‘WE ARE IN LOVE’S LAND TO-DAY.’
A sleepless night shed the sober light of reason upon those clouds
of sentiment which had obscured Miss Priscilla Webling’s mind. ‘When
all is done,’ said Reason, ‘you know but too well that you had no
hope of having Joshua for a husband, suitable as might have been such
an union, blessed as you might have made his days by your cherishing
and ministration. You know yourself a creature especially adapted to
be a Methodist minister’s wife; but his eyes have been blinded to
that fact: he could not pierce the modest veil in which maidenhood
enfolded you, and discern the image of the perfect wife behind it.
His mind--too much given to spiritual things to be acute upon earthly
matters--has been caught by the surface beauty of a foolish child.
It is for you to pity rather than resent an error for which he will
doubtless pay dearly when he lies down in damp sheets, or drinks tea
made with half-boiled water, or eats potatoes as hard as stones, and
suffers in various other ways from the mistakes of an inexperienced
housekeeper; to say nothing of the likelihood that so young a wife
may be dressy and flighty, and given to standing at her door of
afternoons gossipping, to the neglect of the housework.’
Thus counselled by Reason, Priscilla assisted at the seven-o’clock
breakfast with a tranquil demeanour, and even smiled upon Joshua with
an assumed cheerfulness, which had some element of the heroic.
‘I hope you do not think my choice foolish or blameworthy,’ said
Joshua meekly, as Deborah helped him to fried potatoes and bacon.
‘Indeed, dear Mr. Haggard, marriage is such a serious
consideration--and a second marriage, where there are grown-up
children, more particularly--that I don’t feel qualified to form an
opinion. Cynthia is a good girl, as girls go; that I should be sorry
to deny, after the way she nursed me through my quinsy last winter.
But there’s a wide difference between a servant-girl and a minister’s
wife, and a great deal will be expected of her in that position.’
‘I am not afraid,’ said Joshua, ‘if I can but make her happy. In the
innocence of her heart she has given me her love. God give me grace
to keep and strengthen that affection in the days to come!’
‘She has so much reason to be grateful to you,’ began Priscilla.
‘I am not talking of gratitude,’ interrupted Joshua almost angrily.
‘She has given me her love. I know not why I am so blessed; but I
know that she loves me. It is the rich reward of all my days of care
and toil. I have not felt my labour heavy. I have no foolish pride
in my work; but the sum of it has perhaps been pleasing in the sight
of Heaven, and this reward has been granted to me--love and renewed
youth, a life that seems beginning again from the starting-point
of twenty years. I feel as young as on the day I first preached in
Penmoyle--before there was a chapel here--on the bit of green waste
at the opening of the lane that leads to Mr. Pamble’s farm.’
‘That was four-and-twenty years ago,’ said Deborah; ‘for it was the
very year father died, and sister and I walked through the dusty
lanes in our new mourning to hear you.’
This, to Deborah’s mind, was almost equal in self-sacrifice to
walking over red-hot ploughshares.
‘It was before we opened the school,’ said Priscilla, ‘and when folks
were recommending us to take situations as housekeepers, instead of
profiting by our education.’
‘I feel as young as I felt that day--four-and-twenty years ago,’
exclaimed Joshua triumphantly.
This was an intoxication of the mind which seemed to the Miss
Weblings fraught with peril. It was a positive duty to say something
depressing.
‘Ah,’ sighed Priscilla, ‘if poor Mrs. Haggard could have looked
forward to this in her long illness, she would have felt it trying.
It’s a blessing that we’re not permitted to see into the future.’
‘I am not going to act hastily,’ said Joshua, ignoring this dismal
suggestion. ‘I thought it my duty to tell you my intentions without
delay; but I shall tell no one else yet awhile, not even my son
and daughter. I shall leave Cynthia with you for some time longer.
She shall have time for reflection--many peaceful days in which to
consider the promise she has made me. If any change should come to
her mind, if she should discover that she has been mistaken in her
feelings towards me, I shall be ready to set her free. It will need
but a word from her to loosen the bond between us. I shall tell her
this before we part. If she hold steadfast to her promise of last
night, I shall come back to fetch her before this year is ended.
Meanwhile I know that you will be kind to her, and that she will be
happy with you.’
‘We have always tried to do our duty by her,’ returned Deborah rather
stiffly.
She could not quite forgive Mr. Haggard for his absurd choice, when
the superior mind of her sister had been lying open before him for
these last twenty years like a wise and valuable book, and he had not
had the sense to read it.
‘I’m afraid she’ll be puffed up by the change in her prospects,’
suggested Priscilla, ‘and not so obedient and dutiful as she has
been. We can hardly expect it of her under the circumstances.’
‘I do not think you will find any difference,’ said Joshua. ‘She is
sincerely grateful to you for your goodness to her.’
‘Yes; but in our case her gratitude does not turn into love,’
retorted Priscilla sharply.
Cynthia brought in the tea-kettle to make the tea, and took it out
again to be kept on the boil on the kitchen-hob, with a meekness
which seemed to give the lie to her mistresses’ doubts; and
presently, when Joshua had finished his breakfast and went out to the
kitchen to bid his newly-betrothed good-bye, he found her scrubbing
the deal-table with vigorous industry, which had brought a vivid pink
to the fair young face.
She put down the scrubbing-brush, and he took her in his arms
and kissed her--with a kiss which was fatherly in its protecting
gentleness, lover-like in its suppressed passion.
‘Dearest love,’ he said softly, holding her in his embrace all the
while, and looking down at her with tender seriousness, ‘I am going
to leave you for a few months. I am going away, dear, so that you
may look into your heart and be very sure the love you talked of
last night is real, and not a childish fancy which may melt away
like the memory of a dream when we awake. In our sleep we wander in
a beautiful garden, and clasp the hand of a friend--loved and dead,
perhaps, long ago; and in the morning we awake, and there is nothing
left of our dream--hardly a memory. Your love for me might be like
that, Cynthia.’
‘No, no,’ she answered eagerly, looking up into his eyes,--‘no it is
real, like your goodness, like your wisdom.’
‘I am old enough to be your father, Cynthia. I have a daughter older
than you.’
‘What has that to do with it? I did not think about your age when I
began to love you.’
‘When did you begin to do that, sweet one?’
‘When you went away from here I felt that there was something gone
out of my life, and I knew that I liked you very much. But perhaps I
might never have known that I loved you if--’
She stopped, blushing deeply, and trifling with the lapel of his coat.
‘If what, dearest?’
‘I don’t like to tell you; it is so foolish.’
‘Please tell me, dear.’
‘Young Mr. Price, at the Rising Sun, wanted to be my sweetheart. He
used to wait for me coming out of chapel of an evening, and follow me
across the street, and stop me at the garden-gate talking to me. And
when he talked about loving me and wanting to marry me, I hated him
dreadfully; and then I knew that I loved you.’
‘And I hope you made Mr. Price quite understand that you didn’t care
for him?’
‘O yes; I told him so very plainly, and he was rather offended, and
Miss Priscilla said I was very foolish to refuse so good an offer.
But you’ve no idea how I hated him when he talked about being fond of
me.’
‘God bless you, darling, and good-bye till I come back to fetch my
young wife, or till you write me one little line to say you have
changed your mind.’
‘I shall never write that,’ replied Cynthia, with conviction.
And with these words they kissed once more and parted, Joshua setting
out on his homeward journey with the light heart of youth, weaving
visions of this happy future as he walked in the briar-scented
lanes, painting pictures of that familiar home which was soon to be
beautified by Cynthia’s sweet presence. It seemed to him that he had
never known what beauty and grace in woman meant before he found that
wanderer on the sunburnt common--before he looked down on those loose
locks of palest gold, and saw the white feet gleaming under dark
water, the delicate figure half-sitting, half-reclining on the grassy
hillock, with the listless grace of repose.
He speculated how he could make the old home a little brighter for
its new mistress. That dingy carpet in the common parlour must be
exchanged for a new one. He would buy a harpsichord or one of those
new pianos people talked about, and Cynthia could learn to play
hymn-tunes. He would buy a gig or a four-wheeled chaise to drive
his wife in, instead of the tax-cart. When Jim got steadier and
married--events which ought to happen within the next half-dozen
years--Joshua told himself that he might retire from the grocery
business altogether, and devote himself exclusively to the chapel.
There was a cottage on the slope of the hill at the upper end of
Combhaven which he fancied would be a charming home for himself and
his young wife--a romantic cottage, with a garden in which some
ambitious tenant had made a fountain. It seemed to the lover’s
fancy that this cottage, with its fountain and weeping-ash, was
better adapted as a background to his picture of Cynthia than the
substantial commonplace old house opposite the First and Last. Yet it
would go against him to leave the old house. His father and mother
had lived and died there. It was his first idea of home. No; if
Cynthia were satisfied, he would stay there. And that cottage with
the fountain was probably damp. Picturesqueness and rheumatism often
go together.
And Judith? How would that tight-waisted, tight-lipped damsel get on
with a lovely young wife? Judith must be taught to bridle that sharp
tongue of hers, to put the curb on her quick temper. There must be
no biting blasts to wither his tender flower.
‘I shall make Judith understand at once and for ever that she must
be kind and gentle to my wife,’ thought Joshua. ‘She has always
respected and obeyed me--I am bound to remember that.’
He was in no hurry to tell Judith, or even his faithful Naomi, of
the change that had come upon his life--that startling and wondrous
change which had made him a new man. It would be time enough when he
took his young wife home. No one had any right to question his choice
or to doubt his wisdom.
He felt somewhat embarrassed, notwithstanding these arguments, when
Naomi questioned him, with a dutiful interest in all his doings,
about the girl he had found on Springfield Common.
‘Has she been well-behaved, father? Has she learned to read yet?’
‘Yes, my dear. She has made wonderful progress.’
‘And is she as pretty as when you first saw her sitting with her feet
in the water, and with her hair falling loose about her shoulders?’
Naomi’s fancy had pictured the scene; her father’s dark face looking
down at the fair-haired wanderer; the thymy hillocks and gorse-bushes
and wild broom under the blue warm sky.
‘I think she is even prettier.’
‘What a sweet little thing she must be! I should so like to see
her! If Sally were to get married now, we might have Cynthia for a
servant, mightn’t we, father?’
‘There’s not much chance of that, Naomi.’
‘Of Sally’s marrying? I’m not sure of that,’ replied Naomi. ‘I know
she has thoughts of it.’
‘You shall see Cynthia some day, Naomi, and I hope you will learn
to love her; but it will not be as a servant. Nature has made her
fit for something better than servitude. I do not mean to say that
service is not worthy, or that all men and women are not equal in the
eyes of their Maker. But Nature has set a mark upon us all, and we
have each our appointed station. I do not think Cynthia was created
to work like Sally, or to take pleasure in the things that please
Sally.’
‘You might get her a better place, father--as lady’s-maid, for
instance.’
‘To be some fine lady’s drudge! That would be worse rather than
better. Don’t concern yourself about her, my dear, till you come to
know more of her. I have made up my mind as to her future life.’
‘How good you are, father, to take so much trouble for a poor
nameless orphan!’
‘There is more selfishness than goodness in the matter, Naomi. It has
been a pleasure to me to do as much for her.’
This was all that he said to his daughter about Cynthia; but he
was pleased to think that Naomi had shown a friendly interest in
the subject, and he fancied that Cynthia’s beauty and Cynthia’s
sweetness would at once appeal to the girl’s heart; that it would
be natural for these two to love one another, and that they would
cleave to each other like sisters. It never occurred to him that
Cynthia, as the recipient of his charity, was quite a different
person in the eyes of Naomi from the same Cynthia as his second
wife; and that in proportion to his daughter’s love for him would
be her disinclination to divide his affection with a new-comer and
interloper. In the fulness of his content, which inclined him to
see all things on the sunnier side, he could foresee no domestic
difficulty, unless it were a little extra snappishness on the part
of Judith, an exhibition of temper which he meant to put down with a
high hand.
He was very happy. It seemed as if his capacity for full and perfect
happiness had never been called into play till now. His life had been
prosperous, successful; but the rainbow hues of joy had not entered
largely into the fabric of his existence. A gleam of vivid colour
here and there had flashed across the dull gray woof; but now warp
and woof were all brightness and colour. He saw all things under an
altered aspect, apparelled in the beauty of a dream. Nature, which
he had viewed hitherto with a mild regard, moved him now to loving
worship. He thanked God for having set him in so fair a world, for
having given him such a goodly heritage. In his daily walks he
was continually repeating to himself those psalms which breathe
joyfulness and thanksgiving, those canticles which tell of triumph
and rapture for the Lord’s chosen people. There was more eloquence in
his sermons, more fervour in his prayers. His congregation even felt
stirred by that strong floodtide of joy which filled his own breast.
In this state of mind he was naturally disposed to look with an
indulgent eye upon Oswald Pentreath’s wooing. He remembered with a
guilty sheepishness what the Squire had said to him--that if he,
Joshua, were going to be married he would not be for such long delay;
and moved by this recollection he told Oswald one evening in the
wilderness that, if he liked, the wedding might take place early in
the year--say in March, when the spring flowers were coming in and
the days getting bright.
‘Now that your father has given his consent there is less reason for
me to hold you to the letter of your promise,’ said Joshua. ‘If you
are quite sure of your affection for Naomi--quite sure she is the one
woman you would choose for yourself out of all the world--it makes
little difference whether you marry her in March or July.’
‘There is no fear of any change in my feelings,’ answered Oswald; ‘I
love her better every day, and honour her more as I get to know her
better. She is the noblest and best of women. I feel myself small and
weak in comparison with her.’
Oswald lost no time in telling Naomi that the length of his
apprenticeship, as it pleased him to call it, had been lessened.
‘We are to be married early in March, Naomi, when the woods are
yellow with daffodils; and you are coming to brighten that dismal old
house of ours. I shall be a respectable married man by midsummer. I
must get my father to buy me a gig, and put Herne into harness, so
that I may drive you about. We shall be a regular Darby and Joan.’
Naomi blushed at an imaginary picture of herself sitting beside
Oswald in a high-wheeled gig, with that unreliable horse swaying the
vehicle against banks and hedges, and making wild bolts round awkward
corners. The idea of driving with her husband in a gig like old
married people seemed to bring their marriage closer home to her than
any gush of poetry on the lover’s part could have done.
‘And we must think of smartening the old rooms a little bit before
you come to us,’ continued Oswald cheerily. ‘I daresay a coat of
whitewash for the ceilings will be about as much as the Squire will
care to afford; but I must see what Phœbe--that’s our old housemaid,
you know--can do with a few yards of chintz and muslin. She’s a
capital manager, poor old thing, and has made her elbow-bones twice
their natural size with rubbing the panelling and furniture. There’s
no such polish in Devonshire, I should think, as poor Phœbe’s
elbow-grease. I see her at it sometimes at six o’clock in the morning
when I’m going for an early ride; and I often wonder why she takes so
much out of herself to embellish rooms that hardly any one sees. I
fancy it must be a part of her religion. There are Shakers, you know,
and Jumpers; perhaps there is a sect of Rubbers--an extra devout
sect, like the Essenes.’
Naomi looked disapprovingly here. As a dissenter herself she was
not prepared to think lightly of even Shakers or Jumpers, who had
doubtless some reason for the faith that was in them--an innate
conviction of truth, perhaps, so strong as to counterbalance the
ridiculousness of their outward manifestations.
‘But when you come the old oak panels will have their use,’ said
Oswald gaily. ‘They will serve as mirrors to reflect your imperial
beauty. I always fancy you like the good Agrippinas and Julias,
Naomi. There were one or two virtuous Julias, you know, though the
majority turned their attention the other way; and there may have
been a decent Agrippina, though there I’m doubtful. I always picture
you as a Roman lady, with golden embroidery on your robes, and a
golden diadem on that dark hair of yours.’
Naomi had read neither Tacitus nor Gibbon; all she knew about Rome
was that St. Paul had acquired the Roman franchise, and that the
Romans had persecuted the early Christians. But she knew that Oswald
meant to praise her beauty when he likened her to these imperial
ladies of doubtful character.
These two also were very happy, but with a more quiet joy than
Joshua’s. The bloom of novelty had been worn off their love by this
time. They had grown accustomed to look forward to a life spent
together; to think of themselves as bound to each other. Oswald
surveyed his future with a tranquil contentment. He liked Naomi
better every day, leaned upon her more entirely, felt her superiority
and his own weaker nature, and looked forward confidently to the
part she was to play in his life. Naomi’s feelings lay deeper, and
but seldom found expression in words. She could not speak playfully
of a love which was the most solemn element in her life. She thought
of her happiness--of this most perfect boon Heaven had given her in
Oswald’s love--with a subdued sense of awe. If he had never loved
her; if he were to be taken from her? She dared not picture to
herself the hideous blank which life must have been in the first
case, nor the gloomy ruin life must become in the second. Sometimes
she recalled that dreadful day when the storm had swept over
Combhaven and her father’s strong arm had snatched Oswald from the
greedy devouring waves. If he had not been saved, and she had never
known him! She was not metaphysician enough to contemplate life under
such seemingly impossible conditions.
Aunt Judith’s attitude of mind in relation to the lovers was one of
equable disapprobation. She thought that Joshua was sacrificing to
Baal by giving his daughter five thousand pounds in order that the
misguided young woman might be raised from her proper position in
life to a station for which Providence had never intended her. Five
thousand pounds at five per cent meant two hundred and fifty pounds a
year, Judith reflected, or nearly five pounds a week, which division
made the money seem a great deal more, as it was thus brought nearer
the housewife’s eye. Why the entire housekeeping expenses of Mr.
Haggard’s establishment--after debiting all goods had out of the shop
against the house--seldom came to more than five pounds a week. And
Joshua was to surrender all that money to make his daughter a fine
lady.
The idea of this monetary sacrifice weighed heavily upon aunt Judith.
She had begun a system of small economies as a kind of set-off
against Naomi’s dowry. Puddings now only graced the board thrice a
week, and those were puddings of the homeliest and least expensive
character; puddings of a substantial and filling character specially
dear to prudent housekeepers, as they do not require eggs in their
composition, and are for the most part independent of butter. The
tea-table was furnished even more sparingly than of old, and, with
a view to the economising of butter, the careful manager pressed
upon the maturer taste of her nephew and niece that thick and slab
molasses which their childish fancies had affected. She doled out
the week’s allowance of soap more grudgingly than of old, and was a
despot in the matter of soda.
‘I don’t know what’s come to your aunt, Miss Naomi,’ the aggrieved
Sally remarked despondently. ‘It’s as much as I can wash out a pair
of white stockings for Sunday afternoon without her going on about my
vanity and extravagance, and throwing Jezebel in my teeth, as if I
was the wickedest young woman in Combhaven.’
These infinitesimal savings, though they inflicted some annoyance
on the household, could go about as far towards counterbalancing
the loss of five thousand pounds as the laborious exertions of an
industrious beaver in the construction of a dam designed to stem
the waters of Niagara; yet these vain efforts afforded some mental
solace to aunt Judith’s perturbed mind. She scraped the butter off
her bread, and felt herself a domestic martyr.
‘There’ll be fine flaunting when she’s a married woman and her own
mistress,’ thought Judith, ‘with two hundred and fifty pounds a
year for her own spending--silk gowns trimmed with thread-lace on
workadays, I daresay. We sha’n’t see her often at chapel, I should
think. She’ll be going to church for the sake of sitting in a big pew
among the gentry. If I were Joshua I’d as leave have my daughter dead
and buried as married to a fine gentleman that would look down upon
me.’
Judith had never been able to get rid of the idea that in his secret
soul Oswald Pentreath despised the Haggards and their surroundings.
Her narrow mind could not conceive it possible that the son of a
landowner could believe in his equality with shopkeepers; that the
odour of soap and candles was not hateful to the nostrils of a
gentleman who sealed his letters with a coat of arms that looked
almost royal, and bore a name which was engraved on the oldest
brazen tablet in the chancel. She was unable to understand that
easy-going temper of Oswald’s, to which rank and wealth were of
small moment compared with the blessings of personal well-being
and the gratification of one’s own inclination. She had a lurking
conviction that Mr. Pentreath, be he never so polite and respectful,
was secretly laughing at her; that he did not admire her Sunday
gown, and thought her pronunciation vulgar; and that he encouraged
that impudent jackanapes Jim in the practice of grimacing behind
her shoulder as she poured out the tea or carved the cold joint
at supper. This conviction and a general sense of injury, chiefly
referable to that marriage portion of five thousand pounds, made aunt
Judith unpleasant company to herself at this time, and not the most
agreeable company for other people.
The young people were happy after their tranquil fashion, untouched
by the blighting influence of this aggrieved spinster. They had their
afternoon rambles together, and Naomi made progress in the art of
pencil landscape, sitting for many a happy hour copying the bold
curved lines of the hartstongue and the delicate tracery of parsley
and oakleaf fern, or the larger outlines of elm or beech; while
Oswald lay on the grass at her side reading _Marmion_ or _Ivanhoe_.
Gentle, peaceful time--a cup filled to the brim with perfect joy--to
be remembered in days to come, when the memory shall be life’s
crowning sorrow.
The lovers had been employed thus one afternoon in August. Oswald
had just read that intense and dramatic scene of Sir Walter Scott’s
most romantic poem when Constance de Beverley defies her pitiless
judges. There had been an ominous stillness in the air for the last
half-hour, and the birds were uttering those subdued twitterings by
which they seem to warn one another of approaching evil; but Naomi
had been too much absorbed by the story to give any heed to these
whisperings of a coming storm, when one big drop falling on her
pencilled group of ferns startled her out of her complacency. Oswald
had been reading the stirring lines somewhat sleepily, the heavy air
under those tall elms exercising a narcotic effect upon his senses,
and he too had been heedless of a change in the heavens.
‘Why, I declare it’s raining!’ he exclaimed, when one of those big
drops had alighted upon his nose; ‘and what a black sky! I’m afraid
we’re in for a storm. And you in that thin dress, Naomi! Let us get
to the house as fast as we can.’
‘To the Grange?’ cried Naomi, with a look of alarm, as if he had
proposed the most awful thing in the world.
‘Why not, love? It is to be your home next spring. Is it too much to
ask a little shelter from the old roof to-day?’
‘The Squire might not like--’ faltered Naomi.
‘He would be delighted. He has not asked you and your father formally
to visit him, for then, you see, you would be visitors, and it is
against his principles to squander his substance upon entertaining
people; but if you were to drop in upon him unawares he would be
enchanted. Come, dear; the rain-drops are falling faster--and there’s
the first thunder-clap.’
It pealed among the trees, sounding so close to them that it seemed a
local thunder-clap intended for them in particular.
‘What a threatening sound it has, Oswald!’ said Naomi, as they
hurried towards the little gate which opened from the wood into the
path.
‘Yes; one can fancy the first murderer hearing such a peal as he
fled. It sounds like the voice of Nemesis, doesn’t it? There’s a
blinding flash; run, Naomi!’
They were at the gate by this time, and only a broad stretch of
turf lay between them and the house. The Squire’s oxen kept the
turf closely cropped, and Oswald and his companion were able to run
quickly over the short crisp grass. Naomi arrived at the porch with
her cambric dress only lightly sprinkled by the rain.
The hall-door stood open, and Oswald led her in. He tried the handle
of his father’s den; but that sanctuary was locked. The Squire was
out, and had the key of his study in his pocket, no doubt, according
to custom. Naomi stood in the grave old hall, looking about her
wonderingly. It was the first time she had ever entered this house,
in which she was to live and die. She felt as if it were a solemn
moment in her life--a moment to be remembered as the beginning of
an epoch. This house was henceforward to mean something more for her
than a tradition or a feature in a familiar landscape: it was to
embody her idea of home.
She looked round her doubtfully. The fine square hall; the brown-oak
panelling, adorned with half a dozen family portraits browner and
darker than the old oak; the wide shallow staircase with its solid
balustrade; the pavement of white and black marble, had doubtless
a certain dignity and beauty of their own. She felt that she was
beneath a roof that had sheltered many generations; but there was
a bleakness and barrenness in the scene that chilled her. A house
built for the accommodation of a large family and numerous servants
must needs have a cheerless and empty look when it falls into the
occupation of a miser’s shrunken household.
‘Let me show you the rooms that are to be all your own,’ said Oswald,
opening the door of a long drawing-room, an apartment so rarely used
that it had assumed a ghost-like air, as of a chamber conscious of
old family secrets, and made gloomy by the mysteries of the past. It
was a narrow panelled room, painted white and salmon, and this very
delicacy of tint, which would have made the apartment cheerful under
favourable conditions, enhanced its chill phantasmal aspect in the
gray light of this thunderous afternoon.
All the furniture was at least a century old. Naomi had never
imagined such spindle-legged tables, such narrow high-backed chairs,
such a general straightness and spareness of outline. The bareness
of all ornament, save the small oval mirrors and crystal candelabra,
and the lack of colour, struck even her inexperienced eye, which
had been accustomed only to the plainest furniture. The brocaded
window-curtains, once sea-green, had faded to a neutral tint; the
seats and backs of chairs and sofas were covered with holland. There
were no books, no pictures.
Oswald watched his betrothed, expectant of some expression of
admiration. He fancied she would be delighted with rooms so much
larger and more aristocratic than those in which she had lived all
her life.
‘It’s a handsome room, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Forty feet by eighteen.’
‘It’s very long,’ said Naomi, rather stupidly her lover thought.
‘Perhaps you’d like to see the dining-room?’
‘Very much.’
Anything would be a relief after this ghastly saloon, with its white
cold walls and general emptiness.
They crossed the hall and entered the dining-room. Here brownness
and gloom replaced the ghostly whiteness of the saloon. Here too the
furniture was scanty; but there was more homeliness, a greater look
of occupation, this being the room in which the Squire and his son
lived from January to December. There were newspapers, books, and
writing-materials on a table in the bay-window; there were whips
and walking-sticks in the corners; the large oaken sideboard was
adorned with a pair of solid old silver tankards, and surmounted by a
portrait of the present Squire, painted in the bloom of youth, when
waistcoats were worn long and ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ was still a party
cry.
The lightning flashed across Naomi’s face as she looked out at the
large bay-window, surveying that neatly-kept garden in front of
the house, which was separated by a close-cut holly hedge from the
neglected domain beyond, the wide stretch of turf which had once been
a lawn sacred from the feet of cattle, and on which the Squire’s
store oxen now browsed at their ease. He could see no good in land
which produced nothing--grass that was mown at much cost of labour
only to be thrown on the manure-heap.
The day had grown darker, and the thunder-peals seemed to shake
the old chimney, down whose wide throat there came gusts of wind
and rain. It was an awful chimney for the wind to howl in; and the
Squire and his son, sitting silently by the hearth on a gloomy
winter evening, had often felt as if evil spirits were howling wild
threatenings at them from the house-top.
Naomi looked at the dark hearth with an affrighted glance, as if she
had heard the family banshee shrieking at her.
‘What an awful noise!’ she said.
‘It’s only the wind, love. And now I must show you the family
portraits, and my mother’s sitting-room, which will be yours so
soon. I think it is the most cheerful room in the house.’
Naomi was glad to think that she was going to see something cheerful.
The gloom of the dining-room had been more depressing than the
ghostly pallor of the drawing-room.
They went up the uncarpeted staircase to a gallery which occupied the
whole length of the house, with a row of long narrow windows looking
westward, and a deep oaken seat in each window. Here there were
family portraits of the usual character; sea-pieces, battle-pieces,
fruit-pieces, and a Dutch picture or two to give a touch of human
interest to the collection. Here too there were some old delf jars,
filled with dried rose-leaves--roses that had been gathered by
fingers that were now clay, and which exhaled an odour of the past.
Oswald showed his betrothed the untenanted rooms, all neatly kept
by the indefatigable housemaid. The room that had been his mother’s
was the prettiest Naomi had seen yet. The white walls, embellished
with carved garlands of fruit and flowers; the old furniture,
painted white; a narrow old-fashioned bookcase on each side of the
fireplace; cabinets of shells and sea-weeds between the windows,
local shells and local weeds, which the Squire’s young wife had
collected in her idle uneventful days.
Naomi went eagerly to look at the books. They were many of them
strange to her even in name. Old poets--Spenser, Cowley, Waller,
Dryden, Prior, Pope--in white vellum, with gilded lettering. The
Essayists, in neat duodecimo volumes, with faded calf bindings;
Richardson’s voluminous novels, in thin octavos, bound in brown.
Naomi read the titles with keenest interest. The great world of
books was an unknown region to her, save for such feeble glimmer as
was afforded by the _Pocket Magazine_, a folio Milton, with awful
mezzotint pictures of Sin and Death, Satan and his Council, which she
used to look at shudderingly in her childhood, and those books of a
theological or devotional character which formed the staple of the
minister’s small collection. Joshua had never been a great reader,
save of his Bible and those good old Puritan divines whose teaching
was after his own heart. His life had been too full and busy to admit
of his acquiring the habits of a student. He read the Scriptures, or
Baxter’s _Saints’ Rest_, or Law’s _Serious Call_ by the wayside.
‘What dear little books!’ exclaimed Naomi, admiring the neat rows of
thin volumes, literature spread over a wide surface.
‘They all belonged to my grandfather, and came to my mother at his
death. She was very fond of them, the poets especially.’
‘I did not know there were so many poets. I knew of Pope and Spenser,
but all these other names are strange to me. Why have you never told
me about them?’
‘They are dead, my dear; gone to the limbo of forgotten genius. Byron
sent the whole crew to Hades. They have a kind of fossil life in
old-fashioned libraries, like flies in amber. Their music was sweet
to mawkishness, their loves and sufferings were as unreal as their
periwigs; they were the poets of a patchbox and powder period.’
He took out a volume of Waller and read the ‘Lines to Amoret,’ that
elegant excuse for being in love with two women at once:
‘Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which, but tasted, does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.
Sacharissa’s beauty’s wine,
Which to madness doth incline:
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain.’
‘Not a bad definition of the love that satisfies and the love that
intoxicates, is it, Naomi?’ asked Oswald, as he closed the book.
‘These periwigged poets reduced love to a science. You are my Amoret,
Naomi, and have given life and gladness to my heart.’
‘I hope you may never meet your Sacharissa,’ replied Naomi gravely,
‘since it seems that poets can love two women at once.’
‘My dearest, that was written in the days of Charles II., when poets
were fops and courtiers, and it was incumbent on a court poet to have
a new mistress as often as he had a new coat. It was a scenic age,
unreal as a stage play; and yet there were true lovers and broken
hearts while Charles Stuart was king; but you will find no trace of
them among his poets.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to like that kind of poetry.’
‘But you like my mother’s room, Naomi?’
‘It is lovely.’
‘I am so glad to hear you say that. It will be your own after next
March.’
‘I have been trying to think of this house as my home, Oswald; but I
have such a strange feeling about it. I cannot imagine myself living
here. I cannot make a picture of our new life. It all seems far away
and shadowy, like my idea of the life to come, which neither my own
faith nor my father’s teaching could ever make real or visible to me.
I must have a very weak imagination.’
‘Perhaps you have too much common sense, Naomi. You will not give
your fancies scope. You think of yourself as Naomi Haggard living in
your father’s house in Combhaven, and you can’t realise the fact that
next year you will be Naomi Pentreath, and sole mistress of these
desolate old rooms. Your coming will alter everything, dear. Even my
father looks forward to it with pleasant anticipations.’
‘He is very good. If it were not foolish or even wicked to give
heed to such fancies, I should think that this feeling of mine was
a presentiment--that God does not intend me ever to live the happy
life you speak of. It is such a settled feeling in my mind to-day; it
comes between me and my happiness, just as those stormy clouds come
between us and the day.’
‘Naomi!’
‘O, it is because I love you so dearly, Oswald! I cannot believe that
Heaven means me to be so perfectly happy all my life, to have no
sorrows, no trials,--I who have been taught that our journey on earth
is to lead us through thorny places,--your love given to me in all
its fulness. It is too much to expect from Providence.’
‘My dearest, you have been taught a gloomy creed. Do you suppose
Providence has never favoured true lovers--never smiled on a happy
union before our time? There are old men and women who loved each
other fifty years ago just as faithfully as you and I love to-day,
and who have climbed the hill of life and gone down into the valley
hand-in-hand. Providence means us to be happy for the most part, I
believe, Naomi. Earth’s most miserable men are those who have made
their own sorrows. That is my creed.’
The Squire’s harsh croak was heard in the hall below at this moment,
and made an end of the conversation. Oswald took Naomi down to
greet her future father-in-law, who had ridden home from one of his
outlying farms in the rain, and was changing his coat and boots with
the assistance of the old butler.
He stopped in the operation to kiss Naomi.
‘We were caught in the storm, father, while we were sketching in
the wood,’ said Oswald. ‘I brought Naomi in for shelter. I’ve been
showing her my mother’s sitting-room.’
‘Very proper. It will be hers when she’s married. She’ll keep her
accounts there, and do her sewing; won’t you, my dear? My shirts and
cravats are in a wretched state. It’ll be a blessing to have a clever
young woman like you to look after them. What a dreadful storm! It
will do no end of mischief to the corn where it isn’t cut--an excuse
for tenants being backward with their Christmas rent.’
‘The rain has stopped, I think,’ said Naomi timidly, looking out
through the open door, ‘and I must go home to tea.’
‘Never mind your tea, my dear. Oswald shall get you a dish of tea
before you go,’ said the Squire, in a gush of hospitality.
But Naomi declared that her father would be alarmed at her absence;
and the storm being really over, Oswald and she set out for Combhaven.