Читать книгу Faith and Unfaith: A Novel - Duchess - Страница 4

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 werehe 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 portière, 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 mediæval, chair and laughs a good deal.

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

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.