The Old Helmet Volume I Part 33

Eleanor's glance of amused curiosity, rewarded him.

"Are you expecting now, that I shall ask for it?"

"No; it would not be like you. You do not ask me for anything--that you can help, Eleanor. I shall have to make myself cunning in inventing situations of need that will drive you to it. It is pleasanter to me than you can imagine, to have your eyes seek mine with a request in them."

Eleanor coloured.

"There are the fieldfares!" she exclaimed presently.

"What is there melancholy in that?" said Mr. Carlisle laughingly.

"Nothing. Why?"

"You made the announcement as if you found it so."

"I was thinking of the time I saw the fieldfares last,--when they were gathering together preparing for their taking flight; and now here they are back again! It seems so little while--and yet it seems a long while too. The summer has gone."

"I am glad it has!" said Mr. Carlisle. "And I am glad Autumn has had the discretion to follow it. I make my bow to the fieldfares."

"You will not expect me to echo that," said Eleanor.

"No. Not now. I will make you do it by and by."

He thought a good deal of his power, Eleanor said to herself as she glanced at him; and sighed as she remembered that she did so too. She was afraid to say anything more. It had not been so pleasant a summer to her that she would have wished to live it over again; yet was she very sorry to know it gone, for more reasons than it would do to let Mr. Carlisle see.

"You do not believe that?" he said, coming with his brilliant eyes to find her out where her thoughts had plunged her. Eleanor came forth of them immediately and answered.

"No more, than that one of those fieldfares, if you should catch it and fasten a leash round its neck, would say it was well done that its time of free flying was over."

"My bird shall soar higher from the perch where I will place her, than ever she ventured before."

"Ay, and stoop to your lure, Mr. Carlisle!"

He laughed at this flash, and took instant tribute of the lips whose sauciness tempted him.

"Do you wonder," he said softly, "that I want to have my ta.s.sel-gentle on my hand?"

Eleanor coloured again, and was wisely silent.

"I am afraid you are not ambitious, Eleanor."

"Is that such a favourite vice, that you wish I were?"

"Vice! It is a virtue, say rather; but not for a woman," he added in a different tone. "No, I do not wish you any more of it, Nellie, than a little education will give."

"You are mistaken, though, Macintosh. I am very ambitious," Eleanor said gravely.

"Pray in what line? Of being able to govern Tippoo without my help?"

"Is it Tippoo that I am to ride to-day?"

"Yes. I will give you a lesson. What line does your ambition take, darling?"

"I have a great ambition--higher and deeper than you can think--to be a great deal better than myself."

She said it lowly and seriously, in a way that sufficiently spoke her earnestness. It was just as well to let Mr. Carlisle know now and then which way her thoughts travelled. She did not look up till the consciousness of his examining eyes upon her made her raise her own.

His look was intent and silent, at first grave, and then changing into a very sunny smile with the words--

"My little Saint Eleanor?"--

They were inimitably spoken; it is difficult to say how. The graciousness, and affection, and only a very little tender raillery discernible with them, at once smote and won Eleanor. What could she do to make amends to this man for letting him love her, but to be his wife and give him all the good she could? She answered his smile, and if hers was shy and slight it was also so gentle that Mr. Carlisle was more than content.

"If you have no other ambition than that," he said, "then the wise man is proved wrong who said that moderation is the sloth of the soul, as ambition is its activity."

"Who said that?"

"Rochefoucauld, I believe."

"Like him--" said Eleanor.

"How is that? wise?"

"No indeed; false."

"He was a philosopher, and you are not even a student in that school."

"He was not a true man; and that I know by the lights he never knew."

"He told the time of day by the world's clock, Eleanor. You go by a private sun-dial of your own."

"The sun is right, Mr. Carlisle! He was a vile old maligner of human nature."

"Where did you learn to know him so well?" said Mr. Carlisle, amused.

"You may well ask. I used to study French sentences out of him; because they were in nice little detached bits; and when I came to understand him I judged him accordingly."

"By the sun. Few men will stand that, Eleanor. Give an instance."

"We are in the village."

"I see it."

"I told you I wanted to make a visit, Macintosh."

"May I go too?"

"Why certainly; but I am afraid you will not know what to do with yourself. It is at the house of Mrs. Lewis,--my old nurse."

"Do you think I never go into cottages?" said he smiling.