The Old Helmet. Volume I

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE BARN

Good resolutions are sometimes excellent things, but they are susceptible of overturns. Eleanor's met with one.

She was sitting with Mr. Carlisle the very next day, in a disturbed mood of mind; for he and her mother had been laying plans and making dispositions with reference to her approaching marriage; plans and dispositions in which her voice was not asked, and in which matters were carried rapidly forward towards their consummation. Eleanor felt that bands and chains were getting multiplied round her, fastening her more and more in the possession of her captor, while her own mind was preparing what would be considered resistance to the authority thus secured. The sooner she spoke the better; but how to begin? She bent over her embroidery frame with cheeks that gradually grew burning hot. The soft wind that blew in from the open window at her side would not cool them. Mr. Carlisle came and sat down beside her.

"What does all this mean?" said he laughingly, drawing his finger softly over Eleanor's rich cheek.

"It's hot!" said Eleanor.

"Is it? I have the advantage of you. It is the perfection of a day to me."

"Eleanor," cried Julia, bounding in through the window, "Mr. Rhys is better to-day. He says so."

"Is he?" said Eleanor.

"Yes; you know how weak he was yesterday; he is not quite so weak to-day."

"Who is Mr. Rhys?" said Mr. Carlisle.

"O he is nice! Eleanor says nice rhymes to Rhys. Wasn't my tea nice, Eleanor? We had Miss Broadus to tea this afternoon. We had you yesterday and Miss Broadus to-day. I wonder who will come next."

"Is this a sick friend you have been visiting?" said Mr. Carlisle, as Julia ran off, having accomplished the discomfiture of her sister.

"No, not at all – only I stopped at Mrs. Williams' cottage to rest yesterday; and he lives there."

"You saw him?"

"Yes; Julia found me, and I could not help seeing him."

"But you took tea there, Eleanor? With whom?"

"I took tea with Julia and her sick friend. Why not? She was making a cup of tea for him and gave me one. I was very glad of it. There was no one else in the house."

"How is your sister allowed to do such things?"

"For a sick friend, Mr. Carlisle? I think it is well anybody's part to do such things."

"I think I will forbid embroidery frames at the Priory, if they are to keep me from seeing your eyes," said he, with one arm drawing her back from the frame and with the other hand taking her fingers from it, and looking into her face, but kissing her. "Now tell me, who is this gentleman?"

Eleanor was irritated; yet the assumption of authority, calm and proud as it was, had a mixture of tenderness which partly soothed her. The demand however was imperious. Eleanor answered.

"He was Alfred's tutor – you have seen him – he has been very ill all summer. He is a sick man, staying in the village."

"And what have you to do with such a person?"

"Nothing in the world! I stopped there to rest myself, because I was too tired to walk home."

He smiled at her kindling indignation, and gave her a kiss by way of forgiveness for it; then went on gravely.

"You have been to that cottage before, Eleanor?"

"Yes."

"How was that?"

"I went with Julia when she was carrying some refreshments to her sick friend. I will do that for anybody, Mr. Carlisle."

"Say that over again," he said calmly, but with a manner that shewed he would have it. And Eleanor could not resist.

"I would do that for anybody, Macintosh," she said gently, laying her hand upon his arm.

"No, darling. You shall send nurses and supplies to all the folk in the kingdom – if you will – but you shall pay such honour as this to nobody but me."

"Mr. Carlisle," said Eleanor rousing again, "if I am not worthy your trust, I am not fit to do either you or anybody else honour."

She had straightened herself up to face him as she said this, but it was mortifying to feel how little she could rouse him. He only drew her back into his arms, folding her close and kissing her again and again.

"You are naughty," he said, "but you are good. You are as sweet as a rose, Eleanor. My wife will obey me, in a few things, and she shall command me in all others. Darling, I wish you not to be seen in the village again alone. Let some one attend you, if I am not at hand."

He suffered her to return to her embroidery; but though Eleanor's heart beat and her cheek was flushed with contending feelings, she could not find a word to say. Her heart rebelled against the authority held over her; nevertheless it subdued her; she dared not bring her rebellion into open light. She shrank from that; and hid now in her own thoughts all the new revelations she had meant to draw forth for Mr. Carlisle's entertainment. Now was no time. In fact Eleanor's consciousness made her afraid that if she mentioned her religious purposes and uneasiness, this man's acuteness would catch at the connecting link between the new dereliction of duty and the former which had been just rebuked. That would lay her open to imputations and suspicions too dishonouring to be risked, and impossible to disprove, however false. She must hold her tongue for the present; and Eleanor worked on at her embroidery, her fingers pulling at it energetically, while feeling herself much more completely in another's power than it suited her nature to be. Somehow at this time the vision of Rythdale Priory was not the indemnification it had seemed to her before. Eleanor liked Mr. Carlisle, but she did not like to be governed by him; although with an odd inconsistency, it was that very power of government which formed part of his attraction. Certainly women are strange creatures. Meanwhile she tugged on at her work with a hot cheek and a divided mind, and a wisely silent tongue; and M. Carlisle sat by and made himself very busy with her, finding out ways of being both pleasant and useful. Finally he put a stop to the embroidery and engaged Eleanor in a game of chess with him; began to teach her how to play it, and succeeded in getting her thoroughly interested and diverted from her troublesome thoughts. They returned as soon as he left her.

"I can never speak to him about my religious feelings," mused Eleanor as she walked slowly to her own room, – "never! I almost think, if I did, he would find means to cheat me out of them, in spite of all my determinations – until it would be too late. What is to become of me? What a double part I shall play now – my heart all one way, my outer life all another. It must be so. I can shew these thoughts to no one. Will they live, shut up in the dark so?"

Mr. Rhys's words about "seeking" recurred to her. Eleanor did not know how, and felt strange. "I could follow his prayers, if I heard them," she said to herself; – "I do not know how to set about it. I suppose reading the Bible is good – that and good books."

And that Eleanor tried. Good books however were by and by given up; none that she had in the least suited her wants; only the Bible proved both a light and a power to her. It had a great fascination for Eleanor, and it sometimes made her hopeful; at any rate she persevered in reading it, through gloom and cheer; and her mind when she was alone knew much more of the former condition than of the latter. When not alone, she was in a whirl of other occupations and interests. The preparations for her marriage went on diligently; Eleanor saw it and knew it, and would not help though she could not hinder. But she was very far from happy. The style and title of Lady Rythdale had faded in her imagination; other honour and glory, though dimly seen, seemed more desirable to Eleanor now, and seemed endangered by this. She was very uneasy. She struggled between the remaining sense of pride, which sometimes arose to life, and this thought of something better; at other times she felt as if her marriage with Mr. Carlisle would doom her forever to go without any treasure but what an earthly coronet well lined with ermine might symbolize and ensure. Meanwhile weeks flew by; while Eleanor studied the Bible and sought for light in her solitary hours at night, and joined in all Mr. Carlisle's plans of gayety by day. September and October were both gone. November's short days begun. And when the days should be at the shortest – "Then," thought Eleanor, "my fate will be settled. Mr. Carlisle will have me; and I can never disobey him. I cannot now."

November reached the middle, and there wanted but little more than a month to the wedding-day. Eleanor sat one morning in her garden parlour, which a mild day made pleasant; working by the glass door. The old thought, "What will become of me!" was in her heart. A shadow darkened the door. Eleanor looked up, fearing to see Mr. Carlisle; it was her little sister Julia.

Julia opened the door and came in. "It is nice in the garden, Eleanor," she said. "The chrysanthemums are so beautiful as I never saw them – white and yellow and orange and rose-colour, and a hundred colours. They are beautiful, Eleanor."

"Yes."

"May I have a great bunch of them to take to Mr. Rhys?"

"Have what you like. I thought you used to take them without asking."

Julia looked serious.

"I wish I could go down to the village to-night, I know" – she said.

"To-night! What do you wish that for?"

"Because, Mr. Rhys is going to preach; and I do want to go so much; but I can't."

"Going to preach! – why is he so well as that?"

"He isn't well at all," said Julia, – "not what you would call well. But he says he is well. He is white and weak enough yet; and I don't think that is being well. He can't go to Lily Dale nor to Rythdale; so some of the people are coming to Wiglands."

"Where is he going to preach?"

"Where do you think? In Mr. Brooks's barn. They won't let him preach at the inn, and he can't have the church; and I do want to see how he can preach in the barn!"

Mr. Brooks was a well-to-do farmer, a tenant of the Rythdale estate, living near the road to the old priory and half a mile from the village of Wiglands. A consuming desire seized Eleanor to do as her little sister had said – hear Mr. Rhys preach. The desire was so violent that it half frightened her with the possibility of its fulfilment.

She told Julia that it was an absurd wish, and impracticable, and dismissed her; and then her whole mind focussed itself on Mr. Brooks's barn. Eleanor saw nothing else through the morning, whatever she was doing. It was impossible! yet it was a first, last, and only chance, perhaps in her life, of hearing the words of truth so spoken as she knew they would be in that place that night. Besides, she had a craving curiosity to know how they would be spoken. One month more, Eleanor once securely lodged in Rythdale Priory, and her chance of hearing any words whatever spoken in a barn, was over for ever; unless indeed she condescended to become an inspector of agricultural proceedings. Yet she said to herself over and over that she had no chance now; that her being present was a matter of wild impossibility; she said it and re-said it, and with every time a growing consciousness that impossibility should not stop her. At last impossibility shaped itself into a plan.

"I am going down to see Jane Lewis, mamma," was Eleanor's announcement at luncheon.

"To day, Eleanor?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"But Mr. Carlisle will be here, and he will not like it."

"He will have enough of me by and by, ma'am. I shall may be never have another chance of taking care of Jane. I know she wants to see me, and I am going to-day. And if she wants me very much, I shall stay all night; so you need not send."

"What will Mr. Carlisle say to all that?"

"He will say nothing to it, if you do not give him an opportunity, mamma. I am going, at all events."

"Eleanor, I am afraid you have almost too much independence, for one who is almost a married woman."

"Is independence a quality entirely given up, ma'am, when 'the ring is on'?"

"Certainly! I thought you knew that. You must make up your mind to it. You are a noble creature, Eleanor; but my comfort is that Mr. Carlisle will know how to manage you. I never could, to my satisfaction. I observe he has brought you in pretty well."

Eleanor left the room; and if the tide of her independence could have run higher, her mother's words would have furnished the necessary provocative.

Jane Lewis was a poor girl in the village; the daughter of one who had been Eleanor's nurse, and who now old and infirm, and unable to do much for herself or others, watched the declining days of her child without the power to give them much relief. Jane was dying with consumption. The other member of the family was the old father, still more helpless; past work and dependent on another child for all but the house they lived in. That, in earlier days, had been made their own. Eleanor was their best friend, and many a day, and night too, had been a sunbeam of comfort in the poor house. She now, when the day was far enough on its wane, provided herself with a little basket of grapes, ordered her pony, and rode swiftly down to the village; not without attendance this time, though confessing bitterly to herself the truth of her mother's allegations. At the cottage door she took the basket; ordered the pony should come for her next morning at eight o'clock, and went into the cottage; feeling as if she had for a little space turned her back upon troublesome people and things and made herself free. She went in softly, and was garrulously welcomed by her old nurse and her husband. It was so long since they had seen her! and she was going to be such a great lady! and they knew she would not forget them nevertheless. It was not flattery. It was true speech. Eleanor asked for Jane, and with her basket went on into the upper little room where the sick girl lay. There felt, when she had got above the ground floor, as if she was tolerably safe.

It was a little low room under the thatch, in which Eleanor now hid herself. A mere large closet of a room, though it boasted of a fireplace, happily. A small lattice under the shelving roof let in what it could of the light of a dying November day. The bed with its sick occupant, two chairs, a little table, and a bit of carpet on the floor, were all the light revealed. Eleanor's welcome here was also most sincere; less talkative, it was yet more glad than that given by the old couple down stairs; a light shone all over the pale face of the sick girl, and the weary eye kindled, at sight of her friend.

Extreme neatness was not the characteristic of this little low room, simply for want of able hands to ensure it. Eleanor's first work was to set Jane to eating grapes; her next, to put the place in tidy order. "Lady Rythdale shall be useful once more in her life," she thought. She brushed up the floor, swept the hearth, demolished cobwebs on the walls, and rubbed down the chairs. She had borrowed an apron and cap from old Mrs. Lewis. The sick girl watched her with eager eyes.

"I can't bear to see you a doing of that, Miss Eleanor," she exclaimed.

"Hush, Jane! Eat your grapes."

"You've a kind heart," said the girl sighing; "and it's good when them that has the power has the feelings."

"How are your nights now, Jane?"

"They're tedious – I lie awake so; and then I get coughing. I am always so glad to see the light come in the mornings! but it's long a coming now. I can't get nobody to hear me at night if I want anything."

"Do you often want something?"

"Times, I do. Times, I get out of wanting, because I can't have – and times I only want worse."

"What do you want, Jane?"

"Well, Miss Eleanor, – I conceit I want to see somebody. The nights is very long – and in the dark and by myself – I gets feared."

To Eleanor's dismay she perceived Jane was weeping.

"What in the world are you afraid of, Jane? I never saw you so before."

"'Tisn't of anything in this world, Miss Eleanor," said Jane. Her face was still covered with her hands, and the grapes neglected.

Eleanor was utterly confounded. Had Jane caught her feeling? or was this something else?