Clare Avery Part 9

"Good lack! 'tis not in human nature," said Barbara, bluntly. "If we be no Christians short of that, there be right few Christians in all the world, Mistress mine."

"So there be," was the reply. "Is it not?"

"Truly, good friend, this is not in nature," said Mrs Tremayne, gently.

"It is only in grace."

"Then in case it so be, is there no grace?" asked Barbara in a slightly annoyed tone.

"Who am I, that I should judge?" was the meek answer. "Yet methinks there must be less grace than nature."

"Well!--and of Mistress Rachel, what say you?"

"Have you a care that you judge her not too harshly. She is, I know, somewhat forbidding on the outside, yet she hath a soft heart, Barbara."

"I am thankful to hear the same, for I had not so judged," was Barbara's somewhat acrid answer.

"Ah, she showeth the worst on the outside."

"And for the childre? I love not yon Lucrece.--Now, Mistress Rose, have a care your cakes be well mingled, and snub not me."

"Ah! there spake the conscience," said Mrs Rose, laughing.

"I never did rightly understand Lucrece," answered her daughter. "For Margaret, she is plain and open enough; a straightforward, truthful maiden, that men may trust. But for Lucrece--I never felt as though I knew her. There is that in her--be it pride, be it shamefacedness, call it as you will--that is as a wall in the way."

"I call it deceitfulness, Thekla," said her mother decidedly.

"I trust not so, Mother! yet I have feared--"

"Time will show," said Mrs Rose, filling her moulds with the compound which was to turn out _pain d'epices_.

"Mistress Blanche, belike, showeth not what her conditions shall be,"

remarked Barbara.

"She is a lovesome little maid as yet," said Mrs Tremayne. "Mefeareth she shall be spoiled as she groweth toward womanhood, both with praising of her beauty and too much indulging of her fantasies."

"And now, what say you to Master Jack?" demanded Barbara in some trepidation. "Is he like to play ugsome [ugly, disagreeable] tricks on Mrs Clare, think you?"

"Jack--ah, poor Jack!" replied Mrs Tremayne.

Barbara looked up in some surprise. Jack seemed to her a most unlikely subject for the compa.s.sionate e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"And dost thou marvel that I say, 'Poor Jack'? It is because I have known men of his conditions aforetime, and I have ever noted that either they do go fast to wrack, or else they be set in the hottest furnace of G.o.d's disciplining. I know not which shall be the way with Jack. But how so,--poor Jack!"

"But what deem you his conditions, in very deed?"

"Why, there is not a soul in all the village that loveth not Jack, and I might well-nigh say, not one that hath not holpen him at some pinch, whereto his reckless ways have brought him. If the lacings of satin ribbon be gone from Mistress Rachel's best gown, and the cat be found with them tied all delicately around her paws and neck, and her very tail,--'tis Jack hath done it. If Margaret go about with a paper pinned to the tail of her gown, importing that she is a thief and a traitor to the Queen's Highness,--'tis Jack hath pinned it on when she saw him not.

If some rare book from Sir Thomas his library be found all open on the garden walk, wet and ruinated,--'tis Jack. If Mistress Rachel be astepping into her bed, and find the sheets and blankets all awry, so that she cannot compa.s.s it till all is pulled in pieces and turned aright, she hath no doubt to say, 'tis Jack. And yet once I say, Poor Jack! If he be to come unto good, mefeareth the furnace must needs be heated fiercely. Yet after all, what am I, that I should say it? G.o.d hath a thousand ways to fetch His lost sheep home."

"But is he verily ill-natured?"

"Nay, in no wise. He hath as tender a heart as any lad ever I saw. I have known him to weep bitterly over aught that hath touched his heart.

Trust me, while I cast no doubt he shall play many a trick on little Clare, yet no sooner shall he see her truly sorrowful thereat, than Jack shall turn comforter, nor go not an inch further."

Barbara was beginning another question, of which she had plenty more to ask, when she saw that the clock pointed to a quarter to eleven, which was dinner-time at Enville Court. There was barely time to reach the house, and she took leave hastily, declining Mrs Tremayne's invitation to stay and dine at the parsonage.

When she entered the hall, she found the household already a.s.sembled, and the sewers bringing in a smoking baron of beef. At the upper end Lady Enville was delicately arranging the folds of her crimson satin dress; the little girls were already seated; and Mistress Rachel, with brown holland ap.r.o.n and cuffs, stood with a formidable carving-knife in her hand, ready to begin an attack upon the beef. The carving was properly Lady Enville's prerogative; but as with all things which gave her trouble, she preferred to delegate it to her sister-in-law.

Sir Thomas came in late, and said grace hastily. The Elizabethan grace was not limited to half-a-dozen words. It took about as long as family prayers usually do now. Jack, in his usual style, came scampering in just when grace was finished.

"Good sooth! I have had such discourse with Master Tremayne," said Sir Thomas. "He hath the strangest fantasies. Only look you--"

"A shive of beef, Sister?" interpolated Rachel, who had no notion of allowing the theoretical to take precedence of the practical.

Lady Enville languidly declined anything so gross as beef. She would take a little--very little--of the venison pasty.

"I'll have beef, Aunt!" put in unseasonable Jack.

"Wilt thou have manners?" severely returned Rachel.

"Where shall I find them, Aunt?" coolly inquired Jack, letting his eyes rove about among the dishes. "May I help you likewise?"

"Behave thyself, Jack!" said his father, laughing.

The rebuke was neutralised by the laughter. Rachel went on carving in dignified silence.

"Would you think it?" resumed Sir Thomas, when everybody was helped, and conversation free to flow. "Master Tremayne doth conceive that we Christian folk be meant to learn somewhat from those ancient Jews that did wander about with Moses in the wilderness. Ne'er heard I no such a fantasy. To conceive that we can win knowledge from the rotten old observances of those Jew rascals! Verily, this pa.s.seth!"

"Beats the Dutch, Sir!" said incorrigible Jack.

Note 1. All members of the Enville family and household are fict.i.tious persons.

CHAPTER THREE.

BREAKERS AHEAD.

"Our treasures moth and rust corrupt: Or thieves break through and steal; or they Make themselves wings and fly away.

One man made merry as he supped, Nor guessed how, when that night grew dim, His soul should be required of him."

_Ellen Alleyn_.

Eleven years had pa.s.sed away since the events of the previous chapters, and in the room where we first saw her, Rachel Enville sat with the four girls around her. Little girls no longer,--young ladies now; for the youngest, Blanche, was not far from her fifteenth birthday. Margaret-- now a young woman of four-and-twenty, and only not married because her betrothed was serving with the army of occupation in the Netherlands-- was very busily spinning; Lucrece--a graceful maiden of twenty-two, not strictly handsome, but possessed of an indescribable fascination which charmed all who saw her--sat with her eyes bent down on her embroidery; Clare--seventeen, gentle, and un.o.btrusive--was engaged in plain sewing; and Blanche,--well, what was Blanche doing? She sat in the deep window-seat, her lap full of spring flowers, idly taking up now one, and now another,--weaving a few together as if she meant to make a wreath,-- then suddenly abandoning the idea and gathering them into a nosegay,-- then throwing that aside and dreamily plunging both hands into the fragrant ma.s.s. Blanche had developed into a very pretty picture,-- lovelier than Lady Enville, whom she resembled in feature.

"Blanche!" said her aunt suddenly.

Blanche looked up as if startled. Rachel had changed little. Time had stiffened, not softened, both her grogram and her prejudices.