TUCKERS.
BARBARA sat in the little oak parlour, a pretty room that opened out of
the hall; indeed it had originally been a portion of the hall, which
was constructed like a letter L. The hall extended to the roof, but the
branch at right angles was not half the height. It was ceiled about ten
feet from the floor, and instead of being, like the hall, paved with
slate, had oak boards. The window looked into the garden. Mr. Jordan’s
father had knocked away the granite mullions, and put in a sash-window,
out of keeping with the room and house, but agreeable to the taste of
the period, and admitting more light. A panelled division cut the room
off from the hall. Barbara and Eve could not agree about the adornment
of this apartment. On the walls were a couple of oil paintings, and
Barbara supplemented them with framed and glazed mezzotints. She could
not be made by her sister to see the incongruity of engravings and oil
paintings hanging side by side on dark oak panels. On the chimney-piece
was a French ormolu clock, which was Eve’s detestation. It was badly
designed and unsuitable for the room. So was the banner-screen of a
poodle resting on a red cushion; so were the bugle mats on the table;
so were the antimacassars on all the arm-chairs and over the back of
the sofa; so were some drawing-room chairs purchased by Barbara, with
curved legs, and rails that were falling out periodically. Barbara
thought these chairs handsome, Eve detestable. The chimney-piece
ornaments, the vases of pale green glass illuminated with flowers, were
also objects of aversion to one sister and admiration to the other.
Eve at one time refused to make posies for the vases in the parlour,
and was always protesting against some new introduction by her sister,
which violated the principles of taste.
‘I don’t like to live in a dingy old hall like this,’ Eve would say;
‘but I like a place to be fitted up in keeping with its character.’
Barbara was now seated in this debatable ground. Eve was out somewhere,
and she was alone and engaged with her needle. Her father, in the next
room, was dozing. Then to the open window came Jasper, leaned his arms
on the sill—the sash was up—and looked in at Barbara.
‘Hard at work as usual?’ he said.
She smiled and nodded, and looked at him, holding her needle up, with a
long white thread in it.
‘On what engaged I dare not ask,’ said Jasper.
‘You may know,’ she said, laughing. ‘Sewing in tuckers. I always sew
tuckers on Saturdays, both for myself and for Eve.’
‘And, pray, what are tuckers?’
‘Tuckers’—she hesitated to find a suitable description, ‘tuckers
are—well, tuckers.’ She took a neck of a dress which she had finished
and put it round her throat. ‘Now you see. Now you understand. Tuckers
are the garnishing, like parsley to a dish.’
‘And compliments to speech. So you do Eve’s as well as your own.’
‘O dear, yes; Eve cannot be trusted. She would forget all about them
and wear dirty tuckers.’
‘But she worked hard enough burnishing the brass necklace.’
‘O yes, that shone! tuckers are simply—clean.’
‘My Lady Eve should have a lady’s-maid.’
‘Not whilst I am with her. I do all that is needful for her. When she
marries she must have one, as she is helpless.’
‘You think Eve will marry?’
‘O yes! It is all settled. She has consented.’
He was a little surprised. This had come about very suddenly, and Eve
was young.
‘I am glad you are here,’ said Barbara, ‘only you have taken an unfair
advantage of me.’
‘I—Barbara?’
‘Yes, Jasper, you.’ She looked up into his face with a heightened
colour. He had never called her by her plain Christian name before, nor
had she thus addressed him, but their hearts understood each other, and
a formal title would have been an affectation on either side.
‘I will tell you why,’ said the girl; ‘so do not put on such a
puzzled expression. I want to speak to you seriously about a matter
that—that—well, Jasper, that makes me wish you had your face in the
light and mine in the shade. Where you stand the glare of the sky is
behind you, and you can see every change in my face, and that unnerves
me. Either you shall come in here, take my place at the tuckers, and
let me talk to you through the window, or else I shall move my chair
close to the window, and sit with my back to it, and we can talk
without watching each other’s face.’
‘Do that, Barbara. I cannot venture on the tuckers.’
So, laughing nervously, and with her colour changing in her checks, and
her lips twitching, she drew her chair close to the window, and seated
herself, not exactly with her back to it, but sideways, and turned her
face from it.
The ground outside was higher than the floor of the parlour, so that
Jasper stood above her, and looked down somewhat, not much, on her
head, her dark hair so neat and glossy, and smoothly parted. He stooped
to the mignonette bed and gathered some of the fragrant delicate little
trusses of colourless flowers, and with a slight apology thrust two or
three among her dark hair.
‘Putting in tuckers,’ he said. ‘Garnishing the sweetest of heads with
the plant that to my mind best symbolises Barbara.’
‘Don’t,’ she exclaimed, shaking her head, but not shaking the sprigs
out of her hair. ‘You are taking unwarrantable liberties, Mr. Jasper.’
‘I will take no more.’ He folded his arms on the sill. She did not see,
but she felt, the flood of love that poured over her bowed head from
his eyes. She worked very hard fastening off a thread at the end of a
tucker.
‘I also,’ said Jasper, ‘have been desirous of a word with you, Barbara.’
She turned, looked up in his face, then bent her head again over her
work. The flies, among them a great bluebottle, were humming in the
window; the latter bounced against the glass, and was too stupid to
come down and go out at the open sash.
‘We understand each other,’ said Jasper, in a low voice, as pleasant
and soft as the murmur of the flies. ‘There are songs without words,
and there is speech without voice: what I have thought and felt you
know, though I have not told you anything, and I think I know also what
you think and feel. Now, however, it is as well that we should come to
plain words.’
‘Yes, Jasper, I think so as well, that is why I have come over here
with my tuckers.’
‘We know each other’s heart,’ he said, stooping in over her head and
the garnishing of mignonette, and speaking as low as a whisper, not
really in a whisper but in his natural warm, rich voice. ‘There is
this, dear Barbara, about me. My name, my family, are dishonoured by
the thoughtless, wrongful act of my poor brother. I dare not ask you to
share that name with me, not only on this ground, but also because I am
absolutely penniless. A great wrong has been done to your father and
sister by us, and it does not become me to ask the greatest and richest
of gifts from your family. Hereafter I may inherit my father’s mill at
Buckfastleigh. When I do I will, as I have undertaken, fully repay the
debt to your sister, but till I can do that I may not ask for more. You
are, and must be, to me a far-off, unapproachable star, to whom I look
up, whom I shall ever love and stretch my hands towards.’
‘I am not a star at all,’ said Barbara, ‘and as for being far off and
unapproachable, you are talking nonsense, and you do not mean it or you
would not have stuck bits of mignonette in my hair. I do not understand
rhodomontade.’
Jasper laughed. He liked her downright, plain way. ‘I am quoting a
thought from “Preciosa,”’ he said.
‘I know nothing of “Preciosa,” save that it is something Eve strums.’
‘Well—divest what I have said of all exaggeration of simile, you
understand what I mean.’
‘And I want you to understand my position exactly, Jasper,’ she said.
‘I also am penniless. The money my aunt left me I have made over to Eve
because she could not marry Mr. Coyshe without something present, as
well as a prospect of something to come.’
‘What! sewn your poor little legacy in as a tucker to her wedding gown?’
‘Mr. Coyshe wants to go to London, he is lost here; and Eve would be
happy in a great city, she mopes in the country. So I have consented
to this arrangement. I do not want the money as I live here with my
father, and it is a real necessity for Eve and Mr. Coyshe. You see—I
could not do other.’
‘And when your father dies, Morwell also passes to Eve. What is left
for you?’
‘Oh, I shall do very well. Mr. Coyshe and Eve would never endure to
live here. By the time dear papa is called away Mr. Coyshe will have
made himself a name, be a physician, and rolling in money. Perhaps he
and Eve may like to run here for their short holiday and breathe our
pure air, but otherwise they will not occupy the place, and I thought I
might live on here and manage for them. Then’—she turned her cheek and
Jasper saw a glitter on the long dark lash, but at the same time the
dimple of a smile on her cheek—’then, dear friend’—she put up her hand
on the sill, and he caught it—’then, dear friend, perhaps you will not
mind helping me. Then probably your little trouble will be over.’ She
was silent, thinking, and he saw the dimple go out of her smooth cheek,
and the sparkling drop fall from the lash on that cheek. ‘All is in
God’s hand,’ she said. ‘We do wrong to look forward; I shall be happy
to leave it so, and wait and trust.’
Then he put the other hand which did not clasp hers under her chin, and
tried to raise her face, but he could only reach her brow with his lips
and kiss it. He said not one word.
‘You do not answer,’ she said.
‘I cannot,’ he replied.
Then the door was thrown open and Eve entered, flushed, and holding up
her finger.
‘Look, Bab!—look, dear! I have my ring again. Now I can shake off that
doctor.’
‘O Eve!’ gasped Barbara; ‘the ring! where did you get it?’ She turned
sharply to Jasper. ‘She has seen him—your brother Martin—again.’
Eve was, for a moment, confused, but only for a moment. She recovered
herself and said merrily, ‘Why, Barbie dear, however did you get that
crown of mignonette in your hair? You never stuck it there yourself.
You would not dream of such a thing; besides, your arm is not long
enough to reach the flower-bed. Jasper! confess you have been doing
this.’ She clasped her hands and danced. ‘O what fun!’ she exclaimed:
‘but really it is a shame of me interfering when Barbara is so busy
with the tuckers, and Jasper in garnishing Barbara’s head.’ Then she
bounded out of the room, leaving her sister in confusion.