Susan Warner - The End of a Coil

"Oh, thank you! But I don't know whether father would choose to afford a gardener," said Dolly low.

"He shall not afford it. I want him to come for my own comfort. You do not think I want your father to pay my gardener."

"You are very kind. What ground is that over there?"

"That? that is Brierley Park. It is a great place. The stream divides the park from this cottage ground."

"Can one go over the bridge?"

"Of course. The place is left to itself; nobody is at the house now."

"Why not?"

"I suppose they like some other place better," said St. Leger, shrugging his shoulders. "You would like to go and see the house and the pictures. The next time I come down I'll take you there."

"Oh, thank you! And may I go over among those grand trees? may I walk there?"

"Walk there, or ride there; you may do what you like; nobody will hinder you. If you meet anybody that has a right to know, you can tell him who you are. But don't go to the house till I come to go with you."

"You are very good, Mr. St. Leger," said Dolly gratefully. But then, as if shy of what he might next say, she turned and went in to her mother. Dolly always kept Mr. St. Leger at a certain fine, insensible distance. He seemed to be very near; he was really very much at home in the family; nevertheless, an atmospheric wall, felt but not seen, divided him from Dolly. It was so invisible that it was unmanageable; it kept him at a distance.

The next day was a delightful one in Dolly's experience. Mr. St. Leger went back to town early in the morning; and as soon as she was free of him, Dolly's delight began. She attended to her mother, and put her in comfort; next, she examined the house and its capabilities, and arranged the little household; and then she gave herself to the garden. It was an unmitigated wilderness. The roses had grown into irregular, wide-spreading shrubs, with waving, flaunting branches; yet sweet with their burden of blushing flowers. Lilac bushes had passed all bounds, and took up room most graspingly. Hawthorn and eglantine, roses of Sharon and stocky syringas, and other bushes and climbers, had entwined and confused their sprays and branches, till in places they formed an impenetrable mass. In other places, and even in the midst of this overgrown thicket, jessamine stars peeped out, lilies and violets grew half smothered, mignonette ran along where it could; even carnations and pinks were to be seen, in unhappy situations, and daisies and larkspur and scarlet geraniums, lupins and sweet peas, and I know not what more old-fashioned flowers, showed their fair faces here and there. It was bewildering, and beyond Dolly's powers to put in order. She wished for old Peter's arrival; and meantime cut and trimmed a little here and there, gathered a nosegay of wildering blossoms, considered what might be done, and lost herself in the sweet June day.

At last it was growing near lunch time, and she went in. Mrs. Copley was lying on an old-fashioned lounge; and the room where she lay was brown with old oak, quaint with its diamond-paned casement windows, and cool with a general effect of wooden floor and little furniture; while roses looked in at the open window, and the light was tempered by the dark panelling and low ceiling. Dolly gave an exclamation of delight.

"What is it?" said Mrs. Copley fretfully.

"Mother, this place is so lovely! and this room, – do you know how perfectly pretty it is?"

"It isn't half furnished. Not half."

"But it is furnished enough. There are only two of us; and certainly here are all the things that we want, and a great deal more than we want; and it is so pretty! so pretty!"

"How long do you suppose there are to be only two of us?"

"I don't know that, mother. Lawrence St. Leger is just gone, and I don't want him back, for my part. In fact, I don't believe we have dinner enough for three."

"That's another thing. Where are we going to get anything to eat?"

"Lunch will be ready in a minute, mother."

"What have we got?"

"What you like. Frizzled beef and chocolate."

"I like it, – but I don't suppose it is very nourishing. Where are we to get what we want, Dolly? how are we to get bread, and butter, and marketing?"

"There's a village half a mile off. And, here is lunch on the table. We shall not starve to-day."

Mrs. Copley liked her chocolate and found the bread good. Nevertheless, she presently began again.

"Are we to live here alone the rest of our lives, Dolly? or what do you suppose your father's idea is? It's a very lonesome place, seems to me."

"Why, mother, we came here to get you well; and it's enough to make anybody well. It is the loveliest place I have ever seen, I think. Mr. St. Leger's grand establishment is nothing to it."

"And what do you mean by what you said about Lawrence St. Leger? Are you glad to have even him go away?"

"Yes, mother, a little bit. He was rather in my way."

"In your way! that's very ungrateful. How was he in your way?"

"Somebody to attend to, and somebody to attend to me. I like to be let alone. By and by, when you are sleeping, I shall go over and explore the park."

"What I don't understand," said Mrs. Copley, recurring to her former theme, "is, why, if he wanted me to be in the country, your father did not take a nice house somewhere just a little way out of London, – there are plenty of such places, – and have things handsome; so that he could entertain company, and we could see somebody. We can have nobody here. It looks really quite like poor people."

"That isn't a very bad way to look," said Dolly calmly.

" Not? Like poor people?" cried Mrs. Copley. "Dolly, don't talk folly. Nobody likes that look, and you don't, either."

"I am not particularly afraid of it. But, mother, we do not want to entertain company while you are not well, you know."

"No; and so here you are shut up and seeing no creature. I wish we were at home!"

Dolly did not precisely wish that; not at least till she had had time to examine this new leaf of nature's book opened to her. And yet she sighed a response to her mother's words. It was all the response she made.

She was too tired with her unwonted gardening exertions to go further exploring that afternoon. It was not till a day or two later, when Dolly had become somewhat more acquainted with her new life and its conditions, that she crossed the bridge one fair, warm June evening, and set her hesitating steps upon what seemed to her a wonderful piece of ground. She entered it immediately upon crossing the bridge. The green glades of the park woods were before her; the old giants of the park trees stretched their great arms over her and shadowed her footsteps. Such mighty trees! their great stems stood as if they had been there for ever; the leafy crown of their heads was more majestic than any king's diadem, and gave its protecting shelter, each of them, to a wide domain of earth's minor growths. Underneath their branches the turf was all green and gold, for the slant sun rays came in there and gold was in the tree tops, some of the same gold; and the green shadows and the golden bands and flecks of light were all still. There was no stir of air that evening. Silence, the stillness and solitude of a woodland, were all around; the only house visible from here was the cottage Dolly had just quitted, with its rose-covered porch.

Dolly went a little way, and stood still to look and listen, then went on a few steps more. The scene had a sort of regal beauty, not like anything she had ever known in her life before, and belonging to something her life had never touched. For this was not a primeval forest; it was not forest at all; it was a lordly pleasure ground. A "pleasaunee," for somebody's delight; kept so. There was no ragged underbrush; there were no wildering bushes and briars; the green turf swept away out of sight under the great old trees clean and soft; and they, the oaks and beeches, stretching their arms abroad and standing in still beauty and majesty, seemed to say – "Yes, we belong to the family; we have stood by it for ages." Dolly could see no dead trees, nor fallen lumber of dry branches; the place was dressed, yet unadorned, except by its own magnificent features; so most simple, most lordly. The first impression almost took away Dolly's breath. She again went on, and again stood still, then went further; at last could go no further, and she sat down on the bank under the shadow of a great oak tree which had certainly seen centuries, and gave herself up to the scene and her thoughts. They did not fit, somehow, and took possession of her alternately. Sometimes her eyes filled with glad tears, at the wonderful loveliness and stateliness of nature around her; the sense of beauty overcame all other feelings; filling and satisfying and also concealing a certain promise. It was certainly the will of the Creator that all things should be thus perfect, harmonious, and fair. What was not, could be made so. But then again a shadow would come over this sunshine, as Dolly remembered the anxieties she had brought from home with her. She had meant to let herself look at them here, in solitude and quiet; could she do it, now she was here? But when, if not now? Gradually Dolly gave herself up to thinking, and forgot where she was, or more correctly, saw the objects around her only through a veil of her own thoughts.