Thistle and Rose Part 8

"I shall not complain if she doesn't, and I shall not be surprised.

There was a matter, years ago, in which I differed from Mrs Forrest, and I have never been to Waverley since: we are quite friendly when we meet, but there can never be really cordial relations between us."

"If I were Anna," began Delia, impetuously--

"But you are _not_ Anna," interrupted Mr Goodwin, with a smile; "you are Delia Hunt, and you are made of different materials. If I am not mistaken, Anna is affectionate and yielding, and will be influenced by those she is with. And then she's very young, you see; she could not oppose her aunt and uncle, and I'm sure I do not wish it. I shall not interfere with her life at Waverley: the Forrests are kind people, and I feel sure she will be very happy there. She will do very well without me."

He turned towards his pupil and added, rather wistfully, "I should like _you_ to be friends with her, though, Delia; it would be a comfort to me."

"Indeed, I will try my best, Professor," she exclaimed, earnestly. Her jealousy of Anna seemed very small and mean, and she felt anxious to atone for it.

"That's well," said Mr Goodwin, with a contented air. "I know you will do what you promise; and now it's my turn to play the sonata, and yours to listen."

As the first plaintive notes of the violin filled the little room, Delia threw herself into the window-seat, leaned back her head, and gave herself up to enjoyment.

The Professor's playing meant many things to her. It meant a journey into another country where all good and n.o.ble things were possible; where vexations and petty cares could not enter, nor anything that thwarted and baffled. It meant a sure refuge for a while from the small details of her life in Dornton, which she sometimes found so wearisome.

The warning tones of the church clock checked her flight through these happy regions, and brought her down to earth just as the Professor's last note died away.

"Oh, how late it is?" she exclaimed, as she started up and put on her hat. "Good-bye, Professor. Oh, if I could only make it speak like that!"

"Patience, patience," he said, with his kind smile; "we all hear and see better things than we can express, you know, but that will come to us all some day."

CHAPTER FIVE.

ANNA MAKES FRIENDS.

Sweet language will multiply friends; and a fair-speaking tongue will increase kind greetings.--_Ecclesiasticus_.

Delia kept her promise in mind through all the various duties and occupations of the next few days, and wondered how she should carry it out. She began, apart from the wish to please the Professor, to have a great desire to know Anna for her own sake. Would they be friends? and what sort of girl was she? Mr Goodwin had told her so very little.

Affectionate, sweet-tempered, yielding. She might be all that without being very interesting. Still she hoped they might be able to like each other; for although the Hunts had a wide acquaintance, Delia had few friends of her own age, nor any one with whom she felt in entire sympathy, except the Professor. Delia was not popular in Dornton, and people regretted that such a "sweet" woman as Mrs Hunt should have a daughter who was often so blunt in her manners, and so indisposed to make herself pleasant. Her life, therefore, though full of busy matters, was rather lonely, and she would have made it still more so, if possible, by shutting herself up with her violin and her books. The bustling sociabilities of her home, however, prevented this, and she was constantly obliged, with inward revolt, to leave the things she loved for some social occasion, or to pick up the dropped st.i.tches of Mrs Hunt's household affairs.

There were endless little matters from morning till night for Delia to attend to, and it was only by getting up very early that she found any time at all for her studies and her music. In winter this was hard work, and progress with her violin almost impossible for stiff, cold fingers; but no one at her home took Delia's music seriously: it was an accomplishment, a harmless amus.e.m.e.nt, but by no means to be allowed to take time from more important affairs. It did not matter whether she practised or not, but it did matter that she should be ready to make calls with her mother, or to carry soup to someone in Mrs Hunt's district who had been overlooked. She would have given up her music altogether if her courage had not been revived from time to time by Mr Goodwin, and her ambition rekindled by hearing him play; as it was, she always came back to it with fresh heart and hope after seeing him.

For nearly a week after her last visit, Delia awoke every morning with a determination to walk over to Waverley, and each day pa.s.sed without her having done so. At last, however, chance arranged her meeting with Anna. Coming into the drawing-room one afternoon in search of her mother, she found, not Mrs Hunt, but a tall girl of fourteen, with light yellow hair, sitting in the window, with a patient expression, as though she had been waiting there some time. Delia advanced uncertainly: she knew who it was; there was only one stranger likely to appear just now. It must be Anna Forrest. But it was so odd to find her there, just when she had been thinking of her so much, that for a moment she hardly knew what to say.

The girl, however, was quite at her ease.

"I am Anna Forrest," she said; "Mrs Hunt asked me to come in--she went to find you. You are Delia, are you not?"

She had a bright, frank manner, with an entire absence of shyness, which attracted Delia immediately. She found, on inquiry, that Mrs Hunt had met Anna in the town with her aunt, and had asked her to come in. Mrs Forrest had driven home, and Anna was to walk back after tea.

"And have you been waiting long?" asked Delia.

"It must have been an hour, I think," said Anna, "because I heard the church clock. But it hasn't seemed long," she added, hastily; "I've been looking out at the pigeons in the garden."

Delia felt no doubt whatever that Mrs Hunt had been called off in some other direction, and had completely forgotten her guest. However, here was Anna at last.

"Come up-stairs and take off your hat in my room," she said.

Delia's room was at the top of the house--a garret with a window looking across the red-tiled roofs of the town to the distant meadows, through which glistened the crooked silver line of the river Dorn. She was fond of standing at this window in her few idle moments, with her arms crossed on the high ledge, and her gaze directed far-away: to it were confided all the hopes, and wishes, and dreams, which were, as a rule, carefully locked up in her own breast, and of which only one person in Dornton even guessed the existence.

Anna glanced curiously round as she entered. The room had rather a bare look, after the bright prettiness of Waverley, though it contained all Delia's most cherished possessions--a shelf of books, a battered old brown desk, her music-stand, and her violin.

"Oh," she exclaimed, as her eye fell on the last, "can you play the violin? Will you play to me?"

Delia hesitated: she was not fond of playing to people who did not care for music, though she was often obliged to do so; but Anna pressed her so earnestly that she did not like to be ungracious, and, taking up her violin, played a short German air, which she thought might please her visitor.

Anna meanwhile paid more attention to her new acquaintance than to her performance, and looked at her with great interest. There was something about Delia's short, compact figure; her firm chin; the crisp, wavy hair which rose from her broad, low forehead like a sort of halo, which gave an impression of strength and reliability not unmingled with self-will.

This last quality, however, was not so marked while she was playing.

Her face then was at its best, and its usual somewhat defiant air softened into a wistfulness which was almost beauty. Before the tune was finished, Anna was quite ready to rush into a close friendship, if Delia would respond to it, but of this she felt rather in doubt.

"How beautifully you play!" she exclaimed, as Delia dropped her bow, and shut up her music-book.

A very little smile curled Delia's lips.

"That shows one thing," she answered, "you don't know much about music, or you would not call my playing beautiful."

"Well, it sounds so to me," said Anna, a little abashed by this directness of speech, "but I certainly don't know much about music; Aunt Sarah says I need not go on with it while I am here."

"I play very badly," said Delia; "if you wish to hear beautiful playing, you must listen to your grandfather."

"Must I?" said Anna, vaguely. "I thought," she added, "that he played the organ in Dornton church."

"So he does," said Delia, "but he plays the violin too. And he gives lessons. He taught me."

She looked searchingly at her companion, whose fair face reddened a little.

"I owe everything to him," continued Delia; "without what he has done for me my life would be dark. He brought light into it when he taught me to play and to love music."

"Did he?" said Anna, wonderingly.

She began to feel that she did not understand Delia; she was speaking a strange language, which evidently meant something to her, for her eyes sparkled, and her brown cheek glowed with excitement.

"We ought to be proud in Dornton," Delia went on, "to have your grandfather living here, but we're not worthy of him. His genius would place him in a high position among people who could understand him.

Here it's just taken for granted."

Anna grew more puzzled and surprised still. Delia's tone upset the idea she began to have that her grandfather was a person to be pitied. This was a different way of speaking of him, and it was impossible to get used to it all at once. At Waverley he was hardly mentioned at all, and she had come to avoid doing so also, from a feeling that her aunt disliked it. She could not suddenly bring herself to look upon him as a genius, and be proud of him, though she had every wish to please Delia.

"What a pity," she said, hesitatingly, "that he is so poor, and has to live in such a very little house, if he is so clever!"

"Poor?" exclaimed Delia, indignantly; then, checking herself, she added, quietly, "It depends on what you call poor. What the Professor possesses is worth all the silver and gold and big houses in the world.

And that's just what the Dornton people don't understand. Why, the rich ones actually _patronise_ him, and think he is fortunate in giving their children music-lessons."

Delia began to look so wrathful as she went on, that Anna longed to change the subject to one which might be more soothing. She could not at all understand why her companion was so angry. It was certainly a pity that Mr Goodwin was obliged to give lessons, but if he must, it was surely a good thing that people were willing to employ him. While she was pondering this in silence, she was relieved by a welcome proposal from Delia that they should go down-stairs, and have tea in the garden. "Afterwards," she added, "I will show you the way to Waverley over the fields."

In the garden it was pleasant and peaceful enough. Tea was ready, under the shade of the medlar tree. The pigeons whirled and fluttered about over the red roofs all around, settling sometimes on the lawn for a few moments, bowing and cooing to each other. Mrs Hunt, meanwhile, chatted on in a comfortable way, hardly settling longer on one spot in her talk than the pigeons; from the affairs of her district to the affairs of the nation, from an anecdote about the rector to a receipt for scones, she rambled gently on; but at last coming to a favourite topic, she made a longer rest. Anna was glad of it, for it dealt with people of whom she had been wishing to hear--her mother and her grandfather. Mrs Hunt had much to tell of the former, whom she had known from the time when she had been a girl of Anna's age until her marriage with Mr Bernard Forrest. She became quite enthusiastic as one recollection after the other followed.

"A sweeter face and a sweeter character than Prissy Goodwin's could not be imagined," she said. "We were all sorry when she left Dornton, and every one felt for Mr Goodwin. Poor man, he's aged a great deal during the last few years. I remember him as upright as a dart, and always in such good spirits!"