A LITTLE SUNSHINE.
The announcement of the engagement between Lord Auchester and Lady
Eleanor Dallas had appeared in the society papers a month ago, and the
world of 'the upper ten' had expended its congratulations and began
asking itself when the wedding was to take place, for it was agreed on
all hands that so excellent and altogether desirable a match could not
take place too soon.
"He has been dreadfully wild, I'm told, my dear," said one gossip
to another, "and is as poor as a church mouse. But there is plenty
of money on her side; indeed, they say that lately she has become
fabulously rich, so that will be all right. Of course she might have
done better; but everybody knows she was ridiculously fond of him--oh!
quite too ridiculously. Gave herself away, in fact; and she goes about
looking so happy and victorious that it is really quite indecent!"
"That is more than can be said of the bridegroom-elect," remarked
gossip number two, "for he looks as grave as a judge and as glum as an
undertaker. The mere prospect of matrimony seems to have taken all the
spirits out of him. Not like the same man, I assure you, my dear."
It was autumn now. The greenery of the trees had turned to russet
and gold; a mystic stillness brooded softly over the country lanes;
the yellow corn waved sleepily to the soft breeze; the blackberries
darkened the hedge-rows, and on the roads lay, not thickly as yet, but
in twos and threes, the leaves of the oak and the chestnut. An air of
repose and quietude reigned over the land, as if nature, almost tired
of the sun and heat and the multitudinous noises of summer, were taking
a short nap to prepare itself for the rigor and robust energy of winter.
In one of the loveliest of our country lanes stood a village school.
It was a picturesque little building of white stone and red tiles. The
tiny school-house adjoining it was so overgrown by ivy as to resemble
a green bower. There was a window at the back, and an orchard in which
the golden and ruddy apples were almost as thick as the blackberries
in the lanes. Everything in and about this school was the picture of
neatness. The curtains of white and pink muslin were exquisitely clean
and artistically draped behind the diamond-paned windows.
The door-sills were as white as marble; the diminutive knocker on the
school-house door shone like a newly minted sovereign. Not a weed
showed its head in the small garden, which literally glowed with
single and double dahlias, sweet-scented stocks and many-colored
chrysanthemums. There was a little gate in the closely cut hedge,
which was painted a snowy white--in short, the tiny domain made a
picture which Millais or Marcus Stone or Leslie would have delighted to
transfer to canvas.
From the open door of the school there issued a hum and buzz which
resembled that which proceeds from the door of a bee-hive, for
afternoon school was still on, and the pupils were still at their
lessons.
The village--it was rather more than half a mile from the school--was
that of Newfold, a quiet, sleepy little place, which not even the
restless tourist seems to have discovered; a small cluster of houses,
with an inn, a church, and a couple of shops lying in the hollow
between the two ranges of Loamshire hills. A Londoner would tell
you that Newfold was at least five hundred years behind the times;
but, if it be so, Newfold does not care. There is enough plowing and
wood-cutting in winter, enough sowing and tilling in spring, enough
harvesting in autumn to keep the kettle boiling, and Newfold is quite
content. Some day one of those individuals who discover such places
will happen on it, write an article about it, attract attention to it,
and so ruin it; but he hasn't chanced to come upon it yet, and oh! let
us pray that he may keep off it for a long while; for Newfolds are
getting scarcer every year, and soon, if we do not take care, England
will become one vast, hideous plain of bricks and mortar, and there
will be no place in which we can take refuge from the fogs and smoke of
the great towns.
In another quarter of an hour school would 'break up,' and the girls
were standing up singing the evening hymn which brought the day's work
to a close. In the center of the room stood a pleasant, fair-haired
young lady, whose eyes, mild and gentle as they were, seemed to be
looking everywhere. On a small platform stood another young lady with
dark hair and gray eyes. These were the two mistresses of the Newfold
village school, and their names were Leslie Lisle and Lucy Somes.
Life is not all clouds and rain, thank God; the sun shines sometimes,
and the sun of good luck had shone upon Leslie and Lucy. It was good
luck that they should pass the much-dreaded examination, that ordeal
to which they had looked forward with such fear and trembling; it was
good luck that there should be two appointments vacant; but oh! it was
the superlative of luck that these appointments should be to the same
school, and that the school should be here in peaceful Newfold!
It seemed to Leslie as if misfortune had grown tired of buffeting her,
and had decided to leave her alone for a time. She could scarcely
believe her eyes when Lucy Somes ran into her room at Torrington Square
with the news that they were to be sent to the same school, and in her
beloved county. Of course influence had been used at headquarters by
Lucy's people, but Lucy persisted that luck had more to do with it than
anything else, and that Leslie had brought the good fortune; and it
did not lessen Lucy's happiness that Leslie, having obtained the most
marks at the exam., was given the post of head-mistress, and that she,
Lucy, was to be her subordinate. "It is quite right, dear," she said,
brightly and cheerfully. "Of course, you ought to be the first; any one
could see that at half a glance. You are ten times quicker and cleverer
than I, and, besides, if we are to be together--and oh! how delightful
it is to think that we are!--I would a thousand times rather you were
the principal!"
"We will both be head-mistress, Lucy!" Leslie had said, as, with tears
in her eyes, she had put her arms round the good-natured girl, and
kissed her.
They had only been four days at the school, but short as the time had
been they had grown fond of it--fond of the work and the children,
and who can tell how fond and proud of the little house that nestled
against the school building!
Lucy was like a child in her unrestrained joy and delight, and if
Leslie took their good fortune more quietly, she was not lacking in
gratitude. In this new life she would not only find peace, please God,
but work--work that in time might bring her forgetfulness of the past.
And the forgetfulness, for which she prayed nightly, was as much of
happiness as she dared hope for.
The lily that has been beaten down by the storm may live and bloom
still, but the chances are that it will never again rear its stately
head as of old.
The evening hymn was finished; Leslie struck the bell on the desk
before her, and in her sweet voice said "Good-afternoon, children," and
with an answering "Good-afternoon, teachers," the children trooped out.
Lucy went and stood beside Leslie, and watched the happy throng as it
ran laughing and shouting to the meadow.
"How happy they are, Leslie, and how good, too! I am sure they are the
best children in the world! And many of them are so pretty and rosy;
and they are all healthy--all except two or three. I should hate to
have a school full of sickly, undergrown children, all peevish and
weary and discontented; but all ours are cheerful and willing."
"They would find it hard to be otherwise where you are, Lucy," said
Leslie, looking at the happy face with a loving smile.
"Oh, I--oh, yes; I'm cheerful enough," said Lucy, laughing and
blushing. "I'm just running over with happiness and contentment; but
I'm afraid that they couldn't get on very fast if I were quite alone
with them. They wouldn't mind me enough. Now you--"
"Are they afraid of me?" said Leslie, smiling.
"No, no!" Lucy hastened to respond. "Afraid? no, no! But they look up
to you, and think more of your good opinion already. Oh, I can see
that, short as the time has been. They were quite right up in London in
making you the head-mistress, dear. Are you tired, Leslie? It has been
rather hot for the time of year, and the children, good as they are,
make a noise. Does your head ache? I'm afraid you will find it rather
trying at first."
"I am not tired, and my head doesn't ache in the least," said Leslie,
"and why should I, more than you, find it trying, Lucy? and, dear, I
want you to let me have the English history class. You have got more
than your fair share. Did you think that I should not notice it? I
believe you would take all the work if I would let you, you greedy
girl."
Lucy blushed--she blushed on the slightest provocation.
"I don't want you to work too hard, Leslie," she said. "You are not
strong yet, not nearly so strong as I am, and you felt the awful
grinding for that exam. more than I did because you were not used to
it, and had to do it in a shorter time; and so I am going to take care
of you."
Leslie laughed.
"Why, I could lift you up and carry you round the room, little girl!"
she said, in loving banter; "and it is I who have to take care of you.
But we'll take care of each other, Lucy. And now let us go in to tea."
They went into the little house, and the small maid who was house-maid,
parlor-maid, and cook rolled into one, had set out the tea in the cosy
parlor, fragrant with the musk and mignonette which bloomed in the
window-box. Lucy looked round with a sigh of ineffable content.
"Isn't it delicious, Leslie?" she exclaimed with bated breath. "I feel
like Robinson Crusoe!"
"Robinson Crusoe with everything ready made for him and all the
luxuries?" said Leslie, laughingly.
"Yes, that's what I mean," assented Lucy naively. "All through I looked
forward to something like this, but my dreams never reached anything
half so delightful. For one thing, I never dreamed that I should have
you for a companion and friend. I thought that there would be sure to
be a thorn in my bed of roses, and that that thorn would probably take
the shape of a disagreeable head-mistress--some horrid, middle-aged,
disagreeable person who would be always complaining and scolding. But
you! Mother writes that I must have exaggerated just to please her when
I described the school and told her what you were like; but I didn't
exaggerate a bit. Oh, Leslie"--she stopped with a slice of bread and
butter half-way to her mouth--"do you think we are too happy--that
something will happen to spoil it all?"
Leslie smiled.
"I think not," she said. "It is only those who don't deserve to be
happy whose happiness doesn't last. Now you, Lucy--But give me some
more tea, and don't try and croak, because you make the most awful
failure of it."
Lucy's face wreathed itself in its wonted smile again.
"I wonder whether there are two happier girls in all the world than
you and I, Leslie?" she said. "What shall we do this evening--go for a
walk? You haven't been into the village yet. Will you come? It is such
a pretty, quaint little place, with the tiniest and most delightful
church you ever saw! Isn't it strange that we should be pitchforked
down here into a place we know nothing about and never heard of? It is
like Robinson Crusoe again. I hope the natives will not be savage!"
Leslie looked up from the copy-book she was examining.
"We shall have very little to do with the natives, savage or friendly,
Lucy," she said.
"Of course not," assented Lucy, cheerfully. "I suppose the clergyman's
wife will call--Oh, I forgot! He said the first morning he came to read
prayers that he wasn't married. But the squire's lady will drive up in
a carriage and pair, and walk through the school with her eyeglass up.
But no one else will come to bother us. You see," she ran on, jumping
up to water the flowers in the window, "school-teachers are supposed to
be neither fish, flesh nor fowl--and not very good red herring. People
don't visit them."
"That is good news for school-teachers, at any rate," said Leslie,
smiling.
"Yes; we don't want anybody, do we, dear? You and I together can be
quite happy without the rest of the world. And now about our walk.
Shall we go, Leslie?"
"I don't think I will this evening, Lucy. I will stay and go over these
books. But you shall go on a voyage of discovery, and bring back a full
and particular account of your adventures."
"No, no! I'll stay," began Lucy. But Leslie looked up at her with the
expression Lucy had learned to know so well. "Very well, dear," she
said, gently. "I will just run into the village and order some things
we want and come straight back; and mind, you are not to do all those
copy-books, or I shall feel hurt and injured."
Leslie worked away at her exercise books for some little time; then
she drew a chair up to the window, and, letting her hands lie in her
lap, enjoyed the rest which she had earned by a day's toil, but not
unexpected toil.
As she sat there, looking out dreamily at the lane, which the setting
sun was filling with a golden haze, she felt very much like the Hermit
of St. Martin. She had refused to go down to the village with Lucy from
choice, and not from any sense of duty toward the exercise books. She
felt that she and the world had, so to speak, done with each other, and
she shrunk from encountering new faces and the necessity of talking
to strangers. If fate would let her live out her life in this modest
cottage she would be contented to confine herself to the little garden
surrounding it, and perhaps the meadows beyond.
With her children and her flowers she was convinced that she could
be, if not happy, at any rate not discontented. She had lived her
life, young as she was. Fate could give her no joy to equal that which
Yorke's love--or fancied love--had given; nor could it deal out to her
a more bitter sorrow than the loss of Yorke and her father. So let Lucy
act as a go-between between her and the outer world, and she (Leslie)
would work when she could, and when she could not, would live over
again in her mind and memory that happy past which had been summed up
in a few all too brief days.
Of Yorke she had heard nothing. She had never read a society paper in
her life, and was not likely to have seen one during the last busy
month, so that she knew nothing of the engagement between him and Lady
Eleanor Dallas. And if she had known, if she had chanced to have read
the paragraphs in which the betrothal was announced and commented on,
she would not have identified Lord Auchester with Yorke, "the Duke of
Rothbury," as she thought him. Sometimes, this evening, for instance,
she wondered with a dull, aching pain, which always oppressed her
whenever she thought of him, where he had gone, and whether he still
remembered, whether he regretted the flirtation "he had carried on with
the girl at Portmaris," or, whether he only laughed over it--perhaps
with the dark, handsome woman, the Finetta to whom he had gone back!
The sun had set behind the hills, and the twilight had crept over the
scene before Lucy came hurrying up the path.
"Did you think I was lost, Leslie?" she said, with a laugh.
Leslie looked round, and though it was nearly dark in the room, she saw
that Lucy's eyes were particularly bright, and that there was a flush
on her cheeks which did not appear to have been caused by her haste.
"It sounds very unkind, but I was not thinking of you, dear," she said.
"It is late, I suppose. Where have you been?"
Lucy came up to the window, tossing her straw hat and light jacket on
the sofa as she passed.
"Leslie, you said something about adventures when I was starting--"
"Did I?" said Leslie. "And have you had any? Let me look at you? You
look flushed and excited. What is it, Lucy?"
"Yes, I have had an adventure," she said, her soft, guileless eyes
drooping for a moment, then lifting themselves candidly to Leslie's
again. "But let me begin at the beginning, as children say. Leslie, you
must go and see the village. It is the dearest little place in all
the world, and just like one of the pictures one sees at the Academy.
You will want to sketch it the moment you see it, I know. Well, I went
to the shop--oh, the funniest shop you ever saw! You go down two steps
into it, and even then it is only just high enough for you to stand
up in. And they sell everything--tapes, treacle, soap, snuff, laces,
biscuits--everything! And the woman that keeps it is the mother of
one of our girls, and she made ever so much of me, and sent her best
respects to you--'the beautiful teacher,' as she said the girls all
called you!"
"Is it all fiction, or only the last sentence, Lucy?" said Leslie.
"My dear Leslie, I have heard them call you so myself!" said Lucy. "I
went to the butcher's--the butcher is one of nature's noblemen, and
took my order for four mutton chops as if I were a princess ordering a
whole sheep--and then I went out into the country beyond, and if I were
to tell you what I think of it you would say I was exaggerating--"
"Which you never do, of course," put in Leslie, gravely.
"It is simply heavenly!" continued Lucy, ignoring the insinuation.
"Such lovely meadows and tree-covered hills, and there is a delicious
river full of trout--so a man who was working close by said. Can you
throw a fly, Leslie? I can, and I will teach you. It is the jolliest
fun in the world, fishing. And when I got to the opening out of the
valley, I saw a tremendous house--a great white place on the brow of a
hill. It took me quite by surprise, for I had no idea that there were
any great people living near us--well, not exactly near, for this must
be four or five miles off. I asked a man who lived there and he said
that it belonged to a lady--Lady--there! I have forgotten the name
after all, and I wanted to remember it to tell you."
"Never mind," said Leslie.
"She is an awfully great lady, and tremendously rich, my informant
said. I wish I could remember her name! It was rather a pretty one.
Well, then"--she paused a moment, and her color came and went--"I
thought I would rest for a little while, and I sat down on a big stone,
up a little grassy lane, and while I was sitting there quiet as a
mouse, I heard the sound of a horse's hoofs on the short turf and, so
suddenly it made me jump, a huge horse came galloping up. He saw me and
shied--goodness, how he shied! I thought the man on his back must be
thrown, but he sat there like--like a rock! But he swore--I don't think
he saw me at first, Leslie; in fact, I am sure he didn't, for when he
did he raised his hat as if to apologize for the bad words, and then
rode on."
"Is that all?" said Leslie, with a smile. "I thought you were going to
say, at the very least, that he stooped down and caught you up and you
would have been carried off into captivity but for a gallant young man
who ran up and seized the horse, etc., etc., etc."
"Leslie!" remonstrated Lucy, laughing and blushing. "He didn't stop a
moment or speak, of course, but rode on straight away. But, Leslie, you
never saw such a handsome man or such a sad-looking one--"
"The Knight of the Woful Countenance," said Leslie.
Lucy laughed, but rather gravely.
"Well, if you had seen him I don't think you would have laughed,
Leslie; he looked so wretched and weary, and--I don't know exactly how
to describe it--so reckless! He seemed as if he didn't care where he
was riding or whether the horse kept straight on or fell."
"So that he kept straight on and didn't fall on or run over you, it is
all right," said Leslie. "But, Lucy dear, I don't think you must be out
so late and alone again, especially if there are reckless young men
riding about the roads and lanes."
"Yes," said Lucy; "but I haven't come to the end of my adventures yet,
Leslie."
"Not yet?"
"No," said Lucy, almost shyly. "Of course, I was rather startled by
that horse thundering by--it was so very big and it passed so near,
almost on to me, you know--and I suppose I must have called out." She
blushed. "It was very foolish, I know, and I know you wouldn't have
done so."
"Don't be too sure! Did the knight come back, Lucy?"
"No, no," and the blush grew more furious, "of course he did not. I
don't suppose he heard me; but some one else did, for there came up the
moment afterward a gentleman--"
"Not another on horseback, Lucy? Don't be too prodigal of your mounted
heroes."
Lucy laughed.
"No, this one was not on horseback; he was walking, and was quite a
different-looking man to the other, though he was nearly, yes, nearly
as good looking."
"Two handsome young men in one evening; isn't that rather an unfair
allowance?" said Leslie.
Lucy smiled.
"I knew you would make fun of it all, Leslie," she said, "and I don't
mind in the least. I like to hear you, and, after all, there was
nothing serious in it."
"I should hope not, Lucy."
"Leslie, you really don't deserve that I should tell you any more--you
don't, indeed."
"Pray, don't punish me so severely," responded Leslie; "my levity only
conceals an overpowering curiosity. What did the second stranger say or
do?"
"Well, he said--and he couldn't say much less, could he?--'are you
hurt?'"
"How you must have screamed! I suppose if I had been listening I should
have heard you here."
"And of course I said no," continued Lucy, severely ignoring this
remark, "and that I had only been a little startled by the horse. He
asked me if I knew who it was, and when I said 'no', he looked as if
he were going to tell me, but instead he asked if I knew the way to the
railway station."
"Now don't say that you told him and that he raised his hat and went
off," said Leslie, with mock earnestness.
Lucy laughed, but said, shyly: "Well, I told him, but he didn't
go--just at once. He asked me one or two other questions--which was
the nearest village, and so on--and, of course, I had to answer that I
was a stranger, and then we both laughed, or rather he smiled, for he
seemed very grave and preoccupied. I think he was a lawyer or something
of that sort. He looked like a business man; and presently he said,
as if accounting for his being there, that he had walked from White
Place--that was the house on the hill-side--and that he was going back
to London, and--and--well, that's all!"
"Are you quite sure that was all?" asked Leslie, with burlesque
severity.
Lucy's fair face flushed.
"Y-yes. Oh!--I'd got a fern-root in my hand; I meant to put in the
garden below the window--and he noticed it, and said that he wished
they had them in London, and--well, I offered it to him--"
"Lucy!"
Lucy jumped up.
"Really--really and honestly, Leslie, I did it without thinking! and
he took it at once without any fuss or nonsense. You see, he was a
gentleman," she added, with delicious simplicity.
Leslie shook her head with a smile.
"It is all too evident that you are not to be trusted out alone, my
dear," she said. "Why, Lucy!"--for something like tears had began to
glitter in Lucy's gentle eyes--"why, you silly girl, I am only in fun!
Why should you not direct a stranger to the railway station, and why
shouldn't you give him the fern he coveted, poor, smoke-dried Londoner.
There was nothing wrong in it."
"You are quite sure, Leslie? Afterward--afterward, as I was walking
home, it seemed to me that I had perhaps, been--unladylike." The awful
word left her lips in a horrified whisper.
"My dear, you couldn't be if you tried," said Leslie, with quiet
decision. "Now run and put your things away and we will talk it all
over again while we are having supper. 'Unladylike!'" She took the
gentle, 'good'-looking face in her hands and kissed it. "You are very
clever, Lucy, but that is the one thing you could never attain to."
They sat for a long time over their simple meal, talking of their
school, discussing the various capacities of the pupils, arranging
classes, and so on; and once or twice Leslie referred to Lucy's
'adventures,' and declared that she did not believe a word of them,
and that Lucy had invented the whole to amuse her, little suspecting
that the big house Lucy had seen was the famous White Place belonging
to Lady Eleanor Dallas, that the horseman was Lord Yorke Auchester,
and that the stranger who "looked like a lawyer" and who had walked off
with Lucy's fern was Ralph Duncombe.