“Whereabouts is the east parlour? Does it open from the hall?” demanded Florence.
“Yes, Miss; the door’s right opposite the drawing-room.”
“Thank you; that will do. I need not detain you any longer. Good night,” said Florence; and then she was left alone to unpack her morning dress, and to find her walking boots; to admire the old-fashioned beauty of her comfortable room; to open her shutters and draw up her blinds, that no ray of awakening daylight might be lost; to say her prayers; and to lay herself down for a sweet, sound, youthful, healthful sleep, that fled lightly away at the first gleam of day light.
Florence did not possess a watch; and although, when at home, she almost equalled a Cumberland shepherd-boy, in the accuracy with which she made every object around her contribute to the accuracy of the sun-dial, by which she regulated her out-of-door avocations, she now, as she took her first look from the window, found herself quite at a loss how to calculate the hour, from her ignorance of the position of the house; and so brightly was the light reflected by the crystals of the frozen snow which covered the earth, that she greatly feared she had slept too long. But the absence of all household sounds reassured her, and dressing herself with as much haste as her ice bathed fingers would permit, she descended the stairs, and thanks to the wide-spreading arched window which lighted them, found the east-parlour without difficulty.
By the aid of such light as the door admitted, and by cautiously making her way amidst the furniture, Florence wasted not much time before she discovered the glass promised door. To many young ladies the task of opening it would have been one of insurmountable difficulty, but Florence had seen such fastenings before; and despite her frost-bitten fingers, succeeded in mastering them all, and found herself, at length, upon the gravel-walk of the pretty shrub-surrounded lawn which the maid had described.
But it was not a gravel walk, or a lawn surrounded with shrubs, that Florence wanted. Her aspirations were for something more rude and less confined. Once, however, beyond the trammels of the walls of the mansion, she felt little doubt of her own powers of getting free from any restraint that out-of-door inclosures could offer, and accordingly she soon found herself at very perfect liberty on the wide-spreading esplanade in front of the house.
The view which greeted her from thence almost made her shout with gladness. The whole of the deep, long, gracefully formed hollow, which gave the place its name, was visible from this spot; its steep sides, sweeping in a beautiful curve round the whole expanse, were thickly clothed with forest-trees of very noble growth, enriched, at intervals, by an undergrowth of clustering evergreens or of feathery larch. At the most distant point the Combe opened by a narrow gorge, but wide enough to admit a lovely landscape beyond, terminating in the blue hills of the Malvern ridge.
It was impossible at any time to look upon this view without feeling that it was one of singularly picturesque beauty, if the phrase may be allowed, of most happy arrangement. Not an object greeted the eye that did not add something to its pleasure; and far away as was the more distant outline, a feeling of home-comfort, and sheltered cosiness was suggested by its form, which soothed the imagination by a thousand delightful dreams of tame Hamadryads, and domestic Fauns. But at the moment Florence Heathcote first looked upon it there was a species of enchantment spread over the scene which was quite distinct from the ordinary charm of forest scenery: the whole sweeping woodland was one bright circle of sparkling crystals, so dazzingly white, that the winking eye hardly dared to gaze upon it, yet so gorgeously beautiful, that if blindness had been the penalty, it must be looked at. It was not snow that clothed it thus in such pale intensity of lustre; the effect of this, though beautiful, is too smothering and heavy, to give the airy grace which made Florence almost fancy that it was a fairy tale made palpable, which she saw before her. — It was that rare perfection of hoar frost, which now and then in our vapoury land turns every tiny twig into a separate jewel, making silver filigree look heavy, and ivory carving coarse. The sun, too, was already high enough (for it was nearly nine o’clock,) to illuminate one side of the fair show, while the other seemed to sleep in breathless stillness, under a delicate veil of shadow, as it were, lightly resting upon it.
Florence clasped her hands together, as this sight burst upon her, and exclaimed, “Oh!” with all the breath her rapture and the frost had left her. For a moment or two she stood perfectly entranced; and then her spirits, gaily awakening from wonder to delight, sent her, with a light step, along the crisp and tempting path which led under the trees round the north side of the Combe.
A sparkling draught of morning air was, to Florence, what sparkling draughts of more doubtful healthfulness may be to duller mortals; it gave her an exhilaration of spirits that made her long to laugh and sing. A woodland path commanding such splendid openings as that she now trod, and trod too, for the first time, possesses an attraction for a country-nurtured fancy, like that of Florence, which only such fancies can comprehend. It sometimes sent her bounding onward at the rate of four miles an hour, and sometimes held her chained as fixedly as if she had no power to move at all. By degrees, too, her fingers and her feet grew warm, and then, most certainly, she was happier still; till at length, on reaching a point at which the fine old grey house, and its sloping lawns, made part of the landscape, she stood stock still, and involuntarily exclaimed aloud, “Oh! how can they all lie with closed eyes up yonder, instead of opening them on such a scene as this?” And then, in the overflowing of her abounding enjoyment, and unmindful of the unseasonable application of imagery, she sang in a voice as clear as the air through which it vibrated,
“Hark! Hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise!
Arise! arise!’’
And having finished her ditty, she bounded on again, much too forgetful of the progress of time, and of the length of way she had to retrace her steps before she could find herself soberly seated at breakfast with the rest of the Combe company. In the next moment, however, her attention was very forcibly recalled to the realities of life, by the sound of crackling branches above her head, attended by a quantity of silvery rime, which fell upon her like a shower bath. She started forward to avoid any farther avalanche, and then turned to look upwards, in order to discover what had caused it. It was with great astonishment that she descried the figure of Sir Charles Temple scrambling down the bank at a pace that seemed to be more regulated by the angle of the declivity than by his will; and she almost screamed when, having reached a point that was too precipitous to walk over, he made a sudden spring, and in an instant stood on the path beside her... In his hand was a gun, a couple of dogs were at his heels, a bag swelling with woodcocks hung from his belt; and his whole dress and appearance were so greatly unlike what she had seen on the preceding evening, that though she immediately recognised him her countenance expressed extreme astonishment.
“I beg your pardon a thousand times, Miss Heathcote,” he said, “not only for having, as I fear, startled you very unpleasantly, but for having sprinkled you so abominably with rime. I will not deny that some very sweet sounds turned me from my path, or that I did really and truly intend to get down to the spot from whence they came; but most assuredly I did not mean to make my descent thus rudely. I had no idea that the bank terminated in this place so abruptly.”
As he spoke he laid aside his gun, and endeavoured with all gentleness to shake from the cloak of Florence the crisped powdering she had received. But having recovered her astonishment, she made light of the shower, blushed a little, laughed a little, begged him not to trouble himself about her cloak, and finally said that she thought it must be time to go home to breakfast.
“I am afraid it is,” he r
eplied; “and yet it is almost a pity to return till you have gone two or three hundred yards farther, where you may see the cataract.”
“A cataract,” exclaimed Florence. “Oh! let me see the cataract!”
“I think you had better not, Miss Heathcote, upon second thoughts, which you know are proverbially the best,” returned Sir Charles, who had suddenly recollected that it would be giving a very unfair advantage against Florence, if he beguiled her into being too late for breakfast; an indecorum of which he knew Mr. Thorpe was likely very particularly to disapprove.
“Why?” said Florence, innocently.
“Because your uncle is rather particular on the article of punctuality, and he might be displeased, perhaps, if you were too late.”
On hearing this, Florence smiled, shook her head, and said in a tone of rather doubtful resignation, “Well, then, I suppose I must turnback; but it is a great pity:” and suiting the action to the word, she turned about and began to walk briskly homeward.
“Do you not think it is very honest of me to have reminded you of this disagreeable necessity, Miss Heathcote?”
“Honest?” repeated Florence, looking up at him with an air of surprise.
“Yes, honest: for did I not advise what was good for you, and bad for me?”
“What was bad for you, sir?” demanded Florence, with half a smile, and looking very beautiful.
“It is bad for me to go home to breakfast, when I should so very greatly have preferred walking on with you to the waterfall,” he replied, returning her smile.
“Then it is certainly a great pity we should not go, for I should have liked it very much too. I never saw a waterfall except in a picture, and I think it must be very beautiful,” said Florence.
The temptation was strong to turn round again, but sir Charles was really too honest to yield to it, so he steadily pursued his way homeward, notwithstanding the pretty temptation at his side.
“You must promise me as a reward for my virtue,” said he, “that you will not go to this waterfall till I can go with you. Will you promise this?”
“I should like to go with you very much,” she replied, with the most perfect naïveté, “but if any plan for seeing it should happen to be proposed when you are not by, I am terribly afraid I should run off without you.”
“Then to prevent such treachery,” said he, laughing, “what say you to our making a party immediately after breakfast? Do you think you could bear the fatigue of walking so far twice in one day?”
“The fatigue of walking as far as the place where you jumped down?” said Florence. “Oh yes, I think I could bear that.”
“Then it is an engagement, is it?”
“Yes, sir, if you please. I should like it better, almost, than anything else in the world. That is if mamma does not happen to want me for anything.”
“Do not call me Sir, Miss Heathcote, unless you put Charles after it — Sir, by itself, sounds so very formal.” This was said with an earnestness that must have puzzled any one who did not understand les dessous des cartes. But Sir Charles Temple happened to know that his old friend, in the midst of all his affected rusticity, cherished a most vehement dislike to any solecism in conventional good breeding, and that a young lady’s saying, “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” would be likely grievously to offend his ear. Therefore, as he was beginning very decidedly to be of opinion that Florence Heathcote would make a most desirable heiress to Mr. Thorpe, he took her to task thus, with an energy that was quite involuntary.
Florence, however, though she understood nothing of all this, took it in very good part, said she was much obliged to him for telling her, and that she would try very much to remember it, because she did not like formality at all, as it always seemed to her as if people were angry. —
“Then, when we are better acquainted, I hope you will let me call you Florence, instead of Miss Heathcote?” said the young baronet.
“You may call me Florence now, if you like it,” she replied. “I am never called anything but Florence.”
The acquaintance thus auspiciously began went on improving as they walked and talked, till, by the time they reached the house, which unfortunately was not till a quarter past ten, they had become fast friends: Florence considering Sir Charles Temple as the kindest and most good-natured person she had ever seen, and Sir Charles feeling most satisfactorily convinced that, neither on the banks of Thames, Arno, Rhone, Rhine, Tiber, or any other stream by which his wanderings had led him, had he ever chanced to meet so pretty a creature as Florence, with a soul so free from every stain of earth, and a spirit so gentle yet so joyous, so reasonable yet so gay.
On arriving at the hall-door, Sir Charles, looking from head to foot at the figure of his beautiful companion, perceived with dismay that the bottom of her dress was adorned with a border of icicles, which would make her entering the breakfast-room, without changing it, an act of great indiscretion. He remembered all the official elegance of Mr. Spencer, and all the precocious cleverness of his accomplished sons; he remembered the three Misses Wilkyns, and all their point-device laboriousness of toilet; and he saw, in imagination, their dozen of eyes all fixed upon the drooping curls and dabbled petticoat of his pretty friend, till he felt positively terrified at the idea of her appearing before them.
You must run up-stairs, Miss Heathcote, you must, indeed!” he said in a hasty whisper and laying his hand on her arm to stay the rapid step with widen she was traversing the hall towards the dining-room. “Look at your dress!.... Look at the shining fringe upon it!”
Florence did so, and laughed. “Here I am, a perfect icicle,” she said, “and yet not cold at all. I must take it off, however, or else this pretty trimming will melt, which would not be agreeable. But I shall not be long getting rid of it, and nobody will think about me if I do but get in before the breakfast is over.” And giving him a parting smile, she ran up the stairs to her room.
Sir Charles entered his old friend’s parlour as usual, sans cérémonie, gun in hand, and exhibiting his game-bag before he rang for the servant to take charge of it.
“Woodcocks, Temple?” said Mr. Thorpe, interrogatively.
“Yes, sir, five of them.”
“Then I think we will forgive you for being late. There’s a place for you, between my eldest niece and my youngest nephew. Make way for him, Montagu — or is it Bentinck? — I don’t quite recollect which noble name belongs to which young gentleman. You must tell me to which dukedom the dark hair belongs, and to which the light, and then I dare say I shall remember. Have you been long out this morning, Temple? It seems to be a glorious day.”
Nothing could be further from Sir Charles Temple’s thoughts than to conceal his accidental meeting with Florence Heathcote, but, somehow or other, he had got into a wrong place for mentioning it. He felt no inclination to say to Miss Wilkyns, “Your cousin Florence and I have been enjoying a tête-à-tête walk together.” Nor was Mr. Montagu Spencer at all a more desirable recipient for the adventure. Neither did he, just then, deem it expedient to announce it for the information of the company in general, because he was quite aware that every eye was fixed upon him. “I will tell her dear good step-mother of it,” thought he, “as soon as she has conquered the difficulties occasioned by that under-done, overflowing egg.”
But he was spared the embarrassment of opening the subject, if he felt any such, by Mrs. Heathcote’s saying, while the golden-tinted egg-drop still bedewed her lip, “It does quite puzzle me where Florence can be gone to. Sophy Martin has found out her room, and says she is not there, nor her bonnet nor cloak neither. So she must be gone out, just as she does so often at home, to enjoy a little air before breakfast, — only she ought not to be so late, to be sure. But you must not think that is her way in general, sir,” she added, addressing Mr. Thorpe, who was seated between her and Miss Martin. “She is never too late at home, but the most ready, punctual child in the world.”
Mr. Thorpe was going to make some laughing reply, but Sir Ch
arles felt that if he missed this excellent opportunity, he should never recount his adventure at all, — and the leaving it to Florence would be exceedingly unfair; so, without any hesitation, but, on the contrary, with a good deal of eagerness in his manner, be said: —
“I can give you news of your lost daughter, Mrs. Heathcote. I had the pleasure of meeting the young lady as I returned from my chase after woodcocks, and we reached the house together.”
“Eldruda, will you have some ham?” said Miss Wilkyns, bending her head over a dish before her, as if to conceal a laugh, which, nevertheless, was sufficiently perceptible.
“No, thank you! Elfreda,” replied her sister, raising a napkin to her mouth to hide symptoms of sympathetic merriment, which were not, however, the less remarkable for the manœuvre.
“Bless her!” ejaculated Mrs. Heathcote. “I told you, Algernon, didn’t I? that I was sure she was got out to look at the ‘white world,’ as she called it, yesterday. But did you come in together, sir? Why does she not come in to breakfast?”
Sir Charles felt no inclination to amuse the lively Misses Wilkyns with a description of Florence’s frosted drapery, and therefore replied very demurely, that he believed the young lady was gone up stairs to take off her bonnet.
“If I had thought that any of you ladies were likely to get out so early, I would have had the garden walks swept,” said Mr. Thorpe. “I am afraid the fair Florence must have wetted those pretty little feet that I saw on the sofa last night, Mrs. Heathcote.”
“No, sir, I hope not,” said the baronet. “The frost is so exceedingly hard, as yet, that you would gain little advantage by sweeping — And besides—” Sir Charles was on the point of adding that Miss Heathcote’s ramble had not been confined to the garden walks, but he happened to catch Miss Eldruda’s little Welsh black eye so curiously fixed upon him, that he stopped short, and said nothing about it.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 285
