THE HEIR.
Miss Gwynne returned to Glanyravon on Christmas Eve. She had not visited
it before, since she left it when her father married. She had seen her
father, his wife, and her little brother almost yearly in London,
whither Lady Mary Nugent insisted on dragging her husband annually; but
she had not hitherto had love, or courage, or Christian charity enough
to visit them at home. When last in town, and repeatedly by letter, her
father had urged her doing so, and she had at last complied with his
request, more from a latent sense of duty than from inclination.
It was a bright, frosty night, when the carriage that had been sent to
meet her drove up to the door. If poor Netta had fainted on returning to
the farm, Freda was obliged to brush away gathering tears as she
returned to the Park. Every branch of tree, as it glittered in the
moonlight in its dress of hoar frost, was familiar to her, every pane of
glass in the windows of the old place seemed a friend.
On the lowest step, bare-headed and expectant, were the old butler and
footman she had left when she went away; she shook hands with each, and
they almost rung her hand off. In the door-way stood her father, not
bare-headed, but expectant, who received her with paternal warmth. Freda
knew that he must for once have forgotten himself and his nervous
debility to have thus exposed himself to the frosty air. In the hall was
Lady Mary ready with smiles and embraces, with which Freda would gladly
have dispensed; but she did her best to seem, if she could not feel,
glad to see her.
Her ladyship preceded her to her own old bedroom, where a huge fire, and
bright wax candles bade her welcome, and whither she was followed by
Frisk, who was exuberant in his demonstrations of delight at his return
home after his long absence.
'I have ordered my maid to wait on you my dear,' said Freda's
stepmother, 'because I find your's does not return to you. But we can
replace her. Dinner will be ready whenever you are; can I do anything
for you?'
'No, thank you, I shall not be long,' said Freda mechanically.
Lady Mary left the room.
Freda felt that her tact was good after all; for no nice feeling could
have been more successful than it was. She had received her just as if
she had come home after a short absence. No demonstrations of any kind;
her room was much as it had ever been. There were even some of her
clothes in the wardrobe.
'I won't cry! I won't give way!' muttered Freda, beginning to take off
her wrappings.
There was a tap at the door.
'Come in!' And Anne the old housemaid appeared.
'Oh, miss, I am so glad to see you home again, it do seem so natural.
Please to let me unpack your things, miss. My lady thought you might
like me better than Mrs Pink.'
'Thank you, Anne, it does look like home to see you.'
'Shall I get your dress, miss?'
'I can't dress to-night, I am too tired. There, that will do. Now I will
go downstairs.'
She did so, and found her father alone in the library.
'I won't cry,' again she said, as she kissed him affectionately.
'Thank you for coming, Freda, it will do me good, and my wife is
delighted. Harold, too, is in ecstasies, and only went to bed with a
promise that sister Freda--he calls you sister, you know, and--and all
that sort of thing.'
The 'my wife,' grated strangely on Freda's ear, but she promised to go
and see her little brother.
Lady Mary came in, and they went to dinner.
It seemed strange to see her at the head of the table, and Freda felt as
if she were in a dream. But nothing could be more perfect than her
ladyship's manner. She behaved as if nothing had ever happened to cause
the least estrangement between them, and almost as if she were still
Lady Mary Nugent. Handsome as ever, and perfectly well-bred, she almost
made even Freda believe, after her long absence from her, that she
really was what she seemed. However, Freda tried to take her as she was,
and to feel thankful that she was no worse. It was she who principally
kept up the conversation; Freda made great efforts, and signally failed,
and Mr Gwynne never talked much.
After dinner, Freda proposed to go and see the little brother. As she
looked at the magnificent boy who lay peacefully sleeping in his little
crib, she was thankful to be able to kiss him, and say, 'God bless you,
my brother,' without feeling angered that he had deprived her of the
inheritance she had once been so proud of. She knew that Lady Mary was
watching her narrowly, but there was no hypocrisy in her affection, so
she did not care.
They went down to the library, where were Mr Gwynne, tea and coffee.
'Is he not a splendid fellow, my dear?' said Mr Gwynne.
'He certainly is, papa,' replied Freda, aloud, saying inwardly, 'and
everything with you now. I am quite second--third I ought to say.'
This was true; Mr Gwynne was proud of his wife and son. The former took
care of him, and did not greatly interfere with his pursuits or
peculiarities, the latter gave him new life and hopes. An heir in his
old age was a gift that might well exceed that of the daughter who could
not perpetuate his name.
Freda was glad when she went to bed, which she did as soon as tea was
over. It was a great relief to sit down once more in the easy-chair
which had helped to nurse so many crude fancies and humours in days gone
by, and think over the past and present. There was an atmosphere of
unreality about everything at Glanyravon, that she hoped to clear off on
the morrow, so she resolved to try not to feel depressed under its
influence; but having once known what it was to enjoy living with real,
working men and women, with aims beyond the formalities of society, it
seemed hard to be thrown back upon the cold worldliness of her
stepmother, and the selfish nervousness of her father.
She was, however, aroused on the blessed morning of Christmas Day by
something that was very real.
'A merry Kismas, sister Freda,' shouted a sharp little voice into her
ear, and before her eyes were half opened brisk little feet were
stamping at her bedside, and the same voice authoritatively enouncing,
'Put me up, Dane, I 'ull be put up.'
'I beg your pardon, miss,' said the nurse, who stood in the doorway,
'but Master Harold would come, and my lady isn't up, and--'
'Never mind, let him in,' said Freda, sitting up in bed, and opening her
arms to receive the rosy, wilful, handsome child, who did not know how
he had supplanted her.
'A merry Kismas!' he repeated, returning Freda's kisses by pulling off
her night-cap, and letting down her long hair before she knew what he
was about. 'Now, I'll dive 'ou to Tewey.'
'Master Harold! don't, sir!' said the nurse.
But Master Harold was jumping on the pillow behind his sister, making
reins of her hair and horses of her head in no very gentle fashion.
'I sha'n't give you what I brought you from London if you pull my hair,'
said Freda, catching the bare, firm, sturdy leg of the small tyrant who
called her sister.
'Is it soldiers?' asked the child, suddenly tumbling down before her.
She caught the little fellow in her arms, and told him that if he would
go away whilst she dressed he should have the present. After some demur
he consented, having first informed Freda that ''ittle Minnie, and
Winnie, and Dot, and baby' were all coming to dinner.
'A family party!' groaned Freda, when the child was carried away by its
nurse, 'myself the only rightful member of the family, and probably the
only one who will feel as if she doesn't belong to it.'
Freda got up and looked out upon the fine park and the hills beyond. She
sighed involuntarily.
'Why should I sigh,' she said. 'I am happier than when it was my
home,--happier, and, I hope, more useful. My father doesn't want
me,'--here she paused. Perhaps that father really did want her, for she,
at least, loved him, and his wife did not; and she was beginning to be
conscious, daily more and more conscious, of the exceeding preciousness
of love.
Breakfast passed, with the same effort to feel at home on her part, and
attempt to keep up a conversation on that of Lady Mary, as had the
dinner of the previous day.
Harold made a diversion by bursting into the room to ask for his
soldiers. He, at least, was quite natural, and entirely spoilt.
Immediately after breakfast they drove to church. It was delightful to
Freda to see the good vicar in the reading-desk, and his wife in the pew
beneath. She felt at home again for the first time. For the first time,
also, she really listened to the worthy man's somewhat dry sermon, and
strove to feel 'in charity with all men' on that blessed day. She
thought once or twice of a sermon Rowland had preached that day
twelvemonth, which riveted the attention of his large congregation, and
made her wonder whence he had received the gift, by half-an-hour's plain
eloquent preaching, of opening the heart to receive truths hitherto more
understood than felt. Rowland had become to her, and many, the type of a
preacher and minister of the Gospel, and to him she owed, under God, the
fuller enlightenment and enlargement of her own mind.
After the service was over she went into the vicarage. Here, again, she
was at home. She had much to tell Mrs Prothero of the kindness of Sir
Philip Payne Perry and his wife to her, and many messages to deliver
from them. She had also to hear Mr and Mrs Jonathan's opinion of Netta,
and of the approaching wedding. She avoided any word that could recall
Howel.
'I hope you are not displeased with the match?' said Freda.
'By no means,' was Mrs Jonathan's reply. 'I always thought Gladys very
superior, and her turning out to be Mr Jones' niece removes our only
objection. It is quite a romance!'
'She is a clever young woman,' said Mr Jonathan. 'I was surprised the
other day to find how much history she knew. As to Wales, she has it by
heart, and is not wholly unacquainted with the antiquities of the
country. It was quite a pleasure for me, Miss Gwynne, I assure you, to
meet with any one who took so much interest in ancient lore. And now she
is to be one of the family she is so much more at her ease. Actually
asked me, of her own accord, of the fossils in the Park quarry, and a
very acute question concerning the lords of the marches. She even knew
that her name, Gladys, meant Claudia, and that the original Gladys is,
probably, the very Claudia mentioned by St Paul.'
'We shall all be thrown into the shade now, Mrs Prothero,' said Freda,
laughing. 'Gladys will evidently be the favourite.'
'I am afraid I must break up your conversation, my love,' interrupted
Lady Mary. 'You can drive or ride over to finish it when you like.'
On their way home her ladyship remarked,--
'I suppose this unfortunate discovery concerning Mr Howel Jenkins will
quite ruin Mr. Rowland Prothero's position in London society?'
'He is scarcely in what is called "society;" but his friends are not
likely to be changed by the conduct of his brother-in-in-law. He is far
too highly esteemed and admired to be injured by such a man as Howel
Jenkins.'
Freda felt the blood rush to her cheeks, and was convinced that Lady
Mary noticed it.
'I am glad to hear you say so, my dear,' said Mr Gwynne. 'He is a great
favourite of mine, and I should be sorry to think his prospects were
injured. They are a rising family. His brother is very much thought of,
and improving his own and my property amazingly. A most energetic young
man, and so amusing, that he almost kills me whenever I see him. I am
glad he is going to marry that pretty Gladys.'
When they arrived at home they found the party from Abertewey ready to
receive them,--at least, Mrs Gwynne Vaughan and her children. The
colonel was to join them at dinner.
'Oh, Freda, dear, I am tho glad you are come home again!' lisped Mrs
Gwynne Vaughan. 'Tho ith Gwynne. He thaith it will be delightful to have
you. Thith ith little Gwynne, and thith ith Minnie, and we call thith
one Dot, and baby ith in the nurthery. You thall thee her by-and-by.
Kith Aunt Freda, Minnie,--they all call you Aunt Freda, you know.'
Freda, not at all rejoicing in the honour, stooped to kiss all the
pretty little children by turns, and had soon made friends with them
all. The children were the greatest possible relief to her; she turned
to them as a sort of neutral ground between the war in her own heart and
the tact and inanity of her stepmother and stepsister.
The latter was as unchanged as the former. Very handsome, very
fashionably dressed, very good-tempered,--in short, Miss Nugent simply
turned into Mrs Vaughan. Freda wondered how the really clever and
agreeable Colonel Vaughan could live with so dull a companion.
Having got through luncheon and the afternoon somehow, thanks to the
children, the dinner-hour arrived, and therewith the colonel. Freda
always felt reserved with him, and his studied kindness and politeness
to her when she had met him occasionally in London, irritated her. She
had spoken to him before his marriage so unreservedly of his wife, and
had given him to understand so unmistakably that she knew what had
passed between him and Gladys, that she fancied he must at heart
cordially dislike her. Moreover, she had loved him. Much as she despised
herself now for having done so, she knew it, and she despised him all
the more on that account.
There was, however, no mistaking the real warmth of his welcome, and for
the moment--only for the moment--Freda's heart beat quick.
'I am so glad to see you, Freda,--sister Freda, you know, now,--and
looking so well.'
'Yeth, ith'nt the looking well. I think the lookth younger than when the
went away.'
'Handsomer, at any rate. I may pay you a compliment, now, Freda.'
Freda could not return it. Colonel Vaughan looked more than six years
older since his marriage, and there was a dissatisfied expression on his
countenance very different from the old suavity.
Freda was not long in discovering that if he had improved his fortune by
marriage he had not improved his temper, or increased his happiness.
Fortunately for his wife, her imperturbable placidity and want of acute
feeling prevented her from appropriating many hard hits from her husband
that would have made Freda wretched.
Again, she admired the tact of the mother. By it she managed her husband
admirably, and retained her power over him in precisely the same way as
she did before she married him; while Wilhelmina wholly lost what little
she had gained over hers prior to her marriage. Her silliness annoyed
him continually, and her beauty, for want of expression, palled upon his
fastidious taste.
Freda's contempt very soon turned to pity. The handsome, fascinating,
deceitful colonel was amply indemnified for all the hearts he had
broken, and those broken hearts fully avenged by the tedium of his home
life.
Of course, Freda did not discover all this during that one Christmas
Day, but it developed itself during her subsequent stay at Glanyravon.
'We did not ask any one else to dinner to-day, Gwynne,' said Mr Gwynne,
'because we thought Freda would like to have us alone, you know, and see
the children, and--and all that sort of thing.'
'I hope Freda enjoys a family-party better than I do,' said the colonel,
looking at her as he spoke. 'Of all things on earth, it is the slowest.'
'Complimentary,' said Lady Mary.
'Oh! Gwynne ith alwayth tho fond of thaying what he dothn't mean. He
often doth to me, don't you, my dear? But I don't mind, becauth I
underthtand him now.'
Freda looked at Mrs Vaughan to see if she spoke ironically. Not at all.
She fully believed what she said. Colonel Vaughan saw the glance, and
smiling, said,--
'All in good faith, I assure you.'
Freda blushed, and to turn the conversation, began to talk to him of his
children, and to praise their beauty. He smiled again, as perfectly
understanding her ruse.
'People call them loves and angels!' he said, 'and even go into raptures
over the baby. For my part, I never look at them when they are babies.
Indeed, I don't like children, and all ours are so spoilt. Wilhelmina
doesn't know how to manage them, and now their governess is away, the
house is like a lunatic asylum.'
'Oh, Gwynne, how abthurd you are! He ith tho fond of them, Freda, you
can't think, and they are thuch little dearth.'
'I was greatly amused,' said Freda, 'to hear Minnie call Harold "uncle,"
just now; and he seemed not a little proud of his dignity.'
'Surely, Freda, you haven't learnt to talk baby talk!' said Colonel
Vaughan. 'You used to eschew such twaddle.'
'It was time for me to learn to like a great many things that I
professed to hate. I hope I am improved since I was here last. But I
always liked children.'
'Oh! Harold is so fond of her,' said Mr Gwynne. 'He is a wonderful boy.'
Here followed a history of various achievements of Harold, during which
Colonel Vaughan vainly endeavoured to catch Freda's eye. She was only
too well-disposed to smile at the infatuation of the doating father.
'Here are the children, I think,' said Lady Mary.
In bounded Harold, and jumped, unbidden, on Freda's lap.
'I ull have some of that--and that,' said Harold.
'And I will have--' began Minnie.
'You will have nothing if you ask for it,' said the colonel with a
frown.
His little trio were quiet in a moment.
'Ganpapa, take me up,' said Dot, creeping round to Mr Gwynne.
Freda felt her blood creep at that word 'Grandpapa,' and also felt the
colonel's glance. He seemed to take a pleasure in watching every
expression of her countenance, and it did, unfortunately, always convey
her feelings to the watcher.
Freda had never passed so uncomfortable a dinner since the day when the
present Mrs Vaughan came of age. Probably she was the only one of the
party who was conscious of Colonel Vaughan's changed manner and temper,
because it was new to her, and she could scarcely believe him to be
himself. Her father was wrapped up in his boy--his wife's attention was
divided between him and the other children, and Mrs Vaughan smiled and
lisped on all by turns.
Freda thought of old times, when her father and herself were so happy
together; and then she thought of the last Christmas day in London, when
Mr and Mrs Jones, Rowland, and herself dined late off a Glanyravon Park
turkey, having first feasted as many poor people as the kitchen would
hold, on geese from Glanyravon Farm. Certainly the comparison with her
present companions was 'odious' to her.
Freda scarcely knew which was worst--the riotous, untameable spirits of
Harold, who did and said what he liked, unchecked either by father or
mother, or the cowed and altered manner of the other children in the
presence of their father; they, too, had been noisy enough before he
arrived.
'It was very good of you to come to-day, Gwynne,' said Lady Mary; 'I
scarcely expected you, knowing how you dislike this frosty weather.'
'Freda is attraction enough to draw off the frost, though she has become
so much better than her neighbours. Wilhelmina, my dear, why do you let
Minnie stuff her mouth so full of orange? The child will choke.'
The dinner came to an end at last, and the children went to bed. Freda
played and sung some sacred music at Colonel Vaughan's request, and he
complimented her on her improvement, and said he wished his wife played
and sung as well, because music was such a resource in a dull country
place.
'I suppose you have practised a great deal since you have been in
London?' he said.
'Mrs Jones and I play and sing whenever we have time, and I have had
some lessons,' replied Freda. 'Besides, one hears all the first
musicians and singers, and they teach one.'
'Did you see much of that young parson, Prothero? I remember he was
somewhere in your neighbourhood,' asked the colonel.
Freda was sure this question was a feeler, and she answered
carelessly,--
'Yes, naturally. He is Mr Jones' brother curate.'
'Now confess, you didn't like those people, and that sort of life? You
must have been _ennuyee_ from morning to night.'
'On the contrary, the days were not half long enough.'
'Freda!' exclaimed Mrs Vaughan, 'I get tho tired, and tho doth the
colonel, before half the evening ith over.'
'Some one else seems in the same condition,' said Freda. 'Papa is fast
asleep.'
'And mamma nearly,' said Mrs Vaughan. 'And I am tho tired. I think
Chrithmath dayth are very dull. One dothn't know what to do.'
'That isn't peculiar to Christmas days in your year,' said the colonel,
sarcastically; 'but I suppose we had better go to bed. I hope we shall
be more amusing to-morrow, Freda. All your old friends, the constant Sir
Hugh amongst them, are invited to meet you. Let me light your candle.
Remember, I always used to do that, when we had our snug evenings
together such an age ago.'
'Yeth, he often talkth of you, Freda, and thayth you were thuch good
company.'
Freda heard Colonel Vaughan sigh, and thought, as she said 'good-night,'
and hastened upstairs, that she ought to be thankful that the
imperturbable and dull Wilhelmina Nugent had been the choice of that
discontented and irritable colonel, instead of the quick-tempered,
independent Winifred Gwynne.