A Dozen Ways Of Love Part 12

'Bless you, no, sir; she's 'ale and 'earty. Cook says she's sure she've fell out with some one. That's her way; she takes to bed when she've fell out with any one. It makes them repent of their sins.'

A soft grey mist lay over land and sea. The church and vicarage were grey and wet. The beeches at the vicarage gate had broken forth in a myriad buds of silver green, and all the buds were tipped with water, and the grey stems were stained and streaked. The yew trees in the churchyard were bedewed with tiny drops. At the little gate that led from the vicarage into the churchyard, between the yew trees and the beeches, the curate waited for Violetta, after evensong. She came out of the old grey porch and down the path between the graves and the yew trees with her prayer-book in her hand. She looked like an Easter lily that holds itself in bud till the sadness of Lent is past, so pure, so modest, such a perfect thing from the hand of G.o.d.

She stopped and started when she saw her lover, and then greeted him with a little smile, but blent with some reproachful dignity.

'I am glad you have come at last, for I have been wanting to speak to you. Poor mamma has been very poorly and ill. It has grieved her very much indeed that you should have so misunderstood her motives, and treated her so rudely. Mamma takes things like that most deeply to heart.'

'She told you why I treated her rudely?'

'Yes, she told me, but she did not tell papa anything about it; it would only vex papa and do no good. Mamma told me to tell you that she had made up her mind to forgive you, and to say no more about it, although she was deeply grieved that you should have so misunderstood her.'

'Yes,' said the curate vaguely, for he did not know what else to say.

'Of course, as to the necklace, it may be a matter of opinion as to whether mamma judged rightly or not; but no one who knows her could doubt that her one desire was to do what was right. It is quite true what she says: that the stone was most unsuitable to the station of those people; every one says that the man was a very common and vulgar-looking person; and of course to regard such a thing with superst.i.tious veneration is a very great sin, from which she saved them as long as she kept it. Mamma says of course she knew she ran the risk of being misunderstood in acting as she did, but she thought it her duty to run that risk if by that means she could save anything that G.o.d had entrusted to her keeping from being misused. You know what mamma is; there is nothing she would not do if she thought it right.'

'Yes,' he said again, as though simply admitting that he had heard what she said.

'So I think we had better not say anything more about it. I know you will see that it is wisest to say nothing to papa or any one else.

People think so differently about such things that it would only cause needless argument, and give poor mamma more pain when she has already suffered so much.'

'You may trust me. I will never mention the matter to your father, or to any one else. No one shall ever hear of it through me.'

'I was sure that you would see that it is wisest not to; I told mamma so. When she is better, and you have shown her that you regret having misunderstood her, we shall all be very happy again.' She held up her pretty face for a kiss.

No one could see them except the chattering starlings in the church tower, for they stood in the soft mist between the dewy yew trees and the red-budding hedge by the vicarage lawn. The beech trees stretched out their graceful twigs above them, the starlings talked to one another rather sadly, and far off through the stillness of the mist came the sound of the tide on the sh.o.r.e. The curate was very pale and grave. His tall frame trembled like a sick woman's as he stooped to give Violetta that kiss. He took her hands in his for a moment, and then he clasped her in his arms, lifting her from the gra.s.s and embracing her in a pa.s.sion of tenderness and love. Then he put her from him.

'Violetta, it is amiable of you, and loyal, to excuse and defend your mother, but tell me--tell me, as you speak before G.o.d, that you do not think as you have spoken. You are a woman now, with a soul of your own; tell me you know that to take this necklace and to keep it secretly was a terrible sin.'

'Indeed'--with candour--'I do not think anything of the sort. I think it is wicked of you to slander mamma in that way. And if you want to know what I think'--with temper now--'I think it was most unkind of you to give away my ring. After it had been given to me on such an occasion, too, it was priceless to us, but we could easily have paid that vulgar man all it was worth to him.'

'I will not argue with you. I perceive now that that would do no good.'

There was a heart-broken tone in his voice that frightened Violetta. 'I will--I will only say----'

'What?' she asked. The thin sharp sound in her voice was a note of alarm.

'I will not marry you,' moaned the curate.

'Not marry me!' she exclaimed in astonishment.

'I love you. I shall always love you. No other woman shall ever be my wife; but I will never marry you; and I shall go away and leave you free to forget me.'

'But why? What have I done?' she asked, her breath catching her tones.

'You have done nothing, my poor, poor girl; but--oh, my darling, I would gladly die if by dying I could open your eyes to see the simple integrity of unselfishness!'

'It is very absurd for you to speak of unselfishness at the very moment when you are selfishly giving me so much pain,' she cried, defiant.

He bent his head and covered his face with his hands.

She stood and looked at him, her cheeks flushed and her breast heaving with a great anger.

'Good-bye, Violetta,' he said, and turned slowly away.

'I never heard of anything so dishonourable,' she cried.

And that was what the world said; the curate was in disgrace with society for the rest of his life.

V

'HATH NOT A JEW EYES?'

Mr. Saintou the hairdresser was a Frenchman, therefore his English neighbours regarded him with suspicion. He was also exceedingly stout, and his stoutness had come upon him at an unbecomingly early age, so that he had long been the object of his neighbours' merriment. When to these facts it is added that, although a keen and prosperous business man, he had attained the age of fifty without making any effort to marry, enough will have been said to show why he was disliked.

Why was he not married? Were English women not good enough for him? The pretty milliner across the street had been heard to remark in his presence that she should never refuse a man simply because he was a foreigner. Or if he did not want an English wife, why did he not import one from Paris with his perfumes? No, there was no reason for his behaviour, and Mr. Saintou was the object of his neighbours' aversion.

Neighbours are often wrong in their estimates. In the heart of this shrewd and stout French hairdresser there lay the rare capacity for one supreme and lasting affection. Mr. Saintou's love story was in the past, and it had come about in this way.

One day when the hairdresser was still a young man, not long after he had first settled in Albert Street, the door of his shop opened, and a young woman came in. Her figure was short and broad, and she was lame, walking with a crutch. Her face and features were large and peculiarly frank in expression; upon her head was a very large hat. When she spoke, it was with a loud staccato voice; her words fell after one another like hailstones in a storm, there was no breathing s.p.a.ce between them.

'I want Mr. Saintou.'

'What may I have the pleasure of showing madame?'

'Good gracious, I told you I wanted to be shown Mr. Saintou. Are you Mr.

Saintou? None of your a.s.sistants for me; I want my hair cut.'

The hairdresser laid his hand upon his heart, as though to point out his own ident.i.ty. He bowed, and as even at that age he was very stout, the effort of the bow caused his small eyes to shut and open themselves again. There was nothing staccato about the manner of the hairdresser, he had carefully cultivated that address which he supposed would be most soothing to those who submitted themselves to his operations.

'Very well,' said the little lady, apparently satisfied with the identification, 'I want my hair cut. It is like a sheaf of corn. It is like a court train. It is like seven horses' manes tied together, if they were red. It is like a comet's tail.'

It is probable that the hairdresser only took in that part of this speech upon which he was in the habit of concentrating his attention, and that the force of the similes which followed one another like electric shocks escaped him altogether. He was about to show the new customer into the ladies' room, where his staid and elderly sister was accustomed to officiate, but she drew back with decision.

'No, not at all; I have come to have my hair cut by Mr. Saintou, and I want to have it done in the room with the long row of chairs where the long row of men get shaved every morning. I told my sister I should sit there. You have no men in at this time of day, have you, Mr. Saintou?

Now I shall sit here in the middle chair, and you shall wash my hair. My father is the baker round the corner. He makes good bread; do you wash people's hair as well? Will you squirt water on it with that funny tube?

Will you put it in my eyes? Now, I am up on the chair. Don't put the soap in my eyes, Mr. Saintou.'

Saintou was not a man easily surprised. 'Permit me, mademoiselle, would it not be better to remove the hat? Mon Dieu! Holy Mary, what hair!' For as the Eastern women carry their burdens on the crown of the head to ease the weight, so, when the large hat was off, it appeared that the baker's daughter carried her hair.

'Like the hair of a woman on a hair-restorer bottle, if it were red,'

remarked the girl in answer to the exclamation.

'No, mademoiselle, no, it is not red. Mon Dieu! it is not red. Holy Mary! it is the colour of the sun. Mon Dieu, what hair!' As he untwined the ma.s.ses, it fell over the long bib, over the high chair, down till it swept the floor, in one unbroken flood of light.

'Wash it, and cut it, and let me go home to make my father's dinner,'

said the quick voice with decision. 'My father is the baker round the corner, and he takes his dinner at two.'