CHAPTER XII.“LADDIE” PUTS IN AN APPEARANCE.
“I think we have managed that as well as possible!” exclaimed Phillis, when they found themselves outside the gates. “What a good thing Adelaide and Mrs. Forbes and Lily were there! Now we need only call at those three houses to say good-bye. How hot you look, Nan! and how they all hemmed you in! I was obliged to come to your rescue, you were so beset; but I think I have put them off the scent.”
“Yes, for the present; but think, Phil, if Carrie really carries out her intention, and all the Paine tribe and Adelaide come down to Hadleigh next summer! No wonder I am hot; the bare idea suffocates me.”
“Something may turn up before then; it is no good looking so far ahead,” was the philosophical rejoinder. “Adelaide is rather formidable, certainly, and, in spite of her good nature, one does not feel at home with her. There is a flavor of money about her, I think; she dresses, talks, and lives in such a gilded way one finds her heavy; but she may get married before then. Mr. Dalrymple certainly seemed to mean it when he was down here last winter, and he will be a good match for her. But here we are at Fitzroy Square. I wonder what sort of humor her ladyship will be in?”
Lady Fitzroy received them very graciously. She had just been indulging in a slight dispute with her husband, and the interruption was welcome to both of them; besides, she was always gracious to the Challoners.
“You have just come in time, for we were boring each other dreadfully,” she said, in her pretty languid way, holding out a hand to each of them. “Percival, will you ring the bell, please? I cannot think why Thorpe does not bring up the tea as usual!”86
Lord Fitzroy obeyed his wife’s behest, and then he turned with a relieved air to his old friend Phillis. She was the clever one; and though some people called her quiet, that was because they did not draw her out, or she had no sympathy with them. He had always found her decidedly amusing and agreeable in the days of his bachelorhood.
He had married the beauty of a season, but the beauty was not without her little crotchets and tempers; and though he was both fond and proud of his wife, he found Phillis’s talk a relief this afternoon.
But Phillis was a littledistraiteon this occasion: she wanted to hear what Nan was saying in a low voice across the room, and Thorpe and his subordinate were setting the tea-table, and Lord Fitzroy would place himself just before her.
“Now look here, Miss Challoner,” he was saying, “I want to tell you all about it;” but here Thorpe left the room, and Lady Fitzroy interrupted them:
“Oh, Percival, what a pity! Do you hear?—we are going to lose our nicest neighbors? Dear little Glen Cottage is to be empty in a week or so!”
“Mr. Ralph Ibbetson will decide to take it, I think; and he and Miss Blake are to be married on the 16th of next month,” returned Nan, softly.
“Ibbetson at Glen Cottage! that red-headed fellow! My dear Miss Challoner, what sacrilege!—what desecration! What do you mean by forsaking us in this fashion? Are you all going to be married? Has Sir Francis died and left you a fortune? In the name of all that is mysterious, what is the meaning of this?”
“If you will let a person speak, Percival,” returned his wife, with dignity, “you shall have an answer:” and then she looked up in his handsome, good-natured face, and her manner softened insensibly. “Poor dear Mrs. Challoner has had losses! Some one has played her false, and they are obliged to leave Glen Cottage. But Hadleigh is a nice place,” she went on, turning to Nan: “it is very select.”
“Where did you say, Evelyn?” inquired her husband, eagerly. “Hadleigh, in Sussex? Oh, that is a snug little place; no Toms and Harries go down there on a nine hours’ trip. I was there myself once, with the Shannontons. Perhaps Lady Fitzroy and I may run down one day and have a look at you,” he continued, with a friendly look at Phillis. It was only one of his good-natured speeches, but his wife took umbrage at it.
“The sea never agrees with me. I thought you knew that, Percival!” rather reproachfully; “but I dare say we shall often see you here,” she went on, fearing Nan would think her ungracious. “You and the Paines are so intimate that they are sure to have you for weeks together; it is so pleasant revisiting an old neighborhood, is it not? I know I always feel that with regard to Nuneaton.”87
“Nuneaton never suits my constitution. I thought you would have remembered that, Evelyn,” returned her husband, gravely; and then they both laughed. Lord Fitzroy was not without a sense of humor, and often restored amity by a joking word after this fashion, and then the conversation proceeded more smoothly.
Nan and Phillis felt far more at their ease here than they had felt at the Paines’. There were no awkward questions asked: Lady Fitzroy was far too well bred for that. If she wondered at all how the Challoners were to live after they had lost their money, she kept such remarks for her husband’s private ear.
“Those girls ought to marry well,” observed Lord Fitzroy, when he found himself alone again with his wife. “Miss Challoner is as pretty a creature as one need see, but Miss Phillis has the most in her.”
“How are they to meet people if they are going to bury themselves in a little sea-side place?” she returned, regretfully. “Shall I put on my habit now, Percy? do you think it will be cool enough for our ride?”
“Yes, run along, my pet, and don’t keep me too long waiting.” Nevertheless, Lord Fitzroy did not object when his wife made room for him a moment beside her on the couch, while she made it up to him for her cross speeches, as she told him.
“There, little mother, it is all done!” exclaimed Phillis, in a tone of triumph, as later on in the afternoon they returned to the cottage; but in spite of her bravado, both the girls looked terribly jaded, and Nan especially seemed out of spirits; but then they had been round the Longmead garden, and had gathered some flowers in the conservatory, and this alone would have been depressing work to Nan.
From that time they lived in a perpetual whirl, a bustle of activity that grew greater; and not less, from day to day. Mrs. Challoner had quietly but decidedly refused the Paines’ invitation. Nan was right; nothing would have induced her to leave her girls in their trouble: she made light of their discomfort, forgot her invalid airs, and persisted in fatiguing herself to an alarming extent.
“You must let me do things; I should be wretched to sit with my hands before me, and not help you,” she said with tears in her eyes, and when they appealed in desperation to Dorothy, she took her mistress’s side:
“Working hurts less than worrying. Don’t you be fretting about the mistress too much, or watching her too closely. It will do her no harm, take my word for it.” And Dorothy was right.
But there was one piece of work that Nan set her mother to do before they left the cottage.
“Mother,” she said to her one day when they were alone together. “Mrs. Mayne will be wondering why you do not answer her letter. I think you had better write, and tell her a88little about things. We must not put it off any longer, or she will be hurt with us.” And Mrs. Challoner very reluctantly set about her unpleasant task.
But, after all, it was Nan who furnished the greater part of the composition. Mrs. Challoner was rather verbose and descriptive in her style. Nan cut down her sentences ruthlessly, and so pruned and simplified the whole epistle that her mother failed to trace her own handiwork: and at the last she added a postscript in her own pretty handwriting.
Mrs. Challoner was rather dissatisfied with the whole thing.
“You have said so little, Nan! Mrs. Mayne will be quite affronted at our reticence.”
“What is the use of harrowing people’s feelings?” was Nan’s response.
It was quite true she had dwelt as little as possible on their troubles.
The few opening sentences had related solely to their friends’ affairs.
“You will be sorry to hear,” Mrs. Challoner wrote after this, “that I have met with some severe losses. I dare say Mr. Mayne will remember that my poor husband invested our little income in the business of his cousin, Mark Gardiner. We have just heard the unwelcome news that Gardiner & Fowler have failed for a large amount. Under these circumstances, we think it more prudent to leave Glen Cottage as soon as possible, and settle at Hadleigh, where we have a small house belonging to us called the Friary. Fortunately for us, Mr. Trinder has found us a tenant, who will take the remainder of the lease off our hands. Do you remember Mr. Ralph Ibbetson, the Paines’ cousin, that rather heavy-looking young man, with reddish hair, who was engaged to that pretty Miss Blake?—well, he has taken Glen Cottage; and I hope you will find them nice neighbors. Tell Dick he must not be too sorry to miss his old friends, but of course you will understand this is a sad break to us. Settling down in a new place is never very pleasant; and as my girls will have to help themselves, and we shall all have to learn to do without things, it will be somewhat of a discipline to us; but as long as we are together, we all feel, such difficulties can be easily borne.
“Tell Mr. Mayne that, if I had foreseen how things were to turn out, I would have conquered my indisposition, and not have forfeited my last evening at Longmead.”
And in the postscript Nan wrote hurriedly,—
“You must not be too sorry for us, dear Mrs. Mayne, for mother is as brave as possible, and we are all determined to make the best of things.
“Of course it is very sad leaving dear Glen Cottage, where we have spent such happy, happy days; but, though the Friary is small, we shall make it very comfortable. Tell Dick the garden is a perfect wilderness at present, and that there are no89roses,—only a splendid passion-flower that covers the whole back of the house.”
Nan never knew why she wrote this. Was it to remind him vaguely that the time of roses was over, and that from this day things would be different with them?
Nan was quite satisfied when she had despatched this letter. It told just enough, and not too much. It sorely perplexed and troubled Dick; and yet neither he nor his father had the least idea how things really were with the Challoners.
“Didn’t I tell you so, Bessie?” exclaimed Mr. Mayne, almost in a voice of triumph, as he struck his hand upon the letter. “Paine was right when he spoke of a shaky investment. That comes of women pretending to understand business. A pretty mess they seem to have made of it!”
“Mother,” said poor Dick, coming up to her when he found himself alone with her for a moment, “I don’t understand this letter. I cannot read between the lines, somehow, and yet there seems something more than meets the eye.”
“I am sure it is bad enough,” returned Mrs. Mayne, who had been quietly crying over Nan’s postscript. “Think of them leaving Glen Cottage, and of these poor dear girls having to make themselves useful!”
“It is just that that bothers me so,” replied Dick, with a frowning brow. “The letter tells us so little; it is so constrained in tone; as though they were keeping something from us. Of course they have something to live upon, but I am afraid it is very little.”
“Very likely they will only have one servant,—just Dorothy and no one else; and the girls will have to help in the house,” returned his mother, thoughtfully. “That will not do them any harm, Dick: it always improves girls to make them useful. I dare say the Friary is a very small place, and then I am sure, with a little help, Dorothy will do very well.”
“But, mother,” pleaded Dick, who was somewhat comforted by this sensible view of the matter, “do write to Nan or Phillis and beg of them to give us fuller particulars.” And, though Mrs. Mayne promised she would do so, and kept her word, Dick was not satisfied, but sat down and scrawled a long letter to Mrs. Challoner, so incoherent in its expressions of sympathy and regret that it quite mystified her; but Nan thought it perfect, and took possession of it, and read it every day, until it got quite thin and worn. One sentence especially pleased her. “I don’t intend ever to cross the threshold of the cottage again,” wrote Dick: “in fact, Oldfield will be hateful without you all. Of course I shall run down to Hadleigh at Christmas and look you up, and see for myself what sort of a place the Friary is. Tell Nan I will get her lots of roses for her garden so she need not trouble about that; and give them my love, and tell them how awfully sorry I am about it all.”
Poor Dick! the news of his friends’ misfortunes took off the90edge of his enjoyment for a long time. Thanks to Nan’s unselfishness, he did not in the least realize the true state of affairs; nevertheless, his honest heart was heavy at the thought of the empty cottage, and he was quite right in saying Oldfield had grown suddenly hateful to him, and, though he kept these thoughts to himself as much as possible, Mr. Mayne saw that his son was depressed and ill at ease, and sent him away to the Swiss Tyrol, with a gay party of young people, hoping a few weeks’ change would put the Challoners out of his head. Meanwhile Nan and her sisters worked busily, and their friends crowded round them, helping or hindering, according to their nature.
On the last afternoon there was a regular invasion of the cottage. The drawing-room carpet was up, and the room was full of packing-cases. Carrie Paine had taken possession of one and her sister Sophy and Lily Twentyman had a turned-up box between them. Miss Sartoris and Gussie Scobell had wicker chairs. Dorothy had just brought in tea, and had placed before Nan a heterogeneous assemblage of kitchen cups and saucers, mugs, and odds and ends of crockery, when Lady Fitzroy entered in her habit, accompanied by her sister, the Honorable Maud Burgoyne, both of whom seemed to enjoy the picnic excessively.
“Do let me have the mug,” implored Miss Burgoyne: she was a pretty little brunette with anez retrousse. “I have never drunk out of one since my nursery days. How cool it is, after the sunny roads! I think carpets ought to be abolished in the summer. When I have a house of my own, Evelyn, I mean to have Indian matting and nothing else in the warm weather.”
“I am very fond of Indian matting,” returned her sister, sipping her tea contentedly. “Fitzroy hoped to have looked in this afternoon, Mrs. Challoner, to say good-bye, but there is an assault-at-arms at the Albert Hall, and he is taking my young brother Algernon to see it. He is quite inconsolable at the thought of losing such pleasant neighbors, and sent all sorts of pretty messages,” finished Lady Fitzroy, graciously.
“Here is Edgar,” exclaimed Carrie Paine; “he told us that he meant to put in an appearance; but I am afraid the poor boy will find himselfde tropamong so many ladies.”
Edgar was the youngest Paine,—a tall Eton boy, who looked as though he would soon be too big for jackets, and an especial friend of Nan’s.
“How good of you to come and say good-bye, Gar!” she said summoning him to her side, as the boy looked round him blushing and half terrified. “What have you got there under your jacket?”
“It is the puppy I promised you,” returned Edgar, eagerly; “don’t you know?—Nell’s puppy? Father said I might have it.” And he deposited a fat black retriever puppy at Nan’s feet. The little beast made a clumsy rush at her and then rolled over91on its back. Nan took it up in high delight, and showed it to her mother.
“Isn’t it good of Gar, mother? and when we all wanted a dog so! We have never had a pet since poor old Juno died; and this will be such a splendid fellow when he grows up. Look at his head and curly black paws; and what a dear solemn face he has got!”
“I am glad you like him,” replied Edgar, who was now perfectly at his ease. “We have christened him ‘Laddie:’ he is the handsomest puppy of the lot, and our man Jake says he is perfectly healthy.” And then, as Nan cut him some cake, he proceeded to enlighten her on the treatment of this valuable animal.
The arrival of “Laddie” made quite a diversion, and, when the good-byes were all said, Nan took the little animal in her arms and went with Phillis for the last time to gather flowers in the Longmead garden, and when the twilight came on the three girls went slowly through the village, bidding farewell to their old haunts.
It was all very sad, and nobody slept much that night in the cottage. Nan’s tears were shed very quietly, but they fell thick and fast.
“Oh, Dick, it is hard—hard!” thought the poor girl, burying her face in the pillow; “but I have not let you know the day, so you will not be thinking of us. I would not pain you for worlds, Dick, not more than I can help.” And then she dried her eyes and told herself that she must be brave for all their sakes to-morrow; but, for all her good resolutions, sleep would not come to her any more than it did to Phillis, who lay open-eyed and miserable until morning.
CHAPTER XIII.“I MUST HAVE GRACE.”
When the Rev. Archibald Drummond was nominated to the living of Hadleigh in Sussex, it was at once understood by his family that he had achieved a decided success in life.
Hadleigh until very recently had been a perpetual curacy, and the perpetual curate in charge had lived in the large, shabby house with the green door on the Braidwood Road, as it was called. There had been some talk of a new vicarage, but as yet the first brick had not been laid, the building-committee had fallen out on the question of the site, and nothing had been definitely arranged: there was a good deal of talk, too, about the church restoration, but at the present moment nothing had been done.92
Mr. Drummond had not been disturbed in his mind by the delay of the building-committee in the matter of the new vicarage, but on the topic of the church restoration he had been heard to say very bitter things,—far too bitter, it was thought, to proceed from the lips of such a new-comer. It is not always wise to be outspoken, and when Mr. Drummond expressed himself a little too frankly on the ugliness of the sacred edifice, which until lately had been a chapel-of-ease, he had caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the mind of his hearers; but when the young vicar, still strongly imbued with the beauties of Oxford architecture, had looked round blankly on the great square pews and galleries, and then at the wooden pulpit, and the Ten Commandments that adorned the east end, he was not quite so sure in his mind that his position was as enviable as that of other men.
Church architecture was his hobby, and, if the truth must be told, he was a little “High” in his views; without attaching himself to the Ultra-Ritualistic party, he was still strongly impregnated with many of their ideas; he preferred Gregorian to Anglican chants, and would have had no objection to incense if his diocesan could have been brought to appreciate it too.
An ornate service was decidedly to his taste. It was, therefore, a severe mortification when he found himself compelled to minister Sunday after Sunday in a building that was ugly enough for a conventicle, and to listen to the florid voices of a mixed choir, instead of the orderly array of men and boys in white surplices to which he had been accustomed. If he had been combative by nature,—one who loved to gird his armor about him and to plunge into every sort ofmelee,—he would have rejoiced after a fashion at the thought of the work cut out for him, of bringing order and beauty out of this chaos; but he was by nature too impatient. He would have condemned and destroyed instead of trying to renovate.
“Why not build a new church at once?” he said, with a certain youthful intolerance that made people angry. “Never mind the vicarage; the old house will last my time: but a place like this—a rising place—ought to have a church worthy of it. It will be money thrown away to restore this one,” finished the young vicar, looking round him with sorely troubled eyes; and it was this outspoken frankness that had lost him popularity at first.
But, if the new vicar had secret cause for discontent in the Drummond family there was nothing but the sweetness of triumph.
“Archie has never given me a moment’s trouble from his birth,” his proud mother was wont to declare; and it must be owned that the young man had done very fairly for himself.
There had been plenty of anxiety in the Drummond household while Archibald was enjoying his first Oxford term. Things had come to a climax: his father, who was a Leeds manufacturer,93had failed most utterly, and to a large amount. The firm of Drummond & Drummond, once known as a most respectable and reliable firm, had come suddenly, but not unexpectedly to the ground; and Archibald Drummond the elder had been compelled to accept a managership in the very firm that, by competition and underselling, had helped to ruin him.
It was a heavy trial to a man of Mr. Drummond’s proud temperament; but he went through with it in a tough, dogged way that excited his wife’s admiration. True, his bread was bitter to him for a long time, and the sweetness of life, as he told himself, was over for him; but he had a large family to maintain, sons and daughters growing up around him, and the youngest was not yet six months old; under such circumstances a man may be induced to put his pride in his pocket.
“Your father has grown quite gray, and has begun to stoop. It makes my heart quite ache to see him sometimes,” Mrs. Drummond wrote to her eldest son; “but he never says a word to any of us. He just goes through with it day after day.”
At that time Archie was her great comfort. He had begun to make his own way early in life, understanding from the first that his parents could do very little for him. He had worked well at school, and had succeeded in obtaining one or two scholarships. When his university life commenced, and the household at Leeds became straitened in their circumstances, he determined not to encumber them with his presence.
He soon became known in his college as a reading-man and a steady worker; he was fortunate, too, in obtaining pupils for the long vacation. By and by he became a fellow and tutor of his college, and before he was eight-and-twenty the living of Hadleigh was offered to him. It was not at all a rich living,—not being worth more than three hundred a year,—and some of his Oxford friends would have dissuaded him from accepting it; but Archibald Drummond was not of their opinion. Oxford did not suit his constitution; he was never well there. Sussex air, and especially the sea-side, would give him just the tone he required. He liked the big old-fashioned house that would be allotted to him. He could take pupils and add to his income in that way; at present he had his fellowship. It was only in the event of his marriage that his income might not be found sufficient. At the present moment he had no matrimonial intentions: there was only one thing on which he was determined, and that was, that Grace must live with him and keep his house.
Grace was the sister next to him in age. Mattie,—or Matilda, as her mother often called her,—was the eldest of the family, and was two years older than Archibald. Between him and Grace there were two brothers, Fred and Clyde, and beyond Grace a string of girls ending in Dottie, who was not yet ten. Archibald used to forget their ages and mix them up in the94most helpless way; he was never quite sure if Isabel were eighteen or twenty, or whether Clara or Susie came next. He once forgot Laura altogether, and was only reminded of her existence by the shock of surprise at seeing the awkward-looking, ungainly girl standing before him, looking shyly up in his face.
Archibald was never quite alive to the blessing of having seven sisters, none of them with any pretension to beauty, unless it were Grace, though he was obliged to confess on his last visit to Leeds that Isabel was certainly passable-looking. He tried to take a proper amount of interest in them and be serenely unconscious of their want of grace and polish; but the effort was too manifest, and neither Clara nor Susie nor Laura regarded their grave elder brother with any lively degree of affection. Mrs. Drummond was a somewhat stern and exacting mother, but she was never so difficult to please as when her eldest son was at home.
“Home is never so comfortable when Archie is in it,” Susie would grumble to her favorite confidante, Grace. “Every one is obliged to be on their best behavior; and yet mother finds fault from morning to night. Dottie is crying now because she has been scolded for coming down to tea in a dirty pinafore.”
“Oh, hush, Susie dear! you ought not to say such things,” returned Grace, in her quiet voice.
Poor Grace! these visits of Archie were her only pleasures. The brother and sister were devoted to each other. In Archie’s eyes not one of the others was to be compared to her; and in this he was perfectly right.
Grace Drummond was a tall, sweet-looking girl of two-and-twenty,—not pretty, except in her brother’s opinion, but possessing a soft, fair comeliness that made her pleasant to look upon. In voice and manner she was extremely quiet,—almost grave; and only those who lived with her had any idea of the repressed strength and energy of her character, and the almost masculine clearness of intellect that lay under the soft exterior. One side of her nature was hidden from every one but her brother, and to him only revealed by intermittent flashes, and that was the passionate absorption of her affection in him. To her parents she was dutiful and submissive, but when she grew up the yoke of her mother’s will was felt to be oppressive. Her father’s nature was more in sympathy with her own; but even with him she was reticent. She was good to all her brothers and sisters, and especially devoted to Dottie; but her affection for them was so strongly pervaded by anxiety and the overweight of responsibility that its pains overbalanced its pleasures. She loved them, and toiled in their service from morning to night; but as yet she had not felt herself rewarded by any decided success. But in Archie her pride was equal to her love; she was critical, and her standard was somewhat high, but he satisfied her. What other people recognized as faults, she regarded95as the merest blemishes. Without being absolutely faultless, which was of course impossible in a creature of flesh and blood, he was still as near perfection, she thought, as he could be. Perhaps her affection for him blinded her somewhat, and cast a sort of loving glamour over her eyes; for it must be owned that Archibald was by no means extraordinary in either goodness or cleverness. From a boy she had watched his career with dazzled eyes, rejoicing in every stroke of success that came to him as though it were her own. Her own life was dull and laborious, spent in the overcrowded house in Lowder Street, but she forgot it in following his. Now and then bright days came to her,—few in number, but absolutely golden, when this dearly-loved brother came on a brief visit,—when they had snatches of delicious talk in the empty school-room at the top of the house, or he took her out with him for a long, quiet walk.
Mrs. Drummond always made some dry sarcastic remark when they came in, for she was secretly jealous of Archie’s affection for Grace. Hers was rather a monopolizing nature, and she would willingly have had the first share in her son’s affections. It somewhat displeased her to see him so wrapt up in the one sister to the exclusion of all the others, as she told him.
“I think you might have asked Matilda or Isabel to accompany you. The poor girls never see anything of you, Archie,” she would say plaintively to her son. But to Grace she would speak somewhat sharply, bidding her fulfil some neglected duty, which another could as well have performed, and making her at once understand by her manner that she was to blame in leaving Mattie at home.
“Mother,” Archibald said to her one day, when she had spoken with unusual severity, and the poor girl had retreated from the room, feeling as though she had been convicted of selfishness, “we must settle the matter about which I spoke to you last night. I have been thinking about it ever since. Mattie will not do at all. I must have Grace!”
Mrs. Drummond looked up from her mending, and her thin lips settled into a hard line that they always took when her mind was made up on a disagreeable subject. She had a pinafore belonging to Dottie in her hand; there was a jagged rent in it, and she sighed impatiently as she put it down; though she was not a woman who shirked any of her maternal duties, she had often been heard to say that her work was never done, and that her mending-basket was never empty.
“But if I cannot spare Grace,” she said, rather shortly, as she meditated another lecture to the delinquent Dottie.
“But, mother, you must spare her!” returned her son, eagerly, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece, and watching her rapid manipulations with apparent interest. “Look here; I am quite in earnest. I have set my heart on having Grace. She is just the one to manage a clergyman’s household. She would be my right hand in the parish.”96
“She is our right hand too, Archie; but I suppose we are to cut it off, that it may benefit you and your parish.”
Mrs. Drummond seldom spoke so sharply to her eldest son; but this request of his was grievous to her.
“I think Grace ought to be considered, too, in the matter,” he returned, somwhat sullenly. “She works harder than any paid governess, and gets small thanks for her trouble.”
“She does her duty,” returned Mrs. Drummond, coldly,—she very seldom praised any of her children,—“but not more than Mattie does hers. You are prejudiced strongly against your sister, Archie; you are not fair to her in any way. Mattie is a capital little housekeeper. She is economical, and full of clever contrivances. It is not as though I asked you to try Isabel. She is well enough, too, in her way, but a little flighty, and rather too pretty, perhaps—” but here a laugh from Archie grated on her ear.
“Too pretty!—what an absurd idea! The girl is passable-looking, and I will not deny that she has improved lately; but, mother, there is not one of the girls that can be called pretty except Grace.”
Mrs. Drummond winced at her son’s outspoken words. The plainness of her daughters was a sore subject.
She had never understood why her girls were so ordinary-looking. She had been a handsome girl in her time, and was still a fine-looking woman. Her husband, too, had had a fair amount of good looks, and, though he stooped, was still admirable in her eyes. The boys, too, were thoroughly fine fellows. Fred was decidedly handsome, and so was Clyde; and as for her favorite Archie, Mrs. Drummond glanced up at him as he stood beside her.
He certainly looked a model young clergyman. His features were good, but the lower part of his face was quite hidden by the fair mustache and the soft silky beard. He had thoughtful gray eyes, which could look as severe as hers sometimes; and, though his shoulders were somewhat too sloping, there could be no fault found with his figure. He was as nice-looking as possible, she thought, and no mother could have been better satisfied. But why, with the exception of Grace and Isabel, were her girls so deficient in outward graces? It could not be denied that they were very ordinary girls. Laura was overgrown and freckled, and had red hair; Susie was sickly-looking, and so short-sighted that they feared she would have to take to spectacles; and Clara was stolid and heavy-looking, one of those thick-set girls that dress never seems to improve. Dottie had a funny little face; but one could not judge of her yet. And Mattie,—Mrs. Drummond sighed again as she thought of her eldest daughter,—Mattie was thirty; and her mother felt she would never marry. It was not that she was so absolutely plain,—people who liked her said Mattie had a nice face,—but she was so abrupt, so uncouth in her awkwardness,97such a stranger to the minor morals of life, that it would be a wonder indeed if she could find favor in any man’s eyes.
“I do think you are too hard on your sisters,” returned Mrs. Drummond, stung by her son’s remark. “Isabel was very much admired at her first party last week. Mrs. Cochrane told me so, and so did Miss Blair.” She could have added that her maternal interest had been strongly stirred by the mention of a certain Mr. Ellis Burton, who she had understood had paid a great deal of attention that evening to Isabel, and who was the eldest son of a wealthy manufacturer in Leeds. But Mrs. Drummond had some good old-fashioned notions, and one of these was never to speak on such delicate subjects as the matrimonial prospects of her daughters: indeed, she often thanked heaven she was not a match-making mother,—which was as well, under the circumstances.
“Well, well, we are not talking about Isabel,” returned her son, impatiently. “The question is about Grace, mother. I really do wish very much that you and my father would stretch a point for me here. I want her more than I can say.”
“But, Archie, you must be reasonable. Just think a moment. Your father cannot afford to send the girls to school, or to pay for a good finishing governess. We have given Grace every advantage; and just as she is making herself really useful to me in the school-room, you want to deprive me of her services.”
“You know I offered to pay for Clara’s schooling,” returned her son, reproachfully. “She is more than sixteen, is she not! Surely Mattie could teach the others?”
But Mrs. Drummond’s clear, concise voice interrupted him:
“Archie, how can you talk such nonsense? You know poor Mattie was never good at book-learning. She would hardly do for Dottie. Ask Grace, if you doubt my word.”
“Of course I do not doubt it, mother,” in rather an aggravated voice, for he felt he was having the worst of the argument.
“Then why do you not believe me when I tell you the thing you ask is impossible?” replied his mother more calmly. “I am sorry for you if you are disappointed, Archie; but you undervalue Mattie,—you do indeed. She will make you a nice little housekeeper, and, though she is not clever, she is so amiable that nothing ever puts her out; and visiting the poor and sick-nursing are more in her line than in Grace’s. Mrs. Blair finds her invaluable. She wanted her for one of her district visitors, and I said she had too much to do at home.”
Archie shrugged his shoulders. Mrs. Blair was the wife of the vicar of All Saints’, where the Drummonds attended, and from a boy she had been his pet aversion. She was a bustling, managing woman, and of course Mattie was just to her taste. He did not see much use in continuing the conversation; with all his affection for his mother,—and she was better loved by her sons than by her daughters,—he knew her to be as immovable98as a rock when she had once made up her mind. He thought at first of appealing to his father on Grace’s behalf, but abandoned this notion after a few minutes’ reflection. His father was decided and firm in all matters relating to business, but for many years past he had abandoned the domestic reins to his wife’s capable hands. Perhaps he had proved her worth and prudence; perhaps he thought the management of seven daughters too much for any man. Anyhow, he interfered less and less as the years went on; and if at any time he differed from his wife, she could always talk him over, as her son well knew.
When the subject had been first mooted in the household, he had said a word or two to his father, and had found him very reluctant to entertain the idea of parting with Grace. She was his favorite daughter, and he thought how he should miss her when he came home weary and jaded at night.
“I don’t think it will do at all,” he had said, in an undecided dissatisfied tone. “Won’t one of the other girls serve your turn? There’s Mattie, or that little monkey Isabel, she is as pert and lively as possible. But Grace; why, she is every one’s right hand. What would the mother or the young ones do without her?”
No; it was no use appealing to his father, Archie thought, and might only make mischief in the house. He and Grace must make up their mind to a few more years’ separation. He turned away after his mother’s last speech, and finally left the room without saying another word. There was a cloud on his face, and Mrs. Drummond saw that he was much displeased; but, though she sighed again as she took up a pair of Clyde’s socks and inspected them carefully, there was no change in her resolution that Mattie, and not Grace, should go to the vicarage for the year’s visit that was all Archie had asked.
There are mothers and mothers in this world,—some who are capable of sacrificing their children to Moloch, who will barter their own flesh and blood in return for some barren heritage or other. There are those who will exact from those dependent on them heavy tithes of daily patience and uncomplaining drudgery; while others, who are “mothers indeed” give all, asking for nothing in return.
Mrs. Drummond was a good woman. She had many virtues and few faults. She was lady-like, industrious and self-denying in her own personal comforts, an exemplary wife, and a tolerant mistress; but she was better understood by her sons than by her daughters.
Her maternal instincts were very strong, and no mother had more delighted in her nursery than she had in hers. As long as there was a baby in the house the tenderness of her love was apparent enough. She wore herself out tending her infants, and no one ever heard her say a harsh word in her nursery.
But as her children grew up, there was much clashing of wills in the household. Her sons did not fear her in the least; but99with her daughters it was otherwise. They felt the mother’s strong will repressive; it threatened to dwarf their individuality and cramp that free growth that is so necessary to young things.
Dottie, who by virtue of being the last baby had had more than her fair amount of petting, was only just beginning to learn her lesson of unquestioning obedience; and, as she was somewhat spoiled, her lesson was hard one. But Laura and Susie and Clara had not yet found out that their mother loved them and wished to be their friend; they were timid and reserved with her, and took all their troubles to Grace. Even Mattie, who was her first-born, and who was old enough to be her mother’s companion, quailed and blushed like a child under the dry caustic speeches at which Clyde and Fred only laughed.
“You don’t understand the mother. Her bark is worse than her bite,” Clyde would say to his sister sometimes. “She is an awfully clever woman, and it riles her to see herself surrounded by such a set of ninnies. Now, don’t sulk, Belle. You know Mattie’s a duffer compared to Grace; aren’t you, Matt?”
At which truism poor Mattie would hang her head.
“Yes, Clyde; I know I am dreadfully stupid sometimes, and that makes mother angry.”
Mrs. Drummond often complained bitterly of her daughters’ want of confidence in her, but she never blamed herself for the barrier that seemed between them. She was forever asserting maternal authority, when such questions might have been safely laid to rest between her and her grown-up daughters. Mrs. Challoner’s oneness of sympathy with her girls, her lax discipline, her perfect equality, would have shocked a woman of Mrs. Drummond’s calibre. She would not have tolerated or understood it for a moment.
“My girls must do as I wish,” was a very ordinary speech in her mouth. “I always do as my girls wish,” Mrs. Challoner would have said. And, indeed, the two mothers were utterly dissimilar; but it may be doubted whether the Challoner household were not far happier than the family in Lowder Street.
CHAPTER XIV.“YOU CAN DARE TO TELL ME THESE THINGS.”
Archibald Drummond had left his mother’s presence with a cloud on his brow. He had plenty of filial affection for her, but it was not the first time that he had found her too much for him. She had often angered him before by her treatment of Grace, but he had told himself that she was his mother, that a100man could have but one, and so he had brought himself to forgive her. But this time she had set herself against the cherished plan of years. He had always looked forward to the time when he could have Grace to live with him; they had made all sorts of schemes together, and all their talk had concentrated itself towards this point; the disappointment would place a sort of blankness before them; they would be working separately, far away from each other, and the distance would not be bridged for years.
He stood for a moment in the dark, narrow hall, thinking intently over all this, and then he went slowly upstairs. He knew where he should find Grace. His mother had paid an unwonted visit to the school-room during their walk, and on their return had expressed herself with some degree of sharpness on the disorder she had found there. Grace would be busily engaged in putting everything to rights. It was Clara’s business, but she had gone out, and had, as usual, forgotten all about it. Grace had taken the blame upon herself, of course: she was always shielding her younger sisters.
Everything was done when he entered the room, and Grace was sitting by the window, with her hands folded in her lap, indulging in a few minutes’ rare idleness. She looked up eagerly as her brother made his appearance.
The school-room was a large, bare-looking room at the top of the house, with two narrow windows looking out over a lively prospect of roofs and chimney-pots. Mrs. Drummond had done her utmost to give it an air of comfort, but it was, on the whole, a dull, uncomfortable apartment, in spite of the faded Turkey carpet, and the curtains that had once been so handsome, but had now merged into unwholesome neutral tints.
Laura, who was the wit of the family, had nicknamed it the Hospital, for it seemed to be a receptacle for all the maimed and rickety chairs of the household, footstools in a dilapidated condition, and odd pieces of lumber that had no other place. Archibald regarded it with a troubled gaze; somehow, its dinginess had never before so impressed him; and then as he looked at his sister the frown deepened on his face.
“Well, Archie?”
“Oh, Grace, it is no use! I have talked myself hoarse, but the mother is dead against it: one might as well try to move a rock. We shall have to make up our minds to bear our disappointment as well as we can.”
“I knew it was hopeless from the first,” returned Grace, slowly; but, as she spoke, a sort of dimness and paleness crept over her face, belying her words.
She was young, and in youth hope never dies. Beyond the gray daily horizon there is always a possible gleam, a new to-morrow; youth abounds in infinite surprises, in probabilities which are as large as they are vague. Grace told herself that she never hoped much from Archie’s mission; yet when he came101to her with his ill success plainly stamped upon his countenance, the dying out of her dream was bitter to her.
“I knew it was hopeless from the first,” had been her answer, and then breath for further words failed her, and she sat motionless, with her hands clasped tightly together, while Archie placed himself on the window-seat beside her and looked out ruefully at the opposite chimneys.
Well, it was all over, this dearly-cherished scheme of theirs; she must go on now with the dull routine of daily duties, she must stoop her neck afresh to the yoke she had long found so galling; this school-room must be her world, she must not hope any longer for wider vistas, for more expansive horizons, for tasks that should be more congenial to her, for all that was now made impossible.
Mattie, not she, must go and keep Archie’s house, and here for a moment she closed her eyes, the pain was so bitter; she thought of the old vicarage, of the garden where she and Archie were to have worked, of the shabby old study where he meant to write his sermons, while she was to sit beside him with her book or needlework, of the evenings when he had promised to read to her, of the walks they were to have taken together, of all the dear delightful plans they had made.
And now her mother had said them nay; it was Mattie who was to be his housekeeper, who would sit opposite to him and pour out his coffee, who would mend his socks and do all the thousand-and-one things that a woman delights in doing for the mankind dependent on her for comfort.
Mattie would visit his poor people, and teach in the schools, entertain his friends, and listen to his voice every Sunday; here tears slowly gathered under the closed eyelids. Yes, Mattie would do all that, but she would not be his chosen friend and companion; there would be no long charming talks for her in the study or the sunny garden; he would be as lonely, poor fellow, in his way as she would be in hers, and for this her mother was to blame.
“Well, Gracie, haven’t you a word to say?” asked her brother, at last, surprised at her long silence.
“No, Archie; it does not bear talking about,” she returned, so passionately that he turned round to look at her. “I must not even think of it. I must try and shut it all out of my mind, or I shall be no good to any one. But it is hard—hard!” with a quiver of her lip.
“I call it a shame for my father and mother to sacrifice you in this way!” he burst out, moved to bitter indignation at the sight of her trouble. “I shall tell my father what I think about it pretty plainly!”
But this speech recalled Grace to her senses.
“Oh, no, dear! you must do no such thing: promise me you will not. It would be no good at all; and it would only make mother so angry. You know he always thinks as she does about102things, so it would be no use. I suppose”—with an impatient sigh—“that I ought to feel myself complimented at knowing I cannot be spared. Some girls would be proud to feel themselves their mother’s right hand; but to me it does not seem much of a privilege.”
“Don’t talk in that way, Grace: it makes me miserable to hear you. I am more sorry for you than I am for myself, and yet I am sorry for myself too. If it were not that my mother would be too deeply offended, I would refuse to have Mattie at all. We never have got on well together. She is a good little thing in her way, but her awkwardness and left-handed ways will worry me incessantly. And then we have not an idea in common––” but here Grace generously interposed:
“Poor old fellow! as though I did not know all that; but you must not vent it on poor Mattie. She is not to blame for our disappointment. She would gladly give it up to me if she could. I know she will do her utmost to please you, Archie, and she is so good and amiable that you must overlook her little failings and make the best of her.”
“It will be rather difficult work, I am afraid,” returned her brother, grimly. “I shall always be drawing invidious comparisons between you both, and thinking what you would do in her place.”
“All the same you must try and be good to her for my sake, for I am very fond of Mattie,” she returned, gently; but he could not help feeling gratified at the assurance that he would miss her. And then she put her hand on his coat-sleeve, and stroked it, a favorite caress with her. “It does not bear talking about: does it, Archie? It only makes it feel worse. I think it must be meant as a discipline for me, because I am so wicked, and that it would not do at all for me to be too happy.” And here she pressed his arm, and looked up in his face, with an attempt at a smile.
“No, you are right: talking only makes it worse,” he returned, hurriedly; and then he stooped—for he was a tall man—and kissed her on the forehead just between her eyes, and then walked to the door, whistling a light air.
Grace did not think him at all abrupt in thus breaking off the conversation. She had caught his meaning in a moment, and knew the whole business was so painful to him that he did not care to dwell on it. When the tea-bell rang, she prepared herself at once to accompany him downstairs.
It was Archibald’s last evening at home, and all the family were gathered round the long tea-table. Since Mr. Drummond’s misfortunes, late dinners had been relinquished, and more homely habits prevailed in the household. Mrs. Drummond had, indeed, apologized to her son more than once for the simplicity of their mode of life.
“You are accustomed to a late dinner, Archie. I wish I103could have managed it for you; but your father objects to any alteration being made in our usual habits.”
“He is quite right; and I should have been much distressed if you had thought such alteration necessary,” returned her son, very much surprised at this reference to his father. For Mrs. Drummond rarely consulted her husband on such matters. In this case, however, she had done so, and Mr. Drummond had been unusually testy—indeed, affronted—at such a question being put to him.
“I don’t know what you mean, Isabella,” he had replied; “but I suppose what is good enough for me is good enough for Archie.” And then Mrs. Drummond knew she had made a mistake, for her husband had felt bitterly the loss of his late dinner. So Archie tried to fall in with the habits of his family, and to enjoy the large plum or seed-cake that invariably garnished the tea-table; and, though he ate but sparingly of the supper, which always gave him indigestion, Grace was his only confidante in the matter. Mr. Drummond, indeed, looked at his son rather sharply once or twice, as though he suspected him of fastidiousness. “I cannot compliment you on your appetite,” he would say, as he helped himself to cold meat; “but perhaps our home fare is not so tempting as Oxford living?”
“I always say your meat is unusually good,” returned Archibald, amicably. “If there be any fault, it is in my appetite; but that Hadleigh air will soon set right.” But, though he answered his father after this tolerant fashion, he always added, in a mental aside, that nine-o’clock suppers were certainly barbarous institutions, and peculiarly deleterious to the constitution of an Oxford fellow.
Mrs. Drummond looked at them both somewhat keenly as they entered. In spite of her resolution, she was secretly uncomfortable at the thought that Archie was displeased with her: her daughter’s vexation was a burden that could be more easily borne; but her maternal heart yearned for some token that her boy was not estranged from her. But no such consolation was to be vouchsafed to her. She had kept his usual place vacant beside her; Archie showed no intention of taking it. He placed himself by his father, and began talking to him of a change of ministry that was impending, and which would overthrow the Conservative party. Mrs. Drummond, who was one of those women who can never be made to take any interest in politics, was reduced to the necessity of talking to Mattie in an undertone, for the other boys never put in an appearance at this meal; but as she talked she took stock of Grace’s pale, abstracted looks as she sat with her plate before her, not pretending to eat, and taking no notice of Susie and Laura, who chatted busily across her.
It was not a festive meal; on the contrary, there was an unusual air of restraint over the whole party. The younger members felt instinctively that there was something amiss.104Archie looked decidedly glum; and there was an expression on the mother’s face that they were not slow to interpret. No one could hear what it was she was saying to Mattie that made her look so red and nervous all at once; but presently she addressed herself abruptly to her husband:
“It is all settled, father. I have arranged with Archie that Matilda should go down to Hadleigh next month.”
Archie stroked his beard, but did not look up or make any remark, though poor Mattie looked at him beseechingly across the table, as though imploring a word. His mother would carry her point; but he would not pretend for a moment that he was otherwise than displeased, or that Mattie would be welcome.
His silence attracted Mr. Drummond’s attention.
“Oh, what, you have settled it, you say? I hope you are satisfied, Archie, and properly grateful to your mother for sparing Mattie. She is to go for a year. Well, it will be a grand change for her. I should not be surprised if you were to pick up a husband, Miss Mattie;” for Mr. Drummond was a man who, in spite of his cares, was not without his joke; but, as usual, it was instantly frowned down by his wife:
“I wonder at you, father, talking such nonsense before the children. Why are you giggling, Laura? It is very unseemly and ill-behaved. I hope no daughter of mine has such unmaidenly notions. Mattie is going to Hadleigh to be a comfort to her brother, and to keep his house as a clergyman’s house ought to be kept.”
“And you are satisfied, Archie?” asked Mr. Drummond, not quite pleased at his wife’s reprimand, and struck anew by his son’s silence.
“I consider these questions somewhat unnecessary. You know my wishes, sir, on the subject, and my mother also,” was the somewhat uncompromising remark; “but it appears that they are not to be met in this instance. I hope Mattie will be comfortable and not miss her sisters;” but he did not look at the poor girl, and the tears came into her eyes.
“Oh, Archie, I am so sorry! I never meant––-” she stammered; but her mother interrupted her:
“There is no occasion for you to be sorry about anything; you had far better be silent, Mattie. But you have no tact. Father, if you have finished your tea, I suppose you and Archie are going out.” And then Archie rose from the table, and followed his father out of the room.
It was Isabel’s business to put Dottie to bed. The other girls had to prepare their lessons for the next day, and went up to the school-room. Mattie made some excuse, and went with them, and Mrs. Drummond and Grace were left alone.
Grace had some delicate work to finish, and she placed herself by the lamp. Her mother had returned to her105mending-basket; but as the door closed upon Mattie, she cleared her throat, and looked at her daughter.
“Grace, I must say I am surprised at you!”
“Why, mother?” But Grace did not look up from the task she was running with such fine even stitches.
“I am more than surprised!” continued Mrs. Drummond, severely. “I am disappointed to see in what a bad spirit you have received my decision. I did not think a daughter of mine would have been so blind to her sense of duty!”
“I have said nothing to make you think that.”
“No, you have said nothing, but looks can be eloquent sometimes. I am not speaking of Archie, though I can see he is put out too, for he is a man, and men are not always reasonable; but that you should place yourself in such silent opposition to my wishes, it is that that shocks me.”
There was an ominous sparkle in Grace’s gray eyes, and then she deliberately put down her work on the table. She had hoped that her mother would have been contented with her victory, and not have spoken to her on the subject. But if she were so attacked, she would at least defend herself.
“You have no right to speak to me in this way, mother!”
“No right, Grace?” Mrs. Drummond could hardly believe her ears. Never once had a daughter of hers questioned her right in anything.
“No; for I have said nothing to bring all this upon me! I have been perfectly quiet, and have tried to bear the bitterness of my disappointment as well as I could. No one is answerable for their looks, and I, at least, will not plead guilty on that score.”
“Grace, you are answering me very improperly.”
“I cannot say that I think so, mother. I would have been silent, if you had permitted such silence; but when you drive me to speech, I must say what I feel to be the truth,—that I have not been well treated in this matter.”
“Grace!” And Mrs. Drummond paused in awful silence. Never before had a recusant daughter braved her to her face.
“I have not been well treated,” continued Grace, firmly, “in a thing that concerns me more than any one else. I have not even been consulted. You have arranged it all, mother, without reference to me or my feelings. Perhaps I ought to be grateful for being spared so painful a decision; but I think such a decision should have been permitted to me.”
“You can dare to tell me such things to my very face!”
“Why should I not tell them?” returned Grace, meeting her mother’s angry glance unflinchingly. “It seems to me that one should speak the truth to one’s mother. You have treated me like a child; and I have a right to feel sore and indignant. Why did you not put the whole thing before me, and tell me that you and my father did not see how you could spare me?106Do you really believe that I should have been so wanting to my sense of duty as to follow my own pleasure?”
“Grace, I insist upon your silence! I will not discuss the matter with you.”
“If you insist upon silence, you must be obeyed, mother: but it is you who have raised the question between us. But when you attack me unjustly, I must defend myself.”
“You are forgetting yourself strangely. Your words are most disrespectful and unbecoming in a daughter. You tell me to my face that I am unjust—I, your mother—because I have been compelled to thwart your wishes.”
“No, no—not because of that!” returned Grace, in a voice of passionate pain; “why will you misunderstand me so?—but because you have no faith in me. You treat me like a child. You dispute my privilege to decide in a matter that concerns my own happiness. You bid me work for you, and you give me no wage—not a word of praise; and because I remonstrate for once in my life, you insist on my silence.”
“It seems that I am not to be obeyed.”
“Oh, yes; you will be obeyed, mother. After to-night I will not open my lips to offend you again. If I have said more than I ought to have said as a daughter, I will ask your pardon now; but I cannot take back one of my words. They are true,—true!”
“I must say your apology is tardy, Grace.”
“Nevertheless, it is an apology; for, though you have hurt me, I must not forget you are my mother. I know my life will be harder after this, because of what I have said; and yet I would not take back one of my words!”
“I am more displeased with you than I can say,” returned her mother, taking up her neglected work; and her mouth looked stern and hard.
Never had her aspect been so forbidding, and yet never had her daughter feared her less.
“Then, if you are displeased with me, I will go away,” replied Grace, moving from her seat with gentle dignity. “I wish you had not compelled me to speak, mother, and then I should not have offended you: but as it is there is no help for it.” And then she gathered up her work and walked slowly out of the room.
Mrs. Drummond sat moodily in the empty room that had somehow never seemed so empty before. Her attitude was as rigid and uncompromising as usual; but there was a perplexed frown on her brow. For the first time in her life one of her girls had dared to assert her own will and to speak the truth to her; and she was utterly nonplussed. It was not too much to say that she had received a blow. Her justice and sense of fairness had been questioned,—her very maternal authority impugned,—and that by one of her own children! Mattie, who was eight years older, would not have ventured to cross her107mother’s will. Grace had so dared; and she was bitterly angry with her. And yet she had never so admired her before.
How honestly and bravely she had battled for her rights! her gray eyes had shone with fire, her pale cheeks had glowed with the passion of her words: for once in her life the girl had looked superbly handsome.
“You have no faith in me; you treat me like a child.” Well, she was right; it was no child, it was a proud woman who was flinging those hard words at her. For the first time Mrs. Drummond recognized the possibility of a will as strong as her own. In spite of all her authority, Grace had been a match for her mother: Mrs. Drummond knew this, and it added fuel to her bitterness.
“I know my life will be harder for what I have said.” Ah, Grace was right there; it would be long before her mother would forgive her for all those words, true as they were; and yet in her heart she had never so feared and admired her daughter. Grace went up to her own room, where Dottie was asleep in a little bed very near her sister’s: it was dark and somewhat cold, but the atmosphere was less frigid than the parlor downstairs. Grace’s frame was trembling with the force of her emotion; her face was burning, and her hands cold. It was restful and soothing to put down her aching head on the hard window-ledge and close her eyes and think out the pain! It seemed hours before Isabel came to summon her to supper, but she made an excuse that she was not hungry, and refused to go downstairs.
“But you ate nothing at tea, and your head is aching!” persisted Isabel, who was a bright, good-natured girl, and, in spite of Archie’s strictures, decidedly pretty. “Do let me bring you something. Mother will not know.”
But Grace refused: she could not eat, and the sight of food would distress her.
“Why not go to bed at once, then?” suggested Isabel,—which was certainly sensible counsel. But Grace demurred to this; she knew Archie would be up presently to say good-night to her: so, when Isabel had gone, she lighted the candle, shading it carefully from Dottie’s eyes, and then she bathed her hot face, and smoothed her hair, and took up her work again.
Archie found her quite calm and busy, but he was not so easily deceived.
“Now, Gracie, you have got one of your headaches: it is the disappointment and the bother, and my going away to-morrow. Poor little Gracie!”
“Oh, Archie, I feel as though I shall never miss you so much!” exclaimed the poor girl, throwing down her work and clinging to him. “When shall I see your dear face again?—not until Christmas?”
“And not then, I expect. I shall most likely run down some time in January, and then I shall try hard to take you back108with me, just for a visit. Mattie will be dull, and wanting to see some of you, and I will not have one of the others until you have been.”
“I don’t believe mother will spare me even for that,” returned Grace, with a sudden conviction that her mother’s memory was retentive, and that she would be punished in that way for her sins of this evening; “but promise me, Archie, that you will come, if it be only for a few days.”
“Oh, I will promise you that. I cannot last longer without seeing you, Grace!” And he stroked her soft hair as she still clung to him.
The next day Archibald bade his family good-bye: his manner had not changed toward his mother, and Mrs. Drummond thought his kiss decidedly cold.
“You will be good to Mattie, and try to make the poor girl happy; you will do at least as much as this,” she said, detaining him as he was turning from her to see Grace.
“Oh, yes, I will be good to her,” he returned, indifferently, “but I cannot promise that she will not find her life dull.” And then he took Grace in his arms, and whispered to her to be patient, and that all would be well one day; and Mrs. Drummond, though she did not hear the whisper, saw the embrace and the long lingering look between the brother and sister, and pressed her thin lips together and went back to her parlor and mending-basket, feeling herself an unhappy mother, whose love was not requited by her children, and disposed to be harder than ever towards Grace, who had inflicted this pain on her.