Chapter Four.An Old Story and a New Secret.“Good nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human; to forgive, divine.”Pope.It was the last evening of the young Morisons being all together at the Villa Martine, for Arthur was returning to England the following day. And a fortnight or so later, the sisters and little Auriol, under the convoy of old Bertha, were to follow him there. Lettice had gone early to her room. She was worn out, though she would not allow it, with all she had gone through during the last week or two. And since Mr Auriol had left, she had put less constraint on herself; she no longer felt the necessity of calling pride to her aid.“I am so dreadfully sorry for Lettice,” said Nina, as she and Arthur were sitting together unwilling, though it was already late, to lose any of their few remaining hours.“So am I,” said Arthur. “But I am sorry for ourselves too, Nina. There is no doubt that all our troubles are very much aggravated by Lettice.”“Arthur!” exclaimed Nina. “What do you mean? How could we ever get on without her?”“Oh, I know all that,” said the boy—for boy he still was, though nearly seventeen—weariedly.“I know she is very good, and devoted, and clever, too; but, Nina, if she were but less obstinate and self-willed, how much happier—at least, how much less unhappy—we should be! If she had taken the advice of Godfrey Auriol, and made friends with our uncle—knowing, too, that mother wished it! Of course, I won’t allow to Godfrey that I disagree with her; at all costs, as you and I determined, we must keep together. But it is a terrible pity.”“I don’t, however, see that for the present it makes very much difference, and in time Lettice may change.”“Too late, perhaps,” said Arthur moodily. “Itisjust now that I think itdoesmake such a miserable difference;” and as Nina looked up, with surprise and some alarm, and was just going to ask him to explain himself, he added hastily, as if eager to change the subject, “Do you know the whole story, Nina—the story of the old quarrel between my father and his family? I have heard it, I suppose; but I have got confused about it, though I didn’t like to let Godfrey see that I was so. Lettice has always been so violent about it, so determined that there was only the one way of looking at it, that it was no use asking her. And just these last days it has dawned upon me that I know very little about it. I have accepted it as a sort of legend that was not to be questioned.”“I don’t know that there is very much to tell—not of actual facts,” said Nina. “Of course, it was all complicated by personal feeling, as such things always are. Mamma told me all; and lately, as you know, she regretted very much having not tried more to bring papa and his brother together. He, our uncle, was perfectly blameless, he was fifteen years younger than papa. Papa, you know, was grandpapa’s only son by his first marriage. His mother died young, and he, as he often said himself, was dreadfully spoilt. His father married again when he was about twelve; and though his stepmother was very good and nice, he was determined never to like her, and set himself against whatever she said, and fancied she influenced grandpapa very often, when very likely she did not. Grandpapa was in business, as, of course, you know, and very much respected, and very successful. He was of very respectable ancestry. His people had been farmers, but not at allgrand. And he was the sort of man to be proud of having made his own way, and to despise those who tried to be above their real position. He had always determined that papa should follow him in his business; but, as might have been expected from a spoilt boy, papawouldn’t; nothing would please him but going into the army.”“Yes, I know that part of it,” said Arthur.“There must have been stormy scenes and most miserable discussions. Any way, it ended in papa’s running away and enlisting, which by people of grandpapa’s class was thought a terrible disgrace. Then grandpapa vowed he would disinherit him, and he made a will, putting his little son Ingram entirely in papa’s place, and giving papa only a very small fortune. Andalwayspapa persisted in believing that this was his stepmother’s doing, though mamma has often told me they had no sort of proof, not evenprobability, that it was so. And the way she acted afterwards certainly did not seem as if she were selfish or scheming.”“But,” interrupted Arthur, “all this has nothing to do withmamma, and she always said it was about her.”“Well, listen,” said Nina. “Time went on. Papa behaved splendidly, and as soon as it waspossiblehe got a commission. And a year or two after that, he became engaged to mamma, who was the daughter of a very poor and very proud captain in the regiment. Captain Auriol, our other grandfather, likedpapa, but could not bear his being connected with any one in trade; and when he gave his consent to the marriage, he said, I believe, that he would not have done so had papa been in his father’s business, and that he liked him all the better for being no longer his father’s heir. Somehow papa’s stepmother got to hear of this engagement, and, knowing how poor mamma was, and thinking papa would be feeling softened and anxious about his future, she tried to bring about a reconciliation. Mamma, before she died, had come to feel sure the poor woman did her best. She got grandpapa—Grandpapa Morison—to write to papa, recognising his bravery as a soldier, and speaking of his engagement, and offering to reinstate him in his old position if he would now allow that he had had enough of soldiering, and would enter the business. He even said that, if he wouldnotdo so, he would still receive him again—him and his wife when he should be married—and make better provision for him if he would express sorrow for the grief and disappointment he had caused him in the past. This part of the letter must have been injudiciously worded.Somethingwas said of mamma’s poverty, which her father and she herself took offence at, when papa showed it them, and consulted them about it—not that he for a moment dreamt of giving up his profession; but hewassoftened, and would have been glad to be friends again. Only, unfortunately, they took it the other way, and he wrote back a letter, under Grandpapa Auriol’s direction, which offended his father so deeply that things were far worse than before. And it was for this that poor mamma always blamed herself, and this was why she said it was for her sake papa had quarrelled with his family. It came to be true, to some extent; for Grandpapa Morison after that always put all the blame on her, and spoke of her very unkindly, which came to papa’s ears, and made him furious. And when his father died, a few years afterwards, he was surprised to find that even a small portion had still been left to him; and I don’t believe he would ever have taken it, poor as he was, but for a message that was sent him with the news of his father’s death, that poor grandpapa had left him his blessing before he died.Ibelieve that he had to thank his stepmother for this, though she did not appear in it. She must have been frightened, poor thing, and no wonder. So the only communication was through the lawyer. And that, I think,” said Nina, with a sigh, “is about all there is to tell.”“Thank you,” said Arthur. “Nina,” he went on, after a moment’s consideration, “do you think Lettice knows it all as clearly as you do?”“It is her own fault if she doesn’t,” said Nina, which for her was an unusually bitter speech.“She has had just as much opportunity as I have had for hearing the whole, except that, perhaps,”—and she hesitated a moment—“perhaps that from Philip Dexter I have heard more than she about how good Uncle Ingram is, through Uncle Ingram’s having married his aunt, you know. But, Arthur, if peoplewillsee things only one way—and Lettice can turn it so, when she talks about it she almost makes me feel as if it would be wrong andmeanto look at it any other way.”“I know,” said Arthur, with a still deeper sigh than Nina’s had been. And, indeed, poor boy, hedidknow. His next remark surprised his sister. “I wonder,” he said, “I wonder papa disliked the idea of business.”“Arthur!” she exclaimed.“I do. I’m in earnest. There is nothing I should like so much. Nina, promise, swear you won’t tell any one,” he went on boyishly but earnestly, “if I tell you the truth. I would have givenanythingto accept that offer. I have no wish to go into the army. I don’t think I’m a coward, but the life has no attraction for me. I’ve seen so much of the other side of it. I used to think, when papa was alive, I should like it. But now—I’m not clever, Nina. I’m awfully behind-hand in several of the subjects I shall have to be examined in; and oh, Nina, the very thought of an examination makes my blood run cold. IknowI shall fail, and—”“But why—oh, why, Arthur, did you not say all this before?” cried Nina, pale with distress.“Idarednot, that’s the truth. I’m a moral coward, if you like. I did not realise it so strongly till Godfrey told me of Uncle Ingram’s offer, and then I felt how I should like business. I think I have asortof cleverness that would suit it. I am what is called practical and methodical, and I should like the intercourse with different countries, and theinterestof it. I suppose Grandfather Morison’s tastes have come out in me. And I should like making money for all of you and for Auriol, who is sure to be a soldier. But, Nina, Idarenot tell Lettice. Think of all she would say—that I was false to papa, that I was throwing away the expensive education that has been so difficult to manage; all sorts of bitter things. No, Idarenot. I have tried, and even at the least hint of misgiving, that I was not fit for the army—oh, Nina, I saw what it would be. No, I must go through with it till the day that I go up for the examination, and am—”“What?” said Nina.“Spun, hopelessly.”“But you will have other chances?”“I can’t face them. Ifeelthat I could never face it again. Even now I dream of it with a sort of horror,” said the poor boy, raising his delicate, haggard face. “AndifI fail. Oh, Nina, sometimes I think I shall drown myself.”“Arthur, Arthur, don’t speak like that,” said Nina imploringly. “ShallItell Lettice? I will if you like—if you are sure, quite sure of what you say.”Arthur laid his hand on her arm. “No, no, Nina. You must promise to tell no one. I must see. Perhaps I may get on better. Mr Downe thinks I should pass if only I were less nervous. Any way, we must wait a while. If it getstoobad I will tell you first of all, and ask you to tell Lettice.”“And we shall see you again soon. It is April now. You will be with us all the summer. Oh, Arthur, I do hope things will go on quietly, and that Lettice will not oppose Godfrey any more. They are both so determined.”“But he has right on his side.”“Yes, I know. But you know, Arthur, she will be of age in less than a year, and then if she chooses to defy our guardians it may come to our being all separated. For think how many years it will be before the little ones are of age.”“Lettice would never do that,” said Arthur. “In the bottom of her heart she knows she must give in. And she loves us all too much to go too far.”“Of course I know how she loves us. Only too much,” said Nina. “I wonder if it would not have been better if we had had no guardians? We should have got on very well, I dare say.”“Nina,” said Arthur solemnly, “mark my words. If there had been no one to keep her in check, Lettice would have grown more and more self-willed, and I don’t know what would have become of us. Better far have all the discomfort of the last week or two than have risked anything like that.”“If I thought it were over!” said Nina. “But you don’t know how I dread our life at Faxleham, and still worse that lady. I don’t know what to call her, for she can’t be called our governess.”“Chaperone,” suggested Arthur.“I suppose so. But isn’t it awful to think of her?”Arthur could scarcely keep from laughing.“I think that part of it would be rather fun,” he said. “I hope—though I’m by no means sure of it, mind you—but I hope she’ll still be there when I come, that I may see the skirmishing between her and Lettice.”“If it isn’t she, it’ll be some one else,” said Nina in a depressed tone. “Godfrey Auriol said it would be impossible—absolutely unheard of—for us to live alone as Lettice wanted. Oh, Arthur, I wish you weren’t going away;” and poor Nina, allowing herself for once the indulgence of giving way to her own feelings regardless of those of others, threw her arms round her boy-brother’s neck and burst into tears. And though Arthur did his best to console her, it was, though not precisely from the same cause, with sad enough hearts that the brother and sister lay down to sleep that night.There had been much to try them since the day that Godfrey Auriol, with nothing but good will in his heart to his young relatives, had left his smoke-dried chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, where frost and fog were still having it their own way, and came “over the sea” to the sunny brilliant south, intent on advising and assisting the sad little group. He had found things very different from what he expected, and he had gone back again depressed and dispirited, doubtful, though he had manfully stood out for victory, if he had gone the right way about it, more perplexed and disgusted with himself than he ever remembered to have been before. For he was in every sense of the word a very successful man. Starting in life with little but a good old name and a clear and well-stocked head, he was already far on the way to competency. He was made much of in whatever society he entered; he was used to being looked up to and having his opinion and advice asked. He had not married, had scarcely ever been in love—never to a fatal extent—and had acquired a habit of thinking that women were not to be too seriously considered one way or the other. “Take them the right way,” and there was never any trouble to be feared. And now when it came to the test he had ignominiously failed. For though Lettice had been obliged to give in, it had been, as she took care to tell him, only to the extent to which shewasobliged to do so—not a jot further. And he had an uncomfortable, an exaggerated idea that he had been rough—what the French call “brutal”—to her.“To her, my own cousin, and an orphan, too, whom I was prepared to care for like a sister—yes, like a sister, that first night when she seemed so sweet and gentle. And to think of the things we have said to each other since!” thought poor Godfrey, during his long solitary journey back again to whence he had come.If Lettice could have seen into his heart I think she would have been moved to regret. And she had been very unreasonable. The “intentions” of which she had spoken no relation or guardian in the world could have approved of.“We do not wish to return to England,” she told Godfrey calmly. “I want to spend the summer, while it is too hot here, in travelling about, and next winter we shall come back here again.”“And under whose care?” Mr Auriol asked quietly.“Mine,” said Lettice, rearing her head. “Of course we have old Bertha, who will never leave us. But I am quite old enough to take care of my brothers and sisters.”“Youmay think so.Idon’t,” he replied drily. “Besides, it is not altogether a question of age. If you were married—”“I shall never marry.”“Indeed!” Mr Auriol observed with the utmost politeness. “But that, excuse me, is a matter for your private consideration, in no way interfering with what I was saying. If, for supposition’s sake, you, or let us say Nina, who is still younger,”—and he turned to Nina with a smile which somehow made the colour rise in her cheeks—“ifNinawere married to a reliable sort of man, there would be nothing against your all living together if you chose.”“Provided the brother-in-law approved, which, in his place,Iwouldn’t,” observed Arthur, in an aside.“But as things are, why, five, ten years hence even, you could not keep house without a chaperone,” said Mr Auriol in conclusion, as if the matter were not open to a question.A very short time before he left, Godfrey told them what he proposed as to their future home.“I have a letter I should like to read to you,” he said to Lettice. His tone and manner seemed to her exceedingly cold; the truth was that he was most uncomfortably constrained.“Certainly,” she replied. “Do you wish me to call Nina?”“Perhaps it would be as well,” said Mr Auriol.And when Nina came he read to them the description that had been sent to him of a small house a few hours’ distance from town, which seemed to him just what was wanted.“The neighbourhood is very pretty, and there is an excellent school for Auriol, in the small town of Garford, at half-an-hour’s distance. And there are some nice families in the neighbourhood to whom I—to whom introductions could easily be got.”“In our deep mourning,” said Lettice icily, “nothing of that kind need be taken into consideration. Besides,” she added, “if you think us so exceedingly childish and unreasonable, I should say the fewer acquaintances we make the better.”“Lettice, oh, please don’t,” said Nina imploringly.But Lettice had “hardened her heart.”“Wemust goto that place,” she said afterwards to Nina; “we cannot help ourselves. For my part I feel perfectly indifferent as to where we live. It is like a choice of prisons—simple endurance for the time being. It is like taking medicine. I will take it because Imust; but I’m not going to have it dressed up with sugar-plums and pretend it’s nice.”“But what do you mean by ‘for the time being’?” asked Nina timidly.To this Lettice would not reply; perhaps, though she would not own it, her ideas were really vague on the subject.Arthur had to be up early the morning he left; and, thanks to their late talk the night before, Nina overslept herself, and Lettice, seeing her looking so tired and pale, had not the heart to wake her. She looked pale and heavy-eyed herself when Arthur found her waiting to give him his breakfast, and he felt sorry for her, and perhaps a little conscience-smitten for some of the things he had said of her.“We shall see you again beforeverylong,” she said; “for surely no difficulty will be put in the way of your spending your holidays with us.”“Of course not. Who would dream of such a thing?” he said.“I don’t know,” replied Lettice wearily; “everything has gone so strangely. I ask myself what next?”“Lettice,” said Arthur simply, “don’t exaggerate; but, to make sure, I will speak of it to Godfrey.”“Better you than I, certainly.”“He likes Nina very much,” went on Arthur innocently, almost as if thinking aloud. “And he thinks her so very pretty.”“Does he? Did he say so?” said Lettice quickly; and a curious expression, which Arthur did not observe, passed over her face.“Oh, ever so many times. He thinks her almost an angel, I believe;” and Lettice would have liked to hear more, but there was no time.“Arthur, you will do your best, will you not?” were her last whispered words to her brother. “Remember, if you don’t succeed, it will break my heart; and I believe,” in a still lower voice, “it would have broken papa’s and mamma’s.”A look of intense pain came into the poor boy’s eyes, and he did not speak. Then with sudden resolution he turned to his sister.“Yes,” he said, though his voice was unlike itself, “I will domy best.”
“Good nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human; to forgive, divine.”Pope.
“Good nature and good sense must ever join;To err is human; to forgive, divine.”Pope.
It was the last evening of the young Morisons being all together at the Villa Martine, for Arthur was returning to England the following day. And a fortnight or so later, the sisters and little Auriol, under the convoy of old Bertha, were to follow him there. Lettice had gone early to her room. She was worn out, though she would not allow it, with all she had gone through during the last week or two. And since Mr Auriol had left, she had put less constraint on herself; she no longer felt the necessity of calling pride to her aid.
“I am so dreadfully sorry for Lettice,” said Nina, as she and Arthur were sitting together unwilling, though it was already late, to lose any of their few remaining hours.
“So am I,” said Arthur. “But I am sorry for ourselves too, Nina. There is no doubt that all our troubles are very much aggravated by Lettice.”
“Arthur!” exclaimed Nina. “What do you mean? How could we ever get on without her?”
“Oh, I know all that,” said the boy—for boy he still was, though nearly seventeen—weariedly.
“I know she is very good, and devoted, and clever, too; but, Nina, if she were but less obstinate and self-willed, how much happier—at least, how much less unhappy—we should be! If she had taken the advice of Godfrey Auriol, and made friends with our uncle—knowing, too, that mother wished it! Of course, I won’t allow to Godfrey that I disagree with her; at all costs, as you and I determined, we must keep together. But it is a terrible pity.”
“I don’t, however, see that for the present it makes very much difference, and in time Lettice may change.”
“Too late, perhaps,” said Arthur moodily. “Itisjust now that I think itdoesmake such a miserable difference;” and as Nina looked up, with surprise and some alarm, and was just going to ask him to explain himself, he added hastily, as if eager to change the subject, “Do you know the whole story, Nina—the story of the old quarrel between my father and his family? I have heard it, I suppose; but I have got confused about it, though I didn’t like to let Godfrey see that I was so. Lettice has always been so violent about it, so determined that there was only the one way of looking at it, that it was no use asking her. And just these last days it has dawned upon me that I know very little about it. I have accepted it as a sort of legend that was not to be questioned.”
“I don’t know that there is very much to tell—not of actual facts,” said Nina. “Of course, it was all complicated by personal feeling, as such things always are. Mamma told me all; and lately, as you know, she regretted very much having not tried more to bring papa and his brother together. He, our uncle, was perfectly blameless, he was fifteen years younger than papa. Papa, you know, was grandpapa’s only son by his first marriage. His mother died young, and he, as he often said himself, was dreadfully spoilt. His father married again when he was about twelve; and though his stepmother was very good and nice, he was determined never to like her, and set himself against whatever she said, and fancied she influenced grandpapa very often, when very likely she did not. Grandpapa was in business, as, of course, you know, and very much respected, and very successful. He was of very respectable ancestry. His people had been farmers, but not at allgrand. And he was the sort of man to be proud of having made his own way, and to despise those who tried to be above their real position. He had always determined that papa should follow him in his business; but, as might have been expected from a spoilt boy, papawouldn’t; nothing would please him but going into the army.”
“Yes, I know that part of it,” said Arthur.
“There must have been stormy scenes and most miserable discussions. Any way, it ended in papa’s running away and enlisting, which by people of grandpapa’s class was thought a terrible disgrace. Then grandpapa vowed he would disinherit him, and he made a will, putting his little son Ingram entirely in papa’s place, and giving papa only a very small fortune. Andalwayspapa persisted in believing that this was his stepmother’s doing, though mamma has often told me they had no sort of proof, not evenprobability, that it was so. And the way she acted afterwards certainly did not seem as if she were selfish or scheming.”
“But,” interrupted Arthur, “all this has nothing to do withmamma, and she always said it was about her.”
“Well, listen,” said Nina. “Time went on. Papa behaved splendidly, and as soon as it waspossiblehe got a commission. And a year or two after that, he became engaged to mamma, who was the daughter of a very poor and very proud captain in the regiment. Captain Auriol, our other grandfather, likedpapa, but could not bear his being connected with any one in trade; and when he gave his consent to the marriage, he said, I believe, that he would not have done so had papa been in his father’s business, and that he liked him all the better for being no longer his father’s heir. Somehow papa’s stepmother got to hear of this engagement, and, knowing how poor mamma was, and thinking papa would be feeling softened and anxious about his future, she tried to bring about a reconciliation. Mamma, before she died, had come to feel sure the poor woman did her best. She got grandpapa—Grandpapa Morison—to write to papa, recognising his bravery as a soldier, and speaking of his engagement, and offering to reinstate him in his old position if he would now allow that he had had enough of soldiering, and would enter the business. He even said that, if he wouldnotdo so, he would still receive him again—him and his wife when he should be married—and make better provision for him if he would express sorrow for the grief and disappointment he had caused him in the past. This part of the letter must have been injudiciously worded.Somethingwas said of mamma’s poverty, which her father and she herself took offence at, when papa showed it them, and consulted them about it—not that he for a moment dreamt of giving up his profession; but hewassoftened, and would have been glad to be friends again. Only, unfortunately, they took it the other way, and he wrote back a letter, under Grandpapa Auriol’s direction, which offended his father so deeply that things were far worse than before. And it was for this that poor mamma always blamed herself, and this was why she said it was for her sake papa had quarrelled with his family. It came to be true, to some extent; for Grandpapa Morison after that always put all the blame on her, and spoke of her very unkindly, which came to papa’s ears, and made him furious. And when his father died, a few years afterwards, he was surprised to find that even a small portion had still been left to him; and I don’t believe he would ever have taken it, poor as he was, but for a message that was sent him with the news of his father’s death, that poor grandpapa had left him his blessing before he died.Ibelieve that he had to thank his stepmother for this, though she did not appear in it. She must have been frightened, poor thing, and no wonder. So the only communication was through the lawyer. And that, I think,” said Nina, with a sigh, “is about all there is to tell.”
“Thank you,” said Arthur. “Nina,” he went on, after a moment’s consideration, “do you think Lettice knows it all as clearly as you do?”
“It is her own fault if she doesn’t,” said Nina, which for her was an unusually bitter speech.
“She has had just as much opportunity as I have had for hearing the whole, except that, perhaps,”—and she hesitated a moment—“perhaps that from Philip Dexter I have heard more than she about how good Uncle Ingram is, through Uncle Ingram’s having married his aunt, you know. But, Arthur, if peoplewillsee things only one way—and Lettice can turn it so, when she talks about it she almost makes me feel as if it would be wrong andmeanto look at it any other way.”
“I know,” said Arthur, with a still deeper sigh than Nina’s had been. And, indeed, poor boy, hedidknow. His next remark surprised his sister. “I wonder,” he said, “I wonder papa disliked the idea of business.”
“Arthur!” she exclaimed.
“I do. I’m in earnest. There is nothing I should like so much. Nina, promise, swear you won’t tell any one,” he went on boyishly but earnestly, “if I tell you the truth. I would have givenanythingto accept that offer. I have no wish to go into the army. I don’t think I’m a coward, but the life has no attraction for me. I’ve seen so much of the other side of it. I used to think, when papa was alive, I should like it. But now—I’m not clever, Nina. I’m awfully behind-hand in several of the subjects I shall have to be examined in; and oh, Nina, the very thought of an examination makes my blood run cold. IknowI shall fail, and—”
“But why—oh, why, Arthur, did you not say all this before?” cried Nina, pale with distress.
“Idarednot, that’s the truth. I’m a moral coward, if you like. I did not realise it so strongly till Godfrey told me of Uncle Ingram’s offer, and then I felt how I should like business. I think I have asortof cleverness that would suit it. I am what is called practical and methodical, and I should like the intercourse with different countries, and theinterestof it. I suppose Grandfather Morison’s tastes have come out in me. And I should like making money for all of you and for Auriol, who is sure to be a soldier. But, Nina, Idarenot tell Lettice. Think of all she would say—that I was false to papa, that I was throwing away the expensive education that has been so difficult to manage; all sorts of bitter things. No, Idarenot. I have tried, and even at the least hint of misgiving, that I was not fit for the army—oh, Nina, I saw what it would be. No, I must go through with it till the day that I go up for the examination, and am—”
“What?” said Nina.
“Spun, hopelessly.”
“But you will have other chances?”
“I can’t face them. Ifeelthat I could never face it again. Even now I dream of it with a sort of horror,” said the poor boy, raising his delicate, haggard face. “AndifI fail. Oh, Nina, sometimes I think I shall drown myself.”
“Arthur, Arthur, don’t speak like that,” said Nina imploringly. “ShallItell Lettice? I will if you like—if you are sure, quite sure of what you say.”
Arthur laid his hand on her arm. “No, no, Nina. You must promise to tell no one. I must see. Perhaps I may get on better. Mr Downe thinks I should pass if only I were less nervous. Any way, we must wait a while. If it getstoobad I will tell you first of all, and ask you to tell Lettice.”
“And we shall see you again soon. It is April now. You will be with us all the summer. Oh, Arthur, I do hope things will go on quietly, and that Lettice will not oppose Godfrey any more. They are both so determined.”
“But he has right on his side.”
“Yes, I know. But you know, Arthur, she will be of age in less than a year, and then if she chooses to defy our guardians it may come to our being all separated. For think how many years it will be before the little ones are of age.”
“Lettice would never do that,” said Arthur. “In the bottom of her heart she knows she must give in. And she loves us all too much to go too far.”
“Of course I know how she loves us. Only too much,” said Nina. “I wonder if it would not have been better if we had had no guardians? We should have got on very well, I dare say.”
“Nina,” said Arthur solemnly, “mark my words. If there had been no one to keep her in check, Lettice would have grown more and more self-willed, and I don’t know what would have become of us. Better far have all the discomfort of the last week or two than have risked anything like that.”
“If I thought it were over!” said Nina. “But you don’t know how I dread our life at Faxleham, and still worse that lady. I don’t know what to call her, for she can’t be called our governess.”
“Chaperone,” suggested Arthur.
“I suppose so. But isn’t it awful to think of her?”
Arthur could scarcely keep from laughing.
“I think that part of it would be rather fun,” he said. “I hope—though I’m by no means sure of it, mind you—but I hope she’ll still be there when I come, that I may see the skirmishing between her and Lettice.”
“If it isn’t she, it’ll be some one else,” said Nina in a depressed tone. “Godfrey Auriol said it would be impossible—absolutely unheard of—for us to live alone as Lettice wanted. Oh, Arthur, I wish you weren’t going away;” and poor Nina, allowing herself for once the indulgence of giving way to her own feelings regardless of those of others, threw her arms round her boy-brother’s neck and burst into tears. And though Arthur did his best to console her, it was, though not precisely from the same cause, with sad enough hearts that the brother and sister lay down to sleep that night.
There had been much to try them since the day that Godfrey Auriol, with nothing but good will in his heart to his young relatives, had left his smoke-dried chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, where frost and fog were still having it their own way, and came “over the sea” to the sunny brilliant south, intent on advising and assisting the sad little group. He had found things very different from what he expected, and he had gone back again depressed and dispirited, doubtful, though he had manfully stood out for victory, if he had gone the right way about it, more perplexed and disgusted with himself than he ever remembered to have been before. For he was in every sense of the word a very successful man. Starting in life with little but a good old name and a clear and well-stocked head, he was already far on the way to competency. He was made much of in whatever society he entered; he was used to being looked up to and having his opinion and advice asked. He had not married, had scarcely ever been in love—never to a fatal extent—and had acquired a habit of thinking that women were not to be too seriously considered one way or the other. “Take them the right way,” and there was never any trouble to be feared. And now when it came to the test he had ignominiously failed. For though Lettice had been obliged to give in, it had been, as she took care to tell him, only to the extent to which shewasobliged to do so—not a jot further. And he had an uncomfortable, an exaggerated idea that he had been rough—what the French call “brutal”—to her.
“To her, my own cousin, and an orphan, too, whom I was prepared to care for like a sister—yes, like a sister, that first night when she seemed so sweet and gentle. And to think of the things we have said to each other since!” thought poor Godfrey, during his long solitary journey back again to whence he had come.
If Lettice could have seen into his heart I think she would have been moved to regret. And she had been very unreasonable. The “intentions” of which she had spoken no relation or guardian in the world could have approved of.
“We do not wish to return to England,” she told Godfrey calmly. “I want to spend the summer, while it is too hot here, in travelling about, and next winter we shall come back here again.”
“And under whose care?” Mr Auriol asked quietly.
“Mine,” said Lettice, rearing her head. “Of course we have old Bertha, who will never leave us. But I am quite old enough to take care of my brothers and sisters.”
“Youmay think so.Idon’t,” he replied drily. “Besides, it is not altogether a question of age. If you were married—”
“I shall never marry.”
“Indeed!” Mr Auriol observed with the utmost politeness. “But that, excuse me, is a matter for your private consideration, in no way interfering with what I was saying. If, for supposition’s sake, you, or let us say Nina, who is still younger,”—and he turned to Nina with a smile which somehow made the colour rise in her cheeks—“ifNinawere married to a reliable sort of man, there would be nothing against your all living together if you chose.”
“Provided the brother-in-law approved, which, in his place,Iwouldn’t,” observed Arthur, in an aside.
“But as things are, why, five, ten years hence even, you could not keep house without a chaperone,” said Mr Auriol in conclusion, as if the matter were not open to a question.
A very short time before he left, Godfrey told them what he proposed as to their future home.
“I have a letter I should like to read to you,” he said to Lettice. His tone and manner seemed to her exceedingly cold; the truth was that he was most uncomfortably constrained.
“Certainly,” she replied. “Do you wish me to call Nina?”
“Perhaps it would be as well,” said Mr Auriol.
And when Nina came he read to them the description that had been sent to him of a small house a few hours’ distance from town, which seemed to him just what was wanted.
“The neighbourhood is very pretty, and there is an excellent school for Auriol, in the small town of Garford, at half-an-hour’s distance. And there are some nice families in the neighbourhood to whom I—to whom introductions could easily be got.”
“In our deep mourning,” said Lettice icily, “nothing of that kind need be taken into consideration. Besides,” she added, “if you think us so exceedingly childish and unreasonable, I should say the fewer acquaintances we make the better.”
“Lettice, oh, please don’t,” said Nina imploringly.
But Lettice had “hardened her heart.”
“Wemust goto that place,” she said afterwards to Nina; “we cannot help ourselves. For my part I feel perfectly indifferent as to where we live. It is like a choice of prisons—simple endurance for the time being. It is like taking medicine. I will take it because Imust; but I’m not going to have it dressed up with sugar-plums and pretend it’s nice.”
“But what do you mean by ‘for the time being’?” asked Nina timidly.
To this Lettice would not reply; perhaps, though she would not own it, her ideas were really vague on the subject.
Arthur had to be up early the morning he left; and, thanks to their late talk the night before, Nina overslept herself, and Lettice, seeing her looking so tired and pale, had not the heart to wake her. She looked pale and heavy-eyed herself when Arthur found her waiting to give him his breakfast, and he felt sorry for her, and perhaps a little conscience-smitten for some of the things he had said of her.
“We shall see you again beforeverylong,” she said; “for surely no difficulty will be put in the way of your spending your holidays with us.”
“Of course not. Who would dream of such a thing?” he said.
“I don’t know,” replied Lettice wearily; “everything has gone so strangely. I ask myself what next?”
“Lettice,” said Arthur simply, “don’t exaggerate; but, to make sure, I will speak of it to Godfrey.”
“Better you than I, certainly.”
“He likes Nina very much,” went on Arthur innocently, almost as if thinking aloud. “And he thinks her so very pretty.”
“Does he? Did he say so?” said Lettice quickly; and a curious expression, which Arthur did not observe, passed over her face.
“Oh, ever so many times. He thinks her almost an angel, I believe;” and Lettice would have liked to hear more, but there was no time.
“Arthur, you will do your best, will you not?” were her last whispered words to her brother. “Remember, if you don’t succeed, it will break my heart; and I believe,” in a still lower voice, “it would have broken papa’s and mamma’s.”
A look of intense pain came into the poor boy’s eyes, and he did not speak. Then with sudden resolution he turned to his sister.
“Yes,” he said, though his voice was unlike itself, “I will domy best.”
Chapter Five.A Change in the Barometer.“Give her a word, good or bad, and she’d spin such a web from the hint,And colour a meaningless phrase with so vivid a lint.”Hilda.It was a lovely evening when the little party arrived at their destination. Many people had noticed them during their long journey, the two pretty sisters and the children, with no one but their old servant to take care of them; for their deep mourning told its own story. Many a kindly heart thought pityingly of them, and sent silent good wishes with them on their way.There had been some talk of their staying a day or two in London, in which case Mr Auriol would have met them. But this Lettice, the ruling spirit, vetoed.“Let us get straight to that place,” she said, “and have it over.”What she meant Nina did not very well understand. She supposed her to refer to the meeting with Miss Branksome, the lady-companion, or “chaperone,” whom Mr Auriol had engaged, and who was to await them at Faxleham Cottage. Nina herself was not without some anticipatory awe of this person, but it was tempered by a strong feeling of pity. And once, when she alluded to her in speaking to Lettice, she was almost amazed to find that her sister shared the latter.“Poor woman!” said Lettice gravely, “she has undertaken a hard task. I could almost find it in my heart to be sorry for her.”Nina could not help smiling as she replied, “But it need not be a hard task, Lettice; not—not unlesswemake it so for her.”“False positions are always hard,” said Lettice oracularly. “She is coming to take care of us, and we don’t want or need to be taken care of.”Then, a moment after, she surprised Nina by asking her to write to Mr Auriol to tell him when they were starting, and when they expected to reach Faxleham, as she had promised to let him know.“I am so tired,” she said, which was an unusual confession, “and I should be so glad if you would do it for me. Besides, he likes you so much better than me; he will be pleased to get a letter from you.”“I don’t think he really likes me better,” said Nina innocently. “I am not clever enough for him. If he had met you—differently—I am sure he would have liked you best.”Lettice did not answer. But a moment or two later, as she was leaving the room, she spoke again on the same subject.“You’ll let me see your letter before you send it, won’t you?” she said. “Don’t be afraid that I shall be vexed if you write cordially. I don’t want him to think us ungrateful. It isn’thisfault.”Nina could scarcely believe her ears. What could be coming ever Lettice? She wished Arthur were at hand to talk over this wonderful change, which she felt completely unable to explain. But it was not Nina’s “way” to trouble or perplex herself about problems which, as she said to herself, would probably sooner or later solve themselves. In this, as in most other characteristics, she was a complete contrast to her sister.She wrote the letter—a pretty, girlish, almost affectionate little letter it was—and brought it to Lettice for approval. The elder sister read it, smiling once or twice in a manner that would have puzzled Nina had she been given to puzzling.“Yes,” said Lettice, “it will do very well;” and she was turning away, when Nina stopped her.“Lettice,” she began.“Well?”“I wanted to tell you—yesterday, when I was out with Bertha, we—I—met Mr Dexter. It is the first time I have seen him since our—our mourning.”“I think it was very inconsiderate of him to speak to you in the street,” said Lettice. “Here, too, where everything one does is observed.”“It was only for one instant,” said Nina, appealingly. “He asked me to tell you—they are leaving to-morrow morning—to tell you that he will call this evening to say good-bye, and he hopes he may see us.”Lettice’s face had grown harder.“I thought they were already gone,” she said, as if speaking to herself. Then second thoughts intervened. “I suppose we must see him. I don’t want to be rude. Besides, he is a friend of Godfrey’s. Yes; perhaps you had better tell Marianne that if he calls she can let him in.”The permission was not too gracious, but it was more than Nina had hoped for.“It is evidently for Godfrey’s sake,” she reflected. “And yet, when he was here, Lettice was so seldom the least pleasant to him.”Philip did call. He was nervous, and yet with a certain determination about him that impressed Lettice in spite of herself, and she felt exceedingly glad to hear him repeat that he and his sister were leaving the next morning.“I shall look forward to seeing you again, before very long, in England,” he said manfully, as he got up to go.“I don’t know much about our plans,” said Lettice, and her tone was not encouraging. “We have only taken a house for the summer. I don’t know what we shall do then.”“Faxleham is not so very far from my part of the country,” said Philip.“Is it not?” said Lettice suspiciously; and she looked at Mr Dexter in a way that made the young man’s face flush slightly. He was one of those fair-complexioned men who change colour almost as quickly as a girl, and whose good looks are to themselves entirely destroyed by their persistent boyishness. At five and twenty he looked little more than nineteen.“But I am not likely to be there for the next twelve months,” he continued coldly, and with a certain dignity. “My place has been let for some years, and the lease will not expire till the spring. No; if I see you at Faxleham or elsewhere I must come expressly.”He looked at Lettice and she at him. It was a tacit throwing down of the gauntlet on his part, and angry as she felt, it yet made her respect the young man whom hitherto she had spoken of so contemptuously as a boy. She bade him good-bye with courtesy, not to say friendliness, much to Nina’s relief, and even carried her attention so far as to accompany him to the door, talking busily all the time of the details of his journey, so that, as she flattered herself, there was no opportunity for any last words between him and her sister. And as she went upstairs, where Bertha was already beginning the packing—such a sad packing! the hundred and one little possessions of their mother to cry over and wonder what to do with—all the bright-coloured belongings with which, full of the hopefulness of inexperienced youth, they had left England in the autumn, to consign to the bottom of the trunks and wish they could be put out of sight for ever—she said to herself, not without self-congratulation at her perspicacity, that it was evidently time forthatto be put a stop to. And she would have been strengthened in her opinion had she known that at that very moment Nina, leaning sadly on the balcony—shehad not gone to the door with Philip—was cheered by the sight of his face, as, passing up the street instead of down, certainly not the nearest way to his home, he stood still for a moment on the chance of seeing her again, and, lifting his hat, called out softly, not “goodbye” but “au revoir.”Lettice wondered at Nina’s good spirits that evening.“Evidently she does not, as yet, care much about him. She was so very young when she first met him—how unfortunate it was!—and was, no doubt, flattered by his attention. But shecannotbut see how superior Godfrey Auriol is—how much more of aman—and then by-and-by it will be easy to suggest how mother would have liked it. One of her own name, and altogether so closely connected with her!”And the imaginary castle in the air which Lettice had constructed for her sister’s happiness assumed more and more imposing and attractive proportions. Lettice had such faith in herself as an architect; she knew so much better than people themselves the sort of castle theyshouldlive and be happy in.So that, onherside, Nina wondered at Lettice’s improved spirits during the last few days at Esparto, and even through the journey. For, besides the other recommendations of the project she had built upon such slender foundations, Lettice felt that there was a good deal of magnanimity in herself for approving of and encouraging such an idea.“It shows I amnotprejudiced,” she said to herself with satisfaction. “And if dear mamma could but know it, she would see how ready I am to sacrifice any personal feelings of mine whenherswould have been concerned. For, of course, though Godfrey is not actually connected with the Morisons, he has entirely ranged himself on their side.”We have wandered a long way from the evening of the arrival at Faxleham, but perhaps it was necessary to explain how it came to pass that the outer sunshine was matched by greater inward serenity than might, all things considered, have been expected.It was, as I said, a most lovely evening. The drive from the station at Garford was through pretty country lanes, where the hedges were at their freshest, untouched as yet by summer dust, and the wild roses and honeysuckle were already in bud, giving promise of their later beauty. And to the young travellers, after their several months’ absence in different scenery, the sweet, homely beauty of their own country was very attractive.“Is it not pretty? So peaceful and yet bright! Just think how mamma would have liked it!” exclaimed Nina; and, though Lettice did not speak, she pressed her sister’s hand sympathisingly.The children, of course, were in ecstasies, though once or twice they glanced up at Lettice, half ashamed of their own delight; but she smiled back at them so kindly that they were quickly reassured; and a whisper which she overheard of Lotty’s gave her greater pleasure than she could have expressed.“Lettice is getting like mamma,” the child said. “When she is so kind, she always makes me think of mamma.”And Lettice always was kind when she felt thoroughly pleased with herself, as she did just now. If only her foundation had been the rock of real principle, and not the sands of passing moods and impulses!“Don’t you think, Lettice,” said Nina, in a low voice, venturing a little further—“don’t you think we are going to be happy—at least, peaceful—here?”Lettice had not the heart to repulse her.“I shall be very glad, dear, if you feel so,” she said, “and I am sure I want to make the best of things. If—if there were not that unhappy Miss Branksome looming in the distance—in the nearness, rather! I know exactly what she will be like. I know those decayed gentlewomen so well. Tall and lank and starved-looking, always having headaches and nerves, and tears in her eyes for nothing, and yet everlastingly interfering. Of course, she must interfere. It’s her business; it’s what she’s there for.”But before Nina had time to reply, the carriage stopped. They had reached their destination.Faxleham Cottage was what its name implied—a real cottage. It had no drive or “approach,” save the simple, old-fashioned little footpath, leading from the garden-gate to the wide, low porch entrance. But unpretending as it was, an exclamation of pleasure broke involuntarily from the lips of its new tenants, as they stepped out of the carriage and entered the sweet, trim, and yet luxuriant little garden, gay with early flowers, not a weed to be seen, bright and smiling in the soft evening sunlight.Lettice, too, felt the pleasant influence.“How I wish mamma could see it!” was her unspoken thought. “If it wereshewho was to welcome us instead of—” And as she went forward she glanced before her apprehensively, half expecting to see realised the unattractive personage she had ingeniously constructed in her imagination.A lady was standing in the porch, and, as the new-comers came forward, she stepped out to meet them.“I am so glad to see you all safe,” she said in a bright, pleasant voice. “I must introduce myself, but you know who I am?”“Miss Branksome,” said Nina, always the ready one on such occasions, probably because her mind was never over occupied with herself or her own concerns. But, with her usual tact, she stepped back a very little, leaving Lettice, as the eldest, to shake hands first with the lady-companion.And Lettice, to her own surprise as she did so, found herself thinking, “How pretty she is! She is certainlynotlike a decayed gentlewoman.”Miss Branksome was very pretty; some people might think it better to say “had been,” for she was more than middle-aged; she was almost elderly. Her hair was perfectly white, and her soft face had the faint delicate pink flush that comes to fair complexions with age, so different from the brilliant roses of youth. Her eyes were bright, but very gentle in expression, and her figure was daintily small.“She looks like an old fairy,” Nina said afterwards, and the description was not a bad one.Everything that genuine kindliness, based on thorough good principle, and aided by great natural tact, could do to make the orphans feel as happy in their new home as was possible for them, was done by Miss Branksome that first evening. Even Lettice succumbed to the pleasant influence. It was new for her to be taken care of, even, as it were, petted, and it came so naturally to the bright, kind-hearted, active little woman to make everybody about her happy, or at least comfortable, that she could not help trying her hand on even the redoubtable Miss Morison, as to whom Mr Auriol had given her some salutary warning.“You must be so tired, my dears,” she said, with the smiles and tears struggling together at the same time, “I thought you would like tea better than anything; and perhaps—this first evening—would you like me to pour it out?”It was perfectly impossible to stand on one’s dignity or to keep up any prejudice with one so genuine and single-minded; and Nina’s heart was relieved of an immense weight when they all went to bed that night.For some time everything went better than could have been hoped. By dint of her simple goodness, by dint, perhaps, of in no way planning or scheming to get it, Miss Branksome unconsciously gained Lettice’s confidence; and when Mr Auriol came down to see his young charges two or three weeks after their arrival, he was most agreeably surprised by the happy state of things. Not being above human weakness, he could not help congratulating himself on the skill which he had displayed in an undoubtedly awkward situation, though, at the same time, he was only too ready to give credit to all concerned.“You have done marvels,” he said to Miss Branksome, who had been a friend of his from his childhood. “They all seem as fond of you as possible. Not that I had any fear for Nina or the little ones; only for—Lettice.”“And yet of all, she, I think, has most gained my heart,” said the little lady. “She is so thorough; there is nothing small or ungenerous about her. Nina is very sweet; but if there is any triumph for me, or satisfaction rather, it is certainly with regard to Lettice. I feel so sure of her. I cannot quite understand your having found her what you described. Are you sure—forgive me now, Godfrey—are you sure there was no sort of prejudice onyourside?” Godfrey’s face flushed.“None whatever,” he exclaimed. “I met her as free from prejudice, from any preconceived idea even, as was possible. And the first time I saw her I thought her as charming and gentle as she is personally attractive. It all came out when the question of the Morison feud was raised. It seemed to change her very nature. You have not come upon that as yet, I suppose?”“Not in the least. Of course I have no right to do so, unless she does; but she knows that I do not know her uncle and aunt, and that they do not know me. I think that has given me an advantage with her. At first I fancied she suspected, or was ready to suspect, that Mr and Mrs Morison had had to do with my being chosen, and I was glad to be able, indirectly, to let her see they had not.”Mr Auriol seemed lost in reflection.“I wonder when I should speak to her—to them all—about their uncle again,” he said at last. “He is so very anxious for some happier state of things, and he trusts to me to bring it about. Lettice could not be pleasanter than she is now, just like what she was at the very first. I wonder if I dare risk it?”“Not yet,” said Miss Branksome. “At least, that is my impression. Let her not think that you came down this time with any purpose except to see how they all are. Leave it all a little longer to her own good sense. She might commit herself to some decision she would afterwards be ashamed to withdraw from, if you spoke of it all again before she has had time thoroughly to consider it.”Mr Auriol shrugged his shoulders.“She has had time enough, it seems to me,” he said. “However, I know you are wiser than I.”Just at that moment Lettice and Nina joined them in the garden.“We are going to fetch Auriol home from school,” said Lettice. “Would you come with us?” she added, looking up at her cousin.“Certainly, with the greatest pleasure,” he said; and the three set off.But they had not gone far when Lettice stopped and hesitated.“If you won’t think me rude for changing my mind,” she said, “I think I would rather not go to-day. I want to write to Arthur.”Nina looked at her in surprise, and a slight look of annoyance crossed Mr Auriol’s face. But Lettice did not see it.“Of course it doesn’t matter,” said Nina good-naturedly. “But I don’t think you need be in such a very great hurry about writing to Arthur.”“I want to write to-night,” Lettice repeated, “and I know Mr Auriol won’t mind;” and she smiled so pleasantly that the annoyance left his face.“She is an odd girl,” he thought to himself. “However, it is as well perhaps that my walk is to betête-à-têtewith Nina and not with her. I might have been tempted to try the ground again in spite of Miss Branksome’s advice, and might have done more harm than good. With Nina I am quite safe.”And, so far as Nina was concerned, the result of their talk was perfectly satisfactory. It was with a more hopeful feeling than he had yet had on the subject that Mr Auriol re-entered the cottage on their return from the walk to Gardon. He and Nina stood for a moment in the porch—they did not notice that Lettice was at an open window above, whence she could clearly see them, and for a moment or two Godfrey stood with Nina’s hand in his, her fair face, in which was more colour than usual, raised towards him.“You may depend on me,” she said softly, “to do all I can. There is nothing—really nothing almost, that I wish so earnestly.”“I am sure of it,” said Godfrey. “Perhaps, indeed,” he added with a little hesitation, “I understand more about what you feel than you think. Not that I think you are selfish, dear Nina. I think you one of the most unselfish people I ever knew, and,”—he hesitated still more this time—“he will be a happy man who wins you.”Nina’s face was crimson by now. But she stood by her cousin a moment longer. He was leaving the next morning, and it might be her last chance of seeing him alone.“Then I am to do what I can, and, in a sort of way, to report progress. You will come down again in two or three weeks?”“Yes, and in the meantime I shall see Arthur;” and then he released her hand and she ran upstairs to take off her hat.“Have you had a nice walk, dear?” said Lettice, who was waiting in their room.“Very,” said Nina heartily.“I think you and Godfrey are getting to understand each other wonderfully,” lattice remarked.“Yes?” said Nina, with a happy little laugh.“I almost think so too;” and Lettice, observing the flush on her face, congratulated herself on her generalship.“She is evidently forgetting all about Philip Dexter,” she thought. “How pretty she looks! How nice it must be to be so sweet and attractive; not hard, and cold, and repellent, like me. But it isforcedon me.”And though she told herself things were going just as she wished, there was a little sigh in her heart as she kissed her sister on their way downstairs.
“Give her a word, good or bad, and she’d spin such a web from the hint,And colour a meaningless phrase with so vivid a lint.”Hilda.
“Give her a word, good or bad, and she’d spin such a web from the hint,And colour a meaningless phrase with so vivid a lint.”Hilda.
It was a lovely evening when the little party arrived at their destination. Many people had noticed them during their long journey, the two pretty sisters and the children, with no one but their old servant to take care of them; for their deep mourning told its own story. Many a kindly heart thought pityingly of them, and sent silent good wishes with them on their way.
There had been some talk of their staying a day or two in London, in which case Mr Auriol would have met them. But this Lettice, the ruling spirit, vetoed.
“Let us get straight to that place,” she said, “and have it over.”
What she meant Nina did not very well understand. She supposed her to refer to the meeting with Miss Branksome, the lady-companion, or “chaperone,” whom Mr Auriol had engaged, and who was to await them at Faxleham Cottage. Nina herself was not without some anticipatory awe of this person, but it was tempered by a strong feeling of pity. And once, when she alluded to her in speaking to Lettice, she was almost amazed to find that her sister shared the latter.
“Poor woman!” said Lettice gravely, “she has undertaken a hard task. I could almost find it in my heart to be sorry for her.”
Nina could not help smiling as she replied, “But it need not be a hard task, Lettice; not—not unlesswemake it so for her.”
“False positions are always hard,” said Lettice oracularly. “She is coming to take care of us, and we don’t want or need to be taken care of.”
Then, a moment after, she surprised Nina by asking her to write to Mr Auriol to tell him when they were starting, and when they expected to reach Faxleham, as she had promised to let him know.
“I am so tired,” she said, which was an unusual confession, “and I should be so glad if you would do it for me. Besides, he likes you so much better than me; he will be pleased to get a letter from you.”
“I don’t think he really likes me better,” said Nina innocently. “I am not clever enough for him. If he had met you—differently—I am sure he would have liked you best.”
Lettice did not answer. But a moment or two later, as she was leaving the room, she spoke again on the same subject.
“You’ll let me see your letter before you send it, won’t you?” she said. “Don’t be afraid that I shall be vexed if you write cordially. I don’t want him to think us ungrateful. It isn’thisfault.”
Nina could scarcely believe her ears. What could be coming ever Lettice? She wished Arthur were at hand to talk over this wonderful change, which she felt completely unable to explain. But it was not Nina’s “way” to trouble or perplex herself about problems which, as she said to herself, would probably sooner or later solve themselves. In this, as in most other characteristics, she was a complete contrast to her sister.
She wrote the letter—a pretty, girlish, almost affectionate little letter it was—and brought it to Lettice for approval. The elder sister read it, smiling once or twice in a manner that would have puzzled Nina had she been given to puzzling.
“Yes,” said Lettice, “it will do very well;” and she was turning away, when Nina stopped her.
“Lettice,” she began.
“Well?”
“I wanted to tell you—yesterday, when I was out with Bertha, we—I—met Mr Dexter. It is the first time I have seen him since our—our mourning.”
“I think it was very inconsiderate of him to speak to you in the street,” said Lettice. “Here, too, where everything one does is observed.”
“It was only for one instant,” said Nina, appealingly. “He asked me to tell you—they are leaving to-morrow morning—to tell you that he will call this evening to say good-bye, and he hopes he may see us.”
Lettice’s face had grown harder.
“I thought they were already gone,” she said, as if speaking to herself. Then second thoughts intervened. “I suppose we must see him. I don’t want to be rude. Besides, he is a friend of Godfrey’s. Yes; perhaps you had better tell Marianne that if he calls she can let him in.”
The permission was not too gracious, but it was more than Nina had hoped for.
“It is evidently for Godfrey’s sake,” she reflected. “And yet, when he was here, Lettice was so seldom the least pleasant to him.”
Philip did call. He was nervous, and yet with a certain determination about him that impressed Lettice in spite of herself, and she felt exceedingly glad to hear him repeat that he and his sister were leaving the next morning.
“I shall look forward to seeing you again, before very long, in England,” he said manfully, as he got up to go.
“I don’t know much about our plans,” said Lettice, and her tone was not encouraging. “We have only taken a house for the summer. I don’t know what we shall do then.”
“Faxleham is not so very far from my part of the country,” said Philip.
“Is it not?” said Lettice suspiciously; and she looked at Mr Dexter in a way that made the young man’s face flush slightly. He was one of those fair-complexioned men who change colour almost as quickly as a girl, and whose good looks are to themselves entirely destroyed by their persistent boyishness. At five and twenty he looked little more than nineteen.
“But I am not likely to be there for the next twelve months,” he continued coldly, and with a certain dignity. “My place has been let for some years, and the lease will not expire till the spring. No; if I see you at Faxleham or elsewhere I must come expressly.”
He looked at Lettice and she at him. It was a tacit throwing down of the gauntlet on his part, and angry as she felt, it yet made her respect the young man whom hitherto she had spoken of so contemptuously as a boy. She bade him good-bye with courtesy, not to say friendliness, much to Nina’s relief, and even carried her attention so far as to accompany him to the door, talking busily all the time of the details of his journey, so that, as she flattered herself, there was no opportunity for any last words between him and her sister. And as she went upstairs, where Bertha was already beginning the packing—such a sad packing! the hundred and one little possessions of their mother to cry over and wonder what to do with—all the bright-coloured belongings with which, full of the hopefulness of inexperienced youth, they had left England in the autumn, to consign to the bottom of the trunks and wish they could be put out of sight for ever—she said to herself, not without self-congratulation at her perspicacity, that it was evidently time forthatto be put a stop to. And she would have been strengthened in her opinion had she known that at that very moment Nina, leaning sadly on the balcony—shehad not gone to the door with Philip—was cheered by the sight of his face, as, passing up the street instead of down, certainly not the nearest way to his home, he stood still for a moment on the chance of seeing her again, and, lifting his hat, called out softly, not “goodbye” but “au revoir.”
Lettice wondered at Nina’s good spirits that evening.
“Evidently she does not, as yet, care much about him. She was so very young when she first met him—how unfortunate it was!—and was, no doubt, flattered by his attention. But shecannotbut see how superior Godfrey Auriol is—how much more of aman—and then by-and-by it will be easy to suggest how mother would have liked it. One of her own name, and altogether so closely connected with her!”
And the imaginary castle in the air which Lettice had constructed for her sister’s happiness assumed more and more imposing and attractive proportions. Lettice had such faith in herself as an architect; she knew so much better than people themselves the sort of castle theyshouldlive and be happy in.
So that, onherside, Nina wondered at Lettice’s improved spirits during the last few days at Esparto, and even through the journey. For, besides the other recommendations of the project she had built upon such slender foundations, Lettice felt that there was a good deal of magnanimity in herself for approving of and encouraging such an idea.
“It shows I amnotprejudiced,” she said to herself with satisfaction. “And if dear mamma could but know it, she would see how ready I am to sacrifice any personal feelings of mine whenherswould have been concerned. For, of course, though Godfrey is not actually connected with the Morisons, he has entirely ranged himself on their side.”
We have wandered a long way from the evening of the arrival at Faxleham, but perhaps it was necessary to explain how it came to pass that the outer sunshine was matched by greater inward serenity than might, all things considered, have been expected.
It was, as I said, a most lovely evening. The drive from the station at Garford was through pretty country lanes, where the hedges were at their freshest, untouched as yet by summer dust, and the wild roses and honeysuckle were already in bud, giving promise of their later beauty. And to the young travellers, after their several months’ absence in different scenery, the sweet, homely beauty of their own country was very attractive.
“Is it not pretty? So peaceful and yet bright! Just think how mamma would have liked it!” exclaimed Nina; and, though Lettice did not speak, she pressed her sister’s hand sympathisingly.
The children, of course, were in ecstasies, though once or twice they glanced up at Lettice, half ashamed of their own delight; but she smiled back at them so kindly that they were quickly reassured; and a whisper which she overheard of Lotty’s gave her greater pleasure than she could have expressed.
“Lettice is getting like mamma,” the child said. “When she is so kind, she always makes me think of mamma.”
And Lettice always was kind when she felt thoroughly pleased with herself, as she did just now. If only her foundation had been the rock of real principle, and not the sands of passing moods and impulses!
“Don’t you think, Lettice,” said Nina, in a low voice, venturing a little further—“don’t you think we are going to be happy—at least, peaceful—here?”
Lettice had not the heart to repulse her.
“I shall be very glad, dear, if you feel so,” she said, “and I am sure I want to make the best of things. If—if there were not that unhappy Miss Branksome looming in the distance—in the nearness, rather! I know exactly what she will be like. I know those decayed gentlewomen so well. Tall and lank and starved-looking, always having headaches and nerves, and tears in her eyes for nothing, and yet everlastingly interfering. Of course, she must interfere. It’s her business; it’s what she’s there for.”
But before Nina had time to reply, the carriage stopped. They had reached their destination.
Faxleham Cottage was what its name implied—a real cottage. It had no drive or “approach,” save the simple, old-fashioned little footpath, leading from the garden-gate to the wide, low porch entrance. But unpretending as it was, an exclamation of pleasure broke involuntarily from the lips of its new tenants, as they stepped out of the carriage and entered the sweet, trim, and yet luxuriant little garden, gay with early flowers, not a weed to be seen, bright and smiling in the soft evening sunlight.
Lettice, too, felt the pleasant influence.
“How I wish mamma could see it!” was her unspoken thought. “If it wereshewho was to welcome us instead of—” And as she went forward she glanced before her apprehensively, half expecting to see realised the unattractive personage she had ingeniously constructed in her imagination.
A lady was standing in the porch, and, as the new-comers came forward, she stepped out to meet them.
“I am so glad to see you all safe,” she said in a bright, pleasant voice. “I must introduce myself, but you know who I am?”
“Miss Branksome,” said Nina, always the ready one on such occasions, probably because her mind was never over occupied with herself or her own concerns. But, with her usual tact, she stepped back a very little, leaving Lettice, as the eldest, to shake hands first with the lady-companion.
And Lettice, to her own surprise as she did so, found herself thinking, “How pretty she is! She is certainlynotlike a decayed gentlewoman.”
Miss Branksome was very pretty; some people might think it better to say “had been,” for she was more than middle-aged; she was almost elderly. Her hair was perfectly white, and her soft face had the faint delicate pink flush that comes to fair complexions with age, so different from the brilliant roses of youth. Her eyes were bright, but very gentle in expression, and her figure was daintily small.
“She looks like an old fairy,” Nina said afterwards, and the description was not a bad one.
Everything that genuine kindliness, based on thorough good principle, and aided by great natural tact, could do to make the orphans feel as happy in their new home as was possible for them, was done by Miss Branksome that first evening. Even Lettice succumbed to the pleasant influence. It was new for her to be taken care of, even, as it were, petted, and it came so naturally to the bright, kind-hearted, active little woman to make everybody about her happy, or at least comfortable, that she could not help trying her hand on even the redoubtable Miss Morison, as to whom Mr Auriol had given her some salutary warning.
“You must be so tired, my dears,” she said, with the smiles and tears struggling together at the same time, “I thought you would like tea better than anything; and perhaps—this first evening—would you like me to pour it out?”
It was perfectly impossible to stand on one’s dignity or to keep up any prejudice with one so genuine and single-minded; and Nina’s heart was relieved of an immense weight when they all went to bed that night.
For some time everything went better than could have been hoped. By dint of her simple goodness, by dint, perhaps, of in no way planning or scheming to get it, Miss Branksome unconsciously gained Lettice’s confidence; and when Mr Auriol came down to see his young charges two or three weeks after their arrival, he was most agreeably surprised by the happy state of things. Not being above human weakness, he could not help congratulating himself on the skill which he had displayed in an undoubtedly awkward situation, though, at the same time, he was only too ready to give credit to all concerned.
“You have done marvels,” he said to Miss Branksome, who had been a friend of his from his childhood. “They all seem as fond of you as possible. Not that I had any fear for Nina or the little ones; only for—Lettice.”
“And yet of all, she, I think, has most gained my heart,” said the little lady. “She is so thorough; there is nothing small or ungenerous about her. Nina is very sweet; but if there is any triumph for me, or satisfaction rather, it is certainly with regard to Lettice. I feel so sure of her. I cannot quite understand your having found her what you described. Are you sure—forgive me now, Godfrey—are you sure there was no sort of prejudice onyourside?” Godfrey’s face flushed.
“None whatever,” he exclaimed. “I met her as free from prejudice, from any preconceived idea even, as was possible. And the first time I saw her I thought her as charming and gentle as she is personally attractive. It all came out when the question of the Morison feud was raised. It seemed to change her very nature. You have not come upon that as yet, I suppose?”
“Not in the least. Of course I have no right to do so, unless she does; but she knows that I do not know her uncle and aunt, and that they do not know me. I think that has given me an advantage with her. At first I fancied she suspected, or was ready to suspect, that Mr and Mrs Morison had had to do with my being chosen, and I was glad to be able, indirectly, to let her see they had not.”
Mr Auriol seemed lost in reflection.
“I wonder when I should speak to her—to them all—about their uncle again,” he said at last. “He is so very anxious for some happier state of things, and he trusts to me to bring it about. Lettice could not be pleasanter than she is now, just like what she was at the very first. I wonder if I dare risk it?”
“Not yet,” said Miss Branksome. “At least, that is my impression. Let her not think that you came down this time with any purpose except to see how they all are. Leave it all a little longer to her own good sense. She might commit herself to some decision she would afterwards be ashamed to withdraw from, if you spoke of it all again before she has had time thoroughly to consider it.”
Mr Auriol shrugged his shoulders.
“She has had time enough, it seems to me,” he said. “However, I know you are wiser than I.”
Just at that moment Lettice and Nina joined them in the garden.
“We are going to fetch Auriol home from school,” said Lettice. “Would you come with us?” she added, looking up at her cousin.
“Certainly, with the greatest pleasure,” he said; and the three set off.
But they had not gone far when Lettice stopped and hesitated.
“If you won’t think me rude for changing my mind,” she said, “I think I would rather not go to-day. I want to write to Arthur.”
Nina looked at her in surprise, and a slight look of annoyance crossed Mr Auriol’s face. But Lettice did not see it.
“Of course it doesn’t matter,” said Nina good-naturedly. “But I don’t think you need be in such a very great hurry about writing to Arthur.”
“I want to write to-night,” Lettice repeated, “and I know Mr Auriol won’t mind;” and she smiled so pleasantly that the annoyance left his face.
“She is an odd girl,” he thought to himself. “However, it is as well perhaps that my walk is to betête-à-têtewith Nina and not with her. I might have been tempted to try the ground again in spite of Miss Branksome’s advice, and might have done more harm than good. With Nina I am quite safe.”
And, so far as Nina was concerned, the result of their talk was perfectly satisfactory. It was with a more hopeful feeling than he had yet had on the subject that Mr Auriol re-entered the cottage on their return from the walk to Gardon. He and Nina stood for a moment in the porch—they did not notice that Lettice was at an open window above, whence she could clearly see them, and for a moment or two Godfrey stood with Nina’s hand in his, her fair face, in which was more colour than usual, raised towards him.
“You may depend on me,” she said softly, “to do all I can. There is nothing—really nothing almost, that I wish so earnestly.”
“I am sure of it,” said Godfrey. “Perhaps, indeed,” he added with a little hesitation, “I understand more about what you feel than you think. Not that I think you are selfish, dear Nina. I think you one of the most unselfish people I ever knew, and,”—he hesitated still more this time—“he will be a happy man who wins you.”
Nina’s face was crimson by now. But she stood by her cousin a moment longer. He was leaving the next morning, and it might be her last chance of seeing him alone.
“Then I am to do what I can, and, in a sort of way, to report progress. You will come down again in two or three weeks?”
“Yes, and in the meantime I shall see Arthur;” and then he released her hand and she ran upstairs to take off her hat.
“Have you had a nice walk, dear?” said Lettice, who was waiting in their room.
“Very,” said Nina heartily.
“I think you and Godfrey are getting to understand each other wonderfully,” lattice remarked.
“Yes?” said Nina, with a happy little laugh.
“I almost think so too;” and Lettice, observing the flush on her face, congratulated herself on her generalship.
“She is evidently forgetting all about Philip Dexter,” she thought. “How pretty she looks! How nice it must be to be so sweet and attractive; not hard, and cold, and repellent, like me. But it isforcedon me.”
And though she told herself things were going just as she wished, there was a little sigh in her heart as she kissed her sister on their way downstairs.
Chapter Six.A Cavalier Reception.“Fell his warm wishes chilled by wintry fear,And resolution sicken at the view:As near the moment of decision drew.”Trans. ofDante.But things seldom turn out as even the most reasonable people expect. Much more than two or three weeks elapsed before Godfrey Auriol came down to Faxleham again. This was owing to a complication of circumstances—unusual pressure of business on him, for one thing, Lotty Morison’s catching the measles for another; and the difficulties in the way were yielded to more easily than might have been the case had the same urgency existed for bringing matters to a decision. But Mr Ingram Morison and his wife were early in the summer obliged to go for several months to an out-of-the-way part of Ireland, where some of Mrs Morison’s family lived, on account of sudden and serious trouble among them. So the question he, and, indeed, she, too, had so much at heart, was left dormant for the time, and Nina heard no more, except a few words of explanation which Godfrey enclosed to her in a letter to Miss Branksome.It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Perhaps, had he known it, Godfrey did not lose in the good graces of his cousins during these rather dull and monotonous weeks. Nina, for more reasons than one, longed to see him, and would have made him most heartily welcome had he appeared. And even Lettice, though she had sturdily refused all offers of introductions to any families in the neighbourhood, would in her heart have been glad of some break in the tranquil round of their daily life.She was disappointed, too, that Godfrey did not seem more eager to see Nina again, and there were times when Nina’s rather troubled and anxious expression made her tremble for the success of her scheme.“If that Philip Dexter were to appear just now, there is no saying what influence he might again acquire over her,” she said to herself. “It is very stupid of Godfrey.”But he came at last, though not till Arthur’s holidays were more than half over, and the lanes were no longer without their summer coating of dust, for it was an unusually dry season. The rain could not be far off, however, for the law of average required that the drought should be compensated for.“There must be a break in the weather soon,” said Mr Auriol, the evening of his arrival, “and I suppose rain will be welcome when it comes. But, if it is nottooselfish, I hope it will hold off for two days. I haveneverfelt so tired of London in my life as during the last three weeks; and I do want to enjoy my breath of country air.”“I am afraid you won’t get much air even here,” remarked Arthur cheerfully. “It has been stifling these two or three days.”Something in the tone of his voice struck his cousin, and he glanced up at him.“You don’t look very bright yourself, my boy,” he said. “You’ve not been working too hard, I hope?”“Hehasbeen working rather hard even during the holidays,” said Lettice, though not without a certain complacence in her tone. “You know, Arthur is not merely toget through, cousin Godfrey, he is to come off with flying colours.”“But in the meantime the colour is all flying out of his face,” said Godfrey kindly, and with concern. “That won’t do;” and Nina, whose own face had grown paler during this conversation, was startled on looking at her brother to see how white, almost ghastly he had grown. She was helping Lettice with afternoon tea, which in these fine days they were fond of having under a big tree on the little lawn, and she made some excuse for sending Arthur to the house on an errand.“They will all think there is something the matter,” she whispered to him, “if you look like that;” though in her heart she would scarcely have regretted anything which would have brought to an end the unhappiness which she felt convinced Arthur was enduring, though she had not succeeded in getting him again to confide in her as he had done that last evening at Esparto.“Arthur is really looking ill,” Godfrey went on. “And he seems so dull and quiet. Of course I have seen too little of him to judge, and the last time there was every reason for his looking very depressed—but even then he had not the same dull, hopeless look. He must either be ill, or— But that is impossible!”“What?” said Lettice coldly.“I was going to say he looks as if he had something on his mind.”Lettice smiled with a sort of contemptuous superiority. “Hehassomething on his mind,” she said, “as every one might understand. He is exceedingly anxious to do more than well at his examination, and he is perhaps working alittletoo hard.”Mr Auriol was silent for a moment. When he spoke again he did not seem to be addressing any one in particular.“I don’t feel satisfied about him,” he said shortly.Lettice’s face flushed.“I do not see, Mr Auriol, that you need feel uneasy about him ifwedo not,” she said. “It is impossible to judge of any one you know so little. Of course, naturally, Arthur is unusually anxious to do well. He knows it would half breakmyheart if he failed. He knows, what matters far more, that it would have been a most bitter disappointment to my father and mother. It is enough to make him serious.”Mr Auriol glanced up quickly.“Were they—were your father and mother so very desirous that he should go into the army?” he said. “I should rather have thought—”But here he stopped.“I wish you would say all you mean,” said Lettice curtly.“I have no objection whatever to doing so, except the fear of annoyingyou,” he replied. “I was going to say that, remembering his own experience I should have thought your father the very last man to force, or even advise a profession unless the lad himself thoroughly liked it.”“Forceit?” exclaimed Lettice, really surprised, and Nina added hastily—“Oh no, while papa was alive there was no question but that Arthur wished it.”“While papa was alive, Nina,” repeated Lettice. “What do you mean? You speak as if Arthur did not wish itnow.”Nina blushed painfully, and seemed at a loss for an answer.“I did not mean to say that,” she said at last. And Lettice, too prepossessed by her own wishes and beliefs to take in the possibility of any others, thought no more of Nina’s agitation. But Mr Auriol did not forget it.He was, however, painfully anxious to come to an understanding with his cousins as to their relations with their uncle. Mr Morison was now at home again, and eager to receive his nephews and nieces and to discuss with them the best arrangements for a permanent home, which he and his wife earnestly hoped would be, if not with, at least near them.But though he had plenty of opportunities for talks with Nina, he tried in vain to have any uninterrupted conversation with Lettice. She almost seemed to avoid it purposely, and he disliked to ask for it in any formal and ceremonious way.“Though I shall be forced to do so,” he said to Nina one day, when, as usual, he found himself alone with her, Lettice having made some excuse at the last minute for not going out with them. “Do you think she avoids me on purpose, Nina?” he asked, with some irritation.“I really do not know,” said Nina. “Sometimes I do not understand Lettice at all.”“I fear I rubbed her the wrong way that first day by the way I spoke of Arthur,” said Godfrey reflectively. “And Arthur, too, baffles me. I have tried to talk to him and to lead him on to confide in me if he has anything on his mind, but it is no use. So I must just leave him for the present. But about this other matter I must do and say something. It is not my own concern. I have promised to see about it.”Nina listened with great sympathy and great anxiety.“I wish I could do anything,” she said. “But I, too, have tried in vain. Lettice seems to avoid the subject.”“Well, then there is nothing for it but to meet it formally. I must ask Lettice to give me half an hour, and I will read her your uncle’s last letter. There she is,” he added hurriedly, pointing to a figure which suddenly appeared in the lane a short way before them. “So she has been out, after all.”“Where have you been, Lettice?” asked Nina, as they came up with her, for she was walking slowly. “I thought you were not coming out.”“I changed my mind,” said Lettice. “I have been some little way on the Garford road.”The words were slightly defiant, but the tone was subdued, and Nina, looking at her sister, was struck by the curious expression of her face. It had a distressed, almost a frightened look. What could it be?Mr Auriol, intent on his own ideas, did not notice it.“Lettice,” he began, “I never seem to see you at leisure, and I must leave the day after to-morrow. When can you give me half an hour?”“Any time you like—any time to-morrow, I mean,” said Lettice. “It is too late this evening.”“Very well,” he said; “just as you like.”Lettice was longing to get away—to be alone in her own room to think over what had happened, and what she had done that afternoon.She had not meant to go out after refusing to walk with Nina and her cousin. But Lotty had come to ask her advice about a little garden she was making; and, after this important business was settled, Lettice, feeling at a loss what to do with herself, strolled a short way down the road. It was too soon to meet Nina and Mr Auriol; they would not be back for an hour at least, and Arthur was as usual shut up in his own room with his books. Who, then, could the figure be whom she saw, when about a quarter of a mile from the house, coming quickly up the road? It was not Godfrey, nor Arthur, and yet it was but seldom that any one not making for the cottage came along this road, which for half a mile or so was almost like a private one. And then, too—yes, it did seem to Lettice that there was something familiar about the walk and carriage of the gentleman she now clearly perceived to be such, though he was still too far off for her to distinguish his features. Another moment or two and she no longer hesitated. It was—there could be no doubt about it—it was the person whom of all others she most dreaded to see—Philip Dexter!And yet there was nothing very alarming in the young man’s appearance as, on catching sight of her, he hastened his steps and came on hurriedly, his features lit up with eagerness, while Lettice walked more and more slowly, at every step growing more dignified and icy. The smile faded from Philip’s face as he distinguished her clearly.“Miss Morison!” he exclaimed. “I saw you some way off, but I was not sure—I thought—”“You thought I was my sister, probably,” said Lettice calmly, as she held out her hand. “I, too, saw you some way off, Mr Dexter, and at first I could scarcely believe my eyes. Are you staying anywhere near here?”“No,” said Philip, braced by her coldness to an equal composure; “I have no acquaintances close to this. I came by rail to Garford, and left my portmanteau at the hotel there, and walked on here. I have come, Miss Morison, on purpose to see—you.”“Not me, personally?” said Lettice, raising her eyebrows.“Yes, you, personally, though notonlyyou. I am, I think, glad to have met you alone. If that is your house,”—for they were approaching the cottage—“will you turn and walk back a little? I would rather talk to you a little first, before any one knows I am here.”With the greatest readiness, though she strove to conceal it, Lettice agreed. They retraced their steps down the road, and then she led him along a lane to the left, also in the Garford direction, though she knew that by it Mr Auriol and Nina couldnotreturn.“I will not beat about the bush, Miss Morison,” said Philip. “I have come to see Nina—to ask her to marry me. I would have done so already—last winter at Esparto—but your mother’s illness, the difficulty of seeing any of you the latter part of the time, interfered, and I thought it, for other reasons too, better to wait. Nina has no father and mother—you are not much older, but youarethe eldest, and I know you have immense influence over her. Before seeing her, I should like to know my ground with you. Do you wish me well?”In face of this straightforward address Lettice felt, for a moment, off her guard.“You have never consulted me hitherto,” she said evasively.“That is not the question now,” said Philip. “Tell me, do you wish me well, and, still more, do you—do you think I am likely to succeed?” At this Lettice looked up at him.“I don’t know,” she said, and she spoke honestly. “Almost the only thing I am sure of is that I wish you had not thought of it—not come here.”Philip’s bright, handsome face fell; he looked in a moment years older.“You think there is something in the way, I see,” he said. “Ah! well, there is nothing for it but to make sure. I must see Nina herself. Where is she?”“She is out,” said Lettice, and her face flushed. “She is out walking with Godfrey Auriol.” Something in her tone and expression made Philip stop short and look at her sharply. She bore his look unflinchingly, and that perhaps impressed him more than her words. She was able to do so, for she was not conscious of deceiving him. She deceived herself; her determined prejudice and self-will blinded her to all but their own tendencies and conclusions. Mr Dexter’s eyes dropped. At this same moment there flashed before his memory the strangely enthusiastic tone with which Godfrey had spoken of—as Philip thought—Nina, that first morning at Esparto. His face was very pale when he looked up again.“Miss Morison—Lettice,” he said, “you do not like me, but you are incapable of misleading me. You think there is something between Nina and Mr Auriol?”“He is very fond of her,” said Lettice. “I do not know exactly, but I think—”“You think she returns it?”Lettice bowed her head in agreement. “Then I will go—as I came—and no one need know anything about my having been,” said Philip. “You will tell no one?”“Not if you wish me not to do so; certainly not,” she replied, only too delighted to be, as she said to herself,obligedto conceal his visit. “I very earnestly beg you not to tell of it,” he said; “it could serve no purpose, things being as you say they are.”Lettice made a little movement as if she would have interrupted him. Then she hesitated. At last—“I did not—exactly—” was all she got out.“No, you did not exactly in so many words say, ‘Nina is engaged, or just going to be, to Godfrey Auriol.’ But you have said all youcould, and I thank you for your honesty. It must have been difficult for you, disliking me, and knowing that Iknowyou dislike me, to have been honest.” Philip spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. Something in his manner, in his white, almost ghastly face, appalled Lettice.“Mr Dexter,” she exclaimed, involuntarily laying her hand on his arm, “I don’t think I do dislike you,personally;” and she felt that never before had she been so near liking, and certainly respecting, the young man. “But you know all the feelings involved. I am very, very sorry it should have gone so far with you. Yet I could not have warned you sooner last winter; it would have been impossible. I had no reason to think there was anything so serious.”“Last winter,” repeated Philip. “I don’t understand you. There was noreasonto warn me off then. Before she had ever seen him? I had all the field to myself. You don’t suppose I am giving it up now out of deference to that shameful, wicked nonsense of prejudice and dig like to the best man in the world—your uncle, and mine, as I am proud to call him?” And Philip gave a bitter and contemptuous laugh. “I am going away because I see I have no chance. I esteem and admire Godfrey Auriol too much to enter into useless rivalry with him. He is not likely to care for any woman in vain. But if I had not been so afraid of hurting you last winter, if I had thrown all the prejudice to the winds, I believe I might have won her. Godfrey wouldneverhave come between us had he had any idea of how it was with me. So, after all, itisthat wicked, unchristian nonsense that has done it all. You may think it is right; you cannot expectmeto agree with you. At the same time, I repeat that I thank you for your honesty. Good-bye. Can I reach Garford by this way?” and Philip, in a white fever of indignation and most bitter disappointment, turned to go.Lettice had never perhaps in all her life felt more discomposed.“Mr Dexter,” she said, “don’t leave me like this; don’t be so angry with me. I have tried to do rightly—by you, too.”“I have not denied it; but I cannot stand and discuss it as if it were anything else. I am only human. I must go. I am afraid of—of meetingthem. Tell me, is this the right way?”“Yes,” replied Lettice mechanically; “straight on brings you out on the road again. It is a short cut.”Philip raised his hat; and before Lettice had time for another word, had she indeed known what to say, he was gone. She stood and looked after him for some moments with a blank, half-scared expression; and then, retracing her steps, she walked slowly back, and thus came to be observed by her sister and Godfrey returning in the other direction.It was not a happy moment for Mr Auriol to choose for his renewed attempt. Lettice slept badly, and woke in the morning feverish and excited; but, by way perhaps of shifting the misgiving and self-reproach whichwouldinsinuate themselves, more blindly determined than ever to stand to her colours. She listened to her uncle’s letter and to all Mr Auriol had to say, and then quietly announced her decision. Nothing could induce her to regard as a relation the man who had supplanted her father, the representative of the unnatural family who had treated him all his life long as a pariah and an outcast, and had been the cause of sorrows and trials without end to him and her mother.“I am the eldest,” she said. “I can remember more distinctly than the others the privations and trials they went through—at the very time when my father’s father and brother were rolling in riches, some part of whichsurely, by every natural law, should have been his.”“And some part of whichwashis,” said Godfrey. “Everything he had came from his father. And why it was not more was his own fault. He would not take it.”“Neither will I,” said Lettice, crimsoning. “What my father accepted and left to us I considers ours; but I will take no more in any shape, directly or indirectly.”“Then,” said Godfrey, also losing his self-control, “you had better give up all you have. For, is surely as I stand here, you would not, as I have already explained to you, have had one farthing left but for what Ingram Morison did and risked. You oweallto him.”Lettice turned upon him, very pale now.“You may some day repent taunting me so cruelly with what I am in no way responsible for,” she said.Godfrey, recognising the truth of this, tried to make her better understand him; but it was useless.“I must bear it for the present,” was all she would say; and Nina heard her mutter something to herself about “once I am of age,” which made her still more uneasy.“I have done more harm than good,” said Godfrey at last. “There is no more to be said.”He glanced at Nina and Arthur, but neither spoke. Lettice saw the glance.“We are all of one mind,” she said proudly. “Are we not, Nina? Are we not, Arthur?”Nina’s eyes filled with tears; Arthur was very pale.“You know, Lettice,” said Nina, “at all costs we must cling together;” and Lettice preferred not to press her more closely.And Godfrey Auriol returned to town the next morning.
“Fell his warm wishes chilled by wintry fear,And resolution sicken at the view:As near the moment of decision drew.”Trans. ofDante.
“Fell his warm wishes chilled by wintry fear,And resolution sicken at the view:As near the moment of decision drew.”Trans. ofDante.
But things seldom turn out as even the most reasonable people expect. Much more than two or three weeks elapsed before Godfrey Auriol came down to Faxleham again. This was owing to a complication of circumstances—unusual pressure of business on him, for one thing, Lotty Morison’s catching the measles for another; and the difficulties in the way were yielded to more easily than might have been the case had the same urgency existed for bringing matters to a decision. But Mr Ingram Morison and his wife were early in the summer obliged to go for several months to an out-of-the-way part of Ireland, where some of Mrs Morison’s family lived, on account of sudden and serious trouble among them. So the question he, and, indeed, she, too, had so much at heart, was left dormant for the time, and Nina heard no more, except a few words of explanation which Godfrey enclosed to her in a letter to Miss Branksome.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Perhaps, had he known it, Godfrey did not lose in the good graces of his cousins during these rather dull and monotonous weeks. Nina, for more reasons than one, longed to see him, and would have made him most heartily welcome had he appeared. And even Lettice, though she had sturdily refused all offers of introductions to any families in the neighbourhood, would in her heart have been glad of some break in the tranquil round of their daily life.
She was disappointed, too, that Godfrey did not seem more eager to see Nina again, and there were times when Nina’s rather troubled and anxious expression made her tremble for the success of her scheme.
“If that Philip Dexter were to appear just now, there is no saying what influence he might again acquire over her,” she said to herself. “It is very stupid of Godfrey.”
But he came at last, though not till Arthur’s holidays were more than half over, and the lanes were no longer without their summer coating of dust, for it was an unusually dry season. The rain could not be far off, however, for the law of average required that the drought should be compensated for.
“There must be a break in the weather soon,” said Mr Auriol, the evening of his arrival, “and I suppose rain will be welcome when it comes. But, if it is nottooselfish, I hope it will hold off for two days. I haveneverfelt so tired of London in my life as during the last three weeks; and I do want to enjoy my breath of country air.”
“I am afraid you won’t get much air even here,” remarked Arthur cheerfully. “It has been stifling these two or three days.”
Something in the tone of his voice struck his cousin, and he glanced up at him.
“You don’t look very bright yourself, my boy,” he said. “You’ve not been working too hard, I hope?”
“Hehasbeen working rather hard even during the holidays,” said Lettice, though not without a certain complacence in her tone. “You know, Arthur is not merely toget through, cousin Godfrey, he is to come off with flying colours.”
“But in the meantime the colour is all flying out of his face,” said Godfrey kindly, and with concern. “That won’t do;” and Nina, whose own face had grown paler during this conversation, was startled on looking at her brother to see how white, almost ghastly he had grown. She was helping Lettice with afternoon tea, which in these fine days they were fond of having under a big tree on the little lawn, and she made some excuse for sending Arthur to the house on an errand.
“They will all think there is something the matter,” she whispered to him, “if you look like that;” though in her heart she would scarcely have regretted anything which would have brought to an end the unhappiness which she felt convinced Arthur was enduring, though she had not succeeded in getting him again to confide in her as he had done that last evening at Esparto.
“Arthur is really looking ill,” Godfrey went on. “And he seems so dull and quiet. Of course I have seen too little of him to judge, and the last time there was every reason for his looking very depressed—but even then he had not the same dull, hopeless look. He must either be ill, or— But that is impossible!”
“What?” said Lettice coldly.
“I was going to say he looks as if he had something on his mind.”
Lettice smiled with a sort of contemptuous superiority. “Hehassomething on his mind,” she said, “as every one might understand. He is exceedingly anxious to do more than well at his examination, and he is perhaps working alittletoo hard.”
Mr Auriol was silent for a moment. When he spoke again he did not seem to be addressing any one in particular.
“I don’t feel satisfied about him,” he said shortly.
Lettice’s face flushed.
“I do not see, Mr Auriol, that you need feel uneasy about him ifwedo not,” she said. “It is impossible to judge of any one you know so little. Of course, naturally, Arthur is unusually anxious to do well. He knows it would half breakmyheart if he failed. He knows, what matters far more, that it would have been a most bitter disappointment to my father and mother. It is enough to make him serious.”
Mr Auriol glanced up quickly.
“Were they—were your father and mother so very desirous that he should go into the army?” he said. “I should rather have thought—”
But here he stopped.
“I wish you would say all you mean,” said Lettice curtly.
“I have no objection whatever to doing so, except the fear of annoyingyou,” he replied. “I was going to say that, remembering his own experience I should have thought your father the very last man to force, or even advise a profession unless the lad himself thoroughly liked it.”
“Forceit?” exclaimed Lettice, really surprised, and Nina added hastily—
“Oh no, while papa was alive there was no question but that Arthur wished it.”
“While papa was alive, Nina,” repeated Lettice. “What do you mean? You speak as if Arthur did not wish itnow.”
Nina blushed painfully, and seemed at a loss for an answer.
“I did not mean to say that,” she said at last. And Lettice, too prepossessed by her own wishes and beliefs to take in the possibility of any others, thought no more of Nina’s agitation. But Mr Auriol did not forget it.
He was, however, painfully anxious to come to an understanding with his cousins as to their relations with their uncle. Mr Morison was now at home again, and eager to receive his nephews and nieces and to discuss with them the best arrangements for a permanent home, which he and his wife earnestly hoped would be, if not with, at least near them.
But though he had plenty of opportunities for talks with Nina, he tried in vain to have any uninterrupted conversation with Lettice. She almost seemed to avoid it purposely, and he disliked to ask for it in any formal and ceremonious way.
“Though I shall be forced to do so,” he said to Nina one day, when, as usual, he found himself alone with her, Lettice having made some excuse at the last minute for not going out with them. “Do you think she avoids me on purpose, Nina?” he asked, with some irritation.
“I really do not know,” said Nina. “Sometimes I do not understand Lettice at all.”
“I fear I rubbed her the wrong way that first day by the way I spoke of Arthur,” said Godfrey reflectively. “And Arthur, too, baffles me. I have tried to talk to him and to lead him on to confide in me if he has anything on his mind, but it is no use. So I must just leave him for the present. But about this other matter I must do and say something. It is not my own concern. I have promised to see about it.”
Nina listened with great sympathy and great anxiety.
“I wish I could do anything,” she said. “But I, too, have tried in vain. Lettice seems to avoid the subject.”
“Well, then there is nothing for it but to meet it formally. I must ask Lettice to give me half an hour, and I will read her your uncle’s last letter. There she is,” he added hurriedly, pointing to a figure which suddenly appeared in the lane a short way before them. “So she has been out, after all.”
“Where have you been, Lettice?” asked Nina, as they came up with her, for she was walking slowly. “I thought you were not coming out.”
“I changed my mind,” said Lettice. “I have been some little way on the Garford road.”
The words were slightly defiant, but the tone was subdued, and Nina, looking at her sister, was struck by the curious expression of her face. It had a distressed, almost a frightened look. What could it be?
Mr Auriol, intent on his own ideas, did not notice it.
“Lettice,” he began, “I never seem to see you at leisure, and I must leave the day after to-morrow. When can you give me half an hour?”
“Any time you like—any time to-morrow, I mean,” said Lettice. “It is too late this evening.”
“Very well,” he said; “just as you like.”
Lettice was longing to get away—to be alone in her own room to think over what had happened, and what she had done that afternoon.
She had not meant to go out after refusing to walk with Nina and her cousin. But Lotty had come to ask her advice about a little garden she was making; and, after this important business was settled, Lettice, feeling at a loss what to do with herself, strolled a short way down the road. It was too soon to meet Nina and Mr Auriol; they would not be back for an hour at least, and Arthur was as usual shut up in his own room with his books. Who, then, could the figure be whom she saw, when about a quarter of a mile from the house, coming quickly up the road? It was not Godfrey, nor Arthur, and yet it was but seldom that any one not making for the cottage came along this road, which for half a mile or so was almost like a private one. And then, too—yes, it did seem to Lettice that there was something familiar about the walk and carriage of the gentleman she now clearly perceived to be such, though he was still too far off for her to distinguish his features. Another moment or two and she no longer hesitated. It was—there could be no doubt about it—it was the person whom of all others she most dreaded to see—Philip Dexter!
And yet there was nothing very alarming in the young man’s appearance as, on catching sight of her, he hastened his steps and came on hurriedly, his features lit up with eagerness, while Lettice walked more and more slowly, at every step growing more dignified and icy. The smile faded from Philip’s face as he distinguished her clearly.
“Miss Morison!” he exclaimed. “I saw you some way off, but I was not sure—I thought—”
“You thought I was my sister, probably,” said Lettice calmly, as she held out her hand. “I, too, saw you some way off, Mr Dexter, and at first I could scarcely believe my eyes. Are you staying anywhere near here?”
“No,” said Philip, braced by her coldness to an equal composure; “I have no acquaintances close to this. I came by rail to Garford, and left my portmanteau at the hotel there, and walked on here. I have come, Miss Morison, on purpose to see—you.”
“Not me, personally?” said Lettice, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes, you, personally, though notonlyyou. I am, I think, glad to have met you alone. If that is your house,”—for they were approaching the cottage—“will you turn and walk back a little? I would rather talk to you a little first, before any one knows I am here.”
With the greatest readiness, though she strove to conceal it, Lettice agreed. They retraced their steps down the road, and then she led him along a lane to the left, also in the Garford direction, though she knew that by it Mr Auriol and Nina couldnotreturn.
“I will not beat about the bush, Miss Morison,” said Philip. “I have come to see Nina—to ask her to marry me. I would have done so already—last winter at Esparto—but your mother’s illness, the difficulty of seeing any of you the latter part of the time, interfered, and I thought it, for other reasons too, better to wait. Nina has no father and mother—you are not much older, but youarethe eldest, and I know you have immense influence over her. Before seeing her, I should like to know my ground with you. Do you wish me well?”
In face of this straightforward address Lettice felt, for a moment, off her guard.
“You have never consulted me hitherto,” she said evasively.
“That is not the question now,” said Philip. “Tell me, do you wish me well, and, still more, do you—do you think I am likely to succeed?” At this Lettice looked up at him.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she spoke honestly. “Almost the only thing I am sure of is that I wish you had not thought of it—not come here.”
Philip’s bright, handsome face fell; he looked in a moment years older.
“You think there is something in the way, I see,” he said. “Ah! well, there is nothing for it but to make sure. I must see Nina herself. Where is she?”
“She is out,” said Lettice, and her face flushed. “She is out walking with Godfrey Auriol.” Something in her tone and expression made Philip stop short and look at her sharply. She bore his look unflinchingly, and that perhaps impressed him more than her words. She was able to do so, for she was not conscious of deceiving him. She deceived herself; her determined prejudice and self-will blinded her to all but their own tendencies and conclusions. Mr Dexter’s eyes dropped. At this same moment there flashed before his memory the strangely enthusiastic tone with which Godfrey had spoken of—as Philip thought—Nina, that first morning at Esparto. His face was very pale when he looked up again.
“Miss Morison—Lettice,” he said, “you do not like me, but you are incapable of misleading me. You think there is something between Nina and Mr Auriol?”
“He is very fond of her,” said Lettice. “I do not know exactly, but I think—”
“You think she returns it?”
Lettice bowed her head in agreement. “Then I will go—as I came—and no one need know anything about my having been,” said Philip. “You will tell no one?”
“Not if you wish me not to do so; certainly not,” she replied, only too delighted to be, as she said to herself,obligedto conceal his visit. “I very earnestly beg you not to tell of it,” he said; “it could serve no purpose, things being as you say they are.”
Lettice made a little movement as if she would have interrupted him. Then she hesitated. At last—
“I did not—exactly—” was all she got out.
“No, you did not exactly in so many words say, ‘Nina is engaged, or just going to be, to Godfrey Auriol.’ But you have said all youcould, and I thank you for your honesty. It must have been difficult for you, disliking me, and knowing that Iknowyou dislike me, to have been honest.” Philip spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. Something in his manner, in his white, almost ghastly face, appalled Lettice.
“Mr Dexter,” she exclaimed, involuntarily laying her hand on his arm, “I don’t think I do dislike you,personally;” and she felt that never before had she been so near liking, and certainly respecting, the young man. “But you know all the feelings involved. I am very, very sorry it should have gone so far with you. Yet I could not have warned you sooner last winter; it would have been impossible. I had no reason to think there was anything so serious.”
“Last winter,” repeated Philip. “I don’t understand you. There was noreasonto warn me off then. Before she had ever seen him? I had all the field to myself. You don’t suppose I am giving it up now out of deference to that shameful, wicked nonsense of prejudice and dig like to the best man in the world—your uncle, and mine, as I am proud to call him?” And Philip gave a bitter and contemptuous laugh. “I am going away because I see I have no chance. I esteem and admire Godfrey Auriol too much to enter into useless rivalry with him. He is not likely to care for any woman in vain. But if I had not been so afraid of hurting you last winter, if I had thrown all the prejudice to the winds, I believe I might have won her. Godfrey wouldneverhave come between us had he had any idea of how it was with me. So, after all, itisthat wicked, unchristian nonsense that has done it all. You may think it is right; you cannot expectmeto agree with you. At the same time, I repeat that I thank you for your honesty. Good-bye. Can I reach Garford by this way?” and Philip, in a white fever of indignation and most bitter disappointment, turned to go.
Lettice had never perhaps in all her life felt more discomposed.
“Mr Dexter,” she said, “don’t leave me like this; don’t be so angry with me. I have tried to do rightly—by you, too.”
“I have not denied it; but I cannot stand and discuss it as if it were anything else. I am only human. I must go. I am afraid of—of meetingthem. Tell me, is this the right way?”
“Yes,” replied Lettice mechanically; “straight on brings you out on the road again. It is a short cut.”
Philip raised his hat; and before Lettice had time for another word, had she indeed known what to say, he was gone. She stood and looked after him for some moments with a blank, half-scared expression; and then, retracing her steps, she walked slowly back, and thus came to be observed by her sister and Godfrey returning in the other direction.
It was not a happy moment for Mr Auriol to choose for his renewed attempt. Lettice slept badly, and woke in the morning feverish and excited; but, by way perhaps of shifting the misgiving and self-reproach whichwouldinsinuate themselves, more blindly determined than ever to stand to her colours. She listened to her uncle’s letter and to all Mr Auriol had to say, and then quietly announced her decision. Nothing could induce her to regard as a relation the man who had supplanted her father, the representative of the unnatural family who had treated him all his life long as a pariah and an outcast, and had been the cause of sorrows and trials without end to him and her mother.
“I am the eldest,” she said. “I can remember more distinctly than the others the privations and trials they went through—at the very time when my father’s father and brother were rolling in riches, some part of whichsurely, by every natural law, should have been his.”
“And some part of whichwashis,” said Godfrey. “Everything he had came from his father. And why it was not more was his own fault. He would not take it.”
“Neither will I,” said Lettice, crimsoning. “What my father accepted and left to us I considers ours; but I will take no more in any shape, directly or indirectly.”
“Then,” said Godfrey, also losing his self-control, “you had better give up all you have. For, is surely as I stand here, you would not, as I have already explained to you, have had one farthing left but for what Ingram Morison did and risked. You oweallto him.”
Lettice turned upon him, very pale now.
“You may some day repent taunting me so cruelly with what I am in no way responsible for,” she said.
Godfrey, recognising the truth of this, tried to make her better understand him; but it was useless.
“I must bear it for the present,” was all she would say; and Nina heard her mutter something to herself about “once I am of age,” which made her still more uneasy.
“I have done more harm than good,” said Godfrey at last. “There is no more to be said.”
He glanced at Nina and Arthur, but neither spoke. Lettice saw the glance.
“We are all of one mind,” she said proudly. “Are we not, Nina? Are we not, Arthur?”
Nina’s eyes filled with tears; Arthur was very pale.
“You know, Lettice,” said Nina, “at all costs we must cling together;” and Lettice preferred not to press her more closely.
And Godfrey Auriol returned to town the next morning.