CHAPTER XXXVII.“A MAN HAS A RIGHT TO HIS OWN THOUGHTS.”
There were great rejoicings in the house in Lowder Street on the occasion of Isabel Drummond’s marriage.
There is always something pathetic in the first wedding in a family,—the first severing of the family circle,—the first break, the first ingathering of new interest. But when there are small means, and seven portionless daughters, very few of whom can be said to be gifted with good looks, a wealthy son-in-law must indeed be regarded as a direct blessing from Providence.
That Mr. Drummond did so regard it, was evident from the jovial good humor that had replaced his usual moody and irritable manner; while his wife’s beaming face, softened by maternal269tenderness for the child who would no longer share the daily life with them, was a surprising spectacle to those acquainted with Mrs. Drummond’s ordinary reserve and somewhat severe bearing. But it is not too much to say that on this occasion Mrs. Drummond was a happy woman.
The tide of fortune, long so adverse to their interests, seemed turning in their favor at last. Archie had done great things for himself, and the mother’s eyes rested on him proudly as he performed the marriage ceremony for his young sister, the gravity of his priestly office setting him apart, as it were, for her reverence as well as love. That Isabel had done great things for herself also could not be denied. But there were other causes for content in the mother’s heart.
Both the boys were doing well. Clyde had been articled to a lawyer, an old friend of Mr. Drummond’s, and had won golden opinions from his chief, who pronounced him an intelligent, likely lad, and as sharp as a needle. Fred had lately obtained a clerkship in an old-established house in Leeds, and was also doing well, and his salary was a great boon to the straitened household. Grace, too, was doing her duty vigorously, and no longer vexed her mother’s soul by her drooping looks of uncomplaining discontent,—that silent protest of many, that is so irritating to the home-rule. True, it might be only the quiescence of despair, but at least she veiled it decently under a show of Spartan cheerfulness. The fox of bitterness might gnaw, but she drew the mantle of her pride closer round her. She might suffer and pine, like a caged lark in her narrow cage, but at least no one, not even Archie, and least of all her mother, should guess the extent of her sufferings. So there was peace in Lowder Street. A truce had silently proclaimed itself between the two strong wills of the household; and, touched by a submission that somehow appealed to her generosity, Mrs. Drummond was secretly revolving schemes for her daughter’s future happiness.
“Mothers are mothers,” as Nan had once sweetly said, and Mrs. Drummond was no exception to the rule. She could be hard to her own flesh and blood; she could exact obedience that was difficult to yield, and sacrifices that cost tears in plenty; but she was a just woman, and, when the right time came, she knew how to reward such obedience.
But there was still another drop that filled the maternal cup of content almost to overflowing, and of this she spoke to Grace, as they were together in the mother’s room, folding up the bridal finery. The little bride had just driven off, all tears and smiles. Archie and the boys had started off for a long walk. Mattie was with her sisters in the small ugly enclosure they called a garden; and Grace and her mother had gone up to shake out the satin dress and lay it between tissue-paper.
“I hope she will be happy, poor little dear!” observed Grace, touching tenderly the Brussels-lace veil; for Isabel had270been her first pupil and charge. “I do think and believe Ellis is really very fond of her.”
“Without doubt he is. His manners were all your father and I could wish. What a magnificent present, and how thoughtful, his bringing those diamond ear-drops just the last moment! Isabel has such pretty little ears. He is as proud of her as he can be. And really she looked quite lovely. Take care how you fold that veil, Grace. It is a perfect beauty.”
“Yes, mother,” returned Grace, meekly.
She was ready to drop with fatigue, for she had been up since six, and had dressed all her sisters one after another in their pretty bridesmaids’ dresses, Mattie’s skill as a lady’s-maid being distrusted even by Dottie. But Mrs. Drummond was not satisfied, and took the lace out of her hand.
“And, Grace, did you ever see any one so improved as Mattie? Her visit to Hadleigh is doing wonders for her. Last evening I could hardly help looking at her. She holds herself so much better, and her dresses are so pretty and well made. I never knew before that her figure was so nice.”
“Yes, indeed; she is wonderfully improved,” returned Grace.
But she said the words mechanically. Her mother’s speech had touched a sore place in her memory. She knew who had transformed Mattie’s dowdiness into comeliness and neatness. She might be an ordinary little woman in the world’s opinion, but in the eyes of her family she was quite another Mattie. Those tasteful dresses had been made by those Challoners of whom Mattie spoke so much and Archie so little.
Mrs. Drummond, who had not noticed her daughter’s sudden abstraction, went on in the same satisfied tone:
“She is not pretty, of course,—no one could ever call Mattie that at the best of times,—but now she has left off making a fright of herself, and hunching her shoulders with every word, she is quite passable-looking. I am glad you talked her out of being a bridesmaid. She would have looked absurd among the girls. But that green surah just suited her. It was good of Archie to buy her such a pretty dress; and yours that came from Hadleigh was even prettier, and wonderfully well made, considering they had only a pattern gown.”
“Yes; it fitted admirably;” but Grace spoke without enthusiasm.
Archie, who knew her tastes, had chosen a soft, creamy stuff which he informed Mattie must be trimmed with no end of lace. Phillis had received and executed the order with such skill and discernment that a most ravishing costume had been produced. But Grace, who had her own ideas on the subject of those “Challoner girls,” had received the gift somewhat coldly, and had even seemed displeased when her father pinched her ear and told her that Archie’s gown had transformed her into a princess fit for a fairy-tale. “And there is always a prince in271that, my dear,—eh, Gracie?” continued the lucky father, who could afford to laugh when one of the seven daughters had got a husband. But Grace would have nothing to do with the jest. She even got up a little frown, like her mother’s on similar occasions.
“Archie is so generous, dear old fellow!” continued Mrs. Drummond, breaking out afresh after a minute’s interval, as she skilfully manipulated the veil. “That is what I always say. There never was such a son or brother. Do you think he is overworking, Grace, or that Mattie really looks after him well? But he strikes me as a little thin,—and—yes—perhaps a little grave.”
Grace’s lips closed with an expression of pain. But her mother was looking at her and she must answer.
“Well, if you ask me, mother,” she returned, a little huskily, “I do not think Archie looks very well, or in his usual spirits; but I am sure Mattie takes good care of him,” she continued, with careful veracity.
“Humph! I am sorry to find you endorsing my opinion,” replied Mrs. Drummond, thoughtfully. “I hoped you would say it was my fancy. He has not said anything to you that makes you uneasy?” with a touch of her old sharpness, remembering that Grace, and not she, was Archie’s confidante; but Grace replied so quickly and decidedly, “Oh, no, mother; we have not exchanged a word together since he and Mattie arrived,” that her maternal jealousy was allayed.
But the next night, when she was alone with him for a few minutes, she was struck afresh by the gravity of his look as he sat by the window, pretending to read, but for the last half-hour he had not turned his page.
“A penny for your thoughts, my son!” she said, so archly and abruptly that Archie started, and his brow grew crimson at finding himself watched.
“Oh, they were nothing particular,” he stammered; and then he said something about the fineness of the evening, and the possibility of his father coming in in time for a long walk.
But Mrs. Drummond was not to be put off so easily. She left her seat, where she had been sewing as usual, and came and stood beside him a moment. He would have jumped up and given her his own chair, but she pressed his shoulder gently, as though to forbid the movement.
“I like to stand, Archie. Yes, it is a lovely evening; but I think you ought to ask Grace, and not your father, to accompany you. Grace was always your companion, you know, and you must not drop old habits too suddenly.” Then Archie saw that his avoidance of Grace had been marked.
“Very well, I will ask her,” he returned; but he showed none of his old alacrity and spirit in claiming his favorite.
Mrs. Drummond noticed this; and the shade of anxiety on her face grew deeper.272
“Archie, you are not quite your old self with Grace; and I am sure she feels it. What has come between you, my dear?”
“Why, nothing, mother;” and here he attempted a laugh. “Grace and I never quarrel, as you know.”
“I was not speaking of quarrelling,” she returned, in a graver voice; “but you do not seek her out as you used. Before, when you arrived, you always disappointed me by shutting yourself up in the school-room, where no one could get at you; and now Grace tells me she has not had a word with you these four days.”
“Has Grace complained of me, then?”
“You know Grace never complains of you. It was not said in any fault-finding way. We agreed you were not quite yourself, or in your usual spirits; and I asked her the reason. Tell me, my son, is there anything troubling you?” Archie sat silent. Mrs. Drummond was so rarely demonstrative to her children that even this well-beloved son had never heard before such chords of tenderness in his mother’s voice; and, looking up, he saw that her keen gray eyes were softened and moist with tears. “You are not quite yourself, Archie,—not quite happy?” she went on.
Then he took counsel with himself; and after a moment he answered her:
“No, mother; you are right. I am not—not quite myself nor quite happy; but I mean to be both presently.” And then he looked up in her face pleadingly, with an expression of entreaty that went to her heart, and continued: “But my own mother will not pain me by unnecessary questions that I could not answer.” And then she knew that his will was that she should be silent.
“Very well,” she returned, with a sigh. “But you will tell me one thing, will you not, my dear! Is it—is it quite hopeless?” her mother’s instinct, like that of the Eastern Caliph, immediately suggesting a woman in the case.
“Quite—quite hopeless!—as dead as this!” bringing down his hand on a large defunct moth. “Talking will not bring to life, or help a man, to carry a real burden.”
Then, as she kissed him, she knew that his pain had been very great, but that he meant to bear it with all the strength he could bring.
Grace went up to prepare for her walk that evening with no very pleasurable anticipations. Her mother had given her Archie’s message in due form, as she sat somewhat sadly by the school-room window, mending a frock Dottie had just torn.
“Archie wants you to go out with him, Grace,” Mrs. Drummond said, as she came in, in her usual active bustling way. “The grass never grew under her feet,” as she was often pleased to observe. “Loitering and lagging make young bones grow prematurely old,” she would say, coining a new proverb for the benefit of lazy Susie. “Never measure your footsteps when you are about other people’s business,” she would say to Laura,273who hated to be hunted up from her employment for any errand. “He thinks of going over to Blackthorn Farm, as it is so fine; and the walk will do you good,” continued Mrs. Drummond, with a keen look at her daughter’s pale face. “Give me Dottie’s frock: that little monkey is always getting into mischief.” But Grace yielded her task reluctantly.
“Are you sure he wishes me to go, mother?”
“Quite sure,” was the brief answer; but she added no more.
Silence was ever golden to this busy, hard-working mother. She was generally sparing of words. Grace, who saw that her mother was bent on her going, made no further demur; but, as she put on her walking-things, she told herself that Archie was only making a virtue of necessity. He was so little eager for her society that he had not sought her himself, but had sent her a message. Ever since his return, no light-springing footsteps had been heard on the uncarpeted stairs leading to the school-room. He had forsaken their old haunt, where they had once talked so happily, sitting hand in hand on the old window-seat.
Grace felt herself grievously wounded. For months a barrier had been between her and Archie. He had written seldom; and his letters, when they came, told her nothing. In manner he was kindness itself. That there was no change in his affection was evident; but the key to his confidence was mislaid. He had withdrawn himself into some inner citadel, where he seemed all at once inaccessible, and her sisterly soul was vexed within her.
He met her at the door with his usual smile of welcome.
“That is right, Grace; you have not kept me long waiting,” he said, pleasantly, as she came towards him; and then, as they walked down Lowder Street, he commenced talking at once. He had so much to tell her, he said; and here Grace’s pulses began to throb expectantly; but the eager light died out of her face when he went on to detail a long conversation he had had with his mother the previous night. Was that all? she thought. Was the longed-for confidence still to be withheld?
Archie did not seem to notice her silence: he rattled on volubly.
“I think we were hard on the mother, Gracie, you and I,” he said. “After all, I believe she was right in not giving us our own way in the spring.”
“I am glad you think so,” replied Grace, coldly. Archie winced at her tone, but recovered himself, and went on gayly:
“It does one good sometimes to have one’s wishes crossed; and, after all, it was only fair that poor Mattie, being the eldest, should have her turn. She does her best, poor little soul! and, though I find her terribly trying sometimes, I can hold out pretty patiently until Christmas; and then mother herself suggested that you should take her place at the vicarage.”274
“I! oh, no, Archie!” And here the color flushed over Gracie’s face, and her eyes filled with tears. The news was so unexpected,—so overwhelming. Another time the sweetness of it would have filled her with rapture. But now! “Oh, no, no!” she cried, in so vehement a tone that her brother turned in surprise, and something of her meaning came home to him.
“Wait a moment,” he said, deprecatingly. “I have not finished yet what I want to say. Mother said Mattie was greatly improved by her visit, and that she was infinitely obliged to me for yielding to her wish. She told me plainly that it was impossible to have spared you before,—that you were her right hand with the girls, and that even now your loss would be great.”
“I do not mean to leave mother,” returned Grace, in a choked voice.
“Not if I want you and ask you to come?” he replied, with reproachful tenderness, “Why, Grace, what has become of our old compact?”
“You do not need me now,” she faltered, hardly able to speak without weeping.
“We will talk of that by and by,” was the somewhat impatient answer. “Just at this minute I want to tell you all the mother said on the subject. Facts before feelings, please,” with a touch of sarcasm; but he pointed it with a smile. “You see, Grace, Isabel’s marriage makes a difference. There is one girl off my father’s hands. And then the boys are doing so well. Mother thinks that in another three months Clara may leave the school-room; she will be seventeen then, and, as Ellis has promised her a course of music-lessons, to develop her one talent, you may consider her off your hands.”
“Clara will never do me credit,” returned his sister, mournfully: “she works steadily and takes pains, but she was never as clever as Isabel.”
“No; she is no shining light, as mother owns; but she will play beautifully, if she be properly trained. Well, as to the other girls, it appears that my father has decided to accept my offer of sending Susie to a first-class boarding-school; and, as he has determined to do the same for Laura, there is only Dottie for Mattie to manage or mismanage. So you see, Gracie, your school-room drudgery is over. Mother herself, by her own will, has opened the prison-doors.”
He spoke in a light jesting tone, but Grace answered, almost passionately,—
“I tell you no, Archie! I no longer wish it so; it is too late: things are now quite different.”
“What do you mean?” he returned, with a long steady look that seemed to draw out her words in spite of her resolve not to speak them.
“I mean that things are changed—that you no longer need me, or wish me to live with you.”275
“I need you more,” he returned, calmly; “perhaps I have never needed you so much. As for living with me, is it your desire to condemn me to an existence of perfect loneliness?—for after Christmas Mattie leaves me. You are mysterious, Grace; you are not your old self.”
“Oh, it is you that are not yourself!” she retorted, in a tone of grief. “Why have you avoided me? why do you withhold your confidence? why do your letters tell me nothing? and then you come and are still silent.”
“What is it that you would have me tell you?” he asked; but this time he did not look her in the face.
“I would know this thing that has come between us and robbed me of your confidence. You are ill at ease; you are unhappy, Archie! You have never kept a trouble from me before: it was always I who shared your hopes and fears.”
“You may still share them. I am not changed, as you imagine Grace. All that I can tell you I will, even if you demand it in that ‘money-or-your-life’ style, as you are doing now,” trying to turn it off with a jest.
“Oh, Archie!”
“Well, what of Archie, now?”
“That you should laugh away my words! you have never done that before.”
“Very well, I will be serious; nay, more, I will be solemn. Grace, I forbid you ever to mention this thing again, on pain of my bitter displeasure!”
Then, as she looked at him, too much startled to answer, he went on:
“A man has a right to his own thoughts, if he choose to keep them to himself and his Maker. There are some things with which even you may not meddle, Grace. What if my life holds a grief which I would bury from all eyes but my own? would you tear up the clods with unhallowed fingers? To no living person but my Saviour”—and here Archie looked up with reverent eyes—“will I speak of this thing.” Then she clung to his arm, and tears flowed over her cheeks.
“Oh, Archie! forgive me! forgive me! I never meant to hurt you like this; I will not say another word!”
“You have not hurt me,” he returned, striving after his old manner, “except in refusing to live with me. I am lonely enough, God knows! and a sister who understands me, and with whom I could have sympathy, would be a great boon.”
“Then I will come,” she replied; drying her eyes. “If you want me, I will come, Archie.”
“I do want you; and I have never told you anything but the truth. But you must come and be happy, my dear. I want you, yourself, and not a grave, reticent creature who has gone about the house the last few days, looking at me askance, as though I had committed some deadly sin.”
Then the dimple showed itself in Grace’s cheek.276
“Have I really been so naughty, Archie?”
“Yes, you have been a very shadowy sort of Grace; but I give you full absolution, only don’t go and do it any more.” And, as she looked at him with her eyes full of sorrowful yearning, he went on, hastily: “Oh, I am all right, and least said is soonest mended. I am like the dog in Æsop’s fable, who mistook the shadow for the substance. A poor sort of dog, that fellow. Well, is your poor little mind at rest, Grace?” And the tone in which she said “Yes” seemed to satisfy him, for he turned their talk into another channel.
When Mrs. Drummond saw her daughter’s face that evening, she knew the cloud had passed between the brother and sister.
Grace followed her to her room that night,—a thing she had not done for months.
“Mother, I must thank you for being so good to us,” she began, impulsively, as soon as she had crossed the threshold.
“How have I been good to you, Grace?” observed her mother, calmly, as she unfastened her brooch. “Of course, I have always tried to be good to my children, although they do not seem to think so.”
“Ah, but this is very special goodness: and I am more grateful than I can say. Are you sure you will be able to spare me, mother?”
“After Christmas?—oh, yes: things will be possible then. If I remember rightly, I had to endure some very bitter words from you on this very subject. I hope you will do justice to my judgment at that time.”
“Yes, mother,” with downcast eyes. “I am afraid Archie and I were very wilful.”
“You were wilful, Grace,”—for Mrs. Drummond never suffered any one to find fault with her son in her hearing,—“you who ought to have known better. And yet I do believe that, but for my determination to enforce the right thing, you would have left your post, and all your duties, because Archie wanted you.”
“I was wrong. I see that plainly.”
“Yes, you were wrong: for a long time you bore yourself towards me as no daughter ought to bear herself to her mother. You angered me sorely, Grace, because I saw you were hardening yourself against me, only because I insisted that no child of mine should neglect her duty.”
“Mother, surely I am humbling myself now?”
“True; but how long have I waited for this confession? Night after night I have said to myself, ‘Surely Grace will come and tell me that she feels herself in the wrong!’ But no such words came. At last I ceased to hope for them; and now at this eleventh hour you can hardly expect me to show much joy at hearing them spoken.”
Then Grace’s head drooped, and she was silent. She knew277she deserved all these hard words, bitter as they were to bear; but Mrs. Drummond had said her say.
“Well, well, better late than never; and we will say no more about it. Next time you will understand me better, Grace.”
Then, as her mother kissed her, Grace knew that her sin was condoned. Nevertheless, as she left the room a few minutes later, her heart was not quite so light in her bosom; she felt that her mother had been just, but hardly generous.
“I thought mothers forgave more easily,” she said to herself, in somewhat aggrieved fashion. She had no idea that her mother was equally disappointed.
Mrs. Drummond was a hard, but not an unloving woman; and she would have liked more demonstration from her daughters. If Grace, for example, instead of all these words, had thrown herself into her arms and owned herself in the wrong, with a child-like pleading for forgiveness, Mrs. Drummond would have felt herself satisfied, and would have pressed her to her bosom with a loving word or two that Grace would have remembered when her mother was in her grave. But such outward forms of tenderness were not possible to Mrs. Drummond’s daughters: for in such matters we must reap as we sow; and Mrs. Drummond’s manner hardly merited softness. For there are mothers and mothers; and the world must produce its Drummonds and its Challoners until the end of time.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.ABOUT NOTHING PARTICULAR.
It was as well that Grace had had this talk with her brother; for, during the two days that remained of his brief visit, they were not alone together until the last half-hour before his departure. The young vicar had to return for his Sunday duties; but Mattie remained behind for another week. Archie, indeed, had once sought her in his old fashion,—running up to the school-room for a chat; but Susie had been there all the time. In former days, Archie would have sent her away with blunt peremptoriness; but now he seemed well content to have her there. He had no secrets to discuss, as he sat in his old place in the window-seat; yet Grace was too happy to see him there to find fault with his discourse.
But on the morning of his departure she had come down early to pour out his coffee. He had bidden his mother good-bye in her room; but he knew that, in spite of the earliness of the hour, Grace would be in her place to minister to his wants.278
“Well, Grace,” he said, entering with his travelling-plaid over his arm, “so it is to be good-bye until Christmas.”
“Yes,” she returned, looking at him with a sort of wistfulness; “but the time will pass quickly now. It is so nice to think that we shall begin our new year together.” And, as her brother checked an involuntary sigh, she went on eagerly: “If you knew how happy I am about it! It will be something to wake every morning and know you are not a hundred miles off,—that when I come down to breakfast I shall find you there,—that I shall be able to talk to you as much as I like; and as for work, why, it will be play to me to work for you, Archie!”
“Of course I know that,” rather mischievously.
“I would work for you like a servant: would I not, dear? I mean to be ever so good to you. Your friends shall be my friends; your likes and dislikes shall be mine too.”
“Why, Gracie,” he said, humoring her, “this is more than a wife would do for me!”
“Ah! but it is not too much to ask from a sister,” she returned, earnestly. “When you bring home your wife, Archie, I mean to be good to her too. I shall have to leave you then, and come back here; but if you are happy I shall not be miserable.” But he interrupted her a little impatiently.
“What put such nonsense into your head? I shall never marry. We shall be a pattern of old-bachelor brother and maiden sister.” And then he pushed away his plate, and went to the window. “Is it not Mrs. Carlyle who quotes that quaint old story about some one who always thanked God ‘for the blessings that passed over his or her head’? Is not that a curious idea, when one comes to think it out? Fancy thanking heaven really and seriously for all our disappointed hopes and plans,—for ‘the blessings that go over our heads’! It would be a new clause in our petitions,—eh, Gracie?”
“Why, yes,” she replied, as she came and stood near him. “I am afraid I could never say that from my heart.”
“It is not easy,” he returned, quietly; “but I do not know that we ought to give up trying, for all that.” And then his manner changed, and he put his arm round her in his old fashion. “Recollect, I want you very much, Grace: your coming will make me far happier. Mattie only touches the outside of things; I want some one near me who can go deeper than that,—who will help me with real work, and put up with my bad humors; for I am a man who is very liable to discouragement.” And when he had said this, he bade her good-bye.
It was a comfort to Archie to find himself hard at work again. These few days of idleness had been irksome to him. Now he could throw himself without stint or limit into his pastoral labors, walking miles of country road until he was weary, and planning new outlets for the feverish activity that seemed to stimulate him to fresh efforts.
People began to talk of the young vicar. His sermons were279changed somehow. There was more in them,—“less of the husk, and more of the kernel,” as Miss Middleton once remarked rather pithily.
They were wonderfully brief discourses; but, whereas they had once been elegant and somewhat scholarly productions, they were now earnest and even pungent. If the sentences were less carefully compiled, more rough-hewn, and deficient in polish, there was matter in them that roused people and made them think.
“I never could remember Mr. Drummond’s sermons before,” Dulce once observed, “but now I can recollect whole sentences quite nicely.”
Phillis, to whom she spoke, assented by a nod. If she had chosen, she could have admitted the fact that she could remember not sentences, but the entire sermon itself. In secret she marvelled also at the change.
“He is more earnest,” she would say to herself. “He preaches now, not from the outside, but from the inside of things,—from his own experience, not from other people’s. That makes the difference.”
And to Nan, who was her other conscience, she said one day, when they were discussing this subject,—
“I have been thinking a great deal about sermons lately. I wish I could publish the result of my cogitation. I feel inclined to write a pamphlet and entitle it ‘Hints to the Clergy.’ I think it would take vastly.”
It was Sunday afternoon, and they were sitting together on their favorite boulder. Phillis had christened it her “thinking-stone.”
“I never think to more purpose than when I am sitting here,” she would say.
Nan, who was looking out to sea rather dreamily, intent on her usual vision, Dick, roused herself at this, and began to smile in a lofty way.
“You think yourself very clever, Phillis, and so do I; but sermons are hardly in your province, my dear.”
Phillis shook her head gravely. She dissented from this view of the case.
“Common sense is in every one’s province,” she persisted. “I am a practical woman, and some of my hints would be valuable. Sermons are failures, Nan. They go over people’s heads like a flight of badly-shot arrows. Does not Goulburn say that? Now and then one touches the mark. When they are all let fly hither and thither and anyhow, the preacher shuts up his book, and his hearers cease to yawn.”
“Oh, Phillis, how absurd you are! Suppose Mr. Drummond were to hear you?”
“I should have no objection. But, Nan, seriously, do you not notice how formal and cut-and-dried most sermons are? They come round regularly, like Sunday. People have to bear280being preached at, and so the unfortunate parson must hammer it out of his head somehow. He picks out his text, writes out his composition, drags in his learning by the ear, and delivers it in his best fashion; and people listen to it politely, and the best behaved do not yawn.”
“Phillis, you are positively irreverent! I am shocked at you!”
“On the contrary, I am very reverent. Well, in my ‘Hints to the Clergy’ I would say, first, ‘Never preach what you do not feel yourself, or the current of electricity or sympathy, or whatever it is that communicates between preacher and people, will be checked or impeded. Do not preach out of the book: we can read that for ourselves. Preach out of your own head and your own experience, just as much as you can.’ Bless you,” continued Phillis, in a wise, half-sad tone, “half the pulpits would be empty: we should get sometimes no sermons at all!”
This was too much for Nan’s simplicity.
“But people would be so disappointed,” she observed, plaintively. “All the middle-aged people like sermons.”
“It would not hurt them to be disappointed sometimes. They would appreciate the real thing all the more when it came. It is as well to go without food altogether as to be fed on husks. After all, people forget that they come to church to say their prayers all together, and sing glorias.”
“That is very nicely said, dear,” was Nan’s admiring comment on this.
But Phillis waved aside the praise. She was quite in earnest.
“But if I were speaking to one of these real and not make-believe preachers, I would say to him, ‘Never be discouraged. Say what you have got to say: if you really feel it and mean it, some one will feel it too. You can’t see into people’s hearts: and a good thing, too, my friend. But “the arrow at the venture” may tell; some one may be “hit between the joints of the armor.”’ There, come along; you shall have more of my hints another time. I have said my say for the present.” And Phillis rose from the boulder, with her eyes bright and kindled by some moving thought, and went down to the edge of the water, and watched a sea-gull dipping towards the shore in the midst of the windy lights; while Nan, marvelling at her sister’s unusual earnestness, followed more slowly.
The Challoners were holding up their heads in the place now. There was no denying that. By the people at the vicarage and the White House they were owned and regarded as equals. Mrs. Cheyne made no secret of her affection for Phillis; and she was full of kindness also to Nan and Dulce. It was their own fault if they declined her frequent invitations. But there was one person who refused to hold out the hand of amity to the eccentric new-comers.281
Colonel Middleton still shook his white head, and delivered his protest into his daughter’s ear. Elizabeth, declared, laughingly, “that the Challoner girls were to her father what a red rag is to a bull.” He never met one of them without coming home and relieving his mind, as he called it. “My father is dying to know them,” she would say to Mr. Drummond. “He has fallen in love with them all,—mother and daughters too; but he is denying himself an introduction for a certain reason.” But, though Archie looked curious and questioned her very closely, she chose to be provoking and say no more. It was Colonel Middleton who at last enlightened the young man.
They were walking from the town together. The colonel was carrying his stick musket-wise over his shoulder, and had the vicar by the arm, when Phillis and Dulce came out of the gateway of the White House. As the girls passed Archie, they smiled at him and nodded, and Phillis, in a pretty way she had, waved her hand; and then they went on rapidly towards the Friary. As they did so, Colonel Middleton groaned, and touched his companion’s arm impressively.
“There, now, Drummond, did you ever see girls with a better carriage?—heads up—light springy step? Why, it is a pleasure even to an old fellow like myself to watch them. Fancy that taller one on horseback in the Row! Why, she would cut out half the girls. And think that one dare not notice them!” And he struck his stick into the ground almost angrily.
Archie smiled: he could not help it. The colonel was so whimsical in his wrath.
“They had plenty of notice from the folk at the White House,” he returned, quietly.
“Ah, Cheyne was always a bit of a Radical, and madam is no better. They can do as they like, without being afraid of consequences. But that is not my case.” And, as Archie looked at him rather mystified, he went on: “Bless me, you do not suppose I am afraid of knowing them for my own sake? Elizabeth tells me that she is intimate with them. But that is not my business, so long as she does not have them at Brooklyn. ‘We must draw the line there, Elizabeth,’ I said. ‘If you choose to visit your dressmakers, it is not for me to prevent you; you are old enough to select your own friends, so you may be as eccentric as you like. But your brother is coming home. Young men are young men; and I do not choose to expose Hammond to such temptation.’”
“Oh, Hammond! That is your son, I suppose?” asked Archie, who was much amused at the colonel’s earnestness.
“Yes; my boy Hammond! the finest fellow in the regiment, though I say it, who should not. Do you think that I, his father, would expose him to such danger as to throw him into the society of a set of fascinating young women who have chosen to emancipate themselves from all conventionality, and who call themselves—stuff and rubbish!—dressmakers?”282
“Not call themselves, so: they are excellent dressmakers!” was Archie’s somewhat malicious reply.
“All the more reason that my son should not know them!” thundered the old man. “What, sir! an officer in one of her Majesty’s regiments—the son and grandson of officers,—is such a one to be mixed up with a family that has lost caste,—to flirt with or make love to girls who are not above making gowns for my butcher’s wife? Before Hammond does such a thing as that––” And here the colonel paused from excess of emotion.
“You are perfectly right to defend your son from such danger,” returned the young clergyman with covert sarcasm. “In your case I should probably feel the same. But, in my position, being intimate with those ladies of whom you speak, and having had good opportunity to form my opinions of them, I cannot help saying, in their defence, that even your son, excellent officer as he is,—and, I am sure, a most worthy young man,—would scarcely be dishonored by an alliance with the finest young gentlewomen I ever met!” And, as he said this, with all due gravity, Archie released his arm, and, with a farewell nod, went off, leaving the colonel, open-mouthed and gasping with astonishment, at his own gate.
Elizabeth met him on the threshold.
“Oh, father, why did you not bring Mr. Drummond in!” she said, reproachfully; “it is so long since he has paid us a visit.”
“Poor Drummond!” replied the colonel, with a mournful shake of his head: “it is just as I thought. He has almost owned it, in fact. He is seriously smitten with one of those Challoner girls, and before long there will be a wedding in the place.”
“Now, father, this is just one of your whimsies,” replied Elizabeth, placidly. “Mr. Drummond is going to have his favorite sister, Grace, to live with him and keep his house. He told me so himself; and that does not look as though he expected to bring home a wife. So you may just put this idea out of your head.” But, though Elizabeth was well aware of the truth of her words, that no new mistress was to come to the vicarage, still her fine sympathy and unerring woman’s divination had read the meaning of the young vicar’s clouded brow, and she knew that he, too, had to try and be grateful for “the blessings that went over his head.”
Archie’s grand and somewhat heroic speech failed in its effect, as far as the colonel was concerned. Elizabeth was right in saying her father was longing to know the Challoners. The old man’s fancy had been mightily taken by the girls; but for Hammond, for his boy’s sake, he was capable of any amount of self-denial. Once he was sorely tempted to give in. When turning the corner of the Braidwood Road, not far from his own house, he came suddenly upon his daughter, who was standing on the side-path, talking to Dulce.
Dulce, who always seemed a sort of reflection and shadow of283her sisters, and who withdrew somewhat in the background, obscured a little by Nan’s beauty and Phillis’s sprightliness, was nevertheless in her way a most bewitching little maiden.
“There comes my father!” observed Elizabeth, tranquilly, never doubting that he would join them; and Dulce looked up a little shy and fluttered from under her broad-brimmed hat; for she had taken a fancy to the colonel, with his white moustache and kindly inquisitive eyes. He was a sort of hero in her fancy; and Dulce loved heroes,—especially when they wore a medal.
Colonel Middleton saw the little girl dimpling and blushing with pleasure, and his old heart thumped a little with excitement and the conflict of feeling: the innocent child-look appealed to his fatherly sympathies. There was a moment’s wavering; then he lifted his white hat, with a muttered “Good-morning,” and the next minute he was walking on with squared shoulders and tremendous energy.
Poor little Dulce’s lip quivered with disappointment: she thought it hard, when other people were so kind to them. Elizabeth said nothing; but she bade the child good-bye with greater tenderness than usual, and sent all sort of messages to her mother and Nan.
The colonel, meanwhile, had retreated into the house, and was opening his papers with more than his usual fuss.
“It is for Hammond,” he murmured to himself. “When one has boys, one must do one’s duty by them; but it was confoundedly hard, by Jove!” And all the remainder of the day a pair of appealing eyes seemed to reproach him with unkindness. But Elizabeth never said a word; it was not her place to find fault with her father.
CHAPTER XXXIX.“HOW DO YOU DO, AUNT CATHERINE?”
One drizzling November morning, Mattie was standing at the hall door, looking out a little blankly through the open gateway at the prospect before her,—at the rotting leaves that lay heaped up in the road, and at the gray, humid sky,—when a very big man suddenly blocked up the entrance, and startled her dreadfully.
Mattie afterwards described the occurrence very graphically to her brother:
“He was the biggest man I ever saw in my life, Archie. He looked as strong as a navvy; and his shoulders reminded me of one of those men one sees in brewers’ drays. And his face284was so red, and his hair, too,—that dreadfully red color, you know, that no one admires; and his hands, and even his voice, were big.”
“What a fascinating description!” laughed Archie. “Upon my word, Mattie, you are rather tremendous in your language. Well, and what did the navvy say to you?”
“Oh, he was not a navvy, really! Of course he was a gentleman. He could not help his big voice, and what he said was nice; but, I assure you, Archie, he nearly took my breath away;” and so on, and so on, to the end of her story.
But it was enough to surprise any one whose nerves were not of the strongest, when one lives in a lonely country road, and the master of the house is out, to see a gigantic specimen of manhood, not very carefully dressed, and with hair like a red glory, come suddenly striding through one’s open gate, without “by your leave,” or waiting for any possible permission.
Mattie dropped her umbrella,—for she was dressed in her waterproof, and her oldest hat, ready for her district-work; and the stranger picked it up, and handed it to her promptly, and then he removed his hat politely.
“How do you do, cousin?” he said; and a broad, genial smile revealed a set of white teeth.
Mattie retreated a step in genuine affright.
“For you know, Archie,” she explained afterwards, in her simple way, “we have no cousins worth mentioning, except Sophy Trinder, who is not our cousin at all, but mother’s; and so you see it sounded so very odd.”
“Very odd indeed,” muttered Archie.
“If you please, Mr. Drummond—that is my brother—is out, and I am going out too,” faltered Mattie, who was not a specially heroic little person, and who decidedly had not got her wits about her just then.
“I do not want Mr. Drummond, whoever he may be. I never heard of him in my life. I only want my aunt and cousins. Which of them are you, eh? Why, you must be Nan, I suppose?” And the big man looked down at her with a sort of supercilious good nature. The name gave Mattie instant enlightenment.
“Nan!—Oh, you must mean the Challoners!” she exclaimed, with a little gasp of surprise.
“Yes, of course; I am a Challoner myself. Well, which of them are you, eh? You are a long time telling me your name.” And the new-comer peered down at her still more curiously, as though he were surprised to find anything so small and ordinary-looking.
Mattie never looked to advantage in her waterproof. More than once her brother had threatened to burn the old rag of a thing.
“My name is Mattie Drummond,” replied the bewildered285Mattie, trying to speak with dignity,—she never would call herself Matilda, she hated it so,—“and I live with my brother, who is the clergyman of the parish. This is the vicarage: if you want the Friary, it is a little lower down the road.”
“Where?” he asked, striding to the gate; and then he came back again, taking the few steps at a single bound,—so at least it appeared to Mattie. “Why—why—there is no house at all—only a miserable cottage, and––”
“That is the Friary,” repeated Mattie, decidedly; “but it is not miserable at all: it is very nice and pretty. The Challoners are very poor, you know; but their house looks beautiful for all that.”
“Oh, yes; I know all about it. I have been down to that place, Oldfield, where they lived; and what I heard has brought me here like an express train. I say, Miss Mattie Drummond, if you will excuse ceremony in a fellow who has never seen his father’s country before, and who has roughed it in the colonies, may I come in a moment and ask you a few questions about my cousins?”
“Oh, by all means,” returned Mattie, who was very good-natured and was now more at her ease. “You will be very welcome, Mr. Challoner.”
“Sir Henry Challoner, at your service,” responded that singular individual with a twinkle of his eye, as Mattie became confused all at once. “You see,” he continued, confidentially, as she led the way rather awkwardly to her brother’s study, hoping fervently that Archie would come in, “I have been making up my mind to come to England for years, but somehow I have never been able to get away; but after my father’s death—he was out in Australia with me—I was so lonely and cut up that I thought I would take a run over to the mother-country and hunt up my relations. He was not much of a father perhaps; but, as one cannot have a choice in such matters, I was obliged to put up with him;” which was perhaps the kindest speech Sir Francis’s son could make under the circumstances.
Mattie listened intelligently, but she was so slightly acquainted with the Challoners’ past history that she did not know they possessed any relations. But she had no need to ask any questions: the new-comer seemed determined to give a full account of himself.
“So do you see, Miss Drummond, having made my fortune by a stroke of good luck, and not knowing quite how to spend it—the father and mother both gone,—and having no wife or chick of my own, and being uncommon lonely under the circumstances, I thought I would just run over and have a look at my belongings. I have a sort of fancy for Aunt Catherine; she used to write me such pretty letters when I was a little chap in Calcutta, and tell me about Nan, and Phillis, and—what was the baby’s name?—Dulce. I believe she and the poor286old governor never hit it off: the old man had been a sad sinner in his day. But I never forgot those letters: and when he was gone, poor old boy! I said to myself, Now I will go and see Aunt Catherine.”
“And you went down to Oldfield, Sir Henry?”
“Eh, what? meaning me, I suppose? but out there they called me Sir Harry, or Harry mostly, for what was the use of a title there? Oh, yes, I went down and found out all about them from a chatty little woman, rather like yourself, and she sent me on here.”
“Oh, dear, I am so glad!” exclaimed Mattie, who was now thoroughly herself: “they will be so pleased to see you, and you will think them all so charming. I am sure I never saw any one the least like them, except Grace, and she is not half so pretty as Nan; and as for Phillis, I admire her even more, she lights up so when she talks.”
“Aunt Catherine used to be beautiful,” observed Sir Harry, gravely; for then and afterwards he insisted on that form of address. He was not English enough or sufficiently stiff for Henry, he would say.
“Oh, dear, yes! she is quite lovely now,—at least Archie and I think so; and Dulce is the dearest little thing. I am ever so fond of them; if they were my own sisters I could not love them more,” continued Mattie, with a little gush; but, indeed the girls’ gentle high-bred ways had won her heart from the first.
Sir Harry’s eyes positively sparkled with delight; he had pleasant eyes which redeemed his other features, for it must be confessed he was decidedly plain.
“I must shake hands with you, Miss Drummond,” he said, stretching out a huge hand, with a diamond ring on it that greatly impressed Mattie. “We shall be good friends, I see that.” And though poor Mattie winced with pain under that cordial grasp, she hid it manfully.
“Did they tell you at Oldfield how poor they are?” she said, when this ceremony had been performed, and Sir Harry’s face looked more like a sunset than ever with that benevolent glow on it.
“Oh, yes,” he returned, indifferently; “but all that is over now.”
“You know they have to work for their living; the girls are dressmakers,” bringing out the news rather cautiously, for fear he should be shocked; a baronet must be sensitive on such points. But Sir Harry only laughed.
“Well, they are plucky girls,” he said, admiringly; “I like them for that.” And then he asked, a little anxiously, if his aunt sewed gowns too,—that was how he put it,—and seemed mightily relieved to hear that she did very little but read to the girls.
“I would not like to hear she was slaving herself at her age,”287he remarked, seriously. “Work will not hurt the girls: it keeps them out of mischief. But now I have come, we must put a stop to all this.” And then he got up and threw back his shoulders, as though he were adjusting them to some burden; and Mattie, as she looked up at him, thought again of the brewer’s dray.
“I was afraid when he got off his chair he would touch the ceiling,” she said, afterwards. “He quite stooped of his own accord going through the study doorway.”
When Sir Henry had shaken himself into order, and pulled an end of his rough red moustache, he said, quite suddenly,—
“As you are a friend of the family, Miss Drummond, I think it would be as well if you would go with me to the Friary and introduce me in due form; for, though you would not believe it in a man of my size, I am painfully shy, and the notion of all these girls, unless I take them singly, is rather overwhelming.” And, though this request took Mattie a little by surprise, she saw no reason for refusing to do him this kindness. So she assented willingly, for in her heart Mattie was fond of a scene. It gave her such a hold on Archie’s attention afterwards; and, to do him justice, when the Challoners were on thetapis, he made a splendid listener.
Sir Henry walked very fast, as though he were in a tremendous hurry; but he was nervous, poor fellow, and, though he did not like to own as much to a woman, he would almost have liked to run away, in spite of his coming all those thousands of miles to see his relations. He had pressed Mattie into the service to cover his confusion, but the little woman herself hardly saw how she was needed, for, instead of waiting for her introduction, or sending in his name or card by Dorothy, he just put them both aside and stepped into the first room that stood handy, guided by the sound of voices.
“How do you do, Aunt Catherine?” he said, walking straight up to the terrified lady, who had never seen anything so big in her life. “I am Harry,—Harry Challoner, you know,—to whom you used to write when I was a little slip of a boy.”
A strange queen in a hive of bees could not have produced more confusion. Dulce stopped her sewing-machine so suddenly that her thread broke; Phillis, who was reading aloud, let her book fall with quite a crash; and Nan said, “Oh, dear!” and grew quite pale with surprise and disappointment: for a moment she thought it was Dick. As for Mrs. Challoner, who had a right to her nerves from years of injudicious spoiling and indulgence, and would not have been without her feelings for worlds, she just clasped her hands and murmured “Good heavens!” in the orthodox lady-like way.
“Why, yes, Aunt Catherine, I am Harry; and I hope you have not forgotten the existence of the poor little beggar to whom you were so kind in the old Calcutta days.” And his big288voice softened involuntarily in the presence of this dignified aunt.
“Oh, no, my dear!—no!” touched by his manner, and remembering the boyish scrawls that used to come to her, signed “Your affectionate nephew, Harry.” “And are you indeed my nephew?—are you Harry?” And then she held out her slim hand, which he took awkwardly enough. “Girls, you must welcome your cousin. This is Nan, Harry, the one they always say is like me; and this is Phillis, our clever one; and this is my pet Dulce.” And with each one did their cousin solemnly shake hands, but without a smile; indeed, his aspect became almost ludicrous, until he caught sight of his homely little acquaintance, Mattie, who stood an amused spectator of this family tableau, and his red, embarrassed face brightened a little.
“Aunt Catherine was such an awfully grand creature, you know,” as he observed to her afterwards, in a confidential aside: “her manners make a fellow feel nowhere. And as for my cousins, a prettier lot of girls I never saw anywhere; and of course, they are as jolly and up to larks as other girls; but just at first, you know, I had a bull-in-a-china-shop sort of feeling among them all.”
Mrs. Challoner, in spite of her fine manners, was far too nervous herself to notice her nephew’s discomfort. She had to mention a name that was obnoxious to her, for of course she must ask after his father. She got him into a chair by her at length, where he stared into his hat to avoid the bright eyes that seemed to quiz him so unmercifully.
“And how is Sir Francis?” she asked, uttering the name with languid interest.
“My father! Oh, did you not know, Aunt Catherine?—he died out in Sydney a year ago. Poor old fellow! he had a terrible illness. There was no pulling him through it.”
Mrs. Challoner roused up at this:
“Your father dead! Then, Harry, you have come to the title?”
But her nephew burst into a boisterous laugh at this:
“Yes,—a title and an old ruin. A precious heritage, is it not? Not that I care what people call me. The most important part is that another fellow—Dalton they call him—and I made a grand hit out in Sydney. When I saw the money flowing in, I just sent for the poor old governor to join me; and we did not have a bad time of it, until the gout took him off. And then I got sick of it all, and thought I would have a look at England and hunt up my relations.”
Sir Harry had blurted out this long speech as he still attentively regarded the lining of his hat; but, happening to look up, he caught Phillis’s eyes, which were contemplating him. The mischievous look of fun in them was not to be resisted. Sir289Harry first got redder, if possible; then his own eyes began to twinkle, and finally they both laughed. And after that the ice was broken, and they got on famously.
The girls chattered to him like magpies. They made Mattie take off her hat and hideous old waterproof and stay to luncheon. Nan smoothed her hair, which was sadly ruffled, and Phillis settled her brooch and collar.
There was only cold mutton in the larder; but what did that matter? Dulce ran out in the garden and picked dahlias for the table; and Nan took her mother’s keys and drew from the recesses of a dim sweet-smelling press some dainty napkins and a fine old cloth that might have suited a princess. There was a bottle of rare Madeira that remained from their stock of wine; and Dorothy had made a batch of fresh dinner-rolls. Dorothy was always full of resources in an emergency.
“Don’t fash yourself, Miss Nan,” she said, when her young mistress came into the kitchen. “The cold mutton can’t be helped; but we have got angels in the larder, and I will just pop them into the oven.”
Sir Harry roared with laughter when Dorothy’s speech was repeated to him. The little puddings were declared by Mattie to be delicious; but Sir Harry could scarcely eat his for laughing.
“Who ever heard of baked angels, Aunt Catherine!” he exclaimed, after another explosion.
“My dear, it is only a name,” she returned, mildly. “Will you have another, Harry? And, Nan, you must pass your cousin the Madeira.”
They were all seated round the table in the small parlor. It was felt to be a triumph when Sir Harry contrived to seat himself without grazing himself seriously against the chiffonnier or knocking over a piece of the blue-and-gold china.
“What a cosey little cabin of a place!” he said with critical approval; “but it is rather small to hold you all,—eh, Aunt Catherine?”
“Yes: it is small after Glen Cottage,” she sighed. “We had such a pretty drawing-room there.”
“And such a lovely garden!” added Dulce.
“Oh, this crib in not fit for you? We will alter all that,” he returned, complacently. “I am the head of the family now, and I must take my uncle’s place. I am awfully rich, Aunt Catherine; so you have only got to tell me what you and the girls want, you know.” And then he rubbed his hands as though he were pleased about something.
But no one took any notice of this speech, hardly knowing how to treat it.
When luncheon—which was, indeed, the family dinner—was over, the girls carried him off to the work-room, and showed him specimens of their skill.
“Very nice; very well done,” he observed, approvingly.290
“I am glad you showed such pluck; for why any woman should think itinfra dig.to make a gown for another woman quite beats me. Why, bless you, in the colonies we fellows turned our hands to anything! Well, Aunt Catherine, they are plucky ones, these girls of yours. But we must put a stop to this sort of thing, you and I. I don’t think my uncle would have liked it. And as I am in his place––” And here he thrust aside some amber satin with his great hands, with a movement full of suggestive possibilities.
He took them all out to walk after that. Mrs. Challoner, indeed, begged to be excused,—the poor lady was already sadly fatigued, and longed for her nap,—but he would not dispense with Mattie’s company.
“We were acquaintances first,” he said to her; “and I look upon you as a sort of cousin too, Miss Mattie.” And poor little Mattie, who had never met with so much friendliness before, quite blushed and bridled with pleasure.
Mr. Drummond, who was coming out of his own gate, stood as though transfixed as the procession came towards him. The four girls were walking all abreast, Mattie in the middle; and beside them stalked a huge man, in rough, rather outlandish attire, looking like a son of the Anakin, or a red-headed Goliath.
Archie stood still in the middle of the road, and Mattie rushed up to him:
“We are going for a walk. Oh, Archie, I wish you would come too! It would be such fun!”
“Yes; do come!” cried unconscious Nan, seconding her out of pure good nature. “Mr. Drummond, this is our cousin, Sir Henry Challoner, who has just come from Australia; and we have never seen him before.” And then the young clergyman shook hands with him very stiffly, and spoke a few conventional words.
“They have not a man belonging to them,” he had said to himself, triumphantly, and then that odious Dick had turned up and now this extraordinary-looking being who called himself Sir Henry Challoner.
Archie took down the “Peerage” when he got home, for he could not be induced to join the merry party in their walk. He found the name there all right,—“Henry Fortescue Challoner, son of Sir Francis Challoner, son of Sir Henry Challoner,” and so on. It was an old baronetcy,—one of the oldest in England,—but the estates had dwindled down to a half-ruined residence and a few fields. “Challoner Place,” as it was called, was nothing but a heap of mouldering walls; but Mattie had whispered to him gleefully that he was “awfully rich, and the head of the family, and unmarried; and he did not mean to let his cousins make gowns anymore for other people, though they might do it for themselves.”
Mattie never forgot that walk. Never in her life had she291enjoyed such fun. Archie, with his grave face and prim ways, would have spoiled the hilarity.
First Sir Henry took his cousins to the hotel, where they heard him order his apartments and dinner: he evidently considered he had not dined; and there was a good deal of discussion about some game that he ordered, and a certain brand of champagne that was to his liking.
“If they make me comfortable, I may stop on a goodish bit,” he informed them, “until we have settled where my aunt would like to live. I shall run up to London every few days, and can do all your commissions. By the bye, I got some trinkets for you girls on my way down; we will haul them over when I come up for the cup of coffee Aunt Catherine promised me this evening.”
“Now, Harry, we don’t want presents,” remarked Phillis, taking him to task as easily as though she had known him all her life long.
In spite of his bigness, his great burly figure and plain face, there was something very pleasant about him. He was rough and unpolished, his dress was careless and of colonial cut; and yet one could not fail to see he was a gentleman. His boyishness and fun would have delighted Dick, who was of the same calibre; only Dick was far cleverer, and had more in his little finger than this great lumbering Harry in his whole body.
He was slow and clumsy, but his heart and intentions were excellent; he was full of tenderness for women, and showed a touching sort of chivalry in his intercourse with them. In some way, his manners were far finer than those of a New Bond Street gentleman; for he could not sneer at a woman, he believed in the goodness of the sex, in spite of much knowledge to the contrary, he could not tell a lie, and he only cheated himself. This was saying a good deal for the son of that very black sheep Sir Francis; but, as Sir Harry once simply observed, “his mother was a good woman:” if this were the case, her husband’s vices must have shortened her life, for she died young.
Phillis was glad when they turned their backs on the town: she found her cousin’s long purse a difficulty: it seemed an impossibility to get him past the shops.
First, he was sure Aunt Catherine was fond of champagne,—all ladies liked sweet sparkling things; but he would see about that at the hotel presently. Then his attention was attracted by some grouse hanging up at the poulterer’s: Aunt Catherine must have some grouse, as he remembered the cold mutton. Phillis made no objection to the grouse, for she knew her mother’s fondness for game; but she waxed indignant when partridges and a hare were added, and still more when Sir Harry ransacked the fruiterers for a supply of the rarest fruit the town could afford. After this, he turned his attention to cakes and bonbons; but here Dulce took his part, for she loved bonbons. Phillis caught Nan by the arm, and compelled her to292leave them; but Mattie deserted her friends, and remained to watch the fun.
Dulce grew frightened at last, and tried to coax her cousin away.
“Oh, no more—no more?” she pleaded. “Phillis and Nan will be so angry with us.”
“I don’t see anything more worth getting,” returned her cousin, contemptuously. “What a place this is, to be sure! Never mind, Dulce; I am going up to London to-morrow, and I will bring you down as many bonbons as you like from the French place in Regent Street. I will bring Miss Mattie some too,” he continued, as the girls hurried him along. “And, Dulce, just write out a list of what you girls want; and I will get them, as sure as my name is Harry.”