ALONE IN THE WORLD.
A few days found Florence settled in her new home, and recognized
as the instructress of Mrs. Railton’s daughters. It was fortunate
for her that Susan Denham had warned her to expect many anxieties
and unpleasantries in the duties she had undertaken, otherwise her
inexperience and natural sensitiveness to slights and unkindness would
have made her throw them up in disgust. As it was, both her patience
and fortitude were greatly tried; for Mrs. Railton--a most indulgent
mother--had no control over her unruly offspring; and the schoolroom
was a scene of noise and contention that had made more than one
governess resign in despair. Perhaps Florence’s innate dignity assisted
in awing the young rebels with whom she found herself brought into
contact; and the determination to persevere, let her difficulties be as
great as they might, was ultimately crowned with success.
But ere the hour arrived when she could aver with truth that her pupils
were docile and even affectionate, she had passed through a long and
fatiguing ordeal. The spring had been followed by summer, and summer,
in its turn, was merging into the deep-russet tints of autumn.
Mr. Heriton had never thoroughly recovered strength; but he was able
to wander about the fields adjoining Mrs. Bick’s cottage, and plan out
the villa residences with which he intended to adorn it as soon as he
could find money for the purpose. Those few persons he encountered,
and to whom he divulged his intentions, and talked largely of his
former grandeur, came to regard him as a harmless lunatic, and either
humored his fancies or avoided him. Mrs. Bick, who saw the reluctance
with which his daughter left him to attend her pupils, and the alarm
she felt if he were missing at her return, good-naturedly endured many
a long detail to keep him quietly at home. Mr. Heriton, pleased to
have so patient a listener, would fetch out his papers, and sketch,
and plan, and lose himself in endless calculations, while Mrs. Bick,
knitting in hand, would sit by and nod and doze until the curls dropped
over the bridge of her nose and awoke her.
When the glorious harvest moon arose, and nightly flooded the fair
earth with her radiance, it seemed too beautiful to stay indoors, and
Florence would wander up and down the garden, while her father joined
Daniel Bick in the porch. There was a seat on either side, and the
two old men would rest there, sometimes chatting sociably, but more
frequently silent, for there was little in common between them but
their feebleness. Sometimes when Florence drew near she would hear her
father talking in the eager, restless way she so disliked, about the
fortune he yet intended to amass, and the best manner of accomplishing
it. If an answer were demanded, old Daniel generally gave it in some
quaint proverb or text from the only book he ever read--his Bible.
“It may be a great thing to be rich, master,” she heard him say one
evening in his shrill, quavering voice, “but enough’s as good as a
feast; and if the Almighty be with us, what more should we want?”
“True--true. You are a well-meaning man,” Mr. Heriton made answer;
“but you have no one’s future to be anxious about as I have. Think of
my daughter, the heiress and sole representative of the Heritons! Do
you suppose I can be contented until I have restored her to her proper
position in society?”
“Heaven bless her!” said Daniel. “I dunno why ye need be troubled about
her, master. She’s a good daughter to your old age, and ye know there’s
a promise for them as honor their father and mother.”
“True--true. But if I could realize a few thousands and invest them in
her name----” Mr. Heriton began, but Daniel’s tremulous accents again
checked him.
“Excuse me, master, but don’t ye think ye turn your mind too much to
the gold and silver and forget the more precious things that’s laid up
for all on us in heaven?”
There was a silence; and Florence stayed her light footstep on the
gravel to listen for her father’s reply. It was spoken with unusual
earnestness:
“My friend, I’m afraid you are right. I’m terribly afraid that I have
not thought half so much of these things as I ought to have done.
But I’ll alter, Heaven helping me. I tell you what we’ll do, my good
Daniel: every night before we sleep my daughter shall read to us all.
It will do me good. I always sleep better when her sweet voice is the
last sound in my ears.”
Florence moved noiselessly away, and, lifting her face to the calm sky
above, prayed that her father’s resolves might not be futile ones, but
that the simple remonstrance of old Daniel might induce him to try and
subdue the feverish craving for wealth which blighted their otherwise
peaceful existence.
Mrs. Bick, who had been to Kirton on an errand, came to the gate as she
approached it, and, leaning her arms upon it, stood there to rest.
“It’s been a terrible hot walk,” she panted. “I was glad enough to get
back again; but I heerd a bit o’ news in the town as’ll s’prise my
Dannle. Orwell Court’s let--that big house through the turnpike as I
told ye Dannle used to work at when he were a boy.”
Florence remembered it directly, for in one of the few walks she had
persuaded her father to take they had approached this untenanted
mansion, and had been civilly invited to enter the grounds by the
person in charge. Orwell Court was an old house of most irregular form,
for it had been originally a mere cottage, to which one after another
of its owners had made additions. But the situation was excellent,
and the half orchard, half park which surrounded it was so full of
exquisite bits of scenery that Florence regretted her inability to stay
and sketch them.
“I am glad to hear that it is let. It was a thousand pities for so
charming a spot to remain empty. Who has taken it?”
She smiled at herself for asking this question, as she was not likely
to recognize any name Mrs. Bick might mention; but the answer had an
unexpected interest of its own.
“He’s a Mr. Ayl----something--Ayling or Aylwinne; yes, that’s
it--Aylwinne. He’s a very rich Ingyman, and a friend o’ Mr. Lumley’s
at the little church in the village just beyond. He’s a dark-faced
gentleman, with a beard as thick and as dark as I dunno what, and such
a pair of eyes! You’ve seen him, ain’t ye?”
“When?” asked Florence, rather confusedly.
“Why, a-riding by on a big brown horse. I ha’ seen him two or three
times when I’ve been pottering about here among Dannle’s flowers; an’
he always looks and looks at one as he goes by just as though he wanted
to speak and didn’t like. I guessed as this was the Ingyman as soon as
they began talking about him in the shop where I went for my tea and
sugar.”
Leaving Mrs. Bick still resting at the gate, Florence strolled along
the path, musing as she went on the curious circumstance of this
stranger taking up his residence in the neighborhood of her own. It
seemed as if it were their fate to encounter each other. At all events,
she might reasonably expect to see him frequently, for the church near
Orwell Court was the one she regularly attended, in preference to the
more crowded one in Kirton, partly because the walk to it was through
pleasant, shady lanes, and by the side of a little river, and partly
because she liked the clergyman--a quiet, earnest man, who had called
frequently on Mr. Heriton, and testified a friendly interest in him.
As Florence drew near the silent figures in the porch, a cloud swept
over the moon, and the rising wind sighed so mournfully that a shiver
crept through her frame.
Laying her hand on her father’s arm, she said:
“It grows cold, papa, dear. Will you not come in?”
He neither moved nor replied, but continued to sit as before, leaning
forward, and apparently gazing intently at old Daniel, whose pipe had
dropped from his hand, and whose head had fallen back against the
trelliswork that supported the honeysuckle growing over it.
Startled, she scarce knew why, Florence also leaned forward, and, the
moon just then emerging from the shadowing cloud, she saw the old
man’s features distinctly. It was the face of the dead! Without sign
or struggle, Daniel Bick’s life had passed away, and the unconscious
partner of its joys and sorrows was a widow.
Florence’s first impulse was to shriek for help; her next, to try and
arouse her father, whose strange immobility added to her terror.
“Come away, papa--come away! We must break the news gently to the poor
wife. Papa, do you not hear me? Speak--pray speak!”
But Mr. Heriton remained insensible to her tears and prayers. The shock
of Daniel Bick’s sudden decease, acting on his own weakened frame, had
brought on an attack of paralysis; and between his terrible state of
helpless unconsciousness and the noisy grief of Mrs. Bick, Florence was
almost distracted.
The doctor, whom a compassionate neighbor hurried to fetch, inquired
if Miss Heriton had no friend who could come to her, and she gave him
the address of Susan Denham. But Susan had been drawn from London by
a report that her unhappy cousin had been seen at Portsmouth, and,
owing to an illness brought on by her long and fruitless quest, did not
receive the letter until some weeks after it was written.
Before the expiration of that time Florence was fatherless. Mr. Heriton
recovered consciousness about an hour before his death; and, as if for
the first time really recognizing the depth of his child’s affection,
he laid his hand on her bowed head and blessed her in words that sent a
grateful throb through her heart long afterward.
Mr. Lumley, the clergyman already mentioned, was with him in that last
hour; and he came daily to the cottage till he saw that Florence had
overcome the first violence of her grief.
Mrs. Bick refused to be comforted under her bereavement by anything he
could urge.
“I knows Dannle’s better off, sir,” she would answer, “and I knows that
if he’s only near enough to the Lord’s garden to see them flowers as
never fades he’s happy enough; but this ’ere’s the place I’ve lived in
all my days along wi’ he, and nobody’ll never make me believe as I can
settle down comferable anywhere else.”
“Then why leave your cottage?” Mr. Lumley inquired.
“Because I’ve got to. I can’t live upon nothing, an’ there’s a home for
me along wi’ my sister; but it’s like being prisoned or emegrated; and
I must fret, for I can’t help it.”
“Then Mrs. Bick’s change of residence will involve your removal, Miss
Heriton?” the clergyman observed.
“I suppose so,” answered Florence dejectedly. “Indeed, I must have
left under any circumstances, for I have here a note from Mrs. Railton
stating that her children were so intolerably troublesome that she was
obliged to fill up my place directly, and the young lady seems to suit
so well that she shall not like to dismiss her.”
“May I inquire what you propose doing?”
Florence put her hands to her brow.
“I scarcely know. I suppose I must return to London; but it is of
little consequence--I have no one to exert myself for now.”
Mr. Lumley waited till the sobs that burst forth as she said this had
been checked; then he said gently:
“Will you promise to come to no decision respecting your movements
until I have seen you again? I fancy I know of something that will suit
you. Will you wait until I can tell you more?”
Grateful for his kindness, Florence gave the required promise. A new
phase in her checkered life was about to commence. Who can wonder if
she gladly clung to the only friendly hand held forth to guide her in
it, or that her mother’s diary was again brought forth and the page
that held out the long-deferred hope of Frank Dormer’s return blistered
with her tears?