Abbeychurch; Or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit

'And is this pretty Lady of the Lake yours too?' said Anne; 'what a pretty binding, with the Douglas arms on it!'

'Yes,' said Helen, 'that was Fanny's present; and Jane gave me the pretty forget-me-not brooch I wore yesterday. You see I have plenty of keep-sakes from the dear people.'

Anne then turned to the portfolio on the table. Helen shewed her, in the first place, a rather stiff and formal looking forget-me-not, painted by Fanny Staunton, and a carelessly sketched but neatly shaded head drawn by Jane, both which specimens of art Anne tried hard to admire for Helen's sake, but could not find it in her heart to do so. Helen's own drawings, which were landscapes, gave more promise of improvement, and displayed a good deal of taste and freedom of hand, though some were by no means correct in the outline. Helen pointed out several faults which she candidly acknowledged to be wrong, and some others which she said 'Lizzie called blunders.'

'There,' said she, 'is the house at dear Dykelands; there is my window with the Banksia roses clustering round it, so that I could gather them as I stood in my room. That room is still to be called Helen's. But now, Anne, do you think that line ought to be straight? Lizzie says it should, but I think the perspective alters it; I am sure I saw it so.'

'Indeed, Helen,' said Anne, 'I think the shadow must have deceived you.' And with a little trouble she proved that Elizabeth was right.

'Ah!' said Helen, 'if Lizzie would but have shewn me patiently, instead of saying, 'Why, Helen, cannot you draw a straight line?' I should have understood her.' Then she continued, while taking out India-rubber and pencil to rectify the mistake, 'I used to draw a great deal at dear Dykelands; we had a sketching master, and used to go out with him twice a week, but it was very delightful when we three went alone, when one of us used to read while the others drew. I am sure these sketches will for ever remind me of those happy days.'

'Why, Helen,' said Anne, smiling, 'you speak as if you never meant to be happy again.'

'Do I?' said poor Helen; 'I am afraid I do seem rather silly about dear Dykelands. The other day I was singing

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,My heart's in the Highlands, gone chasing the deer,"

when in came Lizzie, and said, "No, Helen,

Your heart is at Dykelands, your heart's in the bogs,Your heart is at Dykelands, gone chasing the frogs,"

for she is always laughing at it for being so damp, dear place. And it was before Horace went to school, and he would do nothing but sing it at me all day, and make Winifred do so too.'

Anne could not help laughing.

'Then you too think me absurd,' said Helen; 'but if you only knew how happy I was at Dykelands, and how desolate I sometimes feel here, you would not wonder at me.'

'Then you do not like Abbeychurch?' said Anne incredulously; she could not say 'you are not happy at home.'

'Who could prefer a little dismal town to a pleasant house in the country?' said Helen; 'you like Merton Hall better than this place, do not you, Anne?'

'Of course,' replied Anne; 'but then Merton Hall is my home.'

'And Abbeychurch is mine,' sighed poor Helen. 'I believe it is very wrong to be discontented with home, but I cannot help it.'

'My dear Helen, what do you mean?' exclaimed Anne, quite aghast.

'Indeed, Anne,' said Helen, 'I do not wonder that you are shocked, but you do not know how I feel here. At Dykelands I felt that people liked me and were pleased with me, but at home nobody wants me, nobody cares for me, I am in the way wherever I go.'

'My dear Helen,' cried Anne, 'that must be fancy!'

'I wish it was,' said poor Helen, shaking her head.

'But only think,' proceeded Anne, 'what you are accusing them of. Not loving you, and wishing you away.'

'No, I do not say it is as bad as that,' said Helen; 'but I am sure I am of no use here, and might as well be away.'

'I suppose,' said Anne, 'that you have been so long away as to have lost all your old home occupations, and you have not yet had time to make new ones.'

'Perhaps it is so,' said Helen; 'but I do not think I had any occupations before I went to Dykelands, at least none worth having, and now I cannot make myself new ones. Lizzie does everything, and will not let me help her, for fear I should do mischief.'

'Now, Helen,' said Anne, who had by this time collected her ideas, which had been completely startled by her cousin's avowal of dislike of home, 'I will tell you what I think Mamma would say to you. I think you used to be indolent and waste your senses, but now Dykelands has given you a spur, and you are very much improved.'

'Do you really think so?' interrupted Helen, who had lately felt quite starved for want of praise.

'Yes,' said Anne, 'and so does everyone, and so Lizzie told me.'

'Lizzie?' said Helen; 'I thought she considered me as great a baby as ever.'

'No, no, my dear,' said Anne; 'I will tell you what she said of you. She said you were almost all she could wish in a sister, and that you were quite a reflective creature; and that is high praise from her.'

'Well, if she thinks so,' said Helen, 'she does not shew it; she is always making game of my opinions and feelings.'

'So she does of almost everyone's,' said Anne; 'but that is no proof that she does not love them.'

'And she will never listen to anything that I say, or take interest in anything I care for,' continued Helen.

'Indeed, Helen, you only think so because you do not understand her ways,' said Anne; 'all last month she could think of nothing but the Consecration, and Horace's going to school. Now all that is over and you are quiet again, after we are gone you will get on capitally together.'

'I am sure she contradicts every word I say,' said Helen.

'That is not out of unkindness, I assure you,' said Anne, who unfortunately could not deny that such was the fact. 'She only likes an argument, which sharpens your wits, and does no harm, if both sides are but good-humoured and cheerful. She will find you out in time, and you will understand her better.'

'Oh! Lizzie is delightful when she does not contradict,' said Helen; 'she is cleverer than anyone I ever saw, even than Fanny Staunton, and Papa says her patience and diligence with Horace were beyond all praise; but I can never be clever enough for her to make me her friend.'

'But you do not think people choose their friends only for their cleverness?' said Anne.

'Why, no,' said Helen, 'I do not think they ought, but Lizzie does. You would not be her friend if you were not clever.'

'Well,' said Anne, 'but try and convince her that you can be her friend without being clever, if you will not allow that you are.'

'Oh!' said Helen, brightening up, 'if Lizzie would but make a friend of me, how happy we should be! if she would but talk to me of her own concerns, and listen to mine! But she never chooses to hear me speak of Dykelands.'

'Then,' said Anne, 'you must remember that she has never been there, and does not know the people.'

'Yes,' said Helen; 'but I think that if she had been there, and I at home, I should have listened for her sake, besides that Mrs. Staunton was our own mamma's dearest friend.'

Anne had always thought that her own mother had been Aunt Katherine's dearest friend; but she had forbearance enough to leave the honour to Mrs. Staunton in Helen's imagination, and answered, 'And for that very reason, and for your sake too, Helen, she will delight to hear about Mrs. Staunton when you are quiet together, if you do not give her too much at a time, or talk of Dykelands when she is thinking of something else. Oh yes, Helen, you and Lizzie will be excellent friends, unless you are much more silly than I think either of you.'

Anne smiled so cheerfully, that Helen could not help smiling too; but she would probably have found another sorrow to lament over, if at this moment Dora had not come up to summon them to their early dinner.

Helen felt exceedingly grateful to Anne for having listened so kindly and patiently to her list of grievances. It was the first sympathy, as she considered, that she had met with since she had left Dykelands, and it atoned in her mind for various little thoughtless ways of Anne's, which had wounded her in former years, and which she had not perhaps striven sufficiently to banish from her memory; and this was a great advantage from this conversation, even if she derived no further benefit from it.

On her side, Anne had some thoughts of telling Elizabeth what Helen's feelings really were, in hopes that she might shew a little regard for them; but, sisterless herself, she thought the bond of sisterhood too sacred to be rashly interfered with by a stranger's hand; besides, she considered Helen's complaints as really confidential, if not expressly so, and resolved to mention them to no one but Lady Merton, and to limit her attempts at being useful to bringing the two sisters before each other in their most amiable light, and at any rate to avoid saying anything that could possibly occasion a discussion between them, though she could hardly imagine that it was possible to dislike one of the merry arguments that she delighted in. However, remembering her mother's story of Mrs. Staunton, she decided that though it was a great misfortune for people to have such strange fancies, yet their friends ought to respect them.

CHAPTER VII

As soon as dinner was over, Elizabeth went up to her own room, and was followed in a few moments by Anne, who found her putting on her bonnet and cloak. 'Can you be going out in such weather as this?' exclaimed she.

'Yes,' said Elizabeth; 'I must

"Let content with my fortunes fit,Though the rain it raineth every day."'

'But what are the fortunes which oblige you to go out?' said Anne.

'The fortunes of an old woman to whom Kate or I read every Friday,' said Elizabeth, 'and the fortunes of various young school-children, who must be prepared for Papa or Mr. Walker to catechize in Church on Sunday.'

'Why do not you send Kate or Helen, instead of murdering yourself in the wet?' said Anne.

'Miss Kitty is three inches deep in the mysteries of a spencer, (I do not mean Edmund,)' said Elizabeth, 'and it will not be out of her head these three days, at least not till she has made Mamma's old black satin gown into one after Harriet's pattern; I heard her asking for it as I came up-stairs.'

'And would not Helen go?' said Anne; 'she does not catch cold as easily as you do.'

'Helen has contrived, somehow or other,' said Elizabeth, 'to know no more about the school-children than if they were so many Esquimaux; besides, anyone with any experience of Helen's ways, had rather walk ninety miles in the rain, than be at the pains of routing her out of the corner of the sofa to do anything useful.'

'Indeed,' said Anne, 'I think Helen does wish to make herself useful.'

'I dare say she sits still and wishes it in the abstract, for I think it must be a very disagreeable thing to reflect that she might as well be that plaster statue for any good that she does,' said Elizabeth; 'but she grumbles at every individual thing you propose for her to do, just as she says she wishes to be a companion to Dora and Winifred, yet whenever they wish her to play with them or tell them a story, which is all the companionship children of their age understand, she is always too much at her ease to be disturbed. And now, as she is the only person in the house with whom poor Lucy is tolerably at her ease, it would be cruel to take her away.'

'That is more of a reason,' said Anne; 'what a pity it is that Lucy is so shy!'

'Excessive shyness and reserve is what prevents her mother from being able to spoil her,' said Elizabeth; 'so do not regret it.'

'Still I do not like to see you going out in this way,' said Anne.

'I may truly say that rain never hurts me,' said Elizabeth; 'and if I once let one trifle stop me in these parish matters, I shall be stopped for ever, and never do anything. Perhaps I shall not come back this hour and a half, for old Mrs. Clayton must be dying to hear all about our Consecration, luncheon, dinner, &c., and as she is the widow of the last Vicar, we are in duty bound to be civil to her, and I must go and call upon her. Oh! you poor thing, I forgot how deserted you will be, and really the drawing-room is almost uninhabitable with that Bengal tiger in it. Here is that delightful Norman Conquest for you to read; pray look at the part about Hereward the Saxon.'

Elizabeth would not trust herself to stay with Anne any longer, and ran down-stairs, and might soon be heard putting up her umbrella and shutting the front door after her.

Anne found the afternoon pass rather heavily, in spite of the companionship of William the Conqueror and Hereward the Saxon, of assisting the children in a wet day game of romps, and of shewing Dora and Winifred the contents of the box they had admired the day before. Helen and Lucy were sitting at work very comfortably in the corner of the sofa in the inner drawing-room; Harriet and Katherine very busy contriving the spencer in the front drawing-room, keeping up a whispering accompaniment to the conversation of the elder ladies—if conversation it could be called, when Mrs. Hazleby had it all to herself, while giving Lady Merton and Mrs. Woodbourne an account of the discomforts she had experienced in country quarters in Ireland.

Sir Edward and Mr. Woodbourne were engaged in looking over the accounts of the church in the study, and Fido was trying to settle his disputes with Meg Merrilies, who, with arching back, tail erect, and eyes like flaming green glass, waged a continual war with him over her basket in the hall.

Anne was very glad to hear her cousin's footstep in the hall as she returned. Coming straight to the drawing-room, Elizabeth exclaimed, 'Mamma, did you tell Mrs. Clarke that she might have a frock for Susan?'

'Yes, my dear,' said Mrs. Woodbourne; 'she asked me yesterday when you were not near, and I told her you would give her one. I thought the child looked very ragged.'

'I suppose she must have it,' said Elizabeth, looking much vexed; 'I told her she should not, a month ago, unless she sent the children to school regularly, and they have scarcely been there five days in the last fortnight.'

'I wish I had known it, my dear,' said Mrs. Woodbourne; 'you know I am always very sorry to interfere with any of your plans.'

'O Mamma, there is no great harm done,' said Elizabeth. She then went to fetch the frock, and gave it to the woman with a more gentle and sensible rebuke than could have been expected from the vehemence of her manner towards Mrs. Woodbourne a minute before. When this was done, and she had taken off her bonnet, she came to beckon Anne up-stairs.

'So you have finished your labours,' said Anne, taking up her work, while Elizabeth sat down to rule a copy-book for Winifred.

'Yes,' said Elizabeth, '"we are free to sport and play;" I have read to the old woman, and crammed the children, and given old Mrs. Clayton a catalogue raisonnee of all the company and all their dresses, and a bill of fare of our luncheon and dinner, and where everything came from.'

'And yet you profess to hold gossip in abomination,' said Anne.

'Oh! but this is old gossip, regular legitimate amusement for the poor old lady,' said Elizabeth. 'She really is a lady, but very badly off, and most of the Abbeychurch gentility are too fine to visit her, so that a little quiet chat with her is by no means of the common-place kind. Besides, she knows and loves us all like her own children. It was one of the first pleasures I can remember, to gather roses for her, and carry them to her from her own old garden here.'

'Well, in consideration of all that you say,' said Anne, 'I suppose I must forgive her for keeping you away all this afternoon.'

'And what did you do all that time?' said Elizabeth. 'Have you read Hereward, and do not you delight in him?'

'Yes,' said Anne, 'and I want to know whether he is not the father of Cedric of Rotherwood.'

'He must have been his grandfather,' said Elizabeth; 'Cedric lived a hundred years after.'

'But Cedric remembered Torquilstone before the Normans came,' said Anne.

'No, no, he could not, though he had been told what it had been before Front-de-Boeuf altered it,' said Elizabeth.

'And old Ulrica was there when Front-de-Boeuf's father took it,' said Anne.

'I cannot tell how long a hag may live,' said Elizabeth, 'but she could not have been less than a hundred and thirty years old in the time of Richard Coeur-de-Lion.'

'Coeur-de-Lion came to the throne in 1189,' said Anne. 'No, I suppose Torquil Wolfganger could not have been dispossessed immediately after the Conquest. But then you know Ulrica calls Cedric the son of the great Hereward.'

'Her wits were a little out of order,' said Elizabeth; 'either she meant his grandson, or Sir Walter Scott made as great an anachronism as when he made that same Ulrica compare Rebecca's skin to paper. If she had said parchment, it would not have been such a compliment.'

'How much interest Ivanhoe makes us take in the Saxons and Normans!' said Anne.

'And what nonsense it is to say that works of fiction give a distaste for history,' said Elizabeth.

'You are an instance to the contrary,' said Anne; 'no one loves stories so well, and no one loves history better.'

'I believe such stories as Ivanhoe were what taught me to like history,' said Elizabeth.

'In order to find out the anachronisms in them?' said Anne; 'I think it is very ungrateful of you.'

'No indeed,' said Elizabeth; 'why, they used to be the only history I knew, and almost the only geography. Do not you remember Aunt Anne's laughing at me for arguing that Bohemia was on the Baltic, because Perdita was left on its coast? And now, I believe that Coeur de Lion feasted with Robin Hood and his merry men, although history tells me that he disliked and despised the English, and the only sentence of their language history records of his uttering was, "He speaks like a fool Briton." I believe that Queen Margaret of Anjou haunted the scenes of grandeur that once were hers, and that she lived to see the fall of Charles of Burgundy, and die when her last hope failed her, though I know that it was not so.'

'Then I do not quite see how such stories have taught you to like history,' said Anne.

'They teach us to realize and understand the people whom we find in history,' said Elizabeth.

'Oh yes,' said Anne; 'who would care for Louis the eleventh if it was not for Quentin Durward? and Shakespeare makes us feel as if we had been at the battle of Shrewsbury.'

'Yes,' said Elizabeth; 'and they have done even more for history. They have taught us to imagine other heroes whom they have not mentioned. Cannot you see the Black Prince, his slight graceful figure, his fair delicate face full of gentleness and kindness—fierce warrior as he is—his black steel helmet, and tippet of chain-mail, his clustering white plume, his surcoat with England's leopards and France's lilies? Cannot you make a story of his long constant attachment to his beautiful cousin, the Fair Maid of Kent? Cannot you imagine his courteous conference with Bertrand du Guesclin, the brave ugly Breton?—Edward lying almost helpless on his couch, broken down with suffering and disappointment, and the noble affectionate Captal de Buch, who died of grief for him, thinking whether he will ever be able to wear his black armour again, and carry terror and dismay to the stoutest hearts of France.'

'Give Froissart some of the credit of your picture,' said Anne.

'Froissart is in some places like Sir Walter himself,' said Elizabeth; 'but now I will tell you of a person who lived in no days of romance, and has not had the advantage of a poetical historian to light him up in our imagination. I mean the great Prince of Conde. Now, though he is very unlike Shakespeare's Coriolanus, yet there is resemblance enough between them to make the comparison very amusing. There was much of Coriolanus' indomitable pride and horror of mob popularity when he offended Beaufort and his kingdom in the halles, when, though as 'Louis de Bourbon' he refused to do anything to shake the power of the throne, he would not submit to be patronized by the mean fawning Mazarin. Not that the hard-hearted Conde would have listened to his wife and mother, even if he had loved them as Coriolanus did, or that his arrogance did not degenerate into wonderful meanness at last, such as Coriolanus would have scorned; but the parallel was very amusing, and gave me a great interest in Conde. And did you ever observe what a great likeness there is in the characters of the two apostates, Julian and Frederick the Great?'

'Then you like history for the sake of comparing the characters mentioned in it?' said Anne.

'I think so,' said Elizabeth; 'and that is the reason I hate abridgements, the mere bare bones of history. I cannot bear dry facts, such as that Charles the Fifth beat Francis the First, at Pavia, in a war for the duchy of Milan, and nothing more told about them. I am always ready to say, as the Grand Seignior did about some such great battle among the Christians, that I do not care whether the dog bites the hog, or the hog bites the dog.'

'What a kind interest in your fellow-creatures you display!' said Anne. 'I think one reason why I like history is because I am searching out all the characters who come up to my notion of perfect chivalry, or rather of Christian perfection. I am making a book of true knights. I copy their portraits when I can find them, and write the names of those whose likenesses I cannot get. I paint their armorial bearings over them when I can find out what they are, and I have a great red cross in the first page.'

'And I will tell you of something else to put at the beginning,' said Elizabeth, 'a branch of laurel entwined with the beautiful white bind-weed. One of our laurels was covered with wreaths of it last year, and I thought it was a beautiful emblem of a pure-hearted hero. The glaring sun, which withers the fair white spotless flower, is like worldly prosperity spoiling the pure simple mind; and you know how often it is despised and torn away from the laurel to which it is so bright an ornament.'

'Yes,' said Anne, 'it clings more safely and fearlessly round the simplest and most despised of plants. And would you call the little pink bindweed childish innocence?'

'No, I do not think I should,' said Elizabeth, 'it is not sufficiently stainless. But then innocence, from not seeing or knowing what is wrong, is not like the guilelessness which can use the world as not abusing it.'

'Yet Adam and Eve fell when they gained the knowledge of good and evil,' said Anne.

'Yes, because they gained their knowledge by doing evil,' said Elizabeth, 'but you must allow that what is tried and not found wanting is superior to what has failed only because it has had no trial. St. John's Day is placed nearer Christmas than that of the Holy Innocents.'

'And St. John knew what evil was,' said Anne; 'yes you are right there.'

'You speak as if you still had some fault to find with me, Anne,' said Elizabeth.

'No, indeed I have not,' said Anne, 'I quite agree with you; it was only your speaking of knowledge of evil us a kind of advantage, that startled me.'

'Because you think knowledge and discernment my idol,' said Elizabeth; 'but we have wandered far away from my white convolvulus, and I have not done with it yet. When autumn came, and the leaves turned bright yellow, it was a golden crown.'

'But there your comparison ends,' said Anne; 'the laurel ought to vanish away, and leave the golden wreath behind.'

'No,' said Elizabeth; 'call the golden wreath the crown of glory on the brow of the old saint-like hero, and remember that when he dies, the immortality the world prizes is that of the coarse evergreen laurel, and no one dreams of his white wreath.'

'I wish you would make a poem of your comparison, for the beginning of my book of chivalry,' said Anne.

'It will not do,' said Elizabeth, 'I am no poet; besides, if I wished to try, just consider what a name the flower has—con-vol-vu-lus, a prosaic, dragging, botanical term, a mile long. Then bindweed only reminds me of smothered and fettered raspberry bushes, and a great hoe. Lily, as the country people call it, is not distinguishing enough, besides that no one ever heard of a climbing lily. But, Anne, do tell me whom you have in your book of knights. I know of a good many in the real heroic age, but tell me some of the later ones.'