conservatories, the most flowery lilacs, laburnums, and acacias of
suburban Oxley. Here was the "best neighbourhood," and here, on the
clean, gravelled footway, the nursery-maids and children went to walk on
fine mornings; ladies and little dogs paid calls of an afternoon; and
groups of slim, long-haired girls came out to attend classes at Oxley
Manor, the famous Young Ladies' School. The Manor House lay back from
the road behind high, substantial, red-brick walls, with mossy crevices,
and bushy ivy peeping over the top; showing beyond, garden trees,
walnuts, acacias, and horse-chestnuts, surrounding the big, substantial
house, where, from the small-paned windows, peeped now and then a girl's
face.
There was no better school in the country than the Miss Vennings' at
Oxley Manor; and it was considered a great privilege for the girls of
Oxley that certain classes there were opened to them; and a still
greater that Miss Spencer and Miss Crofton were allowed to attend
regularly as day scholars. But these young ladies did not come from
Redhurst by the road. There was a pretty, quiet path through the
meadows--half-way between the public road and the towing-path by the
canal--that led here through a bit of copsewood famous for primroses,
there across a sunny, open meadow; now over a low, wooden stile, then
between high hedges, full of brambles, honey-suckles, and roses; till
the hedges grew neater and closer, and terminated in the high red wall
of the Manor kitchen-garden, from which opened a little green gate. On
the other side of the road was a paddock, with a shallow pond where
ducks flourished, and where, on the opposite bank, an old pollard willow
threw its slender branches across the muddy water.
On that sunny afternoon a sunnier spot could hardly have been found than
the narrow path under the wall; and yet here lingered two figures: a
girl, who had poised herself on the end of a great garden-roller, and a
young man who leaned against the white railing of the pond beside her.
She was a graceful little lady, small and soft-faced; with brown hair,
shining and neat, round rosy lips, and clear, steady eyes of a hazel
tint. Her white dress was elaborately trimmed with handsome embroidery,
and all her blue ribbons were fresh and smart, as if they had no need to
see sunny days enough to dim their brightness. There was a bag of books
at her feet, and her pretty eyes were cast down towards them; and her
pink cheeks were flushed with considerable, yet not excessive,
embarrassment.
"But, Arthur," she said, with a clear, distinct, and yet soft utterance,
"but, Arthur, I think we ought to consider about it a great deal."
"I have never considered it at all," said Arthur Spencer.
He was a tall young man, slight and graceful; with--spite of his second
class and his cultivated expression--a sort of happy-go-lucky air, that
seemed hardly to have outgrown the right to his old appellation of a
"very pretty boy," earned by his bright colour, dark hair, with a
picturesque wave in it, and black-lashed eyes, of that distinct shade of
grey which cannot be mistaken for blue or hazel. He was an elegant,
rather handsome young man at three-and-twenty, with a light-hearted,
self-reliant manner that might have been careless and even conceited had
a less earnest and genuine affection looked out from his bright eyes at
the pretty creature beside him. Arthur thought himself clever,
good-looking, rather a fine fellow in his way; but what did he not think
of Mysie Crofton?
"There's nothing _new_ in it; is there, Mysie?" he continued, as he took
her prettily-gloved hand, with the freedom of old intercourse, just
touched with something sweeter. "Nothing new. We were always the
friends of the family, and it _must_ have come to this soon."
"Yes," said Mysie, simply; "but I thought--I thought--those things never
_did_ come to anything."
"You thought? Ah, Mysie, I have my answer now: You thought, you little
worldly-minded thing, that first love was all humbug, eh? Well, we'll
be an instance to the contrary."
Mysie blushed.
"I'm sure," she said, "you were always telling me about young ladies."
"But I always told you about them, Mysie! And now I could not go on any
longer without having it out. _I_ knew it; and _you_ knew it--oh, yes,
you did; and Aunt Lily was beginning to find out."
"But there's Hugh?"
"Ah, Hugh. I daresay he won't quite like it; those things are not in
his line. But he is too good to make foolish objections. To be sure,
there is one he may fairly make."
"What's that?" said Mysie, frightened.
"Your fortune, Mysie; and when I think of it, it half frightens me."
"I don't think it is so very much," said Mysie.
"It is enough to give you a right to all this," said Arthur, touching
her pretty dress; "and if I thought I could not give it you, I would be
silent. But, Mysie, I have not much of my own; but I think I have
earned the right to say I have a good chance of success in any career I
might choose; and there is always the Bank. I know I cannot marry you
now, Mysie, my darling," he continued, with a sort of frank, eager
deference; "and if anyone you like better comes by I will never hold you
to your promise. But in the meantime are we the worse for acknowledging
that which has existed so long--so long? Oh, Mysie, I don't know how to
make love to you. I think it's all made, but you are part of myself. I
could have no life without you. I cannot imagine myself _not_ loving
you, not looking to have you one day for my own."
If Mysie was a little slow to answer, it was not because she could
imagine her life without Arthur. All this was only the right name for
that which had always been. They _were_ Arthur and Mysie; and they
would be Arthur and Mysie to the end of the chapter.
"Yes," she said, "that's quite true. It just is. But I'll try and be a
great deal better to you than ever I have been. It ought to be like
`John Anderson.'"
Mysie had ideas, and was not afraid to express them. She used nice,
pretty language, and when a thought struck her she would say it out in a
way sometimes formal, but always genuine and sweet.
"John Anderson?" said Arthur--not that he did not know.
And Mysie repeated the sweetest of all sweet love-songs, the one
fulfilment in the midst of so much longing desire.
As Arthur heard her gentle, fearless voice, and saw her clear eyes
raised to his own, as she repeated, without fear or falter:
"And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo,"
a great awe came over him.
"Oh, Mysie, my love, my darling, may God grant it! For nothing in life
could ever come between us."
And with this hope, that in its intensity was almost fear, he drew her
towards him, and gave her his first _lover's_ kiss. She was silent; and
then, recovering herself, said, in a different tone:
"And I don't think it will be inconvenient to have a little money!"
The revulsion of ideas made Arthur laugh.
"Worldly wisdom!" he exclaimed; then suddenly sprang up from the other
end of the roller as a tall handsome lady, in a garden hat, came out of
the green gate.
"Miss Crofton!"
"I--I was only taking Mysie to school, Miss Venning," said Arthur; while
Mysie, pink and fluttered, picked up her books and hurried off up the
path.
Miss Venning was a stately, blue-eyed woman of forty or thereabouts;
with a fair, fresh complexion, and a manner that twenty-years of
school-keeping had rendered somewhat condescending, as if the world
consisted of pupils to be at once governed and encouraged; while her
blue eyes had a certain look of enquiry in them, as if she was in the
habit of passing judgment on those who came before her. But, that the
judgment would be just and kind, the handsome face gave every promise;
and, perhaps, the scales might even drop a little in favour of a kind of
culprit that did not often come before her. Besides, if Arthur Spencer
had brought the girls to school once within her recollection, he had
done so fifty times.
But Arthur did not give time for this awful monosyllable to frame itself
into an objection.
"Miss Venning," he said, persuasively, "I'm doing no harm. I daresay
you have often thought of it before; it couldn't be helped, you see, any
longer."
"Arthur," said Miss Venning, in a deep, full voice, somewhat appalling
to hear, "if you had anything particular to say to Miss Crofton, you
have ample opportunities without following her here."
Arthur did not look much discomfited. Perhaps there was the slightest
turn in the formidable voice that showed that the humour of the
situation was not quite lost on the speaker.
He blushed, and then said, with a straightforwardness that few ladies
would have resisted:
"Miss Venning, I want to have Mysie for my wife, if my aunt and Hugh
will consent to our engagement. I don't know when we began to think of
it, but I suppose to-day it--well--came to a head."
"And what does Mysie say?" said Miss Venning, still judicial, but
interested. She considered Arthur Spencer a very promising young man.
"Mysie sees no objection, Miss Venning. I didn't mean to take a
liberty, I'm sure, with the sacred precincts of the Manor House; but,
since it has happened so, I do wish you would let me consult you."
Whether this appeal was the result of a delicate tact, or of the
overflowing happiness that longed for sympathy, it caused Miss Venning
to walk along the path beside him, saying:
"Well?"
"Well," said Arthur, "you see how it is with us; and we have our lives
before us, and there is time for me to make myself worthy of Mysie's
money--I'll not say of herself," he added, with a little softening of
his confident voice.
"Well?" said Miss Venning again, with a yet deeper intonation.
"I have not hitherto made up my mind as to my profession," said Arthur.
"I hardly looked beyond the examination; but the Bank has always been my
destination, and you know my uncle's kindness marked out my career there
long ago."
"And haven't you any further ambition?" said Miss Venning, who thought
young men ought to push themselves.
"Why," said Arthur, "I don't like teaching, in which career my degree
would be of most use to me; and the bar is very slow work. Hugh really
wants help; and, in short, Miss Venning, when life is so crowded and the
world so over-full I think if a man has the good luck to have a line
marked out for him he ought to stick to it, unless his tastes point very
decidedly the other way. Besides, I like Oxley. And I think," he
added, laughing and colouring, "I should say this under _any_
circumstances. But if not, one must take life as a whole, you know."
Miss Venning thought Oxley Bank rather a flat ending to so creditable a
career as Arthur's had been; but then, on the other hand, it was
eminently safe and respectable, and, with this early marriage, would
effectually "keep him out of mischief."
"But what will your cousin say?" she asked.
"Why, I'm afraid he'll think it his duty to object a little. But Hugh
is such a good fellow, and has always been so thoroughly kind to me, and
is so fair in judgment, that I am sure he will own I have as good a
right to try for the prize as anyone else. It's very odd that he has
never looked out for himself. But, dear me! he would be so awfully
particular!"
"Well, Arthur," said Miss Venning, "I approve of young men marrying.
It's far more necessary for them than for girls."
"One couldn't well manage it without a girl," murmured Arthur.
"So that," said Miss Venning, "it's well young women have different
opinions on the subject. Go home, and take the responsibility off my
shoulders by telling your aunt at once."
"I'll never do it in your garden again, Miss Venning," cried Arthur, as
he left her with a very hearty shake of the hand.
Certainly life lay fair before and behind Arthur Spencer. He was
clever, with the technical skill needed for the attainment of his
scholastic honours more developed than the general power behind it.
That is to say, all his brains--and they were good ones--had been given
to the composition of Greek and Latin, and to the acquirement of the
knowledge necessary to the attainment of a good degree. He was
naturally active, and industrious; and ambition and conscience had both
urged him to do well the work that nature had made easy to him. He had
won plenty of praise, which he liked exceedingly; and plenty of
popularity, which came so naturally that he was hardly conscious of it.
But he had hitherto taken life outside the schools very much for
granted; thought Hugh infallible on matters of business, and James an
oracle in matters of art. Indeed, Arthur's power of appreciation was
one of his best points. Unlike many of her sons, he loved and believed
in Oxford--perhaps because he had given her his best and she had well
repaid him; and, while there, his time and thoughts had been fully
occupied with the work before him. At once affectionate and
self-reliant, he took readily to the independence that circumstances
indicated, and at a very early age took good care of himself. And,
though there was no one in his boyhood to bestow on him exclusive
affection, his warm heart gave out enough to all to make his kindly home
a happy and sunny one. For Arthur liked most people. It had been said
with some truth that one person was much the same as another to him, he
"got on" so well with all. It would be praising the gay untried boy far
too highly to say that he had a spirit of universal charity; but he did
possess a sort of loving-kindness, a gift in whose soil the greatest of
all graces might grow; an entire absence of depreciating ill-nature.
But Arthur himself had long known that for him the human race was
divided into two parts--Mysie and other people.
PART TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.
OXLEY MANOR.
"Oh, so many, many, many maidens!"
Under the great walnut-tree on the lawn the three Miss Vennings were
assembled in consultation. The Manor House possessed one of the most
enchanting gardens that the past has ever handed down to the present.
High walls shutting it in safe, on winch grew jessamine and wisteria and
sweet old-fashioned roses; a narrow path running round the lawn, and
leading away into vistas of shrubbery; while on the soft turf grew
beautiful trees, and, in especial, an immense walnut. Miss Venning sat
on a garden-bench communicating to her sisters the important event that
had just electrified her maidenly precincts.
"It _was_ very inconsiderate of Arthur to select our garden-roller for
the purpose," said Miss Clarissa, the second of the trio.
"Why, Clarissa? You don't suppose people settle the exact spot
beforehand!" said Miss Florence, the third.
Miss Florence, as she now aspired to be called, had been little Flossy
not many years back; and the thick bright hair of fairest
flaxen--"Flossy's tow," as her sisters called it--now twisted round her
head, had not so very long ago hung down her back in all its native
lustre. She was a tall girl of twenty, with a fine open face, handsome
in form, and coloured with a pink--"as pink as pink ribbon," Clarissa
said--bright enough to allow for a little fading as the years went by;
and her blue eyes were full of thought and energy. Young as she was,
everyone knew that she was a much greater power in the house than Miss
Clarissa, and was hardly second to Miss Venning herself. All the girls
obeyed her; she was full of life and force to the very tips of her
strong, slender fingers; could learn better than the girls, teach better
than the governesses, thought school-keeping a vocation and not a
drudgery, and spent her half-holidays in the parish; was never ill,
never tired, and never unhappy; and possessed such a store of spirits
and energy that--to quote again from Clarissa--if Flossy was not marked
out for misfortune Nature had wasted a great deal of good stuff in the
making of her.
Flossy was Miss Venning's darling, and need never have corrected an
exercise nor set a sum if she had not been so minded; but she had
replied to the offer of freedom with scorn and contempt: "Did sister
think she should be happier for being idle?" and set to work with all
her might and main to "enlarge the minds and improve the tone" of her
sister's pupils, introducing new studies, new authors, and new ideas;
talking over Miss Venning--or sometimes, perhaps, talking her down--with
an equal amount of self-confidence and self-devotion.
In Miss Clarissa's girlish days no such possibility of freedom had been
offered to her. Nine or ten years ago, during the long illness of their
mother, and while the brothers who filled up the wide gaps between the
three sisters had been yet unsettled in life, the circumstances of the
school had required more personal exertion; and when Clarissa was at the
end of her teens she had been too busy--teaching all the English, that
the resident governess might be French--to consider if it was desirable
for the pupils to read Thackeray or to learn Latin and Euclid. Clarissa
was a good girl and did her duty; but now, at eight and twenty, she felt
as if life might have offered her something more than school-keeping.
She told Flossy that she should like to marry a Duke and drink chocolate
out of Sevres china--and the scandalised Flossy perceived neither the
twinkle of the sleepy blue eyes nor the wistful fall of the well-curved
mouth, the delicate prettiness of which gave to the small curly-haired
Clarissa a look of youth which neither the absence of Sevres china nor
the presence of young ladies had hitherto impaired. Flossy's eyes were
always wide open and rarely twinkled, though they often laughed.
They brightened into a laugh now, as she repeated her remark--
"You don't suppose, Clarissa, that people settle the exact spot
beforehand!"
"Really, Flossy, my experience is limited; but, as Mary says, as Arthur
lives in the house with Mysie, I think he might have managed matters at
home."
"Oh, but," said Flossy, "now he has sister on his side, you see."
"Yes, Mary; you're in the scrape," said Clarissa.
"Really, my dear, I don't see that at all. I am not responsible for
Miss Crofton now, beyond her German and music lessons."
"I suppose she might do much better," said Clarissa.
"She couldn't do better," said Florence, decidedly, in her full rich
voice. Will it quite detract from Flossy's character for feminine
softness if it be owned that she spoke rather loud? "Arthur has very
good prospects, and is the very nicest young man I know."
"Dear me! Flossy," said Clarissa. "I thought you considered matrimony
a mistake."
"By no means," emphatically returned Flossy; "when everything is
suitable and people are fond of each other. I don't think I shall ever
wish to marry anyone myself; and how anyone can say life is wanting in
interest I can't conceive; but I should never be so absurd as to lay
down general principles. That is where people fall into error. And
besides," she concluded heartily, "anyone could see dear little Mysie
was fond of Arthur, and I am so glad she will be happy!"
"Well, there are more words than hers and Arthur's to that," said
Clarissa.
"Mrs Crichton never objects to anything," said Flossy; "and as for Mr
Crichton, surely he won't be so horrid."
"Well, _I_ could not help it," said Miss Venning.
"No," returned Flossy; "and as Mysie is not exactly a girl it doesn't
signify."
Mysie was eighteen and a week; but Flossy used the term "girl" in a
strictly technical sense.
"Dear me!" she continued, "my class will be waiting for me." And as she
ran into the house Miss Venning looked after her.
"I think young men have very strange tastes," she said.
"Because _Flossy_ has no lovers?" said Clarissa, with a slight emphasis.
"Well, I am sure I do not want her to have any," returned Miss Venning,
with a smile at her sisterly partiality.
"Dear me, no, Mary! Flossy won't be fit for a lover for five years at
least. She has all the world to reform first!"
Miss Venning laughed as she went to tend her beautiful roses, and
Clarissa, left alone, wandered on till she sat down under an acacia
tree. She threw herself back on the soft turf, and gazed up at the sky
through its veil of delicate dancing foliage, while she caught the
fast-falling white blossoms in her hand. It was a childish attitude and
a childish action; but it may have been absently done, for she was still
smiling at the joke of the surprised lovers. At last the smile trembled
and ceased, and she hid her face on the mossy turf. Lying there on the
grass, with her little slim figure and curly head, she looked like a
girl escaped from school, fretting over her tasks or dreaming of fairy
princes. But Miss Clarissa was twenty-eight, and a schoolmistress; and
had tasks to set instead of to learn, and no lovers to dream of, past,
present, or future. So she soon sat upright, brushed off the acacia
blossoms, and went into the house to get ready for tea.
Meanwhile, Flossy had taken her way to the long sunny school-room, where
sat some twelve or fifteen girls reading Wilhelm Tell with the German
governess--all, save one or two, evincing in tone, look, or manner a
conviction that German and hot afternoons were incompatible elements.
There was a little brightening as Miss Florence paused on her way to the
dining-room, where her own class of younger ones were preparing their
lessons. Mysie sat with her clear eyes fixed on her book, her soft
round face pinker than usual, her little figure very still, her pencil
in her hand. Was she taking notes of the lesson?
"Have you written out your translation, Mysie?" said Flossy,
mischievously.
"No, Miss Florence," said Mysie, in formal school-girl fashion; but she
could hardly restrain her little quivering smile.
"These young ladies are idle, Miss Florence," said their teacher.
"That is very wrong of them," returned Flossy. "There is only one
excuse for being idle--" then, as Mysie looked up with a start, she
added, "the hot weather."
Neither romance not hot weather interfered with Miss Florence's energy
over her German lesson, and the sleepy little schoolgirls had small
chance with their brisk young teacher. A bell rang, Flossy fired a
concluding question at the sleepiest and stupidest, extracted an
entirely wrong answer, and, but slightly disconcerted--for was not she
used to it?--ran off to her room, arranged her dress, stuck a great red
rose in her hair, and came down to tea.
Miss Florence was much admired by her pupils, and had a sort of
half-sympathetic, half-genial pleasure in their admiration. Besides,
her rose was as a flag to celebrate the festal occurrence of the
afternoon. "I always like to wear pretty things when I feel jolly," she
would say; "and if ever you see me going about in a drab dress and a
brown veil you may be quite sure I've had a disappointment!"
"Then," said Clarissa, "if you buy that very pink silk I shall think you
have had an offer."
"Oh, no; think I don't want one."
Flossy crushed her rose under a big straw hat, when she was set free
after tea, and took her way merrily along the fields to Redhurst. The
way was very pretty, and the evening lights very charming; but Flossy
scurried along, much too full of human nature to care for any other.
She had been half playfellow and half teacher to Mysie for years, and
had grown up in familiar intercourse with all the household, and was on
terms with Arthur of mutual lecturing and teasing.
Redhurst was a square, red house, with white facings; and stood in the
midst of pretty, park-like meadows, through which ran the shallow,
sedge-grown river, which, nearer Oxley, merged in the sleepy canal. The
garden came down to the river's brim, and great white fierce swans and
little furry black ducks swam up and down under the willows. The
field-path led to an old white stone bridge, looking like a small model
of one of those over the Thames, and across it Flossy came into the
garden which led up to a terrace and steps in front of the house. So
far the garden was rather stiff and old-fashioned, but croquet hoops
profaned the soft turf, garden chairs and a tea-table enlivened the
terrace; a girl of fifteen, with a mane of dark rusty hair, stood on the
step, and a lady was sitting in the most comfortable of the chairs above
her.