Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/510

504 he and his devoted brethren would still achieve over the infidel elements by which they are surrounded.

 

 From Good Words.

solitude, a solitude which she felt was good, in its comparative independence and exemption from burdensome notice, though her young nature fretted at its dulness and stagnation, and was tempted to long for any variety of enlivenment, seemed fated to have no farther existence.

Within a few days of Jane Douglas's im-promptu visit, Pleasance, who had never even needed to give a "not at home" to visitors, heard, as she sat at work in her drab drawing-room in the early afternoon, an ominous double knock. Before she could conceive who might be the intruder, and make a motion to prevent it, Mr. Perry, released from his gardening and invested in his orthodox black to serve at Pleasance's early dinner — which he called luncheon — was heard on the stairs ushering up company. He threw open the drawing-room door and announced — with a little trip of the tongue for which he did penance in humiliation to Mrs. Perry afterwards, and which he asserted was caused by the lingering recollection of banquets and balls, in which he had once figured in the hall or on the staircase — "Lady Lewis and party." The company thus, grandiloquently summed up, consisted of one very old lady in black silk gown and white shawl, close telescope bonnet, and long green veil of fashions at least two generations back; and an elderly factotum half companion, half maid, in black silk also, but with a bonnet in its quietness still many fashions in advance of that of her mistress. As Pleasance rose to greet the two old Lady Lewis, who was nearly blind with age, did not see her for a moment, and was besides engrossed with her own individuality and at its last feat. "Yes, 'Lizabeth," she said quite aloud, in a piping treble voice, "I have got my breath, and I have not felt the stairs so much, not so very much, and here I am at young Mrs. Douglas's, as I said I would be; now get me a seat and bring her to me."

'Lizabeth was finding her mistress the most suitable chair in the room, settling her in it, putting a footstool beneath her feet, and looking carefully to all the doors and windows, in spite of Mr. Perry's pompous show of precaution — altogether irrespective of Pleasance's presence.

Pleasance was disarmed and diverted by the sovereignty of age, more than of rank, which was thus, without any question of her inclination, taking possession of her domain. She was touched also, she had that tenderness for age, which, much more than any fondness for children, is the test of the highest manhood and womanhood.

For there are men, and, strange to say, still more women, to whom the infirmities of age seem to present themselves in lights altogether repulsive and almost loathsome.

Pleasance came forward, not as she had greeted Jane Douglas and Rica Wyndham, with unconscious stateliness and stiffness, but with frank, kind cordiality to listen to Lady Lewis, who on her part was never doubting a welcome, but was simply bent on delivering her credentials and achieving her purpose.

"I am old Lady Lewis," she supplemented Mr. Perry's magnificent announcement, in the easiest manner, nodding in emphatic confirmation of her words. "How do you do, Mrs. Douglas, you are young Mrs. Douglas, aint you?" She made sure of Pleasance's identity, but as if it were a matter of inferior consequence. "I am a connection of the Douglases — through Mrs. Douglas and the Etheringtons, of course — for Mr. Douglas was not of such birth as to have any connections that one hears of, though! he was a most worthy wealthy man; he had bought Shardleigh before he married Clara Etherington, and he made Clara very comfortable. You know Shardleigh was quite a place; Willow House, which belongs to Shardleigh, as a dowager house, is nothing in comparison. I was once at Shardleigh, twenty, no, five and-twenty years ago — how long ago was it, 'Lizabeth? — when my sight had failed, and my last teeth had grown loose, so that I could no longer eat with any pleasure, and had to get in a complete new set. It was before the heir — your husband, by-the-bye, my dear — was born."

Pleasance, with all her good-will, had nothing to say to these records of the Douglases and of Shardleigh, which 