THE NEWS, AND HOW IT WAS RECEIVED.
Mrs. Eastwood had scarcely uttered these mysterious and affecting words,
when a roll of wheels, a resounding knock, a peal at the outer door,
announced visitors. “Oh, call Brownlow, Nelly, quick, before the door is
opened!” she said. “Oh, Brownlow, stop a moment; I have just heard of a
death in the family. I don’t think I can see any one; I don’t think that
I ought to be able to see any one, Nelly?”
“Who is it, mamma?” cried Nelly, taking possession of the letter. Mrs.
Eastwood took out her handkerchief and put it lightly to her eyes.
“I don’t mean that I was fond of him,” she said, “or could be, for I did
not know him, scarcely--but still it is a shock. It is my
brother-in-law, Nelly, Mr. Vane--whom you have heard of. I wonder now,
who it is at the door? If it is Mrs. Everard, Brownlow, you can let her
in; but if it is Lady Dobson, or Miss Hill, or any other of those
people, say I have just heard of a death in the family. Now run! it must
be some one of importance, for there is another knock at the door.”
“Mr. Vane--why he is not even a relation!” cried Nelly. “There! Brownlow
is sending the people away. My step-aunt’s husband, whom none of us ever
saw----”
“It would be more civil to call him your step-uncle, Nelly. People
generally do--especially as he is dead now, poor man, and never can take
anything upon him. Oh, dear! why, it was Mrs. Barclay, and her brother,
Sir Alexis--people I really wanted to see. How unfortunate! Brownlow, I
am sure I said particularly, Lady Dobson, or Miss Hill, or that kind of
person----”
“You said Mrs. Everard was to come in, mum, and no one else,” said
Brownlow, standing very stiffly erect with his tray, and the card on it,
in his hand.
“That is how it always happens,” said Nelly, “when you say you are not
at home. The nicest people always get sent away: the bores come at other
times, and are admitted as a matter of course. Not to say that one
should always tell the truth; it is the best policy, like honesty, and
other good things.”
“Nelly, you forget yourself,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “When I say not at
home, everybody understands what is meant. But in the present instance
there is no fib. Of course, now we must keep it up for to-day, at least.
You can say, ‘Not a near relation,’ Brownlow; ‘nothing to draw down the
blinds for, but very unexpected and a shock.’ That is enough. Poor man!
it is true I never saw him but twice, and my father never forgave poor
Isabella for marrying him. Poor Isabella! But that is not all, dear.
Give me the letter again.”
“I am reading it, mamma,” said Nelly, and she began to spell it out
aloud, stumbling over the crabbed Italian, and somewhat mazed by mingled
ignorance and wonder. “Here is something about a girl, a young lady. Who
is this young lady, and what did you mean when you said some one of our
very own?”
“I have been a wicked woman,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “When poor Isabella
died, I never asked about the baby; I took it for granted the baby died
too. And I did hate the man so, Nelly; he killed her; I am sure he
killed her. And here has the poor baby been living all the time! I am a
wicked woman. I might have been of some use, and taken her away from
that dreadful man.”
“But she seems to have liked the dreadful man. It says here that she
cannot be consoled. Poor thing! Don’t you know anything about her,
mamma?” cried Nelly. Here Mrs. Eastwood took out her handkerchief once
more, and this time cried in earnest with grief and shame.
“I am a hard-hearted, bad woman!” she said; “Don’t contradict me, Nelly.
A girl that is my own flesh and blood; and I never even inquired after
her--did not know of her existence----”
“Well, mamma, I think I will give you absolution,” said Nelly. “If you
did not know of her existence, how could you inquire after her? Did poor
Aunt Isabella die when she was born?”
“That is the worst of it all,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “I must make a clean
breast of it. I must not deceive myself any more. Yes, I did know of the
poor child’s existence. She must have been six or seven when Isabella
died. The child had the fever too, and I persuaded myself she must have
gone with her mother. For you see, Mr. Vane--poor man, he is dead; we
must not speak any harm of him--was so very disagreeable in his letters.
I know I ought to have inquired; but I had got to dislike him so much,
and almost to be afraid of him----”
“I think it was not quite right of you,” said Nelly, with the gravity of
a judge.
“I know it was not,” said the culprit, penitent. “Many a time I have
said to myself, I would write, but always put it off again. However, it
is not too late now to make amends to her; and as for him----. Give me
the letter, Nelly. Oh! to think he should be dead--such a man as that.”
“Well, surely, mamma, he is no great loss, if he was such a man.”
“Not to us; oh no, not to us! Not to any one except himself; but for
himself! Think, Nelly. However, we are not called upon to judge him,
thank Heaven! And as for the poor child--the poor little girl----”
“It is a long time since Aunt Isabella died,” said Nelly. “How old is
the little girl now?”
Mrs. Eastwood had to make a great effort of recollection. She had many
landmarks all through her life from which to date, and after a
comparison of these, and some trouble in fixing the exact one that
answered, she at length decided that her sister’s death had taken place
the year that Frederick had his fever, which was when he was sixteen. It
is unnecessary for us to go into the details by which she proved her
calculation--as that he grew out of all his clothes while he was ill,
and had nothing to put on till his new mourning arrived, which was a
melancholy business for an invalid. By this means, however, the fact was
established, that “the poor little girl” must be at least sixteen, a
startling conclusion, for which neither of the ladies were prepared.
“As old as Jenny,” said Ellinor, pondering, with unusual gravity upon
her face.
“But then she is a girl, dear, not a boy, remember,” said Mrs.
Eastwood. “Jenny is a dear boy, but two of him in the house would be
trying--in London. That is the worst of London. When boys are at home
for the holidays they have so little scope, poor fellows. I wonder if
she has had any education, poor child?”
“I wonder,” said Nelly, still very grave. “Mamma, must this new cousin
come here?”
“Where else could she go, Nelly? We must be very kind to her. Besides,
she will be a companion for you. It will be very delightful, I don’t
doubt, to have her,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a certain quaver and
hesitation in her voice.
Nelly made no immediate reply. “It will be very odd,” she said, after a
pause, “to have another girl in the house--a girl not so far off one’s
own age. Dear, what an unpleasant sort of creature I must be! I don’t
feel quite so sure that I shall like it. Perhaps she will be much nicer
than I am; perhaps people will like her better. I am dreadfully afraid,
mamma, I am not good enough to be quite happy about it. If she had been
six instead of sixteen----”
“Nelly, don’t say anything, dear. She is our own flesh and blood. You
would be good to any stranger. As for being nicer than you, my
Nelly!--But poor child, poor child, without either father or mother,
without a friend to stand by her--inconsolable in a strange country----”
“But, mamma,” said Nelly, scarcely able to keep from crying in sympathy,
“it cannot be a strange country to her if she has lived there all her
life.”
“That does not matter, dear; nothing can change the fact,” said Mrs.
Eastwood. “I have been in Italy, and I know how English people live.
They hold themselves aloof. Though they live there all their lives, it
is always a strange country to them. And he was not the sort of man to
make friends. I dare say she has been brought up by some old servant or
other, and allowed to run wild.” Here Mrs. Eastwood paused and sighed.
She was the kindest woman in the world, but the idea of a girl of
sixteen, with no manners or education, suddenly thrown upon her hands, a
new member of her family, brought up under circumstances so different,
and no doubt unlike them in every way, was not without its painful side.
And she was angry with herself for seeing this, and grieved to think
that she had so little natural affection or Christian charity. “Our
whole hearts ought to go out towards her, poor thing,” she added, with
profound compunction. “She has nobody else in the world to look to; and,
Nelly, whatever may be our first momentary feeling, of course there can
be no real hesitation----”
“Of course,” said Nelly, springing to her feet. “There is Mrs. Everard’s
knock this time, and now I know you will tell her all about it. What
room must she have? the little green room, or the room in the wing,
or----”
“Dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood coaxingly, “the kindest and the warmest
would be the little room, off yours--close to us both--to make the poor
child feel at home.”
“I knew that was what you would say,” cried Nelly, half laughing, half
crying; “it is exactly like you, mamma; not only take her in, but take
her into the very centre of the nest, between you and me.”
“To warm her, poor child,” said the inconsistent mother, laughing and
crying too; and Nelly ran off, stumbling in her way against Mrs.
Everard, her mother’s friend, whom the rest of the family were not fond
of. “Do not knock me down, Ellinor,” said that lady, giving Nelly a
kiss, which she received without enthusiasm. Where was Nelly going?
Straight up stairs without a pause to the little room which, already in
her own mind, she too had destined to her unknown cousin. She went and
looked at it with her head on one side, contemplating the little bed,
which was decked with faded chintz, and the paper, which was somewhat
dingy, and the carpet, which was so worn as to bear little trace of its
original pattern. “This will never do,” Nelly said to herself. Her
imagination, which was a very lively and sprightly imagination,
instantly set off on a voyage of discovery through the house to make up
what was wanting. She seized, always in her thoughts, upon here a
picture, and there a set of shelves, and rooted out from the lumber-room
the tiniest of easy chairs, and made up her mind as to the hangings. I
do not mean to say that this was all pure kindness. To tell the truth,
Nelly liked the job. The arrangement of the room, and its conversion out
of a dingy receptacle for a nursery maid to a bower for a young lady,
was the most delightful occupation to her. Did not some one say that a
lady had lately set herself up in business as a house decorator? Ellinor
Eastwood would have been her apprentice, her journeywoman, with all her
heart.
It will be apparent from this that though the first idea of the new
arrival startled both mother and daughter, the orphan was not likely to
have a cold or unkindly reception. So much the reverse indeed was this
to the real case, that by the time Mrs. Eastwood had confided all to her
friend she herself was in high excitement and expectation of her unknown
niece. Mrs. Everard had condoled with her on the burden, the
responsibility, the trouble, every one of which words added to the force
of the revulsion in her kindly and simple soul. “God forgive me, Nelly,”
she said, when her daughter reappeared in the twilight, “if I thought my
own sister’s child a burden, or shrank from the responsibility of taking
care of my own flesh and blood. It seemed to hurt me when she said such
things. She must have thought that was how I felt about it; when, Heaven
knows, the very reverse----”
“It was just like her, mamma,” said Nelly.
“My dear, none of you are just to poor Mrs. Everard,” said the mother,
driven back upon herself. She dared not grumble ever so little at this
friend of her bosom without giving occasion, so to speak, to the
Adversary to blaspheme. Therefore for the sake of peace she gulped down
a great many of her friend’s opinions without venturing to say how much
she disagreed with them. The two were sitting there, consulting over the
fire, when Frederick came in. There were no lights in the room, the
shutters were not closed, nor even the blinds drawn, and the trees were
dimly discernible like processions of ghosts in the dim air outside.
That still world outside, looking in through the window, was somewhat
eerie and dreary; when it caught Mrs. Eastwood’s eye she was apt to get
nervous, and declare that there was somebody in the grounds, and that
she saw a face looking in. But this evening she had other things to
think of. Frederick, however, as he came in, felt a shadow of his
mother’s superstitions and alarms. The glimmering dark outside seemed to
him full of possible dangers. “Why don’t you have the lamps lighted, and
shut up the windows?” he said. “I can’t understand your liking for the
firelight, mother. One can’t see to do anything, and anybody that
chooses can see in.”
“We don’t want to do anything, and we don’t care who sees us,” said
Nelly, who was sometimes saucy to her elder brother.
“Don’t wrangle, children: we were discussing something which will
startle you very much, Frederick, as it did me. It will make quite a
change in everything. Perhaps Frederick will feel it least, being out
all day; but we must all feel it,” said Mrs. Eastwood. Frederick seated
himself with his face to the window with a certain air of endurance. He
did not like the firelight flashing over him, and revealing what he
might happen to be thinking. Frederick liked to keep his thoughts to
himself; to tell just as much as he liked, and no more. He put his hands
into his pockets, and gave a half perceptible shrug to his shoulders. He
did not expect to be at all startled. “A change in the fashion, I
suppose,” he said to himself. He was supposed to be very fond of home,
and a most domestic young man; and this was one of the ways in which he
indemnified himself for the good character which he took pains to keep
up.
They told him the story from beginning to end, and he was not startled;
but he was interested, which was a great deal more than he expected to
be. When the lamp was brought in he got the letter; but did not make
very much of that, for to Ellinor’s great gratification he could not
read it. It was written in Italian, as we have said. Now, Mrs. Eastwood
was the only person in the house who knew Italian, though Nelly herself
could spell it out. The mother was rather proud of her accomplishment.
She had lived in Italy in her youth, and had never ceased to regard that
fact as one of the great things in her life. It was with a thrill of
pleasure that she read the letter over, translating it word by word. And
it was something to have moved Frederick to such interest. He entered
into the discussion afterwards with warmth, and gave his advice with
that practical good sense which his mother always admired, though she
was not unaware that it sometimes failed him in his own affairs. “She
cannot come here by herself,” he said; “some one must go and fetch her.
You can’t allow a girl of that age to travel alone.”
“That is quite true, Frederick,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “how odd I should
never have thought of it before. Of course, she could not travel alone.
Dear, dear, what must we do? I cannot go myself, and leave you all to
your own devices. Could I send Brownlow, I wonder; or old Alice----?”
“Brownlow would never find his way to Pisa. He would break down long
before he got there. And old Alice, what good could she do--an old
woman?”
“She travelled with me,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with modest pride.
“Wherever I went she went. She learned a little of the language too. She
would take very good care of her. Whom else can I send? Dick is too
young, and too busy about his examination.”
“If you will pay me well I don’t mind going myself,” said Frederick,
stroking his moustache, and thus concealing a smile which lurked about
the corners of his mouth.
“You, Frederick? It is very good of you to think of it. I never thought
of you. What a pity we cannot make a party, and all go!” said Mrs.
Eastwood. “To be sure that would cost a good deal. I would pay your
expenses, of course, my dear, if you could make up your mind to go. That
would, no doubt, be the nicest way of all. Yes; and although it is a
melancholy occasion, it would be a little change for you too. You have
been looking rather pale lately, Frederick.”
“Yes, I have been looking pale,” he said, with a little laugh, “and
feeling pale. I’ll go. I don’t care much for the melancholy of the
occasion, and I should like the change. To be sure, I am not much like
old Alice; if the little girl wants a nursemaid I might be awkward----”
“She is sixteen,” said Mrs. Eastwood. Nelly made no remark; but she
watched her brother with a scrutiny he did not quite like.
“Do you see anything extraordinary about me, Nell, that you stare at me
like that?” he said, with a little irritation.
“Oh, nothing extraordinary,” said Ellinor. There was a frequent
bickering between the two, which made the mother uncomfortable
sometimes. “I was thinking you must want a change very much to be so
ready to officiate as a nursemaid.”
“I do want a change,” he said.
“Don’t wrangle, my dear children,” said their mother; “what is the use
of wrangling? You have always done it since you were babies. Nelly, I
wish you were not so fond of having the last word.”
“I did not have the last word this time,” said Nelly hastily, under her
breath.
“For, if you will think of it, it is very good of Frederick to bestow so
much interest on a poor lonely little girl. Neither you nor I, Nelly,
though we are women, and ought to have more feeling, ever thought of
going to fetch her. The thing is, can you get leave, Frederick? You had
your two months in the autumn, and then you had Christmas, and you have
been out of town very often, you know, for three days. Can you have
leave again so soon? You must take care not to hurt yourself in the
office.”
“Oh, I can manage; I am not afraid of the office,” he said; but at this
moment Brownlow rung the bell solemnly, meaning that it was time to
dress. When they sat down to dinner together, four of them--for Dick had
come in in the meantime--they were as handsome a young family party as
could be seen. The table was bright with such flowers as were to be had;
well lighted, well served. Perhaps of all the party Frederick was the
most strictly handsome. He had a somewhat long face, with a melancholy
look, which a great many people found interesting--a Charles I. look
some ladies said; and he cultivated a small beard, which was slightly
peaked, and kept up this resemblance. His features were very regular:
and his fine dark brown hair longer than men usually wear it. He was
very particular in his dress, and had delicate hands, shapely and white.
He looked like a man to whom something would happen, the same ladies
said who found out his resemblance to Charles I. There was one thing
about him, however, that few people remarked at first sight; for he was
aware of it, and did his best to conceal the defect of which he was
conscious. He was not fond of meeting a direct look. This did not show
itself by any vulgar shiftiness of look, or downright evasion of other
people’s eyes. He faced the world boldly enough, forcing himself to do
it. There was, however, a subtle hesitation, a dislike to do it, which
affected people strangely who found this peculiarity out; it affected
them with a certain vague doubtfulness, not strong enough to be called
suspicion. This failing it was, undefined and undefinable, which
attracted Nelly’s eyes so often to her brother’s face, and produced the
“wrangling” which Mrs. Eastwood protested against. Nelly had, without
quite knowing it, a wondering curiosity about Frederick; though he was
her brother, she had not found him out.
“What’s the new girl’s name?” said Dick, who was exactly like all the
other young men going in for examinations who abound in English society,
and perhaps scarcely impress the general mind so much as their universal
information gives them a right to do. He was not great in conversation,
and he was fond of asking questions. Some people thought it was an
admirable omen of his future success. If there was a new point to be
found out in an exhausted topic, a new detail or particular (for Dick
was very practical) which no one had investigated, one of his questions
was sure to hit the mark. And it was wonderful, seeing the interest all
young persons take in proper names, that this important inquiry had been
left to him. “You talk of her as the little girl, and the cousin, and so
forth; ain’t she possessed of a name?”
“To be sure; what _is_ her name?” cried Nelly promptly.
Mrs. Eastwood went back into the recesses of her memory. She knew it was
a great family name in the branch of the Vanes to which her
brother-in-law belonged. It was something very unlike him; that she
remembered: very much unlike him; for she recollected quite well
thinking so when she heard it first. Not Angel; oh, no, though that was
pretty, and quite the reverse of the father. No. Now she recollected.
Innocent--that was the name.
“Innocent!” they all said, repeating it one after another all round the
table. It impressed the family somehow, and made Mrs. Eastwood--I cannot
tell you exactly for what reason--cry a little. There was something that
went to her kind heart in the name.
And two days after Frederick started for the Continent, to bring the
orphan home.