“Your father is far off, Nello,” said Mary; “your poor papa, who never hears any news of you. Some time I hope you will be able to write to him, and ask him to come home.”
“Oh,” cried Lilias, “you need not be sorry about that, Mary. He will come home. Some day, in a moment when you are thinking of nothing, there will be a step on the stair, and Martuccia will give a shriek; and it will be as if the sun came shining out, and it will be papa! He is always like that—but you never know when he will come.”
Mary’s eyes filled in spite of herself. What long, long years it was that she had thought but little of John! and yet there suddenly seemed to come before her a vision of his arrival from school or from college, all smiles and, making the old roof ring with his shout of pleasure. Was it possible that this would happen over again—that he would come in a moment, as his little daughter said? But Lilias did not know all the difficulties, nor the one great obstacle that stood in John’s way, and which perhaps he might never get over. She forgot herself in these thoughts, and did not perceive that Lilias was gazing wistfully at her, endeavouring with all her childish might to penetrate her mind and know the occasion of these tears. Mary was recalled to herself by feeling the child’s arm steal round her, and the soft touch of a little hand and handkerchief upon herwet eyes. “You are crying,” said Lilias. “Mary, is it for papa?—why should you cry for papa?”
“My darling, we don’t know where he is, nor anything about him—”
“That does not matter,” said Lilias, winking rapidly to throw off the sympathetic tears which had gathered in her own eyes; “he is always like that. We never knew where he was; but just when he could, just when it was possible, he came home. We never could tell when it would be—it might be any day. Some time when we are forgetting and not expecting him. Ah——!” cried the child, with a ring of wonder in the sudden exclamation. The hall-door was open as usual, and on the road was a distant figure just visible which drew from Lilias this sudden cry. She ran to the door, clutching her brother—“Come, Nello, Nello!” and rushed forth. Mary sat still, thinking her heart had stopped in her breast—or was it not rather suffocating her by the wildness of its beating? She sat immovable, watching the little pair at the door. Could it be that John had come home? John! he who would be the most welcome yet the most impossible of visitors; he who had a right to everything, yet dared not be seen in the old house. She sat and trembled, not daring to look out, already planning what she could do, what was to be done.
But the children stopped short at the door. Lilias, with the wind in her skirts and her ribbons, half-flying, stopped; and Nello stopped, who went by her impulse, not by his own. They paused: they stood for a moment gazing; then they turned back sadly.
“Oh no, no!” said Lilias. “No, Mary! no. It is a little, something like—a very little; it is the walking, and the shape of him. But no, no, it is not papa!”
“Papa!” said Nello, “was that why you looked? I knew better. Papa is all that much more tall. Why are you crying, Lily? There is nothing that makes cry.”
“I am disappointed,” said the little girl, who had seated herself suddenly on the floor and wept. It was a sudden sharp shower, but it was soon over; she sprang up drying her eyes. “But it will be for to-morrow!” she cried.
Mary sat behind and looked on. She did not think again of the chance resemblance Lilias had seen, but only of the children themselves, with whom her heart was tuning itself more and more in sympathy. She had become a mother late and suddenly, without any gradual growth of feeling—leaping into it, as it were; and every response her mind made to the children was a new wonder to her. She looked at them, or rather at Lilias, who was always the leader in her rapid changes of sentiment, with a half-amused adoration. The crying and the smiles went to her heart as nothing else had ever done; and even Nello’s calm, the steadier going of the slower, less developed intelligence, which was so often carried along in the rush without any conscious intention, and which was so ready to take the part of the wise and say, “I knew it,” moved Mary with that mixture of pleased spectatorship and profound personal feeling which makes the enthusiasm of parents. Nello’s slowness might have seemed want of feeling in another child, and Lilias’s impetuosity a giddy haste and heedlessness; but all impartiality was driven from her mind by the sense that the children were her own. And she sat in a pleased abstraction yet lively readiness, following the little current of this swiftly-flowing, softly-babbling childhood which was so fair and pleasant to her eyes. The two set up an argument between themselves as she sat looking on. It was about some minute point in the day’s work which was so novel and unaccustomed; but trivial as it was Mary listened with a soft glow of light in her eyes. The finest drama in the world could not have taken her out of herself like the two little actors, playing their sincerest and most real copy of life before her. They were so much in earnest, and to her it was such exquisite play and delicate delightful fooling! And until the light in the open doorway was suddenly darkened by some one appearing, a figure which made her heart jump, she thought no more of the passer-by on the road who had roused the children. Her heart jumped, and then she followed her heart by rising suddenly to her feet, while the children stopped in their argument, rushed together for mutual support, and stood shyly with their heads together, the arrested talk still hovering about their lips. Seen thus against the light the visitor was undecipherable to Mary.She saw him, nothing but a black shadow, towards which she went quietly and said—
“I beg your pardon, this is a private door,” with a polite defence of her own sanctuary.
“I came to look for—my sister,” said the voice, which was one which woke agitating memories in her. “I am a—stranger. I came—— Ah! it is Mary after all.”
“Randolph!” she cried, with a gasp in her throat.
A thrill of terror, almost superstitious, came over her. What did it all mean? Good Mr. Pennithorne in his innocence had spoken to her of John, and that very day John’s children had arrived; he had spoken of Randolph, and Randolph was here. Was it fate, or some mysterious influence unknown? She was so startled that she forgot to go through the ordinary formulas of seeming welcome, and said nothing but his name.
“Yes; I hope you are well,” he said, holding out his hand; “and that my father is well. I thought I would come and see how you were all getting on.”
“It is a long time since you have been here,” she said. What could she say? She was not glad to see him, as a sister ought to be. And then there was a pause.
The children stood staring open-mouthed while these chill greetings were said. (“I wonder who it is?” said Lilias, under her breath. “It is the one who is a little, a very little, like papa.” “It is a—gentleman,” said Nello. “Oh you silly, silly little boy! not to know that at the very first; but Mary is not very glad to see him,” said the little girl.)
Mary did not even ask her visitor to come in; he stood still at the door, looking round him with watchful, unfriendly eyes. This was not a place for any one to come who was not tender of Mary, and of whomsoever she might shelter there. She did not want him in that special place.
“Shall we go round to the house?” she said; “my father ought to know that you are here, and he never comes into the hall.”
“I am very well where I am,” Randolph said. “I know it was always a favourite place with you. Do not change your sitting-room for me. You have it in very nice order, Mary. Isee you share the popular passion for art furnishing; and children too! This is something more novel still. Who are the children, may I ask? They are visitors from the neighbourhood I suppose?”
“No,” she said, faltering still more, “they are not visitors—they—belong to us—— ” Mary could not tell how it was that her lips trembled, and she hesitated to pronounce the name. She made an effort at last and got it out with difficulty. “They are—John’s children.”
“John’s children! here is a wonderful piece of news,” said Randolph; but she saw by his countenance that it was no news. Howsoever he had heard it, Mary perceived in a moment not only that he knew, but that this was his real errand here. He stood with the appropriate gesture of one struck dumb in amazement; but he was not really surprised, only watchful and eager. This made his sister more nervous than ever.
“Children,” she said, “come here—this is your uncle Randolph; come and speak to him.” Mary was so much perplexed that she could not see what was best to do—whether to be anxiously conciliatory and convince Randolph in spite of himself, without seeming to notice his opposition, or to defy him; the former, however, was always the safest way. He did not make any advance, but stood with a half-smile on his face, while the children drew near with suspicious looks.
“It is the—gentleman who is—a little—not very much, just a little, like papa,” said Lilias, going forward, but slowly, and with that look of standing on the defensive which children unconsciously adopt to those they do not trust.
Nello hung on to her skirts, and did as she did, regarding the stranger with cloudy eyes. Randolph put out his hand coldly to be shaken; his smile broadened into a half-laugh of amusement and contempt.
“So they are said to be his children, are they?”
“Theyarehis children,” said Mary.
Randolph shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “They look like foreigners anyhow,” he said. “My father, I suppose, is delighted. It must be a new experience both for him and you.”
“Go away, my darlings, go to Martuccia; you see I havesome business with—this gentleman.” She could not again repeat the title she had given him. When the curious little spectators had gone, she turned to Randolph, who stood watching their exit, with an anxiety she did not attempt to conceal. “For Heaven’s sake do not talk to my father about them! I ask it as a favour. He consents tacitly that they should be here, but he takes no notice of them. Do not call his attention to them. It is the only thing I ask of you.”
He looked at her fixedly still, with that set smile on his face with which he had looked at the children.
“I am scarcely the person to be called upon to make things smooth with my father,” he said. “Come, come; my father is old, and can be made to believe anything, let us allow. But what do you mean by it, Mary, what doyoumean? You were never any friend to me.”
“Friend toyou! I am your sister, Randolph, though you don’t seem to remember it much. And what have you to do with it?” asked Mary, with a certain amount of exasperation in her voice; for of all offensive things in the world there is none so offensive as this pretence of finding you out in a transparent deception. Mary grew red and hot in spite of herself.
“I have a great deal to do with it. I have not only my own interests to take care of, but my boy’s. And why you should prefer to us, about whom there can be no doubt, these little impostors, these supposed children of John—— ”
“Randolph,” said Mary, with tears in her eyes, “there is no supposing about them. Oh don’t go against us and against truth and justice! They brought me a letter from their father. There was no room to doubt, no possibility. John himself is most unfortunate—— ”
“Unfortunate! that is not the word I should use.”
“But why remember it againstthem, poor little things, who have done no harm? Oh, Randolph, I have never been otherwise than your friend when I had the chance. Be mine now! There are a hundred things about which I want to consult you. You have a family of your own; you have been trained to it; you know how to take care of children. I wanted to askyour advice, to have your help—— ”
“Do you think me a fool then,” he cried, “as silly as yourself? that you try to getmeto acknowledge this precious deception, and give you my support against myself? Why should I back you up in a wicked contrivance against my own interests?”
“What is it you mean? Who has been guilty of wicked contrivances?” cried Mary, aghast. She gazed at him with such genuine surprise that he was arrested in his angry vituperation, and changed his tone to one of mockery, which affected her more.
“Well,” he said, “let us allow that it is your first attempt, Mary, and that is why you do it so clumsily. The mistakes good people make when they first attempt to do badly are touching. Villany, like everything else, requires experience. But it is too funny to expectmeto be the one to stand up for you, to persuade my father to believe you.”
“Oh,” she said, clasping her hands, “do you think this is what I ask? It is you who mistake, Randolph. It has never occurred to my father, or any one else, not to believe. He never doubted any more than I was capable of doubting. I will show you John’s letter.”
Randolph put up his hand, waving off the suggested proof.
“It is quite unnecessary. I am not to be taken in by such simple means. You forget I have a stake in it—which clears the judgment. And I warn you, Mary, that I am here to look after my personal interests, not to foist any nondescript brat into the family. I give you notice—it is not to help your schemes, it is for my own interests I am here.”
“What do interests mean?” she said wondering. “Your own interests!—what doesthatmean? I knowIhave none.”
“No—it cannot make much difference to you whatever happens; therefore you are free to plot at your leisure. I understand that fully; but, my dear,Iam here to look after myself—and my boy. You forget I have an heir of my own.”
Mary looked at him with a dulness of intelligence quite unusual to her. There are things in the most limited minds which genius itself could not divine. The honourable and generous, and the selfish and grasping, do not know what eachother mean. They are as if they spoke a different language. And her brother was to Mary as if he veiled his meaning in an unknown tongue. She gazed at him with a haze of dulness in her eyes. What was it he intended to let her know? Disbelief of her, a suggestion that she lied! and something more—she could not make out what, as the rule of his own conduct! He looked at her, on the other hand, with an air of penetration, a clever consciousness of seeing through and through her and her designs, which excited Mary to exasperation. How could they ever understand each other with all this between?
“I am going to see my father,” said Randolph; “that of course is the object of my visit; I suppose he will not refuse to keep me for a day or two. And in the mean time why should we quarrel? I only warn you that I come with my eyes open, and am not to be made a dupe of. Good-bye for the present—we shall meet no doubt at dinner the best of friends.”
Mary stood still where he left her, and watched him as he went slowly down the slope and round the corner of the house. He was shorter than John and stouter, with that amplitude of outline which a wealthy rural living and a small parish are apt to confer. A comfortable man, fond of good living, fond of his ease; yet taking the trouble to come here, for what?—to baffle some supposed wicked contrivances and plots against himself. Mary remembered that Randolph had taken the great family misfortune as a special wrong to him. How dared the evil fates to interfere with his comfort or rumour to assail his name? He had said frankly that it could be nothing to the others in comparison. And was it once more the idea that he himself was touched, which had roused him out of his comfortable rectory to come here and assert himself? But how did the arrival of John’s children affect that? Mary, in her long calm, had not entered into those speculations about the future which most people more or less think necessary when the head of the house is old. She had not asked herself what would happen when her father died, except vaguely in respect to herself, knowing that she would then in all likelihood leave the old Castle. John was the heir. Somehow or other, she did not know how, the inheritance would be taken up for him. This had been the conclusion in her mindwithout reason given or required. And Randolph had not come into the sphere of her imagination at all as having anything to do with it. What should he have to do with it when there was John? And even now Mary did not know and could not understand the reason of his objection to John’s children. She stood and looked after him with a dull beating of pain in her heart. And as he turned round the corner of the old house towards the door, he looked back and waved his hand. The gesture and look, she could scarcely tell why, gave her a sensation of sickening dismay and pain. She turned and went in, shutting the door in the sudden pang this gave her. And to shut the great door of the hall was the strangest thing, except in the very heart of winter. While the sun was shining and the air genial, such a thing had never happened before. It seemed in itself a portent of harm.
Randolph Musgravewas a squire-parson, a class which possesses the features of two species without fully embodying either—which may be finer than either, the two halves of the joint character tempering each other—or may be a travesty of both, exaggerating their mutual defects. He was of the latter rather than of the former development. His living was small in one sense and large in another, the income being large, but the people few and very much given up to dissent, a fact which soured his character without moving him to exertion. He was not fond of exertion in any case, and it was all but hopeless in this. But not less was he daily and hourly irritated by the little Bethels and Salems, the lively Methodists, the pragmatical Baptists, who led his people away. They made him angry, for he was easily moved to anger, and they increased that tendency to listen to gossip and be moved by small matters which is oneof the temptations of a rural life. He had become accustomed to make much of petty wrongs, calling them insults and crimes, and perhaps to be more disposed to petty vengeances than a man who is placed in the position of an example to others ought to be; and whereas he had always been disposed to consider himself a sacred person, above the ordinary slights of fortune, this tendency had grown and strengthened so, that every petty pin-prick was like a poisoned arrow to him. By natural laws of reverberation he heard more evil of himself, had more mishaps in the way of gossip, of receiving letters not intended for him, and otherwise surprising the sentiments of his neighbours, than almost any one else ever had—which had made him suspicious of his neighbours in the highest degree, and ready to believe every small offence a premeditated insult. This perhaps made him all the more ready to believe that his sister had conceived a villanous plan against him and his. He would not have done such a thing himself; but was not his life full of such attempts made upon him by others? everybody almost whom he encountered having one time or other conspired against his hopes or happiness. But he had always found out the plots in time. It was true that this villany might be John’s, of whom he would have believed anything; and Mary herself might be the dupe: but most likely it was Mary, who did not like him nor his wife, and who would no doubt be capable of anything to banish him finally from Penninghame, and set up there some creature of her own. This was the idea which had come into his mind, when he heard accidentally of the arrival which had made so much commotion in the north country. He had talked it over with his wife till they both saw gunpowder plots and conspiracies incalculable in it. “You had better go and see into it yourself,” Mrs. Randolph said. “I will,” was the Rector’s energetic reply. “And believe nobody, believe nothing but what you see with your own eyes.” “Never! I will put faith in nobody,” Randolph had said. And it was in this frame of mind that he had come here. He meant to believe nobody save when they warned him of plots against himself: to trust nothing save that all the world was in a league to work him harm. But for this determined pre-conclusion, he might perhaps have been less certain of hissister’s enmity to himself, and of the baseness of the deception she was practising; but he had no doubt whatever on this matter now. And he meant to expose her remorselessly. Why should he mince matters? His father was an old man and might die at any moment, and this villany ought to be exposed at once.
With these thoughts in his mind he went round to the great door. How different was the grey north-country house from anything he was used to! The thought of his snug parsonage embosomed in greenery, roses climbing to the chimney-stacks, clustering about all the windows, soft velvet lawns and strict inclosures keeping all sacred—made him shiver at sight of the irregular building, the masses of ivy fostering damp, the open approach, a common road free to everybody. If it ever was his, or rather when it was his—for these supposititious children would soon be done away with, and John, a man under the ban of the law, how could he ever appear to claim his inheritance?—whenit was his, he would soon make a difference. He would bring forward the boundaries of the Chase so as to inclose the Castle. He would make the road into a stately avenue as it once was and ought to be. What did it matter who objected? He would do it; let the village burst with rage. The very idea of exasperating the village and making it own his power, made the idea all the more delightful. He would soon change all this; let it but get into his hands. In the midst of these thoughts, however, Randolph met a somewhat ludicrous rebuff from Eastwood, who opened the door suddenly and softly, as was his fashion, as if he hoped to find the visitor out in something improper. “Who shall I say, sir?” said Eastwood, deferentially. This gave Randolph a sense of the most ludicrous discomfiture; for to be asked what name is to be announced when you knock at the door of your father’s house is a curious sensation. It was nobody’s fault unless it might have been Randolph’s own, but the feeling was disagreeable. He stood for a moment dumb, staring at the questioner—then striding inside the door, pushed Eastwood out of his way. When he was within, however, somewhat conciliated by the alarmed aspect of the butler, who did not know whether to resist or what to do, he changed his mind.
“I don’t want to startle my father,” he said; “say Mr. Randolph Musgrave has arrived.”
“I beg your pardon humbly, sir,” cried Eastwood.
“No, no, it was not your fault.” Randolph replied. It was not the servant’s fault; but it wastheirfault who had made his home a place of disgrace, and no longer a fit home for him.
The Squire was seated among his books, feeling the drowsy influence of the afternoon. He had no Monograph to support his soul, and no better occupation than to rummage dully through the records of antiquity, cheered up and enlivened if he found something to reply to inNotes and Queries, but otherwise living a heavy kind of half-animate life. When the critiques and the letters about that Monograph had ended, what a blank there was! and no other work was at hand to make up, or to tempt him to further exertions. The corner of land that he desired to attain had been bought, and had given him pleasure; but after a while his eyes were satisfied with the contemplation, and his mind almost satisfied with the calculation, of so many additional acres added to the property. The sweetness of it lay in the thought that the property was growing, that there was sufficient elasticity in the family income to make the acquisition of even a little bit of land possible. The Squire thought this was the fruit of his own self-denial, and it gave him that glow of conscious virtue which was once supposed to be the appropriate and unfailing reward of good actions, till conscious virtue went out of fashion. This was sweet; and it was sweet to go and look at the new fields which restored the old boundary of the Penninghame estate in that direction; but such gratifications cease to be sustaining to life after a time. And Mr. Musgrave was dull sitting among his books; the sounds were in his ears which he was always hearing now—the far-off ring of voices that made him sensible of those inmates in his house whom he never noticed, who were to him as if they did not exist. When the mind is not very closely occupied, sounds thus heard in the house come strangely across the quiescent spirit of the solitary. Voices beloved are as music, are as sunshine, conveying a sense of happiness and soft exhilaration. Hearing them far off, though beyond the reach of hearing, so to speak, does not the verydistant sound, the tone of love in them, make work sweet and the air warm, softening everything round the recluse? But these were not voices beloved. The old man listened to them—or rather, not permitting himself to listen,heardthem acutely through the mist of a separation which he did not choose to overcome. They were like something from another world, voices in the air, inarticulate, mysterious, known yet unknown. He turned the leaves idly when these strange suggestions came to him in his solitude; he had nothing to do with them, and yet so much. This was how he was sitting, dully wistful, in that stillness of age which when it is not glad must be sad, and hearing almost, as if he were already a ghost out of his grave, the strange yet familiar stir in the unseen stairs and passages, the movements of the kindly house——
“Mr. Randolph Musgrave!” The Squire was very much startled by the name. He rose hastily, and stood leaning upon his writing-table to see who it was that followed Eastwood into the room after a minute’s interval. It seemed scarcely possible to him that it could be his son. “Randolph!” he said. The children’s voices had made him think, in spite of himself, of the time—was it centuries ago?—when there were two small things running about those old passages continually, and a beautiful young mother smiling upon them—and him. This had softened his heart, though by means which he would not have acknowledged. He looked out eagerly with a sensation of pleasure and relief for his son. He would (perhaps) take Randolph’s advice, perhaps get some enlightenment from him. But the shock set his nerves off, and made him tremulous, though it was a shock of pleasure; and it hurt his pride so to be seen trembling, that he held himself up strained and rigid against his table. “Randolph! you are a stranger indeed,” he said, and his countenance lighted up with a cloudy and tremulous smile.
(“Strange that he was never seen here before in my time,” said Eastwood as he withdrew. “I’ve seen a many queer things in families, but never nothing more queer than this—two sons as never have been seen in the house, and children as the Squire won’t give in he owns them. I thought he’d have walked right straight over little master Saturday last as if no one was there.But I don’t like the looks of’im. When he’s master here I march, and that I can tell you—pretty fast, Missis Cook.”
“Mr. Randolph? He’ll never be master here, thank God for it,” said Cook with pious fervour, “or more than you will go.”)
“Yes,” said Randolph, walking in, “I have been a stranger, but how can we help that! It is life that separates us. We must all run our own course. I hope you are well, sir. You look well—for your time of life.”
It is not a pleasant thing to be told that you look well for your time of life—unless indeed you are ninety, and the time of life is itself a matter of pride. The Squire knew he was old, and that soon he must resign his place to others; but he did not care for such a distinct intimation that others thought so too.
“I am very well,” he said, curtly. “You are so completely a stranger, Randolph, that I cannot make the usual remarks on your personal appearance. You deny me the opportunity of judging if you look ill or well.”
“Ah,” said Randolph, “that is just what I said. We must all run our own course. My duties are at the other end of England, and I cannot be always running back and forward; but I hope to stay a few days now if you will have me. Relations should see each other now and then. I have just had a glimpse of Mary in the old hall as usual. She did not know me at first, nor, I daresay, if I had not seen her there, should I have known her”—
“Mary is little changed,” said the Squire.
“So you think, sir, seeing her every day; but there is a great change from what she was ten years ago. She was still a young woman then, and handsome. I am afraid even family partiality cannot call her anything but an old maid now.”
Mr. Musgrave did not make any reply. He was not a particularly affectionate father, but Mary was part of himself, and it did not please him to hear her spoken of so.
“And, by the bye,” said Randolph, “how did such a thing happen I wonder? for shewashandsome;—handsome and well-born, and with a little money. It is very odd she never has married. Was there anything to account for it? or is it mere ill-luck?”
“Ill-luck to whom?” said the Squire. “Do you think perhaps your sister never had the chance, as people say? You may dismiss that idea from your mind. She has had enough of chances. I don’t know any reason; but there must have been one, I suppose. Either that nobody came whom she cared for, or—I really cannot form any other idea,” he concluded, sharply. It was certain that he would not have Mary discussed.
“I meant no harm,” said Randolph. “She has got the old hall very nicely done up. It is not a place I would myself care to keep up, if the Castle were in my hands; but she has made it very nice. I found her there with—among her favourite studies,” he added, after a momentary pause. It was too early to begin direct upon the chapter of the children, he felt. The Squire did not show any sign of special understanding. He nodded his head in assent.
“She was always fond of the hall,” he said. “I used to think she suited it. And now that she is—past her youth, as you say—— ”
“Well into middle age I say, sir, like other people; which is a more serious affair for a woman than for a man; but I suppose all hopes are over now. She is not likely to marry at her time of life.” This was the second time he had mentioned the time of life. And the Squire did not like it; he answered curtly——
“No, I don’t think it likely that Mary will marry. But yourself, Randolph, how are things going with you? You have not come so far merely to calculate your sister’s chances. Your wife is well, I hope; and your boy?”
“Quite well. You are right in thinking, sir, that I did not come without an object. We are all getting on in life. I thought it only proper that there should be some understanding among us as to family affairs—something decided in the case of any emergency. We are all mortal—— ”
“And I the most mortal of all, you will say, at my ‘time of life,’ Randolph,” said the Squire, with a smile, which was far from genial. “I daresay you are quite right, perfectly right. I am an old man, and nobody can tell what an hour may bring forth.”
“That is true at every age,” said Randolph, with professionalseriousness. “The idea ought to be familiar to the youngest among us. In the midst of life we are in death. I recommend everybody over whom I have the least influence to settle their affairs, so that they may not leave a nest of domestic contentions behind them. It is only less important than needful spiritual preparation, which of course should be our first care.”
“Just so,” said Mr. Musgrave. “I presume you don’t mean to bring me to book on that point?”
“Certainly not, sir—unless there is any special point upon which I could be of use; but you are as well able to judge as I am, and have access to all the authorities,” said Randolph with dignity. “Besides, there is your own clergyman at hand, who is no doubt quite equal to the duties of his position. It is old Pennithorne, is it not?” he added, with a momentary lapse into a more familiar tone. “But there is no question of that. In such matters a man of your experience, sir, ought to be able to instruct the best of us.”
“The bench of bishops even,” said the Squire, “sometimes I think I could—at my time of life. But that is not the question, as you say.”
“No indeed—not to say that my best advice in every way is at your service, sir; but I thought very likely it would be an ease to your mind to see me, to give me any instructions or directions—in short, to feel that your nearest representative understood your wishes, whatever might happen.”
Now Randolph was evidently his father’s representative, John being out of the question; and that John was absolutely out of the question, not only from external circumstances, but from the strong prejudice and prepossession against him in his father’s mind, was certain. Yet the Squire resented this assumption as much as if John had been his dearly-beloved son and apparent heir.
“Thanks,” he said, “I feel your care for my comfort—but after all, you are not my direct representative.”
“Sir!” cried Randolph reddening, “need I remind you of the disabilities, the privation of all natural rights—— ”
“You need not remind me of anything,” said Mr. Musgrave, getting up hurriedly. “I don’t care to discuss that question—or anything else of the kind. Suppose we go and join Mary, who must be in the drawing-room, I suppose? It is she, after all, who is really my representative, knowing everything about my affairs.”
“She—is a woman,” said Randolph, with a tone of contempt.
“That is undeniable—but women are not considered exactly as they used to be in such matters.”
“I hope, sir,” said the clergyman, with dignity, “that neither my sister nor you add your influence to the foolish movement about women’s rights.”
“Do you mean that Mary does not want a vote?” said the Squire. “No, I don’t suppose it has occurred to her. We add our influence to very few public movements, Randolph, bad or good. The Musgraves are not what they once were in the county; the leading part we once took is taken by others who are richer than we are. Progress is not the thing for old families, for progress means money.”
“There are other reasons why the Musgraves do not take their proper place. I have hopes, sir,” said Randolph, “that under more favourable circumstances—if we, perhaps, were to draw more together—— ”
“What do you mean, sir?” said the Squire; “it was you who separated yourself from us, not us from you. You were too good, being a clergyman, as you said, to encounter the odium of our position. That’s enough, Randolph. It is not an agreeable subject. Let us dismiss it as it has been dismissed these fifteen years; and come—to Mary’s part of the house.”
“Then, am I to understand,” said Randolph, sharply, rising, yet holding back, “that your mind is changing as old age gains upon you, that you are going to accept the disgrace of the family? and that it is with your sanction that Mary is receiving—adopting—— ”
He stopped, overawed in spite of himself, by the old man’s look, who stood with his face fixed looking towards him, restraining with all his force the tremor of his nerves. The Squire had been subject all his life to sudden fits of passion, and had got the habit of subduing, by ignoring them, as all his family well knew. He made no reply, but the restrained fire in his eyes impressedeven the dull imagination of his son, who was pertinacious rather than daring, and had no force in him to stand against passion. Mr. Musgrave turned round quickly, and took up his book, which lay on a table near.
“Mary sent you a copy of the Monograph?” he said; “but I don’t remember that you gave me your opinion of it. It has had a very flattering reception generally. I could not have expected so much interest in the public mind on a question of such exclusive family interest. But so it has been. I have kept all the notices, and the letters I have received on the subject. You shall see them by and by; and I think you will agree with me, that a more flattering reception could scarcely have been. All sorts of people have written to me. It appears,” said the Squire, with modest pride, “that I have really been able to throw some light upon a difficulty. After dinner, Randolph, if you are interested, you shall see my collection.”
“My time is short,” said Randolph, “and with so many more serious matters to discuss—— ”
“I know few things more serious than the history of the family honours,” said the Squire, “especially as you have a boy to inherit the old blazon; but we’ll go into all that this evening, as your stay is to be short. Better come and see Mary before dinner. She will want to know all about your home-concerns, and your wife. The house is unchanged, you will perceive,” the Squire continued, talking cheerfully as he led the way; and the sound of his voice, somewhat high-pitched and shrill with age, travelled far through the old passages. “I hope no sacrilegious hands will ever change the house. My heirs may add to it if they please, but it is a monument of antiquity, which ought never to be touched—except to mend it delicately as Mary mends her old lace. This way, Randolph; I believe you have forgotten the way.”
They were standing in an angle of the fine oak staircase, where the Squire waited till his son came up to him. At this moment a rush of small footsteps, and a whispering voice—“Run, Nello, Nello! he is coming,” was audible above. Randolph looked up quickly, with a look of intelligence, into the old man’s face. But the Squire did not move a muscle. His countenancewas blank as that of a deaf man. If he had heard, he allowed no sign of hearing to be visible. “Come along,” he said, “it seems to me that my wind is better than yours even at my time of life,” with a half-sarcastic smile. Was he hard of hearing? a hypothesis rather agreeable to think of; or what was the meaning of it? Were these obnoxious children the pets of the house? but why should they run because he was coming. The hostile visitor was perplexed, and could not make it out. He followed into the drawing-room without a word, while the small footsteps were still audible. Mary was seated at a low table on which there was work, but she was not working. She rose to receive them with a certain formality; for except after dinner, when the Squire would sometimes come for a cup of tea, or when there were visitors in the house, she was generally alone in the low quaint drawing-room, which transported even the unimaginative Randolph back to childhood. The panelled walls, the spindle-legged furniture, the inlaid cabinets and tables, were all exactly as he remembered them. This touched him a little, though he had all the robustness against impression which fortifies a slow intelligence. “It seems like yesterday that I was here,” he said.
This, in her turn, touched Mary, whose excitement made her subject to the lightest flutter of emotion. She smiled at him with greater kindness than she had yet felt. “Yes,” she said. “I feel so sometimes, too, when I look round; but it tells less upon us who are here always. And so much has happened since then.”
“Ah, I suppose so: though you seem to vegetate pretty much in the old ways. Those children though, for instance,” said Randolph, with a laugh, “scurrying off in such haste as we came within hearing, that is not like the old ways. Are you ashamed of them, or afraid to have them here? I should not wonder, for my part.”
The tears sprang to Mary’s eyes. She did not say anything in the sudden shock, but looked at Randolph piteously with a silent reproach. It was the first time since the day of their arrival that any public mention had been made of the children in her father’s presence. And there was a pause which seemed to her full of fate.
“You must not look at me so,” said her brother. “I gave you fair warning. My father is not to be given up to your plots without a remonstrance at least. I believe it is a conspiracy, sir, from beginning to end. Do you intend our old family, with all the honours you are so proud of, to drop into disgrace? With the shadow of crime on it,” cried Randolph, warming into excitement; then, with a dull perception of something still more telling, his father’s weak point, “and the bar sinister of vice?” he said.
TheSquire made use of that discretion which is the better part of valour. When Randolph for the second time insisted upon coming to an understanding on family affairs, which meant deciding what was to be done on the Squire’s death, Mr. Musgrave, not knowing how else to foil his son, got up and came away. “You can settle these matters with Mary,” he said, quietly enough. It would not have been dignified to treat the suggestion in any other way. But he went out with a slight acceleration of his pulses, caused half by anger and half by the natural human thrill of feeling with which a man has his own death brought home to him. The Squire knew that there was nothing unnatural in this anticipation of his own end. He was aware that it required to be done, and the emergency prepared for; but yet it was not agreeable to him. He thought they might have awaited the event, although in another point of view it would have been imprudent to await the event. He felt that there was something undesirable, unlovely, in the idea of your children consulting over you for their own comfort “afterwards.” But then his children were no longer children whose doings touched his affections much—they were middle-aged people, as old as he was—and in fact itwasimportant that they should come to an arrangement and settle everything. Only he couldnot—and this being so, would not—do it; and he said to himself that the cause of his refusal was no reluctance on his own part to consider the inevitable certainty of his own death, but only the intolerableness of the inquiry in other respects. He walked out in a little strain and excitement of feeling, though outwardly his calm was intense. He steadied himself, mind and body, by an effort, putting a smile upon his lip, and walking with a deliberate slow movement. He would have scorned himself had he showed any excitement; but strolled out with a leisurely slow step and a smile. They would talk the matter out, the two whom he had left; even though Mary’s heart would be more with him than with her brother, still she would be bound to follow Randolph’s lead. They would talk of his health, of how he was looking feeble, his age beginning to tell upon him, and how it would be very expedient to know what the conditions of his will were, and whether he had made any provision for the peculiar circumstances, or arrangement for the holding of the estate. “I ought to be the first person considered,” he thought he heard Randolph saying. Randolph had always thought himself the first person to be considered. At this penetration of his own the Squire smiled again, and walked away very steadily, very slowly, humming a bar of an old-fashioned air.
He went thus through the broken woodland towards the east, and strolled into the Chase like a man taking a walk for pleasure. The birds sang overhead, little rabbits popped out from the great tree-trunks, and a squirrel ran up one of them and across a long branch, where it sat peering at him. All was familiar, certain, well known; he had seen the same sights and heard the same sounds for the last seventy years; and the sunshine shone with the same calm assurance of shining as at other times, and all this rustling, breathing life went on as it had always gone on. There was scarcely a leaf, scarcely a moss-covered stone that did not hide or shelter something living. The air was full of life; sounds of all kinds, twitter and hum and rustle, his own step among other movements, his own shadow moving across the sunshine. And he felt well enough, not running over with health and vigour as he had sometimes felt long ago, not disposed to vault over walls and gates in thatunlicensed exuberance which belongs to youth only, but well enough—quite well, in short; steady afoot, his breathing easy, his head clear, everything about him comfortable. Notwithstanding which, his children were discussing, as in reference to a quite near and probable event, what was to be done when he should die! The Squire smiled at the thought, but it was a smile which got fixed and painful on his lip, and was not spontaneous or agreeable. The amusement to be got from such an idea is not of a genial kind. He was over seventy, and he knew, who better? that threescore and ten has been set down as the limit of mortal life. No doubt he must die—every man must die. It was a thing before him not to be eluded; the darkness, indeed, was very near, according to all ordinary law; but the Squire did not feel it, was not in his soul convinced of it. He believed it, of course; all other men of his age die, and in their case the precautions of the family are prudent and natural; in his own case it is true he did not feel the necessity; but yet no doubt it must be so. He kept smiling to himself; so living as he was, and everything round, it was an odd sort of discord to think of dying. He felt a kind of blank before him, a sense of being shut in. So one feels when one walks along a bit of road surrounded with walls, acul de sacfrom which there is no outlet. A sense of imprisonment is in it, of discouragement, too little air to breathe, too little space to move in—certainly a disagreeable, stifling, choking sensation. Involuntarily a sigh came from his breast; and yet he smiled persistently, feeling in himself a kind of defiance to all the world, a determination to be amused at it all, notwithstanding the sentence they were passing against him.
While the Squire continued his walk, amid the twitter of the birds and the warble and the crackle and rustle and hum in the woods, and all the sounds of living, now and then another sound struck in—a sound not necessarily near, for in that still summer air sounds travel easily—an echo of voices, now one soft cry or laugh, now a momentary babble. It struck the old man as if an independent soul had been put into the scene. He knew very well what it meant—very well—no one better. By very dint of his opposition to them he recognized the sound of thechildren wherever they were. They were there now, the little things whose presence had moved Randolph to this assault upon his father. They were altogether antagonistic to Randolph, or rather he to them; this gave them a curious perverse interest in their grandfather’s eyes. They offered him an outlet from hiscul de sac; the pressure seemed suddenly removed which had bowed him down; in a moment he felt relieved, delivered from that sense of confinement. A new idea was like the opening of a door to the old man; he was no longer compelled to contemplate the certainty before him, but was let softly down into the pleasant region of uncertainty—the world of happy chances. The very character of the smile upon his face changed. It became more natural, more easy, although he did not know the children, nor had any intention of noticing them. But they were there, and Randolph might scheme as he liked; here was one who must bring his schemes to confusion. A vague lightening came into the Squire’s thoughts. He was reprieved, if not from the inevitable conclusion, at least from the necessity of contemplating it; and he continued his walk with a lighter heart. By and by, after a somewhat long round, and making sundry observations to himself about the state of the timber which would bear cutting, and about the birds which, without any keeper to care for them, were multiplying at their own will, and might give some sport in September, Mr. Musgrave found himself by the lake again with that fascination towards the water which is so universal. The lake gleamed through the branches, prolonging the blue of the sky, and calling him with soft plashing upon the beach, the oldest of his friends, accompaniment of so many thoughts, and of all the vicissitudes of his life. He went towards it now in the commotion of feeling which was subsiding into calm, a calm which had something of fatigue in it; for reluctant as he was to enter into the question of age and the nearly approaching conclusion, the fact of age made him easily tired with everything, and with nothing more than excitement. He was fatigued with the strain he had been put to, and had fallen into a languid state which was not unpleasant; the condition in which we are specially disposed to be easily amused if any passive amusement comes in our way.
So it happened that as he walked along the margin of the lake, with the water softly foaming over the pebbles at his feet, Mr. Musgrave’s ear was caught by a series of sharp little repetitions of sound, like a succession of small reports—one, two, three. He listened in the mild, easily-roused, and not very active curiosity of such a moment, and recognized with a smile the sound of pebbles skipping across the water; presently he saw the little missiles gleaming along from ripple to ripple, flung by a skilful but not very strong hand. The Squire did not even ask himself who it was, but went on quietly, doubting nothing. Suddenly turning round a corner upon the edge of a small bay, he saw a little figure between him and the shining water, making ducks and drakes with varying success.
The Squire’s step was inaudible on the turf, and he paused in sympathy with the play. He himself had made ducks and drakes in the Penninghame water as long as he could recollect. He had taught his little boys to do it; he could not tell how it was that this suddenly came to his mind just now—though how it should do so with Randolph, a middle-aged, calculating parson, talking about family arrangements—Pah! but even this recollection did not affect him now as it did before. Never mind Randolph. This little fellow chose the stones with judgment, and really, for such a small creature, launched them well. The Squire felt half disposed to step forward and try his skill too. When one shot failed he was half-sorry, half-inclined to chuckle as over an antagonist; and when there came a great success, a succession of six or seven reports one after another as the flat pebble skimmed over fold after fold of the water, he could not help saying, “Bravo!” in generous applause; generous, for somehow or other he felt as if he were playing on the other side. This sensation aroused him; he had not been so self-forgetting for many a day. “Bravo!” he cried, with something like glee in his voice.
The little boy turned round hastily. What a strange meeting! Oddly enough it had never occurred to the Squire to think who it was. Strangers were rife enough in these regions, and people would now and then come to Penninghame with their families—who would stray into the Chase, taking it for public property.But for the ducks and drakes which interested him, he would probably have collared the little fellow, and demanded to know what right he had to be here. He was therefore quite unprepared for the encounter, and looked with the strangest emotions of wonder and half-terror into the face which was so familiar to him, but so strange, the face of his grandson and heir. When once he had seen the child no further doubt was possible. He stared at him as if he had been a little ghost. He had not presence of mind to turn on his heel and go away at once, which would have been the only way of keeping up his former tactics; he was speechless and overpowered; and there was nobody by to spy upon him, no grown-up spectators—not even the other child to observe what he did, or listen to what he said. In this case the Squire did not feel the need to be vigilant, which in other circumstances would have given him self-command. Thus the shock and surprise, and the perfect freedom of his position, unwatched and unseen, alike broke down all his defences. After the first start he stood still and gazed at the child, who still, more frankly and with much less emotion, gazed at him.
“Who are you, sir?” the grandfather said, with a tone that was meant to be very peremptory. The jar in it was incomprehensible to Nello: but yet it gave him greater courage.
“I am Ne—that is to say,” the little fellow answered, with a sudden flush and change of countenance, “my name, it is John.”
“John what? Speak up, sir. Do you know you are a little trespasser, and have no business to be here?”
“Oh yes, I have a business to be here,” said Nello. “I don’t know what it is to be a trespasser. I live at the Castle, me. I can come when I please, and nobody has any business to send me away.”
“Do you know who I am?” asked the Squire, bending his brows. Nello looked at him curiously, half amused, though he was half frightened. He had never been so near, or looked his grandfather in the face before.
“Iknow; but I may not tell,” said Nello. He shook his head, and though he was not very quick-witted, some latent sense of fun brought a mischievous look to his face. “We know very well, but we are never to tell,” he added, shaking hishead once more, looking up with watchful eyes, as children have a way of doing, to take his cue from the expression of the elder face; and there was something very strange in that gleam of fun in Nello’s eyes. “We know, but we are never, never to tell.
“Who told you so?”
“It was—Martuccia,” said the boy, with precocious discretion. His look grew more and more inquisitive and investigating. Now that he had the opportunity he determined to examine the old man well and to make out the kind of person he was.
Mr. Musgrave did not answer. He on his side was investigating too, with less keenness and more feeling than the child showed. He would have been unmoved by the beauty of Lilias, though it was much greater than that of Nello. The little girl would have irritated him; but with the boy he felt himself safe, he could not tell how; he was more a child, less a stranger. Mr. Musgrave himself could not have explained it, but so it was. A desire to get nearer to his descendant came into the old man’s mind; old recollections crept upon him, and stole away all his strength. “You know who I am; do you know who you are, little fellow?” he asked, with a strange break in his voice.
“I told you; you are—the old gentleman at home,” said Nello. “I know all about it. And me? I am John. There is no wonder about that. It is just—me. We were not always here. We are two children who have come a long way. But now I know English quite well, and I have lessons every day.”
“Who gives you lessons, my little boy?” The Squire drew a step nearer. He had himself had a little brother sixty years ago, who was like Nello. So it seemed to him now. He would not think he had likewise had a son thirty years ago, whom Nello was like. He crept a little nearer the child, shuffling his foot along the turf, concealing the approach from himself. Had he been asked why he changed his position, he would have said it was a little damp, boggy, not quite sure footing just there.
“Mr. Pen gives us lessons,” said Nello. “I have a book all to myself. It is Latin, it is more easy than English. But it takes a great deal of time; it does not leave so much for play.”
“How long have you been at your lessons, my little man?”
The Squire’s eyes began to soften, a smile came into them. His heart was melting. He gave a furtive glance round, and there was nobody near to make him afraid, not even the little girl.
“Oh, a long, long time,” said Nello. “One whole hour, it was as much as that, or perhaps six hours. I did not think anything could be so long.”
“One whole hour!” the Squire said in a voice of awe; and his eyes melted altogether into smiling, and his voice into a mellow softness which it had not known for years. Ah! this was the kind of son for an old man to have, not such as Randolph. Randolph was a hard, disagreeable equal, superior in so much as he had, or thought he had, many more years before him; but the child was delightful. He did the Squire good. “Or perhaps six hours! And when did this long spell of study happen? Is it long ago?”
“There was no spell,” said Nello. “And it was to-day. I readed in my book, and so did Lily; but as she is a girl it was different from mine. Girls are not clever, Martuccia says. She can’t make the stones skim. That was a good one when you said ‘Bravo!’ Where did you find out to say Bravo? They don’t talk like that here.”
“It was a very good one,” said the Squire; “suppose we were to try again.”
“Oh! canyoudo it?” said Nello, with round eyes of wonder. “Can you do it as well as me?”
“When I was a child,” said the Squire, quite overcome, “I had a little brother just like you. We used to come out here, to this very place, and play ducks and drakes. He would make them go half across the water. You should have seen them skimming. As far out as that boat. Do you see that boat—— ”
“When he was no bigger than me? And what did you do? were you little too? did you play against him? did he beat you? I wish I had a brother,” said Nello. “But you can’t have quite forgotten, though you are an old gentleman. Try now! There are capital stones here. I wish I could send one out as far as that boat. Come, come! Won’t you come and try?”
The Squire gave another searching look round. He had a sort of shame-faced smile on his face. He was a little shy of himself in this new development. But there was no one near, not so much as a squirrel or a rabbit, which could watch and tell. The birds were singing high up in the tree-tops, quite absorbed in their own business; nothing was taking any notice. And the child had come close to him, quite confiding and fearless, with eager little eyes, waiting for his decision. He was the very image of that little brother so long lost. The Squire seemed to lose himself for a moment in a vague haze of personal uncertainty whether all this harsh, hard life had not been a delusion, and whether he himself still was not a child.
“Come and try,” cried Nello, more and more emboldened, and catching at his coat. When the old man felt the touch, it was all he could do to suppress a cry. It was strange to him beyond measure, a touch not like any other—his own flesh and blood.
“You must begin then,” he said, a strange falter in his voice, half-laughing, half-crying. That is one sign of age, that it is so much nearer to the springs of emotion than anything else, except youth. Indeed, are not these two the fitting partners, not that middle state, that insolent strength which stands between? The Squire permitted himself to be dragged to the margin of his own water, which lay all smiling in soft ripples before him as it had done when he was a child. Nello was as grave as a judge in the importance of the occasion, breathless with excitement and interest. He sought out his little store of stones with all the solemnity of a connoisseur, his little brows puckered, his red lips drawn in; but the Squire was shy and tremulous, half-laughing, half-crying, ashamed of his own weakness, and more near being what you might call happy (a word so long out of use for him!) than he had been, he could not remember when.
Nello was vexed with his first throw. “When one wants to do very good, one never can,” he said, discomfited as his shot failed. “Now you try, now you try; it is your turn.” How the Squire laughed, tremulous, the broken red in his old cheeks flushing with pleasure and shame! He failed too, which encouraged Nello, who for his part made a splendid shot thesecond time. “Two, three, four,five,SIX,SEVEN!” cried the child in delight. “Don’t be afraid, you will do better next time. Me too, I could not make a shot at all at first. Now come, now come, it is your turn again.”
What a thing it is to have a real long summer afternoon! It was afternoon when the Squire’s calm was broken by his son Randolph; and it was afternoon still, dropping into evening, but with a sun still bright and not yet low in the sky when Mr. Musgrave warmed to his work, and, encouraged by Nello, made such ducks and drakes as astonished himself. He got quite excited as they skimmed and danced across the water. “Two, three, four, five,six,seven,EIGHT!” Nello cried, with a shriek of delight. How clever the old gentleman was—how much nicer thangirls. He had not enjoyed his play so much for—never before, Nello thought. “Come back to-morrow—will you come back to-morrow?” he said at every interval. He had got a playmate now after his own heart—better than Mr. Pen’s Johnnie, who was small and timid—better than any one he had ever seen here.
The two players did not in the growing excitement of their game think any more of the chance of spectators; and did not see a second little figure which came running across the grass through the maze of the trees, and stopped wondering in the middle of the brushwood, holding back the branches with her hands to gaze at the strange scene. Lilias was never quite clear of the idea that this wood was fairy-land: so she was not surprised at anything she saw. Yet at this, for the first moment, she was tempted to be surprised. The old gentleman! playing at ducks and drakes with Nello! He who pretended never to see them, who looked over their heads whenever they appeared, for whom they always had to run out of the way, who never took any notice! Lilias stood for two or three whole minutes, holding the branches open, peeping through with a rapt gaze of wonder; yet not surprised. She applied her little faculties at once, on the instant, to solve the mystery; and what so natural as that the old gentleman had been “only pretending” all the time? Half the pleasure which Lilias herself had in her life came from “pretending.” Pretending to be Queen Elizabeth,pretending to be a fairy and change Nello into a lion or a mouse, both of which things Nello “pretended” to be with equal success; pretending to be Mr. Pen preaching a sermon, pretending to be Mary, pretending even now and then to be “the old gentleman” himself, sitting up in a chair with a big book, just like him. She stood and peeped through the branches, and made up her mind to this in a way that took away all her surprise. No doubt he was “only pretending” when he would not let it be seen that he saw them. Motives are not necessary to investigators of twelve; there was nothing strange in it; for was not pretending the chief occupation, the chief recreation of life? She stood and made this out to her own satisfaction, and then with self-denial and with a sigh went back to Martuccia. It was very tempting to see the pebbles skimming across the water, and so easy it seemed! “Me too, me too,” Lilias could scarcely help calling out. But then it came into her head that perhaps it was herself whom the old gentleman disliked. Perhaps he would not go on playing if she claimed a share, perhaps he would begin “pretending” not to see her. So Lilias sighed, and with self-denial gave up this new pleasure. It was very nice for Nello to have some one to play with—some onenew. He was always the lucky one; but then he was the youngest, such a little fellow. She went back and told Martuccia he was playing, he was coming soon, he was not in any mischief—which was what the careful elder sister and mild indulgent nurse most feared.
When Lilias let the branches go, however, with self-denial which was impulsive though so true, the sweep with which they came together again made more sound than could have been made by a rabbit or squirrel, and startled the Squire, who was quite hot and excited in his new sport. He came to himself with a start, and with the idea of having been seen, felt a pang of shame and half-anger. He looked round him and could see nobody; but the branches still vibrated as if some one had been there; and his very forehead, weather-beaten as it was, flushed red with the idea of having been seen, perhaps by Randolph himself. This gave him a kind of offence and resentment and self-assertion which mended matters. Why should he care for Randolph? What had Randolph to do with it? Was he to puthimself under tutelage, and conform to the tastes of a fellow like that, a parson, an interloper? But all the same this possibility stopped the Squire. “There, my little man,” he said with some confusion, dropping his stone, “there! I think it is time to stop now.”
“Oh!—was it some one come for you?” said Nello, following the direction of the old gentleman’s eyes. “Stay a little longer, just a little longer. Can’t you do just what you please—not like me—— ”
“Can you not do what you please, my little boy?” The Squire was a little tremulous with the unusual exertion. Perhaps it was time to stop. He stooped down to lave his hand in the water where it came shallow among the rocks, and that act took away his breath still more, and made him glad to pause a moment before he went away.
“It is a shame,” said Nello, “there is Lily, and there is Martuccia, and there is Mary,—they think I am too little to take care of myself; but I am not too little—I can do a great many things that they can’t do. But come to-morrow, won’t youtryto come to-morrow?” said the child, coming close up to his grandfather, and taking hold of the skirt of his coat. “Oh please, pleasetryto come! I never have any one to play with, and it has been such fun. Say you will come! Don’t you think you could come if you were totry?”
The Squire burst out into a broken laugh. It would have been more easy to cry, but that does not do for a man. He put his soft old tremulous hand upon the boy’s head. “Little Johnny,” he said, “little Johnny!—that was my little brother’s name, long, long ago.”
“Did he play with you? I wish I had a little brother. I have nothing but girls,” said Nello. “But say you will come to-morrow—do say you will try!”
The Squire gave another look round him. Nobody was there, not a mouse or a bird. He took the child’s head between his trembling hands, and stooped down, and gave him a hasty kiss upon his soft round forehead—“God bless you, little man!” he said, and then turned round defiant, and faced the world—the world of tremulous branches and fluttering leaves, for there wasnothing else to spy upon the involuntary blessing and caress. Then he plunged through the very passage in the brushwood where the branches had shaken so strangely—feeling that if it was Randolph he could defy him. What right had Randolph to control his actions? If he chose to acknowledge this child who belonged to him, who was the image of the little Johnny of sixty years ago, what was that to any one? What had Randolph,—Randolph, of all men in the world,—to do with it? He would tell him so to his face if he were there.