OLDCASTLE HALL.
About noon, on a lovely autumn day, I set out for Oldcastle Hall. The
keenness of the air had melted away with the heat of the sun, yet still
the air was fresh and invigorating. Can any one tell me why it is that,
when the earth is renewing her youth in the spring, man should feel
feeble and low-spirited, and gaze with bowed head, though pleased
heart, on the crocuses; whereas, on the contrary, in the autumn, when
nature is dying for the winter, he feels strong and hopeful, holds his
head erect, and walks with a vigorous step, though the flaunting
dahlias discourage him greatly? I do not ask for the physical causes:
those I might be able to find out for myself; but I ask, Where is the
rightness and fitness in the thing? Should not man and nature go
together in this world which was made for man—not for science, but for
man? Perhaps I have some glimmerings of where the answer lies. Perhaps
“I see a cherub that sees it.” And in many of our questions we have to
be content with such an approximation to an answer as this. And for my
part I am content with this. With less, I am not content.
Whatever that answer may be, I walked over the old Gothic bridge with a
heart strong enough to meet Mrs Oldcastle without flinching. I might
have to quarrel with her—I could not tell: she certainly was neither
safe nor wholesome. But this I was sure of, that I would not quarrel
with her without being quite certain that I ought. I wish it were NEVER
one’s duty to quarrel with anybody: I do so hate it. But not to do it
sometimes is to smile in the devil’s face, and that no one ought to do.
However, I had not to quarrel this time.
The woods on the other side of the river from my house, towards which I
was now walking, were of the most sombre rich colour—sombre and rich,
like a life that has laid up treasure in heaven, locked in a casket of
sorrow. I came nearer and nearer to them through the village, and
approached the great iron gate with the antediluvian monsters on the
top of its stone pillars. And awful monsters they were—are still! I see
the tail of one of them at this very moment. But they let me through
very quietly, notwithstanding their evil looks. I thought they were
saying to each other across the top of the gate, “Never mind; he’ll
catch it soon enough.” But, as I said, I did not catch it that day; and
I could not have caught it that day; it was too lovely a day to catch
any hurt even from that most hurtful of all beings under the sun, an
unwomanly woman.
I wandered up the long winding road, through the woods which I had
remarked flanking the meadow on my first walk up the river. These woods
smelt so sweetly—their dead and dying leaves departing in sweet
odours—that they quite made up for the absence of the flowers. And the
wind—no, there was no wind—there was only a memory of wind that woke
now and then in the bosom of the wood, shook down a few leaves, like
the thoughts that flutter away in sighs, and then was still again.
I am getting old, as I told you, my friends. (See there, you seem my
friends already. Do not despise an old man because he cannot help
loving people he never saw or even heard of.) I say I am getting
old—(is it BUT or THEREFORE? I do not know which)—but, therefore, I
shall never forget that one autumn day in those grandly fading woods.
Up the slope of the hillside they rose like one great rainbow-billow of
foliage—bright yellow, red-rusty and bright fading green, all kinds and
shades of brown and purple. Multitudes of leaves lay on the sides of
the path, so many that I betook myself to my old childish amusement of
walking in them without lifting my feet, driving whole armies of them
with ocean-like rustling before me. I did not do so as I came back. I
walked in the middle of the way then, and I remember stepping over many
single leaves, in a kind of mechanico-merciful way, as if they had been
living creatures—as indeed who can tell but they are, only they must be
pretty nearly dead when they are on the ground.
At length the road brought me up to the house. It did not look such a
large house as I have since found it to be. And it certainly was not an
interesting house from the outside, though its surroundings of green
grass and trees would make any whole beautiful. Indeed the house itself
tried hard to look ugly, not quite succeeding, only because of the kind
foiling of its efforts by the Virginia creepers and ivy, which, as if
ashamed of its staring countenance, did all they could to spread their
hands over it and hide it. But there was one charming group of old
chimneys, belonging to some portion behind, which indicated a very
different, namely, a very much older, face upon the house once—a face
that had passed away to give place to this. Once inside, I found there
were more remains of the olden time than I had expected. I was led up
one of those grand square oak staircases, which look like a portion of
the house to be dwelt in, and not like a ladder for getting from one
part of the habitable regions to another. On the top was a fine expanse
of landing, another hall, in fact, from which I was led towards the
back of the house by a narrow passage, and shown into a small dark
drawing-room with a deep stone-mullioned window, wainscoted in oak
simply carved and panelled. Several doors around indicated
communication with other parts of the house. Here I found Mrs
Oldcastle, reading what I judged to be one of the cheap and gaudy
religious books of the present day. She rose and RECEIVED me, and
having motioned me to a seat, began to talk about the parish. You would
have perceived at once from her tone that she recognised no other bond
of connexion between us but the parish.
“I hear you have been most kind in visiting the poor, Mr Walton. You
must take care that they don’t take advantage of your kindness, though.
I assure you, you will find some of them very grasping indeed. And you
need not expect that they will give you the least credit for good
intentions.”
“I have seen nothing yet to make me uneasy on that score. But certainly
my testimony is of no weight yet.”
“Mine is. I have proved them. The poor of this neighbourhood are very
deficient in gratitude.”
“Yes, grannie,——”
I started. But there was no interruption, such as I have made to
indicate my surprise; although, when I looked half round in the
direction whence the voice came, the words that followed were all
rippled with a sweet laugh of amusement.
“Yes, grannie, you are right. You remember how old dame Hope wouldn’t
take the money you offered her, and dropped such a disdainful courtesy.
It was SO greedy of her, wasn’t it?”
“I am sorry to hear of any disdainful reception of kindness,” I said.
“Yes, and she had the coolness, within a fortnight, to send up to me
and ask if I would be kind enough to lend her half-a-crown for a few
weeks.”
“And then it was your turn, grannie! You sent her five shillings,
didn’t you?—Oh no; I’m wrong. That was the other woman.”
“Indeed, I did not send her anything but a rebuke. I told her that it
would be a very wrong thing in me to contribute to the support of such
an evil spirit of unthankfulness as she indulged in. When she came to
see her conduct in its true light, and confessed that she had behaved
very abominably, I would see what I could do for her.”
“And meantime she was served out, wasn’t she? With her sick boy at
home, and nothing to give him?” said Miss Gladwyn.
“She made her own bed, and had to lie on it.”
“Don’t you think a little kindness might have had more effect in
bringing her to see that she was wrong.”
“Grannie doesn’t believe in kindness, except to me—dear old grannie!
She spoils me. I’m sure I shall be ungrateful some day; and then she’ll
begin to read me long lectures, and prick me with all manner of
headless pins. But I won’t stand it, I can tell you, grannie! I’m too
much spoiled for that.”
Mrs Oldcastle was silent—why, I could not tell, except it was that she
knew she had no chance of quieting the girl in any other way.
I may mention here, lest I should have no opportunity afterwards, that
I inquired of dame Hope as to her version of the story, and found that
there had been a great misunderstanding, as I had suspected. She was
really in no want at the time, and did not feel that it would be quite
honourable to take the money when she did not need it—(some poor people
ARE capable of such reasoning)—and so had refused it, not without a
feeling at the same time that it was more pleasant to refuse than to
accept from such a giver; some stray sparkle of which feeling,
discovered by the keen eye of Miss Gladwyn, may have given that
appearance of disdain to her courtesy to which the girl alluded. When,
however, her boy in service was brought home ill, she had sent to ask
for what she now required, on the very ground that it had been offered
to her before. The misunderstanding had arisen from the total
incapacity of Mrs Oldcastle to enter sympathetically into the feelings
of one as superior to herself in character as she was inferior in
worldly condition.
But to return to Oldcastle Hall.
I wished to change the subject, knowing that blind defence is of no
use. One must have definite points for defence, if one has not a
thorough understanding of the character in question; and I had neither.
“This is a beautiful old house,” I said. “There must be strange places
about it.”
Mrs Oldcastle had not time to reply, or at least did not reply, before
Miss Gladwyn said—
“Oh, Mr Walton, have you looked out of the window yet? You don’t know
what a lovely place this is, if you haven’t.”
And as she spoke she emerged from a recess in the room, a kind of dark
alcove, where she had been amusing herself with what I took to be some
sort of puzzle, but which I found afterwards to be the bit and
curb-chain of her pony’s bridle which she was polishing up to her own
bright mind, because the stable-boy had not pleased her in the matter,
and she wanted both to get them brilliant and to shame the lad for the
future. I followed her to the window, where I was indeed as much
surprised and pleased as she could have wished.
“There!” she said, holding back one of the dingy heavy curtains with
her small childish hand.
And there, indeed, I saw an astonishment. It did not lie in the lovely
sweeps of hill and hollow stretching away to the horizon, richly
wooded, and—though I saw none of them—sprinkled, certainly with sweet
villages full of human thoughts, loves, and hopes; the astonishment did
not lie in this—though all this was really much more beautiful to the
higher imagination—but in the fact that, at the first glance, I had a
vision properly belonging to a rugged or mountainous country. For I had
approached the house by a gentle slope, which certainly was long and
winding, but had occasioned no feeling in my mind that I had reached
any considerable height. And I had come up that one beautiful
staircase; no more; and yet now, when I looked from this window, I
found myself on the edge of a precipice—not a very deep one, certainly,
yet with all the effect of many a deeper. For below the house on this
side lay a great hollow, with steep sides, up which, as far as they
could reach, the trees were climbing. The sides were not all so steep
as the one on which the house stood, but they were all rocky and steep,
with here and there slopes of green grass. And down in the bottom, in
the centre of the hollow, lay a pool of water. I knew it only by its
slaty shimmer through the fading green of the tree-tops between me and
it.
“There!” again exclaimed Miss Gladwyn; “isn’t that beautiful? But you
haven’t seen the most beautiful thing yet. Grannie, where’s—ah! there
she is! There’s auntie! Don’t you see her down there, by the side of
the pond? That pond is a hundred feet deep. If auntie were to fall in
she would be drowned before you could jump down to get her out. Can you
swim?”
Before I had time to answer, she was off again.
“Don’t you see auntie down there?”
“No, I don’t see her. I have been trying very hard, but I can’t.”
“Well, I daresay you can’t. Nobody, I think, has got eyes but myself.
Do you see a big stone by the edge of the pond, with another stone on
the top of it, like a big potato with a little one grown out of it?”
“No.”
“Well, auntie is under the trees on the opposite side from that stone.
Do you see her yet?”
“No.”
“Then you must come down with me, and I will introduce you to her.
She’s much the prettiest thing here. Much prettier than grannie.”
Here she looked over her shoulder at grannie, who, instead of being
angry, as, from what I had seen on our former interview, I feared she
would be, only said, without even looking up from the little
blue-boarded book she was again reading—
“You are a saucy child.”
Whereupon Miss Gladwyn laughed merrily.
“Come along,” she said, and, seizing me by the hand, led me out of the
room, down a back-staircase, across a piece of grass, and then down a
stair in the face of the rock, towards the pond below. The stair went
in zigzags, and, although rough, was protected by an iron balustrade,
without which, indeed, it would have been very dangerous.
“Isn’t your grandmamma afraid to let you run up and down here, Miss
Gladwyn?” I said.
“Me!” she exclaimed, apparently in the utmost surprise. “That WOULD be
fun! For, you know, if she tried to hinder me—but she knows it’s no
use; I taught her that long ago—let me see, how long: oh! I don’t
know—I should think it must be ten years at least. I ran away, and they
thought I had drowned myself in the pond. And I saw them, all the time,
poking with a long stick in the pond, which, if I had been drowned
there, never could have brought me up, for it is a hundred feet deep, I
am sure. How I hurt my sides trying to keep from screaming with
laughter! I fancied I heard one say to the other, ‘We must wait till
she swells and floats?’”
“Dear me! what a peculiar child!” I said to myself.
And yet somehow, whatever she said—even when she was most rude to her
grandmother—she was never offensive. No one could have helped feeling
all the time that she was a little lady.—I thought I would venture a
question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag, and looked
down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I could now
distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of a woman
seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping forward over a book.
“May I ask you a question, Miss Gladwyn?”
“Yes, twenty, if you like; but I won’t answer one of them till you give
up calling me Miss Gladwyn. We can’t be friends, you know, so long as
you do that.”
“What am I to call you, then? I never heard you called by any other
name than Pet, and that would hardly do, would it?”
“Oh, just fancy if you called me Pet before grannie! That’s grannie’s
name for me, and nobody dares to use it but grannie—not even auntie;
for, between you and me, auntie is afraid of grannie; I can’t think
why. I never was afraid of anybody—except, yes, a little afraid of old
Sarah. She used to be my nurse, you know; and grandmamma and everybody
is afraid of her, and that’s just why I never do one thing she wants me
to do. It would never do to give in to being afraid of her, you
know.—There’s auntie, you see, down there, just where I told you
before.”
“Oh yes! I see her now.—What does your aunt call you, then?”
“Why, what you must call me—my own name, of course.”
“What is that?”
“Judy.”
She said it in a tone which seemed to indicate surprise that I should
not know her name—perhaps read it off her face, as one ought to know a
flower’s name by looking at it. But she added instantly, glancing up in
my face most comically—
“I wish yours was Punch.”
“Why, Judy?”
“It would be such fun, you know.”
“Well, it would be odd, I must confess. What is your aunt’s name?”
“Oh, such a funny name!—much funnier than Judy: Ethelwyn. It sounds as
if it ought to mean something, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, without doubt.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure about that. I will try to find out when I go home—if you
would like to know.”
“Yes, that I should. I should like to know everything about auntie
Ethelwyn. Isn’t it pretty?”
“So pretty that I should like to know something more about Aunt
Ethelwyn. What is her other name?”
“Why, Ethelwyn Oldcastle, to be sure. What else could it be?”
“Why, you know, for anything I knew, Judy, it might have been Gladwyn.
She might have been your father’s sister.”
“Might she? I never thought of that. Oh, I suppose that is because I
never think about my father. And now I do think of it, I wonder why
nobody ever mentions him to me, or my mother either. But I often think
auntie must be thinking about my mother. Something in her eyes, when
they are sadder than usual, seems to remind me of my mother.”
“You remember your mother, then?”
“No, I don’t think I ever saw her. But I’ve answered plenty of
questions, haven’t I? I assure you, if you want to get me on to the
Catechism, I don’t know a word of it. Come along.”
I laughed.
“What!” she said, pulling me by the hand, “you a clergyman, and laugh
at the Catechism! I didn’t know that.”
“I’m not laughing at the Catechism, Judy. I’m only laughing at the idea
of putting Catechism questions to you.”
“You KNOW I didn’t mean it,” she said, with some indignation.
“I know now,” I answered. “But you haven’t let me put the only question
I wanted to put.”
“What is it?”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve. Come along.”
And away we went down the rest of the stair.
When we reached the bottom, a winding path led us through the trees to
the side of the pond, along which we passed to get to the other side.
And then all at once the thought struck me—why was it that I had never
seen this auntie, with the lovely name, at church? Was she going to
turn out another strange parishioner?
There she sat, intent on her book. As we drew near she looked up and
rose, but did not come forward.
“Aunt Winnie, here’s Mr. Walton,” said Judy.
I lifted my hat and held out my hand. Before our hands met, however, a
tremendous splash reached my ears from the pond. I started round. Judy
had vanished. I had my coat half off, and was rushing to the pool, when
Miss Oldcastle stopped me, her face unmoved, except by a smile, saying,
“It’s only one of that frolicsome child’s tricks, Mr Walton. It is well
for you that I was here, though. Nothing would have delighted her more
than to have you in the water too.”
“But,” I said, bewildered, and not half comprehending, “where is she?”
“There,” returned Miss Oldcastle, pointing to the pool, in the middle
of which arose a heaving and bubbling, presently yielding passage to
the laughing face of Judy.
“Why don’t you help me out, Mr Walton? You said you could swim.”
“No, I did not,” I answered coolly. “You talked so fast, you did not
give me time to say so.”
“It’s very cold,” she returned.
“Come out, Judy dear,” said her aunt. “Run home and change your
clothes. There’s a dear.”
Judy swam to the opposite side, scrambled out, and was off like a
spaniel through the trees and up the stairs, dripping and raining as
she went.
“You must be very much astonished at the little creature, Mr Walton.”
“I find her very interesting. Quite a study.”
“There never was a child so spoiled, and never a child on whom it took
less effect to hurt her. I suppose such things do happen sometimes. She
is really a good girl; though mamma, who has done all the spoiling,
will not allow me to say she is good.”
Here followed a pause, for, Judy disposed of, what should I say next?
And the moment her mind turned from Judy, I saw a certain stillness—not
a cloud, but the shadow of a cloud—come over Miss Oldcastle’s face, as
if she, too, found herself uncomfortable, and did not know what to say
next. I tried to get a glance at the book in her hand, for I should
know something about her at once if I could only see what she was
reading. She never came to church, and I wanted to arrive at some
notion of the source of her spiritual life; for that she had such, a
single glance at her face was enough to convince me. This, I mean, made
me even anxious to see what the book was. But I could only discover
that it was an old book in very shabby binding, not in the least like
the books that young ladies generally have in their hands.
And now my readers will possibly be thinking it odd that I have never
yet said a word about what either Judy or Miss Oldcastle was like. If
there is one thing I feel more inadequate to than another, in taking
upon me to relate—it is to describe a lady. But I will try the girl
first.
Judy was rosy, gray-eyed, auburn-haired, sweet-mouthed. She had
confidence in her chin, assertion in her nose, defiance in her
eyebrows, honesty and friendliness over all her face. No one,
evidently, could have a warmer friend; and to an enemy she would be
dangerous no longer than a fit of passion might last. There was nothing
acrid in her; and the reason, I presume, was, that she had never yet
hurt her conscience. That is a very different thing from saying she had
never done wrong, you know. She was not tall, even for her age, and
just a little too plump for the immediate suggestion of grace. Yet
every motion of the child would have been graceful, except for the fact
that impulse was always predominant, giving a certain jerkiness, like
the hopping of a bird, instead of the gliding of one motion into
another, such as you might see in the same bird on the wing.
There is one of the ladies.
But the other—how shall I attempt to describe her?
The first thing I felt was, that she was a lady-woman. And to feel that
is almost to fall in love at first sight. And out of this whole, the
first thing you distinguished would be the grace over all. She was
rather slender, rather tall, rather dark-haired, and quite blue-eyed.
But I assure you it was not upon that occasion that I found out the
colour of her eyes. I was so taken with her whole that I knew nothing
about her parts. Yet she was blue-eyed, indicating northern
extraction—some centuries back perhaps. That blue was the blue of the
sea that had sunk through the eyes of some sea-rover’s wife and settled
in those of her child, to be born when the voyage was over. It had been
dyed so deep INGRAYNE, as Spenser would say, that it had never been
worn from the souls of the race since, and so was every now and then
shining like heaven out at some of its eyes. Her features were what is
called regular. They were delicate and brave.—After the grace, the
dignity was the next thing you came to discover. And the only thing you
would not have liked, you would have discovered last. For when the
shine of the courtesy with which she received me had faded away a
certain look of negative haughtiness, of withdrawal, if not of
repulsion, took its place, a look of consciousness of her own high
breeding—a pride, not of life, but of circumstance of life, which
disappointed me in the midst of so much that was very lovely. Her voice
was sweet, and I could have fancied a tinge of sadness in it, to which
impression her slowness of speech, without any drawl in it,
contributed. But I am not doing well as an artist in describing her so
fully before my reader has become in the least degree interested in
her. I was seeing her, and no words can make him see her.
Fearing lest some such fancy as had possessed Judy should be moving in
her mind, namely, that I was, if not exactly going to put her through
her Catechism, yet going in some way or other to act the clergyman, I
hastened to speak.
“This is a most romantic spot, Miss Oldcastle,” I said; “and as
surprising as it is romantic. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
looked out of the window and saw it first.”
“Your surprise was the more natural that the place itself is not
properly natural, as you must have discovered.”
This was rather a remarkable speech for a young lady to make. I
answered—
“I only know that such a chasm is the last thing I should have expected
to find in this gently undulating country. That it is artificial I was
no more prepared to hear than I was to see the place itself.”
“It looks pretty, but it has not a very poetic origin,” she returned.
“It is nothing but the quarry out of which the old house at the top of
it was built.”
“I must venture to differ from you entirely in the aspect such an
origin assumes to me,” I said. “It seems to me a more poetic origin
than any convulsion of nature whatever would have been; for, look you,”
I said—being as a young man too much inclined to the didactic, “for,
look you,” I said—and she did look at me—“from that buried mass of rock
has arisen this living house with its histories of ages and
generations; and”—
Here I saw a change pass upon her face: it grew almost pallid. But her
large blue eyes were still fixed on mine.
“And it seems to me,” I went on, “that such a chasm made by the
uplifting of a house therefrom, is therefore in itself more poetic than
if it were even the mouth of an extinct volcano. For, grand as the
motions and deeds of Nature are, terrible as is the idea of the fiery
heart of the earth breaking out in convulsions, yet here is something
greater; for human will, human thought, human hands in human labour and
effort, have all been employed to build this house, making not only the
house beautiful, but the place whence it came beautiful too. It stands
on the edge of what Shelley would call its ‘antenatal tomb’—now
beautiful enough to be its mother—filled from generation to generation
“—
Her face had grown still paler, and her lips moved as if she would
speak; but no sound came from them. I had gone on, thinking it best to
take no notice of her paleness; but now I could not help expressing
concern.
“I am afraid you feel ill, Miss Oldcastle.”
“Not at all,” she answered, more quickly than she had yet spoken.
“This place must be damp,” I said. “I fear you have taken cold.”
She drew herself up a little haughtily, thinking, no doubt, that after
her denial I was improperly pressing the point. So I drew back to the
subject of our conversation.
“But I can hardly think,” I said, “that all this mass of stone could be
required to build the house, large as it is. A house is not solid, you
know.”
“No,” she answered. “The original building was more of a castle, with
walls and battlements. I can show you the foundations of them still;
and the picture, too, of what the place used to be. We are not what we
were then. Many a cottage, too, has been built out of this old quarry.
Not a stone has been taken from it for the last fifty years, though.
Just let me show you one thing, Mr. Walton, and then I must leave you.”
“Do not let me detain you a moment. I will go at once,” I said;
“though, if you would allow me, I should be more at ease if I might see
you safe at the top of the stair first.”
She smiled.
“Indeed, I am not ill,” she answered; “but I have duties to attend to.
Just let me show you this, and then you shall go with me back to
mamma.”
She led the way to the edge of the pond and looked into it. I followed,
and gazed down into its depths, till my sight was lost in them. I could
see no bottom to the rocky shaft.
“There is a strong spring down there,” she said. “Is it not a dreadful
place? Such a depth!”
“Yes,” I answered; “but it has not the horror of dirty water; it is as
clear as crystal. How does the surplus escape?”
“On the opposite side of the hill you came up there is a well, with a
strong stream from it into the river.”
“I almost wonder at your choosing such a place to read in. I should
hardly like to be so near this pond,” said I, laughing.
“Judy has taken all that away. Nothing in nature, and everything out of
it, is strange to Judy, poor child! But just look down a little way
into the water on this side. Do you see anything?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Look again, against the wall of the pond,” she said.
“I see a kind of arch or opening in the side,” I answered.
“That is what I wanted you to see. Now, do you see a little barred
window, there, in the face of the rock, through the trees?”
“I cannot say I do,” I replied.
“No. Except you know where it is—and even then—it is not so easy to
find it. I find it by certain trees.”
“What is it?”
“It is the window of a little room in the rock, from which a stair
leads down through the rock to a sloping passage. That is the end of it
you see under the water.”
“Provided, no doubt,” I said, “in case of siege, to procure water.”
“Most likely; but not, therefore, confined to that purpose. There are
more dreadful stories than I can bear to think of”—-
Here she paused abruptly, and began anew “—-As if that house had
brought death and doom out of the earth with it. There was an old
burial-ground here before the Hall was built.”
“Have you ever been down the stair you speak of?” I asked.
“Only part of the way,” she answered. “But Judy knows every step of it.
If it were not that the door at the top is locked, she would have dived
through that archway now, and been in her own room in half the time.
The child does not know what fear means.”
We now moved away from the pond, towards the side of the quarry and the
open-air stair-case, which I thought must be considerably more pleasant
than the other. I confess I longed to see the gleam of that water at
the bottom of the dark sloping passage, though.
Miss Oldcastle accompanied me to the room where I had left her mother,
and took her leave with merely a bow of farewell. I saw the old lady
glance sharply from her to me as if she were jealous of what we might
have been talking about.
“Grannie, are you afraid Mr. Walton has been saying pretty things to
Aunt Winnie? I assure you he is not of that sort. He doesn’t understand
that kind of thing. But he would have jumped into the pond after me and
got his death of cold if auntie would have let him. It WAS cold. I
think I see you dripping now, Mr Walton.”
There she was in her dark corner, coiled up on a couch, and laughing
heartily; but all as if she had done nothing extraordinary. And,
indeed, estimated either by her own notions or practices, what she had
done was not in the least extraordinary.
Disinclined to stay any longer, I shook hands with the grandmother,
with a certain invincible sense of slime, and with the grandchild with
a feeling of mischievous health, as if the girl might soon corrupt the
clergyman into a partnership in pranks as well as in friendship. She
followed me out of the room, and danced before me down the oak
staircase, clearing the portion from the first landing at a bound. Then
she turned and waited for me, who came very deliberately, feeling the
unsure contact of sole and wax. As soon as I reached her, she said, in
a half-whisper, reaching up towards me on tiptoe—
“Isn’t she a beauty?”
“Who? your grandmamma?” I returned.
She gave me a little push, her face glowing with fun. But I did not
expect she would take her revenge as she did. “Yes, of course,” she
answered, quite gravely. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
And then, seeing that she had put me hors de combat, she burst into
loud laughter, and, opening the hall-door for me, let me go without
another word.
I went home very quietly, and, as I said, stepping with curious care—of
which, of course, I did not think at the time—over the yellow and brown
leaves that lay in the middle of the road.