CHAPTER II.
VENUS’S FLY-TRAP.
ark, will you come to Sunbridge Woods and look for Venus’s fly-trap?”[1]
“With all my heart, Sorella; but what will mother do?”
“Oh, mother will be quite happy in the garden under your tent. She cannot walk in the heat, you know; but perhaps she’ll come and meet us if she does not drive with auntie.”
“Let us go and ask her,” said Mark; and led the way to the cool little parlour, where their mother was engaged in some parish writing for her brother, her writing-table so placed that she could look up from time to time at her husband’s portrait, which seemed to her, simple soul that she was! to look down on her with tender care and encouragement. Margaret never told her thoughts even to her daughter, but both Mark and Eva knew why their mother loved that place better than any other.
Mark propounded Eva’s scheme, which met with no opposition from their mother, who was well content to know that they were happy and together.
“Will you not take Elgitha?” she asked. “She loves to get a walk in the woods.”
Eva would rather have had her brother all to herself, but a suggestion from her mother was law to her; so Mark ran up to the rectory to see if Elgitha might come with them, while Eveline put on her walking dress and prepared her basket, scissors, etc.
Elgitha was now a big girl of thirteen. Small and delicate as she had been in her infancy, she was now developing a rather large frame, and was at that awkward age when a girl seems all angles, and does not know what to do with her hands and feet. Being an ugly likeness of her father, and in character more resembling the Echlins than the Manners, she in no way dimmed the lustre of Gilbert’s glory in her mother’s eyes, and was on all occasions extremely glad to escape to her aunt and cousins at the cottage.
The idea of a walk in the woods with Mark and Eveline was enchanting, a delightful relief to the tedium of a tête-à-tête drive with her mother in the phaeton, and Elgitha floundered into her walking gear with all possible speed. They met Eva at the garden gate, and, after she had put her cousin’s dress to rights with a few judicious touches, the three set off across the fields in the direction of Sunbridge. They crossed cornfields just ripening into yellow, spotted here and there with nodding poppies and blue cornflowers, and Elgitha sought counsel, as to the weather from the shepherd’s weather-glass, white or red, or, as to the time, from the seeding dandelion. The sun was high in the heavens, and blinding in his majesty, so that it was with a sense of exquisite relief that they gained the shelter of the woods, laden with full summer foliage, and whispering sweetly in the gentle wind. At Eva’s wish they sat down to rest under a lime just bursting into blossom.
It was a day when to be alive was pleasure, and Mark lay on his back gazing up into the world of tender green, dreaming deliciously; but Elgitha had not reached the dreamy age, and, having sat for five minutes, pulling to pieces a bunch of poppies which she had gathered, and watching their tender leaves float in the wind, she suddenly started up at the sight of a horseman riding along the high road, where it skirted the wood some two hundred paces distant.
“Hullo!” she shouted. “Gilbert, I wonder where he is going. Hullo! stop; where are you going?” And plunging through moss and bracken, she managed to make a right angle, and, climbing a five-barred gate, stood in front of her brother, as he came riding slowly along the road.
Gilbert was startled, but the horse knew Elgitha, whinnied, and stopped.
“How on earth did you come here?” said Gilbert, not in the most amiable manner.
“Oh! Mark and Eva are here,” explained Elgitha; “we have come out for a walk.”
“Then why do you tear along like a lunatic Meg Merrilies?”
“What a good idea!” laughed Elgitha; “you are Mr. Bertram riding from Ellangowan, and I am Meg; but I ought to be standing on the top of the gate to tell you your doom.”
“Nonsense, child; let the horse’s head free,” for Elgitha was fondling her father’s old favourite.
“The horse! Just as if the dear old thing hadn’t got a name! Poor darling old Dusty, who has carried you, man and boy, for these fifteen years. I’m ashamed of you, Gil.”
“I’m ashamed of him!” replied Gilbert, “the stupid old beast; he hasn’t a bit of spunk left in him, if he ever had any. A nice specimen, isn’t he, Mark?” for Mark and Eveline had not joined them. “What would St. Maur or Tullietudlem say to him? They’d hardly think him fit for dogs’ meat at Cambridge, would they?”
Mark patted the neck of the old horse, who had carried the rector for over twenty years.
“Dusty prefers Sunbridge to Cambridge; he’s quick enough for the rector, and can get over a quantity of ground if need be.”
“He and the rector suit each other, I’ve no doubt; but I wish the rector would keep something a little more up to the mark for his friends. It makes a fellow look such an owl to be astride of such a Rosinante. Mrs. Alderman Jacobson and those black-browed girls of hers passed me ten minutes ago in a splendid barouche with a couple of thoroughbreds—such beauties, Eva, that dark mottled grey that you love so, matched to an inch with silver-plated harness that positively dazzled me. It is scandalous; his grandfather, old Nat Jacobson, used to peregrinate the metropolis in search of cast-off wearing apparel with a black bag and a pyramid of old beavers on his patriarchal head.”
“Oh, Gil, how can you?” remonstrated Elgitha; “it is a case of industry rewarded. If our grandfathers had toiled as Nat Jacobson toiled, and accepted as fish whatever came into their nets, they might have added barn to barn and acre to acre, and left us the wherewithal to skim through the world in barouches drawn by silver-harnessed dappled greys.”
“True enough, most wise maid of Sunbridge, but I don’t think I should ever acquire a taste for making money; people in our position are not fitted for making money; but if our pater instead of being a model curate, had spent his energies on a good milk walk, you wouldn’t have to plod about on foot all your days, and I shouldn’t have had the confounded nuisance of choosing a profession.”
“Pity him—only pity him!” exclaimed Eva, laughing; “the poor young man has to make up his mind within the next twelve months whether he will be a lawyer or a clergyman. There’s yet a doctor, Gilbert. Why don’t you try medicine?”
“Pah! nasty messy work! Do you think I’d be at the call of every hysterical girl or hypochondriac old bachelor, pottering about from one stuffy room to another, with nothing to relieve the tedium but an occasional dish of scandal?”
“Have a care!” cried Mark; “the day may come when you shall need the help of Æsculapius yourself. For my part, I think no one more admirable than the true doctor, who often in the exercise of his art can ‘minister to the mind diseased,’ and, when all other hope is gone, can point the way to hope in heaven.”
“I believe, Mark,” said Gilbert, in disgust, “that you would find something to say in favour of an undertaker.”
“Perhaps I could; but as neither of us is called to weigh the pros and cons of that extremely useful calling, I confess I have not given it due consideration. You have the choice of the Church and the Bar, I of the Church or the Civil Service. I suppose, whichever we choose, we are neither of us to be pitied?”
“Bother your optimism! I believe it is your horrible contentedness that drives me into pessimism! I believe you would have me think that you enjoy dragging along through these woods at the heels of a couple of girls!”
“You can think what you please, Gilbert, it will not affect my comfort. I shouldn’t enjoy dragging at the heels of St. Maur or Tullietudlem, so let us agree to differ and wish each other a good morning. The woods at least are cooler than the high road, and as Eva is bent on having a specimen of Dame Venus’s fly-trap, we may have far to go.”
“And, pray, what may Venus’s fly-trap be?” said Gilbert, who never had any particular taste for his own company.
“I’ll show you, if we are lucky enough to find one,” cried Eva, following her brother into the wood. Elgitha stopped to give Dusty a farewell hug, then plunged after them, and Gilbert was left to his own devices. He slowly resumed his way, the sweetness of his temper not increased by the encounter, for though he affected to despise the company of girls, it was not pleasant to find them indifferent to him, and, sneer at Mark as he would, his frank, happy face filled him with envy.
Mark, of course, must decide on his calling before long. Whatever his decision, he must make his own way; his mother could give him no artificial support; it was very wise of him to make the best of it. Of course, if his pater had lived, things would have been very different, and Mark would have been—well, probably just like his present self, and would have found everything a “confounded bore.” And so post equitem sedet atra cura, and the lad of nineteen is handicapped with a heavy heart, in spite of his good father, his high-born and doting mother—in spite of his most expensive education and a moderate fortune in prospect.
The botanisers meanwhile threaded the mazes of the leafy trees with many a gay laugh and many a simple joke, and with much admiration of the multiform beauties spread before their eyes, until they came to a damp hollow, carpetted with moss of an emerald green brightness, which Eveline immediately recognised as the favourite habitat of the dainty moss which they were seeking.
They separated, each taking a division, and many lovely things, insect and vegetable, were presented to their eyes—tiny beetles, scarcely the size of a pin’s head, harnessed in green and gold, tiny flies with lustrous bodies floating on gauzy wings, mosses with dainty blossoms, scarce distinguishable in colour from the plant itself, often covering a treacherous ooze, and over all the whispering trees and the occasional coo of the woodpigeon—but the prize they sought still eluded them. Mark expressed it as his opinion that it only existed in Eveline’s imagination, and Eveline was, sorrowfully, about to give up the search, when Elgitha raised a loud shout of triumph, and there was a great leap, a splash, and a tumble.
“What are you doing?” exclaimed Mark, hastening to the help of his floundering cousin.
“Don’t mind me! don’t mind me! Here it is! I’ve found it, Lina, I’ve found it!”
“Let me look!” cried Eva, almost equally excited.
“Come round this way,” said Mark, guiding his sister on firm ground to the edge of the swamp. “If Elgitha had not been so impatient she might have won her prize with dry feet!”
“Veni, vidi, vici!” exclaimed the victorious Elgitha, holding aloft her prize; and, glancing at her soaking feet and stained dress, she continued, “When Julius Cæsar wrote that you don’t suppose he looked spick and span as when he went to dine with Pompeius Magnus.”
“Elgitha thinks the prize well worth the cost,” said Eva, admiring the lovely growth; “look at its delicate fan-like leaves, pale green, with tiny rosy spikes—dangerous beauties, too; look at these poor bodies of slain flies, here, ensnared by this leaf—and these new ones just unfolding their spikes, how innocent they look!”
“Nature’s coquettes!” laughed Mark. “Strange, is it not, to see the traps that are everywhere set for silly flies? But come, girls, we had best be getting home. We have accomplished the object of our expedition, taken our Pergama, as Elgitha would say, and the sooner we get our victorious maid home the better. It would be an ignominious catastrophe to have the discoverer of Venus’s fly-trap in bed for a week with mustard poultices and water gruel.”
Elgitha, elated with her success, protested, but in vain, for Eveline agreed with Mark, and observed that even if they had not been successful it was time that they should be getting home again.
The walk back was accomplished with sedater spirits, and as they neared home the brother and sister insensibly fell into grave discourse, while Elgitha, now rather tired, dragged a little behind.
The course of their future life was what they talked about, and Mark explained the reasons that made him hesitate to go into the Church, the course which his college successes seemed to indicate.
“It seems to me imperative,” said Mark, “that I should be no burden on my mother’s slender resources. I should dearly like to be able to make a home for you both.”
“But if Gilbert decides against taking orders there’s Bigglethwaite. I’m sure Aunt Elgitha would rather have you there than anyone else—better even than Gilbert, I think.”
“We must not think of Bigglethwaite, Lina; might as well fix on Rosenhurst itself. Failing Gilbert, the earl has someone no doubt in view, but I believe that it will end in Gilbert’s taking orders.”
“But he will never be fit,” remonstrated Eva.
“That is a hard thing to say. I don’t suppose that he will find the Bar pay, but I would rather not hang about waiting for his determination. I will make up my mind before October.”
“And you don’t know whether to be a clergyman, a schoolmaster, or to try for the Civil Service.”
“That is exactly how matters stand, Dilecta, so you see I am more perplexed than Gilbert; his choice lies between two; I am distracted by three.”
“And in all probability an accident will decide at last.”
“Probably, if, indeed, there be such a thing as accident.”
“My mother would like you to be a clergyman, I think.”
“I think she would, and what would my sister prefer?”
“I don’t know; I don’t think I very much care, for you will always be my own dear brother. Whichever will let me see most of you, I think.”
“You don’t ask me which I prefer,” pouted Elgitha, coming up behind.
“I didn’t know you were listening, goosie,” said Mark, drawing her arm through his, “But, come now, favour us with your opinion.”
“Well, Mark, my honest and true opinion is that you, if you don’t get away from stupid old Rosenhurst as soon as ever you can, you will be a goose of the first feather.”
“And wherefore, O most profound Sybilla?”
“Because there is nothing on earth to do; one day is just exactly like another, and as to being a parson, it just takes an angel like father to put up with it.”
“You naughty girl; what do you mean?”
“Why, isn’t he at everybody’s beck and call from Sunday morning to Saturday night? If Farmer Baynes quarrels with his son, father has to hear both sides, and to try and make them hear reason; if Widow Marvel’s ten babies are down with typhoid fever, because she will not keep the place decently clean, he has to supplement the work of the doctor, and go in and out of the filthy hole as if he liked it. Nobody is in any trouble, no one does any sin, but it all comes back upon father. Don’t you know that that’s what makes him look so white—that and Gilbert together?”
“Elgitha,” said Mark, gravely, “your father is one of God’s saints, and of such as he is the kingdom of heaven. Do not grudge him to the work; his reward is ready. But why would you have me leave Rosenhurst? Do you think sin and sorrow are not as frequent elsewhere?”
“Perhaps; but at any rate other places cannot be as stupid.”
“And yet, child, if you go away, before a year is out you will be looking back to these stupid days with fond regret, and will remember nothing of Rosenhurst but its roses and lilies.”
“I’d wager you something to the contrary, only I know you wouldn’t bet; but here we are home again. Don’t open the gate, please; I’m going round at the back. Mother’ll be in an awful fume if she sees this frock; Mary’ll get it cleaned for me. Here, Lina, take Aunt Margaret this trophy,” holding out a dainty specimen of the fly-trap, snugly packed in moss.
“Nay, dear, that is the prettiest piece of all; take it to Aunt Elgitha.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t care for it; she’d forget to put it in water, and so should I. Aunt Margaret will love it, and know just what it wants, and keep it alive for weeks, and paint it and learn it by heart. Good-bye for the present; I suppose you will be coming in for a little music by-and-by?”
“That is as the superior powers may have determined,” said Mark, holding the gate for her to enter, and so the expedition ended.
(To be continued.)