Chapter IX: Random Shots

"WHAT will be my uncle's reply to my note? Will he write? Will he come? He will be a little sorry, I think, for the loss of my poor hair; but a great deal more sorry for the loss of his money."

Such were the thoughts perpetually recurring to the mind of Philomel Lamb, as she pursued her little household avocations, or, seated in her own apartment, completed her simple preparations for the afternoon's fête by fastening collar and cuffs on the white muslin dress with blue forget-me-nots printed upon it, which she was to wear at the archery-meeting. Philomel's fancy moved more rapidly than her needle, and several times she laid down her work, and went to her little flower-mantled casement to see if no messenger were in sight coming from the direction of Burnesbey Abbey. Was it possible that her uncle would deceive her; would the close-fisted, cold-hearted cynic actually discover some method of keeping his promise to the ear, and breaking it to the sense? Philomel felt indignant with herself at letting such a suspicion cross her mind for a moment.

The clock on the stairs had just struck the midday hour, as if echoing the chime from the church, when Philomel once more went to her casement, and looked down on the shrubbery and lawn. Her father was quitting the vicarage to go on his errands of kindness, umbrella in hand, according to his invariable habit, though there was not a cloud in the sky.

"An honest man, tight buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within."

Mr. Lamb had just issued from under the porch of the vicarage, when Philomel heard the familiar click of the shrubbery gate, and saw Miss Eccles, in her faded green poplin, with her long veil hanging limp behind her, hurrying into the grounds as fast as lameness would let her. The face of the elderly lady was all aglow with delight, her mouth expanded in the broadest of smiles; it might be merely from pleasure at meeting her pastor, but a child could have read fair weather in the barometer of that kindly old face. Miss Eccles held an open note in her hand, and Philomel guessed from her eager gesture that the note must contain good news.

The vicar's daughter watched with curious interest the meeting between her father and her friend, though she could not at the distance distinguish a word that was uttered. Miss Eccles met her pastor half-way on the gravel drive, with both her hands extended towards him; she said something as she held out the note to Mr. Lamb, which made him give a little start of pleasure or surprise. Of course, his back was towards the vicarage; Philomel as she bent forward from the casement would have given anything for a glimpse of her father's face, for she guessed what were the tidings which the joyful messenger had brought. Her wish was quickly gratified; as Mr. Lamb returned the note to Miss Eccles, he turned suddenly round, looked up at the window at which his daughter was standing, every feature of his countenance radiant with honest pleasure, took off his hat and waved it aloft, then joyously went on his way.

Philomel ran down-stairs to welcome Miss Eccles and hear the glad tidings of which she was evidently the bearer. In the excitement of joy and hope, the lamb quite forgot the loss of her fleece.

She met Miss Eccles in the porch. The elderly lady was smiling and panting, but the expression of her face changed by a sudden transition to that of wonder, when her glance fell on the vicar's daughter.

"Why, Philomel," she exclaimed, drawing back, "who on earth has been clipping off your hair?"

"Never mind my hair, tell me your news!" cried Philomel eagerly, catching from the hand of her old friend the open note, in which she recognized the formal, peculiar handwriting of Caleb Coffin.

"Lady Macaw sent it for you and your father to see; she received it not half an hour since. I chanced to be calling. But, dear heart! Dear heart! What has become of your beautiful golden curls?"

Philomel scarcely heard the question, she was eagerly reading the note, which was brief, as the epistles of Caleb Coffin were wont to be.

"DEAR MADAM,—There are some arguments which cannot be refuted, some requests which cannot be denied. It is possible that woman's persuasion may after all prop up the school, and turn an old cynic into a philanthropist in spite of himself. You shall know my final decision at the archery-meeting to-day.—Faithfully yours,—

"CALEB COFFIN."

"To think of his granting to Lady Macaw what he refused to you and your dear excellent father! 'Tis a strange world," exclaimed Miss Eccles. "I little knew that the tiny pink note which I carried myself to the abbey would have worked such a wonderful charm. It must have been a very clever, coaxing letter indeed. She is a remarkable woman, is Lady Macaw. You should see her pride and delight; she is really looking ten years younger to-day. She told me that she had never yet set her heart upon any object which she did not accomplish, that she had felt persuaded from the first that she could twist the old man round her finger."

"She had better not let the old man know that she says so," observed Philomel with a smile, as she accompanied her visitor into the parlour.

Philomel's pleasure at her own success was not to be without much alloy. She needed all its sustaining power to enable her to endure with tolerable patience the cross-questioning which followed from the elderly lady regarding the loss of her tresses. The weakness of Miss Eccles was curiosity, and, with all her kindliness of nature, she was utterly deficient in tact. She was very inquisitive, very desirous to know why Philomel had so disfigured herself, what she intended to make of her hair, whether it were to be turned into a wig, or whether—here Miss Eccles lowered her tone to a mysterious whisper—she meant to sell it for some charitable purpose; she had heard before of such strange things being done. Philomel, half amused, half angry, and a good deal perplexed, felt inclined to make some excuse for escaping to her own room, and so abruptly ending a conversation which teased her almost beyond her powers of endurance.

"Why, here come the Langtons!" exclaimed Miss Eccles, suddenly interrupting herself in the midst of an earnest recommendation of Macassar oil, to stimulate the growth of short hair.

"Oh, I can't stand all this!" thought poor Philomel, starting to her feet, and feeling like a hunted creature in her own father's home.

Lucy Langton, eager and impetuous as usual, came in first, brimful of news; she had heard by this time—all the village had heard—of the note to Lady Macaw, and the story, passing from mouth to mouth, had of course received additions by the way. The Langtons—after calling to congratulate the Arkwrights—had hastened on to the vicarage to tell Philomel, should she not have heard of it already, that Mr. Coffin, in the handsomest manner, had made a gift of schoolhouse and endowment to the lady of the Villa of Roses!

But the rapid current of Lucy's thoughts was quickly turned into a new channel by her first glance at Philomel Lamb. Bursting into an uncontrollable fit of merriment, the young lady threw herself into an arm chair, and rocked herself backwards and forwards, almost convulsed with laughter. Lucy could hardly articulate between her bursts of mirth, "Shorn lamb! Shorn lamb! What has become of your fleece?"

Lucy's exuberant merriment was infectious, and though Miss Eccles bit her own lip and pinched her own arm to suppress by pain her inclination to join in it, and Delia, pressing her handkerchief to her mouth, turned away towards the window, Philomel found herself the unwilling cause of great amusement to the three ladies, a position which caused her considerable embarrassment and annoyance.

"I seem to afford you a good deal of diversion," said the poor young girl, struggling to speak in a tone of good humour.

"Oh, dear child, I beg your pardon!" cried Lucy, with tears of laughter in her merry black eyes. "But really you do look so funny, as if you had just come out of an hospital or a prison—or—or a lunatic asylum!"

A little explosive sound of mirth escaped from under Delia's handkerchief, and Miss Eccles desperately walked to the piano, and pretended to examine the pieces of music on the top.

"But I don't know when wonders will cease. If the owl suddenly is transformed into a bird of paradise—the last thing I should ever have expected—it is no wonder if the nightingale herself appears in the new character of an unfledged yellow—"

"Come, come, you're too hard on her," tittered Delia; "there's no accounting for tastes. Perhaps Philomel has been studying the becomings, or has anticipated a new style of coiffure not yet introduced from Paris, and we shall all be roundheads before winter!"

This weak attempt at a jest elicited another burst of laughter, though Miss Eccles, who had returned to her seat, cried again and again, "'Tis too bad!" more in the way of self-reproach than of rebuke to the others.

"Perhaps, when your mirth has exhausted itself, you will tell me what you meant by the owl becoming a bird of paradise," said poor Philomel, who was anxious to effect a diversion.

"Oh! Have you not heard?—Surely you must know," cried Lucy, eagerly; "Miss Eccles must have told you what has made all Thwayte beside itself with joy. We were at the schoolhouse just now, and you should have seen the rejoicings, heard the clamour. Mrs. Arkwright was almost in tears."

The countenance of Philomel brightened.

"But to think of Mr. Coffin's granting the boon to Lady Macaw," cried Delia; "it really detracts from one's pleasure at having the school retained. Her ladyship stood on a high enough pedestal already."

"I expect to have a proposition to have Lady Macaw's statue in the market-place of G— instead of Lord —'s," laughed Lucy. "I'm certain there will be a paragraph in the 'Times,' all about the school, and probably a picture of it in the 'Illustrated.' It will be the Macaw School from this time forward, for one could not call it the 'Coffin,' you know."

"Certainly Lady Macaw will take good care that the world is informed of her share in the matter," lisped Delia.

"I wonder," observed Lucy, "whether the benefactress and patroness of Thwayte ever heard of the lines,—

"'Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will ne'er inscribe the marble with his name.'

"They come into my mind so often when I am at the Villa of Roses."

"Come come, my dear, Lady Macaw is a very charitable kind creature," said Miss Eccles, grateful for an invitation to the archery-meeting.

"She beats out her gold very thin, and makes it cover a marvellous wide space," said Lucy. "I should like to know the exact point at which gold takes the title of gilding."

"She has done a good deed now," expostulated the elderly lady; "have you seen Mr. Coffin's note to Lady Macaw?"

"I should like to see it of all things!" cried Lucy. "It would be a most amusing specimen of the correspondence of a cynic metamorphosed into a courtier."

Miss Eccles had already drawn from her bag the note which she had brought to the vicarage. It was eagerly seized upon by Lucy, who read it aloud, mimicking the tone of Caleb Coffin as she did so. As she concluded the little epistle, she dropped her hands on her knee with the exclamation,—

"Depend on't, 'tis all a take in! The old miser is laughing in his sleeve at the lady who lets herself be humbugged so readily!"

"What do you mean?" cried poor Miss Eccles, looking aghast at the doubt suggested.

"Don't you see," exclaimed Lucy, striking the paper, "he does not compromise himself. He promises nothing; that word 'may' is a loophole through which he can always back out."

"Certainly," observed Delia, "from what I heard, I had imagined that Mr. Coffin had given a much more decided assurance of his intentions to Lady Macaw."

"She'll find her pedestal crumbling beneath her," said Lucy, laughing as she returned the note to Miss Eccles, who looked crest-fallen and anxious. "I wish that I were as sure of the silver arrow to-day as I am that the owl is not a bird to be caught by any spring prepared for him at the Villa of Roses."

The visitors soon after took their departure, and Philomel seemed to breathe more freely when they had gone. But the ridicule to which she had been subjected had left a sore pang behind.

"Will he regard me as they regarded, though chivalrous courtesy will prevent him from showing outwardly what he thinks?" was the question which she asked herself with a sinking heart. "I have had trial enough for one day—I cannot, dare not meet 'him' at the archery-fête. And yet, what Lucy observed is true. My wary uncle has not compromised himself yet—he is doubtless in hopes that though I have fulfilled his first condition, I will shrink back from the last. He 'has' kept a loophole open, and I—I only—can close it! Heigh-ho! 'Tis a painful ordeal! I would that the day were over!"

The idea of entering a nunnery or a prison would scarcely at that moment have appeared so formidable to Philomel, as that of joining a gay throng of neighbours and acquaintances at that fête to which she had once looked forward with keenest delight.