VALENTINE.
"If he had known where he was going to fall, he could have put down
straw."--_Russian Proverb._
Laura wrote with difficulty an answer to Lizzy Grant's letter. It is
easier for the sister to say, "My brother is a dishonourable young
fellow, and has behaved shamefully," than for the friend to answer
without offence, "I quite agree with you."
But the next letter made matters in some degree easier, for it at least
showed the direction that his family gave to the excuses they now
offered for the behaviour of the young scapegrace. First, he had been
very unwell in London--almost seriously unwell; and next, Lizzy said she
had been quite right as to St. George's love for Dorothea, for he had
made her an offer before she left the house.
"In fact," continued Liz, "we have all decided, so far as we can, to
overlook what Val has done, for he is deeply attached to the girl who,
without any fault of her own, has supplanted Dorothea. He is already
engaged to her, and if he is allowed to marry her early in the spring,
and sail for New Zealand, he is not likely ever to return; at any rate,
he will not for very many years. In that case, you know, Laura, we shall
only be with him about six weeks longer; so I hope our friends will
forgive us for forgiving him."
"They are fond of him, that is the fact," observed Mrs. Melcombe; "and
to be sure the other brother, wanting to marry Miss Graham, does seem to
make some difference, some excuse; but as to his illness, I don't think
much of that. I remember when his old father came here to the funeral, I
remarked that Valentine looked overgrown, and not strong, and Mr.
Mortimer said he had been very delicate himself all his youth, and often
had a cough (far more delicate, in fact, than his son was); but he had
outgrown it, and enjoyed very fair health for many years."
Then Laura went on reading:--
"Besides, we think that, though Dorothea refused St. George point blank
when he made her an offer, yet she would hardly write to him every week
as she does, if she did not like him, and he would hardly be so very
silent and reserved about her, and yet evidently in such good spirits,
if he did not think that something in the end would come of it."
"No," said Mrs. Melcombe, laughing in a cynical spirit, "the ridiculous
scrape they are in does not end with Valentine. If he was really ill,
there could be no thought of his marriage with this other girl; and,
besides, Miss Graham (if this is true) will have far the best of the two
brothers. _St. George_, as they are so fond of calling him (I suppose
because Giles is such an ugly name), is far better off than Valentine,
and has ten times more sense."
"Dorothea is gone to the Isle of Wight," continued Laura, finishing the
letter, "to live with some old friends. She has no relatives, poor girl,
excepting a father, who is somewhere at the other end of the world, and
he seems to take very little notice of her. There is, indeed, an old
uncle, but he lives at sea; he is almost always at sea in his yacht, and
her only brother sails with him; but nobody knows in the least where
they are now. It is very sad for her, and she told St. George, and
sister too, that she had only loved Val out of gratitude, because he
seemed so much attached to her, and because she wanted somebody to
devote herself to."
In her next letter Liz told Laura that she herself was to be married
shortly to Dick A'Court, "who says he fell in love with me when we two
used to add up the coal-and-clothing cards." In these words, and in no
more, the information was imparted, and the rest of the letter was so
stiff and formal that Laura's pleasure in the correspondence ended with
it. The realities of life were beginning to make her child-friend feel
sober and reticent.
Laura wrote a long effusive letter in reply, full of tender
congratulations on the high lot that awaited Liz as the helpmeet of a
devoted clergyman, also on the joys of happy lovers; but this
composition did not touch the feelings of Liz in the right place. "Just
as if I had not told her," she thought, "that Emily was come home from
India, and that I had consented to accept Dick partly to please her,
because she was sure I should be sorry for it afterwards if I didn't. So
I dare say I should have been," she continued thoughtfully. "In fact, I
am almost sure of it. But I know very well, whatever Emily may say, that
Dick will make me do just as he likes. I am sure I shall have to
practise those quire boys of his, and they will bawl in my ears and call
me teacher."
So thinking, Liz allowed herself to drift towards matrimony without
enthusiasm, but with a general notion that, as most people were married
sooner or later, no doubt matrimony was the proper thing and the best
thing on the whole. "And I shall certainly go through with it, now I
have promised," she further reflected, "for it would never do for
another of us to behave badly just at the last."
It was the last week in March, and Laura was loitering through the
garden one morning before breakfast, when Mrs. Melcombe came out to her
in some excitement with a note in her hand, which had been sent on from
the inn, and which set forth that Mr. Brandon, having business in that
immediate neighbourhood, would, if agreeable to her, do himself the
pleasure of calling some time that morning. He added that he had brought
a book for Miss Melcombe from his sister.
"I have sent to the inn," said Mrs. Melcombe, "to beg that he will come
on here to breakfast."
Laura had been gathering a bunch of violets, and she rushed up-stairs
and put them into her hair. Then in a great hurry she changed her
toilette, and, after ascertaining that the guest had arrived, she came
languidly into the breakfast-room, a straw-hat hanging by its strings
from her arm, and filled with primroses and other flowers. She felt as
she approached that all this looked quite romantic, but it did not look
so real and so unpremeditated as might have been wished.
Mrs. Melcombe had also changed her array. Little Peter, like most other
children, was always the picture of cleanly neatness when first he left
his nurse's hand in the morning, and his mother was much pleased at the
evident interest with which their guest regarded him, asking him various
questions about his lessons, his sports, and his pony. She had been
deeply gratified at the kind way in which all the Mortimers and their
connections had received her boy; none of them seemed at all jealous.
Even Valentine had never hinted or even looked at her as if he felt that
the property ought not to have gone to the younger branch.
Peter, now ten years old, and but a small boy for his age, had an
average degree of intelligence; and as he sat winking and blinking in
the morning sunshine, he constantly shook back a lock of hair that fell
over his forehead, till Brandon, quietly putting his hand to it, moved
it away, and while the boy related some childish adventure that he had
encouraged him to talk of, looked at him with scrutinizing and, as it
seemed to his mother, with almost anxious attention.
"Peter has been very poorly several times this winter," she remarked. "I
mean shortly to take him out for change of air."
"His forehead looks pale," said Brandon, withdrawing his hand, and for a
minute or two he seemed lost in thought, till Mrs. Melcombe, expressing
a hope that he would stay at her house as long as his affairs detained
him in that neighbourhood, he accepted her invitation with great
readiness. He would spend that day and the next with her, and, if she
would permit it, he would walk with young hopeful to his tutor's house,
and come back again in time for luncheon.
"I declare, he scarcely spoke to me all breakfast-time," thought Laura.
"I consider him decidedly a proud man, and any one might think he had
come to see Peter rather than to see us."
Brandon evidently did wish to walk with the boy, and accordingly rose as
soon as he had finished his breakfast, Mrs. Melcombe giving him some
directions, and a key to let himself in with by a side gate.
All the intelligence Brandon possessed, and all his keenness of
observation, he exercised during his walk with the little heir. He could
generally attract children, and Peter was already well inclined toward
him, for he had shown himself to be knowing about a country boy's
pleasures; also he knew all about the little Mortimers and their doings.
Brandon wished to see Melcombe, even to examine some parts of the house
and grounds, and he wanted if possible to hear something more about the
ghost story; but it did not suit him to betray any special interest. So
he left it to work its way to the surface if it would. It was not the
business he had come about, but he had undertaken to transact that, on
purpose because it gave him a chance of looking at the place.
This was the deep glen, then, that he had heard Valentine speak of?
"Yes; and mother says the old uncle Mortimer (that one who lived at
Wigfield) improved it so much; he had so many trees thinned out, and a
pond dug where there used to be a swamp. We've got some carp in that
pond. Do you think, if I fed them, they would get tame?"
Brandon told some anecdote of certain carp that he had seen abroad, and
then asked--
"Do you like the glen, my boy--is it a favourite place of yours?"
"Pretty well," answered Peter. "There are not so many nests, though, as
there used to be. It used to be quite dark with trees."
"Did you like it then?"
"Yes, it was jolly; but----"
"But what?" asked Brandon carelessly.
"Grandmother didn't like it," said the boy.
Brandon longed to ask why.
"She was very old, my grandmother."
"Yes. And so she didn't like the glen?"
"No; but the old uncle has had a walk, a sort of path, made through it;
and mamma says I may like it as much as I please, so does aunt Laura."
"You know," continued the child, in an argumentative tone, "there's no
place in the world where somebody hasn't died."
"Now, what does this mean?" thought Brandon. "I would fain raise the
ghost if I could. Is he coming up now, or is he not?"
Presently, however, Peter made some allusion to the family
misfortune--the death of the eldest son, by which Brandon perceived that
it had taken place in the glen. He then dropped the subject, nothing
more that was said till a few minutes before they reached the tutor's
lodgings being of the least interest. Then, as they turned the edge of a
wood, Peter looked back.
"You won't forget the turn of the lane you are to take, will you, Mr.
Brandon? and you've got the key?"
"Yes," said Brandon.
"It's a green sort of door, in the park-paling. A new one has been made,
because that one was so shabby. It's the one my uncles went through when
they ran away, you know."
"What uncles?" asked Brandon, not at all suspecting the truth, and not
much interested.
"Why, that one who belonged to you," said Peter, "and the other one who
belongs to Bertie and Hugh. Didn't you know?" he exclaimed, having
observed the momentary flash of surprise that Brandon made haste to
conceal. "They ran away," he repeated, as Brandon walked beside him
making no answer, "a very long time before my mamma was born, and they
never came back any more till I was nearly six years old."
"So that's your tutor's house, is it?" said Brandon, and thereupon he
took leave of him.
"Amazing!" he said to himself as he walked away. "What next, I wonder?"
As he returned he revolved this information in his mind with increasing
surprise. John Mortimer had a proud and confident way of talking about
his father that did not sound as if he knew that he had begun life by
running away from home. Valentine, he was well aware, knew nothing about
it.
Coming on, he turned aside to talk to some men who were digging a well.
He knew how to talk to working people, and, what is more to the purpose,
he knew how to make them talk; but though they proffered a good deal of
information about the neighbourhood, nothing was said that gave him any
of the knowledge he wanted. And shortly he went on, and let himself in
at the little gate with his key. It was not yet eleven o'clock, and as
he did not want to see the ladies of the family so soon, he determined
to go down into the steep glen and look about him.
He had no doubt now that to this place the superstitious story belonged.
First, he skirted it all about. From above it was nearly as round as a
cup, and as deep in proportion to its size. The large old trees had been
left, and appeared almost to fill it up, their softly rounded heads
coming to within three feet of the level where he stood. All the mother
birds--rooks, jays, thrushes, and pigeons--were plainly in view under
him, as they sat brooding on their nests among the topmost twigs, and
there was a great cawing and crowing of the cock-birds while they flew
about and fed their mates. The leaves were not out; their buds only
looked like green eggs spotting the trees, excepting that here and there
a horse-chestnut, forwarder than its brethren, was pushing its crumpled
foliage out of the pale-pink sheath. Everywhere saplings had been cut
down, and numbers of them strewed the damp mossy ground; but light
penetrated, and water trinkled, there was a pleasant scent of herbs and
flowers, and the whole place was cheerful with growth and spring.
A set of winding steps cut in the soft, red rock led into the glen just
where the side was steepest, and Brandon, intent on discovery, sprang
lightly down them. He wandered almost everywhere about the place. It
seemed to hold within itself a different climate from the world above,
where keen spring air was stirring; here hardly a breath moved, and in
the soft sheltered warmth the leaves appeared visibly to be expanding.
He forgot his object, also another object that he had in view (the
business, in fact, which had brought him), leaned against the trunk of a
horse-chestnut, listened to the missel-thrushes, looked at a pine-tree a
little way off, that was letting down a mist of golden dust, and
presently lost himself in a reverie, finding, as is the way with a
lover, that the scene present, whatever it may happen to be, was helping
to master his everyday self, was indeed just the scene to send him
plunging yet further down into the depths of his passionate dream.
He had stood leaning against the tree, with his hat at his feet and his
arms folded, for perhaps half an hour. He had inherited a world (with an
ideal companion), had become absorbed into a lifetime of hope; and his
love appeared to grow without let or hindrance in the growing freshness
and glorious expansion of the spring.
Half an hour of hope and joy consoles for much foregone trouble, and
further satisfies the heart by making it an easier thing to believe in
more yet to come.
A sudden exclamation and a little crash roused him.
Laura! She had come to visit her favourite tree, and lo! a man there at
last, leaning against it lost in thought, and so absolutely still that
she had not noticed him.
She knew in an instant that this was not Joseph, and yet as the sight of
him flashed on her sense before recognition, the nothingness she always
found gave way to a feeling as of something real, that almost might have
been the right thing. As for him, though he saw her flitting figure, she
did not for the twinkling of an eye pass for the ghost he had come to
look for. He roused himself up in an instant. "Whew!" was his inward
thought, "she is alone; what could be so lucky! I'll do the business at
once, and get it over."
Picking up his hat, and sinking at every step into the soft cushions of
moss, he accordingly approached her and said, but perhaps just a little
coldly, "I did not expect to see you here, Miss Melcombe."
Laura perceived this slight tinge of coldness as plainly as he did the
improvement in her appearance since he had first seen her in the
morning, for surprise at detecting him had overpowered her affectation.
She had coloured from having been startled, and while she, from habit,
moved on mechanically to the tree, she answered quite simply and
naturally that she walked that way almost every day.
Brandon turned and walked with her. Opposite to the said tree, and very
near it, was another, under which stood a bench. Laura sat down, and
while pointing out the spot where certain herons had built their
platform-like nests, began to recover herself, or rather to put on the
damaging affectation which in a moment of forgetfulness she had thrown
off.
Brandon did not sit beside her, but while she arranged her dress to her
mind, threw her plaid shawl into becoming folds, and laying her hand on
her bracelet, furtively drew the ornament upon it to the upper side, he
looked at her and thought what a goose she was.
She wore a straw hat with so wide a brim that as he stood before her he
did not see her face, and he was not sorry for this; it was not his
business to reprove her, but what he had to say would, he supposed, put
her a good deal out of countenance.
He was just about to speak, and Laura was in the full enjoyment of
feeling how romantic it was to be there alone with a young man, was just
wishing that some of her friends could be looking down from above to see
this interesting picture, and draw certain conclusions, when a decidedly
sharp voice called out from behind, "Laura! what can you be doing here?
You know I don't like you to be for ever coming to that tree.--Laura!"
"Yes, I'm here," said Laura, and Mrs. Melcombe, arrayed in blue poplin,
stepped into view, and made Brandon feel very foolish and Laura very
cross.
"Oh! you've brought Mr. Brandon here to see the carp," said Amelia
graciously, but she hardly knew what to think, and they all presently
went to the pond, and watched the creatures flashing up their golden
sides, each wondering all the time what the two others were thinking
of. Then as it was nearly lunch time, Amelia and Laura proceeded to
leave the dell, Brandon attending them and helping them up the steps. He
was rather vexed that he had not been able to say his say and give Laura
a certain packet that he had in his possession; and as the afternoon
presently clouded over and it began to pour with rain, he hardly knew
what to do with himself till the bright idea occurred to him that he
would ask Mrs. Melcombe to show him the old house.
Up and down stairs and into a good many rooms they all three proceeded
together. Hardly any pictures to found a question or a theory on; no old
china with a story belonging to it; no brown books that had been loved
by dead Melcombes. This could not have been a studious race. Not a
single anecdote was told of the dead all the time they went over the
place, till at last Mrs. Melcombe unlocked the door of a dark,
old-fashioned sitting-room upstairs, and going to the shutters opened
one of them, saying, "This is the room in which the dear old grandmother
spent the later years of her life."
This really was an interesting old room. Laura and Amelia folded back
the shutters with a genuine air of reverence and feeling. It was most
evident that they had loved this woman whose son had forbidden her to
leave her property to him.
Two or three dark old pictures hung on the walls, and there was a
cabinet on which Laura laying her hand, said--
"The dear grandmother kept all her letters here."
"Indeed," Brandon answered; "it must have been very interesting to you
to look them over. (And yet," he thought "you don't look as if you had
found in them anything of much interest.")
"We have never opened it," said Mrs. Melcombe. "Mr. Mortimer, when he
was here, proposed to look over and sort all the letters for me, but I
declined his offer."
("And no doubt made him miserable by so doing") was Brandon's next
thought.
"I shall keep the key for my dear boy," she continued, "and give it to
him when he comes of age."
("To find out something that he will wish he didn't know.") thought
Brandon again. ("That cabinet, as likely as not, contains the evidence
of _it_, whatever _it_ is.")
"And in this gallery outside," she proceeded, "the dear grandmother used
to walk every day."
Brandon perceived that he had got to the core and heart of the place at
last. His interest was so intense that he failed to conceal it. He
walked to the window and noticed the pouring rain that was streaming
between the rustic pillars of the balustrades into the garden below. He
examined the pictures; only two of them were portraits, but in the
background of one was an undoubted representation of the house itself;
the other was a portrait of a beautiful boy in a blue jacket and a shirt
with a wide frill laid back and open at the neck. Under his arm appeared
the head of a greyish dog.
"That creature," Brandon thought, "is almost exactly like my old dog
Smokey. I am very much mistaken if this is not the portrait of one of
his ancestors."
He turned to ask some question about it, and observed to his surprise
that Mrs. Melcombe had left the room, and he was alone with Laura, who
had seated herself on a sofa and taken a long piece of crochet-work from
her pocket, which she was doing almost with the air of one who waits
patiently till somebody else has finished his investigations.
"I thought you would be interested in that picture," she said; "you
recognise it, I suppose?"
"No!" he exclaimed.
"It used not to be here," said Laura; "the dear grandmother, as long as
she lived, always had it in her bedroom. It's Mr. Mortimer, your
stepfather, when he was a boy, and that was his dog, a great favourite;
when he ran away the dog disappeared--it was always supposed that it ran
after him. I suppose," continued Laura, impelled to say this to some one
who was sure to be impressed by it--"I suppose nobody ever did mourn as
my grandmother did over the loss of those two sons. Yet she never used
to blame them."
They did run away then, and they did keep away, and yet she did not
blame them. How deeply pathetic these things seemed. Whatever it might
be that had made his step-father write that letter, it appeared now to
be thrown back to the time when he had divided himself thus from his
family and taken his boy brother with him.
"And that other portrait," said Laura, "we found up in one of the
garrets, and hung here when the house was restored. It is the portrait
of my grandmother's only brother, who was sixteen or eighteen years
younger than she was. His name was Melcombe, which was her maiden name,
but ours, you know, was really Mortimer. It is very much darkened by
time and neglect, and never was of any particular value."
"What has he got under his arm?" said Brandon.
"I think it is a cocked hat or some kind of hat. I think they wore
cocked hats then in the navy; he was a lieutenant in the navy. You see
some sort of gold lace on it, and on the hilt of his sword."
"Did he die at sea?" asked Brandon.
"Yes. My great-grandfather left this place to his son, and as he died
unmarried it was to come to our eldest uncle, and then to grandmother,
as it did, you know."
"'Its name was Melcombe, and it came from the sea,'" Brandon repeated
inwardly, adding, "Well, the _ghost_ can have had nothing to do with
this mystery. I shall trouble myself no more about him."
"He was only about a year older than my oldest uncle," proceeded Laura,
"for grandmother married at seventeen."
Brandon looked again. Something in the two pictures reminded him of the
portraits of the Flambourgh family. They had evidently been done by the
same artist. Each youth had something under his left arm, each was
turning his face slightly, and they both looked the same way. Young
Daniel Mortimer was so placed that his quiet eyes seemed to be always
regarding the hearth, now empty of warmth. The other, hung on the same
wall, seemed to look out into the garden, and Laura said in a
sentimental way that, considering the evident love she had borne her
grandmother, was not at all out of place.
"There is a bed of lilies that dear grandmother used to love to watch,
and Amelia and I thought it interesting when we had had this picture put
up to observe that its eyes seemed to fall on the same place. They were
not friends, my grandmother and her brother, and no doubt after his
death my grandmother laid their frequent quarrels to heart, for she
could never bear to mention him, though she had a beautiful monument put
up to his memory. You must go and see it, Mr. Brandon. We have lately
had it cleaned, and dear grandmother's name added under his."
"I will," said Brandon.