Orlando

Front matter

O R L A N DO. BY CLEMENTINA BLACK, AUTHOR OF " A SUSSEX IDYL," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE. 1880. (All rights reserved.) PRINTED AT THE CAXTON PRESS, BECCLES. CONTENTS OF VOL. Ill CHAPTER PAGE I. In the Easter Vacation . . i II. On a Saturday and Sunday . ' 17 III. Released . . . -43 IV. Converging Lines . . 62 V. Self-Confessed . . -87 VI. In the Time of Nightingales . 106 VII. Viola's Birthday . . 125 VIII. "All in the Golden Afternoon" 147 IX. A Meeting . . . -165 X. In the Park Crescent Gardens 181 XI. Parted . . . -203 XII. In a Copse at Sherborne . 216 XIII. Too Late . . . .243 XIV. Set Free .... ORLANDO

Chapter I. In The Easter Vacation

" Betwene Mershe and Averil When spray beginneth to spring." Old English Lyric Poetry. A busy man's time goes quickly, and Or lando was quite surprised to recollect one morning that Easter was close at hand, and that the Duncannons would be coming to their temporary home next week. He walked up from the damp fields, speckled here and there with the first daffodils, to look at the condition of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Haverdike were in London, but directions had been sent down, and he VOL. III. E ORLANDO. found the cottage given up to cleaners and scourers. The rose trees, of which Duncannon had spoken so hopefully, had suffered from the March winds, and were straggling, muddy and rain-beaten, across the path. The lilacs and laburnums were in leaf, and before many weeks, would be in flower, and amid the dark mould peeped the points of crocuses.

He had glanced through the rooms, anxious to see whether he could add anything to their comfort, and, observing that no piano was to be seen, had gone home smiling to himself He wrote, the same evening, to Duncannon, begging to be made useful, and offering to have their lue^ao'e fetched from the oo o station, a matter not always easy of ar rangement in Sherborne. And for the next few days his own plans and schemes were always being interrupted by some fresh idea on behalf of his coming friends. Duncannon, in his letter of answer, mentioned that Viola was coming with them, to stay a few days before going on, at the end of the vacation, to Cambridge. She had, as Orlando knew, become in the pre vious autumn a student of the then newly opened college for women. It seemed to him almost unimaginable that such a college could exist.

The notion of a grave and studious group of female undergradu ates seemed only appropriate to the pages of ' The Princess ; ' and that Viola Cash was otherwise than grave and studious, was not to be supposed. He was rather curious to see whether the new way of life had made any perceptible change in her. He left his friends alone on the first evening, but the next morning walked over, with Rob, as usual, at his heels. Dun cannon caught sight of him, and came out to meet him. " Here you are. Glad to see you. The authorities are delighted with everything, ORLANDO. and are planning lawn-tennis already. Julia is as pleased as a child with a new toy." They went in, and Rob lingered behind them, to rub his muddy feet, according to rule, on a door-mat. Mrs. Duncannon met them, with just her mother's smile and tone of voice.

" I am so glad to see you, Mr. Sher borne, and so much obliged to you for getting the luggage up for us on Tuesday. It made all the difference to our getting comfortably settled. And Sarah is quite charmed with the politeness of your man, who insisted upon coming in and opening all the packing-cases for her." While she spoke the open-standing door was pushed a little wider, and Viola and Rob came in together, apparently on the most friendly terms. " You have done a wonder, Miss Cash, in winning Rob's heart at first sight," said Orlando, looking with surprise at the dog's head, nestled against her hand. " Most dogs like me," she answered. " My heart was won by the way he rubbed the mud off his paws before he came in." She sat down and Rob laid his head upon her knee, while he kept an attentive eye to follow his master's movements.

" I have been pacing out the lawn," she continued. " There would be just room for lawn-tennis on it ; and I would mow the grass myself with pleasure." " Lawn -tennis, Sherborne," observed Duncannon, " is the science chiefly studied by the ladies of Newnham." " As, perhaps, Mr. Sherborne remembers that boating is by the men," said Viola, in a tone too demurely matter of fact to allow an opening for denial. " I little thought," said Orlando, " when I was studying that science there, that I should live to see young ladies invade us, ORLANDO. and discover and proclaim our innocent weaknesses." " Let us hope that mutual emulation may cure the weaknesses of both," said Viola, smiling. " But you speak of us as invaders. That is rather hard. We want to be fellow-soldiers. It is the readiness of people to talk like that makes women so apt to be bitter."

She, however, was not speaking bitterly, but veiy gently. " I used the word carelessly, not in earnest," Orlando hastened to say. And Julia interposed, " I won't have Mr. Sherborne made to stand and give his watchword. He shall have a special absolution to be as heretic as he pleases." " I am very much obliged indeed, but, as Miss Cash says, I thought I was a fellow-soldier." Viola, who had looked down at the black head against her knee, looked up, at this, with a frank smile of pleased and approv ing concord. Duncannon had leaned against the man tel-shelf, watching the discussion in silence. Now, abruptly, according to his wont, he struck in. " Sherborne, thank you for sending up your piano." " Why, how did you know ? " asked Orlando, quite disconcerted. Duncannon chuckled. " Didn't I tell you so, Julia ?

I thought I remembered it as having stood in your breakfastroom." " Oh, why did you do that, Mr. Sher borne ? " Julia began. " Chiefly, I think, in the selfish hope of hearinga little music. There is another O piano left at Sherborne, and by dividing them I hoped that I might, like the lady in the nursery rhyme, have music wherever I went." ORLANDO. "Which means, I trust, that you are coming here pretty often," said Duncannon. " And that I hope you will come pretty often to me. You can't imagine how glad I have been in looking forward to having you for neighbours. Indeed, I came up this morning chiefly to offer a suggestion. Will you come to dinner with me this evening ? I am sure Mrs. Duncannon cannot have had time to discover our resources in the way of butchers and so forth, yet ; I am sure you will have enough to do in bringing out the contents of all those packing-cases, without thinking of dinners."

The ' suggestion ' was made with a peculiar smile of appeal inherited from his father, and not easily to be resisted by persons of gentle disposition. " Thank you," said Julia. " I do confess that I was wondering how, when, and where provisions could be got. Indeed, I was just going to persuade Harry to march into the village, with a big basket on his arm, and forage for us." " ' You was, ma'am, was you ? ' as Fanny Squeers says. Then I think we have had a very lucky escape. I don't know how it is, but when I buy meat it always grows tough on its way home, and fish and fruit grow stale." " Your artistic education, perhaps," said Viola, " leads you unconsciously to think things the better for being old." " If so, Viola, you might be readier to forgive us for denying to women an education which opens up an endless vista of bad dinners."

Orlando looked at Viola, rather expecting that she would give a serious answer. But though Viola had for once taken a light o o word in earnest, she was not subject to that kind of dulness, and merely laughed. Then Orlando, mindful that his house- ORLANDO. keeper would feel hurt if she had not due notice of guests to dinner, stood up to go. Rob at once left Viola and went to his master's side, but the look which had watched Orlando was now transferred to her. As he walked homeward, Orlando's mind was haunted by Viola's little speech, "We want to be fellow-soldiers." Both the manner and the matter of the words had pleased him particularly. He was glad to think that he should see her and hear her again so soon. o The evening was the most pleasant which he had spent in his own house since his father's death.

The desire for society had slumbered in him. His neighbours were well-meaning, kindly people ; he had many subjects of interest in common with them, and it certainly would never have entered his mind to tell himself that they bored him ; but their conversation never touched the deeper currents of his own thoughts, and it was long since he had known that best sort of talk in which ' Thought leapt out to wed with thought Ere thought could wed itself with speech.' To-day he was once more among those who were accustomed to a life of wider scope. He found himself watching, with keen interest, the quick changes of Viola's face, on which every inflection of her thought showed itself. She did not speak very much, but what she said seemed to Orlando to make a great part of the con versation. From her, his eyes went to Duncannon and to Julia.

He noted the little improvements in Duncannon's outer man ; the more smoothly ordered hair,- the greater precision of collar and wristband, the nearer approach to a fit in the cutting of the coat. Julia, too, had changed a little. Her keen eye had somewhat softened, her smile had gained benevo lence ; a touch of sharpness, which might ORLANDO. have developed into sourness, had left only a mere flavour, to save serenity from be coming insipidity. Presently there was music. Viola's voice, if not as sweet as Silvia's, was fresh and pure, and contrasted, as Silvia's used to do, with Julia's mellower contralto. The solitary rooms seemed to have awakened from a long slumber into life again. The pleasant tone of his own laugh rang in the entrance when his guests were leaving. His housekeeper, looking up, wondered in herself.

Then she heard his voice and step pass along the terrace with the others, and presently return, followed by the even footfall of his dog. As he came, he sang, and passed into the library, singing still. His housekeeper slowly nodded, and then as slowly shook her head. He had arranged to go to London next day, to meet some of the directors of the Suffolk Railway Company, and intended at the same time to see some stoves of a new pattern, to inquire into the price of cement for cottage flooring, and several other matters of a similar sort. He meant, however, to despatch all this business as quickly as possible, so that he might be back in Sherborne by the middle of the next day, and might visit two half-built cottages of his, before the workmen left at early Saturday hours. He had not a per fect confidence in his builder, and a long acquaintance with the ' customs of the trade ' had taught him that where no clerk of the works was employed, personal in spection at frequent, but irregular, intervals was absolutely necessary to ensure good work.

His resolve to return early was strengthened by happening, as he walked to the station to meet the builder coming thence to the works. " Going to catch the train, sir ? " asked the builder, cheerfully. ORLANDO. Orlando answered " Yes," and fancied that he observed a look of satisfaction on the builder's face. He stayed, that night, in Portland Place with Millie and Gilbert, and heard by chance that Captain Grove was very ill, and that Elizabeth was nursing him. It was Gilbert who told him, and he added, "It makes me sick, Orlando, to think of a woman wasting her whole life and heart upon such a wretched creature as that. You know what she was. Could you have imagined her throwing herself so utterly 3 '* away : " I can imagine," said Orlando, speaking slowly and with pain, " that she would be very constant to a man whom she had loved once."

" Well, women are so," said Gilbert ; "but it is a mystery." He had not the slightest suspicion that his own affection was a plant of as deep growth as he fancied Elizabeth's, nor that the real secret of her constancy lay in the knowledge that she had never, with her whole heart, loved her lover. Orlando sighed, more than once, as he thought of Elizabeth watching in a foreign country by that sick bed. What could be wished for her but the release of his death ? And if she were released so, what would her life be to her, having loved him all these years ? The thought of her haunted him as he looked at stove after stove, inquiring prices and capabilities. But the need of speedy decision presently absorbed his attention. He gave his orders, and hastened off to catch his train for Sherborne. Arriving there, he struck across country to the cottages.

The damp, dark brown fields smelt of rain ; blackthorn buds were brown, and would soon be white upon the hedges ; the banks were strewn with prim- ORLANDO. rose patches, and gusts of perfume came up from unnoticed violets as he passed. Orlando strode along under the blue spring sky, and a smile came to his lips. He forgot his expectation of finding out his men in misdemeanour, and thought of the sweetness of his native air compared with that of London. But alas ! for the in stability of human cheerfulness. Arriving at the works, he found the men busily building into the inner courses of the walls (where, as soon as the wall was finished, they would be invisible) some half-hundred or so of ineffectual dusty, sandy, ' soft ' bricks, which he had himself sorted out and rejected, two days before.

He did not say many words, but the few were very decisive. He left the men pulling down reluctantly their morning's work, under the angry eyes of the builder, and turning, walked away, with his enjoyment of earth and sky completely dashed.

Chapter II. On

A SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. " Things were as in the April-tide ; And daffodils and cowslips grew, And, hidden, the March violets blew." W. Morris, ' The Earthly Paradise.'' Orlando walked homeward, wearing on his face a frown of deep annoyance not often to be seen there. Amiable as, on the whole, he was, there were some things in the world whose very thought he found it difficult to endure with patience, and upon this list bad workmanship and dis honesty stood high. The bright sky and the flowery fields had lost their power ; even the healthy hunger induced by his walk had departed from him. The vexed VOL. III. c ORLANDO. mood was still on him as he crossed a little copse, green now at every twig and joint. A deep and sudden bark sounded from among the underwood, and Rob came bounding and breaking through to his side.

Orlando's frown relaxed into an expression of grave benignity, and he stopped to welcome Rob with hand and voice. The rustle of the bushes had diminished, but not ceased, with the appearance of the dog. Looking up, Or lando saw Viola coming down the slope of the plantation towards him. She carried a very large truck basket, nearly full of flowers ; her skirt was tucked up over a bright petticoat, and her boots were very muddy. The apparition startled away the last remnants of his gloom. " Oh, Miss Cash, good morning ! " came from his lips, with a smile as pleasant as her own. " Good morning," she replied, as she came down into the path, and gave him a bare and rather cold hand. " I wondered what made Rob rush off in that sudden way. We thought you were in London ? " " I am on my way home from the station — by an indirect road you'll say — but I wanted to go up to the cottages I am building."

A momentary shade of annoyance crossed his face again. They walked on for a few yards in silence, Rob pushing his nose between them. " Harry has begun work," said Viola. " He has been trying his cartoons on the wall, and seeing where they want altering. He wants you, if you will, to go up and see them, and tell him what you think." " Will he be there this afternoon ? " Orlando asked. "Yes; but don't trouble to come up this afternoon. You will be tired." ORLANDO. "Oh no. I'll go down to the Lodge and get some luncheon, and be up at the Haverdikes' by half-past three." " Would it not be better to come at once and have some luncheon with us ? Yes, do." The suggestion was very inviting. " But I don't like to come in upon your sister in that way, without any notice," he began. " My sister would be very much hurt if she thought you doubted her welcome."

" But it might be inconvenient." " Honestly, Mr. Sherborne, I would not have asked you if I had not known it would not be inconvenient. And now, honestly on your side too, don't say ' yes ' unless it suits you best." " But, indeed, it does suit me best, and thank you very much." Rob, finding their progress too regular for his taste, had bounded off, and now returning, pushed his head first against one hand and then against the other. " I never knew Rob take a liking to any one before in the way he has done to you," said Orlando. Viola smiled, flattered, as we all are, when an animal offers us affection. " He came up yesterday morning, and foil owed me about, all day, in the most disconsolate manner. In the evening he went home ; but before I was up this morning, I heard him barking at the door, and had to go down and let him in."

" I am afraid he will miss you when you go away. " So new a fancy can hardly have gone very deep," said Viola, drawing her hand across Rob's head. To Orlando it was strange to see any other than his own moving across that black surface. He noticed that her hand was finely formed, and finished in ORLANDO. detail, small-jointed and long in the fingers, and that she wore no rings. He wondered whether she wore earrings, and lifted his eyes to the line of her hair under her hat. No, her ears were guiltless of any such adorning barbarism. But her dress did not suggest that the absence of ornament implied the absence of care. Viola quite recognized among the rights of women that of looking as pretty as nature and good taste would allow. It was the era of impossibly massive hairdressing, and of short upper dresses, ungracefully flounced and puffed.

Viola's hair and skirts fol lowed a wise path of compromise, avoiding the artifices of fashion's extreme, or the eccentricity of a too markedly opposite style. Her walk, too, was free from the odious bend which was the trick of the day. She bore herself upright, and moved with a full, free step that had just the slightest suggestion of soldierliness. These observations on Orlando's part had not been made in silence. They were the accompaniment running as under current in his mind while he listened to her outspoken admiration of the old Ar thurian legends, with which, in Sir Thomas Malory's version, she had just made acquaintance. The theme was congenial, and they presently advanced into a deeply critical discussion. They were walking, by this time, in a lane between two hedges. A little child was wandering slowly by the bank, gathering cowslips into her pinafore, with views, probably, of a cowslip ball in the future.

Suddenly, through a gap in the hedge, came Rob at a long leap ; the •child was thrown into the road, and the cowslips, scenting the air, fell scattered in all directions. It was pure misadven ture on Rob's part, and he looked almost as disconcerted as the child. The child remained lying in the road, opened her ORLANDO. mouth, and gasped. A dismal howl — justified, it must be owned, by the circum stances — would evidently be the next stage. But before it could have time to break forth, Viola had promptly set the amazed victim again upon her feet, put an arm about her, and said, in tones of consoling sympathy, " Poor little soul ! " The child gasped again, blinked a little, and then shut up her mouth in silence. Viola examined the sturdy knees, then the brown palms and knuckles. The damage to these prominent points appeared to be trifling, and a happy roundness of figure, partly natural, but greatly assisted by costume, had kept the head and face at safe distance from the ground.

" Well, there is not much harm done, after all," said Viola, cheerfully. Then, and not until then, one group of knuckles sought the corresponding eye ; the small underlip began to protrude and to tremble. " Why, what's the matter ? " Viola asked, fearful of unseen hurts. " My — y f — flow — -ow — owers. Orlando made haste to gather them up, but some had fallen in muddy places, and some the child had fallen upon, and a few Viola, in her haste, had trodden. " Look, here are most of them again, and you'll soon be able to gather as many more again," said Orlando, restoring them carefully to the pinafore, whose hem she still firmly grasped. The consolation was appropriate, but it failed. She left off crying, indeed, while she received it into her mind, but, being a logical young person, presently looked him full in the face and said, not without scorn, " 'A mi't have had them and they too."

Orlando was completely crushed, and hardly dared to offer pecuniary compensa tion in the shape of a penny. This, how ever, she accepted without demur ; a grin ORLANDO. restored her countenance to its normal form, and Orlando and Viola proceeded on their way. " A fine instinct for political economy," said he. " Don't you think she ought to have a chance of Newnham ? " Viola looked back at the small, sturdy figure — the chubby hands now, as before, gleaning from the hedges, the round, apple red cheeks and half-open mouth, whence issued an inarticulate, contentedly crooned chant. " Do you think she would thank you for the suggestion ? " said she. " Well, perhaps not. But, then, consider what her country might gain. How, if she should be a sort of mute, inglorious Adam Smith- — an Eve Smith, as you might say ?

" Viola slackened her pace a little, clasped her hands, and looked to the hedges and the sky. " To think," she said, " that I should live to hear a country gentleman, an owner of property, an employer of labour, preaching radical doctrines in his own village ! After this, I shall begin to have hopes of the Millennium. But are you not afraid that your neighbours will rise en masse and drive you into exile ? " " I do not alarm their minds with doc trine. I only carry out this or that little bit of reform as opportunity presents, and take care to let them know, incidentally, how well it pays. Just now I am hoping to afford w7hat my mind has been set upon for some years — the building of a school." Viola looked up, much interested. " It will be rather expensive," he went on, " but that's of course.

I would rather do all, and have my own way, than do half and be liable to interference ; that is not very radical, I am afraid, but so it is. My plan — I may confess it to you, who are not a Sherbornian — is this. By-and-by the School Boards will come into the country ; then I shall resign my school into their ORLANDO. hands, and Sherborne will have had a double advantage. When there was no Board School, it will have had a private school ; and when the Board does come, there will be no private school, dropping behind the times as they nearly always do, to draw away half its scholars. But I should not dare to say that to most of my neighbours. In fact, I believe many of them will applaud my scheme on the very ground of its being a bulwark against the hated Board." They looked at each other and laughed.

Orlando was very sure of his listener's sympathy, for her mother was a member of the London School Board. "And how when you come to the transfer ? " " Oh, it must be put clearly before them that they would have had >to build at their own expense if I had not done it." " And do you mean to start with the same kind of teaching as the Government schools ? It would simplify matters, I should think. And besides, the teaching is really on so good a plan." "It is really good, is it ? The fact is, I know so little about the actual details of the working. I thought you might be able to enlighten me a little." " Certainly, what I have seen of Board Schools gives me a very high idea of their method. It is true it is rather a new broom yet. But have you no school at Sherborne ? " " No — absolutely none.

There is one at Shelbridge, about half-way between here and Addlecombe, but it is a long dis tance for the children to go there. There was an attempt at a school here in the time of my great-uncle, who was vicar, but somehow it died away." "That relieves you from one trouble wrhich perplexes the School Boards. They ORLANDO. don't know how to deal with the little pri vate schools, which are sometimes kept by the most worthy and well-meaning people, and yet are so inefficient. Mamma made a tour of all those in the district, and drew up a report — or rather, as it happened, I drew it up for her." She broke into a sudden smile, and interrupting her busi nesslike narration. " Only fancy !" she said; " there was a meeting in our neighbour hood in favour of a denominational school, and I was held up to commiseration as a second Caddy Jellyby !

How they knew that I had anything to do with it, I can't imagine. It was fortunate I was not there, for I certainly should have said something which might have been considered very unfeminine." Orlando's face expressed the greatest indignation. " Nobody, however, who knew anything of Mrs. Cash could pos sibly be influenced by such an absurdity," he said, warmly. " Oh, Mr. Sherborne, it is clear that you have not seen much of the people who speak against women's rights. Mrs. Jelly by comes out as regularly as a Guy Fawkes on the Fifth of November ; Mrs. Jellyby in public, and an invariable formula in private : ' I like women to be women, and men to be men.'" Orlando thought he remembered meet ing the formula before, and that it had seemed to be considered final. " I never shall forget hearing one par ticularly foolish man say that, three times in the course of one evening.

At the third time Cecily could bear it no more, and answered, ' It is fortunate that you do, for no amount of wishing would succeed in making anything else of them.' ': " Was he entirely quenched ? " asked Orlando, hearing in his ears Cecily's clear, high voice, and imagining the steady gaze with which she would have fixed her victim. ORLANDO. " I cannot tell. He never said it again — to us. But how I have wandered from what I meant to speak of! It was quite melancholy to see what an immense amount of time, money, and good intention was being bestowed in that district with a lamentably disproportionate result. It brought home to one very strongly the need for some centralizing agency." " You don't think, then, that large schools are bad for the children ? " " Not of such a size as you would get in Sherborne," said Viola.

A truly womanly answer, practical and yet evasive, solving the present case, but declining to commit herself to general statements either positive or negative. They came up to the cottage as she spoke, and Orlando followed her into the garden, where Julia was busy among her flower-beds. Orlando's afternoon was so pleasant that it almost made amends for the morning's annoyance due to Mr. Madge. Viola's knowledge of school details promised to be very useful, and the method of its impart ing was certainly very agreeable. It was agreeable, too, to explain his plans to a listener so intelligent and so sympathetic. Her frank face spoke as clearly as her voice, and with greater quickness. Her hints about ventilation, teachers' desks, wall-cementing, and other points of ar rangement, excited his strongest approval.