When the Birds Begin to Sing Part 2

He seems lost in contemplation.

"I have found her at last," he says, speaking his thoughts aloud.

"Who?" asks Eleanor under her breath.

"The Ideal Woman!" he replies.

The girl looks perplexed--she does not understand the phrase. New Women and rational costumes have not yet penetrated to the depths of Copthorne, so their counter-poising ideal is to her an unknown quant.i.ty.

Eleanor's ignorance of modernity const.i.tutes a special charm in his eyes. How sweet a privilege to build up this uncultured soul, to mould her impressionable spirit! Philip is enamoured of the idea, he sees such vast possibilities stretching out before him. Eleanor differed so widely from the women of his set. Perhaps the weaker s.e.x are made variously that the mind of desultory man, studious of change, and pleased with novelty, may be indulged.

"How long have we known each other?" he asks.

"About three hours," she answers promptly.

"How deep can one go below the surface in one hundred and eighty minutes?"

Eleanor seems bewildered; she is at a loss for words.

"Have I only been with you so short a time?" he says incredulously.

"Can it be possible?"

"Does it seem long?" she asks looking down shyly. "Have I wearied you, Mr. Roche?"

His smile rea.s.sures her.

"It does not seem _long_, only _full_ to the brim. To every second a fresh thought, an inch deeper into the unknown."

"I have never met anyone before," she declares frankly, "who spoke to me like that."

Then with a swift "Good night" Eleanor breaks away and vanishes among the shadows.

"A wife," says Philip to himself, "is something between a hindrance and a help. Is this the turn of the tide?"

A nightingale broke into song. "Yes!" it cried; "yes--yes--yes!"

CHAPTER II.

"IMPARADIS'D IN ONE ANOTHER'S ARMS."--_Milton_.

Eleanor is busy in the morning sunlight, brightening the pewter dinner service, the pride of the Grebby family, pa.s.sed down from generation to generation, and priceless in her eyes. She can hear the preparations without for an early start to the neighbouring market. Her mother is loading a cart of vegetables, while her father "shoos" the cackling geese into wicker pens, and harnesses "Black Bess" the steady old mare, who is almost one of themselves. And Eleanor is glad that the market (a weekly centre of attraction to the old village) will leave her in peaceful solitude.

She breaks out into a glad song, which mingles with the twittering of birds:

"There was a jolly miller once, Lived on the River Dee."

"Eleanor, Eleanor, give me a hand with these vegetables," cries her mother's voice. There is a thud, and a whole sack of potatoes fall pell-mell into the yard, still muddy from yesterday's rain.

Eleanor gathers them up, indulging the same tuneful mood:

"He worked and sang from morn till night.

No lark more blithe than he!"

She has a strong, sweet-toned voice, and "Black Bess" turns her head sleepily at the sound, whisking the tiresome flies with her tail. So often Eleanor's tread at the door of her shed has meant apples and carrots and sugar.

She wipes the potatoes clean with her ap.r.o.n, replacing them carefully at the back of the cart.

Mrs. Grebby takes the reins, while Mr. Grebby follows on foot, driving a few specially honoured sheep, who frequently serve him for conversation throughout an entire evening spent smoking with neighbouring farmers.

Eleanor watches them out of sight, her hand over her brow to shade the dazzling sunlight from her eyes. A group of chickens congregate around her with mute inquiry in their beaky faces. She fetches a handful of grain from the barn, flings it into their midst, and returns singing to her pewter polishing:

"And this the burden of his song For ever used to be:

"How dull this soup tureen is, to be sure!" pausing in her verse to rub it with extra vigour:

"I care for n.o.body, no not I, If no one cares for me!"

The delinquencies of the dimmed soup tureen are forgotten as these last words ring out in the quiet parlour. "Surely," thinks Eleanor, "there is hidden pathos in the Jolly Miller of Dee's reckless a.s.sertion! To care for n.o.body! What a horrible thought--a whole life's tragedy lies in the closing verse. If no one cares for me!"

Eleanor sighs and leans her chin on her hands, kneeling before the wooden table on which the dinner service is spread. What if n.o.body cared for her! How vast and miserable a wilderness this world would be! Why, even the dumb animals love her.

The little goat she called Nelly, who fell ill the week before, and gasped out its breath in her arms on a dry heap of hay, gave all the love of its disputed soul to Eleanor. Of course, it had a soul; she made up her mind long ago on this point. How can a creature with such mysteriously human eyes as Nelly possessed be less human than the great plodding, loose-mouthed ploughboy, who only gapes when he is spoken to, and contains what Mr. Grebby is pleased to call, "only half a intellec'!"

Eleanor glances at the old-fashioned clock in the corner, decorated by grotesque pottery dogs and four-legged creatures with horns, and faces resembling tigers or cats. She has been up since five, for besides market day it is churning morning, and she and her mother have worked for hours in the dairy.

"It is time," she says at last, washing her small hands under the scullery tap, and then reaching for a hat hanging on the kitchen dresser.

"I wish I had something pretty to wear," she sighs, glancing at her reflection in a cracked gla.s.s. "Laces and ribbons, beautiful blue ribbons with pink spots, like the Squire's nieces wore last Sunday.

The tall girl was dreadfully plain, and I should have looked so well in her silk gown, with the shorter sister's chiffon fichu."

Eleanor's face brightens at the recollection of those costumes in the Manor House pew, which appeared so lovely in her eyes while she played the Magnificat. Dreams of dainty dresses are dear to her heart as the occasional thoughts of love which steal over her at times. "If the two could be combined," she thinks, "love and wealth."

It is amazing this new and sudden desire for something better, which all but stops the beating of Eleanor's heart.

"If he loved me," she gasps "_if_--" she staggers back against the half-closed door, her fingers clenched and pressed to her temples, throbbing with intense excitement. All the thoughts that crowd to her brain are offsprings of that improbable "if," each moment growing more dazzling!

She hastens with light footsteps to an old cupboard in which her mother has treasured some hand-made lace left in her aunt's will to the Grebbys of Copthorne Farm.

She turns down her collar to reveal a shapely throat, pearly white, and hidden usually from the sun's scorching power, round which the soft folds of lace fall entrancingly.

What would Eleanor's mother say could she see her precious heirloom donned hastily on this busy market morning, to adorn her daughter's neck for a stroll through the fields! It is sacrilege surely, but the prize!