The Tender Mercies of the Good

Front matter

By CHRISTABEL R COLERIDGE AUTHOR of "AN ENGLISH SQUIRE" " WAYNFLETE " ETC ETC " The quality of mercy is not strained" LONDON ISBISTER AND COMPANY Limited 15 & 16, TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN i8,5 LONDON : PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED CITY ROAD. V CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. A Peep Behind the Scenes 7 n. Forgiven 14 III. The Hole . . _ 23 TV. A Hero 30 V. An Old England Nun 37 VI. The Field of the Three Oak Trees ... 43 VII. Stranded 50 VIII. The Passing of the Years 58 IX. Daffodil 65 X. Kit 72 XI. A New Start . 80 XII. Kit's Opinion 88 XIII. An Outing 95 XIV. The Ladye's Bower 101 XV. Magic Moonlight 108 XVI. Limelight 116 XVII. A New Beginning 123 XVIII. The Power of Love 129 XIX. Laying the Ghost 136 XX. Chained 146 XXI. The Demands of Love 154 XXII. Child's Play 161 XXIII.

The Silent Past VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XXIV. In the Background :76 XXV. Speaking Out 185 XXVI. Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other. 191 XXVII. Brothers in Council 202 XXVIII. "An Awful Rose of Dawn" . . . .210 XXIX. Mother and Son 218 XXX. " My Own Brother " 227 XXXI. " Shake Hands " 234 XXXII. A Burning Question 241 XXXIII. At Bay 249 XXXIV. Fight 258 XXXV. Out of the Deep 266 XXXVI. "Leave Ford?" 273 XXXVII. What Will it Cost ? 281 XXXVIII. "Father, I am Sorry" 289 XXXIX. "Your Friend" 296 XL. At Bracebridge 302 XLI. Chipping the Shell 309 XLII. "News! News!" 316 XLIII. The Wood Pile 326 XLIV. Holding Up the Head 333 XLV. A Piece of Kit's Mind 340 XLVI. Self-Sacrifice 349 XLVII. Pieces of Several Minds 356 XLVIII. A. B. C 365 XLIX. A Fallen Idol 376 L. Fellow Sinners 383 LI. Side by Side 390 LII. When Daffodils Begin to Peer ....

Chapter I

A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. " What will the cousins think of me ? ' Diaphenia, like the daffadowndilly, Bright as the sun, fair as the lily.' My name is my fortune, sir," said Diaphenia Villiers, with a curtsey. " Indeed, my dear, I think it's your misfortune," said Mrs. Villiers, with a sigh. " It's too conspicuous for a girl who has to make her way in the world." " Oh well, mother, I'll carry it off somehow ; I'm tall enough." She was. In a many times washed pink blouse, and an old serge skirt which had once been of grown up length, but from beneath which her ankles had long since escaped, she looked as lanky and unfinished as a young colt. Her face, when the eye finally reached it, was pretty, but the flaxen curls which " sunned over" her little head, looked almost more appropriate on her mother's, which, equally fair and curly, hardly reached Diaphenia's shoulder.

" It will be first-rate," said the girl, " to have this dear little place of my very own. Let's live here for a bit, if it's on bread and scrape, and we'll see what turns up. Really, it's not bad to belong to such respectable sort of people as the Fairfords seem to be. I admired Mr. Fairford yesterday very much, and I'm glad you're free from all those horrid little children. I'll get on, if I am five loot nine, and called out of a ridiculous old madrigal. Now, I want to look round." Diaphenia set a little sunburnt straw hat on the top of her curls, and moving a few paces away from the cottage -window at which she had been standing, looked back at it critically, but proudly. " My landed property ! " she exclaimed. It was a little white cottage, with a French window to the tiny drawing-room, over which creepers were waving wildly.

There were a few square yards of grass, separated by a strip of flower-bed from some rows of vegetables, among which were apple-trees now pink with blossom. The whole was shut in by a thick shrubbery nearly as high as the tiled roof of the cottage. " Pretty Peep ? " said the young owner. " I don't see much peep. What ought we to peep at, I wonder ? " She pushed aside the tangled bushes and looked through the opening. There, framed in hawthorn and arbutus, was a little landscape, exactly suited for a sketch in water-colour ; green meadows, a clear shal low river, in which cows were standing, a wooden bridge leading to an old church with a square grey tower half buried in elm-trees, and beyond, low wooded hills against the pearly grey and soft blue of the spring sky. " Pretty, certainly," thought Diaphenia, " and it's easy to cut out the peep.

I'll go and look at it close." She let the branches fly together again and turned out at the little white gate of Pretty Peep Cottage, crossing the lane and the sunny meadows with a springing step and a smiling face. She was very happy, for a piece of great good for tune had befallen her, in the succession to the cottage called Pretty Peep, in the village of Ford- Regis, and to sixty pounds a year. Her father, a young barrister of good family and romantic tastes, had died before his briefs began, and left his widow and little girl A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. with a few thousand pounds for their portion. Mrs. Villiers was pretty, practical, and brave. She took a post as matron in a great orphanage not far from town on terms which allowed her little daughter to board with her. As soon as Diaphenia was old enough, she went every day to a suburban high school, quite understanding that she must qualify herself to earn her own living.

A childhood combin ing the freedom of country lanes and hedgerows with the habit of independence in district trains and busy thoroughfares, and with intercourse with varieties of people, naturally produces self-reliance and a toler ably even development. It has, however, drawbacks for great girls with curly yellow hair and conspicuous height. Mrs. Vil liers was " noticed " by every one in Midwell, and much respected, but she hardly belonged to society there, and she did not like the notion of a half-and half position for her husband's daughter. Here, in Ford-Regis, as the heiress of a lady connected with the Fairfords, the great family of Ford-Regis, and the most influential people in the neighbouring town of Bishopsford, the girl would be inside the magic circle over which at Midwell she had only been occa sionally asked to step.

Mrs. Villiers herself was tired of her situation, econony was easy to both mother and daughter, the idea of a little home of their own de lightful, and they came to Ford-Regis prepared to enjoy life thoroughly. Diaphenia's views were a modification of her mother's. She did not care much for the rise in the social scale, since, as she observed, " if you're out of one set near London, you are pretty sure to be in another, which will do as well," and she was sorry to leave her school, which was an eminent one. But she was not distinguished enough to carry all before her ; if she still had to work, she could do so to better advantage in the country, and there would be less hurry to begin, a good thing for a girl who looked " queer" and unfortunately unconventional. At present Diaphenia found her appearance as unmanage able as her name.

Many efforts had been made to clip this into Di or Phenie. Daffadowndilly had been her father's name for his little yellow-haired baby, and Daffodil remained the only version that lived. Bishopsford and Ford-Regis lay in the fertile Mid lands. Daffodil beheld a world of broad, flat meadows now golden with buttercups, wide-edged lanes shaded here and there with tall elms of luxuriant growth, a scene which told of age-long prosperity and peace. The low soft hills, the wide-stretching plains, the slow calm river, might be dull on a dull day, but responded at once to spring sunshine. The home county from which she came was quite as pretty, but its rural calm was broken by new villas, numberless little railway stations, and by placards of Beecham's Pills and Pears' Soap. Ford-Regis was silent, settled, the same for generations ; its ethos was en tirely different from the suburban one.

Daffodil crossed the river by a wooden foot-bridge, and came through the buttercup meadows into a nice clean village with tiled cottages, in excellent order, and bright with flowers. It was very quiet, for all the children were in a handsome and well set-up school, which Daffodil passed on her way to the churchyard. This was large, with velvet turf, and gay as a garden. Tall elm trees shaded it on one side. The church was old, but restored in excellent taste, and in perfect order. The tower, which was large and square, was evidently much older than the nave, and was covered by an immense tree of ivy with a thick trunk and branches. The lower windows were coloured, so that Daffodil could not look through them, but there was apparently a story above, for a much broken staircase went up to a little built-up door, and on the same level was an open window.

"Perhaps it's an old priest's chamber," thought Daffodil, who read something besides schoolbooks. A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. Some girlish impulse towards a promising scramble, prompted her to climb up the much broken steps and, stretching to her full height opposite the window, to peep in. She saw a small square room, with a square table in the middle of it, round which three well-dressed men were sitting. One, with his back to the window, had his elbows on the table and his grey head bowed down upon his hands. The two at the sides had middle-aged faces, sad and severe. Facing the window, with the light full upon him, stood a youth with red curly hair, straight level brows and a white, miserable face. " The disgrace which your criminal dishonesty has brought upon us " As these words, in a strong, stern voice, fell on her ear, Daffodil dropped down out of sight and hearing, scrambled down the steps and flew away from beneath the window to the other side of the church.

She had seen and heard what she could never forget. She had surprised a secret which seemed of almost tragical importance. She hurried away from the churchyard and hid herself among the trees, fearing to see, or to be seen, when the strange conclave should break up. Her heart beat and her eyes were full of tears. She had come to the place as a stranger, and she knew some thing about its inhabitants which must colour her every thought of them. She tried to shake herself free of the impression. Some naughty village lad was receiving a lecture. But no, it was not the shame of the young man who was being reproved, but the shame of the elders who were sitting in judgment on him that rested on her mind. Diaphenia did not lack good sense. She perceived and she resolved that her chance discovery must be kept to herself.

She ought not even to tell her mother. It would be a great relief to speak of the matter, a great interest to speculate upon it, but Daffodil's conscience spoke with no uncertain sound. If she never told what she had seen, no harm could come of her having seen it. She had done nothing wrong. Who could have expected anything but owls and bell-ropes in such a place ? She was both keen thoughted and keen-eyed. The miserable face of the unhappy boy, with its blank unseeing stare, momen tary as had been her glimpse of it, fixed itself on her memory. She had had a peep behind the scenes of life which made an epoch in her youth, and a decision to make which, though she did not think about her self at all, tested to the utmost the stuff of which she was made. Immature and idle curiosity leading to excited and idle chatter could hardly have been blamed in a sixteen years old creature suddenly beholding so dramatic a moment.

But this long limbed, unfinished, curly-headed girl, not only saw exactly with her eyes ; she came also to an adequate judgment, and her resolution of absolute silence was one which few girls would have instantly seen the necessity of making. As she stood in the thick belt of trees which divided the churchyard from the river which ran round its western side, she saw a tall, well-dressed gentleman walk rapidly along the river-side path towards the high road. She had seen him before. He was her guardian, her distant cousin, Mr. Chris topher Fairford the solicitor, who had come yesterday to meet her and her mother at Bishopsford station and take them to Pretty Peep Cottage, and had pro mised them cousinly and neighbourly help in their new surroundings. And he was the person whom she had just seen sitting on the left side of the table in the little chamber in the church-tower.

He had hardly gone by when, slowly, with drag ging footsteps and bent head, came a taller and older figure whose face Daffodil did not see. She turned her head aside, and the tears which had been choking her fell. There was something in his oppressed and A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. desolate aspect worse to look upon than the misery of the boy. Could this be the eldest of her Fairford cousins, the owner of Ford, the great house of Ford- Regis ? Could it indeed be so ? Daffodil ran away in the opposite direction and came out again into the village street as the children came pouring out of school, stared at the stranger, but dropped various orthodox and old-fashioned curtseys as an elderly clergyman, of composed and dignified aspect, went rapidly down the road. " Who is that ?" asked Daffodil of a taller girl.

" The rector, Miss ; Dr. Fairford," said the child civilly. Daffodil drew a long breath. He was the man whom she had seen sitting on the right side of the table. Yes, these were the creditable and prosperous con nections, the hope of whose notice for her daughter had induced Mrs. Villiers to come and live at Pretty Peep. Diaphenia wondered whether some startling revela tion would suddenly dash all their credit and pros perity to the ground.

Chapter II. Forgiven

" The disgrace which your criminal dishonesty has brought upon us can never be undone. It can never be forgotten by any of those who love you, and whose happiness depends upon you." So ran the sentence in the ears of Austin Fairford, as, with unseeing eyes, he stared at the little square of light in the grey wall before him. He had felt much in the last week, but just now he felt nothing. " I am very sorry," he said politely, though cool politeness was not at all in place just then. If only his father would speak and look at him ; his uncles were telling him what he knew before. " Suppose I go abroad ! " he said, and he knew that his voice sounded just as if he had been saying, " Suppose I go and play cricket." " That," said the other uncle, the solicitor — it was the clergyman who had spoken before — " that would undoubtedly make things easier for your friends.

But your father does not feel justified in leaving you to temptations which you are evidently so ill prepared to resist." "The army" — he paused a little, and the young man stiffened himself up as if to await a blow — " the army being now out of the question" — he spoke softly and reluctantly — " it is necessary to find some other occupation for you." " Well ! I can break stones, or drive a cab," flashed out Austin passionately ; " but you'd better let me do it somewhere out of sight." FORGIVEN. " That is not our intention," said the uncle again. "You are aware that we could not place you with any honourable men of business without giving them our full confidence, and we do not choose that the family disgrace should be betrayed to any one. Nor should we think of leaving you in your own weak hands.

There will be nothing extraordinary in your applying yourself to the management of the estate of which you are the natural heir. Your father will arrange for you to have lessons in the management of land, and in scientific farming, and in my office you can acquire a knowledge of the other duties of a land-agent. You are aware that but for your cousin Hilda's kindness and the regard we all feel for you, the law must have taken its course." " And I think it had better," interposed Austin. " The punishment would not fall upon yourself alone. We think ourselves justified in avoiding it, but we should be greatly to blame if we did so at any risk either to society or to your own chances of repentance. You will comply with our arrangements, and, on our side, we shall keep your secret. You will be treated as usual, and no one shall be allowed to suspect your disgrace.

We require your promise as to obedience and secrecy, and — we shall accept it in spite of what has passed." " Under home influences, and away from tempta tion," said the rector of Ford-Regis, " we hope that you may yet make amends for the past. As your sense of the wrong you have done deepens, as you realise how great your lapse has been, you will feel that no effort can be too great to show your repent ance. That a real repentance, a change of heart that may be accepted in the sight of God, may be granted to you, is the whole object of our plans for you." The words were gently, kindly, and humbly said. Austin knew that they were entirely genuine. His face quivered, but he said nothing. Then his father, the head of the family, lifted his face and looked at him. Austin could not see him ; he looked past the well-known and honoured head to the wall behind, his eyes were too dim, but he knew exactly how his father looked : how the clear, ruddy skin was pale, and the good, honest eyes, which looked so kindly on life, were stern and miserable.

He knew how old his father looked to-day. " I make these terms, Austin," said Colonel Fair ford ; and, as he spoke, Austin saw with his mind's eye, his father's sword against the wall in the hall at Ford, the little bronze cross that sometimes hung at his button-hole, the fair and honourable record of a past without a stain. " I make these terms because, after taking the advice of my brothers, I believe them to be the best for your real welfare ; had your crime been against a stranger, had I thought even as it is that the punish ment of the law would better bring you to a sense of your sin, I would have faced it for you, though to see my name in the law-courts for such a cause, would have been the greatest of miseries, except — except that which must remain — the sense that my son has deserved it."

Austin shook so much that he was obliged to hold on by the table. What had he to do before he could bring this dreadful scene to an end . Promise ? He heard one of them say, " We are waiting for your promise." " I promise," said Austin. "To submit yourself to all the precautions and restrictions we deem essential, regarding them as a milder form of the punishment which you know to be your due?" " Oh, yes, I promise," said Austin. " Very well, then, this painful scene will never be referred to. Remember that outwardly everything will go on as usual." Austin heard the chairs move and everyone got up. FORGIVEN. He knew his father was looking at him ; but he did not look back. " Let us leave him," said the Rector, in a low voice ; " the church is empty and quiet now. It is the best place for him."

They all went slowly downstairs, and dispersed in different directions, that no hint of their consultation might get abroad. Austin came out of the church and stood in the porch. It was all over, and life was going on. Pre sently he would go home to luncheon, perhaps after wards he would play tennis, then there would be dinner. The worst was over. Nothing could ever be so bad again. He looked, and for the first time since his disgrace, he seemed to see the sky and the trees, the familiar world around him. He was alone, unwatched. There was no trial, no conviction, no prison before him, nothing more to come, nothing more to be afraid of. He had been so dreadfully frightened that the relief from fear was comfort : his conscience had been so severely strained that it was tired out and stopped work ; the pressure on his feelings had left them blunt.

He dawdled for some time, then went away from the church to the river-side, and sitting down on an old bench under the trees, a favourite haunt of his, looked into the slow, shallow water, saw an eel wriggle through the weeds at the bottom, saw the flies make little circles on the surface. He threw in a stone, and saw the mud which it disturbed rise slowly and dim the clear water. He wanted nothing, but sat on in that curious calm which is the reaction from undisciplined emotion. His eyes were still hot with tears ; he had suffered to a degree which seemed altogether out of proportion to the temptations to which he had yielded, and he had sinned — he supposed — even more than he had suf fered. But escape was so delightful, that if he had not 17 B been so tired, so cowed and ashamed, he could have shouted for joy.

What a fool he had been, what a double-distilled fool ! If repentance meant knowing his folly, he repented in sackcloth and ashes. But he was so tired. As he sat with his head on his hands, he yawned and grew sleepy. It was so long since he had slept properly, so long too since he had been really awake to the outside world. If the past three weeks, nay, three months, could only prove to be a dream. The oddest feeling came over him, that if people could only agree so to treat them, no harm would have been done. He could take up his life again where he had left it, and be once more the light-hearted, inconsequent, happy-go-lucky boy, who giggled when he should have kept his own and his friends' secrets and was cuffed ; laughed and snig gered in class or in chapel and was licked ; cried when he left home every holiday, or when his con temporary, the big dog, died at sixteen, full of years and honours, and was chaffed by his cousins ; lost his head at his first cricket-match, after he was in the eleven, and came very near crying at the con sequences.

If he could but be again the boy who was always giving himself away to some cooler head, always making the kind of speeches that " have to be lived down," and generally laying up recollections at which his ears would burn and his smooth cheeks grow crimson, but whom, notwithstanding, every one liked, and whose word no one had ever dreamed of doubting — that boy, who was made of refined and sensitive as well as of honest stuff, and whose inherited instincts towards goodness were now sting ing him to desperation. He never could depend on himself in any game ot skill ; if he scored one success, he was sure to come to grief the next minute. Why then, when he found billiards so much the fashion at the army crammer's where he was sent, did he set his heart on becoming a crack player ? Why did he continue to play when FORGIVEN. he had no money left ?

Why in that and in a dozen other ways had he fallen into a tone so unlike the decent, manly, "good form" of his set at school? Why — why ? Austin's thoughts wandered off into endless vistas of profitless wondering while he was watching the calm, glistening water, and feeling the peace of the opening spring. A few words will tell the story which he had pledged himself should never be told. Three months of conduct and companionship as to which least said is soonest mended. One month of folly which was not all foolish. Daisy, with her fair fluffy hair, her big blue eyes, her simplicity, and her quick response to his quick passion, had been to him like the flower after which she was named. Even now — even now, the moment when she, blushing, had whispered, "You may call me Daysey — if you like," and he, as he repeated " Daisy !

" had thought how sweet her voice was, and how delightful it would be to correct her accent, even now the sweet ness of such moments came back upon him with a thrill. He had never meant to lose the train back, and compromise his Daisy, that evening when he had with such difficulty persuaded her to come out with him to gather primroses. But the train was lost, and Daisy was in dire disgrace ; and her uncle, the proprietor of the billiard saloons, who " had all the feelings of a gentleman," declared that he could never face her parents again unless Mr. Fairford came forward at once honourably, and, moreover, proved his honourable intentions, and his power to carry them out, by at once paying his little account. Otherwise an appeal to the tutor was inevitable, and that Daisy never would get over.

She was too much ashamed now to speak to Mr. Fairford. And Daisy was only visible for a second, with her handkerchief up to her face. Austin would not consult any of his fellow pupils, because they did not speak of Daisy with respect. He could not write home and ask for an advance of his allowance, because, if he confessed that he needed money to pay gambling debts and other foolish obligations, and had borrowed it of a billiard saloon proprietor, he would bring his family down upon him, and there would be an end of his chances for and with his Daisy for ever. And Austin had been seized upon by a passion out of proportion to his power of self-control. And then— what happened then ? His cousin, Hilda Fairford, his father's ward, wanted to contribute a pony and cart to the pleasure and convenience of the home party.

Austin had seen the right thing for her, and had managed the transaction. The purchase and the account had been despatched direct to the lady, but she, thinking that Austin had better finish the business which he had begun, sent the bill back to him, together with a cheque for fifty pounds, made out to himself, desiring him to pay the account, and at the same time to inquire as to any special management required by the new pony. Austin endorsed the cheque, and in a. moment of intolerable pressure paid his debt with it to Daisy's uncle. Gillespie, his fellow-pupil, who was rolling in riches, would, he felt sure, lend him the money when he got his allowance, and the receipt would be taken back to Hilda at the end of the term. But a short delay brought a lecture from his father for carelessness in attending to Hilda's wishes and want of accuracy in money matters.

He must send the receipted bill back at once. The receipted bill went back to Ford by return of post. No one thought much of Hilda's innocent remark at the moment, " Why, the man's writing is something like Austin's own, only very bad and in a great hurry." But she took up another letter, and this was from the coachbuilder who had been commissioned to sell the turn-out, to the effect that a white fur carriage rug was also to be disposed of; if she cared to pur- FORGIVEN. chase it, the price could be added to her account, which would then amount to ios. This was strange ; but it happened that Colonel Fairford was going to visit his son to make some inquiries about his approaching examination. He would take the receipted bill with him and find out what it all meant. Then came the meeting; inconceivable, dull sus picion, then sharp fear, explanations demanded, pre varication, inquiries, shame and horror unspeakable — only half felt by Austin, for Daisy was fatally ill.

In a few hours she died of diphtheria, caused by drinking a glass of milk on that fatal outing which was to cost them both so dear. The little butterfly life went out into the darkness, and the foolish idyll was turned into a tragedy. The solicitor uncle came, and he and the tutor managed the bitter and disgraceful business. What the coachbuilder guessed or what means were taken to prevent his guessing that the unhappy boy was in his power, perhaps even the still more unhappy father hardly knew. Finally the man expressed him self satisfied, all the other comparatively innocent debts were paid, and Daisy was buried. Austin was too miserable for repentance, in too deep shame for grief. He found half a sovereign by chance in a waistcoat pocket, and spent it on a white cross for her grave. He was taken home ; he had to do as he was bid.