Among the heavy burdens that are laid on female human nature, perhaps the heaviest, at the age of sixteen, is the burden of gravity. Miss Milroy struggled, t.i.ttered, struggled again, and composed herself for the time being.
The gardener, who still stood where he had stood from the first, immovably waiting for his next opportunity, saw it now, and gently pushed his personal interests into the first gap of silence that had opened within his reach since Allan"s appearance on the scene.
"I humbly bid you welcome to Thorpe Ambrose, sir," said Abraham Sage, beginning obstinately with his little introductory speech for the second time. "My name--"
Before he could deliver himself of his name, Miss Milroy looked accidentally in the horticulturist"s pertinacious face, and instantly lost her hold on her gravity beyond recall. Allan, never backward in following a boisterous example of any sort, joined in her laughter with right goodwill. The wise man of the gardens showed no surprise, and took no offense. He waited for another gap of silence, and walked in again gently with his personal interests the moment the two young people stopped to take breath.
"I have been employed in the grounds," proceeded Abraham Sage, irrepressibly, "for more than forty years--"
"You shall be employed in the grounds for forty more, if you"ll only hold your tongue and take yourself off!" cried Allan, as soon as he could speak.
"Thank you kindly, sir," said the gardener, with the utmost politeness, but with no present signs either of holding his tongue or of taking himself off.
"Well?" said Allan.
Abraham Sage carefully cleared his throat, and shifted his rake from one hand to the other. He looked down the length of his own invaluable implement, with a grave interest and attention, seeing, apparently, not the long handle of a rake, but the long perspective of a vista, with a supplementary personal interest established at the end of it. "When more convenient, sir," resumed this immovable man, "I should wish respectfully to speak to you about my son. Perhaps it may be more convenient in the course of the day? My humble duty, sir, and my best thanks. My son is strictly sober. He is accustomed to the stables, and he belongs to the Church of England--without inc.u.mbrances." Having thus planted his offspring provisionally in his master"s estimation, Abraham Sage shouldered his invaluable rake, and hobbled slowly out of view.
"If that"s a specimen of a trustworthy old servant," said Allan, "I think I"d rather take my chance of being cheated by a new one. _You_ shall not be troubled with him again, Miss Milroy, at any rate. All the flower-beds in the garden are at your disposal, and all the fruit in the fruit season, if you"ll only come here and eat it."
"Oh, Mr. Armadale, how very, very kind you are. How can I thank you?"
Allan saw his way to another compliment--an elaborate compliment, in the shape of a trap, this time.
"You can do me the greatest possible favor," he said. "You can a.s.sist me in forming an agreeable impression of my own grounds."
"Dear me! how?" asked Miss Milroy, innocently.
Allan judiciously closed the trap on the spot in these words: "By taking me with you, Miss Milroy, on your morning walk." He spoke, smiled, and offered his arm.
She saw the way, on her side, to a little flirtation. She rested her hand on his arm, blushed, hesitated, and suddenly took it away again.
"I don"t think it"s quite right, Mr. Armadale," she said, devoting herself with the deepest attention to her collection of flowers.
"Oughtn"t we to have some old lady here? Isn"t it improper to take your arm until I know you a little better than I do now? I am obliged to ask; I have had so little instruction; I have seen so little of society, and one of papa"s friends once said my manners were too bold for my age.
What do _you_ think?"
"I think it"s a very good thing your papa"s friend is not here now,"
answered the outspoken Allan; "I should quarrel with him to a dead certainty. As for society, Miss Milroy, n.o.body knows less about it than I do; but if we _had_ an old lady here, I must say myself I think she would be uncommonly in the way. Won"t you?" concluded Allan, imploringly offering his arm for the second time. "Do!"
Miss Milroy looked up at him sidelong from her flowers "You are as bad as the gardener, Mr. Armadale!" She looked down again in a flutter of indecision. "I"m sure it"s wrong," she said, and took his arm the instant afterward without the slightest hesitation.
They moved away together over the daisied turf of the paddock, young and bright and happy, with the sunlight of the summer morning shining cloudless over their flowery path.
"And where are we going to, now?" asked Allan. "Into another garden?"
She laughed gayly. "How very odd of you, Mr. Armadale, not to know, when it all belongs to you! Are you really seeing Thorpe Ambrose this morning for the first time? How indescribably strange it must feel! No, no; don"t say any more complimentary things to me just yet. You may turn my head if you do. We haven"t got the old lady with us; and I really must take care of myself. Let me be useful; let me tell you all about your own grounds. We are going out at that little gate, across one of the drives in the park, and then over the rustic bridge, and then round the corner of the plantation--where do you think? To where I live, Mr.
Armadale; to the lovely little cottage that you have let to papa. Oh, if you only knew how lucky we thought ourselves to get it!"
She paused, looked up at her companion, and stopped another compliment on the incorrigible Allan"s lips.
"I"ll drop your arm," she said coquettishly, "if you do! We _were_ lucky to get the cottage, Mr. Armadale. Papa said he felt under an obligation to you for letting it, the day we got in. And _I_ said I felt under an obligation, no longer ago than last week."
"You, Miss Milroy!" exclaimed Allan.
"Yes. It may surprise you to hear it; but if you hadn"t let the cottage to papa, I believe I should have suffered the indignity and misery of being sent to school."
Allan"s memory reverted to the half-crown that he had spun on the cabin-table of the yacht, at Castletown. "If she only knew that I had tossed up for it!" he thought, guiltily.
"I dare say you don"t understand why I should feel such a horror of going to school," pursued Miss Milroy, misinterpreting the momentary silence on her companion"s side. "If I had gone to school in early life--I mean at the age when other girls go--I shouldn"t have minded it now. But I had no such chance at the time. It was the time of mamma"s illness and of papa"s unfortunate speculation; and as papa had n.o.body to comfort him but me, of course I stayed at home. You needn"t laugh; I was of some use, I can tell you. I helped papa over his trouble, by sitting on his knee after dinner, and asking him to tell me stories of all the remarkable people he had known when he was about in the great world, at home and abroad. Without me to amuse him in the evening, and his clock to occupy him in the daytime--"
"His clock?" repeated Allan.
"Oh, yes! I ought to have told you. Papa is an extraordinary mechanical genius. You will say so, too, when you see his clock. It"s nothing like so large, of course, but it"s on the model of the famous clock at Strasbourg. Only think, he began it when I was eight years old; and (though I was sixteen last birthday) it isn"t finished yet! Some of our friends were quite surprised he should take to such a thing when his troubles began. But papa himself set that right in no time; he reminded them that Louis the Sixteenth took to lock-making when _his_ troubles began, and then everybody was perfectly satisfied." She stopped, and changed color confusedly. "Oh, Mr. Armadale," she said, in genuine embarra.s.sment this time, "here is my unlucky tongue running away with me again! I am talking to you already as if I had known you for years! This is what papa"s friend meant when he said my manners were too bold. It"s quite true; I have a dreadful way of getting familiar with people, if--"
She checked herself suddenly, on the brink of ending the sentence by saying, "if I like them."
"No, no; do go on!" pleaded Allan. "It"s a fault of mine to be familiar, too. Besides, we _must_ be familiar; we are such near neighbors. I"m rather an uncultivated sort of fellow, and I don"t know quite how to say it; but I want your cottage to be jolly and friendly with my house, and my house to be jolly and friendly with your cottage. There"s my meaning, all in the wrong words. Do go on, Miss Milroy; pray go on!"
She smiled and hesitated. "I don"t exactly remember where I was," she replied, "I only remember I had something I wanted to tell you. This comes, Mr. Armadale, of my taking your arm. I should get on so much better, if you would only consent to walk separately. You won"t? Well, then, will you tell me what it was I wanted to say? Where was I before I went wandering off to papa"s troubles and papa"s clock?"
"At school!" replied Allan, with a prodigious effort of memory.
"_Not_ at school, you mean," said Miss Milroy; "and all through _you_.
Now I can go on again, which is a great comfort. I am quite serious, Mr.
Armadale, in saying that I should have been sent to school, if you had said No when papa proposed for the cottage. This is how it happened.
When we began moving in, Mrs. Blanchard sent us a most kind message from the great house to say that her servants were at our disposal, if we wanted any a.s.sistance. The least papa and I could do, after that, was to call and thank her. We saw Mrs. Blanchard and Miss Blanchard. Mistress was charming, and miss looked perfectly lovely in her mourning. I"m sure you admire her? She"s tall and pale and graceful--quite your idea of beauty, I should think?"
"Nothing like it," began Allan. "My idea of beauty at the present moment--"
Miss Milroy felt it coming, and instantly took her hand off his arm.
"I mean I have never seen either Mrs. Blanchard or her niece," added Allan, precipitately correcting himself.
Miss Milroy tempered justice with mercy, and put her hand back again.
"How extraordinary that you should never have seen them!" she went on.
"Why, you are a perfect stranger to everything and everybody at Thorpe Ambrose! Well, after Miss Blanchard and I had sat and talked a little while, I heard my name on Mrs. Blanchard"s lips and instantly held my breath. She was asking papa if I had finished my education. Out came papa"s great grievance directly. My old governess, you must know, left us to be married just before we came here, and none of our friends could produce a new one whose terms were reasonable. "I"m told, Mrs.
Blanchard, by people who understand it better than I do," says papa, "that advertising is a risk. It all falls on me, in Mrs. Milroy"s state of health, and I suppose I must end in sending my little girl to school.
Do you happen to know of a school within the means of a poor man?" Mrs.
Blanchard shook her head; I could have kissed her on the spot for doing it. "All my experience, Major Milroy," says this perfect angel of a woman, "is in favor of advertising. My niece"s governess was originally obtained by an advertis.e.m.e.nt, and you may imagine her value to us when I tell you she lived in our family for more than ten years." I could have gone down on both my knees and worshipped Mrs. Blanchard then and there; and I only wonder I didn"t! Papa was struck at the time--I could see that--and he referred to it again on the way home. "Though I have been long out of the world, my dear," says papa, "I know a highly-bred woman and a sensible woman when I see her. Mrs. Blanchard"s experience puts advertising in a new light; I must think about it." He has thought about it, and (though he hasn"t openly confessed it to me) I know that he decided to advertise, no later than last night. So, if papa thanks you for letting the cottage, Mr. Armadale, I thank you, too. But for you, we should never have known darling Mrs. Blanchard; and but for darling Mrs.
Blanchard, I should have been sent to school."
Before Allan could reply, they turned the corner of the plantation, and came in sight of the cottage. Description of it is needless; the civilized universe knows it already. It was the typical cottage of the drawing-master"s early lessons in neat shading and the broad pencil touch--with the trim thatch, the luxuriant creepers, the modest lattice-windows, the rustic porch, and the wicker bird-cage, all complete.
"Isn"t it lovely?" said Miss Milroy. "Do come in!"
"May I?" asked Allan. "Won"t the major think it too early?"
"Early or late, I am sure papa will be only too glad to see you."