THE BEST ROOM.
The music, we are grieved to say, was not at all worth listening to--it
would not have disturbed Bell and Beau had the two little beds been on
the top of the piano. Though Marian with a careless hand ran over three
or four notes, the momentary sound did not disturb the brown study of
Mrs Atheling, and scarcely roused Susan, nodding and dozing, as she
mended stockings by the kitchen fire. We are afraid this same practising
was often an excuse for half an hour’s idleness and dreaming. Sweet
idleness! happy visions! for it certainly was so to-night.
The best room was of the same size exactly as the family sitting-room,
but looked larger by means of looking prim, chill, and uninhabited--and
it was by no means crowded with furniture. The piano in one corner and a
large old-fashioned table in another, with a big leaf of black and
bright mahogany folded down, were the only considerable articles in the
room, and the wall looked very blank with its array of chairs. The sofa
inclined towards the unlighted fire, and the round table stood before
it; but you could not delude yourself into the idea that this at any
time could be the family hearth. Mrs Atheling “kept no company;” so,
like other good people in the same condition, she religiously preserved
and kept in order the company-room; and it was a comfort to her heart to
recollect that in this roomy house there was always an orderly place
where strangers could be shown into, although the said strangers never
came.
The one candle had been placed drearily among the little coloured glass
vases on the mantel-shelf; but the moonlight shone broad and full into
the window, and, pouring its rays over the whole visible scene without,
made something grand and solemn even of this genteel and silent
Bellevue. The tranquil whiteness on these humble roofs--the distinctness
with which one branch here and there, detached and taken possession of
by the light, marked out its half-developed buds against the sky--the
strange magic which made that faint ascending streak of smoke the
ethereal plaything of these moonbeams--and the intense blackness of the
shadow, deep as though it fell from one of the pyramids, of these homely
garden-walls--made a wonderful and striking picture of a scene which had
not one remarkable feature of its own; and the solitary figure crossing
the road, all enshrined and hallowed in this silvery glory, but itself
so dark and undistinguishable, was like a figure in a vision--an
emblematic and symbolical appearance, entering like a picture to the
spectator’s memory. The two girls stood looking out, with their arms
entwined, and their fair heads close together, as is the wont of such
companions, watching the wayfarer, whose weary footstep was inaudible in
the great hush and whisper of the night.
“I always fancy one might see ghosts in moonlight,” said Marian, under
her breath. Certainly that solitary passenger, with all the silvered
folds of his dress, and the gliding and noiseless motion of his
progress, was not entirely unlike one.
“He looks like a man in a parable,” said Agnes, in the same tone. “One
could think he was gliding away mysteriously to do something wrong. See,
now, he has gone into the shadow. I cannot see him at all--he has quite
disappeared--it is so black. Ah! I shall think he is always standing
there, looking over at us, and plotting something. I wish Charlie would
come home--how long he is!”
“Who would plot anything against us?” said innocent Marian, with her
fearless smile. “People do not have enemies now as they used to have--at
least not common people. I wish he would come out again, though, out of
that darkness. I wonder what sort of man he could be.”
But Agnes was no longer following the man; her eye was wandering vaguely
over the pale illumination of the sky. “I wonder what will happen to us
all?” said Agnes, with a sigh--sweet sigh of girlish thought that knew
no care! “I think we are all beginning now, Marian, every one of us. I
wonder what will happen--Charlie and all?”
“Oh, I can tell you,” said Marian; “and you first of all, because you
are the eldest. We shall all be famous, Agnes, every one of us; all
because of you.”
“Oh, hush!” cried Agnes, a smile and a flush and a sudden brightness
running over all her face; “but suppose it _should_ be so, you know,
Marian--only suppose it for our own pleasure--what a delight it would
be! It might help Charlie on better than anything; and then what we
could do for Bell and Beau! Of course it is nonsense,” said Agnes, with
a low laugh and a sigh of excitement, “but how pleasant it would be!”
“It is not nonsense at all; I think it is quite certain,” said Marian;
“but then people would seek you out, and you would have to go and visit
them--great people--clever people. Would it not be odd to hear real
ladies and gentlemen talking in company as they talk in books?”
“I wonder if they do,” said Agnes, doubtfully. “And then to meet people
whom we have heard of all our lives--perhaps Bulwer even!--perhaps
Tennyson! Oh, Marian!”
“And to know they were very glad to meet _you_,” exclaimed the sister
dreamer, with another low laugh of absolute pleasure: that was very near
the climax of all imaginable honours--and for very awe and delight the
young visionaries held their breath.
“And I think now,” said Marian, after a little interval, “that perhaps
it is better Charlie should be a lawyer, for he would have so little at
first in papa’s office, and he never could get on, more than papa; and
you would not like to leave all the rest of us behind you, Agnes? I know
you would not. But I hope Charlie will never grow like Mr Foggo, so old
and solitary; to be poor would be better than that.”
“Then I could be Miss Willsie,” said Agnes, “and we should live in a
little square house, with two bits of lawn and two fir-trees; but I
think we would not call it Killiecrankie Lodge.”
Over this felicitous prospect there was a great deal of very quiet
laughing--laughing as sweet and as irrepressible as any other natural
music, but certainly not evidencing any very serious purpose on the
part of either of the young sisters to follow the example of Miss
Willsie. They had so little thought, in their fair unconscious youth, of
all the long array of years and changes which lay between their sweet
estate and that of the restless kind old lady, the mistress of Mr
Foggo’s little square house.
“And then, for me--what should I do?” said Marian. There were smiles
hiding in every line of this young beautiful face, curving the pretty
eyebrow, moving the soft lip, shining shy and bright in the sweet eyes.
No anxiety--not the shadow of a shade--had ever crossed this young
girl’s imagination touching her future lot. It was as rosy as the west
and the south, and the cheeks of Maud in Mr Tennyson’s poem. She had no
thought of investigating it too closely; it was all as bright as a
summer day to Marian, and she was ready to spend all her smiles upon the
prediction, whether it was ill or well.
“Then I suppose you must be married, May. I see nothing else for you,”
said Agnes, “for there could not possibly be two Miss Willsies; but I
should like to see, in a fairy glass, who my other brother was to be. He
must be clever, Marian, and it would be very pleasant if he could be
rich, and I suppose he ought to be handsome too.”
“Oh, Agnes! handsome of course, first of all!” cried Marian, laughing,
“nobody but you would put that last.”
“But then I rather like ugly people, especially if they are clever,”
said Agnes; “there is Charlie, for example. If he was _very_ ugly, what
an odd couple you would be!--he ought to be ugly for a balance--and very
witty and very pleasant, and ready to do anything for you, May. Then if
he were only rich, and you could have a carriage, and be a great lady, I
think I should be quite content.”
“Hush, Agnes! mamma will hear you--and now there is Charlie with a
book,” said Marian. “Look! he is quite as mysterious in the moonlight as
the other man--only Charlie could never be like a ghost--and I wonder
what the book is. Come, Agnes, open the door.”
This was the conclusion of the half-hour’s practising; they made
grievously little progress with their music, yet it was by no means an
unpleasant half-hour.