The Lark (Nesbit)/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
"I think," said Jane, in a small, flat voice, "that I would rather go before he comes."
"Before who comes?" Mr. Rochester was laying the keys out on the table, one by one, in a row.
"Your uncle."
"But he isn't coming," said Mr. Rochester, still intent on the keys. "Why can't people use key-rings? These were on a cord, and it's broken. They were all in a certain order. Only two labelled A and B—the rest en suite. A silly game. No—he's not coming. He's gone to Thibet. There's a Buddhist manuscript there that he must see, or perish. So he's gone to see it. But I've got a letter for you from him."
"You can post it to us," said Lucilla, in a voice smaller and flatter than Jane's.
"No need for that—I'll give it you in half a minute, I'm only trying to remember how these things go. My dear girl," he ended, in a quite changed voice, "whatever is the matter?"
"Oh, nothing," said Jane, now sufficiently recovered to bristle defensively. "Everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as Marcus Aurelius said, didn't he? Only those unexpected things do rather take your breath away. I daresay our new gardener can take down the board. I don't mind in the least," she went on, and she was now, indeed, a little breathless; "but I must say I think it would have been better to have let us alone, and not let us begin to work here and hope and plan things, and then spring this on us." She walked to the window and stood looking out at the cedars, which looked, to her eyes, twisted and rainbow-rimmed.
"Springing what?" asked Rochester in complete bewilderment. "Tell me—what?" But Jane could find no voice to tell him what.
"Springing what?" he asked again.
"What you told us," said Lucilla, in a sort of faint, timid growl, and then she too became speechless, and turned to the other window and gazed out at the gates and the board, also, to her, prismatically coloured.
"But I haven't told you anything yet," Rochester protested. Four eyes bright with unconcealable tears turned on him astonished reproach.
The bewildered young man was quite overcome. He gazed from Lucilla to Jane; his heart experienced a twinge at sight of Lucilla's brimming eyes, but when he saw the dejected droop of Jane's head he lost his own.
"Ah, don't!" he said, in a voice of extreme tenderness, and he took two steps and put his hand over Jane's hand, which lay on the window-ledge. "Please, please don't. I must have been incredibly stupid—I don't know what I've done, but . . ."
Will it be believed that Mr. Dix chose this exact moment to appear at the glass door and ask cheerfully where the wheelbarrow was kept? He looked very handsome though; his classic brow was dotted with beads of sweat, and his blue shirt, open at the neck and rolled up as to the sleeves, accentuated the blue of his eyes. He spoke with perfect respect, of course, but it was the respect of the young man to the woman who is his social equal, not the respect of the gardener to his employer.
"I can't find the wheelbarrow anywhere," he said.
"We hid it behind the laurels," said Lucilla, "in case of burglars. We couldn't get it into the shed. I'll show you," and felt herself being tactful. The spectacle of Mr. Rochester laying his hand on Jane's, and Jane not whisking her hand abruptly from this unusual contact until Mr. Dix's voice was heard at the door, made Lucilla extremely anxious to get away, somehow, from the garden room. But Jane also appeared anxious for flight.
"No—I'll go," she said, and was out of the door like a flash.
"Who's that?" asked Mr. Rochester, when she was gone.
"Mr. Dix. He was going to be our gardener."
"Oh," said Mr. Rochester coldly; "why only 'was'?"
"Well—we don't need a gardener at Hope Cottage, and since we're not going to go on here . . ."
"Oh," said Mr. Rochester slowly, "I begin to see. Well, it's no use my trying to remember what I said—something more than usually idiotic, I suppose—but what I came down to say was this: my uncle is so charmed with the panelling, and the tea, and you, and Miss Quested, and everything, that he's changed his mind completely; he says you can have the whole of Cedar Court to do exactly as you like with—no restrictions. Only in return he wants to have Hope Cottage kept exactly as it is—not let—but kept as it is."
"Just as it is? No one to live in it? Like a museum?"
"More like a sacred relic of the past."
"I don't understand," said Lucilla; "but then I don't understand anything this morning. Let me go and tell Jane."
"Just a minute," said Mr. Rochester. "Who is this Mr. Dix?"
"A friend of ours," said Lucilla cautiously.
"Known him long?" asked Mr. Rochester—"though, of course, I've no earthly right to ask."
"No," said Lucilla, with some spirit, "I don't think you have—any earthly."
And a gloomy silence fell between them. The young man broke it by a laugh that was not very merry.
"Why," he said, "this is like a nightmare! I couldn't sleep last night—literally and actually I couldn't sleep—for thinking how frightfully pleased you'd both be. And now you're quarrelling with me, and she's gone off crying with that Dixy fellow, and everything's about as damnable—I beg your pardon, but it really is—as it can possibly be."
"Well," said Lucilla, "it's no use making it worse by being silly; of course Jane and I both wanted to go off and look for the wheelbarrow—anything to get away from you. You don't suppose we enjoyed standing and snivelling at you like silly, hysterical schoolgirls, do you?"
"Look here," said Mr. Rochester, "about that man Dix, or whatever his wretched name is . . ."
"Well, what about him?"
"Don't be prickly. Do tell me about him."
"All right. I will. We made his acquaintance at Madame Tussaud's and—and we asked him to tea. Jane asked him to be our gardener. And now what about it?"
"You mean to say you just met him like that—you don't know anything about him?"
"No more than we knew about you when we asked you to tea. Now look here, Mr. Rochester, we like you very much as friend, but we aren't going to have you as a duenna. Yes, I daresay I'm vulgar, but there it is. We choose our own friends. You oughtn't to forget that we chose you. And you can't expect us to go through life without any friends except you. And you can't expect us not to have a gardener. And do think what a much better number four is than three for tennis."
"That's true," he admitted thoughtfully.
"If I knew you well enough to ask a favour . . ."
"But you do—you do."
"Then I should ask you to be very nice to Mr. Dix. There's every reason why you should. Look here, Mr. Rochester. I'm beginning to understand what you said just now. If we're really to have Cedar Court, this is our day of days—the birthday of our life. And we're spoiling it with silliness. Put the black dog up the chimney. Fie, fie! Unknit that angry, threatening brow, and tell me I'm not dreaming, and that your uncle really is the angel you said he was. Are you going to be nice? Are you?"
He was smiling by this time.
"How eloquent you are!" he said. "I've never heard you say so much at once since I've known you."
"I'm never eloquent when Jane's there," said Lucilla—"she does it so much better than I do; and you will be nice?"
"I'll do anything you like. I'll even try to admire your far too admirable gardener. Please forgive me, and let's enjoy the day of days."
"Mr. Dix will have to be allowed to enjoy it too," she stipulated.
"Out of working hours," he urged. "If he's a gardener, let him jolly well garden."
"And now," she said, smiling as April smiles, "let's go and find Jane, and tell her. Monday's early-closing day—at least it ought to be. We'll lock up the shop and be free for happiness."
They found Jane on the stone seat in the nut-walk at the far end of the garden. On the way, Mr. Rochester noted with some satisfaction that the gardener was jolly well gardening. He had his wheelbarrow and was pitchforking weeds into it with due energy.
Mr. Rochester thought he had never seen anything so satisfying as the light of half incredulous joy that shone in Jane's eyes when Lucilla—without any beating about the bush—broke out with:
"It's all right, Jane. It's the exact opposite of what we thought. We're to have all Cedar Court, my dear—and do just what we like with it."
"You're not—not joking?" Jane asked, afraid to take this new joy in her hands.
"Joking?" said Lucilla. "Not much. It's dream-like, but it's true. Mr. Rochester's got the keys. Let's go now, this very minute, and see all over everything."
"Oh yes!" said Jane. "Oh, who would have thought my blundering down those stairs that day would have led to this!"
"If people only knew what results you get there wouldn't be enough stairs in the world for all the people who'd be tumbling over each other to tumble down them," said Lucilla.
"You're wandering, dear," said Jane. "Oh, Mr, Rochester, is it really true?"
"As true as taxes," said Mr. Rochester.
••••••
And so, led by Mr. John Rochester, who by a curious coincidence had on boots as new as Mr. Dix's—boots that creaked too—they explored the house. It was, they both felt, a great moment. Those trembling joys of their first furtive raid on Cedar Court, those breathless glimpses, those hurried peeps at forbidden treasures of cabinet and banner-screen—these surely would be as nothing compared with the mature joy of this absolutely lawful exploration.
They "went over" the house. No longer now were shutters opened, a mere reluctant inch, by fumbling feminine fingers, but flung fully back by the strong hand of a benevolent authority. The treasures of furniture and hangings, of picture and ornament, which, just glimpsed in twilight, had remained less a subject for memory than the seeds of romantic imaginings, now came forth out of the shadows boldly, solidly, with all their correct curves and angles, their definite "periods," their declared colours and unconcealed textures. To the early survey the place had seemed a dream-mansion—a place with a spell on it,like the Castle of the Sleeping Beauty, or the old brewery where Miss Havisham walked in her ghostly bridal satin and dusty bridal flowers. Seen now by daylight, the May sunshine streaming unhindered through the dusty panes, with Mr. Rochester's new boots creaking on its obvious carpets, it was just like a house—like any other house. Rather a big house, furnished in a rather old-fashioned style. Even the front rooms, whose boarded windows still denied the light, seemed not very mysterious, only dark and dull.
Rather a big house? It was a very big house. A neglected big house. A very charming place to dream dreams about, when all that one knew was its pleasing outside shell, and the romantic suggestion of its half-seen dusky interior. But a house to live in? A house to use and make useful? As they went through room after room the spirits of the girls sank lower and lower, and when they came to the laundry and still-room and butler's pantry the house had come to seem less a Paradise than a problem. The girls became more and more silent, and Mr. Rochester, who, never voluble, had now almost the whole weight of the conversation on his shoulders, felt a growing conviction that his uncle's generosity had conferred not a benefit but a white elephant.
"Don't you," he said, when they had been through all the rooms and stood at last on the doorstep, "don't you like it?"
"Oh yes!" they both said, but quite without conviction.
"Of course we like it," Jane said.
"Very much, thank you, of course," said Lucilla.