The Vicar of Wrexhill. Frances Milton Trollope
made Helen very angry.
"Your little girl will make herself ill, I am afraid, Mrs. Simpson, by the quantity of wine she is taking: I am afraid there is no water with it."
The lady, who was talking very earnestly in an under tone to Mr. Cartwright, started at this appeal, and with a glance of more anger than the age of the child could justify, drew her back from the table and made her stand at some distance from it.
"I really think that it is Mr. Jacob Cartwright who should be punished," said Helen: "for he knew a great deal more about the matter than the little girl herself."
"Oh no! … naughty little thing!"—said the mamma.
"I am very sorry if I have been the occasion of the little girl's doing what was wrong," said Mr. Jacob slowly and in a very gentle tone. "I did not think she would have taken so much; and she looked very tired and warm."
Mrs. Simpson made some civil answer, and turned to renew her conversation with the Vicar; but he was gone. She positively started, and looked about her with great interest to discover what had become of him. The windows of the room opened upon the lawn, and though she had not seen his exit, she very naturally guessed that it must have been made in that direction. After rising from the table, and making one or two unmeaning movements about the room, taking up a book and laying it down again without looking at its title, examining a vase on the chimney-piece and a rose on the flower-stand, she gradually drew towards the open window, and after pausing for half a minute, walked through it upon the grass.
The little girl trotted after her; Mr. Jacob followed, probably hoping to see her stagger about a little; and Helen, though sadly vexed at this new device to prolong the tedious visit, could do no less than walk after them.
The conservatory, drawing-room, and library, formed this side of the house, the whole range of windows opening uniformly upon the lawn. As Helen stepped out, she perceived that the party who had preceded her were entering by the window of the library, and she quickly followed them, thinking it probable that Fanny might be startled and vexed at this unexpected interruption, when, as was very likely, she might be in the very act of invoking the "sacred nine."
Upon entering the room, however, she found her sister, to her great surprise, conversing earnestly with Mr. Cartwright, and appearing to be hardly yet conscious of the presence of the others.
Mrs. Simpson gave a little, almost imperceptible toss of the head, at discovering how the gentleman was engaged.
"We could not think whither you had vanished, Mr. Cartwright," said she, in her sweetest voice; "but you really were very lucky to ramble in this direction. Miss Fanny ought to have her picture taken in this fine room, with all her books about her."
While she said this, Mr. Cartwright continued in a whisper to finish what he was addressing to Fanny; and having done so, he turned to the party which had followed him, saying, "The bright verdure of your beautiful lawn, Miss Mowbray, tempted me out; but I hope our intrusion has not disturbed your sister?"
Fanny answered eagerly that she was very glad to see him. At that moment Helen chanced to turn her eyes towards the window by which they entered; when she perceived that Miss Cartwright had followed them. She was, however, more than half concealed by a large orange tree which stood in a high square box beside the window; but her head was bent forward to look into the room, and a sneer of such very singular expression rested on her lip and in her eye as she looked at her father and Fanny, who were still standing close together, that Helen remained perfectly still, staring at her. In another moment Miss Cartwright changed the direction of her eyes, and encountered those of Helen fixed upon her with a look of unconcealed astonishment; but her own did not sink before them, and she turned away with a smile quite as strange and unintelligible as the look she had bestowed on Fanny.
At length this tedious visit was brought to its conclusion; the bonnet of the tipsy and now very pale little girl was replaced, a number of civil speeches spoken, and the whole party walked off together across the lawn to a gate which was to take them by a short cut through the Park.
"I quite envy Mrs. Simpson her walk home!" said Fanny. "I see she has taken Mr. Cartwright's arm: I really do think he is the very handsomest and most agreeable man I ever saw in my life!"
CHAPTER VII.
THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS MADE BY MR. CARTWRIGHT.—LETTER FROM LADY HARRINGTON.
The three girls rallied round Mrs. Mowbray as soon as the guests had departed, all kindly anxious to see how she bore this first step back into a world so wholly changed for her.
She looked pale, and there was an air of languor and weariness about her: nevertheless, to the great surprise of Helen, she expressed herself much pleased by the visit:
"Mr. Cartwright," said she, "appears to me to be one of the most amiable men I ever saw; every tone of his voice speaks kindness, and indeed, if he did not speak at all, one look of his has more feeling and pity in it than other people could express by a volume of words."
"Do you really think so, mamma?" said Helen eagerly, but suddenly stopped herself, aware that in truth she had no grounds whatever for the strong feeling of dislike towards him of which she was conscious. She remembered, too, that her father had expressed himself greatly pleased by the urbanity of his manners, and that the last act of the benign influence he was wont to exercise on those around him had been to conquer the prejudice against him, to which the exclusion of the Wallace family had unjustly given rise. Helen remembered all this in a moment; the colour mounted to her cheeks, and she was silent.
Rosalind, too, was silent, at least from words; but her eyes could speak as many volumes at a glance as Mr. Cartwright's, and she fixed them for an instant on Helen with a look that told her plainly her prejudices against their new neighbour, however unreasonable, were fully shared by her.
Meanwhile Fanny had thrown her arms round her mother's neck in a sort of rapture at hearing her own opinions confirmed by such authority. "Oh, how true that is, dearest mamma!" she exclaimed; "how exactly I feel the same when he speaks to me! … Such goodness, such gentleness, so much superiority, yet so much humility! Poor dear Mr. Wallace was an excellent good man, certainly, but no more to be compared to Mr. Cartwright than I to Hercules!"
"How many times have you seen Mr. Cartwright, Fanny?" said Rosalind.
"I have heard him preach three times," she replied, "and they were all the most beautiful sermons in the world; and I have seen and spoken to him four times more."
"Poor Mr. Wallace!" said Rosalind. "It was he who christened you, Fanny; and from that time to the hour of his death, you seldom passed many days together, I believe, without seeing and receiving affectionate words and kind looks from him: and yet four times speaking to this gentle gentleman has driven the memory of the poor old man from your heart!"
"No, it has not, Rosalind," replied Fanny, deeply blushing: "I am sure I did not say that, did I, mamma?—But my loving and remembering Mr. Wallace all the days of my life need not make me dislike everybody else, I suppose?"
"It would be a great misfortune to you if it did, Fanny," said Mrs. Mowbray. "I am delighted to see, both in you and many others, that the violent and most unjustifiable prejudice which was conceived against Mr. Cartwright before he was seen and known, is giving way before his amiable and excellent qualities: I have no doubt that he will soon be quite as popular in the parish as Mr. Wallace was."
"And Miss Cartwright, mamma?" said Helen; "do you think we shall love her as well as we did Emma Wallace?"
"I know nothing whatever of Miss Cartwright as yet, Helen; she appears very shy, but we must try to give her courage, my dear girls. I hope we shall be on terms of as great