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Title: How they loved him, Vol. 1 (of 3)
A novel
Author: Florence Marryat
Release date: February 24, 2026 [eBook #78031]
Language: English
Original publication: London: F. V. White & Co, 1882
Credits: Matthew Sleadd, Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW THEY LOVED HIM, VOL. 1 (OF 3) ***
Italic represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
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HOW THEY LOVED HIM.
_A NOVEL_.
BY
FLORENCE MARRYAT
(MRS FRANCIS LEAN).
_IN THREE VOLUMES_.
VOL. I.
LONDON: F. V. WHITE & CO.,
31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1882.
THE POPULAR NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.
THREE FAIR DAUGHTERS. By LAURENCE BROOKE, Author of ‘The Queen of Two
Worlds,’ etc. 3 vols.
SWEETHEART AND WIFE. By LADY CONSTANCE HOWARD. 3 vols.
MY LADY CLARE. By Mrs EILOART, Author of ‘How He Won Her,’ etc. 3
vols.
‘“My Lady Clare” is a pleasant, readable novel.’--_John Bull_.
‘The interest is maintained with undeniable force and skill.’
--_Daily Telegraph_.
A LOVELESS SACRIFICE. By INA L. CASSILIS, Author of ‘Guilty without
Crime,’ &c. 3 vols.
_John Bull_ says:--‘The story is a pleasant one--healthy in tone,
lofty in teaching, and very sympathetic in manner and style.’
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Dedicated,
WITH THE WARMEST OF GOOD WISHES,
TO
MR AND MRS MICHAEL GUNN,
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF
MANY ACTS OF KINDNESS SHOWN TO MY CHILDREN
AND MYSELF.
‘Oh! human Heart, which thus art strong,
To love, to dare, to suffer wrong,
I will not doubt thee, though I see
Thy wickedness continually:
Nor fail to trust thy holier part,
Darkened and fallen as thou art;
But by thy faith--thy love--thy light,
Thy secret longings infinite,
Still trust in God that thou shalt win
Forgiveness for thy host of sin.’
[Illustration: Decorative]
_CONTENTS_.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
ASLEEP, 1
CHAPTER II.
‘THE SACRED AMULET,’ 26
CHAPTER III.
A MOTHER’S WELCOME, 58
CHAPTER IV.
‘FOR SELF ALONE,’ 86
CHAPTER V.
RELUCTANT FEET, 105
CHAPTER VI.
BANISHED, 135
CHAPTER VII.
IN A NEW WORLD, 169
CHAPTER VIII.
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT, 197
CHAPTER IX.
IN WONDER-LAND! 222
CHAPTER X.
THE DAWN BREAKS, 249
CHAPTER XI.
AWAKENED, 290
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
HOW THEY LOVED HIM.
CHAPTER I.
ASLEEP.
‘Her form was fresher than the morning rose
When the dew wets its leaves,--unstain’d and pure
As is the lily, or the mountain snow.’--_Thomson_.
Spring was over all the land, and the April sunshine was beaming mildly
on the tender green leaves and half-blown flowers in the convent garden
of Ansprach. On the broad open terrace, strewn with the golden petals
of the fragile and short-lived laburnum, and scented with the delicate
fragrance of lilac and apple-blossom, a pair of anxious, feathered
parents were vainly endeavouring, by means of continuous twittering,
to induce an awkward fledgling to return to the nest from which he had
prematurely fallen; whilst up and down between the borders of primroses
and polyanthuses, three or four old nuns, too feeble for work, toddled
and sunned themselves, and talked together in quavering voices--Heaven
alone knows of what--perhaps of the days when they were young and
comely, and thought lovers and husbands were natural institutions
and free gifts from God to Woman. From the pasture-lands around the
convent, the lambs were calling to their mother ewes; in the farmyard
the poultry softly chattered to each other as they picked up the
scattered grain; from the playground was wafted a buzz of happy voices.
There were no sounds to be heard, nor sights to be seen on any side,
but such as breathed of purity, and contentment, and peace.
Suddenly, at the farther end of the terrace, appeared a group of
children, galloping and stamping as they played at horses, and the
venerable sisters stood on one side, smiling, to let them pass. A
tall graceful girl led the van, but she was evidently joining in the
sport only for the benefit of the little ones, who had encircled her
with half-a-dozen skipping ropes, and were driving her vigorously from
behind. ‘_Allons--courage--plus vite!_’ they shouted every time their
charger showed the least symptom of declining speed. But as the tall
girl reached the side of the sisters, she came to a full stop. It
was not only to say ‘_Bon jour, mes sœurs_,’ with a deep reverence,
that she did so; she had caught sight of the little fledgling on the
pathway, and her heart was full in a moment. She called to the children
to be careful, and knelt down on the terrace to examine the fallen
bird, much to the consternation of its anxious parents.
‘What can I do for it?’ she demanded of the old nuns who watched her
proceedings.
‘Do nothing, my child,’ they answered, ‘but lay it inside the flower
border. It will be safe there; and the mother bird is close at hand.
She will provide for it better than you can.’
‘Yes,’ shouted one of the little ones; ‘see, there they are,
Fenella--both the papa and the mamma. How dreadfully afraid they are
lest we should hurt their child! And now it has hopped up to them--just
as I shall hop up to my darling mamma when the midsummer holidays
arrive. Oh, Fenella, don’t you wish that they had come?’
Fenella did not answer; she was watching the twittering fuss that the
old birds were making over their fledgling, and perhaps she did not
hear what the child said. But as she rose and twisted the ropes about
her arms again, and set off at a gallop down the terrace, with the
little ones tearing after her, something very like a tear fell from her
grey eyes upon the bosom of her convent dress.
‘Is she an orphan?’ asked one of the nuns, as the girl passed out of
hearing.
‘I don’t know, but I think she must be; she has not left Ansprach for
five years. She is, at any rate, very friendless.’
‘Poor little soul! Perhaps they destine her to remain here for ever,’
was the reply; and then the old women were silent for awhile, as though
the idea had conjured up some tender memory. It must be sad to arrive
at the close of one’s life, and feel that very soon it will be ended,
and leave not a sign behind it that it has ever been. But they soon
shook off the feeling, for the Convent of Saint Barbara was like a
busy hive of bees upon that April morning, and it was difficult to
realise that it could ever be less so. Inside the solemn grey building
dozens of hands were employed in cooking and washing and ironing, for
the sisters allowed no one to assist them in their household labour,
and brought up the children under their charge to be as helpful as
themselves. In the class-rooms a score of teachers were engaged in
the education of the pupils; the hospital had no lack of tender
nurses, nor the chapel of reverent worshippers; whilst, as though in
strong contrast to the latter employment, the mother of the English
pupils--or, as she was generally called, Mère Josephine--was seated in
one of the convent parlours, talking on the most mundane of matters
with a visitor who had arrived in Ansprach but an hour ago.
To look at Mère Josephine alone, was almost to be persuaded that a
conventual life must be the happiest life in the world. For she was
not so young as to be unaware of the weight of the duties she had
undertaken, nor was she so old as to have lost interest in what might
befall her in the future. And yet, though her lot was irrevocably
fixed beyond the power of alteration, she not only looked happy, but
was so. She was a healthy, intelligent woman, of from five-and-thirty
to forty years of age, who was English on the mother’s side, and spoke
that language as well as she did her native German. She had blue eyes
that twinkled with humour, firm rosy cheeks, an elastic step that
would have befitted twenty, and a comfortably rounded form that seemed
the very embodiment of maternity, though no one would have laughed
more than Mère Josephine had you told her so. She was a thoroughly
practical person into the bargain, with a keen appreciation of motives
and character, and she jingled the huge bunch of keys that hung at her
girdle with an air that said she would not be trifled with. In fact,
you would have had to get up early to take in Mère Josephine.
The person with whom she was engaged in conversation was not a bad
specimen of her class either, but it was a lower class. She had a mild
face, which would, under any circumstances, have denoted rather a weak
and easily led disposition, and it had had no opportunities of learning
to attest itself--for she was a servant. Her name was Eliza Bennett,
and she was the housekeeper and lady’s-maid and confidential agent of
Mrs Barrington, of South Audley Street, London.
Mrs Bennett was sitting on the edge of her rush-bottomed chair, looking
very ill at ease. She was tired and hungry and cold--for though the
April sunshine was on the convent garden, it did not penetrate the
thick walls sufficiently to give a look of warmth to the polished oak
floor and the uncurtained casements of the parlour. Added to which, Mrs
Bennett had failed in her mission, and already anticipated with dread
the welcome that should await her return to England. Mère Josephine,
in her serge dress and woollen petticoats and thick shoes, looking as
if she did not know what it was to feel cold, was seated beside her,
scrutinising her face keenly as she replied to her remarks, and forcing
Eliza Bennett, even against her will, to speak the truth.
‘And so Mrs Barrington does not want to have her daughter home for the
present, and she has sent you over here to say so,’ said the reverend
mother briskly, as she rattled her keys--a habit of hers when she was
annoyed by anything.
‘Well, ma’am, it would be more convenient for my mistress, certainly,
ma’am,’ stammered the servant; ‘for, you see, Mrs Barrington has just
let her house for the season and is going abroad, and she says if Miss
Fenella could remain at Ansprach till the Christmas vacation--’
‘But she cannot,’ interrupted Mère Josephine, ‘and I have already
written Mrs Barrington the reason. The doctor has decided that an
immediate change is absolutely necessary for the child. She has grown
unusually fast during the last twelve months, and though our Ansprach
is healthy enough on the whole, it is not a bracing place, and all
young people require change of air at times.’
‘Oh, surely--yes, ma’am. I wouldn’t think of contradicting you; only it
disarranges my mistress’s plans terribly,’ murmured the housekeeper.
‘Mrs Bennett,’ continued Mère Josephine, sternly, ‘Miss Barrington has
been at Ansprach for five years without once going home. She was only
eleven when you brought her to me, and she is now sixteen. It is a most
unusual thing, and with an only child too. I should have thought her
mamma would have been all anxiety to see her again.’
‘Oh! yes, ma’am! And, of course, my mistress is very anxious--very
anxious indeed--to see Miss Fenella; only the rooms being let, and my
mistress going abroad, and having no one with whom to leave the young
lady, it makes it awkward, you see--’
‘And why cannot Mrs Barrington take her daughter abroad with her, Mrs
Bennett?’
‘Well, I don’t know, ma’am; I couldn’t answer for my mistress, of
course; but I know she’s going with a party, and her orders to me were,
whatever I did, to persuade you to be so good as to keep Miss Fenella
over the midsummer vacation.’
‘I am sorry to refuse your request, Mrs Bennett, for Fenella’s sake;
but she is out of health, and it is my duty to send her away. I really
believe she is happy here--as happy as she can be, shut out from home;
but Mrs Barrington has displayed such a culpable want of interest in
her daughter, that she positively knows nothing about her. Fenella is
a very clever girl--far too advanced and deep-thinking for her years;
and, at the same time, she possesses a very affectionate and sensitive
nature. I have, on several occasions, pointed out to Mrs Barrington the
drawbacks she encountered in receiving her education at Ansprach. As
she is not of the same faith as ourselves, we have been restricted from
giving her any religious instruction. For five years, therefore, she
has been left entirely to herself in such matters, and I doubt if she
thinks on the subject at all. She will require very careful watching,
Mrs Bennett, if she is to steer through the world with safety. You seem
a sensible woman. Do you think her mother is likely to prove such a
friend as she will require?’
At this appeal Eliza Bennett produced a pocket handkerchief, and
commenced to sniffle furtively.
‘Ah! I know all the family well, ma’am, and it’s not for me to speak
against them. I lived with them before Miss Fenella was born, and was
with her poor papa when he died. Such a fine gentleman--six foot two,
and in the Royal Navy--and worshipped the very ground she trod on. If
he had lived--but there! what’s the use of talking--but if the dear
child ever wants a friend, and I can serve her, the Lord knows I will.’
‘It strikes me she will live to want one, Mrs Bennett; for she
possesses the most dangerous attributes with which a young girl can
encounter the world,--a heart so large and warm and generous that where
it loves it cannot see a fault, and a strong resolute nature that will
act upon its own impulses against all conventionality or advice. But I
forget how long it is since you have seen her. I will send for her at
once.’
The reverend mother rang the bell, whilst Eliza Bennett wiped her eyes
and said,--
‘Ah! she was always a bright one and a loving one was Miss Fenella! Her
poor papa used often to say that her heart would lead her into more
scrapes than her head would ever help her out of.’
‘I am afraid he was not far wrong, Mrs Bennett; but, at the same
time, you must remember it will depend entirely on what treatment she
gets now whether Fenella will turn out a good woman or a bad one. At
present she is as innocent as a girl of her age could possibly be--too
innocent, perhaps. When I think of her entering the world without a
guide, I could almost wish she were less so.’
‘Let’s hope she’ll get a good husband, ma’am, to keep her out of all
danger,’ remarked the servant.
‘We will, although I do not think the mere fact of having a husband is
always a specific against danger,’ replied Mère Josephine, when she
had dismissed a sister in search of her pupil. ‘And what orders did
Mrs Barrington give you in case of my refusing to keep Miss Fenella at
Ansprach?’
‘Well, my mistress did say, ma’am, in case of its being _quite_
impossible, that there would be nothing else to do, of course, but for
me to take the young lady back with me. But I’m sure she’ll be very
angry if I do.’
‘I am sorry for that, but I cannot help it. If you had refused to take
her back, I should have sent her over in charge of a sister. I will
write to Mrs Barrington to tell her as much, and Fenella will be ready
to start with you this evening.’
‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! what will the mistress say when she sees us!’
wailed Mrs Bennett. But at this moment a tap on the door of the
convent parlour was followed by the entrance of a tall slight girl in
black--the same girl who had been playing horses with the little ones
in the garden--who, advancing quickly, fell on one knee, kissed the
hand of the reverend mother, and then stood upright before her, waiting
her orders.
‘Don’t you know who this is, Fenella?’ said Mère Josephine, as she
laid her hand kindly on the girl’s shoulder.
Fenella looked round at Eliza Bennett, and even the servant was
struck with her appearance. She was like a fair straight lily, fresh
gathered from the garden bed; she might have stood as a model for the
patroness of the convent, the virgin saint Barbara, whose heathen
father butchered her at seventeen for adhering to the Christian faith.
She was slender as a willow, but with a form that gave promise of
unusual excellence in the years to come; her skin was like a snowdrift;
her grey blue eyes looked out of an oval face set in a framework of
sunny brown hair; and from that sensitive mouth, with its tremulous,
half-opened lips that betokened a life of pain in this rough world,
gleamed firm white teeth that spoke for the perfect purity of her
constitution. She was not handsome at this period, perhaps, in the
usual acceptation of the word; there was nothing flashing nor brilliant
about her; she was nothing but a tall white lily, half blown, with no
consciousness that life was anything but one long summer’s day. But
it was a face that, once seen, was not easily forgotten; a dangerous
face, that changed its expression twenty times in an hour--that could
look sad or gay, or anxious, or shy, or arch, just as the humour caught
it, and showed every feeling on the surface without knowing that it
did so. In after years Fenella Barrington was much more dangerous to
herself and others than any merely handsome woman could have been.
She became fascinating! She developed that fatal power to attract and
win and hold, which breaks more hearts and ruins more lives than any
other power has the capacity to do. But she knew nothing of all this as
she stood in the convent parlour; it had not even stirred within her.
She was asleep--a white innocent lily with folded leaves, wrapt in a
peaceful dreamless sleep, that made her think that to live meant to be
happy. How well it would have been for her if she had never waked!
‘Oh dear! she’s the very moral of her poor papa,’ cried Mrs Bennett.
At the sound of her voice, Fenella recognised her.
‘Why, nurse, is that you?’ she said as she crossed the room rapidly to
the old servant’s side. ‘Why have you come here?’ Then a sudden fear
flooded her pale cheek with crimson. ‘Mamma is not ill, is she? There
is nothing the matter with mamma?’ she repeated in an anxious voice.
‘No, no! Miss Fenella, your mamma is well enough; it’s you as we’ve
heard is not well, my dear, and indeed you don’t look over strong. And
are you glad to see me, miss?’
‘Very, very glad, nurse! You remind me of my dear father, and of the
days when he lay ill in England. Oh, nurse! why don’t I go home to see
mamma? It is five years since I came to Ansprach. Am I to pass the
summer at school again?’
Eliza Bennett glanced at the reverend mother, who answered promptly for
her.
‘No, Fenella; you will go to England with Mrs Bennett to-night. Your
mamma knows you require change, and she has sent for you. If all goes
well, you will be at home by this time to-morrow!’
Fenella stood upright again, her face glowing with that fatal
excitement which as yet she had felt so seldom, but which was part of
her nature, and she would learn to recognise but too soon.
‘Going home!’ she said, when she could articulate. ‘Home to mamma!--to
see mamma again!--and to-night? Oh! _chère mère_, it is too delightful,
I hardly know how I shall bear it. Don’t think me ungrateful for
all your kindness,’ she continued, with a rapid change of feeling;
‘indeed--indeed, I shall never forget all I owe to you; but to be going
home to my own mother--to see her to-morrow--in a few hours--it seems
as if it could not be true.’
Mère Josephine smiled at the girl’s enthusiasm, kindly but sadly.
She felt intuitively the disappointment that awaited her warm loving
nature--the disappointment that all true generous hearts experience
when they first come in contact with the selfish world.
‘I do not grudge you your happiness, dear child,’ she answered, ‘for I
am sure you will not forget Ansprach, nor the lessons you have learned
here.’
‘Forget Ansprach!’ echoed Fenella; ‘but how will that be possible? I
shall return to you after the vacation, _chère mère!_’
‘I do not know what your mamma’s plans may be, Fenella. You are no
longer a child, remember. You are almost a woman.’
The girl laughed in a light incredulous way.
‘_Me_ a woman! Ah! _chère mère_, you are laughing at me because you
know I am such a hoyden, and love to be in the gymnasium better than
anywhere else. _A woman!_ why, it seems only the other day that you
began to teach me French and German.’
‘You have learned a great deal since then, my child. Your education
may almost be said to be finished, and I wish, now that you are
going to leave us so suddenly for the great world, that I had
taught you a little more of its ways and temptations. But you must
let your own sense of right be your guide. Should I never see you
again, Fenella’--at these words the girl’s features began to work
nervously--‘should it be Heaven’s will that this parting is the last--’
But the good mother was not allowed to finish her injunction. Fenella’s
feelings could not bear the strain. Remembrance overpowered her, and
she burst into tears.
‘What! never to see you nor the dear sisters again,’ she cried; ‘never
to help you plant seeds in the garden, nor gather flowers for the
altar; never to go in the Ansprach woods on _fête_ days, nor to join
in the processions with my schoolfellows? Oh! _chère mère_, I cannot,
_cannot_ bear it. Don’t send me away! Let me come back again; I have
loved you all so dearly.’
She flung herself on her knees as she spoke, and buried her face in
the folds of the reverend mother’s dress, and her fair hair fell about
her shoulders in beautiful confusion. Why did something in the girl’s
attitude of abandonment, or the falling of her abundant hair, strike
the good nun with a resemblance to the prostrate Magdalen, pictured
on some of the convent walls. The thought chilled her, and she raised
Fenella hastily.
‘Come, my child,’ she said tenderly, ‘you must not give way like this.
Surely you forget that you are going home to see your mamma; and after
so long an absence. What would she think if she saw these tears? And
here is poor Mrs Bennett, who has had nothing to eat since arriving at
Ansprach this morning! Go to Sister Ursula and tell her to come to me
at once. And then arrange your hair tidily, and wait for Mrs Bennett in
No. 16. She will join you there in a few minutes.’
Fenella kissed the reverend mother’s hand, and curtseying left the
room; but her face had lost the look of joyful anticipation that had
irradiated it but a minute before.
‘You see what she is,’ remarked Mère Josephine, as the door closed
behind her, ‘warm-hearted, impulsive, and excitable! These qualities
have been kept down with us. We know their danger, and check them as
much as possible, but in the world they will have full play, and if
Fenella does not find a good friend in her mother to guide them aright,
I fear they will cause her much unhappiness. She will expect too much
from the world, Mrs Bennett. She will think every one she meets is as
generous and frank as herself, and she will be terribly deceived.’
‘Ah! if her poor papa had only lived,’ sighed Mrs Bennett, with an
emphatic shake of the head.
‘Mrs Barrington sees, I suppose, a great deal of society.’
‘Well, it is not for me to talk of my mistress’s doings, ma’am; but she
just lives in it and nothing else.’
Mère Josephine looked grave.
‘That will not be good for so young a girl as Fenella,’ she said.
‘No, ma’am; and I don’t think my mistress would wish her to mix in it,
neither. You see Mrs Barrington is very young-looking for her age, and
very much admired, and Miss Fenella here is so tall and so much of a
woman that--’
‘That her mother will be ashamed to own her! I understand,’ rejoined
Mère Josephine promptly--so promptly as to make Eliza Bennett fear she
had said too much.
‘Well, if it were not that her health requires change, I should say
Fenella would be better here. However, I am sure you must require some
refreshment, Mrs Bennett, so if you will follow Sister Ursula, she will
show you where you can get it.’
Sister Ursula, who had been waiting, smiling at the door for some
minutes, now indicated that she was ready to play pilot, and Eliza
Bennett, who was but too pleased to escape further questioning from the
reverend mother, followed her to No. 16.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER II.
‘THE SACRED AMULET.’
‘What a power there is in innocence! whose very
helplessness is its safeguard: in whose presence
even Passion himself stands abashed, and
turns worshipper at the very altar he came to
despoil.’--_Moore_.
Here she found Fenella awaiting her, standing composed and thoughtful
by the open casement, and looking more like a straight white lily than
ever, with her hair brushed smoothly behind her ears, and her long
eyelashes lying on her fair pale cheeks. The table was spread with a
substantial meal of coffee and rolls and cold meat, and the sister,
having seen that nothing more was required, withdrew, and kept the
servant and her young mistress together.
‘Miss Fenella,’ said Eliza Bennett, as she sat down to table, ‘aren’t
you going to take some breakfast?’
Fenella opened her grey eyes.
‘_Me_, nurse! Oh dear, no! I had my breakfast at six o’clock this
morning, and my dinner at twelve. What do you think of that?’
‘I never heard of such hours for gentlefolks, miss. They wouldn’t suit
London ladies at all.’
‘And at what time shall I have my meals in London, nurse?’
‘Your mamma mostly has her breakfast about this time, and her dinner at
eight in the evening. But I don’t suppose you’ll go out to parties as
much as she does, miss.’
‘Oh, no! I shouldn’t wish to do so. What should I do at parties, nurse?
I have never been to one in my life! I don’t even know what they do
there; but it will be so sweet to creep out of my bed again when mamma
comes home--(I shall always lie awake till I hear her step)--and come
downstairs to help to undress her and make her comfortable for the
night. My own dear mamma! I have never forgotten her face, Bennett, nor
her beautiful dark hair.’
Bennett, who knew all about the ‘beautiful dark hair,’ which had
mysteriously changed by this time to golden, and had experienced the
sweetness of creeping out of her bed to attend to Mrs Barrington’s
requirements at two o’clock in the morning, did not appear to join in
her daughter’s enthusiasm on the subject, and only remarked that it
would not be good for Miss Fenella, not being strong, to have her rest
disturbed after that fashion, and she didn’t think her mamma would
allow it.
The girl looked disappointed.
‘I shall soon grow strong in England,’ she said, ‘and I should love to
wait upon mamma.’
‘You will soon find other things to think of, miss,’ replied Bennett,
with a view to consolation. ‘Your mamma has me to wait upon her, and
don’t need to trouble any one else. And you’ll be getting lovers before
long, and making them wait upon you.’
‘Lovers!’ echoed Fenella; ‘do you mean men to marry me? Oh no! I
sha’n’t. I shall never be married. I don’t wish to. I shouldn’t like
it.’
Had she been less of a child and more of a woman she would have blushed
or laughed a little at the idea, for it does not take much to call up
blushes in a young girl’s cheek at the mention of marriage, even from
one of her own sex; but Fenella did neither. She only looked at the
servant, straight out of her frank grey eyes, as a child of four years
old might have done, and shook her head and repeated emphatically, ‘I
know all about marrying, nurse, and I’m _sure_ I shouldn’t like it.’
Eliza Bennett, in her quiet way, was infinitely amused.
‘Why, who could have told you all about it, Miss Fenella?’
‘Oh, lots of people! I have a great friend here--Honorée St Just. Ah!
how sorry I shall be to part with her. And her sister Cécile is married
to a man, and Honorée says it is horrid. They quarrel dreadfully, and
Cécile hates him, and one day he boxed her ears. No man should do that
to me; and if I had my choice I’d rather marry a woman, only they say
that’s nonsense.’
‘I should think it was, miss--too great nonsense to talk about.’
‘I won’t say it again then, but I don’t know why it should be. Honorée
and I would never quarrel like Cécile and her husband if we lived in
the same house. But if that is the case I shall never marry, for I
should not care to have a man for a friend. They are rough, and they
do not care for the same amusements as girls. I am sure we should not
agree together.’
‘You’ll change your opinion, Miss Fenella, when you have seen more of
gentlemen. You don’t know anything about them now, though bad’s the
best, I must say. But all young ladies marry sooner or later.’
‘Oh no, nurse, not all! The nuns are ladies, but they never marry, and
they are very happy. And I should like best of all to live with them.
I mean to live with dear mamma, and wait on her till she wants me no
longer, and then when she has gone to heaven I will come back to dear
Ansprach and be buried with the sisters in the convent yard.’
‘Oh dear me, miss, that _is_ sorrowful talking,’ remonstrated Eliza
Bennett, with her mouth full of bread and butter.
‘_Why?_’ replied Fenella, with evident surprise. ‘We often have deaths
here, because some of the nuns are so very old, and you should see
how pleased they are to hear it is all over, and they are going to
Jesus and the Blessed Virgin for ever. When one of the sisters die,
the others take turns to watch by her coffin till she is buried, and I
always coax _chère mère_ to let me have my turn, although I am not a
Catholic. And oh, nurse!’ exclaimed Fenella, with a sudden outburst of
prophecy from her childish soul, ‘I have sometimes wondered if it would
not be better if I died too whilst I was at Ansprach, and never went
home to see mamma and what they call the “world again.”’
But this was a line of argument with which Eliza Bennett could not
cope, and which half frightened her, for it revealed a nature deeper
than any which she had yet been called upon to fathom.
‘Please don’t talk like that, miss, nor ask me such questions,’ she
said nervously; ‘it isn’t right nor natural. I don’t mean to say as
things mayn’t seem a bit strange to you in Audley Street after the
convent, but still they’re your mamma’s ways, you know, and you must
give in to them, and not put her out, and then you’ll be happy enough.’
‘_Put her out!_ Do you mean vex her? Oh, no! that I never will. How can
you think so for a moment. I am only afraid that I may disappoint her,
and that she will not be able to love me as much as I shall want her to
do. Nurse, shall I sleep in the same bed as my mamma? Do tell me.’
‘Well, I hardly know what to say to that, miss; your mamma never cared
for any one sleeping alongside of her, so you mustn’t be vexed if you
don’t share her bed, for, to tell truth, I don’t think you will.’
‘Nurse!’ exclaimed Fenella, as if struck by a sudden fear, ‘_won’t she
love me?_’
There was so much energy in her tone that the old servant was quite
taken aback.
‘Bless your heart, miss, of course she will. Whatever makes you ask
me such a question. Why, all mothers love their children, and you an
only one too, and such a fine grown young lady, and the very image of
your papa; it would be against nature entirely if your mamma weren’t as
proud of you as proud can be.’
‘But it is so long since she sent for me,’ said Fenella mournfully;
‘five whole years. I began to think I was never going home, and the
other girls would hardly believe I had a mother. It made me feel almost
ashamed, nurse, and as if I had done something wrong.’
‘Well, your mamma will make up for it now, miss, never fear! She has
had more than enough to worry her, my dear, I expect, during the last
few years, and perhaps she thought you was better away learning your
books than knocking about with her.’
‘Worried!’ cried Fenella, with a startled look. ‘What can she have to
worry her?’
Eliza Bennett looked mysterious. She longed to tell what was in her
mind, but she had been too well trained to turn informer; and the
girl’s eager tone of inquiry made her more cautious than she might
otherwise have been.
‘Everybody has something to worry ’em,’ she answered, ‘and your dear
mamma ain’t free from it, miss--no more than others. There’s always
plenty of trouble in this world.’
‘Do you mean she is sorry? I never thought of that! Oh, I am so glad
she has sent for me to comfort her! I am the proper person to comfort
her. Am I not, Bennett? And I will--indeed, I will!’
Bennett, who was perfectly aware that the last thing Mrs Barrington
would regard as an alleviation of her cares would be the appearance
of her tall womanly daughter, here wiped her mouth in token of having
finished her breakfast, and was significantly silent. She tried
to appear at her ease, but, in reality, she was full of nervous
apprehension, which amounted to cowardice. She had been twenty years
in the service of Mrs Barrington, and since her husband’s death she
had been her housekeeper, lady’s-maid, and humble friend,--in fine,
the recipient of all her secrets. Mrs Barrington would not have parted
with her on any consideration--she would have been afraid to do so; and
Eliza Bennett knew it well; and yet she was so much under the thumb of
her mistress, that she had no will of her own. She did not love her; on
the contrary, she despised her for her heartlessness and artifice. She
derived no particular benefit from remaining in her service; and yet,
had her life depended on it, she would not have left her,--nor did she
do so until the strange fascination which Mrs Barrington exercised over
her was exhausted.
Fear is a much stronger motive power to bind people together than
love,--fear of the world--fear of change--fear of themselves. How many
uncongenial couples does it not link fast for life, and make them
jog on, afraid to rupture the unholy spell that unites them, until
death causes the parting to be inevitable. There was a subtle, secret
magnetism in Mrs Barrington for Eliza Bennett, which the servant felt
but could not analyze, and the mistress wielded without knowing whence
her power came.
The rest of that day was spent, as far as Fenella was concerned, in a
very tearful and unhappy manner. Five years is a long while for any one
to spend in one place and with one set of people, and to a young girl
of sixteen it appears a lifetime.
Fenella ran from the farmyard to the gymnasium, and the flower garden
to the chapel, and wept freely as she thought she might never see any
of them again. She visited the kitchens and laundry and class-rooms,
and felt intuitively, as she bade farewell to the sisters who had
surrounded her childhood with kindness and care, and the schoolfellows
who had shared her pleasures and advantages, that the happiest and
most peaceful years of her life were over. But the great trial to her
in leaving Ansprach was parting with her bosom friend Honorée St Just.
Fenella was not a general lover. She possessed a full, impulsive nature
that could rejoice in the sunshine and the blossoms, and the singing
of the birds, and sometimes, when all the world smiled at her, and her
spirit seemed to rush forth to meet it, her heart would overflow and
she would weep for very gladness. But though she felt deeply, she was
not sentimental. She had never nursed sickly fancies after the fashion
of school girls. She was impulsive and emotional, but what she loved
she must look up to. Hers was a nature that all through life would feel
the necessity of a passionate love--the necessity of a friend whom she
could worship--of some one to whom she would be the very first, in whom
she could confide every thought that came into and over-weighted her
active brain.
She was clever, but she was dependent on others for sympathy. Left to
herself and her own thoughts, Fenella would have sunk into a miserable
being. And for the last few years Honorée St Just, who was much older
than herself, had been the depository of all Fenella’s half-fledged
thoughts, and she felt the wrench of parting from her terribly. It was
only by oft-repeated promises of a speedy reunion at Honorée’s house
in Germany, where she protested her parents should invite Fenella to
visit her, that the young girls could be persuaded to separate, and
when at last Eliza Bennett found herself with her charge outside the
convent walls of St Barbara, she was afraid that Fenella’s grief would
make her ill. But it subsided sooner than she expected. These impulsive
natures suffer keenly, but they do not suffer long, unless the wound is
incurable, and then may Heaven help them, for they twist and writhe
above the unextracted weapon, until death mercifully closes the scene.
But to a girl of sixteen who had spent the greater part of the last
five years within a convent garden, the mere fact of travelling was an
excitement and distraction; and when the next morning broke and they
found themselves at Calais, ready to cross over to Dover by the midday
boat, Fenella was able to look at the scenes that passed around her
with dry eyes, and to comment on them with all the natural liveliness
of her disposition.
But Eliza Bennett could not make out her young lady. She was puzzled
to know what to answer to the extraordinary questions she put to her.
She had never been brought in contact with such a womanly child before.
Fenella had no shyness in her composition, and her innocence made her
afraid of nothing. She would as soon have addressed a stranger passing
in the street as the servant that walked beside her. They had some
hours to wait in Calais, and they employed them in traversing the town.
As they came opposite a church a wedding party issued from it, the
bride resplendent in her foreign finery--a bright blue dress trimmed
with velvet, and a cap decorated with satin ribbons and orange blossoms.
‘Who are those people, nurse?’ demanded Fenella, with interest. ‘What
have they been about? Is it a first communion?’
‘Bless my soul, Miss Fenella, it’s a wedding! Don’t you see the flowers
in the bride’s cap?’
‘Is it?’ indifferently; and then, after a pause, she added,--‘Why do
people go to church when they’re married, Bennett?’
‘Why, to say prayers, Miss Fenella, of course.’
‘Couldn’t they pray at home?’
‘Well, I suppose so, but then there’s the marriage vows, you see. They
go to the parson, and he makes them swear they will live together all
their lives.’
‘What! in the same house always? Why should they swear that? Suppose
after a time they got tired of each other and wanted to live in
different houses, what would they do then?’
‘Oh, miss, you mustn’t think of such a thing. Marriage is binding for
life, you know, and when people have once entered on it, they never
dream of changing.’
‘Don’t they? Then why does the priest make them swear not to?’
Eliza Bennett met Fenella’s eyes fixed upon hers, and resolute for an
answer, and had to think before she concocted one.
‘Lor! my dear child, whatever would your mamma say if she heard you?
Why, they haven’t taught you nothing at that convent. Why do married
people swear to keep to each other? Why, because it’s the law of the
land, miss, as they should do so; and they’d be chopping and changing
all round if they hadn’t something to hold ’em together; but when
they’ve made a vow, of course it’s all right, and they never think of
such a thing.’
Fenella pondered on this mystery for a minute or two, then she said,--
‘Do mothers take vows that they’ll always live with their children,
nurse?’
‘Dear me no, miss, their hearts keep them to each other--it’s nature,
you see; they couldn’t turn against their little ones any more than
they could against themselves.’
‘Isn’t marriage nature, then, and haven’t the married people hearts?
Wouldn’t that keep them together as well as going into church and
swearing?’
‘I’m sure I can’t tell you, miss; you do put such strange questions
you quite flurry me. But you’ll be married yourself some day, and then
you’ll understand all about it. They look happy enough any way, don’t
they? See how the girl is smiling at her friends--’
At that moment the wedding party passed close to them, and one of the
men, struck by Fenella’s face, remarked to his companion,--
‘_Mon Dieu! qu’elle est belle! la petite Anglaise!_’
Eliza Bennett saw the look of admiration that accompanied the words.
‘I hope that fellow didn’t say anything rude to you, miss?’
She looked at her young mistress as she spoke, and seemed to see, for
the first time, what she would become. The lily was flushed with the
excitement and the fresh sea air; a delicate pink glow was spreading
over her features, as if the rising sun had touched the petals of a
flower--a glow that made her eyes look bluer, her hair more sunny, her
parted lips like carmine.
The servant took in the fascination of her appearance at a glance, and
pulled her to one side.
‘Come on, Miss Fenella, we mustn’t loiter like this; ladies should
never stand about the streets; besides, it’s nearly twelve, and we go
on board at one. It is time we were making our way to the restaurant;
you must have a good luncheon before we start.’
She led the girl away as she spoke, and they entered the restaurant.
But Fenella was too excited to eat; her loving heart was filled now
with the idea of meeting her mother again, and she but half finished
the bason of soup which Bennett ordered for her. As the servant, much
confused by the foreign coins with which her purse was filled, bustled
away to the counter to pay for what they had consumed, Fenella’s
attention was attracted by the figure of a young gentleman, who leaned
against the side of the open doorway, and gazed at her.
He was a tall, slight youth of about two-and-twenty, and there was
something about his appearance that betokened an Irish descent. His
fine silky hair and moustaches were of the darkest shade of brown; his
blue eyes were shaded by black pencilled brows, and thick lashes that
lay upon his cheek as though he had been a child; his delicate nose
and closed nostrils showed a refined and artistic disposition, and his
mouth (or what could be seen of it), if weak and pleasure-seeking, was
very tender, and had a certain melancholy droop at the corners, that
would have led a stranger to believe its owner to be the possessor of
very deep feelings.
But what should a child like Fenella, just let loose from school, know
of the subtle signs of physiognomy, when even the oldest and most
experienced amongst us refuse to be guided by them. All she saw was a
very handsome young man, whose eyes were fixed earnestly upon her face,
and her first thought was, whether it was the quaintness of her convent
garb that had excited his curiosity. The idea made her colour and
look conscious, and she turned slightly to one side. But the mesmeric
influence of the eyes, that never moved for a moment from her face,
forced her after a while to meet them again, and her frank childish
glance was once more mingled with his own. This time she noted the
melancholy of his expression, and wondered what had caused it.
‘Is he in any pain or trouble? Can he want to speak to me?’ she thought.
When Eliza Bennett returned to her seat, Fenella communicated this idea
to her.
‘Do you see that gentleman who is looking at me, nurse?’ she whispered.
‘I think he must want to say something. Perhaps he is sick, or sorry.
Shall I go and speak to him?’
‘Goodness me! no, Miss Fenella! The impudent rascal to go staring a
young lady out of countenance after that fashion. I’ll get one of
the waiters to turn him out of the restaurant, if he don’t mend his
manners.’
‘Don’t say that, nurse! Indeed, he is not rude; he has only looked at
me. Oh! I hope he did not hear what you said about him.’
For the ‘impudent rascal,’ perceiving the advent of a middle-aged
chaperon with a flustered manner, had concluded to shift his position
for a while, and sauntered into the sunshine.
‘A good thing if he did, Miss Fenella,’ replied Eliza Bennett.
‘However, he seems to have taken the hint, so I’ll go and see after the
luggage. If you’ll wait here for me, you’ll be safe enough.’
‘_Safe!_’ echoed the girl; ‘safe! why what should happen to me?’ and
then the servant left her again, and she leaned her head upon her
hand, and tried to realise what she would feel when once more within
the embrace of her mother. Then the young man, with the earnest glance
and the tender droop in his mouth, noting that the coast was clear,
returned to his former position, and fixed his gaze once more upon
Fenella’s face. She did not raise her eyes, but she knew that his were
on her. She _felt_ them, as one feels the heat of fire, even through
her sheltering hand, and her nature stirred uneasily beneath their
influence.
‘He _must_ want to speak to me,’ she said to herself; ‘else why should
he look so earnestly at me. Perhaps he has had a misfortune; he may
have been robbed of his purse, and be unable to pay his passage home;
or he may be a stranger who cannot speak the language and make his
wants known, and he sees I am English and wishes me to help him. How
can I be so unkind as to take no notice? He may find no one else to
assist him. Surely that would not be doing as I would be done by.’
At this juncture Fenella, moved by an irresistible impulse, rose
hastily from the table and walked towards the door. The young man, who
had been so fascinated by her appearance, thought that she was offended
by his admiration, and was about to leave the restaurant in token of it.
He was a gentleman, and regretted he had been so thoughtless, and so
he drew to one side respectfully as she approached the threshold,
and slightly raised his hat. But what was his astonishment when the
childish figure stopped directly in front of him, and two kind,
fearless eyes were raised innocently to his face.
‘Why do you look at me?’ demanded Fenella. ‘Are you in trouble? Can I
assist you?’
The stranger blushed scarlet; her quiet question took him so completely
aback he had not a word to say for himself. He could only stammer forth
some awkward thanks for her kindness, and a denial that he needed
anything. But Fenella did not blush; she only smiled.
‘I am glad it is nothing,’ she said; ‘I thought you wanted to speak to
me,’ and then she returned to her seat without any confusion, and sat
down again to wait for Eliza Bennett.
Meanwhile, had she felt annoyance at the stranger’s admiration, she
could not have taken a better means of preventing his continuing a
display of it. He could not look at her again after the innocent
misconstruction she had put upon his motives. He walked straight away
from the restaurant on board the steamer that waited to take them to
Dover. And in a few minutes Fenella was claimed by Bennett and hurried
after him, and it was not until she stepped on deck and caught sight of
him, again eagerly watching their movements, that she had time to tell
the servant what had occurred.
‘Nurse,’ she said, as she followed her to the cabin, ‘did you see that
gentleman that looked so hard at me in the restaurant, leaning on the
bridge as we came on board? He is going to England with us. But he is
not in any trouble, because I asked him. I think he was only looking
at me to please himself, for he said he was very much obliged, but he
did not want anything.’
‘Miss Fenella, you don’t mean to tell me you _spoke_ to him?’ exclaimed
Eliza Bennett in dismay.
‘Yes, I did! I thought he might wish me to interpret for him or
something, but he didn’t. Don’t you think he has a nice face?’
‘Goodness me, miss, you make my blood run cold; the idea of you
speaking to a perfect stranger, and a man too! Why, he might be one of
the swell mob for ought we know. Oh, Miss Fenella, don’t you _never_ go
and tell your mamma of what you’ve done, or I sha’n’t hear the last of
it for having left you a minute by yourself.’
‘But why should mamma be angry, nurse? It wasn’t wrong.’
‘It was very wrong, indeed, Miss Fenella; it isn’t the custom, and
every-thing’s wrong that isn’t the custom, and young ladies can never
learn that too soon. However, you are but a child as yet, and don’t
know any better, but you won’t do it again, my dear; will you, now?’
‘Not if it’s _wrong_,’ said Fenella quietly.
And then she allowed Eliza Bennett to fuss over her and tuck her up
with shawls upon a sofa, where she lay for a couple of hours, enduring
the purgatory of the ladies’ cabin, and thinking what a strange custom
it was that forbade her to speak to her fellow-creatures. Whilst the
servant, too nervous at the approaching interview with her mistress to
take any rest, turned and tossed upon her couch, and tried to invent
arguments to appease the threatened storm.
At last the steamer touched the Dover pier; and not in the best humour,
Eliza Bennett dragged her charge after her up the steps of the gangway.
As they reached the top, they again encountered the subject of their
discussion, who had mounted before them, and was leaning over the
railings gazing at Fenella. Had the stranger smiled whilst gazing, the
girl might have thought with her attendant he meant to be rude, but as
he only fixed two grave eyes upon her, she could not feel offended.
But the expression in that steadfast glance had no such effect upon
Eliza Bennett. All she read in it was pertinacity, which she considered
it her duty to crush. She was a timid woman by nature, and, like many
timid people, when she made an effort to be brave she became offensive.
She pulled Fenella past the young gentleman almost roughly, as she
exclaimed in an audible voice,--
‘Well, _I_ never saw such impudence. I hope he’ll know you again to
swear to.’
At these words Fenella looked up, startled and annoyed, and the
stranger’s eyes again met hers. This time they made her feel
uncomfortable--she hardly knew why, and she turned her head quickly
away. But not before the young man had seen that she did not share the
sentiments of her companion.
‘By Jove! What a sweet face,’ he thought, ‘and what a world of feeling
lies in those eyes! I must get into the same compartment with that girl
if I can.’
He ran along the line of carriages as the idea struck him, but he was
already too late. Eliza Bennett had secured the only vacant seats in
a compartment for Fenella and herself, and the stranger was obliged
to content himself with a smoking carriage. Here he indulged freely
in his favourite occupation, and tried hard to shake off the absurd
fascination which the memory of this girl exercised over him, and for
which he was ready to laugh at his own folly. But he found the task
more difficult than he anticipated. As the wreaths of smoke from his
cigar floated from him in ghostly rings of cloudy blue, they kept on
shaping themselves into the form of an oval face, from which gleamed
forth two clear innocent eyes, that almost seemed to look reproachfully
at him. ‘What nonsense!’ he thought. ‘What is there so different in
her from other women, that I can’t knock her out of my head? She’s
nothing, after all, but a half-grown school-girl. Why can’t I think of
something else?’ Why, not indeed! Who can tell? Was it his good angel
that raised that vision to warn him against what might be; or was it
his bad angel that evoked it for his greater condemnation in the years
to come, when he should remember what had been and what was, and that
he had heeded nothing but his own selfish gratification. He leapt out
of the train as soon as it reached the London station, but the platform
was crowded with passengers, and in the confusion he missed the two he
sought to see. Luggage was being examined; porters were rushing to and
fro; people were hustling each other in their eagerness to be served
first, and whilst his eyes were still roving here and there in hopes
of gaining some clue to the identity of the girl who had attracted
his fancy, Fenella and Eliza Bennett were in a cab jolting along the
streets on their way to Mrs Barrington’s apartments.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER III.
A MOTHER’S WELCOME.
‘What’s this world? Thy school, O Misery!
Our only lesson is to learn to suffer,
And he, who knows not that, is born for nothing.’
_Young_.
It was now several years since Mrs Barrington had had either the
means or the disposition to keep up a house of her own, and so she
lived in furnished rooms in South Audley Street, which fulfilled all
her requirements when she was in London, which was seldom. She had
been left in very comfortable circumstances by her late husband, but
she had frittered away all the available portion of her income until
she was really seriously encumbered. The fact is, Mrs Barrington
had been a beauty and a coquette, and much admired in her younger
days, and she considered she had thrown herself away when she married
Captain Barrington. She had always intended to purchase a fortune at
least, if not a title, with her good looks; and then he had come in
her light and blinded her to her own interests, and she had married
him and got neither. It had been a source of constant grievance and
many quarrels between them during the captain’s lifetime, and when he
died his widow began to consider whether she might not yet retrieve
her youthful error, and spend the rest of her days as the beginning
should have been. She was still good-looking and not old, and had many
admirers. But these things do not always mean marriage, and though
Mrs Barrington had not given up all hope, it was certainly dwindling,
and her temper suffered terribly as the fact became more and more
patent to her senses. Of course the first thing had been to get rid of
Fenella,--widows, with daughters as tall as themselves, find it no use
to look young,--besides, it was so much easier to talk of her ‘sweet
child’ and her ‘dear little girl,’ from whom it was such a cruel trial
to be parted, whilst Fenella was safe at Ansprach, and there was no
chance of her intruding her long arms and legs into the midst of the
conversation.
So the girl had been kept at school for five years whilst the mother
tried her luck at a second throw of Fortune’s wheel. But as yet the
hoped-for prizes had all turned up blanks. For Mrs Barrington had
overstepped her mark. Instead of contenting herself with the good
looks that Heaven had given her, she had supplemented them with so
much powder and rouge and hair-dye that she had frightened the men
away. They would come and lounge in her drawing-room, or take her to
the theatre, or meet her at Mentone or Wiesbaden by the dozen, but
they would not propose. They treated her to presents and flowers and
opera boxes and everything but offers of marriage, and they talked of
her amongst themselves as of rather a better sort of courtesan, and
that was all. No one of them in his senses ever thought of making her
his wife, and the consciousness of failure had begun to dawn upon Mrs
Barrington’s mind and make her more ill-tempered and fractious than
ever. And yet there was no doubt that she was a very pretty woman--much
prettier, most men would have thought, than her daughter Fenella; but
her face, like her life, was a lie, and nothing is more patent to the
world than that. When Mrs Barrington found that she had been a widow
for some years, and had no chance of changing her condition, she
redoubled her energies to charm, and wasted her money in the effort.
She spent a small fortune in dresses and pigments; passed half her
time in foreign watering-places, and at last committed the fatal
error of attempting to retrieve some of her lavish expenditure at the
gaming-tables. At the moment Fenella was returned on her hands, Mrs
Barrington was really more impecunious than she had been for years.
So she had let her apartments in South Audley Street for a good sum
for the London season, and was about to join her friend Lady Wilson
in passing a few months at Mentone. There was another reason for her
leaving England in this company. Lady Wilson’s husband was still alive
and well, but she had a son of about five-and-twenty, a moonstruck,
æsthetic youth, who raved on the subject of Mrs Barrington’s golden
_chevelure_ and ivory teeth (not knowing that she kept the one in a
bottle and her dentist made the other), and the widow believed that,
with a little flattery and a few _têtes-à-tête_, she might conquer the
fledgling baronet. He might not become ‘Sir Henry,’ it was true, for
years--but still it was something to look forward to, and time was
waning, as Mrs Barrington had been compelled at last to acknowledge to
herself.
Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the reverend
mother’s letter, announcing that she must send Fenella home at once,
was the most unwelcome news she could have received. She had had Eliza
Bennett up on that occasion and confided to her all her hopes and
fears. She had conjured her to go to Ansprach, and by hook or by crook
to induce the nuns to keep her daughter, at all events until this
eventful season was past.
‘Then I shall either be engaged or married to Mr Wilson, Bennett,’ she
had said. ‘It’s a dreadful come-down, I know, still, he will be the
baronet some day if he lives, and meanwhile, his mother will never let
him or his wife want for anything. And you know, Bennett dear, that I’m
dreadfully hard up. How I am ever to pay Madame Carrafine if I don’t
marry, beats me altogether, and Masters has threatened me with a suit
for the carriage hire if the account is not settled next quarter. You
must do this for me, Bennett--it’s a matter of life or death. Go to
Ansprach and persuade the reverend mother to keep the girl there till
Christmas. I promise to have her home then, but whatever you do, _don’t
bring her back with you_, or you’ll ruin all my plans.’
After which harangue, and fearing her mistress’s anger as she did,
it is not wonderful that Eliza Bennett positively trembled as the
cab approached South Audley Street. Fenella, on the other hand, was
trembling also, not with fear, but anticipation. ‘My mother, my own
mother,’ she kept on repeating with clasped hands. ‘Oh, Bennett, how
long we are getting to Audley Street! Tell the man to drive faster. I
feel as if I must get out and run until I reach her arms.’
It was now nearly seven o’clock in the evening--one delay and
another had made them longer than they ought to have been, and the
April twilight had deepened into dusk. Mrs Barrington was in her
dressing-room, with a very ill-tempered expression on her countenance,
attiring herself for a dinner-party. She wondered why Eliza Bennett
could not have managed to return home before, and she was put out
by the fact of having to wait upon herself; and so she was venting
her ill-humour by tearing laces and wrenching off buttons, and
using lady-like expletives under her breath in revenge for her own
carelessness. At last she heard a cab stop at the door.
‘There she is!’ she exclaimed; ‘thank goodness! What I should do
without that woman I don’t know. I am a perfect baby when she leaves me
to myself.’
A heavy step came up the stairs, and without any notice the door of
her room was thrown open. Mrs Barrington turned at the sound with an
expression of relief. Bennett was standing on the threshold.
‘So you’ve arrived at last,’ she said. ‘I thought you were never coming
home. I suppose you’ve made it all right with that old fool of a
reverend mother--’
Bennett did not answer at once, but advancing to the bed, threw
her bonnet and shawl upon it. She was trembling violently, but Mrs
Barrington was too selfish to notice her distress.
‘You are going out again this evening, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Let me help
you with your dress.’
She stood behind her mistress and commenced to lace up her dress, as
though she had only made a journey from the kitchen to the bedroom.
‘You have arrived in the very nick of time,’ laughed Mrs Barrington. ‘I
was just wondering what had become of you, and if I should send for Ann
to help me to dress; but I shall be in plenty of time now. I am engaged
to Lady Wilson, but we don’t dine till eight. And so you’ve settled it
all with the convent people, I suppose, and they’ll keep the child till
Christmas? What a relief! I should have gone out of my mind if they had
insisted upon sending her back.’
‘But, if you please, ma’am,’ stammered Bennett, as she stood pulling
the lace together, ‘I am sorry to say the reverend mother wouldn’t
hear any reason, and I was obliged to bring Miss Fenella back with me,
whether I would or no.’
‘_What!_’ cried the affectionate mother, who had not seen her only
child for five years, ‘do you mean to say that she has returned with
you now--that she is _here?_’
‘She is, indeed, ma’am. I couldn’t help it. I had no alternative. The
reverend mother declared Miss Fenella required change, and that if I
didn’t bring her to England she would send her over in charge of a
sister. So I thought it would be cheaper for me to comply; and we came
third class all the way. I knew it would put you out terribly, ma’am,
but I couldn’t help it--indeed, I couldn’t.’
‘Bennett,’ cried Mrs Barrington tragically, as she sank into a chair,
‘you have ruined all my prospects.’
‘Oh no, ma’am, don’t say that! pray don’t--for I’d lay down my life to
serve you at any time--as you know well; but this wasn’t my fault, as
Miss Fenella herself will tell you, and when they insisted on it, what
could I do but bring her along with me!’
‘But what am I to do with her?’ exclaimed her mistress. ‘Lady Wilson
wants to start on Friday, and the Foulkes are coming into these rooms
on Monday. It’s enough to drive me out of my senses. I believe I’m the
most unfortunate woman that was ever born.’
And real tears of vexation and perplexity began to roll down Mrs
Barrington’s painted cheeks. The sight seemed to move Eliza Bennett
powerfully, and she flung herself on her knees beside the lady’s chair.
‘Don’t, my dear mistress,’ she said pleadingly; ‘pray don’t give way
like that; you might make yourself ill. I will think of some plan for
Miss Fenella, by which she sha’n’t interfere with any of yours; only
don’t blame me, dear mistress, for what has happened, for I was as
helpless in it as the babe unborn.’
She grasped Mrs Barrington’s hand and kissed it as she spoke, but the
selfish creature pushed her away almost contemptuously.
‘There, there, Bennett, don’t mess me, for Heaven’s sake! You know how
I hate it. I suppose you couldn’t help it, as you say you couldn’t, but
it doesn’t show much wit on your part. All the reverend mothers in the
world wouldn’t have made _me_ bring that child home against my will,
and you may take your oath of that.’
Eliza Bennett was beginning to murmur something about her mistress
being so much cleverer and better and more persuasive than herself,
when the opening of the bedroom door made her rise suddenly to her
feet. There, on the threshold, stood Fenella, her cheeks burning with
excitement, her arms extended in anticipation.
‘Mother! dearest mother!’ she cried passionately.
Even Mrs Barrington was roused by the appeal. She made several steps
forward and folded the girl in her arms.
‘My dearest child,’ she said, ‘is this really you? I was just about
to send Bennett for you. Why, what a woman you’ve grown; inches above
me, I declare. I don’t think I should have known you had we met in the
street.’
She kissed Fenella as she spoke, but not warmly--Mrs Barrington never
kissed warmly. She did not know how to kiss. She always presented her
nose or a portion of her jaw to the dearest friends she possessed.
Possibly the habit had grown on her from a fear of spoiling the dainty
arrangement of rouge and powder with which her face was embellished,
but it had become a custom from which she never deviated. Fenella felt
the coldness of her mother’s embrace, even whilst it fell upon her
cheek, and, worn out with fatigue and excitement and disappointment,
she burst into tears.
‘Dearest mother!’ she exclaimed, ‘don’t be angry with me for coming up
before you sent for me; but I could not wait downstairs any longer. I
felt as if my heart would burst with longing. Oh, mamma, what a time it
is since we met! I thought I was never going to see you again.’
‘That was a very silly thing to think,’ replied Mrs Barrington sweetly,
as she disengaged herself from the girl’s clinging clasp, which she
feared would prove rather detrimental to her dinner dress. ‘Of course
I should have had you home soon, dear Fenella, only it was not very
convenient just at present, as I am expecting to go abroad in a day or
two with some friends.’
‘Oh, I will be no trouble to you, darling mother,’ said Fenella,
smiling through her tears. ‘I will wait on you and be your maid, and I
can always sit at home, when you go out, with my books or my work. I
sha’n’t want any other amusement.’
‘I am afraid you would soon get tired of that, dear,’ said Mrs
Barrington, drawing down her lip complacently. ‘And I am not what I
was, Fenella. I have had much trouble and sorrow in this life beside
the loss of your poor papa, and they have robbed me of the little
spirits I was possessed.’
‘Oh no, they haven’t! You look as young as ever, mamma. Isn’t it
strange that you shouldn’t have a grey hair in your head yet--but I
am glad of it. I shouldn’t like my beautiful mother to turn grey like
other women.’
‘Silly child,’ remonstrated Mrs Barrington, with a smile. ‘But you
must be very hungry; you haven’t had your tea yet. Bennett, take Miss
Fenella downstairs again, and see what they may have to give you. I
think there were some cutlets left from luncheon. And let the child
have a glass of wine--she looks very thin and pale; it will be better
for her than tea. And we will discuss the subject we were speaking of
just now when I return home to-night.’
‘Don’t send me from you, mamma,’ said Fenella entreatingly. ‘Let me
wait here till you are ready to come down too.’
‘But, my dear, I am going out to dinner. I shall have to leave the
house in ten minutes.’
The girl’s face fell.
‘Going out! and on our first evening too. Oh, I _am_ sorry. Couldn’t
you put it off and stay at home with me? I have so much to say to you,
mamma. It is so hard to part with you again so soon.’
‘I feel it too, my dear Fenella, I can assure you; but my engagement
is almost a business one, at all events of the utmost importance, and
I cannot possibly postpone it. It _is_ provoking, isn’t it? but then
I hardly expected you to-night, and we can have a long talk together
to-morrow. Besides, you must be very tired after such a journey, and
should go to bed early.’
‘May I sleep with you, mamma?’ asked Fenella eagerly.
Mrs Barrington shrugged her shoulders and glanced at her French
bedstead.
‘My dear girl,’ she replied, ‘I am afraid there would be no room for
such a long creature as you are in my diminutive couch. What is her
height, should you think, Bennett? She looks a perfect grenadier to me.
It seems quite impossible she should be my daughter.’
‘I should say Miss Fenella was a good bit over five feet,’ said Eliza
Bennett.
‘I am five feet five inches,’ interposed the girl mournfully.
‘An awful height, my dear child; just three inches too tall for a
woman. We shall have to look out for a guardsman for you. However, you
won’t look so tall, perhaps, when you’ve filled out a little, and get
into decent frocks. How those old nuns can let you go about such an
object I can’t think.’
‘All the convent pupils wear the same dress, mamma.’
‘Well, I suppose so; and it does well enough for a hole like Ansprach.
And now you had better go with Bennett and get your tea. You positively
look as white as a sheet.’
‘Mayn’t I stay and help you to dress, mamma?’ demanded Fenella more
timidly. ‘I am not at all in a hurry for my tea, and I want to be with
you to the very last.’
But this would not have suited Mrs Barrington, who had to put some
fresh layers of white and pink upon the cheeks over which Fenella had
incautiously wept, before she could encounter the lights of Lady
Wilson’s drawing-room.
‘No, my dear, I couldn’t think of it, and there is positively nothing
more to do, for, as you see, Bennett has fastened my dress, and I have
only my cloak to put on. Take Miss Fenella down with you, Eliza,’ she
said, with a meaning glance at the servant, ‘and see that she is made
comfortable. And put her to bed early--she must need rest.’
‘And am I to sit up for you, ma’am?’ demanded Bennett, whose eyes were
red for want of sleep.
‘Yes; I think so; I must speak to you about this matter of going
abroad, and all the rest of it. I sha’n’t be late; but if I am you
can lie down on the couch till I return. Good-night, my dear child,’
continued Mrs Barrington as she presented her chin to Fenella; ‘mind
you sleep well, and we will see what we can do about getting you some
other dresses to-morrow,’ and in another minute Fenella and the
servant found themselves on the landing with the bedroom door closed
behind them. They followed each other to the dining-room in silence.
The girl’s heart was so full she could not trust herself to speak,
and Bennett did not know what to say to console her. The comfortable
meal was soon upon the table, for Mrs Barrington was an epicure in
her feminine way, and loved good eating and good service--but Fenella
scarcely tasted anything. Eliza Bennett, after the belief of her class,
pressed her young mistress to eat and drink, as the best cure for the
disappointment under which she saw she was labouring; but Fenella was
sick at heart, and after having swallowed a cup of tea, sat with folded
hands over the fire, thinking to herself. She had listened eagerly at
first for the sound of her mother’s footstep descending the stairs, in
hopes that Mrs Barrington would look into the dining-room, to give her
one more kiss, but such sentimentalism was not in that lady’s nature.
She had gone straight from her bedroom to the carriage that was waiting
for her, and driven off to her friend Lady Wilson, with but one thought
disturbing her mind--how she was to get rid of the encumbrance that had
been unexpectedly thrust upon her. She was not blind to the advantages
of her daughter’s appearance. She had seen at a glance, notwithstanding
the unsightly convent uniform, that Fenella would shortly be, not only
a woman, but a very handsome woman. She had dreaded having some awkward
school-girl--all arms and legs, red elbows and splay feet--thrust
upon her, but the reality was worse than the anticipation. The lanky
school-girl would have been only a nuisance; but this fair, straight
lily with her lovely, speaking eyes and earnest manner threatened to
become a formidable rival. With all her conceit and self-appreciation,
Mrs Barrington could not be blind to the fact that, were her daughter
seen by her side, she would throw her charms considerably in the shade:
might even make young Wilson, who was more in love with women than with
any particular woman, waver in his half-formed allegiance to herself.
There was no doubt about it--if the widow was to succeed in making a
second marriage, it would not be with Fenella standing and looking
on--and the puzzle was, how to get rid of her.
Had there been plenty of money at hand, the thing would have been easy
enough. Mrs Barrington would have sent her off to some sanatorium or
sea-side boarding school, and said the dear child’s health required
it. All difficulties vanish when the purse is full. But she had
barely enough coin to accomplish her plan of sharing Lady Wilson’s
housekeeping for a few months at Mentone, and certainly none to spare
for the requirements of a daughter, to keep whom it would take as much
as to keep herself.
At the Convent of Saint Barbara it was all such smooth sailing. The
nuns had taken the girl in for the whole year, and boarded and educated
her for twenty pounds, and had become so used to Mrs Barrington’s
pleadings, for a little indulgence in the matter of payment, that they
had ceased to press even for that. But now they refused to keep Fenella
there any longer, and she supposed they would be sending in their
horrid bill, and she would be compelled to pay it, added to those of
Masters and Carrafine, and all the rest.
It was too provoking--enough to make any woman curse the day when she
had become a mother! And so fidgeting and perplexed, Mrs Barrington
went to her friend’s house, and looked so pensive and mournfully sweet
all through dinner, that she very nearly brought young Wilson to book
the same evening, and had it only been a little later in the season,
and she had been able to draw him out upon a moonlit balcony, she
quite believed it would have been an accomplished thing. Meanwhile, by
means of languishing glances and well-directed sighs, she did her best
to excite his warmest interests; whilst her disappointed young daughter
sat at home with the servant, and tried to keep up an appearance of
cheerfulness, until it was time for her to go to bed. But the attempt
could hardly be termed a success.
Fenella talked of her convent life, and the occupations she had pursued
there, and her voice faltered as she mentioned Honorée St Just, and
the probabilities of seeing her again. The girl’s grief at parting
with her friend was genuine; but there would have been no room for it
that night had she been in the possession of her mother’s new-found
love to comfort her. And, although she did not yet acknowledge it to
herself, the cold disappointment and regret that were weighing down
her heart, were not for her friends at Ansprach, but for the void
that had taken their place, the empty home to which she had come, the
sorry welcome that had awaited her. She chattered on of the kindness
of the nuns, and the love the little children had borne her, and the
fear she entertained lest she should never meet Honorée again, until
her over-wrought feelings reached their climax, and found vent in an
hysterical burst of tears. Of course the servant declared she was
over-tired, and must go to rest at once, and Fenella obeyed without
demur, and lay down in the room prepared for her, with a weary sense of
loneliness and pain.
Eliza Bennett attended on her as her mother ought to have done, and sat
in the room whilst the girl knelt down and addressed her simple prayers
to Heaven.
Captain Barrington had been both loved and pitied by his servants, and
this one, although she was so strangely devoted to his frivolous widow,
had not forgotten Fenella’s father, and felt all the more drawn to the
girl because of her likeness to him. She waited till the last word of
the prayer had been uttered, and Fenella had risen to her feet, and
then she took her in her arms, as if she had been her own child, and
laid her gently down in her bed.
‘Don’t you fret, my dear,’ she whispered compassionately, ‘your mamma’s
a bit flurried and put out to-night by our coming in so suddenly, but
she will be better to-morrow. She’ll come to see things in a different
light, and that what must be must be; and then you’ll feel more at
home-like with her. The mistress was always a hard one to move; but
when she can’t alter a matter, she generally makes the best of it. So
don’t you think nothing of her manner nor her words, but go to sleep
like a good child, and she’ll be very different in the morning.’
But all the effect of Eliza Bennett’s speech was to make Fenella
cling to her tighter and weep more convulsively. She did not utter a
complaint against her mother or her reception. She only cried till she
could cry no longer, and her eyes closed from sheer exhaustion. And
then Bennett kissed the fair, sweet face very tenderly, and laid it
down upon the pillow, and watched by Fenella till there was no chance
of her waking again. Her sympathies were roused on behalf of her dead
master’s child, and, though she didn’t know how she should do it, and
the mere thought of such a thing made her tremble, she was determined
to plead her cause with Mrs Barrington as soon as ever she came home.
She took up her station in her mistress’s room for that purpose, but
she had argued the point with herself and nodded off to sleep, and
started up to recommence her argument, and nodded off to sleep again,
at least a dozen times, before that selfish little lady’s latch-key was
heard to turn in the hall door, and she came upstairs to rouse Eliza
Bennett in good earnest.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER IV.
‘FOR SELF ALONE.’
‘I would cut off my own head if it had nothing
in it than wit; and tear out my own heart if
it had no better disposition than to love only
myself.’--_Pope_.
Mrs Barrington returned home as cross as she could be. In the first
place, the absence of the warm weather and the moonlit balcony, which
would certainly have brought Mr Wilson to the point, had considerably
put her out; and then, as if to add fuel to the flame, Lady Wilson
had insisted upon sending her husband, Sir Thomas, to see her down to
her carriage on coming away, whilst she kept her son Henry dancing
attendance on some old women upstairs. And thus Mrs Barrington had
missed saying the last few tender words to him, which would have
kept the flame alight in his youthful breast until they met again.
And, instead of having made an appointment, he would probably come
blundering in to-morrow, just at the wrong moment, and catch her
_tête-à-tête_ with that child, Fenella, who was the last person in
the world she wished him to see. Altogether, it was enough to provoke
a saint, and Mrs Barrington, not having reached that climax of
perfection, was very much provoked indeed. As she commenced to undress,
and scattered her jewellery and her false curls and her flowers to
every side of her, Eliza Bennett saw that she was in for a very hot
discussion. And as soon as Mrs Barrington was in her dressing-gown, and
the servant began to brush her hair, it commenced.
‘Bennett!’ she ejaculated, without further preface, ‘I never thought
you could be such a fool.’
‘Indeed--indeed, ma’am, as I told you before, it is not my fault.’
‘Where is that child? What have you done with her?’
‘She is asleep, ma’am--in the little bed in my room.’
‘You are sure that she is asleep, that she won’t hear us talking and
come down in the middle and interrupt our conversation, or overhear it?’
‘Quite sure, ma’am--she’s been fast asleep ever since nine o’clock.
I’ve been up several times, but she never stirred. She’s just worn out,
and no mistake.’
‘I daresay she is, and the sounder she sleeps the better. Look here,
Bennett, we’ve never had any secrets from each other, and I must speak
plainly to you. Fenella’s coming home just now will be my ruin.’
‘I was afraid you might think so, ma’am, but I hope it won’t turn out
as bad as that.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish! What should you know about it? I tell you it
will. I have always spoken of her to the Wilsons as a very little
girl--naturally--and I believe if Lady Wilson were to see her looking
such a woman, she would use her as an argument against her son marrying
me. And she isn’t too well disposed towards the idea as it is.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. I always thought her ladyship such a
friend of yours.’
‘Oh, a friend--yes! like most women are to each other--the jealous
cats! A friend so long as I can be of use to her, or make myself
agreeable, but just the reverse directly I interfere with her views for
her idiot of a son. But I mean to marry him, Bennett, for all that,
unless something much better comes in the way.’
‘If you mean to do it, ma’am, you will,’ replied the servant. ‘I should
think there was very few things you couldn’t do if you choose.’
And her mistress’s power over herself was so absolute that Bennett
really believed what she said.
‘Well, I’m not so sure of that,’ said Mrs Barrington, ‘but at any rate
I mean to try. But I shall never succeed if Fenella’s in the way.
Her presence would spoil everything. Very few men would care to find
themselves fathers--ready-made--to a girl like that.
‘And yet she’s a very handsome young lady,’ mused the servant.
‘Oh, it isn’t a question of her looks,’ rejoined her mistress,
fretfully, ‘she’ll be well enough by-and-by, I daresay. I don’t see
(considering she’s my daughter) how she can fail to be, but she’s
so tall and womanly for her age. No one would believe she was only
sixteen. Besides which, Bennett,’ continued Mrs Barrington in a more
confidential voice, ‘I am not sure how Miss Fenella and I would get on
together. Those old nuns do put such queer ideas in girls’ heads; she’s
most likely full of fads about churches and prayers, and the wickedness
of pleasure, and so forth, and I couldn’t stand a walking sermon about
the house. She’d be as bad as a death’s-head and cross-bones to me.’
‘But the reverend mother said that Miss Fenella had no particular
religion, ma’am; that she was neither a Protestant nor a Roman
Catholic, so I don’t suppose she troubles herself much on such matters.’
‘All the better, Bennett; I am sure it never does one any good.
You remember how the poor captain used to fuss and fidget me about
religion, and I’m sure he didn’t die any the happier for it himself.’
Eliza Bennett had her own opinion on this subject, but she did not dare
to express it before Mrs Barrington.
‘But, putting religion on one side,’ continued the lady, ‘I could not
have Fenella with me at present. She is just the sort of girl to think
a little rouge and powder an iniquity, and to tell the first person who
came into the house that I dyed my hair. And there are some things in
this world, you know, Bennett, that we _cannot_ speak about.’
‘Oh, certainly, ma’am--without doubt, and Miss Fenella is, as you say,
very childlike in such matters. She asked me this morning why people
went into a church to get married.’
‘Now just fancy a girl of sixteen being such a fool. And that’s the
sort of person people would expect me to drag over the world with me.
But I can’t do it, Bennett, and I won’t. My mind is made up on that
score. I must get rid of her, at all events till I return to London,
and the question is “How?”’
‘I suppose her aunts, the captain’s sisters, wouldn’t have her on a
visit for a bit, ma’am,’ suggested Bennett.
‘Good gracious me, no! I’ve been afraid to tell them the girl was at a
convent; they would have declared I wanted her to be a Roman Catholic.
As if I cared what she was. She might turn Mahommedan to-morrow, if
it pleased her and she didn’t interfere with my plans. But the Miss
Barringtons would be more troublesome than herself. They are a couple
of fussy old maids, who would have the whole story from her in an hour,
and then proclaim it to the world. Oh no, Bennett, whatever happens,
Fenella’s aunts must not hear she has returned to England.’
‘Could you put her in another school, ma’am, for a spell? Perhaps we
might find one by the sea-side, where Miss Fenella’s health would be
looked after, for I’m afraid she’s not over strong.’
‘There again, Bennett! the provoking part of it is, I am so terribly
hard up. I haven’t more than enough money to take me to Mentone,
and there are a dozen things I ought to pay first--your wages, for
instance. I think I owe you for nearly a year.’
‘Oh, don’t give another thought to my wages, dear mistress,’ cried
Eliza Bennett. ‘I can do without them very well, even if I never see
them at all. Think only of yourself, ma’am, and what’s the best thing
to be done with poor Miss Fenella.’
‘You’re a good creature, Eliza,’ replied Mrs Barrington; ‘really you
are; and I don’t know what I should do without you. However, you
sha’n’t lose by it, and of that you may rest assured, only do your best
to help me out of this dilemma. You know I’ve more than one string to
my bow, and if Mr Wilson proves to be no good, I shall turn my thoughts
to Colonel Ellerton. He is not so rich as Mr Wilson will be, but what
he has is his own, and he is not dependent on the caprices of his
mother.’
‘And he need not be ashamed of having Miss Fenella as a daughter,
ma’am,’ interposed Bennett, ‘for he is old enough to be her
grandfather.’
‘I am not sure that a man’s age makes him less particular on such
points,’ said Mrs Barrington, ‘and at any rate I should prefer
even Colonel Ellerton not seeing her whilst matters are unsettled
between us. But there is no chance of that, as he is abroad. See how
conveniently things had arranged themselves for me, Bennett. Colonel
Ellerton has been passing the winter in Mentone, the very place to
which I am going with the Wilsons, so that if one man fails me, I
have only to take up with the other, for the colonel has been my most
devoted admirer for years.’
‘I know that, ma’am, but then who isn’t?’ murmured Eliza Bennett.
‘And then this stupid girl is thrown back upon my hands to spoil it
all. But I cannot allow it. Her interests, as well as my own, demand
that I make some sacrifice in the matter, and however much I might wish
to keep her with me, she must stay behind. I have neither the money
nor the power to take her abroad.’
‘What can we do with her?’ questioned the servant with knitted brows.
‘I have thought of a plan, Bennett! It will entail enormous
inconvenience on me, but some one must suffer in the matter. I must
part with you for awhile, and you must take Fenella to your own home in
the country, until I can have you both back again.’
The first thought that struck Eliza Bennett on this announcement, was
horror at the idea of separating from her mistress.
‘Oh, don’t send me from you, ma’am!’ she exclaimed, as she stood behind
Mrs Barrington’s back with the uplifted brush in her hand; ‘what on
earth would you do without me? Who is to brush your hair and keep it a
nice colour, and to alter your dresses and mend your linen? Who will
wait on you and see you have all your little comforts around you?
You’ll never get on without me, ma’am, who have served you for so many
years, and as for myself,’ continued Bennett, in a faltering voice,
‘why, the last two days have been bad enough, and what I should do
missing you for weeks, I’m sure I can’t tell.’
‘Well, I know it will be hard, Eliza, awfully hard, you don’t suppose
I don’t feel it,’ returned Mrs Barrington; ‘but what on earth are we
to do? They won’t keep the girl at school, and I can’t take her with
me, and I can’t leave her here, and I don’t know a soul to send her
to. Now, with you and your people she will be safe, and I think I have
heard you say you come from some place by the sea.’
‘Yes, ma’am, from Ines-cedwyn in Wales, and my brother’s farm isn’t a
stone’s-throw from the water; but it isn’t a place for a lady to lodge
in, ma’am. They’re only poor folk when all’s said and done, and I doubt
if they have a bedroom that’s fit to put Miss Fenella in.’
‘Nonsense, Bennett! any place will do that contains a bed to lie on.
Do you suppose she has been accustomed to luxury at the convent? Why,
they bring them all up as hardy as can be. The only question is, what
your brother would expect for keeping the child and you, and whether he
would want to have the money down, or consent to wait for it?’
‘Oh, don’t think twice about the money, ma’am! My brother Benjamin is
my only living relation, and he’ll be but too glad to see me in the
old house again for a few weeks. And Miss Fenella’s bit and sup won’t
make them nor break them, and they’ll be willing enough to bide your
own time for the payment. But what I’m thinking of, ma’am, is yourself.
What will you do without me?’
‘I _must_ do without you,’ replied Mrs Barrington, with the air of a
martyr. ‘A mother is constantly called on to give up something or other
for her child, and I must give up you. Perhaps Lady Wilson’s maid will
help me a little, when I tell her the necessity of the case. I shall
say the doctors forbid my taking Fenella abroad, and ordered her into
Wales for change, so I was compelled to leave you to take charge of
her. That will be a plausible story, which no one can find fault with.’
‘Miss Fenella at my brother Benjamin’s at Ines-cedwyn,’ said Bennett,
in an incredulous voice; ‘I can hardly believe it will come true. You
mustn’t deceive yourself, ma’am. We call it a farm, but it’s a poor
place--no better than many a labourer’s cottage--and from what I hear,
my brother hasn’t been doing very well of late years. His wife Martha
is a thrifty body enough, and will do all she can to oblige; but it
will be coarse food and living I’m afraid for the young lady, and she
won’t have a soul to speak to but myself.’
‘Who else should she want?’ demanded her mistress rather snappishly;
‘you’re making a ridiculous fuss over the matter, it strikes me,
Bennett. The child can take down her books if she likes and go on with
her lessons, but I think she had much better spend all her time in the
open air. Don’t forget she goes there for her health, Bennett, and let
her be on the beach all day long. As she wants change, let her have it.
It would add to all my other troubles to have a long doctor’s bill for
her attendance.’
‘If Miss Fenella goes with me to Ines-cedwyn, ma’am, I’ll do all I can
to make her strong; you may depend on that,’ replied Bennett. ‘It’s
a fine bracing place, and so lonely that you can bathe off the beach
without a machine, and the young lady will be able to roam about just
as she pleases. No harm will come to her there.’
‘That’s just what I want for her,’ said Mrs Barrington, with a sigh
of relief. ‘Take her where she’ll grow strong, and no one will see
her. And then when I’ve settled my own matters, I’ll have her home
and introduce her into society. She ought to marry well, by-and-by,
Bennett! and so she will if I marry well myself. But, under present
circumstances, I have no inclination to take her about with me.’
‘And I don’t think she’d care for it if you did, ma’am. Miss Fenella
don’t seem to me like a young lady as would care much for balls and
parties.’
‘Ah! dreamy and romantic, I suppose, like her poor father. The worst
disposition, Bennett, with which a woman can enter the world. It blinds
her to her own interests, and makes her go gaping like a fool, after
some impossibility which she never attains. I thought her voice sounded
rather sentimental, and I hate girls who are always ready to cry. You
must try and knock that out of her when you are down at Ines-cedwyn.
Talk to her sensibly about money, and the impossibility of living in
this world without it, and I daresay you will do her a deal of good.
She ought to have some sense on the subject, since she is my daughter.’
‘I am afraid those nuns have learned her very little that is useful,’
replied Bennett, shaking her head as she remembered the episode of the
morning. ‘Miss Fenella is as much of a child for her age as ever I see!’
‘Well, we mustn’t be too hard upon her,’ said the mother
sweetly--having gained her point she felt uncommonly sweet again;
‘perhaps she inherits that from me too. Poor Captain Barrington always
said I was the greatest child he knew, and Lady Wilson really said
this evening--and you know how cruel women generally are about each
other--that she could not believe I was more than thirty.’
‘You didn’t undeceive her, I hope, ma’am?’
‘Oh no! I didn’t say anything one way or another. I wouldn’t tell a
falsehood, you know, for the world. I only remarked I hoped it would
be a long time before I looked as much--but trouble was a terrible
thing to age women. I really think Lady Wilson likes me, Bennett. She
kissed me twice this evening.’
‘I am sure she does, ma’am--in fact, she must. Who can help it? But
with respect to Miss Fenella. I suppose you’ll break the news of her
going to Ines-cedwyn to her?’
‘I don’t suppose there’ll be anything to break, Bennett. She ought to
be very pleased to go. It’s just the place to suit a young girl. I
shall tell her the doctor has ordered it, and there is no gainsaying
his opinion. And now I think we had better go to bed. It is past three,
I declare; and all the packing must be done to-morrow.’
‘Will Miss Fenella and I start before yourself, ma’am?’
‘I think not. There is no need for me to part with you before I am
absolutely obliged. And now tuck me up like a good woman and leave me
to sleep. I’m as tired as I can be.’
The woman arranged her mistress in bed as carefully as though she had
been an infant; covering her lightly with the laced counterpane, and
drawing the curtains round her head. Then she stooped and kissed the
slender fingers that lay outside the bed-clothes. Mrs Barrington felt
the silent homage, and lifting her hand patted Eliza Bennett’s face
condescendingly.
‘You’re a good creature,’ she murmured sleepily; ‘a very good creature.
I don’t know what I should do without you,’ and the servant’s heart
thrilled as she felt the touch and heard the words, and she crept away
with the glamour of her mistress’s spirit stronger upon her than ever.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER V.
RELUCTANT FEET.
‘Standing with reluctant feet,
Where womanhood and childhood meet.’
Fenella did not see her mother on the following morning until she
descended to the breakfast-room, but their meeting then seemed to atone
for everything that had gone before. Mrs Barrington was looking her
best, for she had no intention of letting her young daughter into her
secrets too soon. Eliza Bennett had already arranged her golden-tinted
hair into its many twists and curls, and a pale blue cashmere dressing
gown, trimmed with swan’s-down, greatly enhanced the effect of the
powder on her delicate complexion, and the touch of carmine she had
applied to her lips.
‘Oh, mamma, how beautiful you look!’ was the girl’s first greeting,
and the admiration was genuine. Mrs Barrington’s style and attire were
so totally opposed to anything she had been accustomed to see at the
convent, that Fenella thought she was the rarest, daintiest vision of
beauty that had ever burst upon her sight. She had always considered
her friend Honorée pretty, because she loved her; but Honorée’s
looks became commonplace by comparison with those of her mother. Mrs
Barrington was not displeased at the compliment. She was so vain that
all flattery was welcome to her, even when it came from the lips of an
inexperienced child, fresh from her convent school. She bridled and
smiled, and told Fenella she was a silly girl to say such things of an
old woman whom no one else considered worth looking at.
‘An old woman, mamma! How can you say so?’ cried her daughter. ‘Do you
know, my greatest wonder is to find you still so young? I don’t know
what I can have been thinking about, but I really expected you to be
quite middle-aged, and perhaps have grey hair by this time.’
‘Foolish child,’ murmured Mrs Barrington, though rather consciously.
‘Yes; am I not? I suppose it is because I have been away so many years
that I make such a mistake. And another thing, mamma, I always fancied
your hair was dark. I used to tell the girls at school that my mother
had dark hair. I seem quite to have forgotten it was golden--and such
a pretty golden too--the prettiest colour, I think, that I have ever
seen. How could I be so silly as to forget it?’
‘Children have usually short memories, and take all sorts of fancies
into their heads,’ replied Mrs Barrington, with a visible increase
of colour. ‘I daresay you dreamt it, my dear. But let us take our
breakfast, for I have to go shopping this morning.’
‘How delightful that will be,’ chattered Fenella, as she poured out the
tea. ‘There was a girl at Ansprach who lived in London, and she used
to tell us so much about the shops. Are you going to buy me some new
dresses, mamma?’
‘I don’t know, my dear,’ said Mrs Barrington.
She had come downstairs determined, before breakfast was over, to tell
her daughter of the absolute necessity of her going to the sea-side;
but somehow, looking into those fearless grey eyes, the task became
more difficult than it had seemed to be.
‘I am not sure whether you will require new dresses till the summer
is over,’ she went on; ‘for I have several that can be altered nicely
for you, and you will be at a quiet sea-side place where your convent
uniform will do as well as anything else.’
‘Shall we?’ exclaimed Fenella eagerly; ‘oh, I am very glad of that! To
be at some quiet place with you, where we shall be always together, and
there will be no tiresome balls and parties to take you away in the
evenings, will be just like heaven, won’t it? And we shall be able to
bathe, and to sit on the beach all day, and if Bennett will cut out my
frocks, I will make them myself--I love work, and _chère mère_ used to
say I was the quickest worker in the school.’
So ran on Fenella, never doubting but that wherever she went, her
mother would go too. For what other reason than to be with her had she
been sent home from Ansprach. But Mrs Barrington did not immediately
respond. Practised deceiver as she was, she required a little time, in
order to frame a politic reply.
‘I don’t think you need trouble yourself about the work, my dear,’
she said after a pause; ‘Bennett will do all that you require, and I
want you to enjoy yourself, and get all the strength you can during
your visit to the sea. You will never be able to stand a London life,
Fenella, if you don’t grow strong. I shall want you to go to balls and
parties with me by-and-by, and that is very fatiguing for anybody. And,
of course, you must bathe--every day--and be in the open air as much as
you can. You have evidently been shut up too much at Ansprach.’
‘Don’t you like bathing, mamma?’
‘No, my dear! it doesn’t agree with me, nor the sea-side either! I am
generally ill there.’
Fenella’s face grew ominously grave.
‘Oh, mother, don’t go then! What does my health signify in comparison
with yours? Besides, I am really stronger than I look--and now I am
with you again, I am sure I shall be quite well. We mustn’t go to the
sea, mamma; I shall be wretched if we do.’
‘My dear, I have already taken a doctor’s opinion on the subject, and
he says it is absolutely necessary you should have the benefit of sea
air. At all risks, therefore, _you_ must go to the sea.’
The tears started into Fenella’s eyes. A suspicion of the truth darted
on her.
‘Come, come, I must have no fretting,’ said her mother, as she rose
from table; ‘we have all to make sacrifices sometimes in this world,
dear, and you will never find me backward, I hope, in setting you a
brave example. And now I must leave you for my shopping.’
‘Mayn’t I go with you, mamma?’ pleaded Fenella as she resolutely
swallowed an ominous feeling that had risen in her throat. ‘I will be
ready before you are!’
Mrs Barrington looked the girl from head to foot.
‘I would take you directly, Fenella, but not this morning, my love, you
see you are scarcely suitably dressed to drive about town. Besides, I
am going out on a very uninteresting errand, and shall visit none of
the fine shops your schoolfellows spoke to you about. My business lies
entirely with house-agents and coach-builders. But if you feel inclined
for a walk, Bennett shall take you into the park, or down Regent
Street, where you will see all the prettiest things in London.’
‘No thank you, mamma,’ replied the girl, in a disappointed tone. ‘If I
can’t go with you, I would rather stay at home till you return.’
‘Just as you please, my dear. I shall be home to luncheon,’ said Mrs
Barrington, as smiling sweetly she tripped up to her room. On the
threshold she met Eliza Bennett.
‘Just fancy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Miss Fenella’s taken it into her head
to sulk because I refused to let her accompany me out driving this
morning. As if I could be seen with a girl dressed up such an object
as she is! But if she’s going to turn out sulky, there’ll be an end of
all peace between us, Bennett. I hate a sullen temper. Her poor father
had it, you remember; and what words it made between us! It was bad
enough from a husband, but I never could endure it from a daughter.’
‘I don’t think Miss Fenella is sulky, ma’am,’ replied Bennett; ‘but I
fancy she’s a little disappointed at finding things different from what
she expected.’
‘Different! How different?’ snapped Mrs Barrington.
‘She hasn’t seen much of you since she came home, ma’am.’
‘How could she expect to do so when I have all these engagements? Give
me the black satin cloak, Bennett, and the velvet bonnet.’
‘Shall you be gone long, ma’am?’
‘No; I shall be back to luncheon. I am going out early on purpose to be
at home when Mr Wilson calls. He is sure to look in this afternoon. And
mind, Bennett, if any one comes whilst I am away, they are _not_ to be
admitted. Say I am out, and shall not be back till three o’clock. Do
you understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am--only, did you not say I was to go to French’s this morning
about the cleaning of your lace?’
‘Of course! and so you must go, or it will not be done in time. How
provoking! You ought to be here to answer the door in case of visitors.’
‘Can’t Mrs Watson do it, ma’am?’
‘She is so stupid; she never understands an order.’
‘I’ll make her understand, ma’am; it’s easy enough. No one is to be
admitted on any account, and Miss Fenella will be quite happy with her
books whilst I’m away. I sha’n’t be gone more than half-an-hour.’
‘Very well, Bennett. I leave it to you,’ said Mrs Barrington, as she
descended to the carriage in waiting for her.
The servant saw her drive away, and then returned to the
breakfast-room, where she found Fenella in a very dejected attitude,
looking out at the leads from the back window.
‘Come, Miss Fenella!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have to go out on a little
business for your mamma, and you must try and amuse yourself whilst I
am away. There isn’t much to see in this room, but if you’ll go into
the drawing-room, there’s a nice fire, and the piano, and plenty of
picture-books, and as soon as I come back I’ll dust it and set it in
order against the mistress has company in the afternoon.’
Fenella’s sad face brightened. Bennett’s words had suggested that she
might be of some use.
‘Is mamma going to have company?’ she exclaimed. ‘Let me set the
drawing-room in order for her, Bennett. I can do it just as well as
you. We always had to make our beds and keep the dormitories clean
at St Barbara. Will you give me a duster and a brush, and let me be
of use to you and mamma?’ she said, with a pleading look, as she
approached the servant’s side.
‘Of course I will, if it will give you any pleasure, miss,’ replied
Bennett; ‘although it don’t seem quite the right thing for your papa’s
daughter to do. Still, I don’t suppose your mamma will be angry, and
that’s the main point.’
‘I will run and get my apron,’ said Fenella, and a few minutes after
Bennett left her busily engaged dusting the books and ornaments in the
drawing-room.
‘Mind,’ said the servant to the owner of the apartments, as she
passed her in the hall on her way out, ‘if anybody calls whilst I’m
absent, you’re to say Mrs Barrington won’t be back till three. Do you
understand?’
‘Well, it’s not particularly difficult to understand,’ muttered the
woman, who didn’t like being dictated to by a servant.
Meanwhile Fenella, having dusted all the china and pictures, and looked
through the photograph albums (where the only portrait she recognised
was that of her father), remembered the piano, and opened it to try its
tone. One of the girl’s chief talents lay in music. She was too young
to be a finished instrumentalist, but she possessed a soprano voice of
unusual purity and power, which had been assiduously cultivated by the
Sisters of St Barbara, in order that she might perform in their choir.
To hear Fenella sing was like listening to a thrush at early morning
carolling in a lilac bush; her voice was so fresh and shrill, it
reminded you only of a bird that sang because it could not help
singing. It lacked as yet the modulation that comes only with
culture and experience, but it had that in it which every year would
lessen--the sound of nature and youth and gladness that could not be
restrained, and yet moved the listener to tears in remembering what he
had lost. The girl knew few songs and fewer ballads. Such compositions
spoke of earth rather than heaven, and had been condemned by the
good sisters as dangerous. But she had a glorious stock of hymns and
anthems--the grand old Catholic hymns for which the masters of their
art had not considered it _infra dig_. to compose the music, and with
which the most solemn acts of Faith of the Church were intimately
associated.
As Fenella opened her mother’s piano, the desire to sing came over her,
and without preface she placed her hands upon the notes and brought
out some such chords as Rossini loved to handle, or Mozart create. And
then her pure, young voice rose in unison, and a solemn chant sounded
through the rooms that made the woman in the hall pause with her broom
in her hand to listen. It was not often (if ever) that such sounds
had floated through these apartments. Mrs Barrington was no musician;
she kept her piano for the use of her friends rather than herself,
and such chords as were usually struck from it were of a decidedly
secular--not to say unholy--nature. So the woman in the hall leant on
her broom and said, ‘Well, I never!’
At that moment a gentleman came up the front steps and stood at the
door--which was open.
‘Is Mrs Barrington at home?’ he inquired.
‘No, sir, she ain’t; and she won’t be home till three o’clock.’
The visitor paused.
‘Surely that is Mrs Barrington’s piano that I hear?’ he said. ‘Are you
quite sure she is out?’
‘Quite sure, sir--at least so her servant told me just now. But I think
that’s the young lady as is playing the pianner.’
‘What young lady?’
‘Miss Barrington, sir; she came home yesterday from school.’
Mr Henry Wilson (for it was he) stood and deliberated with himself for
a moment. He had heard that the fascinating widow, who occupied most
of his thoughts at the present time, had a daughter, but he had always
imagined she was a little girl of five or six years old. Everything
connected with Mrs Barrington was naturally interesting to him, and
he suddenly conceived a desire to see the little girl and judge for
himself. So he turned to his informant and said,--
‘If Miss Barrington is at home, I will go upstairs and leave my message
with her.’
This proposal not in any way infringing (as the woman thought) on Eliza
Bennett’s admonition, she led the way to the drawing-room, and opening
the door, announced Mr Wilson as ‘a gentleman to see your ma, miss,’
and retired, leaving him in the presence of Fenella.
The girl rose from the piano as he appeared, but was in nowise abashed
by his entrance. She only made him a slight reverence (after the
polite fashion in which foreign children are educated), and brought
forward a chair for his acceptance, which Mr Wilson, colouring scarlet,
seized from her hand with alacrity. Then he seated himself awkwardly
enough--the unexpected appearance of this fine young woman so entirely
upset his mental equilibrium--whilst Fenella sat opposite, calmly
waiting to hear him address her.
‘I think I must be mistaken,’ he stammered at last. ‘The person
who admitted me said Miss Barrington was at home, but it is quite
impossible that you can be the daughter of my friend Mrs Barrington.’
Fenella looked puzzled, and knit her white brows.
‘Because I am not so pretty as she is, do you mean?’ she said
ingenuously.
‘Oh, Miss Barrington, how could you suppose such a thing? No, indeed!
but I imagined--I had an idea that Mrs Barrington’s daughter was quite
a little girl.’
‘Had you? How funny. Did mamma never tell you, then? I know I am tall
for my age, but I was sixteen last birthday, so I ought to be tall,
ought I not?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Mr Wilson; ‘and you are really, then, Fenella
Barrington?’
‘Yes, I am Fenella. I came from the Convent at Ansprach yesterday with
our maid Bennett, but mamma and I are soon going away again to some
place abroad where I can get well, for I am not very strong. Mamma has
gone out on business, but she will be back to lunch. Do you want to see
her?’
‘I did call for that purpose, but I am very well pleased to see you
instead.’
‘Ah, now! you are laughing, I am sure. I know I cannot be a bit like
mamma to any one. She is so beautiful and so good.’
‘I quite agree with you; but there are different sorts of beauty in the
world. Was it your voice that I heard singing when I entered the house?’
At this question Fenella _did_ blush, but she answered frankly,--
‘Yes, it was I--’
‘Would it be too much to ask you to sing again? I love music dearly.’
‘Do you? But I don’t think you would care for mine. I don’t know any
songs--only hymns and chants.’
‘But sacred music is the most glorious music in the world,’ said Mr
Wilson.
‘If you think so, I will sing again,’ replied Fenella quietly, and she
sat down to the piano, and her fresh young voice rung out the notes of
an air from Mendelssohn’s Hymn of Praise.
‘It is charming!--delicious! How I should like my mother to hear you!’
exclaimed her visitor, when she had concluded.
‘I don’t think mamma would like me to sing before company,’ said
the girl. ‘She says I am too young for parties yet. And who is your
mother?’ she added naïvely.
‘She is called Lady Wilson, and is a great friend of Mrs Barrington’s.’
‘Then, perhaps, I may be allowed to sing to her; I cannot say. Are
those flowers for my mother?’ she continued, looking at a hothouse
bouquet that Mr Wilson carried in his hand. He had intended them for
an offering to the fair widow, but somehow his fealty wavered, and he
thought he should like to give them to her daughter instead. He was a
man of the world, and to utter a white lie was no difficulty to him.
‘No!’ he answered boldly, as he held them towards her. ‘I brought them
for you.’
Her look of childish delight repaid him for the onus he had taken on
himself. The improbability of the circumstance, when he had confessed
himself unaware of her being in London, never seemed to strike her.
‘Did you _really?_’ she exclaimed, as she buried her face in the roses
and hyacinths and stephanotis of which the bouquet was composed. ‘How
kind of you to think of me--and when I love flowers so dearly. But I
shall give them to my mother. You won’t mind that, will you?--because
I have nothing to give her that is really my own, and it seems so
hard not to be able to give to those we love. If I had thousands and
thousands of pounds, I would spend them all upon my mother.’
‘You are very fond of your mother, Miss Barrington.’
‘Of course I am; and I have no father, you know. My papa died when I
was only ten years old. Have you seen his likeness?’
‘I don’t think I have,’ said Mr Wilson, rather uneasily, the virtues
of the late Captain Barrington not having formed the usual topic of
conversation between the widow and himself.
Fenella dropped her bouquet, and flew for the photograph book.
‘Here he is!’ she exclaimed, as she presented it open to her visitor.
‘Hasn’t he a nice, good face? Some people think I am very like papa,
and I am always so proud to hear them say so. And he was clever too, as
well as good. And my poor mother has had to live without him all this
time--isn’t it sad for her?’
‘Very sad,’ replied Henry Wilson, not knowing what else to say.
‘Bennett thinks that is the reason mamma has kept me so long at
Ansprach,’ resumed Fenella, in a mysterious voice, ‘because I remind
her too painfully of papa; but I hope she won’t love me the less for
that, now that I have come home again.’
‘And are you not going back to school, Miss Barrington?’
‘No!--never, I think; for as soon as I have grown strong and well, I
am to go out to balls and parties with mamma. I don’t know whether I
shall care much for them, but I shall love to go with mamma everywhere,
and look at her when I am not speaking to her. It is so very, _very_
long, you see, since we have been together.’
‘I can quite understand your pleasure at the reunion,’ replied Mr
Wilson, rising; ‘and now, I think, I have intruded on your time long
enough, Miss Barrington, and had better take my leave.’
‘Won’t you wait to see mamma?’ demanded Fenella. ‘She will be back to
lunch.’
‘Not this morning, thank you. Will you give Mrs Barrington my kindest
regards, and say that, if quite convenient to her, I will look in
to-morrow afternoon to let her know the final arrangements for our
starting on Friday?’
‘Are we all going together, then?’ exclaimed Fenella brightly. ‘Oh,
that will be very nice! and I shall be able to sing to you whenever
you wish me to do so.’
‘I shall claim your promise until, I am afraid, you will regret having
given it,’ he answered, and then he bowed himself out of the room, and
left Fenella smiling and nodding above her bunch of roses and hyacinths.
‘What a nice, kind man!’ she thought as the door closed behind him. ‘If
all mamma’s friends are like him, I sha’n’t be frightened of meeting
them. But I must put my lovely flowers in water, lest they should fade
before she returns.’
Meanwhile Henry Wilson went back to his mother’s house with somewhat
of a cloud upon his brow, which she was not slow to detect. For Lady
Wilson, though a hard woman, was a good mother, and this was her only
child.
‘Henry,’ she asked, ‘what is the matter with you?’ and he answered,--
‘Nothing! don’t bother me,’ after the manner of men.
But Lady Wilson was not to be put off in that way.
‘Mrs Barrington is at the bottom of this,’ she said; ‘it’s no use your
trying to deceive me. There is always some worry about that woman
now-a-days, and I wish she had been at the bottom of the sea before I
had consented to her making one of our party to Mentone.’
‘I’ve not even seen Mrs Barrington this morning,’ replied her son.
‘But you have been to her house! Whom did you see?’
‘I saw her daughter.’
‘Her daughter! What! has she got that child home? What does she intend
to do with her? She can’t bring her to Mentone. I hate children in the
house. They upset everything.’
‘But she isn’t a child,’ interposed Mr Wilson, who was only too glad
to have an opportunity of retailing his news. ‘She is quite a young
woman, and twice the size of her mother! I never was so astonished in
my life. She sings charmingly, and told me she was sixteen on her last
birthday.’
‘Sixteen last birthday,’ repeated Lady Wilson, as she made rapid mental
calculations. And then she turned round and pounced upon her son.
‘Henry! haven’t I told you again and again that Mrs Barrington is much
older than she looks?’
‘I daresay she is. What does it matter to me?’ he answered consciously.
‘Well, I hope it doesn’t matter, but it’s the truth. She’s nearer forty
than thirty--in fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s more than
forty; those niminy-piminy women with dolly features always manage
to keep their looks to the last. And so the girl’s a young woman, is
she? Why, her mother has always spoken of her as if she were still in
frilled trousers and frocks.’
‘Yes; she looks very young, of course, and her hair hangs down her
back; but she’s nearly as tall as I am, and she talks as composedly as
if she’d been “out” all her life. She’s deucedly pretty too, mother,
though not at all like Mrs Barrington.’
‘She’s none the worse for that,’ snapped Lady Wilson; ‘however, pretty
or not, I can’t have her at Mentone, and I shall write and tell her
mother so. Our party’s made up--it was with the greatest inconvenience
I could squeeze Mrs Barrington in, and a fifth person will upset
everything. Five people can’t go in a carriage, nor an opera box, nor a
coupé; it would split us into two parties at once, and I won’t have it.
If Mrs Barrington has decided to take her daughter abroad, they must go
by themselves. Give me my blottingbook and inkstand, Henry, and let me
write and settle this matter at once.’
‘You won’t say anything to make Mrs Barrington think we don’t want
_her_,’ remarked the young man, as he complied with his mother’s
request.
‘I shall say just what I told you--that we can’t make room for the
girl; that is all. I know you are very partial to the widow’s society,
Henry,’ she continued pointedly, ‘though I sincerely trust there will
never be anything but friendship between you; but you must see that, if
she takes her daughter abroad, you will not enjoy even that unmolested.
Did Miss Barrington appear to know anything of her mother’s plans?’
‘Yes; she spoke of it as a settled thing that she was to accompany her
abroad for the sake of her health.’
‘What impertinence! and without consulting me!’ replied Lady Wilson, as
she commenced to write her letter. ‘However, Mrs Barrington shall soon
know my mind on the matter.’
‘Let me see what you have said,’ pleaded her son, as he leant over her
shoulder.
‘Certainly. I wish to have no secrets from you, Henry.’
He read the note through, and sighed.
‘Is it not right?’ demanded his mother.
‘Yes; I don’t see what else you could have said. Miss Barrington’s
presence would certainly prove a great kill-joy to the party.’
‘Ah! my son,’ said Lady Wilson, as she looked up affectionately in his
face, ‘perhaps, did I consult my own interests, I might put myself
out of the way to receive this young lady, for her mother is not a
favourite companion of mine. But I want you to see this woman as she is
in her own home, Henry--selfish, vain, and worldly--and when you have
done that, I will leave the issue of it to your own good sense.’
‘Hush, mother,’ he said gently; ‘don’t discuss her faults--it gives me
pain!’
‘I know it does; so does the surgeon’s probe when it touches a secret
wound. But I cannot believe, Henry, but that you would rather know
the worst before marriage than after, and this note will help to show
it you. Mrs Barrington has been separated for five years from her
only child, who returns home--(how it is that she _has_ returned is a
mystery to me)--just in time to interfere with her mother’s plans of
pleasure! Let us see which the widow prefers--her daughter or herself!
There is little doubt which she _should_ prefer, and, I think, even you
will acknowledge that a bad mother is scarcely likely to make a good
wife. Oh, Henry, Henry! twenty-five and forty--’
‘No, no, mother; she _can’t_ be forty!’
‘My boy, I tell you she _is_. Why, that would only make her twenty-four
years old when this girl was born, and--’
‘Give me your note and I will see it is sent at once,’ cried her son,
as he seized the letter and left the room, to avoid further discussion
of a subject which was beginning to make him feel ashamed as well as
miserable.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER VI.
BANISHED.
‘What sudden anger’s this? How have
I reap’d it?’
_Shakespeare_.
Eliza Bennett’s errand occupied more time than she had calculated upon,
and she returned home but a few minutes before her mistress. She was
still in her room, taking off her walking things, when Mrs Barrington
entered the house. Fenella was on the landing, ready to greet her
mother, the bouquet of flowers which Henry Wilson had given her held
tightly in both hands behind her back.
‘Guess,’ she cried gleefully--‘guess, mamma, what I have for you?’
Mrs Barrington was even more amiable than she had been in the morning.
The agent who had let her apartments had spoken in the highest terms of
the probity of the incoming tenants, and had even handed her something
on account; and she had met an old admirer, Sir Gilbert Conroy, who had
expressed himself delighted at the encounter, and promised to call on
her before she left town. So she was quite in the humour to enter into
her young daughter’s gaiety.
‘How can I guess, you silly girl?’ she replied, smiling. ‘Besides, it’s
only some trick or other. I know what you children think fun. But if
it’s a mouse, Fenella, I warn you not to show it to me, or I shall go
into convulsions. I never could endure mice, nor black-beetles; and I
remember once when your father (who was always doing something stupid)
put a cockchafer on my arm, I nearly had a fit.’
‘Oh, mamma dear! do you think I would be so silly as to frighten you,
or give you anything nasty? Look at my present. _That_ won’t make you
go into a fit, will it?’ And as Fenella spoke, she thrust the bouquet
of roses and stephanotis under her mother’s nose.
At first Mrs Barrington was simply surprised. She could not imagine
whence the girl had procured such flowers.
‘I hope you haven’t been spending your money on me, Fenella,’ she said;
‘for I know how expensive hothouse bouquets are at this time of the
year. And your purse cannot be too full, my dear; I am quite aware of
that--’
Fenella laughed.
‘Mamma dear, I haven’t got a sou; though, if I had thousands and
thousands of pounds, I could not find a greater happiness than spending
them on you. No, I didn’t buy the flowers; and you must guess where
they came from, though I suppose you never will.’
‘I am sure I shall not, my dear; so you had better tell me at once.’
‘But try, mamma--_try_,’ repeated the girl, as she followed Mrs
Barrington and the bouquet to the drawing-room. ‘Think of where they
would be most likely to come from.’
‘Were they left at the door for me?’ demanded her mother quickly.
Fenella shook her head, smiling, all unmindful of the storm which would
gather and burst in a moment, and scatter all her gaiety to the winds.
‘No, no--nobody left them; but I see I must tell you, mamma. It was a
gentleman who called to see you who gave me the flowers, and he said he
had brought them expressly for me. Wasn’t it kind of him? But I told
him I should give them to you; for I would much rather you had them
than myself. And, indeed, I would.’
Mrs Barrington turned pale.
‘What gentleman?’ she gasped.
‘Mr Wilson. He said his mother’s name was Lady Wilson, and he made me
sing to him, and he wants me to go and sing to her; but I said I must
ask your leave first, as I was not sure if you considered me old enough
yet to sing before company.’
Mrs Barrington dropped the bouquet on the table, and rang the bell
violently.
‘Where is Bennett?’ she demanded, in a harsh voice. ‘What was she about
to allow such a thing?’ and then, without waiting for an answer, she
ran to the door and called, ‘Bennett! Bennett! Where are you? come here
at once,’ at the top of her voice.
Fenella stood a little apart, frightened and amazed.
‘What is the matter? Have I done wrong?’ she said, in a timid voice.
But her mother took no heed of her quiet supplication.
‘Where _is_ Bennett?’ she demanded again, with a stamp of the foot,
whilst the angry colour mounted to the very partings of her hair.
Eliza Bennett had heard the voice, and interpreted its meaning. She ran
downstairs without her cap, and stood before her mistress.
‘Is anything wrong, ma’am?’ was her first interrogation.
‘What were my orders to you on leaving this house?’ exclaimed Mrs
Barrington fiercely. ‘Didn’t I say that no one was to be admitted
during my absence? What is the use of my giving orders if they are not
obeyed--if there is no more attention paid to my wishes than if I was a
cipher in my own house!’
‘But, indeed, ma’am, I don’t understand,’ replied Bennett, trembling.
‘I gave your orders most particular to Mrs Watson, the very last thing
before I left home, and she promised to attend to them; and I left Miss
Fenella busy dusting the drawing-room; and I’ve heard nothing of any
one having been here whilst I was away!’
‘You never hear anything, nor see anything--you’re no use to me at
all,’ cried her mistress angrily, and then she turned on Fenella. ‘And
what did _you_ mean by asking the gentleman upstairs! Do you suppose a
child like you is a proper person to receive my guests? It’s a piece of
insufferable impertinence on your part, which may lead to all kinds of
mischief.’
‘Indeed--_indeed_, mamma,’ said Fenella, in a faltering voice, ‘I
did not ask him up. I was singing at the piano, when a woman opened
the door and showed the gentleman in. I couldn’t turn him out, could
I?--and when he had brought me those beautiful flowers.’
‘Don’t be rude to me, miss,’ returned her mother sharply, ‘for I won’t
stand it. And I don’t believe Mr Wilson brought the flowers for you
at all. He didn’t know you were in existence, and never should have
except for this blundering piece of folly.’
As these words revealed one of the traits in her mother’s character,
Fenella turned white, and shrunk farther from her. She was a child in
her ignorance of the world and its ways, but she had been reared in
a school that taught her to distinguish truth from falsehood, and a
righteous anger from intemperance.
‘You don’t mean to say, ma’am,’ murmured Bennett confidentially, ‘as Mr
Wilson have been here?’
‘Yes, I do! What’s the good of your whispering in that absurd manner?
All the town will know it before long. He has been in this room sitting
with that child, and making her sing to him--and receiving all her
confidences, I suppose, in exchange. I’d bet anything she told him her
age. Didn’t you, now?’ turning to Fenella.
‘Yes,’ replied the girl, in a low, sad voice; ‘he asked me. How could
I help telling him?’
‘You hear what she says, Bennett? The very thing I wished to avoid has
come to pass, and all through your idiotcy, or that of Watson. Send for
that woman to come to me at once. If I’m not to have my orders obeyed,
I shall give up her rooms as soon as the season’s over.’
‘Don’t you think it’s best to keep this to ourselves, ma’am?’ suggested
Bennett, gravely.
‘Obey my orders, and don’t attempt to dictate to me!’ exclaimed her
mistress, who, once in a rage, refused all counsel, and completely lost
sight of policy.
In another minute Mrs Watson stood in the doorway.
‘Mrs Watson! didn’t you understand Bennett to say that no visitors were
to be admitted during my absence this morning?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ replied the woman sullenly.
‘Don’t presume to answer me in that tone. Bennett says she gave you the
order distinctly.’
‘She did nothing of the sort,’ replied Mrs Watson; ‘because, in the
first place, I don’t take orders from servants, and in the second, what
she said was that if anybody called I was to tell ’em you wouldn’t be
home till three. And so I did.’
‘So it was _your_ fault,’ said Mrs Barrington, turning upon Eliza
Bennett.
‘Oh no, ma’am. I’m sure Mrs Watson must have mistaken my words, or
forgot them, for I remember I told her most particularly.’
‘Look here, Mrs Bennett!’ interrupted the woman of the house. ‘I didn’t
mistake your words nor your meaning; but if I had, it would have made
no difference, and for this reason--that I refuses to be a party to
any underhand dealings, and if a gentleman or lady asks civilly to
walk upstairs and leave a message, why, I shall let ’em do it so long
as this house belongs to me. And I take this opportunity to tell you,
ma’am,’ she continued, turning to Mrs Barrington, ‘that I don’t care
for your ways of going on, and you must tell your own lies in future,
for I won’t tell no more for you--and so _there!_’
With which emphatic ending Mrs Watson unceremoniously left the room,
and slammed the door after her.
‘Did you ever hear such insolence?’ cried Mrs Barrington, relapsing
into tears of rage. ‘And this is what _you_ have brought upon me,
Fenella, with your abominable forwardness and stupidity.’
The girl left the corner where she had been listening with horror to
the quarrel between the landlady and her mother, and coming forward,
threw herself on her knees beside Mrs Barrington’s chair.
‘Oh, mother, mother!’ she said, with a ring of despair in her youthful
voice, ‘tell me if I’ve been wrong, but don’t say I was forward or
impertinent, for indeed I only acted as I thought you would wish me to
do.’
‘Be good enough to get up,’ replied Mrs Barrington, in a cold, selfish
tone. ‘I am not used to melodramatics, and do not understand them. If
you think that, because you have come home, one of your duties will be
to receive my visitors and worry them to death with your nonsensical
talk, you are very much mistaken. However, it will not occur again; I
shall take good care of that! Bennett, go and see if luncheon is on the
table. This business has perfectly upset me.’
‘Oh, mamma! won’t you say a kind word to me? I feel as if my heart
was breaking,’ sobbed Fenella, as she rose from the position she had
assumed.
‘I really don’t know what I have to say,’ replied Mrs Barrington, in
the same hard tone. ‘If, as you declare, you committed this folly
ignorantly, you have no need of my forgiveness; but your conduct has
put me to the greatest inconvenience, and done yourself no good, as you
will find out by-and-by.’
The selfish woman perceived already that the incident would pave the
way to her getting rid of her daughter, with a more plausible excuse
than she had yet been able to devise. At the same time, she did not
know what harm might not have been done to her cause with Mr Henry
Wilson, and was proportionately anxious and harassed.
Bennett, who felt herself to be in disgrace, and was about as
low-spirited as Fenella, here announced, in a subdued voice, that the
luncheon was on the table, and the mother and daughter walked into the
dining-room.
It was a miserable meal. Fenella, who hardly knew now wherein she had
offended, ate nothing; and Mrs Barrington, although her temper had not
destroyed her appetite, consumed her cutlets and sherry in distressing
silence. Before the luncheon-table was cleared, a letter was handed
to her by Eliza Bennett, who had recognised the writing in fear and
trembling.
‘From Lady Wilson!’ exclaimed Mrs Barrington, with an ominous frown.
‘I thought as much. Be good enough to remain and hear what she says,
Bennett. I wish both you and Fenella to know what you have brought upon
me by your disobedience and ingratitude.’
She broke the seal as she spoke, and having first perused the note to
herself, commenced to read it aloud, with interpolations of her own
rendering.
‘“MY DEAR MRS BARRINGTON,--My son tells me that he has just seen your
daughter, who informed him that she was about to accompany our party
to Mentone--”
‘There now! Didn’t I say, Bennett, that that child’s coming home
would be my ruin? Going to Mentone indeed! Who ever told you such
a thing, and how dare you invent falsehoods on your own account! Is
that the training you’ve received at the convent--to tell lies?’
cried Mrs Barrington coarsely, as she turned upon her shrinking
daughter.
‘I never mentioned Mentone, mamma. I said I was going somewhere
abroad with you for the sake of my health, as you told me this
morning.’
‘I never told you any such thing, miss; don’t attempt to foist your
inventions upon me. Now, what does the woman say more?’
‘“I shall be sorry to upset any plans you may have made for yourself
and Miss Barrington, but I am afraid I cannot possibly make room
for any further addition to our household. You know how limited the
accommodation of the Villa Abracci is. Of course, we can hardly
expect you to separate from your daughter, especially as you have
not seen her for so many years. Therefore, if you wish to give up
your engagement with me, do not hesitate to do so, as Miss Russell
will be only too happy to take your place. Had Miss Barrington been
a child, we might have managed to squeeze her in; but my son tells
me she is quite a grown-up young lady, so that I feel compelled to
let you know my dilemma at once. I will call to-morrow morning and
receive your answer.--Yours sincerely,
MARGARET WILSON.”’
‘You _see!_’ exclaimed Mrs Barrington emphatically, as she finished
her friend’s note, and brought down her closed fist upon the
luncheon-table,--‘You see, perhaps now, both of you, _what_ you have
done. Lady Wilson tries at once to get rid of me--wants to put that
red-haired Miss Russell in my place--just because the girl’s got two
thousand a-year, and on the score of Miss Barrington being “_quite a
grown-up young lady_”--(the one thing on earth I wanted to keep from
the woman!)--she thinks I shall wish to resign my engagement with her!
But Lady Wilson will find that I am rather too sharp for that. And she
is coming here to-morrow morning to receive my answer--which means that
she is coming to look at that gawky girl, and then run round to tell
everybody she knows that Miss Barrington is twenty if she is a day. But
I will circumvent her good intentions. She shall have her answer from
me at once!’
Mrs Barrington rose from the table as she spoke, and going to her desk,
hastily scribbled the following words,--
‘DEAR LADY WILSON,--Your son must have entirely mistaken what my
little girl said to him this morning. How do you suppose that
_anything_ would make me wish to break through my engagement with
you? Besides, I couldn’t take Fenella abroad with me if I wished it,
as Dr Melville says it is imperative she should go to the sea-side
this summer, and she starts for Wales under the charge of her old
nurse to-morrow afternoon. She has grown too fast for her age, poor
child, and requires a more bracing air than Mentone. With my kindest
regards to your circle,--believe me, dear Lady Wilson, yours very
truly,
‘ROSINA BARRINGTON.’
When Mrs Barrington had finished this note, she read it aloud for
the benefit of her daughter and servant, and then ordered Bennett to
despatch it by a messenger at once.
‘And bring me the railway guide from the drawing-room table,’ she
added. ‘If there is a train to Ines-cedwyn this afternoon, you will
have to start by it.’
Fenella had listened to her mother’s note in silent amazement. That she
was to be separated again from her, and sent away in charge of Eliza
Bennett, had never entered her head before. As the railway guide made
its appearance, and Mrs Barrington began to search through its pages,
she watched her proceedings through a mist of tears, but she said
nothing.
‘Ines-cedwyn--Ines-cedwyn--let me see,’ mused Mrs Barrington, as though
the matter were one of no concern to her listeners. ‘Yes, there is
a train starts from Paddington at four o’clock, and reaches Lynwern
(that’s the nearest town, isn’t it, Bennett?) at ten. You must bundle
your things and Fenella’s into your boxes as quick as you can, and be
off to Paddington in time to catch it.’
‘But--two hours--ma’am; it’s no time to get ready in,’ stammered the
servant. ‘Besides, Martha won’t be prepared for our coming. I only
wrote to her this morning; and Lynwern is a good three miles from our
part of the country. Hadn’t we better wait till to-morrow?’
‘Certainly not! If I had thought you had better wait till to-morrow,
I shouldn’t have told you to go to-day. Do you take me for a fool,
Bennett? I think both you and Fenella must, from the way in which you
treated me this morning; but it will be the last time, you may depend
upon that.’
‘Oh, mother!’ cried Fenella, finding her voice in her extremity, ‘pray
don’t send me away all alone with Bennett. Let me go back to Ansprach
instead. I am no trouble to them there. The nuns love me, and Honorée
was very unhappy when I had to leave her; and if I had thought it was
for any one but you, I don’t think I could have borne it. Please send
me back to the convent. I shall never get strong away from everybody
who cares for me--’ and here Fenella’s courage broke down, and she wept
piteously.
Bennett came round to her side of the table, and patted the girl’s
hand, whilst her mother looked on in cool indifference.
‘Don’t talk of impossibilities,’ she said presently; ‘and pray don’t
make such a horrid noise, Fenella. You positively deafen me. As for
Ansprach, you are not likely to see that again. I consider that the
reverend mother has behaved most impertinently in sending you home when
I said I wished you to remain there; and I shall certainly not trouble
her any more in the matter. And there is nothing to make a fuss about.
You are going to a beautiful place by the sea-side, under the charge of
Bennett, who will take every care of you; and as the medical opinion
is that you must have sea air, you ought to be very grateful to have
so much trouble taken on your account. But I must say I don’t think
gratitude is one of your prominent qualities. You must take after your
poor papa in that respect. Instead of remembering the sacrifice _I_ am
obliged to make in giving up Bennett’s services to you, and having to
wait on myself, and the expense I shall be put to in paying for you
at Ines-cedwyn, you cry and howl as if I were doing myself a benefit
in sending you there. But I am used to ingratitude in this world,’
concluded Mrs Barrington, with the air of a martyr, ‘and am no longer
surprised at it.’
‘Come, my dear,’ whispered Bennett, soothingly, to Fenella; ‘if you
wish to please your mamma, you’ll just take things quietly, for no
crying will alter them. And if we are to start by four o’clock, why, I
shall want every bit of your help to get the things into the boxes in
time.’
At these words the girl rose, and brushing her hand across her eyes,
followed Bennett silently from the room. She did not give another
glance to the place where her mother sat. Her last selfish speech had
revealed more to her daughter than she had ever wished to know; and
some great hope in her life which she had cherished for years past,
seemed suddenly to have been overthrown and crumbled into dust.
As Bennett and Fenella disappeared, Mrs Barrington felt rather mean and
small. It was an ignoble way by which to have gained a victory, and she
experienced more of the feelings of the conquered than the conqueror.
But she consoled herself with the idea that it was absolutely necessary
that she should take some stringent measures in order to secure her own
success in life.
‘Of course the poor child thinks I am hard,’ she pondered, ‘for it is
impossible I can explain my motives to her; but it is for her sake as
well as my own, and she will thank me for it by-and-by.’
Yet though she argued thus, Mrs Barrington did not follow her daughter
upstairs to offer any consolation in the shape of soothing words or
caresses. Truth to say, she was afraid of Fenella. The girl looked her
so steadily in the face, she could not tell falsehoods easily in her
presence, and was continually on thorns lest her remarks should evoke
so straightforward a question that she should find great difficulty in
replying to it. But had Mrs Barrington known it, she need not have been
afraid of Fenella’s frankness now. The girl was too unhappy and too
subdued to have questioned anything her mother might have said to her.
She helped Eliza Bennett to pack their boxes and arrayed herself in her
travelling costume in complete silence, and Mrs Barrington did not see
her again until she stood before her, ready for departure, and uttered
in a low voice,--
‘Good-bye, mamma.’
Her mother started from her seat.
‘Dear me! is it really time for you to go? Has Bennett sent for a cab?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ replied the servant; ‘and the boxes are on, and we have
only half-an-hour to catch the train, so the sooner we are off the
better.’
With the cab waiting at the door, and the luggage actually on the top
of it, Mrs Barrington could afford to become sentimental.
‘Good-bye, my sweet child,’ she said, as she kissed Fenella’s face.
‘It is sad to have to part again so soon; but it is for your health,
you know, and we must submit for that reason. And I am sorry that
anything disagreeable should have occurred in the short time we have
been together, but it was all the fault of that stupid Mrs Watson, and
I shall take good care to let her know it. Good-bye, dear Bennett,’ she
continued, as she shook the servant by the hand; ‘mind you look well
after my child, and bring her back to me quite strong again. I shall
write to you as soon as I have any settled address, but we are likely
to be moving about for the first few weeks. You have sufficient money,
have you not, to last you a month?--and I will send you a remittance as
soon as the tenants pay their first instalment.’
Eliza Bennett was visibly affected at parting from her mistress.
‘Oh, my dear lady!’ she exclaimed, as she kissed the hand extended to
her; ‘it is sorrowful work to think I shall not see you again for so
long a time. But you will write to me, madam, will you not, and let me
know how you are, and how you manage without me?’
‘Of course I shall, you silly creature,’ rejoined Mrs Barrington, with
real tears in her eyes. ‘Come, give me a kiss. That is right; and don’t
set my little girl a bad example. One more good-bye, Fenella. And now
run away, both of you, for I cannot bear the strain much longer.’
She sank into a chair as they obeyed her orders, and put her cambric
handkerchief to her eyes, whilst Eliza Bennett was compelled to lift
the corner of her shawl to wipe away the tears that were running
down her cheeks. As the cab set off, she considered it necessary to
apologise to Fenella for her emotion.
‘I can’t help it, miss,’ she said, ‘though I daresay you will think I
am very foolish, but I’ve waited on your dear mamma, as I may say, day
and night for the last twenty years, and she’s so used to turn to me
for dressing and everything that I don’t know what she’ll do now I’m
gone,--and I’m sure I sha’n’t rest at night for worrying myself about
her. But I’m afraid you must think I’m a poor creature to give way
after this fashion, but I shall be all right again in a minute or two.’
For Fenella was sitting by Bennett’s side, with the same dry eyes with
which she had witnessed her mother’s affected farewell. Her heart had
received a shock from which it would not easily recover; and her short
sojourn in South Audley Street already began to assume the appearance
of some ugly dream. She said nothing in answer to the servant’s appeal,
but the tightened grasp she laid upon her hand proved she was not
without feeling. Bennett felt for her young mistress’s disappointment,
and thought it only natural at first that she should be unable to
speak of it. But when they were in the train for Ines-cedwyn, and had
performed half the journey, and Fenella had neither made a remark upon
what had happened in London nor asked a question concerning their
destination, the servant began to think her reticence was unnatural and
alarming.
‘Miss Fenella,’ she said suddenly, ‘aren’t you going to speak a word
to me all day? Do you know where we are going, miss?--to my brother
Benjamin’s farm in Ines-cedwyn. It will look a poor place to you,
I’m afraid, after that big convent; but we’ll manage to make you
comfortable, and you’ll get plenty of fresh sea air, which is what your
mamma says you want most. Do try and cheer up a bit, my dear, and take
an interest in what’s going on around you. It’s sad work for both of
us, I know, but we must try and make the best of it.’
‘Bennett,’ said Fenella, raising her solemn eyes to the servant’s face,
‘you must explain one thing to me. Why has mamma sent me away? I want
to know the real truth about it.’
They were the only occupants of the carriage they travelled in, so
Bennett had no hesitation in answering,--
‘Well, miss, I think you ought to know, for you are not a child any
longer, whatever the mistress may choose to say, and I am sure I can
trust you not to tell your mamma that I said anything about it.’
‘I am not likely to have the opportunity of repeating it,’ replied
Fenella in a sad voice.
‘Well, miss, the long and the short of it is, you are too much in your
mamma’s way.’
‘_In mamma’s way?_’ echoed the girl, with open eyes.
‘Yes, Miss Fenella. You see your mamma is quite young looking still,
and has her own pleasures and occupations, and a grown-up young lady
like you would be apt to interfere with them. I saw that from the
beginning--indeed, you would have spoiled all her plans if she had kept
you by her. So I really don’t blame her for sending you away, though I
wish she had shown a little more heart in the matter.’
‘But how could I spoil her plans--my own mother’s plans? Does she think
I would have been so wicked or mischievous as that?’
‘My dear, you’re so innocent I hardly know how to talk to you. But has
it never struck you that the mistress might marry again?’
Fenella looked aghast.
‘What! Have another husband, nurse? But my father was her husband.’
‘Of course he was--whilst he lived; but now he’s dead, the mistress is
at liberty to do as she pleases, and most people’s surprise is that she
hasn’t married again long before this.’
‘Does mamma _want_ to be married again?’ cried Fenella in horror.
‘I don’t suppose she’d marry if she didn’t wish it, miss; and of course
it’s uncertain even now. But perhaps it will help you to understand why
she felt you to be in her way. Few gentlemen would care to marry a lady
with such a tall daughter as you are.’
‘But she must tell them; they must know some day,’ said Fenella.
‘Ah! so they will, perhaps, when it’s too late to mend matters,’ quoth
Bennett oracularly. ‘But then it won’t signify what they think. I
shouldn’t wonder if you had another papa, miss, before ever you see
your mamma again.’
‘Another papa!’ echoed Fenella. ‘Oh no, nurse, that is impossible!
Mamma may have another husband, but I can never have another father,
and--and--if she has, we shall be further apart than ever,’ she added
in a choking voice.
‘No, miss, you mustn’t think that. I’m sure the mistress would have
been very fond and proud of you, if there hadn’t been none of these
bothering gentlemen to come between you. It’s a great pity, but it was
just the very awkwardest time of any that you could have been sent
home. I told the reverend mother so, over and over again, but she was
determined to have her own way, and you see what trouble she’s given
us.’
‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Fenella, ‘if _chère mère_ had thought--I am
sure if she had known how my presence would worry mamma, she would have
kept me at Ansprach sooner than let me come home only to be sent away
again. I feel like an orphan, Bennett--as if there was no one in all
the world who ever cared for me, except my father, and he is gone. Oh,
how I wish that I could go to him!’
‘Don’t speak like that, my dear,’ said Bennett soothingly. ‘I shouldn’t
like even your papa to hear you; I feel as if it would vex him so. And
I’m sure, after a bit, that you’ll be very happy at Ines-cedwyn. There
is no beach there, not to speak of, Miss Fenella, but such a beautiful
strip of sand--fine yellow sand, that shines in the sun like gold. And
the trees, they grow almost down to the water’s edge. It’s very quiet,
is Ines-cedwyn, but a fine place for fish. I suppose there’s as much
fish taken there as ever goes to the London market from one place; and
it’s so plentiful, they manure the land with it. And the people there
all ride donkeys. Do you like riding donkey-back, Miss Fenella? I shall
get my brother to borrow a side-saddle for you; and then you will be
able to go long jaunts by yourself, for Ines-cedwyn’s such a lovely
place. You can do as you please there; and, as you may fancy, I’m a bit
past donkey-riding. Oh, don’t look so scared and white, my dear! You’ll
make yourself ill--indeed you will; and if you take to fretting for
what can’t be helped, all the sea air in the world won’t do you a bit
of good.’
But the only answer Eliza Bennett’s eloquence produced was the stifled
cry,--
‘Oh, nurse! if she had only loved me a little--the least little bit--I
would have died for her; indeed, indeed, I would!’
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER VII.
IN A NEW WORLD.
‘The bridegroom sea
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride;
And, in the fulness of his marriage joy,
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a pace to see how fair she looks,
Then, proud, runs up to kiss her.’
_Alexander Smith_.
I wonder if any one who reads these pages will recognise
Ines-cedwyn--not under that name assuredly, nor perhaps in the same
hemisphere, but as a place existing somewhere in this wide world,
where men and women have met and loved and suffered. In the disguise
under which it is here represented, it was a fishing hamlet only, the
scanty population of which lived by the labour of their own hands.
There was no almighty squire of Ines-cedwyn to rule the people by his
frown, and hunt over the springing wheat to the ruin of the farmer; no
noble landlord to keep a bullying agent to represent him, and force
the tenants to make improvements they could not afford, at the risk
of having their leases cancelled. Ines-cedwyn was too humble a place
to enjoy such privileges, which some said was so much the better for
Ines-cedwyn. Its land was too near the sea to be worthy the attention
of any but the smallest farmers; and the majority of the cluster of
humble dwellings that called themselves by its name were inhabited by
fishermen.
Lynwern, which was three miles off, was becoming quite a fashionable
watering-place; and occasionally its visitors found their way over to
Ines-cedwyn, but they never stayed there. One person, indeed, a city
merchant, had once thought he would like to build himself a retreat
in Ines-cedwyn, where he might fly when sick of the world and its
society, and enjoy the pleasures of solitude and meditation. So he
purchased part of the rights of the beach, and erected a villa on the
very sands, not a stone’s-throw from the water, and in memory of some
old associations with a sojourn in the East, had named it ‘The Beach
Bungalow.’
This had happened years and years before; the merchant had soon grown
tired of his plaything, and the ‘bungalow’ was in ruins. Agents had
tried to let it for him, but no one had been found willing to take
it. For in the first place, those who desired to live comfortably
in Ines-cedwyn were obliged to have all their provisions sent over
from Lynwern; and in the second, the merchant had had the ‘bungalow’
built after his recollection of its Indian counterpart, which made
it an inconvenient residence for the changeable climate of Wales. It
consisted of three rooms only, all facing the sea; but with a wide
bricked verandah, which was of the same length and breadth of the rest
of the villa, shading them in front. A small kitchen and wash-house had
been built out, at some little distance behind, but were now reduced
to nothing better than sheds. Indeed, the whole of the ‘bungalow’
presented a most forlorn appearance. The windows were broken or gone,
the doors were off their hinges, the roof leaked like a cullender, and
the birds of the air made it their habitation. Added to all this, it
had the reputation of being haunted, which was supposed to give it the
only interest it possessed in the eyes of the visitors of Lynwern, who
sometimes made picnic parties to Ines-cedwyn, in order to lunch on the
floor of the ruined bungalow.
It stood all alone on a long strip of golden sand, which stretched on
either side as far as eye could reach. This stretch of sand was the
glory of Ines-cedwyn, and the villagers often grumbled at the superior
popularity of Lynwern, and wondered how ladies and gentlemen could
prefer a shingly beach that cut their shoes and boots to ribbons, to a
place where they might walk for miles when the tide was out, with as
much ease as in their own drawing-rooms. And when the tide came in,
what a _suave_ and gentlemanly tide it was. It never made much racket
even in the wildest weather, for the waves soon found they had nothing
to buffet against, and were compelled to run up the sands, a little
more hastily than usual, perhaps, but still not in a manner to frighten
the most timid looker on, though they had been known on one or two
occasions to wash right through the ‘Beach Bungalow,’ and out on the
other side.
But it was spring now, and a remarkably warm spring, and the
Ines-cedwyn tide had never been seen to greater advantage. The waves
were mere ripples on the water, and they broke like music and ran in
upon the yellow sands like cream, leaving behind them upon every visit
unbroken pink-lipped shells, and perfect branches of green and yellow
sea-weed, which they had carried on their quiet breasts from foreign
shores. The fishermen said there never had been finer weather nor
calmer seas in the memory of all Ines-cedwyn, and day after day the
fishing smacks put out from shore and returned laden with their shining
spoils.
Benjamin Bennett, Eliza Bennett’s brother, took no part in such
proceedings. He was a farmer on a very small scale, or at least they
called him so in that part of the country. He was the owner of a small
patch of arable land, from which he procured a tolerable crop of hay;
and he had a large market garden, the produce of which he carried daily
into Lynwern. In fact in England he would have been termed a market
gardener. He had a horse and cart and a cow in the shed, which did duty
for a stable; five or six pigs fatting in the stye; a considerable
number of cocks and hens, and a pretty little flower garden. His
cottage consisted of some half-dozen rooms, furnished poorly but
decently, for his wife Martha was a notable woman, and they kept a girl
to help in the house and farm work. They had no family, and so they
had managed to save a small sum of money, and Mr and Mrs Bennett were
considered to be amongst the most thriving and respectable inhabitants
of Ines-cedwyn. Their cottage was situated about half-a-mile from the
sea, in the centre of the village, and a broad piece of marshy land lay
between it and the beach.
Here all was green and leafy enough, and one might have thought a
hundred miles separated the flowery little hamlet from the briny
ocean, though a suspicious smell of tar and rope pervaded most of the
fishermen’s dwellings.
On the evening on which Eliza Bennett and Fenella travelled down from
London to Lynwern, Martha and Benjamin, all unmindful of the proximity
of their nearest relation, had retired to rest even earlier than usual,
for their cow had presented them with a calf that morning, and they had
sat up all night with her in anticipation of the event. But they would
have sat up a second night with alacrity, had they imagined Eliza was
so close at hand.
They were very proud of Eliza and her doings, and each time a letter
reached them in her writing, they were not satisfied till they had read
it out to all the village. She represented the ‘genteel’ portion of the
family to their ignorant minds. They were never weary of hearing of
the grand doings of her mistress (and none of Mrs Barrington’s doings
suffered in importance by passing through Eliza’s hands), nor of the
foreign places to which her maid accompanied her.
‘Think of our Eliza being at Paris, and seeing the Hemperor and
Hempress!’ Martha would exclaim; ‘why, she’ll be too much of a lady to
speak to us when she comes this way again;’ and Benjamin would answer,--
‘Nonsense! nothing of the sort, Marthy! ’Liza’s my sister, born and
bred, and she’ll never forget it! Why, haven’t she been to Hitaly and
the Pope o’ Rome, and up the mountains, and I don’t know where not,
and writes just as haffable after it as if she’d never stirred from
Ines-cedwyn!’
‘Well, let’s hope she’ll come back to the hold place some day,’ the
hospitable wife replied, ‘and give us a treat of her face. Why, it must
be a dozen years and more, Ben, since she and you met.’
‘That it is, wife, and she’s my only relation, as you may say, so it
seems a bit hard; but never mind, it’s a long lane as has no turning,
and ’Liza’ll be with us agen afore we goes ’ome. Mark my words.’
The good couple often talked after this fashion, and they had been
speaking of her the very evening that she arrived there. Martha told
Benjamin, as they were retiring to rest, that she had had a dream
about his sister the night before. ‘And I’m sure we’re agoing to hear
somethink of her, for our family is remarkable for dreams, and mine
allers come true.’
‘What did ye dream then, Marthy?’
‘Why, Ben, it was just when our poor Cowslip seemed a bit easier, and
I was so tired I nodded off--and what should I dream but that I was
stumbling over that piece of waste land in the dark, and I knocked up
against some one, and I calls out, “Who is it?” and, to my surprise, it
was the voice of your sister ’Liza, and she says to me, “Take this,”
she says, and puts something into my arms, and I could feel that it was
a baby! And I should have dreamed a deal more,--only you shook me by
the shoulder, and I woke up, and haven’t had time to think of it again
till just now.’
Benjamin Bennett was much amused at his wife’s vision.
‘’Liza with a baby!’ he said; ‘that would be a rum start--I fancy she’s
past that sort of thing, old woman! for she never did seem to take the
men’s fancy for marriage, even when she was young.’
‘It shows your ignorance of dreams, if you think to take them just
as they’re presented,’ retorted his wife somewhat offended. ‘I never
supposed as Eliza would be married, but she’s comin’ to some misfortune
nevertheless. A child is as bad a thing to dream of as you can well
have.’
‘Well, I ’ope poor ’Liza ain’t in any fix,’ said Benjamin, as he
settled himself in bed, ‘’cos she’s my only sister, and I couldn’t see
’er sufferin’ without sufferin’ myself.’
‘In course not,’ responded Martha, and in a few moments the worthy
couple were fast asleep.
It was past midnight when they were roused by a violent knocking on the
front door with a stick.
‘Benjamin Bennett,’ cried a voice several times in succession, ‘get up,
will ye--there’s some one as wants your assistance.’
‘Hark to that, Ben!’ exclaimed Martha as she started up in bed. ‘What
must be done now? Cowslip must have been taken bad again.’
‘Throw up the casement and ask ’im his business,’ said her husband.
The woman obeyed.
‘Who’s there? What is it ye want with Benjamin Bennett at this time o’
night? Why! Tom Asher, is it you?’
‘Yes, Mrs Bennett, it’s me, sure enough, and I’ve got bad news for you.
There’s Bennett’s sister as was coming on here has fell down and hurt
herself, and I want ’im to get out the horse and cart to fetch ’er
home.’
‘What!’ screamed Martha. ‘Bennett’s sister? Are you mad, man? Why,
Eliza’s in London with ’er mistress.’
‘Well! I don’t know her, not likely; but she says as ’ow she’s
Bennett’s sister, and she asked me to fetch ’im to her: and she’s got a
young lady there too, and they’re both in sad trouble to be sure.’
‘Where are they?’ cried Martha breathlessly.
‘In the Beach Bungalow. I passed ’em on the road, and carried ’er in
there, for she can’t move another step, that’s certain. She’s broke her
foot or summat, to my mind.’
By this time both husband and wife were fairly roused and hurrying on
their clothes.
‘You get out the horse and cart, Ben,’ said Martha, ‘whilst I run down
to the bungalow as hard as I can, and if you overtake me you can pick
me up. But you can never drive fast over them ruts. Only to think of
our ’Liza being in such a plight, and broke her foot too. Bless my
heart! Now, didn’t I tell you as misfortune was comin’? But why has she
got a young lady with her, and at this time o’ night? It’s all a muddle
to me. However, I’m ready, and I shall go straight across the common as
fast as my legs will carry me.’
Martha was as good as her word, and arrived breathless at the ruined
bungalow before her husband’s horse and cart had traversed the
uncertain road. Here she found Eliza Bennett stretched on the floor of
the verandah in evident pain, whilst Fenella, white as a sheet with
alarm, sat patiently beside her waiting for help.
‘Bless my soul! what’s this?’ cried Martha, as she bustled up to them.
‘Why, ’Liza, my dear, who’d ever have thought of seein’ you, and what
have you done to yourself? Fell down and hurt your leg. Well, your
brother’ll be along with the cart in no time to take you home, and
right glad we are to see you, though you have given us such a start.
And the young lady too--this isn’t the time of night for her to be
sittin’ on these cold stones. However came you both to get in such a
plight?’
‘Oh, Martha!’ said Bennett, between her groans; ‘I do feel putting upon
you like this more than I can tell, but the mistress is going abroad,
and wanted me and Miss Fenella here to spend the time with you and
Ben, which I knew you’d be agreeable to; and I wrote you a letter this
morning to say as we were coming on Friday. But my mistress altered her
plans, and so we had to start sooner, and came off from London by the
four o’clock train.’
‘Yes,’ continued Fenella in a sad voice, ‘and we didn’t reach Lynwern
till ten, and I am afraid it is all my fault, for Bennett thought we
had better sleep there; but it seemed such a beautiful night, and I
said I should like a walk, so we left our boxes at Lynwern, and set
out to walk to Ines-cedwyn. And just as we had got opposite here,
Bennett’s foot slipped on a stone in the road, and she has hurt it so
she can’t stand. But a man met us, and he carried her in here, and said
he would go on and tell you about it.’
‘Ay! that was Tom Asher; and so he did, miss. Ben and I couldn’t think
what had happened when we heard him a-knockin’ at the door. We had been
asleep for a good three hours. And where is it you’ve hurt yourself,
’Liza--is it here?’
As Martha administered a kindly, but not over-gentle touch to the
injured member, Bennett could hardly keep herself from screaming.
‘Oh! don’t handle it please, Martha! I’ve given it such a wrench I feel
as if ’twas all alive. Just to think of my doing such a stupid thing,
and the very minute I’ve come back to the old place too.’
‘But you couldn’t help it, Bennett,’ expostulated Fenella; ‘it was all
my fault for teasing you to walk.’
‘’Twasn’t no fault of yours, Miss Fenella, my dear, so don’t think it.
’Twas just an accident, and the Lord’s doing, and such things is not to
be prevented by any thought nor care.’
‘You’re right there, ’Liza, and I daresay it won’t turn out to be
much. You’ve sprained your ankle--that’s what it is, and I don’t know
anything as is more painful-like than a sprained ankle; but a day or
two’s rest’ll put it all right again. And I hope you’ve come for a long
spell, now you have come, my dear, and will give yourself time to get
fat and ’earty in the mountain air.’
At this juncture Benjamin and Tom Asher arrived, and after the first
greetings had passed between the brother and sister, they prepared to
lift Bennett into the cart. Whether the injury she had sustained was
dangerous or not, it was exceedingly painful, and she fainted as they
carried her away. Martha took Fenella under her charge, and prepared
to follow them as quickly as she could across the marshy common.
‘This is a sad beginning to a holiday for you, miss,’ she said, when
she found that the girl walked by her side in utter silence; ‘but you
mustn’t take it too much to heart. ’Liza must lay up for a day or two,
and I daresay it won’t turn out as bad as it seems. I’ll put cold
bandages round her foot as soon as she is comfortably settled. Them
sprained ankles are nasty things to bear, but they always yield to rest
and cold water.’
‘Do you think it is nothing worse than a sprained ankle?’ asked Fenella
timidly. ‘As soon as it was done she fell right down, and couldn’t get
up again.’
‘I daresay she did, miss. That’s generally the way with ’em, for the
agony’s fearful. However, we shall be able to tell better when we’ve
got ’Liza into bed.’
The carrying of poor Bennett up the narrow cottage stairs; and the
undressing of her was a terrible business, and she fainted more than
once during the proceeding, but when laid in Martha’s bed, and revived
by a little brandy and water, she declared she was, comparatively
speaking, comfortable, and became all anxiety for the welfare of her
young mistress.
‘Do you go and lie down, dear Miss Fenella,’ she urged; ‘you look like
a ghost, and I know you are as tired as you can be--and well you may,
at past one o’clock in the morning. I shall have no rest till I know
you are in bed.’
‘No, indeed, Bennett, you must let me watch by you to-night. What does
it signify if I am tired when you are in such pain?’
‘Now, my dear young lady,’ interposed Martha, ‘Ben and me is used to
this sort of thing, and you must let us do it. Why, only last night
we was up for seven hours giving warm mashes to our red cow, Cowslip.
And I couldn’t go to sleep again now, not if you was to pay me ever
so--could I, Ben? He knows the wakeful habit I am, miss. And so now,
if you please, you must let me take you to your bed, though it’s a poor
sort of a room for a real lady like yourself to lie down in.’
Fenella followed her homely hostess to another room, on the same floor,
where a small truckle bedstead and a painted chest of drawers formed
all the furniture.
‘’Tisn’t fit for the likes of you,’ remarked Martha, as she ushered her
into it; ‘but ’tis the best we have, miss, and the Queen couldn’t give
you more.’
‘And I shall be much more comfortable in it than if I were with the
Queen,’ replied Fenella, with the true courtesy that sets our inferiors
at their ease, as she prepared to take possession of the humble-looking
couch.
She slept on it nevertheless, for she had not yet reached the age when
trouble keeps us waking; but with the earliest signs of dawn she was
in Bennett’s room, to inquire how she had passed the night. She heard
that she had been in great pain and very feverish, but both Martha and
herself declared that the cold water bandages and rest would do all
that was required for the injured limb.
‘I am so sorry I can’t get up and see after you to-day, Miss Fenella,’
said Bennett with anxious eyes; ‘but Benjamin is going to Lynwern with
his vegetables, and has promised to call for our boxes and bring them
back with him. So if you can amuse yourself on the beach, my dear, till
they arrive, perhaps you will, and to-morrow, I hope to be able to
hobble about a bit and see after you.’
‘Bennett, you mustn’t talk like that,’ said Fenella; ‘I shall do very
well by myself, and you must lie still until you are quite recovered.
But I wish I could get some paper and ink, that I might write and tell
mamma about you.’
‘Miss Fenella! I couldn’t hear of such a thing. What! go to worry your
dear mamma just as she’s setting off on her journey. What’s to-day?
Thursday! Why, she couldn’t get your letter till she was on the very
point of starting, and what good would it do, miss? It would only upset
and fidget her. You wouldn’t expect her to come here and see after
me--would you?’
‘_I_ would, Bennett, if you had left me and met with such an accident.’
‘Ah! _you_, miss! well, you’re different from your mamma in many ways,
and you’re but a child you see. No one would expect a lady to give up
her plans for a servant. So I wouldn’t have her worried for the world,
and ’tisn’t worth it either, for I shall be all right again in a few
days.’
‘But you will send for a doctor, won’t you, Bennett?’ urged Fenella.
Both Bennett and her sister-in-law, sitting by the bed, began to laugh.
‘A doctor, miss! and for a sprained ankle! bless your heart--no,’
said Martha; ‘that’s not the way we manage in these parts; why, if
we was to send off to Lynwern for the doctor everytime we felt a bit
ill, there’d be no end to his coming and going. I can’t call to mind
as there’s been a doctor in Ines-cedwyn since Mary Wills died of the
typhus fever, and then her husband said as ’twas good money throw’d
away, and he’d much better have kept it to help bury her. Oh no, miss,
we don’t want no doctors here, and we’ll do well enough without him,
never you fear!’
Fenella did not feel quite easy under this decision, but she was too
young to oppose it. She spent the morning in wandering about the
premises in a listless manner, making acquaintance with the poultry and
the pigs and the new-born calf, but directing many an anxious glance,
nevertheless, at the latticed window of the room where Eliza Bennett
lay.
Martha, sitting behind the flapping blind, watched the girl’s
proceedings, and remarked on them to her sister-in-law.
‘Lor’, what a pretty creature, and such a feelin’ ’art, too! I’m sure,
if you was her equal, ’Liza, she couldn’t be more careful over you. How
proud her ma must be of her. Ain’t she, now?’
‘Well, Martha,’ replied Bennett, whose loyalty was sorely tried
in answering the question, ‘you see the mistress is very ’ansome
herself--particular ’ansome; so p’raps she don’t think so much of
beauty as we do. And Miss Fenella and she have been apart a good bit
of late years. Young ladies must be educated, you see; and it can’t be
done as well at home, so they don’t know so much of each other as they
might.’
‘That seems strange; don’t it, now?’ returned Martha. ‘I never had
a child, as you know; but if I had, I don’t think Ben nor me would
have known how to make enough of it. We often says so ’mongst our two
selves.’
‘But you mustn’t fancy but what the mistress thinks a deal of Miss
Fenella,’ interposed Bennett eagerly. ‘That’s why she sent us down
here, though it was a great inconvenience to herself, because my young
lady looks so pale, and has grown so fast.’
‘She do look very peaky,’ said Martha sympathisingly; ‘my master was
sayin’ so this morning.’
‘And her mamma wants her to be out in the sea air as much as possible,
Martha--all day long if she can--so do show her the way to the beach
after dinner, and let her go and sit on the sands.’
‘That I will, ’Liza; and I think it will be best for your sake to keep
the house as quiet as possible, for you look a bit feverish to me.
Close your eyes and try to sleep, my dear, and I’ll go and see after
the young lady’s dinner, and send her out for a walk.’
Accordingly, when the early meal was concluded, Martha broached the
subject to Fenella.
‘If you take my advice, miss,’ she said, ‘you’ll put on your hat
and take a stroll down to the sea. It will be beautiful there this
afternoon, for the tide’ll be up at five o’clock. And ’Liza she wants
to go to sleep, so I wouldn’t disturb her if I was you, but just set
off and enjoy yourself, and come back when you feel disposed for it.’
‘Oh, I should like to go if I may,’ replied Fenella, with a pink flush
on her cheeks, ‘and if you are sure Bennett won’t want me; but which
way is it, Martha?’
‘Why, straight across the common, miss, to where you see that streak
of blue--that’s the water. And it’ll bring you out close to the place
where poor ’Liza fell last night--“The Beach Bungalow.”’
‘The Beach Bungalow!’ repeated Fenella; ‘what a strange name! Why is it
called so?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure, miss, unless it is as the person who built it
felt he had made a bungle; but any way that’s how it’s known amongst
us. It’s an unlucky place, to my thinking, and I always fancy as every
misfortune as ’appens to our folk, seems to have that bungalow mixed up
with it--and, you see, ’Liza missed ’er footing just opposite. I often
tells Ben as I wish somebody would take and pull it down. And they _do_
say,’ continued Martha mysteriously, ‘as it’s haunted into the bargain.
But p’raps that’s a matter I oughtn’t to speak to you on, or maybe you
have no fear of ghosts.’
‘Oh no,’ replied the girl indifferently; ‘if there are such things,
they wouldn’t hurt me--why should they?’
‘’Twould be a good job if every one had your sense, miss; but, you
see, they haven’t, and so the place has got a reg’lar bad name in
Ines-cedwyn, and none of our people would go past it after midnight
unless they was obliged. But whether you believe in spirits or not,
don’t you have too much to do with the Beach Bungalow, for it’ll bring
you bad luck as sure as my name’s Martha Bennett.’
‘I will only go and sit in the verandah; that won’t hurt me,’ said
Fenella, with a smile as she walked away.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER VIII.
A VOICE IN THE NIGHT.
‘As I trembled, look’d, and sigh’d,
His eyes met mine--he fix’d their glories on me;
Confusion thrill’d me then, and secret joy,
Fast throbbing, stole its treasures from my heart,
And, mantling upward, turn’d my face to crimson.’
_Brooke_.
There was none of the mischievous joy of a girl set at liberty to
follow her own devices in her demeanour, as she traversed the distance
that lay between the cottage and the sands, with her head bent and her
eyes fixed on the ground. For, perhaps, in all her short life, Fenella
had never felt so lonely and uncared-for as she did that afternoon.
She had often grieved during her school days because she did not go
home to see her mother; but the separation between them at that time
was as nothing compared to the gulf that divided them now--a gulf
which, some instinct told the girl, would never be bridged over but by
the conventionalities of society.
She soon reached the ruined villa, and sitting on the floor of the open
verandah, with her feet upon the sand, she leaned her cheek against
a stucco pillar, green with the damp of time, and gave herself up to
thought. Had she been less sad, the scene around would have excited
all her interest, even in its solitude; it was so unlike anything to
which she had been accustomed. Before her lay the broad, still ocean,
and there were few moving things about to break the sense of isolation
it engendered. Two or three boats were drawn up upon the sand; in the
distance several more might be seen floating on the quiet waters; and
to the right a faint trail of blue smoke, curling along the horizon,
showed that the little steamer had started with its daily freight from
the pier at Lynwern.
Fenella had seated herself with her back to Ines-cedwyn; had she turned
her head she would have seen that the green slope down which she had
wandered was the foreground of a range of chalk hills that sheltered
the little village from the winter gales. She would have seen that
the vegetation, such as it was, grew almost to the water’s edge; that
sheep and donkeys and cattle browsed peacefully upon the common; that
to the right of her, though hidden by a cliff, lay Lynwern, the town
from which she had walked the night before, and to the left was a great
landslip that had rolled almost into the sea, and was still crowned
with the wild apple orchard it had carried with it.
But her heart was too full just then to see the wild beauties of the
place to which she had come. The tears were too near her eyes for her
to see anything distinctly. She kept them fixed upon the blue water,
which broke with monotonous fidelity upon the golden sand, and ran back
again with a subdued murmur, leaving a trail of froth and scum to mark
its way.
Fenella believed, in her loneliness, that she had arrived at the very
climax of all suffering--that there could never be anything worse for
her to bear than she was bearing then. All her friends seemed to have
retreated from her as the sea retreated from the sands, but with no
hope of return. She had been parted from Honorée St Just and all her
convent friends, and she had received nothing in return with which to
fill up the vacancy their loss had made in her heart, and life seemed
cruelly hard to the girl. Her love for her mother and her mother’s love
for her had been the dream of her youth. She had believed in it as in
the mercy of God. She had returned home ready to lean her whole weight
upon it as on the staff of her existence, and it had snapped like a
reed in her hand. And even Bennett had failed her; even poor Bennett,
though it was not her fault, was absent at this crisis, and preferred
Martha’s attendance to that of her young mistress.
No one wanted her--that was Fenella’s prevailing thought that
afternoon. Every one would get on better without the trouble of her
presence; she might as well be out of the world altogether. It was a
dangerous thought to indulge in--a dangerous moment in which to present
any new interest to fill up the void in the girl’s aching heart. She
felt so forlorn that she would have been thankful to a dog for showing
her any sympathy. And a dog was the first to do it.
Fenella had been so absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts that she
had not observed that a little boat had come in at a short distance
from where she sat--that is, the boat had come in as near as it could
through the shallow water, and its occupants had jumped out, and waded
through the ankle-deep tide to shore. And one of the occupants, being
very short and bandy-legged and impetuous, had wetted himself from
head to foot, and now came bounding forward--some doggish instinct
telling him he would be welcome--and, with pricked ears and shining
eyes, ensconced his dripping little body behind the shelter of
Fenella’s black skirt, and from that ambush barked vociferously at his
approaching master.
The girl started from her reverie; then perceiving the friendly
disposition of the intruder, she put out her hand and patted the wet
coat of the little terrier.
‘Trap! Trap! come back, sir; come back! Do you hear what I say to
you?’ was shouted in an authoritative masculine voice; but Trap
only wriggled his small red body about, and declined to have another
sea-bath, as he imagined his owner was desirous of making him. Then a
young man in boating gear strode up to Fenella’s side, and seizing the
little terrier by the nape of the neck, flung him to some distance on
the sand.
‘Oh! don’t hurt him!’ cried the girl; ‘poor little fellow, he didn’t
mean to do any harm.’
The gentleman’s soft felt hat was crushed in one hand in a moment.
‘You are very good to say so,’ he replied, ‘but the brute has wetted
your dress.’
Fenella blushed.
‘It is only an old frock,’ she said ingenuously; ‘he cannot hurt it.
May I take him on my lap?’ for Trap had ventured by that time to crawl
back to his master’s feet.
‘Trap will be but too much honoured,’ replied the young man, as he
lifted the little animal and deposited him in Fenella’s open arms.
Then he said, ‘I hardly hoped we should have met again so soon, and
least of all should I have thought to meet you here.’
At these words, and at the sound of his voice, the girl started.
‘You don’t remember me,’ he continued, as he met her look of frank
amazement, ‘neither had I any right to hope you should do so; but I
have a better memory, you see. “_I know you again to swear to_.”’
As he repeated Bennett’s indignant remark, Fenella recognised him as
the young man whom she had accosted at the Calais restaurant, and who
had crossed with them to Dover. The colour rushed to her pale cheeks in
a flood of crimson, but all she said was,--
‘How funny!’
‘What is funny?’
‘That you should be here, in this very place,’ said Fenella shyly.
‘But I think it is funnier that _you_ should be here, or at least that
you should have walked over here so soon, for I suppose you are staying
at Lynwern.’
‘No; I am living at Ines-cedwyn with my nurse, but she has hurt her
foot and cannot come out with me.’
The stranger put on a look of proper concern.
‘I’m very sorry to hear it; I hope she will soon be better. When did
you arrive?’
‘Only yesterday; we were in London first with my mother.’
‘Well, I came straight through from Dover, for my people are staying at
Lynwern, and they wished me to join them. I have been all the winter in
Paris.’
‘Have you? for your holidays?’ demanded Fenella, as she caressed the
little terrier, who had now settled himself for a comfortable nap in
her arms.
The gentleman laughed.
‘Not exactly--though it is something like it. I belong to the army, and
I am home on leave.’
‘The army!’ repeated the girl wonderingly. ‘Oh, then you are quite
grown up!’
‘Nearly,’ he replied, still laughing. ‘I am twenty-two.’
His laugh was so pleasant and boyish, and his whole demeanour so
friendly as he stood with one foot upon the floor of the verandah and
looked down upon her, that after a while Fenella ventured to look up at
him. He was an exceptionally handsome man, and to her unsophisticated
eyes he appeared to be the handsomest she had ever seen. She thought
so from the first moment she met him--she thought so to the very last.
His power over her would have been, eventually perhaps, as great had
his features been plain, but it would not have asserted its sway so
rapidly. There is a magic in beauty which few minds are strong enough
to resist. As the girl’s eyes met his, her lids were lowered, and he
felt that his influence had commenced.
‘May I tell you,’ he said, bending down to her, ‘how pleased I am to
have met you again, because I want to thank you for your kindness?’
‘What kindness?’
‘Why, in speaking to me at the restaurant, and asking if you could help
me. Do you think I did not appreciate it, or that I am such a bear as
to be ungrateful?’
‘I thought perhaps you couldn’t speak French,’ stammered the girl.
‘Some people who go abroad can’t; and I had just come from the convent,
so I wanted to help you. But Bennett scolded me dreadfully about it.
She said I had done very wrong indeed, and I am afraid she would say
I was wrong in speaking to you now,’ continued Fenella, as she looked
around her rather fearfully.
‘Who is Bennett?’
‘The woman who was with me. She was my nurse once, but she is mamma’s
maid now, and I am under her care here.’
‘And do you always believe what Bennett says to you, then?’
‘Not always, perhaps; but wasn’t she right? Do you think I ought to
have spoken to you?’
‘I think, if you had not, I should have missed knowing one of the most
admirable traits of your character. It is not always wise, certainly,
for a young lady to address a stranger, but I should think you might be
safely left to follow your own instincts. Besides, I hope you saw I was
a gentleman,’ he added, rather proudly.
‘No; I never thought about that,’ replied the girl. ‘I was afraid you
were in trouble--that is all! But I am glad I was mistaken.’
‘I daresay your nurse is a very good sort of old woman,’ continued the
young man, ‘but she can’t know much of the rules of society, can she?’
‘I suppose not; but no more do I. I have never been in society yet.’
‘All the better for you. Keep out of it as long as ever you can.
Society is a huge sham--a community whose religion is to tell lies; and
when a girl wants to be honest and follow the inclinations of her own
kind heart, as you do, they tell her it is not proper, and society will
never allow it.’
‘If that is true,’ sighed the girl, ‘I hope I shall never go into
society; and any way it will be a long time, for I am only sixteen. But
my mother likes it very much, I think.’
‘Will you forgive me if I ask you something very strange?’ said her new
friend presently. ‘I want to know who your mother is, and what your
name is?’
Fenella laughed softly.
‘Oh, how funny! we have been talking together all this time, and we
don’t even know who we are. If you had gone away and forgotten to ask
me that question, I should never have known. It would have been all
like a dream, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I could have been contented to
remember it only as a dream. I should have come back again to ask you
that question.’
The look he threw at her as he pronounced the words made Fenella’s eyes
droop again.
‘My name is Fenella Barrington,’ she said, in a low voice, ‘and my
mother is Mrs Barrington.’
‘And have you no father?’
‘No; he died a long time ago.’
There was silence between them for a minute, and then the stranger
said,--
‘You don’t ask who I am,--perhaps you don’t care to hear.’
‘Won’t you tell me?’ rejoined Fenella simply.
‘Certainly I will. I am Geoffrey Doyne, and I belong to the 30th
Hussars. Don’t I look like a hussar?’
‘No; I think you look more like a boatman,’ said the girl, smiling.
‘When I saw you first to-day, I was in hopes you were a sailor.’
‘Why--_in hopes?_’
‘Because my father was a captain in the Royal Navy, and I love sailors
for his sake.’
‘Then I wish I were one.’
‘But weren’t you allowed to choose which you would be?’
‘Certainly I was.’
‘And you preferred to be a soldier?’
‘I did.’
‘Then why should you wish to change?’ said Fenella, with open eyes. ‘I
daresay it is nicer to be a soldier, after all--it must be so hard to
go away to sea from all whom you love!’
‘Soldiers have to do that sometimes, too!’
‘Yes; there seems nothing but parting and sadness in this world.’
‘But you are too young to say that, Miss Barrington.’
‘Am I? I am not too young to think it.’
‘Are you going to make a long stay in Ines-cedwyn?’ was the next
question he asked her.
‘I think so, but I am not sure. My mother has gone to Mentone, and
she sent me here because I am not very strong, and the doctor said I
required sea air. But it is very lonely, isn’t it? I would rather have
gone with my mother,’ said Fenella, with tears in her eyes.
How Geoffrey Doyne would have liked to have the privilege of consoling
her!
‘It is dull,’ he answered, ‘even at Lynwern. I can’t imagine why my
people chose to come here, but I have an invalid sister who cannot
stand a noisy watering-place, and as my leave will soon be up, they
wanted to see something of me before I go back again.’
‘Back again!’ reiterated his companion.
‘Yes, to India; the 30th is at Kerampore at present. A horrid hole; I
couldn’t stand it, and so I got eighteen months’ leave to England.’
‘And is this better than Kerampore?’
‘I hope it will be. I shall pass most of my time fishing. I have hired
that little boat for the season. I have been out since eight o’clock
this morning.’
‘And why did you land at Ines-cedwyn?’
‘I cannot tell you; a happy intuition guided me, I suppose; but the
sands looked inviting, and our arms ached with pulling. However, I
promised to get back to dinner. Do you live far from here?’
‘Bennett and I are staying at her brother Benjamin’s cottage in the
village, half-a-mile from this. It is such a strange little place, you
would laugh to see it, and there is sand on the floor instead of a
carpet.’
‘That must be rather pleasant this warm weather; and I suppose you will
be as little as possible in the house.’
‘Yes; my mother’s orders were that I was to be on the beach all day
long, so Bennett says I am to bring my work and books down here every
day.’
‘That will be charming. I envy you. And this old tumble-down house
makes a convenient retreat from the sun. I wonder to whom it belongs?’
‘To nobody, Martha says,’ replied Fenella; ‘and the people of
Ines-cedwyn won’t come near it at night because they declare that it’s
haunted.’
‘What fools!’ laughed Mr Geoffrey Doyne; ‘they will mistake you for a
ghost if they see you here, Miss Barrington.’
Fenella laughed too.
‘I should like to frighten them and keep them all away,’ she said; ‘and
then I would sweep out one of the rooms, and bring down a table and
some chairs, and make a little house where I could come and sit and
have tea whenever I liked.’
‘And wouldn’t you ask me in to tea sometimes, Miss Barrington, if I
came this way?’ pleaded Mr Doyne.
‘Yes, if you came this way,’ she answered gravely; ‘and little Trap
too. He should have a saucer of milk all to himself, for I think he is
a dear little fellow.’
‘Since you admire him, I wish I could leave him with you, for he is not
a particular favourite of mine,’ said Geoffrey Doyne; ‘he belongs to
one of my sisters, and I think him a great nuisance, especially in the
boat when I am fishing. But as you are good enough to approve of him, I
will bring him over to see you again some day, if I may?’
‘Thank you,’ said Fenella, as she patted the dog’s rough coat. At this
juncture the boatman approached them, touching his hat.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but if we’re to get back to Lynwern by six
o’clock, we’d better be going,’ he said to young Doyne.
‘All right, Tugwell, I am ready. Good bye,’ he continued, turning to
Fenella, who had risen to her feet. ‘I am so glad we have met again; I
hope it won’t be for the last time.’
She did not echo his wish, but she put her hand in his as confidingly
as a child, and then she stooped down again and patted the little dog.
Geoffrey Doyne waited with his hat in his hand until her farewells were
concluded; then, with a bow and a smile, he whistled to Trap and turned
away.
Fenella watched him and the boatman as they strode over the wet,
glistening sand to the boat, which they pushed into the water. Then
the man got on board with the dog under his arm, and with one bound
Geoffrey Doyne went over the gunwale after him. Fenella saw his lithe,
graceful figure standing in the boat as the man pushed off from shore;
his face was turned towards her, and he waved his hat once again in
the air before he took the oar and settled down to his work. She
watched the long powerful strokes that bore the little bark away from
Ines-cedwyn, and when it had rounded the cliffs that hid Lynwern from
her sight, she felt somehow as if the sun had suddenly set, and the
evening air was chilly. And yet there was a glow about her girlish
heart that it had never experienced before--the first consciousness
that comes to a woman of being appreciated by the other sex. Fenella’s
life had not been worse than wasted (as so many school-girls’ lives
are in the present day) by dreaming and talking of possible lovers.
Her ideas on all such subjects were very crude and childlike; still
the womanly instinct was strong within her--the yearning to love and
to be loved--and only needed the touch of Nature to make its presence
known. That first meeting with Geoffrey Doyne caused it to stir in its
sleep--stir as a heavy sleeper might, when some unexpected sound makes
him move and murmur for a moment uneasily, and then sink off to rest
again.
For some time after the young man had left her she sat in the same
place, gazing at the sea, over which the setting sun was now shedding
rays of ineffable glory; sat there, reviewing each glance of his eyes,
each tone of his voice, and thinking how nice and pleasant it was to
have a friend to talk to, and how much she wished that Mr Doyne lived
in Ines-cedwyn, in Benjamin Bennett’s cottage, and she could see and
talk with him every hour of the day--it would make the place so much
less dull for her and Bennett. With this remembrance came the wonder
what her nurse would say when she heard that Fenella had again spoken
to a gentleman who was a stranger to her. But then he wasn’t a stranger
now (so the girl argued); he knew her name, and she knew his--Geoffrey
Doyne! It was a pretty name, Fenella thought; and she said it over
several times softly to herself,--‘_Geoffrey Doyne! Geoffrey Doyne!
Geoffrey Doyne!_’ She was afraid Bennett might be angry and scold a
little, but she quite made up her mind that she must tell her of the
meeting. There was no deceit in Fenella’s nature; if ever she concealed
a thing during her lifetime, it was in deference to an opinion which
she considered superior to her own. She did not relish the idea of
confessing this second piece of imprudence on her part to her old nurse
(because it _was_ the second, Bennett would consider it all the more
culpable); still Fenella never dreamt of _not_ confessing it. It was
nearly seven o’clock when at last she could persuade herself to give
over dreaming and take her way homewards. As she rose and left the
ruined bungalow, she turned and cast a fond look back to it--a look
that seemed to say, ‘I will return--and he will return! I love you for
the happiness you have given me.’
Ah! the blindness of her ignorant heart,--she had better have cursed
each stone of which it was composed. But had an angel barred her
path that evening; had Michael himself, the Head of all the Heavenly
Hosts, stood in her way with his shining sword, and told her it would
be better for her had she laid down and died upon those stones before
she left them, with the joyous hope of return filling her eyes with a
light that had never beamed in them before--that it would be better
for her if the boat that bore Geoffrey Doyne to Lynwern never reached
its destination, but sunk with him and her faint remembrance of him
beneath the waves,--would Fenella have believed even the Archangel
of God Himself? No; she would have called him hard, and cruel, and
unsympathetic; would have accused him of envy and malice, and all
uncharitableness--and clung to her ideal, although there was but the
merest outline of a fancied god to cling to. But, pour the poison once
into the opened veins, and all your efforts to extract it afterwards
will prove unavailing. So is it with a fatal passion. Let it
once--only once--mix with the current of the heart’s blood, and it will
never again be dissevered until that current is stopped by the chill
hand of Death.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER IX.
IN WONDER-LAND!
‘Women are poor things: they are like swallows
numbed in the winter; the hand that warms
them and lifts them up, puts them in the breast
without trouble.’--_Ariadne_.
Fenella reached the cottage with her head filled with the unexpected
encounter that had taken place, and ready to rush into Bennett’s
presence and tell her all about it, but Martha met her at the door with
a portentous countenance that made her at once ask what was wrong.
‘Well, miss, I’m sorry to say as poor ’Liza’s been took worse this
afternoon, and I’ve been obliged to send into Lynwern for the doctor,
and I was just looking up the road to see if there was any signs of
’im.’
‘What is the matter with her?’ exclaimed Fenella. ‘How is she worse?
Why didn’t you send for me?’
‘Well, miss, what would have been the good of that--spoiling your
pleasure and all for nothing, as the less people about in sickness the
better. ’Liza wasn’t so well this mornin’--I see that plain enough;
but this afternoon she went right off her head with pain, and her
leg swelled dreadful, so I thought the sooner Dr Redfern saw ’er the
better. And when Benjamin came home with the cart, I sent him straight
back to Lynwern again to tell the doctor, and I expect it won’t be long
now afore we see ’im.’
‘Will he come in the cart?’ demanded Fenella.
‘Bless you, no, miss. He’ll drive over in his own gig--he’s quite the
gentleman, is Dr Redfern.’
‘Let me go up and see poor Bennett--she would like to see me!’ said the
girl, as she attempted to pass into the cottage.
‘Better not, miss, please, if it’s all the same to you. I give ’er some
tea just now, and she seemed a bit easier, and dropt off to sleep, and
I wouldn’t have ’er roused before the doctor come, for anything.’
So Fenella sat down on one of the wooden chairs in the sanded parlour,
with a heart full of apprehension. But it was all for the sick woman
upstairs; she never thought twice of herself, nor what would become of
her if Bennett were going to be really ill, and she were left stranded
in a place like Ines-cedwyn, far from everybody that belonged to her.
She kept on thinking how the accident could have been avoided, and
blaming herself that it had ever occurred, until the rattle of wheels
outside the cottage door announced the doctor’s arrival from Lynwern,
and Martha obsequiously ushered a portly and authoritative looking
individual through the little parlour and up the narrow stairs.
The doctor threw a glance towards Fenella as he passed her, and started
as he did so. He could not imagine what such a fair, delicate girl
could be doing in Benjamin Bennett’s cottage. But he had no time for
questions before he found himself in the presence of his patient.
‘Hullo! what’s this!’ he exclaimed, as he examined the injured limb.
‘Why, the woman’s broken her leg--what were you thinking of not to have
sent for me before?’
‘Broke her leg, sir!’ cried Martha, who was trembling with fright at
the news. ‘You don’t never mean to go to tell us that! Dear, dear me!
Why, we thought it was nothing worse than a sprained ankle!’
‘Sprained ankle! Rubbish! There’s no more the matter with her ankle
than there is with yours. She’s broken her leg, I tell you. It’s a
simple fracture, and would have been a trifle if you’d sent for me at
first, but I can do nothing with it now.’
‘Lor’ bless me, sir! you don’t mean to say as it’s to be broken all my
life?’ said poor Bennett, with eyes of horror.
‘No, no! Nonsense! But I mean I can’t set it till this swelling has
subsided. Why, your leg’s like a bolster! You must have suffered a
great deal of pain.’
‘Oh, I have, sir--dreadful!’
‘Yes; and you have a bit of fever into the bargain. Now, look here, Mrs
Bennett. You must keep your sister-in-law perfectly quiet and perfectly
still till I’ve got that leg down to its proper size. Don’t let her be
worried about anything, and don’t you talk too much, but feed her on
slops, and leave her alone. I’ll give her a fever-draught now to make
her sleep, and I’ll look in again to-morrow morning. Good evening to
you,’ and Dr Redfern turned on his heel and walked downstairs again. As
he entered the parlour, Fenella was standing by the table, with a face
full of anxiety.
‘Is she better?’ she inquired. ‘Will she soon be well?’
The old doctor looked at her with interest.
‘Yes, yes!’ he said soothingly. ‘Don’t alarm yourself, my dear. She’ll
soon be all right again, and I’m coming to see her to-morrow morning.’
‘Oh, I am so glad! I am so thankful!’ replied Fenella fervently.
Dr Redfern regarded her with curiosity. He did not like to ask her what
possible connection there could be between herself and the woman he had
been summoned to see, but when he had climbed into his gig again, he
stooped down and addressed Martha Bennett, who had accompanied him to
the door.
‘Who’s that young lady in the parlour?’ he whispered.
‘That’s Miss Barrington, sir, ’Liza’s young mistress. She had just
brought her down here for the sea air when she broke her leg in this
terrible manner.’
‘Ah! I see--I understand,’ replied the doctor, as he gathered up the
reins. ‘Well, keep her out of the sick-room. I must have no talking
there.’
‘No, doctor; certainly not. And you’ll be over in the morning, sir?’
‘Yes; about ten o’clock. Good-night.’ And away drove the doctor to
Lynwern.
‘Here’s a sad business, miss,’ said Martha, as she returned to
Fenella’s side. ‘Poor ’Liza’s been and broke her leg, and it can’t even
be splintered till all that nasty swellin’s gone down.’
Fenella’s distress was genuine.
‘Oh, poor Bennett!’ she exclaimed. ‘What pain she must have suffered!
And she wouldn’t let me write to my mother, and now it is too late!’
‘How’s that, miss?’
‘Because mamma leaves London to-morrow morning, and we don’t know where
she is going. She said she would write to us when she was settled, but
that may not be for a long time.’
‘Well, never mind, miss. Your ma wouldn’t have been no manner of use
here, and we’ll take good care of ’Liza, never fear. It’s done, and it
can’t be helped. So, as soon as I’ve made ’er comfortable, I’ll come
down and lay the supper, and then we’ll all go to bed and have a good
night’s rest.’
‘Mayn’t I go and bid Bennett good night?’ pleaded the girl.
‘Well, it must be good-night then, miss, and nothing more, for Dr
Redfern gave particular orders there was to be no talkin’ of any sort,
so you must please to remember that.’
Fenella did remember it. She crept into her nurse’s room on tip-toe,
and gave her one kiss upon the forehead.
Bennett’s eyes sought those of her young lady gratefully, but she was
in too much pain to speak. So there was no opportunity--no possibility,
indeed--of Fenella informing her of the encounter she had had with Mr
Geoffrey Doyne upon the sands.
Dr Redfern was punctual to his appointment the following morning,
and, finding his patient still in a high fever, he stayed and applied
leeches to the inflamed leg; but it was still quite impossible to do
anything towards re-setting the broken bone. He was employed for nearly
an hour in Bennett’s room before he descended again to the parlour,
where Fenella sat by the open casement with her work.
‘And why are you not down on the sands this beautiful morning, young
lady?’ he demanded facetiously, as she rose to greet him.
‘I was waiting, sir, to hear your report of Bennett,’ she answered.
‘Ah! your nurse, is she not?’
‘Yes; she was my nurse, and sometimes I call her so still.’
‘Well, I’m afraid it will be a long job you know--a very long job.
She’s at an awkward age to go tumbling about in this fashion--bones
don’t set so readily after forty as before--and she is rather of an
inflammatory disposition. She’ll have to be kept very quiet, and for
some time too; and I should advise you, Miss Barrington, to write and
let your friends know my opinion at once.’
‘But--but--’ said Fenella, with her eyes downcast, ‘I can’t do that,
because I don’t know where my mother is!’
‘You don’t know where she is!’ repeated the doctor, with surprise.
‘No, sir; for she starts to-day with a party of friends for the
Continent, and will be moving about for some time. She does not even
know herself where she will be, and she told us not to write until we
heard from her.’
‘Just so; but Mrs Barrington could not have anticipated your servant
meeting with such an accident. It makes it very awkward for you, young
lady. What will you do in this outlandish place alone? If you had
only been at Lynwern now, you might have found some amusement; but
this village is dulness itself. Have you no other friends except your
mother?’
Fenella blushed.
‘Oh yes, of course I have; only I don’t know them, and I would rather
not write to them. What could any one do for me?--unless it were to
take me away from Ines-cedwyn; and I would not leave Bennett on any
account. I must nurse her until she is well again.’
‘Very good; if that’s your decision, you must abide by it. You’ll be
quite safe here; there is no doubt of that. Only you must understand
one thing, Miss Barrington. If you wish to see your nurse recover
quickly, you must leave her alone. Don’t go into her room; don’t remain
in the cottage more than you can help--the quieter the house is the
better. Take your work and books down to the beach, and stop there all
day. It’ll do you good as well as her, for you are not over-strong.
Now, I can see you are a sensible girl, and I’m sure you understand
me.’
‘Yes, I understand you perfectly, and I will do all I can to aid her
recovery. When will you be able to set her leg and stop that dreadful
pain?’
‘I hope to do it this evening or to-morrow morning, if the leeches do
their duty. And now I must run away, and don’t let me catch you in the
house when I come back again.’
He drove off laughing, and Fenella felt comforted by the circumstance.
If a doctor laughed, she thought there couldn’t be anything very
serious the matter with his patient. So she took a book from one of
the boxes that Benjamin Bennett had brought over from Lynwern the day
before; and as soon as Martha had given her the midday meal, which she
dignified by the name of dinner, she put on her little black hat and
cape, and strolled down to the sands.
As she went along, did Fenella think of the stranger whom she had met
there the day before? Possibly! but she certainly never expected to see
him again so soon. When she had passed the ruined bungalow, and came
within full sight of the open sea, she was almost as much surprised to
perceive his figure stretched full length on the sands, with his felt
hat over his face to shelter it from the midday sun, as she had been on
the first occasion of their meeting. For why had he come back so soon,
she asked herself--so very soon--to such a stupid place as Ines-cedwyn!
Mr Doyne evidently did not hear her approach--her footsteps left no
sound behind them on the yielding sand--but Trap did. Trap, with the
unerring canine instinct that puts our human perceptiveness to shame,
had pricked his ears for full half-a-minute before the girl appeared;
and as he caught sight of her, he stirred and whined with eagerness to
salute his new acquaintance.
‘What’s that, old boy?’ said Geoffrey Doyne, as he tilted his hat from
off the corner of one eye.
In another moment he was on his feet--bareheaded, and besprinkled with
sand; and Trap, given the cue, was barking vociferously, and wheeling
round in airy circles of delight. Fenella’s cheeks had suddenly bloomed
like the rose.
‘Oh, how funny you look!’ she exclaimed childishly--‘just as if you
were covered with brown sugar!’
‘This is very hard upon me,’ said Mr Doyne; ‘we have met but twice, and
each time your first remark has been, “How funny!”’
Fenella laughed, and sat down on the sand.
‘But so you are, you know; and so is Trap--the funniest little dog I
ever saw. Just look at him now, all covered with sea-weed.’
‘Yes; I ventured to bring him over again to see you, Miss Barrington,
since you were kind enough to give me leave; and we have been waiting
for you such a time, more than two hours. Haven’t we, Trap?’
‘But how did you know I should be here at all?’ demanded Fenella, with
open eyes. ‘I didn’t say so, Mr Doyne.’
‘Perhaps not; but I _hoped_ so, and you see my hope has come true. “All
things come to him who knows how to wait.”’
‘But where is your dear little boat?’ said Fenella. ‘I don’t see it
anywhere.’
‘The dear little boat, as you call it, is in harbour at Lynwern. I rode
over to Ines-cedwyn this morning.’
‘You rode!’ exclaimed Fenella--‘on a horse?’
The young man laughed.
‘The Hussars are not in the habit, generally speaking, of riding
anything but horses, Miss Barrington.’
‘No, no; of course! How stupid you must think me,’ said the girl,
colouring; ‘but I have been so long shut up at Ansprach, that I seem to
know nothing.’
‘What do they ride at Ansprach?’ he asked--‘cows, or donkeys?’
‘Oh! now you are laughing at me, Mr Doyne; but I suppose I deserve it.
Why, we never rode anything at Ansprach, of course. There was nothing
but the convent there. You never saw nuns riding on donkeys, did you?
How funny they would look!’
‘Or a fat old lady abbess on a cow; that would be funnier still,’
suggested Geoffrey Doyne.
Fenella took all he said _au pied de la lettre_.
‘We did not call them “lady abbesses” at Ansprach,’ she answered; ‘they
were called “reverend mother,” or “chère mère;” and they were very good
to me--oh! very, very good. I shall never forget all their kindness as
long as I live.’
Her loyal heart would not permit even a shadow of ridicule to be cast
upon its absent friends, and Geoffrey Doyne saw and appreciated the
feeling.
‘You were happy at the convent,’ he said.
‘Yes, I was, in a way,’ replied Fenella, with some hesitation; ‘but
school can never be quite like home, you know; and five years was a
long time to be away from my mother.’
‘Do you mean to say that you never came home for five years?’ demanded
the young man, in surprise.
Fenella was afraid she had gone too far; she had no wish to betray her
mother.
‘It was inconvenient,’ she stammered; ‘I mean, it was impossible for
mamma to have me home. She was busy, you see, and moving about, and I
had my education to finish.’
‘And now you have only been with her for two days,’ said Geoffrey Doyne.
The girl bit her lip to prevent the tears starting to her eyes, and
looked nervously away from her companion.
‘How warm the sun is,’ she said irrelevantly, ‘and how lazy it makes
one feel. I meant to be very studious to-day and read Molière, but I
don’t seem inclined to do anything.’
Geoffrey Doyne knew too much of the world to be taken in by her
apparent indifference. As she tried to divert his attention from
the subject under discussion, he was summing up the absent mother’s
character. ‘Selfish and worldly,’ he thought, ‘and jealous of her
daughter’s budding attractions. And so she may well be, by Jove!’ But
all he said was,--
‘Were you going to read, Miss Barrington? I was going to draw. What
two busy people we are. Happy thought! suppose you read to me whilst I
sketch that fishing smack.’
‘But my book is in French,’ said Fenella. ‘_Le Malade Imaginaire_, by
Molière.’
‘All the better! I love plays, and French plays above all others.’
‘Do you speak French, then?’
‘I do. Not quite so well, perhaps, as a young lady fresh from a
convent school; but still I speak it.’
‘And will you speak it with me?’ cried Fenella, clasping her hands.
‘That will be delightful. I cannot bear English, it is so rough on the
tongue.’
‘I will speak anything with you that you will allow me,’ said Geoffrey
Doyne; and from that moment most of their conversation was carried on
in French.
Fenella commenced chattering it at once; all her hesitation vanished as
she indulged in the language most familiar to her, and a new vivacity
appeared to add a charm to her conversation. Her speaking looks, her
little foreign gestures, her volubility, delighted her companion. He
seemed to have suddenly called a statue to life by his ‘happy thought.’
‘Let me see your drawing,’ commenced Fenella rapidly. ‘Ah! how
beautiful it must be to draw like that! It is quite perfect--it is
_ravissante_. Now I, for my part, cannot draw at all--is it not stupid?
I only sing and play. Do you sing, Mr Doyne?’
‘Yes! I am fonder of singing than drawing; but I cannot get much
practice out in India.’
‘How is that?’
‘We move about so often, and just as some lady has got into the way of
accompanying my songs, she is whisked off to another station.’
‘How provoking! I have been taught to accompany from sight, and can do
it easily. If we lived near each other, I could always accompany you,
and sing with you too. Would it not be pleasant?’
‘It would be too delightful. How I should like to hear your voice.
Couldn’t you sing me a song whilst I draw?’
Fenella drew backward.
‘Oh no! not here; every one would hear me.’
‘Where is every one?’ said Mr Doyne, smiling, as he looked from right
to left at the solitude that surrounded them. ‘But never mind, we
will go to the landslip together some day, and there, perhaps, I may
persuade you to sing me a song. Have you walked over there yet?’
‘No; but Martha Bennett says it is very pretty just now--all covered
with apple blossoms.’
‘Yes; it was an orchard of wild apple trees, and one night the whole
concern tumbled into the sea. Half of the trees are uprooted, but they
blossom still. Shall we go and picnic there some day?’
‘What is a picnic?’
‘A dinner in the open air, under the trees. I will bring it over in my
boat from Lynwern, if you’ll be there to eat it with me.’
‘Oh, how lovely it would be--a dinner in the woods!’ cried Fenella.
‘And Martha gives me such nasty dinners too,’ she added confidentially,
‘bacon and beans--only fancy!--and Irish stew--oh, not at all nice! I
don’t like them. But I am not sure if Bennett will let me dine at the
landslip with you.’
‘Never mind Bennett; she’s not to be worried, you know’ (for Fenella
had given him the account of her servant’s increased illness), ‘and I
will take the very greatest care of you, Miss Barrington.’
‘I know you’ll do _that_,’ she said, with bright, confident eyes.
The young man gazed at her admiringly; at that moment there was no more
guile in his soul than hers.
‘How much you looked like poor Edith when you said that,’ he
ejaculated, with a sigh.
‘Who was Edith, Mr Doyne?’
‘She was my sister--my favourite sister--and she died two years ago,
whilst I was in India.’
‘Oh, that was very sad! Cannot you bear to talk of her? Shall I say no
more?’
‘Say what you like. I don’t think you _could_ wound me. But the subject
is a very tender one.’
‘You loved each other?’ said Fenella softly.
‘We did--most truly; as much as a brother and sister ever did. She was
my world, and since she has left me I have had none.’
‘But you will meet her again?’
‘Yes, I feel that--I _know_ it--but these life partings are very
bitter, and heaven seems such a long way off.’
‘You have other sisters?’
‘Yes; I have three; but none like Edith. She was my _confidante_, my
counsellor, my true friend. I went to her in all my difficulties. She
saved me from so much folly and weakness. No one cares for me as she
did, and she has left me. Sometimes I feel as if it were too hard to
bear.’
He bent his head over his sketching-block as she spoke, that she might
not see the moisture that bedewed his eyes; for Geoffrey Doyne’s nature
was a very sentimental one--weak, emotional, and easily impressed for
either right or wrong. His soul was filled with a sort of poetical,
dreamy religion, that on occasions could raise him to the heights of
enthusiasm, but was seldom strong enough to shield him in the hour of
temptation.
Fenella longed to comfort him, but she was too inexperienced to know
how. She could only suggest gently,--
‘But your mother, Mr Doyne--you have still your mother to go to in your
trouble?’
He shook his head.
‘My mother died before I can remember her. Had she lived she might have
been to me what my sister was. But I am not happy enough to have a
mother!’
Fenella was shocked that she had touched on such a theme, but she could
not retrieve the error. At the idea of his unhappiness and loneliness,
so akin to her own, her soft eyes beamed with the tenderest sympathy.
Geoffrey Doyne, sitting beside her on the sand, with his handsome
profile clearly defined against the sky, looked such an embodiment of
melancholy that her heart yearned to tell him that she too knew what it
was to lose a mother. He seemed to discern her feelings, for in another
moment he had turned to address her.
‘I know that you pity me,’ he said. ‘I am sure that you can understand
what it is to look for love and not to find it for--(forgive me if I am
too bold)--you too are _motherless!_’
The girl did not reply, but her hand dropped at her side. He laid his
own upon it.
‘Will you come down here to-morrow?’ he asked. ‘Will you let me hear
your voice again and see your face? Will you let me feel if my troubles
are too hard to bear--that some one will be here for me to tell them
to?’
‘Yes’ said Fenella simply. ‘I will be here.’
Had Geoffrey Doyne entertained a deep design against her heart,
he could not have thought of a better plan by which to effect its
subjugation.
‘Come and tell me everything,’ she said softly, ‘if it comforts you in
the least degree to talk; for I too am lonely and--_very sad!_’
He raised the hand he held lightly to his lips, and laid it by her side
again.
‘That is a compact,’ he replied. ‘We both need consolation. We will try
and console each other.’
He looked at her. There was no thought of coquetry in her heart.
All was clear there as the light of heaven. Yet with that innocent
invitation she had sealed her fate.
Sympathy--pity--a kindred grief! Could three ties more powerful be
found to knit two young hearts in a bond that should never more be
broken? Many meet and are attracted to each other in the midst of
merriment, to the sounds of music and laughter, midst the braying of
trumpets and the proud revelry of success. But such may part as easily.
Those only who are drawn together by a mutual sorrow find it impossible
to free themselves.
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER X.
THE DAWN BREAKS.
‘Let me but bear your love--I’ll bear your cares.’
_Shakespeare_.
Geoffrey Doyne’s father was a country gentleman, and a justice of the
peace for Buckinghamshire. He was a selfish old person, who seldom
consulted anything but his own inclinations, and as he professed a
strong aversion to the sea-side, he never accompanied his family
in their summer excursions. As Margaret Doyne, however, his eldest
daughter, was quite old enough to take the charge of her younger
sisters, the absence of their paternal parent was considered rather in
the light of a blessing than otherwise, especially as he was wealthy,
and never denied them the means of enjoying themselves so long as they
did not trouble him. They were not left entirely alone either. Their
elder brother, Michael Doyne, who was in the law, ran down occasionally
from town to see how they were getting on at Lynwern; and now they
had their handsome Geoffrey at home for the next month or six weeks,
to act as their chaperon in such excursions as they could not take by
themselves. But Geoffrey had not given satisfaction in this particular.
He was continually going away for five and six hours at a time, rowing
about in the boat he had hired--and what was worse, he refused to take
his sisters with him.
The first time that Michael Doyne visited them after Geoffrey had
arrived at Lynwern, he found Margaret full of complaints of the younger
brother’s selfishness and neglect.
‘It really is too bad of him, Michael,’ she said. ‘He knows how tied I
am to home, and he might take Cissy and Amy out with him occasionally.
But he goes away by himself, morning, noon, and evening. He might just
as well not be in the house at all for what we see of him.’
‘Where does he go to?’ inquired Mr Doyne.
‘I am sure I don’t know. He says he goes fishing, but he never brings
home any fish. He talks a good deal about Ines-cedwyn, a village a
few miles from here, so I suppose he goes there; but he is extremely
reticent about his doings.’
‘I hope he’s not got into any scrape,’ remarked her brother.
‘Scrape! my dear Michael, what sort of a scrape?’
‘There is but one sort of scrape for a dreamy fellow like Geoffrey,
Margaret, and that’s a feminine one!’
‘My _dear_ Michael,’ said Miss Doyne reproachfully, ‘I know there used
to be trouble enough with Geoffrey about such things in the days gone
by, but surely there’s no fear of it now that he’s engaged to Jessie
Robertson.’
‘What has his engagement to do with it? He doesn’t care for the girl.
He never did!’
‘Oh, Michael, it’s terrible to think of! What prospect of happiness can
there be for him in such a case?’
‘As much as matrimony usually brings, my dear. I really don’t think it
much signifies how it begins. It generally ends in the same way,--we
have citations served for upwards of four hundred divorce motions for
the next sessions!’
‘Pray don’t mention such horrid things to me. You had better talk to
Geoffrey, and find out what mischief he is after now. That would be
much more to the purpose.’
‘Not I! Geoff is old enough to manage his own affairs without any
assistance from me. But I’ll put him in mind of his responsibilities
with regard to Miss Robertson, in case he should have forgotten them?’
Accordingly, at the next meal they took together, Michael Doyne
broached the subject. He was the last man in the world who should have
done so. He was a hard, practical lawyer, who looked at everything
in life from a strictly business point of view, and had no sympathy
with romance of any kind. Consequently, he and his younger brother had
seldom been able to get on together.
‘By the way, Geoffrey,’ he commenced, as he pushed the decanter across
the table, ‘I dined with the Robertsons last week, and Jessie was very
anxious to ascertain how much longer we intended remaining at Lynwern,
and if you were going to stay with them in Blenheim Square on your
return.’
‘Well, yes; I suppose I shall. I’ve told her so all along,’ replied
Geoffrey indifferently; ‘but we don’t want to leave Lynwern yet,
surely, when the warm weather is just setting in.’
‘Margaret means to remain over June, but her plans need not interfere
with yours.’
‘I never supposed they would.’
‘And I really think you owe something to Jessie Robertson. She appeared
hurt that you had not seen her on your way through from Paris; and,
considering you had been absent for three months, it was rather
peculiar.’
‘I like to be peculiar,’ rejoined the younger brother; ‘but, joking
apart, what would have been the use of it? The London season has not
begun yet, there’s nothing stirring in town, and I shall have more than
enough of it before it’s over.’
‘Upon my word, Geoff,’ interposed Amy, ‘I must say you are cool. Fancy,
speaking in that way of the girl you are engaged to marry! Jessie ought
to feel flattered. After three months’ absence, you have not sufficient
interest in seeing her to make you halt twelve hours on your journey.’
‘My dear Amy, men don’t treat these matters in the ridiculous fashion
of your sex. Jessie and I must get used to separation, else what should
we do when I return to India next October?’
‘And is not the wedding to take place before you go?’ inquired
Margaret. ‘When Mrs Robertson spoke to me on the subject a few weeks
back, she seemed to look upon it as a settled thing.’
Geoffrey’s face flamed with excitement.
‘Most certainly not!’ he exclaimed emphatically; ‘and I made Mrs
Robertson understand that thoroughly when I consented to the
engagement. It was on the condition that we were not to be married till
I returned from India again. The old woman knows that as well as I do.’
‘And for how long are you likely to be away this time?’ demanded
Michael Doyne.
‘I don’t know--two or three years--what does it matter? Any way, I’m
not going to lose my liberty before I start.’
‘Poor Jessie,’ said Cissy, laughing. ‘I wonder how much of your heart
will be left by the time you return to her.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ replied her brother crossly, as he turned away.
‘But at any rate, Geoffrey, whenever the marriage is to take place, you
are engaged to the girl, remember that; and you can’t get out of it,’
said Michael Doyne.
‘Who wants to get out of it?’ asked Geoffrey.
‘I don’t wish even to suggest such a thing, my dear fellow; but it is
as well under the circumstances to keep the family in good-humour,
isn’t it?’
‘I am not going out of my way to do it,’ said Geoffrey; ‘and if they
begin to worry me, I shall cut the whole business.’
‘They will never let you do that,’ replied his brother quietly; ‘they
are too proud of the connection. The old lady boasts of her daughter’s
engagement wherever she goes.’
An exclamation not too complimentary to the ‘old lady’ burst from
Geoffrey’s lips.
‘Whatever you feel on the subject of your engagement, I wish it
wouldn’t make you forget yourself,’ remarked Margaret coldly.
‘I beg your pardon, Margaret, but it is enough to make any fellow swear
to hear that his private affairs are being canvassed in this way. Why
were women born with tongues?’
‘It’s a pity you have one yourself, or you couldn’t have entered into a
contract that appears so distasteful to you!’
‘There you go! that’s the way you women run on! Who ever said it was
distasteful to me? Now, I suppose you’ll have that piece of news all
over Lynwern before to-morrow morning!’ retorted her brother.
‘It’s no use quarrelling in this fashion,’ said Michael Doyne; ‘and as
for Lynwern being informed of your private affairs, Geoffrey, you must
know your sisters have no acquaintance here to tell them to. But the
danger, I fancy, lies more in reticence than in repetition. If you give
yourself out publicly as an engaged man, no harm will be done.’
He looked at the younger man so steadfastly as he pronounced the words,
that Geoffrey immediately suspected he knew something of the truth.
‘How can I give myself out as an engaged man,’ he answered, colouring,
‘when I know no one to give myself out to? Do you want me to make a
confidant of Tugwell, the boatman; or of the landlady of the lodgings?’
Michael noticed the increase of colour in his brother’s face, though he
professed not to do so.
‘Of course,’ he replied, in an indifferent tone, ‘if you know no one,
it cannot signify. But I think it would please the Robertsons if you
were to run up to town for a couple of days to see them, even before
you leave Lynwern. It would look polite and attentive, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes; I’ll think about it,’ replied Geoffrey, as he rose from table.
It was luncheon they had been sitting over, and the hour was two
o’clock.
‘What are you going to do this afternoon?’ asked Michael.
‘Fish,’ replied the other laconically.
‘You seem to do nothing but fish,’ said his brother. ‘You have been
in Lynwern nearly three weeks, and Margaret tells me that during that
while you have only taken your sisters out twice.’
‘I came down here for sport,’ replied Geoffrey. ‘I didn’t come for the
purpose of towing a lot of girls about! I can’t go pottering over rocks
looking for anemones and all that sort of rubbish. And when I don’t
fish, I like to ride about the country.’
‘Well, I suppose you must have your own way,’ said Michael, ‘but don’t
get into any scrapes. By the way, is there much fish at Ines-cedwyn?’
Geoffrey’s handsome face crimsoned.
‘Why--at Ines-cedwyn?’ he stammered.
‘Only that it’s the nearest point, and Margaret says you have spoken of
the place.’
‘Oh yes, yes, there are! it’s a fishing hamlet, you know; but I go for
the pleasure of the thing, you know, and don’t care so much about the
spoil.’ And with a laugh that was intended to be careless, Geoffrey
Doyne strode away. The lawyer looked after him till he was out of sight.
‘Whether you care about the spoil or not, you’ve got a fish more there
than you’ve any right to have, my boy,’ he thought; ‘however, it’s no
affair of mine. You have a wonderful faculty for getting into scrapes,
and you must learn to get out of them the best way you can.’
Meanwhile Geoffrey took his way down to the harbour, where Tugwell was
waiting for him with the little boat, in the steerage of which lay a
hamper which the boatman had been previously ordered to fetch from the
Lynwern Hotel. It was a glorious afternoon in May; not a cloud flecked
the pure blue of the sky, not a ripple showed itself on the surface of
the water, and Geoffrey had meant to be so happy, for he had at last
persuaded Fenella Barrington to picnic with him on the landslip, and
was going to meet her there. But the unpleasant conversation that had
taken place over the luncheon-table had somewhat embittered his cup of
pleasure.
He had now for more than a fortnight held almost daily intercourse with
the girl at Ines-cedwyn. With the exception of a few occasions on which
he had done duty with his sisters, he had met her every afternoon upon
the golden sands, and talked with her until the evening shadows warned
them to seek their respective homes. They had become such fast friends
that he had spoken to her of almost everything that passed through his
mind--except his engagement with Jessie Robertson.
Several times it had been on the tip of his tongue to tell her, and
something had prevented him. Something in the tender light of the clear
eyes bent upon him, something in the frank confidence with which he was
treated, made him reserve his own. The words would not come; they had
died upon his very lips. He had told himself it was not necessary that
Fenella should learn the fact; that she was but an acquaintance from
whom he should soon again be parted, and perhaps for ever; there was no
need to cast a shadow on their pleasant intercourse. But something in
his brother’s way of mentioning the subject that afternoon had placed
it in a different light before him. It had opened his eyes, perhaps, to
his own feelings in the matter; any way, he had come to the conclusion
that he owed it to his girl friend and himself to tell her the truth.
But the idea made him very melancholy; it did more, it made him nervous.
Tugwell did not know what had come to the master that afternoon. His
young muscular arms seemed to have lost half their power, and his
tongue--generally so voluble and pleasant--to have relapsed into
silence. The journey to Ines-cedwyn took half again as long as usual,
and when at last they pulled up alongside of the landslip, the boatman
had had a great deal more than his fair share of labour.
Geoffrey Doyne, ever generous, seemed to acknowledge the fact, for he
was unusually liberal that afternoon.
‘Pull the boat round to the cliffs, Tugwell,’ he said, ‘and when I want
you again I’ll go up to the public house and give you a call. I don’t
think I shall be going back till this evening.’
And then he carried the basket of provisions up to a grassy knoll, and
sat down under the shade of an apple-tree, and wondered--whilst the
white and pink blossoms fell about his handsome head, and crowned him
like a young god of Spring--in what words he had best break the news of
his engagement to Fenella.
Meanwhile the girl, ardently anxious for the moment that should bring
her face to face with him again, was standing in Eliza Bennett’s
bedroom looking out through the honeysuckled casement. The servant
was now convalescent, that is to say, she could sit up in bed, but Dr
Redfern would not yet permit her to put her foot to the ground.
‘And just to fancy, Miss Fenella,’ she was saying, ‘that it is a
fortnight and more since we came to Ines-cedwyn, and here I am still in
bed like a log, and of no use to any one. It’s enough to make a woman
lose all patience--it really is!’
‘But, Bennett, you are so much better; you will soon be able to get
about again now,’ replied Fenella. ‘The doctor said this morning that
another week or two would see you in the garden.’
‘It is not of myself I’m thinking, my dear; it’s of you! I shouldn’t
fret if I’d to lie here another month, for Martha’s as good as she can
be to me; but it’s so lonely for you, poor lamb, and that’s what puts
me out. Whatever you do with yourself all day long in this solitary
place, I can’t think.’
Fenella turned scarlet.
‘Oh! I am quite happy Bennett--indeed I am; and I think it is the
nicest place I ever was in.’
‘Do you, now? Well, you haven’t seen much as yet, that’s true; but
though Ines-cedwyn’s my native village, I never heard anybody speak of
it like that. And do you find anything to amuse yourself with here,
Miss Fenella? any shells, or sea-weed, or such like? I am afraid you
must be so terribly dull.’
‘No, Bennett, I am not dull; I assure you I am not.’
‘Martha tells me you’re so good, you give next to no trouble; but you
mustn’t keep out of the house for our sakes, you know, miss, though the
beach is pleasanter than the cottage this weather, I daresay. What do
you do there? Do you take your books and work on the sands?’
Fenella looked more and more uneasy as the catechising proceeded, but
she answered,--
‘Yes, Bennett, always--I work there every day.’
‘And do you ever get any one to speak to, miss? I know there’s only
boatmen and children about here, but do you ever have a talk with them
about the weather and the fishing?’
‘Yes, often.’
‘That’s right. I’m glad you’re not too proud for that, Miss Fenella,
for it’s dull work never to hear the sound of one’s own tongue. And you
can talk with whom you will in Ines-cedwyn. You can’t come to any harm
here. But there’s another thing I want to say to you, miss. Don’t you
think it’s strange we’ve never had a line from your dear mamma?’
At these words Fenella’s face lowered. She had ceased to think of her
mother with the softness with which she had regarded her all her life
hitherto. She recognised the utter want of maternal feeling which had
condemned her to her present position, and it had hardened her heart
against her. Others loved her--strangers offered her sympathy and
kindness. Why did her mother alone withhold them from her?
‘I did think we should have heard from her before now,’ resumed Eliza
Bennett, ‘though I know the mistress hates letter-writing above
everything. But she promised to write from Mentone, and she must be
there by this time.’
‘I daresay she has forgotten all about us,’ said Fenella, shrugging
her shoulders. Perhaps she means to leave us here for the rest of our
lives.’
‘Oh! don’t say such things, miss, please, of your dear mamma--as if
she’d ever go to do such a thing!’
‘I shouldn’t much mind if she did,’ rejoined Fenella blithely. ‘I am so
happy in Ines-cedwyn, I never wish to go away again.’
Eliza Bennett regarded the girl with astonishment.
‘Lor’, Miss Fenella!’ she exclaimed, ‘who’d have thought to hear you
talk like that? But I’m glad you’re happy here, my dear, for I’m sure
the place agrees with you. You’re not the same young lady that came
here. I don’t believe your mamma would know you again. You’re getting
quite stout, and blooming like a rose.’
‘That’s because Martha takes such good care of me,’ replied Fenella,
blushing; ‘and what do you think she has done to-day, Bennett?--made me
a lovely little pie and a plum-cake, and I am going to have a picnic
up at the landslip as soon as she has packed them up for me.’
‘Then you’d better go at once, miss, for it’s past your dinner-hour
already.’
‘I know it is, but I don’t feel hungry,--the air, and the sky, and the
sea are all so beautiful. I am too happy to be hungry. Kiss me, dear
old Bennett! I think you love me, don’t you? Ah! how I wish--’
‘What do you wish, my dear?’ demanded the servant wistfully. She could
not understand the new mood that had come over her young mistress.
Fenella seemed to have altered in some way, and yet she could not say
how. ‘What is it you want, miss? is it anything I can do for you?’ she
repeated.
‘No, no, Bennett; it is nothing--it was only a thought. I have
everything I want in this world--I wish for nothing more. Good-bye! I
must run now and get my basket,’ and in another moment the servant
heard her go singing gaily down the pathway to the sea.
‘Bless her heart!’ she said to herself; ‘what a little it takes to make
us happy when we’re young. But I never thought the dear child would
have got over it so soon.’
But though Fenella sang as she went to meet Geoffrey Doyne at the
landslip, and her face was crimsoned with expectation and her grey
eyes beamed with excitement, she was not entirely at her ease. Her
interviews with him had become the greatest joy of her life, but they
were overshadowed by the fact of their being kept secret. Fenella’s
nature was open as the day--to conceal anything was a real pain to her;
but circumstances had made her refrain from mentioning Geoffrey Doyne’s
name at the cottage until it had become impossible to do so--until the
very thought of him was sacred, and had the power to cover her with
confusion. Yet still the girl was unconscious why it should be so;
still she spoke of him to her own heart as only the dearest friend she
had ever met.
Three weeks of constant and unbroken intercourse--what can they not
effect in the mind of a young and susceptible woman! For they had
actually been potent enough to do this: without her knowing it,
they had transformed Fenella Barrington from a child to a woman,
and accident had but to tear the veil from her eyes to make her see
herself as she really was. During these three weeks Geoffrey Doyne had
unbosomed himself of his deepest thoughts to her, had shown her the
richest treasures of his freshly educated mind. They had conversed
together of poetry and nature and art and religion--the misty,
emotional religion which he affected, made up of heaven and angels,
and everlasting love--that species of ecstatic impossible paradise
to which lovers who are parted by fate in this world, are so fond of
looking forward, and the half child, half woman had listened as to
the utterances of a god, and gradually warmed to life and awakened
to the call of nature beneath the influence of his sweet words and
sweeter voice. He had never spoken to her of love--natural, earthly
love--or her suspicions with regard to her own state of mind might have
been aroused. He only spoke of friendship--an immutable, indivisible
friendship, which was to last for time and eternity and prove the
salvation of them both. He had prayed her to stand in the place of his
lost sister Edith to him; to be his consoler and counsellor and second
self; to become, in fact, that which it is impossible for a woman to be
without being more--the bosom friend of a man!
But Fenella was too unworldly to doubt the reason of his proposal; she
saw nothing absurd in the idea; it appeared both holy and feasible to
her, and had become the gladness of her life. She never stopped to
ask herself how long it would last, and what she and Geoffrey Doyne
would do when he left Lynwern, and she went back to her mother in South
Audley Street. She only knew that the present was in her grasp, and it
was beautiful; and she went to meet him at the landslip without a doubt
but that the horizon of her life would always be as blue and smiling as
it was now. There was only one little cloud to mar her pleasure--she
wished that Geoffrey would come up to the cottage and tell Bennett that
they knew each other. Perhaps the gloom in his own mind that day made
him more readily recognise that all was not quite smooth with her, for
after the first hot flush that rose to Fenella’s face on greeting him
had subsided, he asked her if anything was the matter.
‘Nothing! what should be the matter,’ she answered, ‘when the sun is
shining so splendidly, and the birds are singing all round us, and
we are going to eat our dinner together under these beautiful trees?
There is only one thing that could make me happier.’
‘There now; I knew there was one thing. You see you can’t deceive me,
Fenella,’ he said, as he gazed into her speaking face. ‘Come, now; what
is it?’
‘You will call me silly, Mr Doyne, because we have spoken of it so
often before; but I _do_ wish that Bennett knew that we met each other.’
‘Why don’t you tell her, then?’
‘But perhaps she might be angry, and never let me see you again!’ said
Fenella, with a drooping lip.
‘Ah! that’s it, you see; it’s Bennett _versus_ Geoffrey Doyne, and the
weaker must go to the wall.’
‘Oh, don’t talk so; _you_ won’t go to the wall!’ said Fenella, as she
unpacked the baskets and spread out their contents upon the grass. Her
childish delight at the liberal provision her friend had made for their
comfort--at the delicate raised pie, and the cold chicken and salad,
and the bottle of champagne--for awhile lulled the whispers of her
uneasy conscience.
‘Oh, how kind of you, Mr Doyne! What a beautiful dinner--and tarts too!
Who told you I liked raspberry puffs? And here is a box of chocolate
creams! You _are_ a good boy! I shall never, never forget our picnic
under the landslip trees.’
She spread the cloth which he had brought with him, and laid out the
meal, with all the delight of a child at play.
‘And now, where will you sit?’ she said, when her preparations were
concluded. ‘Will you stay where you are, and I will sit opposite to
you? That is right; now aren’t we cosy sitting here, one at each end of
the table, just like Martha and Benjamin at dinner--eh, Mr Doyne?’
She threw a gleeful glance at him as she spoke, and caught the troubled
expression in his eyes. In a moment her own face became overcast.
‘Now it is my turn to ask what is the matter!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have I
said anything wrong? Is it I who have made you sad?’
‘No, indeed, Fenella; it is not in your power to do that; but let us
have our dinner first, child, and talk afterwards.’
He exerted himself to be cheerful during the meal that followed, but it
was the girl that chattered and laughed the most of the two. She was so
happy to think that Bennett was better, and the sun shone, and Geoffrey
was there. To her innocence it appeared as if life could never give her
anything better than she possessed at that moment. When the dinner was
concluded, he asked her permission to light a cigar. He felt somehow as
if he could speak to her better if he were not obliged to look in her
face; and Fenella took out a strip of work which she was embroidering,
and sat down by his side.
‘Why do you think that Bennett would be angry at your meeting me upon
the sands?’ he asked abruptly, when there had been the silence of a
couple of minutes between them.
‘Oh, I don’t know--perhaps she might not be; but she was angry because
I spoke to you at Calais, you remember? She said it wasn’t proper, and
that no young lady would do such a thing.’
‘I know she did! She was speaking from a conventional point of view,
and in the main she was right. But with respect to our particular case:
I suppose you know _why_ she would be afraid to give her sanction to
our meeting each other, and _what_ she would be afraid of.’
‘No, I don’t,’ replied Fenella frankly.
‘Well, it’s very foolish, of course, but it’s the general idea, and
Bennett is only a servant. Her objection to your meeting me in this way
would be simply because she would imagine I should make love to you.’
‘But you don’t,’ said the girl, with her eyes fixed on her work.
‘No, I don’t; and I want to tell you for what reason. I want to explain
to you, my dear little friend, why her fears would be perfectly
groundless, why--in fact, _I could not_ make love to you even if
I wished to do so; and that is because I am already engaged to be
married. And so I’m as harmless a fellow, you see, as you could meet in
a day’s march!’
Fenella did not answer him. She never stirred, nor looked up, and her
face was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, so that he could not see her
eyes. But after a pause, she said, in a low voice,--
‘I don’t quite understand!’
‘Don’t you? I thought I spoke plainly enough. I said (what I wish I had
not to say) that I have entered into an engagement from which I see no
means of extricating myself. I told you once, dear, that I was not a
happy man. This is the chief cause of my unhappiness: I am engaged to
a girl whom I don’t love, and can’t love, and never shall love, and all
my life is spoiled in consequence.’
A look of divine pity beamed from Fenella’s eyes.
‘Oh, I understand--I comprehend,’ she cried. ‘You were betrothed to her
as a child, and now you find you cannot love her! I have heard of such
things before, and I am very, very sorry.’
She dropped her work as she spoke, and came to his side, and placed one
of her hands upon his own.
‘Is there no way out of such a trouble?’ she asked softly.
The young man’s hand closed upon hers like a vice.
‘None, dear child,’ he answered; ‘there is no remedy for it. But you do
not quite understand me, Fenella. This betrothal was my own doing. I
was drawn into it, it is true, against my better judgment, but I sealed
it of my free will. I am the only one to blame in the matter, and that
is what makes it so hard to bear!’
‘Tell me all about it,’ said the girl, with trembling lips.
‘When I came home from India a year ago, I paid a visit to the house of
Dr Robertson, an old friend of my father’s. He has seven daughters, and
I had known them all from children, and thought no more of romping with
them than with my own sisters. But one day, to my astonishment, the
mother, Mrs Robertson, informed me that her daughter Jessie had grown
to care so much for me, that if I didn’t mean to marry her, she would
break her heart. I was very angry at the idea at first, but they talked
me over, and as I didn’t want to make a quarrel between the families,
and they all seemed to think I ought to propose to the girl, I did so,
and it was settled. But I have been very wretched about it ever since.’
‘Is she pretty?’ asked Fenella, in a low voice.
‘Yes, rather!’ replied Geoffrey, in the depreciating tone in which a
man of the world invariably speaks of one woman’s charms to another.
‘And fond of you?’ went on the girl.
‘Oh yes! there is no question of that. She is very much attached to
me,’ he said, somewhat conceitedly.
‘And yet you don’t love her!’
‘I do not, Fenella. I never did love her--in the way you mean--and now
I seem less able to do it than before. We are utterly unsuited to each
other. We can never be happy together, and I feel that I would rather
die than marry her.’
‘It is very sad for both of you,’ said Fenella quickly, and she said no
more.
Geoffrey Doyne was annoyed at her reticence. Had she reproached or
blamed him; had her voice but faltered, or a few tears fallen on her
embroidery, she would have afforded him an opening to tell her what
a dangerous charm her society possessed for him, and how (since he
had known her) the thought of his engagement to Jessie Robertson had
become more objectionable every day. But Fenella had no such ordinary
female artifices at hand by which to force a confession of love. She
was afraid of betraying what she felt to him; and her only refuge was
in silence. But as she sat there, apparently absorbed in her work,
the music of the birds, and the waves, and the summer breeze sighing
through the branches, seemed to have floated far away, and her head was
filled with a whirring, birring sound instead, and her heart felt cold
and heavy, and sick to death with a longing that was akin to despair.
At last the silence that reigned between them became insupportable.
Geoffrey Doyne had twisted and turned about upon the grass, and
whistled, and done everything he could think of to attract her
attention, without success.
‘Are we never going to talk to each other again?’ he exclaimed
impatiently. ‘I shall wish I had bitten out my tongue before I
mentioned this abominable business to you, if it is to make any
difference to our pleasant intercourse.’
At the sound of his voice Fenella roused herself.
‘What nonsense you are talking,’ she said, with affected gaiety, as she
threw her work to one side. ‘You make no allowance for people wanting
to rest their tongues a little after dinner. Now, I suppose, the next
thing we must do is to pack up this hamper again. Well, Mr Lazy, am
I to do all by myself? Give me those plates, please; they must go at
the bottom, or the eatables will be spoiled; and I will put Martha’s
little pie and cake in with them, lest she should ask me what I had for
dinner. You must give them to Tugwell, Mr Doyne. They will do for his
supper, or he will keep them for his little children. That is done. Oh,
how heavy it is! I don’t think I could carry it if I tried.’
‘No, no; of course you could not,’ said Geoffrey Doyne. ‘We will leave
it here, and Tugwell will fetch it down to the boat himself. But what
is the matter with you, Fenella? are you cold?’ For the girl had sat
suddenly down on the grass again, and was shivering.
‘I don’t know; I think I am. It seems a little chilly,’ she answered
vaguely.
‘We have been sitting still too long, that is the fact,’ said the young
man. ‘We must not forget that, though it is so warm, it is not summer.
Let us walk along the shore, Fenella; a little exercise will do us
good.’
He stretched out his hand to her as he spoke, and she suffered him
to lead her away. The road they chose was not the one that led to
Ines-cedwyn, but lay along a barren shore on the left side of the
landslip. Here, after the space of a few minutes, they found themselves
utterly alone. They were not even within sight of the village, and the
sea-gulls, wheeling every now and then across their path, were the sole
living creatures they encountered. They walked for a little while,
side by side, with their eyes fixed upon the ground, and their tongues
apparently fettered; but presently Geoffrey Doyne approached nearer his
companion, until his arm stole round her slender waist.
‘Fenella,’ he whispered, in a voice in which an older woman would have
detected the underlying passion--‘Fenella, will you ever be less my
friend than you are now?’
‘Never, Geoffrey, never.’
‘Thanks, dear. You won’t let what I told you this afternoon, then, make
any difference in our affection?’
‘Oh no! Why should it?’
‘For I need your friendship all the more for that,’ he continued. ‘I
shall turn to you for comfort in all my troubles. I shall come to you
when everything goes wrong, that you may tell me what is best to do.’
‘Yes, if I can--if I am able,’ she answered. ‘But you are so much older
and wiser than I am, Geoffrey; you can never need me to tell you what
is right.’
‘I shall need you always, Fenella--all through my life. You have
promised, you know, to stand to me in the place of Edith--to be my
sister and counsellor and friend, and to fill up the gap in my lonely
heart.’
‘And indeed I will,’ replied the girl. ‘You must always think of me as
your sister Fenella.’
But her voice trembled a little, despite all her caution, as she
pronounced the words. Even a sister does not always care to have her
affection divided with another.
‘There is no love so beautiful and holy in this world as the love
between a brother and sister,’ continued the young man, with a view to
mutual consolation. ‘It is the purest, closest friendship of which our
mortal natures are capable. It is devoid of jealousy; it is totally
unselfish, and it desires nothing so much as the good of the person
whom it loves. There can be no higher feeling upon earth, Fenella. It
is next door to the loves of the angels.’
‘Yes; I never had a brother, as you know, but I have always felt so.’
‘But you have a brother now, darling. You will never cease to think of
me as a brother, will you?’ asked Geoffrey Doyne.
‘Oh no; I hope not; but--but--’
‘But _what_, Fenella?’
‘You will be going to India very soon,’ she faltered.
The young man looked grave.
‘That is true; and it will be a terrible trial for both of us. But
life, Fenella, is made up of trials, and love like ours was given to
help us bear them with the greater patience.’
‘I know that; but it is so far away, and you might die there, Geoffrey,
and then I should never see you again.’
‘You mustn’t say that. If you love me as much as I love you, nothing
can ever really part us in this world or the next. I heard once,
Fenella, a most charming theory from the lips of a man of science, and
I have never forgotten it. His belief was, that since the angels are
perfect beings, and no mortal, even in a purified condition, can be so,
our future state will consist of a dual existence--that is, it will
take a man and woman to make one angel; and thus, from our stronger
nerves and qualities, joined to your softer, sweeter natures, will
spring a perfected being.’
‘How beautiful! I wonder if it is true!’ exclaimed Fenella.
‘I love to think it is so,’ continued Geoffrey Doyne; ‘and should it
be, will you not hope, dear, that you and I may be the two true friends
to be thus incorporated into one?’
‘Oh, Geoffrey! yes,’ she whispered.
It was now evening, and the stars had commenced to enamel the dark blue
sky. The young man pointed them out to her.
‘Look at the Pleiades, and Orion, and Charles’s Wain, Fenella,’ he
said. ‘What lovely homes there must be, ready waiting for us, beyond
those stars; and what a little while it will seem, after all, before
we get there. And what rest, what peace we shall enjoy, after having
passed through the waves of this troublesome world. Fenella, my darling
sister, will it not be better to preserve our love, unstained by any
thought of earth, until that moment, than to soil it by contact with
human jealousies and passions here below?’
She did not half understand the meaning of his words, but she knew
intuitively that he wished her to say _yes_, and so she said it.
‘In that world,’ he continued, with his arm encircling her girlish
figure, and his eyes, filled with passion, fixed upon her face,--‘in
that world, my dearest, where all is peace and purity, we will belong
to each other for ever and ever, and no living soul shall have the
power to come between us.’
[Illustration: Decorative]
[Illustration: Decorative]
CHAPTER XI.
AWAKENED.
‘What is it that love does to a woman?--without it
she only sleeps; with it alone, she lives.’
_Ariadne_.
Yet although these young people had arrived at such a satisfactory
conclusion with regard to the attitude they were to maintain towards
each other through life, they did not seem any the happier for the
arrangement. They grew less joyous, less confidential, less friendly
after that revelation on the landslip than before. They continued to
meet upon the sands of Ines-cedwyn. Not a day passed that Fenella
Barrington did not find Geoffrey Doyne waiting for her by the Beach
Bungalow; but though they greeted each other kindly, and talked
with alacrity of everything that was most indifferent to them on
earth, there was something between them which had not been there
before--unrecognised but felt--and it marred all their enjoyment.
Fenella would sit in the verandah of the ruined villa for half the
morning, stitching away as if her life depended on the rapidity of her
work; whilst Geoffrey would lie upon the sand, face downward, pitching
the pebbles about, and whistling to himself in a sort of discontented
undertone; and their mutual attempts at conversation drifted again and
again into silence.
On several occasions the girl introduced the subject of his engagement
to Jessie Robertson, and tried to make him talk of her personal
appearance, and surroundings, and the circumstances by which they had
been drawn together. But she found the subject a very unpalatable one.
Geoffrey growled, and grumbled, and bewailed his fate, and sometimes
even launched into imprecations which frightened his companion.
Everything seemed out of gear with him. He never alluded to his own
marriage but with the greatest distaste; and he teased Fenella on the
subject of hers until he nearly betrayed her into tears.
‘I shall never marry, Geoffrey,’ she kept on repeating. ‘I have always
said so, and I mean to keep to my word.’
‘Oh no, you won’t, child; everybody marries sooner or later, and you
are too pretty to remain an old maid. When I return from India, I shall
find my adopted sister a big lady--wife to a lord, perhaps, or some
swell in Parliament, and too grand to remember the brother she picked
up on the Ines-cedwyn sands.’
‘Oh, Geoffrey, as if I could ever forget you!’ Fenella faltered. ‘But
indeed you are mistaken. I mean to live with my mother and Bennett all
my life, and then some day perhaps--perhaps--’
‘Perhaps _what!_ dear?’
‘I was going to say,’ continued the girl, as she resolutely swallowed
something in her throat, ‘that some day perhaps, Geoffrey, when you
have--you have little children, they may learn to love me as if I
really were their aunt.’
Geoffrey Doyne gave vent to an oath that rung out discordantly upon the
still summer air.
‘Forgive me, Fenella,’ he pleaded. ‘I shouldn’t have said that,--but
I wish you wouldn’t talk in that way! It will never come to pass,
you know; it can’t--it must not--it is impossible!--Good Heavens!’
exclaimed the young man suddenly, as he leapt to his feet and paced up
and down the sand, ‘I believe that I shall go out of my mind.’
But one morning towards the close of the week he met her, with a face
from which all the perplexity and doubt had disappeared as if by magic.
‘Congratulate me, my dear girl!’ he exclaimed, as he ran up to meet
her. ‘I am so happy; such a load has been taken off my mind. I am the
most fortunate man in the world.’
‘What has happened, Geoffrey?’ she demanded in surprise.
There was no mistaking the joyousness of his demeanour, the glad light
flashing from his eyes, the new life that seemed to pervade his whole
being. But whence had it come--what had occasioned it? No idea of the
truth entered her mind.
‘Come inside the bungalow,’ he continued; ‘I have grand news to tell
you, and we must be alone.’
He dragged her into one of the empty rooms as he spoke, and perched her
on a window-sill, whilst he stood in front of her.
‘Fenella, dear, I am a free man!--say that you are as glad as I am!’
‘_A free man!_ Geoffrey, what do you mean?’
‘I could not bear my position with regard to Jessie Robertson any
longer, Fenella. It was growing more irksome, more distasteful to me
each day. I felt that I was living and acting a lie, and so at last
I made up my mind to write and tell her so; and she has released
me--released me from my engagement of her own free will--and I am a
happy man once more.’
‘What did you say to her?’ asked Fenella, trembling. Even in the
delight of hearing that Geoffrey Doyne was free again, even in
the whirl of the wild thoughts that swept through her mind at the
announcement, she could still feel for her rival; she could stop to
consider how much the renunciation would hurt _her_, and if she was to
be a sufferer by the arrangement.
‘What did you say to her?’ she repeated.
‘I just told her the truth--that I thought we had been in too great a
hurry in the matter; that marriage was a very solemn business, and once
done there was no undoing it; and I was sure we should never be happy
together. Of course I couldn’t say I wouldn’t marry her,--no man of
honour could do that,--but I put things before her in a proper light,
and left her to take the initiative, which she has done.’
‘And is she glad too?’ asked Fenella.
‘I think she sees the sense of it--in fact, she must. Any way, she sent
me back my letters this morning, with one or two presents I had been
fool enough to give her--which, of course, is as good as telling me the
engagement is cancelled. And so I am free, child, quite free, and you
have not yet congratulated me.’
‘She did not write a single word to you?’ said Fenella wistfully; ‘not
to say she was glad or sorry? Isn’t that very strange, Geoffrey?’
‘I don’t think it is. She could hardly have said she was sorry (that
would have been _infra dig_. for a young lady), and, on the other hand,
it would have been very rude to say she was glad. No! in my opinion
she’s done just the right thing, and I didn’t credit little Jessie with
so much sense. She simply returned my letters and presents--that was
dignified and decisive; and when I saw them, I was the happiest fellow
in Christendom.’
He took both her hands in his own as he spoke, and squeezed them, and
tried to look into the eyes which she kept fixed upon the ground.
‘Fenella,’ he whispered presently, ‘don’t you know _why_ I am so happy
at getting my release?’
‘Because you didn’t love her,’ replied the girl in a low voice.
‘There is another reason than that, my darling--an insurmountable
obstacle to my ever learning to love her--because all my heart and soul
are devoted to another woman. Oh, Fenella, you know who that is! Say
with me that you are glad.’
She raised her eyes to his. He was looking at her with ineffable
tenderness, and his arms were extended towards her. With a cry that was
half joy and half astonishment she flung herself into them.
‘Oh, Geoffrey!’ she exclaimed, ‘how could I be anything but glad when
it half killed me?’
His strong arms closed about her light form and twisted it round, so
that her face lay uppermost upon his breast.
‘My darling,’ he murmured, in a voice full of passion--‘my own, own
darling! I have never loved anything in this world as I love you!’
His eyes gazed straight into her eyes, and his handsome head drooped
lower and lower, until his burning lips baptized her lips with the
first kiss of love. Between fear and excitement, Fenella burst into a
rain of tears, and hid her face upon his breast, whilst he continued to
kiss the crown of her head, and the fair hair that fell like a veil of
gold about her, and tried to soothe her agitation.
‘I believe I loved you from the moment we met,’ he said. ‘Do you
remember how I gazed at you both at Calais and Dover, and made old
Bennett angry? I could not take my eyes off you; I felt somehow as if
it were my fate to look at and remember you. And when we met upon these
sands, I knew I was not mistaken. From that day, my darling, I have
been miserable--miserable to think that I was fettered by that wretched
engagement, and bound in honour not to tell you all I felt. I tried to
console myself a little by pledging eternal friendship to you; but it
was a sham, Fenella, and we both knew it was. I cannot be your brother;
you cannot be my sister. We must be much more to each other--or we must
be nothing at all.’
Fenella shuddered.
‘Oh, Geoffrey! what is this that has come over me? I feel if you were
to leave me that I should die.’
‘I shall never leave you, my dearest. We know each other’s hearts now,
and we must not be separated again. You will not refuse to share my
lot, Fenella. You will come with me to that horrid hot India we have so
often talked about together, and be my companion, and my friend, and my
wife to our lives’ end--will you not?’
A beautiful hot flush spread itself all over the girl’s fair face.
‘_Your wife!_’ she repeated, with a sort of gasp,--‘your wife,
Geoffrey! Oh, I am not worthy!’
She had no need now to ask why one man and one woman should promise
to keep to each other for evermore. Love had taught her all that. The
jealousy of love had seized upon her heart, and made her feel that if
she could not have this wonderful new-found treasure to herself, she
would not have it at all. But to be worthy of so much happiness--that
was another question.
‘Not worthy!’ echoed her lover, as he strained her again to his bosom;
‘then who is? Fenella, you are the one only woman in the world for me!
I love you, my darling, with all the strength and fervour of a man’s
first real love, and were Heaven to snatch you from my arms to-morrow,
the void you would leave in my heart could never be filled by any other
being! It is _I_, my love, who am not worthy to possess your purity and
innocence; but I will hold it, nevertheless, until my life’s end.’
The girl looked up at him through eyes that swam in tears, like
dew-washed violets.
‘And only a month ago,’ she murmured, ‘I was so ungrateful and so
silly, I thought that no one would ever care for me again. I felt as if
my life was already over, and I should be lonely and miserable to my
death! And then you came, Geoffrey, and everything seemed to change!
The sun shone, and the birds sang, and the roses blew, and I became a
different girl altogether. Was I asleep before, or was I dead? I feel
as if the old earth had gone away from me and I was in another world!
Has it gone away, Geoffrey, and is this heaven that we are living in
now?’
‘Yes, my darling, it is! It is the heaven of love--the best heaven God
has bestowed on man; and whilst we have it, we need no other. Fenella,
I have given you my heart and soul! What will you give me in exchange?’
‘_My life_,’ said the girl faintly. ‘You gave it to me, Geoffrey. I did
not live until I saw you. Take it back again and do what you will with
it.’
And in those words Fenella betrayed the fact that her childhood had
passed away from her for ever. Love had forced the blossom of her
womanhood into premature fruition, beneath the heat of Geoffrey Doyne’s
words and glances. The man who first makes a woman realise the fact
of her sex, who makes her feel she is the weaker and the subjugated
one, who asserts himself (by right of love alone) her master--that man
will rule that woman’s life, let who may come after him. The feminine
nature, like the masculine, may love many times, but it succumbs but
once.
But when the first rapturous feeling at the discovery of their mutual
affection had somewhat subsided, Fenella’s thoughts flew back again to
her absent unknown rival.
‘Are you _sure_,’ she said to Geoffrey, ‘that Miss Robertson will not
be very unhappy about this? Is it possible she can give you up without
pain?’
The young man laughed.
‘I don’t believe she will care two straws about it,’ he replied. ‘You
mustn’t think she loves me as you do, Fenella. She could not understand
such love as ours, so don’t trouble your dear little head about her! I
daresay she will be disappointed at first, but it will soon blow over,
and she will forget all about it and look out for somebody else.’
‘Then she could never have been worthy of you,’ said Fenella
indignantly, ‘and I will not be sorry for her any more! Oh, Geoffrey!
it seems very wonderful that this has come to pass! Do you know what
I have prayed for, every day since that miserable afternoon on the
landslip when you told me you were engaged to her?’
‘No, dearest; how should I?’
‘That you might not marry her!--I hope it was not wrong,’ she continued
timidly; ‘but it seemed so dreadful to me that you should take her into
a church and swear to love her all your life, when you knew that you
didn’t love her at all. It wasn’t for _myself_, you know, Geoffrey. I
knew you loved me, but I never thought you would want to marry me; but
I felt so ashamed and so sorry that you should have to tell a lie, and
to God too! For it would have been a lie--wouldn’t it?’
‘It would indeed, my darling. I should have perjured myself (as
thousands do) for fear of what the world would say of me.’
‘That swearing in church is dreadful,’ resumed Fenella thoughtfully;
‘it is positively wicked. It ought not to be allowed.’
‘But you’ll have to swear in church for me, you know,’ said Geoffrey,
laughing.
She grew scarlet.
‘Oh yes! but that will be quite another thing.’
‘How so?’
‘Because I have sworn already--in my heart. The church can’t make any
difference to me. I shall always be true to you, Geoffrey, as long as I
live.’
‘My darling girl, how sweet of you to say so! Yes; that is just what
I feel myself, Fenella. Love is the true marriage. You are mine
already--my own wife--and no one shall ever take you from me.’
Then they began to discuss ways and means, and what the higher
authorities would be likely to say to their intentions.
‘I must see your mother on the first opportunity,’ said Geoffrey Doyne.
‘When is she likely to return home?’
‘We don’t know at all; we have not even heard from her yet.’
‘Well, if she remains much longer abroad, I must go over and find her.
We have no time to lose, my darling. I must leave England in October.’
‘Suppose mamma were to say “No”?’ said the girl, trembling.
‘I don’t think she’s likely to do that,’ replied Geoffrey Doyne; ‘for
without wishing to seem conceited, Fenella, I am not a bad match, and
that is the reason the Robertsons were so anxious to secure me for
Jessie. I have a very fair income of my own, inherited from my mother,
and my prospects are excellent. Added to which, my father is a wealthy
man and a liberal one, and would make me an allowance during his
lifetime if I needed it. So there is no fear of my not being able to
keep you in a proper position. And your mother, you say, is not rich;
and she is not very fond of you?’
‘No,’ said Fenella, shaking her head, ‘she is not at all fond of me. I
think she will be very glad to get rid of me.’
‘And I shall be very glad to take you off her hands!’ exclaimed
Geoffrey playfully. ‘But come, my darling, we must have no tears; never
mind who _doesn’t_ love you now, so long as I _do_.’
‘Oh, Geoffrey!’ she cried, sobbing, ‘promise--_promise_ that you’ll
always love me, for I have no one in the world but you.’
And he called God to witness that he would be true to her so long as
they both had life.
‘And now we are really married,’ said Fenella, smiling through her
tears. ‘That is the same as you will say in church--isn’t it, Geoffrey?
And you asked God to hear you too.’
‘Yes; I can never say any more than that,’ he answered; ‘and I can
never feel any more, Fenella; and may God deal with me as I keep my
word to Him! And now, my dear girl, may I ask you a favour?’
‘No, don’t ask me a favour, Geoffrey. _Order_ me to do something, so
that I may feel that I am really going to be your wife.’
‘Very well, if you will have it so,’ he said, smiling. ‘I _order_ you,
then, my darling, not to make a confidante of your servant in this
matter, until I have communicated with Mrs Barrington.’
‘I am not to tell Bennett anything about our engagement?’
‘I think it will be better not. She is only a servant, you see, and
servants will talk. And then she will probably come prying down here
after us, and spoiling all our enjoyment. She is up again--did you not
tell me so?’
‘Yes, but I am afraid she will not be able to walk for some time yet.
Dr Redfern is going to bring her a pair of crutches to-morrow, so that
she may get about the garden; but she is dreadfully weak, poor thing!
She has been in bed now for five weeks.’
Geoffrey looked properly concerned.
‘Yes, it has been a bad accident for her, but a lucky one for us! If
she had always accompanied you to the sands, who knows if we should
ever have been allowed to pursue our acquaintance--eh, Fenella?’
‘Oh, Geoffrey, is it not wicked to be glad for what makes other people
unhappy?’
‘Well, we didn’t break the old woman’s leg, dear, so I don’t think we
need trouble ourselves about that. And I think, since it has gone so
far without her knowledge, that it would be a pity to tell her now. In
fact, your mother has undoubtedly a right to the first intelligence.
And I think, my darling, our love is too beautiful and too sacred a
thing to be told to everybody we meet--don’t you?’
The look she gave him in return was sufficient answer. Geoffrey Doyne
might rest assured that from that moment he would sway every action of
her life. Hearts such as Fenella’s are not given by halves. He left her
shortly after this, having made an appointment to take his sisters out
walking.
‘I think it will be as well for me to do duty with them occasionally
now, as I don’t want to arouse their suspicions before this matter
is properly settled,’ he said; ‘and I know they think I have some
attraction over at Ines-cedwyn as it is. But I cannot part with you
like this, my darling. I must see you again before I sleep! If I ride
over this evening after dinner--say at eight o’clock--could you manage
to run down and meet me at the landslip? It will be beautifully cool by
that time, and we have not been there since that miserable afternoon.
Ah! how different it will look to us now.’
‘Of course I will come,’ said Fenella confidently. ‘Why should I
not? Bennett never asks me where I am going. Yes, I shall love to sit
there with you--in that very same place, Geoffrey, under the stars,
and--thank God!’
So they parted, full of youth, love, and trust in each other and
themselves, pledged to meet again when the veil of evening was being
drawn as a shroud across the land and sea.
There was no one to control Fenella’s actions; no one to question
her comings and goings; no one even cognisant of the burning secret
that filled her heart. Bennett, worn out with the unusual exertion of
leaving her bed, had gladly retired again, and Martha and Benjamin were
busy with their poultry and flowers. So the girl--who had but this one
great love to consider, who had found her world in Geoffrey Doyne--went
down alone, under cover of the dusk, to meet her lover.
And as she reached the spot where they had picniced together, and he
had crushed her heart with the intelligence of his engagement to Jessie
Robertson, she saw the lithe, graceful figure she had grown to love so
well--the figure that should haunt her restless dreams for many weary
years to come--waiting to receive her, and sprang forward with a cry
of joy to greet him. Geoffrey Doyne strained her to his heart for a
few moments; then, with his arms still round her girlish form, he led
her through the leafy bower. So might Paul and Virginia have wandered
beneath the banyan leaves of the West Indian isles; or, rather, so
might Adam and Eve have explored their new-found paradise, without a
thought of the serpent that tracked their footsteps.
END OF VOL. I.
COLSTON AND SON, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
Transcriber’s Notes
Spelling, punctuation, and hyphens standardised across the text.
p173: perfer changed to “gentlemen could prefer”.
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