“’Tis May without and May within!” might well have been Sydney’s song, as she literally danced along the Park on a perfect afternoon a few weeks later.
Though she and Miss Osric had been up since seven o’clock, the day had seemed all too short for everything she wanted to crowd into it.
“No one should do the flowers but herself,” she declared, and Mackintosh groaned over the ravages she made in “his conservatories” and “his gardens.” But Miss Lisle was a privileged person in his eyes, so his groans were only inward, and he actually went so far as to walk round the conservatories with her, cutting what she wanted, with the face of a martyr at the stake!
“Not that I grudge flowers in reason to her ladyship,” he explained, “but what’s tobecome of my flower-show next month, miss, I ask you?”
“Indeed, I won’t take all your flowers,” said Sydney; “but surely, Mackintosh, you want the Castle to be gay as much as I do when Lord St. Quentin is bringing home his bride at last!”
“Well, miss, I’ll not say but that I do rejoice with all my heart,” the old man said. “And a fine upstanding ladyship we shall have, says I! I mind her well enough when she come here first with the Dean, and looked at my flowers for all the world as if they were Christians, and understood what she said to ’em. ‘Oh, you beauties! you lovely things!’ she cried as she comes into the conservatories, as his lordship he was showing to her. No, miss, I don’t grudge my flowers, in reason—not to you or to her ladyship!”
The wedding had taken place very quietly a fortnight ago. Both Katharine and St. Quentin felt that they had waited long enough for the happiness that had so nearly never come at all. They were married early one morning, in one of the little side chapels of the great cathedral, by Katharine’s white-haired father, with only Sydney and the little cousin Sylvia present, and old Dr. Lorry,who insisted upon coming, to see how his patient got through the ceremony. There were so few relations upon either side to come, even if the health of the bridegroom had been fit for anything but the quietest of weddings. St. Quentin asked Lady Frederica to be present from a sense of duty, but was neither surprised nor disappointed when she wrote to explain it was impossible to expect her to attend a wedding which was fixed for so unconscionably early an hour, but she sent her best wishes to them both. She also sent a handsome wedding present, for which the bill came in afterwards to St. Quentin. So there were only those few there to hear the words that made Katharine and St. Quentin man and wife at last. The honeymoon had been passed in a health-giving cruise on the Mediterranean, and now they were to come home.
Lady Frederica had never returned to the Castle after St. Quentin’s operation, and it cannot be said that her nephew missed her. He invited Mrs. Chichester to come and stay with Sydney during the period of his convalescence, and inwardly determined, as he saw the delight with which the girl showed all her favourite haunts to “mother,” that she shouldhave at least the female portion of the house of Chichester to stay with her as often as she liked. In fact, Katharine had already expressed her intention of being great friends with them all.
But Mrs. Chichester had gone back to London now, and for the fortnight of the honeymoon Miss Osric and Sydney had been alone, and had certainly made good use of their time in the business of arranging a welcome for St. Quentin and his bride.
The Castle was ablaze with flowers and the air ablaze with sunshine, as Sydney, her labours finished, but too excited to sit still and wait, went dancing onward through the Park and out into the village, where the hedges were fast breaking into the bridal white of hawthorn blossom. Miss Osric, as soon as all the work was finished, had discreetly betaken herself to the Vicarage, leaving the girl to welcome Katharine and her cousin alone.
It was four o’clock: they would hardly be here for another quarter of an hour, Sydney thought to herself, and she slackened her pace and looked upward at the gorgeous decorations with which the little village was aflame.
The children were all drawn up in a bodyon the village green, under the charge of the schoolmistress, and armed with little, tight, hard bunches of flowers, to cast before the happy pair. Most of the tenantry, the farmers on horseback, were waiting at the top of the village at the turning on the Dacreshaw road. Some few of the women, however, were remaining quietly at the cottage doors, satisfied without that first view of the bride and bridegroom which the others seemed to think so desirable.
Among the number of these last was Mrs. Sawyer, who, with a healthy colour in the face that used to look so sickly, was standing smiling at the neat white gate of her new cottage.
Sydney paused to shake hands with her and ask if everything in the new cottage were entirely satisfactory.
“Why, that it is, miss,” was the hearty response, “if it weren’t for just a little leakage in the boiler. But there, miss, I’ve no call to complain, for indeed I scarcely know myself with my beautiful tiled kitchen, as is almost too good to use, and my back-kitchen as is fit for duchesses to work in, and all the rest as ’is lordship ’as done for me. Reckon that there boiler is my crumpled rose-leaf, miss!”
Mrs. Sawyer was so serious that Sydney felt it would not do to laugh, though the description of the large black boiler as “a rose-leaf” made the corners of the mouth twitch ominously.
She volunteered to come and look at it, and was bending down to examine the defective tap, when a roar of distant cheering made both forget the leaking boiler and rush wildly to the door. “They are coming!”
Round the bend in the road, under the great arch wreathed with flowers and bearing the inscription, “Welcome to the bride and bridegroom,” bowled the carriage. There they were!
St. Quentin, still very thin, but upright, hat in hand, smiling and nodding to his tenants as they roared their welcome, and by his side Katharine, fair and stately, unchanged, except that the sadness had passed from her eyes.
Sydney ran forward, and the carriage stopped.
“Hullo! what are you doing wandering about alone?” St. Quentin asked, laughing, when they had exchanged greetings. “Lucky for you Aunt Rica isn’t here! What is it?”
“I am trying to make out what is wrong with Mrs. Sawyer’s boiler,” she explained; “it leaks.”
The marquess said something in a low tone to his wife, jumped down, handed her from the carriage, and turned to Greaves, wooden with surprise upon the box, at this extraordinary conduct on the part of the bride and bridegroom.
“Drive on, Greaves; we’ll walk up presently. Now, Mrs. Sawyer, let’s have a look at the boiler.”
“You could have knocked me down with a feather!” Mrs. Sawyer was wont to say when dilating on the story afterwards. “For in they all come, as sure as I’m a living woman! and down goes his lordship on his knees, as interested in that boiler as if it was a newspaper full of the quarrellings of that there silly Parliament, and turns the tap about, and then jumps up and looks about to see if the workmen had left any putty, and as pleased as may be when he finds it, and down on his knees again—and thankful I was as I’d scrubbed the floor only that morning—and makes as neat a job of it as may be, just to last till the plumber comes to do it proper, he says; and full of jokes all the time he was, as made me laugh till I cried nearly!
“And her ladyship sitting by, in my best chair, and nursing Liza’s baby, as though shefair loved to have it on her knee; and our young lady, bless her! looking as bright and happy as though her world was just made of spring and sunshine, as I hopes it may be!
“And his lordship made a rare good job of the boiler too,” she would add, as though anybody had presumed to doubt his powers as a plumber, “and washed his hands in the back kitchen when he finished, and dried ’em on the round towel, not a bit proud, and when he knocks his ’ead against the lintel going out, he laughs again, and says, says he—‘Fane must make my tenants’ doors a little higher,’ says he, ‘for I mean there to be room for me to come in,’ he says.”
The three walked together through the Park with the late afternoon sunshine glittering on the glory of fresh green beneath and overhead, and up the marble steps to the splendid castle towering above them.
As they reached the top, St. Quentin raised his hat, and took a hand of each.
“Welcome home!” he said.
It was a brilliant June morning rather more than a year after the events mentioned in the last chapter.
The air was full of the song of birds and the hum of bees, and of another sound to which Sydney Lisle was listening, as she stood upon the steps of the Castle, shading eyes that danced joyfully from the dazzling sunshine, and listening to the pealing of the bells.
They were plain enough from Lislehurst Church across the Park, but she could distinguish, mingling with these, the more distant peal from Loam, and even, she thought, Marston’s little tinkling duet from its two cracked bells, which were being pulled with a goodwill that went far to atone for their lack of music.
The glory of “leafy June,” that queen of months, was upon the tall trees of the Park, among which presently the girl went wandering. How wonderful a world it was to-day! She felt as though she wanted to drink in the beauty around her.
The sunshine came flickering through the trees, making a chequer of light and shade upon the grassy path before her; in front the softly dappled deer were feeding peacefully, undisturbed by her approach.
“Pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang—pang!” went the bells, and Sydney smiled in sympathy with that wonderful abandonment of joy which only bells can give.
The girl made a charming picture as she stood there on the soft grass, with the mighty trees she loved so well towering in their grandeur overhead, and the sunshine flickering through the leaves upon her white gown and sweet face.
She was good to look upon indeed in her dainty gown, with a great bunch of yellow roses at her belt, and that flush upon her cheek and sun of gladness in her eyes. She might have stood for an embodiment of the sweet young summer which was making the world good to dwell in.
So at least thought a young man, who, catching through the trees a glimpse of her white dress, had left the road and cut across the Park toward her. As he came near his eyes were fixed upon her earnest face, raised to the glory of sight and sound above. She did not hear his footsteps till he was quite close to her; then she sprang to meet him with a low cry of delight.
“Oh, Hugh! have you heard?”
“Yes, I heard at Donisbro’ and came straight.”
Something new in his voice brought a sudden flush to the delicately tinted face. Her eyes fell before his eager ones.
“Come into the gardens,” she said, turning, and the two went wandering together in a strange silence over the cool turf of the bowling green where King Charles I. had once played at his favourite game with a loyal Lisle of old, a Sydney too.
The balmy, fragrant air was filled with the clang of bells; beyond the Park they were beginning to cut hay in the long meadows sloping upwards towards the grey-green downs. A great bush, covered with the little yellow roses Sydney wore, smiled up at the two who stood before it.
“Pang—pang-pang-pang—pang—pang-pang-pang!” went the bells.
“They ring with goodwill,” Hugh said, with a smile.
“They are very glad,” said Sydney, “and oh, Hugh, I wonder whether anybody on the whole estate is more glad than I am!”
And then Hugh turned and caught her hands and said, with an odd break in his voice, “Syd, are you really?”
She looked straight up at him, and he knew that she had spoken truth.
“If you are, what must I be!” he cried. “My darling, you don’t know, you can’t know what this means to me!”
His voice broke suddenly.
“Tell me,” she said. But I think she understood without telling.
Later, as the two sat together on the grassy bank bordering the bowling green, the girl said, “Do you know, I think we ought to be grateful to St. Quentin for taking me away from home and all of you. It was very, very hard to give up my brother Hugh, but this is better!”
“It is,” Hugh said, with absolute conviction.
“Pang—pang-pang-pang—pang-pang-pang-pang!” went the bells, tripping one another upin their haste to clang out the glad tidings of the birth of an heir male to the great St. Quentin title and estates.
But Sydney had come, in those few quiet minutes in the garden, into a far greater heritage than that of which the little heir’s birth had deprived her!
A tall figure with brown hair touched with grey about the temples was coming down the path towards the bowling green. Sydney sprang to her feet and went to meet him, Hugh following her closely.
Lord St. Quentin too was listening to the bells, with a smile upon the face that had nearly lost its cynical expression. “But I feel almost as if the little beggar were doing you an injury, Sydney,” he said, laying his hand upon the girl’s slight shoulder as she joined him.
“You are not to say that!” she cried. “Do you think there is any one more glad and happy than I am to-day? Oh, St. Quentin, if you only knew how glad I am to be disinherited!”
He looked down at her glowing face, then turned from hers to Hugh’s. The light of comprehension dawned in his eyes.
“Upon my word!” he exclaimed as sternlyas he could. “What mischief have you two been doing now?”
“Well,” Sydney said audaciously, looking up into his face, that she had grown so fond of, “you see, you forbade me to look upon Hugh as a brother any longer—and—and I always try to obey you.”
“When I heard at Donisbro’ this morning that she was safely out of the succession, I couldn’t wait,” Hugh said. “There was just time to catch the next train, and I caught it!”
The corners of St. Quentin’s mouth twitched, and after one or two attempts to look serious, he gave it up and laughed outright.
“You are a nice pair!” he said. “If it weren’t for the fact that Katharine is sure to be upon the side of true love, and that you, Sydney, always insist upon your own way, I’d play the stern guardian, and send Master Hugh to the right-about!”
“But of course you are not going to do anything so absolutely horrid,” Sydney said with confidence. “You’re going to take him in to see the baby.”
“It’s all the baby’s fault,” grumbled its father, when Hugh had been presented to the red-faced, crumpled, kicking object who was Lord Lisle. “I believe I bear him a grudge.You would have made a first-rate landlord, Sydney!”
“I never should have made a marchioness,” she declared with much decision. “Ask Lady Frederica. And oh, Quin, don’t be cross, but be glad that I haven’t got to try!”
Katharine sided with the lovers, as her husband had foretold, and he withdrew his opposition.
“Only, how do you intend to live?” he enquired one day of Sydney, as she sat nursing the little heir upon her knee.
“We are going to wait, of course,” she explained, “till Hugh is earning rather more, and in the meantime I am going to be so busy. I shall learn cooking and housekeeping and everything useful I can think of, and then it won’t matter if Hugh and I are not so very rich at first, will it?”
“H—m,” said St. Quentin. “You’re right about not being in a hurry. Katharine and I can’t do without you yet. But, you ridiculous little goose! has it never struck you that there are such things as wedding presents—and as marriage settlements? Look here, old Lorry wants to retire, if he can get a good offer forhis practice. It’s a first-rate one, you know, and it appears your Hugh won golden opinions here at the time of the fever. Lorry thinks if he were to come down and work in with him a little, the youngster would be received with enthusiasm by the patients when he himself cuts the concern. If your Hugh likes the notion, I’ll buy the practice for him and set you up in Lorry’s house, which you can have rent free, of course. How would that suit you as a wedding present? You see, old Lorry means to retire on Donisbro’, where some of his own people hang out.
“It’s a nice enough house and handy to the Castle, which is fortunate; for even if Katharine and I would allow you to leave Lislehurst, my tenants wouldn’t. So if this plan suits you and your Hugh, you can go on with your work-parties and soup-kitchens and all the rest of it, and you and Katharine together see what you can do towards turning me into a model landlord. What do you say to that scheme, eh?”
“Hugh come here, and he and I live here for always!” Sydney cried. “Oh, St. Quentin, you don’t mean it?”
“Then you like the notion?” said her cousin with a pleased smile.
“Like it!” cried Sydney. “Why, the part of being married that I minded was the leaving you!”
Lord Lisle entertained quite a large party at his christening feast.
Mrs. Chichester was there, seeming to grow visibly younger in the freedom from household cares, and rapidly finding a congenial spirit in Katharine, and Dolly, very happy to be with Sydney again, and Fred and Prissie, who in spite of some natural disappointment at finding no merry-go-rounds in St. Quentin’s Park, managed to enjoy themselves exceedingly, with the ecstatic joy of London children in the country.
And Lord Braemuir was there, burly and good-natured as ever, and most hearty in his congratulations both to Hugh and St. Quentin, and Mr. Fenton, absolutely beaming, and looking with a nervous interest at the baby, whom he liked very much, he explained, “at a distance.”
And Hugh was there, with Dr. Lorry, whose door already bore the brass inscription,
Dr. Gustavus Lorry.Dr. Hugh Chichester.
And Mr. Seaton was there, looking asthough all his cares had rolled away with the coming of the bright-faced bride on his arm, who made all the better housekeeper, he used to say proudly, for knowing as much Greek as he did himself.
And Pauly was there, but in no very sociable frame of mind, for he ignored everyone but Freddie, the length of whose nine-year-old legs filled him with awe and admiration. He refused to even look at the baby, but kept his round eyes fixed on Freddie, who patronised him in a way that amused the looker-on considerably.
Both boys, however, managed to do full justice to the splendid christening cake, on which Mrs. Fewkes had expended her utmost pains and skill. Indeed, Pauly very decidedly made up for his abstinence upon that celebrated fifth birthday.
And old Mr. Hudder was there, rather prosy but extremely happy, and never more so than when St. Quentin asked his “oldest tenant” to propose the health of the son and heir.
“My Lord, Your Ladyship, and Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, “man and boy I’ve held my farm under the Marquesses of St. Quentin. They’ve been good landlords to me, and I’ve been a good tenant to them. MyLord, Your Ladyship, Ladies and Gentlemen, we didn’t look to see this happy day. All of us standing here have got a lot to thank God for. He has raised up his lordship and given us the fine strong heir as we’re thanking Him for to-day. I’ll not deny but that we looked forward to seeing the young lady that we’ve learned to love reign over us, but it seems she’s satisfied with the woman’s kingdom that is hers to-day. God bless her! and give her and her husband that is to be every happiness, and the same to you, My Lord and Your Ladyship. And in the name of your lordships’ tenants, I wish a long and happy life, and all prosperity, to Sidney, Lord Lisle.”
That was indeed a happy day, but there was one to come that was even happier—the day on which Sydney Lisle laid down her maiden name and became, what she had always felt herself, a Chichester.
Lord St. Quentin gave the bride away. “A thing which I am bound to do considering it was I who took her from you,” he said, laughing.
He and Hugh were good friends by this time, all the better perhaps for having begun,as the famous Mrs. Malaprop would say, with “a little aversion,” and Hugh did not misunderstand the marquess when he said—“Sydney used to annoy me by insisting upon being three-parts Chichester when I wished her to be all Lisle: now it is my turn to insist that she does not quite forget the Lisle side, when she is a Chichester by right.”
“But we are allonefamily now, aren’t we, Quin?” Sydney said softly, and her cousin did not contradict the statement.
It was on a perfect September day, with that deeper blue in the clear sky and wonderful freshness in the air which summer’s end brings with it, that Sydney was married.
As on that first morning at the Castle long ago, she rose before the rest of the household, and went out into the Park, where diamond dew lay thick and the hedges sparkled with jewelled cobwebs.
She would not call Dolly to come with her: she wanted for a little while upon this happy morning to be the lonely Sydney again.
But there was little to recall that first walk, as she stood on the marble steps of the Castle and looked into the glory of September sunshine glittering around her.
She went through the Park, making for thegap in the hedge she knew so well, and drinking in the beauty which was so atune with her heart to-day—the dark-foliaged trees, the upland fields, some bare, some covered still with corn-sheaves, stacked inhiles, as the Blankshire people called them—the glitter of dew at her feet, where every tiny blade of grass seemed jewelled in the sunshine.
She could not resist one peep through the mullioned windows of the quaint, dark, comfortable, Queen Anne house, furnished throughout by loving hands to suit the girl’s taste. The fittings from her luxurious rooms in the Castle had gone with her to this new home by St. Quentin’s wish, and the beautiful plate on the sideboard spoke eloquently enough of the feeling among the tenantry of the estate for “our young lady.”
Mackintosh had filled the conservatory with his choicest flowers, and Bessie and the pair of ponies already inhabited the roomy stables. This was to be her home and Hugh’s. Her home and Hugh’s!—how good it sounded!
Her eyes shone as she turned into the road leading into the village.
How different all was from that first walk, when the new life had appeared so strange and lonely, and home so terribly far away!Had it ever seemed possible then that she would come to love Lislehurst so well, could come to be as happy there as she was to-day?
At the gap where they had first met Pauly was waiting, with a basket and a broad smile of satisfaction on his round chubby face.
“Going to get mushrooms,” he explained, submitting to her kiss. “Muvver’s coming, and daddy, and dear Dr. Hugh. Come too!”
“Not this morning, Pauly dear,” said Sydney, “but another morning we will all go out together, won’t we, and have a good time? Now good-bye, and don’t forget to come and help us eat the wedding cake.”
“Do I hear you pressing wedding cake on Pauly?” observed Pauly’s father, appearing at the moment, also armed with a mighty basket. “Please don’t, for I assure you it is quite unnecessary. He never needs much pressing, do you, Pauly? Miss Lisle, won’t you come into the Vicarage and have some milk or something, in memory of that first visit that you paid us?”
“When I missed breakfast altogether, and had such a scolding from Lady Frederica for paying calls upon my own account,” Sydney said, laughing. “No, not this morning, thank you, Mr. Seaton: I must hurry home.”
“You’re not afraid of a scolding now?” the Vicar asked with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think Katharine ever learned the way to scold, and St. Quentin has forgotten it.”
And then she put her hand on the Vicar’s arm, as he held the gate open for her.
“Do you remember our talk on that first morning that we met, and how you told me there was work for everyone to do, if they would look for it? I don’t suppose you know how much that helped me.”
“Thank you,” said the Vicar with a smile, “that is a thing it does one good to hear. But it is not everyone who looks to such good purpose as you did.”
And, as Sydney walked rapidly away, he looked after her, thinking of the great results which had followed on the girl’s simple straightforward performance of that work she found to do.
He thought of the enormous difference to be seen in the villages all over the estate; of their owner, honestly striving to do his best for the people whose comfort was committed to his charge; of the happy marriage brought about by her means, and he did not wonder at the hearty cheers with which the bridewas received, as she came down the crimson-covered churchyard path upon her cousin’s arm.
Sydney flushed with pleasure: it was very pleasant to feel herself surrounded by so much affection and goodwill.
“I am so very glad it is not ‘good-bye’ to this home,” she whispered to St. Quentin; and he smiled, well pleased.
She had her own way about the wedding festivities, and all the tenants, rich and poor alike, were feasted in the Castle grounds.
It was a day long remembered through the county, and any doubt the tenants may have felt as to Sydney’s perfect pleasure in her dispossession were quite swept away then by the sight of her radiant face.
“Our young lady,” she would be always to the Lislehurst people, but they plainly saw that she was happy in the humbler path her feet were to tread.
“She looked for all the world like a bit of spring and sunshine,” Mrs. Sawyer used to say, in talking of that happy wedding day, “and Dr. Hugh, his face matched hers for gladness, as it should. God bless ’em both!”
It was a bewilderingly happy day, from the moment that Sydney put her hand into Hugh’sstrong one, where she could so safely trust her future, to that in which Pauly, after some loudly whispered directions from old Mr. Hudder, marched forward, and laid in Sydney’s hand the lovely little gold watch, with which she had parted for the sake of her poorer neighbours. “For you,” he said briefly.
“A testimony of respectful affection from his lordship’s tenantry in Lislehurst to their young lady,” Mr. Hudder amended.
“And I gave free pennies for it,” Pauly put in.
I think Sydney nearly cried as she kissed the little boy and held out her hand to Mr. Hudder.
“Thank you, and thank everybody, oh, so much!” she said.
But perhaps the very best moment in the whole long happy day was that in which Sydney Chichester was able to throw her arms about the neck of father and mother, and call herself “their little girl” again.
THE END
THE CREAM OF JUVENILE FICTION
A Selection of the Best Books for Boys by the Most Popular Authors
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An exceptionally good story of frontier life among the Indians in the far West, during the early settlement period.
No modern series of tales for boys and youths has met with anything like the cordial reception and popularity accorded to the Frank Merriwell Stories. There must be a reason for this and there is. Frank Merriwell, as portrayed by the author, is a jolly whole-souled, honest, courageous American lad, who appeals to the hearts of the boys. He has no bad habits, and his manliness inculcates the idea that it is not necessary for a boy to indulge in petty vices to be a hero. Frank Merriwell’s example is a shining light for every ambitious lad to follow. Twenty volumes now ready:
These books are full of good, clean adventure, thrilling enough to please the full-blooded wide-awake boy, yet containing nothing to which there can be any objection from those who are careful as to the kind of books they put into the hands of the young.
Good, healthy, strong books for the American lad. No more interesting books for the young appear on our lists.
One of the most popular authors of boys’ books. Here are three of his best.
This very interesting story relates the trials and triumphs of a Young American Actor, including the solution of a very puzzling mystery.
This book is not a treatise on sports, as the title would indicate, but relates a series of thrilling adventures among boy campers in the woods of Maine.
DAVID McKAY, Publisher, Philadelphia