BEGINNING.
Brotherton stayed a week at the White House--to the great mortification
of the Pilgrims at Wyburgh, whose guest he had been. Nobody likes to
have their visitors interfered with, or that a new acquaintance, whom
they have themselves introduced and brought out, so to speak, in
society, should desert them for a new circle. The girls and the mother
were alike indignant, and the incident even had the effect of quickening
the action of the father, and making him more impatient of the delays in
respect to old Mr. Joscelyn’s estate. But this had little effect upon
the household at the White House, which for the moment was more happy
and peaceful than perhaps it had ever been before. It was the beginning
of one of those new chapters in life which revive the interest of the
old story. Poor Mrs. Joscelyn had lived through many such, but they had
been in most cases not of the pleasant, but painful kind. Her blood had
been quickened in her veins, her heart driven into wild beating, as one
crisis after another occurred in the family life. But now everything was
changed. Lydia had become to her another self. She was not sure whether
it was not herself again, glorified, elevated, made beautiful by present
youth and infinite hope, which was always about her--moving with her
step for step, talking, even thinking with her: the same thoughts rising
to their lips. Between two sisters such a dual life is sweet; but to a
mother it is a recompense for all the pangs of life, which are seldom
few or small. She was not sure that it was not herself who spoke, and
thought, and smiled in Lydia; but only a self far more firm, erect, and
self-supporting than she had ever been. Lydia was not afraid of
anything, and of Ralph Joscelyn least of all. This of itself made the
strangest difference. It gave a flavour and fragrance to their mingled
life. The mother felt herself more brave and more strong in her child;
and now romance was arriving to her late in the same way. Ralph
Joscelyn’s wooing had been a rough one. During its course the pretty,
drooping Lydia of those days had been charmed by its very abruptness,
and considered the peremptory passion a double compliment to herself,
and to the power of love in subduing the strong. She had liked all the
silly similes, the lion enchained, the giant deprived of his strength,
and had believed in her foolish heart that her half-savage hero would be
always in her toils--however rough to others, yet to herself the
gentlest of the gentle. From this foolish dream there had been a summary
awakening; and all her long life since had been calculated to convince
the romantic woman that romance existed only in her dreams. But now
another kind of awakening was coming to her. Youth had come back with
its visions, and Arcadia, and love. The young man who was her own kith
and kin (which of itself was sweet) was also, as becomes a young man,
something of her own kind. He was full of poetry, and sympathy, and
enthusiasm: it was not after her old-fashioned mode, but yet it was not
the common strain of prose to which she had been accustomed. To see his
eyes turn to her Lydia was to Mrs. Joscelyn like the revival of all her
own maiden fancies; and the affectionate worship which he gave to
herself completed the charm. Perhaps she was happier than Lydia in
those early days of wooing. She saw the dawn of admiration and
enthusiasm in his eyes, when Lydia herself thought of him only as a sort
of advanced playfellow, a something new in his youth and pleasantness.
Mrs. Joscelyn saw it all from the beginning; she felt from the beginning
that it was written in heaven. It was half like a story which she was
reading in snatches, or chapters, a single page at a time, always
longing to go on with it, to see what the next step was to be, to
anticipate the end.
As for Lydia herself, after the little excitement of the arrival, and
the pleasure of bringing this new cousin to her mother--the most
delightful present that could be thought--of she subsided sedately into
her usual life, and treated him as a new companion, not doubting his
interest in her simple occupations. His servant came over from Wyburgh
with his baggage, which was a shock to the primitive household; but as
the man was rather in charge of the horse than of his master, and that
is a point on which princes and grooms may fraternise, the alarm was
soon over. Brotherton wanted, it appeared, to find a shooting box, a
little place in which he could establish himself for the autumn. He
explained that he was not rich enough to aspire to a Scotch moor, and
modestly permitted it to be understood that the Duke’s youngest son was
his intimate friend, and that it was chiefly to be near him, and share
his shootings, that he had chosen this part of the world. With the
hospitality of primitive regions, Ralph Joscelyn would have taken him in
permanently, and allowed him to be an inmate of the White House; but his
wife retained enough of her old breeding to see that this expedient was
undesirable, even though her heart stirred faintly with a hope that in
that case the Duchess might have called, which is the chief sign of
belonging to the aristocracy in these countries. The Duchess had never
given her this sign of recognition, which had been a life-long smart to
the poor lady. What did she care about such distinctions now? but yet
for the sake of Liddy, she said to herself. To have her Lydia asked to a
ball at the Castle would indeed be something to reward her for living,
to make her feel that now she could die in peace. Mrs. Joscelyn did not
say anything about this hope--for the disappointment, if nothing came of
it, would have been very severe she felt, too great a trial to expose
her child to: but she cherished it in her heart of hearts. And in the
meantime they made every effort they could to find for this new relation
the lodging he wanted. It was Lydia at last who suggested the old
Birrenshead, the house which had been Uncle Harry’s, but which had not
been inhabited by anybody but Isaac Oliver in the memory of man.
“It is a very tumble-down old place,” she said, deprecating, “but it is
only two miles from here.”
“Oh, if it is only two miles from here--!” cried the young man, eagerly.
This was one of those elliptical forms of speech which he had begun to
employ unawares, and which only Mrs. Joscelyn understood. She smiled
within herself, but she said nothing; and it was agreed that he should
walk there next day and see what accommodation the place possessed. The
name of it threw a little tremor over Mrs. Joscelyn, although she had
smiled. And next morning, when with great simplicity, and without any
thought of harm, Lydia set out with the stranger to show him the way,
she told him the circumstances in which the family stood, as she had
before revealed to him the fact of her brother’s disappearance. It did
not occur either to Lydia or to her mother that there was anything
wrong, anything out of the common, in showing young Brotherton the way
to Birrenshead. It seemed indeed of all things the simplest and most
natural. She walked by his side as seriously as if the young man had
been her own grandfather, with all the dignity of a princess in her own
country. Nor did anyone in the village think it strange. They saw her
pass, and wondered who it was who accompanied her over the bridge; but
that was all.
“This is part of the property,” she said gravely, “which was left to my
poor brother whom I told you of. That is what made my mother look so
serious. She does not like to hear about Uncle Henry’s property. If we
do not hear something of Harry soon, it will have to be divided, they
say.”
“And that is a grief to her?” Brotherton said, sympathetically.
“Oh, Mr. Brotherton, think! to be the heir of your own child--do you
wonder that she cannot bear it? They say we should all have our share,
father and mother too. _He_ does not say much, but he thinks more than
he says, and I am sure he would rather die than touch it. But my
brothers,” said Lydia, with a sigh, “my other brothers, don’t think so.
They want us to yield and consent that Harry is dead. But that is what I
will never do.”
Brotherton looked at her animated face with admiring interest. “You must
have been very fond of this brother,” he said.
“I scarcely remember him; but I am sure I should find him,” cried Lydia.
“You will say that is nonsense; but then I have been my mother’s only
companion all these years, and she will never be happy till she has seen
Harry again. She has not had a very happy life; perhaps she has not
always understood--and then no one has understood _her_. I must, I must
get her some happiness before she dies!”
There was a glow of tender enthusiasm about the girl which touched her
companion deeply. “I think,” he said, “she is happy in you. It would be
strange if she were not,” he added, half under his breath.
This brought a wave of colour over Lydia’s face. “She is a little more
happy in me; but she will not be really happy till she sees Harry.”
“And if----”
“Don’t say so, Mr. Brotherton, please! Don’t think so even. Do you
imagine if he had been ---- that mother would not know? If I could only
go abroad I know I should find him. Here is old Isaac Oliver, old Uncle
Henry’s man. He will let you see the place; and if he is cross you will
not mind? He has been here so long that he thinks it is his own.”
They were walking along the edge of a field of corn, on a little
footpath so narrow that here and there they had to walk singly. The
wind, which swept the tall rustling crop in waves like breath coming and
going, blew the pale yellow heads against them as they went along in
pleasant contact with this wealth and freshness of nature. The corn was
still pale in tint, ripening slowly under the northern sun, with a
glimmer of red poppies under the surface like the woven under-ground of
some rich Indian stuff. As Lydia spoke, an old man became visible
between the corn and the hedgerow, pushing his stooping shoulders along
before him with a sidelong movement like a crab. His head was bent to
one side, his footsteps shuffling. Ten years had told upon Isaac. He did
not take off his hat when he saw Liddy approaching, such a ceremonial
being scarcely necessary to the familiar intercourse of the country, but
he nodded amiably, and made signs of welcome with his hand. As, however,
the path widened a little just at that moment, and young Brotherton,
making a quicker step, appeared suddenly at Lydia’s side, Isaac, who had
not seen him before, was greatly startled. He stopped short in his
crab-like course to stare at the new comer. He fell back a step or two
and screwed his stooping head aloft in a sidelong attitude. Then he
gave vent to a shrill, prolonged “E-eh!” which penetrated the air like a
skewer. “So he’s coomed back,” the old man said.
“Who has come back?” said Lydia, startled and eager.
“Lord, Master, give us a grip o’ your hand. You’re no Master Harry now,
you’re master’s sel’. T’ ould Master left it all to ye, as I said he
would if you’d let him be; but you never would listen, nor think on----”
When he had got so far, old Isaac paused. His head had sunk a little
from its first energy of motion, but he kept one eye screwed up and
shining, and his mouth twisted upward at one corner. Here, however, he
paused, and a cloud came over his face. “Miss Liddy,” he said,
reproachfully, “you might have tellt me it wasn’t him.”
“Who did you think it was, Isaac? It is Mr. Brotherton, a----distant
cousin. Did you think----? Oh, tell me, is he like, is he like----?”
The old man recovered himself gradually. He gave a grin which seemed to
twist upwards from his mouth to his little twinkling eyes.
“Not a feature in his face,” he said, with a growl of angry laughter,
“not a bit, no more nor I’m like. I’m just an old fool. I take anyone
for him. Ne’er a soul comes down t’ Fells but I say, it’s him, as if he
was coming from t’ skies. A fine joke that; and him t’ prodigal son, a
good joke; to look for him from t’ skies! He should come from t’ other
place, Miss Liddy, up from t’ ground.”
“But he was no prodigal,” said Liddy, indignantly. “He did not go away
for any harm, Isaac, you know that!”
“I know a’ about it, a’ about it,” said the old man. “Step forward, Sir,
into the light. If you keep there dangling behind her--Lord! but I’ll
think it’s you after a’.”
“You must be like Harry,” cried Lydia, turning round quickly upon her
companion. “When she saw you first, my mother started too.”
“He’s about the same age,” said old Isaac, “and tallness--no more, not a
hair. Don’t you speak to me, Miss Liddy. If I dunnot know him, who does?
I brought him up, though you wouldn’t think it. I put him on a pony the
first time. I gied him most of his lessons, out of t’ school. But this
isn’t him,” the old man said indignantly, “it’s not him, I tell ye.
Don’t you think to impose on me.”
“Isaac,” said Lydia, “will you let Mr. Brotherton see the house? He
wants to live here for a little. Mother thinks you might put in a little
furniture, and make him comfortable.”
“Com--fortable!” said the old man, prolonging the word with a
half-laughing, half-angry cry; “and it was your mother said it? If he
likes t’ bide with the bats and the rats, he may be com--fortable.
There’s been nobody else there as long’s I mind. Do you mean,” he added,
suddenly screwing up his eye into a little spark of red fire, “that
she’s consented, and Miss Joan, and you? I’ll not b’lieve it; and who,”
he asked fiercely, “is to get this share?”
“You must not speak so to me. We have not consented, and I never will
consent. But this gentleman does not understand what we are talking
about,” said Lydia; “take him into the house and show him what rooms
there are, and I will go and see your wife.”
“Oh, ay,” said Isaac, “speak to t’ missis, you’ll find her in a fine
way. If she hadna gotten t’ meekest man, next to Job, that was ever in
this ill world--a pictur and a pattern. But you’ll see for yourself,
Miss Liddy; you can drop a word about t’ gentleman to soothen her down.
Come this way round, come this way round, it’s the best way.”
Old Isaac had turned in front of them, and was creeping along by the
side of the path scarcely so high as the corn, his battered old hat
about the same height as the yellow ears. When the cornfield ended they
came out abruptly upon a grey old house, surrounded by a small rough
square of grass, in which were some fine trees. The house looked as if
it had been forgotten there, like an old plough. It had a square,
respectable portico, with a pediment above it, and rows of windows
chiefly broken, the lower ones closed with shutters which were falling
to pieces. A huge elm-tree stood up at one corner, throwing its shadow
over half the house; behind it were traces of the trees of an orchard;
but the fields all round had encroached on the place, potatoes were
growing within a stone’s throw of the great door, and everything bearing
witness of its deposition and reduction from a human centre of life to a
mere wreck and encumbrance on the earth.
“Ay, ay,” said old Isaac, shaking his head, “they’d just like to pull it
down and no leave one stone on another, like Jerusalem in t’ Bible; but
the walls is good, and the woodwork’s good, and it would last his time
and mine--and far more if Mr. Harry would come home, as he ought.”
“Then you think he’ll come home,” said young Brotherton, not knowing
what to say.
“Wha said he wasna coming home, why should he no come home?” said Isaac,
screwing up his eye once more into a red spark of angry light. “Them
that say so know nothing about it, I can tell you that, Master. Them
that are of that opinion have nothing to found it on. Who understands
Master Harry like me, unless, maybe, it was his mother? Well, his mother
and me, we’re both expecting him. That should be an answer, except to
them that arguys just for the sake of arguyment,” the old man said,
fiercely. “Will you come in and see the house?”
To Brotherton it had begun to seem, by this time, as if the house and
all about it, the very skies overhead, had darkened. He did not quite
know at first what was the cause. It was some cloud that had come over
the sun; or was there some obscurity about the house, some shadow of
fate, which darkened the skies at midday? It seemed to him suddenly that
nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of the place altogether,
though before Lydia disappeared round the broken bit of garden-wall, it
had seemed so inviting and desirable. But he did not ask himself if
Lydia’s disappearance had anything to do with this sudden change: all he
said to himself was, “it is only two miles from the White House,” and,
strengthened by this reminder, he went on with courage into the dark
portal. It was, as Liddy had said, a very tumble-down house. There was a
dirty and ragged carpet on the floor, sometimes moving in waves when the
windows were opened; a table stood in the centre of the largest
sitting-room, and the chairs were put round, as if some sober party had
just risen from them. This was on the first floor, in the drawing-room
of the house; behind it were some bed-rooms scarcely more inviting; the
dust rose in clouds when the air was admitted, the furniture seemed
dropping to pieces. Brotherton stood at the door of one room after
another, with a blank stare at them. They had but one quality; they were
within two miles of the White House.
“And do you think they will suit you?” Lydia asked, coming back to him
when his inspection was over.
She had not been in dusty places like those which he had just left, but
came round the corner of the garden wall, looking so fresh and bright,
that somehow that cloud over the sun disappeared in a moment, and the
whole landscape brightened, and the dust went out of his throat. He had
been feeling half choked, but he felt so no more. He had thought that
they would not do at all; but now a sort of heavenly suitability seemed
to come to them all at once, and it appeared to him in a moment that, if
he could have the choice of all sorts of lodgings, these dreary rooms
were those which would suit him best.
“They will do beautifully,” he said, with much cheerfulness. “So far as
I can see they are the very thing I want; and then so near the White
House! What is two miles? I shall be able to walk over constantly--if
you will let me,” he added, in a softer tone.
“Of course we will let you,” said Lydia, sedately. “We shall miss you so
much that we shall be very happy to have you whenever you like. But were
they not in very bad order? the furniture dreadful? and everything
dropping to pieces?”
“I did not see it,” said young Brotherton, stoutly. “They were, I
daresay, a little dusty; when a place has been uninhabited for a long
time--I suppose nobody has lived there lately?”
“Nobody has lived there since I can remember--oh, and not for a long
time before. Even Uncle Henry never lived there. I think I must have
been silly to bring you, for it can’t be fit to live in now I think of
it; and while matters are undecided about poor Harry they will not do
anything. Oh, I am afraid mother and I were hasty in thinking it would
do.”
“On the contrary,” said young Brotherton, feeling in the enthusiasm of
the moment as if it had been a palace which he had just quitted, “it is
everything I require. Perhaps,” he added, modestly, as if by an
afterthought, “they would not mind--sweeping it out.”
“I spoke to Jane, that is Isaac’s wife. Isaac is a very funny old man,
but he is frightened for his wife. She keeps him right. And she will
scrub it, and sweep it, and dust it, and make it as clean as a new pin.
Oh, you may be quite sure of that. And then, at first, you can take your
meals with us, the White House is so near--only two miles, what is
that?”
“Nothing,” said Brotherton, with enthusiasm. Then he added, “I must not
tire you out. I shall do very well. I can get everything I want here.”
“Oh, no; until you get used to Jane, and accustomed to the cooking, and
all that--I know these things are of consequence to gentlemen,” Lydia
said, with a soft smile of feminine superiority, “you must come and take
your meals at the White House. But Jane Oliver is quite a good cook,”
she added, encouragingly. Brotherton’s heart had sunk within him at the
mention of Jane’s cookery. The cookery could not but be a terrible
necessity in such a place. But he scorned to show any such weakness.
“I am sure she is,” he said, cheerfully. “I feel certain that I shall be
in the best of quarters. Is there a ghost?”
“A ghost! why should there be a ghost?” cried Lydia, in surprise. Then
she added, with a little dignity, “There was never anybody injured or
betrayed in a house that belonged to the Joscelyns. So there can’t be
any ghosts.”
“You reprove me justly,” he said, feeling his little joke very small
indeed in the presence of Lydia’s youthful dignity. “It was a vulgar,
slangy sort of suggestion. I see the folly of it now.”
“No folly,” said Lydia, from her pedestal; “you did not know.”
And then they went on together, once more very sedately, as if they had
been a sober, middle-aged couple, the corn rustling and nodding towards
them, the soft wind sweeping over it, bowing its yellow plumes in soft
successions of movement, the whole air full of a happy rustle and sweep
of sound, the sound of the atmosphere, the subdued hum of summer
happiness common to all the world. He made up his mind that the
landscape, all full of young trees and northern colours, and the moment,
in which there was no positive bliss indeed, but only a dreary, dusty
lodging, and the prospect of being cared for by a ploughman’s wife--were
perfect, and that life could not hold anything sweeter. Lydia went on
talking of the chance that perhaps Mr. Pilgrim, the executor, would “do
something” when he heard of a tenant, until it gradually began to appear
to the young man as if she were talking of improving heaven. What could
be equal in all the world to a place which was within reach of the White
House? “But if your brother were to come home suddenly,” he said, “what
would become of me? Should I be turned out?”
“Harry!” cried Lydia, with glistening eyes; and then she said, turning
to him (he was behind her for the moment, the path was so narrow),
“Harry! Oh, how kind you are! To speak like that is to give one courage;
for you really, really think, Mr. Brotherton, don’t you, now you have
heard all about him, that he must come home?”