Old Kensington. Anne Thackeray Ritchie
George stared in amazement. Rhoda had stuck some vine-leaves in her hair, and had made a long wreath, that was hanging from the swing, and that floated as she floated. She was looking up with great wistful eyes, and for a minute she did not see him. As the swing rose and fell, her childish wild head went up above the wall and the branches against the blue, and down 'upon a background of pure gold,' where the Virginian creeper had turned in the sun. George thought it was a sort of tune she was swinging, with all those colours round about her in the sultry summer day. As he leaped down, a feeling came over him as if it had all happened before, as if he had seen it and heard the creaking of the ropes in a dream. Rhoda blushed and slackened her flight. He seemed still to remember it all while the swing stopped by degrees; and a voice within the house began calling, 'Rhoda! Rhoda!'
'Oh! I must go,' said Rhoda, sighing. 'I am wasting my time. Please don't tell Aunt Morgan I was swinging.'
'Tell her!' said George. 'What a silly child you are. Why shouldn't you swing?'
'Oh! she would be angry,' said Rhoda, looking down. 'I am very silly. I can't bear being scolded.'
'Can't you?' says George, with his hands in his pockets. 'I'm used to it, and don't mind a bit.'
'I shouldn't mind it if … if I were you, and any one cared for me,' said Rhoda, with tearful eyes. She spoke in a low depressed voice.
'Nonsense,' said George; 'everybody cares for everybody. Dolly loves you, so—so do we all.'
'Do you?' said Rhoda, looking at him in a strange wistful way, and brightening suddenly, and putting back all her cloudy hair with her hands. Then she blushed up, and ran into the house.
When George told Dolly about it, Dolly was very sympathising, except that she said Rhoda ought to have answered when her aunt called her. 'She is too much afraid of being scolded,' said Dolly.
'Poor little thing!' said George. 'Listen to this,' and he sat down to the piano. He made a little tune he called 'The Swing,' with a minor accompaniment recurring again and again, and a pretty modulation.
'It is exactly like a swing,' said Dolly. 'George, you must have a cathedral some day, and make them sing all the services through.'
'I shall not be a clergyman,' said George, gravely. 'It is all very well for Morgan, who is desperately in love. He has often told me that it would be his ruin if he were separated from Mrs. Carbury.'
George, during his stay in Old Street (he had boarded there for some weeks during Lady Sarah's absence), had been installed general confidante and sympathiser, and was most deeply interested in the young couple's prospects.
'I believe Aunt Sarah has got a living when old Mr. Livermore dies,' he went on, shutting up the piano and coming to the table where Dolly was drawing. 'We must get her to present it to John Morgan.'
'But she always says it is for you, George, now that the money is lost,' said Dolly. 'I am afraid it will not be any use asking her. George, how much is prudent?'
'How much is how much?' says George, looking with his odd blue eyes.
'I meant prudent to marry on?' says Dolly.
'Oh, I don't know,' says George, indifferently. 'I shall marry on anything I may happen to have.'
'What are you children talking about?' said Lady Sarah, looking up from her corner by the farthest chimney-piece. She liked one particular place by the fire, from which she could look down the room at the two heads that were bending together over the round table, and out into the garden, where a west wind was blowing, and tossing clouds and ivy sprays.
'We are talking about prudence in marriage,' says George.
'How can you be so silly!' says Lady Sarah, sharply, at which George starts up offended and marches through the window into the garden.
'What is it?' said the widow. 'Yes, Dolly, go to him,' she said, in answer to Dolly's pleading eyes. 'Foolish boy!'
The girl was already gone. Her aunt watched the white figure, flying with wind-blown locks and floating skirts along the ivy wall. Dolly caught her brother up by the speckled holly-tree, and the two went on together, proceeding in step to a triumphant music of sparrows overhead, a wavering of ivy along their path; soft winds blew everywhere, scattering light leaves; the summer's light was in the day, and shining from the depth of Dolly's grey eyes. The two went and sat down on the bench by the pond, the old stone-edged pond, that reflected scraps of the blue green overhead; a couple of gold-fishes alternately darted from side to side. George forgot that he was not understood as he sat there throwing pebbles into the water. Presently the wind brought some sudden voices close at hand, and, looking up, they saw two people advancing from the house, Robert Henley walking by Lady Sarah and carrying her old umbrella.
'Oh, he is always coming,' said George, kicking his heels, and not seeming surprised. 'He is staying with his grandmother at the Palace, but they don't give him enough to eat, and so he drops into the Morgans', and now he comes here.'
'Hush!' said Dolly, looking round.
Robert Henley was a tall, handsome young fellow, about twenty, with a straight nose and a somewhat pompous manner. He was very easy and good-natured when it was not too much trouble; he would patronise people both younger and older than himself with equally good intentions. George's early admiration for his cousin I fear is now tinged with a certain jealousy of which Robert is utterly unconscious; he takes the admiration for granted. He comes up and gives Dolly an affable kiss. 'Well, Dolly, have you learnt to talk French? I want to hear all about Paris.'
'What shall I tell you?' says simple Dolly, greatly excited. 'We had such a pretty drawing-room, Robert, with harps on all the doors, and yellow sofas, and such a lovely, lovely view.' And Lady Sarah smiled at Dolly's enthusiasm, and asked Robert if he could stay to dinner.
'I shall be delighted,' says Robert, just like a man of the world. 'My grandmother has turned me out for the day.'
CHAPTER X.
A SNOW GARDEN.
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,
And every pointed thorn seemed wrought in glass;
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow …
The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine,
Glazed over, in the freezing æther shine;
The frighted birds the rattling branches shun,
That wave and glitter in the distant sun.
—Phillips.
Is it that evening or another that they were all assembled in the little bow-windowed drawing-room in Old Street listening to one of Rhoda's interminable 'pieces' that she learnt at her French school? And then came a quartette, but she broke down in the accompaniment, and George turned her off the music-stool.
The doors were open into John's inner room, from which came a last western gleam of light through the narrow windows, and beyond the medlar-tree. It would have been dark in the front room but for those western windows. In one of them sat Lady Sarah leaning back in John's old leathern chair, sitting and listening with her hands lying loosely crossed in her lap; as she listened to the youthful din of music and voices and the strumming piano and the laughter. She had come by Dolly's special request. Her presence was considered an honour by Mrs. Morgan, but an effort at the same time. In her endeavours to entertain her guest, Mrs. Morgan, bolt upright in another corner, had fallen asleep, and was nodding her head in this silent inner room. There was noise and to spare in the front room, people in