Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Promenade

[section]

From the back of the old four-poster bed, where blue flowers and white butterflies melted together in the faded chintz hangings, Darien watched Sally undressing just outside the pale pool of candle-light. Like little ghosts on top of the wardrobe, Sally's dolls sat in a row, staring with round eyes as though not at all understanding why they were not packed in the big trunks out in the passage and going away with Sally and Darien and Mr Lovel to New Zealand.

But Darien understood. “You will have babies instead now, won't you?” she had asked Sally. “Married people always do.” Then Sally went pinker than the dolls, say-in, “Hush, darling,” as she had said it every day for ages now, and Darien was tired of hushing. And tired of seeing Sally fold her clothes neatly and slip on her nightgown before she took off her shift, instead of perhaps dancing about, bare and white and dimpled and laughing, just as God made her, and pretending she was a nymph in a hazel copse or the flame of a sacrificial fire or something. Sally used to have such lovely pretendings, but they were all gone now.

“Why do you have to be married to-morrow, Salvolatile?” demanded Darien, sitting up suddenly. “Let that stiff black rig go to New Zealand by himself. I expect the savages will eat him.”

“Oh … don't … don't,” cried Sally, her blue eyes looking quite wild under the mass of soft brown hair she was putting in curl-papers. Sally always looked like that when one talked of New Zealand. She was afraid to face page 12 things; but Darien wasn't. Often she faced the fact that she might have been christened Nombre de Dios or Old Calabar. Mamma had had her way with Sally, but since papa was going to die so soon she had let him be as romantic as he chose in naming Darien, who (upon diligent inquiry into herself) had discovered that she was romantic too and would probably have a grande passion in New Zealand. She feared that Sal-volatile hadn't the grande passion for Mr Lovel.

Sally feared it also, just as she feared New Zealand. Mr Lovel, she knew, was inevitable, having bought the tickets … but she could never call him Peregrine, which sounded like a duck or something. “Peregrine is a hawk and he's just like one,” said Darien, who read far too much for a child of nine. So he is, thought Sally, shivering.

Aunt Matilda's heavy step sounded down the passage. Sally flung a desperate glance about her. She should have been in bed, but there was no time to get there; so she dropped on her knees (hoping God would forgive her) and buried her flushed face in the coverlet, hearing Darien giggle as the portentous lady came pecking her way through the dusky sweetness of the little room.

Aunt Matilda looked like a widow, in wide purple dressing-gown and black cap; but when maiden ladies grow elderly they often like to pretend they are widows, thought Darien, while Sally rose, standing meekly with her pretty head drooped shyly under the close little nightcap.

“I am pleased to find you at your prayers, my love,” said Aunt Matilda, giving the impression that she didn't find Sally there often enough. “A young lady who has turned fifteen and is about to marry,” she said, sounding very experienced, “has need of many prayers.”

“Poor thing,” said Sally faintly. She was thinking that herself.

“Remember that Darien is now in your care. I do page 13 feel,” said Aunt Matilda, very confused between gratitude and rebellion, “that it is exceedingly kind of Mr Peregrine Lovel to give my poor brother's orphans a better chance than I could … though I have done my best and no angel could do more and Darien so troublesome about her flannel petticoats…. I hope you are prepared to be a dutiful wife, Sally.”

“Yes, Aunt Matilda,” said Sally, feeling that there wasn't anything she need mind promising now, because to-morrow she would have to promise to love and obey Mr Lovel.

“I … I …” floundered Aunt Matilda. But there was so little a maiden lady could say to a niece about to marry, and besides she knew so little. “I wish you always to remember that buttermilk is excellent for the skin. Wear your best gloves when people come to call, and see that Darien don't freckle…. Now, let me tuck you up, or you will be pale to-morrow and gentlemen don't like pale brides….”

Under the chintz curtains Sally felt a whirlwind of arms and legs about her, felt Darien's sharp little chin digging into her shoulder.

“Oh, Sal-volatile, let's run away and then we can always be together. Nurse says you will always have to be with Mr Lovel now. Why will you?”

“Oh, please hush, Darien,” begged Sally, feeling the crying coming up in her again. Why was all this happening to her? She didn't know, although Mr Lovel and Aunt Matilda seemed to. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, childishly.

“Slay him in his sleep, like Elvira in the ‘Phantom Bride,’” urged Darien, who read all the “Keepsakes” in Aunt Matilda's bookshelf. “I'll find a knife.”

But Sally (although feeling like a phantom to-night, with all the dear familiar little room gone strange about her) knew that she mustn't do that. To love, honour and obey … how much did that mean, she wondered, lying page 14 with innocent blue eyes wide in the dark long after Darien was sleeping. So little she knew, and so much to learn. And she would never be able to ask Mr Lovel, stalking along so tall above her with his dark haughty face folded into his stock. Why am I so frightened? He is not unkind, she thought, trying to be brave. So thickly now those reverberations from the ages past sounded in her bewildered blood; whispering voices (oh, that ghostly sister-company of women's whispering voices); echoing of tired feet down alien ways; strange difficult dedications, all the long mysterious litany of unescapable womanhood….