"Now, Lizzie, I want to know what all this means?" said the Reverend
Herbert Pringle, B.A., putting on quite a fatherly dignity of manner to
his sister, an evening or two after Lady Inskip had spoken to him. "I
want to know what all this means."
Lizzie was at the time engaged lifting pots up and down, and poking
about in her little conservatory, which jutted out of the drawing room,
with a trowel and watering-pot, in the manner peculiar to young ladies
of a horticultural tendency. Her back was turned to her brother, so
that he could not see her face, but a brilliant tinge of pink carnation
coloured her little white neck, and suffused her dainty-cheeks, and
ascended even to the pure white forehead; still she steadfastly kept her
head down, bent apparently on investigating the wonderful mysteries of
some flower with a horribly long Greek name, which she was inspecting.
She must have guessed intuitively what her brother was going to speak
about, but with a woman's noble gift of dissimulation, she asked, with
an air of candour and conscious rectitude--little hypocrite!
"Why, Bertie, dear, what on earth do you mean?"
They are all deceivers, every one; bless you! that's the way with them.
They are tricksters at heart, and conceal their feelings with a sort of
savage deceit, which only a Red Indian besides possesses. See how
calmly and placidly Miss Dissembler smiles with elegant ease, whilst
Madame Verjuice pierces her little writhing heart through and through
with a malicious sarcasm that wounds her to the core. She looks as if
she never felt it whilst she is bleeding to death inwardly. Look at the
poor fainting wife and mother, who with a smile on her lips and death at
heart, cheerfully gives her husband and starving children the last
morsel of bread in the hovel, and says with a martyr-like dissimulation
that she does not want it, she is not hungry. Bless you they are all
deceivers, every one, from little miss in her teens, who flirts with her
boy lovers, to old Joan of threescore, who still wheedles her venerable
Darby!
"Why, Bertie, what on earth do you mean?" as innocently as you please.
The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., had for the last two days been
puzzling his small amount of brains how to broach the subject to his
sister. He did not wish to vex her, or hurt her feelings; in fact, he
did not know what to do, it was "such a delicate matter, you know, such
a very delicate matter," that he wished it were settled and done for,
and off his hands. But still, all the same, he did not know how to
begin.
"Well, humph!" clearing his throat portentously, "the fact is, Lizzie,
you know all about it."
"Really, Bertie," said Lizzie, laughing--oh! such a faint little laugh,
"you are very enigmatical to-day."
"I'm not joking, Lizzie; it's a serious business, a very serious
business. What is all this going on between you and Tom Hartshorne?"
Poor Lizzie's little defences of affected ignorance and nonchalance at
once broke down, although she bravely struggled on to preserve her
equanimity.
"I'm sure I've nothing to do with Mr Hartshorne. What _do_ you mean,
Herbert? Pray explain yourself."
And the young lady drew herself up with a tremendous accession of
dignity to the full height of her little figure.
Herbert Pringle was so disgusted with the dissimulation of the sex as
evinced in the instance of his sister that he felt himself nerved up and
able to go on with the talk before him, so he plunged at once _in medias
res_.
"Here's Lady Inskip been telling me--"
"Oh! I've got to thank _her_ for interesting herself about me! I am
sure I am very much obliged to Lady Inskip!"
"You need not interrupt me, Lizzie, and you need not get angry about
Lady Inskip. She's a most motherly woman, and she spoke very kindly to
me about you. You see, Lizzie, it's a very hard thing for a fellow to
speak of. Of course I think girls ought to be allowed to mind their own
affairs of this kind, and it seems rough on my part to interfere; but,
you see, as Lady Inskip very kindly observed, you've no mother to advise
you, and consequently I must take her place."
As he said this, the Reverend Herbert Pringle looked certainly as unlike
a mother as possible.
"Go on, Herbert; let me know all that Lady Inskip has been kind enough
to say of me," said Violet Eyes, now facing her brother, with a full
sense of her dignity, and tapping her foot on the floor with angry
impatience.
"Well, she told me that she saw you and Tom Hartshorne in the garden the
other day as she drove by; and, though I see no harm in it, and
fortunately no one but herself saw it, she said she was very much
shocked, and that you acted as if you were engaged. Now, Lizzie, you
know I'm very fond of you, and all that sort of thing, but people might
talk, you know, and I want you to put a stop to it."
Lizzie's defences were entirely overthrown. Her look of indignation
faded off her face, to be replaced by a quick crimson blush, which as
rapidly disappeared and left her features as pale as marble. She made a
hurried step towards her brother, and fell sobbing on his neck.
"Oh! Bertie, Bertie!" she sobbed out, between a series of little gasps.
"There, there, don't cry! my darling little Lizzie. You know I did not
mean to hurt you, my own little sister!" said Herbert, sympathisingly,
patting her head as if he were saying "Poor dog! poor dog!" to a
Newfoundland pup. And the subject was dropped, Lizzie thus gaining the
victory in the end by having recourse to a woman's strongest safeguard--
tears. For, as he told Lady Inskip afterwards, "when the waterworks
were turned on he had to give in." The old campaigner for her part, was
very well satisfied that the topic had been mentioned: that was all she
wanted.
Lizzie went to bed very early that night, pleading a headache, and
really her face was so pale and the deep violet eyes were so sunk in her
head with broad veins of black underneath them, that her assertion was
freely borne out by her appearance.
The poor little heart was deeply troubled: the stricken deer was
grievously wounded. She was very young, you must remember, and had
fallen into that horrible abyss of love without knowing what she was
doing. The temptation had been so sweet, the steps she had taken into
that rose-coloured paradise so gradual, that she had not perceived the
drift of their march, so that Tom's sudden act and manner had startled
and frightened her; it was letting in the sunlight on one who has been
blindfolded, and the little secret which she had hugged to her heart
alarmed, while it gave her such sweet ecstasy.
Ever since that morning in the garden, only two days ago--two days! it
seemed more like two years, she had been so much altered--Lizzie had not
been the same. She had awakened from a long sleep as it were, and
everything round her, every little inconsiderable item in her daily life
bore a new charm to her or had a fresh meaning. A deeper and more
beautiful light beamed now in her thoughtful eyes; there was a charming
hesitancy in her manner in lieu of the former piquante pert way she had.
In a word, Lizzie was our Lizzie still, but a hundred times more
loveable and prettier from the new love light that encircled her.
She had been watching--eagerly watching, for her next meeting with Tom,
and yet when she thought of him, blushed at her thoughts and trembled
with a sly rapture. He was so noble--so manly--so handsome! Just in
fact what most young girls think Corydon when in love.
It was no wonder, then, that the brother's lecture and the idea of the
old campaigner's criticism on her conduct frightened our poor little
maid.
She went up to her little bed tearfully and heavy-hearted, and thought
of chains and dungeons, and all the malicious contrivances of the wicked
for parting true lovers, and she sobbed herself to sleep. When she woke
up in the morning she was still in the most restless and perturbed state
that her little mind could be in. "How dared that odious old thing
speak about her, or look at her, or come round at all!" She would never
see Tom again--and she was longing to see him all the time!
She would not go to the pic-nic--that she wouldn't!
Then she _would_ go, because the aforesaid old odious thing would
imagine that she took it to heart if she stopped away.
But she would _not_ go because that impudent Master Tom would be there,
she thought, with a rising blush and a conscious swelling of the tender
little bosom underneath her muslin dress.
Of course she determined to go!
Volume 1, Chapter XIV.