The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 3

"I beg pardon, lady--I cannot _see_ you--but you are heartily welcome--is your brother with you, Miss Clare? I don't hear him."--

"He could not come, madam, but he sends his love by me."

"You have an excellent brother, Miss Clare--but pray do us the honor to take some refreshment--Rosamund"----

And the old lady was going to give directions for a bottle of her currant wine--when Elinor, smiling, said "she was come to take a cup of tea with her, and expected to find no ceremony."

"After tea, I promise myself a walk with _you_, Rosamund, if your grandmother can spare you."--Rosamund looked at her grandmother.

"O, for that matter, I should be sorry to debar the girl from any pleasure--I am sure it's lonesome enough for her to be with _me_ always--and if Miss Clare will take you out, child, I shall do very well by myself till you return--it will not be the first time, you know, that I have been left here alone--some of the neighbours will be dropping in bye and bye--or, if _not_, I shall take no harm."

Rosamund had all the simple manners of a child--she kissed her grandmother, and looked happy.

All tea-time the old lady's discourse was little more than a panegyric on young Clare's good qualities. Elinor looked at her young friend, and smiled. Rosamund was beginning to look grave--but there was a cordial sunshine in the face of Elinor, before which any clouds of reserve, that had been gathering on Rosamund's soon brake away.

"Does your grandmother ever go out, Rosamund?"

Margaret prevented the girl's reply, by saying--"my dear young lady, I am an old woman, and very infirm--Rosamund takes me a few paces beyond the door sometimes--but I walk very badly--I love best to sit in our little arbour, when the sun shines--I can yet feel it warm and cheerful--and, if I lose the beauties of the season, I shall be very happy if you and Rosamund can take delight in this fine summer evening."

"I shall want to rob you of Rosamund's company now and then, if we like one another. I had hoped to have seen _you_, madam, at our house. I don't know whether we could not make room for you to come and live with us--what say you to it?--Allan would be proud to tend you, I am sure; and Rosamund and I should be nice company."

Margaret was all unused to such kindnesses, and wept--Margaret had a great spirit--yet she was not above accepting an obligation from a worthy person--there was a delicacy in Miss Clare's manner--she could have no interest, but pure goodness, to induce her to make the offer--at length the old lady spake from a full heart.

"Miss Clare, this little cottage received us in our distress--it gave us shelter when we had _no home_--we have praised G.o.d in it--and, while life remains, I think I shall never part from it--Rosamund does every thing for me--"

"And will do, grandmother, as long as I live;"--and then Rosamund fell a crying.

"You are a good girl, Rosamund, and if you do but find friends when I am dead and gone, I shall want no better accommodation while I live--but, G.o.d bless you, lady, a thousand times, for your kind offer."

Elinor was moved to tears, and, affecting a sprightliness, bade Rosamund prepare for her walk. The girl put on her white silk bonnet; and Elinor thought she had never beheld so lovely a creature.

They took leave of Margaret, and walked out together--they rambled over all Rosamund's favourite haunts--through many a sunny field--by secret glade or woodwalk, where the girl had wandered so often with her beloved Clare.

Who now so happy as Rosamund? She had oft-times heard Allan speak with great tenderness of his sister--she was now rambling, arm in arm, with that very sister, the "vaunted sister" of her friend, her beloved Clare.

Not a tree, not a bush, scarce a wild flower in their path, but revived in Rosamund some tender recollection, a conversation perhaps, or some chaste endearment. Life, and a new scene of things, were now opening before her--she was got into a fairy land of uncertain existence.

Rosamund was too happy to talk much--but Elinor was delighted with her when she _did_ talk:--the girl's remarks were suggested, most of them, by the pa.s.sing scene--and they betrayed, all of them, the liveliness of present impulse:--her conversation did not consist in a comparison of vapid feeling, an interchange of sentiment lip-deep--it had all the freshness of young sensation in it.

Sometimes they talked of Allan.

"Allan is very good," said Rosamund, "very good _indeed_ to my grandmother--he will sit with her, and hear her stories, and read to her, and try to divert her a hundred ways. I wonder sometimes he is not tired. She talks him to death!"

"Then you confess, Rosamund, that the old lady _does_ tire _you_ sometimes."

"Oh no, I did not mean _that_--it's very different--I am used to all her ways, and I can humour her, and please her, and I ought to do it, for she is the only friend I ever had in the world."

The new friends did not conclude their walk till it was late, and Rosamund began to be apprehensive about the old lady, who had been all this time alone.

On their return to the cottage, they found that Margaret had been somewhat impatient--old ladies, _good old ladies_, will be so at times--age is timorous and suspicious of danger, where no danger is.

Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good hours--indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than might well beseem a creature of this.

So the new friends parted for that night--Elinor having made Margaret promise to give Rosamund leave to come and see her the next day.

CHAPTER VII

Miss Clare, we may be sure, made her brother very happy, when she told him of the engagement she had made for the morrow, and how delighted she had been with his handsome friend.

Allan, I believe, got little sleep that night. I know not, whether joy be not a more troublesome bed-fellow than grief--hope keeps a body very wakeful, I know.

Elinor Clare was the best good creature--the least selfish human being I ever knew--always at work for other people's good, planning other people's happiness--continually forgetful to consult for her own personal gratifications, except indirectly, in the welfare of another--while her parents lived, the most attentive of daughters--since they died, the kindest of sisters--I never knew but _one_ like her.

It happens that I have some of this young lady's _letters_ in my possession--I shall present my reader with one of them. It was written a short time after the death of her mother, and addressed to a cousin, a dear friend of Elinor's, who was then on the point of being married to Mr. Beaumont, of Staffordshire, and had invited Elinor to a.s.sist at her nuptials. I will transcribe it with minute fidelity.

_Elinor Clare to Maria Leslie_

Widford, July the --, 17--.

Health, Innocence, and Beauty, shall be thy bridemaids, my sweet cousin.

I have no heart to undertake the office. Alas! what have I to do in the house of feasting?

Maria! I fear lest my griefs should prove obtrusive. Yet bear with me a little--I have recovered already a share of my former spirits.

I fear more for Allan than myself. The loss of two such parents, with so short an interval, bears very heavy on him. The boy _hangs_ about me from morning till night. He is perpetually forcing a smile into his poor pale cheeks--you know the sweetness of his smile, Maria.

To-day, after dinner, when he took his gla.s.s of wine in his hand, he burst into tears, and would not, or could not then, tell me the reason--afterwards he told me--"he had been used to drink Mamma's health after dinner, and _that_ came in his head and made him cry." I feel the claims the boy has upon me--I perceive that I am living to _some end_--and the thought supports me.

Already I have attained to a state of complacent feelings--my mother's lessons were not thrown away upon her Elinor.

In the visions of last night her spirit seemed to stand at my bed-side--a light, as of noon day, shone upon the room--she opened my curtains--she smiled upon me with the same placid smile as in her life-time. I felt no fear. "Elinor," she said, "for my sake take care of young Allan,"--and I awoke with calm feelings.

Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something like this?--I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread--I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.

Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me--I see her sit in her old elbow chair--her arms folded upon her lap--a tear upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some inattention--I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.

Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the vision in a moment.

I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these things but you--you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little--I mourn the "cherishers of my infancy."

I sometimes count it a blessing, that my father did not prove the _survivor_. You know something of his story. You know there was a foul tale current--it was the busy malice of that bad man, S----, which helped to spread it abroad--you will recollect the active good nature of our friends W---- and T----; what pains they took to undeceive people--with the better sort their kind labours prevailed; but there was still a party who shut their ears. You know the issue of it. My father's great spirit bore up against it for some time--my father never was a _bad_ man--but that spirit was broken at the last--and the greatly-injured man was forced to leave his old paternal dwelling in Staffordshire--for the neighbours had begun to point at him.--Maria! I have _seen_ them _point_ at him, and have been ready to drop.

In this part of the country, where the slander had not reached, he sought a retreat--and he found a still more grateful asylum in the daily solicitudes of the best of wives.