“Around the very place doth brood
A calm and holy quietude.”—REV. ISAAC WILLIAMS.
The level beams of a summer sun, ending one of his longest careers, were
tipping a mountain peak with an ineffable rosy purple, contrasting
with the deep shades of narrow ravines that cleft the rugged sides, and
gradually expanded into valleys, sloping with green pasture, or clothed
with wood. The whole picture, with its clear, soft sky, was retraced on
the waters of the little lake set in emerald meadows, which lay before
the eyes of Rachel Keith, as she reclined in a garden chair before the
windows of a pretty rustic-looking hotel, but there was no admiration,
no peaceful contemplation on her countenance, only the same weary air of
depression, too wistful and startled even to be melancholy repose, and
the same bewildered distressed look that had been as it were stamped on
her by the gaze of the many unfriendly eyes at the Quarter Sessions, and
by her two unfortunate dinner parties.
The wedding was to have been quietness itself, but though the bridegroom
had refused to contribute sister, brother-in-law, or even uncle to the
numbers, conventionalities had been too strong for Mrs. Curtis, and
“just one more” had been added to the guests till a sufficient multitude
had been collected to renew all Rachel’s morbid sensations of distress
and bewilderment with their accompanying feverish symptoms, and she had
been only able to proceed on her journey by very short stages, taken
late in the day.
Alick had not forgotten her original views as to travelling, and as they
were eventually to go to Scotland, had proposed beginning with Dutch
reformatories and Swiss cretins; but she was so plainly unfit for extra
fatigue and bustle, that the first few weeks were to be spent in Wales,
where the enjoyment of fine scenery might, it was hoped, be beneficial
to the jaded spirits, and they had been going through a course of
passes and glens as thoroughly as Rachel’s powers would permit, for any
over-fatigue renewed feverishness and its delusive miseries, and the
slightest alarm told upon the shattered nerves.
She did not easily give way at the moment, but the shock always took
revenge in subsequent suffering, which all Alick’s care could not
prevent, though the exceeding charm of his tenderness rendered even the
indisposition almost precious to her.
“What a lovely sunset!” he said, coming to lean over the back of her
chair. “Have you been watching it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you very much tired?”
“No, it is very quiet here.”
“Very; but I must take you in before that curling mist mounts into your
throat.”
“This is a very nice place, Alick, the only really quiet one we have
found.”
“I am afraid that it will be so no longer. The landlord tells me he has
letters from three parties to order rooms.”
“Oh, then, pray let us go on,” said Rachel, looking alarmed.
“To-morrow afternoon then, for I find there’s another waterfall.”
“Very well,” said Rachel, resignedly.
“Or shall we cut the waterfall, and get on to Llan—something?”
“If you don’t think we ought to see it.”
“Ought?” he said, smiling. “What is the ought in the case? Why are we
going through all this? Is it a duty to society or to ourselves?”
“A little of both, I suppose,” said Rachel.
“And, Rachel, from the bottom of your heart, is it not a trying duty?”
“I want to like what you are showing me,” said Rachel.
“And you are more worried than delighted, eh?”
“I—I don’t know! I see it is grand and beautiful! I did love my own
moors, and the Spinsters’ Needles, but—Don’t think me very ungrateful,
but I can’t enter into all this! All I really do care for is your
kindness, and helping me about,” and she was really crying like a child
unable to learn a lesson.
“Well,” he said, with his own languor of acquiescence, “we are
perfectly agreed. Waterfalls are an uncommon bore, if one is not in a
concatenation accordingly.”
Rachel was beguiled into a smile.
“Come,” he said, “let us be strong minded! If life should ever become
painful to us because of our neglect of the waterfalls, we will set out
and fulfil our tale of them. Meantime, let me take you where you shall
be really quiet, home to Bishopsworthy.”
“But your uncle does not expect you so soon.”
“My uncle is always ready for me, and a week or two of real rest there
would make you ready for the further journey.”
Rachel made no opposition. She was glad to have her mind relieved
from the waterfalls, but she had rather have been quite alone with
her husband. She knew that Lord and Lady Keith had taken a house at
Littleworthy, while Gowanbrae was under repair, and she dreaded the
return to the bewildering world, before even the first month was over;
but Alick made the proposal so eagerly that she could not help assenting
with all the cordiality she could muster, thinking that it must be a
wretched, disappointing wedding tour for him, and she would at least not
prevent his being happy with his uncle; as happy as he could be with
a person tied to him, of whom all his kindred must disapprove,
and especially that paragon of an uncle, whom she heard of like an
intensification of all that class of clergy who had of late been most
alien to her.
Alick did not press for her real wishes, but wrote his letter, and
followed it as fast as she could bear to travel. So when the train, a
succession of ovens for living bodies disguised in dust, drew up at the
Littleworthy Station, there was a ready response to the smart footman’s
inquiry, “Captain and Mrs. Keith?” This personage by no means accorded
with Rachel’s preconceived notions of the Rectory establishment, but she
next heard the peculiar clatter by which a grand equipage announces its
importance, and saw the coronetted blinkers tossing on the other side of
the railing. A kind little note of welcome was put into Rachel’s hand as
she was seated in the luxurious open carriage, and Alick had never felt
better pleased with his sister than when he found his wife thus spared
the closeness of the cramping fly, or the dusty old rectory phaeton.
Hospitality is never more welcome than at the station, and Bessie’s
letter was complacently accepted. Rachel would, she knew, be too much
tired to see her on that day, and on the next she much regretted having
an engagement in London, but on the Sunday they would not fail to meet,
and she begged that Rachel would send word by the servant what time Meg
should be sent to the Rectory for her to ride; it would be a kindness to
exercise her, for it was long since she had been used.
Rachel could not help colouring with pleasure at the notion of riding
her own Meg again, and Alick freely owned that it was well thought of.
He already had a horse at his uncle’s, and was delighted to see Rachel
at last looking forward to something. But as she lay back in the
carriage, revelling in the fresh wind, she became dismayed at the
succession of cottages of gentility, with lawns and hedges of various
pretensions.
“There must be a terrible number of people here!”
“This is only Littleworthy.”
“Not very little.”
“No; I told you it was villafied and cockneyfied. There,” as the horses
tried to stop at a lodge leading to a prettily built house, “that’s
Timber End, the crack place here, where Bessie has always said it was
her ambition to live.”
“How far is it from the Parsonage?”
“Four miles.”
Which was a comfort to Rachel, not that she wished to be distant from
Bessie, but the population appalled her imagination.
“Bishopsworthy is happily defended by a Dukery,” explained Alick, as
coming to the end of the villas they passed woods and fields, a bit of
heathy common, and a scattering of cottages. Labourers going home from
work looked up, and as their eyes met Alick’s there was a mutual smile
and touch of the hat. He evidently felt himself coming home. The trees
of a park were beginning to rise in front, when the carriage turned
suddenly down a sharp steep hill; the right side of the road bounded by
a park paling; the left, by cottages, reached by picturesque flights
of brick stairs, then came a garden wall, and a halt. Alick called out,
“Thanks,” and “we will get out here,” adding, “They will take in the
goods the back way. I don’t like careering into the churchyard.”
Rachel, alighting, saw that the lane proceeded downwards to a river
crossed by a wooden bridge, with an expanse of meadows beyond. To her
left was a stable-yard, and below it a white gate and white railings
enclosing a graveyard, with a very beautiful church standing behind a
mushroom yew-tree. The upper boundary of the churchyard was the clipped
yew hedge of the rectory garden, whose front entrance was through
the churchyard. There was a lovely cool tranquillity of aspect as the
shadows lay sleeping on the grass; and Rachel could have stood and
gazed, but Alick opened the gate, and there was a movement at the seat
that enclosed the gnarled trunk of the yew tree. A couple of village
lads touched their caps and departed the opposite way, a white setter
dog bounded forward, and, closely attended by a still snowier cat, a
gentleman came to meet them, so fearlessly treading the pathway between
the graves, and so youthful in figure, that it was only the “Well,
uncle, here she is,” and, “Alick, my dear boy,” that convinced her that
this was indeed Mr. Clare. The next moment he had taken her hand, kissed
her brow, and spoken a few words of fatherly blessing, then, while
Alick exchanged greetings with the cat and dog, he led her to the arched
yew-tree entrance to his garden, up two stone steps, along a flagged
path across the narrow grass-plat in front of the old two-storied house,
with a tiled verandah like an eyebrow to the lower front windows.
Instead of entering by the door in the centre, he turned the corner
of the house, where the eastern gable disclosed a window opening on a
sloping lawn full of bright flower-beds. The room within was lined
with books and stored with signs of parish work, but with a refined
orderliness reigning over the various little ornaments, and almost
betokening feminine habitation; and Alick exclaimed with admiration of a
large bowl of fresh roses, beautifully arranged.
“Traces of Bessie,” said Mr. Clare; “she brought them this morning,
and spent nearly an hour in arranging them and entertaining me with her
bright talk. I have hardly been able to keep out of the room since, they
make it so delicious.”
“Do you often see her?” asked Alick.
“Yes, dear child, she is most good-natured and attentive, and I take it
most kindly of her, so courted as she is.”
“How do you get on with his lordship?”
“I don’t come much in his way, he has been a good deal laid up with
sciatica, but he seems very fond of her; and it was all her doing that
they have been all this time at Littleworthy, instead of being in town
for the season. She thought it better for him.”
“And where is Mr. Lifford?” asked Alick.
“Gone to M—— till Saturday.”
“Unable to face the bride.”
“I fear Ranger is not equally shy,” said Mr. Clare, understanding a
certain rustle and snort to import that the dog was pressing his
chin hard upon Rachel’s knee, while she declared her content with the
handsome creature’s black depth of eye; and the cat executed a promenade
of tenderness upon Alick.
“How are the peacocks, Alick?” added Mr. Clare; “they, at least, are
inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but
Joe insisted that they were getting lop-sided.”
Alick put his head out at the window. “All right, sir; Joe has been a
little hard on the crest of the left-hand one, but it is recovering.”
Whereupon, Rachel discovered that the peacocks were creatures of
yew-tree, perched at either end of the garden fence. Mr. Clare had found
them there, and preserved them with solicitous fidelity.
Nothing could be less like than he was to the grave, thin, stooping
ascetic in a long coat, that she had expected. He was a tall, well-made
man, of the same youthful cast of figure as his nephew, and a far
lighter and more springy step, with features and colouring recalling
those of his niece, as did the bright sunny playful sweetness of his
manner; his dark handsome eyes only betraying their want of sight by
a certain glassy immobility that contrasted with the play of the
expressive mouth. It was hard to guess why Bessie should have shunned
such an uncle. Alick took Rachel to the bedroom above the library,
and, like it, with two windows—one overlooking churchyard, river, and
hay-fields, the other commanding, over the peacock hedge, a view of the
playground, where Mr. Clare was seen surrounded by boys, appealing to
him on some disputed matter of cricket. There was a wonderful sense of
serenity, freshness, and fragrance, inexpressibly grateful to Rachel’s
wearied feelings, and far more comfortable than the fine scenery through
which she had been carried, because no effort to look and admire was
incumbent on her—nay, not even an effort to talk all the evening. Mr.
Clare seemed to have perfectly imbibed the idea that rest was what she
wanted, and did not try to make small talk with her, though she sat
listening with pleased interest to the conversation between him and his
nephew—so home like, so full of perfect understanding of one another.
“Is there anything to be read aloud?” presently asked Alick.
“You have not by chance got ‘Framley Parsonage?’”
“I wish I had. I did pick up ‘Silas Marner,’ at a station, thinking you
might like it,” and he glanced at Rachel, who had, he suspected, thought
his purchase an act of weakness. “Have you met with it?”
“I have met with nothing of the sort since you were here last;” then
turning to Rachel, “Alick indulges me with novels, for my good curate
had rather read the catalogue of a sale any day than meddle with one,
and I can’t set on my pupil teacher in a book where I don’t know what is
coming.”
“We will get ‘Framley,’” said Alick.
“Bessie has it. She read me a very clever scene about a weak young
parson bent on pleasing himself; and offered to lend me the book, but I
thought it would not edify Will Walker. But, no doubt, you have read it
long ago.”
“No,” said Rachel; and something withheld her from disclaiming such
empty employments. Indeed, she was presently much interested in the
admirable portraiture of “Silas Marner,” and still more by the keen,
vivid enjoyment, critical, droll, and moralizing, displayed by a man who
heard works of fiction so rarely that they were always fresh to him, and
who looked on them as studies of life. His hands were busy all the time
carving a boss for the roof of one of the side aisles of his church—the
last step in its gradual restoration.
That night there was no excitement of nerve, no morbid fancy to trouble
Rachel’s slumbers; she only awoke as the eight o’clock bell sounded
through the open window, and for the first time for months rose
less weary than she had gone to rest. Week-day though it were, the
description “sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright,” constantly
recurred to her mind as she watched the quiet course of occupation.
Alick, after escorting his uncle to a cottage, found her searching among
the stores in the music stand.
“You unmusical female,” he said, “what is that for?”
“Your uncle spoke of music last night, and I thought he would like it.”
“I thought you had no such propensity.”
“I learnt like other people, but it was the only thing I could not do
as well as Grace, and I thought it wasted time, and was a young ladyism;
but if can recover music enough to please him, I should be glad.”
“Thank you,” said Alick, earnestly. “He is very much pleased with your
voice in speaking. Indeed, I believe I first heard it with his ears.”
“This is a thorough lady’s collection of music,” said Rachel, looking
through it to hide her blush of pleasure. “Altogether the house has not
a bachelor look.”
“Did you not know that he had been married? It was when he first had the
living twelve years ago. She was a very lovely young thing, half Irish,
and this was the happiest place in the world for two years, till her
little brother was sent home here from school without proper warning of
a fever that had begun there. We all had it, but she and her baby were
the only ones that did not recover! There they lie, under the yew-tree,
where my uncle likes to teach the children. He was terribly struck
down for years, though he went manfully to his work, and it has been
remarkable how his spirits and sociability have returned since he lost
his sight; indeed, he is more consistently bright than ever he was.”
“I never saw any one like him,” said Rachel. “I have fallen in with
clergy that some call holy, and with some that others call pious, but he
is not a bit like either. He is not even grave, yet there is a calming,
refreshing sense of reverence towards him that would be awe, only it is
so happy.”
Alick’s response was to bend over her, and kiss her brow. She had never
seen him so much gratified.
“What a comfort your long stay with him must have been,” she said
presently, “in the beginning of his blindness!”
“I hope so. It was an ineffable comfort to me to come here out of
Littleworthy croquet, and I think cheering me did him good. Rachel, you
may do and say what you please,” he added, earnestly, “since you have
taken to him.”
“I could not help it,” said Rachel, though a slight embarrassment came
over her at the recollection of Bessie, and at the thought of the narrow
views on which she expected to differ. Then, as Alick continued to
search among the music, she asked, “Will he like the piano to be used?”
“Of all things. Bessie’s singing is his delight. Look, could we get this
up?”
“You don’t sing, Alick! I mean, do you?”
“We need not betray our talents to worldlings base.”
Rachel found her accompaniment the least satisfactory part of the
affair, and resolved on an hour’s practice every day in Mr. Clare’s
absence, a wholesome purpose even as regarded her health and spirits.
She had just sat down to write letters, feeling for the first time as if
they would not be a toil, when Mr. Clare looked in to ask Alick to refer
to a verse in the Psalms, quoting it in Greek as well as English, and
after the research had been carried to the Hebrew, he told Rachel that
he was going to write his sermon, and repaired to the peacock path,
where he paced along with Ranger and the cat, in faithful, unobtrusive
attendance.
“What, you can read Hebrew, Alick?”
“So can you.”
“Enough to appreciate the disputed passages. When did you study it?”
“I learnt enough, when I was laid up, to look out my uncle’s texts for
him.”
She felt a little abashed by the tone, but a message called him away,
and before his return Mr. Clare came back to ask for a reference to St.
Augustine. On her offer of her services, she was thanked, and directed
with great precision to the right volume of the Library of the Fathers,
but spying a real St. Augustine, she could not be satisfied without a
flight at the original. It was not, however, easy to find the place; she
was forced to account for her delay by confessing her attempt, and
then to profit by Mr. Clare’s directions, and, after all, her false
quantities, though most tenderly and apologetically corrected, must have
been dreadful to the scholarly ear, for she was obliged to get Alick to
read the passage over to him before he arrived at the sense, and Rachel
felt her flight of clever womanhood had fallen short. It was quite new
to her to be living with people who knew more of, and went deeper into,
everything than she did, and her husband’s powers especially amazed her.
The afternoon was chiefly spent in the hay-field under a willow-tree;
Mr. Clare tried to leave the young people to themselves, but they would
not consent; and, after a good deal of desultory talk and description of
the minnows and water-spiders, in whom Mr. Clare seemed to take a deep
interest, they went on with their book till the horses came, and Alick
took Rachel for a ride in Earlsworthy Park, a private gate of which,
just opposite to the Rectory, was free to its inhabitants. The Duke was
an old college friend of Mr. Clare, and though much out of health, and
hardly ever able to reside at the Park, all its advantages were at the
Rector’s service, and they were much appreciated when, on this sultry
summer’s day, Rachel found shade and coolness in the deep arcades of the
beech woods, and freshness on the upland lawns, as she rode happily on
the dear old mare, by whom she really thought herself fondly recognised.
There was something in the stillness of the whole, even in the absence
of the roll and plash of the sea waves beside which she had grown up,
that seemed to give her repose from the hurry and throb of sensations
and thoughts that had so long preyed upon her; and when the ride was
over she was refreshed, not tired, and the evening bell drew her to the
conclusion most befitting a day spent in that atmosphere of quietude.
She felt grateful to her husband for making no remark, though the only
time she had been within a church since her illness had been at their
wedding, he only gave her his arm, and said she should sit in the nook
that used to be his in the time of his lameness; and a most sheltered
nook it was, between a pillar and the open chancel screen, where no eyes
could haunt her, even if the congregation had been more than a Saturday
summer evening one.
She only saw the pure, clear, delicately-toned hues of the east window,
and the reverent richness of the chancel, and she heard the blind
pastor’s deep musical voice, full of that expressive power always
enhanced by the absence of a book. He led the Psalms with perfect
security and a calm fervour that rendered the whole familiar service
like something new and touching; the Lessons were read by Alick,
and Rachel, though under any other circumstances she would have been
startled to see him standing behind the Eagle, could not but feel all
appropriate, and went along with each word as he read it in a tone well
worthy of his uncle’s scholar. Whether few or many were present, Rachel
knew not, thought not; she was only sensible of the fulness of calm
joy that made the Thanksgiving touch her heart and fill her eyes with
unbidden tears, that came far more readily than of old.
“Yet this can’t be all,” she said to herself, as she wandered among the
tall white lilies in the twilight; “is it a trance, or am I myself?
I have not unthought or unfelt, yet I seem falling into a very sweet
hypocrisy! Alick says thought will come back with strength. I don’t
think I wish it!”
The curate did not return till after she had gone to bed, and in the
morning he proved to be indeed a very dry and serious middle-aged man,
extremely silent, and so grave that there was no knowing how much to
allow for shyness. He looked much worn and had a wearied voice, and
Mr. Clare and Alick were contriving all they could to give him the rest
which he refused, Mr. Clare insisting on taking all the service that
could be performed without eyes, and Alick volunteering school-work.
This Rachel was not yet able to undertake, nor would Alick even let her
go to church in the morning; but the shady garden, and the echoes of the
Amens, and sweet, clear tones of singing, seemed to lull her on in this
same gentle, unthinking state of dreamy rest; and thence, too, in the
after part of the day, she could watch the rector, with his Sunday
class, on his favourite seat under the yew-tree, close to the cross that
marked the resting-place of his wife and child.
She went to church in the evening, sheltered from curious eyes in her
nook, and there for a moment she heard the peculiar brush and sweep of
rich silk upon pavement, and wondered at so sophisticated a sound in the
little homely congregation, but forgot it again in the exulting, joyous
beauty of the chants and hymns, led by the rector himself, and, oh, how
different from poor Mr. Touchett’s best efforts! and forgot it still
more in the unfettered eloquence of the preaching of a man of great
natural power, and entirely accustomed to trust to his own inward
stores. Like Ermine Williams, she could have said that this preaching
was the first that won her attention. It certainly was the first that
swept away all her spirit of criticising, and left her touched and
impressed, not judging. On what north country folk call the loosing of
the kirk, she, moving outwards after the throng, found herself close
behind a gauzy white cloak over a lilac silk, that filled the whole
breadth of the central aisle, and by the dark curl descending beneath
the tiny white bonnet, as well as by the turn of the graceful head, she
knew her sister-in-law, Lady Keith, of Gowanbrae. In the porch she was
met with outstretched hands and eager greetings—
“At last! Where did you hide yourself? I had begun to imagine dire
mischances.”
“Only in the corner by the chancel.”
“Alick’s old nook! Keeping up honeymoon privileges! I have kept your
secret faithfully. No one knows you are not on the top of Snowdon, or
you would have had all the world to call on you.”
“There are always the Earlsworthy woods,” said Alick.
“Or better still, come to Timber End. No one penetrates to my morning
room,” laughed Bessie.
“Now, Uncle George,” she said, as the rector appeared, “you have had
a full allowance of them for three days, you must spare them to me
to-morrow morning.”
“So it is you, my lady,” he answered, with a pleased smile; “I heard a
sort of hail-storm of dignity sailing in! How is Lord Keith?”
“Very stiff. I want him to have advice, but he hates doctors. What is
the last Avonmouth news? Is Ermine in good heart, and the boys well
again?”
She was the same Bessie as ever—full of exulting animation, joined to
a caressing manner that her uncle evidently delighted in; and to Rachel
she was most kind and sisterly, welcoming her so as amply to please and
gratify Alick. An arrangement was made that Rachel should be sent for
early to spend the day at Timber End, and that Mr. Clare and Alick
should walk over later. Then the two pretty ponies came with her little
low carriage to the yew-tree gate, were felt and admired by Mr. Clare,
and approved by Alick, and she drove off gaily, leaving all pleased and
amused, but still there was a sense that the perfect serenity had been
ruffled.
“Rachel,” said Alick, as they wandered in the twilight garden, “I wonder
if you would be greatly disappointed if our travels ended here.”
“I am only too glad of the quiet.”
“Because Lifford is in great need of thorough rest. He has not been away
for more than a year, and now he is getting quite knocked up. All he
does care to do, is to take lodgings near his wife’s asylum, poor man,
and see her occasionally: sad work, but it is rest, and winds him up
again; and there is no one but myself to whom he likes to leave my
uncle. Strangers always do too little or too much; and there is a young
man at Littleworthy for the long vacation who can help on a Sunday.”
“Oh, pray let us stay as long as we can!”
“Giving up the Cretins?”
“It is no sacrifice. I am thankful not to be hunted about; and if
anything could make me better pleased to be here, it would be feeling
that I was not hindering you.”
“Then I will hunt him away for six weeks or two months at least. It will
be a great relief to my uncle’s mind.”
It was so great a relief that Mr. Clare could hardly bring himself to
accept the sacrifice of the honeymoon, and though there could be little
doubt which way the discussion would end, he had not yielded when the
ponies bore off Rachel on Monday morning.
Timber End was certainly a delightful place. Alick had railed it a
cockney villa, but it was in good taste, and very fair and sweet with
flowers and shade. Bessie’s own rooms, where she made Rachel charmingly
at home, were wonderful in choiceness and elegance, exciting Rachel’s
surprise how it could be possible to be so sumptuously lodged in such
a temporary abode, for the house was only hired for a few months, while
Gowanbrae was under repair. It was within such easy reach of London that
Bessie had been able from thence to go through the more needful season
gaieties; and she had thought it wise, both for herself and Lord Keith,
not to enter on their full course. It sounded very moderate and prudent,
and Rachel felt vexed with herself and Alick for recollecting a certain
hint of his, that Lady Keith felt herself more of a star in her own old
neighbourhood than she could be in London, and wisely abstained from a
full flight till she had tried her wings. It was much pleasanter to go
along with Bessie’s many far better and more affectionate reasons for
prudence, and her minutely personal confidences about her habits,
hopes, and fears, given with a strong sense of her own importance and
consideration, yet with a warm sisterly tone that made them tokens of
adoption, and with an arch drollery that invested them with a sort of
grace. The number of engagements that she mentioned in town and country
did indeed seem inconsistent with the prudence she spoke of with regard
to her own health, or with her attention to that of her husband; but it
appeared that all were quite necessary and according to his wishes,
and the London ones were usually for the sake of trying to detach his
daughter, Mrs. Comyn Menteith, from the extravagant set among whom she
had fallen. Bessie was excessively diverting in her accounts of
her relations with this scatter-brained step-daughter of hers, and
altogether showed in the most flattering manner how much more thoroughly
she felt herself belonging to her brother’s wife. If she had ever been
amazed or annoyed at Alick’s choice, she had long ago surmounted the
feeling, or put it out of sight, and she judiciously managed to leap
over all that had passed since the beginning of the intimacy that had
arisen at the station door at Avoncester. It was very flattering, and
would have been perfectly delightful, if Rachel had not found herself
wearying for Alick, and wondering whether at the end of seven months she
should be as contented as Bessie seemed, to know her husband to be in
the sitting-room without one sight of him.
At luncheon, however, when Lord Keith appeared, nothing could be
prettier than his wife’s manner to him—bright, sweet, and with a touch
of graceful deference, at which he always smiled and showed himself
pleased, but Rachel thought him looking much older than in the
autumn—he had little appetite, stooped a good deal, and evidently moved
with pain. He would not go out of doors, and Bessie, after following him
to the library, and spending a quarter of an hour in ministering to his
comfort, took Rachel to sit by a cool dancing fountain in the garden,
and began with some solicitude to consult her whether he could be really
suffering from sciatica, or, as she had lately begun to suspect, from
the effects of a blow from the end of a scaffold-pole that had been run
against him when taking her through a crowded street. Rachel spoke of
advice.
“What you, Rachel! you who despised allopathy!”
“I have learnt not to despise advice.”
And Bessie would not trench on Rachel’s experiences.
“There’s some old Scotch doctor to whom his faith is given, and that I
don’t half believe in. If he would see our own Mr. Harvey here it would
be quite another thing; but it is of no use telling him that Alick would
never have had an available knee but for Mr. Harvey’s management. He
persists in leaving me to my personal trust in him, but for himself he
won’t see him at any price! Have you seen Mr. Harvey?”
“I have seen no one.”
“Oh, I forgot, you are not arrived yet; but—”
“There’s some one,” exclaimed Rachel, nervously; and in fact a young man
was sauntering towards them. Bessie rose with a sort of annoyance, and
“Never mind, my dear, he is quite inoffensive, we’ll soon get rid of
him.” Then, as he greeted her with “Good morning, Lady Keith, I thought
I should find you here,” she quickly replied.
“If you had been proper behaved and gone to the door, you would have
known that I am not at home.”
He smiled, and came nearer.
“No, I am not at home, and, what is more, I do not mean to be. My uncle
will be here directly,” she added, in a fee-faw-fum tone.
“Then it is not true that your brother and his bride are arrived?”
“True in the same sense as that I am at home. There she is, you
see—only you are not to see her on any account,” as a bow necessarily
passed between him and Rachel. “Now mind you have not been introduced to
Mrs. Keith, and if you utter a breath that will bring the profane crowd
in shoals upon the Rectory, I shall never forgive you.”
“Then I am afraid we must not hope to see you at the bazaar for the
idiots.”
“No, indeed,” Bessie answered, respecting Rachel’s gesture of refusal;
“no one is to infringe her incog, under penalty of never coming here
again.”
“You are going?” he added to Bessie; “indeed, that was what brought
me here. My sisters sent me to ask whether they may shelter themselves
under your matronly protection, for my mother dreads the crush.”
“I suppose, as they put my name down, that I must go, but you know I
had much rather give the money outright. It is a farce to call a bazaar
charity.”
“Call it what you will, it is one device for a little sensation.”
Rachel’s only sensation at that moment was satisfaction at the sudden
appearance of Ranger’s white head, the sure harbinger of his master and
Alick, and she sprang up to meet them in the shrubbery path—all her
morbid shyness at the sight of a fresh face passing away when her hand
was within Alick’s arm. When they came forth upon the lawn, Alick’s brow
darkened for a moment, and there was a formal exchange of greetings as
the guest retreated.
“I am so sorry,” began Bessie at once; “I had taken precautions against
invasion, but he did not go to the front door. I do so hope Rachel has
not been fluttered.”
“I thought he was at Rio,” said Alick.
“He could not stand the climate, and was sent home about a month ago—a
regular case of bad shilling, I am afraid, poor fellow! I am so sorry
he came to startle Rachel, but I swore him over to secrecy. He is not to
mention to any living creature that she is nearer than Plinlimmon till
the incog, is laid aside! I know how to stand up for bridal privileges,
and not to abuse the confidence placed in me.”
Any one who was up to the game might have perceived that the sister
was trying to attribute all the brother’s tone of disapprobation to his
anxiety lest his wife should have been startled, while both knew as
well as possible that there was a deeper ground of annoyance which was
implied in Alick’s answer.
“He seems extremely tame about the garden.”
“Or he would not have fallen on Rachel. It was only a chance; he just
brought over a message about that tiresome bazaar that has been dinned
into our ears for the last three months. A bazaar for idiots they may
well call it! They wanted a carving of yours, Uncle George!”
“I am afraid I gave little Alice Bertie one in a weak moment, Bessie,”
said Mr. Clare, “but I hardly durst show my face to Lifford afterwards.”
“After all, it is better than some bazaars,” said Bessie; “it is
only for the idiot asylum, and I could not well refuse my name and
countenance to my old neighbours, though I stood out against taking a
stall. Lord Keith would not have liked it.”
“Will he be able to go with you?” asked Alick.
“Oh, no; it would be an intolerable bore, and his Scottish thrift would
never stand the sight of people making such very bad bargains! No, I am
going to take the Carleton girls in, they are very accommodating, and I
can get away whenever I please. I am much too forbearing to ask any of
you to go with me, though I believe Uncle George is pining to go and see
after his carving.”
“No, thank you; after what I heard of the last bazaar I made up my mind
that they are no places for an old parson, nor for his carvings either,
so you are quite welcome to fall on me for my inconsistency.”
“Not now, when you have a holiday from Mr. Lifford,” returned Bessie.
“Now come and smell the roses.”
All the rest of the day Alick relapsed into the lazy frivolous young
officer with whom Rachel had first been acquainted.
As he was driving home in the cool fresh summer night, he began—
“I think I must go to this idiotical bazaar!”
“You!” exclaimed Rachel.
“Yes; I don’t think Bessie ought to go by herself with all this Carleton
crew.”
“You don’t wish me to go,” said Rachel, gulping down the effort.
“You! My dear Rachel, I would not take you for fifty pounds, nor could I
go myself without leaving you as vice deputy curate.”
“No need for that,” said Mr. Clare, from the seat behind; “young people
must not talk secrets with a blind man’s ears behind them.”
“I make no secret,” said Alick. “I could not go without leaving my wife
to take care of my uncle, or my uncle to take care of my wife.”
“And you think you ought to go?” said Mr. Clare. “It is certainly better
that Bessie should have a gentleman with her in the crowd; but you
know this is a gossiping neighbourhood, and you must be prepared for
amazement at your coming into public alone not three weeks after your
wedding.”
“I can’t help it, she can’t go, and I must.”
“And you will bring down all the morning visitors that you talk of
dreading.”
“We will leave you to amuse them, sir. Much better that,” he added
between his teeth, “than to leave the very semblance of a secret trusted
by her to that intolerable puppy—”
Rachel said no more, but when she was gone upstairs Mr. Clare detained
his nephew to say, “I beg your pardon, Alick, but you should be quite
sure that your wife likes this proposal.”
“That’s the value of a strong-minded wife, sir,” returned Alick; “she is
not given to making a fuss about small matters.”
“Most ladies might not think this a small matter.”
“That is because they have no perspective in their brains. Rachel
understands me a great deal too well to make me explain what is better
unspoken.”
“You know what I think, Alick, that you are the strictest judge that
ever a merry girl had.”
“I had rather you continued to think so, uncle; I should like to think
so myself. Good night.”
Alick was right, but whether or not Rachel entered into his motives,
she made no objection to his going to the bazaar with his sister, being
absolutely certain that he would not have done so if he could have
helped it.
Nor was her day at all dreary; Mr. Clare was most kind and attentive to
her, without being oppressive, and she knew she was useful to him. She
was indeed so full of admiration and reverence for him, that once
or twice it crossed her whether she were not belying another of her
principles by lapsing into Curatocult, but the idea passed away with
scorn at the notion of comparing Mr. Clare with the objects of such
devotion. He belonged to that generation which gave its choicest in
intellectual, as well as in religious gifts to the ministry, when a
fresh tide of enthusiasm was impelling men forward to build up, instead
of breaking down, before disappointment and suspicion had thinned the
ranks, and hurled back many a recruit, or doctrinal carpings had taught
men to dread a search into their own tenets. He was a highly cultivated,
large-minded man, and the conversation between him and his nephew was a
constant novelty to her, who had always yearned after depth and thought,
and seldom met with them. Still here she was constantly feeling how
shallow were her acquirements, how inaccurate her knowledge, how devoid
of force and solidity her reasonings compared with what here seemed to
be old, well-beaten ground. Nay, the very sparkle of fun and merriment
surprised and puzzled her; and all the courtesy of the one gentleman,
and the affection of the other, could not prevent her sometimes feeling
herself the dullest and most ignorant person present. And yet the sense
was never mortifying except when here and there a spark of the old
conceit had lighted itself, and lured her into pretensions where she
thought herself proficient. She was becoming more and more helpful to
Mr. Clare, and his gratitude for her services made them most agreeable,
nor did that atmosphere of peace and sincerity that reigned round the
Rectory lose its charm. She was really happy all through the solitary
Wednesday, and much more contented with the results than was Alick. “A
sickening place,” he said, “I am glad I went.”
“How glad Bessie must have been to have you!”
“I believe she was. She has too much good taste for much of what went on
there.”
“I doubt,” said Mr. Clare, laughing, “if you could have been an
agreeable acquisition.”
“I don’t know. Bessie fools one into thinking oneself always doing her
a favour. Oh, Rachel, I am thankful you have never taken to being
agreeable.”