CHAPTER XIII.

A VISIT TO ELDERBERRY LODGE.

"Children, ay, forsooth, They bring their own love with them when they come, But if they come not there is peace and rest; The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more: Why, the world's full of them, and so is heaven-- They are not rare."--_Jean Ingelow._

The girls had lingered so long at the vicarage that Cathy postponed their intended walk until after luncheon; but as soon as it was over they sallied forth again, this time with Emmie.

They went through the length and breadth of the village, peeped into the schools, visited one or two of the cottages, crossing Langley more than once on their path; and Queenie was again struck with the bright cheerfulness and cleanliness of the whole place. She took an especial fancy to the post-office--a pretty rustic-looking cottage, with a long garden full of sweet old-fashioned flowers.

"Cathy, I have fallen in love with this place," she said at last. "I think life would go on peacefully and well here; look, Emmie, at this empty cottage; is not this just the one you always wanted to live in with Caleb?"

They had just passed the turning that led to Church-Stile House; beyond were a cluster of new-built villas. Emmie clapped her hands and ran breathlessly across the road.

"It has a board up 'to let.' Oh, Queen, do let us go over it, just for fun; it is such a dear, sweet little house; and what a long garden!--look."

"We can go in if you like," returned Cathy, smiling at the child's eagerness. "I know the woman who takes care of it; it is rather a pretty place, though ill-kept and desolate. I heard Garth say it would let for a mere song."

Queenie did not answer; a strange thought had been agitating her all the morning, a possibility and a probability that had taken tremendous hold of her mind. An odd feeling came over her as she followed Cathy through the little gate--one of those weird over-shadowings or pre-visions that baffle metaphysicians. The place somehow seemed familiar to her; had she seen it in a dream? A dim sense that it belonged to her, that she had trodden that path before, and peeped through the lattice windows, oppressed her with a giddy unreality. Had she conjured it up among the shadows of the old garret? or had she seen a place so nearly approximate that its similarity deceived her? She gave Emmie's hand an involuntary squeeze as they stood in the little porch.

It was certainly a pretty place, in spite of the air of neglect and disuse that pervaded everything. A long narrow lawn in front ran down to the road; opposite was the smart grocer's shop, and the lane that led to the church and vicarage.

Some laburnums and lilacs grew near the house; there was a little border for flowers under the windows: only a ragged-looking Sweet-William and some weeds grew there now. Behind, an ill-kept lawn sloped down to the house, running on to the back door, giving it a waste, barren look, and imparting an air of dampness to the whole place.

The inside was a little less dreary: the low lattice window, odd-shaped and diamond-paned, gave a picturesque finish to the rooms; the little square hall was pleasant. There were two sitting-rooms, one much smaller than the other, with a front view that was sufficiently cheerful; and a large bare-looking apartment, with two windows looking out on the steep green waste behind. Nettles and docks and festoons of coarse-looking ivy climbed about the window ledges. The kitchen was small and dull. Upstairs, three rooms in different stages of dampness opened out on the dark landing. Some of the paper was torn off, and hung in moist curling lengths. A scurry and patter of tiny feet sounded beside them; they were evidently tenanted by families of mice.

"It is a miserable place after all," observed Cathy. "Take care, one of those boards are rotten, Emmie; my foot nearly went through just now."

"I don't know," returned Queenie, hesitatingly, "I think I have taken a fancy to it; it might be made very pretty with fresh papers and a little paint. To whom does it belong?"

"To Captain Fawcett. We are going there directly; Langley has given me a message for Mrs. Fawcett. Oh! do come to the window a moment, Queen; there is Mrs. Morris stopping at the corner to speak to the three Miss Palmers. Look at the dear old creatures, dressed just alike. There you have all the aristocracy of Hepshaw, with the exception of Church-Stile House and the vicarage people."

"Do you mean that constitutes your society?" inquired Queenie, pressing closer to the dirty panes, and trying to inspect critically the flock of womanhood gathered round Greyson's smart window.

"What would you ask more?" returned her companion drily; "we don't have balls and concerts in Hepshaw. To dine with the Fawcetts and drink tea with Mrs. Morris and the Miss Palmers are our sole dissipation. Ted finds so much tea a little intoxicating, and prefers sometimes staying at home; but Langley and Garth always do their duty manfully."

"I like the look of Mrs. Morris, she is tall and graceful-looking; but I cannot see her face under that brown mushroom. Is she nice, Cath?"

"Hum! there are widows and widows. She is not the 'widow indeed' St. Paul talks about; but I won't tell tales. She has a pretty home, and seven little hopes, more or less red-haired, like the deceased and ever-lamented Major Morris--the dear Edmund to whose loss she owes her present blighted and remarkably healthy existence."

"Cathy, how can you take off people so! I tell you I like the look of her."

"So do I. She has white teeth and bright eyes, which she knows how to use. Do you see the direction they are taking now? 'why tarry the wheels of his chariot!' Isn't that our waggonette coming up from Warstdale? Never mind my nonsense, Queenie; we must talk gossip sometimes in this dreary place. Mrs. Morris is very good-natured and very clever, and the seven little hopes are clean, wholesome children."

"Look! your brother is stopping to speak to them."

"Of course; as though he would pass the Palmers! You have no idea how fond the dear old ladies are of him. They pet him, and knit endless mittens and comforters for him; he has a drawer full, I believe. Look at them now, wagging their old heads and fluttering round him like a flock of grey pigeons; that is Miss Faith, his favorite, near him now."

"Faith; what a curious name!"

"Oh, they are all a cardinal virtue; they must have had devout parents. The eldest is Hope, then comes Prudence and Charity, and lastly, Faith. Faith is much the nicest and the prettiest; she is comparatively young too."

"I should like to go and see them."

"Then you shall, but not this afternoon; we shall only have time for the Fawcetts. Their house is full of curious odds and ends, and though they dress alike they have separate rooms, which they have furnished after their own taste. I must coax them to let you see them; it will give you an insight into their characters."

"And they have none of them married," exclaimed Queenie, with a girl's involuntary pity for the monotonous existence of single blessedness.

"How could they!" returned Cathy, with a puzzled elevation of her eyebrows. "They have lived in Hepshaw all their lives; they could not have possibly seen any gentleman except the Vicar, and I dare say he was married. You would not have a clergyman's daughter commit the unpardonable crime of entering into a _mésalliance_ with the inn-keeper or the chemist!" continued Cathy, drawing down her lips at the corner, and speaking in a "prunes-and-prism" voice. "That is Miss Hope; and so the poor cardinal virtues have wasted all their sweetness on the desert air."

"How very sad," began Queenie; but Cathy suddenly cut her short.

"Not at all," was the somewhat stormy rejoinder; "people are just as well without marrying. For my part, I think men are a mistake. I am sick to death of school-girl rubbish; half the girls at Miss Titheridge's pretended to be in love, and with such creatures too! any masculine face approaching to the ideal of a barber's block was pronounced handsome, fascinating. You know how you hated it all, Queenie."

"As I hate all sham."

"Faugh! the thought of all the three-volume trash I swallowed gives me moral dyspepsia even now. I recollect it was the fashion one term to have a _cœur serré_; every one had an experience or a disappointment. I know half the school was in love with Garth. Well, we have flattened our faces long enough against this bottle-green glass; now we must go on to Elderberry Lodge."

"Is that Captain Fawcett's?"

"Yes; Mrs. Morris's, next door, is the Sycamores, and the Miss Palmers' is the Evergreens. Now I have talked myself hoarse for your benefit; it is your ladyship's turn now. There is the Captain himself working in his front garden; is he not a fine-looking man, Queenie?"

Queenie acquiesced, as the tall soldierly figure walked down to the gate to greet them. She liked the brown weather-beaten face, with its grizzled moustache and closely-cropped head, looking as though it were covered with grey bristles.

"Good afternoon, ladies. I saw Miss Clayton just now, and she told me you were coming. Fine weather for the crops; I was just pottering among my geraniums. Sit down, both of you, while I go into the house and find my little woman; she's palavering with the maids somewhere."

"Please don't hurry her, Captain Fawcett; we shall be very comfortable out here under this awning. Isn't this a delicious little garden? look at those roses and bee-hives. Bless you, the Captain's garden is his hobby; he spends the greater part of his time working here, and in his kitchen-garden. He has the greatest show of flowers for miles round."

"Have they no children?"

"They had one, a girl, but she died. I almost wish we had not brought Emmie; I think Alice was just twelve when she caught the fever. It is eight or nine years ago, but they have never got over it. Ah, there comes the Captain with his 'little woman.'"

Queenie stifled an exclamation as she rose from her seat. Mrs. Fawcett was as tall as her husband,--a thin, long-necked woman, fully six feet high, and gaunt almost to scragginess.

She had a worn, anxious-looking face; it was difficult to imagine it had ever been young or good-looking. The prominent teeth, high cheekbones, and scanty grey hair, told no tale of past beauty. It was a plain face, grown plainer with age. She looked like a caricature of her husband's taste beside his handsome old face and grand figure.

Her hand-shake was almost masculine in its grasp, and her voice was harsh, but not ungentle; but both face and voice softened strangely at the first sight of Emmie. The husband and wife exchanged looks.

"Do you see, Captain?"

"Aye, aye, missus, I see."

"Is this your little sister, Miss Marriott? Come to me, darling; how old are you?"

"Twelve," repeated Emmie, looking up in her face with solemn blue eyes. Emmie rarely smiled with strangers.

"Twelve; do you hear that, Joshua?"

"Aye, aye, I hear it, little woman."

"Just her age," repeated the wife hurriedly, laying her hand on his arm, while her eyes filled with tears.

"Twelve years and three months," he repeated involuntarily.

"And she has Alice's blue eyes too,--your own color, Captain."

The girls had listened with silent sympathy to this brief interchange of sorrowful questioning; but now Emmie interrupted them. She drew closer to Mrs. Fawcett, and laid a hand confidingly on her lap.

"Was Alice the name of your little girl? Cathy said you had one."

"Hush, Emmie; come here to me, love;" but Emmie hung back from her friend's extended hand.

"Yes; her name was Alice; she is still my little girl," returned the poor mother, speaking with her pure maternal faith, and unconsciously verifying the eternity of love; "the treasure once given never really lost, only lent to safe keeping."

"Of course she is your little girl," was Emmie's answer. "You mean to see her again some day, only she is not keeping house with you now; perhaps she would have got tired. God would know all about that; He does not like children to be tired; He was very nearly taking me away for the same reason, only I got rested somehow."

"Captain, do you hear that?"

"Aye, poor bairn; too big a mind for so small a body."

"Am I like her?" persisted Emmie curiously, looking up into the plain face, now softened into motherly comeliness, the beautifier, love, smoothing out irregularities and roughnesses even on Mrs. Fawcett's unloving visage.

Queenie heard afterwards that she had never been handsome even in her youth, but that she had been loved, as some plain women are by men, with a constancy and devotion which many a spoiled beauty fails to win. "He must have seen the real goodness shining behind her plainness," Cathy said afterwards, when Queenie and she talked the matter over.

"Are you like her, darling?" answered Mrs. Fawcett, mournfully. "You have her large blue eyes; but, until she fell ill, she had rosy cheeks and long dark curls. She was the very image of her father, the dear angel."

"My hair has been cut off," returned Emmie, pointing to the soft little rings just peeping under her cap; "it means to curl too some day. I have always longed for curls; so the angels always have them in pictures."

"Come with me, my little maid, and look at my roses," interrupted the Captain, reading his wife's troubled countenance aright. The tears streamed over the thin face as Emmie trotted happily away with him.

"That is just the way they walked hand in hand every morning to look at the roses," sobbed the poor mother. "'Father's roses' were the last words Alice ever said; 'I should like one of father's roses'; and when he went out to pick her one she put her head down on my shoulder and then she was gone."

Queenie's long eye-lashes glittered with sympathizing tears. She could enter into all; she had so nearly lost Emmie. She thought of the father going down to his garden to pick red and white roses for the little dead hand that could not open to receive them. "My beloved is gone down into his garden to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies": those beautiful words of the Canticles came into her mind. What if in Paradise, while parents wept below for them that are not, the children they had lost went in bright bands after One who died for them, "when He went down into His garden to gather lilies!"

The girls were rather subdued when they bade good-bye to the good Captain and his wife, and turned into the little lane. Cathy pushed her hat restlessly from her forehead; some thought or discontent wrinkled it.

"What lots of good people there are in the world after all," she half grumbled.

"There are two there," returned her friend, with a gesture of her hands towards Elderberry Lodge. "My visit there has made me sad, and yet it has done me good. I am so glad we went, Cathy."

"Good people seem to agree with you; they never make you discontented, as they do me."

"No; I like standing on tiptoe till my neck aches. I love size, bigness, grand moral structure; it does one good to breathe the same air with some people; it is like resting on a hill-top and enjoying a wide beautiful view. I don't mind at all being a pigmy among giants. If I had been Gulliver I should have had small sympathy with the Lilliputians. Littleness of mind is abhorrent to me."

"There you go," grumbled Cathy; "you sensible people are enough to drive one crazy. Over-much goodness makes me vixenish; I feel inclined to fly in the face of it."

"You foolish child."

"Mr. Logan is often too much for me, and so is Miss Cosie; I run away from them both sometimes. I'll own, if you like, the disease is infectious to those predisposed to it. If you stay long enough in their vicinity you might catch it, you know. Prevention is better than cure; so, for fear I get too good, I just run away," finished Cathy in her droll manner.

In the front court they came upon Garth digging up a little flower-border under the hall window. He threw down his spade when he saw them.

"Well, I've settled about the picnic in the granite quarry. We go to-morrow."

"Garth, you are a brick; I mean a dear old fellow. Oh," folding her hands pathetically, "don't tell of me, the word only slipped out just by accident. Have you really arranged it?"

"Yes; I have had a talk with Langley. She says we must not lose the fine weather. It is not to be a grand affair, mind. Only the Logans, and Fawcetts, and Miss Faith; yes, and Harry Chester."

"King Karl! Oh, I am so glad. Why, when did you see him?"

"He and Nanette are in there," pointing to the drawing-room. "Don't let me keep you if you want to introduce him to Miss Marriott," as Cathy looked eager and irresolute. "He is a very old friend of ours, and a great favorite with the whole family," he continued, speaking to Queenie; "in fact, Harry is a favorite with every one."

"Let her judge for herself," returned his sister, impatiently. "Come, Queenie, let us go in; I have set my heart on being the first to introduce you to the King of Karldale."