Red as a Rose is She: A Novel. Broughton Rhoda

Gerard never appears at breakfast. About twenty years ago she had an illness, and, on the strength of it, has kept up a character for invalidhood ever since. Miss Blessington takes her place at the head of the table; she is sitting there now. Her shapely hands are busy among the teacups; her white lids drooped over her calm eyes. There is a great gold cross on her breast, that rises and falls in soft, even undulations. Eve, as she was when first she grew into separate entity and embodiment out of Adam's side; Eve, of creamiest flesh, and richest, reddest blood, before a soul – a tormenting, puzzling, intangible, incomprehensible soul – was breathed into her.

      When Constance marries, her husband will gaze at her as a man might gaze at Gibson's "Venus," supposing that he had bought for a great price that marvel of modern sculpture, and had set it up in the place of honour in his gallery. He would half-shut his eyes, the better to appreciate the exquisite turn of the cold, stately throat, the modelling of the little rounded wrist; would put his head on one side, and look at it this way and that, to determine whether he liked the tinting.

      "Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,"

      as the pithy line that everybody knows, and that next to nobody could have written, hath it. At forty Constance will be a much handsomer woman than Esther. At forty those clean-cut, immovable, expressionless features will be hardly the worse for wear; that colourless marble skin will be hardly less smoothly polished than it is now. At forty Esther (if she live so long) will have cried and laughed, and fretted and teased herself into a mere shadow of her present self.

      Every one's letters at Felton are put on their plate for them. As Esther takes her seat, she perceives that there is one for her – one directed in a scrawling, schoolboy hand. The blood rushes to her face, as it does to a turkeycock's wattles when he is excited or angry, and she thrusts it hastily into her pocket. To her guilty imagination it seems that written all over it, in big red letters, legible to every eye, is, "From Bob Brandon, Esther Craven's lover." As her eyes lift themselves shyly, to see whether St. John is observing her, they meet his, looking at her curiously, interestedly, puzzledly.

      "We allow people to read their letters at breakfast here," he says, with a friendly smile; "we are not particular as to manners, as I dare say you have found out by this time."

      "Oh! thanks, I'm in no hurry; it's of no consequence – it will keep," answers Esther, disjointedly, with would-be indifference, and the turkeycock hue spreading to the edge of her white gown.

      The morning hours at Felton are not exciting. Sir Thomas is building a new orchid house, and spends much of his time standing over the bricklayers, like an Egyptian overseer, telling them with his usual courteous candour how much more he knows about their trade than they themselves do, who have been at it all their lives. St. John disappears too, and Constance and Esther are left tête-à-tête.

      Esther has plenty of time to read Bob's letter, and to understand it, which latter requires some ingenuity, as, from the greater rapidity of his thoughts than of his pen, he omits most of the little words —tos and ands and whichs and whos and hes and shes. There is a good deal about his mother in it: several messages from her; a great many questions as to what Mr. Gerard was like, with solemn adjurations to answer them; a sheet devoted to the exposition of the luxury in which it is possible to live on £300 a year; and, lastly, a sentence or two as to his great loneliness, and his eager longing to have his darling Esther back again – not much on that head, as if he were afraid of marring her enjoyment by intruding upon her the picture of his own disconsolateness. It was not an eloquent letter; in fact, it was rather a stupid one, and had evidently been written with a very nasty scratchy pen; but for all that it was a nice one, and so Esther felt, and wished that it had been less so.

      Bob is a dear fellow; and, no doubt, when she goes back to Glan-yr-Afon, she will be very glad to see him, and be very fond of him; but, for the present, she would like to forget him altogether – to have a holiday from him: he seems to come in incongruously now somehow.

      "Where's St. John?" grunts miladi, who makes her appearance towards luncheon time, from the arm-chair which is witness to so many gentle dozes on her part.

      Miladi likes St. John; he is very good to her, and often stands in the breach between her and Sir Thomas.

      "Vanished," answers Miss Blessington, in her slow, sweet drawl. "I think Miss Craven must have frightened him away."

      It is very pleasant, is not it? when you think you have been making a highly favourable impression on a person, to hear that they have fled before you in abject fear.

      "I had no idea that he was such a timid fawn," answers Essie, nettled.

      "He is very peculiar," says Constance, her white fingers flying swiftly in and out among the coloured silks of the smoking cap she is embroidering; "and has a most unfortunate shrinking from strangers."

      "The greatest friends must have been strangers once," objects Essie, feeling rather small.

      "Quite true, so they must; but he is so very difficile, we never can get him to admire any one – can we, aunt?"

      But "aunt" has fallen sweetly asleep.

      "With the exception of two or three fortunate blondes – I prefer dark people myself infinitely, don't you?"

      "Infinitely," replies Esther, with emphasis.

      It is not true – she does nothing of the kind; but, after all, what is truth in comparison of the discomfiture of an adversary?

      CHAPTER X

      Luncheon comes, but no St. John. After luncheon Sir Thomas, Miss Blessington, and Miss Craven go out riding. Miss Craven's knowledge of horsemanship is confined to her exploits on a small, shaggy, down-hearted Welsh pony, concerning whom it would be difficult to predicate which he was fullest of, years or grass. Miss Blessington has lent her an old habit; it is much too big in the waist and shoulders for her, but a well-made garment always manages to adapt itself more or less to any figure, and she does not look amiss in it. It is a matter of very little consequence to her at the present moment how she looks; she is the arrantest coward in Christendom, and her heart sinks down to the bottom of her boots as she sees three horses that look unnaturally tall and depressingly cheerful issue through the great folding-doors that open into the stable-yard.

      "Oh, Sir Thomas! it is a chesnut, is it? Don't they say that chesnuts always have very uncertain tempers? Oh! please – I'm rather frightened. I think, if you don't mind, I'd almost as soon – "

      "Fiddlesticks!" answers Sir Thomas, roughly. "Cannot have my horses saddled and unsaddled every half-hour because you don't know your own mind. God bless my soul, child! Don't look as if you were going to be hanged! Why, you might ride her with a bit of worsted. Here, Simpson, look sharp, and put Miss Craven up."

      After two abortive attempts, in the first of which she springs short, and glides ignobly to earth again, and in the second takes a bound that goes near to carrying her clean over her steed, after having given Simpson a kick in the face, and torn a hole in her borrowed habit, Miss Craven is at length settled in her seat.

      It is a hot afternoon; after all, I think that miladi has the best of it, sitting in a garden-chair under a tulip tree, eating apricots. The deer, with dappled sides and heavy-horned heads, are herding about the rough, knotted feet of the great trees that stand here and there in solitary kingship about the park. They spread their ancient, outstretched arms between earth and heaven, and man and beast rejoice in the shade thereof. The dust lies a hand-breadth thick upon the road; the nuts in the hedgerow, the half-ripe blackberries, the rag-wort in the grass – all merge their distinctive colours in one dirty-white mask.

      "Is she going to kick, do you think?" asks Esther, in a mysterious whisper of Miss Blessington, across Sir Thomas. "Does not it mean that when they put their ears back?"

      "I don't think you need be alarmed," answers Constance, with politely-veiled contempt; "it is only the flies that tease her."

      The animal that inspires such alarm in Esther's mind, is a slight, showy thing, nearly thoroughbred; a capital lady's park hack. It is quiet enough, only that the quietness of a young, oats-fed mare, and of an antediluvian Welsh pony