For there is neither buske nor hay In May, that it n’ill shrouded bene, And it with newé leavés wrene; These woodés eke recoveren grene, That drie in winter ben to sene, And the erth waxeth proud withall, For swoté dewes that on it fall, And the poore estate forget, In which that winter had it set: And than becomes the ground so proude, That it wol have a newé shroude, And maketh so queint his robe and faire, That it hath hewes an hundred paire, Of grasse and floures, of Ind and Pers, And many hewés full divers: That is the robe I mean, ywis, Through which the ground to praisen is.
CHAUCER’S translation of the Romaunt of the Rose.
So passed the three days of rain. After breakfast the following morning, Hugh went to find Harry, according to custom, in the library. He was reading.
“What are you reading, Harry?” asked he.
“A poem,” said Harry; and, rising as before, he brought the book to Hugh. It was Mrs. Hemans’s Poems.
“You are fond of poetry, Harry.”
“Yes, very.”
“Whose poems do you like best?”
“Mrs. Hemans’s, of course. Don’t you think she is the best, sir?”
“She writes very beautiful verses, Harry. Which poem are you reading now?”
“Oh! one of my favourites—The Voice of Spring.”
“Who taught you to like Mrs. Hemans?”
“Euphra, of course.”
“Will you read the poem to me?”
Harry began, and read the poem through, with much taste and evident enjoyment; an enjoyment which seemed, however, to spring more from the music of the thought and its embodiment in sound, than from sympathy with the forms of nature called up thereby. This was shown by his mode of reading, in which the music was everything, and the sense little or nothing. When he came to the line,
“And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,”
he smiled so delightedly, that Hugh said:
“Are you fond of the larch, Harry?”
“Yes, very.”
“Are there any about here?”
“I don’t know. What is it like?”
“You said you were fond of it.”
“Oh, yes; it is a tree with beautiful tassels, you know. I think I should like to see one. Isn’t it a beautiful line?”
“When you have finished the poem, we will go and see if we can find one anywhere in the woods. We must know where we are in the world, Harry—what is all round about us, you know.”
“Oh, yes,” said Harry; “let us go and hunt the larch.”
“Perhaps we shall meet Spring, if we look for her—perhaps hear her voice, too.”
“That would be delightful,” answered Harry, smiling. And away they went.
I may just mention here that Mrs. Hemans was allowed to retire gradually, till at last she was to be found only in the more inaccessible recesses of the library-shelves; while by that time Harry might be heard, not all over the house, certainly, but as far off as outside the closed door of the library, reading aloud to himself one or other of Macaulay’s ballads, with an evident enjoyment of the go in it. A story with drum and trumpet accompaniment was quite enough, for the present, to satisfy Harry; and Macaulay could give him that, if little more.
As they went across the lawn towards the shrubbery, on their way to look for larches and Spring, Euphra joined them in walking dress. It was a lovely morning.
“I have taken you at your word, you see, Mr. Sutherland,” said she. “I don’t want to lose my Harry quite.”
“You dear kind Euphra!” said Harry, going round to her side and taking her hand. He did not stay long with her, however, nor did Euphra seem particularly to want him.
“There was one thing I ought to have mentioned to you the other night, Mr. Sutherland; and I daresay I should have mentioned it, had not Mr. Arnold interrupted our tête-à-tête. I feel now as if I had been guilty of claiming far more than I have a right to, on the score of musical insight. I have Scotch blood in me, and was indeed born in Scotland, though I left it before I was a year old. My mother, Mr. Arnold’s sister, married a gentleman who was half Sootch; and I was born while they were on a visit to his relatives, the Camerons of Lochnie. His mother, my grandmother, was a Bohemian lady, a countess with sixteen quarterings—not a gipsy, I beg to say.”
Hugh thought she might have been, to judge from present appearances.
But how was he to account for this torrent of genealogical information, into which the ice of her late constraint had suddenly thawed? It was odd that she should all at once volunteer so much about herself. Perhaps she had made up one of those minds which need making up, every now and then, like a monthly magazine; and now was prepared to publish it. Hugh responded with a question:
“Do I know your name, then, at last? You are Miss Cameron?”
“Euphrasia Cameron; at your service, sir.” And she dropped a gay little courtesy to Hugh, looking up at him with a flash of her black diamonds.
“Then you must sing to me to-night.”
“With all the pleasure in gipsy-land,” replied she, with a second courtesy, lower than the first; taking for granted, no doubt, his silent judgment on her person and complexion.
By this time they had reached the woods in a different quarter from that which Hugh had gone through the other day with Harry. And here, in very deed, the Spring met them, with a profusion of richness to which Hugh was quite a stranger. The ground was carpeted with primroses, and anemones, and other spring flowers, which are the loveliest of all flowers. They were drinking the sunlight, which fell upon them through the budded boughs. By the time the light should be hidden from them by the leaves, which are the clouds of the lower firmament of the woods, their need of it would be gone: exquisites in living, they cared only for the delicate morning of the year.
“Do look at this darling, Mr. Sutherland!” exclaimed Euphrasia suddenly, as she bent at the root of a great beech, where grew a large bush of rough leaves, with one tiny but perfectly-formed primrose peeping out between. “Is it not a little pet?—all eyes—all one eye staring out of its curtained bed to see what ever is going on in the world.—You had better lie down again: it is not a nice place.”
She spoke to it as if it had been a kitten or a baby. And as she spoke, she pulled the leaves yet closer over the little starer so as to hide it quite.
As they went on, she almost obtrusively avoided stepping on the flowers, saying she almost felt cruel, or at least rude, when she did so. Yet she trailed her dress over them in quite a careless way, not lifting it at all. This was a peculiarity of hers, which Hugh never understood till he understood herself.
All about in shady places, the ferns were busy untucking themselves from their grave-clothes, unrolling their mysterious coils of life, adding continually to the hidden growth as they unfolded the visible. In this, they were like the other revelations of God the Infinite. All the wild lovely things were coming up for their month’s life of joy. Orchis-harlequins, cuckoo-plants, wild arums, more properly lords-and-ladies, were coming, and coming—slowly; for had they not a long way to come, from the valley of the shadow of death into the land of life? At last the wanderers came upon a whole company of bluebells—not what Hugh would have called bluebells, for the bluebells of Scotland are the single-poised harebells—but wild hyacinths, growing in a damp and shady spot, in wonderful luxuriance. They were quite three feet in height, with long, graceful, drooping heads; hanging down from them, all along one side, the largest and loveliest of bells—one lying close above the other, on the lower part; while they parted thinner and thinner as they rose towards the lonely one at the top. Miss Cameron went into ecstasies over these; not saying much, but breaking up what she did say with many prettily passionate pauses.
She had a very happy turn for seeing external resemblances, either humorous or pathetic; for she had much of one element that goes to the making of a poet—namely, surface impressibility.
“Look, Harry; they are all sad at having to go down there again so soon. They are looking at their graves so ruefully.”
Harry looked sad and rather sentimental immediately. When Hugh glanced at Miss Cameron, he saw tears in her eyes.
“You have nothing like this in your country, have you, Mr. Sutherland?” said she, with an apparent effort.
“No, indeed,” answered Hugh.
And he said no more. For a vision rose before him of the rugged pine-wood and the single primrose; and of the thoughtful maiden, with unpolished speech and rough hands, and—but this he did not see—a soul slowly refining itself to a crystalline clearness. And he thought of the grand old grey-haired David, and of Janet with her quaint motherhood, and of all the blessed bareness of the ancient time—in sunlight and in snow; and he felt again that he had forgotten and forsaken his friends.
“How the fairies will be ringing the bells in these airy steeples in the moonlight!” said Miss Cameron to Harry, who was surprised and delighted with it all. He could not help wondering, however, after he went to bed that night, that Euphra had never before taken him to see these beautiful things, and had never before said anything half so pretty to him, as the least pretty thing she had said about the flowers that morning when they were out with Mr. Sutherland. Had Mr. Sutherland anything to do with it? Was he giving Euphra a lesson in flowers such as he had given him in pigs?
Miss Cameron presently drew Hugh into conversation again, and the old times were once more forgotten for a season. They were worthy of distinguishing note—that trio in those spring woods: the boy waking up to feel that flowers and buds were lovelier in the woods than in verses; Euphra finding everything about her sentimentally useful, and really delighting in the prettinesses they suggested to her; and Hugh regarding the whole chiefly as a material and means for reproducing in verse such impressions of delight as he had received and still received from all (but the highest) poetry about nature. The presence of Harry and his necessities was certainly a saving influence upon Hugh; but, however much he sought to realize Harry’s life, he himself, at this period of his history, enjoyed everything artistically far more than humanly.
Margaret would have walked through all this infant summer without speaking at all, but with a deep light far back in her quiet eyes. Perhaps she would not have had many thoughts about the flowers. Rather she would have thought the very flowers themselves; would have been at home with them, in a delighted oneness with their life and expression. Certainly she would have walked through them with reverence, and would not have petted or patronised nature by saying pretty things about her children. Their life would have entered into her, and she would have hardly known it from her own. I daresay Miss Cameron would have called a mountain a darling or a beauty. But there are other ways of showing affection than by patting and petting—though Margaret, for her part, would have needed no art-expression, because she had the things themselves. It is not always those who utter best who feel most; and the dumb poets are sometimes dumb because it would need the “large utterance of the early gods” to carry their thoughts through the gates of speech.
But the fancy and skin-sympathy of Miss Cameron began already to tell upon Hugh. He knew very little of women, and had never heard a woman talk as she talked. He did not know how cheap this accomplishment is, and took it for sensibility, imaginativeness, and even originality. He thought she was far more en rapport with nature than he was. It was much easier to make this mistake after hearing the really delightful way in which she sang. Certainly she could not have sung so, perhaps not even have talked so, except she had been capable of more; but to be capable of more, and to be able for more, are two very distinct conditions.
Many walks followed this, extending themselves farther and farther from home, as Harry’s strength gradually improved. It was quite remarkable how his interest in everything external increased, in exact proportion as he learned to see into the inside or life of it. With most children, the interest in the external comes first, and with many ceases there. But it is in reality only a shallower form of the deeper sympathy; and in those cases where it does lead to a desire after the hidden nature of things, it is perhaps the better beginning of the two. In such exceptional cases as Harry’s, it is of unspeakable importance that both the difference and the identity should be recognized; and in doing so, Hugh became to Harry his big brother indeed, for he led him where he could not go alone.
As often as Mr. Arnold was from home, which happened not unfrequently, Miss Cameron accompanied them in their rambles. She gave as her reason for doing so only on such occasions, that she never liked to be out of the way when her uncle might want her. Traces of an inclination to quarrel with Hugh, or even to stand upon her dignity, had all but vanished; and as her vivacity never failed her, as her intellect was always active, and as by the exercise of her will she could enter sympathetically, or appear to enter, into everything, her presence was not in the least a restraint upon them.
On one occasion, when Harry had actually run a little way after a butterfly, Hugh said to her:
“What did you mean, Miss Cameron, by saying you were only a poor relation? You are certainly mistress of the house.”
“On sufferance, yes. But I am only a poor relation. I have no fortune of my own.”
“But Mr. Arnold does not treat you as such.”
“Oh! no. He likes me. He is very kind to me.—He gave me this ring on my last birthday. Is it not a beauty?”
She pulled off her glove and showed a very fine diamond on a finger worthy of the ornament.
“It is more like a gentleman’s, is it not?” she added, drawing it off. “Let me see how it would look on your hand.”
She gave the ring to Hugh; who, laughing, got it with some difficulty just over the first joint of his little finger, and held it up for Euphra to see.
“Ah! I see I cannot ask you to wear it for me,” said she. “I don’t like it myself. I am afraid, however,” she added, with an arch look, “my uncle would not like it either—on your finger. Put it on mine again.”
Holding her hand towards Hugh, she continued:
“It must not be promoted just yet. Besides, I see you have a still better one of your own.”
As Hugh did according to her request, the words sprang to his lips, “There are other ways of wearing a ring than on the finger.” But they did not cross the threshold of speech. Was it the repression of them that caused that strange flutter and slight pain at the heart, which he could not quite understand?
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said, “I hate,” To me that languished for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet, Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to greet: “I hate” she altered with an end, That followed it as gentle day Doth follow night, who, like a fiend, From heaven to hell is flown away. “I hate” from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying—“Not you.”
Mr. Arnold was busy at home for a few days after this, and Hugh and Harry had to go out alone. One day, when the wind was rather cold, they took refuge in the barn; for it was part of Hugh’s especial care that Harry should be rendered hardy, by never being exposed to more than he could bear without a sense of suffering. As soon as the boy began to feel fatigue, or cold, or any other discomfort, his tutor took measures accordingly.
Harry would have crept into the straw-house; but Hugh said, pulling a book out of his pocket,
“I have a poem here for you, Harry. I want to read it to you now; and we can’t see in there.”
They threw themselves down on the straw, and Hugh, opening a volume of Robert Browning’s Poems, read the famous ride from Ghent to Aix. He knew the poem well, and read it well. Harry was in raptures.
“I wish I could read that as you do,” said he.
“Try,” said Hugh.
Harry tried the first verse, and threw the book down in disgust with himself.
“Why cannot I read it?” said he.
“Because you can’t ride.”
“I could ride, if I had such a horse as that to ride upon.”
“But you could never have such a horse as that except you could ride, and ride well, first. After that, there is no saying but you might get one. You might, in fact, train one for yourself—till from being a little foal it became your own wonderful horse.”
“Oh! that would be delightful! Will you teach me horses as well, Mr. Sutherland?”
“Perhaps I will.”
That evening, at dinner, Hugh said to Mr. Arnold:
“Could you let me have a horse to-morrow morning, Mr. Arnold?”
Mr. Arnold stared a little, as he always did at anything new. But Hugh went on:
“Harry and I want to have a ride to-morrow; and I expect we shall like it so much, that we shall want to ride very often.”
“Yes, that we shall!” cried Harry.
“Could not Mr. Sutherland have your white mare, Euphra?” said Mr. Arnold, reconciled at once to the proposal.
“I would rather not, if you don’t mind, uncle. My Fatty is not used to such a burden as I fear Mr. Sutherland would prove. She drops a little now, on the hard road.”
The fact was, Euphra would want Fatima.
“Well, Harry,” said Mr. Arnold, graciously pleased to be facetious, “don’t you think your Welsh dray-horse could carry Mr. Sutherland?”
“Ha! ha! ha! Papa, do you know, Mr. Sutherland set him up on his hind legs yesterday, and made him walk on them like a dancing-dog. He was going to lift him, but he kicked about so when he felt himself leaving the ground, that he tumbled Mr. Sutherland into the horse-trough.”
Even the solemn face of the butler relaxed into a smile, but Mr. Arnold’s clouded instead. His boy’s tutor ought to be a gentleman.
“Wasn’t it fun, Mr. Sutherland?”
“It was to you, you little rogue!” said Sutherland, laughing.
“And how you did run home, dripping like a water-cart!—and all the dogs after you!”
Mr. Arnold’s monotonous solemnity soon checked Harry’s prattle.
“I will see, Mr. Sutherland, what I can do to mount you.”
“I don’t care what it is,” said Hugh; who though by no means a thorough horseman, had been from boyhood in the habit of mounting everything in the shape of a horse that he could lay hands upon, from a cart-horse upwards and downwards.
“There’s an old bay that would carry me very well.”
“That is my own horse, Mr. Sutherland.”
This stopped the conversation in that direction. But next morning after breakfast, an excellent chestnut horse was waiting at the door, along with Harry’s new pony. Mr. Arnold would see them go off. This did not exactly suit Miss Cameron, but if she frowned, it was when nobody saw her. Hugh put Harry up himself, told him to stick fast with his knees, and then mounted his chestnut. As they trotted slowly down the avenue, Euphrasia heard Mr. Arnold say to himself, “The fellow sits well, at all events.” She took care to make herself agreeable to Hugh by reporting this, with the omission of the initiatory epithet, however.
Harry returned from his ride rather tired, but in high spirits.
“Oh, Euphra!” he cried, “Mr. Sutherland is such a rider! He jumps hedges and ditches and everything. And he has promised to teach me and my pony to jump too. And if I am not too tired, we are to begin to-morrow, out on the common. Oh! jolly!”
The little fellow’s heart was full of the sense of growing life and strength, and Hugh was delighted with his own success. He caught sight of a serpentine motion in Euphra’s eyebrows, as she bent her face again over the work from which she had lifted it on their entrance. He addressed her.
“You will be glad to hear that Harry has ridden like a man.”
“I am glad to hear it, Harry.”
Why did she reply to the subject of the remark, and not to the speaker? Hugh perplexed himself in vain to answer this question; but a very small amount of experience would have made him able to understand at once as much of her behaviour as was genuine. At luncheon she spoke only in reply; and then so briefly, as not to afford the smallest peg on which to hang a response.
“What can be the matter?” thought Hugh. “What a peculiar creature she is! But after what has passed between us, I can’t stand this.”
When dinner was over that evening, she rose as usual and left the room, followed by Hugh and Harry; but as soon as they were in the drawing-room, she left it; and, returning to the dining-room, resumed her seat at the table.
“Take a glass of claret, Euphra, dear?” said Mr. Arnold.
“I will, if you please, uncle. I should like it. I have seldom a minute with you alone now.”
Evidently flattered, Mr. Arnold poured out a glass of claret, rose and carried it to his niece himself, and then took a chair beside her.
“Thank you, dear uncle,” she said, with one of her bewitching flashes of smile.
“Harry has been getting on bravely with his riding, has he not?” she continued.
“So it would appear.”
Harry had been full of the story of the day at the dinner-table, where he still continued to present himself; for his father would not be satisfied without hint. It was certainly good moral training for the boy, to sit there almost without eating; and none the worse that he found it rather hard sometimes. He talked much more freely now, and asked the servants for anything he wanted without referring to Euphra. Now and then he would glance at her, as if afraid of offending her; but the cords which bound him to her were evidently relaxing; and she saw it plainly enough, though she made no reference to the unpleasing fact.
“I am only a little fearful, uncle, lest Mr. Sutherland should urge the boy to do more than his strength will admit of. He is exceedingly kind to him, but he has evidently never known what weakness is himself.”
“True, there is danger of that. But you see he has taken him so entirely into his own hands. I don’t seem to be allowed a word in the matter of his education any more.” Mr. Arnold spoke with the peevishness of weak importance. “I wish you would take care that he does not carry things too far, Euphra.”
This was just what Euphra wanted.
“I think, if you do not disapprove, uncle, I will have Fatima saddled to-morrow morning, and go with them myself.”
“Thank you, my love; I shall be much obliged to you.” The glass of claret was soon finished after this. A little more conversation about nothing followed, and Euphra rose the second time, and returned to the drawing-room. She found it unoccupied. She sat down to the piano, and sang song after song—Scotch, Italian, and Bohemian. But Hugh did not make his appearance. The fact was, he was busy writing to his mother, whom he had rather neglected since he came. Writing to her made him think of David, and he began a letter to him too; but it was never finished, and never sent. He did not return to the drawing-room that evening. Indeed, except for a short time, while Mr. Arnold was drinking his claret, he seldom showed himself there. Had Euphra repelled him too much—hurt him? She would make up for it to-morrow.
Breakfast was scarcely over, when the chestnut and the pony passed the window, accompanied by a lovely little Arab mare, broad-chested and light-limbed, with a wonderfully small head. She was white as snow, with keen, dark eyes. Her curb-rein was red instead of white. Hearing their approach, and begging her uncle to excuse her, Euphra rose from the table, and left the room; but re-appeared in a wonderfully little while, in a well-fitted riding-habit of black velvet, with a belt of dark red leather clasping a waist of the roundest and smallest. Her little hat, likewise black, had a single long, white feather, laid horizontally within the upturned brim, and drooping over it at the back. Her white mare would be just the right pedestal for the dusky figure—black eyes, tawny skin, and all. As she stood ready to mount, and Hugh was approaching to put her up, she called the groom, seemed just to touch his hand, and was in the saddle in a moment, foot in stirrup, and skirt falling over it. Hugh thought she was carrying out the behaviour of yesterday, and was determined to ask her what it meant. The little Arab began to rear and plunge with pride, as soon as she felt her mistress on her back; but she seemed as much at home as if she had been on the music-stool, and patted her arching neck, talking to her in the same tone almost in which she had addressed the flowers.
“Be quiet, Fatty dear; you’re frightening Mr. Sutherland.”
But Hugh, seeing the next moment that she was in no danger, sprang into his saddle. Away they went, Fatima infusing life and frolic into the equine as Euphra into the human portion of the cavalcade. Having reached the common, out of sight of the house, Miss Cameron, instead of looking after Harry, lest he should have too much exercise, scampered about like a wild girl, jumping everything that came in her way, and so exciting Harry’s pony, that it was almost more than he could do to manage it, till at last Hugh had to beg her to go more quietly, for Harry’s sake. She drew up alongside of them at once, and made her mare stand as still as she could, while Harry made his first essay upon a little ditch. After crossing it two or three times, he gathered courage; and setting his pony at a larger one beyond, bounded across it beautifully.
“Bravo! Harry!” cried both Euphra and Hugh. Harry galloped back, and over it again; then came up to them with a glow of proud confidence on his pale face.
“You’ll be a horseman yet, Harry,” said Hugh.
“I hope so,” said Harry, in an aspiring tone, which greatly satisfied his tutor. The boy’s spirit was evidently reviving. Euphra must have managed him ill. Yet she was not in the least effeminate herself. It puzzled Hugh a good deal. But he did not think about it long; for Harry cantering away in front, he had an opportunity of saying to Euphra:
“Are you offended with me, Miss Cameron?”
“Offended with you! What do you mean? A girl like me offended with a man like you?”
She looked two and twenty as she spoke; but even at that she was older than Hugh. He, however, certainly looked considerably older than he really was.
“What makes you think so?” she added, turning her face towards him.
“You would not speak to me when we came home yesterday.”
“Not speak to you?—I had a little headache—and perhaps I was a little sullen, from having been in such bad company all the morning.”
“What company had you?” asked Hugh, gazing at her in some surprise.
“My own,” answered she, with a lovely laugh, thrown full in his face. Then after a pause: “Let me advise you, if you want to live in peace, not to embark on that ocean of discovery.”
“What ocean? what discovery?” asked Hugh, bewildered, and still gazing.
“The troubled ocean of ladies’ looks,” she replied. “You will never be able to live in the same house with one of our kind, if it be necessary to your peace to find out what every expression that puzzles you may mean.”
“I did not intend to be inquisitive—it really troubled me.”
“There it is. You must never mind us. We show so much sooner than men—but, take warning, there is no making out what it is we do show. Your faces are legible; ours are so scratched and interlined, that you had best give up at once the idea of deciphering them.”
Hugh could not help looking once more at the smooth, simple, naïve countenance shining upon him.
“There you are at it again,” she said, blushing a little, and turning her head away. “Well, to comfort you, I will confess I was rather cross yesterday—because—because you seemed to have been quite happy with only one of your pupils.”
As she spoke the words, she gave Fatima the rein, and bounded off, overtaking Harry’s pony in a moment. Nor did she leave her cousin during all the rest of their ride.
Most women in whom the soul has anything like a chance of reaching the windows, are more or less beautiful in their best moments. Euphra’s best was when she was trying to fascinate. Then she was—fascinating. During the first morning that Hugh spent at Arnstead, she had probably been making up her mind whether, between her and Hugh, it was to be war to the knife, or fascination. The latter had carried the day, and was now carrying him. But had she calculated that fascination may re-act as well?
Hugh’s heart bounded, like her Arab steed, as she uttered the words last recorded. He gave his chestnut the rein in his turn, to overtake her; but Fatima’s canter quickened into a gallop, and, inspirited by her companionship, and the fact that their heads were turned stablewards, Harry’s pony, one of the quickest of its race, laid itself to the ground, and kept up, taking three strides for Fatty’s two, so that Hugh never got within three lengths of them till they drew rein at the hall-door, where the grooms were waiting them. Euphra was off her mare in a moment, and had almost reached her own room before Hugh and Harry had crossed the hall. She came down to luncheon in a white muslin dress, with the smallest possible red spot in it; and, taking her place at the table, seemed to Hugh to have put off not only her riding habit, but the self that was in it as well; for she chatted away in the most unconcerned and easy manner possible, as if she had not been out of her room all the morning. She had ridden so hard, that she had left her last speech in the middle of the common, and its mood with it; and there seemed now no likelihood of either finding its way home.
the house is crencled to and fro,And hath so queint waies for to go,For it is shapen as the mase is wrought.
CHAUCER—Legend of Ariadne.
Luncheon over, and Harry dismissed as usual to lie down, Miss Cameron said to Hugh:
“You have never been over the old house yet, I believe, Mr. Sutherland. Would you not like to see it?”
“I should indeed,” said Hugh. “It is what I have long hoped for, and have often been on the point of begging.”
“Come, then; I will be your guide—if you will trust yourself with a madcap like me, in the solitudes of the old hive.”
“Lead on to the family vaults, if you will,” said Hugh.
“That might be possible, too, from below. We are not so very far from them. Even within the house there is an old chapel, and some monuments worth looking at. Shall we take it last?”
“As you think best,” answered Hugh.
She rose and rang the bell. When it was answered,
“Jacob,” she said, “get me the keys of the house from Mrs. Horton.”
Jacob vanished, and reappeared with a huge bunch of keys. She took them.
“Thank you. They should not be allowed to get quite rusty, Jacob.”
“Please, Miss, Mrs. Horton desired me to say, she would have seen to them, if she had known you wanted them.”
“Oh! never mind. Just tell my maid to bring me an old pair of gloves.”
Jacob went; and the maid came with the required armour.
“Now, Mr. Sutherland. Jane, you will come with us. No, you need not take the keys. I will find those I want as we go.”
She unlocked a door in the corner of the hall, which Hugh had never seen open. Passing through a long low passage, they came to a spiral staircase of stone, up which they went, arriving at another wide hall, very dusty, but in perfect repair. Hugh asked if there was not some communication between this hall and the great oak staircase.
“Yes,” answered Euphra; “but this is the more direct way.”
As she said this, he felt somehow as if she cast on him one of her keenest glances; but the place was very dusky, and he stood in a spot where the light fell upon him from an opening in a shutter, while she stood in deep shadow.
“Jane, open that shutter.”
The girl obeyed; and the entering light revealed the walls covered with paintings, many of them apparently of no value, yet adding much to the effect of the place. Seeing that Hugh was at once attracted by the pictures, Euphra said:
“Perhaps you would like to see the picture gallery first?”
Hugh assented. Euphra chose key after key, and opened door after door, till they came into a long gallery, well lighted from each end. The windows were soon opened.
“Mr. Arnold is very proud of his pictures, especially of his family portraits; but he is content with knowing he has them, and never visits them except to show them; or perhaps once or twice a year, when something or other keeps him at home for a day, without anything particular to do.”
In glancing over the portraits, some of them by famous masters, Hugh’s eyes were arrested by a blonde beauty in the dress of the time of Charles II. There was such a reality of self-willed boldness as well as something worse in her face, that, though arrested by the picture, Hugh felt ashamed of looking at it in the presence of Euphra and her maid. The pictured woman almost put him out of countenance, and yet at the same time fascinated him. Dragging his eyes from it, he saw that Jane had turned her back upon it, while Euphra regarded it steadily.
“Open that opposite window, Jane,” said she; “there is not light enough on this portrait.”
Jane obeyed. While she did so, Hugh caught a glimpse of her face, and saw that the formerly rosy girl was deadly pale. He said to Euphra:
“Your maid seems ill, Miss Cameron.”
“Jane, what is the matter with you?”
She did not reply, but, leaning against the wall, seemed ready to faint.
“The place is close,” said her mistress. “Go into the next room there,”—she pointed to a door—“and open the window. You will soon be well.”
“If you please, Miss, I would rather stay with you. This place makes me feel that strange.”
She had come but lately, and had never been over the house before.
“Nonsense!” said Miss Cameron, looking at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Please, don’t be angry, Miss; but the first night e’er I slept here, I saw that very lady—”
“Saw that lady!”
“Well, Miss, I mean, I dreamed that I saw her; and I remembered her the minute I see her up there; and she give me a turn like. I’m all right now, Miss.”
Euphra fixed her eyes on her, and kept them fixed, till she was very nearly all wrong again. She turned as pale as before, and began to draw her breath hard.
“You silly goose!” said Euphra, and withdrew her eyes; upon which the girl began to breathe more freely.
Hugh was making some wise remarks in his own mind on the unsteady condition of a nature in which the imagination predominates over the powers of reflection, when Euphra turned to him, and began to tell him that that was the picture of her three or four times great-grandmother, painted by Sir Peter Lely, just after she was married.
“Isn’t she fair?” said she.—“She turned nun at last, they say.”
“She is more fair than honest,” thought Hugh. “It would take a great deal of nun to make her into a saint.” But he only said, “She is more beautiful than lovely. What was her name?”
“If you mean her maiden name, it was Halkar—Lady Euphrasia Halkar—named after me, you see. She had foreign blood in her, of course; and, to tell the truth, there were strange stories told of her, of more sorts than one. I know nothing of her family. It was never heard of in England, I believe, till after the Restoration.”
All the time Euphra was speaking, Hugh was being perplexed with that most annoying of perplexities—the flitting phantom of a resemblance, which he could not catch. He was forced to dismiss it for the present, utterly baffled.
“Were you really named after her, Miss Cameron?”
“No, no. It is a family name with us. But, indeed, I may be said to be named after her, for she was the first of us who bore it. You don’t seem to like the portrait.”
“I do not; but I cannot help looking at it, for all that.”
“I am so used to the lady’s face,” said Euphra, “that it makes no impression on me of any sort. But it is said,” she added, glancing at the maid, who stood at some distance, looking uneasily about her—and as she spoke she lowered her voice to a whisper—“it is said, she cannot lie still.”
“Cannot lie still! What do you mean?”
“I mean down there in the chapel,” she answered, pointing.
The Celtic nerves of Hugh shuddered. Euphra laughed; and her voice echoed in silvery billows, that broke on the faces of the men and women of old time, that had owned the whole; whose lives had flowed and ebbed in varied tides through the ancient house; who had married and been given in marriage; and gone down to the chapel below—below the prayers and below the psalms—and made a Sunday of all the week.
Ashamed of his feeling of passing dismay, Hugh said, just to say something:
“What a strange ornament that is! Is it a brooch or a pin? No, I declare it is a ring—large enough for three cardinals, and worn on her thumb. It seems almost to sparkle. Is it ruby, or carbuncle, or what?”
“I don’t know: some clumsy old thing,” answered Euphra, carelessly.
“Oh! I see,” said Hugh; “it is not a red stone. The glow is only a reflection from part of her dress. It is as clear as a diamond. But that is impossible—such a size. There seems to me something curious about it; and the longer I look at it, the more strange it appears.”
Euphra stole another of her piercing glances at him, but said nothing.
“Surely,” Hugh went on, “a ring like that would hardly be likely to be lost out of the family? Your uncle must have it somewhere.”
Euphra laughed; but this laugh was very different from the last. It rattled rather than rang.
“You are wonderfully taken with a bauble—for a man of letters, that is, Mr. Sutherland. The stone may have been carried down any one of the hundred streams into which a family river is always dividing.”
“It is a very remarkable ornament for a lady’s finger, notwithstanding,” said Hugh, smiling in his turn.
“But we shall never get through the pictures at this rate,” remarked Euphra; and going on, she directed Hugh’s attention now to this, now to that portrait, saying who each was, and mentioning anything remarkable in the history of their originals. She manifested a thorough acquaintance with the family story, and made, in fact, an excellent show-woman. Having gone nearly to the other end of the gallery,
“This door,” said she, stopping at one, and turning over the keys, “leads to one of the oldest portions of the house, the principal room in which is said to have belonged especially to the lady over there.”
As she said this, she fixed her eyes once more on the maid.
“Oh! don’t ye now, Miss,” interrupted Jane. “Hannah du say as how a whitey-blue light shines in the window of a dark night, sometimes—that lady’s window, you know, Miss. Don’t ye open the door—pray, Miss.”
Jane seemed on the point of falling into the same terror as before.
“Really, Jane,” said her mistress, “I am ashamed of you; and of myself, for having such silly servants about me.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss, but—”
“So Mr. Sutherland and I must give up our plan of going over the house, because my maid’s nerves are too delicate to permit her to accompany us. For shame!”
“Oh, du ye now go without me!” cried the girl, clasping her hands.
“And you will wait here till we come back?”
“Oh! don’t ye leave me here. Just show me the way out.”
And once more she turned pale as death.
“Mr. Sutherland, I am very sorry, but we must put off the rest of our ramble till another time. I am, like Hamlet, very vilely attended, as you see. Come, then, you foolish girl,” she added, more mildly.
The poor maid, what with terror of Lady Euphrasia, and respect for her mistress, was in a pitiable condition of moral helplessness. She seemed almost too frightened to walk behind them. But if she had been in front it would have been no better; for, like other ghost-fearers, she seemed to feel very painfully that she had no eyes in her back.
They returned as they came; and Jane receiving the keys to take to the housekeeper, darted away. When she reached Mrs. Horton’s room, she sank on a chair in hysterics.
“I must get rid of that girl, I fear,” said Miss Cameron, leading the way to the library; “she will infect the whole household with her foolish terrors. We shall not hear the last of this for some time to come. We had a fit of it the same year I came; and I suppose the time has come round for another attack of the same epidemic.”
“What is there about the room to terrify the poor thing?”
“Oh! they say it is haunted; that is all. Was there ever an old house anywhere over Europe, especially an old family house, but was said to be haunted? Here the story centres in that room—or at least in that room and the avenue in front of its windows.”
“Is that the avenue called the Ghost’s Walk?”
“Yes. Who told you?”
“Harry would not let me cross it.”
“Poor boy! This is really too bad. He cannot stand anything of that kind, I am sure. Those servants!”
“Oh! I hope we shall soon get him too well to be frightened at anything. Are these places said to be haunted by any particular ghost?”
“Yes. By Lady Euphrasia—Rubbish!”
Had Hugh possessed a yet keener perception of resemblance, he would have seen that the phantom-likeness which haunted him in the portrait of Euphrasia Halkar, was that of Euphrasia Cameron—by his side all the time. But the mere difference of complexion was sufficient to throw him out—insignificant difference as that is, beside the correspondence of features and their relations. Euphra herself was perfectly aware of the likeness, but had no wish that Hugh should discover it.
As if the likeness, however, had been dimly identified by the unconscious part of his being, he sat in one corner of the library sofa, with his eyes fixed on the face of Euphra, as she sat in the other. Presently he was made aware of his unintentional rudeness, by seeing her turn pale as death, and sink back in the sofa. In a moment she started up, and began pacing about the room, rubbing her eyes and temples. He was bewildered and alarmed.
“Miss Cameron, are you ill?” he exclaimed.
She gave a kind of half-hysterical laugh, and said:
“No—nothing worth speaking of. I felt a little faint, that was all. I am better now.”
She turned full towards him, and seemed to try to look all right; but there was a kind of film over the clearness of her black eyes.
“I fear you have headache.”
“A little, but it is nothing. I will go and lie down.”
“Do, pray; else you will not be well enough to appear at dinner.”
She retired, and Hugh joined Hairy.
Euphra had another glass of claret with her uncle that evening, in order to give her report of the morning’s ride.
“Really, there is not much to be afraid of, uncle. He takes very good care of Harry. To be sure, I had occasion several times to check him a little; but he has this good quality in addition to a considerable aptitude for teaching, that he perceives a hint, and takes it at once.”
Knowing her uncle’s formality, and preference for precise and judicial modes of expression, Euphra modelled her phrase to his mind.
“I am glad he has your good opinion so far, Euphra; for I confess there is something about the youth that pleases me. I was afraid at first that I might be annoyed by his overstepping the true boundaries of his position in my family: he seems to have been in good society, too. But your assurance that he can take a hint, lessens my apprehension considerably. To-morrow, I will ask him to resume his seat after dessert.”
This was not exactly the object of Euphra’s qualified commendation of Hugh. But she could not help it now.
“I think, however, if you approve, uncle, that it will be more prudent to keep a little watch over the riding for a while. I confess, too, I should be glad of a little more of that exercise than I have had for some time: I found my seat not very secure to-day.”
“Very desirable on both considerations, my love.”
And so the conference ended.