it were taught to follow after good and reject evil, not because it would be rewarded for the one and punished for the other, but because goodness and virtue were beautiful and to be worshipped, while vice and sin were ugly and hateful, and to be shunned for the sake of its own deformity, then would be laid the foundation for a race of men who would be neither free-thinkers nor Pharisees———"
"If you please, miss," says Simpkins, in a patient voice, that signifies he has made the announcement more than once to us, "luncheon is served!"