The Call of the Town Part 10

Eunice had offended Nature, diddled the doctors, and looked all the better for the offence. The pasty whiteness of her girlhood had given place to a creamy freshness, which blended perfectly with her high colour--so you see her red cheeks were not the flame of consumption, but the bloom of health. Her colour was of that intensity which seems to come from the atmosphere around the face, and to shine upon the skin as a shaft of ruby light, carried by the sunbeams through a cathedral window, glows on a marble statue.

Her features were pretty, but with no mere prettiness. They were marked by character. The nose would have been a despised model for a Grecian; the mouth not dollishly small, yet small, firm-set, the firmness being saved from shrewish suggestion by an upward ending of the lips. Eunice had a chin; a most essential quality in man and woman, sometimes unhappily omitted. A chin that said: "Yes, I mean what I say; and I mean to say what I mean." Eyes that--well, they were violet eyes, and what more can one say? A forehead not high, but wide, to carry a wealth of l.u.s.trous dark hair.

Eunice was no Diana in stature, for she had scarcely grown an inch in all those years since we saw her with the caterpillar. She had sprung up suddenly as a girl, and remained at the same height for womanhood to clothe her. Perhaps five feet four. But do not let us condescend upon such details. She was small, she was dainty; enough is said. Violet eyes--more than enough!

It is not to be supposed that Eunice and Henry had ever been sweethearts. That is altogether too rude a suggestion. What does a girl of thirteen think of sweethearts? A lad of sixteen? They pick up the conventional phrase, with its suggestion of friendship more intimate than everyday acquaintance, from their elders; that is all. There may possibly be a liking for each other, a liking more than for any other playmates. That is rare. The most that could be guessed about Eunice and Henry before his leaving home was that he had been more inclined to talk with her than with any other girls who came to the house, and as he, in his cubhood, had a sniff of contempt for most girls, that counted for very little. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be held to count for a good deal.

When Henry had been home two summers ago, Eunice was away on one of her rare visits to an aunt in Tewksbury--in a sense, at the world's end. So Henry had rarely seen her since that peep she took at him long ago in Memoryland. He had heard of her frequently, we will suppose, in the letters from his sister Dora, and she of him from her chum.

Meanwhile, an important event had happened in her life. Old Edgar Carne, Eunice's grandfather, had died a year ago, and left his orphan grand-daughter at eighteen with the tiniest little fortune, equal to probably twenty pounds a year. For a time it seemed likely that she would leave the village and go to reside with her aunt at Tewksbury, as she had now no blood relations in Hampton Bagot, though many warm-hearted friends. Simple in her tastes, educated only to the extent of a village curriculum, which did not breed ambition, fond of domestic duties and the light work of a garden, Eunice had no clear-cut path ahead, and would have preferred to stay on among the people who had been planted around her by the hand of friendship.

It so fell out that Fate pinned her to Hampton yet awhile. The housekeeper of the Rev. G.o.dfrey Needham had left, and it was suggested to him by Mr. Charles that Eunice and a young serving-maid would do wonders in brightening up the vicarage, where an elderly housekeeper had only fostered frowsiness. Besides, the vicar had recently to the amazement of his parishioners, taken a little la.s.s of nine to live with him, the orphan child of a relation of his long-dead wife. Eunice could thus be of double service to him in mothering the little one, and her sympathy could be relied upon, since she herself had been robbed of a mother's love so early. It was even whispered that the coming of little Marjorie had something to do with the old housekeeper giving notice to leave; she was "no hand wi' childer," as she herself confessed.

Mr. Needham fell in with Edward John's proposal; Eunice was delighted; and a year had testified to its wisdom. The vicarage had never been so bright in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the vicar himself had come under the transforming hand of Eunice, and now, within hail of seventy, he was a sprucer figure than he had been since the days of his brief married happiness--forty years before. His collars were always spotless, his white ties--white. His trousers reached to his shoes at last. Perhaps his step had lost its springiness, his coat its breezy freedom; but he had gained in dignity what was lost in quaintness.

As for Eunice herself, this one short year had carried her well into womanhood, and though only nineteen she was the counsellor of many who were older. There is a wonderful reserve of domestic gold in every young woman whose bank is run upon. At an age when a young man is watching his moustache's progress, many a young woman is grappling heroically, obscurely, with the essential things of life. Yet Eunice was doing no more than thousands of womenkind had done.

But her position as housekeeper at the vicarage, as teacher in the Sunday School, conferred certain advantages, and brought her more prominently into the life of the little village. From being "Old Carne's little girl," she had been translated into "Miss Lyndon at the vicarage." Her daily pursuits, the refining influence of her duties, quickly developed and ripened her own excellent qualities of heart and mind, and in twelve fleeting months she stood forth a woman; discreet of tongue, yet bright with happiness, resourceful, heart-free.

Henry noted, with a thrilling interest he could scarce account for, these changes in his little friend of long ago, when she came under his eyes again at church on the Sunday following his arrival.

"How do you do, Miss Lyndon?" and "How are you, Mr. Charles? It seems a lifetime since you went away," did not suggest the sputtering fires of kindling pa.s.sion.

"Yes, it takes an effort of mind sometimes to recall my Hampton days."

One was almost suspicious of affectation.

"Really! That's scarcely kind to Hampton and--us."

"Ah, I am not likely to forget old friends; but I mean that the years of almost changeless life here are only the impression of a morning sky, compared with the crowded day that has followed."

Was the suspicion well founded?

"Then you've been bitten by the dog Town, and go hunting for a hair of him!"

Eunice smiled at her conceit, and Henry laughed with rising eyebrows, that said: "This young lady has improved wonderfully."

"Good, Eunice; very good! You have a turn for metaphor, I see." The "Eunice" slipped out, and immediately brought a deeper tinge of colour to the girl's cheek. The man was sallow, but his eyes looked away from her after it was out. "Do you read much, or are your duties at the vicarage engrossing?" was said with an air of friendly interest only.

"Engrossing, yes. You see, I've to play little mother. One of my charges is ten and the other nearly seventy. So I feel a centenarian. But I don't get much time for reading, what with visiting in the parish and keeping the vicarage in order. No; I'm not a bit clever, and I have only a dark idea of what a metaphor is."

"Ah, you should tell that to the marines," was all that Henry could say by way of comment.

He had made obvious conversational progress in the outer world, but there was an artificial touch about his talk--a literary touch--that was not quite equal to his swimming dolphin-like, in a sea of talk, around this child of Nature.

"You are liking Laysford, I hear," the little mother said, after some paces in silence.

"Immensely! The place teems with life. You've just to stir it and behold a boiling pot of human interest."

"And how is the stirring done?"

"Ah, there you have me! That's the worst of metaphors. I must rid myself of the habit; it comes, I fancy, of too much Meredith on an empty head."

"Dear me! And what is Meredith?"

"It is a man that writes things."

"Like you?"

"Not like me, I hope. He writes for all time; I for an hour--literally.

But don't let's talk of writing. There are greater things to do in this world. Unless one were a Meredith."

"You didn't always think so."

"No; but I've learned young, and that's a good thing. When I read Meredith I hide my face at the thought of writing anything. But you've done very well, so far, without books, if I'm to believe your own story."

"I suppose folk lived before printing was invented?"

"I used to wonder how they did; but now I am willing to believe it possible."

"You will come and see Mr. Needham at the vicarage, while you are here, I hope? He often talks about you."

"I shall be delighted.... And you? You will give us a peep at the old house?"

"Oh, yes! Dora and I are bosom friends."

"Early next week you can look for me to have a chat with ... Mr.

Needham."

"I'll be in soon ... to see Dora."

They shook hands at the field path to the vicarage, and Eunice went up the hill hand-in-hand with Marjorie, whom Henry had never deigned to notice. She looked back when a few hundred yards had been covered, but the young man was stepping briskly after his father and his two younger sisters, who had gone ahead.

"How Eunice Lyndon has improved," said Henry to Dora when they sat at dinner.

"Isn't she bright? I think she is the sweetest girl I know."

"But you don't know many, Dora."

"She's made a wonnerful change on the pa.s.son. An' it was all my own idea," Edward John declared with satisfaction, as he scooped up a mouthful of green peas with his knife.

"Her mother--poor thing--died o' consumption," Mrs. Charles remarked, and sighed as though she were placing a wreath on Eunice's coffin.

"But she's the very picture of health, mother," Henry protested.

"Still, there's consumption in the family," she murmured.

"Nothing to do with her case. Doctors are now giving up the idea that the disease is hereditary," Henry said, with unnecessary emphasis, as it seemed to Edward John.