Trifles mar tranquillity.
For a moment silence is invaded, and the dissonant sounds gather strength; for once infant tears fail to be dried by mother smiles, and, as if in answer to the shrill cries, flocks of snow-white geese waddle solemnly across the grass; the boy leaves off whittling wood and chases the yellow-bills; through the leafy avenue comes the loaded corn-wain, the jocund wagoner with scarlet poppies in his hat, blue corn-flowers and pink convolvuli trailing from the horses’ ears; over the fields sound the distant pealing of bells.
The girl wakes up from her musing fit with a deep sigh, and her face becomes suddenly very pale; then she moves slowly across the road toward a path winding through the bare harvest fields, where the gleaners are busily at work. From under the tamarisk hedge comes the shadow of a woman; as the white gown disappears and the lodge-keeper carries off her wailing child, the shadow becomes substance and grows erect into the figure of a girl.
Of a girl in shabby black, foot-sore and weary, who drags herself with hesitating steps to the spot where the other woman’s feet have rested, and there she stoops and hurriedly gathers a few blades of grass and presses them to her lips.
Silence once more over the landscape: the glitter of sunshine round the empty bench; the whirling of insects in the ambient air; under the shadowy elms a girl smiling bitterly over a few poor grasses, gathered as we pluck them from a loved one’s grave.
* * * * * *
Catharine, the lodge-keeper, sat rocking her baby in the old porch seat; through the open door one could catch glimpses of the bright red-tiled kitchen with its wooden settle and the tortoise-shell cat asleep on the great wicker chair; beyond, the sunny little herb-garden with its plots of lavender, marjoram, and sweet-smelling thyme, the last monthly roses blooming among the gooseberry bushes; a child cliqueting up the narrow brick path with a big sun-bonnet and burnished pail; in the corner a toy fountain gurgling over its oyster-shell border, and a few superannuated ferns.
Catharine sat contentedly in the shady porch, on her lap lay the brown baby with his face all puckered up with smiles; his tiny hole of a mouth just opened ready for the small moist thumb, and his bare rosy feet beating noiseless time to the birds; he was listening besides to his mother’s voice as she sat rocking him and talking unconsciously aloud.
“‘Heaven bless her!’ she muttered, with a cloud on her pleasant face; yes, those were her very words, as she stood like a picture under the old trees yonder.”
“‘Heaven bless her and him too,’—but there was not a speck of color in her face as she said the words, and I could see the tears in her beautiful eyes. Oh, but you are a saint, Miss Margaret—every one knows that; but, as I tell Martin, it is a sin and a shame to ring the joy bells for a feckless chit that folk never set eyes on; while our darling, Miss Margaret, is left alone in the old place.”