“Yes, I sent for you. I am in—difficulty, Martha. These children have just come—the children of a friend—— ” Her first idea was to conceal the real state of the case even from her confidential and well-informed maid.
“Dear me,” said Miss Brown, with seeming innocence. “How strange! to bring a little lady and gentleman without any warning. But I’ll go and give orders, ma’am; there are plenty of rooms vacant, there need not be any difficulty—— ”
Miss Musgrave caught her by the arm.
“What I want for the moment is light, and some foodhere. Bring me the lamp I always use. No, not Eastwood; never mind Eastwood. I want you to bring it, they will be less afraid in the light.”
“There is a fire in the dining-room, ma’am, it is only a step,and Eastwood is lighting the candles; and there you can have what you like for them.”
It was confidence Miss Brown wanted—nothing but confidence. With that she was ready to do anything; without it she was Miss Musgrave’s respectable maid, to whom all mysteries were more or less improper. She crossed her hands firmly and waited. The room was growing darker and darker every minute, and the foreign nurse began to lose patience. She called “Madame! madame!” in a high voice; then poured forth into a stream of words, so rapid and so loud as both mistress and maid thought they had never heard spoken before. Miss Musgrave was not a great linguist. She knew enough to be aware that it was Italian the woman was speaking, but that was all.
“I do not understand you,” she said in distress, going up to the little group. But as she approached a sudden accession of terror, instantly suppressed on the part of the little girl but irrepressible by the younger boy, and which broke forth in a disjointed way, arrested her steps. Were they afraid of her, these children? “Little Lilias,” she said piteously, “be a brave child and stand by me. I cannot take you out of this cold room yet, but lights are coming and you will be taken care of. If I leave you alone for a little while will you promise me to be brave and not to be afraid?”
There was a pause, broken only by little flutterings of that nervous exhaustion which made the children so accessible to fear. Then a small voice said, dauntless, yet with a falter—
“I will stay. I will not be afraid.”
“Thank God,” said Mary Musgrave, to herself. The child was already a help and assistance. “Martha,” she said hastily, “tell no one; they are—my brother’s children—”
“Good Lord!” said Martha Brown, frightened out of her primness. “And it’s dark, and there’s two big boxes, and master don’t know.”
“That is the worst of all,” said Miss Musgrave sadly. She had never spoken to any one of her father’s inexorable verdict against John and all belonging to him. “The heir! and I must not take him into the house of his fathers! Take care of them, take care of them while I go—— And, Martha, say nothing—not a word.”
“Not if they were to cut me in pieces, ma’am!” said Miss Brown fervently. She was too old a servant to work in the dark; but confidence restored all her faculties to her. It was not, however, in the nature of things that she should discharge her commission without a betrayal more or less of the emergency. “I want some milk, please,” she said to the cook, “for my lady.” It was only in moments of importance that she so spoke of her mistress. And the very sound of her step told a tale.
“I told ye there was somethink oop,” said Tom Gardener, still lingering in the kitchen.
And to see how the house brightened up, and all the servants grew alert in the flutter of this novelty! Nothing had happened at the castle for so long—they had a right to a sensation. Cook, who had been there for a long time, recounted her experience to her assistants in low tones of mystery.
“Ah, if ye’d known the place when the gentlemen was at home,” said cook; “the things as happened in t’auld house—such goings on!—coming in late and early—o’er the watter and o’er the land—and the strivings, that was enough to make a body flee out of their skin!” She ended with a regretful sigh for the old times. “That was life, that was!” she said.
Meanwhile Mary Musgrave came in out of the dark hall into the lighted warmth of the dining-room, where the glass and the silver shone red in the firelight. How cosy and pleasant it was there! how warm and cheerful! Just the place to comfort the children and make them forget their miseries. The children! How easily her mind had undertaken the charge of them—the fact of their existence; already they had become the chief feature in her life. She paused to look at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, to smooth her hair, and put the ribbon straight at her neck. The Squire was “very particular,” and yet she did not remember to have had this anxious desire to be pleasant to his eyes since that day when she had crept to him to implore a reversal of his sentence. She had obtained nothing from him then; would she be more fortunate now? The colour had gone out of her face, but her eyes were brighter and more resolute than usual. How her heart beat when Mr. Musgrave said, “Come in,” calmly from the midst of his studies, as she knocked trembling at the library door!
“Comein,” said the Squire. He was sitting among his books, working with such a genuine sense of importance as was strange to see. Mary did not know that she thought anything in the world (except this present mission of hers) so important as he thought his search into the heraldic fortunes of the family. He was in full cry after a certain “augmentation” which had got into the Musgrave arms no one well knew how. It was only the Musgraves of Penninghame who bore this distinction, and how did they come by it? It appeared in the thirteenth century—in the age of the Crusades. Was it in recollection of some feat of a Crusader?—that was the question. He put down his pen and laid one open book upon another as she came in. He had no consciousness in his mind to make him critical or inquiring. He did not observe her paleness, nor the special glitter in her eyes. “I am busy,” he said, “so you must be brief. I think I have got hold of that ‘chief’ at last. After years of search it is exciting to find the first trace of it; but perhaps it is best to wait till I have verified my guesses—they are still not much more than guesses. What a satisfaction it will be when all is clear!”
“I am glad you are to have this satisfaction, papa.”
“Yes, I know you take little interest in it for itself. Ladies seldom do; though I can’t tell why, for heraldry ought to be an interesting science to them and quite within their reach. Nothing has happened about the dinner, I hope? I notice that is your general subject when you come into my room so late. Law business in the morning, dinner in the evening—a very good distribution. But I want a good dinner to-night, my dear, to celebrate my success.”
“It is not about dinner. Father, we have been living a very quiet life for many years.”
“Thank Heaven!” said the old man. “Yes, a quiet life. A man of my age is entitled to it, Mary. I never shrank from exertion in my time, nor do I now, as this will testify.” He laid his hand with a genial complaisance upon the half-written paper that lay before him. Then he said with a smile, “But make haste, my dear. There is still an hour before dinner, and I am in the spirit of my work. We need not occupy our time, you and I, with general remarks.”
“I did not mean it for a general remark,” she said with a tremble in her voice. “It is that I have something important—very important to speak of, and I don’t know how to begin.”
“Important—very important!” he said, with the indulgence of jocular superiority for a child’s undue gravity. “I know what these important matters are. Some poaching rascal that you don’t know how to manage, or a quarrel in the village? Bring them to me: but bring them to-morrow, Mary, when my mind is at rest—I cannot give my attention now.”
“It is neither poaching nor quarrelling,” she said. “I can manage the village. There are other things. Father, though we have been quiet for so many years, it is not because there has been nothing to think of—no seeds of trouble in the past—no anxieties—— ”
“I don’t know what you are thinking of,” he said, pettishly. “No anxieties? A man has them as long as he is in the world. We are mortal. Seeds of trouble? I have told you, Mary, that you may spare me general remarks.”
“Oh, nothing was further from my mind than general remarks,” she cried. “I don’t know how to speak. Father—look here—read it; it will tell its own story best. This is what, after the silence of years, I have received to-day.”
“The silence of years!” said the Squire. He had to fumble for his spectacles, which he had taken off, though he carefully restrained himself from betraying any special interest. A red colour had mounted to his face. Perhaps his mind did not go so far as to divine what it was; but still a sudden glimmering, like the tremble of pale light before the dawn, had come into his mind.
And this was the thunderbolt that suddenly fell upon him in his quietness after the silence of years:—
“My dear Sister Mary,—This will be given to you by my little daughter Lilias. The sight of my handwriting and of the children will be enough to startle you, so that I need not try to soften the shock which you must have already received. I claim from my father shelter for my children. Their mother is dead; so are the others of my family whose very names will never be known to my nearest relations. Never mind that now. I am a man both sick and sorry, worn by the world, lonely, and not much better than an adventurer. These children are the last of our race, and the boy, however reluctant you may be, is my father’s heir. I claim for them the shelter of the family roof. I have no home to give them, nor can I give them the care they require. Mary, you are a good woman: you are blameless one way or another. I charge you with my children. God do so to you and more also, according as you deal with them. Some time or other before I die I will drag myself home. That you may be sure of, unless God cuts short my life by the way, of which, if He will, I shall not complain.“Your brother,“John Musgrave.”
“My dear Sister Mary,—This will be given to you by my little daughter Lilias. The sight of my handwriting and of the children will be enough to startle you, so that I need not try to soften the shock which you must have already received. I claim from my father shelter for my children. Their mother is dead; so are the others of my family whose very names will never be known to my nearest relations. Never mind that now. I am a man both sick and sorry, worn by the world, lonely, and not much better than an adventurer. These children are the last of our race, and the boy, however reluctant you may be, is my father’s heir. I claim for them the shelter of the family roof. I have no home to give them, nor can I give them the care they require. Mary, you are a good woman: you are blameless one way or another. I charge you with my children. God do so to you and more also, according as you deal with them. Some time or other before I die I will drag myself home. That you may be sure of, unless God cuts short my life by the way, of which, if He will, I shall not complain.
“Your brother,“John Musgrave.”
This was the letter which the Squire placed upon his mouldy books, over the statement he had been writing. He did not speak, but read it steadily to the end, betraying no emotion except by the glow of colour that rose over his weather-beaten face. Who that has sat by, anxious, watching the effect of such a letter, needs to be told with what intense observation Mary Musgrave noted every sign of the rigid control he kept upon himself—the tight clutch of one hand upon the table, the tremor of the other which held the letter? But the Squire said nothing, not even when he had visibly come to the end. He held it before him still for some minutes; then he began to fold it elaborately—but said nothing still. The shadow of his head with its falling locks of white hair shook a little upon the wall. There is a peculiar tremble which shows the very severity of restraint, and this was of that kind.
“Father! have you nothing to say?”
“I thought it was a subject put aside, not to be mentioned between us,” he said. “I may be wrong—if I am wrong you can inform me; but I supposed this and all cognate subjects to be closed between us—— ”
“How can this be closed; I have ceased to importune you, but this is a new opening. And there is more than the letter—the children—— ”
“Ah!” He gave a slight cry. If he could it would have been an exclamation of scorn, but this was too much for him; the cry was sharp with impatient pain.
“I could not keepthema secret from you, father.”
“I hate secrets,” he said; “nevertheless there are few families in which they are not necessary. When he had said this he pushed the letter towards her, drew forward his heraldry books, and took his pen in his hand.
“Will you say nothing to me?” she cried. “Will you give me no answer? What am I to do?”
“Do! It seems to me quite an unnecessary question. It is a long time since I have given up exercising any control over you, Mary,” he said.
“But, father, have a little pity. The house is not mine to do as I like with.”
“That is unfortunate,” he said with a cold precision which made it doubtful whether he spoke satirically or in earnest. “But it is not my fault. You cannot expect me to make place voluntarily for another; and even if I did, as you are a woman, it would be of very little use to you. You cannot be the heir—— ”
“And this boy is!” she said with a gesture of appeal.
Mr. Musgrave said nothing. He shook his head impatiently, pushed the letter to her with an energy that flung it into her lap, and resumed his writing. She stood by while he deliberately returned to his description of the “chief,” turning up a page in his heraldry book, where all the uses and meanings of that “augmentation” were discussed. According to all appearance his mind took up this important question exactly where he had left it; and he resumed his writing steadily, betraying agitationonly by a larger, bolder, and firmer handwriting than usual. His daughter stood for a moment by his side, and watched him speechless—then went out of the room without another word. The Squire went on writing for a full minute more. The lines he wrote had not been so bold, so firm, so well-defined for years. Was it because he had to put forth the whole force that remained in him, soul and body, to get them upon the paper at all? When all sound of her departing steps had died out, he stopped suddenly, and, putting down his pen, let his head drop upon the open book and its figured page. An augmentation of honour! The days were over in which such gifts came from heralds and kings. And instead, here were struggles of a very different kind from those which won new blazons. But the most insensible, the most self-controlled of men, could not take such an interruption of his studies with absolute calm. He had never been in such desperate conflict with any man as with this son, and here his enemy, whom nature forbade to be his enemy, his antagonist, had come again after the silence of years and confronted him. To see such a one pass by could not but excite a certain emotion; but to meet him thus as it were face to face! The passion of parental love has been often portrayed. There is no passion more fervent, none perhaps even that can equal it; but there is another passion scarcely less intense—that which rises involuntarily in the bosom of a man between whom and his son there are no ties of mutual dependence, when the younger has become as the elder, knowing good and evil, and all the experiences of life; when there is no longer any question of authority and obedience, and natural affection yields to a strain of feeling which is too strong for it. Many long years had passed now since young Musgrave ceased to be his father’s pride and boyish second in everything. He had grown a man, his equal, and had resisted and held his own in the conflict half a lifetime ago. All the embitterment which close relationship gives to a deadly quarrel had been between them, and though the father had so far got the better as to drive the rebel out of his sight, he had not crushed his will or removed him from his standing-ground. He was the victor, though the vanquished. His son had not yielded, nor would ever yield. When Mr. Musgrave raised his head his face was pale, and his head shookwith a nervous tremor; all the broken redness of his cheeks shone like pencilled lines through his pallor, increasing it. “This will never do,” he said to himself, and rising, went to an old oak cupboard in the corner, and poured himself a small glass of the strongest of liqueurs. Not for all that remained of the Musgrave property would he have shown himself so broken, so overcome. This other man who was no younger, but only stronger than himself, was at the same time his successor, ready to push him out of his seat; waiting for a triumph that must come sooner or later. He had been able to forget all about him for years; to thrust out the thought of him when it recurred; but here the man stood once more confronting him. The Squire was wise in his way, and knew that there was nothing in the world so bad for the health, or so likely to give his antagonist an advantage, as the indulgence of emotion—therefore he crushed it “upon the threshold of the mind.” He would not give him so much help towards the inevitable eventual triumph. He went back to his writing-table when he had fortified himself with that potent mouthful; but, knowing himself, tried his pen upon a stray bit of paper before he would resume his writing. What he wrote was in the quivering lines of old age. He tore it into pieces. No one should see such a sign of agitation in the manuscript which was to last longer than he. He took up the most learned of his books, and began to read with close attention. Here, at all events, the adversary should not get the better of him; or, at least, if thoughts did surge and rise, obliterating the old escutcheon altogether and the lion on its “chief,” nobody should be the wiser.
Thus the old man sat, with a desperate courage worthy a better object, and mastered the furious excitement in his mind. But he was not thinking of the children as perhaps the reader of this story may suppose. He was not resisting the thrill of natural interest, the softening of heart which might have attended that sudden arrival. He did not even realize the existence of the children. His thoughts were of conflicts past, and of the opponent against whom he had striven so often: the opponent whom he could not altogether dismiss or get rid of, his rival, his heir, his successor, his son. There was nothinghe had wished as a father, as a Musgrave, as the head of a great county family, which this man had not done his best to undo: and as he had by ill-fortune thirty years the advantage of his father, there was no doubt that he would, some time or other, undo and destroy to an extent of which he was incapable now; unless indeed he was prevented in the most disgraceful way, incapacitated by public conviction of crime—conviction, which was only too probable, which hung over his banished head and prevented his return home. What would there be but pain in the thought of such a son—an opponent if he were innocent, if he were guilty a disgrace to the family name? The more completely the Squire could banish this thought from his mind, the happier he was; and he had banished it with wonderful success for many years past. He had done all he could to evade the idea that he himself would one day be compelled to die. Many men do this who have no painful consciousness of the heir behind who is waiting to dispossess them; and Mr. Musgrave had, to a great degree, attained tranquillity on this point. The habit of living seems to grow stronger with men as they draw near the end of their lives. It has lasted so long; it has been so steady and uninterrupted, why should it ever cease? But here was the death’s-head rising at the feast; the executioner giving note of his presence behind backs. John! he had dismissed him from his mind. He had exercised even a kind of Christianity in forgetting him. But here he was again, incapable of being forgotten. What a tremor in his blood—what undue working of all that machinery of the heart which it was so essential to keep in calm good order had this interruption caused! he who had no vital energy to spare; who wanted it all for daily comfort and that continuance which with younger people is so lightly taken for granted. How much of that precious reserve had been consumed by this shock! It had been done on purpose, perhaps, to try what the effect of such a shock upon his nerves and fibres would be.
Mr. Musgrave pushed back his chair again from the table, and gave all his faculties to the task of calming himself down. He would not allow himself to be overcome by John. But it took him a long time to accomplish this, to get his pulse back to itsusual rate of beating. When he relaxed for a moment in his watch over himself, old recollections would come back, scenes of the long warfare, words that were as swords and smote him over again with burning and stinging wounds. He had to calm it all down and still memory altogether if he would recover his ordinary composure. It wanted about an hour of dinner when he began this process. Up to that time it did not so much matter except for wearing him out and diminishing his strength. But it was his determination that no one should know or see this agitation which he had not been able to master. His daughter thought she had a harder task before her when she left him and hurried back to the ghostly half-lighted hall where she had left the children; but what was her work, or the commotion of her thoughts, in comparison to that which raged within the bosom of the old man in his solitude, defying Heaven and nature, and all gentler influences—whose conflict was for himself only, as it was carried on unhelped and unthought of by himself alone?
Miss Musgravewent back to her visitors with a heightened colour and assured step. Her alarm had departed along with her wistful and hopeful ignorance as to what her father might do. Now that she knew, her courage came back to her. When she opened the door which led out of the little passage into the hall, the scene before her was striking and strange enough to arrest her like a picture. The great ancient room, with its high raftered roof and wide space, lay in darkness—all but one bright spot in the midst where the lamp stood on the table. Miss Brown had hastily arranged a kind of homely meal, a basket of oatcakes, some white bread in a napkin, biscuits, home-made gingerbread, and a jug of fresh milk. The white and brown bread, the tall white jug, the cloth upon the tray, all helped toincrease the whiteness of that spot in the gloom. In the midst of this light sat the Italian nurse, dark and vigorous, with the silver pins in her black hair, and red ribbons at her breast. The pale little boy sat on her knee; he had a little fair head like an angel in a picture, light curling hair, and a delicate complexion, white and red, which was fully relieved against that dark background. The child’s alarm had given way a little, but still, in the intervals of his meal, he would pause, look round him into the gloom, and clutch with speechless fright at his attendant, who held him close and soothed him with all the soft words she could think of. Little Lilias stood by her on the further side, sufficiently recovered to eat a biscuit, but securing herself also, brave as she was, by a firm grasp of the nurse’s arm to which she hung, tightly embracing it with her own. Miss Brown was flitting about this strange little group, talking continuously, though the only one among them who was disposed to talk could not understand her, and the children were too worn out to pay any attention to what she said.
There was a little start and thrill among the three who held so closely together when the lady returned. Little Lilias put down her biscuit. She became the head of the party as soon as Miss Musgrave came back—the plenipotentiary with whom to conduct all negotiations. Nello, on the other hand, buried his head in his nurse’s shoulder. In the midst of all her agitation and confusion it troubled Miss Musgrave that the child should hide his face from her. The boy who was like herself and her family was the one to whom her interest turned most. Lilias bore another resemblance, which was no passport to Mary Musgrave’s heart. Yet it was hard to resist the fascination of this child’s sense and courage; the boy, as yet, had shown himself capable of nothing but fear.
“Go, and have fires lighted at once in the two west rooms—make everything ready,” Mary said, sending Miss Brown away peremptorily. It was not a worthy feeling perhaps, but it vexed her, agitated as she was, to see that her maid woke no alarm in the children, while she, their nearest relation, she who, if necessary, had made up her mind to sacrifice everything for them, was an object of fear. She thought even that the childrenclung closer to their nurse and shrank more from herself when Martha was sent away. Miss Musgrave stood at the other side of the table and looked at them with many conflicting thoughts. It was altogether new to her, this strange mixture of ignorance and wonder, and almost awe, with which she felt herself contemplating these unknown little creatures, henceforward to be wholly dependent upon her. They were afraid of her, but she was scarcely less afraid of them, wondering with an ache in her heart whether she would be able to feel towards them as she ought, to bring her middle-aged thoughts into sympathy with theirs, to be soft and gentle with them as their helplessness demanded. Love does not always come with the first claim upon it; how was she to love them, little unknown beings whose very existence she had never heard of before? And Mary thought of herself with a certain pity in this strange moment, remembering almost with a sense of injury that the fountain of mother’s love had never been awakened in her at all. Was it thus to be awakened? She was not an angelic woman, as poor Mr. Pen imagined her to be. She knew this well enough, though he did not know it. She had been young and full of herself when the family misfortunes happened, and since then what had there been in her life to warm or awaken the heart? Was she capable of loving? she asked herself; was there not a chill atmosphere about her which breathed cold upon the children and drove them away? This thought gave her a pang, as she stood and looked at the two helpless creatures before her, too frightened now to munch their biscuits, one gazing at her with big pathetic eyes, the other hiding his face. An ache of helplessness and pain not less great than theirs came into her mind. She was as helpless as they were, looking at them across the table, as if across a world of separation which she did not know how to bridge over, with not only them to vanquish, but herself. At last she put out her hands with the sense of weakness, such as perhaps she had never felt before. She had not been able, indeed, to influence her father, but she had not felt helpless before him; on the contrary, his hardness had stirred her to determination on her side, and a sense of power which quickened the flowing of her blood. But before thesechildren she felt helpless; what was she to do with them, how bring herself into communication with them? She put out her hands—hands strong to guard, but powerless she thought to attract. “Lilias, will you come to me?” she said with a tremulous tone in her voice.
The weariness, the strangeness, the darkness had been almost too much for Lilias; her mouthful of biscuit and draught of milk had been too quickly interrupted by the return of the strange, beautiful lady, with whom she alone, she was aware, could deal. And she could not respond to that appeal without quitting hold of Martuccia, who, though powerless to treat with the lady, was still a safeguard against the surrounding blackness, a something to cling to. But the child was brave as a hero, notwithstanding the nervous susceptibility of her nature. She disengaged her arm slowly from her one stay, keeping her eyes all the time fixed upon Miss Musgrave, half attracted by her, half to keep herself from seeing those dark corners in which mysterious dangers seemed to lurk; and came forward, repressing the sob that rose in her throat, her little pale face growing crimson with the strain of resolution which this effort cost her. It was all Lilias could do to move round the table quietly, not to make a rush of fright and violent clutch at the hand held out to her—even though it was the hand of a stranger, from which in itself she shrank. Mary put her arm round the little trembling figure, and smoothing away the dark hair from her forehead, kissed the little girl with lips that trembled too. She would do her duty by her; never would she forsake her brother’s child; and with the warmth of this resolution tears of pity and tenderness came into her eyes. But when Lilias felt the protection of the warm soft arm about her, and the tenderness of the kiss, her little heart burst forth with a strength of impulse which put all laws at defiance. With a sobbing cry she threw herself upon her new protector, caught at her dress, clung to her waist, nestled her head into her bosom, with a close pressure which was half gratitude, half terror, half nervous excitement. Mary was taken by storm. She did not understand the change that came over her. A sudden warmth seemed to come into her veins, tingling to her very finger-points. She too, mature and self-restrained as she was, began to weep, asudden flood of tears rushing to her eyes against her will. “My child, my brave little girl!” she said almost unawares, recognising in her heart a soft surprise of feeling which was inexplicable; was this what nature did, sheer nature? she had never felt anything like it before. She held the child in her arms and cried over her, the tears falling over those dark curls which had nothing to do with the Musgraves, which even resembled another type with which the Musgraves would have nothing to do!
As she stood thus overcome by the double sensation of the child’s nestling and clinging, and by the strange, sudden development of feeling in herself, Mary Musgrave felt two soft touches upon her hand which were not mistakable, and which made her start and flush, with the decorum of an Englishwoman surprised. It was Martuccia, who, moved like all her race by quick impulses of emotion, had risen hastily to her feet in sympathy, and had kissed the lady’s hand, and put forward her little charge to perform the same act of homage. This roused Mary from her momentary breaking down. She took the little boy by the hand whom she found at her feet, not quite so frightened as at first, but still holding fast by the nurse’s skirts, and led them both into the house. They were too much awed to make any noise, but went with her, keeping close to her, treading in her footsteps almost, closer and closer as they emerged into one unknown place after another. Wonder kept them still as she took them through the cheerful lighted dining-room, and up the stairs. Eastwood was busy about his table, putting it in that perfect order which it was his pride to keep up (“For who is more to me nor my family? what’s company?” said Eastwood; “it’s them as pays me as I’m bound to please”); but Eastwood was too good a servant to manifest any feeling. He had, of course, heard all about the arrival, not only from the gardener, but from every one in the kitchen; and he was aware, as nobody else was, that there had been a private interview between the father and daughter, to which she had gone with a pale face, and come back with nostrils expanded, and a glow of resolution upon her. Eastwood was not an old servant, but he had learned all that there was to learn about the family, and a little more. Hisinterest in the Musgraves was not so warm as that of cook for instance, who had been born in the place, and had known them from their cradles; but he had the warm curiosity which is common to his kind. He gave a glance from beneath his eyebrows at the new-comers, wondering what was to become of them. Would they be received into the house for good; and if so, would that have any effect upon himself, Eastwood? would it, by and by, be an increase of trouble, a something additional to do? He was no worse than his neighbours, and the thought was instinctive and natural, for no one likes to have additional labour. “But he’s but a little chap; it’ll be long enough before he wants valeting—if ever,” Mr. Eastwood said to himself. What would be wanted would be a nurse, not a valet; and if that black-eyed foreigner didn’t stay, Eastwood knew a nice girl from the village whom the place would just suit. So he cast no unkindly eye upon the children as he went noiselessly about in his spotless coat, putting down his forks, which were quite as spotless. The sight of the table with its bouquet of autumn flowers excited Lilias. “Who is going to dine there?” she said, with a pretty childish wile, drawing down Miss Musgrave towards her to whisper in her ear.
“I am, Lilias.”
“May we come too?” said the little girl. “Nello is very good—he does not ask for anything; we know how to behave.”
“There will be some one else besides me,” said Mary, faltering slightly.
“Then we do not want to come,” said Lilias with decision. “We are not fond of strangers.”
“I am a stranger, dear—— ”
“Oh no, you are Mary!” said the child, embracing Miss Musgrave’s arm with her own two arms clasped round it, and raising her face with the confidence of perfect trust. These simple actions made Mary’s heart swell as it had not done for years—as indeed it had never done in her life. Other thrills there might have been in her day, but this fountain had never been opened before, and the new feeling was almost as strangely sweet to her as is the silent ecstasy in the bosom of the new mother, whose baby has just brought into the world such anatmosphere of love. It was like some strange new stream poured into her heart, filling up all her veins.
The firelight had already begun to sparkle pleasantly in the bedrooms, and Mary found herself suddenly plunged into those pleasant cares of a mother which make time fly so swiftly. She had found so much to do for them, getting them to bed and making the weary little creatures comfortable, that the bell rang for dinner before she was aware. She left them hastily, and put herself into her evening gown with a speed which was anxiously seconded by Miss Brown, who for her part was just as eager to get back to the children as was her mistress. Miss Musgrave did not know what awaited her when she went down-stairs, or what battles she might have to fight. She had another duty now in the world beyond that claimed by her father. He had no such need of her as these children, who in all the wide world had no protector or succour but herself. Her heart beat a little louder and stronger than usual; her bearing was more dignified. The indifference which had been in her life this morning had passed away. How strange it seemed now to think of that calm which nothing affected much, in which she had been comparatively happy, but which now appeared so mean and poverty-stricken. The easy quiet had gone out of her life;—was it for ever?—and instead there had come in a commotion of anxieties, hopes, and doubts and questions manifold; but yet how miserable to her in comparison seemed now that long loveless tranquillity! She was another woman, a living woman, she thought to herself, bearing the natural burden of care, a burden sweetened by a hundred budding tendernesses and consolations. It is well to have good health and enough to do; these had been the bare elements of existence, out of which she had managed to form a cold version of living; but how different was this vivid existence, new-born yet eternal, of love and care! She was like one inspired. If she had been offered the alternative, as she almost expected, of leaving the house or giving up the children, with what pride would she have drawn her cloak round her and left her father’s house! This prospect seemed near enough and likely enough as she walked into the dining-room, with her head high, and a swell of conscious force in herbosom. Whatever might be coming she was prepared for any blow.
Mr. Musgrave, too, was late. He who was the soul of punctuality did not enter the room for a minute or more after his daughter had hastened there, knowing herself late—but whereas she had hurried her toilet, his had never been more careful and precise. He took his seat with deliberate steadiness, and insisted upon carving the mutton and partridge which made their meal, though on ordinary occasions he left this office to Eastwood. It gratified him, however, to-day, to prove to himself and to her how capable he was and how steady were his nerves. And he talked while he did this with unusual energy, going over again all the history of the “chief.”
“I hope it will interest the general reader,” he said. “Not many family questions do, but this is really an elucidation of history. It throws light upon a great many things. You scorn heraldry, Mary, I am aware.”
“No, I do not think I scorn it.”
“Well, at all events you are little interested; the details are not of much importance, you think. In short, I suspect,” he added, with a little laugh, “that if the truth were told, you and a great many other ladies secretly look upon the science as one of those play-sciences that keep men from being troublesome. You don’t say so, but I believe you think we fuss and make work for ourselves in this way while you are carrying on the real work of the world.”
“I am not so self-important,” she said; but there was a great deal of truth in the suggestion if her mind had been free enough to think of it. What was it else but a play-science to keep country gentlemen too old for fox-hunting out of mischief? This is one of the private opinions of the gynecæum applying to many grave pursuits, an opinion which circulates there in strictest privacy and is not spoken to the world. Mary would have smiled at the Squire’s discrimination had her mind been free. As it was, she could do nothing but wonder at his liveliness and composure, and say to herself that he must be waiting till Eastwood went away. This, no doubt, was why he talked so much, and was so genial. He did not wish to betray anythingto the man, and her heart began to beat once more with renewed force as the moment came for his withdrawal. No doubt the discussion she feared would come, and most likely come with double severity then. She had seen all this process gone through before.
But when Eastwood went away the Squire continued smiling and conversational. He told her of a poacher who had been brought to him, a bumpkin from a distant farm, to whom he meant to be merciful; and of some land which was likely to be in the market, which would, if it could be got, restore an old corner of the estate and rectify the ancient boundary.
“I do not suppose there is any hope of such a thing,” he said, with a sigh. “And besides, what does it matter to me that I should care? my time cannot be very long.”
“The time of the family may be long enough,” she said, with a throb of rising excitement, for surely now he would speak; “one individual is not all.”
“That is a sound sentiment, though perhaps it may seem a little cold-hearted when the individual is your father, Mary.”
“I did not mean it to be cold-hearted; you have always taught me to consider the race.”
“And so you ought,” he said, “though you don’t care so much for the blazon as I could wish. I should like to talk to Burn and to see what the lawyers would think of it. I confess I should like to be Lord of the Manor at Critchley again before I die.”
“And so you shall, father, so you shall!” she cried. “We could do it with an effort: if only you would—if only you could—— ”
He interrupted her hastily.
“When Burn comes to-morrow let me see him,” he said. “This is no question of what I could or would. If it can be done it ought to be done. That is all I have to say. Is it not time you were having tea?”
This was to send her away that he might have his evening nap after dinner. Mary rose at the well-known formula, but she came softly round to his end of the room to see that the fire was as he liked it, and lingered behind his chair, not knowingwhether to make another appeal to him. Her presence seemed to make him restless; perhaps he divined what was floating in her mind. He got up quickly before she had time to speak.
“On second thoughts,” he said, “as I was disturbed before dinner, I had better resume my work at once. You can send me a cup of tea to the library. It is not often that one has such a satisfactory piece of work in hand; that charms away drowsiness. Be sure you send me a cup of tea.”
“You will not—over-fatigue yourself, father?” said Mary, faltering. “I—hope you will not do too much.”
This was not what she meant to say, but these were the only words that she could manage to form out of her lips.
“Oh, no; do not be uneasy. I shall not overwork myself,” said the Squire once more, with a laugh.
And he went out of the room before her, erect and steady, looking younger and stronger in the force of that excitement which he was so careful to conceal. Mary did not know what to think. Was he postponing his sentence to make it more telling? or was he, happier thought, moved by the new event as she herself had been, warmed into forgiveness, into relenting, into the happiness of old age in children’s children? Could this be so? She stood over the fire in her agitation holding her hands out to the ruddy blaze, though she was not cold. Her heart beat violently against her breast. How uneasy a thing this life was, how restless and full of change and commotion! Yet so much more, so much greater than the gentler stagnation which was gone.
Thevicarage was stilled in the quiet of the evening, the children in bed, the house at rest. It was not the beautiful and dignified old house which in England is the ideal dwelling of the gentleman parson, the ecclesiastical squire of the parish. And indeed Mr. Pennithorne was not of that order. Though there had beenmany jokes when he first entered upon the cure as to the resemblance between his name and that of the parish, Pennithorne of Penninghame was a purely accidental coincidence. Mr. Musgrave was the patron, but the living was not wealthy enough or important enough to form that appropriate provision for a second son which, according to the curious subordination and adaptation of public wants to family interests, has become the rule in England, unique, as are so many others. Randolph Musgrave had his rectory in one of the midland counties, in the district which was influenced by his mother’s family, where there was something more worth his acceptance; and his old tutor had got the family living. Mr. Pennithorne was not a distinguished scholar with chances of preferment through his college, and it had been considered a great thing for him when, after dragging the young Musgraves through a certain proportion of schooling and colleging, he had subsided into this quiet provision for the rest of his life. He was a clergyman’s son, with no prospects, and whatsoever glimmerings of young ambition there might have been in him, there was no coming down involved when he accepted the small rural vicarage where his heart was. We have already said that in his wildest hopes a vision of the possibility of bringing Mary Musgrave to the vicarage to share his humble circumstances with him had never entered into Mr. Pennithorne’s mind; but to be near her was something, and to be her trusted and confidential friend seemed the best that life could give him. Here he had remained ever since, being of some use to her, as he hoped, from time to time, and some comfort at least, if nothing more, in the convulsions of the family. During the first years of his incumbency, Mr. Pennithorne’s own mind had been subject to many convulsions as one suitor after another came to the Castle; but as they had all ridden away again with what grace they could after their rejection, comfort had come back. It was a curious passion, and one which we do not pretend to explain. After a while, impelled by friends, by convenience, and by the soft looks of Emily Coniston, the daughter of the clergyman in his native place, to which he had gone on a visit, he had himself found it possible to marry, without any failure of his allegiance to his visionary love; but still to this daythough he had been Emily’s husband for ten years, it troubled the good vicar when any stranger came to the Castle whose society seemed specially pleasant to Miss Musgrave. He would hang about the place at such times like an alarmed hen when something threatens the brood, nor ceased to cluck and flutter his wings till the danger was over. Did he not wish her happiness? Ah, yes, and would, he thought, have given his life to procure it; but was it necessary that happiness should always be got in that one vulgar way? Marriage was well enough for the vulgar, but not for Mary. It would have been a descent from her maiden dignity, a lowering of her position. He was willing that everybody should love her and place her on a pedestal above all women; but it wounded his finest feelings to think that she too, in her turn, might love. There was no man good enough or great enough to be worthy of awakening such a sentiment in Mary Musgrave’s breast.
As is not unusual in such cases, Mr. Pennithorne, the chief inspiration of whose life was a visionary passion of the most exalted and exalting kind for a woman, had married a woman for whom no one could entertain any very exalted or impassioned feelings. Perhaps the household drudge is a natural double or attendant of the goddess. They “got on” very well together, people said, and Mr. Pen put up with his wife’s little foolishnesses and fretfulnesses, as perhaps a man could not have done whose heart was fortified by no ideal passion. Emily was a good housekeeper of the narrow sort, caring very little for comfort, and very proud of her economy; and she was a good mother of the troublesome kind, whose children are always in the foreground, always wanting something, always claiming her attention. Mr. Pen adored them, and yet he was glad when they were got to bed, when his wife could be spoken to without one child clinging to her skirts, or another breaking in upon everything with plaintive appeals to mamma. But he took it for granted that this was how it must be, and that a more lovely course of life was impracticable. One woman excepted, all women, he thought, were like this; it is thus that the dogmatisms of common opinion are formed and kept up; and what could be done but to shrug his shoulders at the inevitable, escaping from it intohis study, or with a sigh into that world of the ideal where imagination is never ruffled by the incidents of common life. The children were in bed on this October night, and everything was still. The vicarage was not a handsome house, nor was it old, but merely modern, badly built, and common-place, redeemed by nothing but its garden, which was large, and gave a pretty surrounding to the place in summer. But the night had become stormy, and the wind was raving in the trees, making their close neighbourhood anything but an advantage. Mrs. Pennithorne thought it extravagant to use two sitting-rooms, so the family ate and lived in the dining-room—a dark room papered and furnished as, in the days when Mr. Pen was married, it was thought right to decorate such places, with a red flock paper of a large pattern, which relieved the black horsehair of the furniture. The room was not very large. It had a black marble mantel-shelf, with a clock upon it, and some vases of Bohemian glass, and a red and blue table-cover upon the table, about which there lingered always a certain odour of food, especially in cold weather, when the windows were closed. Mrs. Pennithorne sat between the fire and the table. She had some dressmaking in hand, which made a litter about—dark winter stuff for little Mary’s frock; and as she had no genius for this work, it was a lingering and confusing business with her, and made her less amiable than usual. The reason why her husband was there at all instead of being in his study was that the evening was cold; but it had not yet become, according to Mrs. Pen’s code, time for fires. There was one in the dining-room, for she had not been well; but to light a second so early in October was against all her traditions, and Mr. Pen had been driven out of his study, where he had been sitting in his great-coat, and now stood with his back to the fire, warming himself, poor man, in preparation for another spell of work at his sermon. He was thin, and felt the cold. It was this, she had just been saying, that had brought him, and not any regard for her loneliness—which indeed was quite true.
“No, Emily,” he said, meekly, “for I have my work to do, you know; but while I am here, I hope you are not sorry to see me. The children were rather late to-night.”
“I am glad to keep them up a little for company,” she said. “It is not so cheerful sitting here all alone, hearing the wind roaring in the trees; and my nerves are quite gone. I never used to fear anything when I was a young girl, but now I start at every sound. I don’t mean to blameyou—but it is lonely sitting by one’s self after being one of a large family.”
“No doubt—no doubt,” he said, soothingly. “I suppose we gain something as years go on, but we do lose something. That must be taken for granted in life.”
“I don’t like your philosophy, Mr. Pennithorne,” said Emily; “the way you have of always making out that things have to be! I don’t see it, for my part. I think a married woman should have a great deal to cheer her up that a girl can’t have—— ”
“My dear,” he said, “perhaps I am not much—and you know the parish is my first duty; but have you not the children?—dear children they are. I do not think there can be any greater pleasure than one’s children—— ”
“You have nothing to do but enjoy them,” said Mrs Pennithorne, slightly softened; “but if you had to work and slave like me! There is never a day that I have not something to do for them; mending, or making, or darning, or something. Fathers have an easy time of it; they play with the baby now and then, take out the elder ones for a walk, and that is all. That is nothing but pleasure; but to sit for days and work one’s fingers to the bone—— ”
“I wish you would not, Emily. I have heard you say that Miss Price in the village was a very good dressmaker—— ”
“For those who can afford her,” said Mrs. Pennithorne. “But,” she added, with a better inspiration, “you make me look as if I were complaining, and I don’t want to complain. Though it is dull, William, you must allow, sitting all the evening by one’s self—— ”
“But I have to do the same,” he said, with gentle hypocrisy. “You know, Emily, if I wrote my sermon here, we should fall to talking, which no doubt is far pleasanter—but it is not duty, and duty must come before all—— ”
“There is more than one kind of duty,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, who was tearing her fingers with pins putting together two sidesof Mary’s frock. While she was bending over this, the maid came into the room with a note. There was something in the “Ah!” with which he took it which made his wife raise her head. She was not jealous of Miss Musgrave, who was nearly ten years older than herself, an old maid, and beneath consideration; but she did think that William thought a great deal too much of the Castle. “What is it now?” she said pettishly. Perhaps once more—they had done it several times already—it was an invitation to dinner for Mr. Pennithorne alone. But he was so much interested in what he was reading that he did not even hear her. She sat with her scissors in her hand, and looked at him while he read the note, his face changing, his whole mind absorbed. He did not look like that when their common affairs were discussed, or the education of his children, which ought to be more interesting to him than anything else. This was other people’s business—and how it took him up! Mrs. Pennithorne was a good woman, and did her duty to her neighbours when it was very clearly indicated; but still, of course, nothing could be of such consequence as your own family, and your duty to them. And to see how he was taken up, smiling, looking as if he might be going to cry! Nothing about Johnny or Mary ever excited him so. Mrs. Pennithorne was not only vexed on her own account, but felt it to be wrong.
“Well, life is a wonderful thing,” he said suddenly. “I went to the Castle this afternoon—— ”
“You are always going to the Castle,” she said, in a fretful voice.
“—Expressly to tell Miss Musgrave how much my mind had been occupied about her brother John. You never knew him, Emily; but he was my pupil, and I was very fond of him—— ”
“You are very fond of all the family, I think,” she said, half-interested, half-aggrieved.
“Perhaps I was,” he said, with a little sigh, which, however, she did not notice; “but John particularly. He was a fine fellow, though he was so hot-headed. The other night I kept dreaming of him, all night long—over and over again.”
“That was what made you so restless, I suppose,” Mrs. Pennithorne put in, in a parenthesis. “I am sure you have plenty belonging to yourself to dream of, if you want to dream.”
“—And I went to ask if they had heard anything, smiling at myself—as she did, for being superstitious. But here is the wonderful thing: I had scarcely left, when the thing I had foreseen arrived. A carriage drew up containing John Musgrave’s children—— ”
“Did you know John Musgrave’s children? I never knew he had any children—— ”
“Nor did I, or any one!—that is the wonder of it. I felt sure something was happening to him or about him—and lo! the children arrived. It was no cleverness of mine,” said Mr. Pennithorne with gentle complacency, “but still I must say it was a wonderful coincidence. The very day!”
Mrs. Pennithorne did not make any reply. She was not interested in a coincidence which had nothing to do with her own family. If Mr. Pen had divined when Johnny was to break his arm, so that they might have been prepared for that accident! but the Musgraves had plenty of people to take care of them, and there seemed no need for a new providential agency to give them warning of unsuspected arrivals. She put some more pins into little Mary’s frock—the two sides of the little bodice never would come the same. She pulled at them, measured them, repinned them, but could not get them right.
“I have heard a great deal about John Musgrave,” she said with a pin in her mouth. “What was it he did that he had to run away?”
“My dear Emily! don’t do that, for heaven’s sake—you frighten me; and besides, it is not—pretty—it is not becoming—— ”
“I think I am old enough by this time to know what is becoming,” said Mrs. Pennithorne with some wrath, yet growing red as she took out the pins. She was conscious that it was not ladylike, and felt that this was the word her husband meant to use. “If you knew the trouble it is to get both sides the same!” she added, forgetting her resentment in vexation.
It was a troublesome job. There are some people in whose hands everything goes wrong. Mrs. Pen shed a tear or two over the refractory frock.
“My dear! I hope it is not my innocent remark—— ”
“Oh no, it is not any innocent remark. It is so troublesome. Just when I thought I had got it quite straight! But what do you know about such things? You have nothing to say to Mary’s frock. You never would notice, I believe, if she had not one to her back, or wore the same old rag year after year—— ”
“Yes, Emily, I should notice,” said Mr. Pen with some compunction; “and I am very sorry that you should have so much trouble. Send for Miss Price to-morrow, and I will pay her out of my own money. You must not take it off the house.”
“Oh, William! William!” said his wife, “who is it that will suffer if your own money, as you call it, runs out? Do you think I am so inconsiderate as only to think of what I have for the house! Isn’t it all one purse, and will it not be the children that will suffer eventually whoever pays? No, your money shall not be spent to save me trouble. What is the good of us but to take trouble?” said Mrs. Pen with heroic fortitude.
Mr. Pen sighed. Perhaps he was more conscious of the litter of dressmaking than of this fine sentiment. But anyhow he did not give any applause to the heroine. He left indeed this family subject altogether, and after a momentary pause, said, half to himself, “John Musgrave’s children! Who could have thought it! And how strange it all is—— ”
“Really, Mr. Pennithorne,” said his wife, offended, “this is too much. I don’t believe you think one half so much of your own children as of those Musgraves. What did they ever do for us?”
“They did this for us, my dear, that but for them I should not have had a home to offer you—nor a family at all,” said the vicar with a little warmth. “I might have been still travelling with boys about the world—— ”
“Oh, William, not with your talents,” said his wife, looking at him with admiration. With all her fretfulness and insensibility to those fine points of internal arrangement for which he had a half-developed, half-subdued taste, Emily had still a great admiration for her husband. Now Mary Musgrave, who was, unknown to either, her spiritual rival, had no admiration for good Mr. Pen at all. This gave the partner of his life an infinite advantage. His voice softened as he replied, shaking his head:
“Unfortunately, my love, other people do not appreciate my talents as you do.”
“That is because they don’t know you so well,” she said with flattering promptitude. Mr. Pennithorne drew a chair to the fire and sat down. It was but rarely that he received this domestic adulation; but it warmed him, and did him good.
“Ah, my dear, I fear I must not lay that flattering unction to my soul,” he said.
“You are too modest, William; I have always said you were too modest,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, returning good for evil. How little notice he had taken of her fine heroic feeling and self-abnegation! Women are more generous; she behaved very differently to him. And the fact was, he very soon began to think that old Mr. Musgrave had made use of him, and given him a very poor return. The vicarage was not much—and the Squire had never attempted to do anything more. It is sweet to be told that you are above your fate—that Providence owes you something better. He roused himself up, however, after a time out of that unwholesome state of self-complacency. “What a strange state of affairs it is, Emily,” he said. He was not in the habit of making his wife his confidant on matters that concerned the Musgraves, but in a moment of weakness his resolution was overcome. “What a painful state of affairs! Mr. Musgrave knows of the coming of these children, but he takes no notice, and whether she is to be allowed to keep them or not—— ”
“Dear me, think of having to get permission from your father at her time of life,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, with a naïve pity. “And whom did he marry, William, and what sort of person was their mother? I don’t think you ever told me that.”
“Their mother was—John’s wife; I must have told you of her. She was not the person his family wished. But that often happens, my dear. It is no sign that a man is a bad man because he may make what you may call a mistaken choice.”
“My dear William,” said Mrs. Pen, with authority, “there is nothing that shows a man’s character so much as the wife he chooses; my mother always said so. It is the best test if he is a nice feeling man or not,” the vicar’s wife said blandly, with a little conscious smile upon her face.
Mr. Pennithorne made no reply. There was something humorous in this innocent little speech, considering who the speaker was, to any one who knew. But then nobody knew; scarcely even Mr. Pennithorne himself, who at this moment was so soothed by his wife’s “appreciation,” that he felt himself the most devoted of husbands. He shook his head a little, deprecating the implied condemnation of his old pupil; for the moment he did not think of himself.
“Now that we are sitting together, and really comfortable for once in a way,” said Mrs. Pennithorne, dropping Mary’s bodice with all the pins, and drawing her chair a little nearer to the fire—“it does not happen very often—tell me, William, what it is all about, and what John Musgrave has done.”
Again the vicar shook his head. “It’s a long story,” he said, reluctantly.
“You tell things so nicely, William, I sha’n’t think it long; and think how strange it is, knowing so much about people, and yet not knowing anything. And of course I shall have to see the children. Poor little things, not to be sure of shelter in their grandfather’s house! but they will always have a friend in you.”
“They will have Mary; what can they want more if they haveher?” he said suddenly, with a fervour which surprised his wife; then blushed and faltered as he caught her eye. What right had he to speak of Miss Musgrave so? Mrs. Pennithorne stared a little, but the slip did not otherwise trouble her, for she saw no reason for the exaggerated respect with which the Squire’s daughter was treated. Why should not she be called Mary—was it not her name?
“Mary, indeed! what does she know about children? But, William, I am waiting, and this is the question—What did John Musgrave do?”
Thearrival of the children was an era at Penninghame from which afterwards everything dated; but the immediate result was a very curious and not very comfortable one. As they had been introduced into the house, so they lived in it. Mr. Musgrave never mentioned them, never saw them or appeared to see them, ignored their existence, in short, as completely as if his faculties had been deadened in respect to them. His life was in no way changed indeed; the extraordinary revolution which had been made to every one else in the house by this change showed all the more strongly from the absence of all effect upon him. He read, he wrote, he studied, he took his usual quiet exercise exactly as he did before, and never owned by a word or look that he was conscious of any alteration in the household. For a little while the children were hushed not to make a noise, and huddled away into corners to keep them out of sight and hearing; but that arrangement was too unnatural to continue, and it very soon happened that their presence was forced upon him by unmistakable signs, by both sight and hearing. But the Squire took not the slightest notice. He looked over their heads and never saw them. His ear was engaged with other sounds and he did not hear them. By this system of unconsciousness he deprived himself indeed of some evident advantages; for how can you interfere with the proceedings of those whose very existence you ignore? He could not give orders that the children should make less noise, because he professed not to be aware of their presence; nor send them out of his sight, when he was supposed not to see them; and in consequence this blindness and deafness on his part was perhaps a greater gain to them than to himself. The mental commotion into which he had been thrown by their arrival had never been known to any one but himself. He had a slight illness a fewdays after—his liver out of order, the doctor said; and so worked off his excitement without disclosing it to any one. After this he resumed his serenity, and completed his heraldic study. The history of the augmentation granted to the Musgraves in the year 1393 in remembrance of the valour of Sir Egidio, or Giles, Musgrave in the Holy Land made rather a sensation among students in that kind. It was a very interesting monograph. Besides being a singularly striking chapter of family history, it was, everybody said, a most interesting contribution to the study of heraldic honours—how and why they were bestowed; especially as concerning “augmentations” bestowed on the field for acts of valour—a rare and exceptional distinction. The Squire made a little collection of the notices that appeared in the newspapers of his “Monograph” pasting them into a pretty little book, as is not unusual with amateur authors. He enjoyed them a great deal more than if he had been the author of a great history, and resented criticism with corresponding bitterness. He was very proud of Egidio, or Giles, who died in the fifteenth century; and it did not occur to him that there was any incongruity between this devotion to his ancestors and the fact that he persisted in ignoring the little boy upstairs.
And yet day by day it grew more hard to ignore him. Mr. Musgrave in his study, after the enthusiasm of his monograph was over, could not help hearing voices which it was difficult to take no notice of. The enthusiasm of composition did a great deal for him: it carried him out of the present; it filled him with a delightful fervour and thrill of intellectual excitement. People who are always writing get used to it, and lose this sense of something fine and great which is the inheritance of the amateur. Even after the shock of renewed intercourse with the son, who had brought shame upon his name, and whom he had cast off, Mr. Musgrave, so long as his work lasted, found himself able to forget everything in the happiness it gave. When he woke in the morning his first thought was of this important occupation which awaited him, and he went to bed with the fumes of his own paragraphs in his head; he was carried away by it. But when all this intellectual commotion was over, and when the ennui of having nothing further to do had swallowedup the satisfaction of having finished a great piece of work, as it so soon does, then there came a very difficult interval for the Squire. He had no longer anything to absorb him and keep him comfortably above the circumstances of ordinary life; and as he sat in his library, only reading, only writing a letter, no longer absorbed by any special study, or by the pride and delight of recording in fine language the results of that study, ordinary life stole back, as it has a way of doing. He began to hear the knocks at the door, the ringing of bells, and to wonder what they meant; to hear steps going up and down the stairs, to be aware of Eastwood in the dining-room, and the rustle of Mary’s dress as she went about the house in the morning, and in the afternoon passed with a soft boom of the swinging door into her favourite hall. The routine of the house came back to the old man. He heard the servants in the kitchen, the ticking of that measured, leisurely old clock in the hall which took about five minutes to spell out the hour. He was not consciously paying any attention to these things. On the contrary, he was secluded from them, rapt in his books, knowing nothing of what was going on; yet he heard them all; and as he sat there through the long winter days and the still longer winter evenings, when there was rain or storm out of doors, and nothing to break the long, still blank of hours within, a sound would come to him now and then, even before the care of the household relaxed—the cry of a little voice, a running and pattering of small feet, sometimes an outburst of laughter, a small voice of weeping, which stirred strangely in the air about him and vaguely called forth old half-extinct sensations, as one might run over the jarred and half-silent keys of an old piano in the dark. This surprised him at first in his loneliness—then, when he had realized what it was, hurt him a little, rousing old wrath and bitterness, so that he would sometimes lay down his pen or close his book and all the past would come before him—the past, in which John his son had disappointed, mocked, insulted, and baffled his father. He would not allow himself to realize the presence of these children in the house, but he could not avoid thinking of the individual who stood between him and them, who was so real while they were so visionary.Always John! He had tried to live for years without thought of him and had been tranquil; it was grievous to be compelled thus to think of him again. This all happened, however, in the seclusion of his own mind, in the quiet of his library, and no one knew anything of it; not his daughter, who thought she knew his looks by heart; nor his servant, who had spelled him out by many guesses in the dark—as servants generally do—and imagined that he had his master at his fingers’ ends. But during all this time while these touches were playing upon him, bringing out ghosts of old sensations, muffled sounds and tones forgotten, Mr. Musgrave publicly ignored the fact that there were any children in the house, and contrived not to see them, nor to hear them, with a force of self-government and resolution which, in a nobler cause, would have been beyond all praise.
The effect of the change upon Miss Musgrave was scarcely less remarkable though very different. Her mental and moral education had been of a very peculiar kind. The tragedy which swallowed up her brother had interrupted the soft flowing current of her young life. All had gone smoothly before in the natural brightness of the beginning. And Mary, who had little passion in her temperament, who was more thoughtful than intense, and whose heart had never been awakened by any strong attachment beyond the ties of nature, had borne the interruption better than most people would have borne it, and had done her duty between her offending brother and her enraged father with less strain and violence of suffering than might have been imagined. And she had got through the more quiet years since without bitterness, with a self-adaptation to the primitive monotony of existence which was much helped, as most such virtues are, by temperament. She had formed her own theory of life, as most people do by the time they reach even the earliest stages of middle age; and this theory was the philosophical one that happiness, or the calm which does duty for happiness in most mature lives, was in reality very independent of events; that it came from within, not from without; and that life was wonderfully equal, neither bringing so much good, nor so much evil, as people of lively imaginations gave it credit for doing. Thus she had herself lived, not unhappy, except at the very crisis of the family life.She had suffered then. Who could hope (she said to herself) to do other than suffer one time or another in their life? But since then the calm and regularity of existence had come back, the routine which charms time away and brings content. There had no doubt been expectations in her mind which had come to nothing—expectations of more active joy, more actual well-being, than had ever fallen to her lot; but these expectations had gradually glided away, and no harm had been done. If she had no intensity of enjoyment, neither had she any wretchedness. She had enough to do; her life was full, and she was fairly happy. So she said to herself; so she had said many a day to Mr. Pen, who shook his mildly melancholy head and dissented—as far as he ever dissented from anything said by Miss Mary. Her brother was lost—away—wandering in the darkness of the great world as in a desert. But if he had been near at hand, absorbed in his married life, his wife, who was not of her species, and his unknown children, would not he have been just as much lost to Mary? So she persuaded herself at least; and so lived tranquilly, happy enough—certainly not unhappy;—and why should an ordinary mortal, youth being over, wish for more?