CHAPTER XVII.
The sweetness of September is that of the last few days spent with afriend that goeth on a very long journey; and we know not whether, whenhe returneth, we shall go to meet him with outstretched arms, or shallsmile up at him only through the eyes of the daisies that flower uponour straight green graves.
"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,"
and our sweetest seasons are, to my thinking, those in which theecstasies of possession are mixed with the soft pain of expectedparting. A September sun--such a one as warmly kissed the quietfaces of our young dead heroes, as they lay thick together on Alma'shill-side--is shining down with even mildness upon the just and theunjust, upon Constance Blessington's grass-green gown as she sits atbreakfast, and on the hair crown of yellow gold with which Providencehas seen fit to circle her dull fair brows.
"I think that you must have regretted being in such a hurry to runaway from the garden and us," she is saying, with a gentle smile oflady-like malice, to Esther, _a propos_ of her yesterday's misadventure.
"Sitting in the shade eating nectarines is certainly pleasanteroccupation than grovelling on your hands and knees on a mud-bank,"replies Esther, demurely.
"St. John is so terribly energetic!" says Miss Blessington, ratherlackadaisically; "he would have walked me off the face of the earthlong ago if I had let him."
Remembering the Chinese invitation, Esther cannot repress aninvoluntary smile.
"What about St. John?" says the young man, entering; having caught hisown name, with that wonderful acuteness of hearing with which every oneis endowed when themselves are in question.
"Much better have stuck to your parish church," says Sir Thomas,brandishing a large red and yellow bandanna, which is part of the oldEnglish costume, "than gone scrambling heigh-go-mad over hedges andditches after new-fangled Puseyite mummeries!"
Gerard and his betrothed exchange a glance of intelligence. Gerard islooking slightly sentimental; his head is a little on one side; buton his discovering that he is an object of attention to Constance, itreturns rather suddenly to the perpendicular.
Esther's eyes are brillianter than their wont; her cheeks are flushedwith a deeper hue than the crimson lips of a foreign shell, but itis not the flush of a newly-departed sleep. The angel of slumber haspassed by the portals of her brain, as the destroying angel passedby the blood-painted lintels of Israel. Thoughts sweeter than virginhoney, thoughts bitterer than gall, have kept her wakeful. Ere shewent to bed, she spent three hours in writing letters of dismissal toBrandon, and at the end left him undismissed. "I _cannot_ write it tohim!" she cries, sitting up in bed in the dark, and flinging out blindarms into the black nothingness around her; "anything written sounds soharsh, so abrupt, so hard. I must tell him myself very gradually andgently, and tell him how sorry I am, and beg him to forgive me, andcry--go down on my knees, perhaps. No; I should look such a fool if Idid that! After all, no one cries long over spilt milk--least of allany one so sensible and utterly unimaginative as poor dear Bob." Andwith that, thinking in a disparaging, hold-cheap way of him and hislove, she turns the pillow over to try and find a cooler place on theunder side for her burning face to rest on.
* * * * *
"Two dissyllabic names now passing many mouths by three dissyllabicnames are here expressed," reads Miss Blessington, with distinctgravity, after breakfast that morning, out of an acrostic book thatlies on the work-table before her, while Esther sits opposite withpencil and paper, ready to write down the products of the joint wisdomof their two minds. But the top of the pencil is being bitten by theyoung scribe's short white teeth, and her eyes are straying awayabsently--away through the open window and out to the sunshiny sward,where two of St. John's dogs, forbidden by Sir Thomas on pain of death,to set paw within the house, are rolling over one another, makingabortive bites at each other's hind legs, and waggishly, with muchgrowling and mumbling, taking each other's heads into their mouths.
"That is the whole," continues Constance. "These are the proofs; awoman, a wise man, a king, a poet, a beauty!"
Silence.
"A woman!" says Miss Blessington, cogitatively, resting her smooth chinon her hand, and looking vaguely round at the cabinets and busts forinspiration.
Esther makes no suggestion.
"A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, raising her voice a little.
Esther comes back to consciousness with a little jump. "Oh! I beg yourpardon; I don't think I was attending. A----what did you say?"
"A woman!" repeats Miss Blessington, for the third and last time.
"A woman!" echoes Esther, vacantly; "that is rather vague, is it not?There have been a good many women, one way or another."
"Let us try the next, then," says Constance, obligingly: "A wise man."
"Solomon!" answers Esther, glibly.
"I said a _dis_syllable name," remarks Constance, with gentle asperity.
The door opens, and St. John enters.
"Tell us a wise man's name?" "Who was a wise man?" cry they both in abreath.
"Solomon!" replies St. John, brilliantly.
"So I said," says Esther, smiling; "but, unluckily, it must be a_two_-syllabled wise man. I'm afraid that it would be disrespectful toabbreviate him into _Solmon_, wouldn't it?"
"One ought to be provided with a Bible, a Lempriere, and anencyclopaedia before one attempts to grapple with these devices ofSatan," says Gerard, sitting down on the arm of the sofa besideConstance and looking over her shoulder.
"A woman! Who is the woman?"
"We have not found out yet."
"A king! Who is the king?"
"We have not found out yet."
"You seem to be on the highroad to success," says he, laughing, andthrowing himself back lazily.
"We have only just begun," says Miss Blessington, a littlereproachfully. "You and Miss Craven are always so impatient."
"There are a great many two-syllabled kings' names," says Esther, witha prodigious effort to look intelligent and interested: "Edward, Henry,Louis, Ahab, Alfred, Joash!"
"I daresay it is one of those Jewish kings," says Constance,reflectively; "they are always fond of introducing Bible names intoacrostics. Is there a Bible anywhere about, St. John?"
St. John walks slowly round the well-laden tables; looks overphotograph books, Dore's "Elaine," Flaxman's "Dante;" but in vain. Hecomes back, and shakes his head.
"I will go and fetch one," says Constance, rising with noiseless grace,and rustling softly away among the console tables.
"May she long be occupied in searching the Scriptures for a dissyllabicking!" cries Gerard, drawing a long breath, and yawning as the doorcloses behind her.
"I am glad she is gone," says Esther, looking rather embarrassed, "as Ihave something to say to you."
"Say on."
"I must go home to-morrow," she continues, drawing hideous faces andwooden-legged cows on her bit of paper.
"Are you beginning to try experiments on me already?" he asks,incredulously, leaning his folded arms on the little table which formsa barrier between them.
"No; but I have received a letter from Jack this morning, which----"
"Which you are going to read to me?"
"Oh, no--no!" she answers, hastily, putting her hand in involuntaryprotection over her pocket; "it--it--wouldn't interest you." (It wouldhave interested him rather too much.) "He seems to be missing me a gooddeal."
"Be honest," says St. John, stretching out his hand and taking herscaptive, pencil and all. "Does he miss you as much as I shall?"
"More, a good deal, I should say," she replies, looking up with an archsmile; "I don't make your tea, and order your dinner, and darn yoursocks. One, two, three, four weeks," continues she, marking each numberwith her slender fingers on the table. "I have actually been herenearly a month, and" (with a half-absent sigh), "do you know, the veryday I left home I told them----"
"Who's them?"
She blushes f
uriously. "Them--did I say them? Oh! I meant _him_, ofcourse--Jack."
"Does he always speak of himself in the plural, like a king, or areviewer?"
"Nonsense!" cries Esther, pulling away her hand rather impatiently. "Doyou never make slips of the tongue?"
"Frequently. Well, you must write and tell _them_" (with a laughingemphasis on the _them_) "that they must get some one else to darn theirsocks, for that you have found something better to do."
"I could not have anything better," she answers, reddening withindignation. "You don't understand about Jack, or you would not makejokes!"
"It is a fault I'm not often guilty of; being funny never was mybesetting sin," he answers, drily. "Essie, whenever you do go home, Ihave a great mind to go with you--if you will invite me."
"Oh, no, don't!" she cries, with involuntary eagerness, the pencildropping from between her fingers.
"I believe you are ashamed of me," he says, angrily, walking off to thewindow to hide the flush of vexation which is invading his weather-worncheeks.
"Ashamed of myself more likely," she cries, jumping up suddenly andfollowing him.
"Why?"
"You fine gentlemen do not understand the
"'short and simple annals of the poor,'"
she answers, with a forced laugh. "You would probably be in theposition of Mother Hubbard's singularly ill-used dog;
"When you came there, The cupboard was bare.'"
"You think that gluttony, like gout, must be hereditary," says Gerard,laughing again, and yet looking very tender withal--not with thepuling, milk-and-water tenderness of a green love-sick boy, but withthe condensed, strong passion of a world-worn, world-tainted, halfworld-weary-grown man.
"There are other reasons too," says Essie, drooping her eyelids, overwhich the small blue veins--
"wandering, leave a tender stain--"
with a maiden's shyness, under the new-known fire of a lover's gaze.
"What other reasons?"
"I have never mentioned anything about you to Jack!" she answers,twisting her one paltry ring round her finger. "I don't suppose he isaware of your existence, unless he has bought a new 'Baronetage' sinceI left home--a piece of extravagance that I do not think he is likelyto have been guilty of: and he would think it so odd if I were toappear suddenly on the scene, dragging you in tow."
"That would be easily explained," replies St. John, gravely, drawinghimself up, and looking rather too conscious of the eight centuries ofNorman blood in his strong veins. "I suppose that a man may be allowedto travel for a few hours in company with his future wife without anyone being straightlaced enough or behind the world enough to call it_odd!_"
"Your future wife!" she repeats, with a dreamy, mournful smile. "Am Ithat? I think not. I shall _never_ be your wife," she says, a look ofmelancholy inspiration crossing and darkening, as a travelling cloudcrosses and darkens the blue eyes of a June brook, the sweet red andsweeter white of her little piquante face.
"Do you know any just cause or impediment why you should not be?" heasks, gaily.
"None," she answers, shuddering a little, as she has got into the habitof doing lately--"except" (throwing herself impulsively into his gladarms) "that it would make me so intolerably happy!"
There is a pause--a little brief pause--in which that shyest,fleetest-winged of earth's visitants--Happiness--folds her pinions andsettles down for a little minute on two beating, trembling human hearts.
"Do you know," continues Essie, after awhile--raising herself, andlooking up, with tears glistening, like dew on the autumn grass, uponher long swart lashes--"Do you know that in a book I was reading theother day I met this sentence: 'Le bonheur sur terre est un crime punide mort comme le genie, comme la divinite'? It has haunted me eversince yesterday."
"As far as that goes," he answers, thoughtfully, "there is nothing inthis world that is not punished with death, except Death himself. Well"(smiling fondly, and stroking her ruffled, scented love-locks), "may Icome? may I be Mother Hubbard's dog?"
"Why do you want to come _now_, particularly?" she asks, in rather atroubled voice.
"Because I am a coward," he answers, laughing--"because I like a quietlife, and I imagine that there will be squally weather here when Iannounce my intention of taking you as a helpmeet for me."
"I _am_ a _mesalliance_, I suppose?" she answers, rather sadly. "Whatwill Sir Thomas say? Anything very bad?"
"Oh, nothing out of the way," answers Gerard, with a careless shrug."He will call me an ass, and tell me that I always was, from a boy, thebiggest fool he ever came across; and that, for his part, he'll washhis hands of me: and he'll probably conclude with a threat of cuttingme off with a shilling."
"And will he?" asks Esther, quickly, looking up eager-eyed,parted-lipped.
"Why do you ask?" said the young man, sharply.
"Do you think that I want to marry a _beggar?_" inquires she,playfully, not detecting his suspicion.
"You need not be alarmed," he replies, coldly, and his arms slackentheir fond hold a little. "He will not, for the very excellent reasonthat he cannot."
The door handle, turning, rattles. With one spring, Esther returns toher seat--to her deserted cows and impossible profiles. St. John looksout of the window. No transformation scene at Drury Lane could be morecomplete.
"Ahab--Jehu--Zimri--Omri--Joash!" recites Miss Blessington, entering,with an open Bible in her hand.