Читать книгу Red as a Rose is She: A Novel - Broughton Rhoda - Страница 9

Death and the sun are very much alike in one respect, and that is, their utter impartiality and stupid want of discernment. They make no difference between those who love them and those who hate. They pay their visits equally to those who are longing for and lifting up eager hands towards them, and those who would much prefer to be without them.

I will drop the parallel, which cannot be carried much farther, and talk of the sun only. He certainly shows very little judgment, and less taste, in these matters. He gives his great, warm light just as readily to a scullery as a boudoir, to an ill-smelling dunghill as to a bed of mignonette; kisses with just as much relish the raddled cheeks of an old fish-wife as the fresh scarlet lips of a young countess.

This present August morning he is blazing full and hot on that very grievous daub of Mrs. Brandon in a no-waisted black satin, out of which she appears to be bursting, like a chrysalis from its sheath, in the Plas Berwyn dining-room, and not a whit more fully or more hotly on the exquisite "Monna Lisa" of Da Vinci, which is the chief jewel of the Gerard collection.

The same sunbeam that brings out with such clearness Monna Lisa's faint, weird smile, takes in also within its compass Esther's small, swart head, round the back of which coils a great, loose, careless twist of burnished hair, like a black snake. She is standing outside the dining-room door, with her lithe, svelte figure stooped forward a little. The family are at prayers, as she ascertained by applying her ear to the key-hole, and hearing a harsh, elderly voice going at a good round trot through a variety of petitions, for himself, his children (he has only one, and hates him), his friends, his enemies, his queen, his bishops and curates, his black brethren, &c., all without the vestige of a comma between them.

"What! eavesdropping?" asks St. John, coming down the handsome, shallow stairs in knickerbockers and heather-mixture stockings that his old mother made him.

"Hush!" holding up her forefinger; "they are at prayers."

St. John listens too, and a sneer comes and settles on his mouth.

"Isn't he a worthy rival for the man who said he would give any one as far as Pontius Pilate in the Creed, and then beat him?"

"You ought not to abuse your own father" (in a whisper).

"I know I ought not" (in another whisper).

"Why do you, then?" casting down her eyes, that he may see how large a portion of downy cheeks her long curly lashes shade.

"I only do for him what I know he would do for me if he had the chance."

"Hush! they are nearly over."

"… be with us all evermore. Amen. Morris!"

"Yes, Sir Thomas."

"What the deuce do you mean sticking the legs of that chair against the wall knocking all the paint off the wainscot?"

says St. John, in ironical quotation; and then the door opens, and a long string of servants issue out, and the two culprits again, as on the previous evening, together enter.

Lady Gerard never appears at breakfast. About twenty years ago she had an illness, and, on the strength of it, has kept up a character for invalidhood ever since. Miss Blessington takes her place at the head of the table; she is sitting there now. Her shapely hands are busy among the teacups; her white lids drooped over her calm eyes. There is a great gold cross on her breast, that rises and falls in soft, even undulations. Eve, as she was when first she grew into separate entity and embodiment out of Adam's side; Eve, of creamiest flesh, and richest, reddest blood, before a soul – a tormenting, puzzling, intangible, incomprehensible soul – was breathed into her.

When Constance marries, her husband will gaze at her as a man might gaze at Gibson's "Venus," supposing that he had bought for a great price that marvel of modern sculpture, and had set it up in the place of honour in his gallery. He would half-shut his eyes, the better to appreciate the exquisite turn of the cold, stately throat, the modelling of the little rounded wrist; would put his head on one side, and look at it this way and that, to determine whether he liked the tinting.

as the pithy line that everybody knows, and that next to nobody could have written, hath it. At forty Constance will be a much handsomer woman than Esther. At forty those clean-cut, immovable, expressionless features will be hardly the worse for wear; that colourless marble skin will be hardly less smoothly polished than it is now. At forty Esther (if she live so long) will have cried and laughed, and fretted and teased herself into a mere shadow of her present self.

Every one's letters at Felton are put on their plate for them. As Esther takes her seat, she perceives that there is one for her – one directed in a scrawling, schoolboy hand. The blood rushes to her face, as it does to a turkeycock's wattles when he is excited or angry, and she thrusts it hastily into her pocket. To her guilty imagination it seems that written all over it, in big red letters, legible to every eye, is, "From Bob Brandon, Esther Craven's lover." As her eyes lift themselves shyly, to see whether St. John is observing her, they meet his, looking at her curiously, interestedly, puzzledly.

"We allow people to read their letters at breakfast here," he says, with a friendly smile; "we are not particular as to manners, as I dare say you have found out by this time."

"Oh! thanks, I'm in no hurry; it's of no consequence – it will keep," answers Esther, disjointedly, with would-be indifference, and the turkeycock hue spreading to the edge of her white gown.

The morning hours at Felton are not exciting. Sir Thomas is building a new orchid house, and spends much of his time standing over the bricklayers, like an Egyptian overseer, telling them with his usual courteous candour how much more he knows about their trade than they themselves do, who have been at it all their lives. St. John disappears too, and Constance and Esther are left tête-à-tête.

Esther has plenty of time to read Bob's letter, and to understand it, which latter requires some ingenuity, as, from the greater rapidity of his thoughts than of his pen, he omits most of the little words —tos and ands and whichs and whos and hes and shes. There is a good deal about his mother in it: several messages from her; a great many questions as to what Mr. Gerard was like, with solemn adjurations to answer them; a sheet devoted to the exposition of the luxury in which it is possible to live on £300 a year; and, lastly, a sentence or two as to his great loneliness, and his eager longing to have his darling Esther back again – not much on that head, as if he were afraid of marring her enjoyment by intruding upon her the picture of his own disconsolateness. It was not an eloquent letter; in fact, it was rather a stupid one, and had evidently been written with a very nasty scratchy pen; but for all that it was a nice one, and so Esther felt, and wished that it had been less so.

Bob is a dear fellow; and, no doubt, when she goes back to Glan-yr-Afon, she will be very glad to see him, and be very fond of him; but, for the present, she would like to forget him altogether – to have a holiday from him: he seems to come in incongruously now somehow.

"Where's St. John?" grunts miladi, who makes her appearance towards luncheon time, from the arm-chair which is witness to so many gentle dozes on her part.

Miladi likes St. John; he is very good to her, and often stands in the breach between her and Sir Thomas.

"Vanished," answers Miss Blessington, in her slow, sweet drawl. "I think Miss Craven must have frightened him away."

It is very pleasant, is not it? when you think you have been making a highly favourable impression on a person, to hear that they have fled before you in abject fear.

"I had no idea that he was such a timid fawn," answers Essie, nettled.

"He is very peculiar," says Constance, her white fingers flying swiftly in and out among the coloured silks of the smoking cap she is embroidering; "and has a most unfortunate shrinking from strangers."

"The greatest friends must have been strangers once," objects Essie, feeling rather small.

"Quite true, so they must; but he is so very difficile, we never can get him to admire any one – can we, aunt?"

But "aunt" has fallen sweetly asleep.

"With the exception of two or three fortunate blondes – I prefer dark people myself infinitely, don't you?"

"Infinitely," replies Esther, with emphasis.

It is not true – she does nothing of the kind; but, after all, what is truth in comparison of the discomfiture of an adversary?