A VISIT TO ELDERBERRY LODGE.
"Children, ay, forsooth,
They bring their own love with them when they come,
But if they come not there is peace and rest;
The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more:
Why, the world's full of them, and so is heaven--
They are not rare."--_Jean Ingelow._
The girls had lingered so long at the vicarage that Cathy postponed
their intended walk until after luncheon; but as soon as it was over
they sallied forth again, this time with Emmie.
They went through the length and breadth of the village, peeped into
the schools, visited one or two of the cottages, crossing Langley
more than once on their path; and Queenie was again struck with the
bright cheerfulness and cleanliness of the whole place. She took an
especial fancy to the post-office--a pretty rustic-looking cottage,
with a long garden full of sweet old-fashioned flowers.
"Cathy, I have fallen in love with this place," she said at last. "I
think life would go on peacefully and well here; look, Emmie, at this
empty cottage; is not this just the one you always wanted to live in
with Caleb?"
They had just passed the turning that led to Church-Stile House;
beyond were a cluster of new-built villas. Emmie clapped her hands
and ran breathlessly across the road.
"It has a board up 'to let.' Oh, Queen, do let us go over it, just
for fun; it is such a dear, sweet little house; and what a long
garden!--look."
"We can go in if you like," returned Cathy, smiling at the child's
eagerness. "I know the woman who takes care of it; it is rather a
pretty place, though ill-kept and desolate. I heard Garth say it
would let for a mere song."
Queenie did not answer; a strange thought had been agitating her all
the morning, a possibility and a probability that had taken
tremendous hold of her mind. An odd feeling came over her as she
followed Cathy through the little gate--one of those weird
over-shadowings or pre-visions that baffle metaphysicians. The place
somehow seemed familiar to her; had she seen it in a dream? A dim
sense that it belonged to her, that she had trodden that path before,
and peeped through the lattice windows, oppressed her with a giddy
unreality. Had she conjured it up among the shadows of the old
garret? or had she seen a place so nearly approximate that its
similarity deceived her? She gave Emmie's hand an involuntary
squeeze as they stood in the little porch.
It was certainly a pretty place, in spite of the air of neglect and
disuse that pervaded everything. A long narrow lawn in front ran
down to the road; opposite was the smart grocer's shop, and the lane
that led to the church and vicarage.
Some laburnums and lilacs grew near the house; there was a little
border for flowers under the windows: only a ragged-looking
Sweet-William and some weeds grew there now. Behind, an ill-kept
lawn sloped down to the house, running on to the back door, giving it
a waste, barren look, and imparting an air of dampness to the whole
place.
The inside was a little less dreary: the low lattice window,
odd-shaped and diamond-paned, gave a picturesque finish to the rooms;
the little square hall was pleasant. There were two sitting-rooms,
one much smaller than the other, with a front view that was
sufficiently cheerful; and a large bare-looking apartment, with two
windows looking out on the steep green waste behind. Nettles and
docks and festoons of coarse-looking ivy climbed about the window
ledges. The kitchen was small and dull. Upstairs, three rooms in
different stages of dampness opened out on the dark landing. Some of
the paper was torn off, and hung in moist curling lengths. A scurry
and patter of tiny feet sounded beside them; they were evidently
tenanted by families of mice.
"It is a miserable place after all," observed Cathy. "Take care, one
of those boards are rotten, Emmie; my foot nearly went through just
now."
"I don't know," returned Queenie, hesitatingly, "I think I have taken
a fancy to it; it might be made very pretty with fresh papers and a
little paint. To whom does it belong?"
"To Captain Fawcett. We are going there directly; Langley has given
me a message for Mrs. Fawcett. Oh! do come to the window a moment,
Queen; there is Mrs. Morris stopping at the corner to speak to the
three Miss Palmers. Look at the dear old creatures, dressed just
alike. There you have all the aristocracy of Hepshaw, with the
exception of Church-Stile House and the vicarage people."
"Do you mean that constitutes your society?" inquired Queenie,
pressing closer to the dirty panes, and trying to inspect critically
the flock of womanhood gathered round Greyson's smart window.
"What would you ask more?" returned her companion drily; "we don't
have balls and concerts in Hepshaw. To dine with the Fawcetts and
drink tea with Mrs. Morris and the Miss Palmers are our sole
dissipation. Ted finds so much tea a little intoxicating, and
prefers sometimes staying at home; but Langley and Garth always do
their duty manfully."
"I like the look of Mrs. Morris, she is tall and graceful-looking;
but I cannot see her face under that brown mushroom. Is she nice,
Cath?"
"Hum! there are widows and widows. She is not the 'widow indeed' St.
Paul talks about; but I won't tell tales. She has a pretty home, and
seven little hopes, more or less red-haired, like the deceased and
ever-lamented Major Morris--the dear Edmund to whose loss she owes
her present blighted and remarkably healthy existence."
"Cathy, how can you take off people so! I tell you I like the look
of her."
"So do I. She has white teeth and bright eyes, which she knows how
to use. Do you see the direction they are taking now? 'why tarry the
wheels of his chariot!' Isn't that our waggonette coming up from
Warstdale? Never mind my nonsense, Queenie; we must talk gossip
sometimes in this dreary place. Mrs. Morris is very good-natured and
very clever, and the seven little hopes are clean, wholesome
children."
"Look! your brother is stopping to speak to them."
"Of course; as though he would pass the Palmers! You have no idea
how fond the dear old ladies are of him. They pet him, and knit
endless mittens and comforters for him; he has a drawer full, I
believe. Look at them now, wagging their old heads and fluttering
round him like a flock of grey pigeons; that is Miss Faith, his
favorite, near him now."
"Faith; what a curious name!"
"Oh, they are all a cardinal virtue; they must have had devout
parents. The eldest is Hope, then comes Prudence and Charity, and
lastly, Faith. Faith is much the nicest and the prettiest; she is
comparatively young too."
"I should like to go and see them."
"Then you shall, but not this afternoon; we shall only have time for
the Fawcetts. Their house is full of curious odds and ends, and
though they dress alike they have separate rooms, which they have
furnished after their own taste. I must coax them to let you see
them; it will give you an insight into their characters."
"And they have none of them married," exclaimed Queenie, with a
girl's involuntary pity for the monotonous existence of single
blessedness.
"How could they!" returned Cathy, with a puzzled elevation of her
eyebrows. "They have lived in Hepshaw all their lives; they could
not have possibly seen any gentleman except the Vicar, and I dare say
he was married. You would not have a clergyman's daughter commit the
unpardonable crime of entering into a _mésalliance_ with the
inn-keeper or the chemist!" continued Cathy, drawing down her lips at
the corner, and speaking in a "prunes-and-prism" voice. "That is
Miss Hope; and so the poor cardinal virtues have wasted all their
sweetness on the desert air."
"How very sad," began Queenie; but Cathy suddenly cut her short.
"Not at all," was the somewhat stormy rejoinder; "people are just as
well without marrying. For my part, I think men are a mistake. I am
sick to death of school-girl rubbish; half the girls at Miss
Titheridge's pretended to be in love, and with such creatures too!
any masculine face approaching to the ideal of a barber's block was
pronounced handsome, fascinating. You know how you hated it all,
Queenie."
"As I hate all sham."
"Faugh! the thought of all the three-volume trash I swallowed gives
me moral dyspepsia even now. I recollect it was the fashion one term
to have a _cœur serré_; every one had an experience or a
disappointment. I know half the school was in love with Garth.
Well, we have flattened our faces long enough against this
bottle-green glass; now we must go on to Elderberry Lodge."
"Is that Captain Fawcett's?"
"Yes; Mrs. Morris's, next door, is the Sycamores, and the Miss
Palmers' is the Evergreens. Now I have talked myself hoarse for your
benefit; it is your ladyship's turn now. There is the Captain
himself working in his front garden; is he not a fine-looking man,
Queenie?"
Queenie acquiesced, as the tall soldierly figure walked down to the
gate to greet them. She liked the brown weather-beaten face, with
its grizzled moustache and closely-cropped head, looking as though it
were covered with grey bristles.
"Good afternoon, ladies. I saw Miss Clayton just now, and she told
me you were coming. Fine weather for the crops; I was just pottering
among my geraniums. Sit down, both of you, while I go into the house
and find my little woman; she's palavering with the maids somewhere."
"Please don't hurry her, Captain Fawcett; we shall be very
comfortable out here under this awning. Isn't this a delicious
little garden? look at those roses and bee-hives. Bless you, the
Captain's garden is his hobby; he spends the greater part of his time
working here, and in his kitchen-garden. He has the greatest show of
flowers for miles round."
"Have they no children?"
"They had one, a girl, but she died. I almost wish we had not
brought Emmie; I think Alice was just twelve when she caught the
fever. It is eight or nine years ago, but they have never got over
it. Ah, there comes the Captain with his 'little woman.'"
Queenie stifled an exclamation as she rose from her seat. Mrs.
Fawcett was as tall as her husband,--a thin, long-necked woman, fully
six feet high, and gaunt almost to scragginess.
She had a worn, anxious-looking face; it was difficult to imagine it
had ever been young or good-looking. The prominent teeth, high
cheekbones, and scanty grey hair, told no tale of past beauty. It
was a plain face, grown plainer with age. She looked like a
caricature of her husband's taste beside his handsome old face and
grand figure.
Her hand-shake was almost masculine in its grasp, and her voice was
harsh, but not ungentle; but both face and voice softened strangely
at the first sight of Emmie. The husband and wife exchanged looks.
"Do you see, Captain?"
"Aye, aye, missus, I see."
"Is this your little sister, Miss Marriott? Come to me, darling; how
old are you?"
"Twelve," repeated Emmie, looking up in her face with solemn blue
eyes. Emmie rarely smiled with strangers.
"Twelve; do you hear that, Joshua?"
"Aye, aye, I hear it, little woman."
"Just her age," repeated the wife hurriedly, laying her hand on his
arm, while her eyes filled with tears.
"Twelve years and three months," he repeated involuntarily.
"And she has Alice's blue eyes too,--your own color, Captain."
The girls had listened with silent sympathy to this brief interchange
of sorrowful questioning; but now Emmie interrupted them. She drew
closer to Mrs. Fawcett, and laid a hand confidingly on her lap.
"Was Alice the name of your little girl? Cathy said you had one."
"Hush, Emmie; come here to me, love;" but Emmie hung back from her
friend's extended hand.
"Yes; her name was Alice; she is still my little girl," returned the
poor mother, speaking with her pure maternal faith, and unconsciously
verifying the eternity of love; "the treasure once given never really
lost, only lent to safe keeping."
"Of course she is your little girl," was Emmie's answer. "You mean
to see her again some day, only she is not keeping house with you
now; perhaps she would have got tired. God would know all about
that; He does not like children to be tired; He was very nearly
taking me away for the same reason, only I got rested somehow."
"Captain, do you hear that?"
"Aye, poor bairn; too big a mind for so small a body."
"Am I like her?" persisted Emmie curiously, looking up into the plain
face, now softened into motherly comeliness, the beautifier, love,
smoothing out irregularities and roughnesses even on Mrs. Fawcett's
unloving visage.
Queenie heard afterwards that she had never been handsome even in her
youth, but that she had been loved, as some plain women are by men,
with a constancy and devotion which many a spoiled beauty fails to
win. "He must have seen the real goodness shining behind her
plainness," Cathy said afterwards, when Queenie and she talked the
matter over.
"Are you like her, darling?" answered Mrs. Fawcett, mournfully. "You
have her large blue eyes; but, until she fell ill, she had rosy
cheeks and long dark curls. She was the very image of her father,
the dear angel."
"My hair has been cut off," returned Emmie, pointing to the soft
little rings just peeping under her cap; "it means to curl too some
day. I have always longed for curls; so the angels always have them
in pictures."
"Come with me, my little maid, and look at my roses," interrupted the
Captain, reading his wife's troubled countenance aright. The tears
streamed over the thin face as Emmie trotted happily away with him.
"That is just the way they walked hand in hand every morning to look
at the roses," sobbed the poor mother. "'Father's roses' were the
last words Alice ever said; 'I should like one of father's roses';
and when he went out to pick her one she put her head down on my
shoulder and then she was gone."
Queenie's long eye-lashes glittered with sympathizing tears. She
could enter into all; she had so nearly lost Emmie. She thought of
the father going down to his garden to pick red and white roses for
the little dead hand that could not open to receive them. "My
beloved is gone down into his garden to the beds of spices, to feed
in the gardens, and to gather lilies": those beautiful words of the
Canticles came into her mind. What if in Paradise, while parents
wept below for them that are not, the children they had lost went in
bright bands after One who died for them, "when He went down into His
garden to gather lilies!"
The girls were rather subdued when they bade good-bye to the good
Captain and his wife, and turned into the little lane. Cathy pushed
her hat restlessly from her forehead; some thought or discontent
wrinkled it.
"What lots of good people there are in the world after all," she half
grumbled.
"There are two there," returned her friend, with a gesture of her
hands towards Elderberry Lodge. "My visit there has made me sad, and
yet it has done me good. I am so glad we went, Cathy."
"Good people seem to agree with you; they never make you
discontented, as they do me."
"No; I like standing on tiptoe till my neck aches. I love size,
bigness, grand moral structure; it does one good to breathe the same
air with some people; it is like resting on a hill-top and enjoying a
wide beautiful view. I don't mind at all being a pigmy among giants.
If I had been Gulliver I should have had small sympathy with the
Lilliputians. Littleness of mind is abhorrent to me."
"There you go," grumbled Cathy; "you sensible people are enough to
drive one crazy. Over-much goodness makes me vixenish; I feel
inclined to fly in the face of it."
"You foolish child."
"Mr. Logan is often too much for me, and so is Miss Cosie; I run away
from them both sometimes. I'll own, if you like, the disease is
infectious to those predisposed to it. If you stay long enough in
their vicinity you might catch it, you know. Prevention is better
than cure; so, for fear I get too good, I just run away," finished
Cathy in her droll manner.
In the front court they came upon Garth digging up a little
flower-border under the hall window. He threw down his spade when he
saw them.
"Well, I've settled about the picnic in the granite quarry. We go
to-morrow."
"Garth, you are a brick; I mean a dear old fellow. Oh," folding her
hands pathetically, "don't tell of me, the word only slipped out just
by accident. Have you really arranged it?"
"Yes; I have had a talk with Langley. She says we must not lose the
fine weather. It is not to be a grand affair, mind. Only the
Logans, and Fawcetts, and Miss Faith; yes, and Harry Chester."
"King Karl! Oh, I am so glad. Why, when did you see him?"
"He and Nanette are in there," pointing to the drawing-room. "Don't
let me keep you if you want to introduce him to Miss Marriott," as
Cathy looked eager and irresolute. "He is a very old friend of ours,
and a great favorite with the whole family," he continued, speaking
to Queenie; "in fact, Harry is a favorite with every one."
"Let her judge for herself," returned his sister, impatiently.
"Come, Queenie, let us go in; I have set my heart on being the first
to introduce you to the King of Karldale."