Faith And Unfaith Part 20

Clarissa is slight and tall and calm; she, all life and brightness, eager, excited, and unmindful of the end.

Cissy Redmond, at this juncture, summons up sufficient courage to open the door and come in again. She ignores the fact of Georgie's red eyes, and turns to Clarissa. She has Miss Peyton's small dog in her arms,--the terrier, with the long and melancholy face, that goes by the name of Bill.

"_Your_ dog," she says to Clarissa, "and such a pet. He has eaten several legs off the tables, and all my fingers. His appet.i.te is a credit to him. How do you provide for him at Gowran? Do you have an ox roasted whole occasionally, for his special benefit?"

"Oh, he is a worry," says Clarissa, penitently. "Billy, come here, you little reprobate, and don't try to look as if you never did anything bad in your life. Cissy, I wish you and Georgie and the children would all come up to Gowran to-morrow."

"We begin lessons to-morrow," says the new governess, gravely, who looks always so utterly and absurdly unlike a governess, or anything but a baby or a water-pixie, with her yellow hair and her gentian eyes. "It will be impossible for me to go."

"But lessons will be over at two o'clock," says Cissy, who likes going to Gowran, and regards Clarissa as "a thing of beauty." "Why not walk up afterwards?"

"I shall expect you," says Clarissa, with decision; and then the two girls tell her they will go with her as far as the vicarage gate, as she must now go home.

There she bids them good-by, and, pa.s.sing through the gate, goes up the road. Compelled to look back once again, by some power we all know at times, she sees Georgie's small pale face pressed against the iron bars, gazing after her, with eyes full of lonely longing.

"Good-by, Clarissa," she says, a little sad imploring cadence desolating her voice.

"Until to-morrow" replies Clarissa, with an attempt at gayety, though in reality the child's mournful face is oppressing her. Then she touches the ponies lightly, and disappears up the road and round the corner, with Bill, as preternaturally grave as usual, sitting bolt upright beside her.

The next morning is soft and warm, and, indeed, almost sultry for the time of year. Thin misty clouds, white and shadowy, enwrap the fields and barren ghost-like trees and sweep across the distant hills. There is a sound as of coming rain,--a rus.h.i.+ng and a rustling in the naked woods. "A still wild music is abroad," as though a storm is impending, that shall rise at night and shake the land the more fiercely because of its enforced silence all this day.

"But now, at noon, Upon the southern side of the slant hill, And where the woods fence off the northern blast The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, Without a cloud: and white without a speck, The dazzling splendor of the scene below."

The frost has gone, for the time being; no snow fell last night; scarcely does the wind blow. If, indeed, "there is in souls a sympathy with sounds," I fear Georgie and Cissy and the children must be counted utterly soulless, as they fail to hear the sobbing of the coming storm, but with gay voices and gayer laughter come merrily over the road to Gowran. Upon the warm sullen air the children's tones ring like sweet silver bells.

As they enter the gates of Gowran, the youngest child, Amy, runs to the side of the new governess, and slips her hand through her arm.

"I am going to tell you about all the pretty things as we go along,"

she says, patronizingly yet half shyly, rubbing her cheek against Miss Broughton's shoulder. She is a tall, slender child, and to do this has to stoop a little. "You fairy," she goes on, admiringly, encouraged perhaps by the fact that she is nearly as tall as her instructress, "you are just like Hans Andersen's tales. I don't know why."

"Amy! Miss Broughton won't like you to speak to her like that," says Cissy, coloring.

But Georgie laughs.

"I don't mind a bit," she says, giving the child's hand a rea.s.suring pressure. "I am accustomed to being called that, and, indeed, I rather like it now. I suppose I _am_ very small. But" (turning anxiously to Cissy, and speaking quite as shyly as the child Amy had spoken a moment since) "there is a name to which I am not accustomed, and I hate it. It is 'Miss Broughton.' Won't you call me 'Georgie?'"

"Oh, are you sure you won't mind?" says the lively Cissy, with a deep and undisguised sigh of relief. "Well, that is a comfort! it is all I can do to manage your name. You don't look a bit like a 'Miss Anything,' you know, and 'Georgie' suits you down to the ground."

"Look, look! There is the tree where the fairies dance at night,"

cries Amy, eagerly, her little, thin, spiritual face lighting with earnestness, pointing to a magnificent old oak-tree that stands apart from all the others, and looks as though it has for centuries defied time and storm and proved itself indeed "sole king of forests all."

"Every night the fairies have a ball there," says Amy, in perfect good faith. "In spring there is a regular wreath of blue-bells all round it, and they show where the 'good folks' tread."

"How I should like to see them!" says Georgie, gravely. I think, in her secret soul, she is impressed by the child's solemnity, and would prefer to believe in the fairies rather than otherwise.

"Well, _you_ ought to know all about them," says Amy, with a transient but meaning smile: "you belong to them, don't you? Well" (dreamily), "perhaps some night we shall go out hand in hand and meet them here, and dance with them all the way to fairy-land."

"Miss Broughton,--there--through the trees! Do you see something gleaming white?" asks Ethel, the eldest pupil. "Yes? Well, there, in that spot, is a marble statue of a woman, and underneath her is a spring. It went dry ever so many years ago, but when Clarissa's great grandfather died the waters burst out again, and every one said the statue was crying for him, he was so good and n.o.ble and so well beloved."

"I think you might have let me tell that story," says Amy, indignantly. "You knew I wanted to tell her that story."

"I didn't," with equal indignation; "and, besides, you told her about the fairies' ball-room. I said nothing about that."

"Well, at all events," says Georgie, "they were two of the prettiest stories I ever heard in my life. I don't know which was the prettier."

"Now, look at that tree," breaks in Amy, hurriedly, feeling it is honestly her turn now, and fearing lest Ethel shall cut in before her.

"King Charles the Second spent the whole of one night in that identical tree."

"Not the whole of it," puts in Ethel, unwisely.

"Now, I suppose this is my story, at all events," declares Amy, angrily, "and I shall just tell it as I like."

"Poor King Charles!" says Georgie, with a laugh, "If we are to believe all the stories we hear, half his lifetime must have been spent 'up a tree.'"

A stone balcony runs before the front of the house. On it stands Clarissa, as they approach, but, seeing them, she runs down the steps and advances eagerly to meet them.

"Come in," she says. "How late you are! I thought you had proved faithless and were not coming at all."

"Ah! what a lovely hall!" says Georgie, as they enter, stopping in a childishly delighted fas.h.i.+on to gaze round her.

"It's nothing to the drawing-room: that is the most beautiful room in the world," says the irrepressible Amy, who is in her glory, and who, having secured the unwilling but thoroughly polite Bill, is holding him in her arms and devouring him with unwelcome kisses.

"You shall see the whole house, presently," says Clarissa to Georgie, "including the room I hold in reserve for you when these children have driven you to desperation."

"That will be never," declares Amy, giving a final kiss to the exhausted Billy. "We like her far too much, and always will, I know, because nothing on earth could make me afraid of her!"

At this they all laugh. Georgie, I think, blushes a little; but even the thought that she is not exactly all she ought to be as an orthodox governess cannot control her sense of the ludicrous.

"Cissy, when is your father's concert to come off?" asks Clarissa, presently.

"At once, I think. The old organ is unendurable. I do hope it will be a success, as he has set his heart on getting a new one. But it is so hard to make people attend. They will pay for their tickets, but they won't come. And, after all, what the--the _others_ like, is to see the county."

"Get Dorian Brans...o...b.. to help you. n.o.body ever refuses him anything."

"Who is Dorian Brans...o...b..?" asks Georgie, indifferently, more from want of something to say than an actual desire to know.

"Dorian?" repeats Clarissa, as though surprised; and then, correcting herself with a start, "I thought every one knew Dorian. But I forgot, you are a stranger. He is a great friend of mine; he lives near this, and you must like him."

"Every one likes him," says Cissy, cordially.

"Lucky he," says Georgie. "Is he your lover, Clarissa?"

"Oh, no,"--with a soft blush, born of the thought that if he is not the rose he is very near to it. "He is only my friend, and a nephew of Lord Sartoris."

"So great as that?"--with a faint grimace. "You crush me. I suppose he will hardly deign to look at _me_?"

As she speaks see looks at herself in an opposite mirror, and smiles a small coquettish smile that is full of innocent childish satisfaction, as she marks the fair vision that is given back to her by the friendly gla.s.s.

"I hope he won't look at you too much, for his own peace of mind,"