Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

Jack Craven has been to church too, and has, as he always does, been reading the inscriptions on the coffin-plates, nailed up, Welsh fashion, against the dilapidated, whitewashed walls, in lieu of monumental tablets. Esther has also been to church; has been in state in a great, close carriage, in company with Sir Thomas, Miladi, and Miss Blessington. Sir Thomas has been storming the whole way about a gap he detected in a hedge that they passed, through which some cattle have broken, so that they all arrive at the church door in that calmly devout state of quietude which is the fittest frame of mind for the reception of Divine truth.

The Gerard pew in Felton church is as large as a moderate-sized room, and is furnished with arm-chairs and a fire-place. In winter, Sir Thomas spends fully half the service time in poking the fire noisily and raking out the ashes. There is no fire now, and he misses it. A high red curtain runs round the sacred enclosure, and through it the farmers' wives and daughters strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of Miladi's marabout feathers, and Miss Blessington's big, golden chignon, and little green aerophane bonnet. St. John generally pulls the brass rings of his bit of curtain aside along the brass rods, to make a peep-hole for himself over the congregation. The shape and size of the pew do away with the necessity for any wearisome conformity of attitude among the inmates. During the prayers, Sir Thomas stands bolt upright, with one bent knee resting on his chair; his bristling grey head, shaggy brows, and fierce spectacles looming above the red curtain, to the admiration and terror of the row of little charity girls beneath. Constance kneels forward on a hassock, with a large, ivory prayer book, gold-crossed, red-edged, in one hand, and a turquoise and gold-topped double scent-bottle and cobweb cambric handkerchief in the other. She confesses in confidence to her pale lavender gloves that she has done that which she ought not to have done, and has left undone that which she ought to have done; making graceful little salaams and undulations of head and body every two minutes. Miladi confesses that she has gone to sleep. St. John makes no pretence of kneeling at all: he leans, elbow on knee and head on hand, and looks broken-hearted, as men have a way of doing in church.

In the afternoon, no one at Felton thinks of attending Divine service. It is a fiat of Sir Thomas's that no carriage, horses, or servants are to be taken out more than once a day, and the two miles' walk is an insuperable impediment to Lady Gerard, and hardly less so to Constance.

After luncheon the three ladies are sitting in the garden, with the prospect of four unbroken hours of each other's companionship before them. Masses of calceolarias, geraniums, lobelias, are flaring and flaunting around them – masses in which the perverted eye of modern horticulture sees its ideal of beauty. Nature, in her gardening, never plants great, gaudy squares and ovals and rounds of red and blue and yellow, without many shades of tenderest grey and green to soften and relieve them. Across the grass St. John comes lounging; his Sunday frock coat sitting creaseless to his spare, sinewy figure. Esther hates the sight of that coat: it reminds her so painfully, by its very unlikeness, of the singular garment that forms the head and crown of her betrothed's scant wardrobe.

"Do you know, I have half a mind to go to Radley church this afternoon. Will any one come with me? – will you, Conny?" turning, mindful of last night, with a conciliatory smile to Miss Blessington.

"How far is it?" she asks, indolently, divided between her hatred of walking and her desire to frustrate the tête-à-tête she sees impending between St. John and Esther.

"Three or four miles; four, I suppose."

She lifts her large blue eyes languidly, "Four miles there, and four miles back! Are you mad, St. John? What do you suppose one is made of?"

"Will you take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to Esther.

She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not.

"A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god, don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice); "you had much better."

"Don't be so absurd, St. John!" cries Miss Blessington, pettishly. "Miss Craven would far rather be left in peace."

"Would you?" (appealing to her.)

"No – o; that is – I mean – I think I should like the walk, if I may. May I, Lady Gerard? do you mind?" (turning sweet red cheeks and quick eyes towards her hostess.)

"I, my dear! Why should I mind?" responds Miladi, leaning back and fanning herself with a large fan (I believe that fat women often suffer a foretaste of the torments of the damned in the matter of heat) – "so as you don't ask me to go with you (with a fat smile). And, St. John, be sure that you are back in time for dinner, there's a good boy! You know what a fuss Sir Thomas is always in on Sunday evening?"

"I know that Sir Thomas is digging his grave with his teeth as fast as he can," answers St. John disrespectfully.

"Shall not we be rather late for church if we have four miles to go?" asks Esther, as she steps out briskly beside her companion, while heart and conscience keep up a quarrelsome dialogue within her.

"It is not four miles; it is only three."

"You told Miss Blessington four?"

"So I did; but I drew for the extra mile upon the rich stores of my imagination."

"Why did you?" she asks, turning a wondering rosy face set in the frame of a minute white bonnet towards him.

"Did you ever hear of the invitations that the Chinese give one another?" he asks, laughing, and switching off a fern-head with a baby umbrella – "which, however pressing they may be, are always expected by the giver to be declined. My invitation to Conny was a Chinese one: I was not quite sure that she would understand it as such, and I was so afraid that she would yield to my importunities, that I had to embroider a little in the matter of distance; do you see?"

There has been rain in the morning; now the clouds have rent themselves asunder, and broken up into great glistering rocks, peaks, and spires, such as no fuller on earth could white:

"Blue isles of heaven laugh between."

The breeze comes more freshly over the wet grasses and flowers, and blows in little fickle puffs against St. John's bronzed cheeks and Esther's carnation ones. The girl's heart is pulsing with a keen, sharp joy; all the keener, as the heaven's blue is deeper for the clouds that hover about it.

"I shall have him all to myself for three hours," she is saying inwardly; "he will speak to no one but me; he will hear no one else's voice (she forgets the parson and the clerk). Surely Bob may spare me these three hours, and just a few more, out of the great long life during which I shall tramp-tramp at his side! Three hours:

"Then let come what come mayNo matter if I go mad,I shall have had my day."

"Let me carry your prayer book?"

"No, thanks; it is not heavy" (retaining it, mindful of a certain inscription in the fly-leaf).

"I am like a retriever; I like to have something to carry" (taking it from her with gentle violence).

"'Esther Craven from Robert Brandon.' Who is Robert Brandon when he is at home?" (speaking rather shortly.)

Esther's heart leaps into her mouth. Shall she tell him now, this minute, without giving herself time for second thoughts, which are not by any means always best? Shall she lift off the weight of compunction, anxiety, shame, that has been pressing upon her for the last fortnight? – let it fall down, as the dead albatross fell from the Ancient Mariner's neck —

"Like lead into the sea?"

The subject has introduced itself naturally, easily, without any of the dragging in by the head and shoulders of the officiously-volunteered confessions that she had salved her conscience by deprecating. Shall she, with strong, brave hand, push away all hope of the fine house and the broad lands, of the carriages and horses, the roses and pine-apples, the down pillows and fragrances of life? Shall she courageously, nobly, and yet in mere bare duty, turn away from the fairy prince and return to her hovel and scullionship? Shall she, or shall she not?

"Who is Robert Brandon?" repeats St. John, rather crossly.

In the second that follows Esther's life destiny is settled. She refuses the good and chooses the evil. ("He is the man I am engaged to," that is what she ought to have said.)

"He is in the – th foot." This is what she does say, blushing till the tears come into her eyes, turning away her head, and feeling stabbed through and through with shame.

"An ally of yours?" (quickly.)

"I have known him all my life," she answers, evasively.

"I thought he was a very young child, from this specimen of his caligraphy," remarks Gerard, superciliously, examining Bob's sprawly, slanty characters. "He would be none the worse for a few writing lessons."

Esther is a mean young woman: she feels ashamed of her poor lover, and his pothooks and hangers, and yet vexed with St. John for sneering at them.

"It was a fact worth inscribing, I must say," continues he, ironically – "the making of such a very handsome present," holding the poor little volume between his lavender kid finger and thumb, and surveying it with a disparaging smile. "He must have had a great deal of change out of sixpence, I should think."

"If you have nothing better to do than abuse my property," cries Esther, impulsively, snatching it out of his hand, "you may give it me back," looking half disposed to whimper.

"I apologise," responds St. John, gravely. "I did not mean to offend you; I give you carte blanche to insult mine" (holding out a very minute Russia leather one). "But may I ask, is Mr. Robert Blandon, or Brandon, or what's his name, your godfather?"

"No; why?"

"Because I never heard of any one being given a prayer book except as a wedding present, or by their godfathers and godmothers at their baptism. As you are not married, I know it could not have been the first case, and so I concluded it must be the last."

"Robert is not old enough to be my godfather," says Essie, overcoming by a great effort the repugnance to pronouncing the fateful name: "he is quite young; a great deal younger than you," she ends, rather spitefully.

"He might easily be that," replies St. John, coldly. "Once, not so very many years ago, in whatever company I was, I always was the youngest present; now, on the contrary, in whatever company I am, I always feel the eldest present. I don't suppose I always am, but I always feel as if I were."

"I believe old people have the best of it, after all," says Esther, recovering a little of her equanimity: "they have certainly fewer troubles than young ones. I should say that Sir Thomas was decidedly a happier man than you are."

"A man's happiness is proportioned to the simplicity of his tastes, I suppose," answers St. John, sardonically. "Sir Thomas's happiness lies in a nutshell: he has two ruling passions – eating and bullying; he has a very fair cook to satisfy the one, and my mother always at hand for the gratification of the other."

"We have all our ruling passions," rejoins Esther, with a light laugh, "only very often we will not own them. Mine is burnt almonds; what is yours?"

"Going to church," he replies, in the same tone; "as you may perceive by the strenuous efforts I have made to get there this afternoon."

Radley church stands on a knoll. Radley parishioners have to go upwards to be buried – a happy omen, it is to be hoped, for the destination of their souls. The church has a little grey tower, pretty, old, and squat, and a peal of bells – these are its claim to distinction – a merry peal, as people say; but to me it seems that in all the gamut of sad sounds there is nothing sadder, sorrowfuller, than bells chiming out sweetly and solemnly across the summer air.

Rung in by the grave music of their invitation, St. John and Esther enter. Verger or pew-opener is there none, so they slip into the first of the open sittings that presents itself. The clergyman is young and energetic: he has rooted up the tall, worm-eaten, oak pews – disfiguring compromises between cattle-pen and witness-box – has clothed several

"Dear little soulsIn nice white stoles, – "

and is trying to teach himself intoning. He produces at present only prolonged whining groans, but it is a step in the right direction.

Rest is good after exertion, and so Essie thinks. The south wind has been playing tricks with the dusk riches of her hair. Nature has been laying on her bistre under the great liquid eyes, and emptying a whole potful of her rouge on the rose velvet round of her cheeks. She is not in apple-pie order at all, and yet

"She was most beautiful to see,Like a lady from a far countree."

If Esther were to murder any one, and her guilt were to be brought home to her as plainly as the eye of day shines in the sky at noon, judge and jury would combine to acquit her.

"Blessed be God, who has made beautiful women!" says the Bedouin, and Gerard echoes the benediction, as he stands with his big lavender thumb on one side of the hymn book, and her small, lavender thumb on the other, while the "dear little souls" are singing sweetly and quickly:

"There God for ever sitteth,Himself of all the Crown;The Lamb, the Light that shineth,And goeth never down."

Grand words, that make one feel almost good and almost happy merely to say them!

There is only one hymn-book in the pew, and St. John is glad of it. There is something pleasant in the sense of union and partnership, though it be only a three minutes' partnership in a dog's-eared psalter.

"Is not there some different way of going home?" asks Essie, as they stand side by side, after service, in the high churchyard, looking down on the straggling damson trees, the grey smoke spiring northwards under the south wind's faint blowing, the dark-blue green of the turnip fields. "I hate going back the same way one came; it shows such a want of invention!"

"There is another way," answers St. John, scooping out a little plump green moss from a chink in the wall with the point of his umbrella, while the parson and the parson's sister, on their homeward way, turn their heads to look at them – the parson at Esther, the parson's sister at St. John – Jack at Jill, and Jill at Jack as is the way of the world; "but it is a good deal longer and a great deal muddier than the one we came by."

"I like mud," says Essie, gaily, stooping and picking a daisy from a little child's grave at her feet; "it is my native element; at home we are up to our knees in mud in winter, and over our ankles in summer."

So they chose the longer and the muddier way. It is its length that is its recommendation to them both, I think.

Down the village street, past the Loggerheads and the Forge, and along a long country lane, paved unevenly with round stones after a way our forefathers in some of the northern counties had of paving, in imperfect prophetic vision of MacAdam. To-day no broad waggon-wheel groans, nor hoofed foot clatters along; only a few cottagers and smart-bonneted servant girls trudge along to the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, built A.D. 1789, that stands in simple, dissenting ugliness at the hill-foot, while over its newly-painted, gingerbread-coloured door stands this modest announcement: "This is the Gate of Heaven."

"It strikes me," says St. John, rousing himself out of a reverie which has lasted a quarter of an hour – "it strikes me as one of the few instances in which one's experience tallies with what one reads in novels, the awkward knack people have of interrupting one at the wrong moment."

"How do you mean?" asks Essie, coming out of a reverie, too.

"I never," pursues he, taking off his hat, and passing his hand over the broad red mark it has made on his forehead – "I never read aloud to any one in my life – I was rather fond of reading poetry at one period of my history, I leave you to guess which – not that she cared about it – she did not know Milton from Tommy Moore; but I never read to her in the course of my life without the footman coming in to put coals on at the most affecting passages – Arthur's parting from Guinevere, say, or Medora's death – and clattering down the tongs and shovel, making the devil's own row."

Esther laughs.

"These reflections are à propos of – what?"

"Of Conny's most ill-timed entry last night," he answers, with energy. "I don't suppose she makes such a midnight raid once in five years, and she certainly could not have found you and me tête-à-tête at two in the morning more than once in fifty years. Why could not she leave us in peace that once? We did not grudge her any amount of pleasant dreams; why need she grudge us our pleasant wakefulness?"

"Do you think she came on purpose, then?" asks Essie, her eyes opening as round in alarmed surprise as a baby's when a grown-up person makes ugly faces at it.

He shrugs his shoulders slightly. "Cannot say, I'm sure. Conny is not much in the habit of burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of knowledge generally. If it was accident, she came in at a wonderfully à propos, or rather mal à propos, moment. Tell me," he says, crossing over to her side of the road, and fixing frankly-asking eyes upon her; "I may be mistaken – it is a misfortune to which I am often incident – but I could not help thinking that, just as that unlucky candle appeared round the corner last night, you were going to tell me something – something about yourself? I thought I saw it in your face. I think I deserved some little reward for raking up for your behoof the ashes of that old fire that I burnt my fingers at so badly once."

Esther still remains silent, but turns her long neck from one side to the other with a restless, uneasy motion.

"Are lamplight and the small hours indispensable accessories?" he asks, with gentle pleading in look and words – "or could not you tell me as well now?"

"Tell you what?" she says, turning round sharp upon him, and snapping, as a little cross dog snaps at the heels of the passer-by – "must I invent something?"

"Are you sure that it is necessary to invent?" he asks, scanning the fair, troubled face with searching gaze.

She pulls a bunch of nuts out of the hedge from among their rough-ribbed green leaves, and begins to pick them out of their sheath. "What am I to tell you?" she says, petulantly, a suspicion that he may have heard a rumour of her engagement crossing her mind: "that I live in an old farmhouse with my brother Jack, and that we are very hard up – you know already; that 'Su dry da chi' is Welsh for 'How do you do?' and that our asparagus has answered very badly this year?"

"Of course, I cannot force your confidence," he answers, rather coldly.

"Why do you insist upon my having something to confide? What reason have you for supposing that I have?" she cries, with increased irritation.

"None whatever, but what you yourself have given me!"

"I!"

"Yes, you; not your words, but your face now and then. Don't think me impertinent. You know what unhappy reason I have had to be suspicious. But tell me" (trying his best to get a look round the corner into the averted, perturbed face of his companion) – "tell me whether there is not something between you and – and – that fellow that gave you the prayer-book?"

Esther's heart gives one great bounding throb; the thin muslin of her dress but poorly conceals its hard, quick pulsings.

One more chance for her! Fate generally gives us two or three chances before it allows us to consign ourselves irrecoverably to the dogs. One more choice between loyalty and disloyalty – a plain question, to be answered plainly, unequivocally – Yes or No; Robert or St. John. The man whose conversation bores her, whose proximity and whose gaze leave her colder than snow on an alp's high top an hour before sunrise, and with whom she has promised to live till death do them part; or the man, no whit better or handsomer, whose coming, felt, though unseen, makes her whole frame vibrate, as a harp's strings vibrate under the player's hands – beneath whose eyes hers sink down bashful, yet passionate – the man whom, after this week, she must see never again until death do them unite. Woman-like, she tries to avoid the alternative.

"What is that to you?" she retorts, abruptly, endeavouring to be playful, and succeeding only in being rude.

"Nothing whatever," he replies, flushing angrily; and then they walk on for some distance in silence.

"Are you angry?" asks Esther, presently, with a smile, half saucy, half frightened.

"I? not in the least," he replies, with an air of ostentatious indifference, but with a complexion undoubtedly florider than nature made his.

"You look excessively cross, and have not uttered a word for the last half mile," she says, pouting out her full red under-lip, and then looking (a little alarmed at her own audacity) to see in what spirit he takes her impertinence.

"When I do not get civil answers to civil questions, I think it best to hold my tongue," he says, stalking along with his head up, and hitting viciously with his umbrella at the tall, yellow mulleins in the hedge.

"People's ideas differ as to what are civil questions," says Essie, trying to stalk too, and to elevate nose and chin in emulation of his. "Suppose that I had asked you how many times you had been refused, would you have answered me?"

"Undoubtedly I should," he replies, gravely.

"How many times have you?" she asks, coming down from her elevation of offended dignity with a jump, and looking up at him with naïve, eager curiosity.

"Questions should be answered in the order of priority in which they are asked," he replies, with a smile of amusement at her simplicity, but with a good deal of dissatisfied doubt underlying the smile. "Answer my question, and I'll answer yours."

Esther turns away, and passes her hand along the hedge, catching idly at any grasses or flowers that come in her way, to the great detriment of her Sunday gloves. His anxiety overcomes his hurt pride.

"Give me an answer one way or another," he says, breathing rather short. "Is there not something between you and him?"

Esther is silent. "No" is a plain downright lie, at which conscience demurs, and "Yes" a cannon-ball that will knock her away from St. John's side out into the drear, great world for ever.

"For God's sake answer me!" he says again, in great agitation at a dumbness that seems to him ominous.

Hearing the sharp pain and angry fear in his voice, she hesitates no longer. Lie or no lie, she takes the plunge.

"Nothing!" she says, faintly, turning first milk-white, then red as a rose in her burning prime.

"Why do you turn away your face? Are you quite certain?" he asks, quickly, only half convinced by her weak negation.

"Certain," she replies, indistinctly, as if just able to echo his words, but not to frame any of her own.

"Why do you stammer and blush, then, whenever his name is mentioned?" he asks, with jealous impatience.

"I won't stand being catechised in this way," she cries, blazing out angrily, and stopping short, while sparks of fire, half quenched in tears of vexation, dart from the splendid night of her eyes. "I have answered a question which you ought never to have asked; you must be a person of very little observation," she continues, sharply, "not to have discovered during the three weeks that I have been with you that I blush at everything and nothing; I should be as likely as not to blush when Sir Thomas's name was mentioned, or – or – "

"Or mine," suggests St. John, ironically; "put it as strongly as you can."

"Or yours, if you like," she answers, hardily, but crimsoning painfully meanwhile in confirmation of her words.

At a little distance farther on, their path forsakes the road and leads across a line of grass fields. St. John crosses the first stile, and waits politely on the other side to help Esther over.

"No, no!" she cries, petulantly, withdrawing her foot from the first rung – "I hate being helped over stiles. Go on, please."