Mrs. Fairfield was a proud woman when she received Mrs. Riccabocca and
Violante in her grand house; for a grand house to her was that cottage
to which her boy Lenny had brought her home. Proud, indeed, ever was
Widow Fairfield; but she thought then in her secret heart, that if ever
she could receive in the drawing-room of that grand house the great Mrs.
Hazeldean, who had so lectured her for refusing to live any longer in
the humble, tenement rented of the squire, the cup of human bliss would
be filled, and she could contentedly die of the pride of it. She did
not much notice Helen,--her attention was too absorbed by the ladies who
renewed their old acquaintance with her, and she carried them all over
the house, yea, into the very kitchen; and so, somehow or other, there
was a short time when Helen and Leonard found themselves alone. It was
in the study. Helen had unconsciously seated herself in Leonard’s own
chair, and she was gazing with anxious and wistful interest on the
scattered papers, looking so disorderly (though, in truth, in that
disorder there was method, but method only known to the owner), and at
the venerable well-worn books, in all languages, lying on the floor, on
the chairs--anywhere. I must confess that Helen’s first tidy womanlike
idea was a great desire to arrange the litter. “Poor Leonard,” she
thought to herself, “the rest of the house so neat, but no one to take
care of his own room and of him!”
As if he divined her thought, Leonard smiled and said, “It would be a
cruel kindness to the spider, if the gentlest band in the world tried to
set its cobweb to rights.”
HELEN.--“You were not quite so bad in the old days.”
LEONARD.--“Yet even then you were obliged to take care of the money. I
have more books now, and more money. My present housekeeper lets me take
care of the books, but she is less indulgent as to the money.”
HELEN (archly).--“Are you as absent as ever?”
LEONARD.--“Much more so, I fear. The habit is incorrigible, Miss
Digby--”
HELEN.--“Not Miss Digby; sister, if you like.”
LEONARD (evading the word that implied so forbidden an
affinity).--“Helen, will you grant me a favour? Your eyes and your smile
say ‘yes.’ Will you lay aside, for one minute, your shawl and bonnet?
What! can you be surprised that I ask it? Can you not understand that
I wish for one minute to think that you are at home again under this
roof?”
Helen cast down her eyes, and seemed troubled; then she raised them,
with a soft angelic candour in their dovelike blue, and, as if in
shelter from all thoughts of more warm affection, again murmured
“brother,” and did as he asked her.
So there she sat, amongst the dull books, by his table, near the open
window, her fair hair parted on her forehead, looking so good, so calm,
so happy! Leonard wondered at his own self-command. His heart yearned to
her with such inexpressible love, his lips so longed to murmur, “Ah,
as now so could it be forever! Is the home too mean?” But that word
“brother” was as a talisman between her and him. Yet she looked so at
home--perhaps so at home she felt!--more certainly than she had yet
learned to do in that stiff stately house in which she was soon to have
a daughter’s rights. Was she suddenly made aware of this, that she so
suddenly arose, and with a look of alarm and distress on her face.
“But--we are keeping Lady Lansmere too long,” she said falteringly. “We
must go now,” and she hastily took up her shawl and bonnet.
Just then Mrs. Fairfield entered with the visitors, and began making
excuses for inattention to Miss Digby, whose identity with Leonard’s
child-angel she had not yet learned.
Helen received these apologies with her usual sweetness. “Nay,” she
said, “your son and I are such old friends, how could you stand on
ceremony with me?”
“Old friends!” Mrs. Fairfield stared amazed, and then surveyed the
fair speaker more curiously than she had yet done. “Pretty, nice-spoken
thing,” thought the widow; “as nice-spoken as Miss Violante, and
humbler-looking like,--though, as to dress, I never see anything so
elegant out of a picter.”
Helen now appropriated Mrs. Riccabocca’s arm; and, after a kind
leave-taking with the widow, the ladies returned towards Riccabocca’s
house.
Mrs. Fairfield, however, ran after them with Leonard’s hat and gloves,
which he had forgotten.
“‘Deed, boy,” she said, kindly, yet scoldingly, “but there’d be no more
fine books, if the Lord had not fixed your head on your shoulders. You
would not think it, marm,” she added to Mrs. Riccabocca, “but sin’ he
has left you, he’s not the ‘cute lad he was; very helpless at times,
marm!”
Helen could not resist turning round, and looking at Leonard, with a sly
smile.
The widow saw the smile, and catching Leonard by the arm, whispered,
“But where before have you seen that pretty young lady? Old friends!”
“Ah, Mother,” said Leonard, sadly, “it is a long tale; you have heard
the beginning, who can guess the end?” and he escaped. But Helen still
leaned on the arm of Mrs. Riccabocca, and, in the walk back, it seemed
to Leonard as if the winter had re-settled in the sky.
Yet he was by the side of Violante, and she spoke to him with such
praise of Helen! Alas! it is not always so sweet as folks say to
hear the praises of one we love. Sometimes those praises seem to ask
ironically, “And what right hast thou to hope because thou lovest? All
love her.”