My Little Lady Part 36

This little scene pa.s.sed so rapidly, that the two looking on had hardly time to realize that they were looking on, before it was all over. There was a sort of pause. Madelon gave one glance to Graham, and turned away--then the children came running up with their primroses. "Here are some for you, Uncle Horace; Cousin Madelon, please may I put some in your hat?"

Madelon took off her hat, and stooped down to help Madge arrange the flowers; she would not try to understand the meaning of what they had just witnessed, nor to interpret Monsieur Horace's look.

"You are going home," said Graham, unfastening the gate without looking at her; "then we part company here; I have to go further." And without another word he strode off, leaving the children disconcerted and rebellious at this abrupt termination of their walk.

"Madge," said Madelon, caressing the little square perplexed face, "you won't mind having a short walk to-day, will you?

Let us go home now, and we will play in the garden till your tea-time;" and wise little Madge agreed without further demur.

It was on the evening of the same day that Madelon, coming in from the garden where she had been wandering alone in the twilight, found Horace discussing his plans with Mrs.

Vavasour, who was making tea. She would have gone away again, but Graham called her back, and went on talking to his sister.

"I must send an answer as soon as possible," he was saying; "I can't keep B---- waiting for a month while I am making up my mind; I will speak to Maria this evening."

"It would be as well," answered Mrs. Vavasour; "she ought to be told at once. But must an answer be sent immediately? I think you will see that it will be useless to hurry Maria for a decision; she will want time for consideration."

"She shall have any reasonable time," he replied shortly; "but that is why I shall speak at once--she can think it over."

"And if you have in a measure made up your mind," continued her sister, "she will be better pleased, I am sure; she will wish in some sort to be guided by your wishes."

"That is just what I am anxious to avoid," he answered impatiently. "I do not desire to influence her in any way; I would not for the world that she should make any sacrifice on my account, and then be miserable for ever after."

"My dear Horace, you do not suppose Maria----"

"My dear Georgie, I know what Maria is, and you must allow me to take my own way."

He began to stride up and down the room with his hands in his pockets, Madelon watching him in silence. Presently he began again:--

"I know what Molly is; if she imagined that I wanted to go to this place, she would say 'Go,' without thinking of herself for a moment; but ten to one, when we got there, she would be for ever regretting England, and hating the society, and the mode of life, and everything, and everybody; and it would be very natural--she has never been abroad, and knows nothing of foreign life and manners."

"Then you do not mean to go?" said Mrs. Vavasour.

"I have not said so," he answered--"I shall put the matter calmly before Maria; tell her what I think are the reasons for and against, and leave her to decide. I suppose she cannot complain of that."

"I do not imagine for a moment she will complain," replied Mrs. Vavasour; "but I think she will want your judgment to help her."

He only muttered something in answer to this; and Madelon asked in a low voice, "Is it about going abroad that Monsieur Horace is doubting?"

"Yes, he told you about it, did he not?" said Mrs. Vavasour.

"I hope he may decide to go--it would be the very thing for him."

"Do you think so?" said Graham, who had overheard this last remark; and turning to Madelon with rather a melancholy smile, "Listen to the description, Madelon, and tell me what you think of it--a little town on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, sheltered on every side by hills, so that all the winter is spring, and flowers bloom all the year round. The gardens are full of pomegranate and orange trees, and the hills are terraced with vineyards, and covered with olives and chestnuts everywhere else. Do you think that that sounds inviting?"

"A great deal too good to be true," said Mrs. Vavasour, laughing. "I never believe thoroughly in these earthly paradises." But Madelon did not laugh; her eyes lighted up, her cheeks glowed.

"Ah!" she cried, "I can imagine all that. I believe in such places; they exist somewhere in the world, but one cannot get to them."

"One can sometimes," said Graham; "for perhaps Maria and I are going to this one, and then you had better become an invalid as fast as possible, Madelon, that Aunt Barbara may bring you there too."

"And you are really going?" she asked, with a sad sick feeling at her heart.

"Perhaps," he said, "we shall see what Maria says. I am afraid she may not take the same view of it all that you do;" and Maria coming in at that moment, the conversation dropped.

After tea they were all sitting, as usual, in the drawing- room; a wood fire burnt and crackled on the low hearth, but the evening was warm, and the long windows were open to the lawn, where Graham was walking up and down, smoking a pipe.

Dr. Vavasour was dozing in an arm-chair, Mrs. Vavasour sat a the table st.i.tching, Maria in the shade knitting cotton socks, and Madelon was leaning back in her chair, the lamplight falling on her brown hair and white dress, a piece of embroidery between her fingers, but her hands lying in her lap, and such sad thoughts in her poor little weary head. So this was the end of it all? Monsieur Horace was going to be married, and then live abroad--yes, she was certain he would live abroad--who would stay in England if they could help it?-- and she would never, never see him again! The one thought revolved in her brain with a sort of dull weariness, which prevented her seizing more than half its meaning, but which only required a touch to startle it into acutest pain. No one spoke or moved, and this oppressive silence of a room full of people seemed to perplex her as with a sense of unreality, and was more distracting for the moment than would have been the confusion of a dozen tongues around her.

Presently, however, Graham came in from the garden, and walked straight up to her.

"Will you not sing something?" he said.

She rose at once without speaking or raising her eyes, and went to the piano.

"What shall I sing?" she said then, turning over her music.

"Anything--it does not matter," said Graham, who had followed her; "never mind your music--sing the first thing that comes into your head."

She considered a moment, and then began.

When Madelon sang, her hearers could not choose but listen; in other matters she had very sufficient abilities, but in singing she rose to genius. Gifted by nature with a superb voice, an exceptional musical talent, these had been carefully cultivated during the last two or three years, and the result was an art that was no art, a n.o.ble and simple style, which gave an added intensity to her natural powers of expression, and forbade every suspicion of affectation. As she sang now, the Doctor roused up from his doze, and Mrs. Vavasour dropped her work; only Maria Leslie, sitting in the shadow of the window-curtain, knitted on with increased a.s.siduity.

It was a German song, Schumann's "Sehnsucht," that she was singing; it was the first that had come to her mind at Graham's bidding, and, still preoccupied, she began it almost without thought of the words and sentiment; but she had not sung two lines, when some hidden emotion made itself felt in her face with a quite irresistible enthusiasm and pathos.

These were the words:--

"Ich blick' im mein Herz, und ich blick' in die Welt, Bis vom schwimmenden Auge die Thrane mir fallt: Wohl leuchtet die Ferne mit goldenem Licht, Doch halt mich der Nord, ich erreiche sie nicht.

O die Schranken so eng, und die Welt so weit!

Und so fluchtig die Zeit, und so fluchtig die Zeit.

Ich weiss ein Land, wo aus sonnigem Grun Um versunkene Temple die Trauben bluhn, Wo die purpurne Woge das Ufer besaumt, Und von kommenden Sangern der Lorbeer traumt; Fern lockt es und winkt dem verlangenden Sinn, Und ich kann nicht hin--kann nicht hin!"

As Madelon sang these last words she looked up, and her eyes met Graham's, as he stood leaning against the piano, gazing at her face. She blushed scarlet, and stopped suddenly.

"I--I don't think I can sing any more," she said, letting her hands fall from the keys into her lap. She turned round, and saw Maria looking at her also, watching her and Graham perhaps. "How hot it is!" she cried, pushing the hair off her forehead with a little impatient gesture. "_J'etouffe ici!_" And she jumped up quickly and ran out of the room.

Out of the atmosphere of love, and suspicion, and jealousy that was stifling her, into the hall, up the shallow staircase to the long matted pa.s.sage which ran the length of the house, the bed-rooms opening on to it on either side. Madelon paced it rapidly for some minutes, then opened a door at the end, and entered the nursery. Nothing stifling here; a large, cool, airy room, with white blinds drawn down, subduing the full moonlight to a soft gloom, in which one could discern two little beds, each with its small occupant, whose regular breathing told that they had done, for ever, with the cares and sorrows of at least that day.

Madelon stood looking at them, the excitement that had made her cheeks burn, and her pulses throb, subsiding gradually in presence of this subdued, unconscious life. She smoothed the sheets and counterpane of one little sleeper, who, with bare limbs tossed about, was lying right across the bed, all the careful tuckings-up wofully disarranged; and then, pa.s.sing on, went into an inner room, that opened out of the larger nursery. The window was open here to the cool, grey sky, the moonlight shining in on the white curtains, the little white bed at the further end.

"Is that you, Cousin Madelon?" says Madge, raising a brown, s.h.a.ggy head as Madelon softly opened the door. "Won't you come in, please? I am not asleep."

Madelon came in, and went to the window. It looked down upon the lawn, with the still tree-shadows lying across it, and some other shadows that were not still--those of two people walking up and down, talking earnestly. She could distinguish Monsieur Horace's voice, and then Maria's in answer, and then Monsieur Horace again, and a sudden pang seemed to seize the poor child's heart, and hold it tight in its grasp. How happy they were, those two, talking together down there, whilst she was all alone up her, looking on!

"Do come here, Cousin Madelon," said Madge's impatient voice from the bed. "I want you to tuck me up, and give me a kiss."

Madelon went up to the bed, and kneeling down by it, laid her cheek wearily by Madge's on the pillow. The child pa.s.sed her arm round her neck, and hugged her tight, and the innocent, loving caress soothed the girl's sore heart, for the moment, more than anything else could have done.

"Little Madge," she said, drawing the child closer to her, as if the pressure of the little, soft, warm limbs had power to stop the aching at her heart. "Oh! Madge, I wish I were no bigger and no older than you. One is happier so."