CHAPTER XVIII.
The next day at class, Laura's place still being empty, I watched eagerly for Clara. The people were pouring in at the door, and I, knowing their faces, could not but feel how unlike she was to them all, when in the way she appeared, so bright in her dark dress, with her cloudless forehead and air of ecstatic innocence. She spoke to me to-day.
"How are you?"
"Quite well; and you, Miss Benette? But I want you to listen to me presently; seriously, I have something to say."
"I'll wait," and she took her seat.
Davy extolled our anthem, and did not stop us once, which fact was unprecedented. We all applauded him when he praised us, at which he laughed, but was evidently much pleased. In fact, he had already made for himself a name and fame in the town, and the antagonistic jealousy of the resident professors could not cope therewith, without being worsted; they had given him up, and now let him alone,—thus his sensitive nature was less attacked, and his energy had livelier play. When the class divided, Miss Benette looked round at me: "I am at your service, Master Auchester."
I gave her my mother's message. She was sweet and calm as ever, but still grave, and she said, "I am very grateful to your mother, and to those young ladies your sisters; but I never do go anywhere out to tea."
"But, Miss Benette, you are going to that party at the Redferns'."
"I am going to sing there,—that is different. It is very hard to me not to come, but I must not, because I have laid it upon myself to do nothing but study until I come out. Because, you see, if I make friends now, I might lose them then, for they might not like to know me."
"Miss Benette!"—I stamped my foot—"how dare you say so? We should always be proud to know you."
"I cannot tell that," she retorted; "it might be, or it might not. Perhaps you will think I am right one day. I should like to have come," she persisted bewitchingly. But I was inwardly hurt, and I daresay she thought me outwardly sulky, for it was all I could do to wish her good-evening like a "young gentleman," as she had called me.
I said to Millicent, when we were walking the next morning, that I had had my fortune told. We had a long conversation. I saw she was very anxious to disabuse me of the belief that I must necessarily be what, in myself, I had always held myself ready to become, and I laughed her quite to scorn.
"But, Charles," she remonstrated, "if this is to be, you must be educated with a direct view to those purposes."
"So I shall be; but when she said medicine she did not mean I should be an apothecary, Millicent," and I laughed the more.
"No, I rather think it is music you ought to profess. But in that case you will require high as well as profound instruction."
"I mean to profess an instrument, and I mean to go to Germany and learn all about it."
"My dear boy!"
"Yes, I do, and I know I shall; but as I have not chosen my instrument yet, I shall wait."
Millicent herself laughed heartily at this. "Would you like to learn the horn, Charles? or the flute? or perhaps that new instrument, the ophicleide?" And so the subject dwindled into a joke for that while. I then told her in strict confidence about Laura. I scarcely ever saw her so much excited to interest; she evidently almost thought Clara herself angelic, and to my delight she at length promised to call with me upon her, if I would ascertain that it would be convenient. I shall never forget, too, that Millicent begged for me from my mother some baked apples, some delicate spiced jelly, and some of her privately concocted lozenges, for Laura. I do think my mother would have liked to dispense these last à la largesse among the populace. I carried these treasures in a small basket to Miss Benette, and saw her just long enough to receive her assurance that she should be so pleased if my sister would come and look at her work.
Sweet child! as indeed she was by the right of Genius (who, if Eros be immortal youth, hath alone immortal fancy),—she had laid every piece of her beauteous work, every scrap of net or cambric, down to that very last handkerchief, upon the table, which she had covered with a crimson shawl, doubtless some relic of her luxurious mother conserved for her. And with the instinct of that ideal she certainly created in her life, she had interspersed the lovely manufactures with little bunches of wild-flowers and green, and a few berries of the wild rose-tree, ripe and red.
I was enchanted. I was proud beyond measure to introduce to her my sister; proud of them both. Millicent was astonished, amazed; I could see she was quite puzzled with pleasure, but more than all she seemed lost in watching Clara's calm, cloudless face.
"Which of the pieces do you like best?" asked Miss Benette at last, after we had fully examined all.
"Oh! it is really impossible to say; but if I could prefer, I should confess, perhaps, that this is the most exquisitely imagined;" and Millicent pointed to a veil of thin white net, with the border worked in the most delicate shades of green floss silk, a perfect wreath of myrtle-leaves; and the white flowers seemed to tremble amidst that shadowy garland. I never saw anything to approach them; they were far more natural than any paintings.
Miss Benette took this veil up in her little pink hands, and folding it very small, and wrapping it in silver paper, presented it to Millicent, saying, in a child-like but most touching manner, "You must take it, then, that you may not think I am ungrateful; and I am so glad you chose that."
As Millicent said, it would have been impossible to have refused her anything. I quite longed to cry, and the tears stood in my tender-hearted sister's eyes; but Clara seemed entirely unconscious she had done anything touching or pretty or complete.
If I go on in this way, raking the embers of reminiscence into rosy flames, I shall never emancipate myself into the second great phase of my existence. It is positively necessary that I should not revert to that veil at present, or I should have to delineate astonishment and admiration that had no end.