Spring in a Shropshire Abbey. Gaskell Catherine Henrietta Milnes

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СКАЧАТЬ ambitious, aspiring letters from his wife; tear-stained appeals from Royalists; pretty notes from his best beloved daughter, gentle Mistress Claypole. Who knows? And that day it held my little pieces of jewelry, my fans, odds and ends of ribbon, shoes, bows, and collars, and on it, filling the air with sweet perfume, rested a bowl of January roses. How fragrant they were, carrying with them all the breath of summer. Roses are the sweetest of all flowers – the triumph of summer suns, and summer rains, at least so they seemed to me. Those that I gazed on were a selection of exquisite teas: pink, fawn, copper, and creamy white, all the various tints of dying suns were represented, as they stood in an old Caughley bowl; and then I looked at the carnations and buried my nose in their sweet aromatic scent – some of these were of absolute pearl grey, and make me think of the doves of St. Mark when they circle or alight in the Piazza of the City of Lagoons.

      “That’s a beauty,” said Bess, authoritatively. “Why it’s the colour of Smokey.” Smokey is the nursery Persian cat. “I did not know, mama,” continued Bess, “that flowers was grey – I thought they was always red, white, or blue. Burbidge would call that a dust-bin blow.”

      “Flowers are all colours – at least gardeners make them so,” I answered.

      “Ah, madame forgets,” interrupted Célestine, who with Gallic vivacity always likes her share of the conversation, “there are no blue roses.”

      “You are right,” I answered, “there are no blue roses; they are only the flowers of our imaginations, but they never fade,” and I laughed. I spoke in French, and this irritated Bess. Bess has a Shropshire nurse, Winifrede Milner, who has unfortunately an invincible objection to Célestine, in fact to foreigners of all kinds. It is a religion of hatred and objections, and creates continual disagreements in the household. Bess, owing to the nursery feud, sternly sets her face against everything foreign, and, above all, against speaking another tongue.

BESS DISLIKES FOREIGNERS

      “I won’t jabber like Célestine when she talks,” she cried, “it sounds like shaking up a money-box, only no money comes out. Burbidge says ‘foreigners are like sparrows when a cat’s about. They talk when they’ve nothing to say, and go on when they’ve done.’”

      “Oh, Bess, you must not be rude. If you were in France, you wouldn’t like to hear rude things said about England, or English people.”

      “I shouldn’t mind,” replied Bess, sturdily, “because they wouldn’t be true. When things aren’t true, Miss Weldon says, you should rise above such considerations, and take no notice.”

      To divert the child I asked her abruptly what she was going to do. “You must go out, Bess,” I said, “if the sun shines, and take poor Mouse.” Mouse looked at me reproachfully as I spoke – she understood my reference to outdoor exercise, but hated the idea of wetting her feet, besides which she considered going out with any one except me beneath her dignity. Of all boarhounds that I have ever known, mine is the most self-indulgent and the most self-satisfied of my acquaintance. Besides which, secretly I felt convinced she was hopeful of sharing my meals, and lying later on the bed when no one was looking.

      “Old Mouse is no good,” retorted Bess, disdainfully. “She only follows grown-up people. If I lived in heaven,” she added dreamily, “I should have a real, live dog, that would walk with me, although I was only a child cherubim.”

      “Well,” I pursued, “but what are you going to do?”

      “Me?” inquired Bess, with small attention to grammatical niceties. “When I’ve done my lessons I shall go out with Burbidge. We are going to put up cocoa-nuts for tom-tits, and hang up some pieces of fat bacon for the starlings, besides which we are going to sweep round the sundial for the rooks. Papa said they were to be fed, and we are going to do it – Burbidge and me.”

      “What will Miss Weldon do?” I asked.

      “Oh, she will read,” with great contempt said Bess; “she reads, and never sees anything. Burbidge says that there are many who would know more if they read less.”

      “See after my canaries,” I cried, as Bess flew off to finish her lessons, buoyed up with the hope later of going out with our old gardener. Outside I heard him, our faithful old retainer of some seventy years, tramping heavily on the red Ercal gravel. He was about to sweep a place by the sundial on which to feed my birds.

FEEDING THE BIRDS

      Birds of all kinds come to this outside dining-hall – tom-tits, the beautiful little blue and green variety, perky and no larger than a wren; wrens with deep guttural bell-like notes and brown tails up-tilted; robins with flaming breasts; ill-bred, iridescent, chattering starlings; a few salmon-breasted chaffinches, the tamest of all wild birds; spotted thrushes, and raven-hued blackbirds; besides an army of grey sparrows, very tame, very cheeky, and very quarrelsome. Added to all these were the rooks, and a flight of grey-pated hungry jackdaws who uttered short sharp cries when they saw the corn and scraps of bread, but who dared not approach as near as the other and smaller birds.

      Across my latticed windows dark shadows passed and repassed; they were caused by the jackdaws and the rooks who swept down at intervals, and carried off a big piece of bread when nobody was at hand. The old gardener fed this strange feathered crew, and then stood aside to see the fun. How the starlings jabbered and screamed, and what an ill-bred, ill-conditioned lot they were, as they all talked at once, screamed, scolded – vulgar, loud, noisy, common, and essentially of low origin.

      A few of the Watch Tower pigeons swept down with a flutter of musical wings, and were about to fall upon the food, when crowds of jackdaws left the old stone tiled roof and dashed in for their share, uttering as they went their weird ghostly cry. For a moment the noise was chaotic – the pigeons cooed and strutted, the starlings screamed, and the jackdaws pressed greedily forward to seize and carry off all they could get. Suddenly there was a noise, hungry, passionate, furious, like an angry motor pressing forward in a race and bent on dealing death on all sides; and I saw the peacock dash forward, his tail up, and his neck outstretched. He fell upon the food and would allow none to partake of any, till he had had his fill. Behind him followed his three wives, but at a respectful distance; he was not gallant like a barndoor cock, in fact he was much too fine a fellow to think of any one but himself. His tail feathers were not yet quite perfect, and they seemed swathed in places in silver paper, but his neck was glorious, of a brilliant blue with shimmers of golden reflections, and of a colour that has no equal. He had a viperish head, and was gloriously beautiful, and morally, a collection of all the vices – greedy, spiteful, and furiously ill-tempered. He slew, last spring, a whole clutch of young “widdies,” as the country people call ducklings, and killed, in a fit of anger, two of his own chicks. Burbidge dislikes him on account of the damage he does in a garden, but respects him for his beauty.

      “He is like an army of ‘blows’” (blossoms), he says, “and creates more damage than a tempest at harvest time, does old Adam.”

      Mouse, whilst I was watching the scene outside through the long lancet window, seized upon her opportunity and leapt up upon the bed.

      “I wish you wouldn’t,” I said feebly. “I am sure the fire was nice enough, even for a dog.” But Mouse thought differently; she turned round in a distracting, disagreeable way, some three or four times, as wild dogs are said to do in the prairies, on the bed – my bed, and then flumped down heavily across my feet. I wriggled uneasily, but Mouse had gained her point and had no feelings for my discomfort; she rested upon the bed, which to every well-constituted dog-mind is a great achievement, almost an acknowledgment of sovereignty. There she would lie, I knew, until some divertisement could be suggested that would appeal to her palate, or some suggestion of danger outside. For Mouse is greedy and lazy, but faithful as most dogs are, and few human beings. I dared not slap or speak rudely, for great Danes are gifted with acute sensibilities; and if I were to be so ill-judged СКАЧАТЬ