VIOLET EYES
WHEN Henry was seated alongside the carrier that fateful morning long
ago--Henry, you must be more than twenty-two!--he had to pass the
cottage of old Carne the sexton, and a sweet face, jewelled with a pair
of violet eyes, looked out between the curtains, a girl's hand rattled
on the window-pane. The owner of these eyes had been playing with a
caterpillar when Henry went round the village telling everybody he met
that he was going away to Stratford--her among the rest. But surely that
was ages ago! "I could never have been such a young ass," Henry would
say to a certainty if you were to ask him at the mirror.
Well, here is Eunice Lyndon in proof of the fact that it was almost six
years since. At all events, she says she is just nineteen, and she was
thirteen then. She doesn't play with caterpillars now; but her eyes are
certainly violet, though Henry probably thought they were blue, if he
thought of them at all.
The six years have wrought wonders in the girl who rattled on the
window when Henry went forth to the fray.
For one thing, Eunice, who was the chum of Dora, and thus a frequent
visitor in the Charles household, had discredited the croakers by
continuing to live and even to strengthen, despite the fact of her
mother's consumptive end. Poor Mrs. Charles, who had seldom a chance of
opening her mouth on any topic, never avoided stating, as an article of
her faith, that all children of consumptive parents were doomed as
clearly as though their sentence had been passed by a hanging judge. It
was positively an insult to her and to many another anxious mother for
the progeny of consumptive parents to go on living. For such to wax
strong was against Nature, and in the teeth of medical experience.
Eunice had offended Nature, diddled the doctors, and looked all the
better for the offence. The pasty whiteness of her girlhood had given
place to a creamy freshness, which blended perfectly with her high
colour--so you see her red cheeks were not the flame of consumption, but
the bloom of health. Her colour was of that intensity which seems to
come from the atmosphere around the face, and to shine upon the skin as
a shaft of ruby light, carried by the sunbeams through a cathedral
window, glows on a marble statue.
Her features were pretty, but with no mere prettiness. They were marked
by character. The nose would have been a despised model for a Grecian;
the mouth not dollishly small, yet small, firm-set, the firmness being
saved from shrewish suggestion by an upward ending of the lips. Eunice
had a chin; a most essential quality in man and woman, sometimes
unhappily omitted. A chin that said: "Yes, I mean what I say; and I mean
to say what I mean." Eyes that--well, they were violet eyes, and what
more can one say? A forehead not high, but wide, to carry a wealth of
lustrous dark hair.
Eunice was no Diana in stature, for she had scarcely grown an inch in
all those years since we saw her with the caterpillar. She had sprung up
suddenly as a girl, and remained at the same height for womanhood to
clothe her. Perhaps five feet four. But do not let us condescend upon
such details. She was small, she was dainty; enough is said. Violet
eyes--more than enough!
It is not to be supposed that Eunice and Henry had ever been
sweethearts. That is altogether too rude a suggestion. What does a girl
of thirteen think of sweethearts? A lad of sixteen? They pick up the
conventional phrase, with its suggestion of friendship more intimate
than everyday acquaintance, from their elders; that is all. There may
possibly be a liking for each other, a liking more than for any other
playmates. That is rare. The most that could be guessed about Eunice and
Henry before his leaving home was that he had been more inclined to talk
with her than with any other girls who came to the house, and as he, in
his cubhood, had a sniff of contempt for most girls, that counted for
very little. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be held to count for
a good deal.
When Henry had been home two summers ago, Eunice was away on one of her
rare visits to an aunt in Tewksbury--in a sense, at the world's end. So
Henry had rarely seen her since that peep she took at him long ago in
Memoryland. He had heard of her frequently, we will suppose, in the
letters from his sister Dora, and she of him from her chum.
Meanwhile, an important event had happened in her life. Old Edgar Carne,
Eunice's grandfather, had died a year ago, and left his orphan
grand-daughter at eighteen with the tiniest little fortune, equal to
probably twenty pounds a year. For a time it seemed likely that she
would leave the village and go to reside with her aunt at Tewksbury, as
she had now no blood relations in Hampton Bagot, though many
warm-hearted friends. Simple in her tastes, educated only to the extent
of a village curriculum, which did not breed ambition, fond of domestic
duties and the light work of a garden, Eunice had no clear-cut path
ahead, and would have preferred to stay on among the people who had been
planted around her by the hand of friendship.
It so fell out that Fate pinned her to Hampton yet awhile. The
housekeeper of the Rev. Godfrey Needham had left, and it was suggested
to him by Mr. Charles that Eunice and a young serving-maid would do
wonders in brightening up the vicarage, where an elderly housekeeper had
only fostered frowsiness. Besides, the vicar had recently to the
amazement of his parishioners, taken a little lass of nine to live with
him, the orphan child of a relation of his long-dead wife. Eunice could
thus be of double service to him in mothering the little one, and her
sympathy could be relied upon, since she herself had been robbed of a
mother's love so early. It was even whispered that the coming of little
Marjorie had something to do with the old housekeeper giving notice to
leave; she was "no hand wi' childer," as she herself confessed.
Mr. Needham fell in with Edward John's proposal; Eunice was delighted;
and a year had testified to its wisdom. The vicarage had never been so
bright in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the vicar himself had
come under the transforming hand of Eunice, and now, within hail of
seventy, he was a sprucer figure than he had been since the days of his
brief married happiness--forty years before. His collars were always
spotless, his white ties--white. His trousers reached to his shoes at
last. Perhaps his step had lost its springiness, his coat its breezy
freedom; but he had gained in dignity what was lost in quaintness.
As for Eunice herself, this one short year had carried her well into
womanhood, and though only nineteen she was the counsellor of many who
were older. There is a wonderful reserve of domestic gold in every young
woman whose bank is run upon. At an age when a young man is watching his
moustache's progress, many a young woman is grappling heroically,
obscurely, with the essential things of life. Yet Eunice was doing no
more than thousands of womenkind had done.
But her position as housekeeper at the vicarage, as teacher in the
Sunday School, conferred certain advantages, and brought her more
prominently into the life of the little village. From being "Old Carne's
little girl," she had been translated into "Miss Lyndon at the
vicarage." Her daily pursuits, the refining influence of her duties,
quickly developed and ripened her own excellent qualities of heart and
mind, and in twelve fleeting months she stood forth a woman; discreet
of tongue, yet bright with happiness, resourceful, heart-free.
Henry noted, with a thrilling interest he could scarce account for,
these changes in his little friend of long ago, when she came under his
eyes again at church on the Sunday following his arrival.
"How do you do, Miss Lyndon?" and "How are you, Mr. Charles? It seems a
lifetime since you went away," did not suggest the sputtering fires of
kindling passion.
"Yes, it takes an effort of mind sometimes to recall my Hampton days."
One was almost suspicious of affectation.
"Really! That's scarcely kind to Hampton and--us."
"Ah, I am not likely to forget old friends; but I mean that the years of
almost changeless life here are only the impression of a morning sky,
compared with the crowded day that has followed."
Was the suspicion well founded?
"Then you've been bitten by the dog Town, and go hunting for a hair of
him!"
Eunice smiled at her conceit, and Henry laughed with rising eyebrows,
that said: "This young lady has improved wonderfully."
"Good, Eunice; very good! You have a turn for metaphor, I see." The
"Eunice" slipped out, and immediately brought a deeper tinge of colour
to the girl's cheek. The man was sallow, but his eyes looked away from
her after it was out. "Do you read much, or are your duties at the
vicarage engrossing?" was said with an air of friendly interest only.
"Engrossing, yes. You see, I've to play little mother. One of my charges
is ten and the other nearly seventy. So I feel a centenarian. But I
don't get much time for reading, what with visiting in the parish and
keeping the vicarage in order. No; I'm not a bit clever, and I have only
a dark idea of what a metaphor is."
"Ah, you should tell that to the marines," was all that Henry could say
by way of comment.
He had made obvious conversational progress in the outer world, but
there was an artificial touch about his talk--a literary touch--that was
not quite equal to his swimming dolphin-like, in a sea of talk, around
this child of Nature.
"You are liking Laysford, I hear," the little mother said, after some
paces in silence.
"Immensely! The place teems with life. You've just to stir it and behold
a boiling pot of human interest."
"And how is the stirring done?"
"Ah, there you have me! That's the worst of metaphors. I must rid myself
of the habit; it comes, I fancy, of too much Meredith on an empty
head."
"Dear me! And what is Meredith?"
"It is a man that writes things."
"Like you?"
"Not like me, I hope. He writes for all time; I for an hour--literally.
But don't let's talk of writing. There are greater things to do in this
world. Unless one were a Meredith."
"You didn't always think so."
"No; but I've learned young, and that's a good thing. When I read
Meredith I hide my face at the thought of writing anything. But you've
done very well, so far, without books, if I'm to believe your own
story."
"I suppose folk lived before printing was invented?"
"I used to wonder how they did; but now I am willing to believe it
possible."
"You will come and see Mr. Needham at the vicarage, while you are here,
I hope? He often talks about you."
"I shall be delighted.... And you? You will give us a peep at the old
house?"
"Oh, yes! Dora and I are bosom friends."
"Early next week you can look for me to have a chat with ... Mr.
Needham."
"I'll be in soon ... to see Dora."
They shook hands at the field path to the vicarage, and Eunice went up
the hill hand-in-hand with Marjorie, whom Henry had never deigned to
notice. She looked back when a few hundred yards had been covered, but
the young man was stepping briskly after his father and his two younger
sisters, who had gone ahead.
"How Eunice Lyndon has improved," said Henry to Dora when they sat at
dinner.
"Isn't she bright? I think she is the sweetest girl I know."
"But you don't know many, Dora."
"She's made a wonnerful change on the passon. An' it was all my own
idea," Edward John declared with satisfaction, as he scooped up a
mouthful of green peas with his knife.
"Her mother--poor thing--died o' consumption," Mrs. Charles remarked,
and sighed as though she were placing a wreath on Eunice's coffin.
"But she's the very picture of health, mother," Henry protested.
"Still, there's consumption in the family," she murmured.
"Nothing to do with her case. Doctors are now giving up the idea that
the disease is hereditary," Henry said, with unnecessary emphasis, as it
seemed to Edward John.
"But doctors don't know everythink, 'Enry, my boy," his father remarked.
"And neither do mothers."
Whereat one of them sighed again.
The meal went on in silence for a while, and the pudding was at
vanishing point when Henry broke into talk again.
"By the way, Dora, did I ever tell you that the Wintons have come to
Laysford? You remember them? My old friends at Wheelton."
"You never mentioned it."
"Funny that I had forgotten. Edgar joined the _Leader_ nearly six months
ago as second reporter, and the whole family have removed to Laysford,
when Mr. Winton got a post as cashier in a large hosiery factory."
"There was a sister, I think?"
"Yes; Flo--a jolly, dashing sort of girl."
"Pretty?"
"Extremely! One of your blonde beauties. Almost as tall as I am, and
nearly my age."
"Indeed!"
"A fine puddin', mother, but just a trifle too many o' them sultanas,"
said Edward John.
Mrs. Charles sighed once more.