Part 2 (2/2)
Eleanor gathers them up, indulging the same tuneful mood:
”He worked and sang from morn till night.
No lark more blithe than he!”
She has a strong, sweet-toned voice, and ”Black Bess” turns her head sleepily at the sound, whisking the tiresome flies with her tail. So often Eleanor's tread at the door of her shed has meant apples and carrots and sugar.
She wipes the potatoes clean with her ap.r.o.n, replacing them carefully at the back of the cart.
Mrs. Grebby takes the reins, while Mr. Grebby follows on foot, driving a few specially honoured sheep, who frequently serve him for conversation throughout an entire evening spent smoking with neighbouring farmers.
Eleanor watches them out of sight, her hand over her brow to shade the dazzling sunlight from her eyes. A group of chickens congregate around her with mute inquiry in their beaky faces. She fetches a handful of grain from the barn, flings it into their midst, and returns singing to her pewter polis.h.i.+ng:
”And this the burden of his song For ever used to be:
”How dull this soup tureen is, to be sure!” pausing in her verse to rub it with extra vigour:
”I care for n.o.body, no not I, If no one cares for me!”
The delinquencies of the dimmed soup tureen are forgotten as these last words ring out in the quiet parlour. ”Surely,” thinks Eleanor, ”there is hidden pathos in the Jolly Miller of Dee's reckless a.s.sertion! To care for n.o.body! What a horrible thought--a whole life's tragedy lies in the closing verse. If no one cares for me!”
Eleanor sighs and leans her chin on her hands, kneeling before the wooden table on which the dinner service is spread. What if n.o.body cared for her! How vast and miserable a wilderness this world would be! Why, even the dumb animals love her.
The little goat she called Nelly, who fell ill the week before, and gasped out its breath in her arms on a dry heap of hay, gave all the love of its disputed soul to Eleanor. Of course, it had a soul; she made up her mind long ago on this point. How can a creature with such mysteriously human eyes as Nelly possessed be less human than the great plodding, loose-mouthed ploughboy, who only gapes when he is spoken to, and contains what Mr. Grebby is pleased to call, ”only half a intellec'!”
Eleanor glances at the old-fas.h.i.+oned clock in the corner, decorated by grotesque pottery dogs and four-legged creatures with horns, and faces resembling tigers or cats. She has been up since five, for besides market day it is churning morning, and she and her mother have worked for hours in the dairy.
”It is time,” she says at last, was.h.i.+ng her small hands under the scullery tap, and then reaching for a hat hanging on the kitchen dresser.
”I wish I had something pretty to wear,” she sighs, glancing at her reflection in a cracked gla.s.s. ”Laces and ribbons, beautiful blue ribbons with pink spots, like the Squire's nieces wore last Sunday.
The tall girl was dreadfully plain, and I should have looked so well in her silk gown, with the shorter sister's chiffon fichu.”
Eleanor's face brightens at the recollection of those costumes in the Manor House pew, which appeared so lovely in her eyes while she played the Magnificat. Dreams of dainty dresses are dear to her heart as the occasional thoughts of love which steal over her at times. ”If the two could be combined,” she thinks, ”love and wealth.”
It is amazing this new and sudden desire for something better, which all but stops the beating of Eleanor's heart.
”If he loved me,” she gasps ”_if_--” she staggers back against the half-closed door, her fingers clenched and pressed to her temples, throbbing with intense excitement. All the thoughts that crowd to her brain are offsprings of that improbable ”if,” each moment growing more dazzling!
She hastens with light footsteps to an old cupboard in which her mother has treasured some hand-made lace left in her aunt's will to the Grebbys of Copthorne Farm.
She turns down her collar to reveal a shapely throat, pearly white, and hidden usually from the sun's scorching power, round which the soft folds of lace fall entrancingly.
What would Eleanor's mother say could she see her precious heirloom donned hastily on this busy market morning, to adorn her daughter's neck for a stroll through the fields! It is sacrilege surely, but the prize!
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