THE REVENGE OF SORDID SPIRITS
'I am quite convinced,' said Ida Morton, 'it is quite plain why we are
not invited.'
'My dear, you see what your aunt says; that Mrs. Bury's daughter's
husband is ordered to India, and that having the whole family to stay at
Northmoor gives them the only chance of being all together for a little
while, and after their obligations to Mrs. Bury--'
'Ma, how can you be so green? Obligations, indeed! It is all a mere
excuse to say there is not room for us in that great house. I see
through it all. It is just to prevent us from being able to ask
inconvenient questions of the German nurse and Mrs. Bury and all!'
'Now, Ida, I wish you would put away that fancy. Your uncle and aunt
were always such good people! And there was Mrs. Bury--'
'Mother, you will never understand the revenge of sordid souls,' said Ida
tragically, quoting from _The Unconscious Impostor_.
'Revenge! What can you mean?'
'Of course, you know, Mrs. Bury never forgave Herbert's taking her for a
tramp, and you know how nasty uncle was about that white rook and the
bets. Oh, it is quite plain. He was to be deprived of his rights, and
so this journey was contrived, and they got into this out-of-the-way,
inaccessible place, and sent poor Conny away, and then had no doctor or
nurse--exactly as people always do.'
'Oh, Ida, only in stories! Your novels are turning your head.'
'Novels are transcripts of life,' again said Ida, solemnly quoting.
'I don't believe it if they put such things into your head,' said her
mother. 'Asking Herbert to be godfather too! Such a compliment!'
'An empty compliment, to hoodwink us and the poor boy,' said Ida. 'No,
no, ma, the keeping you away settles it in my mind, and it shall be the
business of my life to unmask that!'
So spoke Ida, conscious of being a future heroine.
It was quite true that Herbert had been asked to stand godfather to his
little cousin's admission into the Church, after, of course, a very good
report had been received from his tutor. 'You are the little fellow's
nearest kinsman,' wrote Lord Northmoor, 'and I trust to you to influence
him for good.' Herbert wriggled, blushed, thought he hated it, was glad
it had been written instead of spoken, but was really touched.
His uncle had justly thought responsibility would be wholesome, and
besides, Herbert represented to him his brother, for whom he had a very
tender feeling.
It was quite true that Northmoor was as full as it would hold. Mrs.
Bury's eldest daughter was going out to India, and another had a husband
in the Civil Service; the third lived in Ireland, and the only way of
having the whole family together for their last fortnight was to gather
them at Northmoor, as soon as its lord and lady returned, nor had they
been able to escape from their Dolomite ravine till the beginning of May,
for the roads were always dangerous, often impassable, so that there had
been weeks when they were secluded from even the post, and had had
difficulties as to food and fire.
However, it had done them no harm, and was often looked back upon as,
metaphorically as well as literally, the brightest and whitest time in
their lives. Frank had walked and climbed both with Mrs. Bury and on his
own account, and had drunk in the wild glories of the mountain winter,
and the fantastic splendours of snow and ice on those wondrous peaks.
And, with that new joy and delight to be found in the queer wooden
cradle, his heart was free to bound as perhaps it had never done before,
in exulting thankfulness, as he looked up to those foretastes of the
Great White Throne.
Never had he had such a rest before from toil, care, and anxiety as in
those months in the dry, bracing air, and it was the universal remark
that Lord Northmoor came back years younger and twice the man he had been
before, with a spirit of cheerfulness and enterprise such as had always
been wanting; while as to his wife, she was less strong than before, but
there was a certain peaceful, yet exulting happiness about her, and her
face had gained wonderfully in sweetness and expression.
The child was a fine plump little fellow, old enough to laugh and respond
to loving faces and gestures. Mary had feared the sight might be painful
to Lady Adela, and was gratified to find her too true a baby-lover and
too generous a spirit not to worship him almost as devotedly as did
Constance.
Perhaps the heads of the family had never seen or participated in
anything like the domestic mirth and enjoyment of that fortnight's visit;
Bertha was with Lady Adela, and the intimacy and confidence in which
Frank and Mary had lived with Mrs. Bury had demolished many barriers of
shyness, and made them hosts who could be as one with their
guests--guests with whom the shadow of parting made the last sunshine
seem the more bright.
'I did not know what I was letting you in for,' said Bertha, in apology
to Mrs. Bury.
'My dear, I would not have been without the experience on any account. I
never saw such a refreshing pair of people.'
'Surely it must have been awfully slow--regular penal servitude!'
'You confuse absence of small talk with absence of soul, Birdie. When we
had once grown intimate enough to hold our tongues if we had nothing to
say, we got on perfectly.'
'And what you had to say was about Master Michael?'
'Not entirely; though I must say the mingled reverence and curiosity with
which they regard the little monster, and their own fear of not bringing
up their treasure properly, were a very interesting study.'
'More so than your snowy peaks! Ah, if the proper study of mankind is
man, the proper study of womankind is babe.'
'Well, it was not at all an unsatisfactory study, in this case. And let
me tell you, Miss Birdie, it is no bad thing to be shut in for a few
months with a few good books and a couple of thoroughly simple-hearted
people, who have thought a good deal in their quiet humdrum way.'
'Why, Lettice, you must have been quite an education to them!'
'I hope they were an education to me.'
'I hope your conscience is not going to be such a rampant and obstructive
thing as that which they possess in common,' said Bertha.
'I wish it had been,' said Mrs. Bury gravely.
'At any rate, the deadly lively time has brisked you all up,' said
Bertha, laughing.
Constance, on her Saturdays and Sundays, looked on with a kind of wonder.
She was not exactly of either set. The children were all so young as to
look on her as a grown-up person, though willing to let her play with
them; and she was outside the group of young married people, and could
not enter into their family fun; but this kind of playfulness and
merriment was quite a revelation to her. She had never before seen
mirth, except, of course, childish and schoolgirl play, that had not in
it something that hurt her taste and jarred on her feeling as much as did
Ida's screeching laughter in comparison with the soft ripplings of these
young matrons.
Still, little Michael was her chief delight, and she could hardly be
detached from him. She refreshed her colloquial German (or rather
Austrian) with his nurse, who had much to say of the goodness of _die
Gnadigen Frauen_. Poor thing, she was the youthful widow of a guide, and
the efforts of the two Frauen had been in vain to keep alive her only
child, after whose death she had found some consolation in taking charge
of Lady Northmoor's baby on the way home. Constance hoped Ida might
never hear this fact.
Some degree of prosperity was greeting the little heir. A bit of
moorland, hitherto regarded as worthless, had first been crossed by a
branch line, and the primary growth of a station had been followed by the
discovery of good building stone, and the erection of a crop of houses of
all degrees, which promised to set the Northmoor finances on a better
footing than had been theirs for years, and set their conscientious
landlord to work at once on providing church room and schools.
All this, and that most precious possession at home, combined to give
Lord Northmoor an amount of spirit and life that enabled him to take his
place in the county, emancipate himself from the squire, show an opinion
of his own, and open his mouth occasionally. As Bertha observed, no one
would ever have called him a stick if he had begun like this. To people
like these, humbled and depressed in early life, a little happiness was a
great stimulus.