Faith And Unfaith Part 2

"It is more! it is right down stupid of him," says Clarissa, who plainly declines to consider any one's feelings.

"You needn't pile up my agony any higher," interposes Brans...o...b.., meekly. "To my everlasting regret I acknowledge myself utterly unworthy of you. But why tell me so in such round terms? I a.s.sure you I feel excessively hurt and offended. Am I to understand, then, that you have refused me?"

"You shall understand something worse, if you say another word," says Clarissa, holding, up before him a little clinched hand in a would-be threatening manner. And then they both laugh in a subdued fas.h.i.+on; and she moves on towards the open hall-door, he following.

"Well, I forgive you," he says, as she steps into her low phaeton, and he arranges the rug carefully around her. "Though you don't deserve it. (What ridiculous little hands to guide such refractory ponies!) Sure you are quite comfortable? Well, good-by; and look here,"--teasingly,--"I should think it over if I were you. You may not get so excellent a chance again; and Arthur will never forgive you."

"Your uncle, though charming, and a very dear, is also a goose," says Miss Peyton, somewhat irreverently. "Marry you, indeed! Why, I should quite as soon dream of marrying my brother!"

"Well, as I can't be your husband, it would be rather nice to be your brother," says Mr. Brans...o...b.., cheerfully. "Your words give me hope that you regard me in that light. I shall always think of you for the future as my sister, and so I am sure"--with an eloquent and rather mischievous pause--"will Horace!"

Miss Peyton blushes again,--much more vividly this time,--and, gathering up the reins hastily, says "good-by" for the second time, without turning her flushed face to his, and drives rapidly up the avenue.

Brans...o...b.. stands on the steps watching her until she is quite lost to sight behind the rhododendrons, and then strokes his moustache thoughtfully.

"That has quite arranged itself, I should fancy," he says, slowly.

"Well, I hope he will be very good to her, dear little thing!"

CHAPTER II.

"Her form was fresher than the morning rose When the dew wets its leaves."--THOMSON.

Pullingham-on-the-Moors is a small, untidy, picturesque little village, situated on the side of a hill. It boasts a railway-station, a police-barrack, a solitary hotel, and two or three well-sized shops.

It is old-fas.h.i.+oned, stationary, and, as a rule, hopelessly harmless, though now and then, dissensions, based princ.i.p.ally on religious grounds, will arise.

These can scarcely be avoided, as one-half of the parish trips lightly after Mr. Redmond, the vicar (who has a subdued pa.s.sion for wax candles, and a craving for floral decorations), and looks with scorn upon the other half, as, with solemn step and slow, it descends the high hill that leads, each Sabbath, to the "Methody" Chapel beneath.

It never grows older, this village, and never younger; is seldom cast down or elated, surprised or demonstrative, about anything. In a quaint, sleepy fas.h.i.+on, it has its dissipations, and acknowledges its festive seasons,--such as Christmas-tide when all the shops burst into a general bloom of colored cards, and February, when valentines adorn every pane. It has also its fair days, when fat cattle and lean sugar-sticks seem to be everywhere.

A marriage is reckoned an event, and causes some gossip: a birth does not,--possibly because of the fact that it is a weekly occurrence.

Indeed, the babies in Pullingham are a "joy forever." They have their season all the year round, and never by any chance "go out;" though I have heard people very foolishly liken them to flowers. They grow, and thrive, and blossom all over the place, which no doubt is greatly to the credit of the inhabitants. Occasionally, too, some one is good enough to cause a little pleasurable excitement by dying, but very seldom, as the place is fatally healthy, and people live here until they become a social nuisance, and almost wish themselves dead. There is, I believe, some legend belonging to the country, about an old woman who had to be shot, so aggressively old did she become; but this is obscure.

About two miles from the town, one comes to Sartoris, the residence of Dorian Brans...o...b.., which runs in a line with the lands of Scrope Royal, the property of Sir James Scrope.

Sir James is a tall, rather old-young man of thirty-two with a calm, expressive face, kindly eyes, and a somewhat lanky figure. He has a heart of gold, a fine estate, and----a step-sister.

Miss Jemima Scrope is not as nice as she might be. She has a face as hard as her manners, and, though considerably over forty, is neither fat nor fair. She has a perfect talent for making herself obnoxious to all unhappy enough to come within her reach, a temper like "Kate the Curst," and a nose like the Duke of Wellington.

Somewhere to the left, on a hill as high and pompous as itself, stands the castle, where three months out of the twelve the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Spendleton, and some of their family, put in a dreary time. They give two b.a.l.l.s, one fancy bazaar, a private concert, and three garden-parties--neither more nor less--every year. n.o.body likes them very much, because n.o.body knows them. n.o.body dislikes them very much, for just the same reason.

The castle is beautifully situated, and is correct in every detail.

There are Queen Anne rooms, and Gothic apartments, and Elizabethan anterooms, and staircases of the most vague. There are secret pa.s.sages, and panels, and sliding doors, and trap-doors, and, in fact, every sort of door you could mention, and all other abominations.

Artists revel in it, and grow frenzied with joy over its impossibilities, and almost every year some room is painted from it and sent to the Academy, But outside lies its chief beauty, for there are the swelling woods, and the glimpse of the far-off ocean as it gleams, now green, now steel-blue, beneath the rays of the setting sun. And beyond it is Gowran, where Clarissa lives with her father, George Peyton.

Clarissa is all that is charming. She is tall, slight, _svelte_: indeed, earth has not anything to show more fair. She is tender, too, and true, and very earnest,--perhaps a degree too earnest, too intense, for every-day life. Her eyes, "twin stars of beauty," are deep and gray; her hair is dark; her mouth, though somewhat large, is perfect; and her smile is indescribable, so sweet it is, so soft and lingering.

Her mother died when she was nine years old, and from that time until she was twelve she spent most of her life with the Brans...o...b.. boys,--riding, fis.h.i.+ng, sometimes even shooting, with them. The effect of such training began to make itself felt. She was fast degenerating into a tomboy of the first water (indeed, one of the purest gems of its kind), when James Scrope, who even then was a serious young man, came to the rescue, and induced her father to send her from Gowran to a school at Brussels.

"Virtue is its own reward," they tell us: let us hope Scrope felt rewarded! Whether he did or not, I know he was considerably frightened when Clarissa (having discovered who had been the instigator of this "plot" to drive her from her beloved Gowran) came down to Scrope Hall, and, das.h.i.+ng into his presence like a small whirlwind, abused him for his well-meant interference in good round terms, and, having refused even to say good-by to him, had slammed the door in his face, and, starting from home next morning, had seen no more of him for six long years.

At seventeen, her aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Greville, had brought her back from Brussels to her own house in town, where she kept her for twelve months, and where she once more renewed acquaintance with her old friends, Dorian and Horace Brans...o...b... Mrs. Greville took her to all the most desirable b.a.l.l.s of her season, to concerts and "small and earlies," to high-art entertainments of the most "too, too," and, having given her free scope to break the hearts of half the men in town, had sent her at last to her father, hopelessly in love with a detrimental.

The detrimental was Horace Brans...o...b... Mrs. Greville was intensely annoyed and disgusted. After all her care, all her trouble, to have this happen! She had married her own girls with the greatest _eclat_, had not made one false move with regard to any of them, and now to see Clarissa (who, with her beauty and fortune, might have married any one) throw herself away upon a penniless barrister seemed to her to savor of positive crime.

Horace, certainly, so far, had not proposed in form, but Mrs. Greville was not to be hoodwinked. He meant it. He was not always at her niece's side for nothing; and, sooner or later, Clarissa, with all her money, would go over to him. When she thought of this shocking waste of money, she groaned aloud; and then she washed her hands of the whole affair, and sent Clarissa back to Gowran, where her father received her with open arms, and made much of her.

CHAPTER III.

"O Helen, fair beyond compare!

I'll make a garland of thy hair, Shall bind my heart for evermair, Until the day I die!"

Across the lawn the shadows move slowly, and with a vague grace that adds to their charm. The birds are drowsy from the heat, and, sitting half hidden in the green branches, chant their songs in somewhat lazy fas.h.i.+on. All nature has succ.u.mbed to the fierce power of Phoebus Apollo.

"The morn is merry June, I trow: The rose is budding fain."

Each flower in the sunlit garden is holding up its head, and breathing fragrant sighs as the hours slip by, unheeded, yet full of a vague delight.

Miss Peyton, in her white gown, and with some soft rich roses lying on her lap, is leaning back in a low chair in the deep embrasure of the window, making a poor attempt at working.

Her father, with a pencil in his hand, and some huge volumes spread out before him, is making a few desultory notes. Into the library--the coseyest, if not the handsomest, room at Gowran--the hot sun is rus.h.i.+ng, dancing lightly over statuettes and pictures, and lingering with pardonable delay upon Clarissa's bowed head.

"Who is this coming up the avenue?" she says, presently, in slow, sleepy tones, that suit the day. "It is--no, it isn't--and yet it is--it must be James Scrope!"

"I dare say. He was to have returned yesterday. He would come here as soon as possible, of course." Rising, he joins her at the window, and watches the coming visitor as he walks his horse leisurely down the drive.

"What a dear little modest speech!" says Miss Peyton, maliciously.

"Now, if I had been the author of it, I know some one who would have called me vain! But I will generously let that pa.s.s. How brown Jim has grown! Has he not?"

"Has he? I can scarcely see so far. What clear eyes you must have, child, and what a faithful memory to recollect him without hesitation, after all these years!"

"I never forget," says Clarissa, simply, which is quite the truth.

"And he has altered hardly anything. He was always so old, you know, he really couldn't grow much older. What is his age now, papa?

Ninety?"

"Something over thirty, I fancy," says papa, uncertainly.

"Oh, nonsense!" says Miss Peyton. "Surely you romance, or else you are an invaluable friend. When I grow brown and withered, I hope you will prove equally good to me. I shall expect you to say all sorts of impossible things, and not to blush when saying them. Ah!--here is Sir James" as the door opens, and Scrope--healthy and bronzed from foreign travel--enters quietly, staid and calm as ever.

When he has shaken hands with, and been warmly welcomed by, Mr.

Peyton, he turns with some diffidence towards the girl in the clinging white gown, who is smiling at him from the window, with warm red lips, half parted and some faint amus.e.m.e.nt in her friendly eyes.