CHAPTER XII.—THE ROSEBUD SKETCHES FROM MEMORY.
Reader! dear reader! nay, on the chance of your being a young lady, and, therefore, necessarily charming, we will go the whole length of the adjective, and say at once, dearest reader! (of course, asking your pardon for the liberty, and feeling quite sure you are only too ready to grant it, because you are such an amiable sex) don’t you think—(by the way, how very becoming that new plan of plaiting a pig-tail of your back hair, and twisting it round like a coronal over your front hair, is to you—it gives quite a Classical, Grecian, Etruscan, and all that sort of thing, style to your contour)—don’t you think, dearest reader, that we have for much too long a time lost sight of, and practically ignored, and altogether cruelly and abominably deserted, and neglected, the Rosebud of Ashburn? and she all the while, in the self-denial of her nature (a species of self-denial, by the way, which would be very generally practised and become exceedingly popular, if we were but sufficiently philanthropic to divulge the recipe), has only been growing prettier and more fatally fascinating every day.
Oh, that dangerous, irresistible little Rosebud! There she sat, looking as demure as if she wasn’t always ready to smash any amount of hearts into the smallest possible pieces, on the shortest notice imaginable, toiling busily over an absurd little crochet purse, which she was manufacturing literally “by hook and by crook,” against Mr. Selby’s birthday, when she intended to present him with it “to keep all his sovereigns in;” though if he could have kept all his sovereigns in that pretty little folly, the said folly would very soon have had a sinecure, and poor Mr. Selby have been a ruined snob, instead of a prosperous one.
Now, we do not object to mention in confidence, though we should not wish it repeated, that the Rosebud, albeit a most dutiful and affectionate daughter, had, since the boys went to school, found her life very dull and monotonous, and was getting decidedly “hard up” for excitement;—pleasurable excitement would, of course, have been her choice, but even a little mild persecution would not have come amiss, in this dearth of variety: she had expected Sir Thomas Crawley would have given away the living, and some horrid interloper have arrived to turn them out of house and home long ere this, but no; day after day passed by without producing even the ghost of an incident, and the unfortunate and victimised Rosebud was reduced to sit by herself and look pretty, without any one to reap the benefit thereof. What a cruel situation for a vivacious Rosebud!
Mrs. Colville had been absent nearly an hour, and Emily, who stayed at home to get on with her crochet (for the next day was the eventful birthday, and she was alarmed lest her offering should not be ready in time), had been all by her small and pretty self, and had croched away so hard that she had croched herself into a headache;—perceiving this to be the case, she laid down her work and fell a thinking, and having nothing agreeable to reflect upon in the present, she began to “try back,” till she had mentally jibbed as far as the day when she, and her friend Caroline, had been frightened by the footpad, and rescued by an interesting young stranger, whom you and I, dearest reader, know to have been Ernest Carrington, although the Rosebud was still in ignorance of that fact. From sheer listlessness and want of anything better to think about, Emily began speculating as to whom her deliverer could possibly have been, and whether, by any odd chance, she should ever meet him again, and if so, whether he would recollect her, or she him, when it occurred to her to try if she could remember his features well enough to sketch them. Emily had rather a talent for taking likenesses, so she provided herself with a pencil and a piece of paper, and drew away till she had produced, what an auctioneer would have termed, a “splendid portrait of a nice young man.” Having accomplished this feat, she held up her performance to scrutinise it, drawing back her head and bending her slender neck from side to side, like some graceful bird, till she got the light to fall properly upon her sketch,—“Yes, I think that is very like him,” she said, “only it hasn’t got quite his expression—there was something so calm and—spiritual, I suppose it would be called, in his look; he was very handsome, certainly; I wonder who he could be!” Resuming her pencil, she added two or three finishing touches, then appended to it her initials, and the date, with the intention of adding it to a select gallery of portraits of remarkable ball-partners, and other heroes of her imagination, which reposed inviolate within the sacred precincts of her writing-desk; but, at this moment, the house-door opened and Mrs. Colville entered, so hastily that Emily had only time to thrust her portrait between the leaves of the nearest book (which happened to be a volume of Blair’s Sermons), ere her mother had joined her.
“Mamma, you are tired,” she said, as Mrs. Colville, hurriedly drawing off her gloves, seated herself on the sofa; observing her more attentively, she continued, “You look pale, and—— You are not ill? Has anything happened?”
Mrs. Colville smiled faintly. “I am not ill, darling,” she said, “but—but—the new rector is appointed, and we must leave this house next week;” and overcome by the idea of quitting the home where she had passed so many happy years with him who was no more, but whom she had loved, nay, still loved so well (for hers was one of those rare and true affections which only begin on earth), the widow burst into tears. In an instant, Emily flew to her side, quietly removed her bonnet, and then, with the delicate instinct of a true woman’s nature, feeling that her sympathy could best be shown by silent tenderness, she gently drew her mother’s head towards her till it rested on her bosom, and suffered her to weep unrestrained. But Mrs Colville, although on this occasion the suddenness of the shock had overcome her habitual self-control, was by no means a weak character, and she soon recovered herself.
“I did not mean to distress you thus, dearest,” she said “but the announcement was made to me so abruptly; Sir Thomas—I do not wish to speak against him—but he is not a man of any delicacy of feeling.”
“He!” interrupted Emily, “he has no more feeling than the most obdurate old paving-stone that ever refused to be macadamised.”
“He has certainly not shown much consideration towards us in our sorrow,” returned the widow, “but I bear him no ill-will: he only exacts his legal rights, and I have no business to blame because nature has not gifted him with delicate perception. But I was going to tell you: Mr. Selby received a note from him this morning, saying—but here it is; Mr. Selby gave it to me to show you.”