DESDICHADO
It was a brilliant June morning rather more than a year after the events
mentioned in the last chapter.
The air was full of the song of birds and the hum of bees, and of another
sound to which Sydney Lisle was listening, as she stood upon the steps of
the Castle, shading eyes that danced joyfully from the dazzling sunshine,
and listening to the pealing of the bells.
They were plain enough from Lislehurst Church across the Park, but she
could distinguish, mingling with these, the more distant peal from Loam,
and even, she thought, Marston’s little tinkling duet from its two
cracked bells, which were being pulled with a goodwill that went far to
atone for their lack of music.
The glory of “leafy June,” that queen of months, was upon the tall trees
of the Park, among which presently the girl went wandering. How wonderful
a world it was to-day! She felt as though she wanted to drink in the
beauty around her.
The sunshine came flickering through the trees, making a chequer of light
and shade upon the grassy path before her; in front the softly dappled
deer were feeding peacefully, undisturbed by her approach.
“Pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang!” went the bells, and Sydney
smiled in sympathy with that wonderful abandonment of joy which only
bells can give.
The girl made a charming picture as she stood there on the soft grass,
with the mighty trees she loved so well towering in their grandeur
overhead, and the sunshine flickering through the leaves upon her white
gown and sweet face.
She was good to look upon indeed in her dainty gown, with a great bunch
of yellow roses at her belt, and that flush upon her cheek and sun of
gladness in her eyes. She might have stood for an embodiment of the sweet
young summer which was making the world good to dwell in.
So at least thought a young man, who, catching through the trees a
glimpse of her white dress, had left the road and cut across the Park
toward her. As he came near his eyes were fixed upon her earnest face,
raised to the glory of sight and sound above. She did not hear his
footsteps till he was quite close to her; then she sprang to meet him
with a low cry of delight.
“Oh, Hugh! have you heard?”
“Yes, I heard at Donisbro’ and came straight.”
Something new in his voice brought a sudden flush to the delicately
tinted face. Her eyes fell before his eager ones.
“Come into the gardens,” she said, turning, and the two went wandering
together in a strange silence over the cool turf of the bowling green
where King Charles I. had once played at his favourite game with a loyal
Lisle of old, a Sydney too.
The balmy, fragrant air was filled with the clang of bells; beyond the
Park they were beginning to cut hay in the long meadows sloping upwards
towards the grey-green downs. A great bush, covered with the little
yellow roses Sydney wore, smiled up at the two who stood before it.
“Pang—pang-pang-pang—pang—pang-pang-pang!” went the bells.
“They ring with goodwill,” Hugh said, with a smile.
“They are very glad,” said Sydney, “and oh, Hugh, I wonder whether
anybody on the whole estate is more glad than I am!”
And then Hugh turned and caught her hands and said, with an odd break in
his voice, “Syd, are you really?”
She looked straight up at him, and he knew that she had spoken truth.
“If you are, what must I be!” he cried. “My darling, you don’t know, you
can’t know what this means to me!”
His voice broke suddenly.
“Tell me,” she said. But I think she understood without telling.
Later, as the two sat together on the grassy bank bordering the bowling
green, the girl said, “Do you know, I think we ought to be grateful to
St. Quentin for taking me away from home and all of you. It was very,
very hard to give up my brother Hugh, but this is better!”
“It is,” Hugh said, with absolute conviction.
“Pang—pang-pang-pang—pang-pang-pang-pang!” went the bells, tripping one
another up in their haste to clang out the glad tidings of the birth of
an heir male to the great St. Quentin title and estates.
But Sydney had come, in those few quiet minutes in the garden, into a far
greater heritage than that of which the little heir’s birth had deprived
her!
A tall figure with brown hair touched with grey about the temples was
coming down the path towards the bowling green. Sydney sprang to her feet
and went to meet him, Hugh following her closely.
Lord St. Quentin too was listening to the bells, with a smile upon the
face that had nearly lost its cynical expression. “But I feel almost as
if the little beggar were doing you an injury, Sydney,” he said, laying
his hand upon the girl’s slight shoulder as she joined him.
“You are not to say that!” she cried. “Do you think there is any one more
glad and happy than I am to-day? Oh, St. Quentin, if you only knew how
glad I am to be disinherited!”
He looked down at her glowing face, then turned from hers to Hugh’s. The
light of comprehension dawned in his eyes.
“Upon my word!” he exclaimed as sternly as he could. “What mischief have
you two been doing now?”
“Well,” Sydney said audaciously, looking up into his face, that she had
grown so fond of, “you see, you forbade me to look upon Hugh as a brother
any longer—and—and I always try to obey you.”
“When I heard at Donisbro’ this morning that she was safely out of the
succession, I couldn’t wait,” Hugh said. “There was just time to catch
the next train, and I caught it!”
The corners of St. Quentin’s mouth twitched, and after one or two
attempts to look serious, he gave it up and laughed outright.
“You are a nice pair!” he said. “If it weren’t for the fact that
Katharine is sure to be upon the side of true love, and that you, Sydney,
always insist upon your own way, I’d play the stern guardian, and send
Master Hugh to the right-about!”
“But of course you are not going to do anything so absolutely horrid,”
Sydney said with confidence. “You’re going to take him in to see the
baby.”
“It’s all the baby’s fault,” grumbled its father, when Hugh had been
presented to the red-faced, crumpled, kicking object who was Lord Lisle.
“I believe I bear him a grudge. You would have made a first-rate
landlord, Sydney!”
“I never should have made a marchioness,” she declared with much
decision. “Ask Lady Frederica. And oh, Quin, don’t be cross, but be glad
that I haven’t got to try!”