CHAPTER XXI

COMPOUND UMBELS AND BLUE EYES

"A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure—critics all are ready-made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well-skilled to find or forge a fault: A turn for punning—call it Attic salt."

"ONE of the Umbelliferæ," said Tom.

He stood watching Ethel, as she painted a flower upon a wooden panel, his head being inclined to one side. It was not long before Mr. Carden-Cox's call at the Grange that same afternoon.

Ethel had a gift in the flower-painting line; but this was not done so well as usual. Ethel's fingers were nervous, not quite obedient. She had taken to her paints as a refuge from Tom, and there was no getting away from him. He followed her even into her pet sanctum, the little lumber-room, where, as she would have said, she "did her messes." It was no use to suggest his being elsewhere. Tom's mild good-humour was impervious to the broadest hints. Ethel felt for once uncontrollably cross in her satiety of Tom's talk; yet she tried to be patient. In a few days he would be gone.

"One of the Umbelliferæ," repeated Tom, finding his information disregarded. "Umbel-bearing. Umbel—from the same source, so to speak, as 'umbrella'—spreading outward from the centre. This little flower is a simple umbel; but there are compound umbels also—umbels of umbels,—you understand?"

"Oh yes. Like a lot of sunshades branching out of one umbrella."

The illustration was so new, that Tom had to give it serious consideration.

"Yes—" came slowly, at length. "I do not know that your idea is—altogether inappropriate. No, perhaps not—on the whole. As an instance of compound umbels, we have—a—"

"An umbrella shop."

"I am afraid that you would be pushing the—the simile—too far." Tom was perfectly serious. "As a matter of fact, an umbrella can never be other than a simple umbel—ha, ha!" Tom could always laugh at his own jokes, though never at those of other people. "Ha, ha! Yes, an umbrella is undoubtedly a simple umbel But in Nature we have compound umbels, as, for instance, the hemlock, the parsley, the—"

Tom paused, and Ethel was silent.

"You are making too much of a curve. That stalk does not bend in reality," said Tom, who looked upon the said stalk from a different standpoint, and failed to allow for the fact. He know about as much in respect of painting as the Rectory cat. A row of "flower-heads," with stalks as stiff as pokers in parallel lines below, would have seemed to him the correct thing.

"Nature deals in curves. When she doesn't, it is a mistake, and art has to put her right," declared Ethel sententiously; for when dealing with a sententious man, one has sometimes to pay him in his own coin.

Tom undertook to prove her mistaken, and Ethel listened with wandering thoughts to his laboured disquisition. It was hard to attend enough to prevent his discovering her absence. Her heart was at the Grange, for the last fortnight had been a severe trial of her fortitude, and each day added to the trial.

She had not seen or spoken with Nigel since his father's death; and one or two brief interviews with Daisy had been unsatisfactory. Ethel was not intimate with the Browning family as a whole, only with Nigel as Malcolm's friend—not to speak of his being her own friend!—and in a less degree with Daisy. She had always a distinct consciousness of being avoided by Fulvia. Her own feelings would have carried her daily to the Grange, if only as an expression of her intense sympathy with them all, if only to learn how Nigel was: but this could not be; and certainly neither Mrs. Browning nor Fulvia would have welcomed any such expression of solicitude from a member of the Elvey family, albeit they were most polite to Mr. Elvey, who had paid more than one visit to the widow. Ethel had to stay at home, and to wait for such information as came by her father and Malcolm, or filtered through less direct channels. She seized any scrap of news with avidity, yet her hunger was not satisfied.

"Now, these are instances of straight lines in Nature, which I venture to think you will hardly disparage," said Tom.

Ethel woke up to the fact that "these instances" had been thrown away upon her. She had travelled to the Grange while he discoursed, forgetting even to paint, and sitting, with suspended brush, in an attitude of absorption, which Tom took for devoted attention to himself. He was much gratified naturally!

"Oh yes,—Oh no, I mean," she said hastily. Alarmed lest he should catechise her on what he had said, she began to paint again in vehement style, and Tom's attention strayed back to the "flower-head" expanding under her touch.

"I have not yet introduced you to the Umbelliferous Family," he observed, by way of a ponderous joke. "This is not a bad opportunity, while you are actually engaged in taking the likeness of a member of that family—Ha! Ha!" Tom stopped to laugh complacently, and Ethel felt like throwing her brush at him. "You are fairly acquainted already with the family characteristics of the Ranunculaceæ, the Papaveraceæ, the Onagraceæ, the Myrtaceæ, the Violaceæ, the Cucurbitaceæ, the Malvaceæ, the—"

"Seven sneezes," murmured Ethel. It really did seem as if Tom were laboriously selecting all those tribes which rejoiced in this particular sound at the end of their names.

"I beg your pardon. Did you speak?" asked unsuspecting Tom.

"Oh, nothing. Please go on."

"I was about to say, you are already acquainted fairly well with the characteristics of these and other tribes. But the Umbelliferæ are, I believe, new to you. Umbelliferæ—umbel-bearing. One principal characteristic—the ovary inferior. You should remember this. Fruit dry and hard—not juicy. I think you comprehend now what the ovary is."

"The ovary?" Ethel was away at the Grange once more.

"The ovary. I believe you understand what is signified by the ovary of a flower," repeated indulgent Tom.

Ethel looked up vacantly, then sighed.

"Tom, I am busy. I can't be bothered with ovaries and things to-day," she said. "I have so much to do, and those long names are detestable."

Tom's face fell. He was thunderstruck. Never till this moment had Ethel allowed such a remark to escape. "I thought—I hoped—you had learnt to appreciate—" he faltered.

"I have tried—really I have—and I can't. I shall never appreciate putting beautiful things into stiff rows, and giving them long names. It isn't in me," said Ethel, her tone half petulant, half apologetic. "You must try your hand on somebody else."

"But,—" protested dismayed Tom. "But—" and he could say no more. After all these weeks of careful instruction, it was too much. Tom's whole course of thought was turned upside down by it. He found himself saying, with displeasure, "I imagined that you were a girl of sense."

"Oh no! Not botanical sense, Tom." Then she was afraid she had hurt his feelings, and she looked up penitently. "Tom, you mustn't mind me. I'm worried, and it's of no consequence. Another day I'll try to listen. If only you will leave me in peace this afternoon, I'll be good afterwards, and I'll learn all about those horrid umbels. I will, really."

Tom did not know what to make of her. He was more won than ever—fascinated, in fact, though Ethel had not the smallest wish to fascinate him. At the same time he was desperately disappointed to find that her "listening" was a matter of "trying." He had flattered himself that she listened because she could not help it: because his speech was of such engrossing interest that she could not turn away.

He objected very much to the girlish expression, "those horrid umbels"; but the girlish eyes were too much for him. In the general upsetting of Tom's ideas, one alone kept its equilibrium, and grew more definite. Umbels or no umbels, science or no science, Tom liked Ethel, and he wanted her for his own. She had grown necessary to him these weeks. Existence could not be the same to Tom, if he were bereft of the occupation of watching Ethel. Her deft fingers enchained his masculine intellect. It came over him now, almost as a new idea, that in a few days this occupation would cease.

Not that he wished to go. He could have remained at the Rectory for an indefinite period, so far as his own wishes were concerned. A gentle intimation had been made to him, however, that the spare room would be required for another visitor after a certain date; so Tom had no choice.

By-and-by he would be returning to Australia, hopelessly out of reach of Ethel, and far beyond the touch of those little fingers, which had somehow become inextricably entwined in Tom's mind with the dried herbarium specimens, for the gumming in of which they were so admirably adapted. What success might not Tom achieve with Ethel as his coadjutor?

Ethel little dreamt that her momentary tartness was bringing him to a most undesirable point.

Tom to yield to sudden impulse! Tom to be betrayed into ill-considered action! The thing was incredible. Tom had had floating ideas of how he would one day address himself to Mr. and Mrs. Elvey on the subject of marriage. He had planned a careful exposition of his prospects and intentions, such as might win the consent of Ethel's parents. He had pictured the circumspect choice of a suitable time and place in which to open his heart to Ethel, the clothing of his ideas in well-selected language, perhaps even the making of one or two apt quotations, conned beforehand for the occasion, for Ethel loved poetry.

All this Tom had proposed to himself. And that all this should go to the winds, that Tom should precipitately have the matter out with Ethel herself, saying no word to her father or mother,—who could have thought it? Not Tom, certainly, and not Ethel!

Never in Ethel's life had she been more astonished than by Tom's next utterance, after her pettish remark about "those horrid umbels." The pause following was long enough for Ethel to lose herself anew in thought, to forget Tom and painting, umbels and botany. Suddenly her attention was arrested by a shaky voice of genuine emotion—

"It's no good, you know, Ethel! I can't help it. I can't go off, and—and leave things like this. I'm going back to Australia, you know, before long, and you'll—you'll—you'll come with me, won't you? Say you will, Ethel! I can't get along without you, and that's the truth."

Was there ever a more unscientific "specimen" of a proposal?

Tom seized Ethel's hand, and held it as in a vice.

Ethel's eyes opened widely, and stared at him in blank-bewilderment.

"Tom!"

"Just say you will, and it'll be all right," pleaded Tom, discarding long words and Latin terminations with shameless promptitude. Somehow, neither long words nor Latin terminations lend themselves to love-making, or to the expression of strong feeling; and Tom's feeling for Ethel was strong of its kind. "Just say you will," reiterated Tom. "I'll do my very best to make you happy, I will indeed!" and his grasp tightened.

Ethel could not have released herself by struggling, and she did not try. She looked straight at Tom, and said, "Please let go!"

Tom dropped the hand as if it had been a hot potato, and Ethel rubbed it.

"You hurt me!" she said. "But it doesn't matter; only you must not do that again. And please understand that I don't want any more nonsense. We are cousins and friends, that is all. We never can be anything else—never!"

Tom began to beg. Tom began to implore. It was not nonsense, but sense. He meant fully all that he had said. If Ethel would only consent, he would be the happiest man living.

"Oh no, you would not. We should both be wretched. I could not make you happy, and you could not make me happy."

"Why not?" Tom demanded fiercely. He was unhappy, and therefore fierce. At this moment he felt that Ethel was worth more than all the world could offer beside. He would have sacrificed even his herbaria to win her! Who then might say that he could not make Ethel happy?

"We are not made for one another," Ethel asserted. "Our tastes are different, and our ways. It would be a perpetual rub and fret."

"Why should it?" insisted Tom. "Husbands and wives don't always like the same things." He was right enough there, no doubt.

"No, I suppose not. But they ought to be able to agree to differ, able to go their own separate paths in peace. It doesn't sound like a cheerful arrangement exactly, but it is what has to be in a great many cases." She spoke soberly, as if familiar with various phases of matrimonial life. "And you know that is what you and I never could do. You would never leave me in peace."

Tom broke in to assure her that he would. He would do anything, everything. There was nothing under the sun that Tom would not do to please Ethel.

"Yes, that is all very kind," said Ethel, smiling. "But one has to look forward, and when a lover becomes a husband, things are not exactly the same. Everybody says so, and I have seen it. You might mean to leave me in peace, but you wouldn't be able. It is not your way. You would never be happy unless I could like what you liked, and then I should be cross, and you would be vexed."

Tom was indignant. As if Ethel ever was cross! As if he ever could be vexed—with her!

"Oh, I can be desperately cross; and I assure you, Tom, you would very soon be vexed with me. Scientific specimens are all very well for a month, but you don't know how I should detest them if it were always!"

"I believe you have other reasons," declared Tom, with no small annoyance. "It's inconceivable that you should refuse me for nothing but this."

"I don't say I have no other reasons. Of course I have. But isn't one enough?" asked Ethel cheerfully.

"No; one isn't enough!" said wrathful Tom. "One isn't enough, especially when that one's not the true one! I believe you care a great deal too much for that fellow at the Grange."

Ethel's face flamed into anger, and she stood up to leave the room.

"Tom, if you are going to be rude, I have done with you. I didn't wish to hurt your feelings more than was needed; but as you are determined to have another reason, it's easy enough to give. I don't care an atom for you, and I never shall care! I don't want ever to see anything more of you at all."

Tom was crushed. He had done the business now, and no mistake. The proverbial dove flying in his face would not have amazed him more than this indignant outburst. He did not dare to follow Ethel; but presently he heard a step running downstairs, and when he looked out of the window, there was Ethel in the garden, dressed as for a walk.

Where could she be going? Darkness fell early these wintry afternoons. It would soon be dusk.

Tom saw nothing of Ethel for hours afterward. Nobody seemed to know where she had betaken herself. "In the parish, of course," everybody said, when Tom went about asking questions. At five-o'clock tea she did not become visible. Tom felt sufficiently punished; yet he began to count Ethel's absence almost a compliment. It seemed to clothe him with a certain fictitious importance.