PART IV.

YOUNG MUSGRAVE.

“Touching sacrifice: of thy worldly possessions give all, even to

the spoiling of thy goods; for thus teaches our Lord Christ, and

our blessed master San Francesco. If a poor person, more poor than

thou, would have thy habit, which it is not permitted by the rule

of the order to give, let him take it from thee: so wilt thou do no

wrong; but thy life, which is not thine, give not: it is but given

to thee for God’s service; thou canst not take it up, neither canst

thou lay it down. This rule obey if thou wouldest be free from

presumption. For our Lord Christ alone, whose life was His own,

hath power and privilege to give it away.”--_Sermons, BB. Frati

Ginepro e Lausdeo, dei Frati Minori._

YOUNG MUSGRAVE

BY

MRS. OLIPHANT

AUTHOR OF “THE CURATE IN CHARGE” ETC.

“No man can redeem his brother.”--Ps. xlix. 7

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1894

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,

LONDON AND BUNGAY.

_First Edition_ (3 Vols. Crown 8vo.) 1877. _Second Edition_ (1 Vol. Crown 8vo.)

1878. _Reprinted_ (Globe 8vo.) 1883, 1886, (Crown 8vo.) 1894.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

THE FAMILY 1

CHAPTER II.

MARY 10

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW-COMERS 20

PART II.

CHAPTER IV.

AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS 30

CHAPTER V.

WAKING UP 37

CHAPTER VI.

AT THE VICARAGE 46

PART III.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE 56

CHAPTER VIII.

LADY STANTON 66

CHAPTER IX.

AT ELFDALE 77

CHAPTER X.

THE OTHER SIDE 86

CHAPTER XI.

AN AFTERNOON’S WORK 95

CHAPTER XII.

VISITORS 104

PART IV.

CHAPTER XIII.

FAMILY CARES 116

CHAPTER XIV.

AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR 123

CHAPTER XV.

RANDOLPH 133

CHAPTER XVI.

DUCKS AND DRAKES 144

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BAMPFYLDES 156

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NEW FRIEND 169

CHAPTER XIX.

A MIDNIGHT WALK 177

CHAPTER XX.

THE COTTAGE ON THE FELLS 187

CHAPTER XXI.

AN EARLY MEETING 199

CHAPTER XXII.

THE HENS AND THE DUCKLING 208

CHAPTER XXIII.

COUSIN MARY’S OPINION 218

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE SQUIRE AT HOME 227

CHAPTER XXV.

A NEW VISITOR 240

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN SUSPENSE 249

CHAPTER XXVII.

AN APPARITION 261

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE LOVES OF THE ANGELS 273

CHAPTER XXIX.

NELLO’S JOURNEY 282

CHAPTER XXX.

A CHILD FORLORN 295

CHAPTER XXXI.

A CRISIS AT PENNINGHAME 306

CHAPTER XXXII.

NELLO’S RESCUE 321

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BABES IN THE WOOD 330

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE NEW-COMER 338

CHAPTER XXXV.

ANOTHER HELPER 348

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END 358

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A TRAITOR 366

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MOTHER 373

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE TRAGEDY ENDS 384

CHAPTER XL.

CONCLUSION 389

YOUNG MUSGRAVE.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE FAMILY.

It would be difficult to say how Penninghame Castle had got that

imposing name. It was an old house standing almost on the roadside, at

least at the termination of a rough country road leading from the

village, which widened into a square space at the side of the house. The

village road was lined with trees, and it pleased the Musgraves to

believe that it had been in happier days the avenue to their ancient

dwelling, while the rough square at the end had been the courtyard. The

place itself consisted of a small mansion not important enough to be

very distinctive in architecture, built on to the end of an old hall,

the only remaining portion of a much older and greater house. This hall

was entered directly by a great door of heavy oak, from which a slope of

ancient causeway descended into the road below--an entrance which was

the only thing like a castle in the whole _ensemble_, though it ought to

have led to an ancient gateway and portcullis rather than to the great

door generally wide open, through which, according to the story, a

horseman once entered to scare the guests at their feast and defy the

master at the head of the table. The hall was not used for such festive

purposes now, nor threatened by such warlike intruders. It had known

evil fortune in its day and had been degraded into a barn, its windows

blocked up, its decorations destroyed--but had come to life again for

the last fifty years and had come back to human use, though no longer as

of old. Round the corner was the front of the old mansion, built in that

pallid grey stone, which adds a sentiment of age, like the ashy paleness

of very old people, to the robust antiquity of mason-work more lasting

than any that is done now. Successive squires had nibbled at this old

front, making windows there and doorways here: windows which cut through

the string-courses above, and a prim Georgian front door, not even in

the centre of the old arched entrance which had been filled up, which

gave a certain air of disreputable irregularity to the pale and stern

old dwelling-place. Ivy and other clinging growths fortunately hid a

great deal of this, and added importance to the four great stacks of

chimneys, which, mantled in its short, large leaves and perpetual

greenness, looked like turrets, and dignified the house. A lake behind

somewhat coldly blue, and a great hill in front somewhat coldly green,

showed all the features of that north country which was not far enough

north for the wild vigour and vivifying tints of brown bracken and

heather. The lake came closely up in a little bay behind the older part

of the house where there was a rocky harbour for the boats of the

family; and between this little bay and the grey walls was the

flower-garden, old-fashioned and bright, though turned to the unkindly

east. Beyond this was a kind of broken park with some fine trees and a

great deal of rough underwood, which stretched along the further shore

of the lake and gave an air of dignity to the dwelling on that side.

This was still called “the Chase” as the house was called the Castle, in

memory it might be supposed of better days. The Musgraves had been

Cavaliers, and had wasted their substance in favour of the Charleses,

and their lands had been ravaged, their park broken up into fields,

their avenue made a common road, half by hostile neighbours, half by

vulgar intrusion, in the days when the Revolutionists had the upper

hand. So they said, at least, and pleas of this kind are respected

generally, save by the very cynical. Certainly the present occupants of

the house believed it fervently, and so did the village; and if it was

nothing more it was a great comfort and support to the family, and made

them regard the rude approach to “the Castle” with forbearance. The

public right of way had been established in those stormy times. It was a

sign even of the old greatness of the house. It was better than trim

lawns and smiling gardens, which would have required a great deal of

keeping up. It was, however, a family understanding that the first

Musgrave who made a rich marriage, or who in any other way became a

favourite of fortune, should by some vague means--an act of parliament

or otherwise--reclaim the old courtyard and avenue, and plant a pair of

magnificent gates between the castle and the village: also buy back all

the old property; also revive the title of Baron of Penninghame, which

had been in abeyance for the last two hundred years; and do many other

things to glorify and elevate the family to its pristine position; and

no Musgrave doubted that this deliverer would come sooner or later,

which took the bitterness out of their patience in the meantime and gave

them courage to wait.

Another encouraging circumstance in their lot was that they were fully

acknowledged as the oldest family in the county. Other and richer

persons pushed in before them to its dignities, and they were no doubt

very much left out of its gaieties and pleasures; but no one doubted

that they had a right to take the lead, if ever they were rich enough.

This, however, did not seem likely, for the moment at least. The family

at Penninghame had, what is much to be avoided by families which would

be happy, a history, and a very recent one. There were two sons, but

neither of them had been seen at the Castle for nearly fifteen years,

and with the name of the elder of these there was connected a dark and

painful story, not much known to the new generation, but very well

remembered by all the middle-aged people in the county. Young Musgrave

had been for a year or two the most popular young squire in the north

country, but his brightness had ended in dismal clouds of misfortune and

trouble and bloodshedding, with perhaps crime involved, and certainly

many of the penalties of crime. He had not been seen in the north

country since the crisis which made all the world acquainted with his

unfortunate name; and his younger brother had re-appeared but once in

their father’s house, which was thus left desolate, except for the one

daughter, who had been its delight before and was now its only stay. So

far as the county knew, young Musgrave still lived, though he was never

mentioned, for there had been no signs of mourning in the house, such as

must have intimated to the neighbours the fact of John’s death--which

also of course would have made Randolph the heir. And save that once,

not even Randolph had ever come to break the monotony of life in his

father’s house. Squire Musgrave and his daughter lived there alone now.

They had been alone these fifteen years. They had little society, and

did not keep up a large establishment. He was old, and she was no longer

young enough to care for the gaieties of the rural neighbourhood. Thus

they had fallen out of the current of affairs. The family was “much

respected,” but comparatively little heard of after the undesired and

undesirable notoriety it had once gained.

Thus abandoned by its sons, and denuded of the strongest elements of

life, it may well be supposed that the castle at Penninghame was a

melancholy house. What more easy than to conjure up the saddest picture

of such a dwelling? The old man, seated in his desolate home, brooding

over perhaps the sins of his sons, perhaps his own--some injudicious

indulgence, or untimely severity which had driven them from him; while

the sister, worn out by the monotony of her solitary life, shut herself

out from all society, and spent her life in longing for the absent, and

pleading for them--a sad, solitary woman, with no pleasure in her lot,

except that of the past. The picture would have been as appropriate as

touching, but it would not have been true. Old Mr. Musgrave was not the

erring father of romance. He was a well-preserved and spare little man,

over seventy, with cheeks of streaky red like winter apples, and white

hair, which he wore rather long, falling on the velvet collar of his

old-fashioned coat. He had been an outdoor man in his day, and had

farmed, and shot, and hunted, like others of his kind, so far as his

straitened means and limited stables permitted; but when years and

circumstances had impaired his activity he had been strong enough to

retire, of his own free will, while graceful abdication was still in his

power. He spent most of his time now in his library, with only a

constitutional walk, or easy ramble upon his steady old cob, to vary

his life, except when quarter sessions called him forth, or any other

duty of the magistracy, to which he still paid the most conscientious

attention. The Musgraves were not people whom it was easy to crush, and

Fate had a hard bargain in the old squire, who found himself one

occupation when deprived of another with a spirit not often existing in

old age. He had committed plenty of mistakes in his day, and some which

had been followed by tragical consequences, a practical demonstration of

evil which fortunately does not attend all the errors of life; but he

did not brood over them in his old library, nor indulge unavailing

compunctions, nor consider himself under any doom; but on the contrary

studied his favourite problems in genealogy and heraldry, and county

history, and corresponded with _Notes and Queries_, and was in his way

very comfortable. He it was who first pointed out that doubtful

blazoning of Marmion’s shield, “colour upon colour,” which raised so

lively a discussion; and in questions of this kind he was an authority,

and thoroughly enjoyed the little tilts and controversies involved, many

of which were as warm as their subjects were insignificant. His family

was dropping, or rather had dropped, into decay; his eldest son was

virtually lost to his family and to society; his youngest son alienated

and a stranger; and some of this at least was the father’s fault. But

neither the decay of the house, nor the reflection that he was at least

partially to blame, made any great difference to the squire. There had

no doubt been moments, and even hours, when he had felt it bitterly; but

these moments, though perhaps they count for more than years in a man’s

life, do not certainly last so long, and age has a way of counterfeiting

virtue, which is generally very successful, even to its personal

consciousness. Mr. Musgrave was generally respected, and he felt himself

to be entirely respectable. He sat in his library and worked away among

his county histories, without either compunction or regret--who could

throw a stone at him? He had been rather unfortunate in his family, that

was all that could be said.

And Mary Musgrave, his daughter, was just as little disposed to brood

upon the past. She had shed many tears in her day, and suffered many

things. Perhaps it was in consequence of the family troubles which had

come upon her just at the turning-point in her life that she had never

married; for she had been one of the beauties of the district--courted

and admired by everybody, and wooed by many: by some who indeed still

found her beautiful, and by some who had learned to laugh at the old

unhappiness of which she was the cause. Miss Musgrave did not like these

last, which was perhaps natural; and even now there would be a tone of

satire in her voice when she noted the late marriage of one or another

of her old adorers. Women do not like men whose hearts they have broken,

to get quite healed, and console themselves; this is perhaps a poor

feeling, but it is instinctive, and though it may be stoutly struggled

against in some cases, and chidden into silence in many, it still

maintains an untolerated yet obstinate life. But neither the failure of

the adorations she once inspired nor the family misfortunes had crushed

her spirit. She lived a not unhappy life, notwithstanding all that had

happened. It was she who did everything that was done at Penninghame.

The reins which her father had dropped almost unawares she had taken up.

She managed the estate; kept the bailiff in order; did all business that

was necessary with the lawyer; and what was a greater feat still, kept

her father unaware of the almost absolute authority which she exercised

in his affairs. It had to be done, and she had not hesitated to do it;

and on the whole, she, too, though she had suffered many heartaches in

her day, was not unhappy now, but lived a life full of activity and

occupation. She was forty, and her hair began to be touched by grey--she

who had been one of the fairest flowers of the north country. A woman

always has to come down from that eminence somehow; whether she does it

by becoming some one’s wife or by merely falling back into the silence

of the past and leaving the place free for others, does not much matter.

Perhaps, indeed, it is the old maid who has the best of it. A little

romance continues to encircle her in the eyes of most of those who have

worshipped her youth. She has not married; why has she not married--that

once admired of all admirers? Has it been that she, too, sharing the lot

which she inflicted on so many, was not loved where she loved? or was

it perhaps that she had made a mistake--sent away some one, perhaps,

who knows, the very man who thought of her thus kindly and

regretfully--whom she was afterwards sorry to have sent away? Nobody

said this in words, but Mary Musgrave at forty was more tenderly thought

of than Lady Stanton, who had been the rival queen of the county. Lady

Stanton was stout now-a-days; in men’s minds, when they met her sailing

into a ball-room, prematurely indued with the duties of chaperon to her

husband’s grown-up daughters, there would arise a half-amused wonder how

they could have worshipped at her feet as they once did. “Can this

muckle wife be my true love Jean?” they said to themselves. But Miss

Musgrave, who was slim as a girl in her unwedded obscurity, and whose

eyes some people thought as bright as ever, though her hair was grey,

gave rise to no such irreverent thoughts. There were men scattered

through the world who had a romantic regard, a profound respect still,

for this woman whom they had loved, and who had preserved the

distinction of loving no one in return. Nobody had died for love of her,

though, some had threatened it; but this visionary atmosphere of past

adoration supplied a delicate homage, such as is agreeable even to an

old maiden’s heart.

And Miss Musgrave’s life was spent chiefly in the old hall, as her

father’s was spent in his library. She had been full of gay activity in

her youth, a bold and graceful horsewoman, ready for anything that was

going; but, with the same sense of fitness that led the squire to his

retirement, she too had retired. She had put aside her riding-habits

along with, her muslins, and wore nothing but rich neutral-tinted silk

gowns. Her only extravagance was a pair of ponies, which she drove into

the county town when she had business to do, or to pay an occasional

visit to her friends: but by far the greater part of her life was spent

in the old hall, where all her favourites and allies came, and all her

poor people from the village, who found her seated like a scriptural

potentate in the gate, ready to settle all quarrels and administer

impartial justice. The hall was connected with the house by a short

passage and two doors, which shut out all interchange of sound. There

was nothing above it but the high-pitched roof, the turret chimneys, and

the ivy, nor was any interposition of servants necessary to usher in

visitors by that ever-open way. This was a thing which deeply affected

the spirits and feelings of Eastwood, the only male functionary in the

house--the most irreproachable of butlers. A door which opened straight

into the lady’s favourite sitting-room was felt by him to be an insult

to the family; it was more like a farmhouse than a castle; and as for

Miss Musgrave, she was just as bad--too affable, a deal too affable,

talking to any one that came to her, the tramps on the road as well as

the ladies and gentlemen whose unwilling steeds pranced and curveted on

the old slope of causeway. This was a standing grievance to the butler,

whoso complaint was that the “presteedge” of the family was in hourly

jeopardy; and his persistent complaint had thrown a shade of

dissatisfaction over the household. This, however, did not move the lady

of the house. Eastwood and the rest did not know, though some other

people did, that it was the proudest woman in the county whom they

accused of being too affable, and who received all the world in the old

hall without the assistance of any gentleman usher. There were no

windows in the side of the hall which fronted the road, but only this

huge oaken door, all studded with bars and elaborate hinges of iron. On

the other side there was a recess, with a large square window and

cushioned seats, “restored” by village workmen in a not very perfect

way, but still preserving the ample and noble lines of its original

design. This windowed recess was higher than the rest of the hall, the

walls of which were low, though the roof was lofty. But towards the

front the only light was from the doorway, which looked due west, and

beheld all the sunsets, flooding the ancient place with afternoon light

and glories of evening colour. The slanting light seemed to sweep in

like an actual visitor in all its sheen of crimson and purple, when the

rest of the house was in the still and hush of the grey evening. This

was where Miss Musgrave held her throne.

Thus Penninghame Castle stood at the moment this story begins. The lake

gleaming cold towards the north, rippling against the pebbles in the

little inlet which held the two boats, the broken ground and ancient

trees of the Chase, lying eastward, getting the early lights of the

morning, as did the flower-garden, which lay bright under the old

walls. A little genial hum of the kindly north-country women-servants,

who had been there for a lifetime, or who were the daughters and cousins

of those who had been there for a lifetime, with Eastwood strutting

important among them--the one big cock among this barndoor company--made

itself audible now and then, a respectful subdued human accompaniment to

the ripple of the lake and the whispering of the wind among the trees:

and now and then a cheerful cackle of poultry, the sound of the ponies

in the stable, or the squire’s respectable cob: the heavy steps of the

gardener walking slowly along the gravel paths. But for these tranquil

sounds, which made the stillness more still, there was nothing but quiet

in and about the old house. There had been a time when much had happened

there, when there had been angry dissensions, family convulsions, storms

of mutual reproach and reproof, outbursts of tears and crying. But all

that was over. Nothing had happened at Penninghame for fifteen years.

The old squire in his library and Mary in her favourite old chamber

lived as though there were no breaks in life, no anguishes, no

convulsions, as quietly as their trees, as steadily as their old walls,

as if existence could neither change nor end. Thus they went on from day

to day and from year to year, in a routine which occupied and satisfied,

and kept the sense of living in their minds, but in a lull and hush of

all adventure, of all commotion, of all excitement. Time passed over

them and left no trace, save those touches imperceptible at the moment

which sorrow or passion could surpass in effect in one day, yet which

tell as surely at the end. This was how things were at Penninghame when

this story begins.

CHAPTER II.

MARY.

It was not one of Mary Musgrave’s fancies to furnish her hall like a

drawing-room. She had collected round her a few things for use, but she

was not rich enough to make her favourite place into a toy, as so many

people do, nor had she the opportunity of “picking up” rarities to

ornament it, as she might have liked to do had she been in the way of

them. The room had been a barn fifty years before. Then it became a

family storeroom, was fitted up at one end with closets and cupboards,

and held the household linen, and sometimes the winter supply of fruit.

It was Mary who had rescued it back again to gentler use; but she had

not been able to re-decorate or renew it with such careful pretence at

antiquity as is common nowadays. All that she could do for it was to

collect her own doings there, and all the implements for her work. The

windowed recess which got the morning sun was her business-room. There

stood an old secretaire, chosen not because of its age or suitability,

but because it was the only thing she had available, a necessity which

often confers as much grace as the happiest choice. Opposite the doorway

was an old buffet, rough, yet not uncharacteristic, which had been

scrubbed clean by a generous housemaid when Miss Musgrave first took to

the hall. And much it had wanted that cleansing; but the soap and the

water and the scrubbing-brush had not agreed very well, it must be

allowed, with the carved mahogany, which ought to have been oak. Between

the open door and this big piece of furniture was a square of old Turkey

carpet, very much faded, yet still agreeable to the eye, and a

spindle-legged table of Queen Anne’s days, with drawers which held Miss

Musgrave’s knitting and a book, and sometimes homelier matters, mendings

which she chose to do herself, calculations which were not meant for the

common eye.

She was seated here, on an afternoon of October, warm with the shining

of that second summer which comes even in the north. The sunshine came

so far into the room that it caught the edges of the carpet, and made a

false show of gold upon the faded wool; and it was so warm that Miss

Musgrave had drawn her chair farther into the room than usual, and sat

in the shade to escape the unusual warmth. At this moment she was not

doing anything. She was sitting quite silent, the book she had been

reading laid open upon her knee, enjoying the sun, as people enjoy it to

whom it suddenly reveals itself after date when it is past expectation.

In the end of October in the north country, people have ceased to think

of warmth out of doors, or any blaze of kindly light from the skies--and

the morning had been grey though very mild. The sudden glow had caught

Mary as she sat, a little chilly, close to her opened door, thinking of

a shawl, and had transfigured the landscape and the heavens and her own

sentiments all at once. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, and

the open book on her knee, thinking of it, surprised by the sweetness of

it, feeling it penetrate into her very heart, though she had drawn her

chair back out of the sun. No, not thinking--people do not think of the

sunshine; but it went into her heart, bringing back a confused sweetness

of recollection and of anticipation--or rather of the anticipations

which were recollections--which had ceased to exist except in memory.

Just so does youth expect some sudden sweetness to invade its life; and

sometimes the memory of that expectation, even when unfulfilled, brings

a half sad, half sweet amusement to the solitary. It was so with this

lady seated alone in her old hall. She was Mary again, the young

daughter of the house; and at the same time she was old Miss Musgrave

smiling at herself.

But as she did so a footstep sounded on the rough pavement of the

ascent. No one could come unheard to her retreat, which was a safeguard.

She gave a little shake to her head, and took up the open book, which

was no old favourite to be dreamed over, but a modern book; and prepared

herself for a visitor with that smoothing of the brow and closing up of

mental windows which fits us to meet strange eyes. “It is only I,” said

the familiar voice of some one who knew and understood this slight

movement: and then she dropped the book again, and let the smile come

back into her eyes.

“Only you! then I may look as I please. I need not put on my company

garb,” she said, with a smile.

“I should hope not,” said the new-comer, reaching the door with that

slight quickening of the breath which showed that even the half-dozen

steps of ascent was a slight tax upon him. He did not even shake hands

with her--probably they had met before that day--but took off his hat as

he crossed the threshold, as if he had been going into a church. He was

a clergyman, slim and slight, of middle size, or less than middle size,

in somewhat rusty grey, with a mildness of aspect which did not promise

much strength, bodily or mental. The Vicarage of Penninghame was a poor

one, too poor to be worth reserving for a son of the family, and it had

been given to the tutor of Mr. Musgrave’s sons twenty years ago. What

had happened was natural enough, and might be seen in his eyes still,

notwithstanding lapse of time and change of circumstances. Mr.

Pennithorne had fallen in love, always hopelessly and mildly, as became

his character, with the Squire’s daughter. He had always said it did not

matter. He had no more hope of persuading her to love him than of

getting the moon to come out of heaven, and circumstances having set

marriage before him, he had married, and was happy enough as happiness

goes. And he was the friend, and in a measure the confidant, of this

lady whom he had loved in the superlative poetical way--knew all about

her, shared her life in a manner, was acquainted with many of her

thoughts and her troubles. A different light came into his eyes when he

saw her, but he was not at all unhappy. He had a good wife and three

nice children, and the kind of life he liked. At fifty, who is there who

continues to revel in the unspeakable blisses of youth? Mr. Pennithorne

was very well content: but still when he saw Mary Musgrave--and he saw

her daily--there came a different kind of light into his eyes.

“I was in mental _déshabille_,” she said, “and did not care to be

caught; though after all it is not everybody who can see when one is not

clothed and in one’s right mind.”

“I never knew you out of your right mind, Miss Mary. What was it?--no

new trouble?”

“You are always a flatterer, Mr. Pen. You have seen me in all kinds of

conditions. No, we don’t have any troubles now. Is that a rash speech?

But really I mean it. My father is in very good health and enjoys

himself, and I enjoy myself--in reason.”

“You enjoy yourself! Yes, in the way of being good to other people.”

“Hush!” she said, putting up her hand to stop him in his little speech,

sincere as it was. “Shall I tell you what it was that put me out of

order for any one’s eyes but an old friend’s? Nothing more than this

sunshine, Mr. Pen. Don’t you recollect when we were young how a sudden

thought of something that was coming would seize upon you, and flood you

with delight--as the sun did just now?”

“I recollect,” he said, fixing his mild eyes upon her, and shaking his

head, with a sigh: “but it never came.”

“That may be true enough; but the thought came, and ‘life is but

thought,’ you know; the thing might not follow. However, we are all

quite happy all the same.”

He looked at her, still shaking his head.

“I suppose so,” he said; “I suppose so; quite happy! but not as we meant

to be; that was what you were thinking.”

“I did not go so far. I was not thinking at all. I _think_ that I think

very seldom. It only caught me as the old thought used to do, and

brought so many things back.”

She smiled, but he sighed.

“Yes, everything is very different. Yourself--to see you here, offering

up your life for others--making a sacrifice----”

“I have made no sacrifice,” she said, somewhat proudly, then laughed.

“Is that because I am unmarried, Mr. Pen? You wedded people, you are so

sure of being better off than we are. You are too complacent. But _I_ am

not so sure of that.”

He did not join in her laugh, but looked at her with melting eyes--eyes

in which there was some suspicion of tears. It was perhaps a trifle

unkind of her to call him complacent in his conjugality. There were a

hundred unspeakable things in his look--pity, reverence, devotion, not

the old love perhaps, but something higher; something that was never to

end.

“On the whole, we are taking it too seriously,” she said, after a pause.

“It is over now, and the sun is going down. And you came to talk to

me?--perhaps of something in the parish that wants looking to?”

“No--I came in only to look at you, and make sure that you were well.

The children you were visiting the other day have the scarlet fever; and

besides, I have had a feeling in my mind about you--a presentiment. I

should not have been surprised to hear that there had been--letters--or

some kind of advances made----”

“From whom?”

“Well,” he said, after a slight pause; “they are both brothers--both

sons--but they are not the same to me, Miss Mary. From John; he has been

so much in my mind these two or three days, I have got to dreaming about

him. Yes, yes, I know that is not worth thinking of; but we were always

in such sympathy, he and I. Don’t you believe in some communication

between minds that were closely allied? I do. It is a superstition if

you like. Nothing could happen to any of you but, if I were at ever so

great a distance, I should know.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Mr. Pen. Sometimes the dearest to us perish,

and we know nothing of it; but I prefer your view. You dreamt of poor

John? What did you see? Alas! dreams are the only ways of divining

anything about him now!”

“And your father is as determined as ever?”

“We never speak on the subject. It has disappeared like so many other

things. Why continue a fruitless discussion which only embittered him

and wore me out? If any critical moment should come, if--one must say it

plainly--my father should be like to die--then I should speak, you need

not fear.”

“I never feared that you would do everything the best sister, the

bravest friend, could do.”

“Do not praise me too much. I tell you I am doing nothing, and have done

nothing for years; and sometimes it strikes me with terror. If anything

should happen suddenly! My father is an old man; but talking to him now

is of no use; we must risk it. What did you see in your dream?”

“Oh, you will laugh at me,” he said with a nervous flutter;

“nothing--except that he was here. I dreamt of him before, that time

that he came home--after----”

“Don’t speak of it,” said Miss Musgrave, with a corresponding shiver.

“To think that such things should happen, and be forgotten, and we

should all go on so comfortably--quite comfortably! I have nothing

particular to make me happy, and yet I am as happy as most

people--notwithstanding all that I have come through, as the poor women

say.”

“That is because you are so unselfish--so----”

“Insensible--more like. I am the same as other people. What the poor

folk in the village come through, Mr. Pen!--loss of husbands, loss of

children, one after another, grinding poverty, and want, and anxiety,

and separation from all they care for. Is it insensibility? I never can

tell; and especially now when I share it myself. I am as happy sometimes

as when I was young. That sunshine gave me a ridiculous pleasure. What

right have I to feel my heart light?--but I did somehow--and I do

often--notwithstanding all that has happened, and all that I have ‘gone

through.’”

Mr. Pennithorne gave a vague smile, but he made no reply; for either she

was accusing herself unjustly, or this was a mood of mind which perhaps

derogated a little from Mary Musgrave’s perfection. He had a way himself

of keeping on steadfastly on the one string of his anxiety, whatever it

might be, and worrying everybody with it--and here he lost the object of

his faithful worship. It might--nay, must--be right since so she felt;

but he lost her here.

“And speaking of happiness,” she went on after a pause, “I want the

children to come with me to Pennington to see the archery. It is pretty,

and they will like it. And they like to drive behind my ponies. They are

quite well?--and Emily?”

“Very well. Our cow has been ill, and she has been worrying about

it--not much to worry about you will say, you who have so much more

serious anxieties.”

“Not at all. If I had a delicate child and wanted the milk, I should

fret very much. Will you send up for some of ours? As usually happens,

we, who don’t consume very much, have plenty.”

“Thank you,” he said, “but you must not think that little Emmy is so

delicate. She has not much colour--neither has her mother, you know.” He

was a very anxious father, and looked up with an eager wistfulness into

her face. Little Emmy was so delicate that it hurt him like a foreboding

to hear her called so. He could not bear Miss Musgrave, whose word had

authority, to give utterance to such a thought.

“I spoke hastily,” she said; “I did not think of Emmy. She is ever so

much stronger this year. As for paleness, I don’t mind paleness in the

least. She has such a very fair complexion, and she is twice as strong

as last year.”

“I am so glad you think so,” he said, with the colour rising to his

face. “That is true comfort--for eyes at a little distance are so much

better than one’s own.”

“Yes, she is a great deal stronger,” said Miss Musgrave, “but you must

send down for the milk. I was pale too, don’t you remember, when you

came first? When I was fifteen.”

“I remember--everything,” he said; “even to the dress you wore. I bought

my little Mary something like it when I was last in town. It was

blue--how well I remember! But Mary will never be like you, though she

is your godchild.”

“She is a great deal better; she is like her mother,” said Miss Musgrave

promptly; “and Johnny is like his father, the best possible

distribution. You are happy with your children, Mr. Pen. I envy people

their children, it is the only thing; though perhaps they would bore me

if I had them always on my hands. You think not? Yes, I am almost sure

they would bore me. We get a kind of fierce independence living alone.

To be hampered by a little thing always wanting something--wanting

attention and care--I don’t think I should like it. But Emily was born

for such cares. How well she looks with her baby in her arms--all was

the old picture over again--the Madonna and the child.”

“Poor Emily,” he said, though why he could not have told, for Emily did

not think herself poor. Mr. Pennithorne always felt a vague pity for his

wife when he was with Miss Musgrave, as for a poor woman who had many

excellent qualities, but was here thrown into the shade. He could not

say any more. He got up to go away, consoled and made comfortable he

could not quite tell why. She was always sweet he said to himself as he

went home. What she had said about being bored by children was a mere

delusion, or perhaps a little conscious effort of self-deception,

persuading herself that to have no children and to be independent was

the best. What a wife she would have made! What a mother! he said this

to himself quite impartially, knowing well that she never could have

been wife for him, and feeling a pang at his heart for the happiness she

had lost. Married life was not unmixed happiness always; it had its

difficulties, he knew. But if _she_ had married it was not possible that

she could have been otherwise than happy. With her there could have been

no drawbacks. Mr. Pennithorne looked upon the question from a husband’s

point of view alone.

When he was gone, Miss Musgrave sat still without changing her place, at

first with a smile, which gradually faded away from her face, like the

last suffusion of the sunshine, which was going too. She smiled at her

fast friend, to whom she knew, notwithstanding his legitimate affection

for his Emily, she herself stood first of created beings. It was a

folly, but it did not hurt him, she reflected with a faint amusement;

and Emily and the children, notwithstanding this sentiment, were first

and foremost really in his heart. Poor Mr. Pen! he had always been like

this, mildly sentimental, offering up an uninterrupted gentle incense.

But he was not in the least unhappy, though perhaps he liked by times to

think that he was. Few people were really unhappy. By moments life was

hard; but the struggle itself made a kind of happiness, a strain of

living which it was good to feel by times. This was her theory. Most

people when they come to forty have some theory or another, some settled

way of getting through their existence, and adapting themselves for it.

Hers was this: that evil was very much less than good in every way, and

that people suffered a great deal less than they gave themselves credit

for. Life had its compensations, daily and hourly, she thought. Her own

existence had no exciting source of joy in it, but how far it was from

being unhappy! Had she been unhappy she would have scoffed at herself.

What! so many things to enjoy, so many good and pleasant circumstances

around, and not happy! Would not that have been a disgrace to any woman?

So she was apt to think Mr. Pennithorne extracted a certain cunning

enjoyment from that vain love for herself which had been so visionary at

all times, and which he persuaded himself had saddened his life. She

thought it had been a harmless delusion: a secret advantage rather;

something to fall back upon; a soft and visionary grievance of which he

never wearied. And perhaps she was right. She sat looking after him with

a smile on her face.

The sun had crept away from her open doorway as they had talked. It was

stealing further and further off, withdrawing from the line of the road,

from the village roofs, from the gleam of the lake--and like the sun her

smile stole away, from her eyes first, and then from the lingering

curves about her mouth. Why was it that he could think he felt some

action upon him of John’s mind in the far distance, while she felt none?

No kind of presentiment or premonition had come to her. It must be

foolishness she was sure--superstition; for if sympathy could thus

communicate even a vague thrill of warning from one to another through

the atmosphere of the mind, surely she was a more likely object to

receive it than Mr. Pennithorne! John knew her,--could not doubt her,

surely. Therefore to her, if to any one, this secret communication must

have come. The smile disappeared altogether from her mouth as she

entered upon this subject, and her whole face and eyes became grave and

grey, like the dull coldness of the east, half-resentful of the sunset

which still went on upon the other edge of the horizon, dispersing all

those vain reflections to every quarter except that from which the sun

rose. Could it be possible after all that John might trust Mr.

Pennithorne with a more perfect confidence, as one unconnected and

unconcerned with all that had passed, than he could give to herself? The

thought, even though founded on such visionary grounds, hurt her a

little; yet there was a kind of reason in it. He might think that she,

always at her father’s side, and able to influence him in so many ways,

might have done more for her brother; whereas with Mr. Pennithorne, who

could do nothing, the sentiment of trust would be unbroken. She sat thus

idly making it out to herself, making wondering casts of thought after

her brother in the darkness of the unknown, as inch by inch the light

stole out of the sky. It was not a fine sunset that night. The sun was

yellow and mournful; long lines of cloud broke darkly upon his sinking,

catching only sick reflections of the pale light beneath. At last he was

all gone, except one streaming yellow sheaf of rays that seemed to

strike against and barb themselves into the damp green outline of the

hill.

Her eyes were upon this, watching that final display, which, somehow in

the absorption of her thoughts, kept her from observing an object near

at hand, an old hackney-coach from Pennington town--where there was a

railway station--which came along the road, a black, slow, lumbering

vehicle, making a dull roll of sound which might have been a country

cart. It came nearer and nearer while Miss Musgrave watched the bundle

of gold arrows flash into the hill-side and disappear. Her eyes were

dazzled by them, and chilled by their sudden disappearance, which left

all the landscape cold and wrapped in a greyness of sudden evening. Mary

came to herself with a slight shiver and shock. And at that moment the

dull roll of the cab ceased, and the thing stood revealed to her. She

rose to her feet with a thrill of wonder and expectation. The hackney

carriage had drawn up at the foot of the slope opposite to and beneath

her. What was coming? Had Mr. Pennithorne been warned after all, while

she had been left in darkness? Her heart seemed to leap into her throat,

while she stood clasping her hands together to get some strength from

them, and waiting for the revelation of this new thing, whatever it

might be.

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW-COMERS.

The cab was loaded with two boxes on the roof, foreign trunks, of a

different shape from those used at home; and a woman’s face, in a

fantastic foreign head-dress, peered through the window. Who could this

be? Mary stood as if spell-bound, unable to make a movement. The driver,

who was an ordinary cab-driver from Pennington, whose homely

everydayness of appearance intensified the strangeness of the others,

opened the door of the carriage, and lifted out, first a small boy, with

a scared face and a finger in his mouth, who stared at the strange

place, and the figures in the doorway, with a fixed gaze of panic, on

the eve of tears. Then out came with a bound, as if pushed from behind

as well as helped a little roughly by the cabman, the foreign woman, at

whose dress the child clutched with a frightened cry. Then there was a

pause, during which some one inside threw out a succession of wraps,

small bags, and parcels; and then there stepped forth, with a great

shawl on one arm, and a basket almost as large as herself on the other,

clearly the leading spirit of the party, a little girl who appeared to

be about ten years old. “You will wait a moment, man, till we get the

pay for you,” said this little personage in a high-pitched voice, with a

distinctness of enunciation which made it apparent that the language,

though spoken with very little accent, was unfamiliar to her. Then she

turned to the woman and said a few words much more rapidly, with as much

aid of gesture as was compatible with the burdens. Mary felt herself

look on at all this like a woman in a dream. What was it all--a dream or

reality? She felt incapable of movement, or rather too much interested

in the curious scene which was going on before her, to think of movement

or interference of any kind. When she had given her directions, whatever

they were, the little girl turned round and faced the open door and the

lady who had not moved. She gave these new circumstances a long, steady,

investigating look. They were within a dozen yards of each other, but

the chatelaine stood still and said nothing, while the little invader

inspected her, and prepared her assault. The child, who looked the

impersonation of life and purpose between her helpless companion and the

wondering stranger whom she confronted, was dark and pale, not like the

fair English children to whom Mary Musgrave was accustomed. Her dark

eyes seemed out of proportion to her small, colourless face, and gave it

an eager look of precocious intelligence. Her features were small, her

dark hair falling about her in half-curling masses, her head covered

with a little velvet cap trimmed with fur, as unlike anything children

wore in England at the time as the anxious meaning of her face was

different from ordinary baby prettiness. She made a momentary

pause--then put down the basket on the stones, threw the shawl on the

top of it, and mounted the breach with resolute courage. The stones were

rough to the little child’s feet; there was a dilation in her eyes that

looked like coming tears, and as she faced the alarming stranger, who

stood there looking at her, a burning red flush came momentarily over

her face. But she neither sat down and cried as she would have liked to

do, nor ran back again to cling to the nurse’s skirts like her little

brother. The small thing had a duty to do, and did it with a courage

which might have put heroes to shame. Resolutely she toiled her way up

to Miss Musgrave at the open door.

“Are you--Mary?” she said; the little voice was strange yet sweet, with

its distinct pronunciation and unfamiliar accent. “Are you--Mary?” Her

big eyes seemed to search the lady all over, making a rapid comparison

with some description she had received. There was doubt in her tone when

she repeated the name a second time, and the tears visibly came nearer,

and got with a shake and tremor into her voice.

“What do you want with Mary?” said Miss Musgrave; “who are you, little

girl?”

“I do not think you can be Mary,” said the child. “He said your hair was

like Nello’s, but it is more like his own. And he said you were

beautiful--so you are beautiful, but old--and he never said you were

old. Oh, if you are not Mary, what shall we do? what shall we do?”

She clasped her little hands together, and for a moment trembled on the

edge of a childish outburst, but stopped herself with a sudden curb of

unmistakable will. “I must think what is to be done,” she cried out

sharply, putting her little hands upon her trembling mouth.

“Who are you? who are you?” cried Mary Musgrave, trembling in her turn;

“child, who was it that sent you to me?”

The little thing kept her eyes fixed upon her, with that watchfulness

which is the only defence of weakness, ready to fly like a little wild

creature at any approach of danger. She opened a little bag which hung

by her side and took a letter from it, never taking her great eyes all

the time from Miss Musgrave’s face. “This was for you, if you were

Mary,” she said; holding the letter jealously in both hands. “But he

said, when I spoke to you, if it was you, you would know.”

“You strange little girl!” cried Miss Musgrave, stepping out upon the

stones and holding out her hands eagerly; but the child made a little

move backward at the moment, in desperation of fear, yet courage.

“I will not give it you! I will not give it! it is everything we

have--unless you are Mary,” she cried, with the burst of a suppressed

sob.

“Who are you then, child? Yes, I am Mary, Mary Musgrave--give me the

letter. Is not this the house you were told of? Give me the letter--the

letter!” said Miss Musgrave, once more holding out her hands.

And once more the child made her jealous mental comparison between what

the lady was, and what she had been told to look for. “I cannot do what

I please,” she said, with little quivering lips. “I have Nello to take

care of. He is only such a little, little child. Yes, it is the house he

told me of; but he said if you were Mary--Ah! he said you would know us

and take us into your arms, and be so kind, so kind!”

“Little girl,” said Miss Musgrave, the tears dropping from her cheeks.

“There is only one man’s child that you can be. You are John’s little

girl, my brother John, and I am his sister Mary. But I do not know your

name, nor any thing about you. Give me John’s letter--and come to me,

come to me, my child!”

“I am Lilias,” said the little girl; but she held back, still examining

with curious though less terrified eyes. “You will give it me back if

you are not Mary?” she went on, at length holding out the letter; but

she took no notice of the invitation to come nearer, which Mary herself

forgot in the eagerness of her anxiety to get the letter, the first

communication from her brother--if it was from her brother--for so many

years. She took it quickly, almost snatching it from the child’s

reluctant fingers, and leaning against the doorway in her agitation,

tore it hastily open. Little Lilias was agitated too, with fear and

desolate strangeness, and that terrible ignorance of any alternative

between safety and utter destruction which makes danger insupportable to

a child. What were they to do if their claims were not acknowledged?

Wander into the woods and die in the darkness like the children in the

story? Little Lilias had feared nothing till that first doubt had come

over her at the door of the house, where, her father had instructed her,

she was to be made so happy. But if they were not taken in and made

happy, what were she and Nello to do? A terror of darkness, and cold,

and starvation came upon the little girl. She would wrap the big shawl

about her little brother, but what if wild beasts or robbers should come

in the middle of the dark? Her little bosom swelled full, the sobs rose

into her throat. Oh where could she go with Nello, if this was not Mary?

But she restrained the sobs by a last effort, like a little hero. She

sat down on the stone edge of the causeway, and held her hands clasped

tight to keep herself together, and fixed her eyes upon the lady with

the letter. The lady and the letter swam and changed, through the big

tears that kept coming, but she never took those great dark, intense

eyes from Miss Musgrave’s face. The Italian nurse was bending over

Nello, fully occupied in hushing his little plaints. Nello was tired,

hungry, sleepy, cold. He had no responsibility upon him, poor little

mite, to overcome the weakness of nature. He looked no more than six,

though he was older, a small and delicate child; and he clung to his

nurse, holding her desperately, afraid of he knew not what. She had

plenty to do to take care of him without thinking of what was going on

above; though the woman was indignant to be kept waiting, and cast

fierce looks, in the intervals of petting Nello, upon the lady, the cold

Englishwoman who was so long of taking the children to her arms. As for

the cabman, emblem of the general unconcern which surrounds every

individual drama, he stood leaning calmly upon his horse, waiting for

the _dénoûment_, whatever it might be. Miss Musgrave would see him paid

one way or another, and this was the only thing for which he needed to

care.

“Lilias,” said Miss Musgrave, going hastily to the child, with tears

running down her cheeks, “I am your aunt Mary, my darling, and you will

soon learn to know me. Come and give me a kiss, and bring me your little

brother. You are tired with your long journey, my poor child.”

“No, no--I am not tired--only Nello; and he is h-hungry. Ah! Kiss Nello,

Nello--come and kiss him; he is the baby. And are you Mary--real, real

Mary?” cried the little girl, bursting out into sobs; “oh; I cannot

h-help it. I did not mean it; I was fr-frightened. Nello, come, come,

Mary is here.”

“Yes, Mary is here,” said Miss Musgrave, taking the child into her arms,

who, even while she sobbed against her shoulder, put out an impatient

little hand and beckoned, crying, “Nello! Nello!” But it was not so easy

to extract Nello from his nurse’s arms. He cried and clung all the

faster from hearing his sister’s outburst; their poor little hearts were

full; and what chokings of vague misery, the fatigue and discomfort

infinitely deepened by a dumb consciousness of loneliness, danger, and

strangeness behind, were in these little inarticulate souls! something

more desperate in its inability to understand what it feared, its dim

anguish of uncomprehension, than anything that can be realized and

fathomed. Mary signed eagerly to the nurse to bring the little boy

indoors into the hall, which was not a reassuring place, vast and dark

as it was, in the dimness of the evening, to a child. But she had too

many difficulties on her hands in this strange crisis to think of that.

She had the boxes brought in also, and hastily sent the carriage away,

with a desperate sense as of burning her ships, and leaving no possible

way to herself of escape from the difficulty. The gardener, who had

appeared round the corner, attracted by the sound, presented himself as

much out of curiosity as of goodwill to assist in carrying in the boxes,

“though it would be handiest to drive round to the front door, and tak’

them straight oop t’ stair,” he said, innocently enough. But when Miss

Musgrave gave authoritative directions that they were to be brought into

the hall, naturally the gardener was surprised. This was a proceeding

entirely unheard of, and not to be understood in any way.

“It’ll be a deal more trouble after,” he said, under his breath, which

did not matter much. But when he had obeyed his mistress’s orders, he

went round to the kitchen full of the new event. “There’s something

oop,” the gardener said, delighted to bring so much excitement with him,

and he gave a full account of the two pale little children, the foreign

woman with skewers stuck in her hair, and finally, most wonderful of

all, the boxes which he had deposited with his own hands on the floor of

the hall. “I ken nothing about it,” he said, “but them as has been

longer aboot t’ house than me could tell a deal if they pleased; and

Miss Brown, it’s her as is wanted,” he added leisurely at the end.

Miss Brown, who was Mary Musgrave’s maid, and had been standing

listening to his story with frequent contradictions and denials, in a

state of general protestation, started at these words.

“You great gaby,” she said, “why didn’t you say so at first?” and

hurried out of the kitchen, not indisposed to get at the bottom of the

matter. She had been Miss Musgrave’s favourite attendant for twenty

years, and in that time had, as may be supposed, known about many things

which her superiors believed locked in the depths of their own bosoms.

She could have written the private history of the family with less

inaccuracy than belongs to most records of secret history. And she was

naturally indignant that Tom Gardener, a poor talkative creature, who

could keep nothing to himself, should have known this new and startling

event sooner than she did. She hurried through the long passage from the

kitchen, casting a stealthy glance in passing at the closed door of the

library, where the Squire sat unconscious. A subdued delight was in the

mind of the old servant; certainly it is best when there are no

mysteries in a family, when all goes well--but it is not so amusing. A

great event of which it was evident the squire was in ignorance, which

probably would have to be kept from him, and as much as possible from

the household--well, it might be unfortunate that such things should be,

but it was exciting, it woke people up.

Miss Brown obeyed this summons with more genuine alacrity than she had

felt for years.

Very different were the feelings of her mistress standing there in the

dimness of the old hall, her frame thrilling and her heart aching with

the appeal which her brother had made to her, out of a silence which for

more than a dozen years had been unbroken as that of the grave. She

could scarcely believe yet that she had seen his very handwriting and

read words which came straight from him and were signed by his now

unfamiliar name. The children, who crouched together frightened by the

darkness, were as phantoms to her, like a dream about which she had just

got into the stage of doubt. Till now it had been all real to her, as

dreams appear at first. But now, she stood, closing the door in the

stillness of the evening, which, still as it was, was full of curiosity

and questioning and prying eyes, and asked herself if these little

figures were real, or inventions of her fancy. Real children of her

living brother--was it true, was it possible? They were awe-stricken by

the gathering dusk, by the strange half-empty room, by the dim circle of

the unknown which surrounded them on every side. The nurse had put

herself upon a chair on the edge of the carpet, where she sat holding

the little boy on her knee, while little Lilias, who had backed slowly

towards this one familiar figure, stood leaning against her, clutching

her also with one hand, though she concealed instinctively this sign of

fear. The boy withdrew the wondering whiteness of his face from the

nurse’s shoulder now and then to give a frightened, fascinated look

around, then buried it again in a dumb trance of dismay and terror, too

frightened to cry. What was to be done with these frightened children

and the strange woman to whom they clung? Mary could not keep them here

to send them wild with alarm. They wanted soft beds, warm fires,

cheerful lights, food and comfort, and they had come to seek it in the

only house in the world which was closed by a curse and a vow against

them. Mary Musgrave was not the kind of woman who is easily frightened

by vows or curses; there was none of the romantic folly in her which

would believe in the reality of an unjust or uncalled-for malediction.

But she was persuaded of the reality of a thing which involved no

supernatural mysteries, the obstinancy of her father’s mind, and his

determination to hold by the verdict he had given. Years move and change

everything, even the hills and the seas--but not the narrow mind of an

obstinate and selfish man. She did not call him by these names; he was

her father and she did not judge him; but no more did she hope in him.

And in this wonderful moment a whole circle of possibilities ran through

her mind. She might take them to the village; but there were other

dangers there; or to the Parsonage, but Mr. Pen was weak and poor Emily

a gossip. Could she dare the danger that was nearest, and take them

somehow upstairs out of the way, and conceal them there, defying her

father? In whatever way it was settled she would not desert them--but

what was she to do? Miss Brown coming upon her suddenly in the dusk

frightened her almost as much as the children were frightened. The want

of light and the strangeness of the crisis combined made every new

figure like a ghost.

“Yes, I sent for you. I am in--difficulty, Martha. These children have

just come--the children of a friend----” Her first idea was to conceal

the real state of the case even from her confidential and well-informed

maid.

“Dear me,” said Miss Brown, with seeming innocence. “How strange! to

bring a little lady and gentleman without any warning. But I’ll go and

give orders, ma’am; there are plenty of rooms vacant, there need not be

any difficulty----”

Miss Musgrave caught her by the arm.

“What I want for the moment is light, and some food _here_. Bring me the

lamp I always use. No, not Eastwood; never mind Eastwood. I want you to

bring it, they will be less afraid in the light.”

“There is a fire in the dining-room, ma’am, it is only a step, and

Eastwood is lighting the candles; and there you can have what you like

for them.”

It was confidence Miss Brown wanted--nothing but confidence. With that

she was ready to do anything; without it she was Miss Musgrave’s

respectable maid, to whom all mysteries were more or less improper. She

crossed her hands firmly and waited. The room was growing darker and

darker every minute, and the foreign nurse began to lose patience. She

called “Madame! madame!” in a high voice; then poured forth into a

stream of words, so rapid and so loud as both mistress and maid thought

they had never heard spoken before. Miss Musgrave was not a great

linguist. She knew enough to be aware that it was Italian the woman was

speaking, but that was all.

“I do not understand you,” she said in distress, going up to the little

group. But as she approached a sudden accession of terror, instantly

suppressed on the part of the little girl but irrepressible by the

younger boy, and which broke forth in a disjointed way, arrested her

steps. Were they afraid of her, these children? “Little Lilias,” she

said piteously, “be a brave child and stand by me. I cannot take you out

of this cold room yet, but lights are coming and you will be taken care

of. If I leave you alone for a little while will you promise me to be

brave and not to be afraid?”

There was a pause, broken only by little flutterings of that nervous

exhaustion which made the children so accessible to fear. Then a small

voice said, dauntless, yet with a falter--

“I will stay. I will not be afraid.”

“Thank God,” said Mary Musgrave, to herself. The child was already a

help and assistance. “Martha,” she said hastily, “tell no one; they

are--my brother’s children--”

“Good Lord!” said Martha Brown, frightened out of her primness. “And

it’s dark, and there’s two big boxes, and master don’t know.”

“That is the worst of all,” said Miss Musgrave sadly. She had never

spoken to any one of her father’s inexorable verdict against John and

all belonging to him. “The heir! and I must not take him into the house

of his fathers! Take care of them, take care of them while I go---- And,

Martha, say nothing--not a word.”

“Not if they were to cut me in pieces, ma’am!” said Miss Brown

fervently. She was too old a servant to work in the dark; but confidence

restored all her faculties to her. It was not, however, in the nature of

things that she should discharge her commission without a betrayal more

or less of the emergency. “I want some milk, please,” she said to the

cook, “for my lady.” It was only in moments of importance that she so

spoke of her mistress. And the very sound of her step told a tale.

“I told ye there was somethink oop,” said Tom Gardener, still lingering

in the kitchen.

And to see how the house brightened up, and all the servants grew alert

in the flutter of this novelty! Nothing had happened at the castle for

so long--they had a right to a sensation. Cook, who had been there for a

long time, recounted her experience to her assistants in low tones of

mystery.

“Ah, if ye’d known the place when the gentlemen was at home,” said cook;

“the things as happened in t’auld house--such goings on!--coming in late

and early--o’er the watter and o’er the land--and the strivings, that

was enough to make a body flee out of their skin!” She ended with a

regretful sigh for the old times. “That was life, that was!” she said.

Meanwhile Mary Musgrave came in out of the dark hall into the lighted

warmth of the dining-room, where the glass and the silver shone red in

the firelight. How cosy and pleasant it was there! how warm and

cheerful! Just the place to comfort the children and make them forget

their miseries. The children! How easily her mind had undertaken the

charge of them--the fact of their existence; already they had become the

chief feature in her life. She paused to look at herself in the mirror

over the mantelpiece, to smooth her hair, and put the ribbon straight at

her neck. The Squire was “very particular,” and yet she did not remember

to have had this anxious desire to be pleasant to his eyes since that

day when she had crept to him to implore a reversal of his sentence. She

had obtained nothing from him then; would she be more fortunate now? The

colour had gone out of her face, but her eyes were brighter and more

resolute than usual. How her heart beat when Mr. Musgrave said, “Come

in,” calmly from the midst of his studies, as she knocked trembling at

the library door!

PART II.

CHAPTER IV.

AFTER THE SILENCE OF YEARS.

“Come in,” said the Squire. He was sitting among his books, working with

such a genuine sense of importance as was strange to see. Mary did not

know that she thought anything in the world (except this present mission

of hers) so important as he thought his search into the heraldic

fortunes of the family. He was in full cry after a certain

“augmentation” which had got into the Musgrave arms no one well knew

how. It was only the Musgraves of Penninghame who bore this distinction,

and how did they come by it? It appeared in the thirteenth century--in

the age of the Crusades. Was it in recollection of some feat of a

Crusader?--that was the question. He put down his pen and laid one open

book upon another as she came in. He had no consciousness in his mind to

make him critical or inquiring. He did not observe her paleness, nor the

special glitter in her eyes. “I am busy,” he said, “so you must be

brief. I think I have got hold of that ‘chief’ at last. After years of

search it is exciting to find the first trace of it; but perhaps it is

best to wait till I have verified my guesses--they are still not much

more than guesses. What a satisfaction it will be when all is clear!”

“I am glad you are to have this satisfaction, papa.”

“Yes, I know you take little interest in it for itself. Ladies seldom

do; though I can’t tell why, for heraldry ought to be an interesting

science to them and quite within their reach. Nothing has happened about

the dinner, I hope? I notice that is your general subject when you come

into my room so late. Law business in the morning, dinner in the

evening--a very good distribution. But I want a good dinner to-night, my

dear, to celebrate my success.”

“It is not about dinner. Father, we have been living a very quiet life

for many years.”

“Thank Heaven!” said the old man. “Yes, a quiet life. A man of my age is

entitled to it, Mary. I never shrank from exertion in my time, nor do I

now, as this will testify.” He laid his hand with a genial complaisance

upon the half-written paper that lay before him. Then he said with a

smile, “But make haste, my dear. There is still an hour before dinner,

and I am in the spirit of my work. We need not occupy our time, you and

I, with general remarks.”

“I did not mean it for a general remark,” she said with a tremble in her

voice. “It is that I have something important--very important to speak

of, and I don’t know how to begin.”

“Important--very important!” he said, with the indulgence of jocular

superiority for a child’s undue gravity. “I know what these important

matters are. Some poaching rascal that you don’t know how to manage, or

a quarrel in the village? Bring them to me: but bring them to-morrow,

Mary, when my mind is at rest--I cannot give my attention now.”

“It is neither poaching nor quarrelling,” she said. “I can manage the

village. There are other things. Father, though we have been quiet for

so many years, it is not because there has been nothing to think of--no

seeds of trouble in the past--no anxieties----”

“I don’t know what you are thinking of,” he said, pettishly. “No

anxieties? A man has them as long as he is in the world. We are mortal.

Seeds of trouble? I have told you, Mary, that you may spare me general

remarks.”

“Oh, nothing was further from my mind than general remarks,” she cried.

“I don’t know how to speak. Father--look here--read it; it will tell its

own story best. This is what, after the silence of years, I have

received to-day.”

“The silence of years!” said the Squire. He had to fumble for his

spectacles, which he had taken off, though he carefully restrained

himself from betraying any special interest. A red colour had mounted to

his face. Perhaps his mind did not go so far as to divine what it was;

but still a sudden glimmering, like the tremble of pale light before the

dawn, had come into his mind.

And this was the thunderbolt that suddenly fell upon him in his

quietness after the silence of years:--

“My dear Sister Mary,--This will be given to you by my little

daughter Lilias. The sight of my handwriting and of the children

will be enough to startle you, so that I need not try to soften the

shock which you must have already received. I claim from my father

shelter for my children. Their mother is dead; so are the others of

my family whose very names will never be known to my nearest

relations. Never mind that now. I am a man both sick and sorry,

worn by the world, lonely, and not much better than an adventurer.

These children are the last of our race, and the boy, however

reluctant you may be, is my father’s heir. I claim for them the

shelter of the family roof. I have no home to give them, nor can I

give them the care they require. Mary, you are a good woman: you

are blameless one way or another. I charge you with my children.

God do so to you and more also, according as you deal with them.

Some time or other before I die I will drag myself home. That you

may be sure of, unless God cuts short my life by the way, of which,

if He will, I shall not complain.

“Your brother,

“JOHN MUSGRAVE.”

This was the letter which the Squire placed upon his mouldy books, over

the statement he had been writing. He did not speak, but read it

steadily to the end, betraying no emotion except by the glow of colour

that rose over his weather-beaten face. Who that has sat by, anxious,

watching the effect of such a letter, needs to be told with what intense

observation Mary Musgrave noted every sign of the rigid control he kept

upon himself--the tight clutch of one hand upon the table, the tremor of

the other which held the letter? But the Squire said nothing, not even

when he had visibly come to the end. He held it before him still for

some minutes; then he began to fold it elaborately--but said nothing

still. The shadow of his head with its falling locks of white hair shook

a little upon the wall. There is a peculiar tremble which shows the very

severity of restraint, and this was of that kind.

“Father! have you nothing to say?”

“I thought it was a subject put aside, not to be mentioned between us,”

he said. “I may be wrong--if I am wrong you can inform me; but I

supposed this and all cognate subjects to be closed between us----”

“How can this be closed; I have ceased to importune you, but this is a

new opening. And there is more than the letter--the children----”

“Ah!” He gave a slight cry. If he could it would have been an

exclamation of scorn, but this was too much for him; the cry was sharp

with impatient pain.

“I could not keep _them_ a secret from you, father.”

“I hate secrets,” he said; “nevertheless there are few families in which

they are not necessary. When he had said this he pushed the letter

towards her, drew forward his heraldry books, and took his pen in his

hand.

“Will you say nothing to me?” she cried. “Will you give me no answer?

What am I to do?”

“Do! It seems to me quite an unnecessary question. It is a long time

since I have given up exercising any control over you, Mary,” he said.

“But, father, have a little pity. The house is not mine to do as I like

with.”

“That is unfortunate,” he said with a cold precision which made it

doubtful whether he spoke satirically or in earnest. “But it is not my

fault. You cannot expect me to make place voluntarily for another; and

even if I did, as you are a woman, it would be of very little use to

you. You cannot be the heir----”

“And this boy is!” she said with a gesture of appeal.

Mr. Musgrave said nothing. He shook his head impatiently, pushed the

letter to her with an energy that flung it into her lap, and resumed his

writing. She stood by while he deliberately returned to his description

of the “chief,” turning up a page in his heraldry book, where all the

uses and meanings of that “augmentation” were discussed. According to

all appearance his mind took up this important question exactly where he

had left it; and he resumed his writing steadily, betraying agitation

only by a larger, bolder, and firmer handwriting than usual. His

daughter stood for a moment by his side, and watched him

speechless--then went out of the room without another word. The Squire

went on writing for a full minute more. The lines he wrote had not been

so bold, so firm, so well-defined for years. Was it because he had to

put forth the whole force that remained in him, soul and body, to get

them upon the paper at all? When all sound of her departing steps had

died out, he stopped suddenly, and, putting down his pen, let his head

drop upon the open book and its figured page. An augmentation of honour!

The days were over in which such gifts came from heralds and kings. And

instead, here were struggles of a very different kind from those which

won new blazons. But the most insensible, the most self-controlled of

men, could not take such an interruption of his studies with absolute

calm. He had never been in such desperate conflict with any man as with

this son, and here his enemy, whom nature forbade to be his enemy, his

antagonist, had come again after the silence of years and confronted

him. To see such a one pass by could not but excite a certain emotion;

but to meet him thus as it were face to face! The passion of parental

love has been often portrayed. There is no passion more fervent, none

perhaps even that can equal it; but there is another passion scarcely

less intense--that which rises involuntarily in the bosom of a man

between whom and his son there are no ties of mutual dependence, when

the younger has become as the elder, knowing good and evil, and all the

experiences of life; when there is no longer any question of authority

and obedience, and natural affection yields to a strain of feeling which

is too strong for it. Many long years had passed now since young

Musgrave ceased to be his father’s pride and boyish second in

everything. He had grown a man, his equal, and had resisted and held his

own in the conflict half a lifetime ago. All the embitterment which

close relationship gives to a deadly quarrel had been between them, and

though the father had so far got the better as to drive the rebel out of

his sight, he had not crushed his will or removed him from his

standing-ground. He was the victor, though the vanquished. His son had

not yielded, nor would ever yield. When Mr. Musgrave raised his head his

face was pale, and his head shook with a nervous tremor; all the broken

redness of his cheeks shone like pencilled lines through his pallor,

increasing it. “This will never do,” he said to himself, and rising,

went to an old oak cupboard in the corner, and poured himself a small

glass of the strongest of liqueurs. Not for all that remained of the

Musgrave property would he have shown himself so broken, so overcome.

This other man who was no younger, but only stronger than himself, was

at the same time his successor, ready to push him out of his seat;

waiting for a triumph that must come sooner or later. He had been able

to forget all about him for years; to thrust out the thought of him when

it recurred; but here the man stood once more confronting him. The

Squire was wise in his way, and knew that there was nothing in the world

so bad for the health, or so likely to give his antagonist an advantage,

as the indulgence of emotion--therefore he crushed it “upon the

threshold of the mind.” He would not give him so much help towards the

inevitable eventual triumph. He went back to his writing-table when he

had fortified himself with that potent mouthful; but, knowing himself,

tried his pen upon a stray bit of paper before he would resume his

writing. What he wrote was in the quivering lines of old age. He tore it

into pieces. No one should see such a sign of agitation in the

manuscript which was to last longer than he. He took up the most learned

of his books, and began to read with close attention. Here, at all

events, the adversary should not get the better of him; or, at least, if

thoughts did surge and rise, obliterating the old escutcheon altogether

and the lion on its “chief,” nobody should be the wiser.

Thus the old man sat, with a desperate courage worthy a better object,

and mastered the furious excitement in his mind. But he was not thinking

of the children as perhaps the reader of this story may suppose. He was

not resisting the thrill of natural interest, the softening of heart

which might have attended that sudden arrival. He did not even realize

the existence of the children. His thoughts were of conflicts past, and

of the opponent against whom he had striven so often: the opponent whom

he could not altogether dismiss or get rid of, his rival, his heir, his

successor, his son. There was nothing he had wished as a father, as a

Musgrave, as the head of a great county family, which this man had not

done his best to undo: and as he had by ill-fortune thirty years the

advantage of his father, there was no doubt that he would, some time or

other, undo and destroy to an extent of which he was incapable now;

unless indeed he was prevented in the most disgraceful way,

incapacitated by public conviction of crime--conviction, which was only

too probable, which hung over his banished head and prevented his return

home. What would there be but pain in the thought of such a son--an

opponent if he were innocent, if he were guilty a disgrace to the family

name? The more completely the Squire could banish this thought from his

mind, the happier he was; and he had banished it with wonderful success

for many years past. He had done all he could to evade the idea that he

himself would one day be compelled to die. Many men do this who have no

painful consciousness of the heir behind who is waiting to dispossess

them; and Mr. Musgrave had, to a great degree, attained tranquillity on

this point. The habit of living seems to grow stronger with men as they

draw near the end of their lives. It has lasted so long; it has been so

steady and uninterrupted, why should it ever cease? But here was the

death’s-head rising at the feast; the executioner giving note of his

presence behind backs. John! he had dismissed him from his mind. He had

exercised even a kind of Christianity in forgetting him. But here he was

again, incapable of being forgotten. What a tremor in his blood--what

undue working of all that machinery of the heart which it was so

essential to keep in calm good order had this interruption caused! he

who had no vital energy to spare; who wanted it all for daily comfort

and that continuance which with younger people is so lightly taken for

granted. How much of that precious reserve had been consumed by this

shock! It had been done on purpose, perhaps, to try what the effect of

such a shock upon his nerves and fibres would be.

Mr. Musgrave pushed back his chair again from the table, and gave all

his faculties to the task of calming himself down. He would not allow

himself to be overcome by John. But it took him a long time to

accomplish this, to get his pulse back to its usual rate of beating.

When he relaxed for a moment in his watch over himself, old

recollections would come back, scenes of the long warfare, words that

were as swords and smote him over again with burning and stinging

wounds. He had to calm it all down and still memory altogether if he

would recover his ordinary composure. It wanted about an hour of dinner

when he began this process. Up to that time it did not so much matter

except for wearing him out and diminishing his strength. But it was his

determination that no one should know or see this agitation which he had

not been able to master. His daughter thought she had a harder task

before her when she left him and hurried back to the ghostly

half-lighted hall where she had left the children; but what was her

work, or the commotion of her thoughts, in comparison to that which

raged within the bosom of the old man in his solitude, defying Heaven

and nature, and all gentler influences--whose conflict was for himself

only, as it was carried on unhelped and unthought of by himself alone?

CHAPTER V.

WAKING UP.

Miss Musgrave went back to her visitors with a heightened colour and

assured step. Her alarm had departed along with her wistful and hopeful

ignorance as to what her father might do. Now that she knew, her courage

came back to her. When she opened the door which led out of the little

passage into the hall, the scene before her was striking and strange

enough to arrest her like a picture. The great ancient room, with its

high raftered roof and wide space, lay in darkness--all but one bright

spot in the midst where the lamp stood on the table. Miss Brown had

hastily arranged a kind of homely meal, a basket of oatcakes, some white

bread in a napkin, biscuits, home-made gingerbread, and a jug of fresh

milk. The white and brown bread, the tall white jug, the cloth upon the

tray, all helped to increase the whiteness of that spot in the gloom.

In the midst of this light sat the Italian nurse, dark and vigorous,

with the silver pins in her black hair, and red ribbons at her breast.

The pale little boy sat on her knee; he had a little fair head like an

angel in a picture, light curling hair, and a delicate complexion, white

and red, which was fully relieved against that dark background. The

child’s alarm had given way a little, but still, in the intervals of his

meal, he would pause, look round him into the gloom, and clutch with

speechless fright at his attendant, who held him close and soothed him

with all the soft words she could think of. Little Lilias stood by her

on the further side, sufficiently recovered to eat a biscuit, but

securing herself also, brave as she was, by a firm grasp of the nurse’s

arm to which she hung, tightly embracing it with her own. Miss Brown was

flitting about this strange little group, talking continuously, though

the only one among them who was disposed to talk could not understand

her, and the children were too worn out to pay any attention to what she

said.

There was a little start and thrill among the three who held so closely

together when the lady returned. Little Lilias put down her biscuit. She

became the head of the party as soon as Miss Musgrave came back--the

plenipotentiary with whom to conduct all negotiations. Nello, on the

other hand, buried his head in his nurse’s shoulder. In the midst of all

her agitation and confusion it troubled Miss Musgrave that the child

should hide his face from her. The boy who was like herself and her

family was the one to whom her interest turned most. Lilias bore another

resemblance, which was no passport to Mary Musgrave’s heart. Yet it was

hard to resist the fascination of this child’s sense and courage; the

boy, as yet, had shown himself capable of nothing but fear.

“Go, and have fires lighted at once in the two west rooms--make

everything ready,” Mary said, sending Miss Brown away peremptorily. It

was not a worthy feeling perhaps, but it vexed her, agitated as she was,

to see that her maid woke no alarm in the children, while she, their

nearest relation, she who, if necessary, had made up her mind to

sacrifice everything for them, was an object of fear. She thought even

that the children clung closer to their nurse and shrank more from

herself when Martha was sent away. Miss Musgrave stood at the other side

of the table and looked at them with many conflicting thoughts. It was

altogether new to her, this strange mixture of ignorance and wonder, and

almost awe, with which she felt herself contemplating these unknown

little creatures, henceforward to be wholly dependent upon her. They

were afraid of her, but she was scarcely less afraid of them, wondering

with an ache in her heart whether she would be able to feel towards them

as she ought, to bring her middle-aged thoughts into sympathy with

theirs, to be soft and gentle with them as their helplessness demanded.

Love does not always come with the first claim upon it; how was she to

love them, little unknown beings whose very existence she had never

heard of before? And Mary thought of herself with a certain pity in this

strange moment, remembering almost with a sense of injury that the

fountain of mother’s love had never been awakened in her at all. Was it

thus to be awakened? She was not an angelic woman, as poor Mr. Pen

imagined her to be. She knew this well enough, though he did not know

it. She had been young and full of herself when the family misfortunes

happened, and since then what had there been in her life to warm or

awaken the heart? Was she capable of loving? she asked herself; was

there not a chill atmosphere about her which breathed cold upon the

children and drove them away? This thought gave her a pang, as she stood

and looked at the two helpless creatures before her, too frightened now

to munch their biscuits, one gazing at her with big pathetic eyes, the

other hiding his face. An ache of helplessness and pain not less great

than theirs came into her mind. She was as helpless as they were,

looking at them across the table, as if across a world of separation

which she did not know how to bridge over, with not only them to

vanquish, but herself. At last she put out her hands with the sense of

weakness, such as perhaps she had never felt before. She had not been

able, indeed, to influence her father, but she had not felt helpless

before him; on the contrary, his hardness had stirred her to

determination on her side, and a sense of power which quickened the

flowing of her blood. But before these children she felt helpless; what

was she to do with them, how bring herself into communication with them?

She put out her hands--hands strong to guard, but powerless she thought

to attract. “Lilias, will you come to me?” she said with a tremulous

tone in her voice.

The weariness, the strangeness, the darkness had been almost too much

for Lilias; her mouthful of biscuit and draught of milk had been too

quickly interrupted by the return of the strange, beautiful lady, with

whom she alone, she was aware, could deal. And she could not respond to

that appeal without quitting hold of Martuccia, who, though powerless to

treat with the lady, was still a safeguard against the surrounding

blackness, a something to cling to. But the child was brave as a hero,

notwithstanding the nervous susceptibility of her nature. She disengaged

her arm slowly from her one stay, keeping her eyes all the time fixed

upon Miss Musgrave, half attracted by her, half to keep herself from

seeing those dark corners in which mysterious dangers seemed to lurk;

and came forward, repressing the sob that rose in her throat, her little

pale face growing crimson with the strain of resolution which this

effort cost her. It was all Lilias could do to move round the table

quietly, not to make a rush of fright and violent clutch at the hand

held out to her--even though it was the hand of a stranger, from which

in itself she shrank. Mary put her arm round the little trembling

figure, and smoothing away the dark hair from her forehead, kissed the

little girl with lips that trembled too. She would do her duty by her;

never would she forsake her brother’s child; and with the warmth of this

resolution tears of pity and tenderness came into her eyes. But when

Lilias felt the protection of the warm soft arm about her, and the

tenderness of the kiss, her little heart burst forth with a strength of

impulse which put all laws at defiance. With a sobbing cry she threw

herself upon her new protector, caught at her dress, clung to her waist,

nestled her head into her bosom, with a close pressure which was half

gratitude, half terror, half nervous excitement. Mary was taken by

storm. She did not understand the change that came over her. A sudden

warmth seemed to come into her veins, tingling to her very

finger-points. She too, mature and self-restrained as she was, began to

weep, a sudden flood of tears rushing to her eyes against her will. “My

child, my brave little girl!” she said almost unawares, recognising in

her heart a soft surprise of feeling which was inexplicable; was this

what nature did, sheer nature? she had never felt anything like it

before. She held the child in her arms and cried over her, the tears

falling over those dark curls which had nothing to do with the

Musgraves, which even resembled another type with which the Musgraves

would have nothing to do!

As she stood thus overcome by the double sensation of the child’s

nestling and clinging, and by the strange, sudden development of feeling

in herself, Mary Musgrave felt two soft touches upon her hand which were

not mistakable, and which made her start and flush, with the decorum of

an Englishwoman surprised. It was Martuccia, who, moved like all her

race by quick impulses of emotion, had risen hastily to her feet in

sympathy, and had kissed the lady’s hand, and put forward her little

charge to perform the same act of homage. This roused Mary from her

momentary breaking down. She took the little boy by the hand whom she

found at her feet, not quite so frightened as at first, but still

holding fast by the nurse’s skirts, and led them both into the house.

They were too much awed to make any noise, but went with her, keeping

close to her, treading in her footsteps almost, closer and closer as

they emerged into one unknown place after another. Wonder kept them

still as she took them through the cheerful lighted dining-room, and up

the stairs. Eastwood was busy about his table, putting it in that

perfect order which it was his pride to keep up (“For who is more to me

nor my family? what’s company?” said Eastwood; “it’s them as pays me as

I’m bound to please”); but Eastwood was too good a servant to manifest

any feeling. He had, of course, heard all about the arrival, not only

from the gardener, but from every one in the kitchen; and he was aware,

as nobody else was, that there had been a private interview between the

father and daughter, to which she had gone with a pale face, and come

back with nostrils expanded, and a glow of resolution upon her. Eastwood

was not an old servant, but he had learned all that there was to learn

about the family, and a little more. His interest in the Musgraves was

not so warm as that of cook for instance, who had been born in the

place, and had known them from their cradles; but he had the warm

curiosity which is common to his kind. He gave a glance from beneath his

eyebrows at the new-comers, wondering what was to become of them. Would

they be received into the house for good; and if so, would that have any

effect upon himself, Eastwood? would it, by and by, be an increase of

trouble, a something additional to do? He was no worse than his

neighbours, and the thought was instinctive and natural, for no one

likes to have additional labour. “But he’s but a little chap; it’ll be

long enough before he wants valeting--if ever,” Mr. Eastwood said to

himself. What would be wanted would be a nurse, not a valet; and if that

black-eyed foreigner didn’t stay, Eastwood knew a nice girl from the

village whom the place would just suit. So he cast no unkindly eye upon

the children as he went noiselessly about in his spotless coat, putting

down his forks, which were quite as spotless. The sight of the table

with its bouquet of autumn flowers excited Lilias. “Who is going to dine

there?” she said, with a pretty childish wile, drawing down Miss

Musgrave towards her to whisper in her ear.

“I am, Lilias.”

“May we come too?” said the little girl. “Nello is very good--he does

not ask for anything; we know how to behave.”

“There will be some one else besides me,” said Mary, faltering slightly.

“Then we do not want to come,” said Lilias with decision. “We are not

fond of strangers.”

“I am a stranger, dear----”

“Oh no, you are Mary!” said the child, embracing Miss Musgrave’s arm

with her own two arms clasped round it, and raising her face with the

confidence of perfect trust. These simple actions made Mary’s heart

swell as it had not done for years--as indeed it had never done in her

life. Other thrills there might have been in her day, but this fountain

had never been opened before, and the new feeling was almost as

strangely sweet to her as is the silent ecstasy in the bosom of the new

mother, whose baby has just brought into the world such an atmosphere

of love. It was like some strange new stream poured into her heart,

filling up all her veins.

The firelight had already begun to sparkle pleasantly in the bedrooms,

and Mary found herself suddenly plunged into those pleasant cares of a

mother which make time fly so swiftly. She had found so much to do for

them, getting them to bed and making the weary little creatures

comfortable, that the bell rang for dinner before she was aware. She

left them hastily, and put herself into her evening gown with a speed

which was anxiously seconded by Miss Brown, who for her part was just as

eager to get back to the children as was her mistress. Miss Musgrave did

not know what awaited her when she went down-stairs, or what battles she

might have to fight. She had another duty now in the world beyond that

claimed by her father. He had no such need of her as these children, who

in all the wide world had no protector or succour but herself. Her heart

beat a little louder and stronger than usual; her bearing was more

dignified. The indifference which had been in her life this morning had

passed away. How strange it seemed now to think of that calm which

nothing affected much, in which she had been comparatively happy, but

which now appeared so mean and poverty-stricken. The easy quiet had gone

out of her life;--was it for ever?--and instead there had come in a

commotion of anxieties, hopes, and doubts and questions manifold; but

yet how miserable to her in comparison seemed now that long loveless

tranquillity! She was another woman, a living woman, she thought to

herself, bearing the natural burden of care, a burden sweetened by a

hundred budding tendernesses and consolations. It is well to have good

health and enough to do; these had been the bare elements of existence,

out of which she had managed to form a cold version of living; but how

different was this vivid existence, new-born yet eternal, of love and

care! She was like one inspired. If she had been offered the

alternative, as she almost expected, of leaving the house or giving up

the children, with what pride would she have drawn her cloak round her

and left her father’s house! This prospect seemed near enough and likely

enough as she walked into the dining-room, with her head high, and a

swell of conscious force in her bosom. Whatever might be coming she was

prepared for any blow.

Mr. Musgrave, too, was late. He who was the soul of punctuality did not

enter the room for a minute or more after his daughter had hastened

there, knowing herself late--but whereas she had hurried her toilet, his

had never been more careful and precise. He took his seat with

deliberate steadiness, and insisted upon carving the mutton and

partridge which made their meal, though on ordinary occasions he left

this office to Eastwood. It gratified him, however, to-day, to prove to

himself and to her how capable he was and how steady were his nerves.

And he talked while he did this with unusual energy, going over again

all the history of the “chief.”

“I hope it will interest the general reader,” he said. “Not many family

questions do, but this is really an elucidation of history. It throws

light upon a great many things. You scorn heraldry, Mary, I am aware.”

“No, I do not think I scorn it.”

“Well, at all events you are little interested; the details are not of

much importance, you think. In short, I suspect,” he added, with a

little laugh, “that if the truth were told, you and a great many other

ladies secretly look upon the science as one of those play-sciences that

keep men from being troublesome. You don’t say so, but I believe you

think we fuss and make work for ourselves in this way while you are

carrying on the real work of the world.”

“I am not so self-important,” she said; but there was a great deal of

truth in the suggestion if her mind had been free enough to think of it.

What was it else but a play-science to keep country gentlemen too old

for fox-hunting out of mischief? This is one of the private opinions of

the gynecæum applying to many grave pursuits, an opinion which

circulates there in strictest privacy and is not spoken to the world.

Mary would have smiled at the Squire’s discrimination had her mind been

free. As it was, she could do nothing but wonder at his liveliness and

composure, and say to herself that he must be waiting till Eastwood went

away. This, no doubt, was why he talked so much, and was so genial. He

did not wish to betray anything to the man, and her heart began to beat

once more with renewed force as the moment came for his withdrawal. No

doubt the discussion she feared would come, and most likely come with

double severity then. She had seen all this process gone through before.

But when Eastwood went away the Squire continued smiling and

conversational. He told her of a poacher who had been brought to him, a

bumpkin from a distant farm, to whom he meant to be merciful; and of

some land which was likely to be in the market, which would, if it could

be got, restore an old corner of the estate and rectify the ancient

boundary.

“I do not suppose there is any hope of such a thing,” he said, with a

sigh. “And besides, what does it matter to me that I should care? my

time cannot be very long.”

“The time of the family may be long enough,” she said, with a throb of

rising excitement, for surely now he would speak; “one individual is not

all.”

“That is a sound sentiment, though perhaps it may seem a little

cold-hearted when the individual is your father, Mary.”

“I did not mean it to be cold-hearted; you have always taught me to

consider the race.”

“And so you ought,” he said, “though you don’t care so much for the

blazon as I could wish. I should like to talk to Burn and to see what

the lawyers would think of it. I confess I should like to be Lord of the

Manor at Critchley again before I die.”

“And so you shall, father, so you shall!” she cried. “We could do it

with an effort: if only you would--if only you could----”

He interrupted her hastily.

“When Burn comes to-morrow let me see him,” he said. “This is no

question of what I could or would. If it can be done it ought to be

done. That is all I have to say. Is it not time you were having tea?”

This was to send her away that he might have his evening nap after

dinner. Mary rose at the well-known formula, but she came softly round

to his end of the room to see that the fire was as he liked it, and

lingered behind his chair, not knowing whether to make another appeal

to him. Her presence seemed to make him restless; perhaps he divined

what was floating in her mind. He got up quickly before she had time to

speak.

“On second thoughts,” he said, “as I was disturbed before dinner, I had

better resume my work at once. You can send me a cup of tea to the

library. It is not often that one has such a satisfactory piece of work

in hand; that charms away drowsiness. Be sure you send me a cup of tea.”

“You will not--over-fatigue yourself, father?” said Mary, faltering.

“I--hope you will not do too much.”

This was not what she meant to say, but these were the only words that

she could manage to form out of her lips.

“Oh, no; do not be uneasy. I shall not overwork myself,” said the Squire

once more, with a laugh.

And he went out of the room before her, erect and steady, looking

younger and stronger in the force of that excitement which he was so

careful to conceal. Mary did not know what to think. Was he postponing

his sentence to make it more telling? or was he, happier thought, moved

by the new event as she herself had been, warmed into forgiveness, into

relenting, into the happiness of old age in children’s children? Could

this be so? She stood over the fire in her agitation holding her hands

out to the ruddy blaze, though she was not cold. Her heart beat

violently against her breast. How uneasy a thing this life was, how

restless and full of change and commotion! Yet so much more, so much

greater than the gentler stagnation which was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

AT THE VICARAGE.

The vicarage was stilled in the quiet of the evening, the children in

bed, the house at rest. It was not the beautiful and dignified old house

which in England is the ideal dwelling of the gentleman parson, the

ecclesiastical squire of the parish. And indeed Mr. Pennithorne was not

of that order. Though there had been many jokes when he first entered

upon the cure as to the resemblance between his name and that of the

parish, Pennithorne of Penninghame was a purely accidental coincidence.

Mr. Musgrave was the patron, but the living was not wealthy enough or

important enough to form that appropriate provision for a second son

which, according to the curious subordination and adaptation of public

wants to family interests, has become the rule in England, unique, as

are so many others. Randolph Musgrave had his rectory in one of the

midland counties, in the district which was influenced by his mother’s

family, where there was something more worth his acceptance; and his old

tutor had got the family living. Mr. Pennithorne was not a distinguished

scholar with chances of preferment through his college, and it had been

considered a great thing for him when, after dragging the young

Musgraves through a certain proportion of schooling and colleging, he

had subsided into this quiet provision for the rest of his life. He was

a clergyman’s son, with no prospects, and whatsoever glimmerings of

young ambition there might have been in him, there was no coming down

involved when he accepted the small rural vicarage where his heart was.

We have already said that in his wildest hopes a vision of the

possibility of bringing Mary Musgrave to the vicarage to share his

humble circumstances with him had never entered into Mr. Pennithorne’s

mind; but to be near her was something, and to be her trusted and

confidential friend seemed the best that life could give him. Here he

had remained ever since, being of some use to her, as he hoped, from

time to time, and some comfort at least, if nothing more, in the

convulsions of the family. During the first years of his incumbency, Mr.

Pennithorne’s own mind had been subject to many convulsions as one

suitor after another came to the Castle; but as they had all ridden away

again with what grace they could after their rejection, comfort had come

back. It was a curious passion, and one which we do not pretend to

explain. After a while, impelled by friends, by convenience, and by the

soft looks of Emily Coniston, the daughter of the clergyman in his

native place, to which he had gone on a visit, he had himself found it

possible to marry, without any failure of his allegiance to his

visionary love; but still to this day though he had been Emily’s

husband for ten years, it troubled the good vicar when any stranger came

to the Castle whose society seemed specially pleasant to Miss Musgrave.

He would hang about the place at such times like an alarmed hen when

something threatens the brood, nor ceased to cluck and flutter his wings

till the danger was over. Did he not wish her happiness? Ah, yes, and

would, he thought, have given his life to procure it; but was it

necessary that happiness should always be got in that one vulgar way?

Marriage was well enough for the vulgar, but not for Mary. It would have

been a descent from her maiden dignity, a lowering of her position. He

was willing that everybody should love her and place her on a pedestal

above all women; but it wounded his finest feelings to think that she

too, in her turn, might love. There was no man good enough or great

enough to be worthy of awakening such a sentiment in Mary Musgrave’s

breast.

As is not unusual in such cases, Mr. Pennithorne, the chief inspiration

of whose life was a visionary passion of the most exalted and exalting

kind for a woman, had married a woman for whom no one could entertain

any very exalted or impassioned feelings. Perhaps the household drudge

is a natural double or attendant of the goddess. They “got on” very well

together, people said, and Mr. Pen put up with his wife’s little

foolishnesses and fretfulnesses, as perhaps a man could not have done

whose heart was fortified by no ideal passion. Emily was a good

housekeeper of the narrow sort, caring very little for comfort, and very

proud of her economy; and she was a good mother of the troublesome kind,

whose children are always in the foreground, always wanting something,

always claiming her attention. Mr. Pen adored them, and yet he was glad

when they were got to bed, when his wife could be spoken to without one

child clinging to her skirts, or another breaking in upon everything

with plaintive appeals to mamma. But he took it for granted that this

was how it must be, and that a more lovely course of life was

impracticable. One woman excepted, all women, he thought, were like

this; it is thus that the dogmatisms of common opinion are formed and

kept up; and what could be done but to shrug his shoulders at the

inevitable, escaping from it into his study, or with a sigh into that

world of the ideal where imagination is never ruffled by the incidents

of common life. The children were in bed on this October night, and

everything was still. The vicarage was not a handsome house, nor was it

old, but merely modern, badly built, and common-place, redeemed by

nothing but its garden, which was large, and gave a pretty surrounding

to the place in summer. But the night had become stormy, and the wind

was raving in the trees, making their close neighbourhood anything but

an advantage. Mrs. Pennithorne thought it extravagant to use two

sitting-rooms, so the family ate and lived in the dining-room--a dark

room papered and furnished as, in the days when Mr. Pen was married, it

was thought right to decorate such places, with a red flock paper of a

large pattern, which relieved the black horsehair of the furniture. The

room was not very large. It had a black marble mantel-shelf, with a

clock upon it, and some vases of Bohemian glass, and a red and blue

table-cover upon the table, about which there lingered always a certain

odour of food, especially in cold weather, when the windows were closed.

Mrs. Pennithorne sat between the fire and the table. She had some

dressmaking in hand, which made a litter about--dark winter stuff for

little Mary’s frock; and as she had no genius for this work, it was a

lingering and confusing business with her, and made her less amiable

than usual. The reason why her husband was there at all instead of being

in his study was that the evening was cold; but it had not yet become,

according to Mrs. Pen’s code, time for fires. There was one in the

dining-room, for she had not been well; but to light a second so early

in October was against all her traditions, and Mr. Pen had been driven

out of his study, where he had been sitting in his great-coat, and now

stood with his back to the fire, warming himself, poor man, in

preparation for another spell of work at his sermon. He was thin, and

felt the cold. It was this, she had just been saying, that had brought

him, and not any regard for her loneliness--which indeed was quite true.

“No, Emily,” he said, meekly, “for I have my work to do, you know; but

while I am here, I hope you are not sorry to see me. The children were

rather late to-night.”

“I am glad to keep them up a little for company,” she said. “It is not

so cheerful sitting here all alone, hearing the wind roaring in the

trees; and my nerves are quite gone. I never used to fear anything when

I was a young girl, but now I start at every sound. I don’t mean to

blame _you_--but it is lonely sitting by one’s self after being one of a

large family.”

“No doubt--no doubt,” he said, soothingly. “I suppose we gain something

as years go on, but we do lose something. That must be taken for granted

in life.”

“I don’t like your philosophy, Mr. Pennithorne,” said Emily; “the way

you have of always making out that things have to be! I don’t see it,

for my part. I think a married woman should have a great deal to cheer

her up that a girl can’t have----”

“My dear,” he said, “perhaps I am not much--and you know the parish is

my first duty; but have you not the children?--dear children they are. I

do not think there can be any greater pleasure than one’s children----”

“You have nothing to do but enjoy them,” said Mrs Pennithorne, slightly

softened; “but if you had to work and slave like me! There is never a

day that I have not something to do for them; mending, or making, or

darning, or something. Fathers have an easy time of it; they play with

the baby now and then, take out the elder ones for a walk, and that is

all. That is nothing but pleasure; but to sit for days and work one’s

fingers to the bone----”

“I wish you would not, Emily. I have heard you say that Miss Price in

the village was a very good dressmaker----”

“For those who can afford her,” said Mrs. Pennithorne. “But,” she added,

with a better inspiration, “you make me look as if I were complaining,

and I don’t want to complain. Though it is dull, William, you must

allow, sitting all the evening by one’s self----”

“But I have to do the same,” he said, with gentle hypocrisy. “You know,

Emily, if I wrote my sermon here, we should fall to talking, which no

doubt is far pleasanter--but it is not duty, and duty must come before

all----”

“There is more than one kind of duty,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, who was

tearing her fingers with pins putting together two sides of Mary’s

frock. While she was bending over this, the maid came into the room with

a note. There was something in the “Ah!” with which he took it which

made his wife raise her head. She was not jealous of Miss Musgrave, who

was nearly ten years older than herself, an old maid, and beneath

consideration; but she did think that William thought a great deal too

much of the Castle. “What is it now?” she said pettishly. Perhaps once

more--they had done it several times already--it was an invitation to

dinner for Mr. Pennithorne alone. But he was so much interested in what

he was reading that he did not even hear her. She sat with her scissors

in her hand, and looked at him while he read the note, his face

changing, his whole mind absorbed. He did not look like that when their

common affairs were discussed, or the education of his children, which

ought to be more interesting to him than anything else. This was other

people’s business--and how it took him up! Mrs. Pennithorne was a good

woman, and did her duty to her neighbours when it was very clearly

indicated; but still, of course, nothing could be of such consequence as

your own family, and your duty to them. And to see how he was taken up,

smiling, looking as if he might be going to cry! Nothing about Johnny or

Mary ever excited him so. Mrs. Pennithorne was not only vexed on her own

account, but felt it to be wrong.

“Well, life is a wonderful thing,” he said suddenly. “I went to the

Castle this afternoon----”

“You are always going to the Castle,” she said, in a fretful voice.

“--Expressly to tell Miss Musgrave how much my mind had been occupied

about her brother John. You never knew him, Emily; but he was my pupil,

and I was very fond of him----”

“You are very fond of all the family, I think,” she said,

half-interested, half-aggrieved.

“Perhaps I was,” he said, with a little sigh, which, however, she did

not notice; “but John particularly. He was a fine fellow, though he was

so hot-headed. The other night I kept dreaming of him, all night

long--over and over again.”

“That was what made you so restless, I suppose,” Mrs. Pennithorne put

in, in a parenthesis. “I am sure you have plenty belonging to yourself

to dream of, if you want to dream.”

“--And I went to ask if they had heard anything, smiling at myself--as

she did, for being superstitious. But here is the wonderful thing: I had

scarcely left, when the thing I had foreseen arrived. A carriage drew up

containing John Musgrave’s children----”

“Did you know John Musgrave’s children? I never knew he had any

children----”

“Nor did I, or any one!--that is the wonder of it. I felt sure something

was happening to him or about him--and lo! the children arrived. It was

no cleverness of mine,” said Mr. Pennithorne with gentle complacency,

“but still I must say it was a wonderful coincidence. The very day!”

Mrs. Pennithorne did not make any reply. She was not interested in a

coincidence which had nothing to do with her own family. If Mr. Pen had

divined when Johnny was to break his arm, so that they might have been

prepared for that accident! but the Musgraves had plenty of people to

take care of them, and there seemed no need for a new providential

agency to give them warning of unsuspected arrivals. She put some more

pins into little Mary’s frock--the two sides of the little bodice never

would come the same. She pulled at them, measured them, repinned them,

but could not get them right.

“I have heard a great deal about John Musgrave,” she said with a pin in

her mouth. “What was it he did that he had to run away?”

“My dear Emily! don’t do that, for heaven’s sake--you frighten me; and

besides, it is not--pretty--it is not becoming----”

“I think I am old enough by this time to know what is becoming,” said

Mrs. Pennithorne with some wrath, yet growing red as she took out the

pins. She was conscious that it was not ladylike, and felt that this was

the word her husband meant to use. “If you knew the trouble it is to get

both sides the same!” she added, forgetting her resentment in vexation.

It was a troublesome job. There are some people in whose hands

everything goes wrong. Mrs. Pen shed a tear or two over the refractory

frock.

“My dear! I hope it is not my innocent remark----”

“Oh no, it is not any innocent remark. It is so troublesome. Just when I

thought I had got it quite straight! But what do you know about such

things? You have nothing to say to Mary’s frock. You never would notice,

I believe, if she had not one to her back, or wore the same old rag year

after year----”

“Yes, Emily, I should notice,” said Mr. Pen with some compunction; “and

I am very sorry that you should have so much trouble. Send for Miss

Price to-morrow, and I will pay her out of my own money. You must not

take it off the house.”

“Oh, William! William!” said his wife, “who is it that will suffer if

your own money, as you call it, runs out? Do you think I am so

inconsiderate as only to think of what I have for the house! Isn’t it

all one purse, and will it not be the children that will suffer

eventually whoever pays? No, your money shall not be spent to save me

trouble. What is the good of us but to take trouble?” said Mrs. Pen with

heroic fortitude.

Mr. Pen sighed. Perhaps he was more conscious of the litter of

dressmaking than of this fine sentiment. But anyhow he did not give any

applause to the heroine. He left indeed this family subject altogether,

and after a momentary pause, said, half to himself, “John Musgrave’s

children! Who could have thought it! And how strange it all is----”

“Really, Mr. Pennithorne,” said his wife, offended, “this is too much. I

don’t believe you think one half so much of your own children as of

those Musgraves. What did they ever do for us?”

“They did this for us, my dear, that but for them I should not have had

a home to offer you--nor a family at all,” said the vicar with a little

warmth. “I might have been still travelling with boys about the

world----”

“Oh, William, not with your talents,” said his wife, looking at him with

admiration. With all her fretfulness and insensibility to those fine

points of internal arrangement for which he had a half-developed,

half-subdued taste, Emily had still a great admiration for her husband.

Now Mary Musgrave, who was, unknown to either, her spiritual rival, had

no admiration for good Mr. Pen at all. This gave the partner of his life

an infinite advantage. His voice softened as he replied, shaking his

head:

“Unfortunately, my love, other people do not appreciate my talents as

you do.”

“That is because they don’t know you so well,” she said with flattering

promptitude. Mr. Pennithorne drew a chair to the fire and sat down. It

was but rarely that he received this domestic adulation; but it warmed

him, and did him good.

“Ah, my dear, I fear I must not lay that flattering unction to my soul,”

he said.

“You are too modest, William; I have always said you were too modest,”

said Mrs. Pennithorne, returning good for evil. How little notice he had

taken of her fine heroic feeling and self-abnegation! Women are more

generous; she behaved very differently to him. And the fact was, he very

soon began to think that old Mr. Musgrave had made use of him, and given

him a very poor return. The vicarage was not much--and the Squire had

never attempted to do anything more. It is sweet to be told that you are

above your fate--that Providence owes you something better. He roused

himself up, however, after a time out of that unwholesome state of

self-complacency. “What a strange state of affairs it is, Emily,” he

said. He was not in the habit of making his wife his confidant on

matters that concerned the Musgraves, but in a moment of weakness his

resolution was overcome. “What a painful state of affairs! Mr. Musgrave

knows of the coming of these children, but he takes no notice, and

whether she is to be allowed to keep them or not----”

“Dear me, think of having to get permission from your father at her time

of life,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, with a naïve pity. “And whom did he

marry, William, and what sort of person was their mother? I don’t think

you ever told me that.”

“Their mother was--John’s wife; I must have told you of her. She was not

the person his family wished. But that often happens, my dear. It is no

sign that a man is a bad man because he may make what you may call a

mistaken choice.”

“My dear William,” said Mrs. Pen, with authority, “there is nothing that

shows a man’s character so much as the wife he chooses; my mother always

said so. It is the best test if he is a nice feeling man or not,” the

vicar’s wife said blandly, with a little conscious smile upon her face.

Mr. Pennithorne made no reply. There was something humorous in this

innocent little speech, considering who the speaker was, to any one who

knew. But then nobody knew; scarcely even Mr. Pennithorne himself, who

at this moment was so soothed by his wife’s “appreciation,” that he felt

himself the most devoted of husbands. He shook his head a little,

deprecating the implied condemnation of his old pupil; for the moment he

did not think of himself.

“Now that we are sitting together, and really comfortable for once in a

way,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, dropping Mary’s bodice with all the pins,

and drawing her chair a little nearer to the fire--“it does not happen

very often--tell me, William, what it is all about, and what John

Musgrave has done.”

Again the vicar shook his head. “It’s a long story,” he said,

reluctantly.

“You tell things so nicely, William, I sha’n’t think it long; and think

how strange it is, knowing so much about people, and yet not knowing

anything. And of course I shall have to see the children. Poor little

things, not to be sure of shelter in their grandfather’s house! but they

will always have a friend in you.”

“They will have Mary; what can they want more if they have _her_?” he

said suddenly, with a fervour which surprised his wife; then blushed and

faltered as he caught her eye. What right had he to speak of Miss

Musgrave so? Mrs. Pennithorne stared a little, but the slip did not

otherwise trouble her, for she saw no reason for the exaggerated respect

with which the Squire’s daughter was treated. Why should not she be

called Mary--was it not her name?

“Mary, indeed! what does she know about children? But, William, I am

waiting, and this is the question--What did John Musgrave do?”

PART III.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHILDREN AT THE CASTLE.

The arrival of the children was an era at Penninghame from which

afterwards everything dated; but the immediate result was a very curious

and not very comfortable one. As they had been introduced into the

house, so they lived in it. Mr. Musgrave never mentioned them, never saw

them or appeared to see them, ignored their existence, in short, as

completely as if his faculties had been deadened in respect to them. His

life was in no way changed indeed; the extraordinary revolution which

had been made to every one else in the house by this change showed all

the more strongly from the absence of all effect upon him. He read, he

wrote, he studied, he took his usual quiet exercise exactly as he did

before, and never owned by a word or look that he was conscious of any

alteration in the household. For a little while the children were hushed

not to make a noise, and huddled away into corners to keep them out of

sight and hearing; but that arrangement was too unnatural to continue,

and it very soon happened that their presence was forced upon him by

unmistakable signs, by both sight and hearing. But the Squire took not

the slightest notice. He looked over their heads and never saw them. His

ear was engaged with other sounds and he did not hear them. By this

system of unconsciousness he deprived himself indeed of some evident

advantages; for how can you interfere with the proceedings of those

whose very existence you ignore? He could not give orders that the

children should make less noise, because he professed not to be aware of

their presence; nor send them out of his sight, when he was supposed not

to see them; and in consequence this blindness and deafness on his part

was perhaps a greater gain to them than to himself. The mental commotion

into which he had been thrown by their arrival had never been known to

any one but himself. He had a slight illness a few days after--his

liver out of order, the doctor said; and so worked off his excitement

without disclosing it to any one. After this he resumed his serenity,

and completed his heraldic study. The history of the augmentation

granted to the Musgraves in the year 1393 in remembrance of the valour

of Sir Egidio, or Giles, Musgrave in the Holy Land made rather a

sensation among students in that kind. It was a very interesting

monograph. Besides being a singularly striking chapter of family

history, it was, everybody said, a most interesting contribution to the

study of heraldic honours--how and why they were bestowed; especially as

concerning “augmentations” bestowed on the field for acts of valour--a

rare and exceptional distinction. The Squire made a little collection of

the notices that appeared in the newspapers of his “Monograph” pasting

them into a pretty little book, as is not unusual with amateur authors.

He enjoyed them a great deal more than if he had been the author of a

great history, and resented criticism with corresponding bitterness. He

was very proud of Egidio, or Giles, who died in the fifteenth century;

and it did not occur to him that there was any incongruity between this

devotion to his ancestors and the fact that he persisted in ignoring the

little boy upstairs.

And yet day by day it grew more hard to ignore him. Mr. Musgrave in his

study, after the enthusiasm of his monograph was over, could not help

hearing voices which it was difficult to take no notice of. The

enthusiasm of composition did a great deal for him: it carried him out

of the present; it filled him with a delightful fervour and thrill of

intellectual excitement. People who are always writing get used to it,

and lose this sense of something fine and great which is the inheritance

of the amateur. Even after the shock of renewed intercourse with the

son, who had brought shame upon his name, and whom he had cast off, Mr.

Musgrave, so long as his work lasted, found himself able to forget

everything in the happiness it gave. When he woke in the morning his

first thought was of this important occupation which awaited him, and he

went to bed with the fumes of his own paragraphs in his head; he was

carried away by it. But when all this intellectual commotion was over,

and when the ennui of having nothing further to do had swallowed up the

satisfaction of having finished a great piece of work, as it so soon

does, then there came a very difficult interval for the Squire. He had

no longer anything to absorb him and keep him comfortably above the

circumstances of ordinary life; and as he sat in his library, only

reading, only writing a letter, no longer absorbed by any special study,

or by the pride and delight of recording in fine language the results of

that study, ordinary life stole back, as it has a way of doing. He began

to hear the knocks at the door, the ringing of bells, and to wonder what

they meant; to hear steps going up and down the stairs, to be aware of

Eastwood in the dining-room, and the rustle of Mary’s dress as she went

about the house in the morning, and in the afternoon passed with a soft

boom of the swinging door into her favourite hall. The routine of the

house came back to the old man. He heard the servants in the kitchen,

the ticking of that measured, leisurely old clock in the hall which took

about five minutes to spell out the hour. He was not consciously paying

any attention to these things. On the contrary, he was secluded from

them, rapt in his books, knowing nothing of what was going on; yet he

heard them all; and as he sat there through the long winter days and the

still longer winter evenings, when there was rain or storm out of doors,

and nothing to break the long, still blank of hours within, a sound

would come to him now and then, even before the care of the household

relaxed--the cry of a little voice, a running and pattering of small

feet, sometimes an outburst of laughter, a small voice of weeping, which

stirred strangely in the air about him and vaguely called forth old

half-extinct sensations, as one might run over the jarred and

half-silent keys of an old piano in the dark. This surprised him at

first in his loneliness--then, when he had realized what it was, hurt

him a little, rousing old wrath and bitterness, so that he would

sometimes lay down his pen or close his book and all the past would come

before him--the past, in which John his son had disappointed, mocked,

insulted, and baffled his father. He would not allow himself to realize

the presence of these children in the house, but he could not avoid

thinking of the individual who stood between him and them, who was so

real while they were so visionary. Always John! He had tried to live

for years without thought of him and had been tranquil; it was grievous

to be compelled thus to think of him again. This all happened, however,

in the seclusion of his own mind, in the quiet of his library, and no

one knew anything of it; not his daughter, who thought she knew his

looks by heart; nor his servant, who had spelled him out by many guesses

in the dark--as servants generally do--and imagined that he had his

master at his fingers’ ends. But during all this time while these

touches were playing upon him, bringing out ghosts of old sensations,

muffled sounds and tones forgotten, Mr. Musgrave publicly ignored the

fact that there were any children in the house, and contrived not to see

them, nor to hear them, with a force of self-government and resolution

which, in a nobler cause, would have been beyond all praise.

The effect of the change upon Miss Musgrave was scarcely less remarkable

though very different. Her mental and moral education had been of a very

peculiar kind. The tragedy which swallowed up her brother had

interrupted the soft flowing current of her young life. All had gone

smoothly before in the natural brightness of the beginning. And Mary,

who had little passion in her temperament, who was more thoughtful than

intense, and whose heart had never been awakened by any strong

attachment beyond the ties of nature, had borne the interruption better

than most people would have borne it, and had done her duty between her

offending brother and her enraged father with less strain and violence

of suffering than might have been imagined. And she had got through the

more quiet years since without bitterness, with a self-adaptation to the

primitive monotony of existence which was much helped, as most such

virtues are, by temperament. She had formed her own theory of life, as

most people do by the time they reach even the earliest stages of middle

age; and this theory was the philosophical one that happiness, or the

calm which does duty for happiness in most mature lives, was in reality

very independent of events; that it came from within, not from without;

and that life was wonderfully equal, neither bringing so much good, nor

so much evil, as people of lively imaginations gave it credit for doing.

Thus she had herself lived, not unhappy, except at the very crisis of

the family life. She had suffered then. Who could hope (she said to

herself) to do other than suffer one time or another in their life? But

since then the calm and regularity of existence had come back, the

routine which charms time away and brings content. There had no doubt

been expectations in her mind which had come to nothing--expectations of

more active joy, more actual well-being, than had ever fallen to her

lot; but these expectations had gradually glided away, and no harm had

been done. If she had no intensity of enjoyment, neither had she any

wretchedness. She had enough to do; her life was full, and she was

fairly happy. So she said to herself; so she had said many a day to Mr.

Pen, who shook his mildly melancholy head and dissented--as far as he

ever dissented from anything said by Miss Mary. Her brother was

lost--away--wandering in the darkness of the great world as in a desert.

But if he had been near at hand, absorbed in his married life, his wife,

who was not of her species, and his unknown children, would not he have

been just as much lost to Mary? So she persuaded herself at least; and

so lived tranquilly, happy enough--certainly not unhappy;--and why

should an ordinary mortal, youth being over, wish for more?

Now, however, all at once, so great a change had happened to her, that

Mary could no longer understand, or even believe in, this state of mind

which had been hers for so many years. Perfectly still, tranquil,

fearing nothing--when her own flesh and blood were in such warfare in

the world! How was it possible? Wondering pangs of self-reproach seized

her; mysteries of death and of birth, such as had never touched her

maidenly quiet, seemed to surround her, and mock at her former ease. All

this time the gates of heaven had been opening and shutting to John.

Hope sometimes, sometimes despair, love, anguish, want, pain, had

struggled for him, while she had sat and looked on so calmly, and

reasoned so placidly about the general equality of life. How could she

have done it? The revelation was as painful as it was overwhelming.

Nature seized upon her with a grip of iron, and avenged upon her in a

moment all the indifferences of her previous life. The appeal of these

frightened children, the solemn charge laid upon her by her brother,

awoke her with a start and shiver. How had she dared to sit and look

through calm windows, or on the threshold by her tranquil door, upon

the struggles, pangs, and labours of the other human creatures about

her? Was it excuse enough that she was neither wife nor mother? had she

therefore nothing to do in guarding, and continuing, and handing down

the nobler successions of life? Mary was startled altogether out of the

state of mind habitual to her. Instead of remaining the calm lady of the

manor, the female Squire, the lawgiver of the village which she had

hitherto been--a little above the problems that were brought to her, a

little wanting in consideration of motives and meaning, perhaps now and

then too decided in her judgment, seeing the distinction between right

and wrong too clearly, and entertaining a supreme, though gentle

contempt for the trimmings and compromises, as well as for the fusses

and agitations of the ordinary world--she felt herself to have plunged

all at once into the midst of those agitations at a single step. She

became anxious, timorous, yet rash, faltering even in opinion,

hesitating, vacillating--she who had been so decided and so calm. Her

feelings were all intensified, the cords of her nature tightened, as it

were, vibrating to the lightest touch. And at the same time, which was

strange enough, while thus the little circle, in which she stood, became

full of such intense, unthought-of interest, the world widened around

her as it had never widened before; into darknesses and silences

indeed--but still with an extended horizon which expanded her heart.

John was there in the wide unknown, which stretched round this one warm,

lighted spot, wandering she knew not where, a solitary man. She had

never realized him so before; and not only John, but thousands like him,

strangers, wanderers, strugglers with fate. This sudden breath of

novelty, of enlightenment, expanded her heart like a sob. Her composure,

her satisfaction, her tranquillity fled from her; but how much greater,

more real and true, more penetrating and actual, became her existence

and the world! And all this was produced, not by any great mental

enlightenment, any sudden development of character, but by the simple

fact that two small helpless creatures had been put into her hands and

made absolutely dependent upon her. This was all; but the whole world

could not have been more to Mary. It changed her in every way. She who

had been so rooted in her place, so absorbed in her occupations, would

have relinquished all, had it been necessary, and gone out solitary into

the world for the children. Could there be any office so important, any

trust so precious? This, which sounded like the vulgarest commonplace,

and at the same time most fictitious high-flown sentiment, on the lips

of Mrs. Pennithorne, became all at once, in a moment, the leading

principle of Miss Musgrave’s life.

But she had to undergo various petty inconveniences from the curiosity

of her neighbours, and their anxiety to advise her as to what she should

do in the “trying circumstances.” What could she know about children?

Mrs. Pen, for one, thought it very important to give Miss Musgrave the

benefit of her advice. She made a solemn visit to inspect them, and tell

her what she ought to do. The little boy, she felt sure, was delicate,

and would require a great deal of care; but the thing that troubled Mrs.

Pennithorne the most was that Miss Musgrave could not be persuaded to

put on mourning for her brother’s wife. Notwithstanding that it was, as

Mary pleaded, five years since she died, the vicar’s wife thought that

crape would be a proof that all “misunderstandings” were over, and would

show a Christian feeling. And when she could not make this apparent to

the person principally concerned, she did all she could to impress it

upon her husband, whom she implored to “speak to”--both father and

daughter--on the subject. Most people would have been all the more

particular to put on crape, and to wear it deep, because there had been

“misunderstandings.” “Misunderstandings!” cried Mr. Pen. It was not,

however, he who spoke to Miss Musgrave, but she who spoke to him on this

important subject; and what she said somewhat bewildered the vicar, who

could not fathom her mind in this respect.

“Emily thinks we should put on mourning,” she said. “And, do you know, I

really believe that is the reason that poor John is so much more in my

thoughts?”

“What--the mourning?” the vicar asked faltering.

“_Her_ death. Hitherto the idea of one has been mingled with that of the

other. Now he is just John; everything else has melted away; there is

nothing but himself to think of. He has never been only John before. Do

you know what I mean, Mr. Pen?”

The vicar shook his head. He wondered if this could be a touch of

feminine jealousy, knowing that even Mary was not perfect; and this gave

him a momentary pang.

“I don’t suppose that I should feel so;--I was very fond of John--but I,

of course, could not be jealous--I mean of his love for one

unworthy----”

“How do you know even that she was unworthy? It is not that, Mr. Pen.

But she was nothing to us, and confused him in our minds. Now he is

himself--and where is he?” said Miss Musgrave, with tears in her eyes.

“In God’s hands--in God’s hands, Miss Mary! and God bless him wherever

he is--and I humbly beg your pardon,” cried Mr. Pen, with an excess of

compunction which she scarcely understood. His feelings were almost too

warm Mary thought.

And as the news got spread through those invisible channels which convey

reports all over a country, many were the visitors that came to the

Castle to see what the story meant, though they did not announce this as

the object of their visit. Among these visitors the most important was

Lady Stanton, who had been Mary’s rival in beauty when the days were.

They had not been rivals indeed to their own consciousness, but warm

friends, in their youth and day of triumph; but events had separated the

two girls, and the two women rarely met, and had outgrown all

acquaintance; for Lady Stanton had been involved, almost more

immediately than Mary Musgrave, in the tragedy which had so changed life

at Penninghame, and this had changed their relations like everything

else. This lady arrived one day to the great surprise of everybody, and

came in with timid eagerness and haste, growing red and growing pale as

she held out her hands to her old friend.

“We never quarrelled,” she said; “why should we never see each other? Is

there any reason?”

“No reason,” said Miss Musgrave, making room upon the sofa beside her.

But such an unexpected appeal agitated her, and for the moment she could

not satisfy herself as to the object of the visit. Lady Stanton,

however, was of a very simple mind, and could not conceal what that

object was.

“Oh, Mary,” she said, the tears coming into her eyes, “I heard that

John’s children had come home. Is it true? You know I always took an

interest----” And here she stopped, making a gulp of some emotion which,

to a superficial spectator, might have seemed out of place in Sir Henry

Stanton’s wife. She had grown stout, but that does not blunt the

feelings. “I should like to see them,” she said, with an appeal in her

eyes which few people could withstand. And Mary was touched too, partly

by this sudden renewal of an old love, partly by the thought of all that

had happened since she last sat by her old companion’s side, who was a

Mary too.

“I cannot bring them here,” she said, “but I will take you to the hall

to see them. My father likes them to be kept--in their own part of the

house.”

“Oh, I hope he is kind to them!” said Lady Stanton, clasping her white

dimpled hands. “Are they like your family? I hope they are like the

Musgraves. But likenesses are so strange--mine are not like me,” said

the old beauty, plaintively. Perhaps the trouble in her face was less on

account of her own private trials in this respect than out of alarm lest

John Musgrave’s children should bear the likeness of another face of

which she could not think with kindness. There was so little disguise in

her mind, that this sentiment also found its way into words. “Oh Mary,”

she cried, “you and I were once the two beauties, and everybody was at

our feet; but that common girl was more thought of than either you or

me.”

“Hush!” said Mary Musgrave, putting up her hand; “she is dead.”

“Is she dead?” Lady Stanton was struck with a momentary horror; for it

was a contemporary of whom they were speaking, and she could not but be

conscious of a little shiver in her own well-developed person, to think

of the other who was clay. “That is why they have come home?” she said,

half under her breath.

“Yes; and because he cannot carry them about with him wherever he

goes.”

“You have heard from him, Mary? I hope he is doing well. I hope he is

not--very--heart-broken. If you are writing you might say I inquired. He

might like to know that he was remembered; and you know I always

took--an interest----”

“I know you always had the kindest heart.”

“I always took an interest, notwithstanding everything; and--will he

come home? Now surely he might come home. It is so long ago; and surely

now no one would interfere.”

“I cannot say anything about that, for I don’t know,” said Miss

Musgrave; “he does not say. Will you come and see the children, Lady

Stanton?”

“Oh, Mary, what have I done that you should call me Lady Stanton? I have

never wished to stand aloof. It has not been my doing. Do you remember

what friends we were? and I couldn’t call you Miss Musgrave if I tried.

When I heard of the children I thought this was an opening,” said Lady

Stanton, faltering a little. She told her little fib, which was an

innocent one; but she was true at bottom and told it ill; and what

difference did it make whether she sought the children for Mary’s sake,

or Mary for the children’s? Miss Musgrave accepted her proffered embrace

with kindness, yet with a smile. She was touched by the emotion of her

old friend, and by the remnants of that “interest” which had survived

fifteen years of married life, and much increase of substance. Perhaps a

harsher judge might have thought the emotion slightly improper. But poor

John had got but hard measure in the world; and a little compensating

faithfulness was a salve to his sister’s feelings. She led her visitor

downstairs and through the narrow passage, in all her wealth of silk and

amplitude of shadow. Mary herself was still as slim as when they had

skimmed about these passages together; and she was Mary still; for once

in a way she felt herself not without some advantage over Sir Henry’s

wife.

Nello was standing full in the light when the ladies went into the hall,

and he it was who came forward to be caressed by the pretty lady, who

took to him all the more warmly that she had no boys of her own. Lady

Stanton fairly cried over his fair head, with its soft curls. “What a

little Musgrave he is!” she cried; “how like his father! I cannot help

being glad he is like his father.” But when this vision of splendour

and beauty, which Lilias came forward to admire, saw the little girl,

she turned from her with a slight shiver. “Ah!” she cried, retreating,

“is that--the little girl?” And the sight silenced her, and drove her

away.

CHAPTER VIII.

LADY STANTON.

Lady Stanton drove home from that visit with her heart and her eyes

full. She was not intellectual, nor even clever, but a soft creature,

made up of feelings easily touched, not perhaps very profound, nor

likely to obscure to her the necessary course of daily living, but still

true enough and faithful in their way. She might have been able to make

sacrifices had she come in the way of them or found them necessary, but

no such chance of moral devotion had come to her; nor had any teachings

of experience or philosophy of middle age, such as works upon the

majority of us, hardened her soft heart, or swept away the little

romantic impulses, the quick sensibilities of youth. A nature so fresh

indeed was scarcely compatible with much exercise of the intellectual

faculties at all. Lady Stanton rarely read, and never under any

circumstances read anything (of her own will and impulse) which rose

above the most primitive and familiar elements; but on the other hand,

the gentle sentimentalities which she did read went straight to her

heart. She thought Mrs. Hemans the first of poets, and cried her eyes

out over Mr. Dickens’s “Little Nell.” Anything about an unhappy love, or

about a dead child, would move her more than Shakespeare; and she shed

tears as ready as the morning dew. Practically, it is true, she had gone

through a certain amount of experience like other people, and her

everyday life was more or less affected by it; but in her heart Lady

Stanton was still the same Mary Ridley whose gentle being had been

involved in the wildest of tragic stories, even though she had come

down to so commonplace a daily routine now. That story, so long past,

took the place in her being of all the poetry and romance which the most

of us get glorified from the hands of genius; and all her associations

were attached to that one personal episode, which was unparalleled in

life as she knew life. When she read one of the novels which pleased

her, she would compare the situations in it with this; when she lingered

over the vague melodious verses which represented poetry to her, there

was always a little appropriation in her heart of their soft measures to

the dim long past emergency. And now, here it was brought back upon her

by every circumstance that could bring the past near. Her love--was it

her love that was recalled to her? But then there was no love in it

properly so called. She had taken an interest in John Musgrave, her

friend’s brother--always had taken an interest in him; but she had no

right to do so at any time, being betrothed to young Lord Stanton, who,

for his part, had forgotten her for the sake of that dressmaker’s girl

at Penninghame, to whom John Musgrave too had given his heart. What a

complication it was! Mary Ridley, who had a pretty property close to

his, had been destined for Lord Stanton from the beginning of time, and

the boy and girl had lightly acquiesced, and had been happy enough in

the parental arrangement. They had liked each other--well enough; they

had been as gay as possible in the lightheartedness of their youth, and

had taken this for happiness. Why should not they be happy? they were

exactly suited to each other. She was the prettiest girl in the county

(except the other Mary), and he was proud of her sweet looks, and fond

of her, certainly fond of her; whereas she, unawakened, undisturbed,

notwithstanding the interest she had always taken in John Musgrave,

would have made him the most affectionate and charming wife in the

world. Thus the early story had flowed on all smoothness and sunshine,

the flowers blooming, the sun shining; until, one fatal day, young Lord

Stanton, riding through Penninghame village on his way to the old

Castle, had seen Lily, Miss Price’s assistant, at the window of the

dressmaker’s parlour. Fatal day! full of all the issues of death.

It is needless to inquire what manner of woman this Lily was, for whom

these two men lost themselves and their existence. She did not know of

any tragedy likely to be involved, but brushed about in her homely

village way through these webs of fate, twisting the threads innocently

enough, and throwing the weaving into endless confusion. Whether Lord

Stanton was murdered by John Musgrave, as many people thought at first,

or killed accidentally in a hot, sudden encounter, as most people

believed now, was a thing which perhaps would never be cleared up. The

guilty man (if he was guilty) had paid the penalty of his deed in exile,

in poverty, in misery, ever since. His life had been as much broken off

at that point as Stanton’s was who died--and the two families had been

equally plunged into woe and mourning; though indeed it was the

Musgraves who suffered most, by reason of the stigma put upon them, by

the shame of John’s flight and of his marriage, and by the fact that he

was still a criminal pursued by justice, though justice had long

slackened her pursuit. As for the Stantons, there was nobody to mourn

much. Aunts and uncles and cousins console themselves sooner than

fathers and mothers, and the boy brother, who had succeeded to the

title, had been too young to be capable of sustained sorrow. Everybody

at that time had sympathized with the young bride who had lost her

future husband, and her coronet, and all the joys of life in this sudden

and miserable way, for there was no concealing what the cause of the

quarrel was, and that Lord Stanton had been unfaithful to the beautiful

Mary. Nobody knew, however, the complication which gave her a double

pang, the knowledge that not only the man who was her own property, her

betrothed husband, but the man in whom, innocently in girlish

simplicity, she had avowed herself to “take an interest,” had preferred

to her the village Lily, who was nobody and nothing, who had not been

blameless between them, and whom everybody condemned. Everybody

condemned: but _they_ loved her. Both of them! this secret and poignant

addition to her trial Mary Ridley never confided to any one, but it

still thrilled through and through her at any allusion to that old long

past tragedy. Both of them!--the man whose best love was due to her, and

the man who had caught her own girlish shy eyes, all unaware to either,

somehow, innocently, unavowedly, in such a visionary way as harmed no

one; both! It was hard. She wept for them both tenderly, abundantly, for

the one not less than the other; and a little--with a cry in her heart

of protestation and appeal--for herself, put aside, thrown over for this

woman who was nothing, who was nobody, yet who was better beloved than

she. All this had welled up in Lady Stanton’s heart when she saw the

little girl who had Lily’s face. She had been unable to restrain the

sting of old wonder and pain; the keen piercing of the old wound which

she had felt to her heart. Both of them! and now a little ghost of this

Lily, her shadow, her representative, had come back again to look her in

the face. She cried as she drove back that long silent way by herself to

Elfdale. It was seldom she had the chance of being so long alone, and

there was a kind of luxury about it, not unmingled with compunction and

a sense of guilt.

For it still remains to be told how Mary Ridley came to be Lady Stanton,

although Lord Stanton, who was the betrothed husband of her youth, had

been killed, and all that apparently smooth and straightforward story

had ended in grief and separation. She had married after some years a

middle-aged cousin of her dead lover, Sir Henry Stanton, who had not

long before come back from India where he had spent most of his life. It

was but a poor fate for the beautiful Mary. Sir Henry had left his

career and a full accomplished life behind him, when he first came to

settle at Elfdale to the passive existence of a gentleman in the

country, who could scarcely be called a country gentleman. He had been

married and had children, a family of sons and daughters, and had only a

second chapter of less vivid meaning, a sort of postscriptal life, to

offer her. Why she had accepted him nobody could well say,--but she made

him a good wife, kind, smiling, always gentle, though sadly put to it

now and then to preserve unbroken the sweet good-temper with which

nature had gifted her. So fair and sweet as she was, to get only the

remains of a man’s heart after all, to be made use of as their chaperon

and caretaker by his big, unlovely daughters; to have her own children,

two dainty, lovely, fairy girls, kept in the background,--no more than

“the little ones”--of no account in the house--all these things were

somewhat trying, and a strange reversal of all that life had seemed to

promise her, and all that had been indicated by the early worship which

surrounded her youth. But perhaps few women could have carried this

inappropriate fate as well. All those contradictions of circumstances,

all those travesties of what might have been, met with no gloom or

sourness of disappointment in her. The very fact that she was Lady

Stanton carried with it a certain aggravation, a parrot-like adhesion to

the letter and change of the spirit, such as had been in the promises

made to Macbeth. Mary might have thought herself the victim of a

perverse fate, keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to

the heart, had she been perversely disposed--but instead of that, all

her thoughts at the present moment were occupied with the fact that she

had taken an unfair advantage of Laura and Lydia, in not telling them

where she was going, that they might have come with her had they been so

disposed. She had stolen a march upon them; they would think it unkind.

But then she could not have gone to Penninghame had Laura and Lydia been

with her. Though they were so much less concerned than she had been,

they kept up the Stanton feud with the Musgraves. They had no “interest”

in John--on the contrary, they were of the few who still believed that

he had “murdered” Lord Stanton--and would have had him hanged if he ever

returned to England. They would not have entered the house, or permitted

any kind inquiries in their presence. And therefore it was that she had

stolen away without letting them know, and was at present conscious--in

addition to all the jumble of emotions in her heart--of a certain prick

of guilt.

The Stantons were a great county family as well as the Musgraves, but in

a very different way. When the Musgraves had been at their greatest, the

Stantons had been nobody. They were nothing more than persistent,

thrifty folk at first, adding field to field, building on ever a new

addition to their old house. Then wealth had come, and then local

importance; and last of all celebrity. The first who brought anything

like fame to the name, and introduced the race to the knowledge of the

world, was a soldier, a general under the Duke of Marlborough, who got

a baronetcy and a reputation, and had a handsome new coat of arms

invented for him--very appropriately gained indeed, on the field of

battle, just as the augmentation of the Musgraves’ blazon had been

gained, but a few hundred years too late unfortunately, and therefore

not telling for nearly so much as if it had been won in the fifteenth

century. The next man was a lawyer, who so cultivated that profession

that it brought his son, in the reign of the Georges, to the bench, and

a peerage--and since that time the family had taken their place among

the magnates of the north country. Young Walter Lord Stanton was a much

greater man than John Musgrave, though not half so great a man in one

sense of the word. Two or three generations, however, tell just as much

upon the individual mind as twenty, and the young peer was conscious of

all his advantages over the commoner, without any sense of inferiority

in point of race. And now the other Lord Stanton, Geoffrey, who had

succeeded that unfortunate young man, was the greatest personage of his

years in the district, regarded with interest by all his neighbours and

with more than interest by some; for was it not in his power to make one

of his feminine contemporaries, however humble she might be by birth,

and however poor in this world’s goods, a great lady?--and so long as

human nature remains as it is, this cannot cease to be a very potent

attraction. Indeed the wonder is that young women should not be

altogether demoralized by the perpetual recurrence of such chances of

undeserved, unearned elevation. Young Lord Stanton could do this. He

could give fine houses and lands, a title, and all the good things of

this earth to his cousin Laura, or his cousin Lydia, or any other girl

in the county that pleased him. Therefore it cannot be wondered at if

his appearance fluttered the dovecotes with sentiments as powerful and

more pleasant than those which fill the nests at the appearance of

predatory hawk or eagle. But any such flutter of feeling was held in

Elfdale to be an unwarrantable impertinence on the part of the other

ladies of the county. Long ago, at the time when at six years old he had

succeeded to his stepbrother, there had been a tacit family

understanding to the effect that one of Sir Henry’s daughters should be

the young lord’s wife. Sir Henry, though old enough to have been the

father of his murdered cousin would have been his heir but for

Geoff--and it was universally allowed to be hard upon him that when such

an unlikely chance happened, as that young Lord Stanton should die,

there should be this boy coming in the way forestalling his claim.

Nobody had wanted that child who was suddenly turned into a personage of

so much importance--not even his father, who had married with a

single-minded idea of being comfortable in his own person, and who was

much annoyed by the prospect of “a second family”--a prospect which was

happily, however, cut short by his own speedy death. When therefore

Walter Lord Stanton was killed, it was very generally felt that Sir

Henry had a real grievance in the existence of the little stepbrother,

who was in the way of everybody except his poor mother, whom the old

lord had married to nurse him, and who had taken the unwarrantable

liberty of adding little Geoffrey to the family. Poor little Geoff! he

was bullied on all hands so long as his brother lived; and then, what a

change came over his life and that of his mother, who was as pale and

shy as her boy! Great good fortune may change even complexion, and Geoff

as he grew to be a man was no longer pale. But Sir Henry never quite got

over the blow dealt him by this succession. He had not resented Walter.

Walter was so to speak the natural heir--and nobody expected him to die;

but when he did die, so out of all calculation, to think there should be

that boy! Sir Henry did not get over it for years--it was a positive

wrong not to be forgotten.

Accordingly, as a small compensation to his injured feelings, all the

family had tacitly decided that Geoff should marry one of his cousins.

This, it is true, was but a very small compensation, for Sir Henry was

not the kind of parent who lives in his children and is indifferent to

his own glory and greatness. Even now, fifteen years after the event, he

was not an old man, and it made up very poorly for his personal

disappointment that Laura or Lydia should share the advancement of which

he had been deprived. Still it was so understood. Geoff paid many

holiday visits at Elfdale, though there was no particular friendship

between Sir Henry and the widowed Lady Stanton, who was Geoff’s guardian

as well as his mother, and things were going smoothly enough between

the young people. They liked each other, and had no objection to be

together as much as was possible, and already the sisters had settled

between them “which of us it is to be.” This Lydia, who was the most

strong-minded, had thought desirable from the moment when she had become

aware what was intended. “It does not matter at present,” she said, “we

are none of us in love, and one is just as good as another, but we had

better draw lots, or something--or toss up, as the boys do.” And what

the mystic ordeal had been which decided this question we are unable to

say, but decided it was in favour of Laura, who was the prettiest, and

only a year younger than Geoff. Lydia, as soon as the die was cast,

constituted herself the guardian of her sister’s fortunes so far as the

young lord was concerned, and made herself into a quaint and really

pretty version of a matchmaking mother on Laura’s behalf. Thus it will

be seen that it was into the very heart of the opposite faction that

Lady Stanton drove home with those tears in her soft eyes, and all that

commotion of old thoughts in her heart. If they could have seen into it

and known that it was the image of John Musgrave that had roused that

commotion, what would these girls have said, towards whom she felt so

guilty as having stolen a march upon them? “The murderer!” they would

have cried with a shriek of horror. Lady Stanton could not, it is clear,

have taken them to Penninghame with her, and surely she had a right to

use her own horses and carriage; but still she felt guilty as she

subdued, with all the effort she could make, the excitement in her

heart.

When she went in, she retired at once upstairs, and announced herself,

through her maid, to have a headache, and had a cup of tea in her own

room, to which her own children, little Fanny and Annie, a pair of

inseparables, came noiselessly like two doves on the wing. Annie and

Fanny liked nothing in the world so much as to get mamma to themselves

like this, in the stillness of her room, with everybody else shut out.

One was ten and the other eleven; they were about the same height, had

the same flowing curly locks of light brown hair, the same rose-tinted

faces, walked in each other’s steps, or rather flew about their little

world of carpeted stairs and passages, together, always in sudden soft

flights--like doves, as we have said, on the wing. “Is your head very

bad, mamma?” they said; and the gentle hypocrite blushed as she replied.

No, it was not very bad; a little quiet would make it quite well. They

took off her “things” for her, and brought her her soft white

dressing-gown, in which she looked like the mother of all the doves, and

let down her hair, which was not much darker, and quite as abundant as

their own--and gave her her cup of tea, thus soothing every tingling

nerve; and by this time Lady Stanton’s head was not bad at all, though

now and then one of them would administer eau-de-cologne or rosewater.

She told them of the children she had seen--little orphans who had no

mother--and the two crept closer to her, to hear of that awful,

incomprehensible desolation, each clasping an arm of hers with two

small, eager hands. To be without a mother! Annie and Fanny held their

breath in reverential silence and pity; but wondered a little that it

was the little boy (“called Nello--what a funny name!”) that mamma spoke

of, not the girl, who was ten (“just the same age as me”).

But not even the sympathy of her children, and the trance of interest

which kept them breathless, could make Lady Stanton speak of the little

girl. Her mother’s face! that face which had taken the best of

everything in existence from Mary Ridley--how could Lady Stanton speak

of it? She made some efforts to get over the feeling, but not with much

success. But the rest restored her, and enabled her to appear, her

headache quite charmed away, and her nerves still, at dinner. She took a

little more care with her toilette than usual, by way of propitiation to

the angry gods. And though Laura and Lydia were not much short of twenty

years younger than their stepmother, it would have been an indifferent

judge who had turned from her to them even in the fresh bloom of their

youth. She came downstairs very conciliatory, ready to make the best of

everything, and to make amends to them for all disloyal thoughts, and

for having cheated them of their drive.

“I hope your head is better, my Lady,” said Laura. “We have been

wondering all the afternoon wherever you had gone.”

The girls had a certain strain of vulgarity in them somehow, which could

not be quite eradicated from their speech.

“I went out for a drive as usual,” said Lady Stanton. “I thought I heard

you say that you meant to walk.”

“Oh yes; we wanted to walk to the village to settle about the school

children,” said Laura; and Lydia added, “But I am sure we never said

so,” and looked suspiciously at her stepmother.

“I went by the Langdale woods, and all the way to Penninghame water,”

said the culprit, very explanatory. “The lake looked so cold. I should

not like to live near it. It chills all the landscape, and I am sure

puts dreary thoughts into people’s heads. And as I was there, Henry,”

she added, addressing her husband, “I did what you will think an odd

thing.” Lady Stanton’s bosom heaved a little, and her breath came quick.

It would have been far easier to say nothing about it; but then she knew

by experience that everything gets found out. She made a momentary pause

before the confession which she tried to treat so lightly. “I ran in for

a moment to the old Castle and saw Mary--Mary, you know. We were great

friends, she and I, when we were young, and it was such a temptation

passing the old place.”

“What whim took you near the old place?” said Sir Henry, gruffly. “I

cannot think of any place in the world that should lie less in your

way.”

“Well, that is true,” she said, breathing a little more freely now that

the worst was told, “and the proof of it is that I have not been there

for years.”

“I hope it will be still longer before you go again,” said her husband.

He did not say any more because of the servants, and because he had too

much good sense to do or say anything that would lessen his wife’s

importance; but he was not pleased, and this troubled her, for she had a

delicate conscience. She looked at him wistfully, and was imprudent

enough in her anxiety to pursue the subject, and make bad worse.

“It is strange to see an old friend whom you have known when you were

young, after so many years,” she said; “though Mary is not so much

altered as I am. You remember her, Henry? She was always so pretty;

handsomer than--any one I know.”

It was on her lips to say “handsomer than ever I was,” which was the

real sentiment in her mind--a sentiment partly originating in the

semi-guilt and humility produced by the consciousness of having grown

stout, a kind of development which troubles women. She was very deeply

aware of this, and it silenced all the claims of vanity. She had lost

her figure; whereas Mary was still slim and straight as an arrow.

Whatever might have been once, there was now no comparison between the

two.

“Do you mean Miss Musgrave?” cried the girls, one after the other. “Miss

Musgrave! that old creature--that old maid--that man’s sister?”

“She is no older than I am,” said Lady Stanton, with a flush on her

face; “she was my dear friend in the old days. She is beautiful still,

as much as she ever was, I think, and good; she has always been good.”

“That will do,” said Sir Henry interposing. “We need not discuss the

family; but I think you will see, my dear, that there could not be much

pleasure in any intercourse at this time of day--whatever might have

been the case when you were young.”

“Intercourse--there could never be any intercourse,” cried Lydia, coming

to the front. “Fancy, papa! intercourse with such people--after all that

has happened! That would be tempting Providence; and it would be an

insult to Geoff.”

“Let Geoff take care of his own affairs,” said Sir Henry, angrily; and

he gave a forcible twist to the conversation, and threw it into another

channel; but Lady Stanton was very silent all the evening afterwards.

She had wanted to conciliate, and she had not succeeded; and how indeed

could she, among her hostile family, keep up any intercourse with her

old friend?

CHAPTER IX.

AT ELFDALE.

Nevertheless this meeting could not be got out of Lady Stanton’s mind.

She thought of it constantly; and in the stillness of her own room, when

nobody but the little girls were by, she talked to them of the children,

especially of little Nello, who had attracted her most. What a place of

rest and refreshment that was for her, after all her trials with Laura

and Lydia, and the seriousness of Sir Henry, who was displeased that she

should have gone to Penninghame, and showed it in the way most painful

to the soft-hearted woman, by silence, and a gravity which made her feel

her indiscretion to her very heart. But notwithstanding Sir Henry’s

annoyance, she could not but relieve her mind by going over the whole

scene with Fanny and Annie, who knew, without a word said, that these

private talks in which they delighted--in which their mother told them

all manner of stories, and took them back with her into the time of her

youth, and made them acquainted with all her early friends--were not to

be repeated, but were their own special privilege to be kept for

themselves alone. They had already heard of Mary Musgrave, and knew her

intimately, as children do know the early companions of whom an

indulgent mother tells them, to satisfy their boundless appetite for

narrative. “And what are they to Mary?” the little girls asked,

breathless in their interest about these strange children. They had

already been told; but the relationship of aunt did not seem a very

tender one to Annie and Fanny, who knew only their father’s sisters, old

ladies to whom the elder girls, children of the first marriage, seemed

the only legitimate and correct Stantons, and who looked down upon these

little interlopers as unnecessary intruders. “Only their aunt!--is that

all?”

They were not in Lady Stanton’s room this time, but seated on an ottoman

in the great bow-window, one on either side of her. Laura and Lydia were

out; Sir Henry was in his library; the coast was clear; no one was

likely to come in and dismiss the children with a sharp word, such

as--“Go away, little girls--there is no saying a word to your mother

while you are there!” or “The little ones again! When we were children

we were kept in the nursery.” The children were aware now that when such

speeches were made, it was better for them not to wait for their

mother’s half-pained, half-beseeching look, but to run away at once, not

to provoke any discussion. They were wise little women, and were, by

nature, of their mother’s faction in this house, where both they and

she, though she was the mistress of it, were more or less on sufferance.

But at present everybody was out of the way. They were ready to fly off,

with their pretty hair fluttering like a gleam of wings, should any of

their critics appear; but the girls had gone a long way, and Sir Henry

was very busy. It was a chance such as seldom occurred.

“All? when children have not a mother, their aunt is next best;

sometimes she is even better--much better,” said Lady Stanton, thinking

in her heart that John’s wife was not likely to have been of any great

service to her children. “And Mary is not like any one you know. She is

a beautiful lady--not old, like Aunt Rebecca--though Aunt Rebecca is

always very kind. I hope you have not forgotten those beautiful sashes

she gave you.”

“I don’t think very much of an aunt,” said Fanny, who was the saucy one,

with a shrug of her little shoulders.

“It must be different,” said Annie, hugging her mother’s arm. They were

not impressed by the happiness of those poor little stranger children in

being with Mary. “Has the little girl got no name, mamma--don’t you know

her name? You say Nello; but that is the boy; though it is more like a

girl than a boy.”

“It is German--or something--I don’t remember. The little girl is called

Lilias. Oh yes, it is a pretty name enough, but I don’t like it. I once

knew one whom I did not approve of----”

“We knew,” said Fanny, nodding her head at Annie, who nodded back again;

“Mamma, we knew you did not like the little girl.”

“I! not like her! Oh, children, how can you think me so unjust? I hope I

am not unjust,” cried Lady Stanton, almost with tears. “Mary is very

proud of her little niece. And she is very good to little Nello. Yes,

perhaps I like him best, but there is no harm in that. He is a

delightful little boy. If you could have had a little brother like

that----”

“We have only--big brothers,” said Annie, regretfully; “that is

different.”

“Yes, that is different. You could not imagine Charley with long, fair

curls, and a little tunic, could you?” This made the children laugh, and

concealed a little sigh on their mother’s part; for Charlie was a big

dragoon, and Lady Stanton foresaw would not have too much consideration,

should they ever require his help, for the little sisters whom he

undisguisedly felt to be in his way.

“I wonder if she wishes he was a little girl.”

“I wonder! How she must want to have a sister! A little brother would be

very nice, too; we used to play at having a little brother; but it would

not be like Fanny and me. Does she like being at the Castle, mamma?”

It troubled Lady Stanton that they should think of nothing but this

little girl. It was Lilias that had won their interest, and she could

not tell them why it was that she shrank from Lilias. “They have left

their poor papa all alone and sad,” she said, in a low voice. “I used to

know him too. And it must make them sad to think of him so far away.”

Once more the children were greatly puzzled. They were not on such terms

of tender intimacy with their father as were thus suggested, but, on the

whole, were rather pleased than otherwise when he was absent, and did

not follow him very closely with their thoughts. They were slightly

humbled as they realized the existence of so much greater susceptibility

and lovingness on the part of the little girl in whom they were so much

interested, than they themselves possessed. How she surpassed them in

this as well as in other things! She talked German as well as English

(if it was German; their mother was not clear what language it

was)--think of that! So perhaps it was not wonderful that she should be

so much fonder of her papa. And a moment of silence ensued. Lady Stanton

did not remark the confused pause in the minds of her children, because

her own mind was filled with wistful compassion for the lonely man whom

she had been thinking of more or less since ever she left Penninghame.

Where was he, all alone in the world, shut out from his own house, an

exile from his country--even his children away from him, in whom perhaps

he had found some comfort?

This momentary silence was interrupted abruptly by the sound of a voice.

“Are you there, Cousin Mary? and what are you putting your heads

together about?”

At this sound, before they found out what it was, the children

disengaged themselves suddenly each from her separate clinging to her

mother’s arm, and approached each other as if for flight; but, falling

back to their places when they recognized the voice, looked at each

other, and said both together, with tones of relief, “Oh, it’s only

Geoff!”

Nothing more significant of the inner life of the family, and the

position of these two little intruders, could have been.

Geoff came forward with his boyish step and voice in all the smiling

confidence of youth. “I thought I should startle you. Is it a story that

is being told, or are you plotting something? Fanny and Annie, leave her

alone for a moment. It is my turn now.”

“O Geoff! it is about a little girl and a boy--mamma will tell you too,

if you ask her; and there’s nobody in. We thought at first you were

papa, but he’s so busy. Come and sit here.”

Geoff came up, and kissed Lady Stanton on her soft, still beautiful

cheek. He was a son of the house, and privileged. He sat down on the

stool the children had placed for him. “I am glad there’s nobody in,” he

said. “Of course the girls will be back before I go; but I wanted to

speak to you--about something.”

“Shall the children go, Geoff?”

“Fancy! do you want them to hate me? No, go on with the story. This is

what I like. Isn’t it pleasant, Annie and Fanny, to have her all to

ourselves? Do you mind me?”

“Oh, not in the least, Geoff--not in the very least. You are like--what

is he like, Annie?--a brother, not a big brother, like Charley: but

something young, something nice, like what mamma was telling us of--a

_little_ brother--grown up----”

“Is this a sneer at my height?” he said; “but go on, don’t let me stop

the story. I like stories--and most other pleasant things.”

“It was no story,” said Lady Stanton. “I was telling them only of some

children:--you are very good and forgiving, Geoff--but I fear you will

be angry with me when you know. I was--out by myself--and

notwithstanding all we have against them, I went to see Mary Musgrave.

There! I must tell you at once, and get it over. I shall be sorry if it

annoys you; but Mary and I,” she said, faltering, “were such friends

once, and I have not seen her for years.”

“Why should I be annoyed--why should I be angry? I am not an avenger.

Poor Cousin Mary! you were out--by yourself!--was that your only reason

for going?”

“Indeed it is true enough. It is very seldom I go out without the girls:

and they--feel strongly, you know, about that.”

“What have they to do with it? Yes, I know: they are _plus royalistes

que le roi_. But this is not the story.”

“Yes, indeed it is, my dear boy. I was telling Annie and Fanny of two

poor children. They belong to a man who is--banished from his own

country. He did wrong--when he was young--oh so many, so many years

ago!--and he is still wandering about the world without a home, and far

from his friends. He was young then, and now--it is so long ago;--ah,

Geoff, you must not be angry with me. The little children are with Mary.

She did not tell me much, for her heart did not soften to me as mine did

to her. But there they are; the mother dead who was at the bottom of it

all; and nobody to care for them but Mary; all through something that

happened before they were born.”

Lady Stanton grew red as she spoke, her voice trembled, her whole aspect

was full of emotion. The young man shook his head--

“I suppose a great many of us suffer from harm done before we were

born,” he said, gravely. “This is no solitary instance.”

“Ah, Geoff, it is natural, quite natural, that you should feel so. I

forgot how deeply you were affected by all that happened then.”

“I did not mean that,” he said, gravely. His youthful face had changed

out of its light-hearted calm. “Indeed I had heard something of this,

and I wanted to speak to you----”

“Run away, my darlings,” said Lady Stanton; “go and see what--nurse is

about. Make her go down with you to the village and take the tea and

sugar to the old women in the almshouses. This is the day--don’t you

remember?”

“So it is,” said Annie. “But we did not want to remember,” said Fanny;

“we liked better to stay with you.”

However, they went off, reluctant yet obedient. They were used to being

sent away. It was seldom their mother who did it, willingly--but

everybody else did it with peremptory determination--and the little

girls were used to obey. They untwined themselves from her arms, to

which they had been clinging, and went away close together, with a soft

rush and sweep as of one movement.

“There go the doves,” said Geoff, looking after them with kind

admiration like that of a brother. It pleased Lady Stanton to see the

friendly pleasure in them which lighted the young man’s eyes. Whoever

married him, he would always, she thought, be a brother to her neglected

children, who counted for so little in the family. She looked after them

with that mother-look which, whether in joy or sorrow, is close upon

tears. Then she turned to him with eyes softened by that unspeakable

tenderness:

“Whatever you wish,” she said. “Tell me, Geoff; I am ready to hear.”

“I am as bad as the rest. You have to send them away for me too.”

“There is some reason in it this time. If you have heard about the

little Musgraves you know how miserable it all is,” said Lady Stanton.

“The old man will have nothing to say to them. He lets them live there,

but takes no notice--his son’s children! And Mary has everything upon

her shoulders.”

“Cousin Mary, will it hurt you much to tell me all about it?” said the

young man. “Forgive me, I know it must be painful; but all that is so

long over, and everything is so changed----”

“You mean I have married and forgotten,” she said, her lips beginning to

quiver.

“I scarcely remember anything about it,” said Geoff, looking away from

her that his eyes might not disturb her more, “only a confused sort of

excitement and wretchedness, and then a strange new sense of importance.

We had been nobodies till then--my mother and I. But I have heard a few

things lately. Walter,--will it pain you if I speak of him?”

“Poor Walter!--no. Geoff, you must understand that Walter loved somebody

else better than me.”

She said this half in honest avowal of that humiliation which had been

one of the great wonders of her life, partly in excuse of her own easy

forgetfulness of him.

“I have heard that too, Cousin Mary, with wonder; but never mind. He

paid dearly for his folly. The other----”

“Geoff,” said Lady Stanton, with a trembling voice, “the other is living

still, and he has paid dearly for it all this time. We must not be hard

upon him. I do not want to excuse him--it would be strange if I should

be the one to excuse him; but only----”

“I am very sorry for him, Cousin Mary. I am glad you feel as I do.

Walter may have been in the wrong for anything I know. I do not think it

was murder.”

“That I am sure it was not! John Musgrave was not the man to do a

murder--oh, no, no; Geoff! he was not that kind of man!”

Geoff looked up surprised at her eager tone and the trembling in her

voice.

“You knew him--well?” he said, with that indifferent composure with

which people comment upon the past, not knowing what depths those are

over which they skim so lightly. Could he have seen into the agitation

in Lady Stanton’s heart! But he would not have understood nor realized

the commotion that was there.

“I always--took an interest in him,” she said, faltering; and then she

felt it her duty to do her best for him as an old friend. “I had known

him all my life, Geoff, as well as I knew Walter. He was hasty and

high-spirited, but so kind--he would have gone out of his way to help

any one. Before he saw that young woman everybody was fond of John.”

“Did you know _her_ too?”

“No, no; I did not know her. God forbid! She was the destruction of

every one who cared for her,” said Lady Stanton with a little outburst.

Then she made an effort to subdue herself. “Perhaps I am not just to

her,” she said with a faint smile. “She was preferred to me, you know,

Geoff; and they say a woman cannot forget that--perhaps it is true.”

“How could he? was he mad?” Geoff said. Geoff was himself tenderly,

filially in love with his cousin Mary. He thought there was nobody in

the world so beautiful and so kind. And even now she was not understood

as she ought to be. Sir Henry thought her a good enough wife, a faithful

creature, perfectly trustworthy, and so forth. It was in this light that

all regarded her. Something better than an upper servant, a little

dearer than a governess; something to be made use of, to do everything

for everybody. She who, Geoff thought in his enthusiasm, was more lovely

and sweet than the youngest of them, and ought to be held pre-eminent

and sacred by everybody round her. This was not the lot that had fallen

to her in life.

“So I am not the best judge, you see,” said Lady Stanton with a little

sigh. “In those days one felt more strongly perhaps. It all seems so

vivid and clear,” she added half apologetically, though without entirely

realizing how much light these half-confessions threw on her present

state of less lively feeling, “that is the effect of being young----”

“I think you will always be young,” he said tenderly; then added after a

pause, “Was it a quarrel about--the woman?--” He blushed himself as he

said so, feeling the wrong to her--yet only half knowing the wonder it

was in her thoughts, the double pain it brought.

“I think so. They were both fond of her; and Walter ought not to have

been fond of her. John--was quite free. He was in no way engaged to any

one. He had a right to love her if he pleased. But Walter interfered,

and he was richer, greater, a far better match. So I suppose she

wavered. This is my own explanation of it. They met then when their

hearts were wild against each other, and there was a struggle. Ah,

Geoff! Has it not cost John Musgrave his life as well as Walter? Has he

ever ventured to show himself in his own country since? And now their

poor little children have come home to Mary; but he will never be able

to come home.”

“It is hard,” said Geoff thoughtfully. “I wish I knew the law. Fifteen

years is it? I was about six then. Could anything be done? I wonder if

anything could be done.”

She put her hand on his shoulder with an affectionate caressing touch,

“Thanks for the thought, my dear boy--even if nothing could be done.”

“You take a great deal of interest in him, Cousin Mary?”

“Yes,” she said quickly; “I told you we were all young people together;

and his sister was my dear friend. We were called the two Maries in

those days. We were thought--pretty,” she said with a vivid blush and a

little laugh. “You may have heard?”

Geoff kissed the pretty hand which had been laid on his shoulder, and

which was perhaps a little fuller and more dimply than was consistent

with perfection. “I have eyes,” he said, with a little of the shyness of

his years, “and I have always had a right as a Stanton to be proud of my

cousin Mary. I wonder if Miss Musgrave is as beautiful as you are; I

don’t believe it for my part.”

“She is far prettier--she is not stout,” said Lady Stanton with a sigh;

and then she laughed, and made her confession over again with a

half-jest, which did not make her regret less real, “and I have lost my

figure. I have developed, as people say. Mary is as slim as ever. Ah,

you may laugh, but that makes a great difference; I feel it to the

bottom of my heart.”

Geoff looked at her with tender admiration in his eyes. “There has never

been a time when I have not thought you the most beautiful woman in all

the world,” he said, “and that all the great beauties must have been

like you. You were always the dream of fair women to me--now one, now

the other--all except Cleopatra. You never could have been like that

black-browed witch----”

“Hush! boy. I am too old to be flattered now; and I am stout,” she

said, with that faint laugh of annoyance and humiliation just softened

by jest. Geoff’s honest praise brought no blush to her soft matronly

cheeks, but she liked it, as it pleased her when the children called her

“Pretty Mamma.” They loved _her_ the best, though people had not always

done so. The fact that she had grown stout did not affect their

admiration. Only those who have known others to be preferred to

themselves can realize what this is. After a moment’s hesitation, she

added in a low voice: “I wonder--will you go and see them? It would have

a great effect in the neighbourhood. Oh, Geoff, forgive me if I am

saying too much; perhaps it would not be possible, perhaps it might be

wrong in your position. You must take the advice of somebody more

sensible, less affected by their feelings. Everybody likes you, Geoff,

and you deserve it, my dear; and you are Lord Stanton. It would have a

great effect upon the county; it would be almost like clearing him----”

“Then I will go--at once--this very day,” said Geoff, starting up.

“Oh no, no, no,” she said, catching him by the arm; “first of all you

must speak to--some one more sensible than me.”

CHAPTER X.

THE OTHER SIDE.

While Lady Stanton spread the news of the arrival of the Musgrave

children among the upper classes, this information was given to the

lower, an equally or perhaps even more important influence in their

history, by an authority of a very different kind, to whom, indeed, it

would have been bitter to think that she was the channel of

communication with the lower orders. But such is the irony of

circumstances that it was Mrs. Pennithorne, who prided herself upon her

gentility, and who would have made any sacrifice rather than descend to

a sphere beneath her, who conveyed the report, which ran through the

village like wildfire, and which spread over the surrounding country as

rapidly and effectually as if it had been made known by beacons on the

hill-tops. The village was more interested in the news than any other

circle in the county could be, partly because the reigning house in a

village is its standing romance, the drama most near to it, and most

exciting when there is any drama at all; and partly for still more

impressive personal reasons. The Castle had done much for the district

in this way, having supplied it with more exciting food in the way of

story and incident than any other great house in the north country.

There had been a long interval of monotony, but now it appeared to all

concerned that the more eventful circle of affairs was about to begin

again. The manner in which the story fully reached the village was

simple enough. Mrs. Pennithorne had, as might have been expected, failed

entirely with Mary’s frock. It would not “come” as she wanted it to

come, let her do what she would; and when all her own efforts had

failed, and the stuff was effectually spoiled, soiled, and crumpled, and

incapable of ever looking better than second-hand under any

circumstances, she called in the doctor, as people are apt to do when

they have cobbled at themselves in vain. The dress doctor in Penninghame

and the neighbourhood, the rule of fashion, the grand authority for

everything in the way of _chiffons_, was a certain Miss Price, a lively

little old woman, who had one of the best houses in the village, where

she let lodgings on occasion, but always made dresses. She had been in

business for a great many years, and was an authority both up and down

the water. It was not agreeable to Miss Price to be called in at the

last moment, as it were, to heal the ailments of Mary’s frock; but

partly because it was the clergyman’s house, and partly because of the

gossip which was always involved, she obeyed the summons, as she had

done on many previous occasions. And she did her best, as Mrs.

Pennithorne had done her worst, upon the little habiliment. “Ladies know

nothing about such things,” the little dressmaker said, pinning and

unpinning with energetic ease and rapidity. And the Vicar’s wife, who

looked on helpless but admiring, accepted the condemnation because of

the flattery involved; for Mrs. Pen was elevated over Miss Price by so

brief an interval that this accusation was a kind of acknowledgment of

her gentility, and did her good, though it was not meant to be

complimentary. She liked to feel that hers was that ladylike uselessness

which is only appropriate to high position. She simpered a little, and

avowed that indeed she had never been brought up to know about such

things; and while Miss Price put the spoiled work to rights the Vicar’s

wife did her best to entertain the beneficent fairy who was bringing the

chaos into order. She did not blurt out suddenly the news with which she

was overbrimming, but brought it forth cunningly in the course of

conversation in the most agreeable way.

“Is there any news, Miss Price?” she said; “but I tell the Vicar that

nothing ever happens here. The people don’t even die.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. There’s two within the last three months; but

to be sure they were long past threescore and ten.”

“That is what I say. It’s so healthy at Penninghame. Look at the old

Squire now, how hale and hearty he is--and after all he has come

through.”

“Yes, he has come through a deal,” said Miss Price, putting her pins in

her mouth, “and that’s too true.”

“Poor old man; and still more and more to put up with. Have you seen the

children, Miss Price? Oh dear! didn’t you know? Perhaps I ought not to

have mentioned it; but people cannot hide up children as they hide

secrets. I have been living here for ten years, and I scarcely know the

rights of the story about John Musgrave yet.”

“Children!” said Miss Price, with a start which shook the pins out of

her fingers. “To be sure--that came in a coach from Pennington with a

play-acting sort of a woman? But what has that to do with Mr. John?”

The dressmaker dropped Mary’s frock upon her knees in the excitement of

her feelings. There was more than curiosity involved. “To be sure,” she

said. “To be sure!” going on with her own thoughts, “where should they

come but to the Castle? and who should have them but his family?

’Lizabeth Bampfylde is an honest woman, but not even me, I wouldn’t

trust the children to her. His children! though they would be hers

too----”

“What do you mean, Miss Price?” said Mrs. Pen, half offended; “are you

going out of your senses? I tell you something about the Squire’s

family, and you get into a way about it as if it could be anything to

you.”

Miss Price recovered her composure with a rapid effort, but her little

pale countenance reddened.

“Nothing to me, ma’am,” she said, with what she felt to be a proper

pride. “But if Mr. John has children, they had a mother as well as a

father; and there was a time when that was something to me.”

“Oh!” cried the Vicar’s wife, “then you knew Mrs. John? tell me about

her. She was a low girl, that is all I know.”

“She was no low girl, whoever told you,” cried the little dressmaker.

“She was one as folks were fond of, as fond as if she had been a

princess. She was no more low than--I am; she was----”

“Oh, I did not mean to offend you, Miss Price. Of course I know how

respectable you are--but not the equal of the Squire, you know, or

of----”

Miss Price looked at the woman who had spoiled Mary’s frock. There she

stood, limp, and faded, and genteel, with no capacity in her fingers and

not much in her head, with a smile of conscious superiority yet

condescension. Miss Price was not her equal. “Good Lord! as if I would

be that useless,” she said to herself, “for all the money in the world!

or to be as grand as the Queen!” But though she was at once exasperated

and contemptuous, politeness and policy at once forbade her to say

anything. She would not “set up her face to a lady,” even when so very

unimpressive as Mrs. Pennithorne; and it did not become the dressmaker

in the village to be openly scornful of the Vicar’s wife. She saved

herself by taking up again with energy and devotion the scattered pins

and the miserable little spoiled bodice of Mary’s frock.

“I am glad you know about this girl,” said Mrs. Pen, satisfied to have

subdued her opponent, “for I want so much to hear about her. One cannot

get much information from a gentleman, Miss Price. They tell you, ‘Oh

yes, she was a pretty creature!’ as if that is all you cared to know.”

“It’s what tells most with the gentlemen, ma’am,” said Miss Price,

recovering her composure. “Yes, that she was. I’ve looked at her many a

time and said just the same to myself. ‘Well, you are a pretty

creature!’ I don’t wonder if their heads get turned when they are as

pretty as that; though it isn’t only the pretty ones that get their

heads turned. The girls that I’ve had through my hands! and not one in

ten that went through with the business and kept it up as it ought to be

kept up.”

“Was Mrs. John Musgrave in the business? Was she in your hands? I

declare! Did he marry her from your house?”

“She was come of wild folks,” said Miss Price; “there was gipsy blood in

them. They had a little bit of a sheep farm up among the hills in their

best days, and a lone house, where there wasn’t a stranger to be seen

twice in a year. ’Lizabeth Bampfylde, that’s her mother, comes about the

village still. I can’t tell you what she does, she sells her eggs and

chickens, and maybe she does tell fortunes. I won’t say. She never told

me mine. I took a fancy to the lass, and I said, ‘Bring her to me. I’ll

take her; I’ll train her a bit. Oh, how little we know! If I had but let

her bide on the fells!--but what a pretty one she was! Such eyes as she

had; and a skin that wasn’t to say dark--it was brown, but so clear!

like the water when the sun is in it.”

“You seem to think a great deal of people being pretty.”

“So I do, ma’am, more than I ought. A woman should have more sense. I’m

near as easy led away as the gentlemen. But there’s different kinds of

beauty, and that is what they never see as want it most. There’s pretty

faces that I can’t abide. They seem to give me a turn. Now that’s where

the men fails,” said the little dressmaker; “all’s one to them, good or

bad, they never see any difference. Lily was never one of the bad ones,

poor dear. Lily? yes, that was the young woman; but she’s not such a

young woman, not a girl now. She’ll be thirty-seven or eight, close upon

that, if she’s living this day.”

“She is not living--she died five years ago; and Miss Musgrave won’t

believe me that she ought to go into black for her,” said Mrs.

Pennithorne.

“Ah!” said Miss Price with a sharp cry. She dropped her work at her feet

with an indifference to it which deeply aggrieved Mrs. Pen. The

announcement took her altogether by surprise, and went to her heart.

“Dead! oh my poor Lily, my poor Lily! Was I thinking ill o’ thee? Dead!

and so many left--and her in her prime!” Sudden sobs stopped the good

little woman’s speech, with which she struggled as she went on, making a

brave effort to recover herself as she picked up the little dress. “I

beg your pardon, ma’am, but it was so sudden; it took me unprepared. Oh,

ma’am, that’s the worst of it when you have to do with girls. Few of

them go through with the business, though it would be best for them;

they turn every one to her own way; that’s Scripture, but I mean it.

They marry, and they think themselves so grand with their children, and

it kills ’em. Oh, if I had but left her on the fells! or if she had

stuck by the business like me!”

“I did not think you took so much interest in her,” said Mrs. Pen,

feeling guilty. “If I had known you cared, I would have been more

careful what I said. But nobody seemed to think much of _her_. It is

always the Musgraves the Vicar speaks of.”

“The Vicar thought of nothing but Miss Mary,” said Miss Price hastily;

then she corrected herself, “I mean of womanfolk,” she said; “the

Musgraves, ma’am, as you say, that was all he thought of. And that’s

always the way, as far as I can judge. The gentry thinks of their own

side, and we that are but small folks, we think of ours; it’s natural.

Miss Musgrave was not much to me. I never made her but one thing, and

that was a cotton, a common morning frock; she was too grand to have her

things made by the likes of me; but Lily, she sat by my side and sewed

at the same seam. And she’s dead! the bonniest lass on all the water, as

the village folks say.”

“You don’t talk like the village folks, Miss Price.”

“No. I’m from the south, as they call it--except when a word creeps in

now and again through being so long here. It’s all pinned and straight,

ma’am, now. It was done almost before I heard the news--and I’m glad of

it, for my eyesight goes when I begin to cry. I don’t think you can go

wrong now,” said Miss Price with a sigh, knowing the powers of her

patroness in that direction. “It’s as well as I can make it--pinned and

basted, and straight before your hand. No, thank you kindly, nothing

for me. I’m that put out that the best thing I can do is to get home.”

“But dear me, Miss Price--as she is not even a relation!”

“A relation, what’s that? A girl that you’ve brought up is more than a

relation,” cried the dressmaker, forgetting her manners. And she made up

her patterns tremulously in a little bundle, and hurried out with the

briefest leavetaking, which was not civil, Mrs. Pennithorne said

indignantly. But Miss Price, in her way, was as important as the Vicar’s

wife herself, being alone in her profession, and enjoying a monopoly. It

is possible to be rude, when you are a monopolist, without damage to

your trade; but this, to do her justice, was not the motive which

actuated the little dressmaker, who, in her nature, was anxiously

polite, and indisposed to offend any one; but the news she had heard was

too much for all her little decorums. She made a long round out of her

way to pass by the Castle, though she could scarcely tell why she did

so--nor it was not the children that were most in her mind. Indeed she

scarcely remembered them at all, in her excitement of pain and hot grief

which took the shape of a kind of fiery resentment against life and

nature. Children! what was the good of the children--helpless things

that took a woman’s life, and made even the rest of death bitter to her,

wringing her heart with misery to leave them after costing her her life!

She was an old maid not by accident, but by nature; and what were a

couple of miserable little children in exchange for the life of Lily!

But when, not expecting to see them, not thinking of them save in this

bitter way, Miss Price saw the two children at the door of the hall,

another quick springing sensation rose suddenly in her hasty soul. She

went slowly past, gazing at them, trying to say to herself that she

hated the sight of them, Lily’s slayers! But her kind heart was too much

for her quick temper, and as soon as they were out of sight, the little

dressmaker sat down by the wayside and cried, sobbing like a child.

Little dreadful creatures, who had worn their mother to death, and

killed her in her prime! Poor little forlorn orphans, without a mother!

She did not know which feeling was the warmest and strongest. But she

reached home so shaken between the two emotions, that her present

assistant, who filled the place to which Miss Price had hoped to train

Lily, and who was a good girl with no nonsense in her head, fully

intending to go through with the business, was frightened by the

appearance of her principal, who stumbled into the little parlour all

garlanded with paper patterns, with tremulous step and blanched cheeks,

as if she had seen a ghost.

“Something’s to do!” cried the girl.

Miss Price made no immediate reply, but sank into a chair to get her

breath.

“Oh nothing; nothing you know of,” she said at last, “nothing that need

trouble you;” and then after a pause, “nothing that will warn you even,

not one of you, silly things. You’d all do just the same to-morrow,

though it was to cost you your lives.”

“I’ll run and get you a cup of tea,” said Sarah, which showed her to be

a young woman of sense. Where lives the woman to whom this cordial,

promptly and as it were accidentally administered, does not do good?

Miss Price gradually recovered herself as she sipped the fragrant tea,

and told her story with many sighs and lamentations, yet not without a

certain melancholy pleasure.

“If girls would only think,” she said; “if they would take a warning;

but ne’er a one of you will do that. You think it’s grand to marry a

gentleman; but it would be far better to go through with the business

like I’ve done, far better! though you’ll never think so.”

Sarah was respectfully sympathetic; she shook her head with a look of

awe and melancholy acquiescence; but nevertheless she did not think so.

She was only twenty, and thirty-seven was a good age. To marry a

gentleman, even at the risk of dying at thirty-seven like Lily, was

better than living till sixty like Miss Price; but she did not say so.

She acquiesced, and even cried over the lost Lily, whom she had never

seen, with the easy emotion of a girl. She herself meant sincerely to go

through with the business; but anyhow Sarah was as much excited by the

news as heart could desire. Miss Price was very determined that it

should not be talked of, that the story should not be spread in the

village. “Don’t let them say _again_ it came from us,” she said; but

however that might be, before the next morning it had spread through

the parish, and beyond the parish. Such things get into the atmosphere.

What can conceal a secret? It is the one thing certain to be found out,

and which every one is bound to know. There was nothing else talked

about in the cottages or when neighbours met, for some days. The men

talked of it over their beer, even, in the public-houses. “She were a

bonnie lass,” the elder ones said; and all the girls in the district

felt that they individually might have been Lily, and felt sad for her.

The children (who could not be hid) were followed by eager looks of

curiosity when they appeared, and the resemblance of Lilias to her

mother was too remarkable not to strike every one who had known her; and

the entire story which had excited the district so deeply in its time,

and which, with its mixture of all the sentiments which are most

interesting to humanity, was almost as exciting still as ever, was

retold, a hundred times over, for the benefit of the younger generation.

In these lower regions, as was natural, the interest all centred in the

beautiful girl, who, though “come of wild folk,” and not even an

appropriate bride for a well-to-do hopeful of the village, had “the

offer of” two gentlemen, one the young lord, and the other the young

squire. Had such fortune ever come before to a lass from the fells? How

she had been courted! not as the village lovers wooed with a sense of

equality, at least, if not perhaps something more; but John Musgrave and

young Lord Stanton had thought nobody in the world like her. And the

young lord, poor fellow! had even broken his word for her, a sin which

was but a glory the more to Lily in the eyes of the village

critics--however bitterly it might have been condemned had his forsaken

bride been a village maiden too. That this rivalry should have gone the

length of blood, all for Lily’s sweet looks, was a thing the middle-aged

narrators shook their heads over with many a moral, “You see what the

like of that comes to, lasses,” they said. But the lasses only put their

heads closer, and felt their hearts beat higher. To be fought for, to be

died for! It was terrible, no doubt, but glorious. “Such things never

happen nowadays” they said to themselves with a sigh.

And the news did not stop down below in the plain, but mounted with the

winds and the clouds, and reached lone places in the fells, where it

raised a wilder excitement still--at least in one melancholy and

solitary place.

CHAPTER XI.

AN AFTERNOON’S WORK.

“You must not cry, Nello; for one thing you are too big to cry; or if

you are not too big you are too old. You are eight--past! and then the

old gentleman downstairs is such a funny, funny old man, that he will

eat us, Nello, if we make a noise.”

“I don’t believe you,” said the little boy, whom England had much

improved in strength. “Old men do not eat children,” but he drew back a

little, and stopped crying all the same.

“We do not know no-ting about old men in England,” said Lilias--the _th_

was still a difficulty to her; and they both pronounced their _rs_ in a

way which was unfamiliar to English ears, though the letter exists and

retains its natural sound in the north country. “They are very very

strange; they sit in a chair all day, like the wild beasts. I go to the

door and peep in. He has no cap on his head like Don Pepé, but a bare

place here, where the cap should be, and white hair. And he never moves

nor speaks. Sometimes I think he will be cut out of wood; and then all

at once he rises up,--and me, I run away.”

“Are you not afraid, Lilias? I should be frightened,” said the little

boy, looking at her with large wondering eyes.

“That is because you are only eight, but I am twelve, and one is never

frightened after twelve. I run away, and it makes me beat and thump

here,” Lilias put her hand to her heart to indicate the place, “and I

like it.”

“Yes,” said the little brother, “when you run it makes that beat; but I

do not like it.”

“Ah, you are a baby,” said Lilias. She stood with her dark hair shaken

back, and her eyes shining, an image of visionary daring. Nothing could

be more unlike than these two children. The boy had all the features of

his race, blue eyes, fair hair, with a touch of gold in it, a fair

complexion, browned and reddened, indeed, with his long journey and the

warm sun he had been used to, but already changing into the pink and

white of English childhood. But there were none of the Musgrave features

in Lilias. Her dark eyes, dancing with life and energy, her warm colour,

clear brown with an underlying rose tint, and a downy bloomy surface

which softened every outline, and her crisp, yet shining dark hair, all

belonged, not only to a different species, but to a different type of

race. The Musgraves were robust and strong, but their strength was not

of this buoyant kind. The cloud of anxiety which had been about her on

her first appearance, that mystery of doubt with which a little human

creature regards the strange and novel, in whatever form, not knowing if

harm or good may be coming, had floated away, and Lilias had already

taken back her natural character. She was at home in the house, every

room of it, though she knew that she was hidden and thrust into corners,

on account of “the old gentleman downstairs.” This did not depress or

trouble her, but felt like a joke, a mystification and masquerading such

as is dear to childhood. She threw herself into the spirit of it with

enjoyment, instead of brooding over it with melancholy consciousness,

which was what Mary, forgetting childhood, as all grown people do, had

feared.

The children were in the hall, which had now grown so familiar to them

that they could not understand how they had ever feared it. It was one

of those exceptional days which occur now and then in the winter before

the turn of the year. The whole world was full of sunshine. There was

not a cloud in the sky, and the great green hill in front of them rose

up in dazzling clearness of relief, like a visible way of ascent into

heaven. There was not a breath stirring; the trees, without a leaf upon

them, printed themselves against the blue of the sky and the green of

the hill, in minute perfection of branch and twig, like a photograph.

The lake was as still and as blue as the sky--everything lay in the

sunshine charmed and stilled, hanging motionless as it were between

earth and heaven. The sense that it was mid-winter, the natural season

of storms, seemed to have got into the air, which wondered over its own

stillness, and into the skies, which excelled themselves in lightness

and soft blueness, snatching this moment of delight with a fearful joy.

Earth took that ecstasy as one who was well aware that she could not

answer for the morrow. The great doorway of the hall stood wide open; it

was after mid-day, and the sun streamed in, having got to the west so

much earlier than in summer. Lilias and her little brother, children of

the sun, were planted in the midst of it, enjoying it with unconscious

exhilaration. Martuccia sat in the open doorway, basking in it,

knitting; a tranquil, almost motionless figure, with that faculty of

repose which is no doubt awarded to nurses in compensation for the

endless calls upon their activity. She had put a little tartan

shawl--congenial garment--upon her fine shoulders, and, with her silver

pins and glowing black hair all whitened by the sunshine, sat perfectly

motionless except for the little rustle of her hands and click of her

knitting-needles. It seemed immaterial whether it might be years or

moments that the robust and comely watcher should hold that peaceful

guardian place. She was paying no attention to the children, yet the

lightest appeal, a querulous exclamation, a longer pause than usual,

anything or nothing, would have brought her to her nurselings. It was

the repose of the mother, who sees everything and feels everything, even

when she does not see: and the additional security which her presence

brought to them, though she sat apart and had nothing to do with their

talk or their play, the strong support of the background which she made,

it would be hard to tell in words. They had been playing in the spacious

place, all lighted and warmed through and through with sunshine. Miss

Musgrave had not yet made her appearance; either she had less time to

spend in her favourite resort, or the fact that it had been appropriated

to the children, as specially suitable in its size and separateness for

their enjoyment, had made her relinquish its use. The great bay window

in the recess gave back a reflected light from the shining of the lake,

which added a colder tone to the prevailing brightness; and in the old

fireplace there burned a smouldering fire, half coals half wood. Every

feature of the place had grown familiar to the two little things who

were once so alarmed by its dark corners--so familiar that they could

not understand how they had ever been afraid. The kind old spacious

silent hall sheltered them with a large passive protection not unlike

that of Martuccia herself.

But the afternoon languor had stolen upon the boy and girl,

notwithstanding the brightness. They, had come to a pause in their round

of amusement, and though half-tired, were yet looking about with all

their quick senses for some new delight. A little scuffle, a little

quarrel and crying fit on Nello’s part, which had been put a stop to by

the warning of Lilias already recorded, had left them free for a new

start, but not with the old plays, which were worn out for the moment.

They made an unconscious pause, and looked about them to find some

novelty; and both pounced upon one at the same moment with a burst of

sudden and unlooked-for rapture. A great broad sheet of something white

lay stretched out on Mary’s table, in company with an open colour-box

and brushes--a sight too tempting to be resisted by any child,

especially after the exhaustion of a long day’s play. It was wonderful

that they had overlooked it so long. They caught sight of it

simultaneously now, and the result was a sudden rush of eager curiosity.

The boy got first to the goal; perhaps he had been by a second of time

the first to start. He grasped one side of the white sheet with his hot

little hand, and climbing into the chair which stood before it, threw

himself upon the new wonder. “It is Mary’s,” said Lilias, making a

feeble effort to hold him back; but her own curiosity was much stronger

than her sense of duty to Mary, who allowed them to see everything and

share everything she had. They both leant over the table breathless, the

mysterious whiteness crackling beneath their hands. It was a sheet of

dazzling white vellum, ornamented with what they considered beautiful

pictures, a puzzling, yet a tempting sight to the children. It was

nothing less than a genealogical tree, their own pedigree, which Miss

Musgrave, skilled in such works, was preparing for her father,

ornamented with emblazoned coats of arms, some of them unfinished and

inviting completion with a seductive force which made the children’s

hearts beat.

“What is it?” said Nello, in a tone of awe.

“I know,” said Lilias, confidently; “it is a copy. You have had no

education, you don’t know what a copy is: but me, I have done them,

though never any so pretty as this. Mary is a grown-up lady, old, not

like us; it must be Mary’s copy. You should not touch it, you are too

little.”

“I will try,” cried Nello, with his eyes upon the brushes. Already he

had rubbed against something not yet dry, and had smudged the colour, to

the horror of his sister. He had both his elbows upon it and the greater

part of his small person.

“Oh, what have you done, you naughty boy!” cried Lilias; “you cannot do

it. Let me!”

“Yes, I will do it, I will do it!” cried Nello, seizing the crackling

vellum and dashing at it with a brush full of colour. Lilias had to

stand and look on, sorest of miseries, while her little brother

performed badly what she felt she could have done well. There was a

large shield in the centre, upon which the cherished “augmentation,” the

chief ornament of the Musgrave arms, was slightly drawn. Gules on a

shield argent, it ought to have been--Nello made a blurred dash of

bright blue, surrounded by a sea of red. “How it is pretty!” he cried in

his half-foreign speech, with a crow of triumph. Colour upon colour! and

such colour! the sight would have driven Mr. Musgrave wild.

Lilias uttered a cry of horror; but the work of destruction was very

captivating. Close to the vellum was the original draught of the

genealogical tree, from which Mary had been copying. Lilias took

possession of this, and carried it away to the table in the recess. She

meant only to look at it, but the temptation was too much for her. At

the bottom of the page an escutcheon void of all colour gradually caught

her eye, a little white space which might be made, she thought, to

resemble the others with great advantage to the whole. That this came

opposite to the name of John Musgrave was nothing to the child, but the

sight of it wrought her by degrees into a sort of creative frenzy. She

would not spoil it as Nello was doing, but to complete what was wanting

could be no harm. Lilias took a brush and filled it with fine broad

vermilion, a colour about which there could be no mistake, and painted

the vacant shield a strong decided gules, safe from any accident. The

outline was not very firm, and there were overflowings and runs of

colour outside, but at all events the hue was undeniable. She was

standing looking at it with a satisfied yet agitated mind, with the

brush still in her hand, when her elbow was grasped by some one behind

and a hand laid on her shoulder. In the start she gave, the child’s arm

made a nervous jerk of the brush over the paper, and ran a tremulous

line of red over some half-dozen of the kindred names. “Mary!” she cried

with a sudden perception of wrong-doing. But Lilias did not weep or

excuse herself. She got quite pale, with a red spot on each cheek, and

stood, not even dropping the brush, looking up at her judge, with the

corners of her mouth suddenly turned downwards, and a gleam of awakened

understanding in her alarmed eyes.

“Lilias! I thought I could trust you; what have you been doing?” cried

Mary. “And Nello?” she added, looking round with dismay at the more

important work. Nello had already been roused to that instinctive sense

of harm which comes with the arrival of an aggrieved person. But he did

not face his victim as Lilias did. He threw down his streaming pencil on

the vellum, got down from his chair in the twinkling of an eye, and fled

to take shelter with Martuccia, who, ever ready to defend, and yet

unaware who was wrong, put an arm round him at once and faced Miss

Musgrave with prompt defiance.

“Oh Mary!” cried Lilias, trembling, “Nello did not mean it. He is so

little. Nello did not know.”

Mary was not so angelically sweet as to be indifferent to the damage

done, but she had not the freedom of reproof which people exercise with

children familiar to them. The little meddlers were still strangers. So

she restrained herself and said nothing. She went to the parchment and

began to sponge off the still wet colour. Nello kept in his refuge

regarding her from afar, ready to bolt behind Martuccia if she made any

hostile advances and hide himself in his nurse’s skirt. But Lilias

followed Miss Musgrave closely as her shadow. She watched the sponging

with the gravest anxious attention. She kept herself close against

Mary’s dress, touching it, and put herself in Mary’s way, and interposed

her wistful face, now quite pale and troubled, between the vellum and

Mary’s eyes. At last her aunt said, perhaps somewhat peevishly, “What do

you want, child? You have done harm enough for one morning. Pray go out

of my way.”

“Have we done much harm?” said Lilias, with strained and anxious eyes.

“Yes; you have spoiled my week’s work, you mischievous children,” said

Mary, melting a little. “I shall have to do it over again. I did not

expect this, Lilias, from you.”

“It was very, very bad of me,” said the child, with perfect seriousness,

her eyes slowly filling; “but Nello is such a little fellow--he did not

know----”

“Then why did you do it, Lilias?”

The child looked up searchingly into her face. “I think it must have

been the devil,” she said, with portentous gravity, drawing a heavy

sigh.

An impulse of laughter came to Miss Musgrave in the midst of her

annoyance; but partly she restrained it for high moral reasons, and

partly she was still too much annoyed to give way to laughter. “What do

you know about--the devil?” she said. “I think it was your own little

mischievous hands, and your curiosity.”

“Oh, I know a great deal about him. Mr. Pennithorne told us on Sunday;

and Martuccia must be of the same religion as Mr. Pen, for she worships

him too,” said Lilias, aware of the advantages of digression when things

were so serious as they were now.

“Worships him, Lilias! You must not use such words.”

“They are always thinking of him, and they say he does everything. They

are very, very afraid of him,” said Lilias seriously, “and so am I--he

can do whatever he pleases; but I cannot think he is as strong as God.”

“And it was he who made you spoil my papers----?”

“Oh, Mary, not Nello--only me. Nello is such a little fellow, he did not

mean it--he did not know what he was doing----”

“And did you?”

Lilias pressed very close against Mary’s side. Her heart was beating

loudly in her brave little bosom. Her sense of crime had not been

lightened by the postponement of the punishment which must, she

thought, be coming. But it was not in her to fly as her brother had

done. She took a furtive hold of Mary’s gown. No hope of any forgiveness

was in her serious soul; yet to whom could she cling in earth and heaven

but only to this inflictor of stern justice? She kept her eyes fixed on

Mary’s face, that she might see the fearful doom which was coming--that

would always be a help in bearing it--and kept close to her, pressing

against her. “_Aie-tu peur de moi? cache-toi dans mes bras_”--this was

the child’s impulse in her penitence and terror.

Mary forgot her vellum and its stains. She put her arm round the child,

whose eyes opened a little wider thinking the judgment was coming, but

who never shrank. “You will not do it again,” she said. Lilias could not

understand that it was over. She bent back a little the better to see

Mary’s face.

“Will you not punish me?” said the child. Between the fear and the

wonder she was breathless. This was the most wonderful of all.

“No, dear--you will never do it again.”

“Nor Nello?” She put her arms round Mary’s arm, with that soft clinging

which is irresistible in a child, and leant her head against her, and

began to sob as if her heart would break. Then Nello, seeing the worst

was over, came out from his shelter, venturing a few steps, then a few

more. Forgiveness did not touch him, as punishment would have done. He

came slowly, ready to turn and fly at any hostile demonstration. Nello

had, as it were, an army at his back, his ships to take refuge in; but

still it was with great caution that he made his advance. This little

exhibition of character, however, soon melted in a more agreeable

sentiment. As soon as the contingency was over, both the children,

restored to a tremulous ease of mind, were seized with a common impulse

of curiosity and interest. They forgot their own culpability in watching

the obliteration of the damage they had done. Fortunately the discovery

had been made in time, and the process of reparation, if not so

exciting, was almost as interesting to them as the delicious frenzy of

mischief in which they had wrought this harm. They pressed upon Mary as

she worked, one at each side. When the last trace had disappeared they

gave a cry of joy. How clever Mary was! She could do everything. As for

Nello, he was unmoved morally by the spectacle; it had been amusing all

through, all but the moment of fear, which fortunately came to nothing.

But Lilias never forgot this scene, and still less did Mary forget it,

whose heart seemed to be learning a hundred sweet and subtle lessons,

and to whom the child, even in her naughtiness, was like an angel,

leading her to depths unsounded, nay, unthought of till now.

But when they had gone away, joyous as usual, to their “tea,” which was

a meal much scorned and wondered at by Martuccia, Mary went to the other

table where lay the draught of the more important document upon which

Lilias had been employed when she came into the hall. At this she smiled

and shuddered, with a curious mixture of feelings. The little girl’s

mischief had taken a symbolical form. The blank shield which represented

her mother was blurred and blood-red, and a stroke like blood ran across

her father’s name; and that of her father’s father, from the little pool

of red in the daubed shield. Lilias knew nothing of the lives from which

her little life had sprung. It was accident, caprice, a child’s fancy

for bright colour--yet it made Mary shudder even when she smiled.

Another incident, which she paid less attention to--indeed, did not

think of at all--happened this same evening. She went to the door where

Martuccia had been seated, her own favourite place, though now in great

part given up to the children and their attendant, to look out upon the

evening before she left the hall. When she had looked at the sky where

the early wintry sunset was just over, leaving deep gorgeous tints of

red and yellow upon a blue which was deepened by coming frost, Mary’s

look came back, carelessly enough, by the lower level of the long brown

road. And it was with a momentary start that she found herself almost

face to face with an unthought-of spectator, who was standing at the

foot of the little slope, gazing intently up to the hall door. Mary was

puzzled to see that though the woman’s appearance was like that of many

of the older women about, she did not know her; and at the same time she

was equally perplexed by a consciousness that the face looking up at her

thus eagerly was not that of a stranger. She could not associate it with

any name, yet she seemed acquainted with the features, which were fine,

and of an unusual cast. The stranger’s look was so intense that it

struck Miss Musgrave like an audible petition. “Did you want anything?”

she said with natural courtesy, making a step towards her. The woman

turned sharp round on her heels with a hasty wave of her hand, and went

hurriedly away towards the village without further reply. Who could she

be? Mary asked herself lightly, and went in and forgot all about her.

The people are independent in their ways, and not grateful for a casual

address, in the north.

CHAPTER XII.

VISITORS.

“My Lord Stanton, ma’am,” said Eastwood, with a certain expansion in the

throat and fulness of voice, like that swell and gurgle which

accompanies in a bird the fullest tide of song. Who has not heard that

roll in the voice of the man who mouths a title like a succulent morsel?

A butler who loves his family, and who has the honour of announcing to

them the visit of the greatest potentate about, is a happy man. And this

was what Eastwood felt, as he uttered with a nightingale trill and swell

of satisfaction this honoured name.

“Lord--_whom_----?” Mary rose to her feet so much startled that she did

not know what she said.

“Lord Stanton, ma’am,” the butler repeated. “He asked if you would

receive him. He said as he would not come in till I asked would you

receive him, ma’am. I said you was at home, and not engaged--but he

said----”

“Lord Stanton!” The name seemed to hurt her, and a kind of dull fear

rose in Mary’s mind. She knew, of course, who it was! the young

successor of the man who, with intention or not, her brother had brought

to his death. She knew well enough about Geoff. It had not been possible

to hear the name at any time without interest, and in this way Mary had

learned as much as strangers knew of the young lord. But what could he

want here? A subdued panic seized her. She did not know what he could

do, or if he could do anything; but that he should come merely as a

friend did not seem probable. And how then had he come? She made a

tremendous pause before she said, “Let him come in, Eastwood.” Eastwood

thought Miss Musgrave was very properly impressed by the name of the

young lord.

Geoff, for his part, waited outside, anxious as to how he was to be

received, and very desirous in his boyish generosity to make a good

impression. He had driven to Penninghame, a long way, and his horses,

drawn up at the door, made a great show, when the children passed,

stealing round the corner like little intruders, but so much attracted

by this sight, that they almost forgot their orders never to approach

the hall door. Geoff himself was standing at some distance from his

phaeton, waiting for his answer; but even Lilias was old enough to know

that to address commendatory remarks and friendly overtures to a horse

or a dog is more easy and natural than to address a man. She said, “Oh,

look, Nello, what lovely horses!” but only ventured to look up shyly

into the friendly face of their owner, though she was not without an

impression that he, too, was nice, and that he might give his friends a

drive perhaps, with the lovely horses, a service which was not in the

power of the animals themselves.

Geoff went up to them, holding out his hand. “You are the little

Musgraves, I suppose?” he said.

The boy hung back, as usual, hanging by Martuccia’s skirts. “Yes,” said

Lilias, looking at him intently, as she always did; and she added at

once, “This is Nello,” and did her best to put her small brother in the

foreground, though he resisted, holding back and close to his protector.

“Is he shy, or is he frightened? He need not be frightened of me,” said

Geoff, unconsciously conscious of the facts between them which might

have caused the child’s timidity had he been old enough to know. “Nello

is an odd name for a boy.”

“Because you do not know where he came from,” said Lilias quickly.

“Nello is born in Florence. Here you will call him John. It is not so

pretty. And me, I am born in France,” she continued; “but we are

English children. That does not make any difference.”

“Don’t you think so?” said simple Geoff. The little woman of twelve who

thus fixed him with her great beautiful eyes, made him feel a boy in

comparison with her mature childhood. She never relaxed in her watchful

look. This was a habit Lilias had got, a habit born of helplessness, and

of the sense of responsibility for her brother which was so strong in

her mind. That intent, half-suspicious vigilance, as of one fully aware

that he might mean harm, and quick to note the approach of danger,

disconcerted Geoff, who meant nothing but good. “I know two little

girls,” he said, trying to be conciliatory, “who would like very much to

know you.”

“Ah!” said Lilias, melting a little, but shaking her head. “I have to

take care of Nello; but if they would come here, and would not mind

Nello,” she added, “perhaps I might play with them. I could

ask--Mary----”

“Who is--Mary?”

“Oh! don’t you know? If you do not know Mary we should not talk to

you--we only ought to talk to friends--and besides, you have no right to

call her Mary if you do not know her,” said Lilias. She turned back to

say this after she had gone a few steps away from him, following Nello,

who, tired of the conversation, had gone on with his guardian to the

Chase.

“That is quite true, and I beg your pardon,” said Geoff; “it must be

Miss Musgrave you mean.”

Lilias nodded approving. She began to take an interest in this big boy.

He was not strictly handsome, but had a bright, attractive countenance,

and the child scarcely ever saw any male creature except Eastwood and

Mr. Pen. “Have you come to see her?” she asked wistfully; “are you going

to be a--friend?”

“Yes,” said Geoff with a little emotion, “if she will let me. I am

waiting to know. And tell me your name?” he added, with a slight tremor

in his voice, for he was young and easily touched. “I will always be a

friend to you.”

“I am Lilias,” she said shyly, giving him her hand, for which he had

held out his. And this was how Eastwood found them when he came bustling

out to inform my lord that Miss Musgrave would see his lordship, if he

would be good enough to step this way. Eastwood was much “struck” to see

his lordship holding “little Miss’s” hand. It raised little Miss in the

butler’s opinion. “If she had been a bit older, now!” he said to

himself. Geoff was half reluctant to leave this little new acquaintance

for the audience which he had come here expressly to ask. Mary was not

likely to be so easily conciliated as little Lilias. And being a lord

did not make him less shy. He waved his hand and took off his hat with a

little sigh, as he followed Eastwood into the house; and Lilias, for her

part, followed Nello slowly, with various thoughts in her small head.

These it must be allowed were chiefly about the little girls who wanted

to make friends with her--and of whom her lonely imagination made

ecstatic pictures--and of the lovely horses who could spin her away over

the broad country, if that big boy would let them. But Lilias did not

think very much about the big boy himself.

Geoff went in blushing and tremulous to Miss Musgrave’s drawing-room. It

was not a place so suitable to Mary as her favourite hall, being dark

and somewhat low, not worthy either of her or of Penninghame Castle. She

was standing, waiting to receive him, and after the bow with which he

greeted her, Geoff did not know what to say to disclose his object. His

object itself was vague, and he had no previous knowledge of her, as his

cousin Mary had, to warrant him in addressing her. She offered him a

chair, and she sat down opposite him; and then there began an

embarrassing pause which she would not, and which he did not seem able

to, break. At last, faltering and stammering--

“I came, Miss Musgrave,” he began, “to say--I came to tell you--I came

to ask--Circumstances,” cried Geoff, impatient of his own incapacity,

“seem to have made our families enemies. I don’t know why they should

have done so.”

“If the story is true, Lord Stanton, it is easy enough to see how they

should have done so. My brother was concerned, they say, in your

brother’s death.”

“No one could prove that he did it, Miss Musgrave.”

“He did not do it with intention, I am sure,” she said. “But so much is

true. It was done, and how could we be friends after? We should have

been angels--you to pardon the loss you had sustained, we to pardon the

wrong we had done.”

There was a gleam of agitation and pain in her eyes which might well

have been taken for anger. The young man was discouraged.

“May I not say anything, then?” he said, wistfully. “My cousin Mary,

Lady Stanton, whom you know, told me--but if you are set against us too,

what need to say anything? I had hoped indeed, that you----”

“What did you hope about me? I should be glad of any approach. I grieved

for your brother as if he had been mine. Oh more, I think, more! if it

had been poor John who had died----”

“It would have been better,” said the young man. “Yes, yes, Miss

Musgrave, that is what I feel; Walter had the best of it. Your brother

has been more than killed. But I came to say, that so far as we are

concerned, there need not be any more misery. Let him come home, Miss

Musgrave, let him come home! We none of us can tell now how Walter

died.”

Mary was moved beyond the power of words. She got up hastily and took

his hand, and pressed it between her own.

“Thank you, I shall always thank you!” she cried, “whether he comes home

or not. Oh, my dear boy, who are you that come with mercy on your lips?

You are not like the rest of us!”

Mary was thinking of others, more near, whose wrongs were not as the

Stantons’, but whom nothing could induce to forgive.

“I am my mother’s son,” said Geoff, his eyes brighter than usual, with a

smile lighting up the moisture in them. What Mary said seemed a tribute

to his mother, and this made him glad. “She does not know, but she would

say so. Let him come home. I heard of the children, and that your

brother----”

“Yes,” said Miss Musgrave, “from Mary. She told you. She always took an

interest in him. Do you know,” she added in a low voice of horror, “that

there is a verdict against him, a coroner’s verdict of murder?”

She shuddered at the word as she said it, and so did he.

“But not a just one. No jury would say it was--that: not now----”

“Heaven knows what a jury would say. It is all half forgotten now; and

as for the dates, and all those trifles that tell in a trial, who knows

anything about them? Even I--could I swear to the hour my brother went

out that morning? I could once, and did, and it is all written down. But

I don’t seem sure of anything now, not that there ever was a Walter

Stanton, or that I had a brother John; and I am one of the interested;

the people who were not specially interested, do you think they would

have better memories? Ah, no; and he fled; God help him! I don’t know

why he did it. That was against him; though I don’t think anyone

believes that John Musgrave did _that_, now.”

“I am sure they do not, and that is why I came. Let him come home, Miss

Musgrave. He would not have been convicted had he been tried. I have

been reading it all up, and I have taken advice. He would be cleared.

And if there is risk in it, we would all stand by him. I would stand by

him,” said the young man with a generous flush of resolution, “so much

as I am worth. I want you to tell him so. Tell him to come home.”

Mary shook her head. How long she had been calm about this terrible

domestic tragedy, and how it all rose upon her now! She got up, in her

agitation, and walked about the room.

“How could he risk it--how could he risk it--with that sentence against

him?” she said; then after a while she came back to her seat, and looked

at Geoff piteously with a heartrending look in her eyes. She was past

crying, which would have relieved her. “That is not all,” she said in a

low voice. “Alas, alas! if all was well, and he might come home when he

pleased, it would matter less. I know nothing about him, Lord Stanton. I

don’t know my brother any longer, nor where he is, nor how he is living

now.”

“But his children have just come to you!”

“Yes, out of the unknown. No one knows anything about him; and suddenly

they came out of the darkness, as I tell you. That is where he is: out

in the world, in the dark, in the unknown----”

“There are ways of penetrating the unknown,” said Geoff, cheerfully.

“There are advertisements; everybody sees the _Times_ nowadays. It goes

all over the world. Wherever there is an Englishman he sees it somehow.

Let us advertise.”

“He would not see it.”

“Then a detective--let us send some one----”

“Oh no, no, no,--not that. I could not bear that. We must let him alone

till he comes of his own accord. Let well alone,” said Mary, in her

panic. She scarcely knew what she said.

“Well! do you call it well, Miss Musgrave, that your brother should be

away from his home, from everything he loves--his country lost to him,

his position, all his friends?”

“He has not been separated from everything he loves; he had wife and

children; does a man care for anything else? What was this old house to

him, and--us--in comparison? His wife is dead--that was God’s doing; and

his children have come home--that is his own choice. I say, let well

alone, Lord Stanton; when he wishes it he will--come--back; but not to

those he loves,” Mary said in a low tone.

Geoff could not fathom her meaning, it was beyond him. The accusation

under which John Musgrave lay was bad enough. It was cowardly of him (he

thought) to fly and leave this stigma, uncontested, upon his own name;

but that there should be any further mystery did not seem possible to

the young man. Perhaps there was something wrong with the family, some

incipient insanity, monomania, eccentricity. He could not understand it.

But at least he had shown his goodwill, if no more.

“I must not dictate to you, Miss Musgrave,” he said; “you know best,”

and he rose to go away, but stood hesitating, reluctant to consent to

the failure of his generous mission. “If I can be of any use, at any

time,” he added, blushing and faltering; “not that I can do much: but if

you should--change your mind--if you should--think----”

She took his hand once more in both of hers.

“I shall always think that you have the kindest and most generous heart:

and are a friend--a true friend--to John, and everybody in trouble.”

“I hope so,” said the youth, fervently; “but that is nothing;--to you,

Miss Musgrave, if I can ever be of any use.”

“I will ask you, if it ever can be,” she said. “I will not forget.”

He kept hold of her hands when she loosed them, and with a confused

laugh and change of tone, asked “About the children? I met them just

now. Might I bring my little cousins, Lady Stanton’s children, to see

them? They want to meet.”

“Sir Henry would not like it, though she might. Sir Henry is not like

you.”

“I know; he is _plus royalist que le roi_. But the children would. And

they don’t deny me anything,” said Geoff, with a little laugh.

He scarcely knew why this was--but it was so; nothing was denied to him;

he was the _enfant gâté_ of Elfdale. Miss Musgrave was not, however,

quite so complacent. She gave an assent which was cold and unwilling,

and which quenched Geoff’s genial enthusiasm. He went back to his

phaeton quite subdued and silent. “But I will see that little thing

again,” he said to himself.

In the mean time, while this conversation had been going on, Lilias had

wandered forth alone into the Chase. Martuccia had gone before with

Nello, while Lilias talked to the young man; and now the child followed

dreamily, as she was in the habit of doing, her eyes abstracted, her

whole being rapt in a separate consciousness, which surrounded her like

an atmosphere of her own. She knew vaguely that the little brother and

his nurse were in front of her; but the watchfulness of Lilias had

relaxed, and she was not thinking of Nello. He was safe; here was no one

who could interfere with him. She had taken up a branch of a tree which

lay in her path and had caught her childish fancy, and with this she

went on, using it like a pilgrim’s staff, and saying a kind of low

chant, without words, to herself, to which the rough staff was made to

keep time. What was she thinking of? everything, nothing; thought indeed

was not necessary to the fresh soul in that subdued elation and

speechless gladness. There was a vague sense in her mind of the brisk

air, the sunshine, the blue sky, the floating clouds, all in one; but

had the clouds been low upon the trees, and the air all damp instead of

all exhilaration, it would have made little difference to Lilias. Her

spring of unconscious blessedness was within herself. Her song was not

music nor her movements harmony in any way that could be accounted for

by rule; and indeed the low succession of sounds which came from her

lips unawares, and to which her little steps and the stroke of the rough

stick kept time, was more inartificial than even the twittering of the

birds. A small, passive, embodied happiness went roaming along the

rough, woodland path, with soft-glowing abstracted eyes that saw

everything, yet nothing; with a little abstracted soul, all freshness

and gladness, that took note of everything, yet nothing; a little

pilgrim among life’s mysteries and wonders, herself the greatest wonder

of all, throbbing with a soft consciousness, yet knowing nothing. Thus

she went pacing on under the bare trees, and murmured her inarticulate

chant, and kept time to it, a poet in being, though not in thought. Not

far off the lake splashed softly upon the stones of the beach, and that

north country air, which is vocal as the winds of the south, sounded a

whole mystery of tones and semi-tones, deep through the fir-trees,

shrill through the beeches, low and soft over the copse; and the brook,

half-hidden in the overgreenness of the grass, added its tinkle; all

surrounding the little figure which gave the central point of conscious

intelligence to the landscape; but were all quite unnecessary to Lilias

marching along in her dream to her own music, a something higher than

they, a thing full of other and deeper suggestions, the wonder of the

world.

Lilias woke up, however, out of this other world, all in a moment, into

the conscious existence of a lively, brave, fancifully-timid child, when

she found herself suddenly confronted by a stranger, who did not pass on

as strangers usually did, making a mere momentary jar and pause in the

visionary atmosphere, but who made a decided pause, and stopped her. A

little thrill of fear sprang up in the child’s breast, and she would

have hurried on, or even run away, but for the pride of honour and

courage in her little venturesome spirit which made it impossible to

fly. It was an old woman who stood in her path, tall but stooping,

dressed in a large grey cloak, the hood of which covered her white thick

muslin cap. She was a woman considerably over sixty, with handsome

features and brilliant dark eyes, and, notwithstanding her stooping

figure, full of vigour and power. She carried a basket on her arm under

her cloak, and had a stick in her hand, and at her neck a red

handkerchief just showed, which would have replaced the hood on her cap

had it been less cold. Just so the fairy in the fairy-tales appears to

the little maiden in the wood, the Cinderella by the kitchen-fire.

Lilias was not at all sure that it was not that poetical old woman who

looked at her with those shining eyes. She made a brief, instantaneous

resolution to draw water for her, or pick up sticks, or do anything she

might require.

“Little Miss, you belong to the Castle, don’t you now? and where may you

come from?” was what the problematical fairy said, with a something wet

and gleaming in her eyes such as never obscures the sight of fairies.

Lilias was overawed by the tone of eager meaning, though she did not

understand it, in the questioning voice, yet might not have answered but

for that feeling that it was unsafe, as much experience had proved, to

be less than obsequiously civil to old women with wands in their hands

who could make (if you were so naughty as to give a rude answer) toads

and frogs drop from your mouth.

“Yes,” she said, with a little tremble in her clear, childish voice. “We

come a very, very long way--over the mountains, and then over the sea.”

“Do you know the name of the place you came from, little Miss?”

“Oh yes, I know it very well, we were so often there. It was Bagni di

Lucca. It was a very, very long way. Nello----”

But the child paused. Why introduce Nello? who was not visible, to the

knowledge of this uncertain person? who, if she was a fairy, might be a

wicked one, or, if she was a woman, might be unkind, for anything Lilias

knew. She stopped short nervously, and it was evident that the old woman

had not taken any notice of the name.

“Little Miss, your mamma would be sorry to send you away?”

“It was papa,” said the little girl, with wondering eyes. “Poor

mamma;--I was quite little when--it was when Nello was a little, little

small baby. Now we have nobody but papa.”

The old woman staggered and almost fell, but supported herself by her

stick for a moment, while Lilias uttered a scream of terror; then sat

down with a groan upon a fallen tree. “It’s nothing new, nothing new,”

she said to herself; “I felt it long ago,” and covered her face with her

hands, with once more a heavy groan. Little Lilias did not know what to

do. She had screamed when the old woman staggered, not knowing what was

going to happen; but what was she to do now, alone with this strange

companion, seated there on the fallen trunk and rocking herself to and

fro, with her face hidden in her hands. It did not occur to the child to

associate this sudden trouble with the information she had herself

given. What could this stranger have to do with her? And poor mamma had

receded far into the background of Lilias’s memory, not even now an

occasion of tears. She did not, however, need to go into this reasoning,

but simply supposed that the poor old fairy was ill, or that something

had happened to her, and never at all connected effect and cause. She

stood for a little time irresolute, then, overcoming her own fears, went

up to the sufferer and stroked her compassionately on the shoulder. “Are

you ill, old woman?” she said.

“Oh, call me Granny--call me Granny, my pretty dear!”

Lilias was more puzzled than ever; but she made up her mind that she

would do whatever was asked of her by this disguised personage, who

might turn into--anything, in a moment. “Yes, Granny,” she said,

trembling, and still stroking the old woman’s shoulder. “I hope you are

not ill.”

The answer she made to this was suddenly to clasp her arms round Lilias,

who could scarcely suppress a cry of horror. What a strange--what a very

strange old woman! Fortunately Lilias, brought up in a country where

servants are friends, had no feeling of repulsion from the embrace. She

was a little frightened, and did not understand it--that was all. The

old woman’s breast heaved with great sobs; there could be no doubt that

she was very deeply, strongly moved. She was “very sorry about

something,” according to Lilias’ simple explanation. She clasped the

child close, and kissed her with a tearful face, which left traces of

its weeping upon the fresh cheeks. The little girl wiped them off,

wondering. How could she tell why this was? Perhaps it was only to try

her if she was the kind of little girl who was uncivil, or not; but she

did not indeed try to account for it. It was not very pleasant, but she

put up with it, partly in fear, partly in sympathy, partly because, as

we have said, she had no horror of the too near approach of a poor old

woman, as an English-bred child might have had. Poor old creature, how

sorry she was about something! though Lilias could not imagine what it

was.

“God bless you, honeysweet,” said the old woman. “You’ve got her dear

face, my jewel. It isn’t that I didn’t know it years and years ago. I

was told it in my sleep; I read it in the clouds and on the water. Oh,

if you think I wasn’t warned! But you’ve got her bonnie face. You’ll be

a beauty, a darling beauty, like the rest of us. And look you here,

little Miss, my jewel. If you see me when the gentry’s with you you’ll

take no notice; but if you see me by myself you’ll give me a kiss and

call me Granny. That’s fixed between us, honey, and you won’t forget?

Call me Granny again, to give me a little comfort, my pretty dear.”

“Yes, Granny,” said the child, trembling. The old woman kissed her

again, drying her tears.

“God bless you, and God bless you!” she said. “You can’t be none the

worse of your old Granny’s blessing. And mind, if you’re with the

gentlefolks you’ll take no notice. Oh, my honeysweet, my darling child!”

Lilias looked after her with wondering, disturbed eyes. What a strange

old woman she was! How strange that she should behave so! and yet Lilias

did not attempt to inquire why. Grown-up people in her experience did a

great many strange things. It was of no use trying to fathom what they

meant, and this strange old person was only a little more strange than

the rest, and startling to the calm little being who had grown in the

midst of family troubles and mysteries without divining any of them.

Strangely enough, the old woman felt equally independent of any

necessity for explanation. It seemed so clear in her mind that everybody

must know the past and understand her claims, whatever they were. She

had no more idea of the tranquillity of innocent ignorance in Lilias’s

mind than the little girl had of the mysteries of her experience. Lilias

watched her going away through the high columns of the trees with great

wonder yet respect, and it was not till she had disappeared that the

little girl went on after Nello. Nello would have been frightened by

that curious apparition. He would have cried perhaps, and struggled, and

would not have said Granny. Perhaps he would have angered her. What a

good thing that Nello had not been here!

PART IV.