Chapter 9…

Chapter 9

She left the gleam-lit fire-place, She came to the bedside, Her look was like a sad embrace, The gaze of one who can divine A grief, and sympathize. Sweet flower, thy children’s eyes Are not more innocent than thine.

--M. ARNOLD--Tristram and Yseulte.

At last there was a respite. The choking, stifling flow of blood, that, with brief intervals, had for the last two hours threatened momentary death, had been at length checked; the eyes were closed that had roamed in helpless affright and agony from Violet to the doctors; and the sufferer was lying, in what his wife would fain have deemed a slumber, but the gasping respiration and looks of distress made it but too evident that it was the stillness of exhaustion, enhanced by dread of renewing the bleeding by word or motion.

There could be no concealment of the exceeding danger. His lungs had never been strong; and the slight cough, which, contrary to his usual habits, he had neglected all the summer, had been the token of mischief, which his recent expedition had aggravated to a fearful extent. Even the violent bleeding had not relieved the inflammation on the chest, and Violet had collected from the physician’s looks and words that it could be hardly expected that he should survive the day.

Yet, through that dreadful morning, she had not failed in resolution or composure: never once had her husband seen in her look, or heard in her tone, aught but what might cheer and sustain him--never had her fortitude or steadiness given way. She had not time to think of consolation and support; but her habit of prayer and trust came to her aid, and brought strength and support around her “in these great waterfloods” of trouble. She was not forsaken in her hour of need. Hitherto there had been no space for reflection; now his quiescent state, though for the present so great a relief, brought the opportunity of realizing his situation; but therewith arose thankfulness for the space thus granted, and the power of praying that it might be blessed to him whether for life or death.

In watchfulness and supplication, she sat beside him, with her babe, much afraid that it should disturb him, and be unwelcome. However, when some little sound made him aware of its presence, he opened his eyes, moved his hand, as if to put back the covering that hid its face from him, and presently signed to have it placed on the bed by his side. It was a fine large dark boy, already so like him as to make the contrast the more striking and painful, between the unconscious serenity of the babe and the restless misery of the face of the father, laid low in the strength of manhood, and with a look of wretched uneasiness, as if the load on the mind was a worse torment than the weight on the labouring breath. He, who usually hardly deigned a glance at his infants, now lay gazing with inexpressible softness and sadness at the little sleeping face; and Violet, while gratified by that look of affection, could not help having it the more borne in on her mind, that death must be very near. Were the well-springs of love, so long closed up, only opening when he was about to leave his children for ever? If she could only have heard him speak!

Presently, as if there was some sting of reproach in the impassive features, he turned his head away abruptly, with a deep groan, and hid his face. She took away the child, and there was another silence, which she ventured to break now and then, by a few sentences of faith and prayer, but without being able to perceive whether he attended. Suddenly he started, as if thrilled in every vein, and glanced around with terrified anxiety, of which she could not at first perceive the cause, till she found it was the postman’s knock. He held out his hand for the letters, and cast a hurried look at their directions. None were for him, but there was one in his sister’s hand-writing. Violet did not feel herself able to read it, and was laying it aside, when she saw his looks following it. Her present world was so entirely in that room that she had forgotten all beyond; and it only now occurred to her to say, ‘Your father? Do you wish for him? I will write.’

‘Telegraph.’ Even this whisper brought back the cough that was anguish and terror.

It was already so late in the day, that though thus summoned, there was no chance of Lord Martindale’s arriving till the following evening; and Violet’s heart sank at reckoning up the space that must elapse, more especially when she saw the perturbed eye, the startings at each sound, the determination to know the business of every one who came to speak to her--evident indications that there was some anxiety on his mind which she could not comprehend.

Thus passed the day--between visits from desponding doctors and vain measures for reducing the inflammation. At night Mr. Harding would have prevailed on her to go to rest, promising to keep watch in her stead; but she only shook her head, and said she could not. She had not seen, and had scarcely thought of, the elder children all day; but at about eleven o’clock at night she was startled by a sound of lamentable crying,--Johnnie’s voice in the nursery. The poor little boy’s nerves had been so much shaken by the fire at Martindale, that he had become subject to night alarms, which sometimes showed their effect for the whole subsequent day; and his mother stole away on hearing his cry, leaving Arthur in Mr. Harding’s charge, and hoping not to be missed.

Sarah was standing over Johnnie, half-coaxing, half-scolding while he sat up in his little crib, shivering and sobbing, with chattering teeth, and terrified exclamations about papa all over blood, lying dead under the burning windows.

‘There now, you have brought your poor mamma up!’ said Sarah, indignantly.

‘Mamma, mamma!’ and the cold trembling little creature clasped itself upon her neck and bosom, still repeating the dreadful words. She carried him to the fire, warmed him on her lap, caressed and soothed him, as his understanding awoke, telling him that papa was safe in his own room,--he was ill, very ill, and Johnnie must pray for him; but oh! he was alive, safe in his own bed. But as Johnnie nestled to her, repeating, ‘Say it again, mamma, I was so frightened! I can’t get it out of my head. Oh! is papa safe?’ there would come the thought that, with morning, the child might have to hear that he was fatherless.

This dread, and the desire to efface the impression of the terrible dream, induced her, when he had obediently struggled for composure, to tell him that, on condition of perfect stillness, he might come down with her, and have a little glimpse of papa. Wrapping him up, she took him in by the open dressing-room door, to which Arthur’s back was turned, trusting to escape observation. But nothing eluded those fever-lighted eyes, and they instantly fell upon the little trembling figure, the quivering face and earnest gaze.

‘I hope we have not disturbed you,’ apologized Violet; ‘we hoped you would not hear us. Poor Johnnie woke up crying so much at your being ill, that I ventured to bring him to have one look at you, for fear he should not go to sleep again.’

She need not have feared. Even while she spoke Arthur held out his hands, with a countenance that caused Johnnie, with a stifled exclamation of ‘Papa! papa!’ to spring on the bed, and there he lay, folded closely to his father’s breast.

It was but for a moment. Violet had to lift the child hastily away, to be carried off by Sarah, that he might not witness the terrible suffering caused by the exertion and emotion; and yet, when this was passed, she could not repent of what she had done, for one great grief had thus been spared to herself and her boy.

She knew that to discover his son’s ardent affection must be a poignant reproach for his neglect and jealousy, and she grieved at once for him and with him; but she could not understand half the feelings of bitter anguish that she perceived in his countenance and gestures. She did not know of his expectation that each ring of the bell might bring the creditors’ claims to heap disgrace upon him, nor how painful were the thoughts of her and of the children, totally unprovided for, without claim during his father’s lifetime, even on his own scanty portion as a younger son. He could only cast them on the mercy of his father and brother; and what right had he to expect anything from them, after his abuse of their kindness and forbearance? He thought of his neglect of his patient devoted wife, whom he was leaving, with her little ones, to struggle with poverty and dependence; he thought of his children growing up to know him only as the improvident selfish father, who had doomed them to difficulties, and without one tender word or kind look to grace his memory. No wonder he turned, unable to brook the sight of his unconscious babe; and that, when with morning little steps and voices sounded above, such a look of misery came over his face, that Violet hastened to order the children down to the dining-room, out of hearing.

Ere long, however, from the other room, appropriated to the baby, a face peeped in, and Johnnie sprang to her side with earnest whispers: ‘Mamma, may I not say my prayers with you! I will not wake papa, but I can’t bear it without!’ and the tears were in his eyes.

Violet’s glance convinced her that this would be anything but disturbing, and she consented. Johnnie thought his father asleep, but she saw him watching the boy, as he stood with clasped hands, and eyes in fixed steadfast gaze, repeating the Creed, so gravely and distinctly, that not one of the whispering accents was lost. Looking upwards, as if pursuing some thought far away, Johnnie said, ‘Amen’; and then knelt, breathing forth his innocent petitions, with their mention of father, mother, sisters, and little brother; and therewith a large teardrop gathered in the eyes fixed on him--but she would not seem to notice, and bent her head over the boy, who, when his daily form was finished, knelt on, and pressed her arm. ‘Mamma,’ he whispered, very low indeed, ‘may I say something for papa?’ and on her assent, ‘O God! make dear, dear papa better, if it be Thy heavenly will, and let it be Thy heavenly will.’

Arthur’s face was hidden; she only saw his fingers holding up the covering with a quivering grasp. Johnnie rose up quite simply, and letting him continue in the belief that his father slept, she allowed him to go noiselessly away, after she had held him fast in her arms, able to feel, even now, the comfort and blessing of her child.

Some little time had passed before Arthur looked up; then gazing round, as if seeking something, he said, ‘Where is he?’

‘Johnnie? He is gone, he did not know you were awake. Shall I send for him?’

‘For all.’

They came; but he was made to feel that he had disregarded them too long. They had never been familiarized with him; seldom saw him, and were kept under restraint in his presence; and there was no intimacy to counteract the fright inspired by his present appearance. Ghastly pale, with a hectic spot on each cheek, with eyes unnaturally bright and dilated, and a quantity of black hair and whiskers, he was indeed a formidable object to the little girls; and Violet was more grieved than surprised when Annie screamed with affright, and had to be carried away instantly; and Helen backed, with her hands behind her, resisting all entreaties and remonstrance, and unheeding his outstretched hand. The child was of so determined and wilful a nature, that Violet dreaded an outbreak if she were too much pressed, and was forced to let her go--though much grieved, both for the distress that it gave Arthur, and for the thought of how his daughter might remember it by and by.

They supposed that Johnnie had gone with his sisters, but at the end of half an hour became aware that he had ever since been standing, almost hidden by the curtain, satisfied with merely being in the room. The fair face, so delicately tinted, the dark shady eyes, lovingly and pensively fixed on his father, and the expression, half mournful, half awe-struck, were a touching sight in so young a child, and Arthur seemed so to feel it. He signed to him to come near; and with a flush, between joy and fear, the little boy was instantly at his side. One hot hand enfolded the small soft cool one, the other pressed fondly on the light silken waves of hair. After thus holding him for some moments, he tried to speak, in whispering breathless gasps of a word at a time.

‘You’ll comfort her!’ and he looked towards his mother, ‘You’ll take care of the others--will you?’

‘If I can. God takes care of us,’ said Johnnie, wistfully, as if striving to understand, as he felt the pressure redoubled on hand and head, as if to burn in what was uttered with such difficulty and danger.

‘Tell your grandfather I trust you all to him. He must forgive. Say so to him. You’ll be a better son to him than I. When you know all, don’t remember it against me.’

He could say no more, it had brought on a fit of coughing and breathlessness, through which he scarcely struggled. Silence was more than ever enforced; but throughout the day the oppression was on the increase, especially towards the evening, when he became excited by the expectation of his father’s arrival. He sat, pillowed high up, each respiration an effort that spread a burning crimson over his face, while eye and ear were nervously alert.

‘Arthur is very ill, and begs to see you,’ was the telegraphic message that filled the cottage at Brogden with consternation. Lady Martindale was too unwell to leave home, but Theodora was thankful to her father for deciding that her presence was necessary for Violet’s sake; indeed, as they travelled in doubt and suspense, and she was continually reminded of that hurried journey when her unchastened temper had been the torment of herself and of her brother, she felt it an undeserved privilege to be allowed to go to him at all. Instead of schemes of being important, there was a crashing sense of an impending blow; she hardly had the power to think or speculate in what form, or how heavily it might fall. She had only room for anxiety to get forward.

They arrived; she hurried up the stairs, only catching James’s words, declaring his master no better.

She saw in the twilight a slight bending form, coming down, holding by the balusters. Violet was in her arms, clasping her with a trembling, almost convulsive tightness, without speaking.

‘O, Violet, what is it? Is he so very ill?’

Lord Martindale hastened up at the same moment, and Violet recovering, in a few words, spoken very low, but clearly, told of his condition, adding, ‘He has been watching for you all this time, he heard you come, and wants you directly, but don’t let him speak.’

She hung on Theodora’s arm, and guided them up, as if hardly able to stand. She opened the outer room door, and there (while the nurse had taken her place) sat Johnnie on the rug, with the baby lying across his lap, and his arms clasped tenderly round it. It was restless, and he looked up to his mother, who bent down and took it in her arms, while Lord Martindale passed on. Theodora stood appalled and overawed. This was beyond even her fears.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Violet, who had sunk into a chair.

‘O, Violet, when?--how!--’

But a look of horror came over Violet; she started up, almost threw the infant into Theodora’s arms, and vanished into the other room. ‘Oh! what is it! What is the matter?’ exclaimed Theodora.

‘The cough, the blood,’ said Johnnie, in a low voice; and turning away with a suppressed sob he threw himself down, and hid his face on a chair. She was in an agony to pass that closed door, but the baby was fretting and kept her prisoner.

After some minutes had thus passed, her father appeared, and would have gone on without seeing her, but she detained him by an imploring cry and gasp, and entreated to hear what had happened.

‘The blood-vessel again--I must send for Harding.’

‘Shall I tell James to go?’ inquired a little quiet voice, as Johnnie lifted up his flushed face.

‘Do so, my dear;’ and as the little boy left the room, his grandfather added, with the calmness of hopelessness, ‘Poor child! it is of no use, it must soon be over now;’ and he was returning, when Theodora again held him fast--‘Papa! papa! I must see him, let me come!’

‘Not yet,’ said her father; ‘the sight of a fresh person might hasten it. If there is any chance, we must do nothing hazardous. I will call you when they give up hope.’

Theodora was forced to relinquish her hold, for the baby screamed outright, and required all her efforts to hush its cries that they might not add fresh distress to the sick room. It seemed to make her own misery of suspense beyond measure unendurable, to be obliged to control herself so as to quiet the little creature by gentle movements, and to have its ever-renewed wailings filling her ears, when her whole soul hung on the sounds she could catch from the inner room. No one came to relieve her; only Johnnie returned, listened for a moment at the door, and dropped into his former position, and presently Mr. Harding passed rapidly through the room.

Long, long she waited ere the door once more opened. Her father came forth. Was it the summons? But he stopped her move towards the room. ‘Not yet; the bleeding is checked.’

Then as Mr. Harding followed, they went out of the room in consultation, and almost the next moment Violet herself glided in, touched Johnnie’s head, and said, ‘Papa is better, darling;’ then took the baby from Theodora, saying, ‘Thank you, you shall see him soon; she was again gone, Johnnie creeping after, whither Theodora would have given worlds to follow.

After another interval, he returned with a message that mamma begged Aunt Theodora to be so kind as to go and make tea for grandpapa; she thought dear papa was breathing a little more easily, but he must be quite quiet now.

Obeying the sentence of banishment, she found her father sending off a hasty express to give more positive information at home. ‘We must leave them to themselves a little while,’ he said. ‘There must be no excitement till he has had time to rally. I thought he had better not see me at first.’

‘Is he worse than John has been?’

‘Far worse. I never saw John in this immediate danger.’

‘Did this attack begin directly after you came?’

‘It was the effort of speaking. He WOULD try to say something about racing debts--Gardner, papers in his coat-pocket, and there broke down, coughed, and the bleeding came on. There is something on his mind, poor--’

Theodora made a sign to remind him of Johnnie’s presence; but the child came forward. ‘Grandpapa, he told me to tell you something,’ and, with eyes bent on the ground, the little fellow repeated the words like a lesson by rote.

Lord Martindale was much overcome; he took his grandson on his knee, and pressed him to his breast without being able to speak, then, as if to recover composure by proceeding to business, he sent him to ask James for the coat last worn by his papa, and bring the papers in the pocket. Then with more agitation he continued, ‘Yes, yes, that was what poor Arthur’s eyes were saying all the time. I could only promise to settle everything and take care of her; and there was she, poor thing, with a face like a martyr, supporting his head, never giving way, speaking now and then so calmly and soothingly, when I could not have said a word. I do believe she is almost an angel!’ said Lord Martindale, with a burst of strong emotion. ‘Take care of her! She will not want that long! at this rate. Harding tells me he is very anxious about her: she is not by any means recovered, yet he was forced to let her sit up all last night, and she has been on her feet this whole day! What is to become of her and these poor children? It is enough to break one’s heart!’

Here Johnnie came back. ‘Grandpapa, we cannot find any papers. James has looked in all the clothes papa wore when he came home, and he did not bring home his portmanteau.’

‘Come home! Where had he been?’

‘I don’t know. He was away a long time.’

Lord Martindale started, and repeated the words in amaze. Theodora better judged of a child’s ‘long time,’ and asked whether it meant a day or a week. ‘Was it since the baby was born that he went?’

‘Baby was a week old. He was gone one--two Sundays, and he came back all on a sudden the day before yesterday, coughing so much that he could not speak, and the gentleman told mamma all about it.’

‘What gentleman, Johnnie? Was it Mr. Gardner?’

‘O no; this was a good-natured gentleman.’

‘Mr. Herries, or Captain Fitzhugh?’

‘No, it was a long name, and some one I never saw before; but I think it was the man that belongs to the owl.’

‘What can the child mean?’ asked Lord Martindale.

Johnnie mounted a chair, and embraced his little stuffed owl.

‘The man that gave me this.’

‘Percy’s Athenian owl!’ cried Theodora.

‘Was Fotheringham the name?’ said Lord Martindale.

‘Yes, it was the name like Aunt Helen’s,’ said Johnnie.

‘Has he been here since?’

‘He called to inquire yesterday morning. I am not sure,’ said the exact little boy, ‘but I think he said he met papa in the steamer.’

It seemed mystery on mystery, and James could only confirm his young master’s statement. After the little boy had answered all the questions in his power he slid down from his grandfather’s knee, saying that it was bed-time, and wished them good night in a grave, sorrowful, yet childlike manner, that went to their hearts. He returned, in a short time, with a message that mamma thought papa a little better and ready to see them. Theodora went up first; Johnnie led her to the door, and then went away, while Violet said, almost inaudibly,

‘Here is Theodora come to see you.’

Prepared as Theodora was, she was startled by the bloodlessness of the face, and the hand that lay without movement on the coverlet, while the gaze of the great black eyes met her with an almost spectral effect; and the stillness was only broken by the painful heaving of the chest, which seemed to shake even the bed-curtains. But for Violet’s looks and gesture, Theodora would not have dared to go up to him, take his hand, and, on finding it feebly return her pressure, bend over and kiss his forehead.

‘His breath is certainly relieved, and there is less fever,’ repeated Violet; but to Theodora this seemed to make it only more shocking. If this was better, what must it not have been? Her tongue positively refused to speak, and she only stood looking from her brother to his wife, who reclined, sunk back in her chair beside him, looking utterly spent and worn out, her cheeks perfectly white, her eyes half-closed, her whole frame as if all strength and energy were gone. That terrible hour had completely exhausted her powers; and when Theodora had recollected herself, and summoned Lord Martindale, who undertook the night watch, Violet had not voice to speak; she only hoarsely whispered a few directions, and gave a sickly submissive smile as her thanks.

For one moment she revived, as she smoothed Arthur’s bed, moistened his lips, and pressed her face to his; then she allowed Theodora almost to lift her away, and support her into the next room, where Sarah was waiting. Even thought and anxiety seemed to be gone; she sat where they placed her, and when they began to undress her, put her hand mechanically to her dress, missed the fastening, and let it drop with a vacant smile that almost overcame Theodora. They laid her in bed, and she dropped asleep, like an infant, the instant her head was on the pillow. Theodora thought it cruel to arouse her to take nourishment; but Sarah was peremptory, and vigorously administered the spoonfuls, which she swallowed in the same unconscious manner. She was only roused a little by a sound from the baby: ‘Give him to me, he will be quieter so;’ and Sarah held him to her, she took him in her arms, and was instantly sunk in the same dead slumber.

‘My pretty lamb!’ mourned the cold stern servant, as she arranged her coverings; ‘this is the sorest brash we have had together yet, and I doubt whether ye’ll win through with it. May He temper the blast that sends it.’

Gazing at her for a few seconds, she raised her hand to dry some large tears; and as if only now conscious of Miss Martindale’s presence, curtsied, saying, in her usual manner, ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. There is the room next the nursery made ready for you.’

‘I could not go, Sarah, thank you. Go to your children; I will take care of her. Pray go.’

‘I will, thank you, ma’am. We will have need of all our strength before we have done.’

‘How has she been before this?’

‘About as well as usual at first, ma’am, till he threw her back with going off into they foreign parts, where he has been and as good as catched his death, and would have died if Mr. Fotheringham had not brought him home.’

‘What! has he been abroad, Sarah?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I was holding the baby when he says to Missus he was going to Bully, or Boulong--’

‘Boulogne--’

‘Yes, Bullying, or some such place; and bullied him they have; stripped him even of his very portmanteau, with his eight new shirts in it, that they have! Well, Missus, she says his cold would be worse, and he said it only wanted a change, and she need never fret, for he meant to get quit of the whole concern. But for that, I would have up and told him he didn’t ought to go, and that he must stay at home and mind her, but then I thought, if he did get rid of them nasty horses, and that there Mr. Gardner, with his great nasturtions on his face, it would be a blessed day. But I ought to have known how it would be: he is too innocent for them; and they have never been content till they have been and got his very clothes, and given him his death, and broke the heart of the bestest and most loving-heartedest lady as ever lived. That they have!’

Having eased her mind by this tirade, Sarah mended the fire, put every comfort in Miss Martindale’s reach, advised her to lie down by her mistress, and walked off.

Theodora felt giddy and confounded with the shocks of that day. It was not till she had stretched herself beside Violet that she could collect her perceptions of the state of affairs; and oh! what wretchedness! Her darling brother, round whom the old passionate ardour of affection now clung again, lying at death’s door; his wife sinking under her exertions;--these were the least of the sorrows, though each cough seemed to rend her heart, and that sleeping mother was like a part of her life. The misery was in that mystery--nay, in the certainty, that up to the last moment of health Arthur had been engaged in his reckless, selfish courses! If he were repentant, there was neither space nor power to express it, far less for reparation. He was snatched at once from thoughtless pleasure and disregard of religion--nay, even of the common charities of home! And to fasten the guilt to herself were those few half-uttered words--races, debts, Gardner!

‘If you once loosen the tie of home, he will go back to courses and companions that have done him harm enough already.’ ‘Beware of Mark Gardner!’ ‘Whatever comes of these races, it is your doing, not mine.’ Those warnings flashed before her eyes like letters of fire, and she turned her face to the pillow as it were to hide from them, as well as to stifle the groans that could not have been wrung from her by bodily pain. ‘Oh, my sin has found me out! I thought I had been punished, but these are the very dregs! His blood is on my head! My brother! my brother! whom I loved above all! He was learning to love his home and children; she was weaning him from those pursuits! What might he not have been? I led him away! When he shrank from the temptation, I dragged him to it! I gave him back to the tempter! I, who thought I loved him--I did the devil’s work! Oh! this is the heavier weight! Why should it crush others with the only guilty one? Oh! have mercy, have mercy on him! Let me bear all! Take me instead! Let me not have slain his soul!’

It was anguish beyond the power of words. She could not lie still; she knelt on the floor, and there the flood of despair fell on her more overwhelmingly; and crouching, almost cast on the ground, she poured out incoherent entreaties for mercy, for space for his repentance, for his forgiveness. That agony of distracted prayer must have lasted a long time. Some sound in her brother’s room alarmed her, and in starting she shook the table. Her father came to ask if anything was the matter; told her that Arthur was quiet, and begged her to lie down. It was a relief to have something to obey, and she moved back. The light gleamed on something bright. It was the setting of Helen’s cross! ‘Ah! I was not worthy to save it; that was for Johnnie’s innocent hand! I may not call this my cross, but my rod!’ Then came one thought: ‘I came not for the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance.’ Therewith hot tears rose up. ‘With Him there is infinite mercy and redemption.’ Some power of hope revived, that Mercy might give time to repent, accept the heartfelt grief that might exist, though not manifested to man! The hope, the motive, and comfort in praying, had gleamed across her again; and not with utter despair could she beseech that the sins she had almost caused might be so repented of as to receive the pardon sufficient for all iniquity.

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Chapter 10

Thus have I seen a temper wild In yokes of strong affection bound Unto a spirit meek and mild, Till chains of good were on him found. He, struggling in his deep distress, As in some dream of loneliness, Hath found it was an angel guest.

--Thoughts in Past Years

Five days had passed, and no material change had taken place. There was no serious recurrence of bleeding, but the inflammation did not abate, and the suffering was grievous, though Arthur was so much enfeebled that he could not struggle under it. His extreme debility made his body passive, but it was painfully evident that his mind was as anxious and ill at ease as ever. There was the same distrustful watch to see every letter, and know all that passed; the constant strain of every faculty, all in absolute silence, so that his nurses, especially Theodora, felt as if it would be a positive personal relief to them if those eyes would be closed for one minute.

What would they have given to know what passed in that sleepless mind? But anything that could lead to speaking or agitation was forbidden; even, to the great grief of Theodora, the admission of the clergyman of the parish. Lord Martindale agreed with the doctors that it was too great a risk, and Violet allowed them to decide, whispering to Theodora that she thought he heeded Johnnie’s prayers more than anything read with a direct view to himself. The cause of his anxiety remained in doubt. Lord Martindale had consulted Violet, but she knew nothing of any papers. She was aware that his accounts were mixed up with Mr. Gardner’s, and believed he had gone to Boulogne to settle them; and she conjectured that he had found himself more deeply involved than he had expected. She remembered his having said something of being undone, and his words to Johnnie seemed to bear the same interpretation.

Mr. Fotheringham’s apparition was also a mystery; so strange was it that, after bringing Arthur home in such a state, he should offer no further assistance. James was desired to ask him to come in, if he should call to inquire; but he did not appear, and the father and sister began to have vague apprehensions, which they would not for the world have avowed to each other, that there must be worse than folly, for what save disgrace would have kept Percy from aiding John’s brother in his distress? Each morning rose on them with dread of what the day might bring forth, not merely from the disease within, but from the world without; each postman’s knock was listened to with alarm, caught from poor Arthur.

His wife was of course spared much of this. That worst fear could not occur to her; she had no room for any thought but for him as he was in the sight of Heaven, and each hour that his life was prolonged was to her a boon and a blessing. She trusted that there was true sorrow for the past--not merely dread of the consequences, as she traced the shades upon his face, while he listened to the hymns that she encouraged Johnnie to repeat. In that clear, sweet enunciation, and simple, reverent manner, they evidently had a great effect. He listened for the first time with his heart, and the caresses, at which Johnnie glowed with pleasure as a high favour, were, she knew, given with a species of wondering veneration. It was Johnnie’s presence that most soothed him; his distressing, careworn expression passed away at the first sight of the innocent, pensive face, and returned not while the child was before him, bending over a book, or watching the baby, or delighted at having some small service to perform. Johnnie, on his side, was never so well satisfied as in the room, and nothing but Violet’s fears for his health prevented the chief part of his time from being spent there.

Her own strength was just sufficient for the day. She could sit by Arthur’s side, comprehend his wishes by his face, and do more to relieve and sustain him than all the rest; and, though she looked wretchedly weak and worn, her power of doing all that was needed, and looking upon him with comforting refreshing smiles, did not desert her. The night watch she was forced to leave to be divided between his father and sister, with the assistance alternately of Sarah and the regular nurse, and she was too much exhausted when she went to bed, for Theodora to venture on disturbing her by an unnecessary word.

Theodora’s longing was to be continually with her brother, but this could only be for a few hours at night; and then the sight of his suffering, and the difficulty of understanding his restlessness of mind, made her so wretched, that it took all the force of her strong resolution to conceal her unhappiness; and she marvelled the more at the calmness with which the feeble frame of Violet endured the same scene. The day was still more trying to her, for her task was the care of the children, and little Helen was so entirely a copy of her own untamed self, as to be a burdensome charge for a desponding heart and sinking spirits.

On the fifth morning the doctors perceived a shade of improvement; but to his attendants Arthur appeared worse, from being less passive and returning more to the struggle and manifestation of oppression and suffering. He made attempts at questions, insisting on being assured that no letter nor call had been kept from him; he even sent for the cards that had been left, and examined them, and he wanted to renew the conversation with his father; but Lord Martindale silenced him at once, and left the room. He looked so much disappointed that Violet was grieved, and thought, in spite of the doctors, that it might have been better to have run the risk of letting him speak, for the sake of setting his mind at rest.

Lord Martindale, however, saw so much peril in permitting a word to be uttered, that he deemed it safer to absent himself, and went out to try to trace out Mr. Fotheringham, and ask whether he could throw any light on Arthur’s trouble.

The children were out of doors, and Theodora was profiting by the interval of quiet to write to her mother, when she heard James announce, ‘Mr. Fotheringham.’

She looked up, then down. Her first thought was of her brother; the next brought the whole flood of remembrances, and she could not meet his eye.

He advanced, but there was no friendly greeting. As to a stranger, he said, ‘I hope Colonel Martindale is better?’

Could it be himself? She gave a hasty glance. It was; he chose to disown her; to meet her without even a hand held out! Rallying her fortitude, she made answer, ‘Thank you; we hope--’

She got no further--her hand was grasped. ‘Theodora! I did not know you.’

She had forgotten her altered looks! Relieved, she smiled, and said, ‘Yes, I am a strange figure. They think Arthur a little better to-day, thank you.’

‘How has it been?’

He listened to the details with eagerness, that dismissed from her mind the sickening apprehension of his knowing of any hidden evil; then, saying he was pressed for time, begged her to ask Mrs. Martindale to let him speak to her on a matter of such importance that he must venture on disturbing her.

Theodora beckoned to Violet at the door, hoping to elude Arthur’s notice; but any attempt at secrecy made him more distrustful, and the name had hardly been whispered before she was startled by hearing--‘Bring him here.’

Much frightened, the wife and sister expostulated, thus making him more determined; he almost rose on his elbow to enforce his wishes, and at last said, ‘You do me more harm by preventing it.’

Violet felt the same; and in fear and trembling begged Theodora to call Percy. She knew herself to be responsible for the danger, but saw the impossibility of preventing the interview without still greater risk. Indeed, while Theodora delayed Percy with cautions, impatience, and the fear of being disappointed, were colouring each sunken cheek with a spot of burning red, the hands were shaking uncontrollably, and the breath was shorter than ever, so that she was on the point of going to hasten the visitor, when he knocked at the door.

She signed to him at once to turn to Arthur, who held out his hand, and met his greeting with an anxious, imploring gaze, as if to ask whether, after all, he brought him hope.

‘Well,’ said Percy, cheerfully, ‘I think it is settled.’

Arthur relaxed that painful tension of feature, and lay back on his pillows, with a relieved though inquiring look.

‘Begging your pardon for being meddlesome,’ continued Percy, ‘I thought I saw a way of being even with that scoundrel. Your papers had got into my pocket, and, as I had nothing else to do, I looked them over after parting with you, and saw a way out of the difficulty. I was coming in the morning to return them and propound my plan, but finding that you could not be seen, I ventured to take it on myself at once, for fear he should get out of reach.’

He paused, but Arthur’s eyes asked on.

‘I had reason to think him gone to Paris. I followed him thither, and found he was making up to Mrs. Finch. I let him know that I was aware of this villainy, and of a good deal more of the same kind, and threatened that, unless he came in to my terms, I would expose the whole to his cousin, and let her know that he is at this moment engaged to Miss Brandon. She is ready to swallow a good deal, but that would have been too much, and he knew it. He yielded, and gave me his authority to break up the affair.’

As Arthur was still attentive and anxious, Percy went on to explain that he had next gone to the man who kept the horses, and by offers of ready money and careful inspection of his bills, had reduced his charge to a less immoderate amount. The money had been advanced for a portion of Arthur’s share of the debts, and a purchaser was ready for the horses, whose price would clear off the rest; so that nothing more was wanted but Arthur’s authority for the completion of the sale, which would free him from all present danger of pressure upon that score.

‘Supposing you do not disavow me, said Percy, ‘I must ask pardon for going such lengths without permission.’

A clutch of the hand was the answer, and Percy then showed him the accounts only waiting for his signature.

The money advanced was nearer five thousand pounds than four; and Arthur, pointing to the amount, inquired, by look and gesture, ‘Where does it come from?’

‘Never mind; it was honestly come by. It is a lot that has accumulated out of publishing money, and was always bothering me with railway shares. It will do as well in your keeping.’

‘It is throwing it into a gulf.’

‘In your father’s, then. I will take care of myself, and speak when I want it. Don’t trouble your father about it till he sees his way.’

‘I must give you my bond.’

‘As you please, but there is no hurry.’

Arthur, however, was bent on giving his signature at once, and, as he looked towards his wife and child, said, ‘For their sakes, thank you.’

‘I did it for their sakes,’ said Percy, gruffly, perhaps to check Arthur’s agitation; but as if repenting of what sounded harsh, he took the infant in his arms, saying to Violet, ‘You have a fine fellow here! Eyes and forehead--his father all over!’

Arthur held out his hand eagerly. ‘Let him be your godson--make him like any one but me.’

Percy took two turns in the room before he could answer. ‘My godson, by all means, and thank you; but you will have the making of him yourself. You are much better than I expected.’

Arthur shook his head; but Violet, with a look, sufficient reward for anything, said, ‘It is you that are making him better.’

He replied by inquiries about the christening. The baby was a day less than four weeks old, and Violet was anxious to have him baptized; so that it was arranged that it should take place immediately on Percy’s return from Worthbourne, whither he was to proceed that same afternoon, having hitherto been delayed by Arthur’s affairs. This settled, he took leave. Arthur fervently pressed his hand, and, as Violet adjusted the pillows, sank his head among them as if courting rest, raising his eyes once more to his ‘friend in need,’ and saying, ‘I shall sleep now.’

Violet only hoped that Mr. Fotheringham understood what inexpressible gratitude was conveyed in those words, only to be appreciated after watching those six wakeful, straining days and nights.

Meantime, Theodora waited in fear, too great at first to leave space for other thoughts; but as time past, other memories returned. On coming to summon Percy she had found him standing before the little stuffed owl, and she could not but wonder what thoughts it might have excited, until suddenly the recollection of Jane dissipated her visions with so violent a revulsion that she was shocked at herself, and perceived that there was a victory to be achieved.

‘It shall be at once,’ said she. ‘I WILL mention her. To be silent would show consciousness. Once done, it is over. It is easier with my altered looks. I am another woman now.’

She heard him coming down, and almost hoped to be spared the meeting, but, after a moment’s pause, he entered.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hope I have done him no harm. I think better of him now than when I came home. He looks to me as if the worst was over.’

They were the first words of hope, and spoken in that hearty, cheery voice, they almost overset her weakened spirits, and the struggle with tears would not let her answer.

‘You have had a most trying time,’ said he, in the kind way that stirred up every old association; but that other thought made her guarded, and she coldly hurried out the words--

‘Yes; this is the first time my father has been out. He went in search of you, to ask how you met poor Arthur, who has been able to give no account of himself.’

‘We met on board the steamer. He had been obliged to leave Boulogne without finishing his business there, and I went back to settle it for him.’

‘And the papers he had lost?’

‘I had them: it is all right.’

‘And his mind relieved?’

‘I hope it is.’

‘Oh! then, we may dare to hope!’ cried she, breathing freely.

‘I trust so; but I must go. Perhaps I may meet Lord Martindale.’

With a great effort, and a ‘now-or-never’ feeling, she abruptly said, ‘I hope Jane is well.’

He did not seem to understand; and confused, as if she had committed an over familiarity of title, she added, ‘Mrs. Fotheringham.’

She was startled and hurt at his unconstrained manner.

‘Very well, I believe. I shall see her this evening at Worthbourne.’

‘Has she been staying there long?’ said Theodora, going on valiantly after the first plunge.

‘Ever since the summer. They went home very soon after the marriage.’

A new light broke in on Theodora. She was tingling in every limb, but she kept her own counsel, and he proceeded. ‘I saw them at Paris, and thought it did very well. She is very kind to him, keeps him in capital order, and has cured him of some of his ungainly tricks.’

‘How did it happen? I have heard no particulars.’

‘After his mother’s death poor Pelham was less easily controlled: he grew restless and discontented, and both he and my uncle fell under the influence of an underbred idle youth in the neighbourhood, who contrived at last to get Sir Antony’s consent to his taking Pelham abroad with him as his pupil. At Florence they met with these ladies, who made much of their cousin, and cajoled the tutor, till this marriage was effected.’

‘She must be nearly double his age.’

‘She will manage him the better for it. There was great excuse for her. The life she was obliged to lead was almost an apology for any way of escape. If only it had been done openly, and with my uncle’s consent, no one could have had any right to object, and I honestly believe it is a very good thing for all parties.’

‘Would Sir Antony have consented?’

‘I have little doubt of it. He was hurt at first, but he was always fond of Jane. She is very attentive to him, and I hope makes him quite comfortable. He wrote to ask me to come and see them at Worthbourne, and I am on my way. I see it is getting late. Good-bye.’

Theodora’s heart had been bounding all this time. Her first impulse was to rush up to tell Violet; but as this could not be, she snatched up a bulky red volume, and throwing over the leaves till she came to F.--Fotheringham, Sir Antony, of Worthbourne, looked down the list of his children’s names, and beheld that the only one not followed by the fatal word “died” was Antony Pelham.

What had they all been doing not to have thought of this before? However, she recollected that it would have seemed as impossible that the half-witted youth should marry as that he should be on the Continent. The escape from the certainty that had so long weighed on her, taught her what the pain had been; and yet, when she came to analyze her gladness, it seemed to melt away.

She dwelt on her period of madness--her wilful, repeated rejection of warning; she thought of the unhappy Derby day--of her own cold ‘Very well’--her flirtation with Lord St. Erme. She recollected the passage with Annette Moss: and then, for her present person, it was changed beyond recognition, as had just been proved; nor could she wonder, as, turning to the mirror, she surveyed the figure in black silk and plain cap, beyond which the hair scarcely yet peeped out--the clearness and delicacy of skin destroyed, the face haggard with care and sorrow, the eyelids swollen by watchful nights. She almost smiled at the contrast to the brilliant, flashing-eyed, nut-brown maid in the scarlet-wreathed coronal of raven hair, whom she had seen the last time she cared to cast a look in that glass.

‘I am glad I am altered,’ said she, sternly. ‘It is well that I should not remind him of her on whom he wasted his hope and affection. It is plain that I shall never marry, and this is a mask under which I can meet him with indifference like his own. Yes, it was absolute indifference--nothing but his ordinary kindliness and humanity; neither embarrassment nor confusion--just as he would have met any old woman at Brogden.

If he remembers that time at all, it is as a past delusion, and there is nothing in me to recall what he once liked. He did not know me! Nonsense! I thought I was content only to know him safe from Jane--still his real self. I am. That is joy! All the rest is folly and selfishness. That marriage! How disgusting--and what crooked ways! But what is that to me? Jane may marry the whole world, so that Percy is Percy!’

The children were heard on the stairs, and Helen rushed in, shouting, in spite of the silencing finger, ‘Aunt, it is the owl man!’ and Johnnie himself, eager and joyous, ‘It is the man who came with papa.’

‘He met us,’ said Helen. ‘He knew my name, and he asked Annie’s, and carried her to our door.’

‘He said he had been into papa’s room,’ said Johnnie, ‘and had seen baby. He is a very good-natured gentleman. Don’t you like him, Aunt Theodora?’

‘And oh! aunt, he asked me whether we ever went to Brogden; and when he heard that we had been at the parsonage, he said he lived there when he was a little boy, and our nursery was his;’ chattered on Helen. ‘He asked if we were in the fire; and you know Johnnie can’t bear to hear of that; so I told him how funny it was when you came and pulled me out of bed, and we went down the garden with no shoes. And he asked whether that was the way you had grown so ugly, Aunt Theodora.’

‘No, Helen, he did not say that; for he was a gentleman,’ interposed Johnnie; ‘he only said he was afraid our aunt had been a sufferer, and Sarah told--’

‘And I told,’ again broke in Helen, ‘how Cousin Hugh said it was an honour and a glory to be burnt like you; and I told him how I got the water and should have put out the fire, if that horrid Simmonds had not carried me away, and I wish he had not. So long as I had not my curls burnt off,’ said Miss Helen, pulling one of the glossy chestnut rings into her sight, like a conscious beauty as she was.

‘He asked Sarah all about it,’ said Johnnie; ‘and he said we had a very good aunt; and, indeed, we have!’ climbing carelessly into her lap. ‘Then he met grandpapa, and they are walking in the square together.’

So Mr. Fotheringham could be in no real haste to be gone, and had only hurried away to avoid Theodora. However, there was no more musing time, the children’s dinner was ready, and she was going down with the little girls, when her father entered. ‘How is Arthur?’

It was answered by Johnnie, who was flying down-stairs with joyous though noiseless bounds, his whole person radiant with good tidings. ‘Papa is asleep! grandpapa. Papa is fast asleep!’

‘Have you been in the room?’

‘No; mamma came to the door and told me. Baby is gone up to our nursery, and nobody is to make the least noise, for papa is gone to sleep so comfortably!’

The boy had caught so much gladness from his mother’s look, that he almost seemed to understand the importance of that first rest. His grandfather stroked his hair, and in the same breath with Theodora, exclaimed, ‘It is owing to Percy!’

‘Has he told you about it?’ said Theodora.

‘So much as that there is a final break with that fellow Gardner--a comfort at least. Percy said they had got their affairs into a mess; Arthur had been trying to free himself, but Gardner had taken advantage of him, and used him shamefully, and his illness had forced him to come away, leaving things more complicated than ever. There was a feeling of revenge, it seems, at Arthur not having consented to some disgraceful scheme of his; but Percy did not give me the particulars. Meeting him in the steamer, ill and desperate--poor fellow--Percy heard the story, took care of him, and saw him home; then, finding next morning what a state he was in, and thinking there might be immediate demands--’

‘Oh! that was the terrible dread and anxiety!’

‘He did what not one man in a million would have done. He went off, and on his own responsibility adjusted the matter, and brought Gardner to consent. He said it had been a great liberty, and that he was glad to find he had not gone too far, and that Arthur approved.’

‘Do you know what it was?’

‘No; he assured me all was right, and that there was no occasion to trouble me with the detail. I asked if any advance was needed, and he said no, which is lucky, for I cannot tell how I could have raised it. For the rest, I could ask him no questions. No doubt it is the old story, and, as Arthur’s friend, he could not be willing to explain it to me. I am only glad it is in such safe hands. As to its being a liberty, I told him it was one which only a brave thorough-going friend would have taken. I feel as if it might be the saving of his life.’

Theodora bent down to help little Anna, and said, ‘You know it is Sir Antony Fotheringham’s son that Miss Gardner married?’

‘Ay!’ said Lord Martindale, so much absorbed in his son as to forget his daughter’s interest in Percival Fotheringham. ‘He says Arthur’s cough did not seem so painful as when he saw him before, and that he even spoke several times. I am frightened to think what the risk has been of letting him in.’

‘Arthur insisted,’ said Theodora, between disappointment at the want of sympathy, and shame for having expected it, and she explained how the interview had been unavoidable.

‘Well, it is well over, and no harm done,’ said Lord Martindale, not able to absolve the sister from imprudence. After a space, he added, ‘What did you say? The deficient young Fotheringham married?’

‘Yes, to Jane Gardner.’

‘Why, surely some one said it was Percy himself!’

‘So Violet was told at Rickworth.’

Lord Martindale here suddenly recollected all, as his daughter perceived by his beginning to reprove Helen for stirring about the salt. Presently he said, ‘Have you heard that the other sister, the widow--what is her name?’

‘Mrs. Finch--’

‘Is going to be foolish enough to marry that Gardner. She was your friend, was not she?’

‘Yes, poor thing. Did you hear much about her?’

‘Percy says that she was kind and attentive to the old man, as long as he lived, though she went out a great deal while they lived abroad, and got into a very disreputable style of society there. Old Finch has left everything in her power; and from some words overheard on the quay at Boulogne, Percy understood that Gardner was on his way to pay his court to her at Paris. There was a former attachment it seems, and she is actually engaged to him. One can hardly pity her. She must do it with her eyes open.’

Theodora felt much pity. She had grieved at the entire cessation of intercourse, even by letter, which had ensued when the Finches went to the Continent; and she thought Georgina deserved credit for not having again seen Mark, when, as it now appeared, there had lurked in her heart affection sufficient to induce her to bestow herself, and all her wealth, upon him, spendthrift and profligate as she must know him to be. Miserable must be her future life; and Theodora’s heart ached as she thought of wretchedness unaided by that which can alone give support through the trials of life, and bring light out of darkness. She could only pray that the once gay companion of her girlhood, whose thoughtlessness she had encouraged, might yet, even by affliction, be led into the thorny path which Theodora was learning to feel was the way of peace.

Arthur was wakened by the recurring cough, and the look of distress and anxiety returned; but the first word, by which Violet reminded him of Percy’s call, brought back the air of relief and tranquillity. Mr. Harding, at his evening visit, was amazed at the amendment; and Johnnie amused his grandfather by asking if the owl man was really a doctor, or whether Sarah was right when she said he had rescued papa and his portmanteau out of a den of thieves.

When Violet left the room at night, the patient resignation of her face was brightening into thankfulness; and while preparing for rest, she could ask questions about the little girls. Theodora knew that she might tell her tale; and sitting in her favourite place on Violet’s footstool, with her head bent down, she explained the error between the two cousins.

‘How glad I am!’ said the soft voice, ever ready to rejoice with her. ‘Somehow, I had never recollected it, he is so like what he used to be. I am very glad.’

‘Don’t treat it as if it was to concern me,’ said Theodora. ‘I care only as he remains the noblest of men.’

‘That he is.’

‘Don’t wish any more, nor think I do,’ said Theodora. ‘I never liked stories of young ladies who reform on having the small-pox. It is time nonsense should be out of my head when a man does not know me again.’

‘Oh! surely--did he not?’

‘Not till I spoke. No wonder, and it is better it should be so. I am unworthy any way. O, Violet, now will you not let me ask your forgiveness?’

‘What do you mean, dearest?’

‘Those races.’

Violet did not shrink from the mention; she kissed Theodora’s brow, while the tears, reserved for the time of respite, dropped fast and bright.

‘Poor dear,’ she said; ‘how much you have suffered!’

There was silence for some moments. Theodora striving to keep her tears as quiet as her sister’s.

‘I think,’ said Violet, low and simply, ‘that we shall be happy now.’

Then, after another silence, ‘Come, if we go on in this way, we shall not be fit for to-morrow, and you have only half a night. Dearest, I wish I could save you the sitting up! If he is better to-morrow, Johnnie shall take you for a walk.’

He was better, though the doctors, dismayed at yesterday’s imprudence, preached strenuously on his highly precarious state, and enforced silence and absence of excitement. Indeed, his condition was still such that the improvement could only be seen in occasional gleams; and as the relief from mental anxiety left him more attention to bestow on the suffering from the disorder, he was extremely depressed and desponding, never believing himself at all better.

The experiment of a visit from the little girls was renewed, but without better success; for the last week had increased the horrors of his appearance; and Theodora reported that Johnnie had confided to her, as a shocking secret, that the reason why Helen could not bear to go near papa was, that he looked exactly like Red Ridinghood’s wolf.

Violet was grateful for the saying, for it was the first thing that drew a smile from Arthur, and to court the child became a sort of interest and occupation that distracted his thoughts from himself. It was touching to see him watching her, as she ran in and out, trying to catch her eye, stretching out his hand invitingly, holding up fruit to allure her, and looking with fond, proud, yet mournful eyes, on her fresh healthful beauty. She used to try not to see him, and would race past at full speed, and speak to her mamma with her back to him; but gradually some mysterious attraction in that silent figure won sidelong glances from her, and she began to pause, each time with a longer and fuller tip-toe gaze, both hands pressed down on the top of her head, and a look like a wild fawn, till all at once, the wehr-wolf feeling would seize her, and she would turn and dash off as if for her life, while his eager, pleased face relaxed into disappointment, and her mother still said that time would bring her round.

At last, she took them completely by surprise, suddenly launching herself on the bed, and plunging her face into the midst of the black bristles; then, leaping down, and rushing to the door as if expecting to be caught. So violent a proceeding was almost more than Arthur could bear, and Violet, rising to smooth the coverings, began to preach gentleness; but shaken as he was, he was too much gratified to permit the reproof, smiled, and held up a bunch of grapes to invite the little maid back. But this was an offence; she put her hands behind her, and, with a dignified gesture, announced, ‘I do not give kisses for grapes. I did it because Johnnie will not let me alone, and said I was unkind.’

‘Theodora all over!’ said her father, much entertained. It was a great step that he had discovered that the children could afford him diversion, especially now, when nothing else could have served to wile away the tedious hours. He could bear no reading aloud from any one but Johnnie, whom he would not refuse; and to whom he listened with pride in a performance he fancied wonderful, while the little books cost no effort of attention, and yet their simple lessons floated on his thoughts, and perchance sank into his heart. Or when he lay panting and wearied out with oppression, the babe’s movements would attract his eye, and the prattlings of the little girls at their mamma’s side would excite a languid curiosity that drew him out of himself. Sometimes that childish talk left food for thought. One day when the children had been sent into the next room to share some fruit from the plate by his bed-side, Helen’s voice was overheard saying, ‘I wish papa would never get well!’

‘Helen! Helen, how can you?’ pleaded her brother’s shocked voice.

‘He is so much more good-natured when he is ill,’ was Helen’s defence. ‘I like him now; I don’t like him at all when he is well, because then he is always cross. Don’t you think so, Johnnie?’

‘That is not kind of you when he lies there, and it hurts him so sadly to breathe. You should wish him to be well, Helen.’

‘If he would be kind to me.’

‘O, you don’t know what it feels like to be ill,’ said Johnnie. ‘I do want to see him strong and able to ride, and go out to his soldiers again. I hope he will be kind still, and not go away and make mamma unhappy--’

‘If he would ever lead me by the hand, like the little girl’s papa at the house with the parrot, I should like that sort of papa, if he was not a little thin short ugly man. Should not you, Johnnie?’

‘No! I never shall like anything so well as my own papa. I do love him with my whole, whole heart! I am so glad he will let us love him now! It seems to come over me in the morning, and make me so glad when I remember it.’

Violet had been on the point of stopping this conversation, but Arthur would not permit her, and listened with his eyes filling with tears.

‘What have you done to that boy?’ he murmured.

‘It is his own loving self,’ said Violet.

Arthur pressed her hand to his lips. ‘My poor children! If papa ever were to get well--’

And Violet regretted that he had heard, for his emotion threw him back for the rest of the evening.

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Chapter 11

Then weep not o’er the hour of pain, As those who lose their all; Gather the fragments that remain, They’ll prove nor few nor small.

--M. L. DUNCAN

In the meantime Theodora and her father had been brought into contact with visitors from the external world. One morning James brought in a card and message of inquiry from Lord St. Erme, and Lord Martindale desired that he should be admitted. Theodora had just time to think how ridiculous it was of her to consider how she should appear to another old lover, before he came in, colouring deeply, and bending his head low, not prepared to shake hands; but when hers was held out, taking it with an eager yet bashful promptitude.

After a cordial greeting between him and her father, it was explained that he had not entirely recovered what he called his accident, and had come to London for advice; he had brought a parcel from Wrangerton for Mrs. Martindale, and had promised to carry the Moss family the latest news of the Colonel. While this was passing, and Lord Martindale was talking about Arthur, Theodora had time to observe him. The foreign dress and arrangement of hair were entirely done away with, and he looked like an Englishman, or rather an English boy, for the youthfulness of feature and figure was the same; the only difference was that there was a greater briskness of eye, and firmness of mouth, and that now that the blush on entering had faded, his complexion showed the traces of recent illness, and his cheeks and hands were very thin. When Theodora thought of the heroism he had shown, of her own usage of him, and of his remembrance of her in the midst of his worst danger, she could not see him without more emotion than she desired. He was like a witness against her, and his consciousness WOULD infect her! She longed for some of the cool manner that had come so readily with Percy, and with some difficulty brought out a composed inquiry for Lady Lucy; but he disconcerted her again by the rapid eager way in which he turned round at her voice.

‘Lucy is very well, thank you; I left her staying with my cousins, the Delavals. It is very hard to get her away from home, and she threatens not to stay a day after my return.’ He spoke in a hasty confused way, as if trying to spin everything out of the answer, so as to remain conversing with Theodora as long as possible.

‘How long shall you be in town?’ she asked, trying to find something she could say without awkwardness.

‘I can hardly tell. I have a good deal to do. Pray’--turning to Lord Martindale--‘can you tell me which is the best shop to go to for agricultural implements?’

Speed the plough! Farming is a happy sedative for English noblemen of the nineteenth century, thought Theodora, as she heard them discussing subsoil and rocks, and thought of the poet turned high farmer, and forgetting even love and embarrassment! However, she had the satisfaction of hearing, ‘No, we cannot carry it out thoroughly there without blowing up the rocks, and I cannot have the responsibility of defacing nature.’

‘Then you cannot be a thorough-going farmer.’

‘I cannot afford it, and would not if I could. It is only for the sake of showing the tenants that I am not devoid of the spirit of the age.’

Country gentlemen being happier in agricultural implement shops than anywhere else, Lord Martindale offered to accompany his friend and give his counsel. He would go up-stairs to see how Arthur was, and carry the parcel to Violet.

‘Pray tell Mrs. Martindale that her mother and sisters sent all manner of kind messages. Very pleasing people they are,’ said Lord St. Erme; ‘and Mrs. Moss was so very kind to my poor little sister that we hardly know how to be sufficiently grateful.’

‘I never saw any of the family but the brother,’ said Theodora.

‘And he is not the best specimen,’ said Lord St. Erme. ‘Some of the young ladies are remarkably nice people, very sensible, and Lucy is continually discovering some kindness of theirs among the poor people. Ah! that reminds me, perhaps you could tell me whether you know anything of a school in your neighbourhood, from which a master has been recommended to me--St. Mary’s, Whiteford.’

‘I don’t know much of it; I believe the clergyman takes pains about it.’

‘Do you think they would have a superior man there! Our funds are low, and we must not look for great attainments at present. It is easy to cram a man if he is intelligent; I only want a person who can keep up what is taught, and manage the reading-room on nights when we are not there.’

‘Have you a reading-room?’

‘Only at Wrangerton as yet; I want to set up another at Coalworth.’

‘Then you find it answer? How do you arrange?’

‘Two nights in the week we read to them, teach singing, or get up a sort of lecture. The other days there are books, prints, newspapers; and you will be surprised to see how much they appreciate them. There’s a lad now learning to draw, whose taste is quite wonderful! And if you could have seen their faces when I read them King Henry IV! I want to have the same thing at Coalworth for the winter--not in summer. I could not ask them to spend a minute, they can help, out of the free air and light; but in winter I cannot see those fine young men and boys dozing themselves into stolidity.’

Was this the man who contemned the whole English peasantry, colliers especially? Theodora rejoiced that his hobby had saved her a world of embarrassment, and still more that their tete-a-tete was interrupted. Lady Elizabeth Brandon begged to know whether Miss Martindale could see her.

She was on her way through London; and having just heard of Colonel Martindale’s illness, had come to inquire, and offer to be useful. Emma remained at the hotel. After Lord Martindale’s cheerful answer and warm thanks, the gentlemen set off together, and Theodora sat down with her good old friend to give the particulars, with all the fulness belonging to the first relief after imminent peril.

After the first, however, Lady Elizabeth’s attention wandered; and before the retrograding story had gone quite back to the original Brogden cough, she suddenly asked if Percival Fotheringham was in England.

‘Yes, at Worthbourne. You know it was his cousin--’

‘I know--it was a mistake,’ said Lady Elizabeth, hurrying over the subject, as by no means suited its importance in Theodora’s eyes. ‘Can you tell me whether he has seen or heard anything of Mr. Mark Gardner?’

‘Yes,’ said Theodora, surprised.

‘I suppose you have not heard him say how he is conducting himself?’

‘Have you heard that he is going to be married to Mrs. Finch?’

Theodora was astonished at the effect of this communication on her sober staid old friend. She started, made an incredulous outcry, caused it to be repeated, with its authority, then rose up, exclaiming, ‘The wretch! My poor Emma! I never was more rejoiced. But Emma!’

The sight of Theodora’s surprise recalled her to herself. ‘Ah! you do not know?’ she said; and having gone so far, was obliged to explain, with expressions of gratitude to Arthur and Violet for having so well guarded a secret that now might continue hidden for ever.

Theodora was slow in comprehending, so monstrous was the idea of Emma Brandon engaged to Mark Gardner! She put her hands before her eyes, and said she must be dreaming--she could not credit it. When convinced, there was something in her manner that pleased and comforted Lady Elizabeth by the kind feeling and high esteem it showed.

‘Let me ask you one question, my dear,’ she said, ‘just to set my mind at rest. I was told that your brother’s affairs were involved with those of that unhappy man. I trust it is no longer so.’

Theodora explained, as far as she understood, how Percy had extricated him.

‘Ah!’ said Lady Elizabeth, ‘I fear we are in some degree the cause. My poor Emma was imprudent enough to quote Colonel Martindale; and she has told me that she was frightened by a pale look of anger that crossed his face, and something which he muttered between his teeth. But he made her believe Arthur his seducer!’

‘Poor Arthur! If you knew all!’ said Theodora; ‘and who--’ then breaking off, ‘Percy did tell papa that it was all Mr. Gardner’s revenge for Arthur’s not consenting to some nefarious transaction. Depend upon it, that was it! You asked Violet, you say. Percy said that, among the sentences he overheard on the quay, there was something about a wife who had crossed him, and who should suffer for it. He said it was spoken with a hard-hearted wickedness that, even when he did not know who it was, made him long to crush him like a reptile; and when he had seen Violet and the children, though it might be interference, he said he could as soon have left them in the folds of a serpent!’

‘Ah! my poor girl!’

‘But this frees her. Oh! she cannot grieve for such a wretch!’

‘I fear her attachment is so strong that she will not see it in this light.’

‘When he gives her up without a word, she ought to be too angry to grieve.’

‘I do not think that is in her nature.’

‘So much the better. Anger and comfort cannot go together. Oh, one so good and gentle must be helped! How I wish I could do anything for her; but she will be better at home. It is lucky there are no associations with him there.’

‘I wish she was at home. Theresa Marstone is staying with her brother in London, and I left her with Emma at the hotel.’

‘Fortunately there cannot be two ways of thinking on this matter,’ said Theodora.

Lady Elizabeth was too anxious to break the tidings to her daughter to wait at that time to see Violet; and went, promising to come to-morrow to report how the blow should have been borne.

Theodora was glad when she had a little space in which to think over the events of the day.

Ever since she had embraced the lesson of humility, the once despised Emma Brandon had been rising in her estimation. The lowliness of her manners, and the heart-whole consistency of her self-devotion, had far outweighed her little follies, and, together with remorse for having depreciated and neglected her, had established her claim to respect and admiration.

And now to find the old prediction verified, and Emma led away by so absurd a delusion, might have seemed a triumph, had not Theodora been thoroughly humbled. She only saw a humiliating contrast between the true pure heart that blindly gave its full affections, and that which could pretend to have given itself away, and then, out of mere impatience of restraint, play with and torture the love it had excited, and, still worse, foster an attachment it never meant to requite!

She was the more sensible of this latter delinquency now that Lord St. Erme had just been brought before her, deserving all that man could deserve; having more than achieved all to which she had incited him, and showing a constancy unchecked by the loss of her personal attractions. His blushing homage came almost as a compensating contrast after her severe mortification at Percy’s surprise and subsequent cool composure.

While reproaching herself for this feeling, her father came home, and with him the Earl. They had been occupied all the afternoon, and had fallen into conversation on county business. Lord Martindale, finding his young friend was alone at his hotel, thought he had better dine with them, since Violet need not be troubled about it. Theodora wondered whether it had occurred to her father that some one else might be troubled, and that it might seem like a renewal of encouragement; but the fact was, that after ten days of the sick-room, his society was a positive treat to Lord Martindale, and in advising him on magistrate’s business, he forgot everything else.

The dinner went off without embarrassment. Lord St. Erme did indeed blush when he offered his arm to her; but with consideration that seemed to understand her, he kept up the conversation chiefly with Lord Martindale on rates, police, and committees.

She thought of the horror he had been wont to express of the English squirearchy, ‘whose arena is the quarter sessions;’ and she remembered standing up for them, and declaring there was far more honest, sturdy, chivalrous maintenance of right and freedom in their history than in all his beloved Lombardic republics. And now, what was he but a thorough-going country gentleman, full of plans of usefulness, sparing neither thought, time, nor means; and though some of his views were treated by Lord Martindale as wild and theoretical, yet, at any rate, they proved that he had found living men a more interesting study than the Apollo Belvedere.

Theodora was resolved that Violet should see him, and now that the dinner was eaten and beyond anxiety, went up to disclose his presence, and persuade her to go down to tea and leave her with the patient. She found it was well she had kept her counsel; Violet took it quietly enough; but Arthur chose to concern himself as to what wine had been produced, and would have sent a message to James if his sister had not assured him that it was too late.

He insisted on Violet’s going down to the drawing-room, and would not hear of Theodora’s remaining with him. The nurse was in the outer room, and Johnnie was made supremely happy by being allowed to sit up an hour longer to be his companion; and thus with Lord Martindale and Theodora making frequent expeditions to visit him, Violet was sufficiently tranquil to remain as long in the drawing-room as was worth the fatigue of the transit.

She could enjoy her talk with the Earl; and, indeed, since Annette’s visit, she had heard no tidings so full and satisfactory. He knew the name of every one at Wrangerton; he seemed to have learnt to love Helvellyn; he spoke very highly of Olivia’s husband, Mr. Hunt, declaring that he liked nothing better than a visit to his most beautiful place, Lassonthwayte, a farm fit for the poets, and had learnt a great deal from him; and of Mrs. Moss he talked with affectionate gratitude that brought the tears into Violet’s eyes, especially when he promised to go and call on her immediately on his return, to tell her how Colonel Martindale was going on, and describe to her her grandchildren. He repeated to Violet how kind her mother had been to his sister, and how beautifully she had nursed him. Lord Martindale began to ask questions, which brought out a narration of his adventures in the coal-pit, given very simply, as if his being there had been a mere chance.

He allowed that he knew it to be dangerous, but added, that it was impossible to get things done by deputy, and that he had no choice but to see about it himself, and he dwelt much on the behaviour of the men.

‘Did you give up hope?’ asked Lord Martindale.

‘For myself I did. The confined air oppressed me so much, even before the sense of hunger came on, that it seemed to take away all power of thought and action.’

‘Yet you did think?’ said Violet.

‘I was obliged, for the men were more confounded and helpless at first, though, when once directed, nothing could be more resolute and persevering! Brave fellows! I would not but have had it happen! One seldom has such a chance of seeing the Englishman’s gallant heart of obedient endurance. It was curious to observe the instinctive submission. Some were men who would not for worlds have touched their hats to me above ground; yet, as soon as I tried to take the lead, and make them think what could yet be done, they obeyed instantly, though I knew almost nothing compared to them, and while they worked like giants, I could hardly move.’

‘Was it very acute suffering?’

‘For the last two days it was, but it was worse for those who had to work. I was generally faint and drowsy, and could hardly rouse myself to speak a word of encouragement, which was what they wanted. They fancied it was vain to work towards the old shaft, but I was sure none of them could live to be dug out from above, and that it would be wrong to let them cease. I think, as well as I recollect, that speaking was the worst pain of all. But it is no harm to know what the poor undergo.’

‘Hardly to such extremity,’ said Violet.

‘Well, I know I shall never turn indifferently away again when I hear, “We are starving.” A man feels little for what he has not experienced.’

‘I suppose,’ said Lord Martindale, ‘that it has put an extinguisher on Chartism?’

‘There are some determined village Hampdens still, but I think the fellow-feeling it has excited has done good. I have not been able to go among them since, but they have indefatigably come to inquire for me. The first Sunday I was able to come down-stairs, I found the hall door beset with them in their best, looking like a synod of Methodist preachers. Poor Lucy shocked my aunt by running about crying, and shaking hands with their great horny fists. I fancy “our young lady,” as they call her, is the strongest anti-chartist argument.’

Though talking in this animated manner he was far from strong, and went away early, looking thoroughly tired. Theodora had stitched away throughout the conversation in silence; but Violet knew, by the very fixity of her eye, that she was feeling it deeply and there was consciousness in the absence of word or look, with which she let the Earl bid her good night. It was a strange thing to have been in part the means of forming so noble a character, and yet to regard her share in it with nothing but shame.

Self-reproachful and unhappy, Theodora went to take her turn of watching her brother for the first part of the night. She could not have borne to be told, what was in fact the case, that he was generally more uncomfortable under her care than that of any one else, chiefly because there was not the restraint either of consideration for his wife, or of the authority of his father. Besides, she was too visibly anxious, too grave and sad, to find anything cheerful with which to divert his attention; and he was sure to become restless and exacting, or else depressed, either as to his illness or his affairs.

To-night he had discovered Lady Elizabeth’s visit, and was anxious to know whether Gardner had broken with Miss Brandon. Theodora would not encourage his talking; and this teased him, only making him say more till she had told all, adding, ‘O Arthur! what a comfort it must be that this is brought upon you by your having tried to save Emma!’

‘Not much of that. It was Violet. I would have stopped her writing if I could.’

Perhaps this downfall of the heroism with which she had been endowing his resistance, was one of the most cruel blows of all.

‘If he marries Mrs. Finch, he must at least pay off what he owes me;’ and he began perplexing himself with reckonings. Theodora saw his brow drawn together, and his lips moving, and begged him to desist and try to sleep.

‘You have interrupted me--I have lost it!’ and he tried again. ‘No, I can’t get it right. There is a lot of papers in my writing-case. You’ll see to it. It will be something for Violet and the children. Mind the claim is sent in;’ and again he strove to explain, while she entreated him to put such things out of his mind; and it ended in such violent coughing, that Lord Martindale heard, came in, and with a look that told her how ill she managed, sent her to bed, where she vexed herself for hours at Arthur’s seeming to dwell only on his gaming debts, instead of on what she longed to see occupying his mind. Her elasticity seemed to have been destroyed by her illness, and she had lost the vigour which once would have made her rise against depression. The reappearance of Percy and of Lord St. Erme seemed only to have wearied and perplexed her; and she lay awake, feeling worn, confused, and harassed, and only wishing to hide her head and be at rest.

Arthur had a bad night, and was not so well in the morning, and while Lord Martindale was wondering why Theodora could not have been more cautious, the letters came in--one from Brogden--making it evident that Lady Martindale was so unwell and dispirited, that she ought not to be left alone any longer. Lord Martindale, therefore, decreed that Theodora should return, taking with her the three eldest children. And she could make no objection; she ought to submit to be passively disposed of; and, grievous as it was to leave her brother and Violet, there was compensation in avoiding her former suitors.

Lady Elizabeth came in almost at the same time as Lord Martindale went out, after breakfast. She was in great distress. Poor Emma treated the whole as a calumny; and when shown the absolute certainty that Mark was at Paris, daily calling on Mrs. Finch, remained persuaded that his cousin had perverted him from the first, and was now trying to revive her pernicious influence when he might have been saved; or that perhaps he was driven to an immediate wealthy marriage by his honourable feeling and his necessities. It was all her own fault for not having taken him at once. Lady Elizabeth had hardly been able to prevent her from writing to revoke the year’s probation, and offer him all that was needed to satisfy his creditors.

Theodora could not help exclaiming, that she thought Emma would have had more dignity.

‘So I told her, my dear; but it seemed to be no consolation. I do not feel secure that, though she has promised me not to write, Theresa Marstone may not.’

‘Is Miss Marstone still in his favour?’

‘I can still less understand her view,’ said Lady Elizabeth, with a grave, sad simplicity, almost like satire; ‘she says it only convinces her that the Church of England does not know how to treat penitents.’

Theodora could not help laughing, and Lady Elizabeth nearly joined her, though sighing and saying that such talk gave her other fears for Emma. She dreaded that Miss Marstone was unsettled in her allegiance to her Church, and that her power over Emma was infusing into her her own doubts.

‘It is very sad--very strange! I cannot understand it,’ said Theodora. ‘I had always believed that such innocence and lowliness as Emma and Violet have was a guard against all snares; yet here is Emma led astray by these very excellences!’

‘My dear,’ said Lady Elizabeth, ‘I think it is the want of that lowliness that is at the root with my poor child. It is a dangerous thing for a girl to throw herself into an exclusive friendship, especially when the disapproval of her own family is felt. I tried, but I never could like Theresa Marstone; and now I see that she liked to govern Emma, and depreciated my judgment--very justly, perhaps; but still I was her mother, and it was not kind to teach her to think doing as I wished a condescension.’

‘So Emma sold all her senses to her friend?’

‘Yes, and Miss Marstone keeps them still. Theresa taught her to think herself wiser than all, and their own way of talking the proof of goodness.’

‘Ay! their passwords.’

‘Just so, and I do believe it was that kind of vanity that took from her her power of discerning and the instinctive shrinking from evil.’

‘It is very easy to make simplicity silliness,’ said Theodora. ‘I beg your pardon, Lady Elizabeth, I did not mean to blame her, but I was thinking how truly you spoke.’

‘And now, may I ask to see Mrs. Martindale; or will it be too much for her?’

‘She will be glad, but she was tired with coming down to Lord St. Erme. And now, Arthur’s bad night! Oh! Lady Elizabeth, you come from your griefs to ours. It is a shame to make you share them!’

‘I do not think so,’ said Lady Elizabeth. ‘There is a tract of Hannah More’s showing that to bear another’s burden lightens our own; and all old people will tell you that many troubles together weigh less heavily than a single one.’

Theodora could not think so; each of her cares seemed to make the others worse, till the mere toil and vexation of Helen’s lessons became serious; and yet, when the children were dismissed for their walk, she felt unable to profit by her leisure, otherwise than by sighing at the prospect of missing the power of looking in at Arthur from hour to hour. She had not roused herself to occupation, when, to her dismay, Lord St. Erme was admitted. She began to say her father was not at home.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I met him.’

He means mischief! thought Theodora.

‘He tells me that you are going away!’

‘I believe so,’ said Theodora. ‘My mother is not well, and we cannot both be spared from home.’

‘Will you forgive me?’ said the Earl, still standing, and with downcast eyes, and heightened complexion. ‘I know this is no fit time, but I could not part without one allusion. I would not harass you for worlds. A word from you, and I drop the subject.’

‘Oh! pray, then, say no more!’ was her breathless entreaty.

He turned in silence, with a mournful gesture of farewell, and laid his hand on the door. She perceived her unkindness to one who had every claim to honour and consideration--one who had remembered her in well-nigh the hour of death.

‘Stay,’ she said; ‘I did not speak as I ought.’

‘I know I presumed too far,’ said Lord St. Erme, pausing; ‘I ask your pardon for disturbing you. It was selfish; but I could not let you go without once adverting to the subject--’

There was a tremor of voice, an eager look, that made her fear that the crushed hope was reviving, and she hastened to say, ‘The best thing would be that you should think no more about me.’

‘Impossible!’ he vehemently cried; then, catching himself up, and speaking in the same deferential tone as at first, ‘I owe you far too much to cease to think of you.’

‘It is a great pity,’ said Theodora; ‘I never deserved such feelings, and they make me wish more and more that all could be undone.’

‘No! no!’ exclaimed Lord St. Erme, his eyes lighting and his cheek glowing, while his fair young features wore a look that was all poet and knight. ‘Would I see what is past undone? It was the turning-point of my life--the call to arms. Hitherto, life had been to me a dream in an enchanted garden, with the same secret weariness and dissatisfaction! I dread the thought of the time and means I lavished away, fancying because it was not vice it was not dissipation. It was then that I became unworthy of you. It was you who taught me where lies modern chivalry, and made my folly and conceit cease to despise the practical; showed me--may I quote German to you once more?--that “Das Leben ist keine Lustfahrt sondern theils eine kampfes, theils eine Pilger-weise.” I took up my staff, at first, I own, in hopes of winning you--’

‘You did not persevere merely for that reason?’

‘No; when my eyes were once opened to the festering sin and misery around, when I saw the evil nourished at my own door by my neglect, and perceived that those dependent on me were doomed to degradation and oppression that I might gratify my craving for art,--then, indeed, I was appalled! Those paintings and statues seemed to cry out to me that human souls had been sacrificed to them! The toil and devotion of a life would be too little to atone! Oh! that it were more able and effective. Means and judgment go but a little way!’

‘Your heart and happiness are in the work,’ said Theodora, seeing how he was carried away by his feelings.

‘Yes. There is a sense like the labourer’s at his daily task, and though there is the mountain of things undone, there is the hope that all are not wilfully neglected. It is for this that I longed to thank you. When I was in danger, I knew what it would have been to wait for death before I thought of--of the way of peace. I blessed you in my heart then--I thank you now.’

‘Thank Him who has brought good out of evil, was all Theodora could say.

He bowed his head gravely, and continued: ‘Now, thank you again for having listened. It has been a great satisfaction to me to acknowledge my obligations. Do not suppose I came to London intending to distress you with my pertinacity, or with any idea of having earned your favour. I was obliged to come; and when once near you, I could not bear to separate without, at least, entreating to know whether the former obstacle exists.’

‘It does,’ said Theodora, looking down; ‘I believe it always will. I lament more than I can express, my conduct towards you; and what you have told me grieves me more in one way, though in another it is most consoling. You have the true secret of peace, and I know all must be well with you. If you had done otherwise, it would have been far worse for me. Tell Lucy I have not forgotten her. I am sure she has the true light-hearted sort of happiness.’

‘She has, indeed,’ said Lord St. Erme; and he entered into a description of his sister’s doings; her perfect content with their seclusion, and her influence over the dependants. So eager did he grow in his favourite subject, the welfare of his people, that he seemed to have forgotten what had brought him to Cadogan-place, and Theodora was convinced that though the being brought into contact with her had for the time renewed the former attachment, it was in reality by no means the prominent thought of his life. His duties and the benefit of his colliers were what engrossed his mind; and with his sister to render his home happy, everything else was secondary. When it did occur to him to think of love, it was for Theodora; but he had no more time for such thoughts than most other busy practical men.

He discoursed upon his schools and reading-rooms till the children came in, and then bade her good-bye, quite as if he had talked himself back into an every-day state of feeling.

Was Theodora mortified? She went to her own room to analyze her sensations, but was almost immediately followed by Johnnie, coming to tell her that the owl-man was in the drawing-room.

‘Another who is consoled!’ thought she. ‘Humiliating, indeed, it is to see such complete cures. There is no need to be absurd and conscious at this meeting! But here I do, indeed, need forgiveness--how my heart aches to ask it--his mere pardon for my offences! If I could only have it out with him without compromising womanly proprieties! That can’t be; I must bear it!’

On the stairs she heard Helen’s voice. ‘He came yesterday, to the evening dinner, but I don’t like him.’

‘Why not?’ asked Percy.

‘Because he says I am just like Aunt Theodora, and I am not.’

Theodora knew whom she meant. Lord St. Erme had been much struck by her little niece’s resemblance, and Helen resented the comparison as an indignity to her beauty. She felt extremely annoyed at Percy’s hearing this; then recollected it did not signify to him, and entered just as he was telling little Miss Vanity that she was the silliest child he had ever the honour of meeting.

There was some constraint, on her part, in the short conversation on Arthur’s health that ensued, before he went up; and he only returned to the drawing-room for a moment, to assure her that he thought Arthur much better than when he had last seen him.

‘He avoids me! he cannot endure me!’ she thought, and yet she felt doubly averse to the idea of returning to Brogden.

Lord Martindale came in with a look of expectation on his face which grieved Theodora, for she knew her refusal would be a disappointment to him. He sent the children away, paused for her to begin, and at last asked: ‘Well, my dear, has Lord St. Erme been here?’

‘Yes papa;’ and it was plain enough how it had been. Lord Martindale sighed. The rest being equal, it was not in human nature not to prefer an Earl to an almost penniless author. ‘I would not urge you on any account,’ he said; ‘but I wish it could have been otherwise.’

‘So do I, most heartily,’ said Theodora.

‘It is very different now,’ said Lord Martindale. Four years ago I could hardly have wished it. Now, I think most highly of him, and I should have been rejoiced to have seen his constancy rewarded.’

‘I am ashamed and grieved,’ said Theodora. ‘He did, indeed, deserve better things. He is a noble character; and I cannot honour or esteem him enough, nor sufficiently regret the way I treated him. But, indeed, papa, it would not be right. I cannot help it.’

‘Well, there is no more to be said,’ sighed Lord Martindale. ‘I know you will do right.’

Something was won since her former dismissal of the Earl! Her father gave her a look full of confidence and affection; and made happy by it, she rallied her spirits and said, ‘Besides, what a pair it would be! We should be taken for a pretty little under-graduate and his mother!’

‘That will not last, my dear,’ said Lord Martindale, vexed though smiling at her droll manner. ‘You are younger than he.’

‘In years, but not in mind,’ said Theodora. ‘No, no, papa; you have me for life, and it is hard you should be so anxious to get rid of me!’

‘I only wish to consult your happiness, my dear child.’

‘And that always was in fancying myself necessary,’ said Theodora, gaily, though there was a trembling in her voice; and when she went up to her own room, she hid her face in her hands, and felt as if life was very dreary and uninteresting, and as if it was a miserable exile to be sent into the country just now, to have to force cheerful conversation for her mother, and to be wearied with Helen’s wild spirits. ‘But have I not deserved everything? And after my brother has been spared so far, how can I repine at any selfish trouble?’

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Chapter 12

Herself, almost heartbroken now, Was bent to take the vestal vow, And shroud, within St. Hilda’s gloom, Her wasted hopes and withered bloom.

--SCOTT

Violet, when called to consult with her father-in-law in the outer room, felt a sort of blank apprehension and consternation at the idea of being separated from her children; and a moment’s reflection satisfied her that in one case at least she might rightly follow the dictates of her own heart. She said that she thought Johnnie could not be spared by his papa.

Lord Martindale’s eye followed hers, and through the half-closed door saw Johnnie, sitting on the bed, reading to his father, who listened with amused, though languid attention.

‘I believe you are right,’ he said; ‘though I wish I had the boy in the country doing no lessons. He puts me more in mind of his uncle every day.’

‘One of the highest compliments Johnnie has ever had,’ said Violet, colouring with pleasure; ‘but I am afraid to trust him away from me and Mr. Harding in the winter because of his croup.’

‘Ah! then it cannot be,’ he answered; ‘and I do not think I would take him from his father now, but his sisters must come; they would be too much for you without Theodora.’

Violet could only be mournfully thankful, and the project was in time laid before Arthur.

‘Send my little girls away!’ said he, looking discomfited. ‘Oh! if you wish to keep them’--joyfully exclaimed Violet.

‘I thought that if Theodora went home, Violet would hardly be able to manage them,’ said Lord Martindale.

‘If they are in her way,’ said Arthur, and his eyes smiled at her, knowing what her decision would be.

‘Oh! no, no! It was their grandpapa’s kindness.’ Johnnie and Helen here peeped into the room; Arthur beckoned to them, and said, ‘How should you like to go into the country with Aunt Theodora?’

‘To see grandmamma and the peacock?’ said Lord Martindale. Johnnie clung to his mother’s hand, piteously whispering, ‘Oh! don’t send me away, mamma--I would try to bear it if I ought.’

Helen climbed the bed, and sturdily seated herself close to her papa. ‘I shall not desert my father and mother,’ said she, with great dignity, drawing up her head.

‘No more you shall, my little heroine!’ said Arthur, throwing his arm round her, while she glanced with saucy triumph at her grandfather.

In the silence of night, when Arthur was alone with his father, he said, ‘If those little girls go away now, they will never remember me.’

To this plea there could be no reply; for though the danger was no longer imminent, it was still extremely doubtful whether he would ever leave his room again.

His wish to keep the children made Lord Martindale reconsider of sending Theodora home, and he desired Violet to choose between her and himself. She thought Theodora the most effective, and Arthur seemed to prefer her remaining, so that she found herself disposed of according to her wishes, her father only stipulating that she should not neglect rest, air, or exercise, of which she stood in evident need.

Every one observed her haggard looks on the day when they met for the baptism of ‘Arthur Fotheringham.’ It was a melancholy christening, without the presence of either parent; and so all the little party felt it, and yet, if they could have seen into the recesses of the mother’s heart, they would have found there were causes which made this baptism day better to her than any of the former ones.

The godfather came afterwards to see Arthur, who believed him more than all the doctors when he assured him he was making progress. Arthur began to speak of the debt; he wished before his father went to have a settlement of accounts, take steps for selling his commission, and repaying Percy.

‘No,’ said Percy, ‘wait till you are better and can look about you. Sell your commission indeed, and take the bread out of your children’s mouths! No, if you did choose to do that, it must in honour and justice be divided among all your creditors.’

Arthur was forced to give up.

Emma Brandon had not joined the christening party. Miss Marstone had actually written to Mark Gardner, and had in reply received an acknowledgment of her ‘good offices, which had gone far to enable him to justify the bets that before Christmas he would have a wife with ten thousand pounds a year!’ He did not quite venture to insult Miss Brandon, but sent her a cool message of farewell. The rest of the letter, the friends declared, was evidently by Mrs. Finch’s dictation. They shut themselves up together; Lady Elizabeth was not allowed to help her daughter, and came to Cadogan-place chiefly that she might talk over her troubles with Theodora, who put her into communication with Percy, and from him she heard a brief sketch of Mr. Gardner’s life and adventures, still less disposing her to desire him as a son-in-law.

She was certainly safe from this danger, but her cares were not thus ended. If Emma would have shared her griefs with her, and admitted her attempts at consolation, she would have been more at ease, but as it was, Emma was reserved with her, and attached herself solely to Theresa Marstone, whom she even made a sort of interpreter between her and her mother, so that Lady Elizabeth only knew as much of her mind as her confidante chose to communicate.

Not only was this most painful to her feelings as a mother, but she had serious doubts of the safety of such a companion. The extreme silliness of Theresa’s vanity and exclusiveness had long been visible, and as it was the young lady’s fashion to imagine the defect anywhere but in her own judgment, there were symptoms of the mischief having been by her attributed to the Church of England. As if to console herself for the shock she had sustained, she was turning to a new fancy, for when a woman once begins to live upon excitement, she will seek for the intoxication anywhere.

This perception made Lady Elizabeth resolve that as long as she was mistress of Rickworth, she would not again invite Miss Marstone thither; while Emma was equally determined not to go home without her only friend. Thus the mother and daughter lingered on in London, Theresa often coming to spend the day with Emma, and Lady Elizabeth having recourse to the Martindale family, and trying to make herself of use by amusing the children, sitting in Arthur’s room, or taking Theodora for a walk or drive.

One morning she came in to say that Emma was going to drive to Islington to call upon Miss Marstone, who had gone two days previously to stay with some friends there, and to beg that Theodora would accompany her. Aware that it would be as great a penance to Emma as to herself, Theodora would fain have been excused, but let herself be overruled on Lady Elizabeth’s promise to supply her place at home, and assurance that it would be a positive relief that she should be of the party, even if she did not get out of the carriage, as a check upon the length of time Emma would spend with her friend.

The two unwilling companions set forth, each in her own comer of the carriage, Emma leaning back, her thick blue veil hiding her face; Theodora, who always repudiated veils, sitting upright, her face turned, so as to catch the breeze on her hot temples, wishing she could turn herself into Violet, and possess her power of sweet persuasion and consolation. She could think of nothing to say, and began at last to fear that her silence might appear unkind. She tried to interest Emma by speaking of Johnnie, but she only obtained brief replies, and the conversation had dropped before they left the streets and entered on suburban scenery. Theodora exclaimed at a gorgeous Virginian creeper--

‘Almost as fine as the one at the Priory,’ said she.

Emma looked and sighed.

‘Rickworth must be in high glory. I know nothing prettier than the many-coloured woods sloping into the meadow, with the soft mist rising. You will find home beautiful.’

‘I cannot bear the thought of it,’ said Emma, in an under-tone.

‘How glad your little orphans will be! How many have you?’

‘There are five.’

Theodora saw she hated the subject, but thought it good for her, and went on to tell her of a case at Whitford, cramming the subject into her ear at first against the stomach of her sense, but it could not but exact attention, a widow sinking in a decline after sorrows which, by comparison, made all young lady troubles shrink into atoms. Emma became interested, and began to ask questions.

‘You will go to see the mother? Poor thing, I hope she may be alive to hear of the prospect for her child. I am sorry to be unable to go and see her, and should be so glad to know you near and able to attend to her.’

‘We will write to the housekeeper,’ said Emma.

‘Are you not going back yourself?’

‘I don’t know; I have no heart to think of it.’

‘Emma,’ said Theodora, ‘we need not go on as if we did not understand each other. Violet can attend to you now; I wish you would talk to her. No one can comfort as she can.’

‘I do not wish to tease her with my--’

‘She knows, she longs to help you. Don’t you know how fond of you she always was? You two appreciated each other from the first.’

‘It is of no use. She never entered into my views. She does not understand. It is her situation I blame, not herself. She is a dear creature, and I once had a strong girlish enthusiasm for her.’

‘Once!’ cried Theodora; ‘what has she ever done to lessen enthusiasm for all that is good and lovely?’

Emma hung her head, alarmed; and Theodora more gently insisted, till, by the power which in childhood she had exerted over Emma, she forced out an answer. ‘Forgive me, if I must tell you. I have thought her too fond of going out. It was no wonder, so very young as she was. I do not find fault, but it seemed to dispel an illusion that she was superior to other people. Don’t you remember one party she would go to against warning, that one where she fainted? I could never feel the same for her afterwards.’

Theodora was silent for a few seconds, then exclaimed, ‘O Violet, is there no end to the injuries I have done you? Emma, never judge without seeing behind the curtain. It was my fault. It was when I was crazed with wilfulness. Your mother offered to chaperon me, I was set on going with Mrs. Finch, and as the only means of preventing that, Violet sacrificed herself. I did not know she likewise sacrificed the friendship of the only person, except John, who had been kind to her.’

‘I wish Theresa had known this,’ said Emma.

‘Now YOU know it, will you not turn to Violet for advice and comfort? I know what she can be. If you could guess what she saved me from, you would fly at once to her.’

‘I cannot begin now, I cannot look anywhere that recalls past happiness!’ said Emma, murmuring low, as though the words, in spite of herself, broke from her oppressed heart. ‘Would that I could hide my head! Oh! that I had wings like a dove!’

‘Emma, you have them. They may carry you into what seems to be a wilderness, but go bravely on, and you will be at rest at last.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The wings of duty.’

‘If I only knew where it was.’

‘Your mother, your dependants, your orphans, your beautiful old plan.

Emma only groaned, and held up her hand in deprecation.

‘I have felt it,’ continued Theodora. ‘I know how vain, and vapid, and weary everything seems, as if the sap of life was gone, but if we are content to remain in the wilderness, it begins to blossom at last, indeed it does.’

‘I thought you had had no troubles,’ said Emma, with more interest. ‘They could not have been such as mine.’

‘In one respect they were worse, for they were entirely my own fault.’

‘May I ask, is there no hope for you?’

‘No, said Theodora, ‘I believe there is none. But a certain peaceful feeling, independent of that, came after the desolateness, and has never gone utterly away, though I have had to reap the harvest of the evil that I sowed. Oh! depend upon it, there is nothing like resolutely facing the day’s work.’

Emma made no answer; they had come to the gate of a villa, and Theodora thought she might as well have held her peace, since Theresa would undo the whole.

Miss Marstone was not within, but she had left a note for Miss Brandon. Emma, after reading it, timidly said that Theresa had gone to spend the day with a friend, who was boarding in a convent not far off, and that she wished her to come and make her visit to her there. Then timidly glancing towards her companion, she desired to be driven thither, but Theodora, leaning forward, said, in an authoritative manner, ‘Drive on two miles on the road. We will say where next when we come back.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said to Emma, ‘but this is not a step to be taken inconsiderately.’

Emma did not reply; Theodora perceived that her decided manner had terrified her. ‘I am sorry if I was rude,’ she said; ‘I did not mean it, but I thought you were acting precipitately, and that you would be glad to have time to reflect before going to this place without your mother’s knowledge.’

‘It is not precipitately,’ said Emma, faintly.

‘You don’t mean that this was a pre-concerted scheme. If so, pray let me out, and I will go home alone.’

‘No, no, I did not mean exactly--don’t use such words, Theodora. Only sister Mary Angela--Theresa’s great friend--had joined the Roman communion. Theresa wished me to see her and the convent, and said that perhaps I might find her there. If I had told mamma, she would have fancied I should be kidnapped like young ladies in books. I believe you expect it yourself,’ said Emma, giggling hysterically.

‘I think, and she thinks nothing but what is rational,’ said Theodora, coldly, ‘that it is a sad thing to see you taught to resort to subterfuges, and that they can lead into no safe course.’

‘You do not know Theresa, or you would not accuse her of what she would detest.’

‘I speak from what I see. She has arranged in secret that, without your mother’s knowledge, you should by stealth go to a place where you both know Lady Elizabeth would be shocked to hear of you.’

‘I thought you understood the true Catholic spirit,’ said Emma, ‘and were interested in these things.’

‘The Catholic spirit is anything but such treatment of a mother,’ said Theodora. ‘Once for all, do you mean to go to this place, or do you not? I see a cab, and if you go I return home in that.’

‘Of course then I must give it up.’

‘Now, and for ever, unless with your mother’s consent, I hope,’ said Theodora.

Emma did not answer, and they proceeded for some distance, Theodora wondering what could be her companion’s frame of mind, and what she ought to do next. So far, it was the sort of compulsion she had been wont to employ in the unscrupulous hours of childhood; but this was no gain--Emma’s reason ought to be convinced, and of this she had little hope. Miss Brandon was the first to break silence. That word subterfuge rankled, as it must in any honourable mind, and she began--‘I wish you would do Theresa justice. No one can have a greater contempt than she for anything underhand.’

Theodora tried not to laugh, and could not help pitying the fond affections that were blind to every fault in the beloved object.

‘Ah!’ said Emma, in answer to her silence, ‘you think this bears the appearance of it; but you may be certain that Theresa is absolutely sure to act conscientiously.’

‘Some people follow their conscience--some drive it.’

‘Now, do let me explain it,’ entreated Emma, and talking eagerly and rather mistily, she told in many more words than were needful how Theresa had serious doubts as to what she termed Anglicanism, reckoning against it every laxity in doctrine or in discipline that came to her knowledge, and admiring everything in other branches of the Church. Emma, taking all for granted that Theresa said, was strongly of the same mind, and while both made high professions of attachment to their own communion, they were in a course of dwelling on all the allurements held out in other quarters. By some astonishing train of reasoning, frequent in persons in a state of excitement and self-deception, they had persuaded themselves that Mark Gardner’s return to his evil courses had been for want of a monastery to receive him; and their tendency to romance about conventual institutions had been exaggerated by the present state of Emma’s spirits, which gave her a desire to retire from the world, as well as a distaste to the projects in which she had lately given her false lover but too large a share. ‘Peace dwells in the cloister,’ she sighed.

‘You have the essentials of such a life in your power,’ said Theodora.

‘Not the fixed rule--the obedience.’

‘Oh! Emma! your mother!’

‘I want discipline--Church discipline as in primitive times,’ said Emma, impatiently.

‘The most primitive discipline of all is, “honour thy father and mother,”’ returned Theodora.

There was a silence. Theodora resumed--‘I know how one would rather do anything than what is required. Violet taught me then that we must not choose our cross.’

Another space, then Emma said, ‘And you call it a subterfuge?’

‘Can you honestly call it otherwise? Don’t bewilder us with explanations, but simply say what you would have thought of it six years ago.’

For Emma not to send forth a vapour of words was impossible, but they did not satisfy even herself. Those short terse sentences of Theodora’s told upon her, and at last she did not deny that she should not have thought it right if Theresa had not prompted it.

‘Is she more likely to be right, or is the Catechism?’

‘The Catechism?’

‘To be TRUE and just in all my dealings.’

‘She did not think it wrong.’

‘No, of course not, but if it is wrong, and she does not think it so, does that make her a safe guide?’

‘You want to set me against her!’

‘I want you to cease to give her a power over you, which is unsafe for any human being.’

‘You have been talking to mamma.’

‘I have been seeing how unhappy she is about you; but since I have talked to yourself I have seen far more danger.’

‘Poor mamma!’

‘May I tell you how your history appears to a looker-on? I know it will be painful, but I think it will be good for you.’

‘Well!’

‘You began beautifully. It was delightful to see how you and your mother went on in perfect confidence, ready to work at everything good together, and she sympathizing in all your projects, only bringing wise caution to restrain your ardour.’

‘Yes, we were very happy then,’ sighed Emma; ‘but mamma wished me to go into society.’

‘And wisely. Remember, in the conventual system, a girl cannot be a novice till she has had six months in which to see the world. It was right that you should count the cost. Besides, society in moderation is the best way to keep one’s mind from growing narrow. Well, then, you met Miss Marstone, and she excited your imagination. She is really clever and good, and I don’t wonder at your liking her; but I cannot think that she has done right in cultivating your exclusive preference till she has detached you from your mother.’

‘She did not always think with her.’

‘No, but a sound friend would always place the duty to your mother foremost. You made a Pope of her, believed all she said, did as she pleased, and she was flattered, and absorbed you more and more, till really you both came to treating Lady Elizabeth’s opinion as a nonentity. Can you deny it?’

‘No.’

More would have been said, but Theodora would not hear, and went on. ‘See the consequence. She made a fearful mistake, and but for your mother and your remaining regard to her authority, where should you have been now? All this misery could not have been if you had been safe under Lady Elizabeth’s wing.’

‘No!’ faintly said Emma.

‘And now, when your mother has saved you, and her heart is aching to comfort you, and take you back to the safe old nest where all your duties and schemes lie, Miss Marstone tries to keep you from her; and fancies she is doing the best and most conscientious thing by teaching you to elude her, and go where, to one in your state of mind, is temptation indeed. Oh! Emma, she may think it right; but are you acting kindly by the mother who has only you?’

Theodora was very glad to see tears. ‘I cannot bear to go home!’ presently said Emma.

‘Have you thought how badly all the poor people must be getting on without you? All your children--it is half a year since you saw them!’

Emma groaned.

‘Yes, it is bad enough at first. You have had a heavy trial indeed, poor Emma; but what is a trial but something to try us? Would it not be more manful to face the pain of going home, and to take up your allotted work? Then you would be submitting, not to a self-made rule, but to Heaven’s own appointment.’

Was Emma’s mind disengaged enough for curiosity, or did she want to quit the subject! She said--‘You have had a trial of this kind yourself?’

Theodora had a struggle. To tell the whole seemed to her as uncalled for as painful; and yet there must be reciprocity if there is to be confidence, and she could not bear to advise like one who had never erred. She therefore confessed how her happiness had been wrecked by her own fault, and related the subsequent misery; how Violet had repelled the disposition to exalt her rather than her parents, and had well-nigh forced her abroad, and how there in the dreary waste a well of peace had sprung up, and had been with her ever since.

Short as Theodora tried to make the story she so much disliked, it lasted till they were almost at home. It had its effect. To be thrown over upon Lady Martindale and Mrs. Nesbit at Baden could not but appear to Emma a worse lot than to be left to her own mother and Rickworth, which, after all, she loved so well; and the promise of peace to be won by following appointed paths was a refreshing sound.

She had, this whole time, never thought of her mother’s feelings, and the real affection she entertained was once more awake. Besides, to see how Theodora represented their scheme, not only shook her faith in Theresa, but alarmed her sense of right on her own account. In short, though she said no word, there was a warmth in her meeting with Lady Elizabeth, on their return, that gave Theodora hopes.

Next morning came a note.

‘My Dear Theodora,--I have decided to go home at once. I could not rest without Theresa’s explanation, so I have written to her, and I had rather have it by letter than in person. I talked till two o’clock last night with mamma, and we go home at twelve to-day. Tell Violet we will come in for a few moments to take leave.

‘Your affectionate,

‘E. E. B.’

‘There is one thing to be thankful for!’ said Theodora. The visit was very short; Emma hardly spoke or raised her eyes, and Theodora hoped that some of her timidity arose from repentance for her false judgment of Violet. To Theodora, she said--‘You shall see Theresa’s explanation,’ and Theodora deserved credit for not saying it would be a curiosity.

Lady Elizabeth did as she had not done since Theodora was a little child; she put her arm round her neck and kissed her affectionately, murmuring, ‘Thank you, my dear.’

This little scene seemed to brace Theodora for the trial of the evening. Percy had offered to sit up that night with Arthur, and she had to receive him, and wait with him in the drawing-room till he should be summoned. It was a hard thing to see him so distant and reserved, and the mere awkwardness was unpleasant enough. She could devise nothing to say that did not touch on old times, and he sat engrossed with a book the reviewal of which was to be his night’s employment.

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Chapter 13

Should this new-blossomed hope be coldly nipped, Then were I desolate indeed.

--Philip van Artevelde--H. TAYLOR

The night was apt to be the worst time with Arthur; and Violet generally found him in the morning in a state of feverish discomfort and despondency that was not easily soothed. Anxious to know how he had fared with his new attendant, she came in as early as possible, and was rejoiced to find that he had passed an unusually comfortable night, had been interested and cheered by Percy’s conversation, and had slept some hours.

Percy’s occupation, in the meantime, was shown by some sheets of manuscript on the table near the fire.

‘I see you have not been losing time,’ said Violet.

‘I fear--I fear I have,’ he answered, as rather nervously he began to gather up some abortive commencements and throw them into the fire.

‘Take care, that is mine,’ exclaimed she, seeing the words ‘Mrs. Martindale,’ and thinking he had seized upon a letter which he had written to her from Worthbourne on Arthur’s business. She held out her hand for it, and he yielded it, but the next moment she saw it was freshly written; before she could speak she heard the door closed, and Arthur sleepily muttered, ‘Gone already.’ Dreading some new branch of the Boulogne affair, she sat down, and with a beating heart read by the firelight:--

‘I can bear it no longer! Long ago I committed one great folly, and should have been guilty of a greater, if you had not judged more wisely for me than I for myself. You did, indeed, act “kindly as ever”; and I have thanked you for it a thousand times, since I came to my senses in the dismal altitude of my “sixieme etage” at Paris.

‘No disrespect to your sister, to whom I did greater injustice than I knew, in asking her to seal my mistake. I threw away a rough diamond because its sharp edges scratched my fingers, and, in my fit of passion, tried to fill up its place with another jewel. Happily you and she knew better! Now I see the diamond sparkling, refined, transcendent, with such chastened lustre as even I scarce dared to expect!

‘These solitary years of disappointment have brought me to a sense of the harshness and arrogance of my dealings with the high nature that had so generously intrusted itself to me. There was presumption from the first in undertaking to mould her, rudeness in my attempts to control her, and precipitate passion and jealousy in resenting the displeasure I had provoked; and all was crowned by the absurd notion that pique with her was love of your sister!

‘I see it all now, or rather I have seen it ever since it was too late; I have brooded over it till I have been half distracted, night after night! And now I can hardly speak, or raise my head in her presence. I must have her pardon, whether I dare or not to ask one thing more. I never was sure that her heart was mine; my conduct did not deserve it, whatever my feelings did. If she accepted me from romance, I did enough to open her eyes! I am told she accepts Lord St. Erme--fit retribution on me, who used to look down on him in my arrogant folly, and have to own that he has merited her, while I--

‘But, at least, I trust to your goodness to obtain some word of forgiveness for me without disturbing her peace of mind. I would not expose her to one distressing scene! She has gone through a great deal, and the traces of grief and care on that noble countenance almost break my heart. I would not give her the useless pain of having to reject me, and of perceiving the pain I should not be able to conceal.

‘I commit myself to your kindness, then, and entreat of you, if the feeling for me was a delusion, or if it is extinct, to let me know in the manner least painful to you; and, when she can endure the subject, to tell her how bitterly I have repented of having tried to force humility on her, when I stood in still greater need of the lesson, and of having flown off in anger when she revolted at my dictation. One word of forgiveness would be solace in a life of deserved loneliness and disappointment.’

Trembling with gladness, Violet could hardly refrain from rousing Arthur to hear the good news! She hastily wrote the word ‘Try!’ twisted it into a note, and sent it down in case Mr. Fotheringham should still be in the house. The missive returned not, and she sat down to enjoy her gladness as a Sunday morning’s gift.

For Violet, though weak, anxious, and overworked, was capable of receiving and being cheered by each sunbeam that shone on herself or on her loved ones. Perhaps it was the reward of her resignation and trust, that even the participation (as it might almost be called) of her husband’s suffering, and the constantly hearing his despondence, could not deprive her of her hopefulness. Ever since the first two days she had been buoyed up by a persuasion of his recovery, which found food in each token of improvement; and, above all, there was something in Arthur that relieved the secret burden that had so long oppressed her.

She was free to receive solace and rejoice in the joy of others; and when Theodora met her in the morning, eye and lip were beaming with a suppressed smile of congratulation, that hardly suited with the thin, white face.

‘Arthur’s comfortable night has done you both good,’ said Theodora. ‘Percy is a better nurse than I.’

‘Oh, yes! it is all Percy’s doing!’ said Violet, there checking herself; but laughing and blushing, so that for a moment she looked quite girlishly pretty.

No more was heard of Mr. Fotheringham till Johnnie came home from the afternoon’s service, and reported that the owl-man was in the drawing-room with Aunt Theodora.

At church Johnnie had seen his papa’s good-natured friend in the aisle, and with his hand on the door of the seat and his engaging face lifted up, had invited him in.

Innocent Johnnie! he little knew what tumultuous thoughts were set whirling through his aunt’s mind. The last time Percy had joined her at church, the whole time of the service had been spent in the conflict between pride and affection. Now there was shame for this fresh swarm of long-forgotten sins, and as the recollection saddened her voice in the confession, foremost was the sense of sacrilege in having there cherished them, and turned her prayer into sin. No wonder she had been for a time yielded up to her pride and self-will!

As silently as usual they walked home from church, and she would at once have gone up-stairs, but he said, in a low, hoarse voice, as her foot was on the step, ‘May I speak to you?’

She turned. It was so strangely like that former occasion that she had a curious bewildered feeling of having passed through the same before; and perhaps she had, in her dreams. Scarcely conscious, she walked towards the fire.

‘Can you forgive me?’ said the same husky voice.

She raised her eyes to his face. ‘Oh, Percy!’--but she could say no more, cut short by rising sobs; and she could only hide her face, and burst into tears.

He was perfectly overwhelmed. ‘Theodora, dearest! do not! I have been too hasty,’ he exclaimed, almost beside himself with distress, and calling her by every affectionate name.

‘Never mind! It is only because I have become such a poor creature!’ said she, looking up with a smile, lost the next moment in the uncontrollable weeping.

‘It is my fault!--my want of consideration! I will go--I will call Mrs. Martindale.’

‘No, no, don’t, don’t go!’ said Theodora, eagerly--her tears driven back. ‘It was only that I am so foolish now.’

‘It was very wrong to be so abrupt--’

‘No! Oh! it was the relief!’ said Theodora, throwing off her shawl, as if to free herself from oppression. Percy took it from her, placed her in the arm-chair, and rendered her all the little attentions in his power with a sort of trembling eagerness, still silent; for she was very much exhausted,--not so much from present agitation as from the previous strain on mind and body.

It seemed to give a softness and tenderness to their reunion, such as there never had been between them before, as she leant back on the cushions he placed for her, and gazed up in his face as he stood by her, while she rested, as if unwilling to disturb the peace and tranquillity.

At last she said, ‘Did I hear you say you had forgiven me?’

‘I asked if you could forgive me?’

‘I!’ she exclaimed, rousing herself and sitting up,--‘I have nothing to forgive! What are you thinking of?’

‘And is it thus you overlook the presumption and harshness that--’

‘Hush!’ said Theodora; ‘I was unbearable. No man of sense or spirit could be expected to endure such treatment. But, Percy, I have been very unhappy about it, and I do hope I am tamer at last, if you will try me again.’

‘Theodora!’ cried Percy, hardly knowing what he said. ‘Can you mean it? After all that is past, may I believe what I dared not feel assured of even in former days?’

‘Did you not?’ said Theodora, sorrowfully. ‘Then my pride must have been even worse than I supposed.’

‘Only let me hear the word from you. You do not know what it would be to me!’

‘And did you really think I did not care for you? I, whose affection for you has been a part of my very self! I am more grieved than ever. I would never have tormented you if I had not thought you knew my heart was right all the time.’

‘It was my fault; my anger and impatience! And you let me hope that this--this undeserved feeling has survived even my usage!’

‘Nay, it was that which taught me its power. Your rejection was the making of me; thanks to Violet, who would not let me harden myself, and ruin all.’

‘Violet! I could almost call her our presiding spirit, sent to save us from ourselves!’

‘Dear Violet! how glad she will be.’

‘Then,’ said Percy, as if he had only room for one thought, ‘are we indeed to begin anew?’

‘I will try to be less unbearable,’ was the stifled answer.

‘We have both had lessons enough to teach us to be more humble and forbearing,’ said Percy, now first venturing to take her hand. ‘Let us hope that since this blessing has been granted us, that we shall be aided in our endeavours to help each other.’

There was a grave and chastened tone about the meeting of these two lovers: Theodora almost terrified at realizing that the bliss she had once forfeited was restored to her, and Percy peculiarly respectful--almost diffident in manner, feeling even more guilty towards her than she did towards him. Neither could be content without a full confession of their wrongs towards each other, and the unjust impressions that had actuated them; and in the retrospect time passed so quickly away, that they were taken by surprise when the candles came in.

‘I need not go?’ entreated Percy.

‘No, indeed; but you have had no dinner.’

‘Never mind--I want nothing.’

Theodora ran up-stairs. Violet understood the suppressed call in the dressing-room, and met her with outstretched arms.

The children never forgot that evening, so delightful did the owl-man make himself. Helen even offered him a kiss, and wished him good night, saucily calling him Percy; and Johnnie set his aunt’s cheeks in a glow by saying, ‘It ought to be Uncle Percy, if he belonged to Aunt Helen.’

‘What do you know of Aunt Helen?’ said Percy, lifting him on his knee, with a sudden change of manner.

Johnnie’s face was deeply tinged; he bent down his head and did not answer, till, when the inquiry was repeated, he whispered, ‘Mamma said Aunt Helen was so very good. Mamma read to me about the dew-drops, in her written book. She told me about her when I had the blister on, because, she said, her thoughts helped one to be patient and good.’

Percy put his arm round him, and his sigh or movement surprised Johnnie, who uneasily looked at his aunt. ‘Ought I not to have said it?’

‘Yes, indeed, Johnnie, boy. There is nothing so pleasant to me to hear,’ said Percy. ‘Good night; I shall like you all the better for caring for my dear sister Helen.’

‘Being dead, she yet speaketh,’ murmured he, as the children went. ‘Strange how one such tranquil, hidden life, which seemed lost and wasted, has told and is telling on so many!’

Even the peace and happiness of that evening could not remove the effects of over-fatigue, and Percy insisted on Theodora’s going early to rest, undertaking again to watch by Arthur. She objected, that he had been up all last night.

‘I cannot go home to bed. If you sent me away, I should wander in the Square, apostrophizing the gas-lamps, and be found to-morrow in the station, as a disorderly character. You had better make my superfluous energies available in Arthur’s service. Ask if I may come in.’

Theodora thought the sick-room had acquired quite a new aspect. A Sunday air pervaded the whole, seeming to radiate from Violet, as she sat by the fire; the baby asleep, in his little pink-lined cradle, by her side. The patient himself partook of the freshened appearance, as the bright glow of firelight played over his white pillows, his hair smooth and shining, and his face where repose and cheerfulness had taken the place of the worn, harassed expression of suffering. Of the welcome there could be no doubt. Arthur’s hands were both held out, and did not let her go, after they had drawn her down to kiss him and sit beside him on the bed.

‘Well done! Theodora,’ he said; ‘I am glad it is made up. He is the best fellow living, and well you deserve--’

‘O, don’t say so!’

‘Not that he is the best?’ said Arthur, squeezing hard both her hands, as he used to do in fond, teasing schoolboy days. ‘I shall not say one without the other. Such a pair is not to be found in a hurry. You only wanted breaking-in to be first-rate, and now you have done it.’

‘No, it was your own dear little wife!’ was whispered in his ear. He pinched her again, and, still holding her fast, said, ‘Is Percy there? Come in,’ and, as he entered, ‘Percy, I once warned you to kill the cat on the wedding-day. I testify that she is dead. This sister of mine is a good girl now. Ask Violet.’

‘Violet--or, rather, our Heartsease’--said Percy, as his grasp nearly crushed Violet’s soft fingers: ‘thank you; yours was the most admirable note ever composed! Never was more perfect “eloquence du billet!”’

‘Eh! what was it?’

Percy held up the little note before Arthur’s eyes: he laughed. ‘Ay! Violet is the only woman I ever knew who never said more than was to the purpose. But now, Mrs. Heartsease, if that is your name, go and put Theodora to bed; Percy will stay with me.’

‘The baby,’ objected Violet.

‘Never mind, I want you very much,’ said Theodora; ‘and as Percy says he has so much superfluous energy, he can take care of two Arthurs at once. I am only afraid of his making the great one talk.’

‘The great one’ was at first as silent as the little one; his countenance became very grave and thoughtful; and at last he said, ‘Now, Percy, you must consent to my selling out and paying you.’

‘If you do, it must be share and share alike with the rest of the creditors.’

‘And that would be no good,’ said Arthur, ‘with all the harpies to share. I wish you would consent, Percy. Think what it is to me to lie here, feeling that I have ruined not only myself, but all my sister’s hopes of happiness!’

‘Nay, you have been the means of bringing us together again. And as to your wife--’

‘I must not have her good deeds reckoned to me,’ said Arthur, sadly. ‘But what can you do? My father cannot pay down Theodora’s fortune.’

‘We must wait,’ interrupted Percy, cheerfully.

Arthur proceeded. ‘Wait! what for? Now you are cut out of Worthbourne, and my aunt’s money might as well be at the bottom of the sea, and--’

‘I can hear no croaking on such a day as this,’ broke in Percy. ‘As to Worthbourne, it is ill waiting for dead men’s shoon. I always thought Pelham’s as good a life as my own, and I never fancied Mrs. Nesbit’s hoards. If I made three thousand pounds in five years, why may I not do so again? I’ll turn rapacious--give away no more articles to benighted editors on their last legs. I can finish off my Byzantine history, and coin it into bezants.’

‘And these were your hard-earned savings, that should have forwarded your marriage!’

‘They have,’ said Percy, smiling. ‘They will come back some way or other. I shall work with a will now! I am twice the man I was yesterday. It was heartless work before. Now, “some achieve greatness,” you know.’

Arthur would have said more, but Percy stopped him. ‘If you gave it me to-morrow, we could not marry on it. Let things alone till you are about again, and John comes home. Meantime, trust her and me for being happy. A fico for the world and worldlings base.’

He attained his object in making Arthur smile; and Violet presently returning, they sat on opposite sides of the fire, and held one of the happiest conversations of their lives. Violet told the whole story of the fire, which seemed as new to Arthur as to Percy.

‘Why did I never hear this before?’ he asked.

‘You heard it at the time,’ said Violet.

Recollections came across Arthur, and he turned away his head, self-convicted of having thought the women made a tedious history, and that he could not be bored by attending. Percy’s way of listening, meanwhile, was with his foot on the fender, his elbow on his knee, his chin resting on his hand, his bright gray eyes fixed full on Violet, with a beaming look of gladness, and now and then a nod of assent, as if no heroism on Theodora’s part could surpass his expectations, for he could have told it all beforehand. However, his turn came, when Violet described her last expedition after the chess-board, and the injury it had entailed.

‘Now, now, you don’t say so!’ said he, stammering with eagerness, and starting up.

‘Poor dear, she hardly knew what she did,’ said Violet.

‘I remember,’ said Arthur. ‘That was the time of the delusion that Percy had taken up with his present cousin-in-law.’

Violet blushed. She was too much ashamed of ever having had the idea to bear to recall it; and when Arthur explained, Percy shuddered, and exclaimed, ‘No, I thank you, Violet! you knew enough against me; but you need not have thought me quite come to that!’

On the morrow, Percy came in as the children’s lessons were concluded. He studied Theodora’s face tenderly, and hoped that she had rested. She laughed, and called herself perfectly well; and, indeed, her eyes were as large and as bright as they ought to me, and she had discovered, that morning, that her black locks would make a much more respectable show if properly managed. He would not have mistaken her if she had looked as she did now three weeks ago.

After they had talked for some time, Theodora said, ‘We must not talk away the whole morning; I must write to papa.’

‘Yes,’ said Percy, ‘I came to speak of that. Theodora, perhaps it was wrong to say what I did last night.’

‘How?’ said she, frightened.

‘You ought to have been told how much worse my position is than before.’

‘Oh! is that all?’

‘It is a very serious all,’ he answered. ‘When I spoke before, and was cool enough to treat it as if I was conferring a favour on you, it was wonderful that your father consented. Now, you see, Worthbourne is gone--’

‘How can you care for that?’

‘I did not, till I began to look at it from your father’s point of view. Besides, I ought to tell you, that there is no chance even of a legacy. I find that Mrs. Fotheringham rules the house, and has tried to prejudice my uncle against me. On the marriage, there were fresh arrangements; my uncle was to alter his will, and it was on that occasion that Sir Antony sent for me to keep up the balance, and save him from her influence. Mrs. Martindale was right about her. What a mischief-maker she is! My delay gave great offence.’

‘Your delay on Arthur’s account?’

‘Yes, she managed to turn it against me. Imagine her having persuaded them that I reckoned on Pelham’s being set aside to make room for me. She says it was named in this house!’

‘Yes, by Jane herself.’

‘She represented me as so disgusted at the marriage that I would pay no attention to Sir Antony. I saw how it was when she received me, purring and coaxing, and seeming to be making my peace with my uncle. By and by, Pelham, when we grew intimate again, blundered out the whole,--that his father wished to have settled something on me; but that Jane had persuaded him that the whole might be wanted as a provision for their family. I cared not one rush then, but it makes a difference now. As for my former line, I am forgotten or worse. I have said blunt things that there was no call for me to say. No one chooses to have me for an underling, and there is no more chance of my getting an appointment than of being made Khan of Tartary. Authorship is all that is left to me.’

‘You have done great things in that way,’ said Theodora.

‘I had made something, but I was obliged to advance it the other day to get Arthur out of this scrape, and there is no chance of his being able to pay it, poor fellow!’

‘Oh, Percy! thank you more for this than for all. If the pressure had come, I believe it would have killed him. If you had seen the misery of those days!’

‘And now,’ continued Percy, ‘poor Arthur is most anxious it should be paid; but I ought not to consent. If he were to sell out now, he would be almost destitute. I have persuaded him to let all rest in silence till John comes.’

‘I am glad you have,’ said Theodora. ‘I am afraid papa is a good deal pressed for money. The rents have had to be reduced; and John wants all the Barbuda income to spend on the estate there. Even before the fire, papa talked of bringing John home to cut off the entail, and sell some land; and the house was insured far short of its value. He wants to get rid of Armstrong and all the finery of the garden; but he is afraid of vexing mamma, and in the meantime he is very glad that we are living more cheaply in the cottage. I really do not think he could conveniently pay such a sum; and just at present, too, I had rather poor Arthur’s faults were not brought before him.’

‘It comes to this, then;--Is it for your happiness to enter upon an indefinite engagement, and wait for the chance of my working myself up into such a competency as may make our marriage not too imprudent? It cannot, as far as I can see, be for years; it may be never.’

‘When I thought you would not have me, I meant to be an old maid,’ said Theodora; ‘and, Percy, this time you shall not think I do not care for you. If we have to wait for our whole lives, let it be with the knowledge that we belong to each other. I could not give up that now, and’--as he pressed her hand--‘mind, I am old enough to be trusted to choose poverty. I know I can live on a little: I trust to you to tell me whenever there is enough.’

‘And your father?’

‘He will not object--he will rejoice. The way I regarded that dear father was one of the worst sins of that time! It is better it should be as it is. Mamma could not well do without me now; I should be in doubt about leaving her, even if the rest were plain. So that is trouble saved,’ she added with a smile.

‘If they will see it in the same light! If they will forgive as readily as you do one of the greatest injuries to a young lady.’

‘Hush--nonsense. Papa always considered that it served me right. And really this is such perfect content, that I do not know how to understand it. You had always the power of reconciliation in your hands; but, you know, I had not; and, apart from all other feelings, the mere craving for pardon was so painful! It was only yesterday morning that I was thinking it might, at least, come in the other world.’

‘The pardon I was begging Violet to seek for me!--I trusted to obtain that, though I little hoped--’

‘But indeed, Percy, we must write our letters, or the children will be upon us again.’

Her letter was more easily written than Percy’s. He wrote, and tore up, and considered, and talked to her, and wished John was at home, and said that Lord Martindale would be perfectly justified in withdrawing his consent, and declaring him a presumptuous wretch.

‘What! when you have rescued his son? No, indeed, papa knows you too well! I have no fears: for though he is not aware of the cost of what you did for Arthur, he is most grateful for what he does know of; he thinks you saved his life, and even without that, he is too kind to me to do what--I could not bear.’

‘I will try to believe you.’

‘I was thinking that this is just retribution on me, that whereas I led Arthur into temptation, this debt should be the obstacle.’

Perhaps nothing gratified him more than to hear her speak of the loan as if she participated in the loss, not as if she viewed it from the Martindale side of the question, and felt it too much of an obligation.

His letter was not written till just in time for the post, and it travelled in the same cover with hers. Till the answer arrived he was very anxious, came little to the house, and only put on his cheerful air before Arthur, whose spirits could not afford to be lowered. Theodora was secure. She knew that she deserved that there should be difficulties; but at the same time she had the sense that the tide had turned. Pardon had come, and with it hope; and though she tried to school herself to submit to disappointment, she could not expect it. She knew she might trust to her father’s kind unworldly temper and sense of justice, now that he was left to himself. And when the letter came, Percy brought it in triumph under the shade of the old green umbrella, which hitherto he had not dared to produce.

Lord Martindale said everything affectionate and cordial. If he grieved at the unpromising prospect, he was wise enough to know it was too late to try to thwart an attachment which had survived such shocks; and he only dwelt on his rejoicing that, after all her trials, his daughter should have merited the restoration of the affection of one whom he esteemed so highly.

He fully forgave the former rejection, and declared that it was with far more hope and confidence of their happiness that he now accorded his sanction than when last it had been asked; and the terms in which he spoke of his daughter seemed to deepen her humility by the strength of their commendation.

Happy days succeeded; the lodgings in Piccadilly were nearly deserted, Percy was always either nursing Arthur, playing with the children, or bringing sheets of Byzantine history for revision; and he was much slower in looking over Theodora’s copies of them than in writing them himself. There was much grave quiet talk between the lovers when alone together. They were much altered since the time when their chief satisfaction seemed to lie in teasing and triumphing over one another; past troubles and vague prospects had a sobering influence; and they felt that while they enjoyed their present union as an unlooked-for blessing, it might be only a resting point before a long period of trial, separation, and disappointment. It gave a resigned tone to their happiness, even while its uncertainty rendered it more precious.

All mirthfulness, except what the children called forth, was reserved for Arthur’s room; but he thought Percy as gay and light-hearted as ever, and his sister not much less so. Percy would not bring their anxieties to depress the fluctuating spirits, which, wearied with the sameness of a sick-room, varied with every change of weather, every sensation of the hour.

Theodora almost wondered at Percy’s talking away every desponding fit of Arthur’s, whether about his health, his money matters, or their hopes. She said, though it was most trying to hear him talk of never coming down again, of not living to see the children grow up, and never allowing that he felt better, that she thought, considering how much depended on the impression now made, it might be false kindness to talk away his low spirits. Were they not repentance? Perhaps Percy was right, but she should not have dared to do so.

‘Theodora, you do not know the difference between reflection and dejection. Arthur’s repentance is too deep a thing for surface talk. It does not depend on my making him laugh or not.’

‘If anxiety about himself keeps it up--’

‘If I let him believe that I do not think he will recover, for the sake of encouraging his repentance, I should be leaving him in a delusion, and that I have no right to do. Better let him feel himself repenting as having to redeem what is past, than merely out of terror, thinking the temptations have given him up, not that he gives them up. Why, when he told me to sell his saddle-horses the other day, and that he should never ride again, it was nothing, and I only roused him up to hope to be out in the spring. Then he began to lament over his beautiful mare,--but when it came to his saying he had sacrificed Violet’s drives for her, and that he had been a selfish wretch, who never deserved to mount a horse again, and ending with a deep sigh, and “Let her go, I ought to give her up,” there was reality and sincerity, and I acted on it. No, if Arthur comes out of his room a changed character, it must be by strengthening his resolution, not by weakening his mind, by letting him give way to the mere depression of illness.’

‘You believe the change real? Oh, you don’t know what the doubt is to me! after my share in the evil, the anxiety is doubly intense! and I cannot see much demonstration except in his sadness, which you call bodily weakness.’

‘We cannot pry into hidden things,’ Percy answered. ‘Watch his wife, and you will see that she is satisfied. You may trust him to her, and to Him in whose hands he is. Of this I am sure, that there is a patient consideration for others, and readiness to make sacrifices that are not like what he used to be. You are not satisfied? It is not as you would repent; but you must remember that Arthur’s is after all a boy’s character; he has felt his errors as acutely as I think he can feel them, and if he is turning from them, that is all we can justly expect. They were more weakness than wilfulness.’

‘Not like mine!’ said Theodora; ‘but one thing more, Percy--can it be right for him to see no clergyman?’

‘Wait,’ said Percy again. ‘Violet can judge and influence him better than you or I. Depend upon it, she will do the right thing at the right time. Letting him alone to learn from his children seems to me the safest course.’

Theodora acquiesced, somewhat comforted by the conversation, though it was one of those matters in which the most loving heart must submit to uncertainty, in patient hope and prayer.

Just before Christmas, Theodora was summoned home; for her mother was too unwell and dispirited to do without her any longer. Her father offered to come and take her place, but Arthur and Violet decided that it would be a pity to unsettle him from home again. Arthur was now able to sit up for some hours each day, and Percy undertook to be always at hand. He was invited to Brogden for Christmas; but it was agreed between him and Theodora that they must deny themselves the pleasure of spending it together; they thought it unfit to leave Violet even for a few days entirely unassisted.

Mr. Hugh Martindale came to fetch Theodora home. He brought a more satisfactory account of poor Emma, who had never forwarded the promised explanation to Theodora. Lady Elizabeth had applied to him to clear Emma’s mind from some of the doubts and difficulties inspired by her friend, and at present, though her spirits were very low, they considered that one great step had been gained, for she had ceased every day to write to Miss Marstone.

Theodora had fixed many hopes on her cousin’s interview with Arthur, but they only talked of Brogden news; however, she heard afterwards that Hugh was well satisfied with what he had seen of him, and that he thought Percy’s view the safest. It was better to force nothing upon him. It was a sad struggle to resolve to depart, but it was made in thankfulness, when Theodora remembered the feelings with which she had entered that house. She went up in the early morning to wish Arthur good-bye. He raised himself and embraced her fondly.

‘Thank you, Theodora,’ he said; ‘you have been a good sister to me.’

‘Oh, Arthur, Arthur!’ as the dark remembrance came, but he did not perceive it.

‘I have been an ungrateful wretch, but I never understood it till lately,’ said he again. ‘The fire,--those children--’

‘Hush, hush! you are hurting yourself,’ for he was choked with excess of feeling.

‘I can’t say more;--but, oh! if I could help keeping you from happiness!’ and he was here overpowered by cough and emotion so much as to alarm her, and she was forced to keep silence, and only kiss him again. He returned it with a squeeze of the hand and a look of affection. He had never given her such an one in the days when she deemed his love a thing exclusively her own, she had now gained something far better than his heart had then to offer. The best spot in it then had nothing half so deep, fond, and unselfish as what he gave her now.

She had ceased her wilful struggle, and besides all the rest, even this was added unto her.

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Chapter 14

A calm stream flowing with a muddy one, Till, in its onward current, it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother, A leaning and upbearing parasite, Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite. Shadow forth thee; the world hath not another Of such refined and chastened purity.

--TENNYSON

Patience and prayer brought their fruit in due season.

‘Violet, you will not be able to go to church on Christmas-day.’

‘No, I am not strong enough, even if you could spare me.’

‘Do you think Mr. Rivers could come to us?’

‘O, thank you!’

Those were the words, but the flush that gave colour to Arthur’s face showed the effort which they cost, and his wife’s brief answer was cut short by the sweetest tears she had ever shed.

She wrote a note to the clergyman, which was answered by a call the same afternoon. It took Arthur by surprise; but his mind was made up, and colouring deeply, he desired that Mr. Rivers should be shown up. Violet left them alone together, her heart throbbing with grateful hope and supplication.

Arthur’s honest though faltering avowal, ‘I have never thought enough of these things,’ was his whole history.

It had been grace missed and neglected, rather than wilfully abused. There had of course been opportunities, but there had been little culture or guidance in his early days; his confirmation had taken place as a matter of form, and he had never been a communicant, withheld at once by ignorance and dread of strictness, as well as by a species of awe. Even his better and more conscientious feelings had been aroused merely by his affections instead of by the higher sense of duty; and now it was through these that the true voice had at length reached him.

He had learnt more from his little boy’s devotions than all the years of his life had taught him. The ever-present influence under which his wife and that child lived and acted, impressed itself on him as a truth and reality, and the consciousness of his full responsibility dawned upon him. In the early part of his illness, his despair had been at the thought of his failures as husband, father, and son. Now there came on him the perception that not merely in his human relations had he transgressed, but that far more had he slighted the Almighty and Long-suffering Father. He looked back on his life of disregard, his dire offences--

Thus awakened, he watched each word from his little unconscious teacher, to gather from them clearer hopes of mercy and pardon. Happily, Johnnie, in his daily lessons, was going through the ground-work, and those words of mighty signification conveyed meanings to the father, which the innocent child had as yet no need to unfold. The long silent hours gave time for thought, and often when the watchers deemed that the stifled groan or restless movement arose from pain or oppression, it was in fact drawn forth by the weight on his mind.

So it had gone on; while mingled feelings of shame, reserve, and reluctance to show himself in a new light, kept his lips closed, and days and weeks passed before he brought himself to speak the word even to his wife. When it was spoken, her silent intense gladness was at once a reward and a rebuke. Though she scarcely spoke, he knew her well enough to perceive more perfect joy than even at the moment when she first made him smile on their first-born son.

He raised his eyes to meet that look again, when, after his interview with the clergyman, she came back to join in fixing the hour. Contrition, dread, shame, penitence, all seemed to be soothed, and yet rendered deeper, by meeting those eyes of serene and perfect content and thankfulness.

That evening Johnnie was turning over prints by his side.

‘There is the Good Shepherd, papa. Do you see the poor sheep, who wandered out of the fold, away into the wilderness among the rocks and deserts--that is doing wrong, you know, papa. And it lost its way, and the wolf was watching to tear it to pieces, that is Satan; but the Good Shepherd,’ and the child bent his head reverently, ‘He went after it. Mamma said that means that He touches our hearts and makes us sorry, and it looked up and was ready--as we pray to be made good again. So then He laid it on His shoulders, and carried it safe home to be happy in the fold again. Is He not very good, papa? And only think! There is joy among the Holy Angels in Heaven when one sinner grieves and comes back.’

Johnnie was wont to go on in this dreamy way without expecting an answer; but he was startled to see his father’s face hidden by the shadowy fingers that propped his forehead.

‘Has it made your head ache, papa? Must I go away?’

‘Say that again, Johnnie.’

‘I cannot say it quite right,’ answered the boy; ‘I only know it says that the Angels in Heaven rejoice and are glad over one sinner that repenteth. I thought about it that night after I had been naughty.’

‘You, Johnnie?’ Arthur could hardly believe that child capable of a fault.

‘Yes,’ said Johnnie, with a trembling lip; ‘I was cross at doing my lessons with Aunt Theodora instead of mamma, and I was so sorry. But at night, something seemed to bring that verse, and I thought the Angels must have faces like mamma.’

Certainly his father thought so too.

Theodora’s Christmas morning was cheered by a letter from Percy, to tell her that he was to be with Arthur and Violet on this occasion. It was greater happiness to her than it would even have been to have had him at Brogden.

It was a very quiet day in Cadogan-place. The full freshness of awe and reverence was upon Arthur, and though he hardly spoke, and made almost no demonstration, the strength of his feeling was attested by the fatigue that ensued, partly, perhaps, from the unwonted effort of fixing his attention. All the rest of the day he lay on the sofa, silent and dozing, till in the evening, when left alone with Johnnie, he only roused himself to ask to have a Bible placed within his reach, and there losing his way in searching for the parable of the strayed sheep, he wandered about in the sayings of St. John’s Gospel.

Johnnie’s delight had been the dressing the cathedral cup with a spray of holly sent to him from Brogden by his aunt, and now he sat conning the hymns he had heard in church, and musing over his prints in silence, till his brow caught an expression that strangely blended with those dreamy impressions of his father.

‘Poor children! they have had a dull Christmas-day!’ said Arthur, as they came to bid him good night.

‘No, no, papa; the owl-man has had such a game at play with us in the dining-room!’ cried Helen.

‘Yes,’ said Johnnie; ‘and you know, papa, I never said my hymn to you on a Christmas-day before. I like to-day the best of all I remember.’

The next day he was glad to find that Johnnie would, after all, have his share of the festivities of the season. Colonel Harrington came to see Arthur, and begged to have his little godson at a New Year’s party at his house.

Violet was perplexed. She could not send her little, shy boy alone, yet she did not like to let his father know that it had been a mistake to accept the invitation. Percy came to her aid. ‘There is no such fun as a children’s party. I wish you would smuggle me in as Johnnie’s nursery governess.’

‘You know, Mrs. Harrington, don’t you?’ said Arthur; ‘as a general rule, you know every one, and every one knows you.’

‘Yes, I know her. Come, Violet, can’t you get me in, in Johnnie’s train? If you will let me take charge or him, I will keep an eye over the cake, and you shall see how I will muffle him up to come home.’

It was too good an offer to be refused, though Violet had doubts whether it would be perfect happiness, for Johnnie was apt to shrink from strange children, and was unusually shy and timid. However, his spirits had risen of late. Ever since he had found his place in his father’s heart, the drooping unchild-like sadness had passed away, and though still grave and thoughtful, there was a life and animation about him at times that cheered and delighted her.

There was a great friendship between him and ‘Uncle Percy’; they took walks together, fed the ducks in St. James’s Park, had many interesting conversations on Brogden affairs, and Johnnie had been several times at the rooms over the toy-shop, and was on intimate terms with old Puss. Violet knew that he would be safe, and was willing to think it right he should be made more of a man.

She felt her Johnnie’s value more than ever that evening, when she saw how his father missed him. After the pleasure of seeing him ready to set off, looking so fair and bright and delicate, Arthur flagged very much.

It had been a trying day. The experiment of a more strengthening diet had resulted in heightened pulse and increased cough, and the medical men had been obliged to own that though the acute inflammation had been subdued, the original evil still remained, and that he was farther from complete recovery than they had lately been hoping. Besides, he had sent in his claim on Mr. Gardner, on hearing of his marriage, and the answer, now due, did not come.

Nothing but the company of the children seemed likely to divert his thoughts, and Helen was too much for him. She was exalted at her own magnanimity in rejoicing that Johnnie should have the treat without her, and was in a boisterous state that led to an edict of banishment, vehemently resisted. It was the first time that anything had gone wrong in Arthur’s presence, and Violet was much concerned, and fearful of the effect, when, after the conquest had been achieved, she left Helen sobbing in the nursery, and came down to his room.

There was not the annoyance she had dreaded; but the dejection had been deepened, and he did not respond to the somewhat forced cheerfulness with which she tried to speak of the generosity united in Helen with a hasty temper. It seemed to hurt and pain him so much to have the little girl punished, that there was nothing to be done but to try to turn away his attention.

Those weary times were perhaps harder to bear than periods of more evident trial and excitement. Violet, as she strove to rally her spirits and sustain his, could not help so feeling it--and then she thought of Helen Fotheringham, and recollected that she had been intending to read to Arthur an affectionate letter she had received from his brother on hearing of his illness. Arthur was greatly touched by the tone in which he was mentioned in it, and began eagerly to talk over John’s many proofs of affection, among which he now ranked his disregarded warnings.

‘I have not forgotten his saying I must make you happy. I little understood him then!’

There was happiness enough in the caress that would fain have silenced him.

‘Well! I have been thinking! Our marriage was the best and worst thing I ever did. It was unjust to you, and as bad as possible towards them; but that is what I can’t be as sorry for as it deserves,’ and he looked up with a sweet smile, fading at once--‘except when I look at you and the children, and think what is to become of you.’

‘Oh, don’t, dear Arthur! Why look forward! There has been great mercy so far. Let us rest in it.’

‘You may; it was not your fault,’ said Arthur; ‘but how can I? I took you in your ignorance; I let your father deceive himself about my expectations, then, when my own people were far kinder to me than I deserved, and I ought to have done everything myself to make up for my imprudence, I go and let you pinch yourself, while I squander everything on my own abominable follies! And now, here am I leaving you with all these poor children, and nothing on earth--nothing but a huge debt? What are you to do, I say?’

He was almost angry that she did not partake his apprehension for her welfare.

‘This is only a casual drawback. Dr. L---- said so!’

‘That’s nothing to the purpose. My health is done for. There is nothing before me but decline. I have felt that all along, whatever doctors may say. And how can you expect me not to feel what I have brought on you?’

‘I am sure you need not be afraid for us. Is it not unkind to doubt your father and John?’

‘Suppose they should die before Johnnie comes of age--suppose John should marry!’

Oh, Arthur, I cannot suppose anything! I am only quite sure that there is a Father who will take care of our children. I do not know how, but I am certain we shall not be forsaken. Do not grieve for us. I am not afraid.’

‘Not of poverty, even for the children?’

‘No!’ said Violet. ‘I know it will not come, unless it is the best thing for them.’

He did not entirely comprehend her, but he liked to watch her face, it looked so beautiful in its perfect trust. He could not share that peaceful confidence for the future, the harvest of his past recklessness was present poignant dread and anxiety for the innocent ones on whom the penalty must fall. He relapsed into silence, and perhaps his meditations were as much perplexed by the nine Arabic figures as those of Violet’s convalescence had once been, only where hers were units, his were hundreds.

She interrupted him with more of John’s letters, and the amusing detail of the West Indian life stood her in good stead till the sounds of return brightened his face; and Johnnie sprang into the room loaded with treasures from a Christmas tree. Never had she seen the little fellow’s face so merry, or heard his tongue go so fast, as he threw everything into her lap, and then sprang about from her to his papa, showing his prizes and presenting them. Here were some lemon-drops for papa, and here a beautiful box for mamma, and a gutta-percha frog for Helen, and a flag for Annie, and bon-bons for both, and for Sarah too, and a delightful story about a little Arthur, that nobody could have but the baby--Johnnie would keep it for him till he could read it.

‘And what have you got for yourself, Johnnie!’ said his father.

‘I have the giving it!’ said Johnnie.

‘You are your mother’s own boy, Johnnie,’ said Arthur, with a sort of fond deep sadness, as the child mounted his footstool to put one of the lemon-drops into his mouth, watching to be told that it was good.

He went off to the nursery to feed Sarah on sugar-plums, and dispose the frog and banner on his sisters’ beds to delight them in the morning; while Percy, coming in, declared that this had been the little boy’s happiest time. He had been far too shy for enjoyment, perfectly well behaved, but not stirring a step from his protector, only holding his hand, and looking piteously at him if invited away; and Percy declared, he was as much courted as a young lady in her teens. Sitting down with him at a table surrounded by small elves, Percy had of course kept them in a roar of laughter, throughout which Johnnie had preserved his gravity, only once volunteering a whisper, that he wished Helen was there; but Percy thought that when unmolested by attention, he had seemed quietly amused. When admitted to the Christmas tree in its glory, he had been slightly afraid of it at first, as of an unexpected phenomenon, and had squeezed his friend’s hand very tight; but as he perceived how things were going, his alarm had given place to silent joyous whispers, appropriating his gifts to those at home. He had no idea of keeping anything for himself; and Percy had distressed him by a doubt whether the book, as a godfather’s gift, ought to be transferred. On this Johnnie was scrupulous, and Percy had been obliged to relieve his mind by repeating the question for him to Colonel Harrington, whether he might give the book to his little brother. This settled, Johnnie’s happiness had been complete, and his ecstasy during their return, at having a present for everybody, was, said Percy, the prettiest comment he had ever known on the blessedness of giving.

It evidently struck Arthur. At night, Violet, from her sofa, heard him murmur to himself, ‘My boy! my unselfish boy, what will you think of your father?’ and then stifle a groan.

The next afternoon, Johnnie, having as a preliminary inscribed his brother’s unwieldy name all over the fly-leaf, was proceeding most happily to read the book aloud, lying on the hearth-rug, with his heels in the air. He read his mamma into a slumber, his papa into a deep reverie, which resulted in his dragging himself up from his chair, by the help of the chimney-piece, and reaching pen and writing-case from Violet’s table.

‘Oh! papa!’ whispered Johnnie, in an injured tone, at not having been asked to do the little service.

‘I thought it would disturb mamma less,’ returned Arthur, sinking back; ‘but you may give me the ink. And now, my dear, go on to yourself.’

‘Are you going to write, papa? That is being much better.’

‘I am going to try to write to your uncle. Johnnie, supposing you lose me, I look to your uncle and you for care of the little ones.’

Johnnie gave a great sigh, and looked at his father, but made no answer. Papa’s writing was a matter of curiosity, and he stood watching in silence.

‘You must not watch me, Johnnie,’ said Arthur, presently, for whether his son could read his writing or not, he could not bear his eyes upon it. The boy had dropped into his place on the carpet in a moment.

It was a full confession and outpouring of his troubles. It cost him much, for there was shame at his own folly and selfishness, and he had to disclose extravagance that he well knew to be, in John’s eyes, especially inexcusable. So painful was the effort, that even his fears for his family would not alone have determined him on making it, if it had not been for his new resolution to face the worst, and to have no more shufflings or concealments. He could bear to tell John better than his father, and Percy had bound him to silence towards Lord Martindale. The whole was explained to the best of his powers, which were not at present great. His debts, including that to Percy, he believed to exceed ten thousand, his resources were limited to the sale of his commission, and the improbable recovery of the debt from Gardner--his wife and children were entirely unprovided for. ‘I can only trust to your kindness,’ he wrote. ‘If I could see you, I could die in peace. I know that while you live, you will never see Violet distressed. I have no right to ask anything, but this much I will and must beg may be looked on as my last wish. Never let the children be taken from their mother’s charge. If they are to be better than I, it must be her doing. And though this is more than I should dare to ask, if you can help me, do not, when I am gone, let my boys grow up to find their father’s memory loaded with these hateful debts, hanging round their necks like a burden. I know Johnnie’s sense of honour would never let him rest till they were cleared; but I cannot look at his face and think of his hearing how I have served his mother. He does love me now, Heaven knows, undeservedly enough. I cannot bear to think of a cloud on his remembrance of me.’

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Chapter 15

Either grief will not come, or if it must, Do not forecast. And while it cometh, it is almost past. Away distrust, My God hath promised, He is just.

--G. HERBERT

‘Arthur, the landlady has been to ask how much longer we shall want the rooms!’

‘How long have we been here?’

‘We came on the 20th of April, and this is the 3rd of June. What a difference it has made in you!’

‘And in you; Ventnor is a grand doctor.’

‘And Johnnie is really beginning to have a colour. How pleased his grandpapa will be to see him so much stronger and more spirited. I do not think Lord Martindale could have done anything kinder by us than sending us here.’

‘How does the purse hold out?’

‘I have been reckoning that we could stay on three weeks more before going to Brogden; and, if you like it, I should wish to spend our wedding-day here,’ said Violet, in the shy diffident way in which she was wont to proffer any request for her own gratification.

‘I had another scheme for our wedding-day. What do you say to spending it at Wrangerton?’

She looked up in his face as if to see if he really meant it, then the glad flush darted into her cheeks, and with a cry of joy like a child, she almost sobbed out, ‘Oh, Arthur, Arthur! thank you.’

He looked at her, amused, and enjoying her ecstasy. ‘So you approve, Mrs. Martindale?’

‘O, to go to mamma! to show mamma the children! Annette! home!--Johnnie to see Helvellyn!--my sisters!--Olivia’s baby!’ cried Violet, in incoherent exclamations, almost choked with joy.

‘My poor Violet,’ said Arthur, surprised and almost remorseful; ‘I did not know you wished it so very much.’

‘I believe I had left off thinking about it,’ said Violet; ‘but I am so very much obliged to you, dear Arthur--how very kind it is.’

It never occurred to her, as it did to him, that the kindness might have come sooner. ‘I only hope you like it,’ she added, after a pause.

‘Don’t I like what makes you look as you do now?’ said he, smiling. ‘I shall enjoy looking up our old quarters. Besides,’ he added, more gravely, ‘it is your turn now; and liking apart, I know I have not used Mrs. Moss well, in keeping you so long from her. You must let her know it was not your fault.’

‘May I write, then? Oh, Arthur, dearest! if I could but find words to tell you how happy you have made me!’

It was no sudden determination, for he brought a ‘Bradshaw’ out of his pocket, with all the various railways and trains underscored in pencil in a most knowing way, and a calculation of expenses on the cover, all wrong--for Arthur had never done an addition sum right in his life.

Violet was to write as soon as she pleased, and fix the day and hour.

Perhaps Violet had never been so happy in her life as when, in the afternoon, she wandered a little apart on the beach, to realize and feed on her new treasure of delight. Arthur and the children were felicitously dabbling in sand and sea-water, reducing the frocks to a condition that would have been Sarah’s daily distraction, if she had not reconciled herself to it by observing, ‘it did her heart good to see the Colonel take to the children, though he was no more to be trusted with them than a sea-mew; and if it was not for Master John, she believed they would all come home some day drownded.’

As soon as the spring was sufficiently advanced, Lord Martindale had sent the whole party to recruit by the sea-side, at their own dear Ventnor, and there the last six weeks had been spent in the daily joy of watching Arthur’s progress in recovery;--until now a slight degree of weakness and languor, an occasional cough, and his greatly altered appearance, were the only evident remains of his illness; and though she could not feel that his health was absolutely re-established, there was such abundant cause for hope and thankfulness, as filled her heart to overflowing, especially when she was rejoiced by tokens of that more blessed change within.

His spirits had returned with his health. Perhaps it was part of his boyish nature, that his sorrow for his errors, though sincere and earnest, did not permanently depress him, when not brought before his mind; but rather the sense of behaving well added to his brightness. There was nothing to conceal; the guilty consciousness was gone, and the fear for the future was distant. His manners had a sweetness more engaging than ever. To his wife, who had, as he recovered, suffered from the effects of her exertions, he was most affectionately attentive, and his children were his delight, while little Johnnie throve and expanded into spirit and mirth, like a plant reviving in sunshine.

He had gone over Violet’s old haunts with her, and she had enjoyed making him enter into the feelings associated with the scenes she had visited with his brother. John was expected to return in the summer, but even this anticipation paled in comparison with the present felicity. That longing for her own home had been forced into such a remote cell, that she had had no idea of its strength till now, when it was allowed to spring up and colour everything.

She walked along the shore within sight of the cottage, where she had been with John, too small and expensive for their present numbers and means, and looking up at its bowery wicket, gathered up the remembrances associated with it.

She had come thither a mere child, a wife and mother, before strength, spirits, or judgment were equal to her tasks,--terrified at her responsibility, perceiving her failures, sinking under the load too early laid on her. There had she been guided to comfort,--there had her hand been taught to clasp the rod and staff, that had led her safe through the shadow, well-nigh of death. How would her heart have fainted if she could have guessed what had awaited her! But these things were past, and their memory was sweetened by thankfulness. And now, where once stood the self-torturing, pining girl, was now the calm trustful woman,--serene beneath the overshadowing Wings, resting on the everlasting Arms,--relying, least of all, upon herself. Further trouble might be in store; the clouds might return after the rain; but her peace was not mere freedom from storms, it was the security that there was One who would be with her and her loved ones through all, and thus could she freely rejoice in present sunshine, without scanning each distant cloud, or marring present bliss by future dread.

It was complete gladness. There was not a misgiving whether home might be exactly as it stood in her memory, or in Johnnie’s imagination; and she filled the children’s heads so much with what they were to see, that their papa declared he had found Annie under the belief that Helvellyn was her grandfather.

Arthur was so much charmed with seeing his wife so happy, that, forgetting all his fears of tediousness, he partook the enjoyment of her anticipations. He was the first, when they came in sight of a mountain, to lift Johnnie on his knee and tell him it was Helvellyn; and mamma’s resentment at the grievous error was one of the prettiest and merriest things imaginable.

However, when Helvellyn actually appeared, and she felt herself really coming home, she was silent, in anxiety and doubt. She must be very different from the Violet who had gone away. Would her mother and Matilda think she had improved according to her opportunities?

She could hardly reply when Arthur recognized the High-street, so much wider in her imagination, and her heart beat as the garden wall and the lawn were before her. At the door--yes!--it was, it was the mother for whose embrace, she had so often longed! Timidly affectionate and hastily nervous, she could hardly afford one moment to her daughter in her frightened haste to greet her son-in-law, before he was ready, as he was lifting the children out. Here, too, were Annette and Mr. Moss, the young ladies were in the drawing-room, detained by etiquettes of Matilda’s; but Violet hardly knew who spoke to her, the joy was to see a baby of hers at last in her mothers arms.

She could hardly see any one but the slight worn-looking mother, whose low, sad-toned voice awoke such endless recollections, and made her realize that she was once more beside mamma. To look at her sisters almost disturbed her; and it well-nigh struck her as unnatural to find the children hanging on her.

Still more unnatural was it to be conducted up-stairs, like company, to the best room, and to find her mother in distress and solicitude lest things should not be comfortable, and such as they were used to. And oh! the strangeness of seeing her little ones in her own old nursery, waited upon by the sisters she had left as children--and by Sarah, settled in there as if she had never been away. One part of her life or the other must be a dream.

Dear as all the faces were, it was a relief to be silent for a little while, as Arthur, half-asleep, rested in the large old armchair, and she unpacked, too happy for weariness; and the clear pure mountain air breathing in at the open window, infusing life into every vein, as she paused to look at the purple head above the St. Erme woods, and to gaze on the fragrant garden beneath; then turned away to call to mind the childish faces which she had not yet learnt to trace in those fine-looking young women.

‘Ha!’ said Arthur, rousing himself; ‘are all the pretty plaits and braids come out again? A welcome sight.’

‘Mamma thought me altered,’ said Violet; ‘and I thought I would not look more old than I could help; so I would not put on my cap for fear it should distress her.’

‘Old! altered!’ said Arthur. ‘How dare you talk of such things!’

‘I can’t help it,’ said Violet, meekly.

‘Well! I believe I see what you mean,’ he said, studying her with a gravity that was amusing. ‘There’s your youngest sister, Octavia, is not she?’

‘Oh, is not she pretty?’

‘Whish! don’t praise yourself; she is the image of you at sixteen. Now that I have seen her, I see you are changed; but somehow--the word that always suited you best was lovely; and you have more of that style of thing than even when your cheeks were pink. Not your oval face and white skin, you know, but that--that look that is my Violet--my heart’s-ease, that used to keep my heart up last winter. Ay! you are more to my mind!’

That little episode was the special charm of Violet’s evening--a happy one, though there were some anxieties, and a few fond little illusions dispelled.

It might be the dread of Arthur’s being annoyed, as she watched him looking very pale and spiritless from fatigue, which made her perceive that all dinner-time Matilda was overwhelming him with a torrent of affected nonsense--or at least what Violet would have thought so in any one but her highly-respected eldest sister; and she feared, too, that he could not admire the girlish airs and graces which did not become that sharpened figure and features. She had not known how much more Matilda talked than any one else; even her father only put in a caustic remark here and there, when Matilda WOULD know all Lord St. Erme’s and Lady Lucy’s views and habits. Mrs. Moss was silenced whenever her low voice tried to utter a sentence. Annette, quiet and gentle as ever, looked drooping and subdued, and scarcely spoke, while the two fine blooming girls, who seemed like new acquaintance, were still as mice in awe and shyness. Caroline, the second sister, was married and settled in Canada; and the three blanks that weddings had made only now impressed themselves on her mind as a novelty.

After dinner, Violet felt as if she must rescue Arthur from Matilda at any cost, and succeeded in setting her down to the piano; and to secure his quiet, though feeling it a very presumptuous venture, she drew her chair near her father, and set herself to talk to him. Mr. Moss was quite amazed to find a woman--a daughter--capable of rational conversation. She went on with the more spirit, from her pleasure in seeing Arthur, instead of dozing under cover of the music, going to sit by Mrs. Moss and talk to her, and though nothing was heard, their countenances were proof enough of their interest--Mrs. Moss’s thin mild face quite colouring up at the unwonted attention, and her eyes glistening. In fact they were talking about Violet, and in such a strain that Mrs. Moss that night confided to Annette, that she should never again believe a word against Colonel Martindale.

But if the fortnight was to be like this, how was Arthur to bear it? Violet dreaded it for him the more because he was so very good and forbearing, not making one remark on what she knew must have struck him. She could almost have reproached herself with selfishness in never having thought of his want of companionship and amusement.

The night’s rest, however, made a great difference in his capacity for entertainment, beginning from his laugh at Helen’s inquiry, ‘What was the use of so many aunts?’ He lay on the grass in the sunshine, playing with the children, and fast making friends with the younger aunts, who heartily relished his fun, though they were a good deal afraid of him; while Violet sat under the verandah, feasting her eyes upon Helvellyn, and enjoying the talk with her sisters as much as she could, while uneasy at the lengthened housekeeping labours that her mother was undergoing. They were to retrace one of their memorable walks by the river-side in the afternoon, but were prevented by the visit expected all the morning, but deferred to that fashionable hour, of Mrs. Albert Moss, who sailed in, resolved that the Honourable Mrs. Martindale should find one real companion in the family.

Those fluttering silks and fringes seemed somewhat to stand on end at finding themselves presented to a slight, simply dressed figure in a plain straw bonnet; and the bare-legged, broad-sashed splendours of Miss Albertine Louisa stood aghast at the brown holland gardening suits of the London cousins.

‘In training for the Highlanders?’ was Arthur’s mischievous aside to Octavia, setting her off into the silent frightened laugh that was his special diversion; and he continued, as they stood half in and half out of the window, ‘There’s Helen patronizing her! I hope she will take her down to the sand-heap, where the children have been luxuriating all the morning.’

‘Oh! how can you--’

‘It is my father’s great principle of education,’ said Arthur, solemnly, ‘to let them grope in the dirt. I never rested till I had seen my boy up to the ears in mud.--But ha! what a magnificent horse! Why,’ as he started forward to look at it, ‘I declare it is stopping here!’

‘Olivia and Mr. Hunt in the gig!’ cried Octavia. Oh, she has the baby in her lap!’

Matilda and Mrs. Albert Moss looked at each other, shocked.

‘What will Mr. Hunt make her do next?’

‘Poor Olivia!’ said Mrs. Albert. ‘We regret the connection; but Mr. Hunt will have his own way. You must excuse--’

It was lost. Seeing the new-comers in difficulties between baby, horse, and gate, Arthur had sped out to open the last for them; and Violet had sprung after him, and received the child in her arms while her sister alighted. Here was the mesalliance of the family, too wealthy to have been rejected, but openly disdained by Matilda, while the gentle Mrs. Moss and Annette hardly ventured to say a good word for him. Violet’s apprehensions had chiefly centred on him, lest his want of refinement should make him very disagreeable to Arthur; and she almost feared to look up as she held out her hand to him.

In a moment her mind was relieved; voice, look, and manner, all showed that the knightly soul was in him, and that he had every quality of the gentleman, especially the hatred of pretension, which made him retain the title of English yeoman as an honourable distinction.

It was a pretty group of contrasts; the soldierly, high-bred, easy grace of the pallid black-haired Colonel, with the native nobleness of bearing of the stalwart farmer, equally tall, and his handsome ruddy face glowing with health; and the two sisters, the one fresh, plump, and rosy, the picture of a happy young mother, and the other slender and dignified, with the slightly worn countenance, which, even in her most gladsome moods, retained that pensive calmness of expression.

The baby occupied the ladies, the horse their husbands; and on hearing what guests were in the drawing-room, Mr. Hunt, with a tell-tale ‘then,’ said he would drive on to his business at Coalworth, inviting the Colonel to take the vacant seat.

With Arthur off her mind, Violet was free to enjoy, and soon found that the only flaw in Olivia’s felicity was the Wrangerton fashion of sneering at her husband, and trying to keep her up to Matilda’s measure of gentility. Proud as she was of her ‘George,’ he had not made her bold enough to set those censures at nought; but when she found Violet of his way of thinking, she joyfully declared that she would never allow herself to be again tormented by Matilda’s proprieties. How glad she was that George had insisted; for, as she confided to Violet and Annette, she knew that bringing the baby without a maid would be thought so vulgar that she would have stayed at home, in spite of her desire to see Violet; but her husband had laughed at her scruples, declaring that if her sister could be offended by her coming in this manner, she must be a fine lady not worth pleasing.

Perhaps Mr. Hunt so expected to find her. He was a breeder of horses on an extensive scale, and had knowledge enough of the transactions of Mark Gardner and his set, not to be very solicitous of the acquaintance of Colonel Martindale, while he dreaded that the London beauty would irretrievably fill his little wife’s head with nonsense.

One look swept away his distrust of Mrs. Martindale; and the charm of the Colonel’s manner had gained his heart before the drive was over. The next day he was to send a horse for Arthur to ride to Lassonthwayte to see his whole establishment; and Violet found she might dismiss her fears of want of amusement for her husband.

He had sold off all his own horses, and had not ridden since his illness, and the thought seemed to excite him like a boy. His eyes sparkled at the sight of the noble hunter sent for him; and Violet had seldom felt happier than as she stood with the children on the grass-plat, hearing her sisters say how well he looked on horseback, as he turned back to wave her an adieu, with so lover-like a gesture, and so youthful an air, that it seemed to bring back the earliest days of their marriage.

This quiet day, only diversified by a call from Lord St. Erme and Lady Lucy, and by accompanying Mrs. Moss to make some visits to old friends in the town, brought Violet to a fuller comprehension of her own family.

Her mother was what she herself might have become but for John. She was an excellent person, very sensible, and completely a lady; but her spirit had been broken by a caustic, sharp-tempered, neglectful husband, and she had dragged through the world bending under her trials, not rising above them. Her eldest daughter had been sent to a fashionable school, and had ever since domineered over the whole family, while the mother sank into a sort of bonne to the little ones, and a slave to her husband. There was much love for her among her fine handsome girls, but little honour for the patient devotion and the unfailing good sense that judged aright, but could not act.

Annette, her chief comfort, tried to bring up her pupil Octavia to the same esteem for her; but family example was stronger than precept, and Annette had no weight; while even Mr. Hunt’s determination that Olivia should show due regard to her mother, was looked on as one of his rusticities. Poor Mrs. Moss was so unused to be treated as a person of importance, that she could hardly understand the attention paid her, not only by Violet, but by the Colonel; while the two young sisters, who regarded Violet and her husband as the first of human beings, began to discover that ‘O, it is only mamma!’ was not the most appropriate way of speaking of her; and that when they let her go on errands, and wait on every one, Violet usually took the office on herself.

So busy was Mrs. Moss, that Violet had very few minutes of conversation with her, but she saw more of Annette, in whom the same meek character was repeated, with the tendency to plaintiveness that prevented its real superiority from taking effect. She drooped under the general disregard, saw things amiss, but was hopeless of mending them; and for want of the spirit of cheerfulness, had become faded, worn, and weary. Violet tried to talk encouragingly, but she only gave melancholy smiles, and returned to speak of the influences that were hurting Octavia.

‘Do not let us dwell on what we cannot help,’ said Violet; ‘let us do our best, and then leave it in the best Hands, and He will bring out good. You cannot think how much happier I have been since I knew it was wrong to be faint-hearted.’

Before the end of the day she had seen her mother and Annette look so much more cheerful, that the wish crossed her that she could often be at hand.

By and by Arthur came home in the highest spirits, tossing Annie in the air, as he met her in the passage, and declaring himself so far from tired that he had not felt so well for a year, and that the mountain breezes had taken the weight off his chest for good and all. He was in perfect raptures with Lassonthwayte and with its master, had made an engagement to bring Violet, her mother, and the children, to stay there a week, and--‘What more do you think?’ said he.

‘Everything delightful, I see by your face,’ said Violet.

‘Why, Hunt has as pretty a little house as ever I saw in the village of Lassonthwayte, to be let for a mere nothing, just big enough to hold us, and the garden all over roses, and that style of thing. Now, I reckon our allowance would go three times as far here as in London; and if I were to sell out, the money invested in these concerns of Hunt’s would be doubled in a year or two--at any rate, before the boys will want schooling. If I do know anything it is of horses, you see, and we should pay off Percy and all the rest of them, and be free again.’

‘Live near mamma and Olivia!’

‘Ah! I knew you would like it. The mountain air will bring back your colour, and make a Hercules of Johnnie yet. I longed to have him there to-day! We may live cheaply, you know, not get into all this town lot; only have the girls staying with us, and give your mother a holiday now and then. Don’t you fancy it, Mrs. Martindale?’

‘It is too delightful! I suppose we must not settle it without your father, though.’

‘He can’t object to our living at half the cost, and getting out of debt; I’ll talk him over when we go home. Hunt is as fine a fellow as I ever saw, and as steady as old time.’

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Chapter 16

And oft when in my heart I heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother paths to stray, But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

--Ode to Duty--WORDSWORTH

Lassonthwaite lost none of its charms on closer acquaintance. Mr. Hunt’s farm stood on the slope of a hill, commanding a view of the mountains, rising like purple clouds above the moorland, richly carpeted with the varied colours of heath, fern, and furze, and scattered with flocks of the white bleached mountain sheep, and herds of sturdy little black cattle; while the valley, nearer at hand, was fringed with woods, sheltering verdant pasture land, watered by the same clear frolicsome stream that danced through the garden--Olivia’s garden--brilliant with roses and other beauties, such as the great Harrison himself would hardly have disdained.

Lord St. Erme might well call it a farm of the poets, so well did everything accord with the hearty yeoman, and his pretty, shepherdess-looking wife. The house was of the fine old order, large and lofty, full of wonders in the way of gables, porches, and oriels, carved doors and panels, in preservation that did them honour due, and the furniture betokening that best of taste which perceives the fitness of things. All had the free homely air of plenty and hospitality--the open doors, the numerous well-fed men and maids, the hosts of live creatures--horses, cows, dogs, pigs, poultry, each looking like a prize animal boasting of its own size and beauty--and a dreadful terror to Johnnie. He, poor little boy, was the only person to whom Lassonthwayte was not a paradise. Helen and Annie had no fears, and were wild with glee, embracing the dogs, climbing into dangerous places, and watching the meals of every creature in the yard; but poor Johnnie imagined each cow that looked at him to be a mad bull, trembled at each prancing dog, and was miserable at the neighbourhood of the turkey-cock; while Mr. Hunt’s attempts to force manliness on him only increased his distress to such a degree as to make it haunt him at night. However, even this became a source of pleasant feeling; Arthur, once so rough with him, now understood the secret of his delicacy of nerves, and reverenced him too much to allow him to be tormented. Even in the worst of Johnnie’s panics at night would come smiles, as he told how papa would not let him be forced to pat the dreadful dog, and had carried him in his arms through the herd of cattle, though it did tire him, for, after putting him down, he had to lean on the gate and pant. So next time the little boy would not ask to be carried, and by the help of holding his hand, so bravely passed the savage beasts, that his uncle pronounced that they should make a man of him yet.

Arthur, always happier when the little fingers were in his, was constantly talking of the good that Johnnie was to gain in the life in the open air; and this project continually occupied them. The cottage was a very pretty one, and most joyously did Olivia show it off to Violet and Mrs. Moss, planning the improvements that Mr. Hunt was to make in it, and helping Violet fix on the rooms. It seemed like the beginning of rural felicity; and Arthur talked confidently to his wife of so rapidly doubling his capital, that he should pay off his debts without troubling his father, who need never be aware of their extent.

Violet did not quite like this, but Arthur argued, ‘They are my own concerns, not his, and if I can extricate myself without help, why should he be further plagued about me?’

She did not contest the point; it would be time enough when they were at Brogden, but it made her rather uneasy; the concealment was a little too like a return to former habits, and she could not but fear the very name of horses and races. Still, in the way of business, and with George Hunt, a man so thoroughly to be relied on, it was a different thing; and Arthur’s mind was so changed in other matters, that she could not dream of distrust. The scheme was present pleasure enough in itself, and they all fed on it, though Mr. Hunt always declared that the Colonel must not consider himself pledged till he had consulted his own family, and that he should do nothing to the house till he had heard from him again.

Violet could not satisfy herself that Lord and Lady Martindale would give ready consent, and when talking it over alone with her mother, expressed her fears.

‘Well, my dear,’ said Mrs. Moss, ‘perhaps it will be all for the best. We cannot tell whether it might turn out well for you to be settled near us. Colonel Martindale is used to something different, and your children are born to another rank of life.’

‘O mamma, that could make no difference.’

‘Not, perhaps, while they were young, but by and by you would not wish to have them feeling that we are not like their other relations. My dear child, you need not blush to that degree!’

‘They will never feel that you are not equal to--to the grandest--the dearest!’ said Violet, tearfully.

‘You would try not to let them, dearest, but the truth would be too strong,’ said Mrs. Moss, smiling. ‘You know we had been content to think poor Louisa our model of manners till you came among us again.’

‘O, mamma! at least there was Lady Lucy.’

‘And now we see you fit company for Lady Lucy, and that we are not. No, my dear, don’t deny it; I see it in your ease with her, and it is quite right.’

‘I don’t like to think so!’

‘I understand better now,’ said Mrs. Moss. ‘Perhaps it would have been more advisable if there had been no intermingling of ranks, yet I can hardly regret, when I see you, my Violet. It has raised your whole tone of mind, but it has cut you off from us, and we cannot conceal it from ourselves. If you do come here, you must make up your mind beforehand not to be too intimate even with Olivia and George.’

‘I am very glad I am not to settle it,’ said Violet, with a sigh. ‘I should be much disappointed to give it up, and yet sometimes--it will be some consolation at least to find that you have not set your heart on it, mamma?’

‘I have left off setting my heart on anything, my dear child, said Mrs. Moss, with a sigh, telling of many and many a disappointment. Sincerely religious as she was, it was out of sight, and scarcely a word was ever breathed to her daughter of her true spring of action.

There was a feeling that she was not mistaken in thinking that too much intercourse was not desirable. Arthur was apt to call the distance from Wrangerton to Lassonthwayte seven miles, instead of five, and soon it grew to nine, with a bad road and a shocking hill. This was after he had discovered from Mr. Hunt that Lord St. Erme’s affairs had fallen into a most unsatisfactory state, while the Messrs. Moss had been amassing a comfortable fortune; and that every one knew that the colliery accident was chiefly owing to Albert’s negligence, cowardice, and contempt of orders; so that it was the general marvel that the Earl did not expose them, and remove his affairs from their hands.

Arthur could suppose that the cause of this forbearance might be the connection between Theodora and the Moss family; and the idea made him feel almost guilty when in company with the Earl. Matilda, and indeed the others, were surprised at his declining the invitations to stay at the park; but Violet, as well as he, thought it better to lay themselves under no further obligations; though they could not avoid receiving many attentions. Lady Lucy feted the children, and Violet accomplished her wish of showing Johnnie the little Madonna of Ghirlandajo.

The first sight of the rooms made Violet somewhat melancholy, as she missed the beautiful works of art that had been a kind of education to her eye and taste, and over which she had so often dreamt and speculated with Annette. However, there was something nobler in the very emptiness of their niches, and there was more appropriateness in the little picture of the Holy Child embracing His Cross, now that it hung as the solo ornament of the library, than when it was vis-a-vis to Venus blindfolding Cupid, and surrounded by a bewildering variety of subjects, profane and sacred, profanely treated. She could not help feeling that there was a following in those steps when she saw how many luxuries had been laid aside, and how the brother and sister, once living in an atmosphere of morbid refinement, were now toiling away, solely thoughtful of what might best serve their people, mind or body, and thinking no service beneath them.

Lord St. Erme’s talent and accomplishment were no longer conducive only to amusement or vanity, though they still were exercised; and it was curious to see his masterly drawings hung round the schools and reading-room, and his ready pencil illustrating his instructions, and to hear him reading great authors to the rude audience whom he awakened into interest. There might be more done than sober judgments appreciated, and there were crotchets that it was easy to ridicule, but all was on a sound footing, the work was thoroughly carried out, and the effects were manifest. The beautiful little church rising at Coalworth would find a glad congregation prepared to value it, both by the Earl and by the zealous curate.

Violet wished Theodora could but see, and wondered whether she would ever venture to make a visit at Lassonthwayte; hardly, she supposed, before her marriage.

Lady Lucy one day asked when Miss Martindale was to be married, and on hearing that no period could be fixed, said she was grieved to find it so; it would be better for her brother that it should be over. Violet ventured to express her hopes that he had at last found peace and happiness.

‘Yes,’ said Lucy, ‘he is very busy and happy. I do not think it dwells on his spirits, but it is the disappointment of his life, and he will never get over it.’

‘I hope he will find some one to make him forget it.’

‘I do not think he will. No one can ever be like Miss Martindale, and I believe he had rather cling to the former vision, though not repining. He is quite content, and says it is a good thing to meet with a great disappointment early in life.’

Violet doubted not of his contentment when she had looked into his adult school, and seen how happily he was teaching a class of great boys to write; nor when she heard him discussing prices, rents, and wages with Mr. Hunt.

Lord St. Erme and Lady Lucy had come to an early dinner at Lassonthwayte, thus causing great jealousy on the part of Mrs. Albert Moss, and despair on Matilda’s, lest Olivia should do something extremely amiss without her supervision. Little did she guess that Lucy had been reckoning on the pleasure of meeting her dear Mrs. Moss for once without those daughters.

After dinner, all the party were on the lawn, watching the tints on the mountains, when Lord St. Erme, coming to walk with Mrs. Martindale, asked her, with a smile, if she remembered that she had been the first person who ever hinted that the Westmoreland hills might be more to him than the Alps.

‘I have not forgotten that evening,’ he said. ‘It was then that I first saw Mr. Fotheringham;’ and he proceeded to ask many questions about Percy’s former appointment at Constantinople, his length of service, and reason for giving it up, which she much enjoyed telling. He spoke too of his books, praising them highly, and guessing which were his articles in reviews, coming at last to that in which, as he said, he had had the honour of being dissected.

‘Poor Lucy has hardly yet forgiven it,’ he said; ‘but it was one of the best things that ever befell me.’

‘I wonder it did not make you too angry to heed it.’

‘Perhaps I was at first, but it was too candid to be offensive. The arrow had no venom, and was the first independent criticism I had met with. Nobody had cared for me enough to take me to task for my absurdities. I am obliged to Mr. Fotheringham.’

Violet treasured this up for Percy’s benefit.

This festivity was their last in the north. Their visit at Lassonthwayte had been lengthened from a week to a fortnight, and Lady Martindale wrote piteous letters, entreating them to come to Brogden, where she had made every arrangement for their comfort, even relinquishing her own dressing-room. They bade farewell to Wrangerton, Arthur assuring Mrs. Moss that he would soon bring Violet back again; and Mrs. Moss and Violet agreeing that they were grateful for their happy meeting, and would not be too sorry were the delightful vision not to be fulfilled.

At the beginning of their journey, Arthur’s talk was all of the horses at Lassonthwayte and the friendship that would soon be struck up between Percy and Mr. Hunt. The railway passed by the village of Worthbourne, and he called Violet to look out at what might yet be Theodora’s home.

‘For the sake of John and Helen too,’ said Violet; while the children, eager for anything approaching to a sight, peeped out at the window, and exclaimed that there was a flag flying on the top of the church steeple.

‘The village wake, I suppose,’ said Arthur. ‘Ha! Helen, we will surprise Uncle Percy by knowing all about it!’

At the halt at the Worthbourne station, he accordingly put out his head to ask the meaning of the flag.

‘It is for the son and heir, sir. Old Sir Antony’s grandson.’

Arthur drew in his head faster than he had put it out, making mutterings to himself that a good deal surprised the children. After their long pleasuring, Cadogan-place looked dingy, and Violet as she went up to the drawing-room in the gray twilight, could not help being glad that only three months of Arthur’s sick leave had expired, and that they were to be there for no more than one night. In spite of many precious associations, she could not love a London house, and the Lassonthwayte cottage seemed the prettier in remembrance.

Arthur had fetched his papers, and had been sitting thoughtful for some time after Johnnie had gone to bed, when he suddenly looked up and said, ‘Violet, would it be a great vexation to you if we gave up this scheme?’

‘Don’t think of me. I always thought you might view it differently from a distance.’

‘It is not that,’ said Arthur; ‘I never liked any one better than Hunt, and it is nine if not ten miles from the town. But, Violet, I find we are in worse plight than I thought. Here are bills that must be renewed, and one or two things I had forgotten, and while I owe the money and more too, I could hardly in honesty speculate with the price of my commission.’

‘No!--oh! You could never be comfortable in doing so.’

‘If it was only Percy that was concerned, I might get him to risk it, and then double it, and set him and Theodora going handsomely; but--No, it is of no use to think about it. I wish it could be--’

‘You are quite right, I am sure.’

‘The thing that settles it with me is this,’ continued Arthur. ‘It is a way of business that would throw me with the old set, and there is no safety but in keeping clear of them. I might have been saved all this if I had not been ass enough to put my neck into Gardner’s noose that unlucky Derby-day. I had promised never to bet again after I married, and this is the end of it! So I think I have no right to run into temptation again, even for the chance of getting clear. Do you?’

‘You are quite right,’ she repeated. ‘If the money is not our own, it would only be another sort--’

‘Of gambling. Ay! And though in those days I did not see things as I do now, and Hunt is another sort of fellow, I fancy you had rather not trust me, mamma?’ said he, looking with a rather sad though arch smile into her face.

‘Dear Arthur, you know--’

‘I know I won’t trust myself,’ he answered, trying to laugh it off. ‘And you’ll be a good child, and not cry for the cottage?’

‘Oh, no! Mamma and I both thought there might possibly be considerations against it, especially as the girls grow up.’

‘That’s right. I could not bear giving up what you seemed to fancy. but we will visit them when we want a mouthful of air, and Annette and Octavia shall come and stay with us. I should like to show Octavia a little of the world.’

‘Then, we shall go on as we are?’

‘Yes; spend as little as may be, and pay off so much a year. If we keep no horses, that is so much clear gain.’

‘That seems the best way; but I almost fear your being well without riding.’

‘No fear of that! I don’t want to go out, and you never do. We will take our long walks, and, as Percy says, I will read and be rational. I mean to begin Johnnie’s Latin as soon as we are settled in. Why, I quite look forward to it.’

‘How delighted Johnnie will be!’

‘We shall do famously!’ repeated Arthur. ‘Nothing like home, after all.’

Violet did not think he quite knew what he undertook, and her heart sank at the idea of a London winter, with his health and spirits failing for want of his usual resources. He imagined himself perfectly recovered; but when he went the next day to show himself to the doctor, the stethoscope revealed that the damage was not so entirely removed but that the greatest care would be necessary for some time to come. It sat lightly on him; his spirits depended on his sensations, and he had no fears but that a few months would remove all danger; and Violet would say no word of misgiving. She would have felt that to remonstrate would have been to draw him back, after his first step in the path of resolute self-denial.

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