Cleg was as good as his word. He went that very night to call on Miss Tennant at Aurelia Villa. He found her in a philanthropic frame of mind. She had received from the dressmaker a dress of the latest mode, and she was conscious that the new fashion suited her like a garment fashioned by the fairies in a dream. Also [158](what was even better) that it would make other girls whose shoulders were not so good and whose figure was less slim and graceful, look perfectly hideous. Yet they would have to wear it. Celie felt that evening that there was little left to wish for in this sinful world. She looked out of the window toward the west. There was also (it seemed on purpose) a beautiful sunset which glorified the purple cliffs of Arthur's Seat—a quiet, providential sunset, for it went so well with the colour of her new dress. Besides, here was Mr. Donald Iverach walking slowly up the Avenue. And yet some people complained that this was not a good world! What would folk say next?
But Cleg forestalled the Junior Partner. He came by the back door, and when in a strait betwixt two, a serving maid will always answer a knock at the back before a ring at the front door. The back door is more variously interesting.
So Cleg had the floor of the house, and was just finishing his tale, when Mr. Donald Iverach was announced.
Celie held out her hand to him, with a motion which signified at once a welcome and a desire that he should not interrupt. So the Junior Partner, who had for some time been accustomed to devote more time to the study of her moods than he had ever done to his Bible (and he had not neglected that either when nobody saw him), sat down upon a sofa and became interested in the pattern of some crochet work, which Miss Celie had tossed on a chair with characteristic impetuosity when she had rushed across the room to greet Cleg.
"Are ye gaun to pit on that dress on Sabbath at the Sunday school?" asked Cleg, when he had time to think a little about his own affairs.
Celie looked at him with a small start of ingenuous wonder. It was a good little start in its way, and expressed [159]amazement that anyone should notice so plain and simple a thing as her new dress. It is an undoubted fact that she was a truthful girl, and it is also a fact that she was quite aware how instantly the summer dress had riveted the attention of both Cleg and the Junior Partner. Yet the little start expressed as plainly as words her surprise, even her sorrow, that in the midst of so serious a world the minds of men and boys should dwell upon so vain a thing as a girl's gown. Perhaps Celie's little start was her way of telling stories. For the sage sayeth that all women tell stories habitually and unintentionally, whereas men tell them only occasionally but intentionally.
At any rate, whether it was the start or whether it was merely owing to her sympathetic nature, after a moment's consideration of the sad failing of Janet of Inverness, Celie lifted her eyes to those of the Junior Partner.
"Poor girl," she said, "I quite understand; don't you?"
"You see, I have not heard," said the Junior Partner, hesitating.
Celie instantly withdrew her eyes from his. She looked at once hurt and disappointed. He set up for being sympathetic and kind, and he had failed to understand a simple thing like this. He was clearly unworthy of confidence. Celie Tennant turned to Cleg for assistance. He was looking at her with wide eyes of boyish adoration. Cleg at any rate understood. She turned half round in her chair and the profile which she presented to Mr. Donald Iverach struck a chill through the room like that part of Greenland which looks towards the Pole. Celie's lovers did not lack varied interests in their life; and perhaps that was why she had so many. For in the affairs of the heart most men like good sport and a run for their money.
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"Come, Cleg," she said, rising, "I want to speak to you. My father is in the garden, Mr. Iverach!" she added, pointedly.
What Mr. Iverach said under his breath of his excellent friend Mr. Robert Greg Tennant at that moment, it is perhaps better not to write down. He rose and went to the window. From the wide space of its oriel, he watched with furtive sidelong gloom the confabulation of Celie and Cleg. Celie was explaining something with great animation to the boy, who looked down and seemed a little doubtful. Then with inimitable archness, which seemed thrown away upon an Arab of the city (if it were intended for him), Celie explained the whole matter over again from the top of the steps. She went a little way back towards the house.
"Now you quite understand?" she cried with impressive emphasis. And lest he should not yet comprehend, she turned ere she reached the door, ran to Cleg at the gate with still more inimitable daintiness, and, with her hand upon his arm, she explained the whole thing all over again. The Junior Partner felt a little string tighten somewhere about the region in which (erroneously) he believed his heart to lie. He clenched his fist at the sight.
"O confound it!" he remarked, for no very obvious reason, as he turned away.
But Celie was full of the most complete unconsciousness. Yet (of course without knowing it) she quite spoilt the game of two young men, who were playing lawn tennis on the court of a neighbouring house. Their returns grew wilder and their services were beneath contempt. Their several partners (attractive young women whom the new style of dress did not suit) met casually at the net, and one of them remarked to the other, "Isn't she a minx? And her pretending to be good and all [161]that!" Which was perhaps their way of clenching fists and saying, "Confound it!" Or worse.
Then in a little while Cleg went down the Avenue with a sense that the heavens had fallen, and that angels were getting quite common about the garden gates of the South Side. He carried the arm on which Celie had laid her hand a little apart from him. It was as blissfully sensitive as if he had been ten years older.
Celie stood a moment at the gate looking after him. She shaded her eyes from the sunset and looked down the long street. It is a charming pose when one is sure of one's arms and shoulders. At this moment one of the young men in the garden sent a ball over the house, and the eyes of his partner met those of the other girl. Peace was upon the earth at that sweet hour of sunset, but good-will to women was not in their two hearts. Celie felt that the light summer silk had already paid for itself.
"I don't believe a bit in religion—so there!" said the girl next door to her friend over the net.
At that moment Celie gave a little sigh to think that her first night in the new garment was so nearly over. "And father wanted to give me a black silk," said Celie Tennant to herself. Celie felt that she had not wasted her time nor her father's money.
So to show her gratitude she went and found her father. He was slowly walking up and down the little plot of garden, meditatively smoking his large evening pipe. He stopped now before a favourite row of cabbages, and now at the end of the strawberry bed. He regarded them equally with the same philosophical and meditative attention. He was a practical man and insisted on growing vegetables in his own private domains at the back, leaving his daughter to cultivate roses and the graces in the front garden.
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Celie elevated her nose and sniffed as she came out. "O father, what a horrid smell of tobacco you are making!"
"It is almost inevitable," he said, apologetically; "you see it is tobacco I am smoking."
If it had been asafœtida, Celie could not have appeared more disgusted.
"I thought your young thieves smoked at that club of yours," said her father.
"Oh, yes; but that is different," she answered.
"Yes, it is different," chuckled her parent, thinking of what his tobacco cost him.
Then Celie went on to explain all about Cleaver's boy and his trouble, telling the sad tale of the "failing" of Janet of Inverness, as, well—as I should like to have the tale of my weaknesses told, if it were necessary that they should be told at all.
Her father smoked and listened. Sometimes he lifted a snail from the leaf of a cabbage with care. Anon he kicked a stone sideways off the path, and ever he smoked, listened, and nodded without comment.
"These are all your orders, ma'am?" he asked slowly, when his daughter had finished.
"I'll pull your ears, father, now I will," said she, with equal want of connection.
And did it.
"Oh, I had forgotten Mr. Iverach!" she cried, running off towards the house with a little gesture of despair; "what shall I do?"
"Give him his orders, too!" her father called after her, as the last flutter of the new dress flashed through the twinkling poplars.
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