The Clever Woman of the Family by Charlotte M. Yonge (good book recommendations TXT) 📖

"we will get out here," adding, "They will take in the goods the back way. I don't like careering into the churchyard."

Rachel, alighting, saw that the lane proceeded downwards to a river crossed by a wooden bridge, with an expanse of meadows beyond. To her left was a stable-yard, and below it a white gate and white railings enclosing a graveyard, with a very beautiful church standing behind a mushroom yew-tree. The upper boundary of the churchyard was the clipped yew hedge of the rectory garden, whose front entrance was through the churchyard. There was a lovely cool tranquillity of aspect as the shadows lay sleeping on the grass; and Rachel could have stood and gazed, but Alick opened the gate, and there was a movement at the seat that enclosed the gnarled trunk of the yew tree. A couple of village lads touched their caps and departed the opposite way, a white setter dog bounded forward, and, closely attended by a still snowier cat, a gentleman came to meet them, so fearlessly treading the pathway between the graves, and so youthful in figure, that it was only the "Well, uncle, here she is," and, "Alick, my dear boy," that convinced her that this was indeed Mr. Clare. The next moment he had taken her hand, kissed her brow, and spoken a few words of fatherly blessing, then, while Alick exchanged greetings with the cat and dog, he led her to the arched yew-tree entrance to his garden, up two stone steps, along a flagged path across the narrow grass-plat in front of the old two-storied house, with a tiled verandah like an eyebrow to the lower front windows.

Instead of entering by the door in the centre, he turned the corner of the house, where the eastern gable disclosed a window opening on a sloping lawn full of bright flower-beds. The room within was lined with books and stored with signs of parish work, but with a refined orderliness reigning over the various little ornaments, and almost betokening feminine habitation; and Alick exclaimed with admiration of a large bowl of fresh roses, beautifully arranged.

"Traces of Bessie," said Mr. Clare; "she brought them this morning, and spent nearly an hour in arranging them and entertaining me with her bright talk. I have hardly been able to keep out of the room since, they make it so delicious."

"Do you often see her?" asked Alick.

"Yes, dear child, she is most good-natured and attentive, and I take it most kindly of her, so courted as she is."

"How do you get on with his lordship?"

"I don't come much in his way, he has been a good deal laid up with sciatica, but he seems very fond of her; and it was all her doing that they have been all this time at Littleworthy, instead of being in town for the season. She thought it better for him."

"And where is Mr. Lifford?" asked Alick.

"Gone to M---- till Saturday."

"Unable to face the bride."

"I fear Ranger is not equally shy," said Mr. Clare, understanding a certain rustle and snort to import that the dog was pressing his chin hard upon Rachel's knee, while she declared her content with the handsome creature's black depth of eye; and the cat executed a promenade of tenderness upon Alick.

"How are the peacocks, Alick?" added Mr. Clare; "they, at least, are inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but Joe insisted that they were getting lop-sided."

Alick put his head out at the window. "All right, sir; Joe has been a little hard on the crest of the left-hand one, but it is recovering."

Whereupon, Rachel discovered that the peacocks were creatures of yew-tree, perched at either end of the garden fence. Mr. Clare had found them there, and preserved them with solicitous fidelity.

Nothing could be less like than he was to the grave, thin, stooping ascetic in a long coat, that she had expected. He was a tall, well-made man, of the same youthful cast of figure as his nephew, and a far lighter and more springy step, with features and colouring recalling those of his niece, as did the bright sunny playful sweetness of his manner; his dark handsome eyes only betraying their want of sight by a certain glassy immobility that contrasted with the play of the expressive mouth. It was hard to guess why Bessie should have shunned such an uncle. Alick took Rachel to the bedroom above the library, and, like it, with two windows--one overlooking churchyard, river, and hay-fields, the other commanding, over the peacock hedge, a view of the playground, where Mr. Clare was seen surrounded by boys, appealing to him on some disputed matter of cricket. There was a wonderful sense of serenity, freshness, and fragrance, inexpressibly grateful to Rachel's wearied feelings, and far more comfortable than the fine scenery through which she had been carried, because no effort to look and admire was incumbent on her--nay, not even an effort to talk all the evening. Mr. Clare seemed to have perfectly imbibed the idea that rest was what she wanted, and did not try to make small talk with her, though she sat listening with pleased interest to the conversation between him and his nephew--so home like, so full of perfect understanding of one another.

"Is there anything to be read aloud?" presently asked Alick.

"You have not by chance got 'Framley Parsonage?'"

"I wish I had. I did pick up 'Silas Marner,' at a station, thinking you might like it," and he glanced at Rachel, who had, he suspected, thought his purchase an act of weakness. "Have you met with it?"

"I have met with nothing of the sort since you were here last;" then turning to Rachel, "Alick indulges me with novels, for my good curate had rather read the catalogue of a sale any day than meddle with one, and I can't set on my pupil teacher in a book where I don't know what is coming."

"We will get 'Framley,'" said Alick.

"Bessie has it. She read me a very clever scene about a weak young parson bent on pleasing himself; and offered to lend me the book, but I thought it would not edify Will Walker. But, no doubt, you have read it long ago."

"No," said Rachel; and something withheld her from disclaiming such empty employments. Indeed, she was presently much interested in the admirable portraiture of "Silas Marner," and still more by the keen, vivid enjoyment, critical, droll, and moralizing, displayed by a man who heard works of fiction so rarely that they were always fresh to him, and who looked on them as studies of life. His hands were busy all the time carving a boss for the roof of one of the side aisles of his church--the last step in its gradual restoration.

That night there was no excitement of nerve, no morbid fancy to trouble Rachel's slumbers; she only awoke as the eight o'clock bell sounded through the open window, and for the first time for months rose less weary than she had gone to rest. Week-day though it were, the description "sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright," constantly recurred to her mind as she watched the quiet course of occupation. Alick, after escorting his uncle to a cottage, found her searching among the stores in the music stand.

"You unmusical female," he said, "what is that for?"

"Your uncle spoke of music last night, and I thought he would like it."

"I thought you had no such propensity."

"I learnt like other people, but it was the only thing I could not do as well as Grace, and I thought it wasted time, and was a young ladyism; but if can recover music enough to please him, I should be glad."

"Thank you," said Alick, earnestly. "He is very much pleased with your voice in speaking. Indeed, I believe I first heard it with his ears."

"This is a thorough lady's collection of music," said Rachel, looking through it to hide her blush of pleasure. "Altogether the house has not a bachelor look."

"Did you not know that he had been married? It was when he first had the living twelve years ago. She was a very lovely young thing, half Irish, and this was the happiest place in the world for two years, till her little brother was sent home here from school without proper warning of a fever that had begun there. We all had it, but she and her baby were the only ones that did not recover! There they lie, under the yew-tree, where my uncle likes to teach the children. He was terribly struck down for years, though he went manfully to his work, and it has been remarkable how his spirits and sociability have returned since he lost his sight; indeed, he is more consistently bright than ever he was."

"I never saw any one like him," said Rachel. "I have fallen in with clergy that some call holy, and with some that others call pious, but he is not a bit like either. He is not even grave, yet there is a calming, refreshing sense of reverence towards him that would be awe, only it is so happy."

Alick's response was to bend over her, and kiss her brow. She had never seen him so much gratified.

"What a comfort your long stay with him must have been," she said presently, "in the beginning of his blindness!"

"I hope so. It was an ineffable comfort to me to come here out of Littleworthy croquet, and I think cheering me did him good. Rachel, you may do and say what you please," he added, earnestly, "since you have taken to him."

"I could not help it," said Rachel, though a slight embarrassment came over her at the recollection of Bessie, and at the thought of the narrow views on which she expected to differ. Then, as Alick continued to search among the music, she asked, "Will he like the piano to be used?"

"Of all things. Bessie's singing is his delight. Look, could we get this up?"

"You don't sing, Alick! I mean, do you?"

"We need not betray our talents to worldlings base."

Rachel found her accompaniment the least satisfactory part of the affair, and resolved on an hour's practice every day in Mr. Clare's absence, a wholesome purpose even as regarded her health and spirits. She had just sat down to write letters, feeling for the first time as if they would not be a toil, when Mr. Clare looked in to ask Alick to refer to a verse in the Psalms, quoting it in Greek as well as English, and after the research had been carried to the Hebrew, he told Rachel that he was going to write his sermon, and repaired to the peacock path, where he paced along with Ranger and the cat, in faithful, unobtrusive attendance.

"What, you can read Hebrew, Alick?"

"So can you."

"Enough to appreciate the disputed passages. When did you study it?"

"I learnt enough, when I was laid up, to look out my uncle's texts for him."

She felt a little abashed by the tone, but a message called him away, and before his return Mr. Clare came back to ask for a reference to St. Augustine. On her offer of her services, she was thanked, and directed with great precision to the right volume of the Library of the Fathers, but spying a real St. Augustine, she could not be satisfied without a flight at the original. It was not, however, easy to find