Sydney

Chapter I

"TTTHEN our duties are burdensome to us it is very tempting to let some willing hand relieve our shoulders from a portion of the weight of them. Sydney, caring little for her own dignity or her own position, felt hardly any inclination, as time went on, to resent the increasing assumption on her sister-indaw's part of rights that might by many another woman have been supposed to clash in various ways with her own. When Mrs. Walkinshaw took possession of Mr. Lou- VOL. III. B SYDNEY. doun, as on many occasions she did, I am afraid Sydney rather felt it as a relief than an offence against her : they were happy together, and she was happiest and freest alone, she merely thought. Indifferent to her husband though she was, it is true that she probably would scarcely have been content if another woman than Mrs. Walk inshaw had done what Mrs. Walkinshaw did : but she let Helen do it with no feeling — or scarcely ever any feeling — but one of satisfaction.

Helen's way of engrossing her husband was odd, she perhaps sometimes thought, but yet, on the whole, she was so much the gainer by it that she hardly felt tempted to complain that her natural place was so often usurped, and herself thrown into the background. " You need not trouble yourself, my SYDNEY. 3 dear, /will do — " this or that — "for Horace," Mrs. Walkinshaw was always saying, and with the sweetest manner and the pleasant est smiles she would wave Sydney aside, and take the various matters of which she spoke into her own hands. " You see, I know him so well," she said to her sister-in-law once, "and it is such a pleasure tometobe with him again — and then you are such a dear soul that I know I shall not make you angry. Horace might have married fifty women who would have been jealous of me ; but you are so nice and sensible : you never think anything foolish.

I am croiner to his room now : he wants to read me something. You don't care to come too, I suppose ? Well, never mind, it is not necessary. You are busy, I daresay." b SYDNEY. And then she nodded and smiled, and gave Sydney an affectionate kiss before she shut herself up with Mr. Loudoun in the stud}'. "Yes, they are very fond of one another ; they are very happy," Sydney thought. Her first sensations, during the early weeks when this sort of thing went on, were un questionably sensations of relief. For six months she had been feeling as if her hus band kept her in prison, and now she had suddenly got a portion of her liberty given back to her, and the regaining of it seemed to give her new power to breathe. She no longer lived in constant dread of his demands upon her. There were hours, even a num ber of hours, during the day when she might put him off her mind, — when she knew that some one else would keep him SYDNEY. 5 from troubling her.

And all this was very pleasant. The sense of partially regained freedom was an unspeakable relief to her ; the thought that the woman who had taken her place loved him much better than she did, for a time kept her conscience at ease. It was during these placid weeks — indeed very near the beginning of them — that she one day asked Helen to let her undertake Netty's as yet very rudimentary schooling. " That child must begin her lessons again," Mrs. Walkinshaw happened to say, with a half sigh. "Netty, you are getting quite wild. On Monday morning you must bring your books to me." " I'd like to do lessons with Aunt Sydney," Netty hereupon promptly replied ; and then, though Mrs. Walkinshaw laughed and told Netty she was talking SYDNEY. nonsense, Sydney struck in, and said, cordially, " I should like it too, if mamma would let you."

" Oh, but, my dear, I couldn't : you are too good," Mrs. Walkinshaw exclaimed. " That's impossible ; nobody's too good," said Netty, sententiously. "Well, you are not, at any rate," retorted her mother, briskly, — " and Aunt Sydney would find that out very soon if she took to teaching you. But, Sydney," she cried, " I really could not be so without a conscience !" " Let us try for a few days how we get on together," Sydney said. And so, after a little more resistance, it was settled, and, with high satisfaction, at the beginning of the following week, Netty went to her new teacher. SYDNEY. 7 The arrangement answered very well, and, from this time, Sydney and her rather flighty pupil spent a couple of hours to gether daily. " I do think it is too bad of me to let you do this," Mrs. Walkinshaw would say constantly, as she came and looked at them seated at their work ; and she would gaze tenderly at them and pat Netty's head, and tell Sydney that she was an angel ; and then — hastened generally by some frank words of dismissal from her daughter — she would smilingly disappear, and betake her self to her brother's room until the lessons ended.

" There is that dear soul teaching Netty, — and far better pleased to be doing it than to be sitting here," she would tell Mr. Loudoun sometimes, laughing with a sense SYDNEY. of fun that he perhaps hardly appreciated. To him it is possible, during these days, that the new order of things scarcely seemed so pleasant as that which had been supplanted by it. But Sydney liked it. Netty was a trou blesome little monkey at times, but Sydney did not much mind her inattention and her waywardness. Netty's company never tried her in the way her husband's did. At the end of a morning spent with the child her face would be brighter by a good deal than it used to be at the end of a morning spent with Mr. Loudoun. She was fond of chil dren naturally, and this one, in spite of her oddness, possessed some qualities that appealed to her.

She was a simple, straight forward little maiden, — very naughty some times, but always very honest and truthful. SYDNEY. In a certain way she was affectionate too. She used to rebuke her mother, and in words at times be rather rough to her, but yet Helen's influence over her, when she chose to exert it, was supreme : both to her uncle and Sydney too she soon came to give no small part of her heart, and for Bertie Crampton she formed an attachment that nothing but an almost daily visit to him could satisfy. She devoted herself to the little invalid indeed with an enthusiasm that perhaps at times rather embarrassed him, and a de monstrativeness that occasionally would bring blushes to his youthful cheeks. For Bertie was ten, though he was small for his age, and ten is not a period of life at which a young gentleman is generally very agree ably affected by feminine tendernesses.

SYDNEY. "I wish you wouldn't kiss me so," Sydney heard him complaining once, in a helpless, objurgatory tone. "Nobody kisses me like this but you, and it makes me so hot and — nasty." " But I'm so fond of you, I can't help it,'r Netty replied to this ungallant speech, with the sweetest frankness ; and even when Ber tie retorted, " Well then, I wish you weren't fond of me," the little maid seemed in no whit disturbed. "You see, I have nobody else who is little, like you, that I care for, and I do like you so much, — I think you're so nice," she merely continued, amorously. " You can think me nice without always going on like that," replied Bertie, in a tone of expostulation. " I hate you to squeeze me in the way you do, — as if you wanted to choke me." SYDNEY. " Oh well, I won't do it if you don't like," said Netty, at last a little huffed, — " but I think you're very ill-natured not to let me.

I always squeeze people that I like. I squeeze papa and mamma, and Aunt Syd ney, and — I don't squeeze Uncle Horace, but I might." " Then I wish you would, and leave me alone," responded Bertie, plaintively, but with great decision. In spite, however, of this little outbreak, and perhaps of one or two more, to which Bertie's overtaxed feelings occasionally com pelled him, the two children were very great friends, and were rarely tired of one another's company. Netty was always eager to run to her play-fellow, and Bertie was almost equally ready on his part to welcome her. The little fellow led a dull life, and SYDNEY. she used to brighten an hour or two of it for him every day. She was quick and in genious and full of resources. She would sit at the foot of his couch and tell him stories, often using a good deal of dramatic action to enhance their effect ; she taught him games, and chattered to him about a hundred things.

In a very short time she became quite enamoured of his helpless con dition. To have a companion who could never escape from her, — who was always in one place, always in want of amusement, and quite incapable of being rough (as boys so often were), — all this appealed to Netty as an experience equally strange and de lightful. " I hope Bertie will never get well," she deliberately said to Sydney one day; and when Sydney with some surprise required SYDNEY. her reasons for giving utterance to so singu lar a desire, she proceeded to state them with the utmost coolness. " He wouldn't be nearly so nice if he could walk," she said, " for he would be just like other boys then, and boys are generally so tiresome. You don't think he is going to get well, do you, Aunt Sydney ?" and she looked up at Sydney with the sweet ly unconscionable look of a cherub.

" If you want selfishness, pure and simple, commend me to a child !" exclaimed Helen, laughing. " My dear, Horace and I have been going over old letters," Mrs. Walkinshaw said one morning to Sydney. "I have been persuad ing him to turn out the drawers of his Indian cabinet, and you can't think what queer old things we have come upon. You SYDNEY. wouldn't care for them, I am afraid, for they all belong to a date before your time, but they are amazingly interesting to us." " Are they family letters ?" Sydney asked. " Oh, yes, a great many of them ; old letters of our own, and of our father's and mother's. I feel as if I had been living all the morning in another world." "I should like to see some of them," Sydney said, after a moment's silence. " Should you ?" Mrs. Walkinshaw looked a little surprised.

" Ah ! I am afraid you would find them dull. They wouldn't speak to you as they do to us, you know. Now to Horace and me there is hardly a line that does not recall some past thing." When Mr. Loudoun joined them at SYDNEY. lunch, Sydney said to him, a little shyly, "1 hear you have been having an inter esting morning?" " Yes— very. Did Helen tell you ?" he asked. " You ought to have been with us." But, before Sydney could reply to this, Helen struck in. "Oh, no! — you see, for Sydney it would be something quite different," she said. " Of course I should have been delighted to have her, but I am afraid she would have found it a very dull amusement. No, no, Horace, our letters would sound very stupid, depend upon it, to anybody except ourselves." He smiled and said nothing more, and they sat down to lunch ; but there were moments, indifferent to her rights as she SYDNEY. was, when even Sydney thought Mrs. Walkinshaw took a good deal upon her self.

" Some day I should like to read a few of your letters — if I might," she said to her husband before he left the room again, speaking to him alone at a moment when Mrs. Walkinshaw was occupied with Netty. " You may read every letter I have," he answered, instantly. " Come to-morrow and help me to go over some of them. Will you ?" " Yes — I shall be glad," she replied And so the next day, when Netty's lessons were over, she went. She had begun half to repent by this time that she had said she would go, for she knew that the brother and sister were together, and the momentary feeling had SYDNEY. passed away that had prompted her to pro fess an interest in their occupation. She opened the study-door, and went into the room shyly. She knew that one at least of its occupants did not want her : she knew that she herself would rather — now — have stayed away.

Mrs. Walkinshaw, as she entered, was reading something aloud, over which she and her brother was laughing heartily. What the joke was Sydney did not catch, but each sentence convulsed them : they hardly noticed Sydney as she came in with her quiet step. Her husband, after a few moments, rose and gave her his seat, but Mrs. Walkinshaw, for some minutes, went on reading. At last she stopped, and, as she folded up the letter, "What absurd creatures we used to be!" vol. in. c SYDNEY. she exclaimed. " Are you come too to read the record of our follies, Sydney? Do you know, I am more than half inclined to object." "You need not show me the record of any of your follies," Sydney replied, a little quickly. " Oh, no — you only care for Horace's : I understand that ; but sometimes, you see, his and mine are so mixed up that it is not easy to separate them.

However, I must submit, I suppose. Only, Horace, don't give her this packet," — and Mrs. Walkin shaw suddenly laid her hand upon a little pile of letters at her side. "Really and truly I won't have her read these !" " Very well : she shall choose a bundle for herself," Mr. Loudoun said. "Come away here, Sydney ; here is a drawer full ; take anything you like." SYDNEY. He brought her to the cabinet that they had begun to ransack, and stood beside her while she made her choice. She took up one or two packets. "These are not yours," she said. " There are some of mine here, I have no doubt, if mine are what you want." " I wish you would find me some." He began to search, and in a few mo ments unearthed a bundle. "There, that is big enough to last you for a long time," he said. " I think these were written almost before you were born."

" Are they all to your mother ?" she asked, looking at them. " And did she keep your letters always ? — everything you wrote to her from school and college ?" " I fancy she must have done so. You c2 SYDNEY. would hardly have suspected, would you, that so sensible a woman could do anything so foolish ?" he said. She laughed, and raised her eyes quickly to him, with rather a sweet look in them. "Yes, I can easily fancy it," she said. " May I have this packet, then ?" " Surely," he told her. And so she took it, and went to a little sofa that stood in one of the windows, and established herself there at some distance from the other two, and read her letters for a long time. They were all chronologically arranged, and marked with their dates outside in Mrs. Loudoun's handwriting. " How she must have cared for them !"

Sydney thought, as she noticed this ; and then presently, after she had read for a little while, she said to herself, " No won- SYDNEY. 21 der that she cared !" for she felt that they were letters that any mother would have been proud of — full of life, of brightness, of ardour. " He must have been different in many ways then from what he is now. I wonder if I should have cared for him more if I had known him when he was young ?" she began to think. For almost an hour she went on reading undisturbed. " How are you getting on, Sydney ?" her husband called to her once ; but she merely answered, " Very well," and said no more. Mr. Loudoun and Helen were seated near together, and Helen, with her usual vivacity, was making frequent comments and remarks on the portions of the letters that were passing through her hands, and often reading passages aloud ; once the brother and SYDNEY. sister had an eager discussion over some point as to wdiich their memories had mis led them.

But Sydney took no part in all this. Had she been alone with her hus band she would more than once have asked him the meaning of some expression that she came to — she would have inquired of him about various things to which in the letters he made reference ; but in Helen's presence, without quite knowing why, she did not care to do this ■ they were engaged with one another, and she instinct ively left them to themselves, and passed by what she did not understand. But the hour was rather a notable one to her ; she felt at the end of it as if some thing very living had been put before her. Half consciously she said to herself, " I think, when he was a lad, he must have SYDNEY. been more loveable than he is now." It was as if a picture had been presented to her with traits in it that were new to her ; the face might be her husband's face, but in it there were expressions that it seemed to her he had lost now.

Mr. Loudoun came across the room to her at last, and made place for himself on the edge of her sofa, sitting face to face with her, with his arm across her knees. " You are tiring yourself out," he said. " Stop now. I don't think you can care for them." " Oh, yes, I care," she answered, quickly. She had only got through about half the bundle yet. " You have not looked at these ones, have you ? They are — wonderfully interesting." SYDNEY. "That is more than I thought you would say," he exclaimed, laughing. " But anybody would say it," she quickly answered. " So you merely speak, you mean, as one of the crowd ? Oh, well, I did not expect you to take any special interest in them, certainly." He made his answer lightly, and perhaps Sydney was unreasonable to be annoyed at it, but yet she was conscious of being half annoyed.

If he had assumed that she took any special interest in his letters, she very probably might have resented that assump tion too, but yet his quiet acceptance of the reverse hurt her. She said nothing after he had spoken, and there was a few moments' silence ; and then, SYDNEY. " What are they all about ?" he asked. "They are college letters," she answered. " I think they must have been written in your second year at Oxford." " Ah, priggish compositions, I have no doubt," he said. " No ; they are not priggish !" she replied, quickly. "They are full of nice things. They give a — a very good impression of you." " I don't think you are any judge," he said, laughing. " I suppose you mean they are full of fine sentiments ? But that would be the very sign-manual of their priggishness." "I don't mean that.

They are not full of fine sentiments. They are not that at all. They seem to me very natural and — pleasant." SYDNEY. "Oh; then I must look at them some day. Are they more pleasant than the letters I write now ?" He asked this, looking at her rather mischievously, and she coloured a little. "I don't know much about the letters that you write now," she answered, evasively. " But you know something. Did I not write to you every day when you were at your mother's, in January?" " Oh, yes," she said, rather reluct antly. " Well, — and are these letters better than those ?" " I don't mean that," she said, half apolo getically. "I am afraid you think they are? " " Oh, no — I was net comparing them." SYDNEY. 27 " You never told me that you considered the letters you had from me at Dover wonderfully interesting, did you?"

"No — I suppose not." She looked at him for a moment rather wistfully. It was only a quick glance, but it had an expression in it that was very like an appeal for mercy ; and he read it, — and was merciful. " Well, — if you find that these interest you, I am glad of that, at any rate," he merely said, heartily. "There are some things I wanted to ask you," she said, after a moment. " There is some one you mention very often, — 'Scott,' you call him." " Ah ; poor Scott !" he exclaimed. " Is there much about him ?" " Yes ; you are always speaking of SYDNEY. him. Was he a great friend of yours?" "We were a great deal together for a couple of years. He was a wonderfully clever fellow." " I think you must have been very good to him. There was a time when he was ill " " Oh, yes ; I remember it well.

He was ill; and had nobody to come to him — I mean, he had no woman belonging to him at all." " And so you nursed him ?" " I did some of the nursing. We had our rooms close together; and then, after wards, I brought him home with me. Helen," he said, turning his head, " do you remember my coming up from Balliol with poor Adam Scott ?" " Yes, — and a nice alarm you gave us !" SYDNEY. 29 exclaimed Mrs. Walkinshaw, rising up and coming towards him. "Dear me, do I not remember it ! Just think, Sydney, — there was this poor young wretch, hardly able to crawl — the sort of creature who was only fit for a convalescent hospital ; and, with nothing but the barest announce ment that they were coming, what did Horace do but bring him here ! He was literally so ill that he could not sit up in the carriage."

" Well ; but what else could I do ?" Mr. Loudoun asked. "I must either have brought him, or have stayed up with him, — and I didn't want to stay. I al ways thought that we managed wonderfully well." " You frightened us out of our wits, I know." SYDNEY. " Oh, nonsense ! I didn't frighten my mother." " Indeed you did. Don't you remember how she sent me out of the house until she had brought Dr. Alcock to see him ? You had such a horrible cool way of saying he had had a fever, without in the least specifying what sort of fever it was." " But it was all right." " Yes. It turned out to be all right. But it would have been the same to you if it had been all wrong. I don't know if you will be inclined to believe it now, Sydney, but when Horace was young he never had one grain of ordinary caution in him.

He used to go and consort with beggars and sick people in the most reckless way. He was always putting in his head where he shouldn't. Once he caught scarlatina in the village, — ■ SYDNEY. 31 and another time he got whooping cough, — and then proceeded to give it to me." " Well, and was it not desirable that you should have it?" her brother answered, laughing. " It was a very good thing to get it and have it over." " I didn't think so at the time. And I know when that poor young Scott came, I didn't like it. I was not much more than a child, you know, Sydney, and he frightened me." " But did he get better ?" Sydney asked. " Oh, yes — for the time. Mamma and Horace devoted themselves to him, and he improved amazingly. In fact, his coming was a great success in the end, for we got quite fond of him.

He was such a bright, quick, likeable young creature. We were SYDNEY. horribly sorry afterwards when we heard of his death." "Then he died?" Sydney exclaimed. " Yes, he died of consumption when he was twenty-four," said Mr. Loudoun. " Poor fellow ! — And were you with him?" she asked, after a moment. "No, he died in Algiers. His doctor had sent him there." "By himself?" " Yes." " Poor fellow !" she said softly, again. "He was wonderfully fond of Horace," said Mrs. Walkinshaw. "He was almost as fond of him as if he had been a woman. There was altogether a strong feminine element in him ; I suppose it came to him with his delicate constitution : — a curious kind of tenderness and dependency. It SYDNEY. always made me think of him as a sort of inspired boy rather than a man. I mean," she said, " however much I had liked him, he was a creature with whom I could never have imagined myself falling in love.

But in fact, you see," she added, beginning to laugh, " his affections were engaged before I ever saw him, — for, as I told you, he was in love already with Horace." " Tie up your letters, Sydney," Mr. Loudoun said. " We have all had enough of them." So she tied them up, but she said, as she gave them back, — " I should like to go on with them to-morrow." "You shall do anything you please," he answered. He was still sitting beside her, and she could not rise until he moved. Mrs. Walk- VOL. III. d SYDNEY. inshaw had gone away, but he continued in his place. " Are you comfortable here ?" he asked her. " Oh, yes," she replied, not very gracious ly ; " but — " and she looked at her watch — " I think the gong will sound for lunch im mediately." " Very well, then ; stay until it does," he said. And so she had to stay.

She often used to try to talk frankly and pleasantly to her husband when they were together, but it always tried her when at such times he treated her in any lover like way. She knew that it was utterly unreasonable in her now to be irritated because he kept his face turned to her, and his arm across her knees, and yet she was unable to force herself not to mind it. SYDNEY. When he sat beside her so, he made her feel as if she were imprisoned _ he made her long to move and escape from him. The sofa was a small sofa, and she was fretted at having him so close to her. He bent over her, and stroked her hand. " It is like having the sunshine with me to have you here," he said, suddenly (Mrs. Walkinshaw had by this time left them.) "Do you think I do not care for it? We have not been very much alone together of late, Sydney?"

" N-o," she said, reluctantly. " Of course Helen's being here makes a difference in many ways." "Yes, it must — of course." "And, naturally, she takes up a good deal of my time." d2 SYDNEY. " Oh, yes." And then, after a moment, " Naturally— and rightly too," she added. "She is very fond of you, Sydney," he said, after a moment's silence. Sydney coloured ; she was not so sure of that fact. She looked embarrassed for a second or two ; then, " We get on very well," she merely answered. But Mr. Loudoun was not contented to let the matter drop with this response. " 1 should have been very ill-satisfied if she had not taken to you," he went on, composedly; "for Helen, in spite of her apparent lightness, is a shrewd judge of character. I often think that she does herself some injustice. I am not sure, for instance, that you understand her yet; but you may take my word for it that you see SYDNEY the worst of her on the surface.

You see her faults before you see her good qualities." " Oh, yes, I can believe that," Sydney said, cordially. " And she is very kind to me. If I am not — exactly — fond of her }Tet," — she said this with a little hesita tion, — "it is only, probably, because I am not quick in general in taking to new people." "Yes — that is it, I have no doubt," he answered, in a tone of satisfaction. " She is naturally far more impulsive than you are ; she generally makes up her mind very rapidly. You and she certainly are not much alike." "No," she said. " But vour want of resemblance need be no bar to your friendship. I hope to see you real friends in time." SYDNEY. "There is the gong," she said, with a feeling of relief. And then she moved, and he had to rise. But, after she had risen, something like a feeling of remorse came over her for the impatience with which she had submitted to his detention of her, and she forced herself to speak to him again.