Miss Matilda's ringlets were perhaps her most noticeable feature--long, waving, twining masses of falling hair; giving her face a pensive and romantic expression which has long ceased to be fashionable, though it once was greatly admired, as was also the poetry of Moore and Mrs. Hemans about the same time. In her youth, and that was not so many years before, an officer in Montreal--it was there the family lived then--had told her she looked like a muse, and not long after he was ordered away to the Crimean war. Her own father was ordered there too, but he said he owed a higher duty to his motherless daughters than to leave them, and he thought he owed it to his own ease not to let himself be sent ranging over Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, in search of transport mules and donkeys, and so he left the Service. He lingered in Montreal after the troops were withdrawn; but soon that community of busy traders grew insupportable in the absence of his fellow-loungers; he bought a farm near Saint Euphrase, and there established himself, carrying his daughters with him. He had already, as he told them, sacrificed his prospects of advancement to their need of a protector, and now it was for them to yield the social comforts of town life, bury themselves in the country, and with grateful assiduity make his home as comfortable, and his rheumatism as little intolerable as possible. After the fall of Sebastopol the troops returned to Canada, and "General" Stanley was able from time to time to relieve the monotony of his retirement with the society of old friends; but the officer who had called Matilda a muse never re-appeared, and no other gentleman since had said anything half as nice. So Matilda cherished her ringlets and her recollections--not very painful ones--and lived tranquilly on, with no event to mark the flight of years, till the death of her father, which took place some three or four years before the time I write of. After that the sisters lived on as before, only more retiredly still. Miss Penelope developed considerable business faculty in managing their affairs, and overlooking Jean Bruneau, the factotum on the farm; and dropped some of the feminine helplessnesses of her youth, though she was still as much in terror of thunder, burglars, fire and snakes as ever. Matilda having less need to exert her powers, continued the same ringletted damsel she had always been. She busied herself with her flowers and her birds, a little music not too difficult or new, a little poetry and fiction, and a good deal of kindness when the need for it was made plain to her. Her youth was passing or had passed into middle life, but the current of her days had been so even that she had not observed their flight. She had had no cares, and her heart slept peacefully, for it had never been awakened. Captain Lorrimer may have called her a muse, and Major Hopkins may have looked in her eyes, but these things had never been carried to a disturbing length; just enough to afford a little pensive self-consciousness, when she read of deserted maids, or Love's young dream, and make her fancy that she understood it all, and ejaculate that "it was so true." Then she would look up and shake her curls with a quite comfortable sigh, and her prosaic sister would watch her admiringly, and wonder where the men's eyes could have been that she was still unmarried. Perhaps it was well for her that she was so. Perhaps it would be well, at least it would be comfortable, for many of us if our hearts would sleep through life, and leave digestion to do its work in peace. How sweet and enjoyable to lead untroubled lives, free from the ecstasies alike of joy and woe, as do the flowers, as did this "muse"--this "grass of Parnassus"--basking in summer suns and drinking dews, without ambition or desire or strife.
But this is wandering. We left Miss Penelope desirous of getting to bed; and Miss Matilda engrossed in her new plaything.
"I shall certainly keep it, Penelope! The very thing of all others I should have liked best to have."
"Is not that rather an odd thing to say?"
"That I am charmed to have found a living doll?--I think it is quite natural. You are too sensible, of course, but for other people--for me--it seems the most natural thing in the world. You know I always doted on dolls, especially when they could wink their eyes. This one can do that, and lots of other things besides. It will be delightful. And to think how I have been mourning the loss of my lame canary these last few days! You would not believe the tears I have shed every time I have looked at the empty cage, and how lonely I have felt; and here, in the middle of the night, just when we are going to bed, arrives this little pet! Is it not opportune? If I had awakened in the night, I might have thought of poor dicky, and then I should certainly have cried. Now I shall take this sweet little image with me, and if I awake, it will be to think how I can make up to it the loss of its mother; though indeed the mother who could find it in her breast to cast her off in this disgraceful way can be no loss."
CHAPTER VII.
[THE DESOLATE MOTHER].
It was three months later. The Selbys' shrubbery had changed from the vigorous greens of summer to russet, paling here into sulphur yellow, there deepening to orange and crimson which outshone the less vivid tints of the early chrysanthemums. The autumn flowers, nipped by early frosts, lay black and ragged on their erewhile brilliant beds. The sun was warm and the air sweet with the breath of leaves falling softly in their brightness, one by one, peaceful, beautiful, fragrant, like the ending of a well-spent life.
In the parlour the windows were open; and a fire burning in the grate to temper the air in shady corners proclaimed the fall of the year.
Stretched on a sofa, thin and wan, with hair pushed back--hair which three months before had been soft and glossy and of the loveliest brown, now dry, rusty, grizzled, banded with locks of grey, and mixed all through with threads of shining white--her fingers shrunk and bloodless, clasping a baby's bells and coral, and her dim eyes wet with silent tears, lay the desolate mother mourning for her child. She had been very ill, and bodily weakness, unable to suffer more, was the one consoler as yet to mitigate her grief, by benumbing the capacity for pain. Her George had mingled tears with hers, tears drawn as much by the sight of what she suffered as by its cause. He had tended and watched her with more than a woman's tenderness, but after all he was a man, with his day's work to perform whatever might befall, and the doing it supported him by bringing distraction and thereby rest. True, it jarred miserably on the overwrought nerves to keep up the routine of music lessons, to watch the "fingering" of inattentive pupils and have his senses pierced by their frequent discords; but it was easier to find endurance for these physical ills than for the heartstrain he had felt at home. The patience and fatigue of the outdoor toil brought the calmness he needed so much in the presence of his stricken wife.