The Tree of Knowledge Part 15

"I perceive, doctor, that you do not hold with the modern ideas concerning introspection. You are a refres.h.i.+ng exception. I regret that I was born a generation too late to adopt your habits of thought."

"Habits of thought! Why, t'would trouble you mighty little to adopt all I've got," was the genial reply. "I've avoided all habits of thought all my life, and that's what makes me so useful a man. I just think what I think without referring to any book to tell me which way to begin.

Hoot! I'd never think on tram-lines, as you do: I go clean across country, that's my way, and I'm bound to get to the end long before you, in your coach-and-four.

"Yes," conceded Claud, "I expect you would; that is, if you didn't come a cropper on the way."

CHAPTER XII.

A low cottage in a sunny bay Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, And the sea-breeze as innocently breathes On Devon's leafy sh.o.r.es.

WORDSWORTH.

"May I come in, Miss Willoughby? My brother is here, and has brought good news from Poole."

"Come in, pray, Lady Mabel; and Mr. Cranmer too," said Ellen, raising herself eagerly on her couch. "Tell me all about this good news. Mr.

Allonby will live?"

"He will live, and is doing finely," said Claud, shaking hands with the invalid. "He has recognised his sister this morning, and spoken several coherent sentences. Dr. Forbes is much elated, and I must say I am greatly relieved; it would have been very tragic had he not recovered."

"I am deeply thankful," said Miss Ellen, with a sympathetic moisture in her eyes. "How delighted his sister must be!"

"She is. I fancy, from what I can gather, that she and her sisters are quite dependent on their brother; she told me they were orphans."

"Poor children!" said Lady Mabel, in her impulsive way. "It would have been terrible had it ended fatally. I feel quite a weight lifted from my mind. Miss Willoughby, I must express to you my hearty thanks for having been so long troubled with me. I have sent Joseph into Stanton with a telegram telling Edward to come and fetch me, as Claud does not seem inclined to come back to London just yet awhile."

"I want to try to get a clue to this affair before I go," said Claud, "for it has piqued my curiosity most amazingly. The fellow from Scotland Yard has quite made up his mind that we shall get the whole truth from Mr. Allonby's own lips; I'm inclined to think he must be right; but, of course, one can't torment the poor fellow about it while he is so weak."

"How very reserved Englishmen are!" burst out Lady Mabel. "All of them are alike! Claud tells me that this Miss Allonby knows absolutely nothing of her brother's affairs, though, from what she said, they seem to be on the most confidential terms. She had never heard that he had an enemy. Claud, my dear boy, draw a moral from this sad story. Write the names and addresses of your secret foes upon a slip of paper, seal it in an envelope, and give it to me, not to be opened till you are discovered mysteriously murdered in an unfrequented spot."

"A good idea, that, Mab," responded Claud, cheerfully, "and one that I shall certainly act upon. How would it be if I were to add a few memoranda to every name, hinting at the means of murder most likely to be employed by each? So that if I were knocked down with a cudgel, you might lay it to Smith; if prussic acid were employed, it would most likely be Jones; while a pistol-shot could be confidently ascribed as Robinson. Save the detectives a lot of trouble that way."

"Oh, how can you jest on such a subject!" said Miss Ellen, reproachfully.

The brother and sister were abashed, and Claud at once apoligised in his neat way.

"We're Irish, you know, we must laugh or die," he said. "Only an Irish mind could have evolved the idea of a wake; they feast at their funerals because the sources of their laughter and their tears lie so close together, if they didn't do the one they must do the other. I am so relieved this morning--such a load's off my mind. Faith! if I didn't talk nonsense, I'd explode, as sure as a gun."

"Bottle up your nonsense a bit, my boy, for the ears of one who's more used to it than Miss Willoughby," said Lady Mabel, patting him on the head admonis.h.i.+ngly. "It's been something quite out of his line," she went on, explanatorily, "these last few days of anxiety and gravity. It has told upon him, poor fellow, and he must let off some steam. I am going to walk up to Poole with him, if you'll allow it, to call upon Miss Allonby. May we take Elsa with us?"

Lady Mabel had shortened Elaine's name into Elsa, because she declared her to be like the Elsa of the old German myth.

"She has just the expression," she said, "which I should imagine to have been worn by Elsa of Brabant, before the appearance of the champion on the scene. She has an unprotected appealing look, as if she were imploring some one to take her part. If I could get her to London she would not long appeal in vain."

Elsa wors.h.i.+pped Lady Mabel, as it was natural she should; and the idea of a visit to London being held out to her had caused such excitement as prevented her sleeping and almost bereft her of appet.i.te. Every turn of their visitor's head, every sweep of her tasteful draperies, every puff of the faint delicate perfume she used, every tone of her deep vibrating voice was as the wave of an enchanter's wand to the bewildered girl. She looked now with aching misery on her own ill-cut, misfitting garments; she pondered with sharp misgivings over her face in the gla.s.s, as she remembered the thick artistic sweep of Lady Mabel's loose grey hair, as it made dark soft shadows over those mysterious, never-silent eyes. A pa.s.sion of discontent, of longing, of unnamed desire was sweeping like a summer storm over the girl's waking heart and mind. The feminine impulses in her were all arousing. Slowly and imperfectly she was learning that she was a woman.

With the strange reticence which she had imbibed from her bringing up, she mentioned none of this. Lady Mabel had very little idea of the seething waves of feeling which every look and smile of hers was agitating afresh. She talked to the girl on various subjects, to be surprised anew at every venture by the intense and childish ignorance displayed; but on the subjects which were just then paramount in Elaine--dress, personal appearance, love--of these she never touched, and so never succeeded in striking a spark from the smouldering intelligence. It was Miss Charlotte who most noted a difference in her pupil.

In the old days, when the girl first came Edge, she had been the possessor of a temper which was furious in its paroxysms. This temper the combined aunts had set themselves soberly to subdue and to eradicate. They had succeeded admirably as far as the subduing went; no ebullition was ever seen; rebellion was as much a thing of the past as the Star Chamber or the Inquisition; but as regards eradication they had not succeeded at all.

In some dumb indescribable way, Miss Charlotte was now made by her pupil to feel this daily. In her looks and words, but chiefly in her manner, was an unspoken defiance. She still came when she was called, but she came slowly; she still answered when spoken to, but her manner was impertinent, if not her words. She was altered, and the fact of not being able to define the change made Miss Charlotte irritable.

Poor lady! she sat stewing in the hot school-room, hearing Elaine read French with praiseworthy patience and fort.i.tude, little thinking how entirely a work of supererogation such patience was, nor how much more salutary it would have been for both if, instead of goading her own and her niece's endurance to its last ebb over the priggish observations of a lady named Madame Melville--who gave her impossible daughter bad advice in worse French with a persistency which would certainly have moved said daughter to suicide had she not been, as has been said, impossible--if instead of this Miss Charlotte had taken Elsa to see the world around her, the pleasant, wholesome world of rural England, with its innocuous society, its innocent delights, its tennis-parties and archery meetings, its picnics and pretty cool dresses, and light-hearted expeditions. Above all, its youthfulness.

To be young with the young--that was what this poor Elsa needed. That was what her aunts could not understand, and they could not see, moreover, what consequences might spring from this well-intentioned ignorance of theirs.

Says Mrs. Ewing, who perhaps best of all Englishwomen understood English girlhood:

"Girls' heads are not like jam-pots, which, if you do not fill them, will remain empty."

Every girl's head will be full of something. It is for her parents and guardians--spite of Mr. Herbert Spencer--to decide what the filling shall be.

Nothing of this recked Elaine's instructress, as she sat with frowning brow and compressed mouth, listening while the intolerable Madame Melville accosted her daughter thus:

"You are happy in your comparisons this morning, and express them pretty well."

In dreary monotone and excruciatingly English accent the girl read on, as the obsequious dancing master wished to know.

"Vous ne voulez point que je la fa.s.se valser?"

"Non," replied his prophetic patroness, "je suis persuadee que cette mode n'est pas faite pour durer!"

And this volume bore date 1851.

To waltz! The very word had a secret charm for Elaine. What was this waltzing? she ignorantly wondered. Something pleasant it must have been, as Madame Melville declined to allow poor Lucy to learn it, and her meditations grew so interesting that she lost her place on the dreary page, and was only recalled to the present by Miss Charlotte's irritable tones:

"I am sure I cannot think what has come over you, Elaine! You seem quite unable to fix your attention on anything."

Meanwhile, upstairs in Miss Ellen's room, Elaine was the subject of conversation.

"May we take your Elsa with us on our walk to Poole? She will like to see Miss Allonby?" Lady Mabel suggested, instigated thereto by a hint from Claud that he should like to renew the acquaintance of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.

"If you could wait half an hour--Charlotte does not like her hours interfered with," said Miss Ellen, deprecatingly. "She will be free at four o'clock."

"Does Miss Brabourne never take a holiday?" asked Claud, tracing patterns with his stick on the carpet.

"Well--not exactly. She is not hard worked, I think," said Miss Ellen, feeling bound to support the family theory of education, in spite of her own decided mistrust of it. "It is very bad for a young girl to have nothing to occupy her time with--my sister considers some regularity so essential."

"I should have thought," Lady Mabel was unable to resist saying, "that a young woman of nineteen could have arranged her time for herself, if she had been properly taught the responsibilities of life."

The wavering pink flush stole over the invalid's kind face.

"I am afraid we middle-aged women forget the flight of years," she said, with gentle apology. "To us, Elaine is still the child she was when she came to us twelve years ago."

"It's most natural," said Claud. "Will Miss Brabourne always live with you? I remember, when Colonel Brabourne died, hearing that the terms of the will were confused, or that there was some mess about it. Was not the estate thrown into Chancery? I hope it is not rude of me to ask?"