PEN’YLLAN.
Emulating the example of the Misses Tregarthyn, Pen’yllan had put on
its best dress to grace the occasion of the arrival of the visitors. As
they drove from the little railway station, Lisbeth was of the opinion
that she had never seen the sea so blue, and cool, and sparkling, the
sands so silver white, or the village so picturesque. The truth was,
the sight of it quite subdued her, and invested her with one of her
softest and most charitable moods.
“I did not know it was so pretty,” she said. “I believe we shall enjoy
ourselves, Georgie.”
Georgie was enraptured. Everything pleased her. The sea, the beach,
the sky, the quaint, white cottages, the bare-legged children, the old
Welsh women in their steeple hats and woollen petticoats. The up-hill
streets of the village were delightful; the little bandbox of a railway
station was incomparable. She had been rather pale and tired during
the journey, but as soon as she set her feet upon the platform at
Pen’yllan, her pallor and fatigue disappeared. The fresh breeze from
the sea tinged her cheeks, and made her eyes sparkle, and she was in
the best of good spirits.
“I never saw such a dear little place in my life,” she said,
delightedly. “Enjoy ourselves, Lisbeth? Why, as you know, I feel just
as I used to when we were all children, and went to the sea-side with
mamma and the nurses, and dug caves in the sand with wooden spades, and
built forts, and looked for shells. I am going to make friends with
those little urchins on the beach to-morrow, and ask them to play with
me.”
Behold the Tregarthyn household, arrayed in all its modest splendor,
when the carriage drove up to the garden gate. Behold the neatest
of young handmaidens, brisk and blue-eyed, and the smallest of
pages standing ready to assist with the boxes, and admire the young
ladies with an exceeding admiration. Behold, also, the three Misses
Tregarthyn, in the trimmest of “company” dresses, and in such a state
of affectionate tremor and excitement, that they kissed their dear
Lisbeth on the tip of the nose by one consent, instead of bestowing
their delighted caresses upon her lips.
“So very happy to see you, my love,” said Miss Clarissa, squeezing
Georgie’s hand, as she led the way into the parlor. “Our dear
Lisbeth’s friend, I hope you are not tired, and that you left your
mamma and papa quite well. Our dear Lisbeth is so tenderly attached to
your mamma and papa, that if such a thing were possible, we should be
quite jealous.”
“They are quite as much attached to her, I can assure you,” answered
Georgie, in her pretty, earnest way. “Indeed, we all are, Miss
Clarissa. Everybody is fond of Lisbeth.” And thereby rendered her
position as a favorite secure at once.
Indeed, she found her way to the heart of the spinster household in an
incredibly short space of time. Miss Millicent, and Miss Hetty, and
Miss Clarissa were charmed with her. Her pretty face and figure, her
girlish gayety, her readiness to admire and enjoy everything, were
attractions enough to enchant any spinster trio, even if she had not
possessed that still greater charm of being Lisbeth’s dearest friend.
The two girls shared Lisbeth’s old room together; a cool nest of a
place, with white draperies, and quaint ornaments, and all the child
Lisbeth’s treasures, of land and sea, still kept in their original
places.
“It looks exactly as it did when I went away with Mrs. Despard,” said
Lisbeth, glancing round, with a sigh, which meant she scarce knew
what. “I gathered that sea-weed when I was fourteen, and I was always
engaged in difficulties with the cooks, because I would bring in more
shells than I wanted, and leave piles of them in the kitchen. Aunt
Clarissa sent one woman away because we had a row, and she said I was
‘a imperent young minx, allus litterin’ the place with my rubbidge.’
How the dear old souls did spoil me. If I had brought a whale into the
drawing-room, they would have regretted, but never resented it. I had
my own way often enough when I ought to have had my ears boxed.”
“You must have been very happy in their loving you so,” said Georgie,
who had drawn a low wicker chair to the open window, and was enjoying
the moonlight and the sea.
“You would have been,” returned Lisbeth, drawing up chair number two.
“And you would have behaved yourself better than I did. I was an
ill-conditioned young person, even in those days.”
They were both silent for a while after this. There was a lovely view
from the window, and all was so still that neither cared to stir for
a few moments. Then the thoughtfulness on Georgie’s face attracted
Lisbeth’s attention.
“I should like to know,” she said, “what you are thinking about?”
The girl drew a positively ecstatic little sigh.
“I was thinking how sweet and quiet everything looked,” she said,
innocently; “and how much happier I am.”
“Happier?” exclaimed Lisbeth. “When were you unhappy, Georgie?”
The surprise in her tone brought Georgie to a recognition of what
her words had unconsciously implied. She found herself blushing, and
wondering at her own simplicity. She had not meant to say so much. She
could not comprehend why she should have said anything of that kind at
all.
“It is strange enough to hear that you can be made happier than you
always seem to be,” said Lisbeth. “You speak as if--” And then, her
quick eye taking in the girl’s trepidation, she stopped short. “You
never had a trouble, Georgie?” she added, in a voice very few of her
friends would have known; it was so soft.
“No,” said Georgie. “Oh, no, Lisbeth! Not a trouble, exactly; not a
trouble at all, indeed; only--” And suddenly she turned her bright,
appealing eyes to Lisbeth’s face. “I don’t know why I said it,” she
said. “It was nothing real, Lisbeth, or else I am sure you would have
known. But it--Well, I might have had a trouble, and I was saved from
it, and I am glad, and--thankful.” And, to Miss Crespigny’s surprise,
she bent forward, and kissed her softly on the cheek.
Lisbeth asked her no questions. She was not fond of asking questions,
and she was a young person of delicacy and tact, when she was in an
affectionate mood. She was too partial to Georgie to wish to force her
into telling her little secrets. But a certain thought flashed through
her mind, as she sat with her eyes resting on the sea.
“She is the sort of girl,” she said, sharply, to herself, “who would
be likely to have no trouble but a love trouble. Who has been making
love to her, or rather, who, among all her admirers, would be likely to
touch her heart?”
But this mental problem was by no means easy to solve. There were so
many men who admired Georgie Esmond, and such a large proportion of
them were men whom any girl might have loved.
It was one of Lisbeth’s chief wonders, that Georgie, who was so soft
of heart, and ready with affection, should have held her own so long
against so agreeable a multitude of adorers. Certainly, if she had
lived through any little romance, she had kept her secret well. She
did not look like a love-lorn young lady when she came down, the next
morning, fresh and rosy, and prepared to explore Pen’yllan in all its
fastnesses. It was exhilarating to see her; and the Misses Tregarthyn
were delighted beyond bounds. She made a pilgrimage through half the
up-and-down-hill little streets in the village, and, before dinner,
had managed to drag Lisbeth a mile along the shore, against a stiff
breeze, which blew their long, loose hair about, and tinted their
cheeks brilliantly. Lisbeth followed her with an amused wonder at her
enthusiasm, mingled with discontent at her own indifference. It was she
who ought to have been in raptures, and she was not in raptures at all.
Had she no natural feeling whatever? Any other woman would have felt a
sentimental tenderness for the place which had been her earliest home.
They had found a comfortable nook behind a cluster of sheltering rocks,
and were sitting on the sand, when Lisbeth arrived at this stage of
thought. The place was an old haunt of hers, and Hector Anstruthers
had often followed her there in their boy and girl days; and the sight
of the familiar stretch of sea and sand irritated her somehow. She
picked up a shell, and sent it skimming away toward the water, with an
impatient gesture.
“Georgie,” she said, “I should like to know what you see in Pen’yllan
to please you so.”
“Everything,” said Georgie. “And then, somehow, I seem to know it. I
think its chief attraction is, that you lived here so long.”
Lisbeth picked up another shell, and sent it skimming after the other.
“What a girl you are!” she said. “It is always your love and your
heart that are touched. You are all heart. You love people, and you
love everything that belongs to them: their homes, their belongings,
their relations. It is not so with me; it never was. You are like what
Hector Anstruthers was, when I first knew him. Bah!” with a shrug of
her shoulders. “How fond the foolish fellow was of Aunt Hetty, and Aunt
Millicent, and Aunt Clarissa.”
Her tongue had slipped, just as Georgie’s had done the night before.
For the moment she forgot herself entirely, and only remembered that
old sentimental affection of her boyish lover; that affection for her
spinster relatives, which, in the past, had impressed her as being half
troublesome and half absurd.