“What would you say if you were in the city?”
“Ah! there’s no talking of it; but if I had been a fashionable London physician, as my father-in-law wanted to make me, I should have been dead long ago!”
“No, I think you would have liked it very much.”
“Why?”
“Love’s a flower that will not die,” repeated Meta, half smiling. “You would have found so much good to do—”
“And so much misery to rend one’s heart,” said Dr. May. “But, after all, I suppose there is only a certain capacity of feeling.”
“It is within, not without, as you said,” returned Meta.
“Ha, there’s another!” cried Dr. May, almost petulant at the sound of the bell again, breaking into the conversation that was a great refreshment.
“It was Sir Henry Walkinghame’s ring,” said Meta. “It is always his time of day.”
The doctor did not like it the better.
Sir Henry sent up a message to ask whether he could see Mr. or Miss Rivers.
“I suppose we must,” said Meta, looking at the doctor. “Lady Walkinghame must be anxious about Flora.”
She blushed greatly, fancying that Dr. May was putting his own construction on the heightened colour which she could not control. Sir Henry came in, just what he ought to be, kindly anxious, but not overwhelming, and with a ready, pleased recognition of the doctor, as an old acquaintance of his boyhood. He did not stay many minutes; but there was a perceptible difference between his real sympathy and friendly regard only afraid of obtruding, and the oppressive curiosity of their former visitors. Dr. May felt it due, both from kindness and candour, to say something in his praise when he was gone.
“That is a sensible superior man,” he said. “He will be an acquisition when he takes up his abode at Drydale.”
“Yes,” said Meta; a very simple yes, from which nothing could be gathered.
The funeral was fixed for Monday, the next day but one, at the church where Mr. Rivers had been buried. No one was invited to be present; Ethel wrote that, much as she wished it, she could not leave Margaret, and, as the whole party were to return home on the following day, they should soon see Flora.
Flora had laid aside all privileges of illness after the first day; she came downstairs to breakfast and dinner, and though looking wretchedly ill, and speaking very low and feebly, she was as much as ever the mistress of her house. Her father could never draw her into conversation again on the subject nearest his heart, and could only draw the sad conclusion that her state of mind was unchanged, from the dreary indifference with which she allowed every word of cheer to pass by unheeded, as if she could not bear to look beyond the grave. He had some hope in the funeral, which she was bent on attending, and more in the influence of Margaret, and the counsel of Richard, or of Mr. Wllmot.
The burial, however, failed to bring any peaceful comfort to the mourning mother. Meta’s tears flowed freely, as much for her father as for her little niece; and George’s sobs were deep and choking; but Flora, externally, only seemed absorbed in helping him to go through with it; she, herself, never lost her fixed, composed, hopeless look.
After her return, she went up to the nursery, and deliberately set apart and locked up every possession of her child’s, then, coming down, startled Meta by laying her hand on her shoulder and saying, “Meta, dear, Preston is in the housekeeper’s room. Will you go and speak to her for a moment, to reassure her before I come?”
“Oh, Flora!”
“I sent for her,” said Flora, in answer. “I thought it would be a good opportunity while George is out. Will you be kind enough to prepare her, my dear?”
Meta wondered how Flora had known whither to send, but she could not but obey. Poor Preston was an ordinary sort of woman, kind-hearted, and not without a conscience; but her error had arisen from the want of any high religious principle to teach her obedience, or sincerity. Her grief was extreme, and she had been so completely overcome by the forbearance and consideration shown to her, that she was even more broken-hearted by the thought of them, than by the terrible calamity she had occasioned.
Kind-hearted Mrs. Larpent had tried to console her, as well as to turn the misfortune to the best account, and Dr. May had once seen her, and striven gently to point out the true evil of the course she had pursued. She was now going to her home, and they augured better of her, that she had been as yet too utterly downcast to say one word of that first thought with a servant, her character.
Meta found her sobbing uncontrollably at the associations of her master’s house, and dreadfully frightened at hearing that she was to see Mrs. Rivers; she began to entreat to the contrary with the vehemence of a person unused to any self-government; but, in the midst, the low calm tones were heard, and her mistress stood before her—her perfect stillness of demeanour far more effective in repressing agitation, than had been Meta’s coaxing attempts to soothe.
“You need not be afraid to see me, Preston,” said Flora kindly. “I am very sorry for you—you knew no better, and I should not have left so much to you.”
“Oh, ma’am—so kind—the dear, dear little darling—I shall never forgive myself.”
“I know you did love her,” continued Flora. “I am sure you intended no harm, and it was my leaving her that made her fretful.”
Preston tried to thank.
“Only remember henceforth”—and the clear tone grew fainter than ever with internal anguish, though still steady—“remember strict obedience and truth henceforth; the want of them will have worse results by and by than even this. Now, Preston, I shall always wish you well. I ought not, I believe, to recommend you to the like place, without saying why you left me, but for any other I will give you a fair character. I will see what I can do for you, and if you are ever in any distress, I hope you will let me know. Have your wages been paid?”
There was a sound in the affirmative, but poor Preston could not speak. “Good-bye, then,” and Flora took her hand and shook it. “Mind you let me hear if you want help. Keep this.”
Meta was a little disappointed to see sovereigns instead of a book. Flora turned to go, and put her hand out to lean on her sister as for support; she stood still to gather strength before ascending the stairs, and a groan of intense misery was wrung from her.
“Dearest Flora, it has been too much!”
“No,” said Flora gently.
“Poor thing, I am glad for her sake. But might she not have a book—a Bible?”
“You may give her one, if you like. I could not.”
Flora reached her own room, went in, and bolted the door.
Oh, where dwell ye, my ain sweet bairns?I’m woe and weary grown!Oh, Lady, we live where woe never is,In a land to flesh unknown.—ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
It had been with a gentle sorrow that Etheldred had expected to go and lay in her resting-place, the little niece, who had been kept from the evil of the world, in a manner of which she had little dreamt. Poor Flora! she must be ennobled, she thought, by having a child where hers is, when she is able to feel anything but the first grief; and Ethel’s heart yearned to be trying, at least, to comfort her, and to be with her father, who had loved his grandchild so fondly.
It was not to be. Margaret had borne so many shocks with such calmness, that Ethel had no especial fears for her; but there are some persons who have less fortitude for others than for themselves, and she was one of these. Ethel had been her own companion-sister, and the baby had been the sunbeam of her life, during the sad winter and spring.
In the middle of the night, Ethel knocked at Richard’s door. Margaret had been seized with faintness, from which they could not bring her back; and, even when Richard had summoned Dr. Spencer, it was long ere his remedies took effect; but, at last, she revived enough to thank them, and say she was glad that papa was not there.
Dr. Spencer sent them all to bed, and the rest of the night was quiet; but Margaret could not deny, in the morning, that she felt terribly shattered, and she was depressed in spirits to a degree such as they had never seen in her before. Her whole heart was with Flora; she was unhappy at being at a distance from her, almost fretfully impatient for letters, and insisting vehemently on Ethel’s going to London.
Ethel had never felt so helpless and desolate, as with Margaret thus changed and broken, and her father absent.
“My dear,” said Dr. Spencer, “nothing can be better for both parties than that he should be away. If he were here, he ought to leave all attendance to me, and she would suffer from the sight of his distress.”
“I cannot think what he will do or feel!” sighed Ethel.
“Leave it to me. I will write to him, and we shall see her better before post time.”
“You will tell him exactly how it was, or I shall,” said Ethel abruptly, not to say fiercely.
“Ho! you don’t trust me?” said Dr. Spencer, smiling, so that she was ashamed of her speech. “You shall speak for yourself, and I for myself; and I shall say that nothing would so much hurt her as to have others sacrificed to her.”
“That is true,” said Ethel; “but she misses papa.”
“Of course she does; but, depend on it, she would not have him leave your sister, and she is under less restraint without him.”
“I never saw her like this!”
“The drop has made it overflow. She has repressed more than was good for her, and now that her guard is broken down, she gives way under the whole weight.”
“Poor Margaret! I am pertinacious; but, if she is not better by post time, papa will not bear to be away.”
“I’ll tell you what I think of her by that time. Send up your brother Richard, if you wish to do her good. Richard would be a much better person to write than yourself. I perceive that he is the reasonable member of the family.”
“Did not you know that before?”
“All I knew of him, till last night, was, that no one could, by any possibility, call him Dick.”
Dr. Spencer was glad to have dismissed Ethel smiling; and she was the better able to bear with poor Margaret’s condition of petulance. She had never before experienced the effects of bodily ailments on the temper, and she was slow to understand the change in one usually so patient and submissive. She was, by turns, displeased with her sister and with her own abruptness; but, though she knew it not, her bluntness had a bracing effect. She thought she had been cross in declaring it was nonsense to harp on her going to London; but it made Margaret feel that she had been unreasonable, and keep silence.
Richard managed her much better, being gentle and firm, and less ready to speak than Ethel, and he succeeded in composing her into a sleep, which restored her balance, and so relieved Ethel, that she not only allowed Dr. Spencer to say what he pleased, but herself made light of the whole attack, little knowing how perilous was any shock to that delicate frame.
Margaret’s whole purpose was to wind herself up for the first interview with Flora; and though she had returned to her usual state, she would not go downstairs on the evening the party were expected, believing it would be more grateful to her sister’s feelings to meet her without witnesses.
The travellers arrived, and Dr. May hurried up to her. She barely replied to his caresses and inquiries in her eagerness to hear of Flora, and to convince him that he must not forbid the meeting. Nor had he any mind so to do. “Surely,” said he, when he had seen the spiritualised look of her glistening blue eyes, the flush on her transparent cheeks, and her hands clasped over her breast—“surely poor Flora must feel as though an angel were waiting to comfort her.”
Flora came, but there was sore disappointment. Fond and tender she was as ever, but, neither by word or gesture, would she admit the most remote allusion to her grief. She withdrew her hand when Margaret’s pressure became expressive; she avoided her eye, and spoke incessantly of different subjects. All the time, her voice was low and hollow, her face had a settled expression of wretchedness, and her glances wandered drearily and restlessly anywhere but to Margaret’s face; but her steadiness of manner was beyond her sister’s power to break, and her visit was shortened on account of her husband. Poor George had quite given way at the sight of Gertrude, whom his little girl had been thought to resemble; and, though Dr. May had soothed him almost like a child, no one put any trust in his self-control, and all sat round, fearing each word or look, till Flora came downstairs, and they departed.
Richard and Ethel each offered to go with them; they could not bear to think of their spending that first evening in their childless home; but Flora gently, but decidedly, refused; and Dr. May said that, much as he wished to be with them, he believed that Flora preferred having no one but Meta. “I hope I have done Margaret no harm,” were Flora’s last words to him, and they seemed to explain her guarded manner; but he found Margaret weeping as she had never wept for herself, and palpitation and faintness were the consequence.
Ethel looked on at Flora as a sad and perplexing mystery during the weeks that ensued. There were few opportunities of being alone together, and Flora shrank from such as they were—nay, she checked all expression of solicitude, and made her very kisses rapid and formal.
The sorrow that had fallen on the Grange seemed to have changed none of the usual habits there—visiting, riding, driving, dinners, and music, went on with little check. Flora was sure to be found the animated, attentive lady of the house, or else sharing her husband’s pursuits, helping him with his business, or assisting him in seeking pleasure, spending whole afternoons at the coachmaker’s over a carriage that they were building, and, it was reported, playing ecarte in the evening.
Had grief come to be forgotten and cast aside without effecting any mission? Yet Ethel could not believe that the presence of the awful messenger was unfelt, when she heard poor George’s heavy sigh, or when she looked at Flora’s countenance, and heard the peculiar low, subdued tone of her voice, which, when her words were most cheerful, always seemed to Ethel the resigned accent of despair.
Ethel could not talk her over with Margaret, for all seemed to make it a point that Margaret should believe the best. Dr. May turned from the subject with a sort of shuddering grief, and said, “Don’t talk of her, poor child—only pray for her!”
Ethel, though shocked by the unwonted manner of his answer, was somewhat consoled by perceiving that a double measure of tenderness had sprung up between her father and his poor daughter. If Flora had seemed, in her girlhood, to rate him almost cheaply, this was at an end now; she met him as if his embrace were peace, the gloom was lightened, the attention less strained, when he was beside her, and she could not part with him without pressing for a speedy meeting. Yet she treated him with the same reserve; since that one ghastly revelation of the secrets of her heart, the veil had been closely drawn, and he could not guess whether it had been but a horrible thought, or were still an abiding impression. Ethel could gather no more than that her father was very unhappy about Flora, and that Richard understood why; for Richard had told her that he had written to Flora, to try to persuade her to cease from this reserve, but that he had no reply.
Norman was not at home; he had undertaken the tutorship of two schoolboys for the holidays; and his father owned, with a sigh, that he was doing wisely.
As to Meta, she was Ethel’s chief consolation, by the redoubled assurances, directed to Ethel’s unexpressed dread, lest Flora should be rejecting the chastening Hand. Meta had the most absolute certainty that Flora’s apparent cheerfulness was all for George’s sake, and that it was a most painful exertion. “If Ethel could only see how she let herself sink together, as it were, and her whole countenance relax, as soon as he was out of sight,” Meta said, “she could not doubt what misery these efforts were to her.”
“Why does she go on with them?” said Ethel.
“George,” said Meta. “What would become of him without her? If he misses her for ten minutes he roams about lost, and he cannot enjoy anything without her. I cannot think how he can help seeing what hard work it is, and how he can be contented with those dreadful sham smiles; but as long as she can give him pleasure, poor Flora will toil for him.”
“It is very selfish,” Ethel caught herself saying.
“No, no, it is not,” cried Meta. “It is not that he will not see, but that he cannot see. Good honest fellow, he really thinks it does her good and pleases her. I was so sorry one evening when I tried to take her place at that perpetual ecarte, and told him it teased her; he went so wistfully to her, and asked whether it did, and she exerted herself into such painful enjoyment to persuade him to the contrary; and afterwards she said to me, ‘Let me alone, dearest—it is the only thing left me.’”
“There is something in being husband and wife that one cannot understand,” slowly said Ethel, so much in her quaint way that Meta laughed.
Had it not been for Norman’s absence, Ethel would, in the warm sympathy and accustomed manner of Meta Rivers, have forgotten all about the hopes and fears that, in brighter days, had centred on that small personage; until one day, as she came home from Cocksmoor, she found “Sir Henry Walkinghame’s” card on the drawing-room table. “I should like to bite you! Coming here, are you?” was her amiable reflection.
Meta, in her riding-habit, peeped out of Margaret’s room. “Oh, Ethel, there you are! It is such a boon that you did not come home sooner, or we should have had to ride home with him! I heard him asking for the Miss Mays! And now I am in hopes that he will go home without falling in with Flora and George.”
“I did not know he was in these parts.”
“He came to Drydale last week, but the place is forlorn, and George gave him a general invitation to the Grange.”
“Do you like him?” said Ethel, while Margaret looked on, amazed at her audacity.
“I liked him very much in London,” said Meta; “he is pleasant enough to talk to, but somehow, he is not congruous here—if you understand me. And I think his coming oppresses Flora—she turned quite pale when he was announced, and her voice was lower than ever when she spoke to him.”
“Does he come often?” said Ethel.
“I don’t think he has anything else to do,” returned Meta, “for our house cannot be as pleasant as it was; but he is very kind to George, and for that we must be grateful. One thing I am afraid of, that he will persuade us off to the yachting after all.”
“Oh!” was the general exclamation.
“Yes,” said Meta. “George seemed to like the plan, and I very much fear that he is taking a dislike to the dear old Grange. I heard him say, ‘Anything to get away.’”
“Poor George, I know he is restless,” said Margaret.
“At least,” said Ethel, “you can’t go till after your birthday, Miss Heiress.”
“No, Uncle Cosham is coming,” said Meta. “Margaret, you must have your stone laid before we go!”
“Dr. Spencer promises it before Hector’s holidays are over,” said Margaret, blushing, as she always did, with pleasure, when they talked of the church.
Hector Ernescliffe had revived Margaret wonderfully. She was seldom downstairs before the evening, and Ethel thought his habit of making her apartment his sitting-room must be as inconvenient to her as it was to herself; but Hector could not be de trop for Margaret. She exerted herself to fulfil for him all the little sisterly offices that, with her brothers, had been transferred to Ethel and Mary; she threw herself into all his schemes, tried to make him endure Captain Gordon, and she even read his favourite book of Wild Sports, though her feelings were constantly lacerated by the miseries of the slaughtered animals. Her couch was to him as a home, and he had awakened her bright soft liveliness which had been only dimmed for a time.
The church was her other great interest, and Dr. Spencer humoured her by showing her all his drawings, consulting her on every ornament, and making many a perspective elevation, merely that she might see the effect.
Richard and Tom made it their recreation to construct a model of the church as a present for her, and Tom developed a genius for carving, which proved a beneficial interest to keep him from surliness. He had voluntarily propounded his intended profession to his father, who had been so much pleased by his choice, that he could not but be gratified; though now and then ambitious fancies, and discontent with Stoneborough, combined to bring on his ordinary moody fits, the more, because his habitual reserve prevented any one from knowing what was working in his mind.
Finally the Rivers’ party announced their intention of going to the Isle of Wight as soon as Meta had come of age; and the council of Cocksmoor, meeting at tea at Dr. May’s house, decided that the foundation stone of the church should be laid on the day after her birthday, when there would be a gathering of the whole family, as Margaret wished. Dr. Spencer had worked incredibly hard to bring it forward, and Margaret’s sweet smiles, and liquid eyes, expressed how personally thankful she felt.
“What a blessing this church has been to that poor girl,” said Dr. Spencer, as he left the house with Mr. Wilmot. “How it beguiles her out of her grief! I am glad she has the pleasure of the foundation; I doubt if she will see the consecration.”
“Indeed!” said Mr. Wilmot, shocked. “Was that attack so serious?”
“That recumbent position and want of exercise were certain to produce organic disease, and suspense and sorrow have hastened it. The death of Mrs. Rivers’s poor child was the blow that called it into activity, and, if it last more than a year, I shall be surprised.”
“For such as she is, one cannot presume to wish, but her father—is he aware of this?”
“He knows there is extensive damage; I think he does not open his eyes to the result, but he will bear it. Never was there a man to whom it came so naturally to live like the fowls of the air, or the lilies of the field, as it does to dear Dick May,” said Dr. Spencer, his voice faltering.
“There is a strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret—I think it is the same with them all—not only Ethel and Richard, who have been immediately concerned; but that one object has been a centre and aim to elevate the whole family, and give force and unity to their efforts. Even the good doctor, much as I always looked up to him—much good as he did me in my young days—I must confess that he was sometimes very provoking.”
“If you had tried to be his keeper at Cambridge, you might say so!” rejoined Dr. Spencer.
“He is so much less impetuous—more consistent—less desultory; I dare say you understand me,” said Mr. Wilmot. “His good qualities do not entangle one another as they used to do.”
“Exactly so. He was far more than I looked for when I came home, though I might have guessed that such a disposition, backed by such principles and such—could not but shake off all the dross.”
“One thing was,” said Mr. Wilmot, smiling, “that a man must take himself in hand at some time in his life, and Dr. May only began to think himself responsible for himself when he lost his wife, who was wise for both. She was an admirable person, but not easy to know well. I think you knew her at—”
“I say,” interrupted Dr. Spencer, “it strikes me that we could not do better than get up our S. P. G. demonstration on the day of the stone—”
Hitherto the Stoneborough subscribers to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had been few and far between; but, under the new dynasty, there was a talk of forming an association, and having a meeting to bring the subject forward. Dr. Spencer’s proposal, however, took the vicar by surprise.
“Never could there be a better time,” he argued. “You have naturally a gathering of clergy—people ought to be liberal on such an occasion, and, as Cocksmoor is provided for, why not give the benefit to the missions, in their crying need!”
“True, but there is no time to send for any one to make a speech.”
“Husband your resources. What could you have better than young Harry and his islanders?”
“Harry would never make a speech.”
“Let him cram Norman. Young Lake tells me Norman made a great sensation at the Union at Oxford, and if his heart is in the work, he must not shrink from the face of his townsmen.”
“No doubt he had rather they were savages,” said the vicar. “And yourself—you will tell them of the Indian missions.”
“With all my heart,” said Dr. Spencer. “When my Brahminhee godson—the deacon I told you of, comes to pay me his promised visit, what doings we shall have! Seriously, I have just had letters from him and from others, that speak of such need, that I could feel every moment wasted that is not spent on their behalf.”
Mr. Wilmot was drawn into Dr. Spencer’s house, and heard the letters, till his heart burned within him.
The meeting was at once decided upon, though Ethel could not see why people could not give without speechifying, and her two younger brothers declared it was humbug—Tom saying, he wished all blackamoors were out of creation, and Harry, that he could not stand palaver about his friend David. Dr. May threatened him with being displayed on the platform as a living instance of the effects of missions, at which he took alarm, and so seriously declared that he should join the Bucephalus at once, that they pacified him by promising that he should do as he pleased.
The archdeacon promised a sermon, and the active Dr Spencer worked the nine muses and all the rest of the town and neighbourhood into a state of great enthusiasm and expectation. He went to the Grange, as he said, to collect his artillery; primed Flora that she might prime the M. P.; made the willing Meta promise to entrap the uncle, who was noted for philanthropical speeches; and himself captured Sir Henry Walkinghame, who looked somewhat rueful at what he found incumbent on him as a country gentleman, though there might be some compensation in the eagerness of Miss Rivers.
Norman had hardly set foot in Stoneborough before he was told what was in store for him, and, to the general surprise, submitted as if it were a very simple matter. As Dr. Spencer told him, it was only a foretaste of the penalty which every missionary has to pay for coming to England. Norman was altogether looking much better than when he had been last at home, and his spirits were more even. He had turned his whole soul to the career he had chosen, cast his disappointment behind him, or, more truly, made it his offering, and gathered strength and calmness, with which to set out on tasks of working for others, with thoughts too much absorbed on them, to give way to the propensity of making himself the primary object of study and contemplation. The praise of God, and love of man, were the best cures for tendencies like his, and he had found it out. His calm, though grave cheerfulness, came as a refreshment to those who had been uneasy about him, and mournfully watching poor Flora.
“Yes,” said Dr. Spencer, “you have taken the best course for your own happiness.”
Norman coloured, as if he understood more than met the ear. Mary and Blanche were very busy preparing presents for Meta Rivers, and every one was anxious to soften to her the thought of this first birthday without her father. Each of the family contributed some pretty little trifle, choice in workmanship or kind in device, and each was sealed and marked with the initials of the giver, and packed up by Mary, to be committed to Flora’s charge. Blanche had, however, much trouble in extracting a gift from Norman, and he only yielded at last, on finding that all his brothers had sent something, so that his omission would be marked. Then he dived into the recesses of his desk, and himself sealed up a little parcel, of which he would not allow his sisters to inspect the contents.
Ethel had a shrewd guess. She remembered his having, in the flush of joy at Margaret’s engagement, rather prematurely caused a seal to be cut with a daisy, and “Pearl of the meadow” as the motto; and his having said that he should keep it as a wedding present. She could understand that he was willing to part with it without remark.
Flora met Meta in her sitting-room, on the morning of the day, which rose somewhat sadly upon the young girl, as she thought of past affection and new responsibilities. If the fondness of a sister could have compensated for what she had lost, Meta received it in no scanty measure from Flora, who begged to call George, because he would be pleased to see the display of gifts.
His own was the only costly one—almost all the rest were homemade treasures of the greater price, because the skill and fondness of the maker were evident in their construction; and Meta took home the kindness as it was meant, and felt the affection that would not let her feel herself lonely. She only wished to go and thank them all at once.
“Do then,” said Flora. “If Lord Cosham will spare you, and your business should be over in time, you could drive in, and try to bring papa home with you.”
“Oh, thank you, Flora. That is a kind treat, in case the morning should be very awful!”
Margaret Agatha Rivers signed her documents, listened to explanations, and was complimented by her uncle on not thinking it necessary to be senseless on money matters, like her cousin, Agatha Langdale.
Still she looked a little oppressed, as she locked up the tokens of her wealth, and the sunshine of her face did not beam out again till she arrived at Stoneborough, and was dispensing her pretty thanks to the few she found at home.
“Ethel out and Norman? His seal is only too pretty—”
“They are all helping Dr. Spencer at Cocksmoor.”
“What a pity! But it is so very kind of him to treat me as a daisy. In some ways I like his present for that the best of all,” said Meta.
“I will tell him so,” said Mary.
“Yes, no,” said Meta. “I am not pretending to be anything half so nice.”
Mary and Blanche fell upon her for calling herself anything but the nicest flower in the world; and she contended that she was nothing better than a parrot-tulip, stuck up in a parterre; and just as the discussion was becoming a game at romps, Dr. May came in, and the children shouted to him to say whether his humming-bird were a daisy or a tulip.
“That is as she comports herself,” he said playfully.
“Which means that you don’t think her quite done for,” said Meta.
“Not quite,” said the doctor, with a droll intonation; “but I have not seen what this morning may have done to her.”
“Come and see, then,” said Meta. “Flora told me to bring you home—and it is my birthday, you know. Never mind waiting to tell Ethel. Margaret will let her know that I’ll keep you out of mischief.”
As usual, Dr. May could not withstand her, and she carried him off in triumph in her pony carriage.
“Then you don’t give me up yet?” was the first thing she said, as they were off the stones.
“What have you been doing to make me?” said he.
“Doing or not doing—one or the other,” she said. “But indeed I wanted to have you to myself. I am in a great puzzle!”
“Sir Henry! I hope she won’t consult me!” thought Dr. May, as he answered, “Well, my dear.”
“I fear it is a lasting puzzle,” she said. “What shall I do with all this money?”
“Keep it in the bank, or buy railway shares!” said Dr. May, looking arch.
“Thank you. That’s a question for my cousins in the city. I want you to answer me as no one else can do. I want to know what is my duty now that I have my means in my own hands?”
“There is need enough around—”
“I do not mean only giving a little here and there, but I want you to hear a few of my thoughts. Flora and George are kindness itself—but, you see, I have no duties. They are obliged to live a gay sort of life—it is their position; but I cannot make out whether it is mine. I don’t see that I am like those girls who have to go out as a matter of obedience.”
Dr. May considered, but could only say, “You are very young.”
“Too young to be independent,” sighed Meta. “I must grow old enough to be trusted alone, and in the meantime—”
“Probably an answer will be found,” said the doctor. “You and your means will find their—their vocation.”
“Marriage,” said Meta, calmly speaking the word that he had avoided. “I think not.”
“Why—” he began.
“I do not think good men like heiresses.”
He became strongly interested in a corn-field, and she resumed,
“Perhaps I should only do harm. It may be my duty to wait. All I wish to know is, whether it is?”
“I see you are not like girls who know their duty, and are restless, because it is not the duty they like.”
“Oh! I like everything. It is my liking it so much that makes me afraid.”
“Even going to Ryde?”
“Don’t I like the sailing? and seeing Harry too? I don’t feel as if that were waste, because I can sometimes spare poor Flora a little. We could not let her go alone.”
“You need never fear to be without a mission of comfort,” said Dr. May. “Your ‘spirit full of glee’ was given you for something. Your presence is far more to my poor Flora than you or she guess.”
“I never meant to leave her now,” said Meta earnestly. “I only wished to be clear whether I ought to seek for my work.”
“It will seek you, when the time comes.”
“And meantime I must do what comes to hand, and take it as humiliation that it is not in the more obviously blessed tasks! A call might come, as Cocksmoor did to Ethel. But oh! my money! Ought it to be laid up for myself?”
“For your call, when it comes,” said Dr. May, smiling; then gravely, “There are but too many calls for the interest. The principal is your trust, till the time comes.”
Meta smiled, and was pleased to think that her first-fruits would be offered to-morrow.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Etheldred, as she fastened her white muslin, “I’m afraid it is my nature to hate my neighbour.”
“My dear Ethel, what is coming next?” said Margaret.
“I like my neighbour at home, and whom I have to work for, very much,” said Ethel, “but oh! my neighbour that I have to be civil to!”
“Poor old King! I am afraid your day will be spoiled with all your toils as lady of the house. I wish I could help you.”
“Let me have my grumble out, and you will!” said Ethel.
“Indeed I am sorry you have this bustle, and so many to entertain, when I know you would rather have the peaceful feelings belonging to the day undisturbed. I should like to shelter you up here.”
“It is very ungrateful of me,” said Ethel, “when Dr. Spencer works so hard for us, not to be willing to grant anything to him.”
“And—but then I have none of the trouble of it—I can’t help liking the notion of sending out the Church to the island whence the Church came home to us.”
“Yes—” said Ethel, “if we could do it without holding forth!”
“Come, Ethel, it is much better than the bazaar—it is no field for vanity.”
“Certainly not,” said Ethel. “What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people’s work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no more!—And Norman! I wish I could run away!”
“Richard says we do not guess how well Norman speaks.”
“Richard thinks Norman can do anything he can’t do himself! It is all chance—he may do very well, if he gets into his ‘funny state’, but he always suffers for that, and he will certainly put one into an agony at the outset. I wish Dr. Spencer would have let him alone! And then there will be that Sir Henry, whom I can’t abide! Oh, I wish I were more charitable, like Miss Bracy and Mary, who will think all so beautiful!”
“So will you, when you come home,” said Margaret.
“If I could only be talking to Cherry, and Dame Hall! I think the school children enter into it very nicely, Margaret. Did I tell you how nicely Ellen Reid answered about the hymn, ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’? She did not seem to have made it a mere geographical lesson, like Fanny Grigg—”
Ethel’s misanthropy was happily conducted off via the Cocksmoor children, and any lingering remains were dissipated by her amusement at Dr. Spencer’s ecstasy on seeing Dr. May assume his red robe of office, to go to the minster in state, with the Town Council. He walked round and round his friend, called him Nicholas Randall redivivus, quoted Dogberry, and affronted Gertrude, who had a dim idea that he was making game of papa.
Ethel was one of those to whom representation was such a penance, that a festival, necessitating hospitality to guests of her own rank, was burden enough seriously to disturb the repose of thankfulness for the attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her, and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm service in the minster, where it was her own fault if cares haunted her, and she could confess the sin of her irritated sensations, and wishes to have all her own way, and then, as ever, be led aright into thanksgiving for the unlooked-for crowning of her labours.
The archdeacon’s sermon amplified what Margaret had that morning expressed, so as to carry on her sense of appropriateness in the offerings of the day being bestowed on distant lands.
But the ordeal was yet to come, and though blaming herself, she was anything but comfortable, as the world repaired to the Town Hall, the room where the same faces so often met for such diverse purposes—now an orrery displayed by a conceited lecturer, now a ball, now a magistrates’ meeting, a concert or a poultry show, where rival Hamburg and Dorking uplifted their voices in the places of Mario and Grisi, all beneath the benignant portrait of Nicholas Randall, ruffed, robed, square-toed, his endowment of the scholarship in his hand, and a chequered pavement at his feet.
Who knows not an S. P. G. meeting?—the gaiety of the serious, and the first public spectacle to the young, who, like Blanche and Aubrey, gaze with admiration at the rows of bonnets, and with awe at the black coats on the platform, while the relations of the said black coats suffer, like Ethel, from nervous dread of the public speaking of their best friends.
Her expectations were realised by the archdeacon’s speech, which went round in a circle, as if he could not find his way out of it. Lord Cosham was fluent, but a great many words went to very small substance; and no wonder, thought Ethel, when all they had to propose and second was the obvious fact that missions were very good things.
Dr. Hoxton pompously, Sir Henry Walkinghame creditably, assisted the ladies and gentlemen to resolve that the S. P. G. wanted help; Mr. Lake made a stammering, and Mr. Rivers, with his good-natured face, hearty manner, and good voice, came in well after him with a straightforward, speech, so brief, that Ethel gave Flora credit for the best she had yet heard.
Mr. Wilmot said something which the sharpest ears in the front row might, perhaps, have heard, and which resulted in Dr. Spencer standing up. Ethel hardly would have known who was speaking had her eyes been shut. His voice was so different, when raised and pitched, so as to show its power and sweetness; the fine polish of his manner was redoubled, and every sentence had the most graceful turn. It was like listening to a well-written book, so smooth and so fluent, and yet so earnest—his pictures of Indian life so beautiful, and his strong affection for the converts he described now and then making his eyes fill, and his voice falter, as if losing the thread of his studied composition—a true and dignified work of art, that made Dr. May whisper to Flora, “You see what he can do. They would have given anything to have had him for a lecturer.”
With half a sigh, Ethel saw Norman rise, and step forward. He began, with eyes fixed on the ground, and in a low modest tone, to speak of the islands that Harry had visited; but gradually the poetic nature, inherent in him, gained the mastery; and though his language was strikingly simple, in contrast with Dr. Spencer’s ornate periods, and free from all trace of “the lamp,” it rose in beauty and fervour at every sentence. The feelings that had decided his lot gave energy to his discourse, and repressed as they had been by reserve and diffidence, now flowed forth, and gave earnestness to natural gifts of eloquence of the highest order. After his quiet, unobtrusive beginning, there was the more wonder to find how he seemed to raise up the audience with him, in breathless attention, as to a strain of sweet music, carrying them without thought of the scene, or of the speaker, to the lovely isles, and the inhabitants of noble promise, but withering for lack of knowledge; and finally closing his speech, when they were wrought up to the highest pitch, by an appeal that touched them all home; “for well did he know,” said he, “that the universal brotherhood was drawn closest in circles nearer home, that beneath the shadow of their own old minster, gladness and mourning floated alike for all; and that all those who had shared in the welcome to one, given back as it were from the grave, would own the same debt of gratitude to the hospitable islanders.”
He ceased. His father wiped his spectacles, and almost audibly murmured, “Bless him!” Ethel, who had sat like one enchanted, forgetting who spoke, forgetting all save the islanders, half turned, and met Richard’s smiling eyes, and his whisper, “I told you so.”
The impress of a man of true genius and power had been made throughout the whole assembly; the archdeacon put Norman out of countenance by the thanks of the meeting for his admirable speech, and all the world, except the Oxford men, were in a state of as much surprise as pleasure.
“Splendid speaker, Norman May, if he would oftener put himself out,” Harvey Anderson commented. “Pity he has so many of the good doctor’s prejudices!”
“Well, to be sure!” quoth Mrs. Ledwich. “I knew Mr. Norman was very clever, but I declare I never thought of such as this! I will try my poor utmost for those interesting natives.”
“That youth has first-rate talents,” said Lord Cosham. “Do you know what he is designed for? I should like to bring him forward.”
“Ah!” said Dr. Hoxton. “The year I sent off May and Anderson was the proudest year of my life!”
“Upon my word!” declared Mrs. Elwood. “That Dr. Spencer is as good as a book, but Mr. Norman—I say, father, we will go without the new clock, but we’ll send somewhat to they men that built up the church, and has no minister.”
“A good move that,” said Dr. Spencer. “Worth at least twenty pounds. That boy has the temperament of an orator, if the morbid were but a grain less.”
“Oh, Margaret,” exclaimed Blanche. “Dr. Spencer made the finest speech you ever heard, only it was rather tiresome; and Norman made everybody cry—and Mary worse than all!”
“There is no speaking of it. One should live such things, not talk over them,” said Meta Rivers.
Margaret received the reports of the select few, who visited her upstairs, where she was kept quiet, and only heard the hum of the swarm, whom Dr. May, in vehement hospitality, had brought home to luncheon, to Ethel’s great dread, lest there should not be enough for them to eat.
Margaret pitied her sisters, but heard that all was going well; that Flora was taking care of the elders, and Harry and Mary were making the younger fry very merry at the table on the lawn. Dr. May had to start early to see a sick gardener at Drydale before coming on to Cocksmoor, and came up to give his daughter a few minutes.
“We get on famously,” he said. “Ethel does well when she is in for it, like Norman. I had no notion what was in the lad. They are perfectly amazed with his speech. It seems hard to give such as he is up to those outlandish places; but there, his speech should have taught me better—one’s best—and, now and then, he seems my best.”
“One comfort is,” said Margaret, smiling, “you would miss Ethel more.”
“Gallant old King! I am glad she has had her wish. Good-bye, my Margaret, we will think of you. I wish—”
“I am very happy,” was Margaret’s gentle reassurance. “The dear little Daisy looks just as her godfather imagined her;” and happy was her face when her father quitted her.
Margaret’s next visitor was Meta, who came to reclaim her bonnet, and, with a merry smile, to leave word that she was walking on to Cocksmoor. Margaret remonstrated on the heat.
“Let me alone,” said she, making her pretty wilful gesture. “Ethel and Mary ought to have a lift, and I have had no walking to-day.”
“My dear, you don’t know how far it is. You can’t go alone.”
“I am lying in wait for Miss Bracy, or something innocent,” said Meta. “In good time—here comes Tom.”
Tom entered, declaring that he had come to escape from the clack downstairs.
“I’ll promise not to clack if you will be so kind as to take care of me to Cocksmoor,” said Meta.
“Do you intend to walk?”
“If you will let me be your companion.”
“I shall be most happy,” said Tom, colouring with gratification, such as he might not have felt, had he known that he was chosen for his innocence.
He took a passing glimpse at his neck-tie, screwed up the nap of his glossy hat to the perfection of its central point, armed himself with a knowing little stick, and hurried his fair companion out by the back door, as much afraid of losing the glory of being her sole protector as she was of falling in with an escort of as much consequence, in other eyes, as was Mr. Thomas in his own.
She knew him less than any of the rest, and her first amusement was keeping silence to punish him for complaining of clack; but he explained that he did not mean quiet, sensible conversation—he only referred to those foolish women’s raptures over the gabble they had been hearing at the Town Hall.
She exclaimed, whereupon he began to criticise the speakers with a good deal of acuteness, exposing the weak points, but magnanimously owning that it was tolerable for the style of thing, and might go down at Stoneborough.
“I wonder you did not stay away as Harry did.”
“I thought it would be marked,” observed the thread-paper Tom, as if he had been at least county member.
“You did quite right,” said Meta, really thinking so.
“I wished to hear Dr. Spencer, too,” said Tom. “There is a man who does know how to speak! He has seen something of the world, and knows what he is talking of.”
“But he did not come near Norman.”
“I hated listening to Norman,” said Tom. “Why should he go and set his heart on those black savages?”
“They are not savages in New Zealand.”
“They are all niggers together,” said Tom vehemently. “I cannot think why Norman should care for them more than for his own brothers and sisters. All I know is, that if I were my father, I would never give my consent.”
“It is lucky you are not,” said Meta, smiling defiance, though a tear shone in her eye. “Dr. May makes the sacrifice with a free heart and willing mind.”
“Everybody goes and sacrifices somebody else,” grumbled Tom.
“Who are the victims now?”
“All of us. What are we to do without Norman? He is worth all of us put together; and I—” Meta was drawn to the boy as she had never been before, as he broke off short, his face full of emotion, that made him remind her of his father.
“You might go out and follow in his steps,” said she, as the most consoling hope she could suggest.
“Not I. Don’t you know what is to happen to me? Ah! Flora has not told you. I thought she would not think it grand enough. She talked about diplomacy—”
“But what?” asked Meta anxiously.
“Only that I am to stick to the old shop,” said Tom. “Don’t tell any one; I would not have the fellows know it.”
“Do you mean your father’s profession?”
“Ay!”
“Oh, Tom! you don’t talk of that as if you despised it?”
“If it is good enough for him, it is good enough for me, I suppose,” said Tom. “I hate everything when I think of my brothers going over the world, while I, do what I will, must be tied down to this slow place all the rest of my days.”
“If you were away, you would be longing after it.”
“Yes; but I can’t get away.”
“Surely, if the notion is so unpleasant to you, Dr. May would never insist?”
“It is my free choice, and that’s the worst of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you see? Norman told me it would be a great relief to him if I would turn my mind that way—and I can’t go against Norman. I found he thought he must if I did not; and, you know, he is fit for all sorts of things that—Besides, he has a squeamishness about him, that makes him turn white, if one does but cut one’s finger, and how he would ever go through the hospitals—”
Meta suspected that Tom was inclined to launch into horrors. “So you wanted to spare him,” she said.
“Ay! and papa was so pleased by my offering that I can’t say a word of the bore it is. If I were to back out, it would come upon Aubrey, and he is weakly, and so young, that he could not help my father for many years.”
Meta was much struck at the motives that actuated the self-sacrifice, veiled by the sullen manner which she almost began to respect. “What is done for such reasons must make you happy,” she said; “though there may be much that is disagreeable.”
“Not the study,” said Tom. “The science is famous work. I like what I see of it in my father’s books, and there’s a splendid skeleton at the hospital that I long to be at. If it were not for Stoneborough, it would be all very well; but, if I should get on ever so well at the examinations, it all ends there! I must come back, and go racing about this miserable circuit, just like your gold pheasant rampaging in his cage, seeing the same stupid people all my days.”
“I think,” said Meta, in a low, heartfelt voice, “it is a noble, beautiful thing to curb down your ambition for such causes. Tom, I like you for it.”
The glance of those beautiful eyes was worth having. Tom coloured a little, but assumed his usual gruffness. “I can’t bear sick people,” he said.
“It has always seemed to me,” said Meta, “that few lives could come up to Dr. May’s. Think of going about, always watched for with hope, often bringing gladness and relief; if nothing else, comfort and kindness, his whole business doing good.”
“One is paid for it,” said Tom.
“Nothing could ever repay Dr. May,” said Meta. “Can any one feel the fee anything but a mere form? Besides, think of the numbers and numbers that he takes nothing from; and oh! to how many he has brought the most real good, when they would have shut their doors against it in any other form! Oh, Tom, I think none of you guess how every one feels about your father. I recollect one poor woman saying, after he had attended her brother, ‘He could not save his body, but, surely, ma’am, I think he was the saving of his soul.’”
“It is of no use to talk of my being like my father,” said Tom.
Meta thought perhaps not, but she was full of admiration of his generosity, and said, “You will make it the same work of love, and charity is the true glory.”
Any inroad on Tom’s reserved and depressed nature was a benefit; and he was of an age to be susceptible of the sympathy of one so pretty and so engaging. He had never been so much gratified or encouraged, and, wishing to prolong the tete-a-tete, he chose to take the short cut through the fir-plantations, unfrequented on account of the perpendicular, spiked railings that divided it from the lane.
Meta was humming-bird enough to be undismayed. She put hand and foot wherever he desired, flattered him by letting him handily help her up, and bounded light as a feather down on the other side, congratulating herself on the change from the dusty lane to the whispering pine woods, between which wound the dark path, bestrewn with brown slippery needle-leaves, and edged with the delicate feathering ling and tufts of soft grass.
Tom had miscalculated the chances of interruption. Meta was lingering to track the royal highway of some giant ants to their fir-leaf hillock, when they were hailed from behind, and her squire felt ferocious at the sight of Norman and Harry closing the perspective of fir-trunks.
“Hallo! Tom, what a guide you are!” exclaimed Norman. “That fence which even Ethel and Mary avoid!”
“Mary climbs like a cow, and Ethel like a father-long-legs,” said Tom. “Now Meta flies like a bird.”
“And Tom helped me so cleverly,” said Meta. “It was an excellent move, to get into the shade and this delicious pine tree fragrance.”
“Halt!” said Norman—“this is too fast for Meta.”
“I cannot,” said Harry. “I must get there in time to set Dr. Spencer’s tackle to rights. He is tolerably knowing about knots, but there is a dodge beyond him. Come on, Tom.”
He drew on the reluctant Etonian, who looked repiningly back at the increasing distance between him and the other pair, till a turn in the path cut off his view.
“I am afraid you do not know what you have undertaken,” said Norman.
“I am a capital walker. And I know, or do not know, how often Ethel takes the same walk.”
“Ethel is no rule.”
“She ought to be,” said Meta. “To be like her has always been my ambition.”
“Circumstances have formed Ethel.”
“Circumstances! What an ambiguous word! Either Providence pointing to duty, or the world drawing us from it.”
“Stepping-stones, or stumbling-blocks.”
“And, oh! the difficult question, when to bend them, or to bend to them!”
“There must be always some guiding,” said Norman.
“I believe there is,” said Meta, “but when trumpet-peals are ringing around, it is hard to know whether one is really ‘waiting beside the tent,’ or only dawdling.”
“It is great self-denial in the immovable square not to join the charge,” said Norman.
“Yes; but they, being shot at, are not deceiving themselves.”
“I suppose self-deception on those points is very common.”
“Especially among young ladies,” said Meta. “I hear so much of what girls would do, if they might, or could, that I long to see them like Ethel—do what they can. And then it strikes me that I am doing the same, living wilfully in indulgence, and putting my trust in my own misgivings and discontent.”
“I should have thought that discontent had as little to do with you as with any living creature.”
“You don’t know how I could growl!” said Meta, laughing. “Though less from having anything to complain of, than from having nothing to complain of.”
“You mean,” he said, pausing, with a seriousness and hesitation that startled her—“do you mean that this is not the course of life that you would choose?”
A sort of bashfulness made her put her answer playfully—