SIDNEY'S WARD.
Sidney passed the rest of the day in seeing a few of his tenants
renting the farms in the immediate neighborhood of Brackenburn Manor,
and hearing from them gossiping reports of the oddities of the late
occupier of the Manor House. By all accounts, the life led by his
young ward had been dreary and lonely indeed. She had not been
suffered to hold any intercourse with her neighbors, even to the extent
of attending the little parish church, which stood in a village about a
mile and a half away. The prevalent idea about her was that she was
not quite in her right mind; that she was at the least an "innocent,"
as they called her, and for this reason her father had never sent her
to school or engaged a teacher for her. That she had spent the greater
part of her time in wandering alone about the moor was told to him
again and again as a proof that she differed from ordinary girls.
Sidney went back to the Manor, after strolling about some hours, and
found Dorothy sitting in the wide old porch, evidently awaiting his
return. The evening sun shone full into the porch, and fell upon a
white, wistful little face, which was lifted up shyly to him as he drew
near, with a faint flush of color coming to the pale cheeks. It was a
sad face, yet the face of a child. He took her hand gently into his
own as he sat down on the bench beside her.
"So you have been sleeping well," he said in his pleasant voice.
"Yes; they've taken the dogs away from his bed," she answered
gratefully, "and the house was very quiet. His room is the quietest of
all. When he was ill he let me read to him sometimes; the dogs could
not do that, and he seemed to like it. So this afternoon I've read to
him all the burial service."
"Aloud!" asked Sidney.
"Yes, aloud," she answered: "it was not wrong, was it?"
"No, no," he replied, looking down pitifully into her anxious, wistful
eyes. She was a very slight, small creature, he thought, easily hurt,
and very easily neglected, for she would not assert her own claims.
There was a great attraction to him in the simplicity and quaintness of
her ways.
"I know," she said, fastening her dark eyes earnestly upon him and
speaking with a quivering mouth, "I know that his body is dead, and he
could not hear me with those ears, but I felt as if his spirit was near
me; and when I finished I almost heard his voice saying: 'After all, I
did love you a little, Dorothy.' I wish I could be sure he thought it."
"I feel sure he loved you," said Sidney, "though he would not show it."
"I am glad you say that," she answered in a trembling voice.
They sat in silence for a few minutes; the pleasant country sounds only
falling peacefully on their ears. Then the girl spoke again in slow
and measured tones.
"I do so wish you would take me away with you," she said. "I would do
everything you like, and work at any kind of work; and I should want
nothing but food and clothes. My clothes do not cost much," she added,
looking down on the coarse merino dress she was wearing. "Betsy buys
my frocks for me, and she says they cost less than her own. If you
could afford to let me live with you I would try not to be an expense
to you."
"Then you would like to live with me?" asked Sidney with a smile.
"You are more like a father to me than he was," she replied wistfully.
"Oh, yes! I should love to live with you. I love you."
"That is well," he said, "because your father has left you to my
care--you and your money."
"Have I any money?" she inquired.
"A great deal," he replied; "you will be very rich."
"Oh!" she cried with a sigh, "I always thought we were poor. And Jesus
Christ says, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God.'"
The tone, and the look, and the words were so like Margaret's that they
startled him. This young girl might have been Margaret's daughter.
"But, perhaps, you want money," she went on, after a pause; "perhaps
you can use it. I only want a little; and I could not use much. Take
it; I do not care for it. It shall all be yours. It is not impossible
to enter the kingdom of God, even if you are rich."
"I trust not," he answered gravely, "for I, too, am a rich man, and my
wife is a rich woman, yet she is truly in the kingdom of heaven
already. My wife will teach you how to use your riches well."
"I thought we were very poor," pursued Dorothy. "My father gave me a
shilling once, the day he let Betsy take me to York with her, to see
the Minster. If I am to be a rich woman, I ought to have learned how
to spend money. Will it take me long to learn it?"
"Very likely not," he replied, smiling at her anxious glance; "it is
easy enough to spend money."
"If you leave me here," she went on, "I should like to keep the dogs
with me, for his sake, you know. They would miss me so, and I should
miss them; and this place is too lonely to live in without plenty of
fierce dogs. John and Betsy want to get rid of them," she said,
cautiously lowering her voice; "but please let me keep them if I stay
here."
"But you cannot stay here," he answered. "The day after to-morrow I
must take you away, and you will live in my house, under my wife's
care, until you are of age. You have a great deal to learn, my child."
"I do not know anything!" she cried clasping her hands. "Do you think
she will like me? I never spoke to a lady in my life; and I am so
ignorant. I can only read, and write, and sew. Only I can work in a
garden and make flowers grow, and take care of dogs, and walk miles and
miles on the moors. I know all the birds, and all the wild creatures
that live there, and they will come to me when I am all alone and I
stand quite still and call to them. After the funeral to-morrow I must
go and bid them good-by. Because, if I ever come back here, I shall be
different. Oh! how different I shall be; and perhaps they will not
know me again."
She turned her head away, looking out pensively across the moors, where
the sun was setting behind the low curves of the horizon. There was a
quaint grace about this girlish outpouring of her full heart which
touched Sidney deeply, accustomed as he was to nothing less
conventional than Phyllis, with her pretty manners and highly
cultivated accomplishments. He felt sure the girl had never spoken so
freely to anyone before. What would Margaret think of her? But he
smiled as he thought how warmly Margaret would welcome this desolate
young girl who had so quickly won her way to his heart. She was in no
degree imbecile, he told himself as he looked at the low, broad
forehead and the thoughtful eyes, and the firm yet sweet mouth of the
girl who sat so motionless at his side watching the western sky. This
was a fresh, simple, unfettered nature which had grown up alone, with
its own thoughts and feelings, and Margaret was the very person to mold
it into true womanly strength and sweetness.
They went into the house as soon as the sun was set and the chill air
of the moors swept across the neglected garden. A supper of oatcakes,
brown bread and cheese, with a large jug of buttermilk, had been laid
on a bare table in the large hall; and Dorothy invited him hospitably
to partake of it. It was the meal of a workingman. A fire of peat and
wood was smoldering on the hearth, which, when she stirred it, gave a
fitful blaze, and this, with one candle, was all the light they had
during the evening. But Dorothy made no comment on the frugal meal or
the dim light; it was evidently all she was used to, and she did not
think her guest would find it strange.
The next morning Sidney and the lawyer alone followed the dead man to
the grave. Dorothy said nothing about going, and Sidney thought it
best that she should be spared the excitement. As they drove somewhat
slowly among the lanes, followed by John and the four mastiffs, the
solicitor gave to Sidney all the necessary information concerning the
property of the deceased, and took his instructions as to the
management of Dorothy's inheritance. He did not return to the Manor
after the funeral, bidding Sidney good-by at the churchyard gate. So,
with no mourners, they laid Dorothy's father in the grave.
Sidney took care to dine at the village inn, where the fare was better
than at the Manor, and it was late in the afternoon before he returned.
Dorothy had gone out on the moors, and the dogs were yelping and baying
in the stable-yard, making their cries resound far and near, as if they
resented being left behind. John pointed out the path Dorothy had
taken, and he followed it till it became a scarcely perceptible track
among the heather. It was an intense enjoyment to him to be up here in
the bracing air, with miles upon miles of uplands stretching on every
hand as far as he could see, with little lonely tarns lying in the
hollows, and gray rocks, half covered with moss, scattered among the
purple heather. He regretted that he had ever let Brackenburn Manor,
and had not kept it as a summer resort for Margaret and the boys. How
they would have enjoyed its wildness and solitude! but now their
boyhood was over. Still he would bring Margaret here next summer, and
they would have long rambles together, such as they had never had
before.
He caught sight of Dorothy at last, her slight girlish figure standing
out clearly against the sky, as she stood on a ridge of rising ground.
As his footsteps drew nearer to her, the dried heather crackling under
his tread, there was a flutter of birds all around her, flying away
hither and thither, and he fancied he heard the scuttering of little
wild creatures through the ling and brushwood. He saw her face was
bathed in tears as he came up to her.
"I have bid them all good-by," she said, "and I think they understand.
And I'm saying good-by to the moors all the time in my heart. It can
never be the same again; for they die soon--the poor little birds and
the wild things--and their young ones will not know me if I go away;
and they'll be afraid of me and fancy I mean to hurt them or catch
them. I'm very glad to go and live with you anywhere, but I love the
moors and the sky, and the living creatures; and I cannot go away from
them without crying."
"But we shall come again," he said; "the Manor is mine; and we are
coming next winter to fix on a site for building a new house for my son
Philip. You shall help to choose it, Dorothy. Who could choose it
better?"
As he spoke the thought flashed across his brain, why should not Philip
marry this charming girl with her large fortune? After three years'
companionship with Margaret she would be all he could wish in his
future daughter-in-law. She had won his heart already, and she would
make his and Margaret's old age as happy as their middle life had been.
Nothing could be better than that Dorothy should marry Philip and live
here, in the birthplace she loved so much, for the best part of every
year.
"Who is Philip!" asked Dorothy.
"One of my boys," he answered. "I have two of them, Philip and Hugh."
"I never spoke to any boys," she said in a troubled tone.
"It is time you did," he replied, laughing heartily. "What sort of a
world have you lived in? Philip is heir to this estate and will live
for a time in the Manor. Here are my boys' photographs for you to see,
and my wife's, too."
He put into her hands a morocco case containing the three portraits,
and Dorothy scrutinized them with intent eagerness. But she had never
seen photographs, and their want of color disappointed her. She gave
them back to Sidney with a faint smile.
"I shall not like any of them as much as you," she said.