CONCLUSION.
John Musgrave settled down without any commotion into his natural place
in his father’s house. The old Squire himself mended from the day when
Nello, very timid, but yet brave to repress the signs of his reluctance,
was brought into his room. He played with the child as if he had been a
child himself, and so grew better day by day, and got out of bed again,
and save for a little dragging of one leg as he limped along, brought no
external sign of his “stroke” out of his sick-room. But he wrote no more
Monographs, studied no more. His life had come back to him as the Syrian
lord in the Bible got back his health after his leprosy--“like the flesh
of a little child.” The Squire recovered after a while the power of
taking his part in a conversation, and looked more venerable than ever
with his faded colour and subdued forces. But his real life was all with
little Nello, who by and by got quite used to his grandfather, and
lorded it over him as children so often do. When the next summer came,
they went out together, the Squire generally in a wheeled chair, Nello
walking, or riding by his side on the pony his grandpapa had given him.
There was no doubt now as to who was heir. When Randolph came to
Penninghame, after spending a day and a half in vain researches for
Nello, life having become too exciting at that moment at the Castle to
leave any one free to send word of the children’s safety--he found all
doubt and notion of danger over for John--- and he himself established
in his natural place. Whether the Squire had forgotten everything in his
illness, or whether he had understood the story which Mary took care to
repeat two or three times very distinctly by his bedside, no one knew.
But he never objected to John’s presence, made no question about
him--accepted him as if he had been always there. Absolutely as if there
had been no breach in the household existence at all, the eldest son
took his place; and that Nello was the heir was a thing beyond doubt in
any reasonable mind. This actual settlement of all difficulties had
already come about when Randolph came. His father took no notice of him,
and John, who thought it was his brother’s fault that his little son had
been so unkindly treated, found it difficult to afford Randolph any
welcome. He did not, however, want any welcome in such circumstances. He
stayed for a single night, feeling himself coldly looked upon by all.
Mr. Pen, who spent half his time at the Castle, more than any one turned
a cold shoulder upon his brother clergyman.
“You felt it necessary that the child should go to school quite as much
as I did,” Randolph said, on the solitary occasion when the matter was
discussed.
“Yes, but not to any school,” the Vicar said. “I would rather----” he
paused for a sufficiently strong image, but it was hard to find; “I
would rather--have got up at six o’clock every day, and sacrificed
everything--rather than have exposed Nello to the life he had
there;--and you who are a father yourself.”
“Yes; but my boy has neither a girl’s name nor a girl’s want of courage.
He is not a baby that would flinch at the first rough word. I did not
know the nature of the thing,” said Randolph, with a sneer. “I have no
acquaintance with any but straightforward and manly ways.”
The Vicar followed him out in righteous wrath. He produced from his
pocket a hideous piece of pink paper.
“Do you know who sent this?” he asked.
Randolph looked at it, taken aback, and tried to bluster forth an
expression of wonder--
“I--how should I know?”
“What did you mean by it?” cried the gentle Vicar, in high
excitement;--“did you think I did not know my duty? did you think I was
a cold-blooded reptile like--like the man that sent that? Do you think
it was in me to betray my brother? I know nothing bad enough for him who
made such a suggestion. And he nearly gained his point. The devil knows
what tools to work with. He works with the weakness of good people as
well as with the strength of bad,” cried mild Mr. Pen, inspired for once
in his life with righteous indignation. “Judas did it himself at least,
bad as he was. He did not whisper treason in a man’s ears nor in a
woman’s heart.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Randolph, with guilt in his face.
“Not all, no; fortunately you don’t know, nor any one else, the trouble
you might have made. But no less, though it never came to pass, was it
that traitor’s fault.”
“When you take to speaking riddles I give it up,” said Randolph,
shrugging his shoulders.
But Mr. Pen was so hot in moral force that he was glad to get away. He
slept one night under his father’s roof, no one giving him much
attention, and then went away, never to return again; but went back to
his believing wife, too good a fate, who smoothed him down and healed
all his wounds. “My husband is like most people who struggle to do their
duty,” she said. “His brother was very ungrateful, though Randolph had
done so much for him. And the little boy, who had been dreadfully
spoiled, ran away from the school when he had cost my husband so much
trouble. And even his sister Mary showed him no kindness; that is the
way when a man is so disinterested as Randolph, doing all he can for his
own family, for their _real_ good.”
And this, at the end, came to be what Randolph himself thought.
Mrs. Pen, after coming home hysterical from Elfdale, made a clean breast
to her husband, and showed him the telegram, and confessed all her
apprehensions for him. What could a man do but forgive the folly or even
wickedness done for his sweet sake? And Mrs. Pen went through a few
dreadful hours, when in the morning John Musgrave came back from his
night journey and the warrant was put in force. If they should hang him
what would become of her? She always believed afterwards that it was her
William’s intervention which had saved John, and she never believed in
John’s innocence, let her husband say what he would. For Mrs. Pen said
wisely, that wherever there is smoke there must be fire, and it was no
use telling her that Lord Stanton had not been killed; for it was in the
last edition of the _Fellside History_, and therefore must be true.
When all was over Sir Henry and Lady Stanton made a formal visit of
congratulation at Penninghame. Sir Henry told John that it had been a
painful necessity to issue the warrant, but that a man must do his duty,
whatever it is; and as, under Providence, this was the means of making
everything clear he could not regret that he had done it now. Lady
Stanton said nothing, or next to nothing. She talked a little to Mary,
making stray little remarks about the children, and drawing Nello to her
side. Lilias she was afraid of, with those great eyes. Was that child to
be Geoff’s wife? she thought. Ah! how much better, had he been the kind
young husband who should have delivered her own Annie or Fanny. This
little girl would want nothing of the kind; her father would watch over
her, he would let no one meddle with her, not like a poor woman with a
hard husband and stepdaughters. She trembled a little when she put her
hand into John’s. She looked at him with moisture in her eyes.
“I have always believed in you, always hoped to see you here again,” she
said.
“Come, Mary, the carriage is waiting,” said Sir Henry. He said after
that this was all that was called for, and here the intercourse between
the two houses dropped. Mary could not help “taking an interest” in John
Musgrave still, but what did it matter? everybody took an interest in
him now.
As for Geoff, he became, as he had a way of doing, the sun of the house
at Penninghame; even the old Squire took notice of his kind, cheerful
young face. He neglected Elfdale and his young cousins, and even Cousin
Mary, whom he loved. But it was not to be supposed that John Musgrave
would allow a series of love passages to go on indefinitely for years
between his young neighbour and his daughter Lilias, as yet not quite
thirteen years old. The young man was sent away after a most affecting
parting, not to return for three years. Naturally, Lady Stanton rebelled
much, she who had kept her son at home during all his life; but what
could she do? Instead of struggling vainly she took the wiser part, and
though it was a trial to tear herself from Stanton and all the servants,
who were so kind, and the household which went upon wheels, upon velvet,
and gave her no trouble, she made up her mind to it, and took her maid
and Benson and Mr. Tritton and went “abroad” too. What is it to go
abroad when a lady is middle-aged and has a grown-up son and such an
establishment?--but she did it: “for I shall not have him very long!”
she said, with a sigh.
Lilias was sixteen when Geoff came home. Can any one doubt that the
child had grown up with her mind full of the young hero who had acted so
great a part in her young life? When the old Squire died and Nello went
to school, a very different school from Mr. Swan’s, the idea of “Mr.
Geoff” became more and more her companion. It was not love, perhaps, in
the ordinary meaning of the word; Lilias did not know what that meant.
Half an elder brother, half an enchanted prince, more than half a hero
of romance, he wove himself with every story and every poem that was
written, to Lilias. He it was, and no Prince Ferdinand, whom Miranda
thought so fair. It was he who slew all the dragons and giants, and
delivered whole dungeons full of prisoners. Her girlhood was somewhat
lonely, chiefly because of this soft mist of semi-betrothal which was
about her. Not only was she already a woman, though a child, but a woman
separated from others, a bride doubly virginal because he was absent to
whom all her thoughts were due. “What if he should forget her?” Mary
Musgrave would say, alarmed. She thought it neither safe nor right for
the child, who was the beauty and flower of Penninghame, as she herself
had been, though in so different a way. Mary now had settled down as the
lady of Penninghame, as her brother was its lawful lord. John was not
the kind of man to make a second marriage, even if, as his sister
sometimes fancied, his first had but little satisfied his heart. But of
this he said nothing, thankful to be able at the end to redeem some
portion of the life thus swallowed up by one of those terrible, but
happily rare, mistakes, which are no less wretched that they are half
divine. He had all he wanted in his sister’s faithful companionship and
in his children. There is no more attractive household than that in
which, after the storms of life, a brother and sister set up peacefully
together the old household gods, never dispersed, which were those of
their youth. Mary was a little more careful, perhaps, of her niece, a
little more afraid of the troubles in her way, than if she had been her
daughter. She watched Lilias with great anxiety, and read between the
lines of Geoff’s letters with vague scrutiny, looking always for
indications of some change.
Lilias was sixteen in the end of October, the third after the previous
events recorded here. She had grown to her full height, and her beauty
had a dreamy, poetical touch from the circumstances, which greatly
changed the natural expression appropriate to the liquid dark eyes and
noble features she had from her mother and her mother’s mother. Her eyes
were less brilliant than they would have been had they not looked so far
away, but they were more sweet. Her brightness altogether was tempered
and softened, and kept within that modesty of childhood to which her
youthful age really belonged, though nature and life had developed her
more than her years. Though she was grown up she kept many of her
childish ways, and still sat, as Mary had always done, at the door of
the old hall, now wonderfully decorated and restored, but yet the old
hall still. The two ladies shared it between them for all their hours of
leisure, but Mary had given up her seat at the door to the younger
inhabitant, partly because she loved to see Lilias there with the sun
upon her, partly because she herself began to feel the cool airs of the
north less halcyon than of old. The books that Lilias carried with her
were no longer fairy tales, but maturer enchantments of poetry. And
there she sat absorbed in verse and lost to all meaner delights, on the
eve of her birthday, a soft air ruffling the little curls on her
forehead, the sun shining upon her uncovered head. Lilias loved the sun.
She was not afraid of it nor her complexion, and the sun of October is
not dangerous. She had a hand up to shade the book, which was too
dazzling in the light, but nothing to keep the golden light from her.
She sat warm and glorified in the long, slanting, dazzling rays.
Mary had heard a horse’s hoofs, and, being a little restless, came
forward softly from her seat behind to see who it was; but Lilias, lost
in the poetry and the sunshine, heard nothing.
“She wept with pity and delight,
She blush’d with love and virgin shame,
And like the murmur of a dream
I heard her breathe my name.
“Her bosom heaved, she stepp’d aside
As conscious of my look she stept,
Then suddenly, with timorous eye,
She fled to me and wept.”
Mary saw what Lilias did not see, the horseman at the foot of the slope.
He looked and smiled, and signed to her over the lovely head in the
sunshine. He was brown and ruddy with health and travel, his eyes
shining, his breath coming quick. Three years! as long as a
lifetime--but it was over. Suddenly, “Lily--my little Lily,” he cried,
unable to keep silence more.
She sprang to her feet like a startled deer; the book fell from her
hands; her eyes gave a great gleam and flash, and softened in the golden
light of sunset and tenderness. The poetry or the life, which was the
most sweet? “Yes, Mr. Geoff,” she said.
THE END.
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.