He kept hold of her hands when she loosed them, and with a confused laugh and change of tone, asked “About the children? I met them just now. Might I bring my little cousins, Lady Stanton’s children, to see them? They want to meet.”
“Sir Henry would not like it, though she might. Sir Henry is not like you.”
“I know; he is plus royalist que le roi. But the children would. And they don’t deny me anything,” said Geoff, with a little laugh.
He scarcely knew why this was—but it was so; nothing was denied to him; he was the enfant gâté of Elfdale. Miss Musgrave was not, however, quite so complacent. She gave an assent which was cold and unwilling, and which quenched Geoff’s genial enthusiasm. He went back to his phaeton quite subdued and silent. “But I will see that little thing again,” he said to himself.
In the mean time, while this conversation had been going on, Lilias had wandered forth alone into the Chase. Martuccia had gone before with Nello, while Lilias talked to the young man; and now the child followed dreamily, as she was in the habit of doing, her eyes abstracted, her whole being rapt in a separate consciousness, which surrounded her like an atmosphere of her own. She knew vaguely that the little brother and his nurse were in front of her; but the watchfulness of Lilias had relaxed, and she was not thinking of Nello. He was safe; here was no one who could interfere with him. She had taken up a branch of a tree which lay in her path and had caught her childish fancy, and with this she went on, using it like a pilgrim’s staff, and saying a kind of low chant, without words, to herself, to which the rough staff was made to keep time. What was she thinking of? everything, nothing; thought indeed was not necessary to the fresh soul in that subdued elation and speechless gladness. There was a vague sense in her mind of the brisk air, the sunshine, the blue sky, the floating clouds, all in one; but had the clouds been low upon the trees, and the air all damp instead of all exhilaration, it would have made little difference to Lilias. Her spring of unconscious blessedness was within herself. Her song was not music nor her movements harmony in any way that could be accounted for by rule; and indeed the low succession of sounds which came from her lips unawares, and to which her little steps and the stroke of the rough stick kept time, was more inartificial than even the twittering of the birds. A small, passive, embodied happiness went roaming along the rough, woodland path, with soft-glowing abstracted eyes that saw everything, yet nothing; with a little abstracted soul, all freshness and gladness, that took note of everything, yet nothing; a little pilgrim among life’s mysteries and wonders, herself the greatest wonder of all, throbbing with a soft consciousness, yet knowing nothing. Thus she went pacing on under the bare trees, and murmured her inarticulate chant, and kept time to it, a poet in being, though not in thought. Not far off the lake splashed softly upon the stones of the beach, and that north country air, which is vocal as the winds of the south, sounded a whole mystery of tones and semi-tones, deep through the fir-trees, shrill through the beeches, low and soft over the copse; and the brook, half-hidden in the overgreenness of the grass, added its tinkle; all surrounding the little figure which gave the central point of conscious intelligence to the landscape; but were all quite unnecessary to Lilias marching along in her dream to her own music, a something higher than they, a thing full of other and deeper suggestions, the wonder of the world.
Lilias woke up, however, out of this other world, all in a moment, into the conscious existence of a lively, brave, fancifully-timid child, when she found herself suddenly confronted by a stranger, who did not pass on as strangers usually did, making a mere momentary jar and pause in the visionary atmosphere, but who made a decided pause, and stopped her. A little thrill of fear sprang up in the child’s breast, and she would have hurried on, or even run away, but for the pride of honour and courage in her little venturesome spirit which made it impossible to fly. It was an old woman who stood in her path, tall but stooping, dressed in a large grey cloak, the hood of which covered her white thick muslin cap. She was a woman considerably over sixty, with handsome features and brilliant dark eyes, and, notwithstanding her stooping figure, full of vigour and power. She carried a basket on her arm under her cloak, and had a stick in her hand, and at her neck a red handkerchief just showed, which would have replaced the hood on her cap had it been less cold. Just so the fairy in the fairy-tales appears to the little maiden in the wood, the Cinderella by the kitchen-fire. Lilias was not at all sure that it was not that poetical old woman who looked at her with those shining eyes. She made a brief, instantaneous resolution to draw water for her, or pick up sticks, or do anything she might require.
“Little Miss, you belong to the Castle, don’t you now? and where may you come from?” was what the problematical fairy said, with a something wet and gleaming in her eyes such as never obscures the sight of fairies. Lilias was overawed by the tone of eager meaning, though she did not understand it, in the questioning voice, yet might not have answered but for that feeling that it was unsafe, as much experience had proved, to be less than obsequiously civil to old women with wands in their hands who could make (if you were so naughty as to give a rude answer) toads and frogs drop from your mouth.
“Yes,” she said, with a little tremble in her clear, childish voice. “We come a very, very long way—over the mountains, and then over the sea.”
“Do you know the name of the place you came from, little Miss?”
“Oh yes, I know it very well, we were so often there. It was Bagni di Lucca. It was a very, very long way. Nello—— ”