The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 25

Cartwright seated beside f.a.n.n.y, a large Bible lying open on the table before them.

She looked at them for one moment without speaking. The vicar spread his open hand upon the volume, as if to point out the cause of his being there; and as his other hand covered the lower part of his face the expression of his countenance was concealed.

f.a.n.n.y coloured violently,--and the more so, perhaps, because she was conscious that her appearance was considerably changed since she met Miss Torrington at breakfast. All her beautiful curls had been carefully straightened by the application of a wet sponge; and her hair was now entirely removed from her forehead, and plastered down behind her poor little distorted ears as closely as possible.

Never was metamorphosis more complete. Beautiful as her features were, the lovely picture which f.a.n.n.y's face used to present to the eye required her bright waving locks to complete its charm; and without them she looked more like a Chinese beauty on a j.a.pan skreen, than like herself.

Something approaching to a smile pa.s.sed over Rosalind's features, which the more readily found place there, perhaps, from the belief that Charles's arrival would soon set her ringlets curling again.

"f.a.n.n.y, your brother is come," said she, "and he is waiting for you in the drawing-room."

"Charles?" cried f.a.n.n.y, forgetting for a moment her new character; and hastily rising she had almost quitted the room, when she recollected herself, and turning back, said,

"You will come too, to see Charles, Mr. Cartwright?"

"I will come, as usual, this evening, my dear child," said he, with the appearance of great composure; "but I will not break in upon him now.

Was his return expected?" he added carelessly, as he took up his hat; and as he spoke Rosalind thought that his eye glanced towards her.

"No indeed!" replied f.a.n.n.y: "I never was more surprised. Did he say, Rosalind, what it was brought him home?"

"I asked him to state his reason for it," replied Miss Torrington, "and he told me he could a.s.sign nothing but whim."

Rosalind looked in the face of the vicar as she said this, and she perceived a slight, but to her perfectly perceptible, change in its expression. He was evidently relieved from some uneasy feeling or suspicion by what she had said.

"Go to your brother, my dear child; let me not detain you from so happy a meeting for a moment."

f.a.n.n.y again prepared to leave the room; but as she did so, her eye chanced to rest upon her own figure reflected from a mirror above the chimney-piece. She raised her hand almost involuntarily to her hair.

"Will not Charles think me looking very strangely?" said she, turning towards Mr. Cartwright with a blushing cheek and very bashful eye.

He whispered something in her ear in reply, which heightened her blush, and induced her to answer with great earnestness, "Oh no!" and, without farther doubt or delay, she ran down stairs. Miss Torrington followed her, not thinking it necessary to take any leave of the vicar, who gently found his way down stairs, and out of the house, as he had found his way into it, without troubling any servant whatever.

CHAPTER II.

CHARLES'S AMUs.e.m.e.nT AT HIS SISTER'S APPEARANCE.--HE DISCUSSES HER CASE WITH ROSALIND.

Rosalind and f.a.n.n.y entered the drawing-room together; and young Mowbray, at the sound of their approach, sprang forward to meet them; but the moment he threw his eyes on his sister he burst forth into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; and though he kissed her again and again, still, between every embrace, he broke out anew, with every demonstration of vehement mirth.

"I am very glad to see you, Charles," said f.a.n.n.y, with a little sanctified air that certainly was very amusing; "but I should like it better if you did not laugh at me."

"But, my dear, dear, dearest child! how can I help it?" replied her brother, again bursting into renewed laughter. "Oh, f.a.n.n.y, if you could but see yourself just as you look at this moment! Oh! you hideous little quiz! I would not have believed it possible that any plastering or shearing in the world could have made you look so very ugly. Is it not wonderful, Miss Torrington?"

"It certainly alters the expression of her countenance in a very remarkable manner," replied Rosalind.

"The expression of a countenance may be changed by an alteration from within, as well as from without," said f.a.n.n.y, taking courage, and not without some little feeling of that complacency which the persuasion of superior sanct.i.ty is generally observed to bestow upon its possessors.

"Why, you most ugly little beauty!" cried Charles, again giving way to merriment; "you don't mean to tell me that the _impayable_ absurdity of that poor little face is owing to any thing but your having just washed your hair?"

"It is owing to conviction, Charles," replied f.a.n.n.y with great solemnity.

"Owing to conviction?--To conviction of what, my poor little girl?"

"To conviction that it is right, brother."

"Right, child, to make that object of yourself? What in the world can you mean, f.a.n.n.y?"

"I mean, brother, that I have an inward conviction of the sin and folly of dressing our mortal clay to attract the eyes and the admiration of the worldly."

"By worldly, do you mean of all the world?" said Rosalind.

"No, Miss Torrington. By worldly, I mean those whose thoughts and wishes are fixed on the things of the earth."

"And it is the admiration of such only that you wish to avoid?" rejoined Rosalind.

"Certainly it is. Spiritual-minded persons see all things in the spirit--do all things in the spirit: of such there is nothing to fear."

Young Mowbray meanwhile stood looking at his sister, and listening to her words with the most earnest attention.

At length he said, more seriously than he had yet spoken, "To tell you the truth, little puritan, I do not like you at all in your new masquerading suit: though it must be confessed that you play your part well. I don't want to begin lecturing you, f.a.n.n.y, the moment I come home; but I do hope you will soon get tired of this foolery, and let me see my poor father's daughter look and behave as a Christian young woman ought to do. Rosalind, will you take a walk with me? I want to have a look at my old pony."

Miss Torrington nodded her a.s.sent, and they both left the room together, leaving f.a.n.n.y more triumphant than mortified.

"He said that my persecutions would begin as soon as my election was made sure! Oh! why is he not here to sustain and comfort me! But I will not fall away in the hour of trial!"

The poor girl turned her eyes from the window whence she saw her brother and Rosalind walking gaily and happily, as she thought, in search of the old pony, and hastened to take refuge in her dressing-room, now rendered almost sacred in her eyes by the pastoral visit she had that morning received there.

The following hour or two gave f.a.n.n.y her first taste of martyrdom. She was, or at least had been, devotedly attached to her brother, and the knowing him to be so near, yet so distant from her, was terrible. Yet was she not altogether without consolation. She opened the volume, that volume that _he_ had so lately interpreted to her (fearful profanation!) in such a manner as best to suit his own views, and by means of using the process he had taught her, though unconsciously perhaps, she contrived to find a mult.i.tude of texts, all proving that she and the vicar were quite right, and all the countless myriads who thought differently, quite wrong. Then followed a thanksgiving which might have been fairly expressed in such words as "I thank thee, I am not like other men!" and then, as the sweet summer air waved the acacias to and fro before her windows, and her young spirit, panting for lawns and groves, sunshine and shade, suggested the idea of her brother and Rosalind enjoying it all without her, her poetical vein came to her relief, and she sat down to compose a hymn, in which, after rehearsing prettily enough all the delights of summer rambles through verdant fields, for four stanzas, she completed the composition by a fifth, of which "sin," "begin," and "within," formed the rhymes.

This having recourse to "song divine" was a happy thought for her, inasmuch as it not only occupied time which must otherwise have hung with overwhelming weight upon her hands, but the employment soon conjured up, as she proceeded, the image of Mr. Cartwright, and the pious smile with which he would receive it from her hands, and the soft approval spoken more by the eyes than the lips, and the holy caress--such, according to his authority, as that with which angel meets angel in the courts of heaven.

All this was very pleasant and consoling to her feelings; and when her hymn was finished she determined to go down stairs, in order to sing it to some (hitherto) profane air, which she might select from among the songs of her sinful youth.

As she pa.s.sed the mirror she again glanced at her disfigured little head; but at that moment she was so strong in "conviction," that, far from wishing to accommodate her new birth of _coiffure_ to worldly eyes, she employed a minute or two in sedulously smoothing and controlling her rebellious tresses, and even held her head in stiff equilibrium to prevent their escape from behind her ears.

"Good and holy man!" she exclaimed aloud, as she gave a parting glance at the result of all these little pious coquetries. "How well I know what his kind words would be if he could see me now! Such" she added with a gentle sigh, "will I strive to be, though all the world should join together to persecute me for it."

While Mr. Cartwright's prettiest convert was thus employed, Miss Torrington and Charles Mowbray, far from being engaged in chasing a pony, or even in looking at the summer luxury of bloom which breathed around them as they pursued their way through the pleasure-grounds, were very gravely discussing the symptoms of her case.

"It is a joke, Rosalind, and nothing more," said the young man, drawing her arm within his. "I really can do nothing but laugh at such folly, and I beg and entreat that you will do the same."

"Then you think, of course, Mr. Mowbray, that I have been supremely absurd in sending you the summons I did?"

"Far, very far otherwise," he replied gravely. "It has shown me a new feature in your character, Miss Torrington, and one which not to admire would be a sin, worse even than poor Mr. Cartwright would consider your wearing these pretty ringlets, Rosalind."

"_Poor_ Mr. Cartwright!" repeated Rosalind, drawing away her arm. "How little do we think alike, Mr. Mowbray, concerning that man!"