Susanna was seated on the moss, at the roots of a wide-spreading oak.
She was leaning back, so that she could look up, up, through vistas of
changing greens,--black-green to gold-green,--through a thousand
labyrinthine avenues and counter-avenues of leaves and branches, with
broken shafts of sunlight caught in them here and there, to the
glimpses of blue sky visible beyond. The tree gave you a sense of
great spaces, and depths, and differences, like a world; and it was
full of life, like a city. Birds came and went and hopped from bough
to bough, twittering importantly of affairs to them important;
squirrels scampered over the rough bark, in sudden panic haste, darting
little glances, sidewise and behind, after pursuers that (we will hope)
were fancied; and other birds, out of sight in the loftier regions,
piped their insistent calls, or sang their tireless epithalamiums.
Spiders hung in their gossamer lairs, only too tensely motionless not
to seem dead; but if a gnat came--with what swift, accurate, and
relentless vigour they sprang upon and garotted him. Sometimes a twig
snapped, or a young acorn fell, or a caterpillar let himself down by a
long silken thread. And the air under the oak was tonic with its good
oaken smell.
Susanna was leaning back in a sort of reverie, held by the charm of
these things. "We have no trees like this in Italy," she was vaguely
thinking. "The trees and the wild creatures are never so near to one
there; one never gets so intimate with them; Nature is not so
accessible and friendly." She remembered having read somewhere that
such enjoyment as she was now experiencing, the enjoyment of commune
with the mere sweet out-of-door things of the earth, was a Pagan
enjoyment, and un-Christian; and her mind revolted at this, and she
thought, "No. There would n't be any enjoyment, if one did n't know
that 'God's in His Heaven, all 's right with the world.'"
And just then her reverie was interrupted. . .
"He has arrived. I have seen him--what you call _seen_--with my own
eyes seen. There are about two yards of him; and a very spruce,
gentlemanlike, well-knit, and attractive two yards they are."
Thus, with a good deal of animation, in a pleasant, crisp old voice,
thus spoke Miss Sandus: a little old lady in black: little and very
daintily finished, with a daintily-chiselled profile, and a neat,
small-framed figure; in a black walking-skirt, that was short enough to
disclose a small, high-instepped, but eminently business-like pair of
brown boots. Miss Sandus (she gave you her word for it) was
seventy-four;--and indeed (so are the generations linked), her father
had been a middie with Nelson at Trafalgar, and a lieutenant aboard the
_Bellerophon_ during that ship's historic voyage to St. Helena;--but
she confronted you with the lively eyes, the firm cheeks, the fresh
complexion, the erect and active carriage, of a well-preserved woman of
sixty; and in her plentiful light-brown hair there was scarcely a
thread of grey. She stepped trippingly across the grass, swinging a
malacca walking-stick, with a silver crook-handle.
"He has arrived. I 've seen him."
So her voice broke in upon Susanna's musings; and Susanna started, and
got up. She was wearing a muslin frock to-day, white, with a pattern
of flowers in mauve; and she was without a hat, so that one could see
how her fine black hair grew low about her brow, and thence swept away
in loose full billows, and little crinkling over-waves, to where it
drooped in a rich mass behind. But as she stood, awaiting Miss
Sandus's approach, her face was pale, and her eyes were wide open and
dark, as if with fright.
"Dear me, child. Did I startle you? I 'm so sorry," said Miss Sandus,
coming up to her. "Yes, Don Antonio has arrived. I saw him as he
disembarked at his native railway-station. I was ordering a book at
Smith's. And such luggage, my dear. Boxes and bags, bags and boxes,
till you could n't count them; and all of stout brown leather--so nice
and manny. He looks nice and manny himself: tall, with nice manny
clothes, and nice eyes, and a nice brown skin; and with a nose, my
dear, a nose like Julius Caesar's. Well, you 'll meet him on Sunday,
at your Papistical place of worship,--if he does n't call before. I
daresay he 'll think himself obliged to."
"Oh, Fairy Godmother," gasped Susanna, faintly; "feel."
She took Miss Sandus's hand, and pressed it against her side.
"Feel how my heart is beating."
"Mercy!" exclaimed Miss Sandus.