"LITTLE PITCHERS."
Once at least in a man's life, if only for a brief space, he reverences
the saint in the woman he desires. He may love and pursue again and again,
but she who has power to hold him back, who can make him tremble instead
of woo, who can make him silent when he feels eloquent, and restrained when
most impassioned, has won from him what never again can be given.
It was an easier matter to win him than Vera thought.
A week later Sir John Kynaston sat alone by his library fire, after breakfast, and owned to himself that he had fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with Vera Nevill.
This was all the more remarkable because Sir John was not a very young man, and that he was, moreover, not of a nature to do things rashly or impulsively.
He was, on the contrary, of a slow and hesitating disposition. He was in the habit of weighing his words and his actions before he spoke or acted, his mind was tardy to take in new thoughts and new ideas, and he was cautious and almost sluggish in taking any steps in a strange and unaccustomed direction.
Nevertheless, in this matter of Vera, he had succumbed to his fate with all the uncalculating blindness of a boy in his teens.
Vera was like no other woman he had ever seen; she was as far removed above common young-ladyhood as Raphael's Madonnas are beyond and above Greuze's simpering maidens; there could be no other like her—she was a queen, a goddess among women.
From the very first moment that he had caught sight of her on the terrace outside his house her absolute mastery over him had begun. Her rare beauty, her quiet smile, her slow, indolent movements, the very tones of her rich, low voice, all impressed him in a strange and wonderful manner. She seemed to him to be the incarnation of everything that was pure and elevated in womanhood. To have imagined that such a one as she could have thought of his wealth or his position would have been the rankest blasphemy in his eyes.
He raised her up on a pedestal of his own creating, and then he fell down before her and adored her.
John Kynaston had but little knowledge of women. Shy and retiring in manner—somewhat suspicious and distrustful also—he had kept out of their way through life. Once, in very early manhood, he had been deceived; he had become engaged to a girl whom he afterwards discovered to have accepted him only for his money and his name, whilst her heart really belonged to another and a poorer man. He had shaken himself free of her, with horror and disgust, and had sworn to himself that he would never be so betrayed again. Since then he had been suspicious—and not without just cause—of the young ladies who had smiled upon him, and of their mothers, who had pressed him with gracious invitations to their houses. He was a rich man, but he did not mean to be loved for his wealth; he said to himself that, sooner than be so, he would die unmarried and leave to Maurice the task of keeping up the old name and the old family.
But he had seen Vera; and all at once all the old barriers of pride and reserve were broken down! Here was the one woman on earth who realized his dreams, the one woman whom he would wait and toil for, even as Jacob waited and toiled for Rachel!
He had come down to Kynaston to hunt; but hitherto hunting had been very little in his thoughts. He had been down to the vicarage once or twice, he had met her once in the lanes, and he had longed for a glimpse of her daily; as yet he had done nothing else. He opened his letters on this particular morning slowly and abstractedly, tossing them into the fire, one after the other, as he read them, and not paying very much attention to their contents.
There was one, however, from his brother, "I wish you would ask me down to Kynaston for a week or two, old fellow," wrote Maurice. "I know you would mount me—now I have got rid of all my horses to please you—and I should like a glimpse of the old country. Write and tell me if I shall come down on Monday."
This letter Sir John did pay attention to. He rose hastily, as though not a moment was to be lost, and answered it:—
"Dear Maurice,—I can't possibly have you down here yet. My own plans are very uncertain, and if you are going to take your leave after Christmas, you had far better not go away from your work now. If I am still here in January, I shall be delighted if you will come down, and will mount you as much as you like."
He was happier when he had written and directed this letter.
"I must be alone just now," he murmured. "I could not bear Maurice's chatter—it would jar upon me."
Then he put on his hat and strolled out. He looked in at the stables one minute, and called the head groom to him.
"Wright, did not Mr. Beavan say, when I bought that new bay mare of him, that she had carried a lady to hounds?"
"Yes, Sir John; Miss Beavan rode her last season."
"Ah, she is a good rider. Well, I wish you would put a side-saddle and a skirt on her, and exercise her this morning. I might want to—to lend her to a lady; but she must be perfectly quiet. You can take her out every day this week."
Sir John went on his way, leaving the worthy Wright a prey to speculation as to who the mysterious lady might be for whom the bay mare was to be exercised.
His master, meanwhile, bent his steps almost instinctively to the vicarage.
Vera was undergoing a periodical persecution concerning Mr. Gisburne at the hands of old Mrs. Daintree. She was standing up by the table arranging some scarlet berries and some long trails of ivy which the children had brought to her in a vase. Tommy and Minnie stood by watching her intently; Mrs. Daintree sat at a little distance, her lap full of undarned socks, and rated her.
"It is not as if you were a girl who could earn her living in case of need. There is not one single thing you can do."
"Aunt Vera can make nosegays of berries boofully, grandma," interpolates Tommy, earnestly; "can't she, Minnie?"
"Yes, she do," assented the smaller child, with emphasis.
"I wasn't speaking to you, Tom; little boys should be—"
"Heard and not seen," puts in Tommy, rapidly; "you always say that, grandma."
Vera laughs softly. Mrs. Daintree goes on with her lecture.
"Many girls in your position are very accomplished; can teach the piano, and history, and the elements of Latin; but it seems to me you have been brought up in idleness."
"Idleness is not to be despised in its way," answers Vera, composedly. "Another bit of ivy, Tommy. What shall I do, Mrs. Daintree?" she continues, whilst her deft fingers wind the trailing greenery round and round the glass stem of the vase. "Shall I go down to the village school and sit at the feet of Mr. Dee? I have no doubt he could teach me a great many things I know nothing about."
"That is nonsense; of course I don't mean that you can educate yourself to any purpose now; it is too late for that; but you need not, at all events, turn up your nose at the blessings that Providence sets before you; and I must say, that for a young woman deliberately to choose to remain a burden upon her friends, betokens an amount of servility and a lack of the spirit of independence which I should not have supposed possible even in you!"
"What do you want me to do?" said Vera, without a sign of impatience. "Shall I walk over to Tripton this afternoon, and make a low curtsey to Mr. Gisburne, and say to him very politely, 'Here is an idle and penniless young woman who would be very pleased to stop here and marry you!' Would that be the way to do it, Mrs. Daintree?"
"No, no, no!" imperatively from Tommy, who was listening with rapidly crimsoning cheeks; "you shall not go and stop at Tripton, and tell Mr. Gisburne you will marry him!"
Vera laughed. "No, Tommy, I don't think I will; not, that is to say, if you are a good boy. I think I can do something better than that with myself!" she added, softly, as if to herself. Mrs. Daintree caught the words.
"And what better, pray? What better chance are you ever likely to have? Let me tell you, bachelors who want penniless wives don't grow on the blackberry bushes down here! If you were not so selfish and so conceited, you would see where your duty to my son, who is supporting you, lay. You would see that to be married to an honest, upright man like Albert Gisburne is a chance that most girls would catch at only too thankfully."
The old lady had raised her voice; she spoke loud and angrily; she was rapidly working herself into a passion. Tommy, accustomed to family rows, stood on the hearthrug, looking excitedly from his grandmother to his aunt. He was a precocious child; he did not quite understand, and yet he understood partly. He knew that his grandmother was scolding Vera, and telling her she was to go away and marry Mr. Gisburne. That Vera should go away! That, in itself, was sufficiently awful. Tommy adored Vera with all the intensity of his childish soul; that she should go away from him to Mr. Gisburne seemed to him the most terrible visitation that could possibly happen. His little heart swelled within him; the tears were very near his eyes.
At this very minute the door softly opened, and Sir John Kynaston, whose ring had been unheard in the commotion, was ushered in.
Tommy thought he saw a deliverer, specially sent in by Providence for the occasion. He made one spring at him and caught him round the legs, after the manner of enthusiastic small boys.
"Please—please—don't let grandmamma send aunt Vera away to Tripton to marry Mr. Gisburne! He has red hair, and I hate him; and aunt Vera doesn't want to go, she wants to stop at home and do something better!"
A moment of utter confusion on all sides; then Vera, crimson to the roots of her hair, stepped forward and held out her hand.
"Little pitchers have long ears!" she said, laughing: "and Tommy is a very silly little boy."
"No, but, aunt Vera, you said—you said," cried the child. What further revelations he might have made were fortunately not destined to be known. His aunt placed her hand unceremoniously over his small, eager mouth, and hustled both children in some haste out of the room.
Meanwhile, Sir John, looking the picture of distress and embarrassment, had shaken hands with the old lady, and inquired if he could speak with her son.
"Mr. Daintree is in his study; I will take you to him," she said, rising, and led him away out of the room. She looked at him sharply as she showed him into the study; and it did come across her mind, "I wonder what you come so often for." Still, no thought of Vera entered into her head. Sir John was the great man of the place, the squire, the potentate in the hollow of whose hand lay Sutton-in-the-Wold and all its inhabitants, and Vera was a nobody in the old lady's eyes,—a waif, whose presence was of no account at all. Sir John was no more likely to notice her than any of the village girls; except, indeed, that he would speak politely to her because she was Eustace's sister-in-law. Still, it did come across her mind to wonder what he came so often for.
Five minutes later the two gentlemen were seen going across the vicarage garden towards the church.
They remained there a very long time, more than half an hour. When they came back Marion had finished her housekeeping and was in the room busy cutting out unbleached calico into poor men's shirts, on the grand piano, an instrument which she maintained had been specially and originally called into existence for no other purpose. Mrs. Daintree still sat in her chimney corner. Vera was at the writing-table with her back to the room, writing a letter.
The vicar came in with his face all aglow with excitement and delight; his wife looked up at him quickly, she saw that something unusual and of a pleasant character had happened.
"My dear Marion, we must both thank our good friend, Sir John. I am happy to tell you that he has consented to restore the chancel."
"Oh, Sir John, how can we ever thank you enough!" cried Marion, coming forward breathlessly and pressing his hands in eager gratitude. Sir John looked as if he didn't want to be thanked, but he glanced towards the writing-table. Vera's back was turned; she made no sign of having heard.
"I am sure I had given up all hopes of it altogether," continued the vicar. "You gave such an unqualified refusal when I spoke to you about it before, I never dreamt that you would be induced to change your mind."
"Some one—I mean—I thought it over—and—and it was presented to my notice—in another light," stammered Sir John, somewhat confusedly.
"And it is most kind, most generous of you to allow it to be done in my own way, according to the plans I had wished to follow."
"Oh, I am quite sure you will understand it much better than I am likely to do. Besides, I have no time to attend to it; it will suit me better to leave it entirely in your hands."
"Would you not like to see the plans Mr. Woodley drew for us last year?"
"Not now, I think, thank you; I must be going; another time, Mr. Daintree; I can't wait just now."
He was standing irresolute in the middle of the room. He looked again wistfully at Vera's back. Was it possible that she was not going to give him one word, one look, when surely she must know by whose influence he had been induced to consent to rebuild the chancel!
Almost in despair he moved to the door, and just as he reached it, when his hand was already on the handle, she looked up. Her eyes, all softened with pleasure and gratitude, nay, almost with tenderness, met his. He stopped suddenly short.
"Miss Nevill, might I ask you to walk with me as far as the clerk's cottage? I—I forget which it is!"
It was the lamest and most blundering excuse. Any six-year-old child in the village could have pointed out the cottage to him. Mrs. Daintree looked up in astonishment. Vera blushed rosy red; Eustace, man-like, saw nothing, and began eagerly,
"I am walking that way myself; we can go together——" Suddenly his coat tails were violently pulled from behind. "Quite impossible, Eustace; I want you at home for the next hour," says Marion, quietly standing by his side, with a look of utter innocence upon her face. The vicar, almost throttled by the violence of the assault upon his garments, perceived that, in some mysterious manner, he had said something he ought not to have said. He deemed it wisest to subside into silence.
Vera rose from the writing-table. "I will go and put my hat on," she said, quietly, and left the room.
Three minutes later she and Sir John went out of the front door together.
"Well, that is the oddest fellow I ever came across in my life," said Eustace, fairly puzzled as soon as he was gone. "It is my belief," tapping his forehead significantly, "that he is a little touched here. I don't believe he quite knows what he is talking about. Why, the other night he would have nothing to say to the chancel, wouldn't even listen to me, cut me so short about it I really couldn't venture to pursue the subject; and here he comes, ten days later, all of his own accord, and proposes to do it exactly as it ought to be done, in the best and most expensive way—purbeck columns round the lancet windows, and all, Marion, just what I wanted; gives me absolute carte blanche about it. I only hope he won't take a fresh fancy into his head and change his mind again."
"Perhaps he found he would make himself unpopular if he did not do it," suggested his mother.
Marion held her tongue, and snipped away at her unbleached calico.
"And then, again, about old Hoggs' cottage," pursued Mr. Daintree. "What on earth could make him forget where it was? He might as well forget the way to his own house. I really do think he must be a little gone in the upper storey, poor fellow! Marion, what have you to say about it?"
"I have to say that if you stand chattering here all the morning, we shall never get anything done. I want to speak to you immediately, Eustace, in the other room."
She hurried her husband out into the study, and carefully closed the door upon them.
What then was the Rev. Eustace's amazement to behold his wife suddenly execute a series of capers round the room, which would not have disgraced a coryphée at a Christmas pantomime, but were hardly in keeping with the demure and highly respectable bearing of the wife of the vicar of Sutton-in-the-Wold!
Mr. Daintree began to think that everybody was going mad this morning.
"My dear Marion, what on earth is the matter?"
"Oh, you dear, stupid, blunder-headed old donkey!" exclaimed his wife, finishing her pas seul in front of him, and hugging him vehemently as a finale to the entertainment. "Do you mean to say that you don't see it?"
"See it? See what?" repeated the unfortunate clergyman, in mortal bewilderment, staring at her hard.
"Oh, you dear, stupid old goose! why, it's as plain as daylight. Can't you guess?"
Eustace shook his head dolefully.
"Why, Sir John Kynaston has fallen in love with Vera!"
"Marion! impossible!" in an awe-struck whisper. "What can make you imagine such a thing?"
"Why, everything—the chancel, of course. She must have spoken to him about it; it is to be done for her; did you not see him look at her? And then, asking her to go down the village with him; he knows where Hoggs' cottage is as well as you do, only he couldn't think of anything better."
Eustace literally gasped with the magnitude of the revelation.
"Great Heavens! and I offered to go with him instead of her."
"Yes, you great blundering baby!"
"Oh, my dear, are you sure—are you quite sure? Remember his position and Vera's."
"Well, and isn't Vera good enough, and beautiful enough, for any position?" answered her sister, proudly.
"Yes, yes; that is true; God bless her!" he said, fervently. "Marion, what a clever woman you are to find it out."
"Of course I am clever, sir. But, Eustace, it is only beginning, you know; so we must just let things take their course, and not seem to notice anything. And, mind, not a word to your mother."
Meanwhile Vera and Sir John Kynaston were walking down the village street together. The man awkward and ill at ease, the woman calm and composed, and thoroughly mistress of the occasion.
"It is very good of you about the chancel," said Vera, softly, breaking the embarrassment of the silence between them.
"You knew I should do it," he said, looking at her.
She smiled. "I thought perhaps you would."
"You know why I am going to do it—for whose sake, do you not?" he pursued, still keeping his eyes upon her downcast face.
"Because it is the right thing to do, I hope; and for the sake of doing good," she answered, sedately; and Sir John felt immediately reproved and rebuked, as though by the voice of an angelic being.
"Tell me," he said, presently, "is it true that they want you to marry—that parson—Gisburne, of Tripton? Forgive me for asking."
Vera coloured a little and laughed.
"What dreadful things little boys are!" was all she said.
"Nay, but I want to know. Are you—are you engaged to him?" with a sudden painful eagerness of manner.
"Most decidedly I am not," she answered, earnestly.
Sir John breathed again.
"I don't know what you will think of me; you will, perhaps, say I am very impertinent. I know I have no right to question you."
"I only think you are very kind to take an interest in me," she answered, gently, looking at him with that wonderful look in her shadowy eyes that came into them unconsciously when she felt her softest and her best.
They had passed through the village by this time into the quiet lane beyond; needless to say that no thought of Hoggs, the clerk, or his cottage, had come into either of their heads by the way.
Sir John stopped short, and Vera of necessity stopped too.
"I thought—it seemed to me by what I overheard," he said, hesitatingly, "that they were tormenting you—persecuting you, perhaps—into a marriage you do not wish for."
"They have wished me to marry Mr. Gisburne," Vera admitted, in a low voice, rustling the fallen brown leaves with her foot, her eyes fixed on the ground.
"But you won't let them over-persuade you; you won't be induced to listen to them, will you? Promise me you won't?" he asked, anxiously.
Vera looked up frankly into his face and smiled.
"I give you my word of honour I will not marry Mr. Gisburne," she answered; and then she added, laughingly, "You had no business to make me betray that poor man's secrets."
And then Sir John laughed too, and, changing the subject, asked her if she would like to ride a little bay mare he had that he thought would carry her. Vera said she would think of it, with the air of a young queen accepting a favour from a humble subject; and Sir John thanked her as heartily as though she had promised him some great thing.
"Now, suppose we go and find Hoggs' cottage," she said, smiling. And they turned back towards the village.