The Maidens' Lodge Part 5

"She fancies so," said Rhoda, laughing. "I never knew her try yet but she went to sleep directly."

Unlocking a closet door which stood in their bedroom, and climbing on a chair to reach the top shelf, Rhoda produced a small volume bound in red sheepskin, which she introduced to Phoebe's notice with a rather grandiloquent air.

"Now, Phoebe! There's my Book of Poems!"

Phoebe opened the book, and her eye fell on a few lines of faint, delicate writing, on the fly-leaf.

"To Rhoda Peveril, with her Aunt Margaret's love."

"Oh, you have an aunt!" said Phoebe.

"I have two somewhere," said Rhoda. "They are good for nothing. They never give me anything."

Phoebe looked up with a rather surprised air. "They seem to do, sometimes," she observed, pointing to the book.

"Well, that one did," answered Rhoda; "one or two little things like that; but she is dead. The others are just a pair of spiteful old cats."

Phoebe's look of astonishment deepened.

"They must be very different from my aunt, then. I have only one, but I would not call her names for the world. She loves me, and I love her."

"Why, what are aunts good for but to be called names?" was the amiable response. "But now listen, Phoebe. I am going to read you a piece of my poetry. You see, our old church is dedicated to Saint Ursula; and there is an image in the church, which they say is Saint Ursula--it has such a charming face! Madam doesn't think 'tis charming, but I do. So you see, this poem is to that image."

Phoebe looked rather puzzled, but did not answer.

"Now, I would have you criticise, Phoebe," said Rhoda, condescendingly, using a word she had picked up from one of her grandfather's books.

"I don't know what that is," said Phoebe.

"Well, it means, if you hear anything you don't like, say so."

"Very well," replied Phoebe, quietly.

And Rhoda began to read, with the style of a rhetorician--as she supposed--

"Step softly, nearer as ye tread To this shrine of the royal dead!

This Abbey's hallowed unto one, Daughter of Britain's ancient throne,-- History names her one sole thing, The daughter of a British King."

Rhoda paused, and looked at her cousin--ostensibly for criticism, really for admiration. If Phoebe had said exactly what she thought, it would have been that her ear was cruelly outraged: but Phoebe was not accustomed to the sharp speeches which pa.s.sed for wit with Rhoda. She fell back on a matter of fact.

"Does history say nothing more about her?"

"Of course it does! It says the Vandals martyred her. Phoebe, you can't criticise poetry as if it were prose."

It struck Phoebe that Rhoda's poetry was very like prose; but she said meekly, "Please go on. I ask your pardon."

So Rhoda went on--

"Her glorious line has pa.s.sed away-- The wild dream of a by-gone day!

We know not from what throne she sprang, Britain is silent in her song--"

"What's the matter?" asked Rhoda, interrupting herself.

"I ask your pardon," said Phoebe again. "But--will _song_ do with _sprang_? And if Ursula was a real person, as I thought she had been, she wasn't a wild dream, was she?"

"Phoebe, I do believe you haven't a bit of taste!" said Rhoda. "I'll try you with one more verse, and then--

"O wake her not! Ages have pa.s.sed Since her fair eyelids closed at last."

"I should think, then, you would find it difficult to wake her,"

remarked Phoebe: but Rhoda went on as if she had not heard it,--

"For twice six hundred years, 'tis said, Hath rested 'neath yon tomb her head,-- That head which soft reposed of old On couch of satin and of gold."

"Dear!" was Phoebe's comment. "I didn't know they had satin sofas twelve hundred years ago."

"'Tis no earthly use reading poetry to you!" exclaimed Rhoda, throwing down the book. "You haven't one bit of feeling for it, no more than if it were a sermon I was reading! Tie your hood on, and make haste, and we'll go and see the Maidens."

Phoebe seemed rather troubled to have annoyed her cousin, though she evidently did not perceive how it had been effected. The girls tied on their hoods, and Rhoda, who was not really ill-natured, soon recovered herself when she got into the fresh air.

"Now, while we are going across the Park," she said, "I will tell you something about the old gentlewomen. I couldn't this morning, you know, more than their names, because there was Madam listening. But now, hark! Mrs Dolly Jennings--the one who came in first, you know, and sat over against Lady Betty--I don't know what kin she is, but there is some kin between her and the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. She is the oldest of the Maidens, and the best one to tell a story--except she falls to preaching, and then 'tis tiresome. Do you like sermons, Phoebe?"

"It all depends who preaches them," said Phoebe.

"Well, of course it does," said Rhoda. "I don't like anyone but Dr Harris--he has such white hands!"

"He does not preach about them, does he?" said Phoebe, apparently puzzled as to the connection.

"Oh, he nourishes them about, and discovers so many elegancies!"

answered Rhoda.

"But how does that make him preach better?"

"Why, Phoebe, how stupid you are! But you must not interrupt me in that way, or I shall never be done. Mrs Dolly, you see, is seventy or more; and in her youth she was in the great world. So she has all manner of stories, and she'll always tell them when you ask her. I only wish she did not preach! Well, then, Mrs Jane Talbot--that one with the high nose, that sat next Mrs Dolly in the coach--she has lively parts enough, and that turn makes her very agreeable. I don't care for her sister, Mrs Marcella, that lives next her--she's always having some distemper, and I don't like sick people. Mrs Clarissa Vane is the least well-born of all of them; but she's been a toast, you see, and she fancies herself charming, poor old thing! As for Lady Betty--weren't you surprised? I believe Madam pays her a good lot to live there; it gives the place an air, you know. She is Sir Richard Delawarr's aunt, and he is the great man all about here--all the land that way belongs to him, as far as you can see. He is of very good family--an old Norman house. They are thought a great deal of, you know."

"But isn't that strange?" said Phoebe, meditatively. "If Sir Richard is thought more of because his forefathers came from France six hundred years ago, why is my grandfather thought less of because he came from France thirty years ago?"

"O Phoebe! It is not the same thing at all!"

"But why is it not the same thing?" gently persisted Phoebe.

"Oh, nonsense!" said Rhoda, cutting the knot peremptorily. "Phoebe, can you speak French?"

"Yes."

"Have a care you don't let Madam hear you! Who taught you?--your father?"

"Yes. He said it was our own language."