The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe fog princesThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The fog princesAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: November 9, 2023 [eBook #72077]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: Frank F. Lovell, & Company, 1889Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOG PRINCES ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The fog princesAuthor: Florence WardenRelease date: November 9, 2023 [eBook #72077]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: New York: Frank F. Lovell, & Company, 1889Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
Title: The fog princes
Author: Florence Warden
Author: Florence Warden
Release date: November 9, 2023 [eBook #72077]Most recently updated: January 30, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Frank F. Lovell, & Company, 1889
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOG PRINCES ***
BYFLORENCE WARDENAuthor of “St. Cuthbert’s Tower,” “The House on the Marsh,” Etc.
NEW YORKFRANK F. LOVELL, & COMPANY,142 and 144 Worth Street
Copyright, 1889,BYJOHN W. LOVELL.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI.
Amongthe noblemen’s seats of the United Kingdom there are many more imposing, many more ancient, than Llancader Castle; but there are none better adapted to the requirements of modern life, none where lifts and electric bells combine more harmoniously with old tapestry and heavily decorated ceilings. It is built in the hybrid classical style of the Jacobean period, and is pleasantly placed among lawns and trees and artificial fishponds not far from the banks of the River Wye.
The Earl of St. Austell, by far the largest landowner in this part of the country, and possessor of estates rich in relics of the past, knew how to avail himself of all the resources of the present. He had the reputation in the country of being a good and beneficent landlord; while in town, in the greenrooms of theatres where ballet was the principal attraction, he had a reputation for munificence of quite another sort.
Lady St. Austell was an amiable and still handsome woman, easy-going to a fault, whose chief grief and grievance was, not her husband’s peccadilloes, but the fact that she had not borne him an heir. In their three daughters the earl took but slight interest; and the countess being allowed full liberty to conduct their education on what principles she pleased, tried to make up for their not being sons by giving them the same education as if they had been.
If these young ladies had possessed brains or strength of character out of the common, this system might have answered very well. Unluckily, however, they were commonplace girls, and their unusual training only served to foster a belief in their own superiority, and thus to emphasize a certain lack of feminine grace and charms which, considering their parentage, was difficult to account for.
On a warm afternoon in early August the eldest and the youngest daughter were sitting at work in a pleasant room, pannelled with light oak and hung with large flowered cretonne, which looked out on to a wide lawn dotted with trees and brightened with flower-beds. In the distance could be seen, through a clearing made specially in the thick groves which line the banks of the winding Wye, the rugged grey walls of ruined Carstow Castle.
“Where’s Marion?” asked Lady Catherine suddenly, looking up from a Latin exercise she was preparing for her tutor.
Lady Catherine was a reddish-haired, freckled little girl of sixteen, very plump and very merry looking.
“Oh, wherever Rees Pennant is, I suppose,” answered her eldest sister, Elizabeth, glancing out of window between the stitches of crewel work over which she was bending.
Lady Elizabeth was, like her younger sister, round-cheeked and blue-eyed; she had a fair complexion, golden hair, eyebrows and eye lashes, a self-satisfied expression, and a figure which all the back-boards, reclining boards, and all the dancing masters in Europe could never have saved from being round-shouldered and “dumpy.”
Lady Catherine burst into a merry laugh, and from a sofa in the shadier depths of the long room a plaintive, but cracked, voice wailed out a request in French that “miladi Katte” would be quieter, and would remember that “madame la comtesse,” her mother, wished her to overcome her propensity to unladylike outbursts of merriment.
Mademoiselle de Laval, the duenna of the earl’s daughters, had been specially chosen for the post for her abnormal ugliness, Lord St. Austell holding that women’s virtue was always in inverse proportion to their beauty. He had over-reached himself, however, for mademoiselle, being a martyr to neuralgia and rheumatism, and finding herself very comfortable in her Welsh home, would not for worlds have endangered her situation by any indiscreet prying into the amusements of her charges.
Lady Kate, with a grimace in her direction, crossed the room to her sister, and sat down on a footstool by her side, with a scandal-loving expression on her face.
“Rees Pennant,” she repeated in a hissing whisper; “do you think she is in love with him?”
“I am sure of it!” cried Elizabeth, with all the superiority in such matters which twenty possesses over sixteen.
Lady Kate chuckled to herself with intense amusement.
“Of course he isn’t in love with her,” she suggested, with a sister’s partiality. “Marion is so gawky and Rees is so handsome. It would be like a figure of Raffaele falling in love with an Anglo-Saxon saint.”
“What’s the use of their falling in love, either of them?” said Elizabeth prosaically. “They can’t marry.”
“Why not? He is the eldest son, and Captain Pennant’s family is as old as ours. And look at us! We’re not beauties, and I know papa does not mean to give us very handsome fortunes, or else you would have had an offer before this. You’re twenty, you know.”
“Certainly. And I don’t want any offer,” answered her sister, not without a pardonable suspicion of tartness. “But I certainly shouldn’t condescend to flirt with a man beneath me in rank, and without a penny. And there must be madness in the family, or Captain Pennant would never have adopted a fisherman’s baby and brought it up as his own child.”
“Deborah’s very pretty,” said Lady Kate, thoughtfully. “If we were half as good-looking we should have been photographed all over the place as beauties.”
“Pretty! Do you think so?” asked her sister, with an air of matter-of-fact impartiality. “I don’t admire those big, coarse-looking women. I like a face which shows signs of the higher intelligence, a face which lights up. And Deborah has no conversation. I can’t admire a girl without conversation.”
“Papa can though,” said Kate, rather maliciously. “He admires Deborah, and I am sure you can’t say he likes coarse-looking women.”
“A gentlemen’s taste in beauty is not the same as a lady’s,” said Elizabeth, moving restlessly, and wishing that her persistent little sister would let her change this awkward subject.
“I know it isn’t. I expect some women would admire Mademoiselle de Laval,” whispered Kate, glancing towards the dozing French governess, whose wide nose and mouth, leathern complexion and well-defined moustache formed a combination of feminine attractions rarely to be met with. “But do you know, Betty, after mature consideration of the subject, I would rather be pretty according to the gentlemen’s standard than according to the ladies’.”
Lady Elizabeth, who, although extremely erudite, was rather dull, did not perceive all the point of this speech, but felt that the pert girl was slyly laughing at her. She was too good-tempered to grow cross, however; she only grew didactic.
“You can’t expect much refinement from a fisherman’s daughter, of course,” she said in obstinate tone. “I’ve always pitied poor Mrs. Pennant—who comes of one of the oldest families in England, better than her husband’s—for having to submit to such an absurd caprice of his. She feels it, poor thing, dreadfully.”
“Yes, and turns up her eyes over it, and acts quite a pretty pantomime of resignation over it still, though Deborah’s been one of the family eighteen years. The consequence is that the boys have never learnt to look upon her as a sister, and so they’re falling in love with her. Godwin, and Hervey—yes, and Rees too, whatever Marion may like to think.”
“So much the better. Then Rees can marry the girl, though I think one of the gamekeepers would be a more suitable match.”
“Betty, how can you? You talk just like an ordinary spiteful girl. Deborah is as much a lady as we are ourselves.”
“Very well then. Don’t let’s talk any more about it. We shall only quarrel. And all about a girl who thinks that a smattering of French, German and the piano form a good education.”
There was a pause. But Kate, who always liked to worry a subject to death, soon broke out again.
“Betty, why do you think papa wouldn’t let Rees marry Marion? He’s so fond of Rees, he really treats him almost as if he were his own son.”
“You don’t understand papa,” said Elizabeth, with authority. “He always seems so easy-going that people don’t guess that he’s just like a rock underneath. Nobody thinks so much of class distinctions and money distinctions—those are almost the same thing nowadays—as he does. Rees would have no more chance as a son-in-law than—than Amos Goodhare,” she ended contemptuously.
Lady Kate laughed and pretended to shudder.
“Oh, old Amos,” she cried with real disgust. “Don’t speak of that man. I can’t bear him. I think he has such shifting eyes and such a bad, horrible face. I never could understand why papa allowed such a man into the house at all.”
“He is really a well-read man, and he looks just such a man as a librarian ought to look,” said Elizabeth, in a reserved tone, as if she knew more than she intended to tell.
Kate looked hard at her sister, and then edged her footstool close up to her side.
“Betty,” she whispered, with a very curious expression, “did you ever notice the extraordinary likeness there is between Mr. Goodhare and—papa?”
“Nonsense, child,” said Lady Elizabeth, blushing violently, and trying to rise.
But Lady Kate, who was a sturdily built girl, with little fat, but muscular hands, held her down.
“Of course, he looks much older, because he doesn’t dye his hair and mustache, as papa does, and because he wears a beard. But really, do you know, Betty, I’ve sometimes thought——”
But here Lady Elizabeth, who was also a robust young woman, disengaged herself, with no great gentleness, from her sister’s clasp, and with an almost frightened, “Hush, Kitty, hush; you mustn’t let your tongue run on so,” left her to form her own opinion on the subject of this sudden closure of the discussion.
Lady Kate mused for some time on this point, until at length it occurred to her to get a peep at Mr. Goodhare by the light of her new suspicions. She knew where he was to be found, for, to do him justice, the librarian loved his books, and appeared to live for nothing else. He had lately been employed in collecting papers and documents and books of reference bearing on the history of Carstow Castle, of which most interesting ruin Lady Marion proposed to compile an exhaustive chronicle.
No subject more fascinating could well have been chosen. The old place, after having suffered many vicissitudes of fortune under Plantagenets and Tudors, had been almost destroyed during the Great Rebellion, when it was held for King Charles by a brave little garrison, who did not surrender until all hope of escape had been cut off by a fearless Puritan soldier. Swimming across the river with a knife in his mouth, he cut adrift the boat on which the defenders of the castle counted for their flight. Some years later a tower of the desolated castle was patched up into a prison for one of the “regicides,” who passed there a pleasantly mitigated captivity, and was buried in the churchyard of the quiet little old town.
From these events Lady Marion had determined to construct a strictly impartial chronicle, which should, however, illustrate in a marked manner her own strictly impartial views on the subject of hereditary monarchy and the powers of Parliament. Therefore, Amos Goodhare, the librarian, had been for the past few weeks employed in digging out, from the vast hoards of accumulated records of the past with which not only the library, but various corners of roomy Llancader were filled, such documents as seemed likely to be of use to the young lady in her vast undertaking.
It was among the nooks and crannies of the castle, therefore, that Lady Kate set about her search for the librarian; and it was in one of the dustiest corners of a scarcely used wing of the building that, after a long hunt, she found him.
There was here a little awkward staircase, which led up to a tower, long since given up, for its draughtiness, to the bats and the mice. Underneath this staircase was an oddly-shaped recess, as large as a small room, where, behind some boxes, boards, and similar lumber, a rough chest, full to the top of yellow and musty papers, had that very day been unearthed by the indefatigable librarian. Lady Kate, creeping about the corridors and staircases with careful feet, heard the rustle of papers as soon as she entered the passage in which the tower staircase was. She stopped, listened, advanced on tiptoe until she was close to the outer pile of lumber. She did not at first dare to peep round at Amos Goodhare, for she wanted to get an opportunity of studying his face unseen by him. She knew he was there, though, for whenever Amos found anything which interested him he omitted a series of low grunts of satisfaction. And now he was grunting at a great rate.
Lady Kate, after half choking with suppressed laughter at his curious little cries and murmurs of excitement, decided that he was too deeply interested in something he had discovered to take any notice of her. So, with cautious steps, holding her breath, she crept through the space between the piled-up boxes and the staircase. He could not have been more favorably placed for her proposed inspection. A long lancet window lighted the staircase, and the bottom panes came low enough to illuminate the space below. Standing close under the little patch of dusty glass was the librarian, holding in his hands some large sheets of paper, which Lady Kate perceived to be old and yellow-looking. He was far too intent upon deciphering the contents of the papers to notice the plump and curious girl’s face peering up at him a couple of feet from the floor.
Lady Kate’s design of comparing the librarian’s face with her father’s was forgotten with her first glance at Amos Goodhare, who was a tall, slender, eminently gentlemanly-looking man, with grey hair and beard, grey eyes, which gazed habitually on the ground, and slightly stooping shoulders. For she saw his usually composed features lighted up with excitement so strong that his nostrils were dilated, his breath came fast and his eyes looked fierce, wide open and almost lurid. His long, white hands shook as he clutched at the yellowing papers, or passed his fingers, in feverish restlessness, through his still thick and curly grey hair.
Little Lady Kate’s plump face grew white with horror; she thought the librarian had gone mad. Over-devotion to the books had done it, she supposed. At any rate, she was too much frightened to stay and speculate as to the cause of this horrible event. She crept back into the passage on all fours, as she had come, and fled away as softly as she could.
On the floor below she met her sister Marion, who had just come in, and who was, as Kate afterwards described it, “looking sentimental.”
Lady Marion was, on the whole, the least attractive of the three sisters. She had not the stolid, but “comfortable,” look of the eldest, nor the merry eyes and laughing little pursed-up mouth of the youngest. She was a tall, bony, angular girl, fair, like the others, but without the pink color they had in their cheeks. Her hair was a little darker than theirs, and of an unpleasing length, as it had been cut quite short and then allowed to grow, the result of which was that little ends and tufts stuck out straight in all directions from the tiny little knob she wore at the back of her neck. Her nose was long, her mouth was wide, and her light blue eyes were without fire. Nevertheless there was a certain look, not only of good nature, but of gentleness and affection, in her face, which made her affectation of masculine manners and speech rather pathetic. For Lady Marion had the warmest and deepest nature of the three sisters, therefore it was on her that their anomalous education had worked the most disastrous effects. She was always yearning to show “strength of mind,” when, as a matter of fact, the strength her character really possessed did not lie at all in mental attributes, but in the more womanly qualities which she despised.
When her younger sister fell against her, whispering fearsomely, “Oh, Marion, Mr. Goodhare’s gone mad!” Lady Marion instantly assumed a manly and devil-may-care front, and said in a deep voice:
“Where is he?”
Whereas, if she had been really a person of much common sense, she would have decided at once that her sister’s statement was a wild exaggeration.
Lady Kate briefly described where and how she had found him. Then a happier idea crossed Marion’s mind.
“Perhaps he’s got hold of something,” she mused. “And I believe he’s quite capable of keeping back important papers, and bringing out a rival work to mine, compiled from authorities he has kept from me.”
For Lady Marion shared the common mistrust of Amos Goodhare, which was, perhaps, only a result of his extreme reserve.
“He looks wickeder than ever, at any rate,” murmured Kate, as the sisters went softly up the stairs together.
“Look here,” whispered Marion, when they had reached the upper floor, and come in sight of the tower staircase at the other end of a long, dark corridor. “You call him out suddenly, as if something had happened, and I’ll watch him on the stairs from the space between the staircase and the window. Then I’ll see what he does with the papers, and try to get in and have a look at them.”
“All right,” whispered Lady Kate.
And they stole along the corridor to the further end.
Thetwo girls carried out their plan beautifully. Marion crept softly up the tower staircase as far as the window. Then, crouching down, she managed to peep between the dusty panes and the side of the staircase, and saw the top of the librarian’s head, which moved from side to side as he scanned the pages of a discolored MS.
Suddenly, ringing down the corridor came a cry in a high, girlish voice, which caused Amos to start and mechanically to hide away under his coat the paper he was reading. Marion noted this action with a suspicious eye.
“Mr. Goodhare, Mr. Goodhare! Where are you? Come! Quick!” the second young conspirator was crying lustily.
“Here I am, your ladyship, at your service,” called out the librarian, as the girl’s voice sounded nearer and nearer.
At the same moment he opened the old chest he had been ransacking, and thrust the document he had been reading deep down among a mass of other old papers, from which the dust rose in a cloud as his hand moved them. To Lady Marion’s delight, he had dropped the last page on the ground. But she had scarcely congratulated herself on the fact when, turning, he perceived the missing leaf, and, not having time to put it into the chest with the rest, dropped it into his pocket. Then he hastened out of his corner to meet the young girl, and addressed her in his usual suave, respectful and dignified manner:
“What can I do for your ladyship?”
“I want you to help me with my Latin exercise. There are some dreadfully hard words in it this time.”
“I shall be delighted,” said he, as he followed the young girl downstairs.
But in his grave and beautifully modulated voice Lady Marion detected a tone of impatience at the trivial cause of this interruption. She was by this time already in the nook under the stairs, making the most of her time, for she guessed that it would not be long before Amos would find an excuse for returning to the occupation which had absorbed him so deeply. She flung open the chest with violence, which caused its old hinges to creak and little splinters to fly off the worm-eaten wood, while she, half choked by the dust, groped blindly among the mass of mouldering, musty parchments, pamphlets and papers. It was some minutes before the air was clear enough, and her eyes sufficiently used to the obscurity of the ill-lighted corner, for her to begin her search in earnest. Deep down into the withered-looking heap she dived, and, after many a futile plunge, fished up at last a crumpled paper, which she felt sure was the one on which Amos had been engaged.
It was part of an old letter, undated, but bearing every sign, in its yellowish paper, faded ink, old-fashioned handwriting, and voluminous style, of having been written long before the introduction of the penny post. The page containing the signature was missing, but the commencement, “My dear Oswin,” showed that it was written to one of her ancestors—Oswin being a family name—and internal evidence proved that it was from one intimate friend to another.
The writer began by regretting that his own health was so bad, not having been improved by a long voyage he had recently taken to improve it, that he was unable to come to see his friend Oswin, who, he was sorry to hear, was also far from well. He wrote in the strain of a man who thinks the end of his own life approaching.
“And now,” so the letter went on, “before the end of my own days shall come, I have somewhat on my mind which I would fain impart to you. Of late, being unable to follow my accustomed pursuits, and compelled to endure a sedentary life which suits me but ill, I have been studying the history of our own land, and more especially such part of it as concerns the reign of our late martyred King Charles, of blessed memory. In the course of my researches (if I may bestow on my poor studies so honorable a name) I have read much of the valiant defence of your own fair Castle of Carstow, that now lies ruined, and have noted a thing that may have escaped your eyes. You know, doubtless, being well versed in the history of this notable and loyal fortress, that shortly before the siege by the rebels, under Essex, the Queen Henrietta Maria did send to her own country of France a trusty messenger, charged straightly to entreat the king for help for her and her lord, and also bearing certain rich jewels of hers for sale in the Netherlands, that the proceeds thereof might be used for payment of troops. And it is known that this messenger did return in safety to England, and that he did reach Carstow, and was there detained by the siege on his way to join the king. But what became further of that noble, the Lord Hugh of Thirsk, never was known, nor was ever aught heard of the treasure he brought back or of the treasure he carried away with him. Yet was he as valiant, and trusty, and honorable a knight and gentleman as ever drew sword, nor was capable of any treachery nor unfair dealing whatsoever. But no mention of moneys reaching the king about this time was ever made, but that he was hard pressed and had to borrow and beg from his faithful courtiers is certain. Now, we know that there has always been among men, during all time, a great and most marvellous avidity for lost treasure, which appeals to the imagination most strangely, and that little of such treasure has ever been recovered. Yet, since we know that here is plain evidence of a knight, bearing treasure, reaching your Castle of Carstow; and since we have no evidence whatsoever of his being seen thereafter, or the riches he carried, is it not just to suppose that such treasure may never have left the precincts of the castle, which was then so close besieged, but that it may have been concealed from the besiegers, and thereafter either forgotten, or, the concealer being killed, its existence not known? You, with your grave discernment, not carried away by impulse, may judge my plan fantastic and unworthy your thought. But I pray you consider the suggestion I have to set before you. It is founded on a study of the castle as I made it minutely some years ago, and may lead, I think, to a discovery of importance. You will remember that, on passing under the great gateway, with its square tower to the south, you have before you a wide open space, now grass-grown, which——”
Here the bottom of the second sheet was reached, and here Marion, who was devouring the MS. with its crooked and sprawling handwriting, in the same state of feverish excitement as the librarian had suffered, was forced to a standstill.
“And the rest is in his pocket,” she said to herself, with fiery impatience. “The most interesting part, too, the plan he had conceived for the finding of this treasure! I must go and find Amos Goodhare; I must force him to give it to me.”
But she was spared that trouble. Springing to her feet, for she had sat down upon a pile of lumber to consider the dazzling prospect which the letter opened to her girlish imagination, she found herself face to face with the librarian himself.
The sun had gone down low in the sky while she was occupied in making out slowly, letter by letter, the old-fashioned spelling and scrawling handwriting. Now there came, through the corner of the window, the last red rays of the sunset. They fell on the face of the librarian, gave a lurid light to his grey eyes, and a diabolical cast to his complexion; so that Lady Marion, seeing him thus unexpectedly, belied her assumption of strength of mind by uttering a shrill cry. Perhaps it was the heat into which the letter had thrown her imagination; perhaps it was only the effect of the shadows thrown by the ivy outside; but it seemed to the girl that his features were distorted by passion so violent as to render him for the time scarcely human; she actually cowered as she stood, afraid that he would strike her, or that his very look would work upon her some mischief. She went through a moment of horror which she never mentioned, yet never forgot, in which the tall, spare man, with his flashing eyes and threatening attitude, the brown rafters overhead, the great piles of lumber on either side, and the thick, choking dust over all, were stamped upon her mind in a weird and vivid picture.
The next moment, as if in a dissolving view, the picture had faded away, and Amos Goodhare, the grave and courteous librarian, stood before her with his head bent and his usual stoop, in a most respectful attitude.
“I have found some papers here to-day, Lady Marion, which I believe will interest you greatly,” said he in his bland, measured voice.
But Lady Marion had received a shock from which she could not in a moment recover.
“I—I—thank you. You can show me presently,” she said, with dry mouth and unsteady voice.
“Can you not stay one moment, just to see one part of a letter which—ah, you have it in your hand. Have you read it? I am afraid the handwriting is not very easy to make out. Will you let me——”
“Thank you, I—I made it out,” said the girl, not yet mistress of herself.
“Dear me! I am afraid I frightened you just now when I came in. I was so astonished myself to find any one in this forsaken corner, that in the dusk my imagination ran away with me, and I thought—well, I don’t know exactly what I thought—but I certainly had no idea it was your ladyship who sprung up suddenly like a fairy in the darkness.”
“Didn’t you?” said Lady Marion, who was recovering her self-command, and had decided to come to an understanding with him at once. “I never knew that there was anything in this little recess until to-day, when I saw you come out of it to join my sister. I have read this letter—or rather the first two pages of it—and now I want you to give me the third, if you please.”
There was now no mistaking the malevolence in Goodhare’s eyes as he answered:
“Unfortunately I haven’t got it,” he said in the humblest and most deprecatory of tones. “Like a serial story, it breaks off just when one is mad for it to go on. But we must hunt and search and ransack until we find it.”
“And supposing, Mr. Goodhare,” suggested Lady Marion, whose temper was rising, “that you ransack first in your own pocket.”
For a moment he was taken aback. The next, he smilingly turned out the contents of his coat pockets. Whether he had already stowed away the missing leaf in a safe place, or whether by some skilful sleight of hand he concealed it about his own person before her eyes, it is certain that he pulled out the lining of the very pocket into which he had so hastily thrust it, but the paper had disappeared.
“I don’t know what can have made you think I had the rest of your letter, your ladyship,” he said with dignity and a shade of contempt. “Any documents found in this house are the property of your family, and I hope you would scarcely accuse me of taking what is not mine. A lady’s caprices must be gratified, and so I have done my best to gratify yours. At the same time I believe you will agree on reflection, that I should not be too exacting if I expected an apology.”
“I do apologise, Mr. Goodhare,” said Lady Marion drily. “You are so much cleverer than I thought, that I can’t think of taking up any more of your time in making notes for my poor work.”
And she gave him a little stiff bow as she went out.
The librarian made no answer, but a murmur of most deeply respectful apology and regret; when she had gone, however, his face puckered up with a look of malice, followed by one of anxiety.
“He would hardly dare—hardly dare, to dismiss me, I should think; and, even if he does, perhaps it may not matter now.”
Again the grave, reserved face lighted up with an almost indescribable expression, in which fierce passions of hunger and yearning seemed to burst the bonds of long-continued repression and to shine forth out of a demon’s eyes.
Lady Marion in the meantime had carried her grievance against the librarian straight to her mother, who, although not passionately attached to her daughters, was kind and indulgent to them. After hearing the story, she agreed to use her influence to procure the dismissal of Amos Goodhare, the more readily as she herself shared the popular prejudice against him.
“I don’t promise that your father will listen to me, my dear,” she said. “I dare say you are old enough to guess that Goodhare is a connection of the family, though, of course, we don’t talk about it. He has to be provided for somehow, and I think your father looks upon him as rather a dangerous man—one whom he likes to keep under his own eye. Perhaps I am wrong, but that has always been my impression. And I don’t suppose your father will think there is much in the story of the lost treasure.”
Lady St. Austell was right. The earl pronounced the story to be “all nonsense,” and said that at the beginning of the last century, to which period he assigned the letter when the first part was shown to him, people went mad on the subject of buried money, and would even fit out ships to go in search of hoards said to have been left by pirates on distant islands. However, he listened attentively to Marion’s account of how she saw the librarian secrete part of the letter in his own pocket. Although he said nothing on the subject to Goodhare, perhaps he thought that his MSS. were not in safe keeping. Shortly afterwards he established a public library in the little town of Carstow, dowered it with a handsome supply of books and appointed Amos Goodhare custodian, with a small furnished house rent free and a more than ample salary.
Goodhare received news of the change in his position with his usual dignified modesty, and declared that he was entirely at the earl’s service always, and was happy provided he was allowed to remain near the old town and castle of which he had grown so fond.
On learning a new regulation which Lord St. Austell, at the instance of the countess, about this time established at the old castle, Amos Goodhare, however, showed himself less submissive. The earl, who preserved all the ruins on his estates with scrupulous care, left each in charge of a keeper, who kept the key and admitted visitors on payment of a small fee. In the case of Carstow, the keeper lived in a tower of the castle itself, close to the gate. She was a respectable widow, with a family of children, and the new rule was that no person whatever should be allowed to go over any part of the ruins unaccompanied either by herself or by one of her children. The only exceptions to this regulation were the Pennant family, for whom Marion procured this privilege; and any deviation from the rule, except in their case, was to be punished by dismissal from the charge of the gate. When Amos Goodhare heard of this, he ventured, in his usual respectful manner, to suggest that this piece of favoritism would offend all the other families in the neighborhood; but the earl, who, having promised to satisfy this whim of his wife’s, was not the man to go back from his word, simply said that it was known that, having no sons of his own, he took an especial interest in the Pennants; and that the regulation would be enforced in such a manner as not to interfere with the enjoyment of anybody. The rule had become necessary in consequence of the dangerous state of part of the ruins; and this reason should be published. The librarian could say no more.
But when the days grew shorter, and the black shadows of the night began to lengthen out under the grey walls early in the evening, Amos Goodhare, now installed in his little house adjoining the new library of Carstow, would spend his every spare hour in rambles round the old fortress, now this, now the other side of the winding river. Walking slowly, with eyes always cast down, and feet that appeared reluctant to rise, even for a moment, from the precious earth, he seemed to worship each blade of grass, each broken stone. It was a beautiful devotion, people said, that made a man so well known for learning and accomplishments linger so lovingly about the grey ruin, never even caring to go within the walls, but always hovering about it, scarcely letting himself go beyond the limited area within which he could keep its rugged and broken towers in view. Why, there could scarcely be a foot of ground within a mile of the castle that he didn’t know, they said.
And they were right. Under the beams of the rising sun, when the laborer was going to his work in the fields; at midday, in sun, or wind, or rain; at evening time, when his work was done, and he was free to wander restlessly until far into the night, the tall, gaunt, stooping figure, with its keen, hungry eyes, stalked, like a starving ghoul, about the precincts of the castle. It passed its long, lean fingers searchingly over the very stones and among the clinging ivy that hung in ragged bunches round the bases of the towers. It crept along over the ground with shuffling, searching feet. It returned, night after night, savage and disappointed, like a starving rat to its hole.
So the winter passed.
At last, one evening in April, when every rood had been well trodden by his restless feet, Amos Goodhare gave in.
“It can’t be done alone,” he said to himself, bitterly. “I must have help—help.”
And as he went home he made up his mind whose it should be.
Captain Pennant’sfamily was by far the most popular in the neighborhood, and this in spite of the fact that they were far too poor to give entertainments on a large scale, or to contribute largely to charities, or to do any of those things upon which popularity is generally supposed to depend.
Captain Pennant himself, though not commonly considered to be overweighted with intellect, was a gentle and chivalrous gentleman, whose strong and kindly impulses were sometimes a little disconcerting to his wife. Thus he had, on one occasion, eighteen years before, brought home from Penzance, and placed in his wife’s lap, a baby girl, the orphan daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned while forming one of the crew of a life boat.
Mrs. Pennant, a stout, handsome little woman of the world, with twice her husband’s common sense, and none of his straightforward simplicity of character, had at last uttered a mild protest. She was in the habit of bearing with all his caprices so beautifully, respecting his prejudices and behaving with such perfect wifely submission, that he had not the least suspicion that the grey mare was the better horse. But she was a strict Conservative, and this sudden addition to her family from the ranks of the proletariat was the last straw which broke her patience.
“I am afraid, Graham,” she said, “that this dear little baby will be rather in the way in the servants’ hall.”
“The servants’ hall!” echoed Captain Pennant, indignantly, “Alicia, I’m astonished at your suggesting such a thing. I mean the darling to be brought up as our own child.”
“As our child! A fisherman’s daughter!”
“We are all of the same value in the sight of heaven, Alicia,” answered her husband, whose Conservatism was never allowed to interfere with his whims.
“And insects are all of the same value in our eyes. Yet we tolerate a fly where we should think a caterpillar out of place.”
“Well, I don’t want to know anything about flies and caterpillars, but I have adopted her as my daughter, and she is to be treated accordingly,” said Captain Pennant, with increased obstinacy because of his wife’s unexpected restiveness. “I believe that God has sent her to us as a precious gift and blessing, because among our own dear children we have not had a girl.”
He had his own way, to all appearances, as he always had. Deborah Audaer was brought up with his sons, and treated as a young lady. But equally, of course, Mrs. Pennant had her own way more surely; for, without any overt act of unkindness, she made the girl feel, and the boys feel, that between them were no ties of blood.
Then, as they all grew up, the intriguing old lady had her punishment. For, one and all, the boys fell in love with Deborah, and when she had reached the age of nineteen they were all suitors for her hand.
Of course, the girl was true to her sex, and gave her heart where it was least wanted. Hervey, the youngest boy, a slow, broad-shouldered giant with a ruddy face and ripe-corn colored hair, who had a didactic manner and a great reputation for wisdom, was only her own age, and therefore too young for her, she said. He was a great theorist, an authority upon “style” in rowing and “seat” in riding, although he could neither pull a boat along nor stick on a horse.
A dash of the kindly prig there was about Hervey, perhaps, and a little too strong a sense that other people didn’t count for much when he was about. But he was fond of Deborah, and he thought that he and she would make quite the grandest couple in the world, if only that unappreciative beast, Rees, were out of the way.
Godwin, the second son, was twenty-one; a matter-of-fact young man, of strictly moderate abilities, plenty of common sense, who never did anything that he did not do well, but in a plodding, methodical manner, without show or fuss. He had never given any trouble to anybody, and was in consequence thought very little of by anybody, particularly by his two brothers, who always exceeded their allowances while he managed to save out of his, the most meagre of the three, and who lived idly at home making up their minds “what they should be,” while he had been for two years going backwards and forwards to a bank at Monmouth, where he had got himself a situation. He adored Deborah in a prosaic manner, keeping her in sweets, of which she was childishly fond, doing her shopping for her with twice as much taste and tact as she would have shown herself, and eking out the few pounds she could spare for this purpose with money of his own, so that she was filled with admiration and astonishment at his “bargains.”
Deborah liked both Hervey and Godwin, but it was on Rees that she poured out all the devotion of a passionate and generous nature. Rees, the handsome, the daring, the brilliant, the favorite of the whole county, adored and indulged by his mother, petted and spoiled by Lord St. Austell, who put his horses, his dog-cart, his yacht, his guns at the service of the lad, whom he treated with smiling, good-humored fondness, as if Rees had been his own son. As a matter of course, the young fellow’s character suffered from all this spoiling, as Captain Pennant, far-sighted in this matter only, had early foreboded.
“Rees is one of those unlucky lads who are born to be ruined,” he had predicted, giving thereby a great shock to his wife, who was as weak as water where her eldest born was concerned, and who flattered herself, poor lady, that her prayers would counteract the effects of reckless indulgence.
At three-and-twenty Rees was the handsomest young fellow in the county. Of the middle height only and slightly built, with delicate features, curly black hair, and black eyes full of fun and fire, his appearance was irresistibly attractive to man, woman, child, and animal. His dog loved Rees with a devotion uncommon even in a dog. Careful mothers were afraid of him, for there was not a pretty girl in the countryside who would not snub the richest bachelor in the principality for the sake of the supper dance with Rees Pennant.
Nothing was difficult to him. He rode and drove well by instinct, could manage a yacht like any old salt, and always made the biggest bag at a shooting party. He had a voice pleasing without cultivation, and a laugh as musical as a bird’s song. A nature so gifted, generous and genial withal, needed an armor of ideal strength of character and of intellect. Unfortunately, Rees Pennant possessed neither. The very curves of his handsome mouth betrayed weakness, which, if now excusable and even lovable, might later in life bear a pitiful significance. He was a leader and ruler now among his companions, attended by satellites of his own sex, worshipped by a troop of shy girls; but he was not of the stuff of which rulers are made, for all that.
It was on Rees Pennant that Amos Goodhare, in search of a tool and catspaw, had cast his eyes. The librarian was, perhaps, the only man in Carstow who disliked Rees; who not only saw through the lad’s bright, affectionate manner to the growing selfishness and egotism beneath, but found no charm in his grace and brightness. He was, besides, intensely jealous of the earl’s fondness for the young fellow, and of Deborah’s passionate attachment.
For Amos had himself cast on the handsome girl eyes full of covetous longing, so that Deborah, without knowing why, blushed under his gaze and felt afraid of him.
Having decided on his plan of action, the librarian lost no time. He put himself in Rees Pennant’s way one sunny April afternoon, when the latter was returning home, flushed and light-hearted, after a game of tennis on one of the Llancader lawns. The meeting took place near the top of the hilly street of which Carstow may almost be said to consist. Amos was leaning against the trunk of a tree, his soft, wide hat thrown back, his stick in his hand, as if overcome by the heat and consequent lassitude.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pennant,” he said, with that tone of flattering, dignified respect which he knew well how to assume.
“Afternoon, Goodhare,” said the lad, saluting him with the airy grace peculiar to him. “Why, you look done up. Don’t you like these warm spring days? They intoxicate me.”
“Yes, yes,” answered the elder man, putting into his grave tone an amount of respectful admiration which inclined the young fellow to stay and chat for a few minutes with the “old bookworm.” “The spring suits you, and the sunshine, and girls’ fair faces, and all bright things. But I’m only an old hulk, and men think me fit for nothing but to stick labels on the backs of books for fools to read and not to profit by.”
“Come, that’s rather hard on us Carstowites, isn’t it? Some of us read seriously, you know, and how do you know we don’t profit by what we read?”
“Well, Mr. Pennant, I don’t want to flatter you, but you must know in your own mind that you are not like the clods around you. You have a quick brain and vivid feelings. But even you—pray excuse the liberty I am taking—show signs of the rusting effect of these narrow-hearted provincial towns. Fancy a fine young fellow like you remaining content with such a horizon! You, who might aspire to be anything you pleased—a king among men—wasting your energies on lawn tennis! Why, to me, old as I am and callous as I ought to have grown, the idea seems shocking—positively shocking!”
The young man’s face had clouded slightly during this speech from the librarian, who worked himself up to a pitch of high excitement for the last words.
“How do you know that I am content?” asked Rees, quietly.
“Oh, pray forgive my taking such liberty! I got excited, carried away,” murmured Amos, showing great irritation with his own indiscreet boldness.
“I’m not offended. I repeat: how do you know I’m contented?” asked Rees, swinging his tennis racquet.
“How do I know?” echoed Amos, diffidently, but with some surprise. “Why, because with natures like yours, full of energy, and fire, and daring, to will is to do. And that you have never done anything—anything great, I mean—is proof enough to me that you have never willed to do anything; that, in fact, the air of Carstow is responsible for the waste of a fine nature. Now you said you would not be offended, Mr. Pennant, and I hold you to your word.”
He made a feint of moving away, but Rees detained him by a gracefully imperious gesture. The lad’s complexion was flushed now with something more than the sun’s heat; his candid face showed a very becoming boyish shame and modesty.
“You do me a lot more than justice, Goodhare,” said he half laughing. “You make me ashamed of my own idleness, not for the first time, I do assure you, though. You see I’ve been spoilt; I know that; but it’s so jolly that one hasn’t the strength of mind to wish people wouldn’t encourage one in one’s evil courses.”
“What evil courses? I’ve never heard a word about you in that way,” said the librarian, whose eyes had glowed with an ugly light at this suggestion.
“Oh, nothing worse than my besetting sin, idling, which they say is the parent of all others,” said Rees, looking up with his handsome, frank young face, on which was no trace of any passion worse than boyish vanity.
Goodhare’s face fell, though its change of expression was not noticeable enough for his ingenuous companion to remark it.
“You see, dear old Lord St. Austell is ever so much too good to me,” continued Rees with an affectionate inflection; “and while there are always his horses for me to ride and his coverts for me to shoot over, the temptation for me to do nothing else is too great.”
“And why should you do anything else, at least in your leisure?” asked Goodhare, with apparent surprise. “Doesn’t every gentleman who goes in for a public career in any profession amuse himself so—among other ways, of course?”
Rees laughed rather bitterly.
“Gentlemen who go in for a public career have private means, Mr. Goodhare,” said he. “Everybody knows I have nothing——”
“But you are the eldest son?”
“And heir to my father’s liabilities; nothing else, I assure you.”
“But when you become Lady Marion’s husband—”
The lad started in astonishment. The idea had never occurred to him.
“Lady Marion’s husband!” he repeated, bewildered.
“Why, Mr. Pennant, you are very modest. Or don’t you wish it to be talked about so soon? If so, I really beg your pardon. But you must know that it has already become common talk—”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it, though,” said Rees, dryly. “Lord St. Austell would never let me enter Llancader Castle again if I were to hint at such a thing.”
“And Lady Marion herself?” suggested the librarian, with malice.
Rees laughed rather self-consciously.
“Poor girls! They must have some creature to talk to, especially now, for this fright about scarlet fever has caused his lordship to give orders for them to remain shut up here all through the London season.”
“And do you believe that, being as fond of you as his lordship is, that his daughter would not be able to talk him round?”
“I am sure she would not. I know the earl.”
“So do I; and I say he would.”
Rees shrugged his shoulders. He was rather impressed by the tone of quiet conviction of the elder man. After a short pause he said, hesitatingly:
“He might, perhaps, if I had money. But as it is——”
“Ah, that want of money—that fatal, miserable want of money. That’s the pinch; yes, that’s always the pinch,” burst out Amos, with surprising energy. “How many a promising, brilliant young man—and yet not so brilliant as—well, as some I know, either—how many have been wrecked on that shoal! What might I not have done myself in the world, with the moderate abilities I have and with perseverance, if it had not been for that curse, want of money. Yes, there’s the rub.”
There was a pause. The younger man was lost in thought, the elder was watching him. Rees woke out of his reverie with a start, and a laugh which was, perhaps, a shade less light-hearted than usual.
“And after all,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and throwing his racquet high in the air, to catch it again as easily as if he had been born a conjuror, “I don’t know, when one comes to think of it, whether I would care about Lady Marion as a wife. She’s a good girl, but not the most graceful creature in the world. Why, I know a girl, one who doesn’t dislike me very furiously either, who has more beauty in the bend of her little finger than all the Ladies Cenarth have in their whole bodies.”
Amos cast at him out of the corners of his eyes a brief glance instinct with venom.
“I don’t suppose there are many girls about, high or low, who do dislike you very furiously, Mr. Pennant,” he said, in a tone of sly malice not altogether as pleasing as the words; “but I do earnestly hope, if I may presume to say so, that you will not destroy chances which I, an old experienced man, perceive to be great, for the sake of a pretty face in a rank of life beneath you.”
“You may be quite sure that the girl I should choose for a wife would be beneath nobody, Goodhare,” said Rees, with haughtiness in which there was no offence. “But anyhow,” he added, with another laugh, “there’s time enough to think about that. I don’t mean to bestow upon any lady my name and my tennis racquet—all I possess—for the next ten years.”
“Of course not. You mean to enjoy yourself.”
Rees did not quite understand the significance of the elder man’s tone, but it rather grated on him.
“Yes, I mean to enjoy myself in my own way,” he said, as he sprang up from the gate on which he had been sitting, and prepared to continue his walk. “Well, good night, Goodhare; I must be getting home.”
“Good night, Mr. Pennant. I wish you’d come round to the library some evening and see an edition of Carlyle which I’ve just had rebound after my own taste. I’m rather proud of it. It won’t be very entertaining for you, but it will bring a ray of sunshine into my grey life, and show me that you are not offended by my frankness.”
He had touched on the right chord again. The young fellow held out his hand and grasped that of the librarian warmly.
“Of course I’ll come,” he said good humoredly. “Only you mustn’t butter me up so; it’ll turn my head.”
He ran down the hill like the boy he still was, and turned his handsome young face for a farewell nod to Goodhare as he reached the bottom.
Amos returned the salutation, but Rees was too far off to hear his suppressed chuckle of hideous exultation.
“He takes the bait already,” he said to himself, grinding out the words between his teeth. “What a pitiful fool he is, and how splendidly he’ll suit my purpose.”
Itwas about three months after the first friendly interview between Rees Pennant and Amos Goodhare that, one hot July afternoon, Deborah Audaer was sitting on the terrace behind Captain Pennant’s house, with a book in her hand, and her eyes fixed, not upon its pages, but upon the straggling, untrimmed fruit trees which filled the bottom of the garden.
Everything about the place—the glimpse of shabby furniture inside the open French window behind her, the greenish flags and broken balustrade of the terrace, and wild and uncultivated condition of the long garden—told of limited means and a pitiful struggle to make both ends meet. Deborah herself was dressed in the most extraordinarily ill-fitting frock that ever clothed a beautiful girl. It was made of a pretty bluish-grey cotton, and set off between the throat and the left shoulder by a bunch of double poppies. But it was too tight in front, too loose in the back, garnished everywhere by unexpected puckers, and giving the idea that it was making its wearer very uncomfortable. Deborah, who was tall and of a handsome, well-developed figure, looked in this garment as if she was masquerading in the dress of a narrow-chested girl with a hump-back. However, her fresh beauty was too decided to be spoilt by such an accident; she had a rich brunette complexion, blue eyes, good teeth, a nose a little bit inclined to be aquiline, and dark-brown hair with strands of a bright copper color.
She had been sitting idly, with rather a melancholy expression of face, for some time, when Godwin, who had been watching the back of her head from the open window, stepped out on to the terrace and seated himself on the balustrade in front of her.
It was not surprising that a young girl should find him less attractive than Rees, for Godwin was short, sallow, insignificant of feature, and rather brusque in manner.
“What are you thinking about, Deborah?” he asked with a shrewd look.
“Nothing,” of course, she answered promptly.
“That is a—well, a perversion of the truth. You were thinking of Rees.”
“I suppose I can think of anything I like.”
“Yes, provided—firstly, that you tell the truth about it; and, secondly, that you don’t lose your temper over it. Shall I give another guess, and tell youwhatyou thought about Rees?”
“You can if you like,” said she with an affectation of indifference.
But she turned away to hide the fact that tears were rising to her eyes.
“Well, we won’t talk any more about him,” said he hastily, distressed and irritated that she should cry over what he considered an unworthy object.
“Yes, we will,” cried Deborah, turning suddenly and almost fiercely. “I can’t bear it all by myself any longer; and you, Godwin, who understand things, you can perhaps tell me what is the matter.”
“With Rees?”
“Yes. He’s changed lately, changed altogether; it’s been coming on gradually, but it’s been most plain the last month or six weeks. Haven’t you noticed it?”
“I’ve noticed that he’s become ill-tempered and discontented, and doesn’t seem to think any of us good enough for him.”
“Well, he used not to be like that, you know, he used not. He was always bright and cheerful and happy. But ever since he’s taken this studious fit, which we thought at first was such a good thing, he’s quite changed. He seems to avoid me, and everybody; and I’ve heard him say such ungrateful things of Lord St. Austell, who’s been so good to him. And yet now, when he isn’t shut up reading in his own room or up at the library in the town, he’s always up at Llancader.”
“Don’t you know why?” asked Godwin, drily.
The girl grew a little paler and her breath came faster, as if she had an idea that she was to hear something unpleasant. But she did not answer.
“Of course you’ll hate me for telling you,” said Godwin rather bitterly. “And it’s no use to tell you it’s for your own good. Anyhow, it’s this: Rees is making up to Lady Marion. I’ve told him he’s only making a fool of himself, and I’ve got snubbed for my pains. There.”
But Deborah had drawn herself up with haughty astonishment.
“And why shouldn’t he ‘make up’ to Lady Marion? He’s a great deal too good for any of those silly, conceited girls.”
Godwin looked at her attentively.
“Girlsareridiculous creatures,” he said at last, contemptuously. “They’ll like a man without reason, and they’ll go on liking him against reason. However, we won’t talk about Rees any more, except that I’ll just say this: ‘Use all your influence with him to try to get him to turn his hand to something; for I’m inclined to think this illness of my poor father’s is more serious than we like to believe, and if anything happens to him Rees and Hervey will have to put their shoulders to the wheel, for father’s pension ends with his life, and his affairs are in a hopeless state of muddle. Now, don’t cry; it had to be said, and if I haven’t said it in the best way you must forgive me.”
But Deborah’s tears were flowing fast. There was only one person in the world whom she loved as well as Rees, and that was Captain Pennant. The idea of his death, which had forced itself upon her again and again lately, she could never bear calmly.
“Now, I thought you had more sense than to give way like that,” said Godwin, trying to be very stern. “I look to you to help me to comfort my mother, who hasn’t the least notion of what you and I—know.”
Deborah shook her head.
“She won’t let me comfort her. She has never—never looked upon me as anything but an intruder, and when our poor father dies I shall have to go. It is only right, too, of course. It’s only lately I’ve begun to see and know what a burden I must have been upon them all these years——”
“Nonsense, Deb. You may be sure my father—and all of us—never considered you that.”
“Of course he didn’t, he is too good,” said the girl, with a caressing tone. “But it’s true, all the same. And you needn’t look like that at me. I shall be glad to earn my own living, and I don’t care how. See, I’ve begun to make my own dresses; I made this one.”
With the tears still rolling down her cheeks, she sat upright with some pride.
“The back of the bodice looks a little like the waves of the sea in a pantomime,” said Godwin, who was a critic on the subject of woman’s dress. “However, no doubt the intention was better than the sewing.” Then he came to a sudden stop, and presently said, “There’s something else to be thought of when you talk about going away. You know we all want to marry you.”
“Rees doesn’t,” burst from her lips.
The next moment she hung her head, crimson and confused.
But Godwin took this outburst beautifully.
“He couldn’t just now, however much he wanted to,” said he, soothingly. “But he will by-and-bye, if he isn’t even a more thundering idiot than I think him,” he added with a burst of irritation. “And if he shouldn’t——”
She interrupted him hastily, with a look almost of fear in her eyes, as she put her hand affectionately on his arm.
“Look here, Godwin,” she began hurriedly. “I know what you’re going to say; but you mustn’t say it. It’s of no use pretending things to you, for you notice everything. Well, and you know I love Rees, and I’m not ashamed of it—no, not a bit,” she added, raising her blushing face fearlessly to his. “He has faults, I know, but there is enough good in him to love, and I do love him. And if he marries any other girl I shall never marry at all; but if he ever marries me, even if he were to be always cross and cold to me, as he has been lately, and if he were to lose all his handsomeness and brightness, and be miserable, and old, and dull, I should be happier as his wife than as the wife of the best man that ever lived.”
“Oh, of course; I don’t doubt it. A good character in a man is a scarecrow which would frighten any woman away.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Yes, I do, unfortunately. I always had a secret belief that girls were idiots. Now it’s an open belief. That’s all.”
Deborah rose, and leaned over the balustrade, against which Godwin was kicking his heels and knocking off pieces of the mouldering stone.
“I can’t help it, Godwin,” she said, with a sigh.
“And I can’t help being just as fond of you as if you were a woman of sense,” said he, with another sigh. “And the worst of it is, that loving you has reduced me to your own level. For I know that there isn’t any hope for me, and that all the same I shall go on hoping, so that, without any fault on your side or my side, you will be the bane of my life.”
“Oh, Godwin, how can you say such dreadful things?” said the girl, with a scared face.
“You will forget them, and everything else—as soon as Rees comes in,” said Godwin, bitterly.
Before she could utter another protest, he had gone back into the house, leaving Deborah unhappy and self-reproachful. And yet those last words of his were true, as she knew. Lord St. Austell, who had been in town for the season, was expected to arrive at Llancader that day for a short stay, before joining his yacht for a long cruise. Rees had been so feverishly anxious to meet him that Deborah had become deeply interested as to the object of the interview. That Rees was not actuated merely by gratitude and affection she knew, as he had been lately in the habit of casting on the earl all the blame of his own idleness.
The fact was that Amos Goodhare, having devoted himself to the study of Rees Pennant’s character, and especially of its weaknesses, had managed by degrees to get such a hold upon him, and to use it in such a diabolical manner, that the lad’s good impulses were being gradually choked and the evil encouraged, while even the loving women of his own household were unable to trace the true source of the change, the effects of which were plain to one at least of them.
Swallowing the bait which the cunning Goodhare held out to his vanity, he persistently avoided Deborah, for whom he had a natural inclination, and hung about Marion, whose unabashed adoration at heart rather disgusted than attracted him. Why should he not become the earl’s son-in-law, as the librarian, by insinuation rather than by direct speech, so constantly suggested? Lord St. Austell had no sons, and had never shown for any man, young or old, so great a partiality as he constantly did for him. He was handsome, brilliant, and more like the ideal conception of what a nobleman’s son ought to be than any eldest son in the whole aristocracy. Rees knew this, and felt more than a modest confidence in the fact. He even began to think that in the earl’s constant indulgence, which had indeed greatly increased the lad’s aversion from the thought of serious work, he saw a long-fixed determination to provide for his future in some brilliant manner.
So that, by the time of the earl’s return to Llancader, Rees had quite prepared himself for an encouraging answer to his proposals. He went to meet him at the station, and everything seemed to favor his wishes. Lord St. Austell was more than kind, he was most affectionate in his greeting, in his inquiries after all the family, not forgetting Deborah. Then, saying that he would like a walk, he dismissed the dog-cart that had been sent to meet him, and, thrusting his arm through that of Rees, started with him towards Llancader.
Nothing could be more propitious, so thought Rees, who felt too hopeful to spoil his effect by rushing at the subject. It was not until they were in sight of the first lodge that Rees, emboldened to make a very spirited appeal, formally asked the earl’s consent to his marriage with Lady Marion.