The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 7

"A most diplomatic project!" replied Rosalind; "for it will enlist his hospitality on our side, and ten to one but the rough coating of his heart will thaw and resolve itself into a dew, as f.a.n.n.y would say, by the mere act of administering coffee and hot cakes to us; and then the field is won."

"I think we will try," said Helen, smiling with a sort of inward strengthening, from the conviction that such would very probably be the result.

A few more words settled the exact time and manner of the expedition, and the friends parted to dress for dinner.

CHAPTER VIII.

MRS. RICHARDS AND HER DAUGHTERS.--THE TEA-PARTY.

On the evening of that day, the three girls for the first time induced Mrs. Mowbray to go beyond the limits of the flower-garden, and walk under the avenue of beautiful elms in the Park. The simple and unostentatious tone of her character had influenced all her habits, and Mrs. Mowbray was a better and more constant walker than ladies generally who have two or three carriages ready to attend them. She appeared to enjoy the exercise from which for several weeks she had been debarred; and when the end of the avenue was reached, and f.a.n.n.y almost mechanically opened the wide gate at the bottom, of it, her mother pa.s.sed through it without making any observation, and in truth forgetting at that moment all that had happened since she had last done so. The gate opened upon a road, which, according to long-established custom, they crossed nearly at right angles, and then mounted and descended half a dozen steps, which conducted them into a wide and beautiful meadow, now fragrant with the new-made hay that several waggons were conveying to augment a lofty rick in a distant corner of it.

It was not till Mrs. Mowbray perceived another party seated round the base of a hayc.o.c.k which an empty waggon had nearly reached, that she remembered all the circ.u.mstances which made every casual meeting a matter of importance and agitation to her. The group which seemed a very merry one, retained their places, till two stout haymakers saucily but playfully presented their pitch-forks as if to dislodge them. They then started to their feet to the number of five; and the Park family recognized Mrs. Richards, her three daughters, and Major Dalrymple.

"I have not seen them yet, Helen!" said Mrs. Mowbray with nervous trepidation:--"how very wrong I have been to come so far!"

"Why so, my dearest mother?" replied Helen, "I am sure it is less painful to meet thus, than at those dreadful visits in the drawing-room."

"But they have not called, Helen ... certainly, we had better go back."

"Dear mamma, it is not possible," said f.a.n.n.y, stepping forward to meet a favourite companion in the youngest Miss Richards: "you see Rosalind has got to them already."

It was indeed too late to retreat; nor did the wish to do so last long.

Mrs. Richards pressed the hand of Rosalind, who had taken hers, but, throwing it off at the same moment, hastened forward to greet the widowed friend she had wanted courage to seek. Her colour was heightened, perhaps, from feeling it possible that the cause of her absence had been mistaken; but large tears trembled in her dark eyes, and when she silently took the hand of Mrs. Mowbray and pressed it to her lips, every doubt upon the subject was removed.

Major Dalrymple and the three girls followed; and the first moment of meeting over, the two parties seemed mutually and equally pleased to join. Mrs. Richards was the only person in the neighbourhood to whom Rosalind, during her six months' residence in it, had at all attached herself: there was something about her that had fascinated the young heiress's fancy, and the circ.u.mstance of her being the only good second in a duet to be found within the circle of the Mowbray Park visitings had completed the charm.

With the two eldest Misses Richards, Helen was on that sort of intimate footing which a very sweet-tempered, unpretending girl of nineteen, who knows she is of some consequence from her station, and is terribly afraid of being supposed to be proud, is sure to be with young ladies of nearly her own age, blessed with most exuberant animal spirits, and desirous of making themselves as agreeable to her as possible.

Louisa and Charlotte Richards were fine, tall, showy young women, with some aspirations after the reputation of talent; but they were neither of them at all like their mother, who was at least six inches shorter than either of them, and aspired to nothing in the world but to make her three children happy.

Little Mary, as her sisters still persisted to call her, approached much nearer to the stature, person, and character of Mrs. Richards; she was not quite so _mignonne_ in size, but she

"Had her features, wore her eye, Perhaps some feeling of her heart,"

and was, spite of all the struggles which her mother could make to prevent it, the darling of her eyes and the hope of her heart. Moreover, little Mary was, as we have before hinted, the especial friend of f.a.n.n.y Mowbray.

The delights of a balmy evening in the flowery month of June--the superadded delights of a hay-field, and above all, the supreme delight of unexpectedly meeting a party of friends, were all enthusiastically descanted upon by the two tall Misses Richards. They had each taken one of Helen's slight arms, and borne her along over the stubble gra.s.s with a degree of vehemence which hardly left her breath to speak.

"I do not think mamma is going any farther," she continued to utter, while Miss Louisa stopped to tie a shoe-string.

"Oh, but you must!" screamed Miss Charlotte, attempting to drag her onward singly.

"Stop, Charlotte!... stop!" cried the eldest sister, snapping off the shoe-string in her haste--"you shall not carry her away from me. What a shame! Isn't it a shame, when it is such an age since we met?"

There is nothing against which it is so difficult to rally, as the exaggerated expression of feelings in which we do not share. The quiet Helen could not lash herself into answering vehemence of joy, and having smiled, and smiled till she was weary, she fairly slipped from her companions, and hastened back with all the speed she could make to the tranquil party that surrounded her mother.

The lively young ladies galloped after her, declaring all the way that she was the cruellest creature in the world.

Mrs. Mowbray now said that she hoped they would all accompany her home to tea;--a proposal that met no dissenting voice; but it was some time before the whole party could be collected, for f.a.n.n.y Mowbray and little Mary were nowhere to be seen. Major Dalrymple, however, who was taller even than the Misses Richards, by means of standing upon the last left hayc.o.c.k, at length discovered them sitting lovingly side by side under the shelter of a huge lime-tree that filled one corner of the field. He was dismissed to bring them up to the main body, and executed his commission with great gallantry and good-nature, but not without feeling that the two very pretty girls he thus led away captive would much rather have been without him; for as he approached their lair, he perceived, not only that they were in very earnest conversation, but that various sc.r.a.ps of written paper lay in the lap of each, which at his approach were hastily exchanged, and conveyed to reticules, pockets, or bosoms, beyond the reach of his eye.

They nevertheless smilingly submitted themselves to his guidance, and in order to prove that he was not very troublesome, f.a.n.n.y so far returned to their previous conversation as to say,

"We must ask your judgment, Major Dalrymple, upon a point on which we were disputing just before you joined us: which do you prefer in the pulpit--and out of it--Mr. Wallace, or Mr. Cartwright?"

"You were disputing the point, were you?" he replied. "Then I am afraid, Miss f.a.n.n.y, I must give it against you; for I believe I know Mary's opinion already, and I perfectly agree with her."

"Then I shall say to you, as I say to her," replied f.a.n.n.y, eagerly "that you are altogether blinded, benighted, deluded, and wrapt up in prejudice! I have great faith both in her sincerity and yours, major; and yet I declare to you, that it does seem to me so impossible for any one to doubt the superiority of Mr. Cartwright in every way, that I can hardly persuade myself you are in earnest."

"What do you mean by _every way_, Miss f.a.n.n.y?--you cannot surely believe him to be a better man than our dear old vicar?" said the major.

"We can none of us, I think, have any right to make comparisons of their respective goodness--at least not as yet," replied f.a.n.n.y. "When I said _every way_, I meant in the church and in society."

"On the latter point I suppose I ought to leave the question to be decided between you, as in all cases of the kind where gentlemen are to be tried, ladies alone, I believe, are considered competent to form the jury;--not that Mary can have much right to p.r.o.nounce a verdict either, for I doubt if she has ever been in a room with Mr. Cartwright in her life."

"Yes, I have," said Mary eagerly, "and he is perfectly delightful!"

"Indeed!--I did not know you had seen him."

"Yes--we met him at Smith's."

"Oh! you saw him in a shop, did you?--and even that was sufficient to prove him delightful?"

"Quite enough!" replied Mary, colouring a little as she observed Major Dalrymple smile.

"The more you see of him, the more you will be aware of his excellence,"

said f.a.n.n.y, coming to the aid of her friend, and with an air of gravity that was intended to check the levity of the major. "I have seen him repeatedly at the Park, Major Dalrymple, and under circ.u.mstances that gave sufficient opportunity to show the excellence of his heart, as well as the charm of his friendly, affectionate, and graceful manner."

"He has certainly been a very handsome man," said the major.

"Has been!" exclaimed both the girls at once.

"He is still very well-looking," added the gentleman.

"Well-looking!" was again indignantly echoed by the ladies.

"You do not think the term strong enough? but when a man gets on the wrong side of forty it is, I think, as much as he can expect."

"I don't care a farthing what his age maybe," cried Mary; "do you, Miss Mowbray?... If he were a hundred and forty, with that countenance and that manner, I should still think him the handsomest and most perfect person I ever saw."

"Dear Mary!" replied f.a.n.n.y affectionately, "how exactly we feel alike about him! I love you dearly for fighting his battles so warmly."

"There is surely no fighting in the case," said Major Dalrymple, laughing,--"at least not with me. But have a care, young ladies: such perfect conformity of taste on these subjects does not always, I believe, tend to the continuance of female friends.h.i.+p. What a sad thing it would be if those two little hands were some day to set pulling caps between their respective owners!"

"There is not the least danger of any such dismal catastrophe, I a.s.sure you. Is there Mary?"