Part 12 (1/2)
the fond gay birds are warbling their tenderest strains. ”Along the gra.s.s sweet airs are blown,” and all the myriad flowers, the ”little wildings” of the forest, ”earth's cultureless buds,” are expanding and glowing, and exhaling the perfumed life that their mother, Nature, has given them.
Chetwoode is looking its best and brightest, and Sir Guy might well be proud of his possessions; but no thought of them enters his mind just now, which is filled to overflowing with the image of this petulant, pretty, saucy, lovable ward, that fate has thrown into his path.
”Yes, it is a lovely place!” says Lilian, after a pause spent in admiration. She has been looking around her, and has fallen into honest though silent raptures over all the undulating parks and uplands that stretch before her, far as the eye can see. ”Lovely!--So,” with a sigh, ”was my old home.”
”Yes. I think quite as lovely as this.”
”What!” turning to him with a start, while the rich, warm, eager flush of youth springs to her cheeks and mantles there, ”you have been there?
You have seen the Park?”
”Yes, very often, though not for years past. I spent many a day there when I was younger. I thought you knew it.”
”No, indeed. It makes me glad to think some one here can remember its beauties with me. But you cannot know it all as I do: you never saw my own particular bit of wood?”--with earnest questioning, as though seeking to deny the hope that strongly exists. ”It lies behind the orchard, and one can get to it by pa.s.sing through a little gate in the wall, that leads into the very centre of it. There at first, in the heart of the trees one sees a tangled ma.s.s with giant branches overhanging it, and straggling blackberry bushes protecting it with their angry arms, and just inside, the coolest, greenest, freshest bit of gra.s.s in all the world,--my fairy nook I used to call it. But you--of course you never saw it.”
”It has a huge horse-chestnut at its head, and a silver fir at its feet.”
”Yes,--yes!”
”I know it well,” says Chetwoode, smiling at her eagerness. ”It was your mother's favorite spot. You know she and my mother were fast friends, and she was very fond of me. When first she was married, before you were born, I was constantly at the Park, and afterward too. She used to read in the spot you name, and I--I was a delicate little fellow at that time, obliged to lie a good deal, and I used to read there beside her with my head in her lap, by the hour together.”
”Why, you know more about my mother than I do,” says Lilian, with some faint envy in her tones.
”Yes,”--hastily, having already learned how little a thing can cause an outbreak, when one party is bent on war,--”but you must not blame me for that. I could not help it.”
”No,”--regretfully,--”I suppose not. Before I was born, you say. How old that seems to make you!”
”Why?”--laughing. ”Because I was able to read eighteen years ago? I was only nine, or perhaps ten, then.”
”I never could do my sums,” says Lilian: ”I only know it sounds as though you were the Ancient Mariner or Methuselah, or anybody in the last stage of decay.”
”And yet I am not so very old, Lilian. I am not yet thirty.”
”Well, that's old enough. When I am thirty I shall take to caps with borders, and spectacles, and long black mittens, like nurse. Ha, ha!”
laughs Lilian, delighted at the portrait of herself she has drawn, ”shan't I look nice then?”
”I dare say you will,” says Guy, quite seriously. ”But I would advise you to put off the wearing of them for a while longer. I don't think thirty old. I am not quite that.”
”A month or two don't signify,”--provokingly; ”and as you have had apparently a very good life I don't think it manly of you to fret because you are drawing to the close of it. Some people would call it mean. There, never mind your age: tell me something more about my mother. Did you love her?”
”One could not help loving her, she was so gentle, so thoroughly kind-hearted.”
”Ah! what a pity it is I don't resemble her!” says Lilian, with a suspiciously deep sigh, accepting the reproach, and shaking her head mournfully. ”Was she like that picture at home in the drawing-room? I hope not. It is very lovely, but it lacks expression, and has no tenderness about it.”
”Then the artist must have done her great injustice. She was all tenderness both in face and disposition as I remember her, and children are very correct in their impressions. She was extremely beautiful. You are very like her.”
”Am I, Sir Guy? Oh, thank you. I didn't hope for so much praise. Then in one thing at least I do resemble my mother. Am I more beautiful or less so?”
”That is quite a matter of opinion.”
”And what is yours?” saucily.