Chapter 11
To Lady Chetwoode, who is fond of young life, she is especially grateful, and creeps into her kind heart in an incredibly short time, finding no impediment to check her progress.
Once a day, armed with huge gloves and a gigantic scissors, Lady Chetwoode makes a tour of her gardens, snipping, and plucking, and giving superfluous orders to the attentive gardeners all the time. After her trots Lilian, supplied with a basket and a restless tongue that seldom wearies, but is always ready to suggest, or help the thought that sometimes comes slowly to her hostess.
"As you were saying last night, my dear Lilian----" says Lady Chetwoode, vaguely, coming to a full stop before the head gardener, and gazing at Lilian for further inspiration; she had evidently remembered only the smallest outline of what she wants to say.
"About the ivy on the north wall? You wanted it thinned. You thought it a degree too straggling."
"Yes,--yes; of course. You hear, Michael, I want it clipped and thinned, and---- There was something else about the ivy, my child, wasn't there?"
"You wished it mixed with the variegated kind, did you not?"
"Ah, of course. I wonder how I ever got on without Lilian," says the old lady, gently pinching the girl's soft peach-like cheek. "Florence, without doubt, is a comfort,--but--she is not fond of gardening. Shall we come and take a peep at the grapes, dear?" And so on.
Occasionally, too,--being fond of living out of doors in the summer, and being a capital farmeress,--Lady Chetwoode takes a quiet walk down to the home farm, to inspect all the latest arrivals. And here, too, Miss Lilian must needs follow.
There are twelve merry, showy little calves in one field, that run all together in their ungainly, jolting fas.h.i.+on up to the high gate that guards their domain, the moment Lady Chetwoode and her visitor arrive, under the mistaken impression that she and Lilian are a pair of dairy-maids coming to solace them with unlimited pans of milk.
Lilian cries "Shoo!" at the top of her gay young voice, and instantly all the handsome, foolish things scamper away as though destruction were at their heels, leaving Miss Chesney delighted at the success of her own performance.
Then in the paddock there are four mad little colts to be admired, whose chief joy in life seems to consist in kicking their hind legs wildly into s.p.a.ce, while their more sedate mothers stand apart and compare notes upon their darlings' merit.
This paddock is Lilian's special delight, and all the way there, and all the way back she chatters unceasingly, making the old lady's heart grow young again, as she listens to, and laughs at, all the merry stories Miss Chesney tells her of her former life.
To-day--although the morning has been threatening--is now quite fine.
Tired of sulking, it cleared up half an hour ago, and is now throwing out a double portion of heat, as though to make up for its early deficiencies.
The
"King of the East,... girt With song and flame and fragrance, slowly lifts His golden feet on those empurpled stairs That climb into the windy halls of heaven,"
and, casting his million beams abroad, enlivens the whole earth.
It is a day when one might saunter but not walk, when one might dream though wide awake, when one
Sir Guy--who has been making a secret though exhaustive search through the house for Miss Chesney--now turns his steps toward the orchard, where already instinct has taught him she is usually to be found.
He is not looking quite so _insouciant_, or carelessly happy, as when first we saw him, now two weeks ago; there is a little gnawing, dissatisfied feeling at his heart, for which he dare not account even to himself.
He thinks a good deal of his ward, and his ward thinks a good deal of him; but unfortunately their thoughts do not amalgamate harmoniously.
Toward Sir Guy Miss Chesney's actions have not been altogether just.
Cyril she treats with affection, and the utmost _bonhommie_, but toward his brother--in spite of her civility on that first day of meeting--she maintains a strict and irritating reserve.
He is her guardian (detestable, thankless office), and she takes good care that neither he or she shall ever forget that fact. Secretly she resents it, and openly gratifies that resentment by denying his authority in all things, and being specially willful and wayward when occasion offers; as though to prove to him that she, for one, does not acknowledge his power over her.
Not that this ill-treated young man has the faintest desire to a.s.sert any authority whatever. On the contrary, he is most desirous of being all there is of the most submissive when in her presence; but Miss Chesney declines to see his humility, and chooses instead to imagine him capable of oppressing her with all sorts of tyrannical commands at a moment's notice.
There is a little cloud on his brow as he reaches the garden and walks moodily along its princ.i.p.al path. This cloud, however, lightens and disappears, as upon the southern border he hears voices that tell him his search is at an end.
Miss Chesney's clear notes, rather raised and evidently excited, blend with those of old Michael Ronaldson, whose quavering ba.s.s is also uplifted, suggesting unwonted agitation on the part of this easy-going though ancient gentleman.
Lilian is standing on tip-toe, opposite a plum-tree, with the long tail of her black gown caught firmly in one hand, while with the other she points frantically in a direction high above her head.
"Don't you see him?" she says, reproachfully,--"there--in that corner."
"No, that I don't," says Michael, blankly, sheltering his forehead with both hands from the sun's rays, while straining his gaze anxiously toward the spot named.
"Not see him! Why, he is a big one, a _monster_! Michael," says Lilian, reproachfully, "you are growing either stupid or short-sighted, and I didn't expect it from you. Now follow the tip of my finger; look right along it now--now"--with growing excitement, "don't you see it?"
"I do, I do," says the old man, enthusiastically; "wait till I get 'en--won't I pay him off!"
"Is it a plum you want?" asks Guy, who has come up behind her, and is lost in wonder at what he considers is her excitement about the fruit.
"Shall I get it for you?"
"A plum! no, it is a snail I want," says Lilian eagerly, "but I can't get at it. Oh, that I had been born five inches taller! Ronaldson, you are not tall enough; Sir Guy will catch him."
Sir Guy, having brought a huge snail to the ground, presents him gravely to Lilian.
"That is the twenty-third we have caught to-day," says she, "and twenty-nine yesterday,--in all forty-eight. Isn't it, Michael?"
"I think it makes fifty-two," suggests Sir Guy, deferentially.
"Does it? Well, it makes no difference," says Miss Chesney, with a fine disregard of arithmetic; "at all events, either way, it is a tremendous number. I'm sure I don't know where they come from,"--despairingly,-- "unless they all walk back again during the night."
"And I wouldn't wonder too," says Michael, _sotto voce_.
"Walk back again!" repeats Guy, amazed. "Don't you kill them?"
"Miss Chesney won't hear of 'en being killed, Sir Guy," says old Ronaldson, sheepishly; "she says as 'ow the cracklin' of 'en do make her feel sick all over."
"Oh, yes," says Lilian, making a little wry face, "I hate to think of it. He used to crunch them under his heel, so," with a shudder, and a small stamp upon the ground, "and it used to make me absolutely faint.
So we gave it up, and now we just throw them over the wall, so,"--suiting the action to the word, and flinging the slimy creature she holds with dainty disgust, between her first finger and thumb, over the garden boundary.
Guy laughs, and, thus encouraged, so does old Michael.
"Well, at all events, it must take them a long time to get back," says Lilian, apologetically.
"On your head be it if we have no vegetables or fruit this year," says Chetwoode, who understands as much about gardening as the man in the moon, but thinks it right to say something. "Come for a walk, Lilian, will you? It is a pity to lose this charming day." He speaks with marked diffidence (his lady's moods being uncertain), which so far gains upon Miss Chesney that in return she deigns to be gracious.
"I don't mind if I do," she replies, with much civility. "Good-morning, Michael;" and with a pretty little nod, and a still prettier smile in answer to the old man's low salutation, she walks away beside her guardian.
Far into the woods they roam, the teeming woods all green and bronze and copper-colored, content and happy in that no actual grief disturbs them.
"The branches cross above their eyes, The skies are in a net;"