Gus came into the hall with Bell and Marie, and waited there while they
proceeded to plead his cause within. He walked about the hall softly,
and looked at the pictures, the old map of the county, and other
curiosities that were there. These things beguiled his anxiety about his
reception, and filled him with an altogether novel interest. A thing
which is quite indifferent to us while it belongs to our neighbour,
gains immediate attraction when it becomes our own. He looked at
everything with interest, even the cases of stuffed birds that decorated
one corner. Then he came and seated himself in the great bamboo chair in
which he had sat down the first time he came to Markham. It was not very
long ago, not yet two months, but what a difference there was! Then,
indeed, he had been anxious about his reception, and he was anxious
about his reception now. But when he came first, he had been doubtful of
his position altogether, not sure what his rights were, or what claim he
could make--and now his anxieties were merely sentimental, and his
rights all established. He sat where he had sat then, and saw everything
standing just as he had seen it, the trees the same, except in colour,
nothing altered except himself. Now it was all his, this noble domain.
He had not known what welcome he might receive, whether his father would
acknowledge him, or what would happen, and now his father’s possessions
were his, and no one could infringe his rights. How strange it was! He
sat sunk in the great bamboo chair, and listened to the faint sound of
voices which he heard through the open door, the two little girls
pleading his cause. He was very desirous that they should be successful,
for if he was not successful, Markham would be a dull house--but still,
successful or not, nothing any longer could affect him vitally. A poor
stranger, a wanderer from the tropics, unused to England and English
ways, with not much money, and a very doubtful prospect before him, he
had been when he first came here. How could he help smiling at the
change? He had no desire to do any one harm. All the evil that he had
done was involuntary, but it could not be expected that he would give up
his rights. He felt very much at his ease as he seated himself in that
chair, notwithstanding the touch of anxiety in his mind. The prospect
which was before him was enough to satisfy an ambitious man, but Gus was
not ambitious. Indeed, the advantages he had gained were contracted in
his eyes by his own inability fully to understand their extent. They
were greater than he was aware, greater than his imagination could
grasp. But, at least, they included everything that his imagination was
able to grasp, and mortal man cannot desire more.
Bell had gone in very quietly, inspired by her mission, without pausing
to think, and Marie had followed, as Marie always did. They went
straight into the room where they were sure, they thought, of seeing
their mother. It was in the recess, the west chamber, at the end of the
drawing room, that they found her. But the circumstances did not seem
very favourable to their plea. Lady Markham and Alice were reading a
letter together, and Alice, it was very apparent, was crying over her
mother’s shoulder, while Lady Markham was very pale, and her eyes red as
if she had shed tears. “It is all over then,” she was saying as the
children came in, folding the letter up to put it away. And Alice cried,
and made no reply. This checked the straightforward fervour of Bell, who
had walked straight into the room and halfway up its length before she
discovered the state of affairs. “Mamma,” she had begun, “I have come
from----” Then Bell paused, and cried, “Oh, mamma, dear, what is the
matter?” with sudden alarm, stopping short in mid-career.
“Nothing very much,” said Lady Markham, “nothing that we did not know
before. What is it, Bell? You may tell me all the same. We must face it,
you know. We must not allow ourselves to be overcome by it,” she said
with a little quiver of her lip, and a smile which made the little girls
inclined to cry too.
“Oh mamma! I just came from--him,” Bell stopped short again, feeling as
if involved in a sort of treason, and her pale little countenance
flushed. Only then Lady Markham perceived the state in which the child
was.
“What have you been doing to yourself, Bell? You have hurt yourself.
You have got a blow on the forehead. What was it? Let me look at you.
You have been up in one of those trees.”
“Oh mamma,” cried Bell, finding in this the very opportunity she wanted,
“I fell, and I think I might have killed myself: but all at once, I
don’t know where he came from, I never saw him coming, there was
the--little gentleman! He picked me up, and he spoiled all his
handkerchief bathing my forehead. He was very kind, he always was very
kind--to us children,” said Bell.
“Oh Bell! how can you speak of that odious little man? how can you
bother mamma about him? We have heard a great deal too much about him
already,” cried Alice with an indignation that dried her tears.
“It is not his fault,” said Lady Markham, “we must be just. What could
he do but what he has done? If we had known of it all along, we should
never have thought of blaming him--and it is not his fault that it all
burst upon us in a moment. It was not his fault,” she said, shaking her
head, “but you must not think I blame your dear papa. He meant it for
the best. I can see how it all happened as distinctly---- At first he
thought it would wound me to hear that he had been married before. And
then--he forgot it altogether. You must remember how young he was, and
what is a baby to a man? He forgot about it. I can see it all so
plainly. The only thing is my poor Paul!” And here, after her defence of
his father, the mother broke down too.
“Mamma,” said Bell, “oh, don’t cry, please don’t cry! That is exactly
what he says. He says he will do anything you like to tell him. He says
he never wanted to do any harm. He is as sorry--as sorry! But how could
he help being born, and being old--so much older than Paul? He says he
is very fond of us all. He does not mind what he does if you will only
let him come home and be the eldest brother. Mamma,” said Bell,
solemnly, struck with a new idea, “he must have saved my life, I think.
I might have broken my neck, and there was nobody but Marie to run and
get assistance. It was a very good thing for me that he was there. If he
had not been there, you would have had--only five children instead of
six,” Bell said, with a gulp, swallowing the lump in her throat. She
thought she saw herself being carried along all white and still, and
the thought overcame her with a sense of the pathos of the possible
situation. She seemed to hear all the people saying, “Such a promising
child and cut off in a moment;” and “Poor Lady Markham! just after her
other great grief;” so that Bell could scarcely help sobbing over
herself, though she had not been killed.
“Oh Bell! it was not so bad as that! how could you be killed coming down
head over heels from the old tree?” cried Marie, almost with
indignation.
Lady Markham had satisfied herself in the meantime that the lump on the
forehead was more ugly than serious.
“Let us be very glad you have not suffered more,” she said. “But, Bell,
the right thing would be not to climb up there again.”
“Mamma, the right thing would be, if you care about me, at least, to let
poor Mr. Gus come in, and thank him for saving my life. Oh, let him come
in, mamma! How could he help being older than Paul? I dare say he would
rather have been younger if he could; and I am sure by what he says he
would give Paul anything--anything! to make it up to him, and to make
friends with you. He says how miserable he would be if you left him
here all alone. He could not bear to be down here thinking he had turned
us out. Oh, if you had only seen him! he looked as if he could cry--Ask
Marie. And he wanted to know if he might speak to Alice, if Alice would
speak for him. But I said I didn’t think it, because Paul was Alice’s
particular brother, and she could not bear anything that was hard upon
him; and then he said,” cried Bell, with unconscious embellishment,
“‘You are my two little sisters, oh, go and plead for me! Say I will do
anything--anything--whatever she pleases.’ Oh mamma! who could say more
than that? He has nobody belonging to him, unless we will let him belong
to us. He is a poor little gentleman, not young, nor nice-looking, nor
clever, nor anything. And, mamma, he is a little--or more than a little,
a great deal--_very_ like poor papa. Oh!” cried Bell, breaking off with
a suppressed shriek, as a hand suddenly was laid upon her shoulder.
Nobody had observed him coming in. A light little man, with a soft step,
and soft unobtrusive shoes that never had creaked in the course of their
existence, upon a soft Turkey carpet, makes very little sound as he
moves. He had got tired waiting outside, and the doors were open, and
Mr. Gus had never been shy. He had walked straight in, guided by their
voices; and the very fact that he had thus made his way within those
curtains into this sanctuary seemed to give him at once a footing in the
place. He put his hand upon Bell’s shoulder, and, though he was not much
taller than she was, made a very respectful bow to Lady Markham over her
head.
“I thought I might take the liberty to come in and speak for myself,
Lady Markham,” he said. There was a flutter of his eyelids, giving that
sidelong glance round him, which was the only thing that betrayed Gus’s
consciousness that the place to which “he had taken the liberty” of
coming in was his own. “My little sisters” (he put his other hand upon
the shoulder of Marie, who was much consoled at thus being brought back
out of the cold into which Bell’s superior gifts invariably sentenced
her), “My little sisters can speak better for me than I can do; and
won’t you take me in for the sake of the little things who have always
been my friends? It is not my fault that this all came upon you as a
surprise. Don’t you think it would be better for everybody--for the
children, and for my poor father’s memory, and all, if you will just
put up with having me in the house?”
Lady Markham grew very pale. She made a great effort, standing up to do
it.
“Sir Augustus,” she said, and nobody knew what it cost her to give him
this title; all the blood ebbed away from her face: “Sir Augustus, the
house is your own, it appears. What I can put up with has nothing to do
with it.”
“Yes,” he said, tranquilly, bowing in acknowledgment, “it is my own; but
it has been yours for a great many years. Why can’t we be friends? I
can’t help being their brother, you know, whatever happens.”
Alice had been sitting with her hand over her eyes. She had a special
enmity towards this interloper; but now she took courage to look at him.
They all looked at him, distinct among the little group of female faces.
He was _dans son droit_, and it is impossible to tell how much the
certainty that all belonged to him, that he was no mere claimant, but
the proud possessor of the place, changed the aspect of the little
gentleman, even to those who had most reason to be wounded by it. It
gave him a dignity he had never possessed before, and a magnanimity
too. When he saw Alice looking at him, he left the little girls and came
towards her, holding out his hands. He was a different man in this
interior from what he was outside.
“I should be very fond of you if you would let me,” he said. “Alice,
though you are Paul’s particular sister, you can’t help being my sister
too; and there is some one else who is a friend of mine, who has been
very kind to me,” the little man said significantly, sinking his voice.
What did he mean? Though she did not know what he meant; Alice felt a
flame of colour flush over her cheeks in spite of herself.
“We are not monsters to disregard such an appeal,” said Lady Markham.
“Whatever may happen, and however we may feel, we must all acknowledge
that you mean to be very kind. You will not ask us to say more just now.
If you will send for your things, I will give orders to have your rooms
prepared at once.”
“Mamma!” they all cried, in a chorus of wonder. Alice with something
like indignation, Bell and Marie with an excitement which was half
pleasure: for this was novelty, at least, if nothing else, which always
commends itself to the mind of youth.
“If it is his right, he shall have it,” said Lady Markham, with a quiver
in her voice. “Mr. Scrivener tells me we must resist no longer--and he
is your brother, as he says, and we have no right to reject his
kindness. Do you know, children,” she cried, suddenly clasping her hands
together with an impatient movement, “while we are talking so much at
our ease, it is not our own house we are in, but this gentleman’s house?
He can turn us out of it whenever he pleases, while we are arguing
whether we will let him come into it! Sir,” she said, rising up once
more (but she had done it once; she could not again give him the title,
which ought to have been Paul’s)--“Sir, I acknowledge that you are kind,
generous--far more than we have any right to expect--but you will
understand that such a position is not easy--that it is very strange to
me--and very new, and----”
“Certainly, ma’am,” said Gus. Her politeness (as he called it to
himself) put him on his mettle. “All you say is very true and just. If I
were a little monster, as Alice thinks, there are a great many things I
could do to make myself disagreeable; and if you were not a sensible
woman, as I always felt you to be, we might make a very pretty mess
between us. But as we are not fiends, but good Christians (I hope),
suppose you let the little ones come down with me to the village to see
after my things? It’s a nice afternoon, though a little dull. You ladies
ought to go out too and take the air. My little dears,” he said, “we’ll
have those big cases up; there are a lot of things in them I brought
from Barbadoes expressly for you. And those sweetmeats--I told you of
them the first time I came into this house.”
“You said they were for me,” said Marie, with a tone of reproach; “but
that cannot have been true, for you did not know of me.”
Gus had put one hand in Bell’s arm and the other on Marie’s shoulder. He
looked at his two little companions with the sincerest pleasure in his
little brown face.
“I did not know you were Marie, nor that this was Bell: but I knew that
you were you,” said the little gentleman, with a smile. “And,” he added,
looking round upon them all, “I knew we must be friends sooner or
later. Let’s go and see after the cases now.”
This was how it was all arranged, to the consternation and amazement of
all the world; and Lady Markham was not less astonished than all the
rest. She went to the Hall window when they were gone, and looked out
after them, scarcely believing her senses. Sir Augustus Markham (as he
must now be allowed to be) had put his arm into Bell’s, who was nearly
as tall as he was, and who had forgotten all about the bump on her
forehead and the tear in her frock; while Marie held his other hand, and
skipped along by his side, now in front, now behind, looking up into his
face and chattering to him. There was in Gus’s gait, in his trim little
figure, and his personality in general, a something which was much more
like Sir William than any of his other children. It had always been a
little private source of gratification to Lady Markham, notwithstanding
her sincere affection for her husband, that Paul was like the
Fleetwoods, who were much finer men. But this resemblance, which she had
not very much desired for her own children, had settled in the unknown
offspring of his youth. It added now another pang to her heartache, not
only to see how like he was, but to see how entirely the children had
adopted their new, yet old, brother. She withdrew from the window in a
bewilderment of pain and excitement. What would Paul say to the step she
had taken? It was right, she had felt. She had done what was the hardest
to do, because it seemed evident that it was the best; but what would
Paul say? And now that all hope and resistance was over, and nothing to
be done but to submit and make the best of it, what was to become of her
boy? Lady Markham had not the solace of knowing of the change that had
taken place in Paul’s mind. She expected nothing else than that her next
meeting with Paul would be to take leave of him, to see him go away with
his chosen associates; most likely the husband of Janet Spears, or about
to become so. Could Janet Spears even now secure her son to her? bring
him back? fix him in England?--at least within reach of her care and
help? And should she--could she--do anything to persuade the girl to
exercise her influence? That discussion, which had been broken by the
sudden appearance of Bell, and this strange episode altogether, returned
to her mind as she went sadly up stairs to consult with Mrs. Fry about
the rooms to be made ready for Sir Augustus. Poor Lady Markham! she
would have to speak of him by this name, and to acknowledge to the
servants the downfall of her own son, the descent of her own family to a
lower place--Sir William’s second family. It was hard--very hard--upon a
woman who had been strong in a pride which had nothing bitter in it, so
long as it had been unassailed, and all had gone well, but which gave
her pangs now that were sufficiently difficult to bear. And then there
was the dilemma in her heart still more difficult, still more painful.
She had done what she thought was the best, at much cost to herself, in
this matter; but ah, the other matter, which was still nearer her heart,
how was she, torn as she was by diverse emotions, to know in Paul’s case
what was the best?
It would be needless to attempt to describe the excitement raised in the
household by the announcement that “Sir Augustus” was “coming home,” and
that his rooms were to be got ready with all speed.
“My lady has give up the very best of everything,” Mrs. Fry said,
solemnly; “and as considerate, thinking which was to be the warmest,
seeing as he’s come from India, where it is _that_ warm. It would not
become us as are only servants, to be more particular than my lady, or
else I don’t know that I could make it convenient to stay with a
gentleman as has the blood of niggers in his veins.”
“I knowed it!” Mr. Brown said, slapping his thigh; he was usually more
guarded in his language, but excitement carries the day over grammar
even with persons of more elevated breeding. “The last time as ever I
helped him on with his coat there was something as told me it was him
that was the man, and not Paul. Well! I don’t say as I don’t regret it
in some ways, but pride must have a fall, as the Bible says.”
“I don’t see as it lays in your spere to quote the Bible on a any such
subject,” said Mrs. Fry with indignation. “If it’s Mr. Paul, I just wish
he had a little more pride. His dear mother would be easier in her mind
this day if he was one that held more by his own class. And if you’re
pleased, you that have eat their bread this fifteen years, to have a bit
of a little upstart that is only half an Englishman, instead of your
young master that you’ve seen grown up from a boy--and as handsome a boy
as one could wish to see--I don’t think much of your Christianity, and
quoting out of the Bible. It’s easier a deal to do that than to perform
what’s put down there.”
“I hope I knows my duty, ma’am,” said Mr. Brown, resuming the dignity
which excitement had momentarily shaken, “without instruction from you
or any one.”
“I hope you do, Mr. Brown,” said Mrs. Fry. And this little passage of
arms restored the equilibrium of these two important members of the
household. But when it became known in the village and at the station,
where the great cases which had been lying at the latter place were
ordered by Sir Augustus to be carried to the house, and his portmanteau
brought from the Markham Arms, and when slowly, through a hundred rills
of conflicting information, the news got spread about the country till
it flooded, like a rushing torrent, all the great houses and all the
outlying villages--drove the Trevors and the Westlands half out of their
senses, and communicated a sudden vertigo to the entire
neighbourhood--words fail us to describe the commotion. Everybody had
known there was something wrong, but who could have imagined anything so
sweeping and complete. “You see now, mamma, how right I was to let Paul
alone,” Ada Westland said with her frank cynicism. “We must see that
your papa calls upon Sir Augustus,” that far-seeing mother replied. As
for old Admiral Trevor, who was getting more and more into his dotage
every day, he ordered his carriage at once to go out and “putsh shtop to
it.” “Will Markham ought to be ashamed of himself,” the old sailor said.
The same impulse moved the inhabitants of the rectory, both father and
daughter. Mr. Stainforth did nothing but go about his garden all day
wringing his hands and crying, “Dear! dear!” and trying to recollect
something about it, some way of proving an _alibi_ or getting evidence
to show that it was impossible. He, too, felt that it was his duty to
put a stop to it. And as for Dolly, what could she do but cry her pretty
eyes out, and wish, oh so vainly, that she had a hundred thousand pounds
that she might give it all to Paul!