She and I Volume I Part 4

"Have you heard the news about The Terrace yet, Frank?" asked Miss Pimpernell.

"No," I said. "What is it?"

"Number sixty-five is let at last!"

"Indeed," said I; "how pleased old Shuffler must be, for the house has hung a long time on his hands. Who are the people that have taken it?"

"A widow lady and her daughter. Their name is Clyde, and they have a good deal of money, I believe," said Bessie Dasher.

"Bai-ey Je-ove!" exclaimed Horner. "I say, old fellah, p'waps they ah those ladies in hawf-mawning, ah?"

"Dear me! this is quite interesting," said Miss Spight. "Do let me know what the joke is about ladies in half-mourning, Mr Lorton--something romantic, I've no doubt." She was always keen to scent out what might be disagreeable to other people, was Miss Spight!

"Oh, it's only Horner's nonsense!" said I. "But what are these Clydes like?"

"Very nice, indeed!" said Miss Pimpernell. "The mother is extremely well-bred and ladylike, and the daughter Minnie--such a pretty name, Frank--is quite a little darling. I'm positively in love with her, and I'm sure you will like her. They are very nice people indeed, my boy, and thorough acquisitions to our little society."

"I only hope so, Miss Pimpernell," sighed Lady Dasher; "but appearances, you know, are _so_ deceitful sometimes."

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Spight, "handsome is as handsome does! We'll see them by and by in their true colours; new brooms, Lady Dasher, sweep clean. Ah!"

There was a world in that "ah!"

"Well," said little Miss Pimpernell, in her staunch good-nature, "I think it is best to be charitable and take people as we find them. I have seen a good deal of the Clydes during the month they have been here and like them very much. But you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself, Frank, as Minnie Clyde promised me to come down to-day and help us with the decorations."

"She's a very nice-looking girl," said the curate.

"Do you really think her pretty?" asked Bessie Dasher. One could detect a slight tone of dissatisfaction in her voice, and she spoke with a decided pout.

"Well, perhaps she's not exactly pretty," said Mr Mawley, diplomatically; "but nice-looking, at all events--that was the word I used, Miss Bessie."

"But she dresses so plainly!" said Lizzie Dangler.

"I call her quite a dowdthy!" lisped Baby Blake.

"And I say she's very nice!" said Seraphine Dasher, who had none of the petty dislike of her s.e.x to praise another girl that might turn out to be a possible rival.

"That's right, my dear," said Miss Pimpernell; "I'm glad, Seraphine, to hear you take the part of the absent; Miss Clyde ought to be here now-- she promised me to come soon after luncheon."

Even as the good old soul spoke, I heard the outer door of the school- room open, and a light footstep along the pa.s.sage. "There she is now, I do believe!" whispered Miss Pimpernell to me.

I could scarcely breathe. I felt that I had at last arrived at the crisis of my life. It must be _her_, I thought, for my heart palpitated with wild pulsations.

And, as the thought thrilled through me, my lost madonna entered the room.

I was not one whit surprised. I had been certain that I should see her again!

CHAPTER FOUR.

"HOPE."

"The wit, the vivid energy of sense, The truth of nature, which, with Attic point, And kind, well-temper'd satire, smoothly keen, Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects."

Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles on imaginative foundations--chateaux en Espagne--that had almost crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous months, of waiting, and watching, and longing!

She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up evergreens, its ma.s.s of piled forms, its lumbering desks and ha.s.socks, its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand, into an enchanted palace.

The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been awakened; and all was altered.

The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry--so my fancy pictured--and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-G.o.d. Her coming in effected all this to my mind.

What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm face bent earnestly over her task--the surrounding foliage, scattered here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter omnes, as Virgil sang of "the young Marcellus," his hero: she "glistened out before them all."

Of course she was introduced to me.

"Mr Lorton--Miss Minnie Clyde." Now, at last, I had met her and knew her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell had said! Just in keeping with its owner.

As my name was p.r.o.nounced, she raised her beautiful grey eyes from the garland in her lap; and I could perceive, from a sudden gleam of intelligence which shot through them for an instant, that I was at once recognised:--from my face, I'm sure, she must have noticed that _she_ had not been forgotten.

I was in heaven; I would not have relinquished my position, kneeling at her feet and stripping off ivy leaves for her use, no, not for a dukedom!

Our conversation became again imperceptibly of a higher tone. Hers was light, sparkling, brilliant; and one could see that she possessed a fund of native drollery within herself, despite her demure looks and downcast eyes. She had a sweet, low voice, "that most excellent thing in woman;"

while her light, silvery laughter rippled forth ever and anon, like a chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach's champagne music.

In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler's prosy plat.i.tudes, which some deemed wit--Horner, par exemple--sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling--her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me singularly silly.

From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.

To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his a.s.sertions; and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that is grand and good in a writer and in man.

"You make a great mistake," I said, "for Thackeray is a satirist pur et simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods--indeed I would rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term."

"Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference lies between the two?" the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and wishing, as usual, to display his critical ac.u.men by demolishing me.

"I will tell you with pleasure," said I, not a bit "put out," according to his evident wish and expectation, "and I will use the plainest language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society--in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private opinion, you need only take it for what it is worth."

"Thank you, Mr Lorton," said _somebody_, giving me a gratefully intelligent look from a pair of deep, thinking grey eyes.

"Oh, indeed! so that's your opinion, Lorton?" put in Mr Mawley, as antagonistic as ever. "So that's your opinion, is it? I _will_ do as you say, and take it for what it is worth--that is, keep my own still!

You may be very sharp and clever, and all that sort of thing, my dear fellow; but I don't see the difference between the two that you have so lucidly pointed out. Satire and cynicism are co-equal terms to my mind: your argument won't persuade me, Lorton, although I must say that you are absolutely brilliant to-day. You should really start a school of Modern Literature, my dear fellow, and set up as a professor of the same!"

"Please get my scissors, Frank," said Miss Pimpernell, trying to stop our wordy warfare. I got them; but I had my return blow at the curate all the same.

"I suppose you'd be one of my first pupils, Mr Mawley," I said. "I think I could coach you up a little!"

He was going to crush me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation, being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by entering the arena and changing the conversation to a broader footing.