THE BOW-WINDOWED HOUSE.
You'll love me yet, and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing;
You reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April's sowing.
Rhoda, as she sat at her work, used to peep out of the bow-windows at
the people passing up and down the street--a pretty girlish head, with
thick black plaits pinned away, and a white frill round the slender
throat. Sometimes, when Mrs. Morgan was out, Rhoda would untwist and
unpin, and shake down a cloud upon her shoulders; then her eyes would
gleam with a wild wilful light, as she looked at herself in the little
glass in the workbox, but she would run away if she heard any one
coming, and hastily plait up her coils. The plain-speaking and
rough-dealing of a household not attuned to the refinements of more
sensitive natures had frightened instead of strengthening hers. She had
learnt to be afraid and reserved. She was timid and determined, but
things had gone wrong with her, and she was neither brave nor frightened
in the right way. She had learnt to think for herself, to hold her own
secretly against the universal encroachments of a lively race. She was
obliging, and ready to sacrifice her own for others, but when she gave
up, she was conscious of the sacrifice. She could forgive her brother
unto seven times. She was like the disciple, whose sympathy did not
reach unto seventy times seven.
Rhoda was not strong, like Cassie and Zoe. She was often tired, as she
sat there in the window-corner. She could not always touch the huge
smoking heaps that came to table. When all the knives and forks and
voices clattered together, they seemed to go through her head. The bells
and laughter made her start. She would nervously listen for the boys'
feet clattering down the stairs. At Church House there was a fresh
silence. You could hear the birds chirruping in the garden all the time
Lady Sarah was reading aloud. There were low comfortable seats covered
with faded old chintz and tapestry. There were Court ladies hanging on
the walls. One wore a pearl necklace; she had dark bright eyes, and
Rhoda used to look at her, and think her like herself, and wonder. There
were books to read and times to read them at Church House, and there was
Dolly always thinking how to give Rhoda pleasure. If she exacted a
certain fealty and obedience from the little maiden, her rule was
different from Aunt Morgan's. Dolly had no sheets to sew, no dusty
cupboards to put straight, no horrible boys' shirts to front or socks to
darn and darn and darn, while their owners were disporting themselves
out of doors, and making fresh work for the poor little Danaides at
home.
To Dolly, Old Street seemed a delightful place. She never could
understand why Rhoda was so unhappy there. It seemed to Dolly only too
delightful, for George was for ever going there when he was at home. The
stillness of Church House, its tranquil order and cheerful depression,
used to weary the boy; perhaps it was natural enough. Unless, as Rhoda
was, they are constitutionally delicate, boys and girls don't want to
bask all day long like jelly-fish in a sunny calm; they want to tire
themselves, to try their lungs; noise and disorder are to them like
light and air, wholesome tonics with which they brace themselves for the
coming struggles of life. Later in life there are sometimes quite old
girls and boys whose vitality cannot be repressed. They go up mountains
and drive steam-engines. They cry out in print, since it would no longer
be seemly for them to shriek at the pitch of their voices, or to set off
running, violently, or to leap high in the air.
'The Morgans' certainly meant plenty of noise and cheerful clatter, the
short tramp of schoolboy feet, huge smoking dishes liberally dispensed.
John Morgan would rush in pale, breathless, and over-worked; in a limp
white neckcloth as befitted his calling, he would utter a breathless
blessing on the food, and begin hastily to dispense the smoking heap
before him.
'Take care, John, dear,' cries Mrs. Morgan.
'What? where?' says John. 'Why, George! come to lunch? Just in time.'
It was in John Morgan's study that George established himself after
luncheon. The two windows stood open as far as the old-fashioned sashes
would go. The vine was straggling across the panes, wide-spreading its
bronzed and shining leaves. The sunlight dazzled through the green,
making a pleasant flicker on the walls of the shabby room, with its worn
carpet and old-fashioned cane chairs and deal bookcases.
A door opened into an inner room, through which George, by leaning
forward from his arm-chair behind the door, can see Mrs. Morgan's
cap-ribbons all on end against the cross-light in the sitting-room
windows. Cassie is kneeling on the floor, surrounded by piles of
garments; while her brother, standing in the middle of the room, is
rapidly checking off a list of various ailments and misfortunes that are
to be balanced in the scales of fate by proportionate rolls of flannel
and calico. Good little Cassie Morgan feels never a moment's doubt as
she piles her heaps--so much sorrow, so many petticoats: so much
hopeless improvidence, so many pounds of tea and a coal-ticket. In cases
of confirmed wickedness, she adds an illuminated text sometimes, and a
hymn-book. Do they ever come up, these hymn-books and bread-tickets cast
upon the waters? Is it so much waste of time and seed? After all, people
can but work in their own way, and feel kindly towards their
fellow-creatures. One seed is wasted, another grows up; as the buried
flora of a country starts into life when the fields are ploughed in
after years.
'Go on, Cassie,' says Mrs. Morgan: 'Bonker--Wickens--Costello.'
'Costello is again in trouble,' says John. 'It is too bad of him, with
that poor wife of his and all those children. I have to go round to the
Court about him now. Tell George I shall be back in ten minutes.'
'I have kept some clothes for them,' said Cassie. 'They are such nice
little children,' and she looks up flushed and all over ravellings at
the relenting curate, who puts Mrs. Costello down in his relief-book.
All over John Morgan's study, chairs and tables, such books are lying,
with pamphlets, blue books, black books, rolls and registers, in
confusion, and smelling of tobacco.
In this age of good reports and evil reports people seem like the two
boys in Dickens's story, who felt when they had docketed their bills
that they were as good as paid. So we classify our wrongs and tie up our
miseries with red tape; we pity people by decimals, and put our
statistics away with satisfied consciences. John Morgan wrote articles
from a cold and lofty point of view, but he left his reports about all
over the room, and would rush off to the help of any human being,
deserving or undeserving. He had a theory that heaven had created
individuals as well as classes; and at this very moment, with another
bang of the door, he was on his way to the police-court, to say a good
word for the intemperate Costello, who was ruefully awaiting his trial
in the dark cell below.
George, although comfortably established in the Morgan study, was also
tired of waiting, and found the house unusually dull. For some time past
he had been listening to a measured creaking noise in the garden; then
came a peal of bells from the steeple; and he went to the window and
looked out. The garden was full of weeds and flowers, with daisies on
the lawn, and dandelions and milkwort among the beds. It was not trimly
kept, like the garden at home; but George, who was the chief gardener,
thought it a far pleasanter place, with its breath of fresh breeze, and
its bit of blue over-roof. For flowers, there were blush-roses, nailed
against the wall, that Rhoda used to wear in her dark hair sometimes,
when there were no earwigs in them; and blue flags, growing in the beds
among spiked leaves, and London pride, and Cape jessamine, very sweet
upon the air, and also ivy, creeping in a tangle of leaves and tendrils.
The garden had been planted by the different inhabitants of the old
brown house--each left a token. There was a medlar-tree, with one rotten
medlar upon a branch, beneath which John Morgan would sit and smoke his
pipe in the sun, while his pupils construed Greek upon the little lawn.
Only Carlo was there now, stretching himself comfortably in the dry
grass (Carlo was one of Bunch's puppies, grown up to be of a gigantic
size and an unknown species). Tom Morgan's tortoise was also basking
upon the wall. The creaking noise went on after the chimes had ceased,
and George jumped out of window on to the water-butt to see what was the
matter. He had forgotten the swing. It hung from a branch of the
medlar-tree to the trellis, and a slim figure, in a limp cotton dress,
stood clinging to the rope--a girl with a black cloud of hair falling
about her shoulders. George stared in amazement. Rhoda had stuck some
vine-leaves in her hair, and had made a long wreath, that was hanging
from the swing, and that floated as she floated. She was looking up with
great wistful eyes, and for a minute she did not see him. As the swing
rose and fell, her childish wild head went up above the wall and the
branches against the blue, and down 'upon a background of pure gold,'
where the Virginian creeper had turned in the sun. George thought it was
a sort of tune she was swinging, with all those colours round about her
in the sultry summer day. As he leaped down, a feeling came over him as
if it had all happened before, as if he had seen it and heard the
creaking of the ropes in a dream. Rhoda blushed and slackened her
flight. He seemed still to remember it all while the swing stopped by
degrees; and a voice within the house began calling, 'Rhoda! Rhoda!'
'Oh! I must go,' said Rhoda, sighing. 'I am wasting my time. Please
don't tell Aunt Morgan I was swinging.'
'Tell her!' said George. 'What a silly child you are. Why shouldn't you
swing?'
'Oh! she would be angry,' said Rhoda, looking down. 'I _am_ very silly.
I can't bear being scolded.'
'Can't you?' says George, with his hands in his pockets. 'I'm used to
it, and don't mind a bit.'
'I shouldn't mind it if ... if I were you, and any one cared for me,'
said Rhoda, with tearful eyes. She spoke in a low depressed voice.
'Nonsense,' said George; 'everybody cares for everybody. Dolly loves
you, so--so do we all.'
'Do you?' said Rhoda, looking at him in a strange wistful way, and
brightening suddenly, and putting back all her cloudy hair with her
hands. Then she blushed up, and ran into the house.
When George told Dolly about it, Dolly was very sympathising, except
that she said Rhoda ought to have answered when her aunt called her.
'She is too much afraid of being scolded,' said Dolly.
'Poor little thing!' said George. 'Listen to this,' and he sat down to
the piano. He made a little tune he called 'The Swing,' with a minor
accompaniment recurring again and again, and a pretty modulation.
'It is exactly like a swing,' said Dolly. 'George, you must have a
cathedral some day, and make them sing all the services through.'
'I shall not be a clergyman,' said George, gravely. 'It is all very well
for Morgan, who is desperately in love. He has often told me that it
would be his ruin if he were separated from Mrs. Carbury.'
George, during his stay in Old Street (he had boarded there for some
weeks during Lady Sarah's absence), had been installed general
confidante and sympathiser, and was most deeply interested in the young
couple's prospects.
'I believe Aunt Sarah has got a living when old Mr. Livermore dies,' he
went on, shutting up the piano and coming to the table where Dolly was
drawing. 'We must get her to present it to John Morgan.'
'But she always says it is for you, George, now that the money is lost,'
said Dolly. 'I am afraid it will not be any use asking her. George, how
much is prudent?'
'How much is how much?' says George, looking with his odd blue eyes.
'I meant prudent to marry on?' says Dolly.
'Oh, I don't know,' says George, indifferently. 'I shall marry on
anything I may happen to have.'
'What are you children talking about?' said Lady Sarah, looking up from
her corner by the farthest chimney-piece. She liked one particular place
by the fire, from which she could look down the room at the two heads
that were bending together over the round table, and out into the
garden, where a west wind was blowing, and tossing clouds and ivy
sprays.
'We are talking about prudence in marriage,' says George.
'How can you be so silly!' says Lady Sarah, sharply, at which George
starts up offended and marches through the window into the garden.
'What is it?' said the widow. 'Yes, Dolly, go to him,' she said, in
answer to Dolly's pleading eyes. 'Foolish boy!'
The girl was already gone. Her aunt watched the white figure, flying
with wind-blown locks and floating skirts along the ivy wall. Dolly
caught her brother up by the speckled holly-tree, and the two went on
together, proceeding in step to a triumphant music of sparrows overhead,
a wavering of ivy along their path; soft winds blew everywhere,
scattering light leaves; the summer's light was in the day, and shining
from the depth of Dolly's grey eyes. The two went and sat down on the
bench by the pond, the old stone-edged pond, that reflected scraps of
the blue green overhead; a couple of gold-fishes alternately darted from
side to side. George forgot that he was not understood as he sat there
throwing pebbles into the water. Presently the wind brought some sudden
voices close at hand, and, looking up, they saw two people advancing
from the house, Robert Henley walking by Lady Sarah and carrying her old
umbrella.
'Oh, he is always coming,' said George, kicking his heels, and not
seeming surprised. 'He is staying with his grandmother at the Palace,
but they don't give him enough to eat, and so he drops into the
Morgans', and now he comes here.'
'Hush!' said Dolly, looking round.
Robert Henley was a tall, handsome young fellow, about twenty, with a
straight nose and a somewhat pompous manner. He was very easy and
good-natured when it was not too much trouble; he would patronise people
both younger and older than himself with equally good intentions.
George's early admiration for his cousin I fear is now tinged with a
certain jealousy of which Robert is utterly unconscious; he takes the
admiration for granted. He comes up and gives Dolly an affable kiss.
'Well, Dolly, have you learnt to talk French? I want to hear all about
Paris.'
'What shall I tell you?' says simple Dolly, greatly excited. 'We had
such a pretty drawing-room, Robert, with harps on all the doors, and
yellow sofas, and such a lovely, lovely view.' And Lady Sarah smiled at
Dolly's enthusiasm, and asked Robert if he could stay to dinner.
'I shall be delighted,' says Robert, just like a man of the world. 'My
grandmother has turned me out for the day.'