"She"s an angel!" said Doctor Strong.
"You are right, my friend, you are very right!" said Miss Phoebe; and her cap strings trembled with affection. "There is an angelic quality, surely, in my sister Vesta. She might have been happy--I trust she would have been--if Providence had been pleased to call her to the married estate. But for me, Doctor Strong, no! I have always said, and I shall always say, while I have the use of my faculties--no! I thank you for the honour you do me; I appreciate the sentiments to which you have given utterance; but I can never be yours."
To any third party who had seen Miss Phoebe, drawn up erect in her chair, uttering these words with chiselled majesty, and Doctor Strong, bellows in hand, his bright eyes fixed upon her, receiving them with kindling attention, it might certainly have appeared as if he had been making her an offer of marriage; but the thought would have been momentary, for when the good lady ceased, the young doctor chimed in heartily:
"Quite right! quite right, I"m sure, Miss Blyth. He"d be absurd to think of such a thing, you know; the idea of your wasting your time!
That"s what I say to fellows; "How can you waste your time, when you"ll be dead before you know it anyhow, and not have had time to look about you, much less learn anything?" No, sir,--I beg your pardon, ma"am! A single life for me. My own time, my own will, and my own way!"
Miss Phoebe looked at him with very kind eyes.
"Doctor Strong," she said, "I think--it is no light thing for me to say, holding the convictions I do--but I think you are worthy of single blessedness!"
CHAPTER III.
GARDEN FANCIES
Miss Vesta was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g her lamp. That meant, in this early summer season, that it was after seven o"clock. The little lady stood at the window in the upper hall. It was a broad window, with a low round arch, looking out on the garden and the sea beyond it. A bracket was fastened to the sill, and on this bracket stood the lamp that Miss Vesta was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. (It was against all fitness, as Miss Phoebe said, that a lamp should be trimmed at this hour. Every other lamp in the house was in perfect order by nine o"clock in the morning; but it was Miss Vesta"s fancy to trim this lamp in the evening, and Miss Phoebe made a point of indulging her sister"s fancies when she conscientiously could.)
It was a bra.s.s lamp of quaint pattern, and the bra.s.s shone so that several Miss Vestas, with faces curiously distorted, looked out at the real one, as she daintily brushed off the burnt wicking, and, after filling and lighting the lamp, replaced the brilliantly polished chimney. She watched the flame as it crept along the wick; then, when it burned steady and clear, she folded her hands with a little contented gesture, and looked out of the window.
The sun had set. The sea on which Miss Vesta looked was a water of gold, shimmering here and there into opal; only where it broke on the shingle at the garden foot, the water was its usual colour of a chrysophrase, with a rim of ivory where it touched the sh.o.r.e. The window was open, and a light breeze blew from the water; blew across the garden, and brought with it scents of lilac, syringa, and June roses. It was a pleasant hour, and Miss Vesta was well content. She liked even better the later evening, when the glow would fade from the west, and her lamp would shed its own path of gold across the water; but this was pleasant enough.
"It is a very sightly evening!" said Miss Vesta, in the soft half-voice in which she often talked to herself. "Good Lord, I beseech thee, protect all souls at sea this night; for Jesus Christ"s sake; amen!"
This was the prayer that Miss Vesta had offered every evening for thirty years. As often as she repeated it, the sea before her eyes changed, and she saw a stretch of black tossing water, with foam-crests that the lightning turned to pale fire; a sail drove across her window, dipped, and disappeared. Miss Vesta closed her eyes.
But as the old doctor said, people do not mourn for thirty years; when she opened her eyes, they were grave, but serene. "It is a very sightly evening!" she repeated. She leaned out of the window, and drew in long breaths of sweetness. Presently the sweetness was crossed by a whiff of a different fragrance, pungent, aromatic,--the fragrance of tobacco.
Doctor Strong was smoking his evening cigar in the garden. He would not have thought of smoking in the house, even if Miss Phoebe would have allowed it; he smoked as he rode on his morning round, and he took his evening cigar, as now, in the garden. Miss Vesta saw him now, in the growing dusk, striding up and down; not hastily, but with energy and determination in every stride. Her eyes dwelt upon him affectionately; she had grown very fond of him. It was delightful to her to have this young, vigorous creature in the house, fairly electric with life and joy and strength; she felt younger every time she saw him. He was good to look at, too, though no one would have called him a beauty. Tall and well-made, his head properly set on shoulders that were perhaps the least bit too square; his fair hair cropped close, in hope of destroying the curl that would still creep into it in spite of him; his hazel eyes as bright as eyes could be, his skin healthy red and brown,--yes, the young doctor was good to look at. So Miss Vesta thought. There was a little look, too--it could hardly be called a resemblance--yet he reminded her somehow--Miss Vesta"s face changed from a white to a pink rose, and she said, softly, "If I had had a son, he might have looked like this. The Lord be with him and give him grace!"
As Miss Vesta watched him, Geoffrey Strong stopped to examine something in one of the borders; stooped, hands on knees, and scrutinised a certain plant; then, glancing upward as he straightened himself, saw Miss Vesta at the window looking down at him.
"Hurrah!" he cried. "Come down, Miss Vesta, won"t you, please? you are the very person I want. I want to show you something."
"Surely!" said Miss Vesta. "I will be with you in a moment, Doctor Strong; only let me get a head-covering from my room."
When she had left the window, Geoffrey was almost sorry he had called her; she made such a pretty picture standing there, framed in the broad window, the evening light falling softly on her soft face and silver hair. It was so nice of her to wear white in the evening! Why didn"t old ladies always wear white? when they were pretty, he added, reflecting that Miss Phoebe in white would be an alarming vision. His mind still on Miss Vesta, he quoted half aloud:
"A still, sweet, placid, moonlight face, And slightly nonchalant, Which seems to hold a middle place Between one"s love and aunt."
"I wish you were my aunt!" he exclaimed, abruptly, when Miss Vesta appeared a few minutes later, with a screen of delicate white wool over her head and shoulders.
"Is that what you wished to say to me?" asked Miss Vesta, somewhat bewildered.
"No! oh, no! I was only thinking what a perfect aunt you would make.
No, I wanted to show you something; a line out of Browning, ill.u.s.trated in life; one of my favourite lines. See here, Miss Vesta!"
Miss Vesta looked.
"I see nothing," she began. "Oh, yes, a miller! Is that it, Doctor Strong? Quite a curious miller. The study of insect life is no doubt--"
"A moth! don"t you see?" cried the young doctor. "On the phlox, the white phlox."
""And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.""
"Don"t you remember, in the "Garden Fancies?""
But Miss Vesta did not remember.
Didn"t she know Browning?
She confessed that she did not. She had fancied that he was not quite--she hardly thought that ladies did read his works to any extent.
"Cowper was my favourite poet in my youth," she said, "and I was very fond of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Barbauld. Their poetry is at once elegant and elevated in tone and spirit. I hope you agree with me, Doctor Strong?"
"I don"t know!" said Geoffrey, "I never read "em. But Sh.e.l.ley, Miss Vesta! you love Sh.e.l.ley, I"m sure? He would have loved you so, you know."
Miss Vesta"s quiet face showed a little trouble. "Mr. Sh.e.l.ley"s poetry," she said, hesitatingly, "is very beautiful. He was--some one I once knew was devoted to Mr. Sh.e.l.ley"s poetry. He--used to read it to me. But Sister Phoebe thought Mr. Sh.e.l.ley"s religious views were--a--not what one would wish, and she objected to my following the study."
"He wrote about moths, too," said Geoffrey, abstractedly. "The desire of the moth for the star, you know. Those things make you feel queer when they come to you out here, with all these lights and dusks and smells. Now I wonder why!"
Miss Vesta looked at him kindly. "Perhaps there is some tender a.s.sociation," she said, gently, "such as is natural at your age, my dear young friend."
"Not an a.s.sociation!" said Geoffrey, stoutly. "Never had one in my life. It"s only in a general way. These things stir one up, somehow; it"s a form of mental intoxication. Do you think a man could get drunk on sunset and phlox, Miss Vesta?"
"Oh, I trust not, I trust not!" said Miss Vesta, hurriedly, and she made haste to change the subject. She as well as her sister found the young doctor"s expressions overstrong at times, yet she loved the lad.
"The roses are at their sweetest now," she said, leading the conversation gently away from the too pa.s.sionate white phlox, on which the moth was still waving its wings drowsily. "This black damask is considered very fine, but I love the old-fashioned June roses best."
""She loves you, n.o.ble roses, I know!"" said Geoffrey, who certainly was not himself to-night. "This one is exactly like you, Miss Vesta.
Look at it; just the colour of ivory with a little sunset mixed in. Now you know what you look like."
"Oh, hush, my dear young friend!" said Miss Vesta. "You must not--really, you know--talk in this way. But--it is curious that you should have noticed that particular rose; it--it is the kind I used to wear when I was young."
She looked up at the lamp in the window. Geoffrey"s eyes followed hers.
Involuntarily he laid his hand on hers. "Dear Miss Vesta!" he said, and his strong, hearty voice could be very gentle. "Miss Blyth told me.
Does it still hurt, dear lady?"
Miss Vesta"s breath fluttered for a moment, but it was only a moment.
Her soft white fingers, cool as rose-leaves, returned the pressure of his affectionately. "No, my--my dear," she said. "It does not hurt--now. There is no pain now, only memory; blessed, blessed memory.
He--there is something--you remind me of him a little, Doctor Geoffrey."
They stood silent, the young man and the old woman, hand in hand in the soft evening. The splendour in the west died out, and soft clouds of gray and purple brooded like wings over the sea. The water deepened from gold to glimmering gray, from gray to deep brown and blue. In one spot a faint glimmer trembled on the waves; the light from Miss Vesta"s lamp. The little lady gazed at it long, then looked up into the strong young face above her.
"He was--your age!" she said, hurrying the words out in a low murmur, hardly louder than the night breeze in the tall lilac-trees. "He was bright and strong and gay like you; his sun went down while it was yet day. The Lord took him into his holy keeping. I wish--I wish you all the joy I should have tried to give him, Doctor Geoffrey. I wish your life fortunate and brave, and your love happy; more than all, your love happy."