Girlhood and Womanhood Part 9

It was a harmonious arrangement, in which not only Clarissa but Mistress Cambridge agreed. Cambridge was one of those worthy, useful persons, whom n.o.body in those strangely plain but decidedly aristocratic days--not even Clarissa and Dulcie, though they sat with her, ate with her, hugged her when they wanted to coax her--ever thought or spoke of otherwise than "Cambridge, a good sort of woman in her own way." The only temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives.

It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the house--don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of good--and only the kisses and tears were finished off in the street.

After all this introduction, it is painful to describe how the company travelled. It was in a stage waggon! But they could not help it. We never stated that they were out-and-out quality; and not even all the quality could travel in four coaches and six, with twelve hors.e.m.e.n riding attendance, and an unpaid escort of butchers, bakers, and apothecaries, whipping and spurring part of the way for the custom. What could the poor Commons do? There were not stage coaches in every quarter of the great roads; and really if they pocketed their gentility, the huge brown waggons were of the two extinct conveyances the roomier, airier, and safer both from overturns and highwaymen. The seats were soft, the s.p.a.ce was ample, and the three unprotected females were considered in a manner incognito, which was about as modest a style as they could travel in. Of course, they were not in their flowered silks, their lutestrings, their mantuas. We are a.s.sured every respectable woman travelled then in a habit and hat, and no more thought of hoops than of hair powder. The only peculiarity was that beneath their hats they wore mob-caps, tied soberly under the chin, and red or blue handkerchiefs knotted over the hat, which gave them the air of Welsh market-women, or marvellously clean and tidy gipsies. Clarissa was spelling out the words in _Pharamond_--a French cla.s.sic; Dulcie was looking disconsolately straight before her through their sole outlet, the bow at the end of the waggon, which circ.u.mscribed as pretty and fresh a circle of common and cornfield, with crimson patches of wood and the blue sky above, as one might wish to see. Occasionally the crack of a sportsman's gun was heard to the right or left, followed by a pheasant or a string of partridges darting across the opening of the canvas car; but as yet no claimant had solicited the privilege and honour of sharing the waggon and the view with our fair travellers.

II.--TWO LADS SEEK A CAST IN THE WAGGON.

"Hullo, Joe! we want a lift," cries a brisk voice, and the couple of great steeds--they might have been Flanders mares or Clydesdale horses, so powerful were they over the shoulders, so mighty in the flanks--almost swerved out of their direct line and their decorum. Two fellows suddenly started up from a couch where they had lain at length on a hay-stack, slid down the height, crashed over an intervening bit of waste land, and arrested the waggoner in his smock-frock and clouted shoes.

"Get in, Will, and take possession. Ha! hum! here are ladies: where will we stow our feet? I declare Will is on their skirts already, with more green slime than is carried on the breast of a pond. I believe he thinks them baggage--lay figures, as they've turned aside their heads.

Gentlefolks for a wager! d.u.c.h.esses in disguise! I must make up to them, anyhow. Ladies, at your service; I humbly beg your pardon for having so much as thought of incommoding you, but indeed I was not aware of your presence. Come, Will, tumble out again instantly, and do not let us be so rude as to plague the ladies."

Poor Will! very stiff and tired, stared about him, disturbed and discomforted, and prepared to perform the behest of his more energetic companion.

Dulcie did a little of her "bridling," but said never a word; Clarissa lifted her large, rather languishing eyes, let them fall again on her mittens, and remained dumb. They speak before they were spoken to? not they, they knew better. At the same time, when Will stumbled as he alighted on his weary feet, they were guilty of an inclination to t.i.tter, though the accident was excusable, and the point of the joke small.

"You are very polite, sirs," protested Cambridge, making round eyes, and reddening and blowing at being const.i.tuted the mouthpiece of the party on any interest save that of victuals. "I vow it is very pretty behaviour; but as it is a public carriage, I don't think we are at liberty to deprive Joe of his money, and you, sirs, of your seats. What say you, Mistress Clary?"

"I decline to give an opinion," answered Clarissa with great dignity; in which she broke down a little by adding hastily, in half audible accents. "Be quiet, Dulcie!" for Dulcie's risible faculties had been excited in a lively degree. She had been crying so lately that there was a hysterical turn in her mirth, and having once given way to it she could not restrain herself, but was making all sorts of ridiculous faces and spasms in her throat without effect. You see, these were two ordinary, happy young girls; and the stiff starch of their manners and pretensions only brought out in a stronger light, and with a broader contrast, their youthful frolicsomeness.

"I think, sirs, you may come in--that is, if you keep your distance,"

Mistress Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a mult.i.tude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the original occupants of the waggon.

Tranquillity settled down on the travellers--a tranquillity only broken by the drowsy rumble of the waggon-wheels, and the perennial whistle of the stooping, grizzled waggoner. Dulcie was just thinking that they might have been Turks, they were so silent, when Mistress Cambridge stirred the still atmosphere by the inquiry--

"Pray, sirs, have you happened to fall in with any stubble chickens in your walk; I think you said you had been walking hereabouts?" affording Clarissa an opportunity of complaining afterwards, in the retirement of the little inn's private room, that these young fellows would judge them a set of gluttons or farmers' daughters abroad for a holiday, aping gentlewomen, instead of being d.u.c.h.esses in disguise.

Although the girls never lifted their eyes, yet, by a magic only known to such philosophers, they had taken as complete an inventory of the young men, beginning at their wardrobes, as if they had looked at them coolly from head to foot for a whole half-hour. They were aware that the fellows were in plain suits, though one of them was not without the air of being fine on occasions. Their coats were cloth, not brocade or velvet; their ruffles were cambric, not lace; their shoe-buckles were only silver; their hats were trimmed with braid, and neither with gold nor silver edging. They were not my lords; they were not in regimentals; they did not rap out oaths; they had not the university air; they showed no parson's bands; they were not plain country b.u.mpkins--what were they?

After all, it was scarcely worth inquiry whether the newcomers belonged to law or physic; for the young women in their pride and petulance felt bound not to consider the investigation worth the trouble. The lad who was the leader, and who was unquestionably of gentle enough nurture, was a plain little fellow, sallow and homely-featured, although a good-natured person might suppose from his smiling sagacity that in animated conversation it would be quite possible to forget his face in his countenance. The other was ruddy, with a face as sharply cut as a girl's, and delicate features not fitting his long limbs--clearly he was no better than a nincomp.o.o.p. Yes, the girls were perfectly justifiable in whispering as the waggon stopped to bait at the "Nine Miles House,"

and they got out to bait also--

"What a pair!"

"Such a fright, the little fellow, Clary!"

"Such a goose, the tall fellow, Dulcie!"

It is a sad truth that foolish young women will judge by the exterior, leap at conclusions, and be guilty of rude and cruel remarks.

What would come of it if the silly, sensitive hearts were in earnest, or if they did not reserve to themselves the indefeasible right of changing their opinions?

At the "Nine Miles House" the wayfarers rested, either in the sanded parlour, or the common kitchen of the ale-house. Mistress Clarissa and her party had the sanded parlour for themselves; the young men, with their cramped legs, stumbled into the flitch-hung kitchen, the more entertaining room of the two, and had plates of beans and bacon, a toast and a tankard; for the day was in September, and the wind was already bracing both to body and appet.i.te. Mistress Clarissa carried her private stores, and Cambridge laid out her slices of roasts and broils, plates of buns and comforts, and cruets with white wines. But when did a heroine remain in a sanded parlour in an inn, when she could stroll over the country and lose her way, and get run at by wild cattle, and stared at by naughty gentlemen? Clary was not so mean-spirited, though she was physically lazier than Dulcie; she was eager to scamper across the stubble fields (where Cambridge expected chickens to roam in flocks), and to wander, book in hand, by yon brook with the bewitching pollards.

Dulcie could not accompany her. Dulcie being a practical woman, a needle in innocent sharpness, had peeped about the waggon to inspect their luggage, and had found to her horror that one of her boxes had burst its fastenings--that very box with her respected mother's watered tabby, and her one lace head on the place of honour on the top. So she and Cambridge had an earnest consultation on the accident, which resulted in their proceeding to tuck up their skirts, empty the receptacle with the greatest care and tenderness, and repack it with such skill that a rope would replace its rent hinges. Dulcie was not for walking.

Clarissa was thus forced to saunter alone, and after she had got to the brook and the pollards, she sat down, and leant her arms on the bars of an old farm gate. Soon tiring of looking about her, staring at the minnows and the late orange coltsfoot and white wild ranunculus, and the straw-coloured willow-leaves drooping into the water, she took out of her pocket that little brown French cla.s.sic, _Pharamond_, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of these absurd Frenchmen's tongues.

At last Clarissa bethought her of the hour, sprang up, carefully put away her volume--volumes and verses were precious then--and began to pick her steps homewards. Ah! there had been a wretch of a man looking at her--actually drawing her in his portfolio--the ugly fellow in the waggon. Thank goodness, he could not have recognized her as his fellow-traveller; he had copied the old farm-gate from the other side, and he could only have got a glimpse of her figure through the bars with not so much as the crown of her hat above them. He had only put her in faithfully by a line or two, and three dots, and he did not observe her now as she pa.s.sed behind him and scanned his performance ere she scampered off. But what a risk she had run of having her likeness taken without her knowledge or consent, and carried about the country by a walking gentleman!

It was quite an adventure; yet how could Clary think it so when an earthquake and a whole town burnt to ashes were nothing in her French novels! But, still true to the instinct of personality which causes us to think a molehill in reference to our dear selves a world more momentous and interesting than a mountain in reference to a princess of the blood-royal, stately Clarissa flew off like a lapwing to tell Dulcie that she had just had such an escape, and hit on such a discovery--she had found out all about the two fellows; they were a couple of painters.

Marry! it was a marvel to see the one so hearty, and the other so rosy.

Doubtless they did not have an odd penny in their purse between them.

Clarissa came too late; she encountered Dulcie running out to meet her, all alive with the same news, only gathered in a more orthodox manner.

The fair, soft lad, whom they had reckoned a nincomp.o.o.p, had shaken himself up in his companion's absence, and had offered his landlady a drawing for his share of the dinner, "if you will score the value off the bill." And the landlady had repeated the story to Cambridge and Dulcie when she showed the picture to them, and expressed her conviction that the lad was far gone in the spleen--he seemed always in a brown study; too quiet-like for a lad. She should have no peace in her mind about him if she were in any way related to him. Bless her heart! he would sell another for something much less than a crown.

Dulcie, all in a glow, had actually been chaffering with the painter for one of those wonderful groups of luscious peaches, mellow pears, July flowers, and striped balsamine, singing birds and fluttering insects, full of extravagant beauty. In the business, too, Dulcie had been by far the more overcome of the two. The painter, roused to a job, had not cheated her; on the contrary, he had been as usual a conscientious spendthrift of his powers. He had conducted the negotiation in the plainest, manliest spirit, looking the eager girl in the face with his blue eyes, and receiving her crown-piece in his hand, which was n.o.bler than his face, inasmuch as it was seamed with the action of his paints and tools, without a notion of anything unbecoming or degrading.

The brother painter shook his head when he returned, and found what Will had been about in his absence.

"Man, man, didn't I bargain that I was to pay for your company, and haven't I put you in the worst bed, and allowed you the burnt meat and the sodden bread, and the valise to carry twice as often as I took it myself, to satisfy your plaguy scruples? And yet you could go and scurvily steal a march upon me the moment you were out of my sight!

But," brightening immeasurably, and bowing low, "you have certainly contrived what I had not the face to attempt--an introduction to the ladies--although, no doubt, it was very simply done, and you are a very modest man, as I do not need to tell them. Ladies, I am Sam Winnington, son of the late gallant Captain Winnington, though I should not call him so; and this is Will Locke, the vagrant child of an excellent man, engaged, I believe, in the bookselling and stationery trade. We are painters, if it please you, on a tour in search of sketches and commissions. I beg to a.s.sure you, that I do portraits on a great scale as well as a small, and Will sometimes does lions in the jungle, as well as larks in a tuft of gra.s.s."

Cambridge was more posed than ever by the fresh advance included in this merry speech; but the girls were quite of another mind, and took the matter forthwith into their own hands, as is usual with the cla.s.s, and bore down caution and experience, particularly when it proceeded from their housekeeper. They liked the young man's congenial sense and spirit, they secretly hankered after his vivacity; they were, with their dear woman's romance, all afire in three minutes about pictures, G.o.ds, and G.o.ddesses, historic scenes, and even scratches in Indian ink. A true woman and a painter are hand and glove at a moment's warning in any age.

Cambridge could but drop naturally into the background, and regard the constant puzzle, "How girls can talk with fellows!"

The chance companions were once more packed into the waggon, pleasantly mixed together this time, and away they trundled yet many weary miles by the sunset and the light of the moon. The boughs in the horses' collars dangled brown, Cambridge and the waggoner nodded drowsily; but, divine privilege of youth! the spirits of the lads and la.s.ses only freshened as the long day waned and they neared the goal. They were _dramatis personae_ on a moving stage, jesting like country folks going to a fair.

Even Will Locke was roused and lively as he answered Dulcie's pertinacious, pertinent questions about the animal and vegetable life he loved so well; while Dulcie, furtively remembering the landlady's suggestion, wondered, kind heart! if she could use the freedom to mention to him that ground ivy was all but infallible in early stages of the spleen, and that turnip broth might be relied on to check every incipient cough. Clarissa was coquettish, Sam Winnington was gallant.

With all the girls' mock heroism, and all their arrogance and precision, trust me, girls and lads formed a free and friendly company in the end.

III.--REDWATER HOSPITALITY.

Clarissa and Dulcie did do the young men service in their calling. They said it would be a shame not to help two such likely fellows (you know they had undauntedly set the one down as a fright and the other as a goose in the morning); they were sure they were industrious and worthy, and they would give bail for their honesty. So they spoke right and left to the few influential families who were at Redwater of the two young painters, who by mere luck had come with them in the waggon, had put up at the "Rod and Fly," and were waiting for commissions. Had the Warrens or the Lorimers not heard of them? they would come bound they were a couple of geniuses, from their conversation.

The old world grinned, and said to the girls' faces that the la.s.ses had better not be too zealous for the lads; they were generally fit to manage their own business, and something more into the bargain. Uncle Barnet would not care to have his niece Clary fling herself away with her tidy fortune on a walking gentleman, though he were a genius.

The result was that Dulcie "bridled" in a twitter of wounded faith and anger. Clarissa was superb and scornful. She ordered a full-length portrait, and fixed the hour for the sitting within the week. Dulcie set off alone with Master Will Locke--Dulcie, who knew no more of Redwater than he should have done, if his wits had not been woolgathering--to find the meadow which was beginning to purple over with the meadow saffron.

But for all the townspeople laughed at Mistress Clary's and Mistress Dulcie's flights, they never dreamt of them as unbecoming or containing a bit of harm. Fine girls like Clary and Dulcie, especially an accomplished girl like Clary, who could read French and do j.a.pan, besides working to a wish in cross-st.i.tch and tent-sketch, were not persons to be slighted. The inhabitants saw for themselves that the painters had coats which were not out at elbows, and tongues, one of which was always wagging, and the other generally at rest, but which never said a word fairly out of joint. They needed no further introduction; the gentlemen called for the young men, the ladies curtsied to them in the bar of the "Rod and Fly," in the church-porch, in the common shop, and began conversations with them while they were chaffering at the same counter for the same red ribbons to tie up the men and the women's hair alike; and they felt that their manners were vastly polite and gracious, an opinion which was not far from the truth.

The Vicar lent the painters books. The Mayor invited them to supper. The nearest Justice, who was a family man, with a notable wife, had them to a domestic party, where they heard a little girl repeat a fable, and saw the little coach which the Justice had presented to his son and heir, then in long clothes, in which he was to be drawn along the smooth oak boarded pa.s.sages of the paternal mansion as soon as he could sit upright.

Lastly, Clarissa Gage, under the sufficient guardianship of Cambridge, treated the strangers to a real piece of sport--a hop on the washing-green, under her mulberry-tree. It commenced at four o'clock in the afternoon, and ended with dusk and the bats, and a gipsy fire, and roasting groats and potatoes in the hot ashes, in imitation of the freakish oyster supper which Clary had attended in town.

Clary took care to have her six couples well a.s.sorted, and not to be severed till the merry-making was over; she did not mind uniting herself to Master Sam Winnington, and Dulcie to Master Will Locke--mind! the arrangement was a courteous compliment to the chief guests, and it gave continual point to the entertainment. The company took a hilarious pleasure in a.s.sociating the four two-and-two, and commented openly on the distribution: "Mistress Clary is mighty condescending to this jackanapes." "Mistress Dulcie and t'other form a genteel pair."

To be sure the two young men heard the remarks, which they might have taken as broad hints, and the girls heard them too, uttered as they were without disguise; but so healthy were our ancestors, that n.o.body was put out--not even soft, mooning Will Locke. Nothing came of it that evening, unless a way Dulcie had of pressing her red lips together, throwing back her little brown head, shaking out the powder from her curls, and shaking down the curls themselves, with a gleeful laugh, which appeared to turn her own "bridling" into derision; and a high a.s.sertion of Clary's that she was determined never to wed a man beneath the rank of a county member or a peer. Now, really, after Clary had danced fifteen dances, and was about to dance other five, without stopping, with a portrait painter, of her own free will, this was drawing a longish and very unnecessary bow. But then Sam Winnington did not take it amiss or contradict her. He said she was right, and he had no doubt she would keep her word, and there was a quick, half-comic, half-serious gleam from the depths of his grey eyes which made Clarissa Gage look more bashful and lovelier than any man had ever yet beheld her. Pity the member or the peer could not have been that man!

Imagine the party after Mistress Cambridge had provided them with some of her favourite chickens, and more substantial Dutch beef, with wet fruit and dry, cold Rhenish and sugar, and mulled wine against the dew and damp feet, collecting merrily round the smoky fire, with little jets of flame shooting up and flashing out on the six couples! Sam Winnington in his silk stockings and points neatly trussed at the knee, was on all-fours poking the blue and red potatoes into the glowing holes.

Another man with rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky, but so near that it caused the women to recoil, screaming and hiding their faces on convenient shoulders, and lodged half-a-dozen instruments of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ladies shriek in greater earnest.

There was the strange ruddy light now on this face, now on that--on Will Locke's as he overturned a shovel of groats at Dulcie's feet, and on Dulcie's, so eager to cover his blunder, that she quite forgot the circ.u.mstances of the case, and never came to herself till she had burnt all the five tips of her rosy fingers catching the miller's pearls. Then Will Locke was so sorry, stroked the fingers so daintily, hung upon Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone--that Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and keenness of remorse.

Conjure up the whole fourteen--the Vicar and Cambridge of the number--when the fire had sunk white in ashes, when they could scarcely see each other's faces, and only guess each other's garments, having a round at "Puss in the corner," running here and rushing there, seizing this shoulder-knot, holding tight like a child by that skirt, drawing up, pulling back, whirling round all blowsy, all panting, all faint with fun and laughter, and the roguish familiarity which yet thought no evil.

Very romping, was it not? very hoydenish? yes certainly. Very improper?

by no means. It was practised by dignitaries of the Church, still more cla.s.sic than the Vicar scuttling and ducking after Cambridge (you never saw the like), and by the pink and pride of English womanhood.