Godfrey Helstone. A novel

Chapter I

There is a grace about some women that gives harmony to their slightest movements, and sweetness to their most trivial acts, so that if they but speak to you, you are con scious of a charm in the accent and cadence of their words, if they only so much as cross a floor your eye follows them with the same sort of pleasure with which your ear listens to music ; but Margaret Egerton was not one of these happily gifted people. She was young, yet she had not much of vol. i. 1 the bloom of youth ; her features were delicate, and yet, except at rare moments, few people called her pretty ; she was straightly made, with a figure that was light and slim, yet in its action there was always a certain stiffness, and the awkward ness that came from self-consciousness and self-depreciation. She was a woman to whom a little admiration from the people whom she loved would have given warmth and life ; but she did not arouse admiration easily, and perhaps the person in the world who cared for her most, was the one who was most keenly alive to her deficiencies and to her inability to charm.

She Avas standing at a table in her cousm Godfrey Helstone's drawing-room arranging some flowers in a bowl, and, to tell the truth, arranging them ill enough, for she had not the knack of doing that sort of thing gracefully. She had been trying to do it just noAv with much labour, but Godfrey, glanciug up once or twice from his book, had experienced a mixture of amaze ment and irritation at her want of success. He had seen other women set a cluster of flowers with a few careless touches, so that when he looked at them he felt in a moment that the thing could cot be better done ; but poor Margaret had been toiling over her work for ten minutes, and the result at last was only a tasteless mass of close packed roses. " Don't you think you might put some more greenery there ? " he said to her suddenly.

The girl glanced up AA7hen her cousin spoke. Perhaps — for, as I have said, she was self-conscious — she had already had a suspicion that Godfrey, although he seemed to be reading, was sufficiently aware of her occupation to be capable of criticizing it, and the suspicion had possibly helped to make her ungraceful fingers even less deft than usual at their work. At any rate, as she looked up now there was some thing deprecating in her expression. " Some more greenery % " she echoed hesitatingly. " Well, I can try ; only I am afraid it might make them look untidy." " I wouldn't mind about that," he answered. " I am afraid I am not clever at arranging floAvers," she said gently. And then he held his peace. That fact Avas so self-evident that, not being a man who paid compliments, he probably felt silence to be his best response.

She went on labouring with her heavy hand, and he read, and spoke no more. She placed her bowl presently in the centre of the table, and went back from it a little to survey the effect. The effect was not good, as even she was aware ; but she could do her work no better, so she gave a little sigh, and gathered up the flowers and leaA'es that she had not used, and went away. And then when she was gone, her cousin for a moment put down his book and looked at the bouquet steadily, and said to himself half-aloud, " How odd ! " They were very good friends, these two, though Margaret had no more charm for Godfrey than if she had been a boy instead of a girl of twenty. Two years ago, when her father died, it was he who had first proposed to his mother that she should come and live with them. " It would be terribly dreary for her to be alone in that big place," he had said.

For Margaret was the only child of Mrs. Helstone's brother, who had been a rich man, and his wealth had all gone to her, with the great house in which she had grown up, and which, indeed, as Godfrey said, would have been a dull place for her to have continued to liv7e in alone. Ivor Hall, they called it. It stood within a mile of Godfrey's own more modest house — the Dene. It was a ponderous, many-roomed building, with a certain grim picturesqueness about it ; it was associated to Margaret with all her memories of the mother who had died when she was a little child, and by whose side she had walked about its formal gardens, and of the silent father who had made her his companion during ten years of a quiet life ; yet after she was left alone, when Godfrey said to her, " Come and make your home with us," she had come willingly.

She would have doue most things that Godfrey asked her to do. When he said, " Come to us," he brought the colour to her cheek, and one of those rare looks into her face that gave her for a moment a touch of beauty. Perhaps he did not know what power he had to bring warmth and animation to her. He did not care enough about the matter, I am afraid, to know. She was nothing to him but his cousin Margaret — hardly even a favourite cousin — only a good, unselfish, kind-hearted girl whom he had known all his life, and for whom he had a loyal feeling of placid friendship. That she liked him more than he liked her he could scarcely fail to be aware, but how much more she liked him he probably did not ask himself ; the question was one that scarcely interested him enough to arouse speculation concerning it in his mind.

"Margaret will be a bait to fortune hunters now," he had said one day to his mother soon after the girl came to stay with them. " I hope she won't be tempted to make some foolish marriage." He made this remark lightly, as if her marriage were a matter with which he could have no personal concern, and Mrs. Helstone hesitated before she spoke the reply that rose to her lips. But though she hesitated she ended by speaking it. " Why don't you try to put such a thing out of her power ? " she said. " Who ?— 1 1 " Godfrey ejaculated hastily, and for a moment the colour came into his face ; but after this one moment he recovered himself, and laughed an unem barrassed laugh. " I shall never do that," he said. " I want neither Margaret's money nor herself." " You might do worse than want her," Mrs. Helstone answered.

" I suppose so," he replied carelessly. " Nevertheless — " and then he turned away. He was rather annoyed at what his mother had said. He was proud enough to have no wish to take a rich woman for his wife, and indifferent enough to Margaret to feel no temptation to woo her. " She is one of the last girls in the world one would fall in love with," he said, perhaps a little contemptuously, to himself. But yet the young man was always very kind to his cousin, in a quiet, undemonstra tive way. When he was at home they often talked and walked and rode together ; they never flirted, partly because flirting was not an amusement he was much addicted to with anybody, partly because she, on her side, could not have succeeded in lending herself with any grace or felicity to that exercise ; but they were intimate after a fashion, and if you had asked him how he liked her he would have spoken of her good qualities warmly and cordially.

" She has everything to make her attractive — except attractiveness," he once said laughingly to his mother, and though Mrs. Helstone would fain have denied the assertion, yet she could not. For I have said before that the person who loved her best was the one who was perhaps most keenly alive to her deficiencies, and that person to whom she was most dear, and who Avould gladly have had her for her daughter in truth, as she was already a daughter in affection, Avas Mrs. Helstone. The two women spent a very quiet life together. Mrs. Helstone Avas a widow, and Godfrey was her only son. He was twentyfour, and had just taken his degree at Oxford, and come into the enjoyment of the estate which his father's death had left to him three years before. It was not a large estate, but it was large enough to make him independent.

He was something of a student, too, and had a good library, in which he cared to spend a considerable por tion of his time. For his age, he was rather a grave man, though social in a fair degree, and fond of travel, and sport, and active life. He was a good son, too, and a good friend, in the opinion, at any rate, of the two women Avho, in their several relations to him, thought they knew him best. Like other fond and foolish women these two were in the habit, during Godfrey's long absences from home, of spending much time in talking together over his manifold virtues. To Mrs. Helstone the occupation was naturally an attractive one ; and if when her niece came to live with her she yielded to the temptation of trying to infuse some of her own enthusiasm into the heart of the younger woman, the fault was at least com prehensible.

In truth, too, Godfrey had some qualities that made him not ill-fitted to occupy the place in her affection to w7hich her aunt encouraged Margaret to elevate him, for he was handsome and brave, and kind and courteous ; he could be tender where tenderness was called for, and hot when anger was needed. The girl admired, and loved, and a little feared him. To talk of him to his mother became before long the greatest pleasure that she had : to do him some little service made her happy ; to hear others praise him brought the colour to her face : to feel that she was so little to him made her heart ache in secret. For though they Avere much together, and though he w-as always good to her, that she was little to him was a hard fact that she knew well, and that she accepted meekly, but that she never forgot.

Both Margaret and Mrs. Helstone had been making much of Godfrey of late, for he had come from Oxford with some honours on his head, and of course they had killed the fatted calf for his delectation, and offered incense to him. His mother had rather a happy way of offering incense, so as to make the act pleasant and acceptable. It is an act that is not always done gracefully, but she was a graceful woman, and knew how to perform it so that it should please him. When she administered her delicate praise to him he might laugh at it, and in words reject it, but in his heart — as was natural enough — he liked it. They had been very happy together fur a Aveek, but on this day, when Margaret had made her ponderous bouquet, Godfrey was on the eve of taking his departure from them again for a little while.

" You must want a holiday now, my dear," his mother had said to him when she saw him first. " You look well, certainly — not as if you had been overworked at all — but still you must really be in need of a thorough rest." " I am not so sure about being in need of one," Godfrey replied ; " but I think of taking one. I have promised Dallas to go for a month's fishing with him on the Trent." And accordingly he was on the eve now of starting on this expedition. He was rather an ardent fisher — his intended companion was a man whom he liked — the weather was all that weather at the end of June ought to be. Mrs. Helstone and Margaret were to spend the summer, as they did usually, at the Dene, for to Mrs. Helstone there was no pleasanter place than her own house, with its beautiful gardens, whose perfect keeping she made the one great luxury that she per mitted herself; and where her aunt was, there Margaret was content to be.

These too, you see, were only a pair of quiet, country ladies. The elder had moved in the world once, but that was long ago, and she had lost her taste now for the amusements she might have cared for in her youth; while as for Margaret, she had never known them. It was a dull life, perhaps, that they led, but they were tolerably uncon scious of its dulness. They had their little round of duties, of pleasures, of sociabilities — their mild interests, their placid occupations. They sat on this last evening that God frey was to spend with them, sewing in the long June daylight. They had always some dainty Avork — embroidery that, like Pene lope's web, seemed never-ending — to employ their fingers on. For nearly all his life Godfrey had seen the same sort of thing in his mother's hands. They sat near one of the windows to catch the latest light, and Godfrey, ensconced comfortably in an arm chair opposite, alternately read and talked to them, claiming their silence or their attention, as it pleased him.

It was a long-shaped room, with a line of windows opening on the garden, — a pretty room, as Godfrey liked to know. For Godfrey was fond of his house too. He cared for its air of refinement, its sobriety, its unostentatious comfort ; he appreciated all that it owed to his mother's taste. He liked the placid life, too, that Mrs. Helstone and Margaret led in it, feeling that such a life satisfied his sense of the fitness of things, for he was a Conservative of rather a stiff type, and had no new-fashioned ideas about women or women's w-ork, nor any desire to see them taking a prominent place in the Avorld, either in the van or the rear of the battle : he preferred vastly to see them sitting, as he saw his mother and Mar garet sitting now, sewing those pieces of embroidery whose use he had never learnt, whose completion seemed never reached.

They worked while the light served them, and then • in the twilight Mrs. Helstone said, " Give us a little music vol. i. 17 -2 "i Margaret," and Margaret went to the piano, and played a piece or two, and sang a song. The pieces w-ere what are called drawing-room pieces, the song too was a drawing-room song. Her execution of them was very correct. Godfrey listened to it with half an ear. He said " Thank you ! " very cordially when the girl rose from her seat ; but I do not think the performance had charmed him. Perhaps by this time he knew all Margaret's songs by heart, and had forgotten that to be charmed with them was a thing that could be expected of him. He said " Thank you," and then added something else pleasantly as she came back to the place that she had left. ;' I heard one of Wilson's sisters sinoinor something the other night that I thought would suit your voice." he said.

" I must find out the name of it. Her voice is not so good as yours, only she has — practised more, perhaps." " Margaret does not practise nearly as much as she should ; I am always telling her so," Mrs. Helstone said. " Perhaps she needs some new music to give her more interest. I am very forgetful, or I would make her get some." " Oh, it is not that. I have music enough," Margaret answered quickly. And then Godfrey made a remark about something else — changing the subject, perhaps purposely. He was a kindly man, and he liked Margaret, but in his heart he knew that he found her dull. He knew that she would never sing or play so as to give pleasure to any intelligent human creature. He felt that her talk wanted life and light, and that in her composition some element that is of the essence of sweet womanhood had been left out.

But yet, if she ever wearied or irritated him he was quick to reproach himself for his weariness, and to call to mind all her virtues — her unselfishness, and loyalty, and truth, and goodness. " She is better — really a better and higher creature — than nine-tenths of the girls one know-s," he would tell himself, trying (though some times trying in vain) to warm his appre ciation of her into enthusiasm. Once to her face he said impulsively, " I think, Margaret, you are the best woman in the Avorld ! " an unwise speech to make perhaps, for though probably he himself forgot the warm expression afterwards, you may imagine Avhether or not she forgot it. He was kind and pleasant to her to-night when the singing was over. It was a starlight night, and he invited her presently to go out into the garden with him and look at the stars.

She knew a good deal about the stars — possibly rather more than he did. Perhaps as they stood together, gazing upwards, she even wearied him a httle by the amount of knowledge she displayed. It Avas to enjoy an æsthetic not a scientific pleasure that he had called her out into the soft June night, and, to tell the truth, after ten minutes he yaw-ned. He found by the end of that time that he had had enough of the heavenly bodies. They walked two or three times up and down the graArel w-alk beneath the drawing room windows. The lights from the room made a subdued illumination on their path. Mrs. Helstone, sitting alone within, heard their advancing and retreating steps and voices, and the sounds were pleasant to her, and set her dreaming her favourite dream, the one that she dreamt daily. " Surely it is only a question of time ; they are so much together," she thought, " and he likes her, and values her.

Some men are caught merely by a pretty face, but Godfrey is not one of these. He wants sterling qualities — real worth, — a w-oman he can respect and trust, as Avell as lov-e. And he does respect and trust Margaret ; I am sure of that. If only he might love her too ! But, living Avith her in the house, seeing her always, getting to knoAV her thoroughly — surely, in time, the love will come ! " So she sat thinking to herself; but, all too soon to content her, the footsteps presently paused at the open w-indow, and she gave a little sigh as, after their twenty minutes' absence, her son and Margaret came back into the room.

Chapter II

Mr. Helstone and his friend were to meet at the inn of Brentwood, a village on the Trent, but when Godfrey reached this place upon the following day, he found not Mr. Dallas, but a letter from him, post poning his arrival until the next after noon. The delay did not matter to Godfrey. " I'll try and get a basket of fish before he comes," he only thought. So he went to bed that night after having taken a survey of the river, and the next morning prepared to begin his sport. It was a grey morning, warm but sun less, with a rather too active soft south wind. Godfrey chose his position, and arranged his line. The place was pretty — green and solitary ; an English, home-like scene, such as was pleasant in the young man's eyes. The river made a bend near where he stood ; on the opposite bank there was a belt of trees that, if he had been a painter, he thought he should like to sketch ; stretching far away on either side were wide green meadows, dotted with Avandering sheep.

It was all so quiet that for a long time he heard no sound except the singing of the birds, and sometimes the low of cattle far away. There was a little splash in the river now and then as some water-duck descended on it ; but except for such occasional sounds the silence was unbroken for so long, that Godfrey at last, to relieve it, said aloud to himself, " Upon my word, this is a quiet place ! " Just at that moment, however, the wind caught his line and discomposed him. He had drawn it out of the water to throw it afresh, and in the act of re-arranging it a sudden gust came and whirled it round the rod. As he shook it free, the same unfortunate breeze attacked his hat. He clapped his hand to his head, but the action came too late. The hat was light, and before Godfrey could prevent it, the covering that had so lately adorned him was first uplifted in the air, and then tossed into the river out of reach.

He threw out his line and tried to catch it, but that effort failed, and it went float ing buoyantly down the stream. " I suppose I must get my things off and go after it," he thought next to himself ; so he laid down his rod, and was in the act of throwing off his coat, when, giving a glance round to assure himself that his solitude was still unbroken, he perceived to his discomfiture, advancing directly towards him across the nearest field, a pair of figures — a man and woman — whose presence brought his intended proceedings to an inevitable stop. "Provoking!" thought Godfrey; but in the face of such an arrival he was clearly helpless, so feeling a little foolish, he took up his rod again, and rather uncomfortably aware of his uncovered head, and of the object that still, prominently conspicuous, was sailing over the surface of the water, he began Avith as much appearance of ease as he could assume to busy himself with the re-adjustment of his line.

He was not, however, left to this un disturbed occupation long. " Hey day, young man, you want that hat of yours back again, don't you ? " cried a A'oice behind him, in such mellow tones, that, though the speaker was at some distance still, Godfrey heard the address distinctly. He turned as it was uttered, and gave a laugh. " Oh yes, I want it back. I shall get it presently," he. said. " Well, I should say you had better get it now,'' returned the other in the same full voice. " Whew ! Wasp ! Come — Wasp ! where are you 1 Come away, lad ! " And then Godfrey became aAvare of the presence of a third invader of his solitude, in the person of a vivacious terrier, who suddenly, in reply to his master's call, precipitated himself with violence on the scene. The strangers in a few minutes more had come near enough for Mr. Helstone to perceive that they were a hale tall man, evidently a clergyman by his dress, and a girl who was tall too, and had clear-cut features, and frank, direct eyes, which she turned on Godfrey's face so fully, that his inability to raise his hat to her disturbed him.

He bowed, howeA-er, as being all he could do, and she smiled in answer, slightly but pleasantly. " Wasp will bring back your hat for you," she said next moment. " He is a clever dog, and he swims beautifully. Shall I send him in ? " And without waiting for Godfrey's answer — " Fetch, Wasp ! " she cried ; and throwing a stone into the river to start him in the right direction, she stood watching while the fussy little animal in a prodigious hurry took the w7ater, and swam out till he had seized on Godfrey's hat, and got it betAveen his teeth. " What a spirited little fellow ! " said Mr. Helstone. " I am sure I am very much obliged to him, — and to you." "Yes, — Wasp is useful," replied the clergyman. " His legs save mine more runs than you would guess. Got it, lad ? That's right — that's right !

Bring it here." And as Wasp rushed up with his prize he took it from him, motioning Godfrey back, and shook the water off it. " There's your property, sir," he said, handing the hat back to its owner when this was done, with a laugh ; " but I am afraid you will find it too wet yet for a good Avhile to put back on your head. It's not a bad kind of hat," he continued contemplatively, plunging his bands into his pockets, and planting himself in front of Godfrey with his legs well apart, and his eyes fixed on the object under discussion. " Not a bad kind of hat, as straw hats go ; but straw is too light ; that is where it fails : it hasn't got body enough : it doesn't stick. Now a felt hat does stick. Look at mine. There's hardly a sou'wester blowing that would get this off my head." " No, I suppose not," replied Godfrey with a smile.

He had done as he was directed, and had raised his eyes to his companion's wide aAvake, and then, after mastering the general appearance of that covering, had withdrawn them to the face below it — a handsome, kindly, hearty face, with a look of both sense and humour in it. Godfrey liked its aspect as he glanced at it : as far as he had yet seen it he liked the girl's face too. He was not sure that it was pretty, but it had an expression of keenness that pleased him — a certain firmness in its wellcut features, and frankness in its bright eyes, that made him desire to look at it again. She had had her back to him for a minute, having been forced to attend to Wasp, Avho, in his delight at his successful achievement, had been besetting her with entreaties to make a second trial of his powers ; but she looked round again at Godfrey's response, and answered his smile with a sudden quiet laugh. ' ' We have winds here in Avinter that Avould blow off almost anything," she said.

" It is often very stormy. The wind comes sweeping so over these fields." " What pretty fields they are ! " replied Godfrey. "Ah yes," said the clergyman, "it's a nice country — a very nice country — a kind you don't get out of England, I'm told. If you are a stranger here you Avill find some things Avorth looking at." " Well, I am a stranger," answered Godfrey. " So I thought, sir ; so I supposed. If you had been in the neighbourhood before I presumed I should have remembered you. We country clergymen haA7e a keen eye for a new-comer, you know." And with that, and Avith a twinkle in his eye, he laughed. Godfrey returned the laugh. He rather liked this man, with his cheery face and mellow voice. " A friend of mine told me that the fishing here was good," he said. " I have not been very fortunate so far," — and he glanced at his fishing-basket, Avhich, to tell the truth, was still empty enough,— "but I only arrived last night, so I suppose I ought hardly as yet to complain."

" You won't complain if you take my advice and shift your ground a little," replied the other. " I've fished in this river for these five-and-twenty years, so I don't exactly speak without experience. There's a pool, now, some six or seven minutes' walk along here to your left ; I've caught more fish in that pool than in any bit of water I ever whipped." " I should hke to find it out," said Godfrey quickly. " Put up your things then, sir, and come along with us," cried the clergyman instantly. " We can walk that way as well as another. That's so ; isn't it, Joanne ? Tut, tut ! there's no obligation in the matter. Why, man, I'm a brother of the craft!" And, silencing Godfrey, who was attempting to remonstrate, with a wave of the hand, he himself seized hold of the fishing-basket, and began to march forward with long strides. vol. I. 33 " I am afraid I am disturbing your walk," Godfrey said to the girl, who lingered a moment behind as he hastily gathered up his gear.

" Were you not going in another direction ? " " If we were, it is of no consequence," she answered. " My father would far rather shoAv you this pool than go anywhere else. And he would not only like to shoAv it to you, but to stay and fish with you too," she added with a smile. " I wish he would do that," exclaimed Godfrey heartily. " What — stay and fish too ? " cried the parson, throwing his head back over his shoulder (he had sharp ears apparently), and laughing one of his full laughs. "Well, it's true. I shouldn't mind if I did. But I have got a sick woman instead to go and see presently — unluckily. I'll come and join yuii another day though, if you like. I've got nothing tu do to-morrow — have I. Joanne ? " " Nothing that we know of yet," replied the girl composedly : "" except," she added, " that Mrs. Oakes may want you again."