Womanhood should be the consecration of earth.
—U. A. Taylor
In the region of domestic affections a new and
ennobling motive came from Bethlehem—"that I may
please God."
—Knox Little.
Elizabeth put on an air of great severity as she regarded the culprit.
"Rotherwood is about a mile and a quarter from our gate," she observed, apostrophising some midges that were dancing in a sunbeam overhead. "You could walk there easily in twenty minutes. It is now one o'clock, and you have been away exactly three hours and a half," and here she consulted the miniature watch that she wore as an ornament as well as for utility. "If it be not impertinent, may we inquire why you have absented yourself the whole morning?"
"Oh, shut up, Bet," returned her brother impatiently. "Sarcasm is not your style at all. It is like killing a grasshopper with a pair of iron-heeled clogs. It is precious heavy, I can tell you."
"You rude, unmannerly boy," and here Elizabeth attempted to pull his hair, but she might as well have tried her prentice hand on a young convict freshly shorn by the prison barber.
"Hands off, Betty, I tell you," returned the graceless lad. "I have had rather a good time of it. I knew Herrick was getting pretty sick of me." Here Cedric rolled over on his back, and tilted his straw hat over his eyes. "Familiarity breeds contempt and all that sort of thing. Conversation is like a salad, isn't it, Herrick?—you may have plenty of green stuff and oil, but it wants pepper and a dash of vinegar too."
"Why don't you box his ears, Miss Templeton? He is getting positively abusive."
"I prefer pepper to oil," she returned calmly. "Well, Cedric, perhaps you will kindly inform me if your mission has been successful."
"Oh, it is all right. David will be here to tea, but he says it will not be cool enough to play until nearly five. Now, don't go tugging at my coat-collar, or I won't say another word." Elizabeth, with a resigned expression, folded up her work. "I left the vicarage note," continued Cedric, mollified by this submission. "Mr. Charrington was engaged, but Mrs. Finch brought me his message—his kind regards to Miss Templeton, and he would have much pleasure in dining at the Wood House to-night."
"Did you tell Dinah?"
"Do I not always do my duty?" rather sententiously, "Well, before I could get to the White Cottage I met old David. He was going to the church to practise on the organ, and he was a bit bothered because he could not get any one to blow, so, being a good-natured chap, I volunteered."
"Good boy," observed Elizabeth softly.
"Well, there we were for pretty nearly an hour and a half—David perched up like a glorified cherubim, and rolling out music by the yard; and there was I grinding away like a saintly nigger in a beastly hole till I could stand it no longer, and told him I must chuck it. He declared he had quite forgotten me."
"I expect he had. Mr. Carlyon plays the organ so beautifully"—Elizabeth was addressing Malcolm now. "My sister and I often go into the church to listen to him."
"It must be a great resource," he returned regretfully, "and I am inclined to envy Carlyon. I am passionately fond of music myself, but the power of expression has been denied me."
"I would back David against most organists," went on Cedric. "Well, as I was pretty much used up by my exertions, he proposed we should go into the vicarage garden and help ourselves to fruit. The greengages were ripe and so were the mulberries, and you bet I did not need pressing."
"Mrs. Finch saw us from the porch room, and sent us out some cider and home-make cake, so we had a rattling good feed. David said he was in a loafing mood, and would not hear of my hurrying away."
"Mr. Carlyon does not seem overworked," remarked Malcolm; but he regretted his speech when he saw Elizabeth's heightened colour.
"Thursday is a slack day with him," she said rather gravely. "I assure you he works harder than most clergymen, and is very conscientious and painstaking. He is not at all strong, but he never spares himself."
"My hasty speech meant nothing," returned Malcolm smiling. "Mr. Carlyon is certainly no loafer—he looks the incarnation of energy."
"How doth the little busy D—
Improve each shining hour,"
chanted Cedric. But Elizabeth would stand no more nonsense. She called to the dogs, and warned their guest that the gong would sound in five minutes, and then marched off with her sailor hat slung on her arm, which she filled on her way to the house with Canterbury bells and blue larkspur.
The game of tennis was a great success. Dinah sat in the shade and watched them.
There was some little difficulty in choosing partners, so Cedric said they must toss up for it, and Elizabeth fell to Mr. Carlyon.
If Malcolm felt secretly disappointed, no one guessed it. To his surprise he and Cedric were ruthlessly beaten.
Mr. Carlyon played a masterly game, and Elizabeth ably seconded him. Malcolm, who had always held his own on the tennis green, and was an excellent golf player, was much chagrined at his defeat. They had lost three successive games, when Cedric flung up his racket and declared he could play no more.
"They have given us a regular beating, mate," he said cheerfully. "You were in capital form, Herrick, and I did not do so badly myself, though I say it as shouldn't; but David has taken the shine out of us. I say, old fellow, you ought to be champion player."
"I think Miss Templeton played a good game," returned David modestly, and then he and Cedric went off to hunt for missing balls, and Elizabeth sauntered to the house. Half an hour later she was just putting the finishing touches to her dress when Dinah tapped at the door, and, as Elizabeth gave her a welcoming smile, sat down by the toilet table. It was one of Dinah's homely, pleasant little ways, but these few minutes of sisterly chat would have been sorely missed by both of them.
"How nice you look, dear!" in an admiring voice. Then Elizabeth glanced at herself with her head a little on one side.
"Do I?" she said simply. "I was afraid I should never regain my normal colour. Are you sure I don't look rather blowsy, and like a milkmaid?" But Dinah indignantly repudiated this; it was Dinah's private belief that Elizabeth was a very beautiful woman. "She has such lovely eyes, and then her face has so much expression," she would say; but Dinah had the good sense to keep this opinion to herself.
Elizabeth, who was not at all vain, and was quite conscious of her own defects, continued to gaze at her own reflection rather critically.
"I suppose on the whole I am passable, Die," she said rather philosophically. "When people like me they seem to like my looks; and really when you think of all the plain and downright ugly people in the world, there is surely room for thankfulness." "Have you just found that out, Betty?"
"My dear Die, I am rather in a humble frame of mind just now. Don't you recollect my telling you Mrs. Robinson's speech last Monday. I have never thought quite so much of myself since."
"If I remember rightly, Mrs. Robinson paid you a compliment. She told Miss Clarkson that she wished Selina were as fine a woman as Elizabeth Templeton."
"And you call that compliment!" and Elizabeth arched her long full throat in rather a haughty and swanlike manner. "Fancy that goose of a Miss Clarkson repeating such a speech. A fine woman is my abhorrence. It always seems to me to rank in the same category with a prime turkey or a prize bullock, or something ready for the market."
"My dear Betty, you do say such odd things!"
"Of course I do. Elizabeth is nothing if she is not original. Don't you remember dear old dad's speech? But I am really serious, Die—you know I never coveted beauty."
"No, nor I, dear," and Dinah spoke quite earnestly.
"Oh, you," returned Elizabeth with playful tenderness. "I should hope not. I expect many women would be glad to change with you, you sweet thing." Then Dinah smiled and patted her sister's hand.
"No, Betty, you must not say that. I have often thought that even our poor faces, with all their defects, ought to be sacred to us. If we are a thought of God, as some one has beautifully put it, surely the stamp of His handiwork must be precious to us."
"But how about the marred and ugly faces, Die?" and Elizabeth looked at her dubiously.
"It is their cross," returned Dinah simply—"a heavy cross perhaps, but when I see a very plain, unattractive woman I do so long to whisper in her ear—"
"Don't trouble about it, poor thing. What does it matter? You will be beautiful one day, and even now, if you are good and patient, the angels will think you lovely.' Dear me, Betty," interrupting herself, "why are you creasing my pretty silk dress."
"Lord love you, miss, I am only a-feeling for your wings," returned Elizabeth in a droll voice, and then they both laughed, for this was a standing joke between them ever since Dinah had repeated poor old Becky Brent's speech, when the wrinkled hand of the blind and doited old creature had fumbled about her shapely shoulders.
Dinah had been right in thinking that the vicar and Mr. Herrick would have much in common, and the conversation at the dinner-table that evening was unusually animated.
She and Elizabeth were attentive listeners, and on comparing notes afterwards both of them owned that they had been struck with Mr. Herrick's intelligence and broad-minded views.
The slight egotism that Elizabeth had detected seemed to drop from him like a veil, and he showed his true nature; he was evidently a patient and reverent searcher after knowledge, and his marked deference to the elder scholar became him greatly. Dinah quite glowed with innocent pleasure as she listened to them. "It is so seldom the dear vicar gets any one to talk on his favourite subjects, but one could see that Mr. Herrick is after his own heart," she remarked, as they sat on the terrace drinking their coffee and waiting for the gentlemen to join them.
"He is certainly very clever," observed Elizabeth thoughtfully.
"David was unusually quiet," went on Dinah; but her sister apparently did not hear this, for she went on talking about the advantage of a more varied reading.
"I am such an ignoramus," she continued, "when those men were talking about the MSS. in that old unknown monastery, I felt like a little goggle-eyed charity-school girl. When I get Mr. Herrick alone I mean to ask him about the Behistun Inscription;" and then Mr. Carlyon strolled towards them, followed by Cedric, and Elizabeth, who had finished her coffee, advanced towards them.
"They are still at it tooth and nail," observed David in an amused tone. "I should have stopped to listen to them, only this fellow was so sick of the discussion. What a well-informed chap Herrick is!"
"So Dinah and I were saying," remarked Elizabeth, as they paced slowly down the terrace. "Why were you so silent?" she continued; "you know a good deal about these subjects too."
"Who? I! My dear Miss Elizabeth, you are quite mistaken. Ask the vicar, and he will tell you that I am really a duffer in these matters. It is a wise child who knows his own father, and I am wise enough to know my own ignorance. Don't you know," with a smile, "it is easier to hold one's tongue and listen in an intelligent manner than flounder about out of one's depth among the billows of cuneiform inscriptions and the insurmountable precipice of the Behistun Rock."
"Why do you undervalue yourself so?" returned Elizabeth gently; "don't you know people take us at our own value? I have got it into my head that you and Mr. Herrick do not quite take to each other—woman's eyes are rather sharp, you know." But Mr. Carlyon turned this off with a laugh.
"Oh, we hit it off all right," he replied; "please don't go and take fancies in your head. He has his innings now, but we got the best of him this afternoon." Elizabeth's merry answering laugh reached Malcolm's ears, and made him lose the drift of the vicar's argument.
But he lost it still more, and became increasingly absent-minded, when a few minutes later he heard her rich, full tones in his favourite song, "Loving, yet leaving." Mr. Charrington noticed it at last. "The siren is too much for you, Mr. Herrick," he said pleasantly; "we will resume our discussion another time," and to this Malcolm cheerfully assented.
Did Elizabeth perceive the dark figure that glided in at the open window and settled itself so comfortably in the easy-chair? If she were conscious of the silent auditor, she made no sign.
Never had her voice been sweeter and truer; never had she sung with such birdlike clearness, with such abandon and pleasure. Now and then a whispered word from David made her exchange one song for another, or a low-toned "bravo" from the same source greeted some special favourite.
Elizabeth was in the mood for singing. She was a creature of moods and tenses, and would probably have gone on carolling blissfully for another hour if the vicar had not interrupted them.
"It is getting late, Carlyon, and we may as well walk back together," he remarked in his leisurely manner, for being an old bachelor he was rather precise in his ways. David jumped up at once.
"I will go with you, sir, of course," he replied quickly. Then in a lower voice, "It is a lovely evening—will you do your lady's mile?" He spoke so low that Malcolm could only guess at what he said; but Elizabeth's answer was quite clear and audible.
"No, not to-night; I think I have exerted myself sufficiently. But I daresay Mr. Herrick and Cedric will go."
And Malcolm, who felt himself dismissed and had no excuse to offer, was soon plunged into an argument again that lasted all the way to Rotherwood.
"Betty, did you notice that Mr. Herrick did not want to go?" asked Dinah, who was always keenly alive to the likes and dislikes of her neighbours. "It was naughty of you to put him in such a position. How could he refuse to go when the vicar was waiting for him?"
"I thought a walk would do him good," returned Elizabeth demurely; "he was almost asleep when Mr. Charrington spoke to us. A comfortable chair, and moon-light, and a German lullaby are soporific influences."
"Nonsense, Betty," replied Dinah in her practical, downright way, "he was as wide-awake as I was; but," with a little sigh of sympathy, "he looked rather sad. Are you sure he is quite happy, dear?"
"I expect he is quite as happy as he deserves to be," returned Elizabeth in rather a hard-hearted way; and then she went off, singing to herself in a low tone a line or two from her last song:
"It may be in the Land above—
The Land beyond our ken;
Yet we shall meet again, my love,
Though none can answer when"
And as Dinah stood listening in the moonlight her face looked like the face of a radiant infant.
"That is so true," she whispered, "and what does it matter—when!"
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