CHAPTER XIX.
PERCUSSION
This was not the right time of year for spring of hope, and bounding growth; the first bloom-bud of the young heart growing milky, and yet defiant; and the leaf-bud pricking up, hard and reckless, because it can never have a family. Not the right time yet for whispered openings, and shy blush of petals, still uncertain of the air, and creeping back into each other's clasp lest they should be tempted to come out too soon. Neither was there in the air itself that coy, delusive, tricksome way, which it cannot help itself for having, somewhere about the month of April, when the sun is apt to challenge and then shirks the brunt.
In a word (though no man can prove a negative, as Jemmy Fox had well remarked) it was the very time when no young man, acquainted with the calendar of his Church, should dream of falling into love, even though he had a waistcoat of otterskin, and fourteen pearl-buttons upon it.
In spite of all that, it was the positive which prevailed in this case. Frank Gilham had received such a blow upon his heart, that the season and the weather were nothing to it. The fall of the leaf, and retirement of the sap – though the Saps now tell us that it never does retire – had less than no effect upon his circulation. He went in vainly for a good day's ploughing, for he could hold as well as drive; but there was his waistcoat, and his heart inside it; and even when he hung the one upon an oak-tree, the other kept going on, upon its private business; and "Whoa! Stand still, hossy!" had no effect upon it.
He sneaked into the house, as if he had no right there – though his mother had only a life-interest – and he made a serious matter of the shortness of his nails, and felt a conscientious longing, when he saw his whiskers, to kick the barber at Pumpington, who had shorn them with a pair of tailor's scissors, so abominably on the last market-day. But last market-day, this young man's heart had been inditing of pigs and peas, whereof he had made a tidy penny, because he was a sharp fellow then.
"How is she now?" he asked his young sister Rose, when he came down at last, discontented with himself, though appearing unusually smart to her.
"Well, thank you, Frank, mother is not quite the thing to-night. She did not get quite her proper rest, you know, on account of the strange young lady. And she never took her hore-hound lozenges. She thinks too much of others, and too little of herself – "
"As if I did not know all that! Will you never tell me anything I want to know? But I suppose the young lady won't keep her up to-night?"
"She? Oh she is all right enough. You should just see her eat. My goodness! Talk of farmhouse appetites!"
"Rose, who are you to understand such things? You have seen so very little of the world; and you judge it entirely by yourself. I suppose the door is not open?"
"Oh yes. Anybody can look in, if that's what you want to do. She has been sitting up ever so long, with mother's dressing-gown and Sunday shawl on. Such a guy you never see in all your life!"
"A pity you can't be a guy then. Why Rose, if you only had a hundredth part – "
"Yes, I dare say. But I don't want, don't you see? I am quite contented as I am; and better judges than you will ever be – why that coloured hair is quite out of fashion now. Everybody goes in for this sort of tint, and a leaden comb to make it darker. Corkscrews are all the rage, and they can't be too black. Why Minnie Farrant told me, last Sunday, that she read on the best authority – "
"Her Bible, or her Prayer-book?"
"Don't be so absurd. The very best authority, that Queen Adelaide herself told His Majesty as much, and he said he was a Tar, and the best pitch wasn't black. That was to please her, you know. Wasn't it clever of him? Oh Frank, why don't you fall in love with Minnie Farrant – your own Godfather's favourite child, and they say she'll have four thousand pounds?"
"Minnie Farrant! Why, I'd rather have a broomstick. Though she is all very well in her way, of course."
"She is the prettiest girl in this parish, by long chalks, except of course Nicie Waldron. And I suppose you wouldn't quite stick up to her."
"Stick up indeed! Is that the way you learn to express yourself at a finishing school? But do look sharp with the frying-pan, if your corkscrews are not too precious. I don't want Minnie Farrant, nor even Miss Waldron – I want my little bit of supper, and you know it well enough. I am sorry for the ninny that ever falls in love with you."
"So am I. Because I won't have him. But what fun it will be! I shall starve him out. All you men think about is eating; and I shall say – "
"Rose again, as usual! Her long tongue running away with her." Mrs. Gilham looked very serious, for every day she found stronger proof that girls were not as they used to be. "You have had your tea, child, and you want nothing more. I am sure you should be the very last to talk as if eating were a sin. Go and help Mary with your dear brother's supper. He has been hard at work all day."
"Sticks to his work, wants no diverting —
A model young man in the farming line!
Never goes hunting, dancing, flirting,
Doesn't know the flavour of a glass of wine."
Away danced Rosie to the tune of her own song, with her light figure frisking from side to side of the long stone passage.
"Ah me! I fear we shall have trouble yet with that very thoughtless girl. She can only see the light side of everything. It is high time for her now; why before I was seventeen – But Frank, you don't look like yourself to-night!" The old lady went up to him, and pushed aside his hair, as crisp and curly as a double hyacinth. "I am almost sure, there is something on your mind. Your dear father had exactly that expression upon his face, at periods of his married life. But then it was always the times when he had rheumatics in his left shoulder blade; and I used to iron them out with brown paper, the darkest brown that you can get, and a sprinkle of vinegar underneath, as hot as ever you can bear it; in fact, until it begins to singe, and then – "
"Well, nobody will ever do that to me, thank God!" Frank spoke in a very reckless tone, and strictly avoided his mother's eyes.
"I will, my son, if I live long enough. Old Mrs. Horner used to say – not the present Mrs. John, you know, but her husband's mother – "
"Excuse me, dear mother, but I thought I heard a call. Shall I go, and knock at the young lady's door?"
"Frank, how can you ask such a question? Not that she is not in very pretty order, and fit for any one to look at her; with my dressing-gown on, as good as new, and the big picture-Bible on one side of her, and 'The Fashionable Lady's Vade Mecum' on the other."
"How queer she must look in your dressing-gown, mother! Quite an old frump, I suppose?"
"I am very much obliged to you, my son. But as it happens, Miss Christie Fox does not look at all like an old frump; though your poor mother would of course, and must expect it – though not perhaps quite to be told of it. On the contrary, Miss Fox looks very bright and blooming, with her eyes like the sky itself, and her lovely hair flowing all down her shoulders."
"I had better go and see whether she has knocked for something. I need not go in of course. In fact I should not think of it, only just to pop my head inside the door, and then – "
"No, you won't pop it, sir, in any place of the kind. Remember that it is a bedroom; and you are a gentleman – or ought to be."
"Oh, come, mother! That's a little too hard on me. I never meant anything, except to save you trouble, by just asking – Well, I didn't think you would speak to me in that way."
"Well my boy, perhaps I spoke too hastily. Words turn so different, outside the lips! But I should not like a visitor of ours to think she had fallen among savages. But here comes your supper at last; and small thanks to Rosie. Why at her time of life, I should have been too proud to serve my only brother, hand and foot. But I must just run back, and get my young lady tucked up. High time for her to be in bed again. Her brother has sent her box full of things, and so we shall be able to get her out a bit to-morrow, if the weather permits, and Dr. Gronow."
Dr. Gronow permitted, and so did the weather. Can any man remember when he was stopped from making a fool of himself by the weather, or encouraged in any wisdom by it? How many a youth under vast umbrella, warranted to shelter two, if their shoulders came nice and close together, with the storm beating on them, and suggesting – but such umbrellas are not made now, fine canopies of whalebone – who would buy them? Who thinks of more than his own top-hat?
Unless he sees a chance of a gold-band round it. And that, to tell the truth, has been very charming always. But here was Frank Gilham, without any thought of that. He knew that Jemmy Fox was a fine young fellow, perhaps a little bit above him in the social scale, and likely to be a wealthy man, some day. But of sweet Christie he knew nothing, except that he wanted to know a great deal.
Therefore he found that the young mare was puffing, and wanted wet bandages, and a day in stable – excess of synovial oil is a serious study. While on the other hand old Tommy, as hard and as dry as a brick-bat, was not altogether free from signs of rheumatism, and had scraped up his litter, in a manner that meant something. He put it to his mother, whether they should plough to-day. It might be all right, and the horses were hers. If she thought wise to venture it —
"It is no use trying to persuade me, Frank," Mrs. Gilham answered; "I won't risk it. Your dear father lost a good horse once, although I advised him to the contrary. Under Providence, our first duty is to the faithful and long-suffering creatures, provided by Him for the benefit of mankind. You may try to persuade me, as much as you like. But you don't seem to have got your ploughing trousers on!"
"That is not a question of ten minutes. When I looked out of window, the first thing this morning – "
"Yes to be sure. You were considering the weather. Your dear father did the same; though always wrong about it. But it is useless to argue with me, Frank. I must have my own way, sometimes."
"Very well. Very well, then I won't go. I have got a lot of little things to see to here. Why the rack in the kitchen would soon be rack and ruin."
"Frank, you do say the very cleverest things. And I feel in myself that it never comes from me. Thank God that I have such a dutiful son, though his mind is so superior."
The young man exerted his superior mind upon a very solid breakfast, topped up with honey, gushing limpid from the comb, sweeter than the softest beeswing of the meed of love. Then he sauntered in the mow-yard with his ginger terrier Jack; whom no wedded love could equal, in aptitude to smell a rat. But hay was sweet, and clover sweeter, and the rich deep ricks of wheat – golden piles on silver straddles – showed the glossy stalk, and savoured of the glowing grain within. A man might thrust his arm into the yellow thicket here and there, and fetch the chined and plump ear out, and taste the concrete milkiness.
"Rose told me that I should just see her eat," Frank Gilham meditated; "what a greedy thing to say! Was it because eggs are now so scarce, and Rose wanted all of them for herself? But if she likes good things, I could have this rick of brown wheat threshed to-morrow. The bread is ten times as sweet and toothsome – oh by the by, what teeth she has, like wind-flower buds among roses. Two or three times, her lips just showed them, while she was lying upon that hay. But what are her teeth to compare with her lips? And did anybody ever see such cheeks, even with the pink flown out of them? There's nothing that you could find a flaw in; forehead, hair, and eyes, and nose – though I can't pretend quite that I have seen her eyes yet – merely a sort of a flash in the air, while she was flying over the backrail of the trap. Only there is no denying that they must be like heaven itself, full of Angels. Mother says the sky, but that sounds so common. So far as that goes, everybody is allowed to look at the sky; but who would care ever to see it again, after a glimpse – Jack, what are you about there? Got into a gin? Well, serves you right for mooning."
"Frank! Frank! Frank!" A loud call rang among the ricks. "Got away smoking again, I'll be bound. I never can understand how it is, he doesn't set every blessed rick on fire."
"Not smoking at all, as it happens. But how frightfully shrill your voice is, Rosie!"
"What a swell we are, to be sure, to-day! And getting quite nervous. Wants cotton wool in his ears, poor dear! But the precious young lady is just coming out. And mother says you should be somewhere handy, in case of her being taken faint. About as likely to faint as I am, I should say. Now mind your P's and Q's, in spite of all your Greek and Latin. You may make your bow, about ten miles off; but not to speak, until spoken to. That's right, flourish your hair up. But you needn't run twenty miles an hour."
On the gravel walk bordered by hollyhocks – now a row of gaunt sceptres without any crowns – the kind Mrs. Gilham was leading her guest, who did not require to be led at all, but was too well-bred to reject the friendly hand. Christie was looking a little delicate, and not quite up to the mark of her usual high spirits; but the man must have been very hard to please, who could find much fault on that score.
"Oh what a beautiful view you have!" she exclaimed, as the sun broke through the mist, spreading Perle valley with a veil of purest pearl. "I had no idea it was such a lovely place. And the house, and the garden, and the glen that slopes away. Why that must be Perlycross tower in the distance, and that tall white house the rectory. Why, there's the bridge with seven lofty arches, and the light shining through them! More light than water, I should say. What on earth induced them to put such a mighty bridge across such a petty river? I dare say they knew best – but just look at the meadows, almost as green as they would be in May! No wonder you get such lovely butter. And the trees down the valley, just in the right places to make the most of themselves, and their neighbourhood. Why half of them have got their leaves on still, here nearly at the end of November – and such leaves too, gold, red, and amber, straw-colour, cinnamon, and russet!"
"And if you come up to that bench, my dear," replied Mrs. Gilham, as proud as Punch, at the praises of her native vale, "that bench at the top of our little orchard – my poor dear husband had such taste, he could find the proper place for everything – gravel-walk all the way, and nothing but a little spring to cross; why, there you can hear the key-bugle of the Defiance! Punctual every day at half-past ten. We always set our kitchen clock by it. The Guard, as soon as he sees our middle chimney, strikes up as loud as ever he can blow, 'Oh the roast-beef of Old England,' or 'To glory we steer,' for the horses to be ready. So some people say; but I happen to know, that it is done entirely to please us. Because we sent cider out every day, when that hot week was, last summer."
"What a grateful man! Oh I must go and hear him. I do think there's nothing like gratitude. By the by, I am not acting up to that. I have never even seen your son, to thank him."
"Oh Miss Fox, it is not fair to him, for any young lady to try to do that. He has no opinion of anything he does; and the last time he saved a young lady's life, he ran away, because – because it wouldn't do to stay. You see, she had been at the very point of drowning, and the people on the bank declared that she came up three times. My son Frank never pulled his coat off – he would have despised himself, if he had stopped to do it – he jumped in, they said it was forty feet high, but there is no bank on the river (except the cliff the church stands on) much over five and twenty. However, in he went, and saved her; and everybody said that she was worth £10,000, but carried away by the current. And from that day to this, we heard nothing more about it; and my son, who has a very beautiful complexion, blushes – oh he blushes so, if he only hears of it!"
"Oh, he is too good, Mrs. Gilham! It is a very great mistake, with the world becoming all so selfish. But I am not the young lady that went with the current. I go against the current, whenever I find any. And your son has had the courage to do the same, in the question of my dear brother. I say what I mean, you must understand, Mrs. Gilham. I am not at all fond of shilly-shally."
"Neither is my son, Miss Fox. Only he thinks so very little of himself. Why there he is! Hard at work as usual. Don't say a syllable of thanks, my dear; if he comes up to pull his hat off. He can stand a cannon-ball; but not to be made much of."
"Won't I though say 'thank you' to him? I am bound to consider myself, and not only his peculiar tendencies. Mr. Frank Gilham, do please to come here, if – I mean supposing you can spare just half-a-minute."
Frank had a fair supply of hard, as well as soft, in his composition. He was five and twenty years old, or close upon it, and able to get a dog out of a trap, in the deepest of his own condition. He quitted his spade – which he had found, by the by, left out all night, though the same is high treason – as if he could scarcely get away from it, and could see nothing so fine as a fat spit of sod. And he kept his eyes full upon Christie's, as if he had seen her before, but was wondering where.
This was the proper thing to do. Though he knew himself to be in no small fright, throughout all this bravery. But there is no monopoly of humbug; though we all do our utmost to establish one.
"Miss Fox, I believe you have seen my son before." The old lady took to the spirit of the moment, with the quickness, in which ladies always take the front. "And my son Frank has had the honour of seeing you."
"And feeling me too – pretty sharp against his chest" – Christie thought within herself, but she only said – "Yes; and it was a happy thing for me."
"Not at all, Miss Fox – a mere casual accident, as the people about here express it. I explained to you, that Frank cannot help himself. Be kind enough not to speak of it."
"That won't do," replied Christie, looking stedfast. "It may do for him, but not for me. Allow me one moment, Mrs. Gilham."
Without more ado, she ran up to Frank Gilham, who was turning away again towards his work, and gave him both hands, and looked full at him, with the glitter of tears in her deep blue eyes.
"My senses have not quite forsaken me," she said: "and I know whom I have to thank for that: and in all probability for my life as well. It is useless to talk about thanking you, because it is impossible to do it. And even before that I was deeply in your debt, for the very noble way in which you took my brother's part, when everybody else was against him. It was so brave and generous of you."
It was more than she could do, with all her spirit, to prevent two large and liberal tears from obeying the laws of nature; in fact they were not far from obtaining the downright encouragement of a sob, when she thought of her poor brother.
"Well, you are a sweet simple dear!" exclaimed the fine old lady, following suit in the feminine line, and feeling for her pocket-handkerchief. "Frankie should be proud to his dying day, of doing any trifle for such a precious dear. Why don't you say so, Frankie, my son?"
"Simply because my mother has said it so much better for me." He turned away his eyes, in fear of looking thus at Christie, lest they should tell her there was no one else in the world henceforth for them to see.
"Here comes the Defiance! Hurrah, hurrah!" shouted Rose, rushing in, for once just at the right moment. "I can hear the horses' hoofs springing up the rise. If you want to know anything about roast beef, you must put on a spurt up the periwinkle walk. Here goes number one. Slow coaches come behind."
"I am not a slow coach. At least I never used to be," cried Christie, setting off in chase.
"Miss Fox, Miss Fox, don't attempt to cross the brook, without my son's hand," Mrs. Gilham called after them; for she could not live the pace. "Oh Rose is wrong as usual – it's 'To glory we steer,' this time."
The obliging guard gave it three times over, as if he had this team also in full view; then he gave the "Roast beef," as the substance of the glory; and really it was finer than a locomotive screech.
Presently Rose heard the cackle of a pullet which had laid, and off she ran to make sure of the result, because there was an old cock sadly addicted to the part that is least golden in the policy of Saturn. So the three who remained sat upon the bench and talked, with the cider apples piled in pink and yellow cones before them, and the mossy branches sparkling (like a weeping smile) above, and the sun glancing shyly, under eaves and along hedgerows, like the man denied the privilege of looking at the horse. By this light however Frank Gilham contrived to get many a peep round his mother's bonnet – which being of the latest fashion was bigger than a well-kept hedgerow – at a very lovely object on the other side thereof, which had no fear as yet of being stolen.
Miss Fox had fully made up her mind, that (happen what might) she would not say a single word, to sadden her good hostess with the trouble her brother had fallen into, or the difficulties now surrounding him. But ladies are allowed to unmake their minds, especially if it enlarges them; and finding in the recesses of that long bonnet a most sympathetic pair of ears, all the softer for being "rather hard of hearing," and enriched with wise echoes of threescore years, she also discovered how wrong and unkind it would be, to withhold any heart-matter from them.
"And one of the most dreadful things of all," Christie concluded with a long-drawn sigh, "is that my dear father, who has only this son Jemmy, is now in such a very sad state of health, that if he heard of this it would most likely take him from us. Or if he got over it, one thing is certain, he would never even look at my brother again. Not that he would believe such a wicked thing of him; but because he would declare that he brought it on himself, by going (against his father's wishes) into this medical business. My father detests it; I scarcely know why, but have heard that he has good reason. We must keep this from him, whatever it costs us; even if it keeps poor Jemmy under this cloud for months to come. Luckily father cannot read now very well, and his doctor has ordered him not to read at all; and mother never looks at a newspaper: and the place being five and thirty miles away, and in another county, there is no great risk, unless some spiteful friend should rush in, to condole with him. That is what I dread to hear of sometimes; though good Dr. Freeborn, who attends him, will prevent any chance of it, if possible. But you see, Mrs. Gilham, how it cripples us. We cannot move boldly and freely, as we ought, and make the thing the topic of the county; as we should by an action of libel for instance, or any strong mode of vindication. I assure you, sometimes I am ready to go wild, and fly out, and do anything. And then I recollect poor father."
"It is a cruel cruel thing, my dear. I never heard of anything resembling it before. That's the very thing that Frank says. From the very first he saw what a shameful thing it was to speak so of Dr. Fox. I believe he has knocked down a big man or two; though I am sure I should be the last to encourage him in that."
"Come, mother, come! Miss Fox, you must not listen to a quarter of what mother says about me. I dare say, you have found that out, long ago."
"If so, it is only natural, and you deserve it;" this Hibernian verdict was delivered with a smile too bright to be eclipsed by a score of hedgerow bonnets; "but there is one thing I should like to ask Mr. Frank Gilham, with his mother's leave; and it is this – how was it that you Mr. Frank, almost alone of all the parish of Perlycross, and without knowing much of my brother at the time, were so certain of his innocence?"
"Because I had looked in his face;" replied Frank, looking likewise into the sister's face, with a gaze of equal certainty.
"That is very noble," Christie said, with a little toss meaning something. "But most people want more to go upon than that."