The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. Yonge (the mitten read aloud txt) 📕

hitherto she had hardly known how to set about it, and had been puzzled and perplexed by Rachel's disapproval, and semi-contempt of "scratching the surface" by the commonplace Sunday-school system.


CHAPTER XII. A CHANGE AT THE PARSONAGE.


"What could presumptuous hope inspire."--Rokeby.

There had been the usual foretaste of winter, rather sharp for Avonmouth, and though a trifle to what it was in less sheltered places, quite enough to make the heliotropes sorrowful, strip the fig-trees, and shut Colonel Keith up in the library. Then came the rain, and the result was that the lawn of Myrtlewood became too sloppy for the most ardent devotees of croquet; indeed, as Bessie said, the great charm of the sport was that one could not play it above eight months in the year.

The sun came back again, and re-asserted the claim of Avonmouth to be a sort of English Mentone; but drying the lawn was past its power, and Conrade and Francis were obliged to console themselves by the glory of taking Bessie Keith for a long ride. They could not persuade their mother to go with them, perhaps because she had from her nursery-window sympathized with Cyril's admiration of the great white horse that was being led round to the door of Gowanbrae.

She said she must stay at home, and make the morning calls that the charms of croquet had led her to neglect, and in about half an hour from that time she was announced in Miss Williams' little parlour, and entered with a hurried, panting, almost pursued look, a frightened glance in her eyes, and a flush on her cheek, such as to startle both Ermine and the Colonel.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, as if still too much perturbed to know quite what she was saying, "I--I did not mean to interrupt you."

"I'm only helping Rose to change the water of her hyacinths," said Colonel Keith, withdrawing his eyes and attention to the accommodation of the forest of white roots within the purple glass.

"I did not know you were out to-day," said Lady Temple, recovering herself a little.

"Yes, I came to claim my walking companion. Where's your hat, Rosie?"

And as the child, who was already equipped all but the little brown hat, stood by her aunt for the few last touches to the throat of her jacket, he leant down and murmured, "I thought he was safe out riding."

"Oh no, no, it is not that," hastily answered Lady Temple, a fresh suffusion of crimson colour rustling over her face, and inspiring an amount of curiosity that rendered a considerable effort of attention necessary to be as supremely charming a companion as Rose generally found him in the walks that he made it his business to take with her.

He turned about long before Rose thought they had gone far enough, and when he re-entered the parlour there was such an expectant look on his face that Ermine's bright eyes glittered with merry mischief, when she sent Rose to take off her walking dress. "Well!" he said.

"Well? Colin, have you so low an opinion of the dignity of your charge as to expect her to pour out her secrets to the first ear in her way?"

"Oh, if she has told you in confidence."

"No, she has not told me in confidence; she knew better."

"She has told you nothing?"

"Nothing!" and Ermine indulged in a fit of laughter at his discomfiture, so comical that he could not but laugh himself, as he said, "Ah! the pleasure of disappointing me quite consoles you."

"No; the proof of the discretion of womanhood does that! You thought, because she tells all her troubles to you, that she must needs do so to the rest of the world."

"There is little difference between telling you and me."

"That's the fault of your discretion, not of hers."

"I should like to know who has been annoying her. I suspect--"

"So do I. And when you get the confidence at first hand, you will receive it with a better grace than if you had had a contraband foretaste."

He smiled. "I thought yours a more confidence-winning face, Ermine."

"That depends on my respect for the individual. Now I thought Lady Temple would much prefer my looking another way, and talking about Conrade's Latin grammar, to my holding out my arms and inviting her to pour into my tender breast what another time she had rather not know that I knew."

"That is being an honourable woman," he said, and Rose's return ended the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their next meeting Ermine's look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had justified Lady Temple's prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was doing there. And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services, for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the meanest scholar. Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as possible.

No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined to Mackarel Lane.

"Well, Colin," said Ermine, on the Tuesday, "I have had a first-hand confidence, though from a different quarter. Poor Mr. Touchett came to announce his going away."

"Going!"

"Yes. In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter from his uncle's curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course. Mr. Touchett jumped at it."

"A very good thing--a great relief."

"Yes. He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in this place within the last few months, and he thought that he should do better in a fresh place, and that a fresh person would answer better here, at least for a time. I am very sorry for him, I have a great regard for him."

"Yes; but he is quite right to make a fresh beginning. Poor man! he has been quite lifted off his feet, and entranced all this time, and his recovery will be much easier elsewhere. It was all that unlucky croquet."

"I believe it was. I think there was at first a reverential sort of distant admiration, too hopeless to do any one any harm, and that really might have refined him, and given him a little of the gentleman-like tone he has always wanted. But then came the croquet, and when it grew to be a passion it was an excuse for intimacy that it would have taken a stronger head than his to resist."

"Under the infection of croquet fever."

"It is what my father used to say of amusements--the instant they become passions they grow unclerical and do mischief. Now he used, though not getting on with the Curtises, to be most successful with the second-rate people; but he has managed to offend half of them during this unhappy mania, which, of course, they all resent as mercenary, and how he is ever to win them back I don't know. After all, curatocult is a shallow motive--Rachel Curtis might triumph!"

"The higher style of clergyman does not govern by curatocult. I hope this one may be of that description, as he comes through Mr. Clare. I wonder if this poor man will return?"

"Perhaps," said Ermine, with a shade of mimicry in her voice, "when Lady Temple is married to the Colonel. There now, I have gone and told you! I did try to resolve I would not."

"And what did you say?"

"I thought it due to Lady Temple to tell him exactly how she regarded you."

"Yes, Ermine, and it is due to tell others also. I cannot go on on these terms, either here or at Myrtlewood, unless the true state of the case is known. If you will not let me be a married man, I must be an engaged one, either to you or to the little Banksia."

This periphrasis was needful, because Rose was curled up in a corner with a book, and her accessibility to outward impressions was dubious. It might be partly for that reason, partly from the tone of fixed resolve in his voice, that Ermine made answer, "As you please."

It was calmly said, with the sweet, grave, confiding smile that told how she trusted to his judgment, and accepted his will. The look and tone brought his hand at once to press hers in eager gratitude, but still she would not pursue this branch of the subject; she looked up to him and said gently, but firmly, "Yes, it may be better that the true state of the case should be known," and he felt that she thus conveyed that he must not press her further, so he let her continue, "At first I thought it would do him good, he began pitying us so vehemently; but when he found I did not pity myself, he was as ready to forget our troubles as--you are to forget his," she added, catching Colin's fixed eye, more intent on herself than on her narrative.

"I beg his pardon, but there are things that come more home."

"So thought he," said Ermine.

"Did you find out," said Colin, now quite recalled, "what made him take courage?"

"When he had once come to the subject, it seemed to be a relief to tell it all out, but he was so faltering and agitated that I did not always follow what he said. I gather, though, that Lady Temple has used him a little as a defence from other perils."

"Yes, I have seen that."

"And Miss Keith's fun has been more encouragement than she knew; constantly summoning him to the croquet-ground, and giving him to understand that Lady Temple liked to have him there. Then came that unlucky day, it seems, when he found Bessie mounting her horse at the door, and she called out that it was too wet for croquet, but Lady Temple was in the garden, and would be glad to see him. She was going to make visits, and he walked down with her, and somehow, in regretting the end of the croquet season, he was surprised into saying how much it had been to him. He says she was exceedingly kind, and regretted extremely that anything should have inspired the hope, said she should never marry again, and entreated him to forget it, then I imagine she fled in here to put an end to it."

"She must have been much more gentle this time than she was with Keith. I had never conceived her capable of being so furious as she was then. I am very sorry, I wish we could spare her these things."