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Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls, a novel by Juliana Horatia Ewing |
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Chapter 28. I Go Back To The Vine... |
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_ CHAPTER XXVIII. I GO BACK TO THE VINE--AFTER SUNSET--A TWILIGHT EXISTENCE--SALAD OF MONK'S-HOOD--A ROYAL SUMMONS The few marked events of my life have generally happened on my birthdays. It was on my fifteenth birthday that Mr. Arkwright got a letter from one of my relations on the subject of my going to live with my great-grandfather and grandmother. They were now very old. My great-grandfather was becoming "childish," and the little dear duchess was old and frail for such a charge alone. They had no daughter. The religious question was laid aside. My most Protestant relatives thought my duty in the matter overwhelming, and with all my clinging of heart to the moor home I felt myself that it was so. I don't know how I got over the parting. I wandered hopelessly about familiar spots, and wished I had made sketches of them; but how could I know I had not all life before me? The time was short, and preparations had to be made. This kept us quiet. At the last, Jack put in all my luggage, and did everything for me. Then he kissed me, and said, "GOD bless you, Margery," and "linking" Eleanor by force, led her away and comforted her like the good, dear boy he is. Clement drove me so recklessly down the steep hill, and over the stones, that the momentary expectation of an upset dried my tears, and I did not see much of the villagers' kind and too touching farewells. And so to the bleak station again, and the familiar old porter, whom fate seems to leave long enough at _his_ post, and on through the whirling railway panorama, by which one passes to so much joy and so much sorrow--and then I was at The Vine once more. I wonder if I am like my great-grandmother in her youth? Some people (Elspeth among them) declare that it is so; and others that I am like my poor mother. I suppose I have some Vandaleur features, from an eerie little incident which befell me on the threshold of The Vine--an appropriate beginning to a life that always felt like a weird, shadowy dream. I did not ring the bell of the outer gate on my arrival, because Adolphe (grown up, but with the old, ruddy boy's face on the top of his man's shoulders) was anxiously waiting for me, and devoted himself to my luggage, telling me that Master was in the garden. Thither I ran so hastily, that a straggling sweetbriar caught my hat and my net, and dragged them off, sending my hair over my shoulders. My hair is not long, however, like Eleanor's, and it curls, and I sometimes wear it loose; so I did not stop to rearrange it, but hurried on towards my great-grandfather, who was coming slowly to meet me from the other end of the terrace, his hands behind his back, as of old. At least, I thought it was to meet me; but as he came near I saw that he was unconscious of my presence. He looked very old, his face was pale and shrivelled, like a crumpled white kid glove; his wild blue eyes, insensible of what was before them, seemed intently fixed on something that no one else could see, and he was talking to himself, as we call it when folk talk with the invisible. It was very silly, but I really felt the colour fading from my face with fright. My great-grandfather's back was to the west, where a few bars of red across the sky, as it was to be seen through the Scotch firs, were all that remained of the sunset. That strange light was on everything, of which modern pre-Raphaelite painters are so fond. I was tired with my long journey and previous excitement; and when I suddenly remembered that Mr. Vandaleur was said to have in some measure lost his reason, a shudder came over me. In a moment more he saw me. I think my crimson cloak caught his eye, but his welcome was hardly less alarming than his abstraction. He started, and held up his hands, and a pained, puzzled expression troubled his face. Then a flush, which seemed to make him look older than the whiteness; and then, with a shrill, feeble cry of "Victoire, ma belle!" he tottered towards me so hastily that I thought he must have fallen; but, like a vision, a little figure flitted from the French window of the drawing-room, and in a moment my great-grandmother was supporting him, and soothing him with gentle words in French. I could see now how helpless he was. For a bit he seemed still puzzled and confused; but he clung to her and kissed her hand, and suffered himself to be led indoors. Then I followed them, through the window, into the room where the candles were not yet lighted for economy's sake--the glare of the red sunset bars making everything dark to me--with a strange sense of gloom. It would be hard to imagine a stronger contrast than that between my life in my new home and my life in my home upon the moors. At the Arkwrights' we lived so essentially with the times. Our politics, on the whole, were liberal; our theology inclined to be broad; our ideas on social subjects were reformatory, progressive, experimental. Scientific subjects were a speciality of the household; and, living in a manufacturing district, mere neighbourhood kept us with the great current of mercantile interests. We argued each other into a general unfixity of opinions; and, full of youthful dreams of golden ages, were willing to believe this young world--where not yet we, but only our words could fly--to be but upon the threshold of true civilization. Above all, life seemed so short, our hands were so full, so over-full of work, the daylight was not long enough for us, and we grudged meals and sleep. How different it was under the shadow of this old Vine! I am very thankful, now, that I had grace, under the sense of "wasted time," which was at first so irritating, to hold by my supreme child-duty towards my aged parents against the mere modern fuss of "work," against what John Wesley called the "lust of finishing" any labour, and to serve them in their way rather than in my own. But the change was very great. How we "pottered" through the days!--with what needless formalities, what slowness, what indecision! How fatiguing is enforced idleness! How lengthy were the evening meals, where we sat, trifling with the vine-leaves under a single dish of fruit, till the gloaming deepened into gloom! At fifteen one is very susceptible of impressions; very impatient of what one is not used to. The very four-post bed in which I slept oppressed me, and the cracked basin held together for years by the circular hole in the old-fashioned washstand. The execution-picture only made me laugh now. Then, as to the meals. No doubt a great many people eat and drink too much, as we are beginning to discover. Whether we at the Vicarage did, I cannot say; but the change to the unsubstantial fare on which very old people like the Vandaleurs keep the flickering light of life aglow was very great; and yet in this slow, vegetating existence my appetite soon died away. The country was flat and damp too; and by and by neuralgia kept me awake at night, as regularly as the ghost of my great-grandfather had done in years gone by. But it is strange how quickly unmarked time slips on. Day after day, week after week ran by, till a lassitude crept over me in which I felt amazed at former ambitions, and a certain facility of sympathy, which has been in many respects an evil, and in many a good to me, seemed to mould me to the interests of the fading household. And so I lived the life of my great-grandparents, which was as if science made no strides, and men no struggles; as if nothing were to be done with the days, but to wear through them in all patient goodness, loyal to a long-fallen dynasty, regretful of some ancient virtues and courtesies, tender towards past beauties and passions, and patient of succeeding sunsets, till this aged world should crumble to its close. My great-grandfather came to know me again, though his mind was in a disordered, dreary condition; from old age, Elspeth said, but it often recalled what I had heard of the state of his mother's intellect before her death. The dear little old lady's intellects were quite bright, and, happily, not only entire, but cultivated. I do not know how people who think babies and servants are a woman's only legitimate interests would like to live with women who have either never met with, or long outlived them. I know how my dear granny's educated mind and sense of humour helped us over a dozen little domestic difficulties, and broke the neck of fidgets that seemed almost inevitable at her great age and in that confined sphere of interests. I certainly faded in our twilight existence, as if there were some truth in the strange old theory that very aged people can withdraw vital force from young companions and live upon it. But every day and hour of my stay made me love and reverence my great-grandmother more and more, and be more and more glad that I had come to know her, and perhaps be of some little service to her. Indeed, it was my great-grandfather's condition that kept us so much among the shadows. The old lady had a delightful youthfulness of spirit, and took an almost wistful pleasure in hearing about our life at the Arkwrights', as if some ambitious Scotch blood in her would fain have kept better pace with the currents of the busy world. But when my grandfather joined us, we had to change the subject. Modern ideas jarred upon him. And it was seldom that he was not with us. The tender love between the old couple was very touching. "It must seem strange to you, my dear, to think of such long lives so little broken by events," said my great-grandmother. "But your dear grandfather and I have never been apart for a day since our happy marriage." I do not think they were apart for an hour whilst I was with them. He followed her about the house, if she left him for many minutes, crying, "Victoire! Victoire!" chiefly from love, but I was sometimes spiteful enough to think also because he could not amuse himself. "The master's calling for you again," said Elspeth, with some impatience, one day when grandmamma was teaching me a bit of dainty cookery in the kitchen. "Oh, fly, petite!" she cried to me; "and say that his Majesty has summoned the Duchess." Much bewildered, I ran out, and met my great-grandfather on the terrace, crying, "Victoire! Victoire!" in fretful tones. "His Majesty has summoned the Duchess, sir," said I, dropping a slight curtsy, as I generally did on disturbing the old gentleman. To my astonishment, this seemed quite to content him. He drew in his elbows, and spread the palms of his hands with a very polite bow, saying, "Bien, bien;" and after murmuring something else in French, which I did not catch, but which I fancy was an acknowledgment of the prior claims of royalty, he folded his hands behind his back and wandered away down the terrace, as I rushed off to my confectionery again. I found that this use of the old fable, which had calmed my great-grandfather in past days, was no new idea. It was, in fact, a graceful fiction which deceived nobody, and had been devised by my great-grandmother out of deference to her husband's prejudices. In the long years when they were very poor, their poverty was made, not only tolerable but graceful, by Mrs. Vandaleur's untiring energy, but (though he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, find any occupation by which to add to their income) the sight of his Victoire, who should have been a duchess, doing any menial work so distracted him, that my grandmother had to devise some method to secure herself from his observation when she washed certain bits of priceless lace which redeemed her old dresses from commonness, or cooked some delicacy for Mons. le Duc's dinner, or mended his honourable clothes. Thus Jeanette's old fable came into use; first in jest, and then as an adopted form for getting rid of my great-grandfather when he was in the way. It must have astonished a practical woman like my great-grandmother to find how completely it satisfied him. But there must have been a time when his helplessness and impracticability tried her in many ways, before she fairly came to realize that he never could be changed, and her love fell in with his humours. On this point he was humoured completely, and never inquired on what business his deceased Majesty of France required the attendance of the Duchess that should have been! To do him justice, if he was a helpless he was a very tender husband. "He has never said a rude or unkind word to me since we were boy and girl together," said the little old lady, with tears in her eyes. And indeed, courtesy implies self-discipline; and even now the old man's politeness checked his petulance over and over again. He never gave up the habit of gathering flowers for my grandmother, and such exquisite contrasts of colour I never saw combined by any other hand. Another accomplishment of his was also connected with his love of plants. "It's little enough a man can do about a house the best of times," said Elspeth, "and the master's just as feckless as a bairn. But he makes a fine sallet." I shudder almost as I write the words. How little we thought that my poor grandfather's one useful gift would have so fatal an ending! But I must put it down in order. It was the end of many things. Of my life at The Vine among them, and very nearly of my life in this world altogether. My great-grandfather made delicious salads. I have heard him say that he preferred our English habit of mixing ingredients to the French one of dressing one vegetable by itself; but he said we did not carry it far enough, we neglected so many useful herbs. And so his salads were compounded not only of lettuce and cress, and so forth, but of dandelion, sorrel, and half-a-dozen other field or garden plants. Sometimes one flavour preponderated, sometimes another, and the sauce was always good. Now it is all over it seems to me that I must have been very stupid not to have paid more attention to the strange flavour in the salad that day. But I was thinking chiefly of the old lady, who was not very well (Elspeth had an idea that she had had a very slight "stroke," but how this was we cannot know now), whilst my grandfather was almost flightily cheerful. I tasted the salad, and did not eat it, but I was the less inclined to complain of it as they seemed perfectly satisfied. Then my grandmother was taken ill. At first we thought it a development of what we had noticed. Then Mr. Vandaleur became ill also, and we sent Adolphe in haste for the doctor. At last we found out the truth. The salad was full of young leaves of monk's-hood. Under what delusion my poor grandfather had gathered them we never knew. Elspeth and I were busy with the old lady, and he had made the salad without help from any one. From the first the doctor gave us little hope, and they sank rapidly. Their priest, for whom Adolphe made a second expedition, did not arrive in time; they were in separate rooms, and Elspeth and I flitted from one to the other in sad attendance. The dear little old lady sank fast, and died in the evening. Then the doctor impressed on us the necessity of keeping her death from my great-grandfather's knowledge. "But supposing he asks?" said I. "Say any soothing thing your ready wit may suggest, my dear young lady. But the truth, in his present condition, would be a fatal shock." It haunted me. "Supposing he asks." And late in the evening he did ask! I was alone with him, and he called me. "Marguerite, dear child, thou wilt tell me the truth. Why does my wife, my Victoire, thy grandmother, not come to me?" Pondering what lie I could tell him, and how, an irresistible impulse seized me. I bent over him and said: "Dear sir, the King has summoned the Duchess." Does the mind regain power as the body fails? My great-grandfather turned his head, and, as his blue eyes met mine, I could not persuade myself that he was deceived. "The will of his Majesty be done," he said faintly but firmly. The next few moments seemed like years. Had I done wrong? Had it done him harm? Above all, what did he mean? Were his words part of one last graceful dream of the dynasty of the white lilies, or was his loyal submission made now to a Majesty not of France, not even of this world? It was an intense relief to me when he spoke again. "Marguerite!" I knelt by the bedside, and he laid his hand upon my head. An exquisite smile shone on his face. "Good child; pauvre petite! His Majesty will call me also, before long. Is it not so? And then thou shalt rest." His fine face clouded again with a wandering, troubled look, and his fingers fumbled the bed-clothes. I saw that he had lost his crucifix in moving his hand to my head. I gave it him, and he clasped his hands over it once more, and carrying it to his lips with a smile, closed his eyes like some good child going to sleep. And Thou, O King of kings, didst summon him, as the dark faded into dawn! _ |
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