"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame."--COLERIDGE.
All round the drawing-room windows at Scrope a wide balcony has been
built up, over which the creepers climb and trail. Stone steps leads
to it from the scented garden beneath, and up these runs Clarissa,
gayly, when Thursday morning had dawned, and deepened, and given place
to noon.
Within the drawing-room, before a low table, sits Miss Scrope, tatting
industriously. Tatting is Miss Scrope's forte. She never does anything
else. Multitudinous antimacassars, of all shapes, patterns, and
dimensions, grow beneath her untiring touch with the most alarming
rapidity. When finished, nobody knows what becomes of them, as they
instantly disappear from view and are never heard of afterwards. They
are as good as a ghost in Pullingham, and obstinately refuse to be
laid. It was charitably, if weakly, suggested at one time, by a member
of the stronger sex, that probably she sent them out in bales as
coverings for the benighted heathen; but when it was explained to this
misguided being that tatted antimacassars, as a rule, run to holes,
and can be seen through, even he desisted from further attempts to
solve the mystery.
Miss Peyton, throwing up one of the window-sashes, steps boldly into
the drawing-room and confronts this eminent tatter.
"Good-morning," she says, sweetly, advancing with smiling lips.
Miss Scrope, who has not heard her enter, turns slowly round: to say
she started would be a gross calumny. Miss Scrope never starts. She
merely raises her head with a sudden accession of dignity. Her
dignity, as a rule, is not fascinating, and might go by another name.
"Good-afternoon, Clarissa," she says, austerely. "I am sorry you
should have been forced to make an entrance like a burglar. Has the
hall door been removed? It used to stand in the front of the house."
"I think it is there still," Miss Peyton ventures, meekly.
"But"--prettily--"coming in through the window enabled me to see you
at least one moment sooner. Shall I close it again?"
"I beg you will not distress yourself about it," says Miss Scrope,
rising to ring the bell. "When Collins comes in he will see to it."
It is a wild day, though warm and sweet, and the wind outside is
tearing madly over lawn and shrubberies into the wood beyond.
"But in the mean time you will perhaps catch cold, of rheumatism, or
something," says Clarissa, hesitating.
"Rheumatism! pugh! nonsense!" says Miss Scrope, disdainfully. "I
simply don't believe in rheumatism. It is nothing but nerves. I don't
have those ridiculous pains and aches people hug nowadays, and I don't
believe they have either; it employs their idle time trying to invent
them."
"Is Jim in?" asks Clarissa, presently, having seated herself in a
horribly comfortless but probably artistic chair.
"_James is_ in," says Miss Scrope, severely. "Do you mean my brother?
It is really almost impossible to understand young people of the
present age."
"Don't you like the name Jim?" asks Clarissa, innocently, leaning
slightly forward, and taking up the edge of Miss Scrope's last
antimacassar to examine it with tender interest. "I think it such a
dear little name, and so happily wanting in formality. I have never
called him anything else since I can remember, so it comes most
naturally to me."
"I think it a most unmaidenly way of addressing any gentleman whose
priest christened him James," says Miss Scrope, unflinchingly. "What
would you think of him were he to call you by some hideous pet name,
or, more properly speaking, nickname?"
"I shouldn't mind it in the least; indeed, I think I should rather
like it," returns Clarissa, mildly.
"I believe that to be highly probable," retorts Miss Jemima, with
considerable scorn.
Clarissa laughs,--not an irritating laugh, by any means, but a little
soft, low, girlish laugh, very good to hear.
"If you scold me any more I shall cry," she says, lightly. "I always
give way to tears when driven into a corner. It saves time and
trouble. Besides," returning with some slight perversity to the
charge, "shall I tell you a secret? Your brother likes that little
name. He does, indeed. He has told me so a thousand times in the days
gone by. Very frivolous of him, isn't it? But--ah! here he is," as the
door opens, and Sir James comes in. "You are a little late, are you
not?" leaning back in her chair with a certain amount of languid, but
pleasing, grace, and holding out to him a slender ungloved hand, on
which some rings sparkle brilliantly.
"Have I kept you waiting?" asks he, eagerly, foolishly, glad because
of her last words, that seem to imply so much and really mean so
little. Has she been anxious for his coming? Have the minutes appeared
tedious because of his absence? "I hurried all I knew," he says; "but
stewards will be stewards."
"I have been quite happy with Miss Scrope; you need not look so
penitent," says Clarissa. "And who am I, that I should compete with a
steward? We have been having quite a good time, and an excellent
argument. Come here, and tell your sister that you think Jim the
prettiest name in the world."
"Did any one throw a doubt on the subject? Lives there a soul so dead
to euphony as not to recognize the music in those three letters?--Jim!
Why, it is poetry itself," says Sir James, who is not so absent that
he cannot scent battle on the breeze. As he speaks, he smiles: and
when James Scrope smiles he is almost handsome.
"Some day you will regret encouraging that child in her folly,"
remarks Miss Scrope, severely. At which the child makes a saucy little
grimace unseen, and rises to her feet.
"What a solemn warning!" says Scrope, with a shrug. "I hope," turning
to Clarissa, "you have taken it to heart, and that it will keep you
out of imaginary mischief. It ought, you know. It would be a shabby
thing to bring down public censure on the head of one who has so nobly
espoused your cause."
"My conduct from this day forth shall be above suspicion," says
Clarissa. "Good-by, Miss Scrope," stooping to press her fresh warm
lips to the withered cross old cheek beneath her: "I am going to tread
old ground with--James."
She follows him across hall and corridor, through two modern rooms,
and past a _portiere_, into another and larger hall beyond. Here,
standing before a heavy oaken doer, he turns the handle of it, and, as
it swings back slowly and sleepily, they pass into another room, so
unexpectedly and so strangely different from any they have yet
entered, as almost to make one start.
It is a huge old-fashioned apartment, stone-floored and oak panelled,
that once, in olden days, must have been a refectory. Chairs carved in
oak, and built like bishops' thrones, line the walls, looking as
though no man for many a hundred years has drawn them from their
present position. Massive cabinets and cupboards, cunningly devised by
crafty hands in by-gone days, look out from dusky corners, the hideous
faces carved upon them wreathed in their eternal ghastly smiles. From
narrow, painted windows great gleams of sunset from the gay world
without pour in, only to look sadly out of place in the solemn gloomy
room. But one small door divides it from the halls outside; yet
centuries seem to roll between it and them.
In one corner a door lies half open, and behind it a narrow flight of
stairs runs upward to a turret chamber above,--a tiny stairway,
heavily balustraded and uncarpeted, that creates in one a mad desire
to ascend and learn the secrets that may lie at its top.
Miss Peyton, scarce noticing the monkish refectory, runs to the stairs
and mounts them eagerly, Sir James following her in a more leisurely
fashion.
"Now for my own room," she says, with some degree of quickness in her
tone. She reaches the turret chamber as she speaks, and looks around
her. It is quite a circle, and apparently of the same date as the one
they have just quitted. Even the furniture, though of lighter make and
size, is of a similar age and pattern. Ugly little chairs and
unpleasantly solid tables are dotted here and there, a perfect wealth
of Old-World work cut into them. Everything is carved, and to an
unsympathetic observer it might occur that the carver must have been a
person subject to fiendish visions and unholy nightmares. But no doubt
the beauty of his designs lies in their ugliness, and his heads are a
marvel of art, and his winged creatures priceless!
The high chimney-piece is _en rapport_ with all the rest, and scowls
unceasingly; and the very windows--long and deep--have little faces
carved on either side of them, of the most diabolical.
Miss Peyton is plainly entranced with the whole scene, and for a full
minute says nothing.
"I feel as though I were a child again," she says, presently, as
though half regretful. "Everything comes back to me with such a
strange yet tender vividness. This, I remember, was my favorite table,
this my favorite chair. And that little winged monster over there, he
used to whisper in my ears more thrilling tales than either Grimm or
Andersen. Have you never moved anything in all these years?"
"Never. It is your own room by adoption, and no one shall meddle with
it. When I went abroad I locked it, and carried the key of it with me
wherever I went; I hardly know why myself." He glances at her
curiously, but her face is averted, and she is plainly thinking less
of him than of the many odd trifles scattered around. "When I
returned, dust reigned, and spiders; but it has been made spick and
span to day for its mistress. Does it still please you? or will you
care to alter anything?"
"No, nothing. I shall pay a compliment to my childish taste by letting
everything stay just as it is. I must have been rather a nice child,
Jim, don't you think? if one passes over the torn frocks and the
shrewish tongue."
"I don't think I ever saw a tear in your frocks," says Sir James,
simply, "and if your tongue was shrewish I never found it out."
Miss Peyton gives way to mirth. She sits down on a wretchedly
uncomfortable, if delightfully mediaeval, chair and laughs a good deal.
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!"
she quotes, gayly. "Those lines, meant by poor Burns as a censure on
frail humanity, rather fall short at this moment. Were I to see myself
as you see me, Jim, I should be a dreadfully conceited person, and
utterly unbearable What a good friend you make!"
"A bad one, you mean. A real friend, according to my lights, is a
fellow who says unpleasant things all round and expects you to respect
his candor. By and by, when I tell you a few home truths, perhaps you
will not like me as you do now."
"Yes, I shall always like you," says Clarissa. "Long ago, when you
used to scold me, I never bore malice. I suppose you are one of those
rare people who can say the ungracious thing in such a manner that it
doesn't grate. But then you are old, you know, Jim, very
old,--though, in appearance, wonderfully young for your years. I do
hope papa, at your age, will look as fresh."
She has risen, and has slipped her hand through his arm, and is
smiling up at him gayly and with a sweetness irresistible. Sir James
looks as pleased as though he had received a florid compliment.
"What a baby you are!" he says, after a pause, looking down at her
admiringly. Judging by his tone, babies, in his eyes, must possess
very superior attractions. "There are a good many babies in the world,
don't you think?" he goes on, presently. "You are one, and Geoffrey
Branscombe is another. I don't suppose he will ever quite grow up."
"And Horace," says Clarissa, idly, "is he another?"
But Sir James, though unconsciously, resents the question.
"Oh, no!" he says, hastily. "He does not come within the category at
all. Why," with a faint smile, "he is even older than I am! There is
no tender baby-nonsense about him."
"No, he is so clever,--so far above us all, where intellect is
concerned," she says, absently. A slight smile plays about her lips,
and a light, that was not there a moment since, comes to life within
her eyes. With an effort, she arouses herself from what were plainly
happy daydreams, and comes back to the present, which, just now, is
happy too.
"I think nature meant me to be a nun," she says, smiling. "This place
subdues and touches me so. The sombre lights and shadows are so
impressive! If it were indeed mine (in reality), I should live a great
part of my time in it. Here, I should write my pleasantest letters,
and read my choicest books, take my afternoon tea, and make welcome my
dearest friends,--you among them. In fact, if it were practicable,"
nodding her pretty head emphatically, "I should steal this room. There
is hardly anything I would not do to make it my own."
Scrope regards her earnestly, with a certain amount of calm inquiry.
Is she a coquette, or merely unthinking? If, indeed, the face be the
index of the mind, one must account her free of all unworthy thought
or frivolous design. Here is
"A countenance in which do meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet."
Her eyes are still smiling up at him; her whole expression is full of
a gentle friendliness; and in his heart, at this moment, arises a
sensation that is not hope, or gladness, or despair, but yet is a
faint wild mingling of all three.
As for Clarissa, she stands a little apart, unconscious of all that is
passing in his heart, and gazes lovingly upon the objects that
surround her, as one will gaze now and then on things that have been
fondly remembered through the haze of many years. She is happy,
wrapped in memories of a past all sunshine and no shade, and is
ignorant of the meaning he would gladly attach to her last words.
"While I stay here I sin,--that is, I covet," she says, at length,
surprised by his silence, "and it grows late. Come, walk with me a
little way through the park: I have not yet seen the old path we used
to call the 'short cut' to Gowran, long ago."
So, down the dark stairs he follows her, across the stone flooring,
and into the hall outside, that seems so brilliant by contrast, and so
like another world, all is so changed, so different. Behind, lie
silence, unbroken, perfect, a sad and dreamy light, Old-World
grandeur; here, all is restless life, full of uncertain sounds, and
distant footsteps, and voices faint but positive.
"Is it not like a dream?" says Clarissa, stopping to point backwards
to the turret they have just quitted.
"The past is always full of dreams," replies he, thoughtfully.