NEA.
She was gay, tender, petulant and susceptible. All her feelings
were quick and ardent; and having never experienced
contradiction or restraint, she was little practiced in
self-control; nothing but the native goodness of her heart kept
her from running continually into error.--WASHINGTON IRVING.
If Mrs. Trafford had been questioned about her past life, she would
have replied in patriarchal language that few and evil had been her
days, and yet no life had ever opened with more promise than hers.
Many years, nearly a quarter of a century, before the gray-haired
weary woman had stood in Mrs. Watkins's shop, a young girl in a white
dress, with a face as radiant as the spring morning itself, leaned
over the balcony of Belgrave House to wave good-bye to her father as
he rode away eastward.
Those who knew Nea Huntingdon in those early days say that she was
wonderfully beautiful.
There was a picture of her in the Royal Academy, a dark-haired girl in
a velvet dress, sitting under a marble column with a blaze of oriental
scarves at her feet, and a Scotch deerhound beside her, and both face
and figure were well-nigh faultless. Nea had lost her mother in her
childhood, and she lived alone with her father in the great house that
stood at the corner of the square, with its flower-laden balconies and
many windows facing the setting sun.
Nea was her father's only child, and all his hopes were centered upon
her.
Mr. Huntingdon was an ambitious man; he was more, he was a profound
egotist. In his character pride, the love of power, the desire for
wealth, were evenly balanced and made subservient to a most
indomitable will. Those who knew him well said he was a hard
self-sufficient man, one who never forgot an injury or forgave it.
He had been the creator of his own fortunes; as a lad he had come to
London with the traditional shilling in his pocket, and had worked his
way to wealth, and was now one of the richest merchant princes in the
metropolis.
He had married a young heiress, and by her help had gained entrance
into society, but she had died a dissatisfied, unhappy woman, who had
never gained her husband's heart or won his confidence. In Mr.
Huntingdon's self-engrossed nature there was no room for tenderness;
he had loved his handsome young wife in a cool temperate fashion, but
she had never influenced him, never really comprehended him; his iron
will, hidden under a show of courtesy, had repressed her from the
beginning of their married life. Perhaps her chief sin in his eyes had
been that she had not given him a son; he had accepted his little
daughter ungraciously, and for the first few years of her young life
he had grievously neglected her.
No mother; left by herself in that great house, with nurses to spoil
her and servants to wait on her, the little creature grew up wayward
and self-willed; her caprices indulged, her faults and follies laughed
at or glossed over by careless governesses.
Nea very seldom saw her father in those days; society claimed him when
his business was over, and he was seldom at home. Sometimes Nea,
playing in the square garden under the acacias, would look up and see
a somber dark face watching her over the railings, but he would seldom
call her to him; but, strange to say, the child worshiped him.
When he rode away in the morning a beautiful little face would be
peeping at him through the geraniums on the balcony, a little dimpled
hand would wave confidingly. "Good-bye, papa," she would say in her
shrill little voice, but he never heard her; he knew nothing, and
cared little, about the lonely child-life that was lived out in the
spacious nurseries of Belgrave House.
But, thank Heaven, childhood is seldom unhappy.
Nea laughed and played with the other children in the square garden;
she drove out with her governess in the grand open carriage, where her
tiny figure seemed almost lost. Nea remembered driving with her mother
in that same carriage--a fair tired face had looked down on her
smiling.
"Mamma, is not Belgrave House the Palace Beautiful? look how its
windows are shining like gold," she had said once.
"It is not the Palace Beautiful to me, Nea," replied her mother,
quietly. Nea always remembered that sad little speech, and the tears
that had come into her mother's eyes. What did it all mean? she
wondered; why were the tears so often in her mother's eyes? why did
not papa drive with them sometimes? It was all a mystery to Nea.
Nea knew nothing about her mother's heart-loneliness and repressed
sympathies; with a child's beautiful faith she thought all fathers
were like that. When Colonel Hambleton played with his little
daughters in the square garden, Nea watched them curiously, but
without any painful comparison. "My papa is always busy, Nora," she
said, loftily, to one of the little girls who asked why Mr. Huntingdon
never came too; "he rides on his beautiful horse down to the city,
nurse says. He has his ships to look after, you know, and sometimes he
is very tired."
"Papa is never too tired to play with me and Janie," returned Nora,
with a wise nod of her head; "he says it rests him so nicely."
Somehow Nea went home not quite so happily that day; a dim
consciousness that things were different, that it never rested papa to
play with her, oppressed her childish brain; and that evening Nea
moped in her splendid nursery, and would not be consoled by her toys
or even her birds and kitten. Presently it came out with floods of
tears that Nea wanted her father--wanted him very badly indeed.
"You must not be naughty, Miss Nea," returned nurse, severely, for she
was rather out of patience with the child's pettishness; "Mr.
Huntingdon has a lot of grand people to dine with him to-night. The
carriages will be driving up by and by, and if you are good, you shall
go into one of the best bedrooms and look at them." But Nea was not to
be pacified by this; the tears ended in a fit of perverse sulking that
lasted until bedtime. Nea would neither look at the carriages nor the
people; the ice and fruit that had been provided as a treat were
pushed angrily away; Nea would not look at the dainties--she turned
her flushed face aside and buried it in her pillow. "I want papa," she
sobbed, as nurse pulled down the blind and left her.
That night, as Mr. Huntingdon crossed the corridor that led to his
bedroom, he was startled by seeing what looked like a mass of blue and
white draperies flung across his door, but as he lowered his
candlestick he saw it was Nea lying fast asleep, with her head
pillowed on her arms, and her dark hair half hiding her face.
"Good heavens! what can nurse be about!" he exclaimed in a shocked
voice, as he lifted the child, and carried her back to her bed. Nea
stirred drowsily as he moved her, and said, "Dear papa," and one warm
arm crept about his neck, but she was soon fast asleep again. Somehow
that childish caress haunted Mr. Huntingdon, and he thought once or
twice how pretty she had looked. Nurse had assured him that the child
must have crept out of bed in her sleep, but Mr. Huntingdon did not
feel satisfied, and the next morning, as he was eating his breakfast,
he sent for Nea.
She came to him willingly enough, and stood beside him.
"What were you doing, my dear, last night?" he asked, kindly, as he
kissed her. "Did nurse tell you that I found you lying by my bedroom
door, and that I carried you back to bed?"
"Yes, papa; but why did you not wake me? I tried not to go to sleep
until you came, but I suppose I could not help it."
"But what were you doing?" he asked, in a puzzled tone; "don't you
know, Nea, that it was very wrong for a little girl to be out of her
bed at that time of night?" But as Mr. Huntingdon spoke he remembered
again how sweet the childish face had looked, pillowed on the round
dimpled arm.
"I was waiting to see you, papa," replied Nea with perfect frankness;
"you are always too busy or too tired to come and see me, you know,
and nurse is so cross, and so is Miss Sanderson; they will never let
me come and find you; so when nurse came to take away the lamp I
pretended to be asleep, and then I crept out of the bed, and went to
your door and tried to keep awake."
"Why did you want to see me, Nea?" asked her father, more and more
puzzled; it never entered his head that his only child wanted him, and
longed for him.
"Oh," she said, looking up at him with innocent eyes that reminded him
of her mother, "I always want you, papa, though not so badly as I did
yesterday; Colonel Hambleton was playing with Nora and Janie, and Nora
said her papa was never too busy to play with them, and that made me
cry a little, for you never play with me, do you, papa? and you never
look up when I am waving to you from the balcony, and nurse says you
don't want to be worried with me, but that is not true, is it, papa?"
"No, no!" but his conscience pricked him as he patted her head and
picked out a crimson peach for her. "There, run away, Nea, for I am
really in a hurry; if you are a good girl you shall come down and sit
with me while I have dinner, for I shall be alone to-night;" and Nea
tripped away happily.
From that day people noticed a change in Mr. Huntingdon; he began to
take interest in his child, without being demonstrative, for to his
cold nature demonstration was impossible; he soon evinced a decided
partiality for his daughter's society; and no wonder, as people said,
for she was a most engaging little creature.
By and by she grew absolutely necessary to him, and they were never
long apart. Strangers would pause to admire the pretty child on her
cream-colored pony cantering beside the dark, handsome man. Nea always
presided now at the breakfast-table; the dimpled hands would carry the
cup of coffee round to her father's chair, and lay flowers beside his
plate. When he was alone she sat beside him as he ate his dinner, and
heard about the ships that were coming across the ocean laden with
goodly freights. Nea grew into a beautiful girl presently, and then a
new ambition awoke in Mr. Huntingdon's breast. Nea was his only
child--with such beauty, talents, and wealth, she would be a match for
an earl's son; his heart swelled with pride as he looked at her; he
begun to cherish dreams of her future that would have amazed Nea. A
certain young nobleman had lately made their acquaintance, a handsome
simple young fellow, with a very moderate allowance of brains; indeed,
in his heart Mr. Huntingdon knew that Lord Bertie Gower was merely a
feather-brained boy with a weak vacillating will that had already
brought him into trouble.
Mr. Huntingdon was thinking about Lord Bertie Gower as he rode away
that spring morning, while Nea waved to him from the balcony; he had
looked up at her and smiled, but as he turned away his thoughts were
very busy. Yes, Lord Bertie was a fool, he knew that--perhaps he would
not own as much to any one else, certainly not if Lord Bertie became
his son-in-law--but he was well-bred and had plenty of good nature,
and--Well, young men were all alike, they would have their fling, and
he was hardly the man to cast a stone at them. Then he was a
good-looking fellow, and girls liked him; and if Nea laughed at him,
and said that he was stupid, he could soon convince her that there was
no need for her husband to be clever--she was clever enough for both;
he would like to see the man, with the exception of himself, who could
bend Nea's will. The girl took after him in that; she had not
inherited her mother's soft yielding nature--poor Susan, who had loved
him so well.
Lord Bertie needed a strong hand; as his son-in-law, Mr. Huntingdon
thought that he could keep him in order. The boy was certainly in love
with Nea. He must come to an understanding with him. True, he was only
a second son; but his brother, Lord Leveson, was still a bachelor, and
rather shaky in his health. The family were not as a rule long-lived;
they were constitutionally and morally weak; and the old earl had
already had a touch of paralysis. Yes, Mr. Huntingdon thought it would
do; and there was Groombridge Hall for sale, he thought he would buy
that; it should be his wedding-gift--part of the rich dowry that she
would bring to her husband.
Mr. Huntingdon planned it all as he rode down to the city that
morning, and it never entered his mind what Nea would say to his
choice. His child belonged to him. She was part of himself. Hitherto
his will had been hers. True, he had denied her nothing; he had never
demanded even a trifling sacrifice from her; there was no fear that
she would cross his will if he told her seriously that he had set his
heart on this marriage; and he felt no pity for the motherless young
creature, who in her beauty and innocence appealed so strongly to his
protection. In his strange nature love was only another form of pride;
his egotism made him incapable of unselfish tenderness.
Nea little knew of the thoughts that filled her father's mind as she
watched him fondly until both horse and rider had disappeared.
It was one of those days in the early year when the spring seems to
rush upon the world as though suddenly new born, when there is all at
once a delicious whisper and rustle of leaves, and the sunshine
permeates everything; when the earth wakes up fresh, green, and laden
with dews; and soft breezes, fragrant with the promise of summer, come
stealing into the open windows. Nea looked like the embodiment of
spring as she stood there in her white gown. Below her was the cool
green garden of the square where she had played as a child, with the
long morning shadows lying on the grass; around her were the
twitterings of the house-martins and the cheeping of sparrows under
the eaves; from the distance came the perfumy breath of violets.
Such days make the blood course tumultuously through the veins of
youth, when with the birds and all the live young things that sport in
the sunshine, they feel that mere existence is a joy and a source of
endless gratitude.
"Who so happy as I?" thought Nea, as she tripped through the great
empty rooms of Belgrave House, with her hands full of golden
primroses; "how delicious it is only to be alive on such a morning."
Alas for that happy spring-tide, for the joyousness and glory of her
youth. Little did Nea guess as she flitted, like a white butterfly,
from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide was already
over, and that the cloud that was to obscure her life was dawning
slowly in the east.