WEAVING IN THE SUNSET.
"Where waitest thou,
Lady I am to love? Thou comest not;
Thou knowest of my sad and lonely lot;
I look'd for thee ere now!
"It is the May!
And each sweet sister soul hath found its brother;
Only we two seek fondly each the other,
And, seeking, still delay."--_Arnold._
Queenie entered upon her new duties with an ardor that would have
surprised any one acquainted with the real state of the case. If a
feeling of amusement sometimes crossed her mind at the incongruity
between her present position and the heiress-ship she had refused to
take up, it only added zest and flavor to her work.
Queenie Marriott was one of those women whose zeal was according to
knowledge. She loved her work for its own sake. In her eyes it was
invested with a meaning and dignity that redeemed it from its
so-called drudgery, and placed it high in the ranks of honorable
labor.
Her youthful enthusiasm anointed everything with a sort of moral
chrism. The little barnlike structure, with its half-moon windows,
and rough forms and desks, was a species of temple wherein she
enshrined all manner of precious things. When she looked round on
the children's faces they seemed to appeal to her with all sorts of
involved meanings, demanding patience and sympathy, and all such
goodly things at her hands.
Queenie knew the royal road to learning lay through her pupils'
hearts. She must love them, and teach them to love her; obedience
would follow as a matter of course. All children were dear to her,
for Emmie's sake. Now and then, through the buzz of voices droning
through the repetition lessons, there would come before her a certain
vivid memory, stabbing her with sudden, sharp pain--a dark garret
haunted with shadows; a pale-faced child crouched on the window-seat,
wrapped in an old red shawl, with great blue eyes dim with fear; of a
little figure stricken down, and lying amongst them as one that was
dead; of a sick-room where a child-martyr went down into the very
valley of the shadow of death, where a fight so long and terrible was
carried on that the weary watcher only covered her face with her
trembling hands, and prayed for merciful death to come as a deliverer.
And so for the sake of that childish sufferer, and that great miracle
of healing--Queenie clave with very love to all children. There was
one child, Prissy Atkinson, the sister of the very Patience whom
Langley had selected as her little maid, to whom she showed especial
kindness.
She was the plainest and most uninteresting girl in the school,
slightly lame, and with an odd drawl and lisp in her voice, ungainly
in manner, and with no particular cleverness to recommend her; yet,
by some undefinable feeling, Queenie singled out this child as an
object of her interest.
The little rough head often felt a tender hand laid upon it. The
gentlest voice Prissy had ever heard would accost her now and then;
difficult tasks were smoothed by magic; pleasant smiles would reward
her diligence. When her head once ached, a resting-place was found
for it on teacher's own shoulder. "Oh, teacher! I love you! I do
love you so!" cried Prissy, out of the fulness of her heart, throwing
her thin arms round Queenie's neck. Was the warm kiss that answered
her given in reality to Prissy or to Emmie?
Emmie would come sometimes and look in at the open door, with round
blue eyes, very wide open with pleasure and astonishment. The little
girls would look up from their tasks and nod at her; the sisters
would interchange fond, satisfied looks. Sometimes a tall figure
would pause for a moment behind Emmie; then a strong arm would draw
the child from the threshold.
"Naughty Emmie! infringing the rules in school-hours. Do you know I
shall have you put on a form as an example for disobedient children?
Why has Langley allowed you to play truant in this way?"
"I ran away from Cathy, down the lane," Emmie answered, clinging to
his hand, and looking up coaxingly into his face. "I do love to see
Queenie amongst them all. Did she not look nice, Mr. Clayton?"
"Very nice," returned Garth absently. In reality he was pondering
over the little scene he had just witnessed. "It would make a
picture," he thought; "the slim, girlish figure in the black dress,
the bent brown head, the children's eager faces, the bowl of white
narcissus on the desk, the sunshine streaming in at the open door."
She had looked up at him, and smiled as he stood there, such a bright
smile; somehow it haunted him. "What a brave, true heart it is," he
thought, as he went down the village with Emmie still clinging
closely to him. "She looked as proud of herself and her work as ever
Princess Ida amongst her golden-haired girl-graduates. That is what
I like about her; she is superior to the nonsense and conventionality
of the present day. Most women would have felt themselves humiliated
in her position; but she seems to have grasped the real meaning of
her work and purpose. If it were not selfish I could find it in my
heart to be half sorry about that legacy. I wanted to see if the
bare crust she talked about would have set her teeth on edge in the
eating. I had a notion that it would have been pleasant to see her
working up her way alone; and then one would have a faint chance of
helping her. She is beyond this now; Cathy says he has left her a
hundred a-year. Why, with her salary and what she has they will have
close upon two hundred. They will do capitally on that; and, after
all, one would not like to see them pinch. Well, it is none of my
business," finished Garth, rousing himself from his cogitations. "I
wish Dora could have seen her just now, giving that object lesson; I
fancy she would have changed her opinion altogether. How strange it
was that they did not seem to take to each other; but then women are
strange creatures, and difficult to understand."
It was an odd coincidence that made Garth think of Dora; for at that
moment her little pony-carriage turned the corner of the lane. She
waved her whip and her little gloved hand as she saw him; and Garth
crossed the road with a slight flush on his face.
"I wanted to see Miss Marriott. I promised to call upon her; but I
find the cottage is still unoccupied," said Miss Cunningham, leaning
a little towards him, and fixing her calm blue eyes on his face. Not
a look or gesture escaped her scrutiny. His slight confusion at her
unexpected appearance was perfectly transparent to her. "Things are
going on as they ought to go on," she said to herself; "but there is
no need to hurry it;" and though her pulses quickened a little at his
obvious pleasure at seeing her she would have scorned to betray her
interest.
"They do not go in until Tuesday; we shall keep them until then,"
returned Garth, stroking the pony's neck absently. Dora was looking
prettier than ever this morning, he thought. She wore a hat with a
long, white curling feather; the golden hair shone under it; she
patted it nonchalantly with her little gloved hand as she talked.
Emmie interrupted them presently.
"School is over! there are the girls coming out. Prissy is last, of
course. Ah! there is Queenie!" and she darted across the road, and
almost threw herself on her sister. Queenie did not quicken her
steps when she saw them. She came up a little reluctantly when she
recognized the occupant of the pony-carriage.
Dora greeted her with her usual good-humor.
"Ah, there you are, Miss Marriott! how cool you look in that nice,
broad-brimmed hat. But I am sorry to see you in black. You have
lost a friend, Mr. Clayton tells me. Well, I told you that I should
call and have a chat about the school and all manner of things. Will
you jump in and let me drive you up the lane. Langley has promised
me some luncheon."
"Emmie and I will be at the house as soon as you," returned Queenie,
taking the child's hand and walking on swiftly. Miss Cunningham
meant to be kind, she was sure of that; why was it that her manner
always irritated her? There was a flavor of patronage in it that
galled her sensitiveness. "Perhaps if she knew I had five thousand
a-year she might change her tone," thought Queenie, a little
wrathfully. "I never find it difficult to get on with people; and
yet in my heart I cannot like her. Why will she make it her business
to poach on other people's manor? The Hepshaw school is my affair,
and has nothing to do with Crossbill Vicarage."
Miss Cunningham seemed to think otherwise. She cross-examined
Queenie all through luncheon on a hundred petty details. Queenie, to
her surprise, found she was acquainted with many of the girls' names
and histories. She put the new mistress right on one or two points
with much shrewdness and cleverness. She could talk, and talk well,
on most subjects. By-and-bye, when the school was exhausted, she
turned to Garth, and argued quite a knotty point of politics with
him, elucidating her view with a clear-headedness and force of words
that surprised her feminine hearers.
Garth had much ado to hold his own against her, but the consciousness
of being in the right gave him the advantage.
"Now, Miss Dora, I think you must yield this once," he said, looking
at her triumphantly. Dora measured him with her glance before she
answered.
"I never yield to papa, but I suppose I must to you," she said in the
quietest manner possible, and there was a slight stress on the last
word that made Garth redden as though he had received an unexpected
concession.
He placed himself at her side when they went into the garden after
luncheon, and appeared determined to monopolize her attention; but
this did not seem to suit Miss Cunningham, for she called Cathy to
her, and the two commenced a conversation in which he soon found
himself excluded. Once or twice, when he turned restive under this
treatment, and seemed to incline to seek conversation in a little
talk with Queenie, a soft glance from Dora's blue eyes recalled and
kept him stationary.
"All this is so uninteresting to you gentlemen, you like politics
better," she said presently in a low voice, as though appealing for
pardon; "if you will gather me a few flowers, Mr. Clayton, I shall
soon have finished my talk with Cathy, and then we will take a turn
down the plane-tree walk; it looks so cool and shady." But when the
flowers were tastefully arranged, and Garth, with a little look of
triumph, threw open the gate for her to pass through, Dora still held
Cathy's arm. It was not quite as enjoyable as Garth had fancied it
would be. Dora was all amiability and sweetness; she had the roses
in her hands, and touched them tenderly from time to time. She
tripped beside him, holding up her long white dress with one hand,
the other rested lightly on Cathy's arm. Her blue eyes looked
yearningly at him and the sunset together.
"How calm and still everything looks. I think I love this old walk
better than any place in the world. It reminds me of old days, Mr.
Clayton, when you and I and Cathy used to walk here."
"When we were children we used to say that two were company and three
none," responded Garth sulkily. The hint was so obvious that Cathy
would at once have made her escape, but Dora tightened her grasp on
her arm with a slightly heightened color.
"That depends on one's company. One could never find Cathy in the
way," she said, with a little infusion of tenderness in her voice.
"Never! can you imagine no possible circumstances in which a duet
would be preferable?" questioned Garth, turning on her so abruptly
that Dora, for all her coolness, was non-plussed for the moment.
What was he going to say? With all her prudence she felt alarmed and
fluttered, but the thought of her girls calmed her into soberness
again.
"I never was good at guessing riddles," she returned, not perusing
the gravel at her feet as some girls would have done in her place,
but looking full at him with unblenching eyes. "Just now a trio
suits me best, that is all I meant."
"Pshaw," he muttered, turning angrily away. Was she fooling him
after all? He was not a man who would ever understand coquetry or
caprice; such things would have simply disgusted him; but then he
knew Dora was no coquette. "She is trying to manage me for some
purpose of her own; she wants me to come to a certain point and no
further; she is showing me very plainly what she means," he said to
himself, repulsed and yet attracted in spite of himself by this
strange conduct. After all the plane-tree walk and the sunset, now
he had them, were failures. He had not once this evening called her
Dora. How could he, with Cathy walking there beside them, and noting
his discomfiture with her keen girlish eyes. True, he had not known
what he would have said to her if they had been alone; sentiment was
only just waking up in Garth's nature. A week or two ago he would
have pronounced himself heart-whole, would have laughed at the notion
of his being in love. Why had a sudden fancy come to him for golden
hair and sunsets, and quiet evening strolls? Was he feeling dimly
after something? was this restlessness, this indefinable longing
after some visionary ideal, a part of the disease?
Garth could not have answered these questions if his life depended on
it. He had ceased to be satisfied with his sister's company. A
craving after some new excitement made itself very plainly felt at
this time. His pulses were throbbing with fresh life; the world was
before him, the young man's world; he had only to look round him and
choose. Strong, keen-eyed, vigorous, with dominant will and sober
judgment, what obstacle need he dread? what impediments could he not
overcome?
Hitherto freedom, and the mystery obscuring his future fate, had had
a strange charm in Garth's eyes. It had pleased him to know that
such things were for him when he should stoop and open his hand to
receive the best gift of heaven. "I suppose I shall fall in love
some day, every one does; but there is plenty of time for that sort
of thing," he often said to his sisters, and there had been an amused
look upon his face, as though the notion pleased him.
But, in spite of his young man's conceit, Garth had an old-fashioned
reverence in speaking on such subjects. It would not be too much to
say that he stood, as it were, bare-headed on holy ground. One
evening, shortly after Queenie's return from Carlisle, Cathy had been
repeating to them scraps of poetry as they sat round the open window
in the twilight, and by-and-bye she commenced in a low voice reciting
some quaint old lines of Arnold, in which this craving for an unknown
love is most touchingly depicted.
"Thou art as I--
Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart must meeting be
Never before we die?
"Dear soul, not so!
That time doth keep for us some happy years,
That God hath portion'd out our smiles and tears,
Thou knowest, and I know.
"Yes, we shall meet!
And therefore let our searching be the stronger:
Dark days of life shall not divide us longer.
Nor doubt, nor danger, sweet!
"Therefore I bear
This winter-tide as bravely as I may,
Patiently waiting for the bright spring-day
That cometh with thee, dear."
"How beautiful!" sighed Langley. "I have always been so fond of
those lines. Your new song, 'My Queen.' embodies the same meaning,
Cathy." But Garth said nothing; he only sat for a long time shading
his eyes with his hand, and there was a certain moved look on his
face when he uncovered it as though he had been strongly affected.
But ever since that evening the restlessness had grown upon him, and
there had been a certain carping fastidiousness in his manner to his
sisters; and once or twice he had used Dora's name as a sort of
reproach. "If you were only as good a manager as Miss Cunningham,
Langley;" or "I wish you would read more, and choose your books as
sensibly as Miss Dora does, Cathy."
Langley took her rebuke meekly and in silence; but Cathy treated her
brother to a contemptuous shrug and a disdainful look.
"Dora; I am sick of Dora. Every one sees how that will end," she
said in a vexed voice, when they had come in from the garden, and she
had followed her friend up-stairs. "When that happens I suppose we
shall all be managed into our graves."
"Oh don't!" exclaimed Queenie, with a sudden accent of pain, and
becoming somewhat pale over her words. "She is not good enough for
him--for your brother."
"She is too good, you mean. I hate such faultless people. Dora is
never in the wrong; she is a pattern daughter, a pattern sister, a
model housekeeper, and unexceptionable in all parochial and social
duties; the work she gets through would astonish your weak mind."
"And then she is so clever."
"Clever! she is a perfect paragon of learning. She educated her
sisters until they went to Brussels. Then she is no mean musician;
she works beautifully too, and copies out all her father's sermons.
I am not sure she does not write them as well."
"Ah! now I can see you are joking."
"My dear, Dora is no joking matter, I can assure you; she and her
goodness together are very ponderous affairs. Do you think Garth
does not know all this? Why he and Dora have been friends ever since
they were children."
"I can see that he respects her most thoroughly."
"Not more than she respects him; she is always telling how excellent
he is, and what a model to other young men. When I am in a very good
humor with Garth, I sometimes repeat these little speeches, only I
have come lately to doubt the wisdom of adding fuel to the fire."
"Surely such perfection must satisfy you as well as him, or you must
be difficult to please," returned Queenie a little sarcastically. A
numb, undefinable sort of pain seemed taking possession of her.
Would Hepshaw be quite so desirable a place of residence when Dora
was mistress of Church-Stile House? this was the question she asked
herself. And for the first time the thought of her fortune gave her
a positive feeling of pleasure.
"Oh, as to that, I am very fond of Dora," replied Cathy carelessly;
"she amuses me, and she is very good-natured; and then one must like
one's future sister-in-law for the sake of dear old Garth. I only
hope she will have the good sense not to try and manage him, for he
will never stand it."
This conversation depressed Queenie somehow, and kept her wakeful and
restless; it did not add to her tranquillity to hear Garth's
footsteps under her window, crunching the gravel walk, for long after
they had retired. It was contrary to his usual habit; it argued
disturbance or preoccupation of mind.
Garth's soliloquy would have perplexed both her and Cathy if they had
heard it.
"I wonder if I am in love with Dora after all?" he was asking
himself, as he lighted himself a fresh cigar, and then stood leaning
against the little gate, looking down the plane-tree walk. It was
moonlight now, and the monuments glimmered in the white light; there
were faint, eerie shadows under the dark trees; now and then a
night-bird called, or a dog barked from the village, and then
stillness gathered over everything again.
"I wonder if I am really in love, or if I am only arguing myself into
it. Now I come to think of it, when I imagined my future wife I
always thought of Dora; we have grown up together, and it seems
natural somehow; and then I had always a boyish fancy for golden
hair. What a pretty little head it is, as well as a wise one. I
wish she were not quite so independent, and would lean on a fellow
more. I suppose it is the fault of circumstances. Every one depends
on her--her father and her sisters. She never had the chance of
being helpless like other women. I always think of that and make
allowance for her faults.
"Sometimes," soliloquized the young philosopher as his cigar went
out, and he calmly relighted it, "sometimes I'm afraid that if we
ever came together I might find her a little masterful and
opinionated; that is the danger with capable women, they have their
own notions and stick to them. I confess I should like my wife to
follow my ideas, and not to be lady paramount in everything; not that
even Dora would find it easy to manage me," continued Garth, with an
amused curl of the lip.
"What a nice, sensible little companion she would be for a man," he
resumed presently, after the firm even footsteps had crunched the
gravel awhile. "That is the best of her, she never bores or wearies
one; she is always fresh and good-humored, and ready to take interest
in everything, even in the schools, and Miss Marriott, only Miss
Marriott repulses her somehow. Her manner vexed me this afternoon;
there was a stand-offishness and a reserve in it, as though Dora's
interest offended her. She never appears at her best advantage when
Dora is with us. Why am I always comparing those two? somehow I
can't help it. Dora interests me most, of course; and yet men who
are in love seldom study the pros and cons of character as I have
been doing for the last half-hour. Certainly some of the symptoms
are still lacking, or else I am too matter-of-fact a fellow to have
them. And yet I don't know. What were those lines Cathy repeated
the other night? How well the little puss recited them; with such
feeling too.
'Thy soul doth wait for mine, as mine for thee;
We cannot live apart.'
Humph! I am not in love so much as all that, and I don't think Dora
is either. I have a doubt whether the 'open sesame' has been said to
either of us yet; if so, 'where waitest thou, lady I am to love?'
Well, it is a rare old poem, and touches a fellow up in an
extraordinary sort of way. I have got it by heart now, and it haunts
me to a droll extent. There, my cigar is out, confound it, so I may
as well get rid of all this moonshine and go in. How runs the last
verse--
'Tis the May-light
That crimsons all the quiet college gloom.
May it shine softly in thy sleeping room;
And so, dear wife, good night.'"