CHAPTER II.
[MARY SELBY MEETS HER DAUGHTER].
Four years later, in a street in Montreal. It had snowed uninterruptedly the day before, in fine dry particles, sifting noiselessly through the air, and filling it with prickly points--not the broad clammy flakes of an insular climate which loiter as they fall, and feel damp and clay-like beneath the passer's feet; but rather an attenuated sand or dust, dimming and pervading the day, and heaping itself in drifts which overspread and bury while you watch, yet cannot reckon how it is they grow. And then it is so dry in its exceeding coldness that it will not wet, and springs and crackles merrily under foot.
It was morning--not yet nine o'clock--and the snow shovellers were only beginning here and there to relieve the encumbered footways, and contribute another layer to the solidly-packed thicknesses of snow and ice which winter had been building in the streets, a foot or two above the neighbouring side walks. The snow had ceased to fall, and the laden clouds which had brought it having burst and dissolved themselves, the sky was a clear pale vault, filled with diffused and dazzling brightness.
From a door there issued a young girl, trim and slight. She was dressed in brown--brown close-fitting, warm and shaggy--muffled as to ears and chin in a wisp of "cloud" of the same colour, out of which there peered the daintiest little pink nose and a pair of eyes of merry blue, shining as they looked out from under the edge of her sealskin cap, with the gleeful twinkle of a squirrel's in the snugness of his nest. I would have said they were like fawn's eyes, save that it has a sentimental association which does not accord with Muriel Stanley, now arrived at the age of fifteen--the border land between child and woman--and fancy free. She stood on the doorsteps with a roll of music under her arm, and her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Muff she had none, it is in the way with active people who do their five or six miles on snow-shoes of winter afternoons, and "toboggan" down slopes in the moonlight.
The air was so chill it seemed to catch the breath on emerging from the indoor warmth; but it was so transfused with brightness and dancing sunshine that it sent the blood coursing quicker through the veins, and prickled in the nostrils with an exhilarating joy, like the sting of the air bubbles in effervescing wine.
The doorsteps were as yet unswept, and deep in snow, the shovellers being still a good many doors off, and Muriel stood on the top looking down and around ere she made the knee-deep plunge, when a voice accosted her coming down the street.
"Miss Muriel! yet surely not, at this hour of the morning."
"Yes, it's me, Mr. Gerald," she said, turning round. "What would any one stay indoors for on a jolly morning like this?"
"But you do not go out at this hour of the morning in general?"
"Neither do you; I know that much. We see the business people go past--M. Petitôt and the Ferretings--about half-past eight, but you gentlemen of the Stock Board never by any chance before half-past ten. If I were a man, and lazy, I would be a stockbroker. No going back to the office in the evening!"
"Ha, ha! you are severe this morning. Does that come of being out so early?"
"That? Oh! I have to go for my music lesson this morning; if I am to have one at all. Mr. Selby has fallen on the ice and sprained both his ankle and his wrist. I have a note from him, written with his left hand, asking me to come to his house, as he cannot come to me--written with his left hand, actually; think of the trouble it must have cost him!--so I could not refuse to go."
"Poor old Selby! I did not hear of that. He is my uncle, you know, or at least he is married to my aunt. And Judy--Mrs. Bunce, I mean--is there just now, with Betsey, to show her the gaieties of the city. Nice house to see the gaieties from. They will consist of a musicale at Counter Tenor's, the dry-goods man, and one or two select performances of the Classical Quartette Club. Betsey's mind won't be unsettled by the dissipation, I guess. She won't leave town thoroughly dissatisfied with country life. Then again, what a pretty specimen of musical culture poor Betsey must be for Selby to lead around. I can imagine his being silently thankful for the sprain as an excuse to stay at home. Just come in the nick of time. However, as my mother was saying to me, though somehow it seems to have slipped out of my mind, we must do what we can for Betsey. If she is a rumpty-tumpty little thing, with her hair always lying the wrong way, she can't help it, and Uncle Bunce is not half bad--for a parson. I have it! I shall go in with you now, if you don't mind, find them all at breakfast, like an intimate and affectionate nephew--it will save more valuable time in the afternoon--and offer to take Betsey to the Rink to-day at three or four o'clock--that is, if you will promise to be there. But let me see! Have I time? Ah, yes! Twenty minutes to spare before I am due at Hammerstone's."
"Hammerstone's? Professor Hammerstone's? Is it a breakfast? Do you attend scientific breakfasts?"
"No. But I study the sciences, though perhaps you would not think it. You see we have so much to do with mineral lands, mines, metals, and that sort of thing, that the governor thinks it is worth while for me to try and find out what it all means. Those sharks, the experts, impose on you so abominably if you do not know something of what they are talking about. So I go to Hammerstone for an hour three mornings in the week, if I get up in time; and really it is more interesting than you would suppose. It is settled, then, that you will be on the Rink this afternoon?"
"I scarcely think it. Mr. Considine is coming to drive us out this afternoon."
"Considine! Phew--But gooseberries are not in season at this time of year! He! he!"
"I do not understand. I said we were going for a sleigh ride."
"With Considine? Will it not be rather cold work sitting with your back to the horses while the old chap makes--conversation--to the Miss Stanleys?"
"Aunt Penelope is afraid to venture out these cold days."
"Just what I said about wholesome summer fruit. That old Considine must be a sad bore, running out and in so much to one's house--like a tame cat."
"Mr. Considine is very nice. I like him. He is so good-natured, and he never says a word against people in their absence."
"One for me! But he is a good fellow, and I fancy you are not the only Miss Stanley who thinks so."
"How slippery it is! You turn off here, I think, to go to Professor Hammerstone's, do you not? I hope you will not be late. Thanks for carrying my music; I will take it now."
"But I mean to carry your music all the way, Miss Muriel. As I told you, I am going to look in on my three aunts at breakfast, and ask them for a cup of hot coffee. That will have a good effect on my aunt Judy, who I fear suspects me of being not very steady. She is a great promoter of coffee taverns. Tried to start one at St. Euphrase, I believe, and had to drink all the coffee herself because the habitants would not buy it. She will say I am an improving character if I ask for a cup of coffee."
When Muriel had finished her music lesson and was resuming her gloves and cloud, she found herself caught from behind by a pair of short fat arms in a sort of hug, accompanied by a little scream of enthusiasm.
"Muriel! And were you going away without ever asking to see me?"
Muriel turned in surprise. "Betsey Bunce! But I did not know you were in town till an hour ago. You know you never wrote."
"Wrote! What is there to write about at St. Euphrase?--unless I were to walk up to the farm and ask Bruneau about your cows and chickens. But you knew an hour ago, you say, and yet you were going away without asking for me. I call it real unkind."
"It is only ten o'clock, you know--far too early an hour for calling."
"You are so particular! Just like an old woman--and a stiff old-country woman, too--Miss Penelope all over."
"I hope so. Aunt Penelope is always right."
"Come in now, anyway, and take off your things. I am dying for somebody to talk to, after sitting round the stove for three days with three old women. What with Mr. Selby's bandages, and embrocations, and Miss Susan's neuralgia, and Mrs. Selby's poor health, this house is worse than a hospital. Auntie likes it first-rate; she enjoys giving people physic, and says it was a Providence which brought her here at this time; but I find it real lonesome. I have read through the only two novels I can find, and I declare my back aches with sitting still and doing nothing. Couldn't we go down town by-and-by and look at the shops? Let me help you off with your jacket. Fur-lined, I do declare! Cost twenty dollars, I dare say. Thirty was it? You're the lucky girl! Never mind fixing up before the glass, you're all right--here's a pin if you want one. Wherever did you pick up that cunning neck-ribbon?--lady bugs and grasshoppers--I call it sweet. It would just suit my geranium-coloured poplin! By-the-way, do you think that will do for evening wear, if I am asked anywhere? It is made with a tablier--looked scrumptious the night they gave charades at Madame Podevin's boarding-house. Mdlle. Ciseau cut it out for me, and I run it on the machine myself--fits like a glove. But your city fashions are so different, one never can be sure. We will go upstairs and look at it; but first you must come into the Snuggery and see the old ladies."
The "Snuggery" was at the back of the house, a sort of family room in which strangers were not received. It had been the chief apartment of the old log homestead which preceded the existing dwelling. The logs had been found so sound and the chamber so desirable that it had been suffered to remain, and been incorporated with the "frame" building erected in front, which it promised to survive, and last on in solid stability when the lighter structure of posts and boards should have fallen to pieces. It was cooler than the rest of the house in warm weather, and warmer in cold; built of twelve inch logs carefully jointed together, plastered on the outside, panelled and ceiled within with red pine highly varnished, and floored with parquetry of different native woods. It had a window on each of three sides, flanked by heavy curtains. There was no fire-place, but in the centre an old-fashioned box-stove, capable of holding billets from two to three feet long, and whose great black smoke-pipe pierced the roof like a pivot for the family life to revolve on.
A bear skin and rugs lay about the floor, sofas and tables stood by the walls, and round the domestic altar, the blazing stove, were the rocking-chairs of the three sisters, gently oscillating like pendulums in a clockmaker's shop, and making the wooden chamber feel like the cabin of a ship, heaving and swinging on a restless tide.
Muriel was greeted effusively by Mrs. Bunce, who looked more fidgety and alert than ever in that reposeful place, and then she was presented to the sisters. Miss Susan, swathed in quilted silk and webs of knitting, a bundle rather than a person, and immersed in her own misery far too deeply to feel or to excite interest in a stranger, merely bowed and shuddered at the breath of cooler air which entered from without; but to the other, Mrs. Selby, Muriel felt strongly drawn, and pleased in a strange and restful way to feel the gentle eyes of the sick and rather silent lady dwelling on her with wistful kindness. She was tall and pale, and in the cross light of windows admitting the dazzling reflections from the snow, and among the browns and yellows of the wainscoting, there was a lambent whiteness which associated itself in Muriel's mind with those "shining ones" she had read of when a child in the "Pilgrim's Progress," and filled her with pleasant reverence.
The lady scarcely spoke, spoke only the necessary words of welcome to a stranger, and then withdrew from the hurry of Betsey's and Judith's eager talk, sitting silently by and looking on the new comer with gentle earnest eyes. In the focus of streaming daylight and backed by russet shadows she sat and looked, wrapped in her white knitted shawl, and with hair like frosted silver, features and hands delicate, transparent, and colourless like wax, and eyes which had the weary faded look which comes of sleepless nights and many tears. She found it pleasant to sit and rest her eyes on Muriel, so elastic and freshly bright, as she chatted with the others; she felt as when a breath of spring comes rustling through the dead and wintry woods, through sapless withered twigs and fallen leaves, whispering of good to come, and sweet with springing grass and opening buds.
She scanned the girl's face and guessed her age, and then her thoughts went back across the years, the weary sunless years which had come and gone since her joys had withered, and she could not but think that had her own lost daughter been spared, she would have been nearly of that age now, and perhaps she would have been gay and bright and sweet as this one was before her. Her eyes grew moist, but it was with a softer, less harrowing regret than she had hitherto known, more plaintive and almost soothing in its sadness. The girl looked so innocent and free of care, with low sweet laughter coming from a heart that had never known sorrow or unkindness. It did her good to watch, and made her feel more patient in her long and weary grief.
For the others, they had their own affairs to make busy with, and it was not every day they came to town. What interest, either, for them, could there be in the emotional variations of their silent and always sorrowful hostess? She had suffered--though it was fourteen years since then--and of course they "felt" for her; but there is a limit to sympathy as to all things human--if there were not, life would be unbearable--and to see her after so many years still cherishing the olden sorrow had grown tedious, if yet touching after a sort, and the family had grown to disregard it as a settled melancholy or monomania, to be pitied and passed over, like the deafness, old age, or palsy of family friends. So Betsey and her aunt had settled themselves one on either side of Muriel "for a good old talk," as Betsey said, and they talked accordingly.
"I shall come round to-morrow morning to see your aunts," said Mrs. Bunce, "and spend a long forenoon with them," and so on ad infinitum.
A letter was brought in while the talk was in full swing.
"An invitation!" cried Judith. "Mrs. Jordan--requests the pleasure--a juvenile party. Well--I declare!--Betsey, we forgot to bring your pinafores--or should it have been a certificate of the date of your birth? A very strange way to pay attention to their rector's wife and niece! I thought Mrs. Jordan would have known better."
"Aunt Matilda and I are going," said Muriel in astonishment. "It was very nice last time. More than a hundred, big and little. They had the band, a splendid supper and lots of fun. Indeed, Aunt Penelope was almost unwilling I should go this time; it was so late when we got home."
"Very proper, my dear; I quite approve. Young people should keep early hours; but, you know, Betsey is a little older than you are. Not much," she added, as prudence pointed to the day, only a year or two ahead, when it would suit Betsey, if still a young lady, to be no older than Muriel--"still she is in long dresses, and it seems odd to invite her the first time to a child's party."
"They are not all children. Tilly Martindale, for instance, is as old as Betsey. So is Randolph Jordan himself and Gerald Herkimer."
"Will they be there?" cried Betsey kindling into interest. "We'd better go, auntie, there's no slight. I see the sort of thing it is; there are a few little girls--big little girls though, all the same--to give it the name of juvenile and take off the stiffness. Just like the candy pulling we had at Farmer Belmore's. You know Farmer Belmore's, Muriel? He lives just across the river and down below the island at St. Euphrase. His son's family from Michigan were with him in the fall, and his wife and daughters are too dévotes to meet their neighbours, and are only waiting his death to go off to the convent. However, the old man--and a good Protestant he is--was determined the children should have a good time, so he gave--a candy pulling and invited everybody for miles round--said it was for the children. So we all went--drove across the river on the first ice of the season--whether we knew Mrs. Belmore or no. And, Muriel, we had just the most too-too time you can imagine. The daughters sat in the back-room with one or two old French women, away from everybody, and the eldest granddaughter received the guests. There was a fiddle, and, oh, just a lovely time! Joe Webb and I pulled the whitest hank of candy in the room, and we danced eight-hand reels and country dances, till one of my shoes gave way and I had to sit out with Joe Webb. It was something beyond, I tell you!"
"Tush, Betsey!" said her aunt. "You are in the city now and must not go into raptures over rustic frolics, or people will think you know no better. I shall ask the Miss Stanleys about this, when I see them to-morrow. They will be able to tell me if we had better go, and how you should dress."
"Dress! Haven't I my geranium poplin?"
"But this is town, my dear, which may make a difference; one never knows. In my young days, now, I always wore white muslin and a blue sash! And you cannot think how many civil speeches I used to get" added the old lady, bridling, with a spot of pink on either cheek and a toss which set the treacle-coloured curls quivering. The war-horse is never too old to prance and champ his bit at the sound of the trumpet, though he may be so old that no one can remember his ever having been in action.
"I do not remember ever seeing geranium poplin at a party," said Muriel, looking to Betsey; but her eyes fell before the glance of displeased superiority she met there.
"You have not seen my dress, or you would speak more guardedly. Besides, you are not out yet, and cannot be expected to know what goes on at fashionable gatherings."
"No," said Muriel, meekly, "I am only a little girl, I know that. Still, at the juvenile parties I go to--Mrs. Jordan's, Mrs. Herkimer's, and the rest--and at our parties at home, though they are not balls by any means--quite small affairs--the people dress very nicely--velvet, satin, lace, and so on--but I never saw a geranium poplin."
"No! Poplin is only coming in! I know that from 'Godey's Magazine.' It was just a mere chance Quiproquo of St. Euphrase having one dress piece. I bought it, and you cannot think how rich it looks. Cut square!--they are all cut square in the higher circles this year--with elbow sleeves and a fall of rich lace at twenty-five cents a yard."
Muriel held her breath at the catalogue of rustic splendour. She would have liked to say a word in mitigation of the fright she feared Betsey was intending to make of herself, but dreaded to have her youth flung in her face again. The young are so ashamed of their youth while they have it; it is only after it has fled, that, like flowers drooping in the midday heat, they sigh for the dried-up dews of morning which erewhile weighed down their heads with mistaken shame.
There followed more talk of millinery, and then it was time for Muriel to go, after effusive farewells and appointments for future meeting. Mrs. Selby came forward last, when the more boisterous adieux were over. She would have liked to take this young girl in her arms; she felt so strongly drawn to her, and knew not why; but she restrained herself, and only begged her to come often while Betsey remained, and to be sure to come to the family room in passing, next time she came for a music lesson. And Muriel, looking in the face of the whitened lady, so venerable and sweet, not only promised--as in good nature she could not avoid--but really intended to fulfil, promising herself pleasure in doing it.