Chapter Twelve.
Pandora.
In the projecting oriel window of a very pleasant sitting-room, whose inside seat was furnished with blue velvet cushions, sat a girl of seventeen years, dressed in velvet of the colour then known as lion-tawny, which was probably a light yellowish-brown. It was trimmed, or as she would have said, turned up, with satin of the same colour, was cut square, but high, at the throat, and finished by gold embroidery there and on the cuffs. A hood of dark blue satin covered her head, and came down over the shoulders, set round the front with small pearls in a golden frame shaped somewhat like a horseshoe. She was leaning her head upon one hand, and looking out of the window with dreamy eyes that evidently saw but little of the landscape, and thinking so intently that she never perceived the approach of another girl, a year or two her senior, and similarly attired, but with a very different expression in her lively, mischievous eyes. The hands of the latter came down on the shoulders of the meditative maiden so suddenly that she started and almost screamed. Then, looking up, a faint smile parted her lips, and the intent look left her eyes.
“Oh! is it you, Gertrude?”
“Dreaming, as usual, Pan? Confess now, that you wist not I was in the chamber.”
“I scarce did, True.” The eyes were growing grave and thoughtful again.
“Sweet my lady!—what conneth she, our Maiden Meditation? Doth she essay to find the philosopher’s stone?—or be her thoughts of the true knight that is to bend low at her feet, and whisper unto her some day that he loveth none save her? I would give a broad shilling for the first letter of his name.”
“You must give it, then, to some other than me. Nay, True; my fantasies be not of thy lively romancing sort. I was but thinking on a little maid that I saw yester-even, in our walk with Aunt Grena.”
“What, that dainty little conceit that came up to the house with her basket of needlework that her mother had wrought for Aunt Grena? She was a pretty child, I allow.”
“Oh no, not Patience Bradbridge. My little maid was elder than she, and lay on a day-bed within a compassed window. I marvelled who she were.”
“Why, you surely mean that poor little whitefaced Christabel Hall! She’s not pretty a whit—without it be her hair; she hath fair hair that is not over ill. But I marvel you should take a fantasy to her; there is nought taking about the child.”
“You alway consider whether folks be pretty, Gertrude.”
“Of course I do. So doth everybody.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh, you! You are not everybody, Mistress Dorrie.”
“No, I am but one maid. But I would fain be acquaint with that child. What said you were her name? All seems strange unto me, dwelling so long with Grandmother; I have to make acquaintance with all the folks when I return back home.”
“Christabel Hall is her name; she is daughter to Roger Hall, the manager at our works, and he and she dwell alone; she hath no mother.”
“No mother, hath she?—and very like none to mother her. Ah, now I conceive her looks.”
“I marvel what you would be at, Pandora. Why, you and I have no mother, but I never mewled and moaned thereafter.”
“No, Gertrude, I think you never did.”
“Aunt Grena hath seen to all we lacked, hath not she?”
“Aunt is very kind, and I cast no doubt she hath seen to all you lacked.” Pandora’s tone was very quiet, with a faint pathos in it.
“Why, Dorrie, what lacked you that I did not?” responded Gertrude, turning her laughing face towards her sister.
“Nothing that I could tell you, True. What manner of man is this Roger Hall?”
“A right praisable man, Father saith, if it were not for one disorder in him, that he would fain see amended: and so being, Dorrie, I scarce think he shall be a-paid to have you much acquaint with his little maid, sithence he hath very like infected her with his foolish opinions.”
“What, is he of the new learning?”
Gertrude failed to see the sudden light which shot into Pandora’s eyes, as she dropped them on the cushion in the endeavour to smooth an entangled corner of the fringe.
“That, and no less. You may guess what Father and Aunt reckon thereof.”
“Father was that himself, Gertrude, only five years gone, when I went to dwell in Lancashire.”
“Pan, my dear heart, I do pray thee govern thy tongue. It maybe signifies but little what folks believe up in the wilds and forests yonder, and in especial amongst the witches: but bethink thee, we be here within a day’s journey or twain of the Court, where every man’s eyes and ears be all alive to see and hear news. What matters it what happed afore Noah went into the ark? We be all good Catholics now, at the least. And, Pan, we desire not to be burned; at all gates, I don’t, if you do.”
“Take your heart to you, sister; my tongue shall do you none ill. I can keep mine own counsel, and have ere now done the same.”
“Then, if you be so discreet, you can maybe be trusted to make acquaintance with Christie. But suffer not her nor Roger to win you from the true Catholic faith.”
“I think there is little fear,” said Pandora quietly.
The two sisters were nieces of Mr Justice Roberts, and daughters of Mr Roberts of Primrose Croft, who was owner of the works of which Roger Hall was manager. Theirs was one of the aristocratic houses of the neighbourhood, and themselves a younger branch of an old county family which dated from the days of Henry the First. The head of that house, Mr Roberts of Glassenbury, would almost have thought it a condescension to accept a peerage. The room in which the girls sat was handsomely furnished according to the tastes of the time. A curtain of rich shot silk—“changeable sarcenet” was the name by which they knew it—screened off the window end of it at pleasure; a number of exceedingly stiff-looking chairs, the backs worked in tapestry, were ranged against the wall opposite the fire; a handsome chair upholstered in blue velvet stood near the fireplace. Velvet stools were here and there about the room, and cushions, some covered with velvet, some with crewel-work, were to be seen in profusion. They nearly covered the velvet settle, at one side of the fire, and they nestled in soft, plumy, inviting fashion, into the great Flanders chair on the other side. In one corner was “a chest of coffins”—be not dismayed, gentle reader! the startling phrase only meant half-a-dozen boxes, fitting inside each other in graduated sizes. Of course there was a cupboard, and equally of course the white-washed walls were hung with tapestry, wherein a green-kirtled Diana, with a ruff round her neck and a farthingale of sufficient breadth, drew a long arrow against a stately stag of ten, which, short of outraging the perspective, she could not possibly hit. A door now opened in the corner of the room, and admitted a lady of some forty years, tall and thin, and excessively upright, having apparently been more starched in her mind and carriage than in her dress. Pandora turned to her.
“Aunt Grena, will you give me leave to make me acquainted with Master Hall’s little maid—he that manageth the cloth-works?”
Aunt Grena pursed up her lips and looked doubtful; but as that was her usual answer to any question which took her by surprise, it was not altogether disheartening.
“I will consult my brother,” she said stiffly.
Mr Roberts, who was a little of the type of his brother the Justice, having been consulted, rather carelessly replied that he saw no reason why the maid should not amuse herself with the child if she wished it. Leave was accordingly granted. But Aunt Grena thought it necessary to add to it a formidable lecture, wherein Pandora was warned of all possible and impossible dangers that might accrue from the satisfaction of her desire, embellished with awful anecdotes of all manner of misfortunes which had happened to girls who wanted or obtained their own way.
“And methinks,” concluded Mistress Grena, “that it were best I took you myself to Master Hall’s house, there to see the maid, and make sure that she shall give you no harm.”
Gertrude indulged herself in a laugh when her aunt had departed.
“Aunt Grena never can bear in mind,” she said, “that you and I, Pan, are above six years old. Why, Christie Hall was a babe in the cradle when I was learning feather-stitch.”
“Laugh not at Aunt Grena, True. She is the best friend we have, and the kindliest.”
“Bless you, Dorrie! I mean her no ill, dear old soul! Only I believe she never was a young maid, and she thinks we never shall be. And I’ll tell you, there was some mistake made in my being the elder of us. It should have been you, for you are the soberer by many a mile.”
Pandora smiled. “I have dwelt with Grandmother five years,” she said.
“Well, and haven’t I dwelt with Aunt Grena well-nigh nineteen years? No, Pan, that’s not the difference. It lieth in the nature of us two. I am a true Roberts, and you take after our mother’s folks.”
“Maybe so. Will you have with us, True, to Master Hall’s?”
“I? Gramercy, no! I’m none so fond of sick childre.”
“Christie is not sick, so to speak, Bridget saith; she is but lame and weak.”
“Well, then she is sick, so not to speak! She alway lieth of a couch, and I’ll go bail she whines and mewls enough o’er it.”
“Nay, Bridget saith she is right full of cheer, and most patient, notwithstanding her maladies. And, True, the poor little maid is alone the whole day long, save on holy-days, when only her father can be with her. Wouldst thou not love well to bring some sunshine into her little life?”
“Did I not tell you a minute gone, Pandora Roberts, that you and I were cast in different moulds? No, my Minorite Sister, I should not love it—never a whit. I want my sunshine for mine own life—not to brighten sick maids and polish up poor childre. Go your ways, O best of Pandoras, and let me be. I’ll try over the step of that new minuet while you are gone.”
“And would you really enjoy that better than being kind to a sick child? O True, you do astonish me!”
“I should. I never was cut out for a Lady Bountiful. I could not do it, Dorrie—not for all the praises and blessings you expect to get.”
“Gertrude, did you think—”
“An’t like you, Mistress Pandora, the horses be at the door, and Mistress Grena is now full ready.”