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OLDCASTLE HALL.
About noon, on a lovely autumn day, I set out for Oldcastle Hall.
The keenness of the air had melted away with the heat of the sun,
yet still the air was fresh and invigorating. Can any one tell me
why it is that, when the earth is renewing her youth in the spring,
man should feel feeble and low-spirited, and gaze with bowed head,
though pleased heart, on the crocuses; whereas, on the contrary, in
the autumn, when nature is dying for the winter, he feels strong and
hopeful, holds his head erect, and walks with a vigorous step,
though the flaunting dahlias discourage him greatly? I do not ask
for the physical causes: those I might be able to find out for
myself; but I ask, Where is the rightness and fitness in the thing?
Should not man and nature go together in this world which was made
for man--not for science, but for man? Perhaps I have some
glimmerings of where the answer lies. Perhaps "I see a cherub that
sees it." And in many of our questions we have to be content with
such an approximation to an answer as this. And for my part I am
content with this. With less, I am not content.
Whatever that answer may be, I walked over the old Gothic bridge
with a heart strong enough to meet Mrs Oldcastle without flinching.
I might have to quarrel with her--I could not tell: she certainly
was neither safe nor wholesome. But this I was sure of, that I would
not quarrel with her without being quite certain that I ought. I
wish it were NEVER one's duty to quarrel with anybody: I do so hate
it. But not to do it sometimes is to smile in the devil's face, and
that no one ought to do. However, I had not to quarrel this time.
The woods on the other side of the river from my house, towards
which I was now walking, were of the most sombre rich colour--sombre
and rich, like a life that has laid up treasure in heaven, locked in
a casket of sorrow. I came nearer and nearer to them through the
village, and approached the great iron gate with the antediluvian
monsters on the top of its stone pillars. And awful monsters they
were--are still! I see the tail of one of them at this very moment.
But they let me through very quietly, notwithstanding their evil
looks. I thought they were saying to each other across the top of
the gate, "Never mind; he'll catch it soon enough." But, as I said,
I did not catch it that day; and I could not have caught it that
day; it was too lovely a day to catch any hurt even from that most
hurtful of all beings under the sun, an unwomanly woman.
I wandered up the long winding road, through the woods which I had
remarked flanking the meadow on my first walk up the river. These
woods smelt so sweetly--their dead and dying leaves departing in
sweet odours--that they quite made up for the absence of the
flowers. And the wind--no, there was no wind--there was only a
memory of wind that woke now and then in the bosom of the wood,
shook down a few leaves, like the thoughts that flutter away in
sighs, and then was still again.
I am getting old, as I told you, my friends. (See there, you seem my
friends already. Do not despise an old man because he cannot help
loving people he never saw or even heard of.) I say I am getting
old--(is it BUT or THEREFORE? I do not know which)--but, therefore,
I shall never forget that one autumn day in those grandly fading
woods.
Up the slope of the hillside they rose like one great rainbow-billow
of foliage--bright yellow, red-rusty and bright fading green, all
kinds and shades of brown and purple. Multitudes of leaves lay on
the sides of the path, so many that I betook myself to my old
childish amusement of walking in them without lifting my feet,
driving whole armies of them with ocean-like rustling before me. I
did not do so as I came back. I walked in the middle of the way
then, and I remember stepping over many single leaves, in a kind of
mechanico-merciful way, as if they had been living creatures--as
indeed who can tell but they are, only they must be pretty nearly
dead when they are on the ground.
At length the road brought me up to the house. It did not look such
a large house as I have since found it to be. And it certainly was
not an interesting house from the outside, though its surroundings
of green grass and trees would make any whole beautiful. Indeed the
house itself tried hard to look ugly, not quite succeeding, only
because of the kind foiling of its efforts by the Virginia creepers
and ivy, which, as if ashamed of its staring countenance, did all
they could to spread their hands over it and hide it. But there was
one charming group of old chimneys, belonging to some portion
behind, which indicated a very different, namely, a very much older,
face upon the house once--a face that had passed away to give place
to this. Once inside, I found there were more remains of the olden
time than I had expected. I was led up one of those grand square oak
staircases, which look like a portion of the house to be dwelt in,
and not like a ladder for getting from one part of the habitable
regions to another. On the top was a fine expanse of landing,
another hall, in fact, from which I was led towards the back of the
house by a narrow passage, and shown into a small dark drawing-room
with a deep stone-mullioned window, wainscoted in oak simply carved
and panelled. Several doors around indicated communication with
other parts of the house. Here I found Mrs Oldcastle, reading what I
judged to be one of the cheap and gaudy religious books of the
present day. She rose and RECEIVED me, and having motioned me to a
seat, began to talk about the parish. You would have perceived at
once from her tone that she recognised no other bond of connexion
between us but the parish.
"I hear you have been most kind in visiting the poor, Mr Walton. You
must take care that they don't take advantage of your kindness,
though. I assure you, you will find some of them very grasping
indeed. And you need not expect that they will give you the least
credit for good intentions."
"I have seen nothing yet to make me uneasy on that score. But
certainly my testimony is of no weight yet."
"Mine is. I have proved them. The poor of this neighbourhood are
very deficient in gratitude."
"Yes, grannie,----"
I started. But there was no interruption, such as I have made to
indicate my surprise; although, when I looked half round in the
direction whence the voice came, the words that followed were all
rippled with a sweet laugh of amusement.
"Yes, grannie, you are right. You remember how old dame Hope
wouldn't take the money you offered her, and dropped such a
disdainful courtesy. It was SO greedy of her, wasn't it?"
"I am sorry to hear of any disdainful reception of kindness," I
said.
"Yes, and she had the coolness, within a fortnight, to send up to me
and ask if I would be kind enough to lend her half-a-crown for a few
weeks."
"And then it was your turn, grannie! You sent her five shillings,
didn't you?--Oh no; I'm wrong. That was the other woman."
"Indeed, I did not send her anything but a rebuke. I told her that
it would be a very wrong thing in me to contribute to the support of
such an evil spirit of unthankfulness as she indulged in. When she
came to see her conduct in its true light, and confessed that she
had behaved very abominably, I would see what I could do for her."
"And meantime she was served out, wasn't she? With her sick boy at
home, and nothing to give him?" said Miss Gladwyn.
"She made her own bed, and had to lie on it."
"Don't you think a little kindness might have had more effect in
bringing her to see that she was wrong."
"Grannie doesn't believe in kindness, except to me--dear old
grannie! She spoils me. I'm sure I shall be ungrateful some day; and
then she'll begin to read me long lectures, and prick me with all
manner of headless pins. But I won't stand it, I can tell you,
grannie! I'm too much spoiled for that."
Mrs Oldcastle was silent--why, I could not tell, except it was that
she knew she had no chance of quieting the girl in any other way.
I may mention here, lest I should have no opportunity afterwards,
that I inquired of dame Hope as to her version of the story, and
found that there had been a great misunderstanding, as I had
suspected. She was really in no want at the time, and did not feel
that it would be quite honourable to take the money when she did not
need it--(some poor people ARE capable of such reasoning)--and so
had refused it, not without a feeling at the same time that it was
more pleasant to refuse than to accept from such a giver; some stray
sparkle of which feeling, discovered by the keen eye of Miss
Gladwyn, may have given that appearance of disdain to her courtesy
to which the girl alluded. When, however, her boy in service was
brought home ill, she had sent to ask for what she now required, on
the very ground that it had been offered to her before. The
misunderstanding had arisen from the total incapacity of Mrs
Oldcastle to enter sympathetically into the feelings of one as
superior to herself in character as she was inferior in worldly
condition.
But to return to Oldcastle Hall.
I wished to change the subject, knowing that blind defence is of no
use. One must have definite points for defence, if one has not a
thorough understanding of the character in question; and I had
neither.
"This is a beautiful old house," I said. "There must be strange
places about it."
Mrs Oldcastle had not time to reply, or at least did not reply,
before Miss Gladwyn said--
"Oh, Mr Walton, have you looked out of the window yet? You don't
know what a lovely place this is, if you haven't."
And as she spoke she emerged from a recess in the room, a kind of
dark alcove, where she had been amusing herself with what I took to
be some sort of puzzle, but which I found afterwards to be the bit
and curb-chain of her pony's bridle which she was polishing up to
her own bright mind, because the stable-boy had not pleased her in
the matter, and she wanted both to get them brilliant and to shame
the lad for the future. I followed her to the window, where I was
indeed as much surprised and pleased as she could have wished.
"There!" she said, holding back one of the dingy heavy curtains with
her small childish hand.
And there, indeed, I saw an astonishment. It did not lie in the
lovely sweeps of hill and hollow stretching away to the horizon,
richly wooded, and--though I saw none of them--sprinkled, certainly
with sweet villages full of human thoughts, loves, and hopes; the
astonishment did not lie in this--though all this was really much
more beautiful to the higher imagination--but in the fact that, at
the first glance, I had a vision properly belonging to a rugged or
mountainous country. For I had approached the house by a gentle
slope, which certainly was long and winding, but had occasioned no
feeling in my mind that I had reached any considerable height. And I
had come up that one beautiful staircase; no more; and yet now, when
I looked from this window, I found myself on the edge of a
precipice--not a very deep one, certainly, yet with all the effect
of many a deeper. For below the house on this side lay a great
hollow, with steep sides, up which, as far as they could reach, the
trees were climbing. The sides were not all so steep as the one on
which the house stood, but they were all rocky and steep, with here
and there slopes of green grass. And down in the bottom, in the
centre of the hollow, lay a pool of water. I knew it only by its
slaty shimmer through the fading green of the tree-tops between me
and it.
"There!" again exclaimed Miss Gladwyn; "isn't that beautiful? But
you haven't seen the most beautiful thing yet. Grannie, where's--ah!
there she is! There's auntie! Don't you see her down there, by the
side of the pond? That pond is a hundred feet deep. If auntie were
to fall in she would be drowned before you could jump down to get
her out. Can you swim?"
Before I had time to answer, she was off again.
"Don't you see auntie down there?"
"No, I don't see her. I have been trying very hard, but I can't."
"Well, I daresay you can't. Nobody, I think, has got eyes but
myself. Do you see a big stone by the edge of the pond, with another
stone on the top of it, like a big potato with a little one grown
out of it?"
"No."
"Well, auntie is under the trees on the opposite side from that
stone. Do you see her yet?"
"No."
"Then you must come down with me, and I will introduce you to her.
She's much the prettiest thing here. Much prettier than grannie."
Here she looked over her shoulder at grannie, who, instead of being
angry, as, from what I had seen on our former interview, I feared
she would be, only said, without even looking up from the little
blue-boarded book she was again reading--
"You are a saucy child."
Whereupon Miss Gladwyn laughed merrily.
"Come along," she said, and, seizing me by the hand, led me out of
the room, down a back-staircase, across a piece of grass, and then
down a stair in the face of the rock, towards the pond below. The
stair went in zigzags, and, although rough, was protected by an iron
balustrade, without which, indeed, it would have been very
dangerous.
"Isn't your grandmamma afraid to let you run up and down here, Miss
Gladwyn?" I said.
"Me!" she exclaimed, apparently in the utmost surprise. "That WOULD
be fun! For, you know, if she tried to hinder me--but she knows it's
no use; I taught her that long ago--let me see, how long: oh! I
don't know--I should think it must be ten years at least. I ran
away, and they thought I had drowned myself in the pond. And I saw
them, all the time, poking with a long stick in the pond, which, if
I had been drowned there, never could have brought me up, for it is
a hundred feet deep, I am sure. How I hurt my sides trying to keep
from screaming with laughter! I fancied I heard one say to the
other, 'We must wait till she swells and floats?'"
"Dear me! what a peculiar child!" I said to myself.
And yet somehow, whatever she said--even when she was most rude to
her grandmother--she was never offensive. No one could have helped
feeling all the time that she was a little lady.--I thought I would
venture a question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag,
and looked down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I
could now distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of
a woman seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping forward over a
book.
"May I ask you a question, Miss Gladwyn?"
"Yes, twenty, if you like; but I won't answer one of them till you
give up calling me Miss Gladwyn. We can't be friends, you know, so
long as you do that."
"What am I to call you, then? I never heard you called by any other
name than Pet, and that would hardly do, would it?"
"Oh, just fancy if you called me Pet before grannie! That's
grannie's name for me, and nobody dares to use it but grannie--not
even auntie; for, between you and me, auntie is afraid of grannie; I
can't think why. I never was afraid of anybody--except, yes, a
little afraid of old Sarah. She used to be my nurse, you know; and
grandmamma and everybody is afraid of her, and that's just why I
never do one thing she wants me to do. It would never do to give in
to being afraid of her, you know.--There's auntie, you see, down
there, just where I told you before."
"Oh yes! I see her now.--What does your aunt call you, then?"
"Why, what you must call me--my own name, of course."
"What is that?"
"Judy."
She said it in a tone which seemed to indicate surprise that I
should not know her name--perhaps read it off her face, as one ought
to know a flower's name by looking at it. But she added instantly,
glancing up in my face most comically--
"I wish yours was Punch."
"Why, Judy?"
"It would be such fun, you know."
"Well, it would be odd, I must confess. What is your aunt's name?"
"Oh, such a funny name!--much funnier than Judy: Ethelwyn. It sounds
as if it ought to mean something, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It is an Anglo-Saxon word, without doubt."
"What does it mean?"
"I'm not sure about that. I will try to find out when I go home--if
you would like to know."
"Yes, that I should. I should like to know everything about auntie
Ethelwyn. Isn't it pretty?"
"So pretty that I should like to know something more about Aunt
Ethelwyn. What is her other name?"
"Why, Ethelwyn Oldcastle, to be sure. What else could it be?"
"Why, you know, for anything I knew, Judy, it might have been
Gladwyn. She might have been your father's sister."
"Might she? I never thought of that. Oh, I suppose that is because I
never think about my father. And now I do think of it, I wonder why
nobody ever mentions him to me, or my mother either. But I often
think auntie must be thinking about my mother. Something in her
eyes, when they are sadder than usual, seems to remind me of my
mother."
"You remember your mother, then?"
"No, I don't think I ever saw her. But I've answered plenty of
questions, haven't I? I assure you, if you want to get me on to the
Catechism, I don't know a word of it. Come along."
I laughed.
"What!" she said, pulling me by the hand, "you a clergyman, and
laugh at the Catechism! I didn't know that."
"I'm not laughing at the Catechism, Judy. I'm only laughing at the
idea of putting Catechism questions to you."
"You KNOW I didn't mean it," she said, with some indignation.
"I know now," I answered. "But you haven't let me put the only
question I wanted to put."
"What is it?"
"How old are you?"
"Twelve. Come along."
And away we went down the rest of the stair.
When we reached the bottom, a winding path led us through the trees
to the side of the pond, along which we passed to get to the other
side.
And then all at once the thought struck me--why was it that I had
never seen this auntie, with the lovely name, at church? Was she
going to turn out another strange parishioner?
There she sat, intent on her book. As we drew near she looked up and
rose, but did not come forward.
"Aunt Winnie, here's Mr. Walton," said Judy.
I lifted my hat and held out my hand. Before our hands met, however,
a tremendous splash reached my ears from the pond. I started round.
Judy had vanished. I had my coat half off, and was rushing to the
pool, when Miss Oldcastle stopped me, her face unmoved, except by a
smile, saying, "It's only one of that frolicsome child's tricks, Mr
Walton. It is well for you that I was here, though. Nothing would
have delighted her more than to have you in the water too."
"But," I said, bewildered, and not half comprehending, "where is
she?"
"There," returned Miss Oldcastle, pointing to the pool, in the
middle of which arose a heaving and bubbling, presently yielding
passage to the laughing face of Judy.
"Why don't you help me out, Mr Walton? You said you could swim."
"No, I did not," I answered coolly. "You talked so fast, you did not
give me time to say so."
"It's very cold," she returned.
"Come out, Judy dear," said her aunt. "Run home and change your
clothes. There's a dear."
Judy swam to the opposite side, scrambled out, and was off like a
spaniel through the trees and up the stairs, dripping and raining as
she went.
"You must be very much astonished at the little creature, Mr
Walton."
"I find her very interesting. Quite a study."
"There never was a child so spoiled, and never a child on whom it
took less effect to hurt her. I suppose such things do happen
sometimes. She is really a good girl; though mamma, who has done all
the spoiling, will not allow me to say she is good."
Here followed a pause, for, Judy disposed of, what should I say
next? And the moment her mind turned from Judy, I saw a certain
stillness--not a cloud, but the shadow of a cloud--come over Miss
Oldcastle's face, as if she, too, found herself uncomfortable, and
did not know what to say next. I tried to get a glance at the book
in her hand, for I should know something about her at once if I
could only see what she was reading. She never came to church, and I
wanted to arrive at some notion of the source of her spiritual life;
for that she had such, a single glance at her face was enough to
convince me. This, I mean, made me even anxious to see what the book
was. But I could only discover that it was an old book in very
shabby binding, not in the least like the books that young ladies
generally have in their hands.
And now my readers will possibly be thinking it odd that I have
never yet said a word about what either Judy or Miss Oldcastle was
like. If there is one thing I feel more inadequate to than another,
in taking upon me to relate--it is to describe a lady. But I will
try the girl first.
Judy was rosy, gray-eyed, auburn-haired, sweet-mouthed. She had
confidence in her chin, assertion in her nose, defiance in her
eyebrows, honesty and friendliness over all her face. No one,
evidently, could have a warmer friend; and to an enemy she would be
dangerous no longer than a fit of passion might last. There was
nothing acrid in her; and the reason, I presume, was, that she had
never yet hurt her conscience. That is a very different thing from
saying she had never done wrong, you know. She was not tall, even
for her age, and just a little too plump for the immediate
suggestion of grace. Yet every motion of the child would have been
graceful, except for the fact that impulse was always predominant,
giving a certain jerkiness, like the hopping of a bird, instead of
the gliding of one motion into another, such as you might see in the
same bird on the wing.
There is one of the ladies.
But the other--how shall I attempt to describe her?
The first thing I felt was, that she was a lady-woman. And to feel
that is almost to fall in love at first sight. And out of this
whole, the first thing you distinguished would be the grace over
all. She was rather slender, rather tall, rather dark-haired, and
quite blue-eyed. But I assure you it was not upon that occasion that
I found out the colour of her eyes. I was so taken with her whole
that I knew nothing about her parts. Yet she was blue-eyed,
indicating northern extraction--some centuries back perhaps. That
blue was the blue of the sea that had sunk through the eyes of some
sea-rover's wife and settled in those of her child, to be born when
the voyage was over. It had been dyed so deep INGRAYNE, as Spenser
would say, that it had never been worn from the souls of the race
since, and so was every now and then shining like heaven out at some
of its eyes. Her features were what is called regular. They were
delicate and brave.--After the grace, the dignity was the next thing
you came to discover. And the only thing you would not have liked,
you would have discovered last. For when the shine of the courtesy
with which she received me had faded away a certain look of negative
haughtiness, of withdrawal, if not of repulsion, took its place, a
look of consciousness of her own high breeding--a pride, not of
life, but of circumstance of life, which disappointed me in the
midst of so much that was very lovely. Her voice was sweet, and I
could have fancied a tinge of sadness in it, to which impression her
slowness of speech, without any drawl in it, contributed. But I am
not doing well as an artist in describing her so fully before my
reader has become in the least degree interested in her. I was
seeing her, and no words can make him see her.
Fearing lest some such fancy as had possessed Judy should be moving
in her mind, namely, that I was, if not exactly going to put her
through her Catechism, yet going in some way or other to act the
clergyman, I hastened to speak.
"This is a most romantic spot, Miss Oldcastle," I said; "and as
surprising as it is romantic. I could hardly believe my eyes when I
looked out of the window and saw it first."
"Your surprise was the more natural that the place itself is not
properly natural, as you must have discovered."
This was rather a remarkable speech for a young lady to make. I
answered--
"I only know that such a chasm is the last thing I should have
expected to find in this gently undulating country. That it is
artificial I was no more prepared to hear than I was to see the
place itself."
"It looks pretty, but it has not a very poetic origin," she
returned. "It is nothing but the quarry out of which the old house
at the top of it was built."
"I must venture to differ from you entirely in the aspect such an
origin assumes to me," I said. "It seems to me a more poetic origin
than any convulsion of nature whatever would have been; for, look
you," I said--being as a young man too much inclined to the
didactic, "for, look you," I said--and she did look at me--"from
that buried mass of rock has arisen this living house with its
histories of ages and generations; and"--
Here I saw a change pass upon her face: it grew almost pallid. But
her large blue eyes were still fixed on mine.
"And it seems to me," I went on, "that such a chasm made by the
uplifting of a house therefrom, is therefore in itself more poetic
than if it were even the mouth of an extinct volcano. For, grand as
the motions and deeds of Nature are, terrible as is the idea of the
fiery heart of the earth breaking out in convulsions, yet here is
something greater; for human will, human thought, human hands in
human labour and effort, have all been employed to build this house,
making not only the house beautiful, but the place whence it came
beautiful too. It stands on the edge of what Shelley would call its
'antenatal tomb'--now beautiful enough to be its mother--filled
from generation to generation "--
Her face had grown still paler, and her lips moved as if she would
speak; but no sound came from them. I had gone on, thinking it best
to take no notice of her paleness; but now I could not help
expressing concern.
"I am afraid you feel ill, Miss Oldcastle."
"Not at all," she answered, more quickly than she had yet spoken.
"This place must be damp," I said. "I fear you have taken cold."
She drew herself up a little haughtily, thinking, no doubt, that
after her denial I was improperly pressing the point. So I drew back
to the subject of our conversation.
"But I can hardly think," I said, "that all this mass of stone could
be required to build the house, large as it is. A house is not
solid, you know."
"No," she answered. "The original building was more of a castle,
with walls and battlements. I can show you the foundations of them
still; and the picture, too, of what the place used to be. We are
not what we were then. Many a cottage, too, has been built out of
this old quarry. Not a stone has been taken from it for the last
fifty years, though. Just let me show you one thing, Mr. Walton, and
then I must leave you."
"Do not let me detain you a moment. I will go at once," I said;
"though, if you would allow me, I should be more at ease if I might
see you safe at the top of the stair first."
She smiled.
"Indeed, I am not ill," she answered; "but I have duties to attend
to. Just let me show you this, and then you shall go with me back to
mamma."
She led the way to the edge of the pond and looked into it. I
followed, and gazed down into its depths, till my sight was lost in
them. I could see no bottom to the rocky shaft.
"There is a strong spring down there," she said. "Is it not a
dreadful place? Such a depth!"
"Yes," I answered; "but it has not the horror of dirty water; it is
as clear as crystal. How does the surplus escape?"
"On the opposite side of the hill you came up there is a well, with
a strong stream from it into the river."
"I almost wonder at your choosing such a place to read in. I should
hardly like to be so near this pond," said I, laughing.
"Judy has taken all that away. Nothing in nature, and everything out
of it, is strange to Judy, poor child! But just look down a little
way into the water on this side. Do you see anything?"
"Nothing," I answered.
"Look again, against the wall of the pond," she said.
"I see a kind of arch or opening in the side," I answered.
"That is what I wanted you to see. Now, do you see a little barred
window, there, in the face of the rock, through the trees?"
"I cannot say I do," I replied.
"No. Except you know where it is--and even then--it is not so easy
to find it. I find it by certain trees."
"What is it?"
"It is the window of a little room in the rock, from which a stair
leads down through the rock to a sloping passage. That is the end of
it you see under the water."
"Provided, no doubt," I said, "in case of siege, to procure water."
"Most likely; but not, therefore, confined to that purpose. There
are more dreadful stories than I can bear to think of"---
Here she paused abruptly, and began anew "---As if that house had
brought death and doom out of the earth with it. There was an old
burial-ground here before the Hall was built."
"Have you ever been down the stair you speak of?" I asked.
"Only part of the way," she answered. "But Judy knows every step of
it. If it were not that the door at the top is locked, she would
have dived through that archway now, and been in her own room in
half the time. The child does not know what fear means."
We now moved away from the pond, towards the side of the quarry and
the open-air stair-case, which I thought must be considerably more
pleasant than the other. I confess I longed to see the gleam of that
water at the bottom of the dark sloping passage, though.
Miss Oldcastle accompanied me to the room where I had left her
mother, and took her leave with merely a bow of farewell. I saw the
old lady glance sharply from her to me as if she were jealous of
what we might have been talking about.
"Grannie, are you afraid Mr. Walton has been saying pretty things to
Aunt Winnie? I assure you he is not of that sort. He doesn't
understand that kind of thing. But he would have jumped into the
pond after me and got his death of cold if auntie would have let
him. It WAS cold. I think I see you dripping now, Mr Walton."
There she was in her dark corner, coiled up on a couch, and laughing
heartily; but all as if she had done nothing extraordinary. And,
indeed, estimated either by her own notions or practices, what she
had done was not in the least extraordinary.
Disinclined to stay any longer, I shook hands with the grandmother,
with a certain invincible sense of slime, and with the grandchild
with a feeling of mischievous health, as if the girl might soon
corrupt the clergyman into a partnership in pranks as well as in
friendship. She fallowed me out of the room, and danced before me
down the oak staircase, clearing the portion from the first landing
at a bound. Then she turned and waited for me, who came very
deliberately, feeling the unsure contact of sole and wax. As soon as
I reached her, she said, in a half-whisper, reaching up towards me
on tiptoe--
"Isn't she a beauty?"
"Who? your grandmamma?" I returned.
She gave me a little push, her face glowing with fun. But I did not
expect she would take her revenge as she did. "Yes, of course," she
answered, quite gravely. "Isn't she a beauty?"
And then, seeing that she had put me hors de combat, she burst into
loud laughter, and, opening the hall-door for me, let me go without
another word.
I went home very quietly, and, as I said, stepping with curious
care--of which, of course, I did not think at the time--over the
yellow and brown leaves that lay in the middle of the road.
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