The Old Helmet Volume I Part 24

There was no chance for more words; Julia came in again; and was thereafter bustling in and out, getting her cup of tea ready. Eleanor could not meet her little sister's looks and probable words; she turned hastily from the ferns and the couch and put herself at the window with her back to everybody. There was a wild cry in her heart--"What shall I do! what shall I do!" One thing she must have, or be miserable; how was she to make it her own. As soon as she turned her face from that cottage room and what was in it, she must meet the full blast of opposing currents; unfavourable, adverse, overwhelming. Her light was not strong enough to stand that blast, Eleanor knew; it would be blown out directly;--and she left in darkness. In a desperate sense of this, a desperate resolve to overcome it somehow, a despairing powerlessness to contend, she sat at the window seeing nothing. She was brought to herself at last by Julia's, "Eleanor--Mr. Rhys wants you to take a cup of tea." Eleanor turned round mechanically, took the cup, and changed her place for one near the fire.

She never forgot that scene. Julia's part in it gave it a most strange air to Eleanor; so did her own. Julia was moving about, quite at home, preparing cups of tea for everybody, herself included; and waiting upon Mr. Rhys with a steady care and affectionateness which evidently met with an affectionate return. The cottage room with its plain furniture--the little common blue cups in which the tea was served--the fire in the chimney on the coa.r.s.e iron fire-dogs--the reclining figure on the couch, and her own riding-habit in the middle of the room; were all stereotyped on Eleanor's memory for ever. The tea refreshed her very much.

"How are you going to get home, Miss Powle?" asked her host. "Have you sent for a carriage?"

"No--I saw n.o.body to send--I can walk it quite well now," said Eleanor.

And feeling that the time was come, she set down her tea-cup and came to bid her host good-bye; though she shrank from doing it. She gave him her hand again, but she had no words to speak.

"Good-bye," said he. "I am sorry I am not well enough to come and see you; I would take that liberty."

"And so I shall never see him again," thought Eleanor as she went out of the cottage; "and n.o.body will ever speak any more words to me of what I want to hear; and what will become of me! What chance shall I have very soon--what chance have I now--to attend to these things? to get right? and what chance would all these things have with Mr.

Carlisle? I could manage my mother. What will become of me!"

Eleanor walked and thought, both hard, till she got past the village; finding herself alone, thought got the better of haste, and she threw herself down under a tree to collect some order and steadiness in her mind if possible before other interests and distractions broke in. She sat with her face buried in her hands a good while. And one conclusion Eleanor's thoughts came to; that there was a thing more needful than other things; and that she would hold that one thing first in her mind, and keep it first in her endeavours, and make all her arrangements accordingly. Eleanor was young and untried, but her mind had a tolerable back-bone of stiffness when once aroused to take action; her conclusion meant something. She rose up, then; looked to see how far down the sun was; and turning to pursue her walk vigorously--found Mr.

Carlisle at her side. He was as much surprised as she.

"Why Eleanor! what are you doing here?"

"Trying to get home. I have been thrown from my pony."

"Thrown! where?"

"Away on the moor--I don't know where. I never was there before. I am not hurt."

"Then how come you here?"

"Walked here, sir."

"And where are your servants?"

"You forget. I am only Eleanor Powle--I do not go with a train after me."

But she was obliged to give an account of the whole affair.

"You must not go alone in that way again," said he decidedly. "Sit down again."

"Look where the sun is. I am going home," said Eleanor.

"Sit down. I am going to send for a carriage."

Eleanor protested, in vain. Mr. Carlisle sent his groom on to the Lodge with the message, and the heels of the horses were presently clattering in the distance. Eleanor stood still.

"I do not want rest," she insisted. "I am ready to walk home, and able.

I have been resting."

"How long?"

"A long while. I went into Mrs. Williams's cottage and rested there. I would rather go on."

He put her hand upon his arm and turned towards the Lodge, but permitted her after all to move only at the gentlest of rates.

"You will not go out in this way again?" he said; and the words were more an expression of his own will than an enquiry as to hers.

"There is no reason why I should not," Eleanor answered.

"I do not like that you should be walking over moors and taking shelter in cottages, without protection."

"I can protect myself. I know what is due to me."

"You must remember what is due to me," he said laughing, and stopping her lips when she would have replied. Eleanor walked along, silenced, and for the moment subdued. The wish was in her heart, to have let Mr.

Carlisle know in some degree what bent her spirit was taking; to have given him some hint of what he must expect in her when she became his wife; she could not find how to do it. She could not see the way to begin. So far was Mr. Carlisle from the whole world of religious interests and concerns, that to introduce it to him seemed like bringing opposite poles together. She walked by his side very silent and doubtful. He thought she was tired; put her into the carriage with great tenderness when it came; and at parting from her in the evening desired her to go early to rest.

Eleanor was very little likely to do it. The bodily adventures of the day had left little trace, or little that was regarded; the mental journey had been much more lasting in its effects. That night there was a young moon, and Eleanor sat at her window, looking out into the shadowy indistinctness of the outer world, while she tried to resolve the confusion of her mind into something like visible order and definiteness. Two points were clear, and seemed to loom up larger and clearer the longer she thought about them; her supreme need of that which she had not, the faith and deliverance of religion; and the adverse influence and opposition of Mr. Carlisle in all the efforts she might make to secure or maintain it. And under all this lurked a thought that was like a serpent for its unrecognized coming and going and for the sting it left,--a wish that she could put off her marriage.

No new thing in one way; Eleanor had never been willing it should be fixed for so early a day; nevertheless she had accepted and submitted to it, and become accustomed to the thought of it. Now repugnance started up anew and with fresh energy. She could hardly understand herself; her thoughts were a great turmoil; they went over and over some of the experiences of the day, with an aimless dwelling upon them; yet Eleanor was in general no dreamer. The words of Mr. Rhys, that had pierced her with a sense of duty and need--the looks, that even in the remembrance wrung her heart with their silent lesson-bearing--the sympathy testified for herself, which intensified all her own emotions,--and in contrast, the very tender and affectionate but supreme manner of Mr. Carlisle, in whose power she felt she was,--the alternation of these images and the thoughts they gave rise to, kept Eleanor at her window, until the young moon went down behind the western horizon and the night was dark with only stars. So dark she felt, and miserable; and over and over and over again her cry of that afternoon was re-echoed,--"What shall I do! what will become of me!"

Upon one thing she fixed. That Mr. Carlisle should know that he was not going to find a gay wife in her, but one whose mind was set upon somewhat else and upon another way of life. This would be very distasteful to him; and he should know it. How she would manage to let him know, Eleanor left to circ.u.mstances; but she went to bed with that point determined.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE BARN.

"It hath been the longest night That e'er I watched, and the most heaviest."

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."