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Title: Harry Joscelyn; vol. 3 of 3

Author: Mrs. Oliphant

Release date: October 27, 2020 [eBook #63562]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images available at The Internet Archive)


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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)









                            HARRY JOSCELYN.

                               VOL. III.




                            HARRY JOSCELYN.


                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT

                               AUTHOR OF

                   “The Chronicles of Carlingford,”

                               &c., &c.


                           IN THREE VOLUMES.
                               VOL. III.


                                LONDON:
                    HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
                     13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
                                 1881.
                        _All rights reserved._




                            HARRY JOSCELYN.




CHAPTER I.

AFTER TEN YEARS.


Ten years is a large slice out of a life; but it slips by, not leaving
much trace in a rural country where everything goes quietly, and where
Christmas follows after Christmas with scarcely any sign by which one
can be identified from another on looking back. We will not say that
nothing had happened in the White House to mark the ten years from the
time when young Harry Joscelyn disappeared from the Fell country, and it
became evident that no one there was likely to hear anything of him
more. Various things had happened: one, for instance, was that Joan had
married Philip Selby, and was now the mistress of Heatonshaw, and could
not easily remember, so strange is the effect of such a change, how she
had contented herself in her previous life, or what had been the habits
and customs of Joan Joscelyn. More had happened to her in this than in
any other ten years of her life; but yet they had glided over very
calmly, day following day with such a gentle monotony that it was hard
for her to decide how many of them there were, or which was which. She
had no child to measure the years by, which was a misfortune, but one
which she bore with submission: reflecting to herself that if children
are a comfort they are often also a great handful, and that when they
are troublesome there is nothing else so troublesome in all the world.
Philip Selby himself was less philosophical, and would have ventured
gladly upon the risk for the sake of the blessing; but it was not so to
be. And thus they had little evidence before them of how the years stole
away. But all that he had augured, and Joan had agreed to, about the
house, had come true. There were the best of beasts in the byres, and
heavy crops on the arable land, and a phaeton in the coach-house, and
horses in the stables such as no man needed to be ashamed of. And with
all this, there was a very comfortable couple inside. Joan, on her
marriage, had been half ashamed of the fine room, which was called--not
according to her old-fashioned formula, the parlour, but--the
drawing-room, to which her husband had brought her home, and which had
been furnished by one of the best shops in Carlisle, with furniture such
as was approved by the taste of the time. There was a white paper on the
walls, and a great deal of gilding, and sofas and tables with legs that
were crooked and curly. But by the end of ten years much that was
somewhat showy once had toned down. The furniture had got more shapely
and a little human; the place had worn into the fashion of the people
that inhabited it. In summer it was a perfect bower of lilies and roses,
the great white shafts of the one rising above the broad branches, heavy
with flowers, of the other (for in those days there were no standards),
and the whole air sweet with the mingled perfume. Liddy Joscelyn, Mrs.
Selby’s little sister, thought there was no flower-garden in the world
like it; but then she had not been away from home since she was twelve,
and had not seen much, and there was nothing like it about the White
House.

That, place, too, had changed in these years. Ralph Joscelyn was the
one upon whom the change had told most. It was not that he was much
altered in personal appearance, nor yet that he had entirely mended and
corrected his ways. Perhaps indeed the alteration visible in him was
more due to the fact that there was nobody about the place who crossed
him, no one who opposed any strenuous opposition to his will, or
dissented from his opinions, than any real alteration. But it was a
quieter life which the homestead led, subject to much fewer storms than
of old; and Mrs. Joscelyn lived a far less anxious life. The loss of her
youngest boy so long ago--though it might not be really the loss of him,
since who could tell what day he might re-appear again?--was not a
thing, as everyone said, that she could be expected to get over. But the
ten years had calmed her, and, what was more, Liddy had calmed her.
Lydia had been sent for to her school when her mother was in the depths
of this trouble, and she had never been suffered to go back again, her
presence being the only consolation which the gentle and unhappy woman
was the better for. And after ten years of Liddy’s constant company,
Mrs. Joscelyn was a very different woman. Joan, who had been so
sympathetic with her mother through that last family trouble, without
understanding her in the others, understood still less the effect
produced by her little sister, who smoothed down everything without any
apparent trouble, more by understanding it, so far as appeared, than
from anything she did. When Joan’s reign terminated, Lydia became the
dominant spirit in the house. She was so at fourteen; how much more at
twenty! It was not a good thing for the butter and the cheese. The dairy
produce of the White House fell off wonderfully. It was no longer half
the quantity, and still less was it equal in quality, to the butter of
Joan’s time. Old Simon never ceased shaking his head over it till his
dying day, and went out of human consciousness moaning to himself that
“A’ things was altered, and no t’ half o’ t’ money coming in.” It was he
that had always been the salesman, and he felt it deeply. For half of
the time or so Joan had done her utmost, driving over in the morning and
spending hours endeavouring to indoctrinate her sister with the
mysteries of that art; but Liddy only laughed, and kept her pretty white
hands by her side, and declared herself incapable. “I don’t know what to
do with these things,” she would say, gazing at the bowls of milk,
without the least sense of shame, with even a smile on her face; and to
Joan’s consternation her father, coming in when this was said, and
himself standing in the doorway, swaying his big figure to and fro,
said, “Let her alone, let her alone, Joan. You did it, but she is
another kind from you.”

“That she is,” said Joan. “She’s not the profitable kind either, if she
let’s the dairy take care of itself.”

But to this Joscelyn paid no attention; and Mrs. Selby was led to her
chaise stupefied, not knowing whether she was asleep or awake, so
bewildered was she. The dairy went off, it was no longer celebrated as
of yore. The cows decreased in number, for what was the use of keeping
them when they brought in so little profit? And by degrees the house
changed altogether. Lydia, slim and straight, with her white hands, and
feet that scarcely sounded upon the old passage, gradually modified
everything. When she was seen in a new riding-habit, and a hat with a
feather, going out to ride with her father, the old servants could
scarcely contain themselves; and the timid mother, coming out to see
her, smoothed the horse’s sleek coat with a frightened hand, and did
not know how to look at the girl, or her father, who was as proud of
Lydia as Mrs. Joscelyn herself could be.

And then the old piano, which nobody had touched for years--for Joan,
who had ended her education at fifteen, had never learned any more music
than was contained in a first book of exercises--was sent off to an
attic, and a new piano was bought for Lydia. Where it came from no one
could quite understand, for it was impossible to believe that Joscelyn
had drawn his purse-strings to such an extent; but all the same it
arrived, and Lydia, sometimes going into Wyburgh, sometimes having her
professor out to the White House, had lessons, and practised diligently,
and by-and-bye became in her way a musician, astonishing all the
neighbourhood with her powers. A young lady who rode about the country
on a handsome horse, and who played the piano, was something altogether
new in the place. She might have been much more profoundly instructed
without producing half so great an impression. The house altogether rose
in the social scale. People came to call who had never been seen near
the White House before; and they found the mistress of the house, who
had always been genteel, a gentle woman, ladylike and subdued, and her
daughter one of the prettiest girls in the county, with a sort of
elegance about her which was the inheritance she had received from her
mother, strengthened and consolidated by the superior strength which she
got from the other side of the house. When Joscelyn himself appeared,
which was rarely, his fine form and strength, and the refinement
imparted by a crown of white hair, raised him, too, to a sort of
pinnacle. People began to say that they found they had done him
injustice, and that after all the present representative of the
Joscelyns was not unworthy his race. The process was slow, but it was
very complete. When Will and Tom appeared with their wives, it was
unaccountable how “put out” and “set down” they felt, as if they were
going to their landlord’s, where everything was finer than the
surroundings they were accustomed to, and not to their father’s, upon
whose shabby furniture Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom had looked with contempt.
Even Joan looked round her with a curiosity which was mingled with
grievance, scarcely able to restrain the thought that what was good
enough for _her_, might certainly have been good enough for Liddy.
Liddy it was clear did not think so. And how that little thing knew, or
where she had got her instinctive acquaintance with polite ways, Mrs.
Selby, who was on the whole proud of Liddy, could not tell; but so it
was. The house brightened up generally; here a new carpet, and there a
new curtain, made a change in its dingy aspect. The old furniture was
made the most of, and old china, and all the stores of a long
established house brought out to embellish the parlours; the very hall
and passages were brushed up, the table, and the service at the table,
so improved, that Joan too thought she must be dining with some of the
great county people, whom the Joscelyns had always thought themselves
equal to, but who had not acknowledged the Joscelyns.

“The thing that surprises me is where she learned it all,” Mrs. Selby
said; “a bit of a thing that has seen no more than the rest of us; but
she has a deal of you in her, mother, far more than any of the rest.”

“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs. Joscelyn, shaking her head, “I never had the
courage to settle things my own way. It was not that I didn’t know: I
knew very well how things ought to be done.” This little gentle
assertion of her gentility Mrs. Joscelyn felt was her due in the new
development of affairs. It was not all the discovery of Liddy. She had
known well enough all the time. Circumstances had been too much for her;
but the refinements of society were her natural atmosphere. Joan looked
at her mother with mingled respect and amusement, proud that she was
such a lady, yet feeling the joke of her superiority.

“Yes, mother,” she said, “I mind how you and Phil talked the first time
he came to the White House. It was as good as a play to hear you. He
never let on it was me he wanted, but to have a talk with you, such a
superior woman. I did not understand a word you were saying, and I took
pains to let him see that the dairy and the stables were what I was most
acquainted with; but that didn’t make any difference, you see.”

“You were never one to make the most of yourself, Joan,” said the
mother, mildly. “I always knew there was a great deal more in you than
you would ever show,” at which Joan laughed; but she was not displeased.
And she was proud of her young sister when Liddy came riding over on
the last perfection from her father’s stable, looking like a young
princess. She was the nearest thing to a child of her own that Joan was
ever likely to have, and she forgave her possession of a great many
indulgences which no one had thought of conceding to Joan. When it
appeared, however, that Lydia had a groom behind her, Mrs. Selby’s soul
was stirred within her.

“Now, Liddy,” she said, “I can stand a deal, but you’ll ruin father if
you go on like this. A groom behind you! what will you want next?
Father’s just infatuated, that is all I can say.”

“It’s only a livery coat,” said Liddy, “that’s all. It doesn’t cost very
much. I’ll pay it off my own allowance, and father will never be the
worse----”

Here she was interrupted by a shriek from her elder sister. “Your
allowance? What next?” she said. “I never had a penny to myself when I
was at home, and hard ado to get a bill paid. If it had not been for the
butter money, I should never have had a gown to my back.”

“But that would not do for me,” said Lydia, with a toss of her head;
and, indeed, to see her here with her airy figure, and her close-fitting
habit, and the beautiful bay arching his fine neck in the background,
and to suggest any connection with the butter money was a thing which
only an elder sister without sentiment or sense of appropriateness could
have done. The Duke’s daughter did not look more unlike any such homely
particulars; indeed, the Duke’s daughter was not fit, as Joan said,
proudly, to herself, to “hold the candle” to little Liddy Joscelyn.

“I don’t know what’s coming of it,” Mrs. Selby said to her husband;
“but, Phil, you and me will stand by that child, and see her out of
it--will you, goodman?”

“That I will, my dear,” Philip Selby said; “but Joscelyn has been doing
not badly, and I dare say he can afford to let the little one have her
fling. He has none to think of now but Liddy--and there’s Uncle Henry’s
money.”

This allusion always made Joan ready to cry, though she was not given to
tears. “I would rather burn off my fingers than touch Uncle Henry’s
money,” she said. “It will never be me that will put my hand to it, and
give my consent that yon poor lad is not coming home----”

“We must be reasonable, my dear,” Philip Selby said, mildly, “and the
others will not be so patient. There is one thing you shall do if you
like, Joan, and that is give your share to Liddy. It would never be any
pleasure to you.”

Joan looked at her husband with a startled air. She was more matter of
fact than he was, and the idea of giving over actual money to which she
had a right, to anyone, was a thing which gave her somewhat of a shock.
In their ordinary affairs she had to keep rather a tight hand upon her
Phil, who was too easy about his money generally; but this was a
complicated case, and puzzled her much.

“Give Liddy my share? You say true it would be little, little pleasure
to me; but money is money, and there are some to come after us. It’s
fine to be generous, but we must think upon justice. What’s Liddy’s is
Liddy’s, and what’s mine is mine.”

It was from no want of kindness that Joan spoke: but she could not help
it. It was as natural to close her hand over money, even when she hated
it, as it was for others to throw it away.

“You will think better of it,” her husband said.

“Oh! it’s very likely I will think better of it. A woman cannot live
with a prodigal like you without getting into ill ways. But I was always
brought up to stick to my money; and I’ve you to look after as well. If
you had not me to watch over you, you would give away the coat off your
back.”

“For all that I’ve always had plenty,” said Selby, “and now more than
plenty--with a good wife to take care of it and me.”

“You may say a wife to take care of you,” said Joan, “and how you ever
kept a penny in your purse before you got her, is what I cannot tell;
though, after all, when a man spends nothing upon himself, it’s easy
keeping him going. But I’m one that sticks to my money. Give what you
please else, but keep a grip upon your money, that’s always been my
way.” Then she added, after a pause: “There will never be any question
about that; when he knows it’s all left to him, it stands to reason that
he will come back. Joscelyns have more regard to their own interest.
They are not easy-going like you.”

“I wish I could think so,” Mr. Selby said.

And so the conversation ended. Uncle Henry had died not very long
before, leaving behind him only an old will in which everything was left
to Harry. The executors, who were both influential persons in Wyburgh,
had advertised for him, or for news of him, but none had come; and the
family generally had accepted this as a proof that Harry was dead--the
family, all but the mother and Joan, who were both strenuous that
nothing should be done, and no division made. Mrs. Joscelyn would have
been overruled before now, but Joan was a stronger opponent, and she had
the backing of her husband, of whom her brothers stood in a little awe;
so that the division and distribution of Uncle Henry’s funds had been
postponed. But this delay could not last: the elder brothers, who were
men with families and in want of money, were certain to push for a
settlement. They had no doubt, and not very much feeling, about the
younger one who was lost. It had been entirely his own doing. He was a
fool to have gone away like that, and compromised himself, and thrown
away all his chances; but whatever happened to him in consequence was
his own fault. If he had died, or if he was living in some obscure
corner far away, were not they equally innocent? They had tried all they
could to find him--the trustees were trying now. Old Pilgrim was
advertising far and wide. If Harry were dead, or if he were so far away
as to be out of reach of this call, it was not their fault; and they
wanted no more than their share--but that share, there was no doubt,
would be very convenient. Will’s sons were growing up, and Tom was
taking in more land to his farm. To each of these, as to most people, a
little money would have been of the greatest use. And it was all very
well for Joan to talk who had neither chick nor child, and was in such
easy circumstances; it was well for her to talk whose husband supplied
her with everything, and who had no need of money; but they were men and
knew better. They knew that men are not such fools as to stay away from
their home as Harry had done. Nobody did such a thing, especially when
advertisements were in the papers about them, and “something to their
advantage” promised.

“Something to your advantage means money,” said Will. “’Twouldn’t be
long I’d skulk away at the end of the world if you were to give me the
chance.”

“He’s never skulking away at the end of the world,” said Tom. “If he
went off at all, he went to California or thereabouts; and he’d have
come home at the first scent of money. Bless you, we know our own
breed;” and in this the other brother concurred. But the trustees held
fast. They would not consent to any distribution of the money till
Harry, if Harry still existed, had every chance of hearing of it.
Privately Mr. Pilgrim had no objection to advance to Tom the money he
wanted for that addition to his farm. There was solid security, and a
feasible reason for borrowing. “There’s but too much reason to think
that your poor brother will never turn up again,” the executor allowed;
“but we must not go too fast.” Alas! such is the weakness of human
nature that the other Joscelyns ere long were not sure that they wished
their poor brother to turn up again. The money would be so convenient!
When is there a time that money is not convenient? And it could do him
no good, poor fellow, if he was in his grave--which at the same time
would be his own fault.

Very different, however, from the conclusions of Will and Joan were
those which were held at the White House on this subject. Mrs. Joscelyn
had never consented to that view. “He may have been led away,” she said;
“but do you think my boy would die and me not know? Oh, Liddy, my
darling, many a time when you see me in low spirits, and ask me why, and
I say it’s nothing, that is what it is. It is borne in upon me that
something is the matter with one of the boys. I’ve different feelings
for each of them. People may laugh that don’t understand, but you’ll not
laugh, my Liddy dear. I never said it to one of the others, but I may
say it to you. If it’s Ben, or if it’s Huntley, I have a kind of a
feeling--and as sure as letters come it’s found to be true. There is
always a something. Now it stands to reason that Harry should be the
same, but as he never writes we never can tell. Sometimes I’ve been
quite light-hearted for nothing at all, and I’ve said to myself, ‘That’s
Harry: something good’s happening to him.’ Do you think it is natural
that if he had _died_--oh, the Lord preserve him!--his mother would not
know?”

“It would not be natural at all,” said Lydia, confidently; “he would
come and stand by your bedside; I don’t feel the least doubt of that.
But there is one thing I should like, mamma; I should like to go abroad.
I feel sure that I should find him. I think that I should find him
somewhere not very far away--or else in America: I have quite made up my
mind to that.”

“You would scarcely know your brother if you saw him,” said Mrs.
Joscelyn, shaking her head; “You were so little, my pet; and poor Harry
must be changed in ten years.”

“Oh, I should know him,” cried Lydia. She held her pretty head high. She
was very sure of most things. “After you are grown up you don’t change
so much. He might not know me, but I should know him wherever I saw him.
Ah, how delightful it would be to bring him back to you!” said Lydia,
throwing her arms round her mother. The words and the arms were alike
sweet. Nobody had given Mrs. Joscelyn this food for her heart in the old
days.

“My darling!” she said; “but I see no chance for you to go abroad, far
less--far less----”

“There is no telling what may happen,” said Liddy, “everybody, you know,
goes abroad now.”

But Mrs. Joscelyn shook her head. She saw the practical difficulties
here.




CHAPTER II.

A NEW COUSIN.


Lydia had indeed as little prospect of going abroad as any girl could
have. Her own kindred dreamt of no such indulgences, and she had no
friends likely to suggest them. In these days people stayed still where
their home was, and did not think of the continued changes and absences
which make up our modern life--though the spirit of travel was beginning
to be in the air, and younger spirits, even in the Fell-country, began
to form dreams on the subject. Perhaps there never was a time when the
idea of travelling was not attractive to the young, and when Italy was
not a name to conjure withal. Lydia Joscelyn had read everything that
fell into her hands all her life, even the Book of Beauty, which her
brother-in-law, Philip Selby, presented to her with an inscription on
the flyleaf, at Christmas. Half the stories, and half, almost all, the
poetry there, bore reference to “the sunny South.” She was resolute to
go “abroad” some time or other; to live among the dark-eyed Antonios and
lovely Rosalbas of romance. And there, she had made up her mind, she
would find Harry, and bring him back to her mother. It was her dream.
Whenever she had nothing else to do she thought of it, and represented
to herself how she should find him, how he would try to conceal himself
from her, and by what wonderful ruses and clever expedients she would
discover his secret and prove him to be her brother. It is not to be
supposed that there did not mingle in Lydia’s dreams, visions of some
other figure still more attractive than that of her brother, who having
been five-and-twenty when he disappeared, ten years ago, was according
to her calculation “quite old” by this time. It is not quite certain
that she did not expect him to be grey-haired, and a little decrepit;
but there would be some friend, some protector, some handsome young
count, or even prince, who would have afforded the stranger hospitality,
and in whom Liddy felt the possible hero of her life to be embodied. He
was quite vague, except a pair of beautiful eyes; there was nothing at
all about him else that she was certain of; but those eyes looked out of
the mists upon her, with every kind of tender and delightful look. He
would help her, could any one doubt, to bring Harry home? and
afterwards--perhaps--would ask for his reward. Such was the natural
sequence of events. To do Lydia justice, however, this visionary prince
was a secondary personage, only indulged in as a dream by way of
recreation, after she had, in her thoughts, tracked Harry down, and got
him at her mercy.

She had not much society or recreation at the White House. There were
times, indeed, when, if it had been possible for a girl to have done so,
Lydia would have had no objection to try, as Harry had done, what the
society of the “Red Lion” could do for her; but to do her justice one
trial would have been enough. She did what was quite as good, and more
innocent; she ran off sometimes into the kitchen of the White House, and
talked with the servants, and heard a hundred stories both of the past
and present, and learned the countryside, so that she knew who everybody
was, and their mothers, and their wives, and all that had happened to
them. It was there, rather than from her mother and her sister, that she
heard about Harry. The old cook remembered everything about him, from
the time when he had cut his teeth. She had a recollection of that night
when he had gone away, and still excused herself for not having gone to
the rescue. “T’ master was all about t’ house, travelling up and down in
his stocking-feet--was it my part to oop and open the door?” Thus her
apologies accused her according to the proverb. The other women were
younger, but they too had something to tell. And then Liddy would go
back to the quietude of the parlour, where her mother was sitting in the
same attitude, reading the same book. The parlour looked cheerful
enough, but there was never any change in it, not half so much as in the
kitchen, where some one was always moving about, and there was a
perpetual flow of talk. Liddy never spent an evening away from home,
except two or three times a year to her sister’s, when there was “a
party” prepared weeks in advance, and talked of for months after; or at
Dr. Selby’s in the village, where now and then there were entertainments
of a homelier kind.

Young Selby, who had been Harry’s friend and a frequenter of the “Red
Lion,” though he had not yet sown all his wild oats, was a person of
some importance in the village society. He was his father’s assistant,
and although it was said that he was far more interested in the fees
than in the Doctor’s patients, yet the fact that he was almost the only
unmarried man in the neighbourhood gave him a certain importance. He was
continually meeting Liddy when she went out to ride, and he looked very
well on horseback, and gave her a great deal of good advice about the
management of her horse. Perhaps but for that young Count in her dream,
she would have got to understand what young Selby meant, though she
scoffed at the adjective, and declared that he was not young, but as old
as his father. He was the most entertaining person in the neighbourhood
all the same, and the hero of Joan’s parties when they came round, one
in summer, one about Christmas. These entertainments were pretty much
alike, whatever was the time of year. Garden parties were not known in
those days. In summer the windows were open, in winter the shutters shut
over them and the curtains drawn. In other ways they were very much
alike. There was a great round game carried on at the round table in the
centre of the room. The tea had been served in the dining-room, so it
did not interfere with the evening’s arrangements. Mr. Pilgrim’s family
from Wyburgh were among the guests, and all the clergymen round, and any
other notability who was not too great for the occasion. Few of the
guests indeed could be called county people; but there were a good many
who visited with the county people, and is not that very nearly the
same? Joan, though she was homely enough, held her head somewhat high at
her own table. The Selbys were but of moderate pretensions, but she
never forgot that she was a Joscelyn. And she kept Liddy by her, not
allowing any indiscriminate flirtations, and distinctly discouraging
young Selby, who was her cousin by marriage, but had never won her
heart. Mrs. Joscelyn never came to her daughter’s parties, though she
was pleased to hear all about them; and it was only on condition that
Liddy was to keep by her sister’s side that she was permitted to go,
“You needn’t fear, mother, that she’ll meet with anyone she oughtn’t to
meet with at my house,” Joan said, and she took care of her accordingly.
It troubled her mind on the occasion to which we are about to refer,
that a young man had come with Mrs. Pilgrim’s party, about whom she knew
nothing. He was nice-looking, but she had not even caught his name. She
could not help thinking it a little wrong of Mrs. Pilgrim to bring a
stranger to such an assembly. If he had been in love with one of her
girls, Joan allowed that would have made a difference; but there was not
the least appearance that he was in love with one of the Pilgrim girls.
They were very assiduous in their attention to him, pointing out
everybody and making conversation for the young man, who, without being
rude or disagreeable, held himself just a little aloof from the company
in general, as if he had come there solely because he was brought, and
had no special interest in the proceedings. His head, for he was tall,
appearing steadily over Mrs. Pilgrim’s, at last began to irritate Mrs.
Selby, who felt herself to be in every way a greater personage. She
called her husband to her again and again to point out to him this
wholly ineffective member of the party.

“What is he wanting here?” she said.

“My dear, what they all want--to enjoy himself,” Philip Selby replied.

“Enjoy himself--do you call that enjoyment? He looks as if he had
swallowed a poker; and is never trusted for a moment out of the charge
of two or three Pilgrims. I don’t think I’ll ask these people again.”

“They are very good sort of people, Joan; and considering the position
in which they stood to your uncle Henry----”

“I’m very tired of Uncle Henry, Phil; besides, the girls didn’t stand in
any position--and I never authorised them to bring a strange young man.”

“He will be after Amy or Tiny--or----”

“He’s after none of them. Can’t you see that with half an eye? It’s my
belief he’s spying out for our Liddy. And what will mother say to me if
I let her make acquaintance with a stranger? I said, ‘You needn’t fear,
mother; she’ll meet nobody you don’t want her to meet at my house.’”

“Well, well,” said Philip Selby, soothingly; “there’s half the room
between them; and nobody can say, my dear, that it’s your fault.”

“But that’s just what mother will do,” said Joan, with a puckered brow,
as if her mother had been the most alarming critic in existence. She
laughed at herself afterwards, and went to the table to superintend the
round game, in which Liddy was deeply involved, seated by young Selby’s
side. There was a strong sense of responsibility on Joan’s mind, or
rather, she was a little cross. Her cakes had not come quite so well out
of the oven as she intended, and Mrs. Doctor Selby had suggested a fault
in the flavour of the tea. She went up to the players in a stormy state
of mind. “Come, come,” she said, “you’re not sitting right. Liddy, you
come over here and help little Ellen; all you strong ones are together.
Raaf,” this was to young Selby, “stay where you are. I’ll put Miss
Armstrong, she’s not playing at all, next to you.”

At this young Selby made a grimace, but Liddy tripped out of her place
with all the alacrity possible, leaving her seat and devoting herself to
little Ellen. She even gave her sister a smiling look of gratitude.
“Thank you,” she said, in an under-tone, “but it was rude, Joan.”

“Now you are a deal better arranged, and the game will go faster; there
will be no cheating,” Joan said. She did not care a bit for being called
rude. Raaf Selby should know that he was not good enough for a Joscelyn
whatever his cousin might be. “One’s enough,” she said to herself.
Besides, she wanted for Liddy something that should be out of the common
altogether. She herself had done very well in marriage. She had got an
excellent man, with enough to be comfortable upon. But she did not feel
that she would be satisfied with only so much for her little sister. Not
that Raaf Selby at his best could hold a candle to Phil. He was not much
except when he was on a horse; then she was obliged to allow he looked
pretty well. But a man can’t always be on a horse’s back, and anywhere
else he was not worth looking twice at; very different from Phil. Even
Phil, however, much as she respected her husband, was not the kind of
person she wanted for Liddy. A fairy prince, if any such fantastic being
had ever existed in Joan’s steady imagination, was the sort of person
who ought to be Lydia’s fate; a fine young fellow (young to start with),
and handsome, and well off, and with an air above the rest of the world.
Unawares, as her eyes went round her guests, they fell once more upon
the tall young stranger behind Mrs. Pilgrim’s chair. Was that the kind
of man? Well, if he had not been an intruder, a stranger, a hanger-on
of the Pilgrims’ (though certainly not in love with either of the
girls), that was the kind of person. She drew near Mrs. Pilgrim as this
unsolicited thought arose in her mind. She was annoyed with herself to
think that a person whom she did not know, and who had no right to be
here, should thus have taken her eye.

“You are doing nothing, Amy,” she said to the eldest Miss Pilgrim; “I’m
sure they want you in the game yonder--or you might give us some music.
You and your sister might play a duet. I like to see everybody
employed.”

“That is what I always say. You don’t let the grass grow beneath your
feet, Mrs. Selby, neither in work nor in pleasure. I was just saying
to----” here she made signs with her thumb, pointing to the stranger,
who was inspecting the party from his eminence, and talking languidly to
one of the girls. “He was introduced to you,” she added, in a whisper,
“when he came in?”

“I should think,” said Joan, “that nobody would bring a strange man into
my house without introducing him to me. But your friend is doing nothing
either,” she said, with compunction, and a relenting of hospitality. “He
has just got into a corner; and the evening’s lost when you once do
that.”

“Oh, Mrs. Selby, he doesn’t know anybody. We promised we would take care
of him if he came with us,” Amy Pilgrim said; and the object of Joan’s
mingled interest and indignation laughed a little, and said that he
hoped Mrs. Selby would not trouble herself, that he was very well there.

Then Joan sought her husband again. “Look at them,” she said, “all
sitting in a corner with this strange man, as if they were above the
rest of us: as if it was my lady Countess and her party from the Castle
looking at the poor people’s amusements. I will never ask these Pilgrims
again.”

“My dear, my dear,” said Philip Selby, “they are very good sort of
people; and if they have a strange man with them that knows nobody, in
civility what can they do?”

“Then in civility it’s your part to make him know somebody. Are you not
the master of the house? Phil, you are lazy; you are not doing your
duty,” Joan said, giving him a little push towards the corner in which
the Pilgrims were enthroned. “If there is one thing I cannot put up
with it is a knot of people in a company making their observations.” She
was quite excited by the Pilgrims and their guest--“for he is their
guest, and not mine, though it’s in my house,” Joan said to herself. But
alas for her consistency! Next time that she disengaged herself from the
lesser crowd round the card-table, Joan saw a sight which displeased and
satisfied her at the same time. The group of the Pilgrims had broken up;
that is to say, “the strange man” had been led or had strayed away, and
Amy and Tiny, having no longer anyone to take care of, and describe the
company to, had sought refuge at the card-table, and were much merrier,
if not so fine, as in their former position. That was all very well;
but, on the other hand, there was Lydia, seated demurely in a chair
apart, with Raaf Selby standing on one side of her like a thunder-cloud,
and on the other, talking and making himself very agreeable, the
Pilgrims’ “strange young man.”

“Raaf,” said Joan, promptly, “you’re as bad as Phil; you’re taking no
trouble. How is the game to go on without you to look after it, when
it’s well known that you are far the best player here?”

“I have been playing all the evening. I think I may be permitted a
little rest,” Raaf said, with a gloomy countenance. He was older and
shorter than the strange young man, and not so tall, and there was a
something about this personage which was above the level of young Selby.
He could not tell what it was. He himself had more ornaments, he had a
finer head of hair, and more shirt-front, but yet there was something.
Lydia was replying very gravely to what the stranger said to her, but
she gave him her whole attention, and the other girls had given evidence
that they saw something in this new comer which was not in their
familiar hero. He felt crestfallen, and he felt angry. He was not in a
humour to be ordered about by Joan.

“Then sing us one of your songs,” Mrs. Selby said. “Things are going a
bit slow; I don’t know what is the matter: or perhaps it’s only me
that’s the matter. But I think things are going a bit slow.”

“That’s my opinion, too,” Raaf said; “but I don’t think it’s my fault.”

Upon which Lydia suddenly struck in, “Never mind how they are going,
Joan, Joan! Let the people alone; they will amuse themselves. Mr.
Brotherton has never been among the Fells before, and he wants to learn
about us and all our ways. We are the natives--a kind of savages, but
friendly; and talking a kind of dialect that can be understood with a
little trouble. Come, Joan, and listen. It is nice to hear so much good
of ourselves.”

This she said a little vindictively, with a glance at her new companion
which brought the colour to his face. He had opened the conversation
unguardedly, as fine people are often in the habit of doing with each
other, by talking about the natives and the barbarous people. It was a
compliment, if Lydia had known, to the superior air of her dress, and
her appearance generally; how it is that one individual looks _comme il
faut_, and another does not, is the most difficult of questions. Lydia
in fact was no way superior to the rest: but the stranger thought she
was a young person of the world, somebody who was in society,
storm-stayed like himself.

“Do not take me at such a disadvantage,” he said; “if I spoke nonsense,
it was because I did not know any better. I have got a relation
somewhere among these good natives. You cannot think I do anything but
respect them when that is the case.”

“Do you always respect your relations?” Lydia asked. She was perfectly
disposed to flirt, and had an instinctive knowledge how to do it, though
she had so little practice--no practice, it may be said; for young Selby
was not light enough in hand to give her any experience, and he was
almost the only individual with whom it would have been possible to
flirt.

“If you are looking for friends,” said Joan, with immediate interest,
“we have been here in this country since before the memory of man, and,
if anybody can help you, we should be able to do it. Who is it you
want?” She took a vacant chair and sat down by her sister--partly to
guard Lydia, partly because she was full of curiosity about the strange
young man--and partly, also, because Joan was a great genealogist, and
knew everybody’s descent and how their grandfathers had married--when
they had any grandfathers, it must be said.

“They are people of my own name,” said the stranger, “or, I should
rather say--it is a distant cousin of my own name, who married somewhere
hereabouts heaven knows how many years ago. My father recollects her
well enough. She was a pretty girl in his day, and he told me to look
her up; but as he had forgotten her present name (if she is still
living), and she was married some forty years ago or more, I doubt if I
am very likely to succeed.”

“Your--own name?” said Joan, with a little confusion. In her own house,
and in the capacity of hostess to the stranger, she felt that it was
rude not to know his name. She gave a glance of appeal at Liddy, who was
mischievous, and in no humour to throw any light on the subject.

“Joan will tell you,” the girl said. “She knows everyone, and whom they
married, and all their aunts and uncles. You have only to ask my
sister.”

More and mere confused grew Joan. She looked at Liddy with reproachful
eyes; she even addressed a plaintive glance to Raaf, who did not
understand her embarrassment, and for the moment was too angry to have
helped if he had. “Of your--own name?” she said, faltering.

“Yes; forty years ago, or so, she was Lydia Brotherton.”

“Why, it’s mother!” said Joan, her countenance beaming. There was a
victory over everybody, Pilgrims and all; while the young man,
starting, turned round with amazed pleasure, and looked, not at Joan,
who spoke, however, but at Lydia, who listened, looking up at him, as
much astonished as he.

“Mother!” Lydia said, and her fair countenance brightened into smiles
from which all the mischievous meaning had gone.

“Well, that’s as easy a find as I ever heard of,” cried Joan, “and how
lucky you should have come here! Mother _will_ be pleased! She has not
seen any of her relations for years. She was an only child, so she had
never any near friends. How pleased she will be, to be sure! The best
thing you can do is to stay here all night, and ride over with Liddy
to-morrow: she is going home to-morrow. Bless me, I think I’ll go too,
just to see mother so pleased!”

“It is a delightful discovery,” said young Brotherton. “How fortunate
that I mentioned it now; my father charged me to find out--but I confess
I had forgotten till this moment. How lucky I thought of it! I am afraid
I must go home to-night with these good people who have been so kind to
me; but I will come back in the morning. It is delightful to fall among
kindred,” the young man said, looking at Lydia, whose face reflected
all manner of pleasant sensations, surprises, a delightful sense of
novelty and exhilaration. She had but few relatives, and a new cousin
was delightful--especially a cousin so completely creditable, a
gentleman, one about whom there could not be two opinions. The Pilgrims,
who had been so proud of this “strange young man,” had altogether
disappeared now, and Raaf was left entirely out of the little group of
three, all so pleased with themselves and each other. Joan forgot even
those duties which usually she performed with such devotion, leaving the
round game and its players to themselves, and no longer thinking either
of the duet of the Pilgrim girls, or Raaf’s song.

“I took the greatest notice of you from the moment you came in,” she
said. “I cannot tell you how it was. It’s not that there is any family
likeness, for I can’t see any. Liddy favours mother, and there’s not a
feature alike in her and you; but all the same I took notice of you from
the first. I didn’t catch your name, or it might have made me think--but
there was something. I was more vexed than pleased with those Pilgrims;
but all the same, when I caught sight of you----”

“It was kindred at first sight,” said the young man.

“That’s a new way of putting it,” said Joan, laughing; and it glanced
through her mind that she had already thought, if he had not been with
the Pilgrims, that this might be the right sort of man; and now it was
clear that he did not belong to the Pilgrims. She gave a rapid glance
from him to Lydia, and back again. As yet she had not the least idea who
he was. She had never seen any of the Brotherton connections, and knew
nothing about them. Mrs. Joscelyn had often told her children that she
had no relations nearer than cousins, and with them even she had kept up
no acquaintance. Her children were entirely in the dark about the
family. They knew that there was a Sir John who gave dignity to it; but
that was all. Joan was very straightforward, but she did not like to
plunge at once into details, and ask him who he was. But when she had
talked a great deal to the new relative, and arranged the expedition to
the White House to-morrow, she went back to Mrs. Pilgrim, who sat
somewhat deserted in her corner, a little humiliated by the desertion of
her “gentleman,” with the most cheerful cordiality. “I did not catch
the gentleman’s name,” she said, “when you brought him in; but what a
good thing you brought him! He’s a cousin of ours, and came here looking
for mother; for her own friends live far away, and we’ve long lost sight
of them. Of course,” said Joan, with a little artifice, “he had no
notion whose house he was coming to. There’s always a great confusion in
a family about your married name.”

“Came here--looking for----? I thought he came looking for a place for
the shooting,” Mrs. Pilgrim said, confounded. She could scarcely allow
herself to believe it. It had been a distinction to bring a new
“gentleman,” a person of such distinguished appearance, in her train;
and to have him taken from her bodily, nay, carried off soul and body,
so to speak, not indeed to her enemy’s side, but at all events into
another family, was hard to bear.




CHAPTER III.

CONFIDENCES.


They were still at breakfast at Heatonshaw next morning when the new
cousin came to the door. He was on a good horse, which was a thing they
all remarked at once, being learned in such matters--and looked
handsomer in daylight than he had done at night. The household had been
late on the previous evening--a party being a matter of such rare
occurrence that it was considered only right to make the best of it,
both in kitchen and parlour, and to bustle half the night “putting
away.” The whole company had dispersed at a little after eleven; but
next morning there was as much license as if it had been the morning
after a ball. And the household felt equally dissipated; everything is
comparative; eleven o’clock at night was in Heatonshaw as bad as three
or four in the morning at another place. So they were still around the
breakfast table when young Brotherton rode up.

“That’s not Pilgrim’s horse,” Mr. Selby said. “It must be out of his own
stables; and he did not get that for nothing.” Even Liddy got up from
where she was sitting, a little out of the way, to peep at the new
arrival. He came in a few minutes after whip in hand.

“You are not so early, Mrs. Selby, as I feared. I made a very early
start lest you should be gone before I could get here.”

“We are not so early as all that,” said Joan, “and we’re not used to
have our home disturbed, and the house turned upside-down, as it was
last night. I’m one that thinks it a duty, where people have a nice
house and plenty to do with, to have your friends from time to time. But
it’s a great trouble both before and after. Not a servant in this house
was in their bed till long past twelve o’clock at night; and, poor
things, we could not be exacting this morning,” Joan added,
apologetically. “Liddy, if Mr. Brotherton will not take anything, we
will, maybe, better get ready to go.”

“Do not hurry for me,” the young man said. He was quite at his ease
talking to Philip Selby, whom it pleased his wife to see putting on
mildly the air of a man of the world when any invasion came from that
big place into the Fell-country. When they had gone to “put on their
things,” young Brotherton made himself very agreeable to the master of
the house. He spoke of my “cousins” as if he had known them all his
life: though all the time there was a look of semi-amusement on his
face. He had stumbled into a new life without knowing anything about it.
The servants up till after twelve, which was spoken of with bated breath
as a wonderful interruption of rule; the master and mistress, who “were
not exacting” after that tremendous vigil; the freshness and sweetness
of the rural place, all produced a great effect upon him. He thought it
a kind of Arcadia, an Arcadia dashed with reminiscences of hot supper,
and some vagaries of homely fashion which struck Brotherton as more
amusing than all the similar vagaries which he had come across before.
When the ladies came down again, Joan attired in a bonnet which was more
striking in its colours and composition than was common, ready to drive
her phaeton to the White House, and Lydia in her riding habit, his
pleasure in the sunshiny expedition he was about to make was as great as
his amusement in finding himself a member of the primitive society,
almost of the family, which was so simple and so kind. He watched the
packing of the phaeton with laughing eyes. Lydia’s box, containing her
evening dress no doubt, was carefully fastened on behind, and in front,
in the vacant seat, was a basket, in which there were a number of
delicacies from the feast, which Mrs. Selby thought “Mother might like:
or if she doesn’t care for them herself, it will always be a pleasure to
give them away,” said Joan; “though you must not think, Mr. Brotherton,
that I am forgetting our own poor folk. A little bit that is out of the
way, that comes from the party--everybody likes that.” He helped to lift
the basket into the phaeton almost with reverence. The feast of last
night became beautiful to him in this light. How many had he seen, much
more delicate and costly, of which the fragments went to the dogs,
nobody dreaming of the “poor folk!” Mr. Selby put Liddy upon her horse
while the young stranger was helping with the basket, and this he felt
to be a sacrifice on his part, in consonance with the kind and homely
charity that breathed about the place. Then Philip Selby promised to
walk over to join his wife in the afternoon, and the party went off,
Mrs. Selby in advance, talking cheerily to her horse, bidding him to get
on, and not bother her with a whip. Liddy and the young man set out
soberly together. They did not say much for the first mile or two. Now
that they were alone together they were a little abashed by each other.
He thought her the prettiest girl he had ever seen--which was by no
means the case, for Liddy, though very pretty, was not a wonder of
loveliness; and she thought him, with more reason, the finest gentleman
that had ever came across her path. She asked herself how it was that he
was so different from Raaf Selby? but could not make any reply. He was
like nobody she had ever seen. “This is what a gentleman is, a real
gentleman, the kind that goes to Court and sees the Queen; the kind that
is in Parliament and rules the country; the kind that everybody tries to
be like, and that Raaf Selby would fain be taken for--he!” Liddy said to
herself; and she was abashed, and did not talk much to her companion.
Indeed it was not till they were near the White House that she ventured
to ask a question which had been long on her lips.

“Are you a member of Parliament, Mr. Brotherton?”

“Oh, no,” he said, laughing; “it is my father you are thinking of. I
have never attained that dignity. I ought to have told you more about
myself before I asked admittance; but Mrs. Selby was so kind. I am a
briefless barrister, if you know what that is.”

“A lawyer with nothing to do,” said Liddy; “one reads about them in
books.”

Young Brotherton laughed. “It is as good a definition as another,” he
said; “but sometimes it means only some one who has pretended to study
for a profession which is all a pretence together, and never comes to
anything. That is my case: and I have been wandering over all the
world.”

“In Italy?” asked Lydia, with eager eyes.

“Oh, yes. You are fond of Italy? I daresay we shall find we have
sympathies on that point. My mother is a great devotee; she would live
there all the year round if we would let her. I wonder which is your
favourite spot.”

“Oh!” cried Lydia, with all her heart in her voice, “I have no
favourite spot; I only know it by name. Italy is where everything
happens--all the stories are there: and besides,” she added, “I have a
private reason too.”

He looked at her with some curiosity, and a great deal of interest. What
could the private reason of a young girl be? “You have, perhaps,” he
said, “friends there?”

Lydia shook her head. “If you are our cousin, Mr. Brotherton, and going
to know all about us--”

“_If_ I am your cousin! Do you think I am making a false claim, Miss
Joscelyn?” he said.

“--then you will soon know about Harry,” said Lydia, going on in the
same breath. “I have a brother who went away a great many years ago. We
don’t know where he is, or anything about him; but I am sure if I could
go abroad I should find him--that is why I am always so anxious to talk
to anyone who has been there.”

“Where?” he said.

“Abroad.” Lydia said the word with all simplicity. “Abroad” meant
everything to her. It meant the place in which Harry was, and where she
should certainly find him if she got there. When she said “Italy” she
meant much the same thing. Not Italy, of which she knew little, except
by the stories in the “Book of Beauty;” but a vague and beautiful place
in which everything that was wonderful happened, and in which it would
be natural that this should happen too.

But Brotherton, whose knowledge was more precise, was puzzled. He did
not know whether to follow out this line of conversation, which promised
to become intimate, or to go back to subjects personal to himself. He
had no right to inquire into the story of the family prodigal, he
thought; but still, as the door had been opened to him, how was he to
turn from it? “I have gone abroad since ever I can remember,” he said;
“my mother, as I tell you, is never so happy in England as out of it.
She is rather an invalid, and she cannot bear the cold. When I was a boy
I scarcely knew where my home was.”

“Are there many of you?” asked Liddy, full of interest. She did not
understand a small family, and a vision came on her of sisters, girls
like herself, companions such as she had never had; but this new idea
was alarming as well as delightful, and she could not help fearing that
young ladies who were equal to her new friend would think themselves
above her; therefore it was almost a relief, though at the same time a
disappointment, when he laughed and said, “I am all the daughters of my
father’s house, and all the brothers too,”--words which she thought she
had heard somewhere else, but was not clear about. And then they went on
again quite silently for a time, the wide valley all about them, the air
breathing in their faces, the great world all to themselves. Joan,
driving in her steady way, was round the next corner, well ahead, and
there was nothing but these two figures stalking on in the sunshine,
with their shadows behind them. Liddy felt that she did not care to
talk. The sensation was sweet, and tranquil, and friendly, and furnished
all that was required, without any talking at all. It is impossible to
describe what an interruption it was, a kind of outrage upon the quiet,
when, as they went round that next corner, skirting the hedgerows, they
were suddenly met face to face by young Selby, on his big brown horse.
Even Lydia, not too favourably disposed towards him, had been obliged to
admit on former occasions that Raaf Selby looked well on his big horse.
But to-day he positively offended her by his appearance. There is no
class of men in the world so delightful, so helpful, so kind, so modest
about their own merits, and of so much service to all the rest of the
world, as doctors; but yet there is a compound of rudeness, jauntiness,
pretension, and vulgarity to be found now and then in a country
practitioner, which can nowhere else be paralleled. Raaf Selby was not
always like this, nor was it at all the impression which he made upon
the general mind, or even upon Liddy’s, who, in other times, had
considered him, as all the country did, “quite a gentleman.” But when he
met them now he had a red face (which was not his fault) and the air of
having been up all night (which, if it had been true, would have been a
virtue in him), and looked altogether like a rural dandy trying to be
something which he was not.

“Hullo, Miss Liddy,” he said, “I suppose you kept it up to all the hours
last night after the rest of us were gone?”

“I don’t know what there was to keep up,” Liddy said, with an indignant
blush; upon which young Selby laughed loudly.

“Ah, I daresay; but _I_ know,” he said, with an open look at Brotherton,
a look full of insolence and jealousy--and he gave a great laugh. “I
was out of it last night; but I haven’t always been out of it,” he said.

Lydia was a girl not at all disposed in her own person to submit to any
impertinence, but she got alarmed when she saw the gathering clouds on
her companion’s face. “I think you are alluding to something I don’t
understand,” she said, firmly, “but I need not ask what it is, to detain
you. We have got to keep up with Joan. Did you see Joan? She has got the
lead of us, and we are bound to make up to her now.”

“Yes, I saw she had got judiciously out of hearing,” said young Selby,
with another laugh. “That’s the first duty of a chaperon.”

In this he meant no particular offence, but spoke with the rough
bantering which was not disliked by ordinary country girls, just
sharpened with jealousy and envy, and the sting of seeing how thoroughly
harmonious and sympathetic Liddy and her new companion looked. As for
Brotherton he kept apart as far as he could. Good manners in another
generation would have suggested a use of his whip. Good manners now
restrained him from taking any notice, though his blood boiled.

“I don’t know about a chaperon’s duties,” Liddy said; “I think we must
go on. Good morning, Mr. Selby,” and they went on, leaving him in the
middle of the road, staring. He could not help looking after them,
though he did not like the sight. Two handsome young people, in complete
accord and harmony, moving along together as if to music, with no noise
nor boisterous gaiety, as would have been the case had Selby himself
ridden home with Liddy after the party, but in perfect friendliness and
union, as he thought.

“Good morning,” he called after them, “and my congratulations to Joan
upon her success last night.”

He was so bitter that he could not forbear from sending this last shaft
after them. Who was this fellow, that he should come in and spoil other
people’s chances? Selby recalled furiously to his recollection,
incidents of a similar kind that he had known. A swell comes down, he
pokes himself between a foolish lass and some honest man that likes her;
and when he has turned her head he rides away! The country gallant was
aware that he had acted this fine part himself in a lower class, when he
had merely laughed at the lass’s credulity and the fury of the clown
who was her true lover, but whom she could not endure after being
courted by a gentleman; but he did not laugh when the case was his own.
This swell, of course, would go away; but Liddy’s head would be turned;
and she was a girl who would have a good bit of money, besides being the
prettiest girl in the county. Joscelyn had been making money of late,
everybody said, and there was her Uncle Henry’s money, which must be
divided sooner or later; and all this to be put out of an honest
suitor’s reach by a young fellow who would not even take it himself, but
only spoil the lass for a better man. This was what was rankling in
Selby’s heart as he rode away.

“Is Mr. Selby a relation of yours?” Brotherton asked.

“Only of Joan’s--my sister’s--husband. It is not bragging,” said Lydia,
with a little blush, yet a slight elevation of her head as well, “but we
are very different from the Selbys, Mr. Brotherton. Many people thought
Joan made a very poor marriage. I don’t think so, for she is fond of
Philip, and he is so good; but the Joscelyns are the oldest family--I
don’t speak out of vanity--the oldest family in the county. We used to
be great people,” said Liddy, laughing, but very serious all the same,
“in the old days.”

“I always knew,” said Brotherton, “that it was an old name.”

“Oh, there are all sorts of people who have old names; but we are the
real people; if you stay long we will show you the old tower. There have
been Joscelyns in it ever since there was any history at all.”

She gave her head a slight fling backwards, and laughed again, half at
herself--but yet Lydia meant every word she said. Young Brotherton, for
his part, had been brought up in more enlightened circles, and would
have thought of himself that he failed in that “sense of humour” which
is the modern preservation from all absurdities, had he spoken of his
family in this way. He held his tongue on the subject, and thought that
he esteemed one name as much as another, and was no respector of
persons; and he laughed in his heart at Lydia’s brag, and admired, with
an indulgent sense of superiority, to see how this sentiment of family
pride kindled her eyes and elevated her head. But all the same he was
impressed by it. It produced its effect upon him, as it does upon every
Englishman. He liked the boast, of which he did not fail to see the
ludicrous side, and which his more cultivated taste would have entirely
prevented him from putting forth in his own person--but in Liddy he
liked it, and laughed, yet was more pleased with her and his connection
with her. She carried it in her face, he thought, and in every movement
of her untutored, yet graceful, carriage. It did not occur to him to
think that homely Joan, soberly speeding along the road in her phaeton,
had all the same advantages of blood.

Mrs. Joscelyn came out to meet them at the door. She liked to see her
Liddy get down beaming, from her horse--the horse as handsome as
herself, which Mrs. Joscelyn began for the first time to see the beauty
of, now that her child was the rider. She did not know who the young man
was, and she did not much care. Her mind had not been awakened to the
matrimonial question, though, to tell the truth, no wild beast, no lion
with a devouring maw, would have wakened so much alarm in Mrs. Joscelyn
as the appearance of a lover for Liddy. That would have inferred the
saddest fate for herself, the destruction of her present sweet life,
and all the late happiness which had come to her in compensation for her
troubles; but fortunately such an idea did not enter into her mind. It
was a pleasant arrival. Joan, always active and bright, lifting down
with her own hands her big basket, stood in the hall watching too the
arrival of the young people, yet calling out to the groom some prudent
suggestions about her own horse, which was being led away to the
stables. She was as well informed about all the necessities of the
stable as any of them, and took the deepest interest in the welfare of
the animals, and she stepped forward to pat the fine neck of Liddy’s
steed as her mother got the young rider in her arms.

“Did you ever see a prettier creature?” she said to Brotherton, “and I
would not say but there were two of them. But mother’s just a fool about
Liddy. She thinks there’s nothing like her on the face of the earth.
Mother, here’s a relation come to see you,” she added, turning round.

Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little cry. Brotherton was standing against the
light, so that his features were not at first decipherable. She made a
quick step forward, throwing out her hands, then grew suddenly pale.

“I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she said, faintly. “I am sure I
beg your friend’s pardon, Joan, and yours too.”

“I see what you’re thinking of, mother--but there’s nothing in it,” Joan
said. “This is young Mr. Brotherton, who’s come to the Fells asking for
a cousin of his name that married here long ago. If it’s not you, I
don’t know who it can be--and I’ve brought him to see you. It would be
his father you knew, for he’s but a young lad himself, as you can see.”

“He’s kindly welcome,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, and he was brought into the
parlour, and a great deal of family explanation was gone through. Mrs.
Joscelyn had her pride of birth, as well as her daughter, and it had
always been a secret pleasure to her to think that there was a Sir John
in her family, who might turn up some time or other and balance the
faded Joscelyn pretensions with a far more tangible living dignity. For
her own part, she did not know anything about Sir John; but it gratified
her mightily to think that he had remembered he had a cousin married in
the Fell-country. “There could not be any--stranger that it would give
me more pleasure to see,” she said.

Young Brotherton, for his part, was delighted with his old cousin. It
was from her, he perceived with pleasure, that Liddy had taken her
willowy grace, and the refined and delicate features which bore little
resemblance to those of Mrs. Selby. He was in a humour to be pleased
with everything he saw. When the master of the house appeared, he
thought him the model of an old North-country squire, rough, perhaps,
but manly and full of character, as suited that strong-minded country.
The plainness of manners and living, the woman-servant, not very adroit,
that served the dinner--which was plainly dinner, and not luncheon--the
atmosphere of farm and stables outside of the house, instead of park and
pleasure-grounds, all struck him in the most favourable light. Liddy had
thrown glamour in the young man’s eyes; he saw them all through her.
These, the unusual features in her surroundings, appeared to him in the
form of characteristic traits and country peculiarities, not as symptoms
of a level of society lower than his own. It was all piquant, novel,
delightful, and when he was asked to stay, a grace which Joscelyn put
forth to the wonder and admiration of all the household, he accepted the
invitation with eagerness. Mrs. Selby, for one, could not get over her
astonishment.

“Nay, when father’s asked him there’s not a word to say,” she cried.
“Father! I would as soon have believed that you and me, Phil, would have
been asked to take tea with the Queen.”




CHAPTER IV.

BEGINNING.


Brotherton stayed a week at the White House--to the great mortification
of the Pilgrims at Wyburgh, whose guest he had been. Nobody likes to
have their visitors interfered with, or that a new acquaintance, whom
they have themselves introduced and brought out, so to speak, in
society, should desert them for a new circle. The girls and the mother
were alike indignant, and the incident even had the effect of quickening
the action of the father, and making him more impatient of the delays in
respect to old Mr. Joscelyn’s estate. But this had little effect upon
the household at the White House, which for the moment was more happy
and peaceful than perhaps it had ever been before. It was the beginning
of one of those new chapters in life which revive the interest of the
old story. Poor Mrs. Joscelyn had lived through many such, but they had
been in most cases not of the pleasant, but painful kind. Her blood had
been quickened in her veins, her heart driven into wild beating, as one
crisis after another occurred in the family life. But now everything was
changed. Lydia had become to her another self. She was not sure whether
it was not herself again, glorified, elevated, made beautiful by present
youth and infinite hope, which was always about her--moving with her
step for step, talking, even thinking with her: the same thoughts rising
to their lips. Between two sisters such a dual life is sweet; but to a
mother it is a recompense for all the pangs of life, which are seldom
few or small. She was not sure that it was not herself who spoke, and
thought, and smiled in Lydia; but only a self far more firm, erect, and
self-supporting than she had ever been. Lydia was not afraid of
anything, and of Ralph Joscelyn least of all. This of itself made the
strangest difference. It gave a flavour and fragrance to their mingled
life. The mother felt herself more brave and more strong in her child;
and now romance was arriving to her late in the same way. Ralph
Joscelyn’s wooing had been a rough one. During its course the pretty,
drooping Lydia of those days had been charmed by its very abruptness,
and considered the peremptory passion a double compliment to herself,
and to the power of love in subduing the strong. She had liked all the
silly similes, the lion enchained, the giant deprived of his strength,
and had believed in her foolish heart that her half-savage hero would be
always in her toils--however rough to others, yet to herself the
gentlest of the gentle. From this foolish dream there had been a summary
awakening; and all her long life since had been calculated to convince
the romantic woman that romance existed only in her dreams. But now
another kind of awakening was coming to her. Youth had come back with
its visions, and Arcadia, and love. The young man who was her own kith
and kin (which of itself was sweet) was also, as becomes a young man,
something of her own kind. He was full of poetry, and sympathy, and
enthusiasm: it was not after her old-fashioned mode, but yet it was not
the common strain of prose to which she had been accustomed. To see his
eyes turn to her Lydia was to Mrs. Joscelyn like the revival of all her
own maiden fancies; and the affectionate worship which he gave to
herself completed the charm. Perhaps she was happier than Lydia in
those early days of wooing. She saw the dawn of admiration and
enthusiasm in his eyes, when Lydia herself thought of him only as a sort
of advanced playfellow, a something new in his youth and pleasantness.
Mrs. Joscelyn saw it all from the beginning; she felt from the beginning
that it was written in heaven. It was half like a story which she was
reading in snatches, or chapters, a single page at a time, always
longing to go on with it, to see what the next step was to be, to
anticipate the end.

As for Lydia herself, after the little excitement of the arrival, and
the pleasure of bringing this new cousin to her mother--the most
delightful present that could be thought--of she subsided sedately into
her usual life, and treated him as a new companion, not doubting his
interest in her simple occupations. His servant came over from Wyburgh
with his baggage, which was a shock to the primitive household; but as
the man was rather in charge of the horse than of his master, and that
is a point on which princes and grooms may fraternise, the alarm was
soon over. Brotherton wanted, it appeared, to find a shooting box, a
little place in which he could establish himself for the autumn. He
explained that he was not rich enough to aspire to a Scotch moor, and
modestly permitted it to be understood that the Duke’s youngest son was
his intimate friend, and that it was chiefly to be near him, and share
his shootings, that he had chosen this part of the world. With the
hospitality of primitive regions, Ralph Joscelyn would have taken him in
permanently, and allowed him to be an inmate of the White House; but his
wife retained enough of her old breeding to see that this expedient was
undesirable, even though her heart stirred faintly with a hope that in
that case the Duchess might have called, which is the chief sign of
belonging to the aristocracy in these countries. The Duchess had never
given her this sign of recognition, which had been a life-long smart to
the poor lady. What did she care about such distinctions now? but yet
for the sake of Liddy, she said to herself. To have her Lydia asked to a
ball at the Castle would indeed be something to reward her for living,
to make her feel that now she could die in peace. Mrs. Joscelyn did not
say anything about this hope--for the disappointment, if nothing came of
it, would have been very severe she felt, too great a trial to expose
her child to: but she cherished it in her heart of hearts. And in the
meantime they made every effort they could to find for this new relation
the lodging he wanted. It was Lydia at last who suggested the old
Birrenshead, the house which had been Uncle Harry’s, but which had not
been inhabited by anybody but Isaac Oliver in the memory of man.

“It is a very tumble-down old place,” she said, deprecating, “but it is
only two miles from here.”

“Oh, if it is only two miles from here--!” cried the young man, eagerly.
This was one of those elliptical forms of speech which he had begun to
employ unawares, and which only Mrs. Joscelyn understood. She smiled
within herself, but she said nothing; and it was agreed that he should
walk there next day and see what accommodation the place possessed. The
name of it threw a little tremor over Mrs. Joscelyn, although she had
smiled. And next morning, when with great simplicity, and without any
thought of harm, Lydia set out with the stranger to show him the way,
she told him the circumstances in which the family stood, as she had
before revealed to him the fact of her brother’s disappearance. It did
not occur either to Lydia or to her mother that there was anything
wrong, anything out of the common, in showing young Brotherton the way
to Birrenshead. It seemed indeed of all things the simplest and most
natural. She walked by his side as seriously as if the young man had
been her own grandfather, with all the dignity of a princess in her own
country. Nor did anyone in the village think it strange. They saw her
pass, and wondered who it was who accompanied her over the bridge; but
that was all.

“This is part of the property,” she said gravely, “which was left to my
poor brother whom I told you of. That is what made my mother look so
serious. She does not like to hear about Uncle Henry’s property. If we
do not hear something of Harry soon, it will have to be divided, they
say.”

“And that is a grief to her?” Brotherton said, sympathetically.

“Oh, Mr. Brotherton, think! to be the heir of your own child--do you
wonder that she cannot bear it? They say we should all have our share,
father and mother too. _He_ does not say much, but he thinks more than
he says, and I am sure he would rather die than touch it. But my
brothers,” said Lydia, with a sigh, “my other brothers, don’t think so.
They want us to yield and consent that Harry is dead. But that is what I
will never do.”

Brotherton looked at her animated face with admiring interest. “You must
have been very fond of this brother,” he said.

“I scarcely remember him; but I am sure I should find him,” cried Lydia.
“You will say that is nonsense; but then I have been my mother’s only
companion all these years, and she will never be happy till she has seen
Harry again. She has not had a very happy life; perhaps she has not
always understood--and then no one has understood _her_. I must, I must
get her some happiness before she dies!”

There was a glow of tender enthusiasm about the girl which touched her
companion deeply. “I think,” he said, “she is happy in you. It would be
strange if she were not,” he added, half under his breath.

This brought a wave of colour over Lydia’s face. “She is a little more
happy in me; but she will not be really happy till she sees Harry.”

“And if----”

“Don’t say so, Mr. Brotherton, please! Don’t think so even. Do you
imagine if he had been ---- that mother would not know? If I could only
go abroad I know I should find him. Here is old Isaac Oliver, old Uncle
Henry’s man. He will let you see the place; and if he is cross you will
not mind? He has been here so long that he thinks it is his own.”

They were walking along the edge of a field of corn, on a little
footpath so narrow that here and there they had to walk singly. The
wind, which swept the tall rustling crop in waves like breath coming and
going, blew the pale yellow heads against them as they went along in
pleasant contact with this wealth and freshness of nature. The corn was
still pale in tint, ripening slowly under the northern sun, with a
glimmer of red poppies under the surface like the woven under-ground of
some rich Indian stuff. As Lydia spoke, an old man became visible
between the corn and the hedgerow, pushing his stooping shoulders along
before him with a sidelong movement like a crab. His head was bent to
one side, his footsteps shuffling. Ten years had told upon Isaac. He did
not take off his hat when he saw Liddy approaching, such a ceremonial
being scarcely necessary to the familiar intercourse of the country, but
he nodded amiably, and made signs of welcome with his hand. As, however,
the path widened a little just at that moment, and young Brotherton,
making a quicker step, appeared suddenly at Lydia’s side, Isaac, who had
not seen him before, was greatly startled. He stopped short in his
crab-like course to stare at the new comer. He fell back a step or two
and screwed his stooping head aloft in a sidelong attitude. Then he
gave vent to a shrill, prolonged “E-eh!” which penetrated the air like a
skewer. “So he’s coomed back,” the old man said.

“Who has come back?” said Lydia, startled and eager.

“Lord, Master, give us a grip o’ your hand. You’re no Master Harry now,
you’re master’s sel’. T’ ould Master left it all to ye, as I said he
would if you’d let him be; but you never would listen, nor think on----”
When he had got so far, old Isaac paused. His head had sunk a little
from its first energy of motion, but he kept one eye screwed up and
shining, and his mouth twisted upward at one corner. Here, however, he
paused, and a cloud came over his face. “Miss Liddy,” he said,
reproachfully, “you might have tellt me it wasn’t him.”

“Who did you think it was, Isaac? It is Mr. Brotherton, a----distant
cousin. Did you think----? Oh, tell me, is he like, is he like----?”

The old man recovered himself gradually. He gave a grin which seemed to
twist upwards from his mouth to his little twinkling eyes.

“Not a feature in his face,” he said, with a growl of angry laughter,
“not a bit, no more nor I’m like. I’m just an old fool. I take anyone
for him. Ne’er a soul comes down t’ Fells but I say, it’s him, as if he
was coming from t’ skies. A fine joke that; and him t’ prodigal son, a
good joke; to look for him from t’ skies! He should come from t’ other
place, Miss Liddy, up from t’ ground.”

“But he was no prodigal,” said Liddy, indignantly. “He did not go away
for any harm, Isaac, you know that!”

“I know a’ about it, a’ about it,” said the old man. “Step forward, Sir,
into the light. If you keep there dangling behind her--Lord! but I’ll
think it’s you after a’.”

“You must be like Harry,” cried Lydia, turning round quickly upon her
companion. “When she saw you first, my mother started too.”

“He’s about the same age,” said old Isaac, “and tallness--no more, not a
hair. Don’t you speak to me, Miss Liddy. If I dunnot know him, who does?
I brought him up, though you wouldn’t think it. I put him on a pony the
first time. I gied him most of his lessons, out of t’ school. But this
isn’t him,” the old man said indignantly, “it’s not him, I tell ye.
Don’t you think to impose on me.”

“Isaac,” said Lydia, “will you let Mr. Brotherton see the house? He
wants to live here for a little. Mother thinks you might put in a little
furniture, and make him comfortable.”

“Com--fortable!” said the old man, prolonging the word with a
half-laughing, half-angry cry; “and it was your mother said it? If he
likes t’ bide with the bats and the rats, he may be com--fortable.
There’s been nobody else there as long’s I mind. Do you mean,” he added,
suddenly screwing up his eye into a little spark of red fire, “that
she’s consented, and Miss Joan, and you? I’ll not b’lieve it; and who,”
he asked fiercely, “is to get this share?”

“You must not speak so to me. We have not consented, and I never will
consent. But this gentleman does not understand what we are talking
about,” said Lydia; “take him into the house and show him what rooms
there are, and I will go and see your wife.”

“Oh, ay,” said Isaac, “speak to t’ missis, you’ll find her in a fine
way. If she hadna gotten t’ meekest man, next to Job, that was ever in
this ill world--a pictur and a pattern. But you’ll see for yourself,
Miss Liddy; you can drop a word about t’ gentleman to soothen her down.
Come this way round, come this way round, it’s the best way.”

Old Isaac had turned in front of them, and was creeping along by the
side of the path scarcely so high as the corn, his battered old hat
about the same height as the yellow ears. When the cornfield ended they
came out abruptly upon a grey old house, surrounded by a small rough
square of grass, in which were some fine trees. The house looked as if
it had been forgotten there, like an old plough. It had a square,
respectable portico, with a pediment above it, and rows of windows
chiefly broken, the lower ones closed with shutters which were falling
to pieces. A huge elm-tree stood up at one corner, throwing its shadow
over half the house; behind it were traces of the trees of an orchard;
but the fields all round had encroached on the place, potatoes were
growing within a stone’s throw of the great door, and everything bearing
witness of its deposition and reduction from a human centre of life to a
mere wreck and encumbrance on the earth.

“Ay, ay,” said old Isaac, shaking his head, “they’d just like to pull it
down and no leave one stone on another, like Jerusalem in t’ Bible; but
the walls is good, and the woodwork’s good, and it would last his time
and mine--and far more if Mr. Harry would come home, as he ought.”

“Then you think he’ll come home,” said young Brotherton, not knowing
what to say.

“Wha said he wasna coming home, why should he no come home?” said Isaac,
screwing up his eye once more into a red spark of angry light. “Them
that say so know nothing about it, I can tell you that, Master. Them
that are of that opinion have nothing to found it on. Who understands
Master Harry like me, unless, maybe, it was his mother? Well, his mother
and me, we’re both expecting him. That should be an answer, except to
them that arguys just for the sake of arguyment,” the old man said,
fiercely. “Will you come in and see the house?”

To Brotherton it had begun to seem, by this time, as if the house and
all about it, the very skies overhead, had darkened. He did not quite
know at first what was the cause. It was some cloud that had come over
the sun; or was there some obscurity about the house, some shadow of
fate, which darkened the skies at midday? It seemed to him suddenly that
nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of the place altogether,
though before Lydia disappeared round the broken bit of garden-wall, it
had seemed so inviting and desirable. But he did not ask himself if
Lydia’s disappearance had anything to do with this sudden change: all he
said to himself was, “it is only two miles from the White House,” and,
strengthened by this reminder, he went on with courage into the dark
portal. It was, as Liddy had said, a very tumble-down house. There was a
dirty and ragged carpet on the floor, sometimes moving in waves when the
windows were opened; a table stood in the centre of the largest
sitting-room, and the chairs were put round, as if some sober party had
just risen from them. This was on the first floor, in the drawing-room
of the house; behind it were some bed-rooms scarcely more inviting; the
dust rose in clouds when the air was admitted, the furniture seemed
dropping to pieces. Brotherton stood at the door of one room after
another, with a blank stare at them. They had but one quality; they were
within two miles of the White House.

“And do you think they will suit you?” Lydia asked, coming back to him
when his inspection was over.

She had not been in dusty places like those which he had just left, but
came round the corner of the garden wall, looking so fresh and bright,
that somehow that cloud over the sun disappeared in a moment, and the
whole landscape brightened, and the dust went out of his throat. He had
been feeling half choked, but he felt so no more. He had thought that
they would not do at all; but now a sort of heavenly suitability seemed
to come to them all at once, and it appeared to him in a moment that, if
he could have the choice of all sorts of lodgings, these dreary rooms
were those which would suit him best.

“They will do beautifully,” he said, with much cheerfulness. “So far as
I can see they are the very thing I want; and then so near the White
House! What is two miles? I shall be able to walk over constantly--if
you will let me,” he added, in a softer tone.

“Of course we will let you,” said Lydia, sedately. “We shall miss you so
much that we shall be very happy to have you whenever you like. But were
they not in very bad order? the furniture dreadful? and everything
dropping to pieces?”

“I did not see it,” said young Brotherton, stoutly. “They were, I
daresay, a little dusty; when a place has been uninhabited for a long
time--I suppose nobody has lived there lately?”

“Nobody has lived there since I can remember--oh, and not for a long
time before. Even Uncle Henry never lived there. I think I must have
been silly to bring you, for it can’t be fit to live in now I think of
it; and while matters are undecided about poor Harry they will not do
anything. Oh, I am afraid mother and I were hasty in thinking it would
do.”

“On the contrary,” said young Brotherton, feeling in the enthusiasm of
the moment as if it had been a palace which he had just quitted, “it is
everything I require. Perhaps,” he added, modestly, as if by an
afterthought, “they would not mind--sweeping it out.”

“I spoke to Jane, that is Isaac’s wife. Isaac is a very funny old man,
but he is frightened for his wife. She keeps him right. And she will
scrub it, and sweep it, and dust it, and make it as clean as a new pin.
Oh, you may be quite sure of that. And then, at first, you can take your
meals with us, the White House is so near--only two miles, what is
that?”

“Nothing,” said Brotherton, with enthusiasm. Then he added, “I must not
tire you out. I shall do very well. I can get everything I want here.”

“Oh, no; until you get used to Jane, and accustomed to the cooking, and
all that--I know these things are of consequence to gentlemen,” Lydia
said, with a soft smile of feminine superiority, “you must come and take
your meals at the White House. But Jane Oliver is quite a good cook,”
she added, encouragingly. Brotherton’s heart had sunk within him at the
mention of Jane’s cookery. The cookery could not but be a terrible
necessity in such a place. But he scorned to show any such weakness.

“I am sure she is,” he said, cheerfully. “I feel certain that I shall be
in the best of quarters. Is there a ghost?”

“A ghost! why should there be a ghost?” cried Lydia, in surprise. Then
she added, with a little dignity, “There was never anybody injured or
betrayed in a house that belonged to the Joscelyns. So there can’t be
any ghosts.”

“You reprove me justly,” he said, feeling his little joke very small
indeed in the presence of Lydia’s youthful dignity. “It was a vulgar,
slangy sort of suggestion. I see the folly of it now.”

“No folly,” said Lydia, from her pedestal; “you did not know.”

And then they went on together, once more very sedately, as if they had
been a sober, middle-aged couple, the corn rustling and nodding towards
them, the soft wind sweeping over it, bowing its yellow plumes in soft
successions of movement, the whole air full of a happy rustle and sweep
of sound, the sound of the atmosphere, the subdued hum of summer
happiness common to all the world. He made up his mind that the
landscape, all full of young trees and northern colours, and the moment,
in which there was no positive bliss indeed, but only a dreary, dusty
lodging, and the prospect of being cared for by a ploughman’s wife--were
perfect, and that life could not hold anything sweeter. Lydia went on
talking of the chance that perhaps Mr. Pilgrim, the executor, would “do
something” when he heard of a tenant, until it gradually began to appear
to the young man as if she were talking of improving heaven. What could
be equal in all the world to a place which was within reach of the White
House? “But if your brother were to come home suddenly,” he said, “what
would become of me? Should I be turned out?”

“Harry!” cried Lydia, with glistening eyes; and then she said, turning
to him (he was behind her for the moment, the path was so narrow),
“Harry! Oh, how kind you are! To speak like that is to give one courage;
for you really, really think, Mr. Brotherton, don’t you, now you have
heard all about him, that he must come home?”




CHAPTER V.

THE DUCHESS.


When it was known that the old house at Birrenshead had been taken by a
gentleman for shooting quarters, the astonishment of the neighbourhood
was great. The house was known to be in a most dilapidated condition,
and the rooms had not been occupied in the memory of man. The village
took the most anxious interest in the rash gentleman, and inquired, with
much solicitude, “what motive” he could have for burying himself in such
a place? Was it for the sake of Lydia Joscelyn? But then he had been
much nearer Lydia Joscelyn at the White House, where the family no doubt
would gladly have kept him had he wished it; or was it on the other hand
to get away from Lydia, who had been devoting herself too unreasonably
to him? Both these opinions had their supporters; but as it was
impossible to prove either, the question remained a burning question for
half of the time that young Brotherton lived at Birrenshead, where he
soon became well-known. He was quite a gentleman, there could be no
doubt of that. He had a couple of horses and a man, and money did not
seem to be wanting with him. The neighbours soon found out all that was
to be found, which was not saying much--that he was Sir John
Brotherton’s son, and a great friend of Lord Eldred, the second son at
the Castle; and that he was actually, on his own showing, second cousin
to Mrs. Joscelyn. Had she said it the neighbourhood might have doubted;
but he said it himself; and he was constantly at the White House.
Scarcely a day elapsed that he was not there on one pretence or another,
and sometimes Lord Eldred would go with him, having his dinner there,
the gossips said, and sometimes tea, and conducting himself as if the
Joscelyns were his equals. This opened a new and exciting question,
which was discussed warmly by the different sides, each maintaining its
own view. What would the Duchess do? She had excluded the Joscelyns from
the list of county gentry when they were first married, asking, with a
contempt for blood, which was most unbecoming in the local head of
society (and the Joscelyns _had_ blood--it was the one thing that could
not be denied to them), “Why should I call upon people who have nothing
to recommend them but that their grandfathers were gentlemen?” This
leaving out of the family altogether had been very marked; when you
consider that the Selbys, who were nobodies, had cards from the Duchess
because the old Doctor was their father! Mrs. Joscelyn had not said
anything about it, but she had felt the sting all her life. And she was
not less interested than the rest of the world in the question--What
would the Duchess now do? This problem was not solved for several weeks;
but at last, just before the great ball which absorbed the whole county
in consideration of what to wear, and how to appear to the best
advantage, the village was convulsed by the appearance of the ducal
liveries. It was an October day, with frost in the air, so clear that
you could see to any distance, from one end of the dale to the other.
The Selbys, called to their windows by the roll of wheels and the jingle
of the horses’ feet and furniture, and the flood of blue and yellow in
the air, rushed to the vicarage to rouse their friends to the
seriousness of the crisis. “The Duchess is going to call,” they cried,
rushing in open-mouthed. “The Duchess _has_ called,” cried the others,
who were all grouped round a telescope which they had brought to bear on
the door of the White House. There the carriage was undoubtedly
standing, delayed an unreasonable time at the door--which both the
families felt, whatever reason they might have, showed bad taste on the
part of the Joscelyns. Then the footman, a splendid apparition all plush
and powder, was seen to make his way a second time up the narrow path,
between the two grass plots, bordered all round with chrysanthemums. The
watchers had a moral certainty that Mrs. Joscelyn was not out. Had she
denied herself to the Duchess? A thrill of sensation passed through the
minds of the observers--of mingled stupefaction and excitement. To say
“not at home” was a moral offence upon which people were hard in that
primitive community; but to have the courage to say it, was something
which overawed them. And to the Duchess! Imagination could scarcely go
further.

When Mrs. Joscelyn perceived, with a sudden rush of blood from her heart
to her head, that the honour she had been looking for all her life had
actually happened to her, she rose up precipitately and fled, throwing a
shawl over her head. This was partly fright, and partly resentment, and
partly it was a wise impulse. The family parlour and Betty in her white
apron to open the door, were not accessories which would impress the
Duchess, and Mrs. Joscelyn had not much confidence in the refinement of
her own appearance. She was not so bold a sinner, however, as to sit
still and instruct her innocent maid to say, “Not at home,” a task to
which Betty, knowing it was not true, would not have been equal. So she
went out, meeting Betty trembling with excitement, tying on her clean
apron as she came. “It’s the Duchess, missis!” Betty said, overwhelmed.
“You will say, Not at home,” said Mrs. Joscelyn breathless. “I am going
out, you see.” “Going out! Missis! and the Duchess at the door.” Betty
thought it was incredible. Mrs. Joscelyn, however, deaf to remonstrance,
though herself trembling with excitement, ran out upon the Fell side,
and enjoyed the spectacle. She was an Englishwoman, and it is not to be
supposed that the sight of the blue and yellow liveries, and the
carriage with a Duchess in it, did not touch the highest feelings in her
nature; and to have spoken to that Duchess, to have realised the full
glory of the event, would have been sweet--but it would have been
alarming too, and discretion is the better part of valour. She stood
upon the rising ground with her heart beating, and gazed at the
wonderful sight, visions rising before her of the ball, and the
invitation for Lydia which would be sure to follow, and the ball dress,
and all the excitement of so great an occasion. She breathed more freely
when the great lady drove away, and she was delivered from the fear of
being sent for, and compelled to come back by some dreadful mistake on
Betty’s part. But Betty too had risen to the occasion. She had said
trembling, but resolute, “Not at home, Sir,” to the fine
footman--arguing with herself that it was quite true that Missis wasn’t
at home, for hadn’t she seen her, with her own eyes, go out? Betty went
out too to ease her Mistress’s mind, when the incident was over,
carrying the cards in her apron. She did not like to touch them with her
hands, though she had scrubbed those hands crimson only a few minutes
before. “T’ gentleman said as Her Grace was sorry,” said Betty, her eyes
almost out of her head with staring. “T’ gentleman” was the biggest part
of the event to her; she had never in her life seen anything so grand so
near. Her ruddy cheeks were crimson, and her liberal bosom palpitated.
And Mrs. Joscelyn could not herself restrain a tremor when she took
these sacred bits of pasteboard in her hand.

The excitement about the ball, however, was not all pleasurable. The
invitation came a few days after, and at first Lydia, who had a great
spirit, altogether refused to avail herself of it. She was in the
parlour with her mother, arranging bunches of the ruddy leaves and rowan
berries which made the country gay, in the big old-fashioned china vases
which stood on the mantel-piece, and which were worth their weight in
silver, though nobody was aware of it. Lionel Brotherton had come in on
his way back from a short day’s shooting. He had brought some game,
which lay in a shallow basket on the table, the mingled colours of the
plumage harmonizing well with the warm autumnal tints of leaves and
fruit. The whole culminated in the girl’s glowing and animated
countenance as she stood by the table, twisting her garlands of leaves
and throwing them about with a freshness of gesture and energy which
only a touch of indignation could have given. She had put a cluster of
the red berries into her hair, with a few long serrated leaves, marked
with brilliant red upon the green; and thus crowned was like an
autumnal nymph, not mature enough for a Ceres, but yet warm with the
northern glow of colour and life. “Why should I go?” she was saying.
“What is it to me, mother? If the Duchess chooses to fling an invitation
at us after all these years, are you and I to seize upon it as if we
cared? I don’t care. I don’t want it. I should not like to go--Of course
I may be forced,” cried Lydia. “I may have to do it, for all the several
reasons which people always bring up; but listen, mother, this is the
truth, I should not like to go.”

“My dearest,” said her mother, joining her hands in that instinctive
movement of entreaty which was her natural attitude. Nobody could admire
Liddy as her mother did, not even the young man who sat a little apart
gazing at her, and thinking all kinds of foolish thoughts. Mrs. Joscelyn
saw in her the perfection of herself, the accomplished ideal to which
she had been striving all her life. She herself would never have had the
strength of mind to look so, and speak so--but Liddy had; and even while
she remonstrated and entreated, she approved. “My pet, that is just your
fancy. Why shouldn’t you like it? You have never been at a ball.”

“That is just the reason,” cried Lydia; “when I do go I want to enjoy
it. I want to be as good as anybody there. I want people to think as
much of me as anyone, and ask me to dance, and think my dress pretty,
and like me altogether. I won’t go anywhere unless I can be sure of
that.”

“And so you will, my darling,” Mrs. Joscelyn said. Brotherton did not
venture to speak, but he put a great deal into his eyes. Lydia indeed
did not look at him, and so could not perceive this, but perhaps she had
some notion of it all the same. Her colour increased the least in the
world, taking a glow from the red leaves in her hands and the red
berries in her hair.

“No, mother, I know how it will be. We shall come in at the end with the
Selbys, and the Armstrongs and the Pilgrims, and--oh, a great many more.
There will not be any want of companions in distress. We will all keep
together at one end of the room, and our hearts will all beat if anybody
comes near us. If it is an officer from Carlisle, or if it is Mr.
Brotherton, or still more if it should happen to be Lord Eldred. Oh my!”
cried Lydia with momentary mimicry, clasping her hands, “We shall look
at him as if we could eat him, and almost hold out our hands like the
children at school, and cry, me, me! If you think that is nice for nice
girls to have to do, mother, I don’t,” said Lydia with a sudden vivid
flush. “So I don’t want to go.”

“But that is impossible,” Brotherton cried.

“No, not at all impossible; it is just what happens, when people ask you
because they cannot help it; of course they don’t take any trouble about
you; and of course the gentlemen prefer to dance with girls they know,
and who belong to their own class, instead of seeking out poor little
Miss Selbys and Miss Armstrongs, and Miss Jos--No,” said Liddy
vehemently, “a Miss Joscelyn has never been in it, and, mother, if you
please, never will be. I don’t say,” she added, calming down, “that it
is anyone’s fault. I feel quite sure for one that you would ask me to
dance, Mr. Brotherton.”

“Do you really--think so? The time has come,” said the young man,
hurried and nervous, but with a laugh of excitement, “to set one matter
to rights. Mr. Brotherton will certainly not ask you to dance, Miss
Joscelyn. I have a right to be Cousin Lionel, and I will be so. I am not
to be defrauded of my birthright any longer. You talk of the Duchess,
but you are far more haughty than the Duchess. Take the beam out of
your own eye, Cousin Lydia, and then you will see more clearly to take
the mote out of the Duchess’s. Mrs. Joscelyn, am I not right?”

Mrs. Joscelyn looked at them both with a pleasure that almost went the
length of tears. In the sudden union which her glance from one to
another made between them, the young man and the young woman
blushed--blushed for nothing at all, for sympathy, for fellow-feeling,
and a little for pleasure. “Yes, yes, my dear,” Mrs. Joscelyn said,
“yes, yes, I think he is right; and your cousin--your cousin would make
a difference. And then, my darling, if you do not go, people will never
know that you were invited, Liddy; and that means--”

“That we are not county people; and we are not county people. We need
not keep up any pretences before--before Cousin Lionel,” said Lydia with
a blush and a smile, and a curtsey to the young man, who looked on with
a sense of enchantment. “Uncle Henry was one of them; but not we. We are
Joscelyns, however,” she cried, tossing her head upwards with a proud
movement, “and if blood means anything, that means something better than
her Grace.”

“But why do you say _if_ blood means anything, Liddy?” said her mother,
“of course it means everything, my love.”

Then Lydia looked straight at the two people before her; both so
admiring, the one more foolish than the other--and the meaning changed
in her face. She sighed; her pretty head, crowned with the glowing red
berries and brilliant leaves, drooped a little. “Because I don’t believe
it does,” she said.

Then there was an outcry, “Oh, Liddy, Liddy!” of horror and alarm from
her mother, who had borne everything else, poor soul, but who could not
bear any attack upon her last stronghold, her pride of family. It had
always been a comfort to her in all her troubles, and specially in those
social ones which her greater neighbours had made her suffer--that, to
everybody who knew, the Joscelyns were far superior even to her Grace,
who had been nobody. To hear her favourite child express this scepticism
was terrible. Even Brotherton sustained a slight shock of
disappointment. He would have preferred on the whole that Lydia should
have felt a romantic certainty of the claims of “blood;” but since it
was not so, he made a virtue out of her incredulity, and looked at her
with a smile and little nod of sympathy. Lydia, however, was wise enough
to make no answer to her mother’s exclamation of horror.

“If I went,” she said with great decision, “you would have to go too; I
will not go with anybody but you.”

“Me, Liddy?” Mrs. Joscelyn cried in alarm.

“And my father. I will go with you both, or not at all,” Lydia gave out
as her final deliverance; and then she went out of the room, carrying
the remains of her autumnal wreaths, and paying no attention to the
pathos of her mother’s protestations. Mrs. Joscelyn could do nothing but
turn to her young kinsman, and appeal to his impartial judgment.

“What should I do among all those fine people? I have not been out in
the evening nor worn a low dress (in those days ‘low dresses’ were
exacted even from old ladies by the stern fiat of fashion) since that
child was born. You must speak to her, you must speak to her, Mr.
Brotherton--I mean Lionel. Oh, yes, I want her to go; but me! and Ralph.
Ralph has never gone among them, I think he has done himself injustice;
but it is too late to change now. You must tell her it would never do.”

“But you would not like her to go with the Selbys or the
Pilgrims--people not fit to be in the same room with her. _I_ should not
like that,” young Brotherton said. And Mrs. Joscelyn’s pale countenance
coloured with pleasure to think that her child should be so determined,
and her young cousin so approving. This sudden appreciation of herself
was late, but yet it was pleasant, though also embarrassing. And after
this there were continual remonstrances and arguments, Liddy holding to
her point, her mother fighting desperately against it. As for Ralph
Joscelyn, he separated himself at once from the feminine part of his
household. “Go to what tomfoolery you like,” he said, with his usual
courtesy, “but don’t ask me; I’ve nought to do with such nonsense.” Mrs.
Joscelyn was then driven to the end of her forces. She was disturbed too
about Lydia’s ball-dress, which Joan would fain have gone to Carlisle
for and been “done with,” in her energetic way; but the mother had no
confidence in Joan’s taste. And for her part, though Joan had behaved
generously it cannot be denied that she felt her exclusion from the
splendour which ought to have belonged to her as the eldest Miss
Joscelyn, but which her husband’s position excluded her from. The other
Selbys even, who went on sufferance as the Doctor’s family, made it more
hard for Joan.

“My husband is a deal better a man than Raaf Selby will ever be,” she
said with some indignation to Brotherton, who heard the complaints on
all sides, “and nobody that knows them would ever hesitate between them.
But Heatonshaw is only a little place, and we’ve nothing at all to do
with the great folks at the Castle. Of course it is me Liddy ought to go
with; and it is a joke to think that Raaf Selby’s family should all be
going, and not me. But I will never forgive mother if she sends Liddy
with them, and does not go herself to take care of the child. Mother’s a
strange woman. She was never happy till the Duchess called, and now she
has got her desire she’ll not hear any more of it. I like consistency.
Now I don’t care a snap of my fingers for the Duchess; but if she
invited me,” said Joan, magnanimously, “I’d go.” Here she paused, but a
minute or two after resumed with great gravity. “A woman takes her
husband’s rank, whatever that may be. I am not ashamed of my husband
because he does not take her Grace’s eye.” And here Joan laughed again,
but with an uneasy laughter. She was sore on the subject, and perhaps if
she had been entrusted with the buying of the dress the result might
have been disastrous. Mrs. Joscelyn would not trust Joan, but in her own
timid person hesitated and doubted what to do, when Brotherton, the
confidant of all their troubles, came to her aid. He proposed that his
mother, who was in town (much the best place for everything of the kind;
the place where fashion reigned, and ball-dresses were much more
plentiful than blackberries), should get the dress.

“Which will be of no use,” said Lydia, sternly, “without a dress for my
mother too.” At this Mrs. Joscelyn was ready to cry, not knowing what
else to do. Her hands stole towards each other with the nervous gesture
of old, when Brotherton again whispered in her ear a message of hope.

“My mother is coming--leave it to me,” he said. She had almost thrown
her arms round his neck in her intense relief and thankfulness.

And this was how it was that Lydia Joscelyn made such a sensation at the
ball. Had she gone with the Selbys, all would have happened precisely as
she predicted. She would have stood among them, in a white gown bought
at Carlisle, at the bottom of the room, surrounded by a little crowd of
other obscure young ladies, left out in the cold, tremulously eager to
secure partners, and taken notice of by nobody. There she would have
stayed, pretending to be amused, till old Mrs. Selby gave the signal,
and gathered her little flock around her, tired with standing, sick with
waiting, cross, and humiliated and mortified, consoled only by the
thought that the ball at the Castle would be a thing to talk of long
after people had forgotten to ask, “Did you dance much?” But for Lydia
was reserved a more splendid fate. She had a dress which everybody at
the White House thought would have been fit for a princess, and she went
with Lady Brotherton, with whom she stayed at the Wyburgh Hotel
afterwards, and whose presence introduced her into the selectest circle,
and the company of all the first people. Lady Althea went so far as to
admire her dress, and Lord Eldred danced with her so often that his
mother was alarmed, but yet could not do anything but smile upon the
stranger whom Lady Brotherton patronised and introduced as “my young
cousin.” Lady Brotherton was a fanciful and romantic woman, and she
seized at once upon the idea that Lydia was the object of a romantic
attachment on the part of Lord Eldred. Perhaps had she known that her
own son was in any danger from the same quarter, it might have checked
her enthusiasm. But Lionel did not feel bound in honour to give her any
information on that point. She was seized with an enthusiastic
friendship for Liddy before they had been half an hour together, and as
she was a graceful, sentimental woman, with very tender and engaging
manners, Lydia was not wanting in her response. Then Sir John, who was
much older than his wife, added his contribution to the rising warmth of
the relationship by vowing continually that this was the Cousin Lydia of
his youth over again. The fact was that he had seen his cousin Lydia
only once or twice in her youth, but he was old enough to have forgotten
that, and nobody knew it was a mistake. So all things concurred in the
growth of this sudden devotion, and before Lydia returned to her mother
she was invited to accompany the Brothertons abroad, and had become, so
to speak, one of the family.

“I will come and see your mother,” Lady Brotherton said, “and I will
take no denial;” while Sir John patted her on the shoulder, and told her
with his toothless jaws, that she was “sh’image of” her mother. Lydia
came home with her head turned, but faithful, among all these new
crotchets of other people’s, to her own.

“You are not to say no, mother dear; but I know you will never do that.
You are to put up with the loneliness, and manage without me the best
you can; for I am going to find Harry,” Lydia cried. This new piece of
excitement obliterated the ball, which was quite an inferior event. Mrs.
Joscelyn cried, and clung to her child in a kind of despair, yet hope.

“Oh, my darling, what shall I do without you? and how are you to find
him?” she said; then wept and wrung her hands. “And how am I to make
sure that your new friends will be kind to you? Oh, yes, they are kind
now; but it is different now and when you have nobody else; and what, oh
what, if you were unhappy, my pet, when you were away.”

“Well,” said Lydia, who was a young person of much strength of mind,
“even in that case there could be nothing desperate about it, for I
should come back. They could not lock me up in my room and feed me on
bread and water. If I was not happy I should come home.”

“But oh, my pet, think,” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, with a fresh outbreak,
“if you should be left like that to travel alone.”

“And why not?” said Liddy. “Nobody would meddle with me if I behaved
myself; and I hope I should always behave myself. But they will not be
unkind to me. Do you think there is anything unkind about--Cousin
Lionel.” She pronounced his name always with a little hesitation, which,
to the foolish young man himself, made it very sweet.

“No, no, Liddy; but then he is only a man--only a young man, and admires
you. His mother will not be like that. A lady is different; a lady is
not carried away.”

“A lady is--much more easily satisfied,” said Liddy. “She took to me in
a moment, mother. They said they never saw her take so quickly to
anyone; and Sir John says I am like you.”

“Like me! I don’t think he ever saw me.”

“Never mind, never mind, mother; they are not a den of robbers. They
cannot do me any harm. And I shall find Harry,” Lydia said.




CHAPTER VI.

THE OPINION OF THE FAMILY.


The Joscelyns were much excited and disturbed by all this “to do” about
Liddy, which the sisters-in-law thought intolerable, and which, as has
been already related, moved even Joan to some sensation of displeasure,
notwithstanding the gratified sense of family pride which she
experienced as a Joscelyn in the recognition of her family, which,
though late, was satisfactory. But Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom had no such
feeling. To them the sense of being left out was not less but rather
more disagreeable because a little chit like Liddy had been made much of
and received as the representative of her race. Neither of these ladies
could bear to hear of it, and Will and Tom showed their feelings in
indignant ridicule, scorning the thought that a little lass should be
put in the foreground, and their own substantial claims as the heirs of
the Joscelyn name disregarded. For what is a girl in a family? nothing;
a mere accident; perhaps useful in a way as extending the connection,
but directly of no sort of benefit at all. When they heard, however,
that Lydia was going “abroad” their indignation burst all bounds. Where
was the money to come from? The sons and the sons’ wives were as angry
as if it came out of their own pockets. Mrs. Will even cried, and
enumerated a whole list of things which were wanted to make her house
comfortable. “I never have even a trip to the seaside,” she said, “and
as for a piano where I’m to get one I can’t tell, and the children all
growing up; and there isn’t a sideboard in the house, not like I was
used to, and the poorest stock of linen! while your sister is
gallivanting all over the world.” Mrs. Tom suggested that nothing but a
surreptitious slice out of Uncle Henry’s property--which it was a sin
and a shame to keep hanging on because of a runaway, who must be dead
years ago or he would have come back on the hands of his family, no
doubt about that--could have induced Ralph Joscelyn to consent to such
a mad piece of expenditure. “That Pilgrim just plays into their hands,”
she said; “your mother’s silly enough for anything, when it’s for Liddy,
but your father’d never have done it without something to go upon.” The
brothers were so moved by these arguments, and by their own sense of
injustice, that they made a joint raid upon the paternal house to see
what remonstrance would do. “I’ll tell you what it is, father, it’s time
that money was divided,” said Will; “it would come in uncommon handy, I
can tell you, in my house, with all my children growing up.” Tom had no
children, but he was not less forcible in his representations. “We’re a
laughing-stock to all the county,” he said, “hanging on waiting for
Harry turning up. If Harry had been going to turn up he’d have done it
long ago. There never was a good-for-nothing in a family but he came
back.” Now the day of this visit was a day which Joan had chosen to come
to the White House to hear “all about it,” and these words were spoken
at the family table just after the early dinner, for which an additional
chicken had been killed on account of the guests.

“Good for nothing!” said Joan, indignantly, “that’s what our Harry
never was. You may say what you like of yourselves, but of him I’ll
never stand such lying. He was as honourable a lad as ever stepped. He
never asked a penny from one of you, nor from father either--that he
got. So far from taking anything of yours with him, he left his own
behind him. Poor lad! there’s his very clothes in his drawers. It must
have cost him a mint of money to get more to put in their place. I’ve
often thought of that. If it’s just to put mother out, which is all
you’ll do, you may as well try some other subject than Harry. Mother,
don’t you take on. He’s no more dead than I am. He’ll come home some
fine day to take up his property--if you don’t let them put you into
your grave first.”

Mrs. Joscelyn’s hands had crept together in a nervous clasp. She looked
pitifully from one to another. “Boys,” she said, in her soft voice, to
the threatening men who looked older and infinitely harder than she, “I
hope you’ll have a little patience. If I had the money, oh! how gladly I
would give it you! It is hard, too, when you have need of it. I say
nothing against that.”

“Need of it! I should think we had need of it,” said Will. “As for
giving it if you had it, that’s easy speaking; and there are plenty
that promise what they haven’t, and think no more of it when they have.
What’s this we hear of Liddy going abroad? I should say that would cost
a pretty penny. My wife and me, we can’t take our family so much as for
a fortnight to the sea-side.”

“And what business is it of your wife’s and yours where Liddy goes?”
said Joan, instantly throwing her shield over her own side. “You’ll not
get Liddy’s money, you may be sure of that, to take you to the
sea-side.”

“Oh, children!” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, clasping her hands.

“Well, I must say it’s more reasonable that a family of children should
have a change, than that a bit of a lass like Liddy should go picking up
foreign manners and ruining her character--not that I am speaking for
myself----” Tom interposed. But he was interrupted by a cry from Joan,
repeating his last words, “ruining her character!” and by an exclamation
of pain from her mother. “Well,” cried Tom, “I say again, ruining her
character. Is there any decent man about here that would have anything
to do with a Frenchified wife?--not to say that a woman’s morals are
always undermined in those foreign places. And Liddy’s flyaway enough,
already----”

Here Joscelyn commanded silence by striking his fist upon the table with
a blow that made the glasses ring. “Hold your dashed tongues,” he said.
“What have you got to do with it, you lads? You’ve got what belongs to
you, and you can go to Jericho and be blanked to you. If there’s any man
has a right to interfere in my house, I’d like just to see his dashed
face. Hold your tongues, the whole blanked lot of you. Them that’s in my
house will do as I please, and them that has houses of their own had
better go where they came from; and, Liddy, don’t you say a word, my
lass. I’ll look after you,” he said, laying a large hand upon her
shoulder, as he thrust his chair away from the table with an impulse
which displaced the table too, and jarred and shook everything upon it.
When Joscelyn “spoke up,” there was nobody in his family that ventured
to withstand him. The sons rose, too, somewhat abashed, and strode forth
after him to view the stables, which was the recognised thing to do
after the meal, which thus came to an abrupt conclusion. They shook
their heads over father’s weakness, and declared to each other that
“they (meaning the women) had got him under their thumb”--though “who
would have thought it of father!” “It’s what every man comes to when he
begins to break up,” Tom said.

When they were gone Mrs. Joscelyn cried, but the two sisters were
indignant. “Now, mother, don’t be a silly,” Joan said. “They are just as
worldly and as hard as they always were. But what can you expect when
you think of the two women these poor lads married? It is a wonder they
are no worse.”

“Oh!” sighed poor Mrs. Joscelyn, “when I think the bonnie boys they
were!” for she was a woman upon whom experience had little power, and
who never could learn.

As for Lydia it struck her against her will with a strong sense of the
ridiculous to hear her middle-aged brothers, in whose favour she had
scarcely even a natural prejudice, spoken of as “bonnie boys.” It was
all she could do out of respect for her mother not to laugh. And she was
more angry than she was amused. “What harm does it do to Will and Tom,”
she said, “that I should be going abroad?”

“They are just furious that Liddy has been asked to the Castle,” said
Joan. “Oh, I know them down to the bottom of their hearts; but I’ll tell
you what, mother, if it’s a question of making a lady of Liddy, and
sending her out in a way to do us credit, you mind there’s nothing to be
spared upon her, for Phil and me, we’ll do our share.”

This was all Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom (for the other women of the family
scouted the idea that the brothers were anything but puppets in the
hands of these ladies), made by their motion. They threw Joan vehemently
upon the other side, blew away the little vapour of envy and
uncharitableness which made the elder sister grudge for a moment the
younger’s elevation, and bound Joan in enthusiastic partizanship to all
her little sister’s wishes. “She shall do us credit,” Joan said, “if I
don’t have a gown to my back for years to come. She shall want for
nothing if I have to give up my party next Christmas. She shall find out
who it is that stands by her, and them that think of her in the family.”

“I never had any doubt about that,” said Lydia, throwing her arms round
her sister, “and, Joan, I’ll bring you the best of presents, I’ll bring
you Harry back.”

At this Joan shook her head and wiped a tear out of the corner of her
eye. “It’s a blessing,” she said, “you little thing, that Phil’s just as
silly about you as me; but to find Harry, poor Harry, will take a
cleverer than you.”

“Joan, do not you say that. I have it borne in upon me here,” said Mrs.
Joscelyn, laying her thin hands upon her bosom, “that before I die I
will see my boy back.”

“And it is I that will find him,” Liddy cried, throwing back her head
with a proud movement of self-confidence; for the moment, being foolish
women, they all believed in this inspiration. “And why not,” said
sensible Joan, “it may be the Lord that has put it into her head. And
all these fine folks, the Duchess and my lady and the rest of them, may
just have been instruments.”

This suggestion filled them all with momentary awe. To see such noble
means bringing about a triumphant end, and to be able to trace so easily
the workings of Providence, is always the highest of pleasures to the
simple-minded. To bring Harry back to his own, and comfort the heart of
his mother before she died, was this not an object worthy the employment
of Duchesses? Meanwhile Tom and Will went home discomfited, and told
their wives how father had “shut them up.” “These women have got him
under their thumb,” was what they all said.

Then there came another agitating crisis; Sir John and Lady Brotherton
offered a visit to their cousin to arrange the details of their journey,
and this made such an overturn in the White House as had not been known
in the memory of man. To the wonder of everybody, Joscelyn made no
objection to it. A shade of complacency even stole over his face as he
gave his consent. “My lady--will maybe take a fancy to me, as some one
else has ta’en a fancy to thee,” he said, pulling Lydia’s ear with
unprecedented playfulness. Certainly the women had got him under their
thumb at last. Joan and her husband came over with a great sense of
importance to help to prepare for this great ceremonial, he enacting
butler and she housekeeper to the admiration of all concerned. Philip
Selby knew about wine, nobody could gainsay that; while his wife
prepared enough of what were then called “made dishes,” and pastry and
cakes, to have lasted a month instead of a day. Then the amiable pair
drove home at a great rate, to dress themselves in their best and
present themselves solemnly as guests to meet the strangers. Lionel
Brotherton was in all these secrets; Joan and he indeed exchanged a
smile of intelligence when after working together all day they met and
shook hands in the evening; but he kept inviolate the confidence
bestowed upon him, and never betrayed even to his mother the tremendous
pains that had been taken to prepare for her, and receive her fitly.
When he went up to her room after the dinner was over, to bid her good
night, Lady Brotherton could not speak enough in praise of their new
cousin. “You did well to say it was an idyllic life,” she cried. “You
did not say a word too much, Lionel; what freshness, what simplicity,
what a breath of the moor; and all so nice, such pretty curtains (Lionel
himself had helped to fasten them up that morning), such nice old
furniture! I thought pretty Liddy was quite an exceptional moor-blossom,
but I quite understand her now. Her mother is a most refined woman. I
should like to model those hands of hers; they are full of expression.
And that handsome whitehaired father like a tower, quite the ideal
representative of a very old impoverished family, little education, and
not much to say, but with long descent in every feature!” It was all
Lionel could do to keep his countenance.

“I am so glad you like them, mother; I don’t know when I have been so
glad; and you can’t think how kind they have been to me.”

“I love them for it,” said Lady Brotherton, “not that I am
surprised--for they like you, Lionel, one can see that, and nothing
could be more delightful to your mother. Tell me, dear, does poor Lord
Eldred come often, or is he forbidden to come? I want to know how far it
has gone.”

“How far what has gone?” said Lionel aghast.

“Is it possible you have not noticed? I am sure he made no secret of it,
poor fellow; the Duchess saw it well enough. Why, that Lord Eldred is
over head and ears, or if there is any stronger expression--deep, deep
in the depths of love; and I am mistaken if she does not know as well as
I--”

“In love--with--? not Lydia? Lydia!” Lionel cried, as if this were the
most astonishing thing in the world.

Lady Brotherton’s back was turned; she did not see his lamentable
countenance. She laughed with a tinkling silvery laugh for which she was
famous, but which her son at that moment felt to be the harshest and
least melodious of sounds. “Who else?” she said; “there is no one but
Lydia here capable of being fallen in love with. Not that nice Mrs.
Selby, you may be sure, which would not be proper, and is
impossible--no, Liddy--I like the name of Liddy. It is quite rural and
moorland, like all the rest. Well, don’t you think she knows it too?”

“I shouldn’t say so,” Lionel answered with the greatest gravity. He
tried very hard not to be so deadly serious; but he could not smile.

“Well, we shall see, we shall see,” said Lady Brotherton gaily, “of
course I shall not interfere. I dare say the Duchess blesses me for
taking her out of the way. But if the lover has the courage to follow,
nobody need expect me to put obstacles in the course of true love. It
shall run smooth for me. Going, Lionel? God bless you, dear; the Fells
have agreed with you, you are as brown and strong as you can look, and I
must go and see your den to-morrow. Good night, good night, my own boy.”

Lionel went away in a frame of mind very different from that with which
he had followed his mother upstairs. He looked into the parlour with a
countenance so solemn that the little party assembled there, and
congratulating themselves on everything having gone off so well, were
entirely chilled. Mrs. Joscelyn, reposing in her chair with her hands
clasped, was smiling with relief and pleasure, while Joan described all
the pangs with which she had looked forward to the arrival of my Lady.
“I thought she would be so stiff and so grand,” said Joan, “Lord, I
don’t know what I didn’t think; but she’s as nice a woman as mother or
myself, and takes nothing upon her. As long as I live I’ll never be
afraid of a fine lady again.” Here Lionel’s solemn voice was heard at
the door.

“I have come to say good night,” he said; “no, thank you, I will not sit
down. I have a long walk before me; not anything, thank you. My mother
is very comfortable, and much obliged to you, Mrs. Joscelyn. I beg I may
not trouble anyone to open the door.”

“What is the matter with him with all his ‘thank yous,’ and his ‘not
troubling any ones,’” cried Joan when he went away without a smile. It
was generally Lydia who let him out, which perhaps Mrs. Joscelyn should
not have permitted. But to-night Lydia was checked by his cold looks,
and held back shyly, and it was Philip Selby who opened the door. This
was a slight matter; but it seemed to prove to Lionel everything his
mother had said. He felt rather glad to have left a chill behind him, as
he had evidently done; and he was very much tempted to steal to the
window and peep in at them, and enjoy the wonder with which no doubt
they would ask each other “What is the matter?” It was well he did not
do so, for he would have seen the company in the parlour laughing--all
but Lydia, who was wondering by herself in a corner, what was the
matter?--at a witticism of Joan’s, who had made a solemn face in
imitation of poor Lionel the moment his back was turned. Lionel was
fortunately not aware of this; but felt that he had produced a
sensation, and was not sorry; and so went away gloomily, not to say
misanthropically, down into the village and across the bridge and along
the river’s side to Birrenshead. On the way he met with old Isaac, who
had once more been beguiled into the “Red Lion,” and was now making his
way home with much stumbling.

“It was you as kept me, Master,” the old man said, “you know ’twas you
as kept me. I’d never have stayed out so long if it hadn’t been for you.
If you would mention it to t’missis I would take it kind, for women is
very onreasonable.”

“T’auld sinner,” cried a voice in the dark, “to larn t’young gentleman a
pack o’ lies. D’ye think I dunuo know where you’ve been just to hear
your voice?”

“My good woman,” said Lionel, “don’t be hard upon poor Isaac.”

He was still so terribly serious, and spoke in tones so hollow and
tragical, that Jane Oliver was alarmed. She darted forward in the dark
and caught hold of his arm.

“Oh! my bonnie young gentleman,” she cried, “tell me! Something’s
happened to my silly auld man?”

At this hint Isaac began to moan, and grasped at Lionel’s other arm,
leaning heavily upon it.

“It’s nothing, Missis, nothing; that is, not much, nothing to frighten
you. T’ young Master’s been that kind, he’s given me his arm to lean
upon all along t’ water-side,” Isaac said, with a limp which would have
been much too demonstrative had it been addressed to the eye; but in the
dark it answered well enough. For once the Missis fell into the trap,
and Lionel, dragged round by his pretended patient to the back door,
with blessings called down upon his head by the deceived woman, went
through the little fiction with the gravest countenance, and without the
least inclination even to smile. It was not till he had left Isaac with
his foot elevated on a chair, elaborating the story of a supposed
sprain, and had groped his way round to the other entrance, and climbed
the dilapidated stairs to the musty old sitting-room, in which his
solitary lamp was flaring, that he burst into a short laugh, as he threw
himself into a chair. If it was Isaac’s little comedy that called forth
this sudden outburst, it was only as the climax of a hundred other
comedies which were not mirthful. His disappointment, and the confusion
of all his thoughts, which his mother’s revelation had brought about,
made him, as was natural, misanthropical and bitter. He laughed at the
tragical folly and falsehood of everything, himself included; from the
Joscelyns making all sorts of efforts to appear better, more refined and
comfortable, than they were, by way of pleasing, _i.e._, deceiving, Lady
Brotherton--and Lady Brotherton accepting everything, adding her own
fanciful interpretation, not only deceived, but deceiving herself--down
to old Isaac, who had so often tried in vain to dupe his wife, and his
wife, who was now duped so easily, not by Isaac, but, save the mark! by
himself, Lionel, without intention or purpose. “And I, who am the
biggest fool of all!” the poor youth said to himself. What had he been
doing all these weeks? making a fool’s paradise out of this squalid
ruin, and princes and princesses out of the Joscelyns, half farmers,
half horse-coupers as they were--all because he had believed in the
sweet looks of a girl who the whole time had been aiming these sweet
looks over his head at a better match, and a greater personage than
himself. What an idiot he had been! the scales seemed to fall from his
eyes. He saw everything round him, he thought, in its true colour. What
would his mother think if she came and saw the wretched place in which
he had been living? She would ask, like the village folk, what could his
motive be? His motive, what was it? Even now, mortified and discouraged
as he was, he sat upright in his chair with a thrill of alarm, when he
imagined a research into his motives. Lady Brotherton might stop the
expedition altogether if she found them out. Lydia’s perfidy was
terrible, but it would be more terrible still to leave her behind,
perhaps to lose sight of her, to miss the opportunity to which he had
been looking forward with so much delight. When he came to think of it,
his mother had not said Lydia was in love with Lord Eldred, but only
that Lord Eldred was in love with Lydia--which was so different. At this
Lionel roused himself, and the sight of his portmanteaux packed and
ready to be shut up, roused him still more. After all it was to-morrow
they were to start, and he, and not Lord Eldred, was to be for the
present Lydia’s daily companion. There would be time to do many things
before that hero could arrive, even if, as Lady Brotherton suggested, he
should join them afterwards. To-morrow, nay, to-day, for it was already
past midnight, was all his own, with nobody to interfere.

And next day, with some suppressed tears and fictitious smiles, and a
general excitement of the whole neighbourhood, as if the village itself
had been going abroad, the party went away. The vicarage people and all
the Selbys came out to their doors to see them pass. Raaf Selby on
horseback stood like a statue at the end of the bridge, and took off his
hat and gave Lydia a look half-tragical and altogether melodramatic.
Joan drove her mother in the phaeton steadily, but with a very grave
countenance, though now and then bursting into momentary jokes and
laughter, to the station to see them off, her husband riding very slowly
by their side. Joan laughed by times, but that did not change the
seriousness of her face; and Mrs Joscelyn sat with her veil down, a
large Spanish veil covered by great spots of black flowers, behind
which nobody could see what she was doing. Lydia herself broke down, and
cried freely, though her mother could not cry. “I’ll bring home Harry,”
the girl cried, with a passionate promise, out of one window of the
railway carriage. Lionel was at another, keeping in the background,
eager to be off, and shorten the moment of farewells, when his attention
was distracted from the pathetic group by the sudden swaying upwards of
old Isaac’s shock head. “I thought you’d like to know, Sir,” old Isaac
said, “as my missis and me’s the best of friends. And it’s all owing to
you, as had the judgment never to say a word. Good-bye and good luck to
you, Master; don’t forget old Isaac Oliver as will do you a good turn
and welcome whenever he has the chance. Lord! but we took t’ Missis in,
that time,” Isaac said, with a grin that reached from ear to ear. And
that was the last the travellers saw of the village folk.




CHAPTER VII.

LYDIA’S TRAVELS.


The quiet that fell over the White House, not to speak of other houses,
when Liddy was thus carried off into the wider world, was something
which might be felt, like the darkness in the vision. Mrs. Joscelyn
subsided into a kind of half-life. She had been living in her child, and
when her child was withdrawn, her existence ebbed away from her. She
began to wring her hands again, especially when in the wild winter
weather the posts were delayed. All that could be done for her was done
by the Selbys, who humoured her and petted her, everybody said, like a
child. Joan drove over in her phaeton as often sometimes as thrice in a
week, and Philip, who was “an understanding man” his wife allowed, did
what was still better. He subscribed for her to the circulating library,
and kept the poor lady supplied, in defiance of all prejudices, even
those of his wife, with a boundless supply of novels. Joan was somewhat
indignant and much scandalised by this, asking him if he thought mother
was a baby, and if it was his opinion that an old person should waste
her time over such nonsense? “If it was a good book indeed,” Joan said.
But Philip verified his title to be called “understanding.” He helped
her through the dull days as nobody else could. She read and read till
she got a little confused among the heroes and heroines, all of whom she
wove together by an imaginary thread of connection with Liddy, comparing
their fictitious graces, their adventures, their history with those of
her child, and following her imaginary Liddy through many a chapter.
Lydia’s letters when they came were like another warmer, fuller romance,
the most enticing of all.

And then Ralph Joscelyn himself suddenly developed a new character. He
was miserable when his daughter was fairly gone, though he had never
betrayed any unwillingness to let her go. He read every word of her long
letters with a patience which had never been equalled in his life. He
gave up the dashes and blanks of which his conversation was once full,
and would come in the cold afternoons and sit with his wife, often
fatiguing her greatly, and keeping her back from the end of an exciting
story, but always meaning the best, and filling her soul with gratitude,
even when she felt most bored. And by and bye he would put on his
spectacles, and surreptitiously turn over a novel too, when the day was
wet, or on a long evening. Thus the sight might be seen of these two in
their old parlour, one at each side of the fire, rather dull but
friendly, like people who had grown old together, and in whom a moderate
modest affection had outlived all quarrels and years. He was a little
shamefaced when he was found thus in his wife’s company, but by degrees
that wore off too.

Meanwhile, Lydia went far afield, leaving dulness and darkness and cloud
behind her; finding winter turned into summer, and her life into
sunshine. It would be impossible to use words too strong to express the
change that had come upon her. From the north country of England to the
south of France was not a more complete difference than from the grey
and limited life of the yeoman household to the brightness and variety
and grace of existence among people accustomed all their lives to wealth
and refinement and luxury. The way in which they travelled, the
attendants always round them, the ease with which they took all their
gratifications, surprised by nothing that was pleasant, taking luxuries,
which were princely to Liddy, as a matter of course, had an
extraordinary effect upon her--the effect of a forced and miraculous
education, in which every half hour told like a year. For a short time
she was much subdued, almost stupefied, indeed, by the revolution in
everything round her, and was so very quiet that Lady Brotherton almost
came the length, notwithstanding her animated countenance, and the
favourable first impression she had made, of thinking her dull. In fact,
she was only in a state of intense receptiveness, taking in everything,
opening her mind and spirits to all the new influences, which confused
and dazzled her. But after thus lying dormant for a time, Lydia suddenly
awoke into new life, and bloomed like a flower. She awoke to a great
many things which were completely new and strange; to beauty and wealth,
to art, which was entirely unknown, and a revelation to her; and to
Nature of a lavish and splendid kind, almost as entirely unknown.

There were other revelations, too, upon which, at this moment, it is
unnecessary to dwell. It was more than enough that little Lydia, out of
what was not much more than a northern farmer’s house, should have found
herself in society, in that wandering society of the English abroad
where the finest specimens are to be found afloat among the coarsest,
and in which all the elements of life are represented; hearing names
familiarly pronounced every day which she had hitherto read with
reverence in books, talking to personages whose distant doings she had
but heard of with awe and wonder, and living in palaces, which she heard
found fault with as poverty-stricken and uncomfortable, she who had
known nothing better than the drawing-room at Heatonshaw. The party went
from France to Italy; to Florence and Rome, and still further south,
Naples and all its dependencies. So dazzled and transported was she with
all the new things she saw and heard that for the first month or two
Lydia forgot all about her quest. When she bethought herself of it, a
question arose which was far more troublesome here than it had been at
home. What was she to do? To examine anxiously every new face she saw,
to look out in the streets and in every company she entered for somebody
like Harry, seemed a far less hopeful enterprise in Italy than it had
been in England. She did not remember Harry’s face, which was disabling
to begin with, and then why should he be in Italy? she asked herself.
Poor people (unless they were artists) did not seem to come to Italy,
but only people with plenty of money and leisure, who came to enjoy
themselves. She was so bewildered by this altogether new idea that she
did not know what to do, nor did Lionel, “Cousin Lionel,” to whom she
began to refer everything (as indeed his mother did), suggest anything
that could help her. They looked over all the visitors’ books together,
and lists of the English inhabitants in every new place they came to,
with their young heads together, and much secret enjoyment of the
business; but neither did this stand her in much stead. In Rome, where
they spent Christmas, they were joined, as Lady Brotherton’s prophetic
soul had divined, by Lord Eldred; but when they left he did not follow,
and Liddy’s course, which was not that of true love but wandering
fancy, required no trouble to keep it smooth. But, by others besides
Lord Eldred, Lydia was “very much admired,” as people say. She might
have got “a very good match” out of her wanderings; but walked through
all these possibilities unwitting, not having even her little head
turned, which Lady Brotherton expected. The elder lady, however, was
delighted with the little sensation she made. She liked the little
flutter of moths about this gentle taper. She liked to have half-a-dozen
young men standing ready to do every necessary civility, to procure
everything that was wanted. Lydia saved her a great deal, she said, in
commissionaires; and old Sir John laughed his chuckling old laugh, and
said she was just like her mother; his Cousin Lydia had always a train
after her. Liddy wondered sometimes whether it was a former Cousin
Lydia, a century old or so, whom the old man meant. But they were very
kind to her. They became fond of her as the time went on. She lived an
enchanted life among them, with “Cousin Lionel” always at her side,
seeing everything, doing everything, along with her; and she could not
have believed that it would prove so easy to forget Harry and all about
him. Sometimes she awoke to this thought with such a sense of guilt as
depressed her for days; but in the meantime life was flowing on in
content, brightness, and variety, full of a hundred occupations. There
was not a moment vacant. Sometimes it would glance across her that the
day must come when she must leave it all and return to the White House.
Alas, poor mother! vegetating there, keeping herself alive by means of
her novels, and chiefly the unfinished romance of Lydia, most delightful
of all. What would she have felt had she known the cold chill which came
over Lydia as she realised that the day must come when she would be once
more at home; and how wretched, how angry Lydia was with herself, how
she despised her own frivolous being when she felt this chill invading
her! Generally however she put the thought away, and was content to
live, and no more. To live, how sweet it was! “Good was it in that time
to be alive, and to be young was very heaven.” At last Lydia came, as
the time of return approached, to throw away every consideration, and
exist only in the moment, with a kind of desperation of happiness. “I
shall never have it over again,” she said to herself, and shut her eyes
and went on, forgetting home and forgetting Harry, refusing to think of
anything but the sweet hours that were going over her; “I shall have had
my day.”

Thus time came to have a prodigious sweep and fling as the long
delicious holiday approached its end. The hours and days rushed on like
the waters of a river hurrying to the falls, every minute increasing the
velocity; already the skies were getting bright (as if they had ever
been anything but bright!) with spring; the flowers were bursting forth
everywhere; the warmth becoming excessive; the English tourists
beginning to return home in clouds. And the Brothertons spoke quite
calmly of going back to England. To them it meant a natural succession,
no more; they would return home to other delights. When autumn came back
they would set out again, and go over the same enchanted lands; but for
Lydia all would be over. She tried to enter into their plans, however,
quite steadily, concealing the vertigo that seized her, and her wild
sense of the hurrying rush of those last days. When it was suggested
that they should rest a few days at Pisa, Sir John having a cold, and
from thence go on to Leghorn, and take the steamer, Lydia felt like a
criminal who has got a reprieve; but oh, how guilty, how more than ever
deserving of any sentence that could be passed upon her!

By this time there had come a strange uneasiness into her intercourse
with “Cousin Lionel.” Liddy had always been more reserved with him than
with anyone else, she could not tell why. Since the first frankness of
the days when she went with him to Birrenshead there had been a great
seriousness in all their relations. This was partly his doing, and
partly hers. Lord Eldred’s appearance had checked him when he had been
getting rid of the impression which his mother’s opinion on the subject
of Lord Eldred had produced on him. And Lydia’s seriousness had subdued
the young man. She had consulted him indeed, referred to him constantly,
took his advice, kept up an invariable tacit appeal to him in all her
concerns, which she was scarcely herself aware of, but which went to the
very bottom of his heart; but she was always serious. Her gayer flights
were with the moths, as Lady Brotherton called them, the
commissionaires, the young men who fluttered about the two ladies, and
whom Lydia, caring nothing about them, treated with every kind of gay
malice, and a hundred caprices; but she was never capricious with
cousin Lionel. They treated each other with a sort of stately dignity,
reserved on one side, reverential on the other, to the amusement, but
great gratification of Lady Brotherton.

“Thank heaven there is no fear of these two falling in love with each
other,” she said, “which is an embarrassment one is scarcely ever safe
from.” As for Sir John, he chuckled and declared that his son was an old
woman. “Talk’sh like two ambassadorsh,” said the old man. Never was
anything more satisfactory; for to have a course of true love so near to
her, notwithstanding her sentimental sympathy with the thing in the
abstract, would not have suited Lady Brotherton at all. But on the day
of Sir John’s cold at Pisa, something occurred which, if she had not
been so busy administering gruel, she might not have found so
satisfactory. The two young people being thus left alone went out
together, and walked very soberly, as was their wont, about the
Cathedral and the Baptistery, gazing at everything as it was their duty
to do. They stood and looked up at the delicate fretted galleries of the
leaning tower, and the blue sky above which filled up every opening.
They had been very silent, and silence is dangerous. At last Lionel said
hastily:

“I don’t know why this should make me think of the old Joscelyn tower
you showed me; there is not much likeness certainly between this and a
Border tower.”

“The sky was just as blue,” said Lydia, “in all the crevices; though
they say that in England we never see the sky.”

“You remember it too?”

“Yes,” she said with a faint little tremor in her voice.

“And soon you will be there again,” he said (as if it were not brutal to
remind her of it!), “but I---- where shall I be?” He threw so much
pathos into his tone that Lydia, feeling herself on the brink of
darkness and desolation, could not quite restrain a little outburst of
impatience. He to talk like that, who would have nothing to give up,
whose life would always be as beautiful as it was now!

“Where should you be--but where you please!” she said, with a sharp tone
of irritation in her voice.

“Where I please?----do you think?--but I must not ask you that,”
Lionel said, drawing a long breath. And then he added as if he were
breathless and hurried, though in reality there was nothing to hurry
him, “Lydia--I want to speak to you before--before----”

“I don’t know what you mean; you can talk to me whenever you please,”
cried Lydia, with the daring of anger. She was angry with him, she could
scarcely tell why.

He was silent for a minute, looking at her with a curious expression
which she did not understand. What did it mean? No doubt Lionel thought
that Lydia knew exactly all that was overflowing in him; the eagerness
in his eyes, the hesitation in his mind. He thought she looked him
through and through, and she thought he looked her through and through.
The young man felt as if it could scarcely be necessary for him to say
what was in his heart; she must have seen it in every look for months;
and she, on her side, felt that her secret, which he was so likely to
have divined, must be kept from him at all hazards. Thus they stood for
a moment as in a duel, the man sealing his lips by force, considering,
with a generosity that cost him much, that to speak now would make the
position intolerable for her, and that any formal declaration of his
sentiments (which she must know so well before he uttered them!) must be
reserved for the very end of the family intercourse in which they had
been living; while the woman, who had been far too much interested on
her own account ever to discover his meaning fully, doubted still, and
guarding herself against a mistake of vanity, had to guard her own
secret, which she would not have him divine. They looked at each other
thus for a breathless moment; then he spoke.

“I can talk to you whenever I please? but not now; before--if ever--we
part.”

What did that mean? “Before--if ever.” Her heart beat so loudly that she
seemed unable to do anything but keep it down, and yet she asked herself
wistfully what was the meaning of it. She was tantalized and aggravated
beyond words. “That will soon be,” she said with a little mocking laugh,
and turning, walked away towards the river. He followed her quite silent
and cast down, for he thought this laugh meant the very worst. And when
they got back to the inn Lydia disappeared, and save in his mother’s
presence saw him no more that day. Lady Brotherton saw no difference for
her part. She tried to throw them together benevolently. “You must try
and make the best of it,” she said. “I must go back to your father,
Lionel. Take Lydia somewhere, show her the town. You are cousins, you
need not stand upon ceremony, you don’t want a chaperon.”

“I am so sorry, Lady Brotherton,” said Liddy with an innocent air, “but
I must go and write letters. We have been moving about so much lately. I
have not written half so often as usual to my mother. I thought I’d take
this afternoon for it.”

“That is a pity,” said Lady Brotherton, “I am sure she will excuse you,
my dear; you will be with her so soon! and Lionel will be quite lonely;
you might give him this afternoon. Your mother will have you in a week,
you know.”

Poor wicked Liddy! what a pang it gave her! and a still greater pang to
think that it should be a pang. She looked at Lady Brotherton with
sorrowful, half reproachful eyes, into which, much against her will, the
tears came--but fortunately kept suspended there, making her eyes big
and liquid, not falling. “I know,” she said, trying hard to suppress a
sigh; “but I must write all the same.”

“Don’t think of me,” said Lionel. “I shall play a game at billiards--or
something.” Lady Brotherton paused to launch a _mot_ at the absurdity of
coming to Italy to play billiards before she went to Sir John, and in
that interval Lydia disappeared, and except at dinner, when his mother
was present, the two did not meet again that day.

Sir John was a little better next morning, and declared himself able to
go the little way there was to Leghorn, where he would rest another
night before taking the steamer. “And there’sh old Bonamy,” he said,
“old friend’sh, never forshake old friend’sh. Bonamy, Vicesh-Conshull,
famous old fellow.” He was delighted at the idea, though Lady Brotherton
shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, yes, he is very nice,” she said, “not old,
quite a handsome man; but all these Consular people, they are--you know
what they are--However Mr. Bonamy is quite superior. Another night in
Italy, Liddy, though it is only a mercantile place and not interesting.
Let us hope there will be a moon.”

But Lydia did not wish for a moon. She had got into a state of feverish
indifference. It was so nearly over now, that she wished it over
altogether. What was the good of a few more hours? She would have run
away, had she been able, to get out of it all, to forget Italy if that
were possible, and all these five months of happiness. She felt angry
with Sir John and his friend, and the place they were going to, and
everything about it. A moon? what did she want with a moon? she would
have liked to pluck it out of that blue, blue intolerable sky that never
changed. It was all Liddy could do to keep herself from making a cross
reply.

They got to Leghorn early that Sir John might not be exposed to the heat
of the day; and the aspect of that place did not tend to soften Lydia’s
feelings; a town with shipping and docks and counting-houses; she
declared to herself that it was like any town in England, not like Italy
at all. Sir John, who was fond of novelty, had his card sent at once to
the Vice-Consul, with a request that Mr. Bonamy would go and see an old
friend who was not well enough to visit him; and the old man grew quite
brisk on the strength of something new, and sat up in a chair and
declared himself quite well. He looked so comfortable that Lady
Brotherton was very sorry that she had settled to stay another evening.
“When we have quite made up our minds to it, it seems a pity,” she said,
“to lose a day.” How tranquilly she spoke! while the two young people
listening to her, and too languid or too nervous to take any part in the
discussion, felt a secret fury burn within them. “Lose a day!” Neither
of them knew whether it was a loss or a gain, an incalculable treasure
of possibilities, or a miserable hour the more of suspense and
unhappiness. Perhaps they were both most disposed to look upon it in the
latter light; and yet they were both angry with Lady Brotherton for
talking of losing a day. There is no consistency in youth, nor was there
any reason for the nervous excitement which possessed them both. They
sat down to luncheon together, both of them devouring their hearts, and
quite indisposed for other fare.

“Mr. Bonamy knows our English ways. I should not be surprised,” said
Lady Brotherton, “if he came to lunch.”

“Yes, yes, knowshur English ways, English himself,” said Sir John,
“knowsh what’sh what. Shure to come in to lunch.”

And then they sat down at table. Lady Brotherton ate her bit of chicken
with all that unearthly, immeasurable calm which distinguishes elder
people, taking everything quite coolly, though with a flaming volcano on
each side of her; would she eat her chicken all the same, they
wondered, if they too were to explode and be carried off into the
elements? Notwithstanding their mutual opposition, they could not help
giving each other a glance of sympathy as they watched her, wondering
how she could do it. Lionel felt that he never could again believe in
those sensations which his mother had often described to him, which
affected her when he was in any trouble. Sympathy! She could not take
things so quietly if she was a woman of any sympathy at all.

The meal was half over. Lydia had scattered salad over her plate to look
as if she had eaten what was set before her, and Lionel, on his side,
had practised some other artifice. Thank heaven the moment was almost
over when they must sit there together exposed to observation. When the
door opened, Lionel rose to his feet to receive his father’s old friend.
But what did Lydia care for Sir John’s old friend? it was an excuse to
push her chair away from the table. It was Sir John’s English servant
who introduced the stranger; an Italian might have made a mistake about
the name, but about this there was no mistake. Thomas came in before the
visitor with all the imperturbability of a British flunkey.

“Mr. Isaac Oliver,” he said.

Then Lydia too rose to her feet wondering, with a little cry of
surprise. She did not know what she thought, whether it was a messenger
from home with evil tidings, or merely a fantastic coincidence. Lionel
was greatly astonished too. He made a step forward to meet the
new-comer--and there was something in the aspect of the new-comer which
puzzled him still more, he could not tell why. Where had he seen him
before? He was certain he had seen him before.

“Mr.--Isaac--Oliver?” he said.

He perceived, without being aware of it till after, that at his
surprised tone the stranger turned a suspicious look upon him, and
glanced round upon the party with the manner of a man who was not
entirely at his ease.

“Yes, that is what I am called,” he said.




CHAPTER VIII.

ISAAC OLIVER.


And after all, what is there in a name? That was not an original
observation in Romeo’s case, much less in that of an English resident in
Italy far on in the nineteenth century. The person who thus presented
himself in Sir John Brotherton’s rooms was tall and strong, and fair,
with the amplitude of chest and breadth of back which show a man to have
attained the very fullness of manhood, or perhaps a little more. His
hair was light brown and curly, with life and vigour in every crisp
twist of it, and in the short beard then unusual with Englishmen, and
considered “foreign” by the inexperienced. Except this beard, and
something in his dress which betrayed a continental tailor, he was
altogether English in his appearance, and in his voice there was
something that betrayed the North-country, or so at least two of the
company, startled by his name, supposed. Lydia who felt ashamed of
herself for her little cry of wonder, sat down in a corner behind backs,
and felt the better for the curious stir of surprise and expectation
which seemed to blow on her like a breath of fresh air: while Lionel
bestirred himself to welcome the stranger, who explained that he came on
the part of Mr. Bonamy, then occupied in public affairs, who hoped to
pay his respects to Sir John later. “I ought to introduce myself as his
son-in-law,” Mr. Oliver said.

“Oh, you are Rita’s husband,” said Lady Brotherton, “little Rita!
forgive me, I used to know her when she was a child. I have not realised
the idea of Rita married.”

“Then you must prepare yourself for a shock,” he said pleasantly. “For
Rita has been married more than eight years.”

“And there are children--of course?”

“Four,” he said, with a smile of affectionate pride, “but my wife still
looks like a little girl. You will not find so much difference in her
appearance as there ought to be. I think Mr. Bonamy prefers to ignore
the babies--and it’s not difficult to do so when you look at her. My
father-in-law hoped you would come and dine with us to-night.”

“Sir John is--rather an invalid----”

“Not a bit--not a bit!” cried the old man, speaking for himself. “Yesh,
yesh, letsh dine with Bonamy. Bonamy knowsh what’sh what.”

“And we are a large party,” said Lady Brotherton deprecating.

Here Lydia came behind her chair. “You must not think of me, dear Lady
Brotherton.” “I have--my letters to write.”

“Still letters to write, Liddy? My dear, you must have set up a most
alarming correspondence. My young friend, Miss Joscelyn, Mr. Oliver.”

The stranger made a slight movement in his chair, with a hurried breath,
and a sudden startled widening of his eyes. It was a thing which he had
often said to himself might happen any day, but years of serenity had
almost driven it from his remembrance. As it was, the start was but
momentary, and perhaps among men might have passed unnoticed. But Lady
Brotherton caught it with her keen observation; and Lydia, herself, so
excited and curious, saw it with additional excitement, but without any
surprise.

“I hope,” he said with a hesitation which did not sound unfriendly. “I
hope we may see--Miss Joscelyn, too.”

“I shall certainly bring her if you think you can really have us. How
kind to think of it!” Lady Brotherton said. “But the Bonamys were always
kind. I remember your wife’s mother, Mr. Oliver. She was the prettiest
creature----”

“I flatter myself you will think the same of her daughter,” he said,
with a smile (“But if he thinks so much of his wife what business had he
to stare so much at Liddy?” Lady Brotherton said after. “Liddy is a very
pretty girl, and of course with young men one knows what one must
expect--but a man with a family of children! I don’t think I quite like
it.”). He spoke to the elder lady, but his eyes were on the younger--not
so much admiringly as curiously, anxiously. Was it? could it be? A sort
of brotherly impulse came over him. “I think I must have met--some of
Miss Joscelyn’s family--from the Fell-country?--from the North of
England?” he said, a rush of colour coming to his face.

“Oh!” cried Lydia, paling as he reddened, “none of my family were ever
abroad except one. Oh, I wonder if you can have met my brother. I am
looking for him. I came to look for him. Harry Joscelyn? We have people
of your name,” she added hastily, “in our village too.”

“I come from--Lancashire,” he said, with a sort of hurried abandonment
of the subject. Lionel Brotherton had begun to stare at him too. He felt
himself in an atmosphere charged with electricity of some sort, and
thought with alarm, that some one or other of this dangerous party might
put a moral pistol to his head and accuse him at any moment of his false
name. He returned to the subject of his wife and family, which was safer
in every way. “You know that Mr. Bonamy will not let his daughter go to
England,” he said, “because it was fatal to her mother. It is her great
grievance; by dint of being debarred from it there is nothing she wants
so much to do.”

“And you--have you nothing to say? Is she so delicate?” Lady Brotherton
asked.

“Not delicate at all, thank heaven! I have a great deal to say; but I
agree. I came under a solemn promise before I was allowed to marry her,
and then I have no wish to take her to England--England--” he said, with
a little sternness, “has no particular attraction to me. All the
happiness of my life is here.”

“But that is a hard thing to say of your home, Mr. Oliver.”

“My home--is here,” he said. What did that girl mean by watching him so?
He felt that he was talking vindictively at her, though all that he
desired was to ignore her, and escape the scrutiny of her eyes, which
made him angry and alarmed, both together. All this time Sir John had
been breaking in at intervals, expressing with a great many sibillations
his pleasure in the prospect of dining with “Old Bonamy.”

“Old Bonamysh sh’a very old friend; alwaysh liked him, and hish father
before him,” the old man cried. “N’ash for bein’ able to dine out, never
wash better, never wash better.” This came in at intervals as a kind of
chorus, while Lady Brotherton kept up the central strain of friendly
commonplace, as unconscious of Lydia’s eager eyes over her shoulder, as
of the vague, alarmed curiosity and anxiety that had roused the girl out
of herself.

“It was startling to hear his name,” said Lionel, when after awhile, as
quickly as politeness permitted, the visitor took his leave.

“What was there peculiar about his name? Oliver! it is not a bad name,”
Lady Brotherton said.

“It is not the Oliver, but the Isaac Oliver. Lydia was startled too. It
is a name we know very well in the Fell-country,” Lionel said. He was
able to treat the subject more lightly than Liddy, on whom, in her
excitement, this new and sudden fire had caught at once. He told his
mother all about Isaac Oliver, with details that quite satisfied her as
to the origin of the stranger’s startled looks and apparent excitement
when he heard Liddy’s name.

“That’s it, you may be sure,” she said; “he is ashamed of his people. He
is a son or a nephew or something of your old man, and he doesn’t want
it to be known; very natural. He must have kept it a secret from Mr.
Bonamy--who never would have let Rita marry him if he had known. Well, I
am almost glad it is that, and nothing worse. I thought you had made an
impression upon him, Liddy, my dear. I thought his eyes would have leapt
out of his head when he saw you. Of course, I saw in a moment there was
something; but this explains it. Dear, dear, what a sad thing for the
Bonamys if it ever comes to be known! You must take the greatest care,
both of you, not to betray him. Now, remember--not a word,” Lady
Brotherton said, making as though she would have put her soft, plump,
white hand first on one mouth and then on another. Nevertheless, when
Mr. Bonamy himself came in later, she could not help telling him that
“my young people” knew, they supposed, some of Mr. Oliver’s friends. But
Lady Brotherton was very sorry when she saw with how much interest a
statement which she thought too vague to do any harm was received.

“My dear lady,” the Vice-Consul cried, “they know more than I do if they
know his friends. He is the best fellow in the world and the best son,
and the most excellent husband that ever was; but I fear the world in
general would think me very imprudent. I know nothing about his family,
except that he quarrelled with them, and made a vow never to return till
he had made his fortune. Well, I don’t know where he will do that--not
in the service of H.B.M. He has settled down here with me, and we are
all very comfortable, and it was no small comfort to me to find an
English husband for Rita who would not insist upon taking her to
England. It was all settled,” said Mr. Bonamy, “when I was so ill. I
believed I was going to die, and so did everybody else; and to provide
for my Rita was all I thought of. Well, I have nothing to regret. He
makes her an excellent husband, and she is as happy as the day is long;
and I don’t know what I should do without him. Still I allow it was
rash, for I know nothing about his friends.”

“When a man has proved himself to be all that,” said Lady Brotherton, in
alarm, “it does not matter much about his family.”

“Well, no--perhaps not,” said the Vice-Consul, doubtfully. “But I have
always taken it for granted they were people of some importance,” he
added, elevating his head. “He speaks like a man with good blood in his
veins; he has all the prejudices of a man of some family. I don’t think
I can be mistaken in that; but I have never had the least clue to who
they were. I should be quite glad to hear something about them from your
young people.”

“Unfortunately,” cried Lady Brotherton, “they are both out; and then it
was a mere conjecture, you know. Excuse me a moment, and I will ask the
servant if he knows whether my son or Miss Joscelyn have come in----”
And she hurried to the door to tell Thomas, who was waiting in the
passage, to tell Miss Joscelyn and Mr. Brotherton, if they should make
their appearance, that she was very much engaged, and begged they would
_not_ come in. “Remember, _not_ come in,” she whispered, earnestly.
Alarm had seized upon her. She had laughed at Lionel’s description of
old Isaac Oliver--but, good heavens! to be the means of introducing such
a very undesirable relation to the knowledge of the Bonamys! She was
almost too much frightened to be able to face the Vice-Consul again; but
it had to be done. She found him pondering when she went back. Sir John
was lying down to rest, so that they were alone; and poor Lady
Brotherton’s punishment for her indiscretion was not yet over.

“Did you say Miss Joscelyn?” he asked, “then I am sure it must be the
same, for my son-in-law has Joscelyn in his name. He does not use it in
an ordinary way, but on grand occasions; indeed I did not know it till I
saw his signature at his marriage, and he has never liked to be
questioned about it. Perhaps he may turn out to be a relation, a
connection of your young friend.”

“Oh, I don’t think that is at all likely,” cried Lady Brotherton
hastily, “her mother is a cousin of Sir John’s--” then she faltered and
coloured, seeing the inference to be drawn from her words. “I do not
mean that Mr. Oliver’s family is not--everything that is desirable,” she
said.

The Vice-Consul looked up for a moment startled; but then he bethought
himself of Lady Brotherton’s “way.” Her way he said to himself was well
known. She was fond of connecting things that had no connection, and
scorning those that had. So he answered without offence, “I did not
suppose for a moment that you meant anything of the kind, Lady
Brotherton; you will like him when you know him. He is as good a fellow
as ever stepped; not very much educated--but so few of your young
English squireocracy are.”

“Do you think so, Mr. Bonamy?” her mind glanced straight of course to
Lionel, and she felt a little offence as well as a disdainful pity for
so foolish an opinion, and the grounds upon which it must have been
formed.

“Yes, I think so; they come here knowing no language but their own,
without a notion what they have come for, or what they want, trying to
get up cricket matches and yawning in the face of all that makes Italy
desirable. If they want cricket they should stay in England, where they
would get it at its best. Yes, it must be allowed we see a great many
ignorant young fellows--who are thorough gentlemen all the same----”

“I am glad you allow that,” said Lady Brotherton, a little piqued. She
was rather fond herself of finding fault with her country folks, but she
did not like it in other people; and the Vice-Consul went away with his
mind in a considerable ferment, wondering if now he was about to
penetrate the mystery of his son-in-law’s antecedents. The idea that he
knew nothing about them had given him a prick now and then through all
these years; but Harry had never betrayed himself. He had not done so,
for the good reason that all his young life had disappeared from him
like a mist, and that honestly he never thought of it, or felt tempted
to make any reference to it. His marriage had taken place while the
Vice-Consul was still in a weak state of health, for the results of his
illness had lasted long, though the seizure itself was over: and in all
those happy quiet years Harry’s heart had been so full and his mind had
been so occupied that he had scarcely thought of the possibility of
being called upon some day to roll away the stone from the grave of the
past. And a sort of honourable hesitation had moved the Vice-Consul; he
had accepted the stranger as he was; ought he to enter into discussion
of his rights and wrongs now, and perhaps be compelled to condemn him,
though he was so good? Now, however there seemed a prospect of a
clearing up. “I should like to know who he is; before I die, I should
like to know the rights of it,” Mr. Bonamy said to himself.

“I was so glad you were not here, my dear,” Lady Brotherton said to
Lydia. “It appears that this Mr. Oliver has said nothing to the Bonamys
about his family. He has allowed it to be supposed that they were people
of importance. How they could be so foolish as to let Rita marry him
without knowing all about him I can’t imagine; but that is just what has
been done. Now, my love, I want to warn you; be on your guard. Be on
your guard, Lionel. It was very wrong of the young man to do it, but
it’s no business of ours; and they’re married now, and can’t be
separated, you know; and Mr. Bonamy has not a word but praise to say of
him. Be on your guard; I have no right to speak; I as nearly as possible
let it out myself. I said my young people thought they knew Mr. Oliver’s
family; but afterwards I assured him that this was mere conjecture, and
that I didn’t think there was anything in it. So, my dears, both of you
be on your guard.”

“I shall not betray him, mother; but all the same it is a shabby
business. The fellow must be a cad to do it,” Lionel said.

Lydia looked up at him with hot, sudden displeasure, she could not tell
why. What had she to do with Isaac Oliver? But she was excited by the
appearance of this stranger who bore such a familiar name, and she felt
angry that he should be called a “cad.” She was in so strange a
condition, so feverish, and restless, and impatient, that to be angry
for some real cause was a luxury to her. She did not, for her part, give
any pledge or make any reply, but seated herself in the carriage with a
forlorn and partly fictitious feeling that this man, whom she had never
(she thought) seen before, and knew nothing about, would be more near
to her, if he were one of the Olivers, than these people with whom she
had been so familiar, who had been her friends, and more than her
friends, but who were about to drop her (she said to herself) next week,
as if she had never belonged to them at all. They were all reminding her
of this parting, keeping it before her, she thought, even old Sir
John--without any sympathy for her, or regret to leave her, or
perception of what the parting would be to her. Anybody from her own
country, within her own circle of being, would be more to her, she said
within herself, would understand her better, would feel more for her,
than the friends who had been so kind, but who did not care.

But the visit of the travelling party was contemplated with very much
stronger feelings by the one of all concerned, who alone knew all about
it, and understood the full importance of the meeting. Harry had been
unable to keep himself from one startled look when he heard his sister’s
name. “Liddy” first, which of itself roused him a little--he had not
heard the north-country sound of that familiar name since he left the
north country--and then Joscelyn. Who could she be? Could there be any
Liddy Joscelyn but one? It was his mother’s name, and his little
sister’s, whom he remembered with that tender partiality with which
elder brothers and sisters think of the little one who is the pet of the
family. Liddy had not been old enough to have come to the bar of
fraternal judgment when he had left the White House. She was still a
child, and he had been fond of her. They had all been fond of her. She
had been the pet, sacred from the animadversion even of Tom and Will,
who, being married, and separated from their home, were in some measure
freed from the family prejudices. But Harry was not freed. He had been
angry with all his belongings for all these years, but as soon as he
heard her name his heart grew soft to little Liddy. Liddy Joscelyn! He
went away from the inn full of excitement, saying over and over to
himself those familiar, soft-sounding syllables, Liddy Joscelyn, Liddy
Joscelyn. Could it really be that this pretty young woman, who had
looked at him over Lady Brotherton’s shoulder, with such earnest eyes,
was his little sister? For a long time he could think of nothing else
but this, and took a long walk in an entirely different direction from
the office to familiarize himself with the idea, and to get his
excitement calmed down.

But the more he thought, the less he could manage to get his excitement
calmed down. It might be supposed that he would have thought first of
all of the danger of being discovered, and the likelihood that something
might arise which would betray him to his sister. But this was only his
second impulse. The first was instinctive, a sudden surging up of family
affection, a leap of his heart into old prejudices and tendernesses; and
it was only when he had exhausted this that he thought of the risk that
he would inevitably run when Liddy found herself brought into contact
with a man bearing so marked a name as that of Isaac Oliver. He laughed
within himself, half bitterly, half with a sort of amusement at the
sudden image which her little cry of surprise and startled look brought
before him as well as before herself--Old Isaac Oliver! He remembered
every line of him, all in a moment, his stooping, his shuffling, his
desire to give good advice, his fear of his Missis, and almost laughed
out at the strange connection he had himself formed between this grey
old figure and himself. Why had he been so absurd as to choose such a
marked name? But the idea that anybody could suppose him, Harry
Joscelyn, to have anything to do with that old peasant, amused him more
than all the rest. He could scarcely keep himself from shouts of
laughter. He! The notion was too incongruous to be considered with
gravity. It was an offence to him at the same time, but most of all it
was ludicrous. And these people were coming to his house to-night, to
dine at his table, to ask him questions, to make their remarks, to speak
of old Isaac, and, perhaps, put it into the heads of his wife and her
father that this was the kind of relation whom he had left behind him in
England. The Bonamys had received him so generously, accepted his own
explanations so easily, given him the best evidence of their perfect
confidence and trust, and, if now they heard this fine story of the old
north-country clown, what would they think of him? The more Harry
thought of it the more he was confused and bewildered. Liddy had looked
at him with a very penetrating, anxious look over Lady Brotherton’s
shoulder. What was she so curious about? How could she know? And his
wife and she would meet, would talk together, would perhaps come to
confidences. He was not able to face the position. He was older and
more experienced in many ways, but he was not experienced in such
complications of circumstances. His head turned round and round. What
was he to do?

The only thing he did was a curious token of the utter helplessness he
felt. When he got to the office he called Paolo, who was still a
faithful prop of the Consulate, and asked him to dinner to meet some
English friends. He waited even till Paolo made his elaborate evening
toilette, and walked home with him arm in arm, clinging to him as a sort
of protection. There could not be a more clear confession of the state
of impotence in which he felt himself. It was like one of his early
difficulties long ago, in which Paolo was his only friend.




CHAPTER IX.

THE BRITISH CONSULATE.


The Vice-Consul’s family still lived in the same house, with more
frequent use than before of the succursale of the Villa, where the
children spent so much of their time. Naturally, however, it was a
changed house, brighter and happier in one sense, in another--perhaps
not all that it had been. Perhaps Mr. Bonamy had found a more delicate
and complete happiness in it when he and his little daughter lived there
alone, in perfect companionship, he sharing every thought with his
child, and finding an entire and sweet compensation for all the troubles
of his life in that perfect union and sympathy. It was true that, as he
was aware now, he had known very little of Rita all that happy time: but
while it lasted he did not know this, and thought that he had
everything. It is the lot of fathers and mothers. When this last
exquisite dream of his life failed him, and his Rita went over to that
amiable, well-disposed, and kind young enemy, who had conquered and
supplanted her father, Mr. Bonamy had, it is needless to say, a certain
struggle with himself. But the circumstances helped him to a large
degree. He was ill, expecting to die, and glad to think that whatever
happened to him he had secured a companion, a support for her. When,
however, death dropped into the background, and he had to begin again,
and to reconcile himself to a third person in his house, at his table,
and in all the most intimate relations of his life, the Vice-Consul had
found it hard; and very hard it was to see his Rita turn to this other
man as a flower turns to the sun, with all the clinging and dependence
she had once shown to her father, and with a constant reference to and
consultation of his wishes. It was quite right that it should be so, oh,
perfectly right! and she was happy, as happy as a young woman could
be--but it jarred upon the man who was left out in the cold, and who had
to share, nay to give up the best of, this love which had been the
recompense of his life, to a stranger. It is the lot of the fathers and
mothers; when they make any difficulty about consenting to it, we call
them hard names; but yet once in a way it may be allowed, that it is a
bitter thing to do. Mr. Bonamy on the whole had done it with a very good
grace. He was, more or less, grateful to the interloper that his house
was not left to him desolate: and he swallowed Harry with as few
grimaces as possible, making in private those which he could not
altogether suppress. On the whole no man could have occupied so
invidious a position more genially, more inofficiously than Harry did.
He was grateful and attached to his father-in-law, and he had a profound
respect for him and his judgment, to which unfortunately Mr. Bonamy did
not make much response. The Vice-Consul indeed had that half-painful,
half-amused sense of being a better man than his son-in-law, which at
once increases the pang of such a rivalry and makes it ludicrous.
“Having known me to decline on a range of lower feelings, and a narrower
heart than mine.” When a father utters in the depths of his own heart
such a sentiment as this, it may be somewhat bitterly, but it must be
with a sense that it is utterly ludicrous. Mr. Bonamy felt all through
like the disappointed lover in the poem “Thou shalt lower to his level
day by day;” for indeed Rita herself, when she became Mrs. Harry, soon
came to have far less interest in matters above Harry’s level, than she
had felt when it was her father’s level by which her eager young being
was founded. Then she had been his leader sometimes, his little oracle,
with a fineness of perception that filled him with wonder and
admiration; now she avoided those fine questions and speculations in
which her husband did not share. He was faultless, Mr. Bonamy was just
enough to allow; he was not exacting, he would still look on with honest
admiring looks when they went beyond his knowledge, and smile and listen
to discussions in which he could not take any share. But what Harry did
not feel for himself, Rita felt for him. She would not go beyond him.
She limited her own impulsive eager steps, which had been so ready for
every path of fancy in order to keep upon the beaten ground by his side.
Perhaps it gave her a little prick of pain too to leave her father
alone, to curb all her natural impulses, to keep to that steady solid
pace which suited Harry; and she did it knowing that her father felt it
was a decline. But nevertheless her delicate instinctive unspoken
loyalty to her husband carried her through. She was “falsely true” as
much as Lancelot though in so different a way, belying herself, for
Harry’s sake, who did not want such a sacrifice; but Rita felt it to be
his due. There, as in all cases where there is a divided duty, the
happiness which they possessed was purchased by a little inevitable
pain, it was no longer unalloyed. The interloper, the breaker up of that
previous blessedness, was the one who felt least drawback in it. For one
thing he was naturally very modest and humble about himself, and it did
not at all hurt him to acknowledge himself less clever than his wife and
father-in-law. He would not have objected had they gone on talking over
his head. His taste was less fine, and his perceptions much less acute
than Rita’s. And he got the advantage of that _finesse_ of thought and
feeling, that delicacy which was so much greater than anything he was
capable of, really without knowing it, or being at all aware of the
sacrifice she made.

Then the children, though they were a new bond, and a great pleasure to
Mr. Bonamy (being good and healthy and smiling children, making the best
of themselves, and looking merry and pretty, as children ought to do),
gave a little wound also to his fantastical delicacy (for it was of
course fantastical) about his daughter, whom he did not like to think of
as involved in all the functions of motherhood. But the Vice-Consul,
though perhaps not a very wise man by the head, was wise by the heart,
and he would not do or say anything to throw the least cloud upon his
child’s happiness; he accepted everything, allowing to himself that he
was fantastical; and their home was pointed out to everybody as the
emblem of a united house, full of love and mutual consideration, and the
closest affection--which it was, though not the same home as of old.

On this particular day Rita was somewhat excited by the prospect of a
visit from the Brothertons. Lady Brotherton had been one of the objects
of her girlish devotion--that devotion which so often flows forth to an
older woman before it turns to a lover. She had admired the beautiful
lady as only a girl can admire, and had copied her in many a little
matter, and still believed in her with all the delightful prejudice
which clings to the friends of our youth. She was eager to show
everything--her husband, her babies, her own maturity of life--to her
old authority, and see how they looked through Lady Brotherton’s eyes.
When she saw her husband before dinner she was full of this pleasant
excitement.

“What a pity, what a pity that Ralph and Vanna are at the Villa” (Harry
in his perversity had given his father’s name to his eldest boy, though
he was of opinion that he hated his father), Rita cried, “I should have
liked her to see them; but there is always Madge and baby. I wonder if
she will think Madge like you, Harry. I wonder if she will think baby a
beauty. English children are so big and red in the face; she may think
ours pale; though I am sure they are quite strong. I wonder how she will
think papa is looking. I wonder if she will approve of----”

“Me?” said Harry, with a somewhat uneasy smile; “she will think me not
half good enough for you, and there I agree with her, so we shan’t
quarrel on that subject. But listen, dear, there is some one with her,
whom I want you to be a little on your guard with; a--a girl--a Miss
Joscelyn----”

Rita looked up suddenly, with a keen light in her dark eyes. She had
Italian blood in her, to which jealousy was quite possible. She looked
up startled, ready to take fire; but Harry went on tying his neck-tie,
not so much as conscious, in his honest simplicity, that such a
sentiment as jealousy could enter into the possibilities.

“I have a kind of idea,” he said, “that she must belong to people--I
used to know. I may be mistaken, but still I have a notion she does. So
don’t say anything, darling; don’t let her enter upon the subject.”

“What subject?” said Rita, breathless. “Do you mean that you knew
the--lady--in those old times that I know nothing about?”

“I can’t tell,” said Harry; “if I knew her, it was as a child. But,
Rita, you are always generous; you never have bothered me with
questions. Don’t say anything to her, or to any of them, if they should
question you--about me.”

“About you!” Rita’s mind was partially relieved, but it was not in human
nature to receive, without some retort, this curious commission. “What
can I say about you? I know nothing,” she said, with a little
bitterness. Then, as he turned and looked at her with unfeigned
astonishment, “Oh, no, no, I do not mean that! I know everything, dear
Harry, I know you; but nothing before you came here.”

“That is true,” he said, thoughtfully. “I wonder if I ever shall be able
to tell you--all about it?” The sight of Liddy and the sound of her name
had worked upon him more than he had thought anything could.

“Do! do!” cried Rita, all eagerness, clasping his arm with both her
hands.

He had never said so much to her before, and she, in fastidious
delicacy, had not asked. He laughed now, but still with anxiety in his
face.

“At present I must get ready for dinner,” he said.

“Ah! it is always like this,” cried Rita; “when you are in a humour to
tell me, something happens, dinner, or something equally unimportant!”
which was more like one of her early girlish outbursts than the matronly
composure by which she liked to think herself distinguished now.

But at this moment her maid came to tell her that the carriage of the
English Signori, who were coming to dinner, had just driven into the
courtyard, and Rita had to give her skirts a last settling, and to hurry
to the drawing-room. And Harry had failed in his tie; he had to take a
new one, feeling his hands tremble a little. His mind was in a great
ferment. Some months before he had seen the advertisement for Harry
Joscelyn, or a certificate of his death, in the _Times_, where he was
described as “supposed to have emigrated,” and this of itself had roused
no small commotion in him. He was to hear of “something to his
advantage.” Harry could not tell what that might be, and if for a moment
now and then the temptation came over him to answer the appeal and
understand the cause of it, it yielded immediately, not only to the old
resentment, but to the new sense of alarm and apprehension with which
the idea of breaking up his present life, and disclosing to those who
knew him under one name another identity, filled his spirit. It appeared
to him that, if he gave up his present standing ground by revealing
another, his whole life, so happy, so sweet, so full of natural duty,
work, and recompense, would break up and disappear from him. As Isaac
Oliver he was at the head of the Consular business, known and named in
all its affairs. As Isaac Oliver he was the husband of his wife. All the
town knew him under that name, his children bore it. It had become
almost dear to him, the name which he had picked up in bitter ridicule,
and adopted with a perverse laugh, as he might have stuck a feather in
his hat. The sound was familiar now to his ears, he liked it. It was
Rita’s name. She called him Harry, as the name of his childhood, which
he preferred, and he had been led to admit that the “Harry Joscelyn
Isaac Oliver,” with which, for precaution sake, he had signed the
register on his marriage, was his full baptismal name. He signed it now
H. J. Isaac Oliver, and she was Mrs. Isaac Oliver. He liked it, and had
a certain pride in it, as a name that was honest and without stain, and
which should never suffer in his hands; and if he cut himself off from
it, what would become of him? his identity would be gone. But the
appearance of Liddy had made a very great impression on him. When she
rose up suddenly, with a little start and cry, at the sound of his name,
he had seen in a moment, in imagination, the real Isaac Oliver,
shuffling like a crab along the North-country road, and a sense of the
incongruity had struck him painfully, bringing a sensation of sudden
shame and discomfiture; but in general he was not ashamed of the name to
which he had grown familiar, and he felt as if, resuming the other, his
pleasant life would all break up and disappear, and he would become
another man.

Rita met the strangers with less composure than she would have done but
for that two minutes’ talk. Even when she threw herself into Lady
Brotherton’s arms, in the fervour of feeling which her Italian blood
made a little more apparent than it would have been had she been all
English, she cast an eye upon Lady Brotherton’s companion. Lydia was not
looking her best in the confused and painful fever of suspense and
expectancy which was upon her; but she looked younger than her real age,
and almost childlike in her slightness and slimness beside the matronly
form of Lady Brotherton. Even Rita, though still light and small, was
rounder and fuller than of old, but Liddy looked eighteen though she was
twenty-two, and there could be no doubt that if Harry had seen her
before it must have been as a child. This somewhat composed the fanciful
bosom of Harry’s wife. Liddy when she had made her curtsey to Mrs.
Oliver, sat down behind backs, with a timidity which had come suddenly
back to her, isolating herself as far as might be, especially from
Lionel, whom she had avoided ever since their recent conversation.
Harry had not yet come into the room, and she felt herself altogether in
a strange place. Perhaps it was this that brought Paolo to her side; the
little Italian thought her probably, a neglected _demoiselle de
compagnie_ whom nobody particularly cared to notice, and this was enough
to bring him instantly to the rescue. “Miss Joscelyn is a stranger in
Italy?” he said with an engaging and conciliatory smile. He spoke a
great deal better English than when Harry had made acquaintance with
him, and dressed with less _abandon_ and devotion to the beautiful; but
he was still a “funny little man,” in the eyes of the English girl; his
kindness however could not be mistaken.

“Scarcely,” she said, “I have been in Italy all the winter; and now we
are going home.”

“Ah, you are going ’ome, that always pleases; but I hope Mees Jos--lyn
will retain a little memory that is pleasant of Italy too.”

“Oh, I have liked it so much,” said Liddy. She was disturbed at this
moment by Harry’s entrance; and it occurred to her now for the first
time as it had done to Lionel when he first saw him, that she had seen
somebody very like him--who was it that was so like him? She paused in
what she was saying to interpose this wondering question in her own
mind.

“That is Mr. Oliver,” said Paolo, “you have seen him before? He is what
we call _beluomo_, fine man, very fine man; he is my great friend; I was
the first to meet him when he stepped upon this shore; we have been
friends of the heart always since that day.”

Lydia cast an involuntary look from the little man in front of her, in
his elaborate dress, to the big person of the Englishman. She could not
help thinking they would make a strange pair. And Paolo, with the
quickness of lightning, divined her meaning.

“You think he is so tall, and I--little? Nevare mind,” said the good
little fellow, “we are of the same tallness in the heart. Nay, even me,
I am a little the tallest there,” he added, laughing, “for I have
nobody, and the good Oliver, he has his wife and little children, and
many to love. He is my devotion,” added the Italian, warmly. “I have
never had a friend before him. I am English too--though perhaps Mees
Jos-lyn would not know it.”

“Are you indeed? I beg your pardon,” said Lydia, “I thought you were an
Italian. Mr. Oliver is very English. Do you know where--he comes from?
and is it long since he came here?”

“That no one can tell you so well as I,” said Paolo, delighted with the
subject. “It was in--Ah, how well I remembare! I was upon the quay to
watch for the great _vapore_--the steamboat I should say--and ecco! in
one of those little boats that brought the travellers, this tall, big,
beautiful young man. I step forward. I offer my help, for he could not
speak a word, not one word. But no! he had a distrust of the foreigner.
Mees Jos-lyn has perhaps remarked? It is the great fault of the English;
they have always a distrust of the foreigners. He would not listen, nor
permit himself to be assisted; but caught up his portmanteau and walked
along. Wonderful! I stood and looked. Che bell’uomo! they all cried. I,
I did not take any time to think--I am English, but I am Italian as
well; from that moment I loved him, though he had a distrust of me. When
I entered _table-d’hôte_ at the hotel where I always dined, there was he
again; and then we became friends. We have quarrelled, oh yes, we have
quarrelled--a hundred thousand times,” cried Paolo, “but we are always
friends again. Mees Jos-lyn will pardon that I tell such a long tale. It
is ten years.”

“What are you saying to Miss Joscelyn, Paul-o, about ten years?”

“I am telling, amico, how we became friends,” said Paolo, stretching
himself to his full height by Harry’s side, raising himself on tip-toe.
The other looked down on him with a kindness that was not without a
touch of contempt. Harry was very faithful to Paolo, and proud of him in
his way; but the almost feminine demonstrative affection of the little
Italian was always a thing of which he was half ashamed.

“Is it ten years?” he said. “But you might find some better subject to
entertain Miss Joscelyn about.”

“I asked him,” said Lydia. She looked at this stranger with very
anxious, suspicious eyes. He was a stranger of course. She had seen him
for the first time to-day. Still his name was one she knew; his face was
one she knew; his very voice sounded familiar. A curious confusion and
suspicion came over her. Strangely enough it never once occurred to her
to think of her brother.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said.

Could anything be more commonplace? The Vice-Consul went before them
with Lady Brotherton, Sir John hobbled after them with Rita. On either
side there were a few words being said. Lady Brotherton on the one hand
pouring praises of Rita’s developed beauty into her father’s pleased
ears, while old Sir John spluttered forth his remarks on the other.
“Fathers’sh an evergreen, my dear. Look’sh ashyoung ash’ever he did.
Bloomin’, bloomin’, like yourshelf.” Between these two, feeling a little
tremor in the arm she touched lightly with her hand. Lydia walked with
her silent companion. He did not say a word, and neither did she. But
her heart began to beat: there seemed something strange and exciting in
the air. She felt suspicious of him as if he had been a criminal; why
did he not speak? It was scarcely any better at dinner. There was a
great deal of talk at table, and much liveliness, but in this he took
little share. When Lydia looked away to the other end of the table, or
talked to anyone else, she invariably found his eye upon her when she
returned to herself; but he said nothing except in answer to what was
said to him; either he was a very stupid man, or--something else. She
became so impatient at last that she turned to him boldly, provoked by
his silence.

“Mr. Oliver,” she said, “I know some one of your name in the
North-country.”

He seemed to perceive with an effort that she was actually addressing
himself; but turned to her quickly, as if prepared for the attack.

“My name is not a very uncommon name,” he said.

“Oliver is not; but Isaac Oliver is surely very uncommon--it made me
stare when I heard it. I thought you must be a messenger from home.”
Lydia felt herself grow important in her excitement. “Our Isaac Oliver
is a very well-known person. Cousin Lionel, you know him too!”

It was a most unjustifiable attack; and to compromise Lionel too! Lady
Brotherton stopped short in the midst of something she was saying, in
her dismay at this contradiction of all her instructions, and this
called the attention of the whole table to what Lydia was saying. There
was a general pause in which every word was distinctly audible.

“Everybody knows him,” said Liddy, “in our countryside.”

And then they all looked at Harry, upon whose countenance there came a
slight shade of colour.

“Is it so?” he said; “but he is no relation of mine.”

“How can you tell,” the audacious girl went on, “when you do not even
know what countryside I mean?”

“Harry,” said Rita, leaning across the table, “what is Miss Joscelyn
saying to you? You have forgotten your favourite dish, which was made
expressly for you. Look, there is Antonio waiting, and cannot make you
understand.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Harry, with a hurried glance round him; and
then Antonio, though he did not know a word of English, understood like
a true Italian that he was wanted to relieve an embarrassment, and
gallantly stepped into the breach with his dish. Lydia, arrested in the
midst of her assault, felt herself driven back upon herself, and
confused as if she had received a soft, unexpected blow.

“Harry,” she said, in a low tone, “Harry--I thought your name was Isaac
Oliver. I beg your pardon, I fear I have been making a mistake.”

The talk had recommenced again; nobody was paying any attention, and
Harry’s head was bent over his plate; but suddenly he raised it for a
single instant, and gave her a look. What did that look mean? Lydia was
stunned by it as by a sudden electric shock. She had been confused
before, but not half so confused as now. The look was tender,
affectionate even, half-appealing, as if, she thought, there was some
secret understanding between them--something which they knew, and which
nobody else knew. She stared at him in return, arrested in all the
movements of her own mind, her lips dropping apart in her wonder, her
eyes opening wide. He was not angry nor surprised at her boldness, nor
at her attempt to force upon him an undesirable relation, but looked at
her with an almost affectionateness, an understanding which she could
not understand. Lydia was altogether confused; she did not say another
word. Sitting by this stranger’s side, she relapsed into silence like
his own. Who was he? What did he mean? How had he got the command of
her? She was giddy with the confusion in her mind, and what it all meant
she could not tell.




CHAPTER X.

AFTER DINNER.


But Lydia was far, very far from being out of the embarrassment which
she had brought upon herself. When the ladies went back to the
drawing-room, which they did after the English fashion, Rita took no
more notice of her than civility required, though she could not help
owning to herself that there could be no reason for displeasure with her
husband, or the least sense of jealousy on Lydia’s account; Rita however
could not help showing her adoption of Harry’s quarrel by the chilliest
civility to the girl against whom he had bidden her to be on her guard.
She would not, as some suspicious women might have done, seize the
opportunity to find out something concerning that part of his life which
was unknown to her. She was too proudly honourable to do this; and she
could not help feeling a certain enmity towards the girl who might
betray him, even to herself. No, she would not hear a word Miss Joscelyn
might have to say. She lingered by her a moment coldly, and asked if she
would like to look at some books of engravings (it was before the time
of photographs), placing them before her on a little table; and then she
sat down on a sofa in a distant corner of the room with Lady Brotherton,
and talked and talked. When the gentlemen came in, Lydia was visible in
her white dress, all lighted up by the condensed light under the shade
of a large lamp, sitting quite alone, while the voices of the two others
seemed to bring her solitude into more full relief. Quite alone--nobody
taking any notice. There was room round her for all the party, and it
would have been natural that they should have collected about her, the
only girl among them, so pretty as she was, and neglected by the other
women. But the younger men were balked by the Vice-Consul, who stepped
forward briskly, and at once put himself into a chair beside her. He
talked to her, as he had a gift of talking, with delightful sympathy and
kindness. He asked her about her travels, how far she had gone, and
entered into all the little adventures of which she told him, telling
her stories of the days when he too had travelled, and giving her all
manner of anecdotes. The Vice-Consul was still a handsome man, as
majestic and gracious as ever; and he had a way, as everybody
acknowledged, of talking to young people. He charmed Lydia altogether.
She thought she had never met with anyone so delightful; and then he led
the conversation quite imperceptibly to England, and her part of the
country, and her family and herself.

“England is a closed country to me,” he said. “To be sure I might go now
that my daughter is married, and I am no longer indispensable to her.
But I forget that. When Rita was younger, before she married, I was all
she had, as she is still all I have in the world. I hope your parents
are both living, Miss Joscelyn, and happy in their child? Ah, that is
well. Rita has never been in England, and must never be.”

“Must never be?” Lydia looked across the room to the sofa on which Mrs.
Oliver was still sitting, with mingled wonder and pity. And yet, she
reflected, she herself was not so very glad to get back to England. That
was a fate which, under certain circumstances, might be bearable
enough.

“No; I dare not risk her among the fogs and damps. She is--well,
perhaps, I ought not to say she is delicate, not now: but she was so
during all her earlier life. You see, I forget that she is not still my
little girl, but has now little girls of her own. That makes a
difference. No, she was never to go to England, that I vowed almost as
soon as she was born. The cold and the damp were fatal to her mother,
and Rita is so like her; I dare not risk my daughter there.”

“But,” said Lydia, “it is not always cold and damp. It is very lovely
here, but people are prejudiced, and talk nonsense about England. If it
is so long since you were there, you have, perhaps, forgotten. We have
something else besides rain and fog.”

“Yes, yes; I know there is an occasional fine day. You come from the
south of England probably, Miss Joscelyn, where some sort of fine
weather is to be found?”

“No, indeed, I come from the north--quite the north, close to Scotland;
and we have often beautiful weather,” said Lydia, with a glow of
patriotism; “a different blue from this, and a great deal more cloud;
but then that is what makes it so beautiful, flying over the hills,
clearing off in a moment, then dropping again like a white veil, and the
sun bursting out all in a moment like a surprise. When one comes to
think of it the variety is the charm. Here you have the same thing all
day long, and every day; but with us the skies are never the same for an
hour; and as for cold, I never feel any cold; one takes a brisk walk,
and that is all that is wanted.”

“I see you enter into the spirit of the country. The north? That is
where my son-in-law comes from.” The Vice-Consul always said to himself
that he put in his tone a note of interrogation to this question; but
Lydia took it for a statement, and received it without hesitation.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said.

“I think I heard you say that you knew--relations of his? Are they
neighbours of yours? I am interested in everything about Harry.”

“That puzzles me,” she said, “to hear you call him Harry. I thought he
was Isaac Oliver. I know some one of that name.”

“A neighbour? It is, as you say, an uncommon name. I might have thought
of that. Yes, quite an uncommon name. And your Mr. Oliver, Miss
Joscelyn, was----?”

“Oh,” cried Lydia, forgetting all previous cautions, with a laugh at the
unnecessary title, “he was not _Mr._ Oliver at all. He was a man
whom--he was a man--he was a----”

Here she stopped all at once, bethinking herself of Lady Brotherton’s
injunction, and of the possible effect upon the young man who had looked
at her with such a strange, curious look, of this revelation. She
stopped all at once, and looked at her questioner with sudden alarm. “I
have not the least reason to think that he is a relation of Mr.
Oliver’s,” she said. “It was only an idea on my part. It was because of
the name. When I heard the name I thought it must be some one sent to
bring me home.”

“It _is_ a curious name. We have got used to it: we have forgotten that.
The man then is--not a gentleman? I think I may guess as much. He is
a--what? A farmer--a yeoman? The yeomen in the north country, I have
always heard, are a very fine, independent class of men.”

“Oh, it is not a farmer, or a---- Indeed, indeed, it was the silliest
mistake on my part. Besides, it is not really the same name, even if
that were anything, for you call him Harry; so he cannot be Isaac
Oliver, after all.”

“You must not think me too pressing, Miss Joscelyn. I have a particular
reason for wishing to know. We have never known much about his family;
and I think I am sure that it must be the same family, for the name of
Joscelyn is---- What is it, what is it, Harry? Am I wanted? This is the
way we are worked, we poor servants of the public. H.B.M., God bless
her! is a hard taskmistress: but this conversation is too interesting to
be abandoned. Keep my seat for me here, Paolo. I put great confidence in
you till I come back.”

Paolo, who had been hovering about with many longing looks, took the
seat with enthusiasm.

“I take it,” he said, “with all my heart; but to give it up, even to the
Signor Consul himself, that is what I shall not do if I can help it.
Mees Joscelyn has known Mr. Bonamy before? He is charming. He will not
only talk, but make talk. He has great education and feeling; and in
art, he knows himself much better than most of the English--not to speak
with unkindness of the English, who have much fine qualities: and also I
am English myself.”

“But one would not think so,” said Lydia, “to hear you talk.” She was of
opinion on the whole that this was rather a compliment than otherwise,
for “foreigners” in her opinion were more “interesting” than commonplace
Englishmen. But Paolo was in despair.

“You think me--? Ah, it is cruel! and if Mees Joscelyn say so,” said
little Paolo, “it must be true. No, I am not like my friend for example;
but Englishmen are not all one like another. There is variety, as you
have said so beautifully, like a poem, about the weather. Ah, the
English weather! I should like that.”

“I don’t think you would altogether,” said Lydia with a quiet smile. She
had no attention to bestow on Paolo. But she did what impulsive people
are so apt to do with strangers, insignificant but sympathetic, often to
the great damage of the victim. She leant forward a little and took him
into her confidence. “You are a great friend of Mr. Oliver?” she said,
“you told me so; then please don’t go away when Mr. Bonamy comes back,
for he is asking me questions, and I would rather not answer. It might
do Mr. Oliver harm.”

“I will not go--for the King himself--if you thus tell me to remain,”
cried Paolo, enchanted. But he was confounded too; he did not
understand. The first and most natural idea seemed to be that Lydia and
Harry were old friends or lovers, with a secret between them; or else
this was a mere pretence to secure the pleasure of his, Paolo’s,
society, instead of that of Mr. Bonamy. English young ladies, who were
so free in their manners, so emancipated, did very strange things. Paolo
smiled upon Lydia with his most captivating smile. “I could stay here
for evare,” he said.

Lydia gave him a look of amused surprise, but she did not mind the
little man at all, nor did it for a moment occur to her that he might
interpret her sudden confidential impulse according to any theory of
nationalities.

“It is very hard,” she said, leaning back in her chair with a little
sigh of relief, “when anyone looks you in the face, and keeps on asking
questions, not to tell everything that you know.”

“You think so,” said Paolo. “Ah! Mees Joscelyn, it is that you are so
true, what you call straightforwards in England; here one would take a
pleasure in doing otherwise. In Italy, when it is imagined that you
desire to know more than is necessary, that pleases to us to confuse
you. Not to me,” he said, bethinking himself, and beating his breast
lightly to indicate himself as an exception, “not to me, for I am also
English: but to noi altri Italiani:” this little confusion of a double
identity as English, yet one of _noi altri_, pleased Paolo; he laughed
at his own cleverness with the frankest self-appreciation. “It pleases,”
he said, “to put a too much inquirer wrong.”

“But when he looks you in the face,” said Lydia, amused and relieved,
“how can you say anything but what it really is? There is a--person in
England whom I know. He is not a gentleman, but he has the same name as
Mr. Oliver. Mr. Oliver’s name is Isaac, is it not? but then they call
him something else, and I don’t know what to think.”

“My amico, Oliver, pleases to Miss Joscelyn?” Paolo said.

“Pleases to----? I feel a great interest in him,” said Lydia. “He
startled me so much with the sound of his name; and then he is like
somebody I know. I cannot remember who it is--but there is some one; and
then Mr. Bonamy asks me so many questions--I feel an interest. I do not
think it very wise, if you have poor relations, to be ashamed of
them--do you? And yet one does not like to betray another if there is
any reason--” Lydia became so fragmentary in her utterances, that Paolo
could not follow the broken thread of her thoughts.

“Ny-ce?” he said. “But my friend Oliver is very ny-ce--there is not a
thought in him that is not ny-ce. I know,” said Paolo, with an
ingratiating smile, “that word so well.”

“How nice of you to answer for him so!” cried Lydia, turning upon him
with a sudden radiance of smiles. “It is delightful to meet with such a
true friend.”

Paolo’s very soul expanded with pleasure. He put his hand upon his
shirtfront, and bowed over the little table, laden with the
picture-books. He did not deprecate as an Englishman would have done, or
disclaim any merit in this; but took the full credit of it with a
pleasant consciousness of deserving it. He thought, however, that there
had been enough of Oliver, and determined to push his own successful
fortunes without further delay. “Miss Joscelyn, I hope, will stay long,
a little while, two, tree weeks at Livorno? No! Oh! that is bad news,
very bad news,” said Paolo, his face growing longer and longer as she
shook her head.

“Only till to-morrow--to-morrow evening we are to go by the steamboat;”
and Lydia, reverting to her own thoughts, recorded this statement with a
sigh.

“You are sorry to leave the beautiful Italy. Ah! and Italy too will be
desolated when so many charming Inglesi, so many beautiful ladies leave
her shore--to-morrow! That is bad news, very bad news,” Paolo said.

“I am afraid Italy will not care very much,” said Lydia, with a little
laugh. “The English come and go every year; but I don’t think I shall
ever come back. For me it is once in my life,” she said, this time with
a sigh; and the sigh was a sad one, for there came once more over her
mind, which had been temporarily distracted by a new subject, all the
heavy and troubled thoughts which had made her so restless and wretched
for a few days past.

“No, no,” cried Paolo. “No, no--ah! pardon, it must not be one time in
the Signorina’s life. She must return--she must return! There are
impressions, made in a moment--which will nevare, nevare be effaced----”

Paolo was carried out of himself; he leaned across the table, almost
kneeling at Liddy’s feet, and with the most passionate expression in his
large liquid Italian eyes. Lydia on her side looked at the little man
with the sublimest composure. She elevated her eyebrows the least in the
world in mild surprise, and a passing wonder crossed her mind,
immediately checked by the reflection that these were “Italian ways.”
But Paolo’s rapt looks attracted the attention of others, if not of her
to whom they were addressed. Two champions stepped forth immediately to
the rescue. On one side Harry, hasty and disposed to be a little
peremptory with his friend, and on the other Lionel, anxious and
alarmed, thinking of course that any rival might come in at the last
moment and “cut him out.”

“Paolo,” said Harry, “I wish you’d look after that gymnastic man for the
children--the man you told me about. Ralph is coming back to-morrow; he
wants exercise when he’s in town.”

“Ralph?” said Lydia, looking up, and once more meeting a look which
bewildered her. Harry’s brow was a little clouded, but his eyes had the
same tender appeal in them, the same solicitude, as if he wanted her to
understand him. What did he want her to understand? and here was another
familiar name.

“Yes,” he said, but a little uneasily; “it is an English name. We are
divided a little in our family. The next is Giovanna, after an aunt--of
my wife’s.”

“But that has an English form, too,” said Lionel. “Joan.”

A spark seemed to flash out of the eyes of this strange Mr. Oliver. He
meant something. What did he mean? Lydia seemed to herself to be groping
after him as if he had led her into a dark passage with a doubtful
outlet, yet one that showed faintly far off. Isaac or not, he must be
somebody who knew about him, who was conscious of some connection. And
to see him standing there before her, the idea that he belonged to old
Isaac Oliver seemed too absurd to be entertained. How foolish she had
been to say anything about it; how unkind and impertinent to try to vex
him by producing that ghost of an old country servant! But then how was
it that this stranger knew she was speaking of an old peasant, a man of
a different species? He knew all about him, she was convinced. Old
Isaac meant to him what it meant to her. Here again Liddy got entirely
confused in the darkness, and groped and felt that she must be on the
edge of finding out all about it, but for the moment knew nothing, and
had not even begun to suspect any new turn which the confusion might yet
take.

“Names seem very much the same in all languages,” said Harry; “the
contractions are different. In England we take the first half of the
name, in Italy the last. My wife’s name is Rita; one little girl is
Madge; but they are the same name--Margaret. And you’ve only to stick on
a vowel, and an English name becomes prime Italian. There’s yours, for
instance, Paolo; in English you would be Paul.”

“That is true,” said Paolo, dissembling, with a broad smile of
affection, the sensations produced by the slap upon his shoulders which
Harry was in the habit of administering, and which he was too polite,
too devoted, to complain of. Paolo had a keen pang of disappointment too
to have been thus interrupted while he felt he was making such progress
with the beautiful young Englishwoman; but he was too sweet-tempered to
resent it. He winced under the blow, but he smiled all the same. “That
is true,” he said; “but, amico mio, if you could but learn what it is to
pronounce two vowels in the Italian! Mees Joscelyn must know that my
friend Oliver, he is in Italia for ten years, and still he cannot do
justice to two vowels. Will the Signorina make me the pleasure to
pronounce my name?--Paolo. Pao-lo, broad, like this--ow. He will never
catch it, he is so true an Englishman; but Mees Joscelyn will say
it--ah, perfectly!” cried Paolo, clapping his hands together, and once
more throwing himself into that adoring attitude; “thanks a thousand
times; that is to make music of my poor little name.”

At this both the Englishmen made a step forward, and stood tall and
frowning like sentinels on either side of her, glooming down upon the
little Italian, thrown forward almost upon his knees, with his clasped
hands half way over the table, and rapture in his big, beautiful eyes.
The scene roused Lydia in spite of herself. She was only a girl after
all, and this conflict of emotion around her, the demonstrative
adoration on one side, the furious defence on the other, which was quite
as great a compliment, amused her, and gave her a little thrill of
pleasure. Both Harry and Lionel, however, were much disgusted to
perceive that, instead of being indignant and offended by Paolo’s
demonstration, she was at the least amused, and perhaps pleased. This
made them more angry than ever.

“The vowel may add softness,” said Lionel, in a tone of irritation; “but
I don’t think that is any advantage, at least in a man’s name. In that a
little abruptness, a bold conclusion, is desirable, not a liquid _a_ or
_o_.”

“You want English for that,” said Harry; “these foreign beggars (I beg
your pardon, Paolo) are all for airs and graces. I suppose I can’t get
my mouth about them; though to tell the truth I don’t see any difference
between my pronunciation and Miss Joscelyn’s.”

“It is true,” said Paolo, “there is a sound in both your voices--what
you call it--a tone. You have in brief, by the way, the same voice--that
is strange. Mr. Brotherton, he is in a different key; but you, that is a
great compliment for you, amico, you are in the same note with Mees
Joscelyn. She will speak perfectly, perfectly! the Italian, and you no.
Oh, you no! nevare,” said Paolo with a laugh, clapping his hands; “but
nevertheless it is true you are in the same tone.”

“That is strange,” Harry said. Once more he looked at her so
affectionately, with a kind look of pleasure in his eyes, that Lydia was
more and more bewildered. “It is a great compliment to me, as Paolo
says.”

“My mother seems to want you, Lydia,” said Lionel, very coldly. He did
not like it at all. It seemed to him that Oliver, who was a married man,
was forgetting himself altogether, though he was an Englishman, and
ought to have known better; and was paying court undisguisedly to Lydia
as well as this little hop-o’-my-thumb of an Italian who was languishing
at her feet, just like a foreigner, showing off those sentiments which
an Englishman has the delicacy to conceal. And Lydia was pleased! Was it
possible? Such a thoroughly nice girl, so modest and delightful in all
her ways, never putting herself forward, always with the pretty reserve
in her frankness which is the very bloom of maidenhood. To think that
she should be pleased! Lionel felt that he could not understand it.
This, no doubt, was the sort of thing which made cynics declare women to
be incomprehensible creatures. A really nice girl, everything about her
good and pure, and yet this kind of thing actually pleased her! Lionel’s
indignation, and disgust, and disappointment were extreme, but he tried
to restrain himself. “My mother is looking for you,” he said. “And I
suppose she wants to go. You must not forget my father has been ill, and
that we have a long journey before us.” He hoped the fellow would
understand this; that she was going away to-morrow, and that he had no
further chance of philandering in this barefaced way; and he hoped Liddy
understood that he thought her forgetful and inconsiderate, and showing
no feeling for poor old Sir John, not to speak of Sir John’s son. But
his ill-temper did not have so great an effect as it might have had in
other circumstances. She was looking up at Oliver, wondering, with her
pretty eyebrows slightly raised and a softened, gentle, almost
child-like look, interrogating the eyes of that fellow, who was a
married man! Lionel thought it absolutely immoral. He was disgusted and
bewildered, and did not know what to think. He made another step nearer
and offered her his arm. “My mother,” he repeated, with some sharpness,
“is moving to go away.”

Lydia made no resistance. She took his arm quite submissively, and held
out her other hand. “Good night,” she said to Harry. “I suppose we must
be of the same country, as we have the same voice.”

“Yes,” he said, holding her hand a moment, “we are of the same country,
and I know what you think; but it is not that.”

“It is not _that_? What is it?” Lydia said, with a startled look, as if
she saw light somewhere; but then Rita came forward with Lady Brotherton
and took leave coldly of Miss Joscelyn, and there was nothing for it but
to go away.




CHAPTER XI.

THE COUNSELS OF THE NIGHT.


“Liddy, Liddy, my dear! you should not have said anything about that old
man. How is it possible that he could be a relation of Mr. Bonamy’s
son-in-law? It is odd, of course, about the name; still, you know, there
might be another Lydia Joscelyn in the world who was no relation of
yours. There are Joscelyns down in the South. I thought when Sir John
first remembered about your mother that it was one of them she had
married; and there might just as well as not be a Lydia among them.
Lydia is not a common name, no more common than Isaac--but there might
be a Lydia among them, who, of course, would not be related to you.”

“I don’t think now that he is related to Mr. Oliver,” Lydia said.

“I wonder,” said Lionel, “what reason you have for that? It seems much
more likely to me than before. I don’t think the fellow is a gentleman.
Oh, he looks well enough, there is nothing amiss about his appearance;
still there are some things I have remarked.”

“If Lionel thinks so,” said Lady Brotherton, “my dear, in these matters,
I always take the opinion of a man, just as about women I would take a
lady’s opinion before all the men in the world. Oh, yes, it is very
pretty to talk of jealousy, and all that; but you may be sure we all
know our own kind the best. If Lionel thinks so, I would take his
opinion before my own.”

At this Lionel had compunctions, and drew back a little.

“Perhaps I went too far,” he said. “I was out of temper. Still there are
some things a man would not do, if----” but though he felt that he had
been rash, he did not complete his sentence. The carriage stopped,
indeed, at that moment at the inn door, and there was no time for him to
say anything more; and Lydia took no further part in the discussion.

She bade her friends good night in the hall of the inn and ran upstairs
to her room. She was rather glad to have disagreed with Lionel and set
her own opinion before his, and she felt angry with him, indignant, and
almost wounded, that he should have given such an opinion. She felt it
almost to be something against herself. She hurried up to her own room,
to finish her packing, she said. She had taken out her white dress to
wear that evening, and had now to put it back, to resume her
travelling-garments. It was their last night in Italy; next evening they
would be at sea, seeing the sun set in the Mediterranean. It was a warm
night, and her mind was far too restless and busy for sleep. When she
had put away her dress, and arranged all her possessions in order, she
went to the open window and sat down there, looking out at the moon. The
room was high up near the skies, and she had all the firmament to
herself, nothing to disturb its calm except the old belfry of a convent
with its little tinkling bell, which was always in movement all day
long, but which seemed to have gone to bed along with the peaceful
sisters and their pupils. This little belfry stood out against the deep
blue of the sky, which lined out every little curve and corner, but all
was quiet in and about it, its shrill tongue still till morning. All
was quiet; the room looked out to the back of the house, and not an echo
of the street reached Lydia in her retirement. She felt, half with the
giddiness of her excited condition, half with the expectation of
to-morrow, as if she were sailing upon a sea of space, floating between
the earth and sky; and as she sat there so still, her candles burning in
the background unnoticed, sedately awaiting her leisure, and the soft
night blowing in upon her with a breath of the sea in it, a perfect
crowd and storm of thoughts burst on Lydia in the quiet. She thought,
you would suppose, of what she had been doing to-night, of the curious
questions about Isaac Oliver, and the examination to which the
Vice-Consul had subjected her, and all the novelty of this story into
which she had been thrust head and shoulders without any will of her
own; but, to tell the truth, Lydia thought nothing about this at all, at
first. She thought of to-morrow, of the tide of movement which would
sweep her away, of leaning over the bulwark and seeing the long trail of
the water gliding under the ship, and of what might be said to her
there. Sir John would be safely installed in the deck-cabin, which had
always to be secured for him, and Lady Brotherton would stretch herself
out on a sofa and close her eyes, in preparation for being ill. And
then: what would be said? She wove a great many imaginary conversations
that came to nothing. Why should they come to anything? He would tell
her--what he was going to do in town; that he hoped she would enjoy
going home; something commonplace, ordinary--or else he would say
foolish things about the months they had been together, and pretend to
regret them. Why should he regret them? Lydia imagined herself saying
much that would not be true, that she was impatient to get back, that
the quiet of the Fells would be delightful after so much wandering; and
much besides which would pique him and wound him, and perhaps goad him
to say other unpleasant things in return.

And then all at once, without any doing of hers, her thoughts gave a
leap back to to-night, and there began to float and move before her all
the new faces never seen before, never, probably, to be seen again,
which for an hour or two had filled her with such strange, strong
interest. From the moment Mr. Isaac Oliver had been announced, startling
her out of herself, until now, when still discussing him, she had left
the rest of the party in the hall, the encounter had agitated and
disturbed her. “We are of the same country, and I know what you
think--but it is not that.” What did he mean?--it is not that! and why
did a stranger whom she had never seen before look at her so, and
understand her so strangely? Her heart began to beat loudly once more
when she thought of her impertinent production of old Isaac, when seated
beside her silent host at the table, taunting him with the old man; and
he understood her--that was the strange thing. If he did not really
belong to old Isaac Oliver, how was it that he understood her? When he
looked at her with that curious appeal, as if saying “Do not vex me--do
not trouble me,” there would have been no meaning in it if he had not
known what she meant; and how could he know if it was not true? Lydia
felt herself caught as in a net of confusing questions and thoughts.
Another man would have been surprised; he would have asked “Who is this
namesake of mine? Tell me about him.” But this man did not ask a
question; he _knew_. She felt that from the first moment she had
perceived this involuntarily, and that her little pricks of questions
could not have had any point if he had not known old Isaac, and if she
had not felt that he knew him. Mr. Bonamy, for instance, did not know at
all, and asked natural questions--who the gentleman was? the gentleman!
if he was a neighbour, a farmer, a yeoman?--none of which things Mr.
Oliver so much as suggested. Then who was this that knew Isaac Oliver,
that knew her own name she began to remember, starting when he heard it
first, as she had started when she heard his?

By this time Lydia began to get hot after the puzzle which unfolded
itself slowly before her. Why did the Vice-Consul ask her so many
questions? and he had begun to say something about “the name of
Joscelyn.” What about the name of Joscelyn? Then a crowd of bewildering
recollections, like motes in the sunbeam, like the whirling flakes of a
snowstorm, began to circle and dance and palpitate around her. “We are
of the same country, and I know what you think--but it is not that.”
What was it, then? What was it? He a relative of Isaac Oliver! no,
no!--it was impossible; but he knew Isaac Oliver; he knew his name and
herself; he knew what she meant when she spoke; and when she tried to
humble him with her impertinence, he was not angry, but sorry. She
seemed to see now his kind, half-reproachful, half-appealing eyes, the
look which bewildered and arrested her, she could not tell why. Quicker
and quicker went the course of Lydia’s thoughts. He had a child who was
called Ralph, and another Joan--no, not Joan, but Giovanna; but there
had come a gleam out of his eyes when Lionel had suggested Joan. Who was
he, who could he be to use these names, to look like that, like somebody
she had seen, to understand all she meant, yet not to be angry? And
their voices that were of the same tone! She could see this herself, or
rather she could hear it herself--that their voices sounded alike, with
a suspicion of a North-Country accent. Good heavens! where was this
flood of suggestion, of recollection, carrying her? She jumped up from
her seat in the confusion and hurry of her thoughts, and began to pace
about the room, her hands clasped together like her mother’s. Then she
stopped in the centre of the room, and in the silence, in the middle of
the night, threw up her arms above her head with a wild gesture, and
gave a sudden cry. “Harry!” she almost screamed to herself in the
stillness. Everybody was asleep around her, the stars winking in the
sky as if about to shut up their wakeful eyes, the blue behind the
belfry beginning to glow with a pale radiation into the air of the
coming dawn--and as if they had given each other a signal, all the
clocks of the silent town began chiming and striking, some of them
prolonging the lengthened measure of the Italian time into the soft
tuning of the night. Lydia standing in the middle of the room in wild
excitement, her hair streaming about her, her arms thrown up, her mouth
open, looked like a prophetess in a trance, seeing the invisible, almost
shrieking her revelation into the heart of the silence. Harry! Harry!
She could not keep it to herself; she could not help but scream it out
into the night, to make sure that she was not dreaming or raving--but
was a sane creature, who had made a discovery which seemed to set her
whole being on fire.

It was a long time before she could calm herself down. If there had been
anybody to tell it to, that would have been something; but, as she had
no way of getting rid of her excitement, it blazed up in her higher and
higher. She did not know what to do to calm herself down. She walked
about for nearly an hour, now and then going to the window, leaning half
out, exposing herself to the fresh air and coolness, eagerly looking
for the first early riser, the first window opening, and watching the
little belfry grow black against the lightening sky, then flash and
blaze to the first touch of the sun. Sleep! she could have sooner done
anything else in the world--stretched out her arms like wings and flown,
leaped down from the window, called out to all the city, that was what
she wanted to do--“Harry, Harry!” She seemed to have but one idea left
in the world.

After a while, however, in the desperation of being unable to
communicate her discovery, or do anything to bring herself more clearly
face to face with so wonderful a revelation, Lydia sat down to trace it
again step by step, then lay down on her bed, going over and over the
familiar ground. She fell asleep just as the sunshine began to stream
into her room, and slept soundly for an hour or two in the depths of her
exhaustion; but when she woke it was still early, and a long day before
her. Naturally the first thing she did was to survey again the entire
circumstances, going over them one by one. She had not much experience,
and in her whole life no such lawless incident as a _nuit blanche_, a
night spent without taking off her clothes had ever occurred to Liddy
before. She felt almost guilty as she found herself lying there, her
long hair streaming about her, in her dressing-gown, as she had been
when she first sat down at her window to think. Sometimes the morning
light dissipates the wisest calculations and conclusions of the night,
and turns its theories and revelations into folly; but as she started up
hastily, and began to put her facts together again, no such awakening
occurred. They seemed more conclusive, more certain, in the sober light
of the morning, than they did in the feverish wakefulness of the long,
silent night. She pieced them all together hurriedly, in a tremble of
excitement. He had been there ten years, and it was ten years since
Harry disappeared. He had said nothing about his family, he had even
married without any explanation on that point. He had started at the
sound of her name; he had understood all she said. He had called his
child Ralph--_Ralph!_ after his father, with a prejudice that was
North-country all over; and his name was Harry, so called by his wife,
though he had himself announced as Isaac Oliver. Lydia thought she could
understand exactly what had made him take Isaac Oliver’s name--a moment
of despite and despair, yet humour--a putting down of himself from the
pinnacle of the Joscelyns to the humility of the lowliest servant, an
expedient which would direct the thoughts of anyone who might seek him
into another direction. She sprang up, and was fully dressed and ready
to begin the extraordinary piece of work she had in hand, before anyone
else of the party had stirred. But what was she to do? Was she to go to
him straight, without any further inquiry, without a pause, and say, Are
you my brother Harry? or, You are my brother Harry! If by any chance he
was not so, after all, he would think her mad. What was she to do? She
sat down again at the window where she had sat for half the night. The
sunshine was pouring in, growing every moment more brilliant, not like
the temperate British sunshine which it is a pleasure in the early
morning to bathe and bask in, but already blazing, slaying in its
Italian force and fervour. She had to close the _persiani_, which she
had herself thrown open in her restlessness on the previous night. When
all the people of the hotel were in motion, and life fully astir, she
went downstairs; but there was nothing to be done there, save to sit
down once more and think it all over again. She had not been there long,
however, when Lionel came into the room in search of a book; he had been
restless too; but he started violently when he caught sight of her
buried in a great chair, with her hands clasped in her lap. For the
first moment he thought that she must have been there all night.

“Lydia!” he cried, in great alarm, “what is the matter?” Then he added,
hastily, “My nerves are entirely wrong, I think. You startled me so, as
if you had been all night in that chair.”

“Not in this chair,” said Liddy, willing, however, to have some credit
of her sleepless night, “but almost the same. Cousin Lionel, I want
advice very much. I am very lonely and very inexperienced to do anything
so important by myself.”

He came quickly and drew a chair close to her. She was excited
physically by her vigil, and the tears were very near her eyes, which
were brimming full when Lionel, much concerned and very tender and
sympathetic, looked her in the face. He put out his hand to take hers
with anxious solicitude; and Lydia did not resist. Her heart was so
full, and she was so overburdened with this new thing, that the mere
touch of a sympathetic hand was a consolation to her. The tears dropped
out of her eyes like two drops of rain upon her dress, and then she
looked at him and said, “I have found Harry,” with the tremor of a sob
in her voice.

“You have found----!” he was so startled that he did not know what to
say in reply.

“Cousin Lionel,” cried Lydia, “answer me this--how did he know what I
meant when I spoke of Isaac Oliver? He knew very well, he never asked a
question; and why did he start when he heard my name? I saw it myself.
He arrived here ten years ago, without knowing anybody, he has never
told them about his family, he called himself _that_, don’t you see, in
a kind of disdain at himself and everything. Then he married and
promised never to take his wife to England. He did not want ever to go
to England, why was that? And he called his son Ralph, fancy, _Ralph_!
why was that? And though he is called Isaac Oliver to the world, he
could not bear that at home, and they call him Harry, his true name. Oh,
Lionel, do you not see it all? It is perfectly clear, as clear as
noon-day. And now tell me what am I to do?”

“But----” Lionel said, who had not followed, entirely without
preparation as he was, her breathless argument. “What do you mean? tell
me what you mean? I am utterly bewildered. Are you speaking of
Oliver--_Oliver_? I don’t understand what you mean.”

Lydia made a gesture of impatience.

“Oh, everybody is so slow, so slow!” she cried, “except him. He
understood at once. Don’t you see he must have known it all beforehand,
everything that could be said? He never asked, ‘Who is Isaac Oliver?’ he
said in a moment, directly, ‘He is no relation of mine.’ How could he
know if he had not known?” cried Liddy, too eager to be lucid. “Mr.
Bonamy asked me, ‘Who are you talking of? a neighbour, a farmer, a
yeoman, who is it?’ but _he_ never asked a question. He said directly,
‘He is no relation of mine;’ and when we were coming away he said to me,
‘I know what you think, but it is not that.’ Now how could he know what
I thought if he had not known?”

“By Jove!” said Lionel. He was very much startled, so that some
exclamation was necessary. “That is very acute,” he said; “I see what
you mean. It is very acute, and this is very strange. Perhaps--there may
be something in it. But you know,” he added, “it is far too pat, too
complete, to be a real discovery. People do not find long lost brothers
like this.”

“Oh, do not talk--in that common way,” cried Lydia; “as if strange
things did not happen as much as they ever did! Why should it be too
complete? The more you think of everything, the more you will feel sure.
Don’t you see just why he chose that name to disguise himself with? I
do. And all those little bits of kindness--to call his boy Ralph, like a
forgiveness to my father, who was so hard upon him. He has not a Liddy,”
she cried, with a little regret. “Ah, I see how that was too! mother,
dear mother, he had nothing to forgive her. Lionel! Lionel!” she cried,
grasping him by the arm in her excitement, “tell me what I must do?”

“You see meaning in everything,” he said, “more than there is, more than
there can be, Lydia. All that about his child’s name is just your own
delicate feeling--though after all, when one comes to think of it,
Ralph! it is an odd name for a little Italian boy.”

“And the girl is Giovanna; you said yourself it was the same name as
Joan.”

“Did I? I am sure I did not mean anything,” said Lionel, with a short
laugh, and then he cried, “By Jove!” again. “I really do think there is
something in it. He gave a look, I remember now, as if he did
understand, as if he thought I meant something. It looks very odd,
Lydia; and I had a strong impression he was like some one that I had
seen him before.”

“He is like--all of us,” said Lydia, with a little breathless gasp, “not
one nor another, but all. But tell me, tell me what to do! We have only
to-day, a few hours, nothing more!”

“As for that,” said Lionel, “of course, if this turns out so important,
my mother must simply arrange to stay till we see the end of it. She
will not mind, she will like to jump into the middle of a romance; and
my father will easily be persuaded to stay, there will be no difficulty
about that.”

And then there was a long debate and consultation between them; a
debate--for Lionel, not understanding that even when a human creature is
a woman she likes to do her work with her own hands, was for proceeding
to the Vice-Consul himself, and going through all the pros and cons, and
bringing the result to her, to save her fatigue, and to keep her from
all disagreeable contact with the world; whereas Lydia’s most
prevailing desire was to follow out the clue at which she had caught,
and to track her prey into his last refuge, and to unveil the impostor.
She did not use these words, but this was the course upon which she was
intent. She was not afraid of contact with the world, or of what anybody
might say. The discussion rose somewhat hotly between them as the
servants came and went, laying the table, bringing in the English urn
and teapot, which all the Inglesi preferred. They were still sitting
close together, talking warmly, interrupting each other, Lydia’s face
glowing with the excitement of the situation, when Lady Brotherton
appeared. She was startled by the sight, but for the moment she did not
ask any questions, being much pre-occupied by Sir John’s breakfast, that
the tea should be strong enough without being too strong, that the cream
should not be “turned,” and that the fish should be done to his mind.
She did not take much notice of them, and the meeting between them broke
up, each retiring upon his and her own side of the question. Lydia was
too much excited to talk, or to think, of ordinary things. She sat at
the table as upon thorns, and the moment the meal was over, got up with
some excuse and hastened away. Lionel followed her a few minutes after.
He lingered in the hall, hoping he might be in time, at least, to go
with her, wherever she might choose to go. But as she did not come,
after half-an-hour’s waiting Lionel resolved to act upon his own theory,
and accordingly set out on his volunteer mission, hoping that she might
have thought better of it, and was staying with dignity in her room,
however anxious she might be, waiting till he, her representative,
should bring her news. It was a pretty division of labour, and one that
fell in with all Lionel’s views.




CHAPTER XII.

ACTING FOR HERSELF.


But it is not to be supposed that Lydia, her whole being ablaze with
excitement and eagerness, was likely to assent to this masculine view of
what was best for her. Before Lionel had got downstairs into the hall,
where he waited so long to intercept any rash enterprise she might be
bound on, she had stolen out, tremulous yet brave, and was speeding
along the morning streets, where the passers-by, who gazed at her with
that frank admiration which Italians feel, without any impertinence of
meaning, to be the due of every pretty woman--excused, yet wondered at
her solitary progress, on the score that everything was to be pardoned
to an Englishwoman. Lydia herself was confused by the looks she met on
every side, but her mind was so entirely preoccupied that they made less
impression upon her than they would have done had it been at freedom,
and it did not occur to her that she was being guilty of any breach of
decorum. What troubled her more was that she was uncertain of the way,
having paid but little attention to it last night, and she was shy of
asking which turning to take. But by right of the inspiration that was
in her, and of that good fortune which attends daring, she at last found
herself in a street which she recognised, and saw with a beating heart
the well-known shield over the doorway. It was not to the official
entrance she was bound. She saw with a smile, even in the midst of all
the ferment of her agitation, the little Italian, her admirer of the
previous night, in light clothes and a cigar, making his way towards it;
and, lingering a moment till he disappeared within the doorway, she
hurried after him till she got safely within the shelter of the
courtyard and to the door of the Vice-Consul’s house.

The Vice-Consul that morning had been early astir. He had been painfully
affected by the half-revelation of last night. All these years, since
the beginning of their intercourse when he had framed his theory about
Harry’s parentage so easily, and satisfied himself so entirely that he
must be right, nothing had occurred to put this theory to the test. The
marriage had taken place while he was still ill, and in a state of some
danger, and perhaps at the bottom of his heart he was glad and relieved
to be in a condition which made all inquiries impossible, and which
forced him to throw himself upon Harry’s honour. He had never had any
occasion to be shaken in his faith as to that honour personally, and use
and wont had made everything natural. For years he had not thought on
the question. Nothing had occurred to bring it up. The serene domestic
life had flowed along, and notwithstanding the drawbacks on Mr. Bonamy’s
part which have been already noted, they had been happy together. He was
aware that, though he might sometimes grudge Harry the position he had
acquired in Rita’s affection, yet that he himself would have been the
first to miss him had any accident taken Harry away. But at the first
whisper of a real discovery of his son-in-law’s antecedents, Mr. Bonamy
was roused out of the quiescence of years. The very suggestion of some
one bearing Harry’s name roused him, and something about Harry, an
awakened attention in his eyes, a strain of watchfulness quite unusual
with his simple, easy-going nature had aided the impression. He had
already heard something from Miss Joscelyn, and was on his way to learn
more when Harry had interrupted the conversation, calling him away for a
matter of business to which strictly speaking it was necessary that he
should give his attention, but which in other circumstances his
son-in-law, he felt sure, would have managed himself rather than disturb
him among his guests. And what he had heard had roused him still more.
It was evident that the person, whoever he was, who bore the same name
was not a relation to be proud of, and the Vice-Consul too was impressed
by the fact, dimly apparent, that Harry had shown no surprise and asked
no questions when this namesake was spoken of. There had been that look
in his eyes, _eveillé_, on the watch, on his guard; but no
curiosity--and he had not said a word about it when the guests were
gone. Neither had Rita said anything about it, which would have seemed
so natural. She had not asked who Miss Joscelyn was speaking of, or what
she was speaking of; but had maintained a complete silence on the
subject. All this awakened the Vice-Consul’s anxious curiosity. He was
on the watch at breakfast next morning, hoping that something might be
said, that Harry might laugh at the suggestion made to him, or take some
notice of it. But nothing occurred to throw the least light upon the
subject. Harry was still watchful, still on his guard, but chiefly
occupied with little Madge and the baby, whom he brought in to breakfast
seated high upon his shoulder, and who occupied him completely in a way
which filled the elder man, though he had usually all the indulgence of
a grandfather for his descendants, with impatience. He was glad to get
away from this scene, rising somewhat abruptly, and going out without
any explanation. Had Lydia come the direct way she would have met Mr.
Bonamy and saved him a great deal of annoyance and trouble. But, as she
took two or three wrong turnings, the Vice-Consul reached the inn and
was shown up to the sitting-room to wait for Lady Brotherton about the
same time that Lydia reached his house; and Lionel, by no means so sure
what to do as either of these straightforward and one-idead persons, had
gone to the English bankers, the best-informed persons he could think
of, to see what information about Mr. Isaac Oliver he could pick up
there.

Lady Brotherton was still busy about Sir John’s breakfast, endeavouring
to beguile him to the simple luxury of an egg instead of the something
much less safe on which he had set his fancy. “You must not forget that
we start to-night; that we have a sea voyage before us,” she was saying.
“Morsh-a reason for deshunt breakfast now,” said the invalid, and
chuckled and laughed at his own cleverness. His wife was not at all
disposed to go downstairs and hear what Mr. Bonamy might have to say.
“Let’sh have old Bonamy up here--show him up here,” Sir John said; but
that was so much worse that Lady Brotherton left him to his ortolan, and
went off to answer her untimely visitor. She thought it was no doubt a
mere visit of goodwill, to inquire “if he could be of any use.” “As if
we wanted anybody to be of use! As if we were not experienced enough to
know what we want, and how to get it,” she said to herself, as she went
to the unwelcome guest. Her mind was a little perturbed besides; the
servant had declared that he could not find either Mr. Brotherton or
Miss Joscelyn. They had both gone out. Where had they gone, had they
gone together? she asked, but nobody could tell. Now Lady Brotherton had
bidden them to go out together, had said they were cousins, and had no
need of a chaperon, but she did not like this adoption of her advice so
suddenly. The last morning, just when Sir John wanted special managing,
that he might commit no imprudence before the evening, and when they
might have known Mr. Bonamy would be sure to call!

But when Lady Brotherton heard that it was not civility, nor for her
sake at all, but a visit full of self-interest upon his own business,
this interruption in the midst of all her cares threw her out of temper.

“No, indeed, I cannot tell you much,” she said; “I heard them talking of
it, but I did not pay much attention. The man is an old servant, I
believe, belonging to Miss Joscelyn’s family, a sort of old factotum at
a farm. My son lodged in some rooms in the old Manor-house (I think),
and this old Isaac and his wife ‘did for him,’ as people say. Yes, I am
sure that was the story. They all know this old man, quite respectable,
I feel sure, a sort of good class of family retainer; servants of this
kind still flourish, you know, in some out of the way places. Mr.
Bonamy, I am afraid you are ill.”

“No, no,” he said, waving his hand, “nothing, it’s nothing, a kind of
faintness I have sometimes since my illness, which goes off directly. I
see--I see--an old servant. Well, of course, it was a very odd
coincidence, very odd. But I thought at first the young lady
supposed--that this old man of hers was somehow connected with my
son-in-law. Thank you! thank you! I see how absurd I was.”

“Oh, I don’t think Lydia could be so ridiculous as to think that,” said
Lady Brotherton, “only my son and she were both struck by the name; it
is such an uncommon name. At least, the two together were struck by it;
they both cried out, ‘Isaac Oliver!’ My son is rather fond of telling
absurd stories about this poor old man. He is a kind of a wit in his
way, it seems, but a little of that goes a long way in the country. I
don’t think I have seen much humour in what they tell of him--”

“A thing that is quite commonplace often seems original from the lips
of a clown,” said the Vice-Consul, with solemnity. “Perhaps you have
heard something about the family, or children, or other relatives of
this--old man?” Mr. Bonamy felt disposed to call him a confounded old
man, but, after all, it was not the old man’s fault.

“Nothing at all, nothing whatever, I assure you. You must not think, Mr.
Bonamy, for a moment--it was only _pour rire_; they never supposed, I am
sure you will believe me when I say it, of connecting old Isaac
with--any gentleman; it was a mere joke. They thought the coincidence so
amusing, and Lydia, I suppose, as girls do, thought it was fun to tease
Mr. Oliver a little; that was all. I have never heard a word more about
it. It was only at the moment. I hope you will forgive my silly
youngsters. They are both out. I cannot think where they are gone, or
they would make their apologies themselves.”

“No apologies are necessary,” the Vice-Consul said. He was very grave,
his countenance had changed even since he came in, much more since
yesterday, when his handsome head had been full of serene content. There
was a deeply marked wrinkle in his forehead, and the lines at the
corners of his mouth drooped heavily. He seemed to have aged
half-a-dozen years. “There is no harm done; and where there is no
offence there need be no excuse.” He said this with a sort of formality,
such as he was in the habit of employing to troublesome British
subjects, who got into many scrapes and gave much occupation to the
representative of their country in pulling them out. It was a style that
told (for the moment) upon such persons, and it came to his hand readily
on an emergency. “I am glad to hear there is so little in it,” he added,
rising. “Unfortunately my son-in-law is estranged from his family, and
we know but little about them; so that I thought it just possible this
might be some one--in whose well-being he was interested. It is I who
should apologise for troubling you. I hope Sir John is none the worse
for last night?”

“He is not at all strong,” said Lady Brotherton. “It begins to be
anxious work when we have long journeys to take. But he bears them
better than anyone would think,” she added. “Oh, no, he is none the
worse; I left him making a very good breakfast. He would have liked to
see you, but I could not think to trouble you coming into a sick-room.”

“No trouble at all,” Mr. Bonamy said, but he did not make any motion to
go, neither did she wish him to do so, and they parted with mutual
politenesses and professions of regret to have given each other trouble,
and repeated protestations that it was no trouble at all. But when the
Vice-Consul got out of doors, he went along slowly with a dejected
tread, his head drooping, his eyes dim, and little in him of the
dignified tranquillity becoming the representative of H.B.M. He was
wounded in his pride, in his self-confidence, in the serenity of his
judgment, in the force of his instincts. He was not going to give up
Harry; Harry was Harry, whatever happened. But to think, after all, that
he was _not a gentleman_, that the family which Mr. Bonamy had taken for
granted was a family of laborious peasants, not of gentlefolks, that his
relations were such as would not help him, but burden him in every
particular of life--in short, that he himself had been entirely
mistaken, and that he had given his daughter to a nobody, went to his
very heart. He had the generosity to reflect that Harry had said
little, that it was he who had jumped at conclusions and given him
credit for connections which he had never directly claimed. It was he,
rather than Harry, who was the fallen personage, fallen from all
certainty, from all faith in the future, in himself. He would say
nothing about it, he thought, to anyone. Why disturb poor Rita, who need
never know that her husband’s father, or uncle, or near relation was a
farm-servant? Why even bring poor Harry to book, and force him to
confess, and convict him, if not of falsehood, yet of sanctioning a
false impression? Mr. Bonamy with true magnanimity decided that he would
not humiliate, as he might do, even the chief culprit, if culprit he
could be said to be. It was no use to make all suffer. He thought it
best on the whole to make an effort to keep the trouble to himself.

Meanwhile Lydia had knocked with some timidity and trembling at the door
of the Vice-Consul’s house. She asked for Mrs. Oliver with a hesitation
that was very unusual to her. Now that the moment had come her heart
beat so loudly, her breath came so quick, that she did not feel able to
face it. She was led soberly up to the large, cool, shadowed
drawing-room, in which with so much agitation she had spent the
previous night. There was no trace of agitation or disturbance of any
kind about the tranquil place, all closed up and semidark, according to
the Italian wont, against the fierceness of the sun. The old graceful
furniture, the dim pictures on the walls, the signs of long established
living everywhere, made it almost impossible to think of any change or
revolution that could happen in such a settled place. Lydia sat down in
a corner, feeling herself more than an intruder--a traitor and
introducer of strife and trouble into the stillness. She had asked
instinctively for the wife, lest after all she might be making a
mistake; and only after she had done so, had it occurred to her that to
have her husband thus discovered and identified, though he had done no
wrong, might not be an agreeable incident in Rita’s life. This, however,
was but a momentary thought. To feel that she was herself within a few
minutes of the truth was an excitement which occupied all her being. Her
mind had room for little more.

Rita was busy with her housekeeping, arranging the affairs of the day.
Her husband was in the office at his work; her father gone out, no
doubt about business; her little children enjoying the morning air in
the garden. All had begun pleasantly as usual in the well-ordered,
calmly constituted life. She had been a little disturbed, a very little,
last night by her visitors, with the slightest possible jealousy in her
mind of the new-comer, who seemed to have some sort of connection with
her husband’s early life, that portion of it with which she was
completely unacquainted. It was a mere superficial sentiment, not strong
enough to be called jealousy, yet veering that way; for she did not like
to think that anybody anywhere could know more about her Harry than his
wife, a feeling which even in its most unreasonable phases is not
uncommon among wives--or husbands either, for that matter. But _that_
Miss Joscelyn was going away, was gone away so far as the Vice-Consul’s
household was concerned, and Rita thought no more of her--She was
interrupted in the very midst of her discussion of the _spese_, and
examination of the contents of the cook’s basket, which old Benedetta
was helping to turn over, and making sharp remarks upon, to the damage
of the cook’s temper, as so much dearer and not nearly so good as in her
time--by a message that a lady wanted to see her. She was predisposed
to be annoyed by it. “A lady! how often must I tell you to bring me the
name! It can be nobody for me; it must be some one for your master,” she
said. The man was very humble and apologetic; he represented that the
English names were very hard to pronounce; that it was the young lady
who had been there last evening--the young lady who resembled the
bambino so much. “Resembled the bambino? What bambino?” cried Rita. And
then old Benedetta burst in and explained that all the servants had
remarked it--that the English young lady was the very image of nostro
bambino, our own blessed baby whom everybody admired.

“Resemblances are very strange,” Benedetta said; “they will come without
rhyme or reason--for of course our darling can have nothing to do with a
stranger--a young Signorina Inglese whom no one ever saw before.”

“I wonder you can allow yourself to talk such nonsense, Benedetta. There
is not the slightest resemblance,” Rita said. The other servants bowed
and deprecated, and agreed that the Signora must know best; but
Benedetta stood like a rock, and completely ruffled the impatient,
fanciful temper of her mistress. Rita delayed consequently as long as
she could find something to occupy her in her kitchen, wilfully keeping
her untimely visitor waiting. “What can she want with me? She had better
ask for Harry if she has anything to say. Like my baby indeed! I wonder
what next?” Rita said to herself. But at last, when there was no further
excuse, she mounted reluctantly the stairs, and walked slowly towards
the drawing-room, Lydia within counting her deliberate steps with a
beating heart that went a great deal faster. It was a duel that was
about to take place between the two.

“Good morning,” Rita said, coldly; “Italian servants never can manage
English names. I was told it was a young lady, and that is vague. Pray
sit down. I hope there is nothing amiss with Lady Brotherton or Sir
John.”

“I come--entirely on business of my own,” said Lydia, with a little
timidity. She was taller and altogether a more imposing person by nature
than this small, little, half Italian matron; but Rita had always a
certain grandeur about her, and she was the invaded châtelaine, the
defender of her house against an intruder. Lydia felt almost afraid of
her, and a little compunctious too.

“My husband would probably be of more use than I can be. But pray sit
down, and if there is anything I can do----” Rita said, with a majestic
wave of her hand towards a chair.

But Lydia did not sit down. Her hands sought each other in that same
clasp of agitation which was habitual to her mother. “I must beg you to
pardon me. It is about your husband that I want to ask.”

“My husband!” Rita said, and no more.

They stood and looked at each other for a moment, Lydia, appealing,
agitated, as if (she felt) there was something wrong in her interest in
Harry, the little wife towering over her in offended dignity, something
like a Queen Eleanor, though without any cause.

“I want you to tell me if you know anything of his family, or where he
came from; and when he came here? and if he has ever spoken to you of
any of----, and why he has never taken any notice? It must seem very
strange to you,” Lydia sat pausing, trying a smile of anxious
deprecation, “that I should ask such questions as these.”

“It is very strange indeed. I cannot understand them, or what right you
can have to put them. A stranger must have a very good reason indeed for
interfering at all between a man and his wife.”

“I do not want to interfere,” cried Lydia; “oh, believe me, it is not
that! I want only to know; and it may be very important for you and the
family, as well as for us. I am only surmising, groping; and I am
not--very old,” the girl said, with that instinctive appeal to personal
feeling with which women invariably back up all arguments, “nor
experienced. I don’t know how to go about it. But it is of so much
importance, if I only could tell you right, to my mother, and all of us,
and may be to you too.”

“Your mother, and all of you! What do you mean? What have you to do with
my husband?” Rita cried.

The wonder, and even the indignation, were natural enough. To be
confronted all at once by a stranger demanding news of your husband,
declaring that what she wishes to find out will be very important to
her mother--what could be more bewildering, more irritating to a woman?
Her nostrils began to expand, and her eyes to flash. “There is evidently
some mystery here which I am unable to fathom,” she said.

“It is a very innocent mystery,” said Lydia; “there is nothing in it
that will do him any harm, or you. If you will not tell me, will you
take him a message from me? It must be cleared up one way or another,
for we are going away to-day.”

“Mr. Oliver is in the office,” said Rita coldly, walking to the bell.
“He can be sent for at once.”

“Will you wait a little, please?” Lydia said, faintly; “though I feel so
sure, yet I may be wrong. Will you take a message for me? It will be
better if you will do it than seeing him myself.”

“I would rather not be mixed up with any mystery.” Rita had her hand on
the bell. She was drawn up to twice her usual height, her small foot
planted firmly on the ground, her head thrown back, her whole person
instinct with resistance, defiance, and indignation. And Lydia before
her, flushed and excited, was not at all unlike a suppliant handmaiden,
whom the wife had a right to reject and cast forth out of her house.

“Oh, do not be so hard upon me,” she cried. “Listen to what I want you
to say to him. Would I send any message that could hurt him by his
wife?”

“Hurt--him--” Rita began to be confused, and took her hand from the
bell. “But it might hurt me.”

“It will not hurt you. Don’t delay, don’t delay!” cried Lydia; “if you
knew what a thing it is to wait. And think how my poor mother has been
waiting all these ten years--and I said when I left her that I should
find him. Mrs. ---- no, no, I cannot call you by that name--it is
unworthy! Mrs. Harry--will you go and say this to him from me? Listen,
listen; you must not make any mistake. Uncle Henry is dead. He has left
all his money to his nephew who went away. If he does not come home it
will be divided, and wrong will be done. Will you say that to your
husband for me?”

“Uncle Henry--and his money--and his nephew. What is the meaning of all
this? What do we know about all this--and who are you?” It was Rita now
who was losing command of herself.

“If _he_ understands,” said Lydia, dropping down in a chair in the
mingled exhaustion and relief of having at last had her say, “I will
tell you who I am. You don’t know the meaning, but I am sure he will
know. Oh, Mrs. Harry, it is so simple a test! Will you not try it? If he
does not understand no harm will be done, and you can judge of it for
yourself. If he knows what it means you will soon know all about me.”

She began to cry, with little tremulous laughs between, in her
agitation. She was entirely overcome by the excitement of the crisis--so
near finding out, so sure, and yet still a little cloud of suspense and
uncertainty between. Rita stood and looked at her--her rival was it? who
was it?--with a tremor of wonder and rising excitement, and even a
sympathy which nature exacted, which she was most unwilling to bestow.
Then reluctantly she went out of the room, slowly and carefully closing
the door behind her, and walking along the corridor as if counting every
step she took. It was the last struggle of her instinctive opposition
with awakened interest, excitement, curiosity, and alarm. She ran along
the passage to the office as soon as she was out of hearing of the
other. In a moment more she would know.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE DECISIVE MOMENT.


Mr. Bonamy felt weary of his morning’s expedition. It was not that there
was really anything to tire him in it; but he was dejected,
disappointed, mortified. He did not feel able to go into the office as
usual, to meet Harry as usual, to do and say the usual things. He
thought he would go into the house instead, and rest a little, and see
Rita and the children, and try to console himself with the reflection
that this painful discovery only made them all belong to himself the
more. It was a poor consolation, and yet in a way it was sure. He felt
them more his now that he was certain no other family could claim them.
Poor girl! poor babies! some time they might be glad to take the name
of Bonamy instead of that wretched one that was their own. He did not
intend to say a word to Rita on the subject, but he did what it was the
habit of this imprudent man to do, he thrust himself into temptation. He
went, all emotional and disturbed as he was, into the dwelling-house,
into the room where his daughter would most likely be found, and where
she was certain to inquire into the cause of his depression. In half an
hour, in the ordinary state of affairs, he would have been at Rita’s
mercy, and notwithstanding all his fine resolutions would have betrayed
everything to her. He went in, however, determined not to say a word,
only to show his child who was injured, though she did not know it, that
her father’s tenderness would never fail her. He was so foolish that he
went into a jeweller’s on his way, and bought a little ornament for her.
And he meant to say something very kind of Harry too, though it was by
Harry that his humiliation had come. A peasant, a servant! and his poor
child who might have been a princess! but he would make it up to her,
and she should never know.

In this mood Mr. Bonamy went into the dim and cool drawing-room, out of
the heat and glare of the streets. He saw some one seated near the
window, but he could not for the first moment make out who it was. He
was greatly disappointed, however, to have the privacy of his first
interview with his daughter interfered with, and though he was too
polite to show his annoyance, yet it was with no friendly feelings
towards the intruder that he made his way among the furniture to the
spot where she sat. He had looked for a moment of _attendrissement_, of
something like the old unbroken union between the father and child. Your
husband is a disappointment, but your father will never forsake you; he
did not mean to say this, would not have said it for the world; but he
intended that it should be understood, and there was no doubt a
melancholy enjoyment in the anticipation. Whoever this stranger might be
he wished her at Jericho; nevertheless courtesy goes before all, and he
went up to her, with the full intention of being friendly if he knew
her, and at all events civil, as became a man in all circumstances
towards a lady in his daughter’s drawing-room. Lydia looked up as he
approached. She saw him well enough, her eyes being accustomed to the
darkness. She was white as a ghost, and trembling, expecting, though
there was not yet time, the return of Rita with an answer to her
message--perhaps, if she was right, of Harry himself, and his
recognition, and the clearing up of the whole matter. But when she saw
only Mr. Bonamy, her heart seemed to stand still. She threw up her arms
with a pained and wondering cry.

“Oh, is it only _you_? Oh, am I wrong, am I wrong, after all?”

The Vice-Consul was as much surprised as she was to find her there; and
he was piqued, as an oldish (not very old) man, who knows himself to be
a handsome man, notwithstanding his years, would naturally be by such an
address; but he pulled himself together, and laughed, and bowed.

“It’s only I, as you say, Miss Joscelyn. I am very sorry to disappoint
you. I daresay some one more interesting will soon be here.”

Lydia was so over-excited, so exhausted with the agitations of the night
and the excitements of the morning, that she burst out crying while he
was speaking. The Vice-Consul was confounded; but he was never more in
his element than when administering consolation. He took her gently by
the hand, and put her back into the seat from which she had risen. “My
dear young lady,” he said, soothingly, “I am grieved to see you
distressed. What is the matter? In what are you wrong?” Then he began to
understand dimly that Lydia’s distress must be somehow connected with
his own. He grew very grave, though he still held her hand with fatherly
kindness. “If you have come to tell Rita anything unpleasant about her
husband,” he said, “I am very, very sorry you should have thought it
right to do so, Miss Joscelyn. I have heard it all from Lady Brotherton.
I don’t deny that it has wounded me; but, after all, my daughter did not
marry her husband for his relations, but for himself. He is the just the
same in himself as he has been these nine, ten years. To tell me would
have been right enough, but why vex Rita? She need never know anything
about it. Neither, so far as I am concerned, is there any need to
reproach Harry with it. I do not even intend to let him know that I am
acquainted with the condition of his family. Let me persuade you, Miss
Joscelyn--you ought to be of gentle mind, so young, and pretty, and
gentle-looking as you are--to pretend this is only a common call, and
not to say anything to Rita, or to him either, poor fellow. Rita is a
girl of a high spirit; she might not forgive her husband. Come, come,
let me take you back to Lady Brotherton; and forget that you have ever
seen young Oliver, or his wife, or myself, or any one here.”

“Mr. Bonamy, you are very, very kind. We don’t say much in the north
country, but I think I love you,” Lydia said.

A smile came over his face; even in such circumstances the Vice-Consul
could not help being pleased. “This is very sweet and very pleasant, and
I have no doubt the feeling would soon be mutual--if you will do what I
ask you, what I beg of you. Let these young people alone. Why should you
interfere with them? I hope the Olivers are decent people, at least, if
nothing more.”

“The Olivers,” cried Lydia, hotly, “are poor folk; they are nobody; they
have nothing to do with it. I will never more submit to call Harry by
that name. I couldn’t do it even at first, though I couldn’t tell why.”

“Now what does this mean?” said Mr. Bonamy, quickly. “What does this
mean? Is there some further story to be told? God bless my soul! what is
it, young lady? You are not the sort of person to interfere and make
mischief. If there was anything disagreeable to be told, why not send
for her father and tell it to me?”

“There is no reason why it should be disagreeable. I may be wrong--I may
still be wrong,” cried Lydia. “Oh, don’t speak for a moment that we may
hear her step coming back! If he comes with her, then I shall know I am
right. A few minutes will make me--I sent Mrs. Harry with a message to
him. I thought he would like best, if it was true, to tell her himself.
Oh, listen, listen! is there nobody coming? This was the message I sent:
‘Uncle Henry is dead, and he has left his property, and it will all be
divided and lost to you if you do not come back.’ Did you hear anything?
If he understands that, don’t you see?--you can judge for yourself--I
shall be right; and mother, dear mother!” cried Lydia, with an outburst
of tears.

Mr. Bonamy stood by her confounded. “Uncle Henry is dead, and has left
his property? What else could Uncle Henry do? he could not take it with
him if he is dead. If he understands that! Well, I do not understand it,
that is one thing certain.”

“Oh, open one of those dreadful windows; that there may be a little
light--a little light!” Lydia cried.

The Vice-Consul obeyed quite humbly; he had lost his standing-ground
altogether, even the painful bit of soil he had got under his feet this
morning. He seemed swimming in a sea of bewildered conjecture. He opened
the _persiani_, throwing a broad bar of sunshine across the dark room:
and then there ensued another pause. They waited in complete silence, he
confounded, shuffling about, taking up things and putting them down, to
the exasperation of Lydia’s nerves, who sat bolt upright and pale as her
dress, with her eyes fixed upon the door.

No ordinary measure of time could be sufficient to calculate what this
was; it was hours; it was weeks; it was minutes. Lydia had time to go
over everything in her thoughts; to glance at the aspect of affairs at
home; the consternation of Will and Tom; the happiness of her mother;
the mingled wonder and delight of Joan. She had time to go through
half-a-dozen scenes with Lionel; to speculate how her father would take
it: to realise even old Isaac Oliver’s gape of astonishment when he
heard that Harry had taken his name of all names in the world--before at
last there came a sound, unfamiliar to her, but which Mr. Bonamy knew,
the little click of the swing door at the end of the passage which
communicated with the office. Then came the sound of steps. Lydia rose
up to her feet to meet the decision whatever it was. She trembled so
that she could scarcely stand, and seeing this the Vice-Consul, though
not yet in charity with her, went to her side in his kindness, and drew
her arm within his. “Lean upon me, my poor child,” he said. They stood
on one side of the broad band of light which divided the room, and
which, though it showed to them the other two who came in, also
arm-in-arm, concealed them from the new-comers. Rita, tearful and
excited but not melancholy, was clinging to her husband’s arm. He with
an eager, pre-occupied face pressed forward across the light. “Confound
that sunshine! who opened the window?” were the first words he said,
then strode along across it, paying but little regard to Rita, whom he
dragged after him. When he got face to face with Lydia he paused.

“Was it you that sent me that message?” he said. “Is it true?”

Lydia’s emotion fled in a moment at this matter-of-fact address. She
drew her arm out of Mr. Bonamy’s, trembling no longer.

“It is true,” she said; “they have advertised and done everything to
find you.”

“I know--I know. I saw that; but they never said why. And they would
like to take it from me! Will and Tom--and their father.”

“For shame!” she said; “not father. He is the one that stands out--with
mother, and Joan, and me.”

He had been quite steady and business-like, almost stern, up to this
moment; now he suddenly fell a-laughing in the strangest way.

“What a united family!” he said, “Mother--and Joan--and you. Who are
you? Little Liddy, the little girl at school, that poor mother always
thought--but, poor soul! she thought that of me too.”

Lydia’s excitement was almost uncontrollable; but she was a
North-country girl, and she kept herself down a moment longer.

“Joan always says still,” she said, “that there was a great deal of
mother in you.”

And then he burst forth into a half shriek of laughter and sobs.

“Look here, I can’t stand it any longer,” he cried. “Mother--is living
then, and all right?” He seized her by the shoulders, looked her in the
face, kissed her almost roughly, brushing his beard along her smooth
cheek. “I knew you the first moment,” he said, “you little thing! I knew
you the first moment. You were always a clever baby from your cradle. I
have often thought the last baby was like you. You were the sharpest
little thing! Of course I knew nobody else could be Liddy Joscelyn. And
you thought I belonged to old Isaac, eh? that is the best joke I ever
heard. Old Isaac--is the old fellow living? And father--stood out for
me? Well he ought to, for it is along of him----” Here Harry stopped a
minute, put Lydia away, and looked round him upon the two silent
spectators who regarded this scene with an astonishment beyond words. He
made a pause, pulling himself up all at once. “Poor old father,” he
said, “after all he’s done more for me than anyone (I called the boy
after him, you can tell him). It is along of him--that I found the best
friend and the dearest wife that ever was.”

And Harry gathered his Rita--who had been standing by with a countenance
swept by all manner of emotions: now angry, now melting, wondering,
bewildered, indignant, always chill with that sense of being left out,
which is the most terrible of sensations to such as she--into his arms
and kissed her, and put his hand over her forehead as if clearing some
veil away. “You are not Mrs. Oliver any longer,” he cried; “that’s a
good thing over. You’re Rita Joscelyn, and the best and the sweetest
that ever did honour to the name. Isn’t she a little beauty, Liddy? What
will mother say to her, and to the children?” Here poor Harry,
overmastered by excitement and pleasure, fairly burst out crying, and
kissed his wife over and over, sobbing, and bedewed her hair with his
tears.

“You might let her speak to me, Harry,” said Lydia, crying a little in
sympathy, but brightening and beaming too.

“This is all very astonishing,” said Mr. Bonamy. “You have talked a
great deal in an unknown tongue, and kissing is all very well, Harry;
but you owe a fuller explanation to me.”

Then Lydia stepped forth. “We are the Joscelyns of Joscelyn Tower--the
real old Joscelyns whom everybody knows in the Fell country,” she said.
“We are not quite so rich as we once were (but father has been doing so
well lately,” she added, in a parenthesis to Harry) “and we live in the
White House. _He_ ran away ten years ago, and never has written, never
has sent a word (oh, shame, Harry! and poor mother breaking her heart)
all this time. But when I left home in November,” Liddy said, holding
her head high, “to come abroad, I told them I should find him, I should
bring Harry home; nobody believed me of course, but I have done it; and
now, Mr. Bonamy, you know why I said I loved you. We are relations,” she
said, holding out her hand; “we all belong to the same family now.”

The Vice-Consul was greatly touched; and he was deeply relieved at the
same time in his own mind (though, if truth were told, a little, just a
little, disappointed too). He took the hand she offered to him very
gallantly, with his old-fashioned, paternal grace. “Then, my dear, I may
as well follow Harry’s good example,” he said, stooping over her to kiss
her forehead. “I am very glad to receive you into my family.” Yet he
would have liked to have had his daughter all to himself. The Isaac
Oliver business, which had seemed such a terrible downfall an hour ago,
looked a little, just a little, to be regretted now. It was an unworthy
thought, and Mr. Bonamy felt that it was so. He in his turn held out his
hand to his son-in-law. “When you are at leisure,” he said, plaintively,
“perhaps you will shake hands with me in your new capacity. Harry
Joscelyn--is that your name now? Well, it is preferable to that of Isaac
Oliver one must allow.”

As for Rita she was crying a little on her husband’s shoulder. “I don’t
think so,” she said. “I like all things as they were. I shall never know
who people are speaking to when they say Mrs. Joscelyn; and how are we
to explain to----. We are not going to tell everybody all the story, I
hope.”

This was a little perversity not to be got over all at once. She had not
said anything to Lydia; she could scarcely forgive Lydia for being her
Harry’s sister, for finding him out, for resembling the baby: she saw
that herself now, but was angry with Benedetta for having discovered it,
and with Lydia for having in that disagreeable way announced a private
claim upon her (Rita’s) family. No doubt Ralph would be like her too,
for he and the baby had always been said to resemble each other. Poor
little Ralfino--Rita, who up to this moment had called him Raaf in
defiance of all Italianisms, instantly conferred upon him the softening
vowel and diminutive: Ralfo, Ralfino he should be henceforward, she
decided in a moment; and she took no notice of Lydia. Papa, she said to
herself, was doing all that was necessary in that way.

Thus the scene of the discovery, the restoration of Harry to his family,
and his inheritance to its right owner, which according to all dramatic
precedent ought to have been ecstatic, was not at all so, and ended in
embarrassment and mutual annoyance. The results would be very
advantageous in every way to the hero himself and his wife and children,
and would not be advantageous, but the reverse to Liddy, who was at once
so much the poorer by Harry’s discovery. But it was she who gained, not
she who lost, who took the revelation unpleasantly. “You will have to
go--to England I suppose,” she said, looking askance at the new-found
sister, and clasping the arm of her husband; and there was a grudge in
her tone.

“Yes, my darling; I must go and see my mother.”

“That is your first duty,” said Mr. Bonamy, almost severely; the
severity was intended for his perverse child, but she took no notice of
it. “Of course you must go to your mother. If I had known, my boy, that
there was a mother in the case----”

“Oh! for heaven’s sake, papa, don’t upbraid him now! it is bad enough
without that. When must you go? and why, now that I am strong as a
little horse, why shouldn’t I go with you?” cried Rita, clasping his arm
with both hers.

“I don’t know any reason, dear, except----” Harry turned appealing eyes
upon Mr. Bonamy, who had stiffened into a man of stone.

“Except--your solemn promise,” said the father; “but that was thought
very binding in my day.”

“In that case there is nothing more to be said, Sir,” said Harry, not
without a shade of incipient offence; and then he turned to his wife.
“It will only be for a very short time, my darling. I shall not be away
from you, you may be sure, a moment longer than I can help.”

Oh, sublime selfishness of marriage! which looks like the most generous
and perfect of sentiments to the two concerned; the bystanders scarcely
saw it in the same light. The father, realizing that his child had to be
consoled for being left a week or two to his sole company and
tenderness; the sister, who had taken so much trouble to reinstate her
brother in his fortune and family, finding out that he was to give to
that family not a moment longer than he could help--looked at each other
with a mutual understanding, which found vent on Lydia’s side in an
uncontrollable laugh of mingled humour and disgust. “Mother would be
pleased to hear you say so, Harry,” she cried, “after ten years. I think
you might give her a day or two of your free will beyond that.”

Rita was very quick-witted, and she saw and was ashamed. She detached
herself from her husband and drew near to his sister. “I daresay you
don’t like me, d’avance, because I have the first right to him,” she
said.

“I have never seen him since I was a child,” said Liddy, with dignity.
“It cannot be supposed that it makes much difference to me. I was very
anxious to find him for mother’s sake, and to let him have his property,
because it was justice, but otherwise why should I fight with any one
about him? he is a stranger to me.”

“Don’t say so, Liddy,” her brother cried.

“I must say so when I am asked such questions. Mrs. Harry does not seem
to understand,” Liddy said.

There is nothing perfect in this world. How different, how very
different, she had expected it all to be! She had expected perhaps that
Harry himself would be a little gratified, that he would be touched by
the faith in him of his little sister and her determination to find him.
Lydia had herself forgotten that this determination had fallen much into
the background in her recent wanderings. She thought her mind had always
been full of it, and that this was the recompense of her devotion. She
was hurt and wounded. Though she was Harry’s sister, and though she had
brought him a fortune in her hand, she was still a stranger in Harry’s
house, and his wife defied her. She could have cried this time in sheer
mortification and injured feeling. “I will let them know that you are
here,” she said with as much stateliness as she could muster. “I have
done all that I suppose is in my power. I will not intrude upon anyone.”
What a dreadful thing it is to be a woman and have that weakness of
crying when you are hurt! Liddy kept her tears in her eyes only by main
force, and could not altogether succeed in subduing the tremor in her
voice.

At this moment, however, the door opened, and the servant appeared,
introducing Lionel, who stared when he saw the party thus assembled.
Lionel was not in the best of tempers. He had been making inquiries as
best he could, and he had found all Lydia’s guesses confirmed. But he
had gone back to find that she had stolen a march upon him, and he was
exceedingly cross, so cross that he was sometimes very angry with, and
at other times very sorry for, himself. When he had made his bow to
Rita, and stared with a gloomy countenance at her husband, he turned to
Lydia with suppressed passion. “My mother has sent me for you,” he said.
“She wishes you to remember that everything must be ready early to be
sent down to the steamboat. Time and tide will wait for no man, you
know.” This was said with a little smile, as if he were beginning to
perceive, and wanted at least to hide from the others, the vexation in
his tone.

This made a diversion, and as the whole story had to be told him, the
members of this strange family group were drawn nearer to each other in
spite of themselves. Under cover of the little commotion of talk which
got up, all of them sometimes speaking together, Rita, who began with
her quick intelligence to realize the position, and to see her own
ungraciousness, took the opportunity to draw a little nearer to Lydia.
She kissed her when she went away. “I--I hope you will forgive me if I
was bewildered,” she said: and Lydia forgave. But she was not the less
stately when she left the party, feeling, with a little bitterness, that
without her they would talk the matter over more at their ease. Lionel
was stately, too. He made them his congratulations with the utmost
gravity, as if pleasure were out of the question, and he took the
earliest opportunity to remind Lydia a second time that his mother was
waiting, and that the things must be sent to the boat. They went out of
the house together in a sort of armed pacification, a truce hastily
patched up, stalking side by side, not looking at each other. Going out
into the street was a sort of solemnity to them, like steering out into
the sea on a voyage in which they did not know what might happen.
Anything might happen in it. They might quarrel for ever and ever, they
might part not to see each other again. They might do anything--except
walk quietly from the British Consulate to the Leone, where Lady
Brotherton was waiting, fretting over Miss Joscelyn’s box, which was not
locked, and of which no one could find the key.




CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE STREET.


Out in the street, out upon the world, out upon a perfectly lonely sea,
where they saw nobody and thought of nobody, but those two worlds of
themselves, he and she, moving alone together, with a little space of
clear daylight between them, the two parallel lines which can never come
together so long as measurements last--For a time they moved on with no
communication at all, each feeling very solitary, and unspeakably
dignified and superior to all trivial thoughts and words. What could
they have to say? What does he care? Lydia said to herself; what does
anyone care but me? She had done her work, but she had not got much
satisfaction out of it. It had estranged her friends from her, and
everybody. Her mother would be pleased, that was always a little
consolation to think of. Dear mother! and what if she were disappointed
too? You never can tell how little satisfaction there is in a new thing
till it has happened, she said to herself. In her preoccupation she
stumbled over a crossing, over the rough pavement, and then her
companion spoke.

“Take care; these little streets are so many traps. Will you take my arm
till we get into the smoother way?”

“Thank you,” said Lydia, “it is not at all necessary. I did not notice
where I was going.”

“You prefer not to be helped in anything,” her adversary said.

“Indeed, no; if anybody will help me, I am always very thankful,” Lydia
replied.

And then he turned his eyes upon her. “I think you are mistaken in
yourself,” he said, quickly, “we often are. You think women should be
independent and manage their own affairs.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows a little.

“I was not thinking about women, or what they should do. I think
everyone, woman or not, likes best to look after their own affairs
themselves.”

“Do you think so? I have always been brought up to believe that it was a
man’s part to take the rough work, and that a woman did well to accept
his help.”

“Cousin Lionel,” said Lydia, “if you are angry because I went off to Mr.
Bonamy’s myself, instead of leaving you to work things your own way, you
are surely very unreasonable. I was sure of it; there was not any reason
to doubt; and why should I bother you about what I could do so easily?
It was my business; you could not be supposed to--take--much interest.”

“Trouble me!” he cried, “take much interest! Do you think there is
anything you care for that I don’t take an interest in? What is the
chief thing I have thought of ever since I knew you? You speak so much
at your ease; I wish you would tell me that.”

“I hope it is nothing to be angry with me about,” said Lydia, with
meekness, “but how can I know?”

“No, I suppose you don’t know,” he said, with almost a scornful tone,
“you have only seen me every day these five months, and talked to me,
and pretended to take some interest in me, as you say; and now you turn
upon me and ask me how can you know? How can you help knowing? is what
I should say.”

“Cousin Lionel, I don’t know why you should be angry. If I had waited
for you this morning I should have lost my chance. There was so little
time to do anything; and time runs away so fast when it is the last
day.”

“Do you think I am talking only of this morning? What is this morning?
It is all the time I complain of. It has just been the same all the
time.”

And now it was Lydia’s turn to look round, this time in unfeigned
surprise; but her glance at him, perhaps, gave her more information than
his words: at least, there was a subtle tone of hypocrisy in the
meekness with which she asked.

“Have I displeased you all the time?” with a little tragic accent of
remonstrance. “I am so sorry,” she said.

“Sorry! and displeased! it is not words like those that will do any
good,” Lionel cried.

Liddy looked at him again piteously, but perhaps in the puckers round
her eyes, and the droop of her mouth, there was a dimple or two which
the faintest touch could have turned into smiles. She shook her head.

“You are hard upon me, Cousin Lionel; you are angry about this morning,
and then you tell me it is not this morning; but all the time; and when
I say I am sorry (what else can I say? for I am very sorry, and so
mistaken! I thought we were such friends!) you say, words like these
will not do any good. What am I to say? It is a discovery I never
expected to make, that I had been--disagreeable all the time.”

“I think you want to drive me out of my senses!” he cried.

Which, indeed, was very foolish; she had all the reason and force of the
argument on her side, and he, having at some point in the altercation
taken a wrong turning, got only further and further astray at every step
he made.

Lydia by this time had recovered all her usual composure. When one party
to a controversy gets hot and weak, the other becomes calm. She felt
herself to have the best of it, and it was a pleasure to her, after her
recent discomfiture, to have the upper hand, and find herself in the
exciting position, not altogether un-enjoyable, of skilfully fencing and
keeping off an agitated man’s self-disclosure. It agitated herself a
little, but the circumstances strengthened her. Besides, whatever was
going to be said, this was not the moment to say it, in the streets,
with the Leone almost within sight. His self-betrayal gave her force to
stand against him.

“Here we are,” she said, softly, “almost at home--if you can call the
hotel home. Whatever I have done amiss, I hope you will pardon me. We
shall be such a short time together now. Oh----!” for some one, darting
forward, caught her with the very tears in her eye, the quaver in the
tone. “Mr.--Paul; Signor----”

“Not me,” said Paolo, shaking his head; “I am born in Livorno, but
except that I am an Englishman; Mees Joscelyn will not find it is
necessary to say Signor to me. I have had a commission--from the bureau.
I am in this direction, and I wait to pay my--homage--to lay once more
my respects--from the heart, from the heart!” said little Paolo, laying
his hand upon that organ, “at these ladies’ feet, and to ask if I can be
of service. The Signor Consul has authorized me. I am known, well known,
on the board of the _vapore_. I could arrange the baggage, select the
cabins, what Mees Joscelyn will.”

Lionel repeated instinctively his movement of last night; he came a step
nearer, as if to keep the anxious Italian off.

“We are much obliged to you, but our own servant has looked after all
that,” he said.

Paolo’s eyes flashed a little. The Englishman was rude; but in Paolo’s
experience Englishmen were very often rude, and he was not surprised.
Englishwomen, that was a different matter. He gave his shoulders a
little shrug, and turned to Lydia once more.

“A servant--that is one thing,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “there
are many, and the travellers many. One pays not too much attention to
servants; but me, I think I can command----” Paolo said this with an
ineffable look of modest importance; and he added in a lower tone: “To
make it more easy for these ladies to go away--that is not what I should
wish to do; but one must forget one’s self, and there may come another
time--perhaps?”

“Yes,” said Lydia, smiling. She was so glad to come to an end of the
_tête-à-tête_, which was becoming so embarrassing, that she smiled with
double sweetness upon Paolo. “Indeed I shall have more to do with
Leghorn than I ever supposed. Mr. Oliver--who is your friend----”

“My friend--of my heart,” said Paolo, laying his hand once more on his
much-decorated bosom. He had dressed himself in all his finest chains
and buttons, and a beautiful waistcoat, that Lydia might see him at his
best.

“Ah!--he is my brother,” Lydia said. She had begun to shake off the
jarred and painful feelings that had spoiled her morning’s work.
Daylight and ordinary life, and a new excitement between her and that,
began to restore the perspective; and as she made this announcement the
first really wholesome natural sense of pleasure came over her. It was
Lionel who was out of perspective now, too close to her, overshadowing
heaven and earth. But the other event began to appear in its natural
size and aspect. Paolo’s state of wonder was unfeigned. The Italian was
quick enough to observe the undercurrents around him on ordinary
occasions; but Lydia had made too great and immediate an impression upon
him to leave his eyes free for anything else.

“Your brother!” he cried.

“Tell me how he arrived here, as you told me last night; but I did not
know all the meaning of it then,” said Lydia. “Tell me again how he
came, and carried his own box.”

She was more than half in earnest, wanting to hear about Harry, and yet
it was half a pretence; she could not help but be conscious of the
figure at her elbow stalking along in silent disgust, ready to abandon
her for ever, and all the plans connected with her; ready to seize the
little Italian by his coatcollar and whirl him away into the sea or air,
yet jealous of losing a word of what was said. Lionel walked along the
street like an embodied thunder-cloud, and they were already at the door
of the Leone, which thank heaven, he thought, would at least put an end
to this. It did not do so, however, for Lydia in her perversity insisted
upon carrying Paolo with her to Lady Brotherton, interrupting him in the
midst of the narrative she had asked for, but which in her gradually
increasing excitement about her other companion she could not listen to.
She broke into it just as Paolo, with the water in his eyes, was
recounting how he had thrown himself on Harry’s bosom and sworn eternal
friendship. “Siamo amici, I said to him,” said Paolo. “What is mine is
thine. I will be your caution; I will respond for you; I will present
you----” “Come upstairs, Mr. Paul,” said Lydia, restless, “Lady
Brotherton will be glad to have you to help us.” He stopped short, thus
interrupted in the midst of his narrative, and it hurt poor Paolo. But
next moment he smiled with his usual sweet temper, and followed her.
Lionel could not help feeling that in the same circumstances he could
have almost killed her--which, indeed, was the state of his mind now.
And then there followed such an afternoon of trouble and excitement as
drove Lionel nearly out of his senses. Lady Brotherton had to be told
the strange story, and then Sir John, who could not understand it at
all; and afterwards, in the midst of all the preparations for the start,
“all Leghorn,” the indignant young man said to himself, poured down upon
them. All Leghorn meant Harry and his family, and Mr. Bonamy, who came
one after another in different degrees of excitement. Rita arrived first
with her two youngest children and their nurse, to show to her new
sister-in-law, and to make amends for her previous want of graciousness.
“I could not understand it--how could I understand it?” she said, and
she was magnanimous enough to point out the resemblance of the bambino
to his aunt. Then came Harry to say that he had made hasty preparations
to go home with his sister, and would join them that evening at the
steamboat. And finally the Vice-Consul’s exertions brought some sort of
enlightenment to Sir John, whose first idea was that Mr. Bonamy’s
son-in-law wanted to marry little Liddy, though he had already a wife of
his own. All these perpetual visitors kept the party in a whirl of
commotion, and Lionel, at last driven to the end of his patience,
sallied forth and walked about till the moment of departure came, all
but cursing Harry, and vowing to himself that he would take no further
trouble, but let Lydia depart as she came. Why should he take any
trouble? His mother would not like it. They (his parents) would wish
him, if he married, to marry somebody with money, somebody with
position, somebody---- Ah! Here he took himself by the shoulders, so to
speak, and shook himself fiercely, and called himself, “you fool!” as if
there was any question of marrying anybody! as if she would have him!
Was she not pouring contempt upon him? putting even that little
hop-o’-my thumb before him, preferring a little Italian beggar, hung all
over with jewellery! These were poor Lionel’s reflections as he wandered
about the streets. And that other fellow, the brother, if he was her
brother, was going with them; would talk to her, who could doubt it, the
whole time, and never give a man a chance----! Lionel would have liked,
without much hyperbole, to smother them all, or pitch them into the sea.

At last the moment of departure came. Rita, with a flush of excitement
about her, her cheeks hot, her eyes shining, and without a tear, came to
the steamboat with her husband to see him away. He whispered again in
her ear that he would not stay a moment longer than he could help; that
he would count the days he was away from her; that she must not worry
about him, must not feel lonely.

“Lonely!” she cried, in a tone which wounded poor Harry deeply. “Oh no,
I shall not be lonely. I mean to amuse myself very much. I shall go
everywhere. I shall not miss you at all. Ser Paolo will take care of
me.”

“You will have your father to take care of you, my darling,” Harry said,
very gravely, with a little surprise; and then he added, with a laugh,
“he will be glad to be rid of me for once, to have you all to himself.
But Paul-o, all the same, will stand by you, I know,” he said, turning
round to his friend lest his susceptible feelings should be wounded;
“it is not that I doubt Paul-o--who will do everything.”

“Yes, everything,” Paolo said, with a fervent grip of his friend’s hand.

And Rita laughed. Why should she laugh? She did not shed a tear to part
with him. Harry looked over the bulwark of the ship and watched his
little wife standing in the boat which had brought them on board as long
as he could make her out. The boatmen lay on their oars, and Rita stood
up, waving her handkerchief, with Paolo by her side. These two figures,
and after them all the features of the well-known scene, and then the
very place itself, which was his home, which contained all his
independent life, dropped away into the mists, into the distance. He had
said to himself many a day that he would never go back; yet he was going
back, severing himself, as he had done before, from everything he knew
or cared for. And Rita had not seemed to care! He was not sentimental,
but he turned away when there was no longer anything to be seen of
Leghorn, with a little shiver, and a pang at his heart.




CHAPTER XV.

AT SEA.


It was a beautiful night, the stars shining like diamonds, like ethereal
lamps in the sky, clear and crisp, with a twinkle and movement in them
as of something living; the sea all in a ripple, in absolute
peacefulness yet endless life, sweeping like a smooth, green,
transparent flood of liquid metal under the bow, seething in white curd
and spray behind, marking a long, moving line of white across its
surface as the great boat rustled and fretted on. The air was so sweet,
the sea so calm, that everybody stayed late on deck, except Lady
Brotherton, who had placed herself at once on her sofa with her eyes
closed, not to see the motion, of which, even when there was no motion
at all, she was afraid. But Sir John sat on deck till it was late,
enjoying the voyage greatly, and, in the absence of his wife, keeping
his son near him, and addressing to him all his thousand questions.
“’Shay, Lionel, what’sh that Consul fellow doing with Liddy, ’shgot a
wife of hish own.” “You forget,” Lionel said, “that he’s her brother,
Sir--Harry Joscelyn. Mr. Bonamy told you all about it to-day.” “Yesh,
yesh, old Bonamy, easy-going old duffer. ’Shish own daughter--should
take more care of her. You look after little Liddy; shgot wife of his
own.” Lionel looked at the pair walking up and down with feelings it
would be difficult to describe. It was easy to say, take care of little
Liddy. Liddy was hanging on her brother’s arm, quite independent of him.
They two were now the two who belonged to each other now. When they
parted in England it was her brother who would take Lydia home. She had
no need of Lionel to talk to, to make a companion of; Harry was much
better--a novelty, and all women like novelty--and then he was her
brother; what could be more natural and right? Lionel took to theorizing
about women, as men naturally do when ill-used by them. This was the
kind of thing to be expected from these unaccountable creatures, whom,
of course, no man could understand--though every man is surrounded by
them all his life; triumphant folly of sex which transcends all
experience! He railed at women in his heart, because Lydia was occupied,
and had no attention to give him. He heard her laugh, and the soft
current of her voice running on continually, with a kind of maddening
contempt. She leant on her brother’s arm, which she never did on
his--Lionel’s. It made his heart sick to see her thus enjoying herself,
enjoying the balmy night. There was nothing so bad that he did not think
it as the hours of the delightful twilight, the soft, early night, flew
by. Perhaps it was not her fault: were not all women the same?
treacherous, fickle, blown about by every wind--off with the old
whenever there was something new to take to; mysterious, worthless,
untrustworthy creatures, who, however sweet they might be one day, were
never to be relied upon for the next; who would part from you with the
tenderest of farewells and meet you next time as if you were the merest
acquaintance! Lionel felt that he hated the whole sex as he stood by his
father’s side watching these two about the decks. When they passed she
would nod at him, or give him one of her easy smiles, not in the least
ignoring his position, recognizing it, and coolly suffering it so to be.
At last he had to withdraw, helping Thomas to move his father into the
cabin reserved for him, and consequently losing sight of them for a
moment. When he returned he could not see them, and the rage in him
burned fiercer than ever. Then, on the bridge, high up against the sky,
he discerned something like Harry’s figure, with a red tip of a cigar
appearing above the collar of his warm coat. Harry had become chilly
after ten years of Italian life. Lionel laughed at this effeminacy. He
liked to feel that his own coat was thin, yet quite enough for his
muscular Anglicism. No doubt she had gone in, retired for the night, and
_all that_ was out of the question. He did not specify to himself what
_all that_ was. He had not the heart even for a cigar. If he smoked he
would come across that fellow, and be compelled to talk to him. After
all, it was a great mistake to dis-inter relations whom you know nothing
about. One might be nice--though even of that he felt far from
certain--but the rest were almost sure to be bores, like this fellow.
Indeed, the brothers were all bores, and without any breeding. It was a
mistake to have taken any trouble about them, or ever to have sought
them out at all. “Confound them!” he said to himself, facing the breeze,
diving his hands deep down to the bottom of his pockets, and angrily
gazing into the night.

“Confound whom, Cousin Lionel?” said a voice by his side.

Lionel started violently, then turned round. “Oh! are you there? I did
not know where you were. I thought you had gone to bed.”

“Must one go to bed? They say we get to Genoa quite early; and it is
such a lovely, lovely night.”

“Do you think so?” he said, softened; “so do I. If you will stay with
me, I don’t think you need go to bed; but if you are going off again
with that fellow--I mean, of course, with your brother----”

“It is quite delightful,” said Lydia, with energy, “to have a
brother--you know, a real brother--a little like one’s self: not
elderly, and worldly, and Westmoreland, like Will and Tom.”

“I thought you were so fond of Westmoreland,” said Lionel.

“Ah! so I am; but not that kind. Now Harry is--you can’t think what
Harry is----”

“I know what you want me to think him--the most disgusting interloper,
the worst nuisance in the world. It is quite unaccountable of him to go
and leave you alone here. Doesn’t he know how a lady should be taken
care of? In a common steamboat when there are all sorts of people----”

“I never knew you were so ill-natured before,” said Lydia in a plaintive
tone. “Poor Harry! he took me to the cabin-door; he thinks I am there
now. I came up afterwards--well--because it is hot there, because it is
such a lovely night, because the sea is so beautiful--look at that light
on it--and, then, because I thought you would perhaps think it civil to
come and say good night.”

“Ah, Liddy!” he cried, seizing her hand and drawing it through his arm,
“come and walk about a little. I thought I was never to have a chance of
saying a word to you to-night. I have been swearing at everything and
everybody.”

“I thought so,” said Liddy, with a little laugh, “from the expression of
your face.”

“And you laughed--at my torture----”

“Would you have had me cry? What could I do? I could not take you from
Sir John; and then you never looked as if you wanted to have anything to
say to us. Well,” said Lydia, stopping short, “now all the purposes of
civility are fulfilled, and we can say good night.”

But they had not said good night full two hours after, when the short
voyage was almost over, and the lights of Genoa stretching round the
whole breadth of the lovely bay in an ineffectual struggle with the
dawn, began to rise upon their dazzled eyes. Then after a little
struggle Lydia made her escape. “What will Lady Brotherton think? It
must be three o’clock in the morning, and how can I face her? She will
see it in my eyes, and she will not like it. Oh! why didn’t we think of
that sooner? They will not like it, neither she nor Sir John; for I am
nobody, Lionel.”

“Nobody? you are Liddy--that is enough; and then you forget,” he said,
with a slight sense of humour, “you are a Joscelyn.”

“Yes, that is true,” said Lydia, very gravely, “I am a Joscelyn; but we
are not at all what we used to be. Being Joscelyns,” she added,
mournfully, “we are rough country people.”

“You a rough country people! You are Liddy,” he said.

“Oh, what is the good of saying that over and over again! Liddy! what is
Liddy? an ugly old-fashioned name. We should have thought of that
sooner. They will not have me,” she said.

“No, I hope not. It is I that must have you,” said Lionel, and he took
no notice of the fact that it was morning; but, to be sure, there was
nobody except the sailors about. He walked with her to the door of the
cabin as the deceived Harry had done. How much had passed since then!
Liddy thought with shame and self-reproach, as she stole into the
darkened shelter where a peevish little lamp was still burning, that it
would never have happened had she not given him that opportunity. She
_had_ given him the opportunity. She ought to have stayed in the cabin
and prevented all that followed. It was her fault; but perhaps, though
she felt guilty, she did not feel so penitent as she might have done.
Lady Brotherton by dint of shutting her eyes had gone peacefully to
sleep, which was a thing she professed never to do on board ship. Lydia
retired to rest; she stole out of her gown as quiet as a mouse, and
compunctious and guilty, but very happy, crept into her berth. The
steamer was coming to anchor with great jars and creakings, and heavy
footsteps overhead; and by and by Lydia’s drowsy eyes, so full of
happiness and freshness, yet soft weariness and dreaminess, closed in
spite of her. She did not suppose that she could have slept on such a
night.

But next day was much more difficult to get through. The honest girl did
not feel that she could look Lady Brotherton in the face. As long as
they were apart, the position, though painful, was possible; but, when
they were together, Lydia was so changed from her usual aspect that Lady
Brotherton could not avoid noticing the alteration. “Liddy, my child,
something is the matter. Are you ill?” she said.

“No, Lady Brotherton.”

“Nervous then--this new brother does not quite fit in with your ideas?
You ought to have calculated upon that, Lydia. People cannot be
separated for ten years, and fall into one another’s ways again in a
moment; though I think he is very nice and very gentlemanly myself.”

“It is not that, Lady Brotherton.”

“What is it then, my dear? You are not a bit like yourself. You are
sorry, a little, to part with us? So am I, my sweet--dreadfully sorry;
but it must only be for a little while. And, then, you know you are
going home.”

“Oh! Lady Brotherton, my heart is breaking! It is not even that. It is
that I have got a secret, and you will not be pleased.”

They were sheltering in Sir John’s deck cabin from the heat of the sun,
the steamboat ploughing peacefully on its further way to Marseilles, the
journey approaching its last stage, and the time of separation drawing
near. Lydia’s eyes were full of tears; she covered her face with her
hand; the other was clasped in that of the kind friend whom she felt she
had betrayed.

“A secret--how can you have a secret? You have never been away from my
side. I suppose it must be something about love, Liddy--that is the only
secret at your age. And why should I not be pleased--unless you have
made an unworthy choice?”

“Oh, no, not that--too good--too good.”

“Lionel, go away; we don’t want you just now. Liddy has something to
tell me.”

“It is better that I should tell you for her, mother. She will not let
the secret be kept a day. I wanted to put off till--we parted: in case
you should be, as she thinks, displeased: though I can’t believe you
will be displeased.”

“Lionel!” Of course, from the time he had begun to speak Lady Brotherton
had perceived but too well what the secret was. She loosed her hold of
Lydia’s hand, which lay white and passive in her lap after she had
withdrawn hers, with a kind of appeal in it. Lady Brotherton’s colour
went and came. Hard words came to her lips; but she looked at her son’s
face and paused. “I am displeased, more than displeased; and your father
will never consent to it,” she said.

Lydia did not say a word, but she sighed and took her hand away, to
clasp it with the other in that pathetic gesture, “the trick of grief,”
which she had learned from her mother. As for Lionel, an only son and
spoilt child, he took matters with a high hand.

“My father will consent gladly enough if you consent, mother,” he said;
“and what did you expect? You have thrown us together constantly for
five months. You must think me a wretched creature if you thought I
could not manage to persuade her to like me--a little, with all the
opportunities we have had.”

“It is not that,” said Lady Brotherton, with simplicity, falling into
the snare, “any girl might like you; of course there is nothing
wonderful in that.”

“And, you see,” he said, “unfortunately I loved her--before we ever
started at all.”

“Before! and why didn’t you warn me? and I who have been saying you were
so safe, and never thought of each other. Liddy! Liddy! you have
deceived me! You would never look at him, never amuse yourself as you
did with the others, you were always so serious! And pray was it going
on all the time, and was that only dust thrown in my eyes?”

“I have never deceived anyone,” Liddy said, with a proud elevation of
her head. She could not say, even in her own defence, what the cause of
her serious treatment of her lover was.

“And how was it settled at last?” Lady Brotherton said. “Since we
started? She has never been away from me night or day.”

This produced a slight flicker of suppressed laughter even in Lydia’s
depressed bosom.

“She did not leave the deck till we were in harbour this morning; I kept
her by force,” Lionel said.

“Well, that is the most wonderful of all,” cried the not hard-hearted
mother; “did you get into your berth by the port-hole? for I declare I
never closed my eyes all night, you know I never do--and I never once
missed you. I believe you have dreamed it all,” Lady Brotherton said.




CHAPTER XVI.

AT HOME.


The rest of the journey was hurried and feverish. Lady Brotherton was
not hard-hearted; she melted every day when in Liddy’s company, and
under the influence of her son’s persuasions and the sight of his
happiness; but in the night hardened again, occupying herself with
reminiscences of former hopes, and summoning up the ideal woman whom she
had intended Lionel to marry, a girl who should be noble if possible,
rich and beautiful, and with the highest connections, adding to the
dignity of the house of Brotherton, as well as the happiness of its
future head; and in this alternation the long journey was got through.
There was a night in the railway between Marseilles and Paris, a night
at Paris, a night in London, in every one of which this freezing process
was performed. Every morning the same round had to be gone over again;
by noon the ice was melted; by evening Lady Brotherton would listen
between tears and smiles to her son’s picture of his future life and all
the happiness she would have in her daughter; and would kiss Liddy and
bid her good night almost with an enthusiasm of tenderness. But before
morning all this was undone, and she got up as unwilling as ever. By
common consent Sir John was told nothing of it while the journey lasted.
The information was only to be given him when he was safe at home, and
his fatigues over. It was evening when Lydia, escorted by Harry, left
finally the party of which she had so long formed part, and with which
now her fate was linked so closely. She had stayed two days in London,
days during which Lady Brotherton had been very kind to her--in the
afternoon. And she was very kind to her on that evening, when she took
her in her arms in a farewell embrace. She cried over Liddy, and called
her my child, and bade God bless her.

“I don’t know what I shall do without you. It will be like losing my
right hand,” Lady Brotherton said. And Lionel, as was natural, took a
still more tender leave at the railway.

“I shall not be long after you,” he whispered, with his head projected
half-way into the carriage. Liddy shook her head.

“I don’t build any hopes on that. Your mother will----”

“What will my mother do? If you think I will allow myself to be coerced
by anyone----”

“But I shall!” said Lydia. “It must never, never be, Lionel, unless she
is pleased.”

“She will be pleased; but it shall be anyhow, whether she is pleased or
not.”

“Oh, no,” Lydia said.

“Oh, yes, yes! and I shall have the last word,” he cried. This little
contention went on till the very moment of their parting, and Lydia put
down her veil and cried gently when it was over, and the darkness had
closed over her and her train, and all that chapter of her life was
over. Was it over? for ever and ever done with, not one last moment
still left between her and the blank of the elder world? It was
dreadful, she knew, to feel as she did, to think of her home with
despair, and all those lingering days which would pass without an
incident, without a break, in dread monotony and quiet, nothing
happening but a visit from Joan, nothing even to be afraid of but a fit
of temper on her father’s part. She was frightened by the prospect. It
took away her breath. “Mother, dear mother!” she said to herself, with a
gasp of self-disgust; that poor mother would be happy to-day thinking of
her child’s return; she would go all over the house to see that
everything was in order for Liddy. There would be flowers gathered, and
fresh curtains hung, and cakes made, and butter churned, and cream put
upon the table for Liddy. And Liddy, she cried to herself, with an ache
in her heart, Liddy would not care! Oh, the hypocrite she would have to
be; the pretences she would have to make for love’s sake! She must look
happy whether she was happy or not; she must make believe even to be
thankful to get home again. At this Liddy cried still more behind her
veil. Harry observed her with curious eyes. He was very much interested
in his little sister, and he thought he understood women--not like
Lionel, who pretended that they were inscrutable; but then Harry was a
married man.

“You don’t seem to be very cheerful about going home,” he said, at last.

“Oh, yes, very happy,” said Liddy, and cried; “It is only--such a
change--Wandering about has been so different--and one never knows--”

Here she broke off, and made a vehement effort to be cheerful. “You will
find it very different, too.”

“Yes, I shall find it very different; but I am always sorry for a
girl--we can get away, but you can’t. You have never said a word to me,
Liddy, but I am not so blind as not to see how things are. Are the
objections--on their side?”

“I don’t know that there are objections. Yes, I suppose they are on
their side. But how can I ever leave mother?” the girl cried, waking up
to the other side of the question. She had never thought of it before,
but now stared at her recovered brother, very pale, with large,
wide-open eyes.

“Poor mother!” he said, softly. By dint of having children himself Harry
had come to a little understanding. “She will never stand in anyone’s
way,” he said. He began to perceive a little what life was to some
souls. She had been happy in little Liddy, and now Liddy was going too.
She would not struggle, but resign the last, with one more pathetic
wringing of her hands. She had wrung those hands often for him, and he,
more than any, had wrung her heart, and had thought little of it; but
somehow he perceived it now. She would stand in nobody’s way. She would
give up, having given up all her life; and now there would be no
compensation possible, nature herself would be against her. A great pang
of pity was in his heart for his mother. She did not know yet what was
in store for her. Whoever was happy it must always be her fate to suffer
for them all.

The rough little country phaeton, which Harry remembered long years ago,
was waiting for them in the early morning at the station. Nobody knew
that Harry was coming. The man who drove it stared at him. It was none
of the young masters he knew (middle-aged Will and Tom being still
indifferently called t’ young masters at the White House), and yet there
was a look of the young masters, and of the old master, too, about this
finely dressed (as Robin thought), foreigneering gentleman, wrapping
himself in his fur-lined coat against the chill freshness of the
morning. Was it some one Miss Liddy had picked up in her travels? Liddy
had a perception, as she got into the carriage--or, rather, remembered
afterwards, that she had perceived other people, strangers, getting out
at the little country station, which was not a very usual thing; but she
was excited and preoccupied, and did not stay to look who they were, or
even notice them much, at the time. She had not written home, except the
merest intimation of her return, since she had found her brother, and
now she was a little alarmed at her own reserve, wondering what her
mother would say, whether she would know him at once, and what effect
the discovery would have upon her. Such things had been known as people
dying of joy. She began to grow alarmed and very nervous; and Liddy
looked round upon everything, to tell the truth, with troubled and
doubtful eyes. She was afraid even of the sight of the home landscape,
the grey hills, the misty valley, the limestone houses, and dividing
dykes, which were so very different from everything she had been seeing.
But it was a beautiful morning, and all this grey northern world was
bathed in the early glory of the sun; and to Lydia’s great relief the
country had not grown smaller, or the hills insignificant, or the sky
dirty or prosaic, as people in Italy said. The blue was pale, but still
it was heavenly blue; the white mists on the hills, here and there
breaking away like the opening of a prison, unfolding on both sides and
showing the grey slopes, the stony peaks, the lonely stormy Fells, were
as full of poetry and dramatic life as ever. The stream still looked
bold and rapid, the village friendly, nestling about the church and over
the bridge. “It is not a bit like Italy,” said Liddy, to her brother. He
felt the sharpness of the morning air as he never would have done had he
stayed among the Fells. “No, you can be quite confident on that
subject,” Harry said.

“But it is just as fine as ever,” cried Lydia, with a little enthusiasm.
“It is not small nor contracted, nor ugly, as I feared. It is finer than
it used to be. These are real hills, after all; and it is so broad, and
so pure, and such a delightful air. What would you give in Tuscany for
air like that?”

“We should die of it in a month,” Harry said, buttoning his furred coat
at the throat.

Lydia was almost angry. He had been there so long, he had got choke full
of Italian prejudice. But she was thankful, very thankful, to find that
the country-side was still pleasant in her own eyes. And now they drive
through the village, one or two early risers looking with expectant
faces out of the windows and waving their hands to her as she passes,
all with a look of surprise at the strange gentleman in his fur coat,
quietly smoking his cigar behind: and the river is crossed, and they
come within sight of the White House. Well! there was no doubt it looked
small: she had been sure it must look small, grey and homely, and
undistinguished, scarcely discernible in its whiteness, which was grey,
like everything here, from the slope of the Fell-side. But Lydia had no
time to make remarks of this description to herself, for immediately at
the door there appeared a slim and tremulous figure, with clasped hands,
looking out; and she gave a cry of uncontrollable joy and excitement,
and sprang down, almost before the carriage stopped, from her seat, and
into the arms of her mother. No, no! there was no change there! For a
moment all her depression and heaviness, and sense of guilt and
baseness, in the thought that her return was no pleasure to her, all
melted away in real natural happiness to see that worn face, and feel
the clasp of those tremulous arms again.

“Oh, Liddy, my darling! it’s been long, long! but here I have you again,
my own!”

“Oh, mother! why did I ever leave you?” cried the girl, and they clung
together as if they would never part.

Mrs. Joscelyn had no eyes for anything but her child. She was about to
lead her in with her arm round her.

“They will all be out in a minute, Liddy; but never mind, my pet, you’ll
see them later, and they’ll bring in your boxes and all your things.
Come in, come in, you must be tired with your night’s journey--and let
me look at you; I want no more, but just to look at you, you’re better
than Italy to me.”

“Mother,” Lydia said, holding back, “I have brought some one with me--a
gentleman; you must give a welcome to him too.”

“A gentleman!” Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little sigh of disappointment. “It
will be Lionel. Yes, I am glad to see him; but I should have liked you
all to myself this first morning. He knows he is welcome, my dear.”

“It is not Lionel, mother; it is some one whom I met--in Italy.”

Mrs. Joscelyn began to tremble a little, and looked earnestly in her
daughter’s face, but not with any suspicion of the truth.

“I will try--to give anyone a welcome, my darling; if you love him, and
if it is for your sake.”

Harry had got down from the phaeton like a man in a dream. He gazed
about him at the place which was so familiar, yet so strange, as if he
had dropped from the skies, remembering everything all in a moment, his
boyhood, his old childish holidays, his last night. He remembered the
foolish exaggerated passion with which he stood, furious, shut out,
before that closed door. He was full of agitation, of compunction, of
wonder, at his own boyish unreasonableness, and at the long obdurate
closing of his heart, which could not have been, he said to himself, had
it not been full of other things. His heart beat as he looked at his
mother, and heard the cry with which she clasped to her her other child.
And Liddy was going to forsake her too, poor woman, poor mother! Somehow
he thought more of this than of all the trouble he had himself brought
upon her. He stood at a little distance, keeping his furred coat closely
round him, stamping his feet a little to get them warm. Had he lived
always on the Fells, he would have wanted no furred coat, and felt no
cold in his feet. Then Lydia beckoned to him, and he went towards them.
It was all he could do to keep calm. “I am sure the gentleman is very
welcome, Liddy,” he heard his mother say, in her tremulous voice. He
came up to them where they still stood in the doorway. Something about
his air, about his general aspect, startled her, though she was so
pre-occupied, and Harry did not know how to contain himself as his eyes
met hers. She gave him a smile, a little forced, with her lips, but her
eyes more sincere, betrayers of her heart, investigated him with anxiety
and wonder. He could not meet them without betraying himself. He took
the hand she held to him, and bowed over it and kissed it, as he had
learned to do in Italy; and he felt as he did so that the worn white
hand, which he thought he must have recognised had he seen no more of
his mother, trembled. She said, “Come in, Sir,” with a quaver in her
voice; “Come in--you are kindly welcome,” and tremulously led the way
into the hall he remembered so well, and opened the parlour door. The
fire was burning brightly within, the table laid for breakfast,
everything as if he had left it the day before. Mrs. Joscelyn would have
had her guest, who had set her all a-tremble, yet whom she thought she
welcomed reluctantly, enter before her, in old-fashioned politeness; but
when he held back, went in precipitately, holding Liddy by the hand. She
turned round instantly to look at him again.

“Liddy--you have not told me--the gentleman’s name?” she said, feeling
her head go round. “Liddy! I think--I must have seen him before.”

Then Harry could keep himself in no longer. He loathed a scene like
every Englishman, but he forgot this, as even Englishmen do in moments
of extreme feeling. He fell down on his knees before her, not knowing
what he did. “Mother! will you forgive me?” he said. And he did not well
know what followed, till the air cleared a little again, and the day
came back, and they had put her in the great chair, her face like death,
her eyelids quivering, her lips trembling and incapable of speech. She
had given a great cry of “Harry! Harry!” which startled all the house.

Then some one else came noisily clattering down the stairs, crossing the
hall with a heavy foot. “Where is my little Liddy?” Ralph Joscelyn said;
and he added with a certain rough sympathy as he kissed his child, “I
told her it was more than she was up to. Let her be, let her be--she
will come round. I wanted her to bide in her bed, and I would bring you
to her there. Well, and so you’re back, my lass--and welcome! There’s
nobody like you to mend her. Did you bring--a doctor with you all the
way?”

Then there was a pause; nobody spoke to give any explanation. “Did you
bring a doctor with you,” Joscelyn repeated, with a sudden excited burst
of laughter, “all the way? or who may this be?”

Harry turned round and came forward into the light, holding out his
hand. “You turned me out last time I was here, father,” he said, not
able to forego the gratification of this taunt; “I ought to have asked
your leave first before I came back now.”

Ralph Joscelyn stood and stared, a dark red colour coming over his face.
He looked uncertainly from Liddy to the stranger. “I don’t know what you
mean,” he said shortly; then, “Do you mean this is--Harry? that’s what
your mother meant, shrieking out, disturbing everybody in the house.
Look to your mother, Liddy! Well! you’ve been a long time coming back.
You seem,” he said, looking at the new-comer from head to foot, “to have
done well for yourself.”

“I have done very well for myself,” Harry said, shortly. “I want help
from nobody now.”

“Well, my lad!” said Joscelyn, suddenly striking his hand into that of
his son with another hoarse, unsteady laugh, “that’s the best of reasons
why you should have whatever you want. You’re welcome home; and there’s
a pretty property waiting for you. And it saves a confounded deal of
trouble, I can tell you, that you should turn up now.”

All this time Liddy was kneeling by the chair, kissing her mother’s
feeble hands and colourless face. There was no particular alarm about
her among them; but she lay floating between life and death for a moment
in the extremity of emotion which was too much for her feeble flesh and
blood. Then the balance turned--the wrong way. If she died then, how
happy for her! but instead she slowly came back, opened her eyes, and
returned to life. “Is it a dream?” she said, feebly. “No--my Liddy, my
darling, you are real; and the other--wasn’t there another?”

They all sat at breakfast half an hour after like people in a dream.
Mrs. Joscelyn sat between her son and daughter, and looked at them
alternately, and sipped a feeble cup of tea, and shed a tear or two of
pure happiness. She was not strong enough yet to ask any questions; she
put her hand now and then on Harry’s arm and patted it softly. She heard
the story of how he was found out without understanding it in the least,
and echoed feebly her husband’s loud but tremulous laugh at the name
his son had taken. “Isaac Oliver--that’s the finest joke I ever heard in
my life. Isaac--Oliver! Dang it, but that is the best joke----” And he
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. The young people both sat by
with the strangest sense of unreality. To go away across half a world,
and then come back again to the same unchanging scene, even to
ameliorations of the past which bring out more clearly the astounding
difference between it and them--how strange it is! In all Harry’s
knowledge of his father, he had never been so friendly or so amiable;
but this only made the gentleman-peasant, the yeoman-horsedealer more
extraordinary, as a father, to his son. Liddy had a far less shock to
sustain in one sense, but a greater in another; for she had come
home--and here was her natural place, love and duty and every tradition
binding her; but, alas! her heart so far away.

The strange meal was still progressing, the whole family lingering over
it; for the household table was a kind of natural centre and place of
union; when wheels were heard again, and a carriage stopped at the door.
“It will be Joan,” Mrs. Joscelyn said; “she would not lose a moment in
coming; and what will she say when she sees--oh, Harry, my boy! She has
always had a warm heart for you--the warmest heart for you; we’ll say
nothing about old times; but her and me--Run out and meet your sister,
Liddy, and say nothing, say nothing--let us see if she will know him.”
Mrs. Joscelyn put her hand upon his sleeve. “It’s a pleasure to touch
you--I like to touch you in case my eyes should be deceiving me. And did
you ever think of your poor mother all these years?”

Liddy had run out--to meet her sister as she thought--and her father,
not unwilling now that the meeting was over to leave his wife alone with
her son, followed her, with the intent of taking another look, as he
said to himself, of _his_ pet, and making sure that he had really got
her back. But Liddy, instead of running out to meet her sister, stood
arrested in the doorway, watching the disembarkation from a rickety
country coach of the strangest party that ever produced itself in the
Fell-country. First came a little man with a high hat, a huge cloak with
a faded lining of blue, which would have delighted a painter, flung over
his shoulder, and a huge comforter round his neck; next a bundle of an
old woman, wrapped in half-a-dozen shawls, one over the other, who
rolled out of the quivering carriage, like something half benumbed and
half asleep; lastly, a figure which sprang out as light as a bird,
pushing aside both the companions who held out anxious hands to assist
her, and flew along the little path between the two grass plats. Liddy
clasped her hands together in wonder and dismay.

“Mrs. Harry!” she cried, with consternation. She was so much surprised
that she made no step to meet her; but stood transfixed, her face pale
with astonishment. Rita was all aglow with pleasure, and excitement, and
triumph. She flung herself upon Lydia as if she had been her dearest
friend in the world.

“Look, I have done it!” she cried. “I am better than ever I was in my
life. I am so happy. I like the cold. I like the country; I think it is
beautiful! Call this England? it is Paradise! Oh, Liddy, Liddy, you dear
little sister, I shall be as fond of you as Harry is--fonder, for he has
me first to think of. I owe all this to you.”

“Mrs. Harry!” Liddy repeated, with consternation. “Father, this is Mrs.
Harry; if you were coming, why did you not come with us?” She could
think of nothing that was kinder to say.

But Rita was too much delighted with herself to stand in need of words
of kindness. She walked up to Ralph Joscelyn, and stretched up to him,
offering her pretty glowing cheek to be kissed.

“How do you do, father?” she said. “Harry ought to present me to you,
but I don’t want any introduction. You are like him; our little boy is
called Ralph, after you. Harry will be dreadfully angry when he sees me,
and I dare not think what papa will say; but I am so happy to be in
England that I don’t mind. Will you take me in, please, to where my
husband is?” and with the air of a little princess Rita took her
father-in-law’s arm. He was a stately, handsome old man, with his white
hair. The eyes of the new-comer found no fault in him. The roughness
which wounded his children was invisible to her. “He is almost as
handsome as papa,” she said to herself.

Meanwhile Liddy, still more bewildered, stood at the door, and watched
the approach of the two other persons, not glowing and happy like Rita,
but miserable, as unaccustomed travellers, half dead after a succession
of night journeys, cold, and sick, and out of heart, could be. She
could scarcely recognise the spruce little Paolo, in the worn-out,
fagged traveller, shivering in his big cloak, and trying in vain to
satisfy the coachman with the money which he did not understand.

“Five shilling, that is six francs twenty-five, six francs twenty-five,
my good man--it is six francs twenty-five, all the world over,” he was
saying, placing a solid French five-franc piece, with other moneys of
the same coinage, in the driver’s hand, and scorning all remonstrances.
“No, no; I am no foreigner--you you will not cheat me. I am not von,”
cried Paolo, betrayed by excitement into inaccuracies which he had quite
got the better of, “to be bullied. I am not von to pay too moche. I am
English as you.”

As for old Benedetta, who was the other companion of Rita’s journey, she
was prostrate with cold and fatigue. She did nothing but weep and groan
as she sank upon the first seat in the hall. “Ah, Signorina! oh,
Signorina! Sono morto! sono morto!” she cried, while Paolo took off his
hat, by this time somewhat battered, and smiled a forlorn smile, his
teeth chattering as he spoke. “All things that have been spoken of the
English climate are below the truth,” he said. “Miss Joscelyn will
forgive me, I have the cold just in my bones; but Miss Joscelyn, and
also, indeed, Signorina Rita, one is bound to say it, they bloom like
the rose.”

“Now, don’t be angry,” said Rita, walking her father-in-law in to the
parlour door, which was slightly open, and through which she saw the
glimmer of the fire, and the white cloth of the breakfast-table, and
appearing before her astonished husband, like some mischievous spirit,
in a glow of happiness and delight, “don’t be angry, Harry. I am going
to telegraph directly to papa. I am perfectly well, and delighted with
everything. I am not cold a bit. I am not tired. England, I always was
sure of it, is just the place for me. Present me to your mother. Dear
madam,” she cried, after a little pause of contemplation, dropping
Joscelyn’s arm, and darting forward, “I see you are ill; you are all
trembling with the emotions you have had this morning. And, I am sure,
it is quite natural; you don’t want me to make them more. But kiss me
once, please, for I know I shall love you. I am your Harry’s wife.”

“Rita!” cried Harry, finding room at last to express his sentiments,
“what, in the name of all that is foolish, brings you here?”

“Thank you, dear mother,” said Rita, in return for the astonished kiss
which poor Mrs. Joscelyn had bestowed. She sat down by her without any
invitation, and took one of her hands and caressed it between her own.
“I never had any mother,” she said; “I do not know what it means; nor
did I ever want one of my own, for papa has been everything to me. But
it is sweet to borrow Harry’s mother, and have her for mine, too; not
borrow,” she added, kissing Mrs. Joscelyn’s hand, “you are mine because
you are his, is it not so? Harry, do not look so like a bear, but come
and kiss me, too.”

“Rita, your father will never forgive me,” cried Harry, obeying his wife
with no bad grace, yet incapable of withholding his lecture; “he will
say it was my fault. And how did you persuade him to let you go?”

“He did not let me go. I said I was going to the villa to the children.
He will not find out till Sunday, that is to-morrow, and he will have my
telegram first. There is no harm done. I believe,” she added,
tranquilly, “he will be as glad as any one to think I have taken it into
my own hands. And look, I am not cold. I liked the air above
everything. Poor Paolo and Benedetta chattered with their teeth, but it
was delightful to me. My poor little mamma was a girl; I am full grown,
strong; and I adore England. It is beautiful. I am enchanted with the
Fells. The grey is lovely; it is your only colour. Harry, Harry, you
great bear, say you are glad to see me, or your mother will think we are
not fond of each other: which is not true, dearest, dearest lady,” said
Rita, once more kissing Mrs. Joscelyn’s hand.

“I am sure anybody would be fond of you,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, gazing
with wonder and awe--but flattered, touched, astonished beyond
measure--at this beautiful young woman, so enthusiastic, so
self-possessed, so fluent, whom she had never heard of before.

“Oh, fond of her, what has that to do with it?” cried Harry. “So you
have brought Benedetta and poor Paolo,” he cried.

After this Paolo was brought in, and warmed and fed; but it took a long
time to bring him round. He had thought it a very fine thing to come off
to England for his holiday, romantically following a beautiful young
lady, helping another to reunite herself to her husband; but the
journey and the privations, want of sleep and over-fatigue, and the wind
of an English May, blowing at six o’clock in the morning over the Fells,
had been too much for poor Paolo. He sounded his friend a few days
after, when he had partially recovered his spirits, as to the custom in
English families when they married their daughters.

“For example,” he said, “Amico, if it is not impertinent. A young lady
like Miss Joscelyn; so beautiful, so charming. When your parents make up
their minds to marry her, they will of course make it a condition that
the ’usband being so happy should live near?”

“Certainly they would make the condition,” said Harry, promptly. “Could
anyone be so cruel, do you think, Paolo, as to take away her last prop
from my mother? They are everything to each other, as you can see.”

“It is true,” said Paolo, much crestfallen. And next day he took a
tearful leave, kissing Liddy’s hand with respectful deference. The
unusual salutation made her blush quite unnecessarily. It was a
resignation of all pretensions on Paolo’s part. He could have made, he
said afterwards, as great a sacrifice to his love as any man; but to
have lived on what they called the Fells, was more than it was possible
to contemplate. But he was a little consoled by a burst of bright
weather in London, and saw the Parks and the Row in all their glory, and
lost his heart to a great many other English young ladies before he
carried it, pieced up again so as to be serviceable for actual living,
but in a sadly battered and shattered condition, back again to Leghorn;
where he was a great authority upon everything English to the end of his
days.

Rita turned out to be right, as she so often was. Her father, after the
first shock, was glad beyond measure that the venture had been made and
proved successful, and that the embargo was taken off his native
country, and he could permit him to return. The accumulations of Uncle
Henry’s money was enough to make a pretty, old-fashioned house out of
Birrenshead, where the Harry Joscelyns settled down, Mr. Bonamy with
them, though without giving up the Italian villa and its associations.
Mr. Bonamy got a C.B. and many compliments when he retired from the
service, though he had never been anything more than a Vice-Consul. As
for Lydia and her concerns, it is needless to say that they ended
prosperously; for what was there that Lady Brotherton could refuse to
her only son? and Sir John saw only through her eyes. So this marriage
was accomplished also towards the autumn, before the year was out, from
the time of their first acquaintance. Harry and his children were known
to be coming home by that time, as soon as the house was ready for them,
“Which was something for mother to look forward to,” Joan said. “A thing
to look forward to is almost better than a thing she’s got, to mother,”
according to that authority. “She can’t fret about it till she has it.”
But nobody could be more tender and sympathetic than Joan when Lydia was
married and went away, leaving a blank that nothing could fill up. “It’s
hard to say what’s the good of us women,” she said, “to rear children
and never have them but when they’re babies, and think all the world of
them, and watch them go away. Phil and me, we are best without any,
though that’s a hard trial too. But, mother, don’t you make a fuss, poor
dear. It’s the way of the world, and it’s the course of nature, and
there isn’t a word to say.”

This was the case, and Mrs. Joscelyn felt it. She clasped her hands as
she had done so often, and held them up to heaven in prayer that was
perpetual. That was all. She saw her children now and then, and they
were all happy, and in no need of her. What could any woman desire more?


THE END.


London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13 Poland Street.







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