Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: "They've not got there! Never arrived!"]
THE ANDERSONS
BROTHER AND SISTER
BY
AGNES GIBERNE
AUTHOR OF
"THE DALRYMPLES," "MISS CON," "SWEETBRIAR," ETC. ETC.
"Live to thy neighbor: live unto thy God:
Not to thyself alone."
LONDON:
JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED
21 BERNERS STREET
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. IN BRIGHTON LODGINGS
II. LETTICE'S DREAD
III. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
IV. PRUE AND BERTHA
V. THEIR NON-ARRIVAL
VI. QUARRINGTON COTTAGE
VII. SUMMONED
VIII. FROM READING TO BRISTOL
IX. A NEW HOME
X. AGED NINETEEN
XI. A VANISHED BANK-NOTE
XII. FOUND! AND WHERE?
XIII. THE VALENTINES AGAIN
XIV. A DISCOVERY
XV. A CRASH!
XVI. A PERSONAL APPEAL
XVII. RULING PASSIONS
XVIII. A NEEDED TOUCH
XIX. RETRIBUTION
THE ANDERSONS:
Brother and Sister.
CHAPTER I.
IN BRIGHTON LODGINGS.
"IT doesn't matter! That's to say, it can't be helped. I wouldn't
have done the same in your place, Sissie. But perhaps you were right.
I don't know exactly how we should have managed. I don't mean to be
indebted to him or to anybody. I have my own way to make in the world;
and I mean to make it. I'll get on—somehow."
The words were spoken resolutely, and the speaker, a lad of about
seventeen or eighteen, gave a slight toss to his head, which shook back
a loose lock of hair, given to dropping over the brow. It was a gesture
characteristic of Felix Anderson. He was a good-looking young fellow,
not tall but well-made, with a resolute square jaw.
"I mean to get on, and I will," he repeated. "Anybody can who chooses.
I have to begin at the bottom of the ladder: but that's no reason why
I shouldn't got to the top some day. Anyhow, I don't mean to be easily
beaten. If I take this thing now, it is only as a stepping-stone to
something better. I shall not be a bookseller's accountant all my days."
There was a touch of egoism in all this, but egoism is almost an
essential part of youth, and the boy was thinking of others besides
himself. "I wouldn't have written to Dr. Bryant in your place,—after
the way he treated my father and your mother. But if you thought it
best—"
"I could not see what else to do. It is hard enough to ask help of
anybody. For myself I would not—only for you and Lettice."
"Not for me. I can do without him, thank goodness! I wouldn't touch a
dirty penny of the old fellow's with a pair of tongs! Not for anything
you could mention," declared Felix, with unnecessary vehemence. "It is
different for you and Lettice. Not that I couldn't have kept you both."
"On seventeen shillings and sixpence a week! Forty-five pounds a year!"
"It will be a pound a week soon. Besides, I shall make more somehow.
Something would have turned up," said Felix, with juvenile hopefulness.
"And in time, you will be able to teach again,—not a great deal so as
to knock yourself up, but enough to be a help. I mean to have a home
for you both before long."
The faded woman, lying on a sofa near the fire—faded, though scarcely
thirty-five in age—knew better. She was too well aware that the
prospective home would not be for her.
It was a shabby little room: a most ordinary specimen of a second-rate
lodging-house "parlour" in a dull back street of Brighton. Yet there
was about it a certain refinement of air and tone. Cecilia Anderson was
a lady, both by birth and by education: and her personality told upon
her surroundings. Rows of well-bound books spoke of better days: and a
graceful arrangement of moss and ferns gave evidence of somebody's love
for beauty. Moreover, the three present, though to some extent shabby,
were also scrupulously neat; and while work lay about, it was not flung
about: and neither table-cloth nor carpet was bestrewn with the shreds
of white cotton, too often seen in the wake of tasteless females.
Lettice had not spoken yet. She knew well that Felix's opinion, not
hers, was the important question, even though her future might be more
acutely affected than his by the correspondence between Miss Anderson
and Dr. Bryant. Not being self-assertive, she was in no haste to thrust
herself into the discussion, but sat quietly, work in hand, glancing
between the stitches from one to the other.
"What did uncle Bryant do?" she at length asked, in the rather long
silence following her brother's last words.
"He's not your uncle,—or mine."
"He is Sissie's,—" with a glance at Miss Anderson.
"And what is mine is yours, of course," added Cecilia Anderson.
"Oh, well—but you can't make a thing to be, when it isn't," rejoined
Felix. "He's no scrap of relation to Lettice or me, you know—really—and
he must have behaved abominably to your mother."
"What did he do?" persisted Lettice.
"He objected to my mother's marriage. I suppose there were hot words
spoken—as usual, in family quarrels. I am not sure about the 'behaving
abominably.' He tried to prevent what he did not think would be for her
happiness. My mother had her way,—and there was no further intercourse
between them."
"And you to write to him—after all these years!"
"That is it! So many years and years ago;—before I was born! My uncle
must be quite an elderly man now. I don't think one ought to make too
much of things spoken so very long since! He thought he was in the
right,—and he did not really know our father. At least, he never learnt
to love him. That is what I mean. It is all over now; and one has to
forget sometimes. And he is my uncle. Better to be helped by him than
by strangers."
"I wonder why Dr. Bryant didn't like your mother to marry papa,"
Lettice conjectured dreamily. "Did anybody mind our mother marrying
him?"
"People sometimes take fancies—unreasonable fancies. Dr. Bryant was
always strong in his dislikes, I have been told. Mind, Lettice, you
know now all that there is any need for you to know. You are not to ask
any more questions, and you are never to discuss the matter with my
uncle."
"No." The word came slowly, and Lettice's eyes widened into a
thoughtful gaze, her needle lying neglected. She had a somewhat
childish look for her fifteen years; and her small-featured pale face
scarcely told of the firm nerves or indomitable pluck of her brother
and half-sister. Yet it was a happy face, contented and cheery: and
the girl, if of more sensitive make than they, was capable of resolute
effort, and of patient endurance, though as yet she had not been
greatly called upon for the exercise of either.
Cecilia Anderson was a woman of remarkable force and courage. She
had been practically a mother to Felix and Lettice, since the death
of their own mother, when Lettice was only six months old: and from
the death of their father—hers and theirs also—whereby they were at
once reduced from ease to penury, she had borne up with unfailing
determination.
Not only by her exertions had she made a home for the two children,
and given them thus far a good education: but she had also paid all
her father's debts—not large, perhaps, in actual amount, but very
large in proportion to Cecilia's means. She knew no rest till they
were liquidated: and she would have done twice as much in love to her
father's memory. He had not been a gifted man, or an estimable man, or
a man of high principle: but he had had the power to make all women
believe in him.
Cecilia was cultivated in no common degree; thoroughly well taught,
and well read: a good French and German scholar: a good musician: a
passable artist: and with these powers she possessed also an unlimited
capacity for work. No doubt her handsome face, her refined and
dignified manner, helped her to make way. Until recently, her time
had been for years more than full: and the incessant toil had been
sufficiently repaid.
But of late, a change had come. She had begun slowly to drop out of
the ranks of the always employed, and to find large gaps in her time,
once entirely occupied. Competition in a place like Brighton is very
keen: and perhaps she was wearing out physically under the long strain,
not able to teach so well. She had often sat up for hours at night,
correcting exercises, when her days were over-full. And even in her
holidays, she had known no rest with incessant holiday-engagements.
Nature will in time take its revenge.
One pupil after another dropped away; and fresh pupils no longer sprang
to supply the vacant places. The worry of this told upon her severely.
She could stand work, but she could not stand the absence of work. It
was scarcely a year since the last of her father's debts had been paid;
and she had hoped for a time of less pressure, when she might lay by a
little for the future. Now, this new reverse was come!
Treading upon the heels of lessening work came soon the direful
question how to get on? How to pay rent and bills, how to procure food
and clothing, how to meet educational expenses?
Lettice went daily to a school near: one of the earlier modern High
schools. Felix, who showed signs of considerable ability, had only left
school this last Michaelmas. Cecilia idolised Felix. She loved Lettice,
quietly: but her whole heart was bound up in the boy, this young
half-brother, to whom she had been sister and mother and friend, all
in one, and for whose success in life she would gladly have flung away
her own happiness. Once upon a time she had indulged in a wild dream
of College; but this dream had faded under the stringent necessity of
finding work for him, without delay.
At first she sought the "something" with ideas far too lofty of what
might be expected; since, surely, there were few boys in Brighton like
her Felix. Employers did not view the matter with her sisterly eyes,
however; and step by step she had to descend in her notions as hope
after hope faded.
Had Felix and Lettice been a little more experienced, they might have
read in Cecilia tokens of the impending break-down, during the autumn
term: but they did not. To the last she never complained, never gave
in, never failed in a single lesson. When the collapse came, it was
sudden and entire. In the morning she went out as usual: before night
she was dangerously ill.
The immediate danger lasted only a few days; but recovery was fitful
and slow. Cecilia at length insisted on hearing the whole truth from
her doctor: and it was a truth which she had long suspected. She was
the victim of complicated and hopeless disease. She might to some
extent rally, and even resume ordinary life; but she would never again
be strong, or fit for teaching; and at any time, an acute attack might
carry her off.
Miss Anderson said not a word of this to Felix or Lettice. She thought
it over quietly: and when again able to sit up, she determined to
write to the only near relative she possessed—her uncle, Dr. Bryant,
alienated many many years earlier by his only sister's marriage to
Francis Anderson.
This decision was hastened by an opening for Felix, as accountant in
a stationer's shop. He would begin at once going daily, to learn his
business: and after a fortnight, would receive the sum of 17s. 6d.
weekly, with prospects of an early rise, if he gave satisfaction.
Cecilia had looked for something widely different, but others told
her how fortunate he was; and the commonsense of the boy acquiesced.
Cecilia gave in, and wrote to Dr. Bryant, resolved that Felix should at
least, if possible, be unhampered.
The reply was prompt. If Cecilia would travel down to the west with
Lettice, as soon as she could bear the journey, Dr. Bryant would give
them both a home. To meet immediate expenses, he enclosed a £10 note.
The letter was not in style affectionate, but Maurice Bryant never
had written affectionately. Some people, demonstrative in manner, are
icy by post; and some, who never thaw in personal intercourse, are
unexpectedly genial in correspondence. He might be none the less warm,
because he expressed himself coldly.
On the whole, satisfaction predominated in Cecilia's mind. To be
compelled to seek aid from any one was a source of distress; but
she was not a person of puny make, always in arms against imaginary
slights, neither was she herself demonstrative. Why should she expect a
show of feeling from others?
"We will offer you a home!" Dr. Bryant wrote, and she wondered over the
plural pronoun. She had always thought of her uncle as an old bachelor,
possibly an eccentric one: but he might have married, without the fact
reaching her ears. If so, the future happiness of herself and Lettice
would depend greatly upon the manner of wife he had chosen.
Cecilia was not a woman of many friends, using the word in a sense
which implies intimacy—partly in consequence of her innate reserve,
partly because she held back from possible friendships. She was proud
as well as reserved; and she would not endure to have it said that she
went after anybody with an object. Neither would she permit towards
herself kindness which might border on patronage. Even the families of
long-standing pupils would drop away, when the engagement ended. People
admired and respected Miss Anderson, but few loved her; and all her
thought and care were concentrated in Felix and Lettice—more especially
in Felix.
So when these troubles came, she had no one to turn to for help: none
except the lodging-house keeper, Mrs. Crofton, who, like everybody,
admired and respected her lodger, and who would have done anything in
the world for Lettice. Mrs. Crofton did do much; nursing the invalid
night and day through the worst of the illness, and afterward sparing
every possible moment from work to the sick room.
The doctor, summoned at haphazard from a neighbouring street, was
kindness itself: and the clergyman of the parish called often. But
though Miss Anderson had been years in this house, she was a stranger
to both of them. Despite all their efforts to break through her shield
of reticence, she and they remained "strangers yet." Nor was she so
grateful as she might have been for their exertions on behalf of Felix,
since the result meant to herself deep disappointment.
"I have been talking with Mrs. Crofton about you, Felix; and we both
wish you to stay on here, when Lettice and I are gone."
"If I can afford it." Felix did not seem enamoured with the plan.
Freedom had its charms for him, and he might be more free elsewhere.
"She will let you have the top back bedroom for half-a-crown a week,
and will do everything for you. It would be impossible to get a
furnished room anywhere else for so little."
"Ten shillings a month. About six pounds a year. I could manage that,
of course. But I say, Sis—" and the lad flushed up hotly; "will it
repay her?"
"She says so. I did hesitate—and I told her it ought at least to be
more in the season: but she would not listen. She declares that she
owes us a great deal, and perhaps it is true. We have never been
behindhand, all these years, in our rent; and of course I have done her
many little kindnesses. By-and-by, it may be in your power to repay her
more fully."
"I hate to be indebted to anybody."
"Yes, I know!—" with full understanding. While Lettice glanced
uncomprehendingly from one to the other. "But Mrs. Crofton is a good
creature. I would rather be indebted to her than to most people. And
the room is not bad—it is neatly furnished, and only one side of the
ceiling slants. I told her the plan would be a comfort to me."
"Oh, it will do as well as anything. I just have to get along for
the present. I don't mean to be in a shop all my days—or in a garret
bedroom."
"You won't—I am sure. It would make me wretched to think so."
"I shall not. I'll get on, somehow. I mean to get on. The chance will
come to me, and I shall use it. You'll see."
Would she see? Or would she soon be far-away, beyond reach of this
idolised brother?
The question came acutely, bringing a shadow with it. For no brightness
lay in the thought. Neither by bringing-up nor by after-conviction was
Cecilia in any sense a religious woman. She had a philosophical way of
viewing troubles, and a spirited fashion of making the best of things:
and what was inevitable she would accept courageously. But death for
her meant simply being cut off from her dearest ones—above and beyond
all, from Felix! The land on the other side of the grave was, for her,
not a Paradise of joy and reunion, but a blank existence of absence and
forgetfulness. All her energies had been expended on this life: all
her treasure was lodged in this world. She had only a faint confidence
in a vague "Providence" to help her through the last straggle, when it
should come.
It was not exactly fear that she felt, looking forward. On the whole,
she counted that she had done her duty, and that things would not
go hardly with her. She had kept up a respectable show of religion,
going pretty often to church on Sunday morning, if wet weather did
not offer an excuse for staying at home—though no rain kept her in on
other days. She had a Bible in her room: not often opened. She had
been scrupulously honourable as to her father's debts; strictly true
in all her dealings: a hard-working, careful, and self-denying sister.
Could more be required? She dreaded having to leave all whom she loved:
otherwise she was prepared—or she thought so—to meet the last enemy
bravely, as she had met many lesser enemies.
"I wish you would get me another shawl, Lettice. I am so chilly."
Lettice sprang up eagerly: rather too eagerly. A certain impulsiveness
and rapidity of movement were natural to her; unlike the dignified
ease which had always characterised Cecilia, and unlike the confident
composure of Felix. The impulsiveness worried Cecilia, who had done her
best to engraft her own manner upon the young girl, hitherto without
success. They had never "suited one another," so completely as Cecilia
and Felix "suited," but Lettice was scarcely aware of this fact. She
was of a happy disposition, humble as to her own merits, passionately
fond of Cecilia, and always sure that Cecilia was in the right.
It had become a received fact in the little circle, that Lettice,
though well-meaning and affectionate, was hopelessly awkward and dull—a
mere foil to her handsome and clever brother. Lettice acquiesced in
this version of affairs as fully as any one. She never expected to be
anything else than dull; and that her occasional gaucheries should
arouse Cecilia's vexation was a matter of course. Lettice was always
more annoyed with herself than Cecilia could be with her.
The hurried start to obey was a mistake. As she sprang up, she caught
her foot in the rug, and stumbled against the couch—then, in her
desperate effort to avoid coming down upon the invalid, she fell
sideways towards the fireplace, striking her head sharply against the
corner of the marble mantelpiece.
"Lettice!" Cecilia said reproachfully—aware only of the unpleasant jar
she had herself received.
"You stupid child!" exclaimed Felix, with brotherly frankness.
Lettice pulled herself up slowly, and laughed—keeping her face turned
away. "I'm sorry," she said, in a lively voice. "I didn't mean—I'll get
the shawl—"
"Don't knock anything down by the way," said Cecilia, with some
sharpness.
"O no—I'll—" Lettice laughed again, and went straight out of the room.
"Did you ever see such a child?" asked Cecilia. "And she doesn't care
in the least!"
Lettice fled to the top of the first flight, and there stood still,
holding the balusters. Resolution failed for the moment to carry her
further. The blow had been severe enough to half-stun her, though not
to overcome her courage, and tears streamed from her eyes with the
pain—an involuntary overflow: muscular, not mental. Lettice would
have scorned to cry for such a cause: but she was stupefied, and five
minutes passed unmeasured. Then the parlour door opened for a shout:
"Lettice! What are you after? You little slowcoach! Sissie wants her
shawl."
Lettice rushed to Cecilia's bedroom door, and called out, "Yes, yes,
I'm coming."
"Make haste! What an age you have been!"
Lettice caught up the shawl and ran downstairs.
When she entered, the other two were again in earnest conference, and
they scarcely noticed her.
Cecilia only remarked carelessly, "I do wish you would learn to be a
little more attentive, Lettice;" and went on with what she was saying.
Lettice attempted no defence. She sat down, not in her former place,
but well in the shade behind the couch, and made believe to be at work
again.
A tap at the door was followed by the announcement,—
"Please, ma'am, Mr. Kelly wants to see you!"
"Mr. Kelly! O dear!"
"He've been a lot of times, ma'am, when you was too ill: and he said
maybe you'd be able now."
"Well, I suppose he must come in for once. It is to be hoped that he
will not stay long."
Felix crossed over to where Lettice sat. "I'm off," he whispered. "I'll
be back in an hour. I say—you didn't really hurt yourself? I saw you
got an uncommonly hard bang."
"Oh, it's nothing—" and she smiled.
"Not bad now."
"It's getting better."
"Sis didn't notice, so I said nothing. She'd only lie and bother.
You'll be all the colours of the rainbow in a day or two."
Felix dashed across the room, intent on escape; and Cecilia's eyes
followed him with hungry looks. She could hardly bear to have him out
of sight, now that the parting was so near. Parting! For how long?
Suppose the separation were to be final? Suppose she should never meet
the boy again in this world? If not in this world—but beyond, all was
blank. Such questions haunted her continually: and they came now with
a sudden vehemence which, for the moment, caused forgetfulness of all
beside. She forgot to look up and welcome the clergyman, advancing
dubiously, after a collision with Felix in the doorway. She entirely
forgot the presence of a silent girl in the shade behind her couch. All
Cecilia's force was for the moment needed to grapple with the inrush of
sad thoughts—the desolate realisation that she had soon to leave the
one whom most in all the world she loved; and that the leaving might be
final.