Part 1, Chapter IX.
“Go Back, My Lord, Across the Moor.”
“Cousin Susan,” said Guy, a few days after he had been left behind at Ingleby, “I promised Miss Vyner that she and her friends should see the mills. If it suits you, I should like to ride over to Moorhead, and ask them to come down next Thursday, and have luncheon here. Then I would take them round.”
“Yes, my dear Guy; yes, certainly. I think it would be most proper, under the circumstances; and with my being here, there can be no objection. I’m glad you’ve given me the hint, my dear Guy.”
Guy thought his very straightforward request had been something more than a hint. He had made it partly because he was extremely dull, and wanted a little variety, and partly because he did not choose to acquiesce in the idea that he was out of favour. Most of Guy’s actions at this time were marked by a certain note of defiance.
He set off on a fresh breezy afternoon, when great clouds flung great shadows over the open moor, and the dark green of the bilberry and the purple of the heather were in full glory of contrast. He rode slowly uphill, over wide roads with low grey walls on either side, behind which grew oats and turnips, past strong-looking stone villages, all white and grey and wind swept, till the land grew poorer and more open, and turf, mixed with furze and heather, began to appear, and at length he turned over the top, and came out upon the great rolling moors, here clear and sunny, there veiled in the smoke and fog of distant centres of human life.
As he drew near the end of his ride, he saw a figure sitting on some rough ground by the roadside, and looking up and away at a broken hillock of rock and heather, which, owing to the falling away of the ground behind, was relieved against the sky.
By the pose of her head and the lines of her figure he at once recognised Florella Vyner, and as he came near she saw him, and rising, answered his greeting with a smile as he dismounted beside her.
“I have ridden over,” said Guy, “with a message from Mrs Joshua Palmer, to ask if your sister still cares to show Ingleby Mills to her friends. My aunt and my brother are at Waynflete, but I have been left behind. And I hope, too, that Moorhead is satisfactory?”
“Oh yes,” said Florella, “we are delighted with it. It suits us quite. The others are all very near by. Would you like to take your horse to the farm, and then come and join us? You will see them a few steps further on.”
“There’s Bill Shipley,” said Guy, looking up the road. “I’ll ask him to take Stella.”
He came back after giving his horse to the boy, with a brighter and sweeter look on his face than it often wore. “May I look first at the drawing? What have you found out about the moor flowers?”
“Oh, they are so difficult—look at those harebells on the top of the road, swinging about in the wind—blue against blue. It is such heavenly colour. But I can’t paint them! I haven’t begun to try. I’m seeing them!”
“I see,” said Guy. “Yes, the sky seems to show through. But what do they say? Your pictures all say something. Are they moor spirits?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t think I quite know. But what I want to say is ‘living blue,’—you know the hymn?—
”‘Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
All dressed in living green.’
“That gives one such a feeling of spring.”
“Yes,” said Guy, “things growing. And ‘living blue’?”
“Well,” said Florella, looking up at the harebells, “I think it must mean thoughts—spirit, soul, growing and springing, perhaps. They are so very ethereal!”
Florella had much of Constancy’s self-possession. In her it showed in a calm simplicity of manner, absolutely without effort or constraint. Guy forgot himself also, for him a rare pleasure.
“I see,” he said, “I hope you’ll get them done.”
“But they shine so,” she said; “one can’t make them glisten. And the heather is very difficult, too. But that I have tried.”
She showed her sketch-book, containing more flower studies and a few landscapes.
“I should like to sketch,” said Guy, as he looked, and made a few comments.
“But you could, I think, because you can see. And it is very interesting. It is impossible to think of anything in the world but the thing you are drawing. That is all I have. My sister and all of them are just behind the harebell rock—shall we come?”
Guy followed, and in a few minutes they were looking down on a cheery group gathered in a hollow of the ground—five skirts and hats among the heather. One or two little puffs of steam showed where the sophisticated “Etnas” were boiling the water, and in the midst Constancy, in a red blouse and brown cap, was evidently concluding an argument.
“Very likely we might like it as well as they did, if we had the same opportunities.”
“Cosy! you’re a traitor. As if we want young men to come and interrupt us, like those dreadful girls in—”
“Mr Waynflete,” said Florella, descending upon the party.
Violet Staunton, who was the last speaker, sank into the heather with a gasp, and a sensation ran through the party. Constancy stood up and held out her hand.
“Mr Waynflete, we are abusing Miss Austen’s heroines for liking visitors. But, you know, we promised to give you some tea.”
Guy coloured and smiled. He felt a little shy, but much as if he had stepped into a fairy-ring. Away from his own people and his perplexities, he was like another person, bright and gay, and was soon giving his invitation, and asking if Cuthbert Staunton had made his holiday plans, or if he could come to Ingleby for a bit, while he helped to hand round the tea and the tea-cakes, for the merits of which he had vouched in London. Thus, at his ease, he had a gentle, friendly manner and a pleasant face, as he dealt with the eccentricities of an “Etna” which refused to boil. Florella felt as if her short, childish intercourse with him had been longer and more recent.
“There!” he said, in a low, half-shy voice, as he glanced at Constancy, “I’m sure Mr Elton could not have made himself more useful.”
“It is humiliating,” said Constancy; “but that ‘Etna’ beat us! Would it if we had the franchise?”
Constancy did most of the talking. Florella sat silent and looked, as she mostly did, happy. The other girls thought that Cosy need not have made it so evident that she was amused by the intruding visitor. Presently a trap was seen coming along the rough, narrow road. One man only was in it, and as the sound of the wheels attracted his attention, Guy looked up and said, in a tone of surprise—
“That’s Godfrey!”
Another moment or two, and they saw the dog-cart stop at the farm; the driver dismounted, picked a long and hairy object off the seat beside him, together with a large basket, and came over the heather with long striding steps. In a minute Godfrey and Rawdon Crawley appeared at the top of the hollow.
“My aunt has sent me,” he began, but at sight of Guy a cloud fell upon his handsome, joyous face, his air of happy expectation faded entirely, and he paused in his speech. Constancy again came to the rescue. She introduced him all round, remarked with cool amusement on the odd chance that had sent both brothers to see them at once, and as Godfrey refused her tea, offered it to Rawdie, who had greeted first her and then Guy with simple cordiality. Guy fell silent, and watched his brother with slightly lifted brows, as if a new idea had struck him. He was quite cool, and not at all put out.
“Has Aunt Margaret asked the ladies to Waynflete?” he said.
“Yes, on Tuesday. She thought the Miss Vyners would like to see it again.”
“Immensely,” said Constancy. “She promised me to ask us.”
Guy, still looking slightly amused, got up and said that he had the longer ride, and must get back, and would expect to see them all on Thursday at Ingleby.
“Tell my aunt I’ll come over to Waynflete on Tuesday by the first train in the morning,” he said as he made his farewells, and went to get his horse.
Godfrey was desperate. He hated all the other ladies who surrounded Cosy. He hated Guy, who had, he thought, come with the same object as himself. He could hardly bring himself to refer to the basket which he had filled that morning with all the fruits and flowers which he had thought Constancy might recollect seeing at Waynflete. When he did bring it forward, he muttered, that his aunt had sent it, which was not true.
Cosy dived into it.
“White raspberries!” she exclaimed. “Now, didn’t they grow just by the gate into the stables? I hope that lovely garden is as untidy as ever.”
“It’s worse, I think,” said Godfrey, more amiably; “but there are plenty of raspberries ready for you to pick.”
“Delightful!” said Cosy, and Godfrey’s brows smoothed till he looked as friendly as Rawdie.
Presently they all walked back to the house together, and Constancy showed him the long, low sitting-room, full of their books and writing-materials. She took his visit to herself, and entertained him in the most cheerful fashion. But she expressed great pleasure at Guy’s invitation to Ingleby, and finally sent Godfrey away when his cart was ready, with a perplexed and appealing look in his grey eyes, and a puzzled wrinkle on his brows, even while she lifted Rawdie into the cart and kissed his nose tenderly, telling him to look out for her on Tuesday morning at Waynflete.
“Constancy,” cried Violet, “you abominable girl! You behaved worse than any of the Miss Bennets, or Emma Woodhouse either. I’m sure those young men must have thought you were delighted to see them.”
“Well, I didn’t mind them. I could not summon the daughters of the plough and bind them in chains, could I? You are all so narrow minded.”
“Narrow minded?”
“Yes; you should take everything as it comes. The Miss Bennets couldn’t exist without morning callers; but if we can’t stand half an hour of them, we make them of equal importance. And besides, you know, they represent a side of life which exists. We must ignore nothing.”
“It’s a most contemptible side,” said Violet. “And besides, if Cuthbert knows, he will laugh at us. I do want him to see we mean business.”
“I mean business,” said Cosy; “if by business you mean reading; but I like to study life all round.”
“Yes,” said the elder Miss Staunton, “just as you like to study opinions all round, and consider smiling, views which, if they were true, would send one out into a moral and spiritual wilderness. You see the force of nothing.”
“If so, there must be an awfully stupid piece in me,” said Constancy, as if rather struck.
“But, after all, you know, whatever is true, the world has got along somehow hitherto, and I suppose it will continue to do so; so why worry.”
“Look here,” said Florella, “if we quarrel over the young men, we shall be more like the Miss Bennets than ever. We belong, you know, a little to the Waynfletes through Aunt Connie, and we knew them long ago. I am going back to my harebells. Violet, will you come?”
A great many young women aspired to the friendship of Constancy Vyner, and courted her, as girls do court each other. Florella’s friends did not make her of so much importance; but they told her all their troubles.