"Jack and I got in our last hayload to-day, without a drop of rain; the
first bit of good luck that has come to us, I don't know when. If we
had any land, I should imagine that we must have a bit of consecrated
ground among it, to account for our ill-fortune; but as we have not
of our own enough to pasture a goose upon, that cannot be it. Such an
odd thing happened to-day--Robert Brandon proposed to me: it is the
first offer I ever had, though I was seventeen last month. If it is
never a more pleasant process than it was to-day, I hope sincerely it
may be the last. I said 'Yes,' too; at least, a species of Yes after
half-a-dozen Noes; I cannot imagine why, for I certainly did not feel
Yes. I suppose I must have been pleased at any one wishing for my
company during the term of his natural life."
The name on the fly-leaf of this journal-book is Esther Craven,
Glan-yr-Afon, and the date July 10, 186-. July is very often a rather
wet month--not so this year; all through its one-and-thirty days the
sky was like brass, as it looked to Elijah (the Seer's) eyes on the top
of Carmel, when, by his faith, he brought up the tarrying rain from the
sea's chambers. London is pouring out her noble army of haberdashers
and greengrocers into Ramsgate and Margate, and Scarborough and
Llandudno. The John Gilpins of to-day are not satisfied with a modest
outing to the "Bell" at Edmonton, "all in a chaise and pair."
Armies of schoolboys are devouring arid sandwiches and prime old buns
in railway refreshment rooms--schoolboys emptied out of every school
and seminary and college all over the country. Highly paid instructors
of youth are stretching their cramped legs up the steep sides of
Helvellyn and Mont Blanc, and surveying the "frozen hurricane" of the
glaciers through their academic spectacles. And young Craven's (of
Glan-yr-Afon) last hayload is safely stacked, as you heard from his
sister's diary. This morning the highest lying of the upland fields was
hilly with haycocks: to-night it is as flat as Salisbury Plain. All
day long the waggons have gone grinding and crunching up and down the
rocky mountain road between field and rick-yard. All day long Evan and
Hugh and Roppert (_sic_) with their waistcoats open and their brown
arms bared, aided and abetted by various Cambrian matrons, with bonnets
standing upright on their heads, and pitchforks in their lily hands,
have been tossing the scented bundles--sweeter in death than in life,
like a good man's fame--into the carts; loading them till of the shaft
horse nought but ears and nose and forelegs appeared, save to the eye
of faith. All day long Esther has been sitting under a haycock, as one
might fancy Solomon's wise woman doing, "looking well to the ways of
her household." The hay moulds itself pliably into a soft arm-chair for
her young, slight figure, and the big hay-spiders walk up her back at
their leisure, and explore the virgin forests of her thick dusk hair.
She has had her luncheon brought out to her there--bread and milk in a
white bowl. It is unsocial, surly work, eating alone; one feels reduced
to the level of a dog, cracking bones, and lapping up gravy out of his
trencher, all by himself, with tail well down, like a pump handle, and
a growl and a snap for any brother dog who may approach to share his
feast.
The haymakers were much cheerier--"couched at ease" under the nutty
hedgerow; bringing slices of unnaturally fat bacon out of blue and
white spotted pocket-handkerchiefs, gabbling to one another in the
Welsh tongue, which, to one who occupies the room of the unlearned, has
always a querulous, quarrelsome, interrogative sound; and digging their
clasp knives into the ground to clean them, when their services were no
longer required. Jack is out for the day, and the place feels stupid
without him. There is not much melody in "I paddle my own canoe," but
one misses it when one is accustomed to hear it echoing gaily over the
crofts and through the farm-yard and orchard. It would be impossible
to talk more dog-Welsh than Jack does to his workmen; but even the
mellifluous tongue of the Cymri, with its three or four consonants
standing together, undissevered by any vowel, is made harmonious,
enunciated by a young, clear voice, that sounds as if it had never been
the vehicle for sorrowful words.
"The village seems asleep or dead,
Now Lubin is away,"
and Esther, though she has entered upon her eighteenth year (an age
which a century ago would have been rather overripe--Chloe and Cynthia
and Phyllis being considered in their prime at fifteen, and toasted
accordingly), has as yet no Lubin but her brother. Now and again, Gwen
the cook, and Sarah the housemaid, came panting up the hill in lilac
cotton gowns and trim white aprons, bearing beer in every jug and
mug and tin pipkin that Glan-yr-Afon affords, as Evangeline brought
the nut-brown ale to the reapers of the village of Grand Pré. And
the haymakers drink insatiably, and wipe the thirsty mouth upon the
convenient sleeve as artless Nature bids. By-and-by artless Nature
makes them rather unsteady on their legs. As they lead the heavy-laden
cart to the last remaining haycock, the one on which their mistress
sits enthroned, I am not at all sure that they do not see two haycocks,
two wide-leaved white hats, two Esthers. Perceiving their condition,
though too old an inhabitant of Wales to be in any degree surprised
at what is, after all, the normal condition of the Welsh, Miss Craven
rises precipitately. Driven from her fortress, she picks up her needles
and threads, and Jack's shirt, from which, as usual, the frequent
button is missing, and runs lightly down the mountain path in her
strong country boots, which bid defiance to the sharp stones that crop
out at every step through the limestone soil. At the hall door--a
little arched door like a church's, with a trellised porch and benches,
such as one sees Dutch boors sitting on with their beer and schnapps,
in Teniers' pictures---Sarah meets her. Sarah is an Englishwoman.
"Mr. Brandon is in the parlour, 'm."
"Parlour! My good Sarah, how many times shall I adjure you, by all you
hold most sacred, to say drawing-room?"
"He has been there best part of half-an-hour, 'm."
"Poor man! how lively for him! why on earth didn't you come and call
me?"
"He said as he wasn't in no partikler hurry, and he'd as lieve as not
wait till you come in. Stop a bit, Miss Esther, you have got some hay
on your frock behind."
"People of seventeen wear gowns, not frocks, Sarah. Oh! there, that
will do. If I had a haystack disposed about my person, he would never
be a bit the wiser."
Half-an-hour passes, and Mr. Brandon is still in the "parlour." It
is seven o'clock, and dinner-time. Would you like to know what it is
that Mr. Brandon takes so long in saying, and whether it is anything
likely to reconcile Miss Craven to the loss of her dinner? A little
room that looks towards the sun-setting; a little room full of evening
sunshine and the smell of tea-roses; a light paper, with small, bright
flower-bunches on the walls; white muslin curtains; a general air of
crisp freshness, as of a room that there are no climbing, crawling,
sticky-fingered children to crumple and rumple. A young woman, rather
red in the face, standing in one corner. She has been driven thither
apparently by a young man, who is standing before her, and who is still
redder. At a rough calculation, you would say that the young man was
seven feet high; but put him with his back against the wall, with his
heels together, and his chin in, and you will find that he is exactly
six feet four; that is, four inches taller than any man who wishes to
do work in the world, and find horses to carry him, ought to be. His
clothes are rather shabby, and he looks poor; but, from the crown of
his close-clipped head to the sole of his big feet, a gentleman, every
inch of him, though he has no "gude braid claith" to help to make him
so. His features may be Apollo's or Apollyon's, for all you can see of
them, so thickly are they planted out with a forest of yellow hair; but
tears do not seem to be at any immense distance from eyes blue as the
sky between storm clouds, fearless as a three-years' child's.
"Don't you think that we do very well as we are?" says the young woman,
suggestively.
"I don't know about you, I'm sure. I know I've lost a stone and a half
within the last year," replies the young man, very ruefully.
Esther laughs. "There is some little of you left still," she says, with
rather a mischievous glance up at the two yards and a half of enamoured
manhood before her.
This is what has been over-roasting the mutton. He has been asking
her to take his heart, his large hand, and the half of one hundred
and twenty pounds a year (the exorbitant pay of a lieutenant in Her
Majesty's infantry), of an old hunting watch, and a curly retriever
dog; and she has been declining these tempting offers, one and all.
The minute hand of the gilt clock, on which Minerva sits in a helmet
and a very tight gown, with her legs dangling down, has travelled from
6.30 to 7.5, and within these five-and-thirty minutes Miss Craven
has refused three proposals, all made by the same person: the first,
very stoutly and mercilessly, from Jack's arm-chair, where she had
originally taken up her position; the second, decisively still, but
with less cruelty, from the music-stool, to which she had next retired;
and the third, in a hasty and wavering manner, from the corner, in
which she has taken final refuge, in a strong, fortified entrenchment
behind the writing-table.
"But--but--" says Esther, her rebellious mouth giving little
twitches every now and then as at some lurking thought of the
ridiculous--"it's--it's such a very _odd_ idea! I don't think I ever
was more surprised in my life. When Sarah told me that you were here,
I thought that, of course, you had come to say something about that
bone-dust. Why, you never said anything at all tending this way before."
"Didn't I?" answers the young giant, with a crestfallen look. "I tried
several times, but I don't think that you could have understood what I
meant, for you always began to laugh."
"I always do laugh at civil speeches," answers the girl simply. "I
don't know how else to take them: I suppose it is because I have had so
few addressed to me; they always sound to me so _niais_."
"I'm not a bit surprised at your not liking me," he says, with
humility. "I don't see how any one could at first. I know that I'm ugly
and awkward, and don't understand things quick----"
"I don't _dis_-like you," interrupts Esther, with magnanimity, quite
affected by her lover's description of his own undesirability.
"Why should I? There is nothing in you to dislike; you are very
good-natured, I'm sure," damning with faint praise, in the laudable
effort not to be unqualifiedly uncomplimentary.
"I know what an unequal exchange it is that I am offering,"
says Brandon, too humble to resent, and yet with a dim sense of
mortification at the quantity and quality of praise bestowed upon him.
"I know of how much more value you are than I!"
She does not contradict him; her own heart echoes his words. "I am of
more value than he; I shall find it out practically some day."
"That was why I was in such a hurry to speak," he says eagerly. "I felt
sure that if I did not, you would be snapped up directly by some one
else."
She laughs rather grimly. "You might have laid aside your alarms on
that head, I think. I don't know who there is about here to snap me up."
Silence for a few minutes: Esther takes up a penwiper, fashioned into
a remote resemblance to a chimney sweep, and studies its anatomy
attentively. "Shall I upset the writing-table and make a rush past
him? No, the ink would spoil the carpet, and he would only come again
to-morrow, and hunt me into the other corner. Poor fellow! I hope he is
not going to cry, or go down on his knees!"
Whether mindful or not of the fate of Gibbon the historian, who, having
thrown himself on his knees before his lady-love, was unable, through
extreme fat, to get up again, Brandon does not indulge in either of the
demonstrations that Esther apprehended. He stands quiet, cramming half
a yard of yellow beard into his mouth, and says presently:
"Well, I suppose I must not worry you any more; it is not good manners,
is it? A man ought to be satisfied with one No; I have given you the
trouble of saying three."
"It's very disagreeable, I'm sure," says Esther, wrinkling up her
forehead in an embarrassed fashion, "and I hate saying No to any one: I
don't mean in this way, because nobody ever asked me before, but about
anything; but what can I do?"
"Try me!" he says very eagerly, stretching out his hand across the
narrow table (all but upsetting the standish _en route_). "I don't want
to threaten you, saying that I should go to the dogs if you threw me
over, for I should not; that always seemed to me a cowardly sort of
thing to do; and, besides, I should have my mother left to live for if
the worst came to the worst; but you must see that it is everything
in the world to a fellow to have one great hope in it to keep him
straight."
Soft music in the distance; some one whistling "I paddle my own
canoe" somewhere about the house; Esther, in an agony between the
fear of subversing the table, and the hundredfold worse fear of being
discovered by Jack in an unequivocally sentimental position, of which
she would never hear the last. "Very well, very well, I'll--I'll
_think_ about it; could you be so very kind as to loose my hand?"
He complies reluctantly, and she, that there may be no further
discussion about it, hides it discreetly away in her jacket pocket. "I
paddle my own canoe" dies away in the distance; apparently it was on
its way to dress for dinner. Esther draws a sigh of relief. "I thought
that some one was coming."
"And if they had?"
"Why, I did not relish the idea of being found driven into a corner,
like a child at a dame's school, and you, like the dame, standing
over me," answers she, abandoning the struggle with the corners of
her mouth, and bubbling over with the facile laughter of seventeen.
Utterly unable to join in her merriment, he stands leaning in awkward
misery against the wall; all other griefs are at least respectable;
love-sorrows, alone, are only ludicrous.
"It really is so silly," says Esther, presently, compassionate but
impatient. "Do try and get the better of it!"
"Easier said than done," he answers ruefully. "I might as well advise
you to get the better of your affection for Jack."
"I don't see the parallel," rejoined she, coldly, feeling as if there
was sacrilege in the comparison. "My love for Jack is a natural
instinct, built too upon the foundation of lifelong obligations,
endless benefits, countless kindnesses. What kindness have I ever shown
you? I sewed a button on your glove once, and once I pinned a rose on
your coat."
"I have the rose still."
She says "Pshaw!" pettishly, and turns away her head.
"Perhaps you are afraid of marrying on small means?" suggests Brandon,
diffidently, after a while.
The gentle clatter and click of dishes carried into the dining-room
enters faintly through the shut door. Esther's heart sinks within
her. Is he going to begin all over again?--round and round, like a
thunderstorm among hills?
"I am afraid of marrying on _any_ means," she says, comprehensively.
"I particularly dislike the idea; marriage seems to me the end of
everything, and I am at the beginning."
"But I don't want you to marry me _now_," cries Robert, stammering.
"Don't you? You told me just now that you did."
"For pity's sake, Esther, don't laugh! it may be play to you, but it is
death to me."
"I'm not laughing."
"Perhaps some day you will feel what I am feeling now."
"Perhaps" (doubtfully).
"And you will find then that it is no laughing matter."
"Perhaps" (still more doubtfully).
The clamour of a fresh cohort of plates shaking noisily upon a tray
warns Brandon that his time is short.
"Esther!" with a sort of despair in his voice, clashing the ridiculous
with the pathetic--they are always twin sisters--"I could live upon
such a little hope."
"What would you have me say?" she cries, standing with fluttering
colour, tapping feet, and irritated eyes. "I have told you the plain
truth, and it does not please you; must I dress up some pretty
falsehood, and tell you that I fell in love with you at first sight, or
that after all I find that you are the only man in the world that can
make me really happy?"
"Say nothing of the kind!" he answers, wincing under her irony. "I
have not much to recommend me, we all know that, and I start with the
disadvantage of your thinking me rather a bore than otherwise; but
other men have overcome even greater obstacles; why should not I? Give
me at least a trial!"
She is silent.
"Say that you will _try_ to like me; there need be no untruth in that."
"But if I fail!" says Esther, wavering--partly in sheer weariness of
the contest, partly in womanly pity for sufferings which owe their rise
to the excess of her own charms.
"If you fail you will not have to tell me so; I shall find it out for
myself, and--and I shall bear it, I suppose." He ends with a heavy sigh
at that too probable possibility.
"And you will console yourself by telling all your friends what a flirt
I am, and how ill I treated you." Apparently he does not think this
suggestion worthy of refutation; at least he does not refute it. "Or,
if you don't, your mother will."
"Not she" (indignantly).
"Or, if she does not, your sisters will."
"Not they" (less indignantly).
"And if--if--after a long while--a very long while--I succeed in liking
you a little--mind, I don't say that I shall; on the contrary, I think
it far more probable that I shall not--but if I do, you won't expect me
to _marry_ you?"
He smiles, despite himself. "I can hardly promise that."
"I mean not for many years, till Jack is married, and I am quite,
_quite_ old--five-and-twenty or so?"
"It shall be as you wish."
"And if, as is most likely, I continue not to care about you, and am
obliged to tell you so, you will not think the worse of me."
"No."
"You are certain?"
"Certain. Whatever you do, I shall love you to-day, and to-morrow, and
always," says the young fellow, very solemnly; and his eyes go away
past her, through the window, and up to the blue sky overhead, as if
calling on the great pale vault to be witness between him and her.
As for her, her prosaic soul has wandered back to the mutton; she takes
the opportunity of his eyes being averted to steal a glance at the
clock. Apparently, however, he has eyes in the back of his head, for he
says hastily, with rather a pained smile: "You are longing for me to
go."
"No--o."
"I ought not to have come at this time of night. I ought to have waited
till to-morrow, I know."
"It is rather late."
"But to-morrow seemed such a long time off, that I thought I must know
the worst or the best before the sun came up again. I don't quite know
which it is now; which is it, Esther?"
"It's neither the one nor the other; it's the second best," she
answers, all smiles again at seeing some prospect of her admirer's
departure, and forgetting, with youthful heedlessness, the price at
which that departure has been bought. "It is that I really am very much
obliged, though, all the same I wish you would think better of it, and
that I'll try; I will, really; don't look as if you did not believe me."
So with this half-loaf he goes, passes away through the little wooden
porch, that is so low it looks as if it were going to knock his tall
head, past the stables, and through the oak woods, home.