Falsely True. A novel

Front matter

% 1»M. BY MRS. CASHEL HOEY, AUTHOR OF 4A HOUSE OF CARDS,' ETC. ETC. ' His honour, rooted in dishonour, stood ; And faith, unfaithful, kept him falsely true.' IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1870. [AU rights of trcmslafion and reproduction reserved. ] losdon: r0es0_. and sons . printi-ks, paxcras road, n.w. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAP. PAGE i. At the Parsonage ..... i ii. Harold's Trouble . . . . 27 in. 'Vi' 51 iv. While Geraldine waits . . . -74 v. ' My Lady' 98 vi. In the Land of the Southern Cross . 120 vii. Don Diego's Daughter .... 142 viii. News at last ...... 168 ix. Quite by chance 200 x. A Suggestion . . . . . .219 xi. A Temptation 241 xii. Long Odds

Chapter I. At The Parsonage

There is nothing more suggestive of common place remark than the contrast between the per petuity of change in human lives, and the im perturbable sequence of Nature. Every one has felt an unreasonable revolt against this ; which has its origin, doubtless, in the strain of poetic sentiment in every human being of any refine ment at all, and is an unconscious protest against the brevity of our fragmentary lives. So many springs and summers are to come which we shall never see, — a truth which makes us all sad ocvol. ii. • B casionally ; but more discordant is the common experience, that those which we do see are out of place and time, and tune sometimes, making trouble worse, and isolation more complete, by their jarring contrast. Joy is not marred by winter; but grief is an uglier, a fiercer enemy, when summer is abroad in the land, to make the children of earth feel insignificant in the sight of the mighty mother.

The physical sympathy which exists between the young and Nature in her summer-time, makes the moral contrast deeper and wider. Old people do not mind it so much. They have ceased to be keenly sensitive, and have done with imagination ; nothing but the real has power to harm them more. Autumn and the early winter had passed heavily over the head of Emily Hargreaves. If the chief interest of her life had been less absorbing, the grief which had come to her would have been al most intolerable. There was no variety in her daily existence; nothing to divert the pain, nothing to alter the current of her thoughts. Save from Geraldine she had no external help. She loved her home ; every room in the old house, every tree in the copses, every blossom in the garden, was dear to her ; but the pain was all the keener for that.

Her serenity, her girlish innocent enjoyment of small things, of the occupa tions and interests of every day, had passed away, never to return. Never could they be quite the same things to her again, or she the same pert son. ' Move on !' — the mot d'ordre of life — had sounded in her ears, and obedience to it was in evitable. Emily could hardly have told how the first weeks after James Morris and she parted had passed by. The pretext of illness, neither un true nor exaggerated, had availed to avert the only danger she had dreaded, and had given her leisure to suffer unmolested. During that period the girl strove honestly to bury her dead hope, and she succeeded. She had not changed in looks or spirits to any eyes but Geraldine's, when she went about as usual, and fulfilled every duty with scrupulous fidelity.

Emily's was not a weak or a one - sided conscience ; she would not have been content to live, doing her duty in a merely exterior sense, but carrying a dead heart within her bosom. The resolution she had arrived at she kept intact ; the sacrifice she had made, she made in its entirety. Only her father, and her relation to him, remained unchanged. The bitter blight which had fallen on all her life beside did not touch that, its central object. He was more precious to her than ever, because she had now the prac tical assurance that she could conquer every feel ing and temptation of self for his sake. She was with him even more constantly than before ; and he saw no alteration in her, beyond the slight languor accounted for by her illness, which had assumed a feverish form and lasted a fortnight.

Mr. Hargreaves had never been observant, and his invalid condition had its natural effect in deaden ing his perceptions and concentrating his attention on the form of ill -health from which he himself suffered. Externally, the peace and comfort of the Red House and its inmates were perfect. When Emily had quite recovered from her short illness, James Morris's departure from the Manor House was al ready an old story, and there did not arise any occasion for the mention of him between Mr. Hargreaves and his daughter. He might never have been at Culvers for any trace of him that remained, save in the memory of the two women. They knew that he had left England. He wrote to Geraldine, and enclosed a letter for Emily, just before the ship sailed. Her friend retained the letter for some time, and when she gave it to Emily she asked no question relative to its con tents, nor did Emily refer to it.

In the girl's composed and serious air, in her steadily active and useful life, Geraldine and Philip Stepney had reassuring evidence that the wound inflicted on her peace had not been mor tal. Terrible as disappointed love appeared to the happy wife, whose life was so full of blessing and prosperity, she began to persuade herself be fore long that Philip was wrong, and that Emily would get over it. Emily did get over it, though not in the sense which Geraldine supposed. She got over it as every human being gets over an irreparable, irre vocable fact. She believed that she had done with the phase of life in which love and the hope of passing one's life with the beloved object are in cluded, and as a horizon is necessary to straining, unquiet human vision, her horizon had widened itself out, become more distant, and its colours colder.

She did not reach the point of sincerely wishing that James should forget her, and marry some other woman ; but she thought she did, and that was a great thing. She had persuaded her self, before the dark days of the ■ winter, that she should rejoice to learn he had found a real home in the distant land to which he had gone. The self-deception was harmless ; and she indulged it, disciplining her young heart withal, and telling what she took to be the truth to Geraldine with such simple conviction, that Mrs. Stepney received it for fact, and rejoiced exceedingly. The new inmate of the Parsonage was happy and popular. He did not make so much pro gress with the Oriental tongues as the conscien tious Philip could have desired ; but Geraldine found excuses for him. Harold was the gayest and brightest of prosperous and unaffected young men, and he speedily secured a high place in the affections of his fastidious half-sister.

The children liked him, the servants liked him, the dogs liked him. He achieved an unprecedented triumph at the Manor House. Rarely had Sir Frederick been known to express so much in terest in any one, and his offers of covert-shoot ing over Culvers were pressing and earnest. As for Lady Grimshaw, it was not long before Harold D'Arcy won her simple heart. Never had she seen such skill as that displayed by Harold on the never-to-be-forgotten occasion when he ex tracted a thorn from Maggie's paw (Lady Grimshaw declared the darling had held the afflicted limb up to the operator ' like a Christian'), or such knowledge as in his prescription, for Guy's often-recurrent sore back, of an ointment warranted not to poison the patient. No visitor to Culvers so perfectly understood Pepper's ' ways,' or dis played so much alacrity in letting that peripa tetically-disposed animal in and out of the room a dozen times in an hour.

In this respect he surpassed James, a very good young man in his way, but not gifted with that comprehension of dogs which Lady Grimshaw early recognised in Harold D'Arcy. It was ' the way of the world,' a natural, and not, in truth, a blamable way, that this young man should be much liked and admired. He had the easy, graceful, ready amiability, which, in all cases where ingrained evil does not exist in the disposition, accompanies a prosperous worldly con dition, absence of care and anxiety, youth, health, and good looks. Life was all gilded and decorated for him, and he showed to advantage amid the splendour. Not that he did not deserve his popularity in the quiet little world in which he was placed for a brief period, — he had solid good in him, as well as surface glitter ; but people there, as well as in wider spheres, were ready to take the good for granted before they had time to see anything but the glitter.

The ' neighbourhood' informed itself thoroughly concerning the position and prospects of Mrs. Stepney's hand some young stepbrother ; and Geraldine was not cynically but good - humouredly amused by the increased respect and observance with which she was treated in consequence of the nature of the facts ascertained. Mr. D'Arcy of Gatcombe was a personage, and Harold was his only son. The Squire became interesting when his only son was ' on view' to an extent far beyond his claim merely as Mrs. Stepney's stepfather, with ' a place' which she was never known to visit. Harold was pleased with his general popu larity. Heavy dinners, to which form the hos pitality of the neighbourhood inclined, had no terrors for him. They did not occur too often, and he had good spirits and unimpaired digestion.

He was always ready to accompany the parson and his wife on these solemn occasions, and to make himself agreeable and useful when Gerald ine in her turn got out her best china, and enter tained her husband's parishioners in small and well-assorted batches. He preferred the latter occasions, on grounds both general and particular. There was better ' fun' to be gotten out of them ; and Emily Har greaves, who seldom made her appearance at other people's dinner - parties, was never absent from Geraldine's. He acknowledged the import ance of this fact to himself; but it was some time before he suspected that his sister was as well aware of his feelings as he was. He little knew that she regarded his desultoriness in his studies, his indifference to the cause assigned for his residence at Culvers, with placid equan imity, because she was beginning to indulge a hope that he would renounce his scheme of travel, and settle down to a kind of life in which out landish languages would not be required. ' I should be almost as glad as the Squire himself,' thought Geraldine one morning, when she had received Philip's complaint that Harold had read next to nothing during the last three days, ' if I could be sure he would never require to know any more recondite dialect than that of the North Riding.' Mrs. Stepney was a good woman, as well as a clever one ; but she was not so revoltingly superior to her sex as to be above judicious match-making.

There was as little in common between her and Lady Grimshaw as could exist between two women whose lives were strictly in accordance with law and order, as prescribed for feminine observance ; and yet the one scheme of Lady Grimshaw's life and Mrs. Stepney's favourite project had the same person for their respective objects. Not very long after Lady Grimshaw was forced, by the agency of Miss Violet Fitzharding, to abandon the hope of marrying her son to Emily Hargreaves, Mrs. Step ney began to discern a possibility of securing her young friend as a wife for her brother. If in this respect she was not superior to her sex, at least she went about the promotion of her scheme with rare discretion. While she did not content herself with thinking vaguely about it at odd times, as Lady Grimshaw had clone, neither did she make the blunder of talking of it to the wrong person.

She sedulously but unostenta tiously promoted the frequent meeting of the destined victims of her praiseworthy machina tions ; but she never spoke of her projects, even to her devoted and usually obedient Philip. He could not aid her, she argued, and he might do mischief, — men have such a talent for blundering in such cases, — and he had taken into his head such a fixed notion about Emily's persistent con stancy to her hopeless love of James Morris, that she could anticipate only discouragement from him. Though Mrs. Stepney estimated Miss Hargreaves' eligibility on a very different scale from that assigned to it by Lady Grimshaw, though she had the warmest admiration for her, nevertheless there was a touch of the jns aller argument in her reasoning also. ' The Squire' would see the advantage of such a marriage more clearly if it should present itself as an obstacle to the scheme which he disliked.

There was no ming ling of depreciation in this consideration; there was only a clever woman's common-sense coming to her aid in a matter in which common-sense must always be desirable, and is generally ' con spicuous by its absence.' Geraldine had a high opinion of Harold, and righteously believed that Emily would be happy as his wife. ' I would not try to bring it about, if I did not think it as good for him as for her,' Geraldine had said in her musings. ' Much as I like Harold, I like Emily better. But he is a fine fellow, with more in him than James Morris, and everything is in favour of it. I know how delighted the poor old Squire would be. I don't think the other impression can be very deep, and that is utterly hopeless.' Geraldine's conscience did not acquit her of some treachery to James Morris in those little plans.

She admitted that she would be very glad to learn that he was married, and that she was glad to discern in Emily symptoms of ' getting over it.' She had not forgotten her pro mise to the disconsolate lover, but she regretted it, — she hoped the occasion for its fulfilment would not • arise. She reflected complacently upon the proverbial effect of change of scene and of new faces, and gravely decided that the best thing that could happen would be the marriage of James Morris. Geraldine, however, was wise enough to con ceal her feelings from Emily, being moved thereto not only by her familiar knowledge of the girl's character, but by her experience of the general perversity of young people. Things did not look badly, on the whole, she thought, seeing Emily so cheerful and active, so sweetly unselfish in all her ways, and observing that the companion ship between her and her father was even closer than before.

But what of Harold ? How far did his con duct, and what she could discern of his feel ings, justify her hopes and projects ? To the fullest extent, she believed. If ever she had seen a man in love, she was quite sure that man was her brother. She had perceived the impression Emily made upon him in the first instance, and though some time elapsed be fore the young people met again, she saw that it renewed itself immediately. Geraldine would have been forced to confess, on cross-examination, that she had admitted the idea of such a solution of Emily's destiny within a very short period after poor James Morris had gone away, cling ing to the hope that she was his friend, and would, at the proper time, come to his assist ance. ' I feel treacherous, I can't deny it,' Geraldine would say to herself. ' And it is such an odd 22. thing, and such a fortunate thing, that Harold and Mr. Morris never met.

Harold might have seen how matters were, and given up hope from the first.' Not only had Harold D'Arcy not seen James Morris (to his knowledge), but he had rarely heard him mentioned. Philip was so busy a man, by disposition, and from the nature of his occupa tions, that he naturally dismissed people and things from his mind when his immediate con tact or concern with them ceased. He had liked the visitor at the Manor for his own sake, and taken interest in him for Emily's ; but he would not have talked much about him afterwards in any case, and in the case in point was naturally silent. James was not often talked of at the Manor House, except when Lady Grimshaw and Emily were alone. Then the girl with inno cent craft would bring about the mention of his name, and be delighted when her old friend com mended him.

Sir Frederick never spoke of him. He had been mixed up with unfortunate circumstances, concerning which Sir Frederick chose to be silent, and that every one else should main tain silence towards him. ' That dreadful business of John's,' Lady Grimshaw called this melancholy family matter. It was noticeable that she dropped the formerly habitual ' dear.' Geraldine and Emily spoke of James very rarely as time went on. They had agreed that this was best. ' Your resolution, which is the right one — though I never could have made it — will be easier to keep, if we don't talk of him,' Geraldine had said ; a hope for Harold lurking even then in her mind. Emily had acquiesced with a gentle placidity which deceived the elder lady. The girl was thinking, ' Nothing of that sort can matter ; whether I speak of him or not, it makes no difference to me.' Emily had been slower to take up a favourable impression of Harold than any of his new ac quaintances.

Her mind was so much preoccupied by her sorrow, that she was very absent in manvol. it. c ner when not engaged in the active duties of her life. Beyond knowing that he was Geraldine's brother and a guest at the Parsonage, she had no definite notions about Harold D'Arcy for some time. The first distinct association with him in her mind was one of pain. It became evident that Mr. Hargreaves liked the young man very much. The favourable effect produced by his first visit did not wear off or decrease. The companionable qualities, the highly-bred considerate ways of Harold gained on the infirm but activeminded and fastidious old gentleman ; and the young man was but a short time at Culvers when he became a daily visitor, and passed several evenings in each week by the invalid's sofa, talking to him with animation, discussing many subjects in which it might have been supposed these two, whose lives had so little in common, could have but little common interest.

The pain which this gave Emily was unmingled with any prejudice against Harold. It was entirely personal. ' So he might have been to him,' she thought ; ' so he and I might have been happy here, but for a fatality.' She could not see the youthful, alert, active figure, she could not hear the gladsome voice, she could not mark the daily growing fa miliarity of Harold in the house, without a jealous pang, — a pang of solitary suffering, which did not influence her manner to the unconscious cause of it. Emily's character was strengthening in the strife and bitterness of self - sacrifice, and her beauty was maturing. Her father could not have told how it was, but he did not fail to see that the few months of that autumn and winter had turned his daughter into a lovely woman, with a fine finish and aplomb of manner, considering her scanty intercourse with society.

Geraldine saw the change as clearly as did Mr. Hargreaves, but she understood it. The external tranquility of the time was un disturbed. The sea might have engulfed James Morris, with the ship which had borne him to the new world — he might never have existed — for any suspicion in the mind of Harold D'Arcy that he had any connection with his fate. But the girl who had given him her heart did not resume the gift. It was in his keeping as surely, when the spring came whispering among the awakening trees at Culvers, as when Emily and James Morris had said their parting words amid the yellowing leaves. The time had arrived when, according to the arrangement at first proposed, Harold D'Arcy should have been taking a final leave of the Par sonage, and returning to Gatcombe, prior to his departure from England.

But there was some not clearly -explained delay. Geraldine was not anxious that he should go away. Philip had a constitutionally hospitable objection to any one's leaving his house whom he could induce to remain; and Harold lingered. Geraldine had ven tured to report to the Squire, who during one of his son's brief visits had observed a hopeful decrease of ardour about his projects, that she had some reason to believe he might be dissuaded from the scheme, or induced to modify it. She was satisfied of Harold's feelings. He had been attentive, he had made himself agreeable to the other young ladies in the neighbourhood; they were not numerous, and they were more or less eligible ; but he had not given any one of them grounds for believing that her charms had made an impression. He had excited no tender am bitious hope of seeing her daughter mistress of Gatcombe in the breast of any mother.

The re tirement of Culvers, the seclusion of the Red House, did not altogether preclude observation ; did not hinder people acquainted with the small incidents of the still and even tenor of life there, from talking and speculating concerning the rich and handsome brother of Mrs. Stepney, and the handsome but not rich daughter of Mr. Har greaves. The episode of James Morris had es caped attention ; but now, while Emily was un conscious that Harold D'Arcy entertained any intentions regarding her, the neighbourhood was discussing her good fortune, and congratulating her father, with as much sincerity and as little jealousy as was possible under the circumstances. The anxious relatives of Harold in Yorkshire, who had shown themselves sensitively alive to his dereliction from the family traditions, were indifferent to the probabilities of a Scylla and Charybdis kind which might beset his career.

He had dis appointed and deceived them by. his unaccount able disinclination to follow the footsteps of the foregone D'Arcys in his education and subsequent pursuits. But that he could do anything foolish and unseemly in the matter of love and matri mony did not occur to them. When his extra ordinary freak should be over, he would come home and marry a young lady of fortune and family, of course. A Yorkshire young lady, also of course, and if of the North Riding, so much the better. It was singular, that while Mr. D'Arcy's relatives indulged themselves in the luxury of find ing unremitting fault with him for his marriage with the beautiful widow, known in the family as ' that Irishwoman,' — treating it as an offence not to be expiated by years, and hardly palliated by Mrs. D'Arcy's death, — they never had any appre hension of Harold's following his father's example.

Geraldine amused herself, when her spirits were buoyant and her little match-making project seemed to be looking up, with imagining the female flut terings and rustlings which would ensue among the D'Arcy connection. Emily was not an Irish woman — that stigma would be spared the family ; but neither was she ' Yorkshire ;' and the ' con nection' entertained notions about the relative im portance of Yorkshire and the remainder of the civilised earth, like those which formerly prevailed among the Abyssinians with reference to the mag nitude and magnificence of their own country. The only interruption to Geraldine's enjoyment of her plans and hopes came ultimately from an unexpected quarter. One day, when she was visiting at the Manor House, Lady Grimshaw said to her in her customary placid tone : ' I have been thinking a great deal about dear Emily, Mrs. Stepney; and I am really getting very anxious that something should be settled for her.

Mr. Hargreaves, poor dear man, can't live for ever' — (he was some years younger than the speaker) — ' and it would be as well to know what dear Emily's prospects are to be if anything should happen to him.' Geraldine was surprised and disconcerted. But Lady Grimshaw did not perceive her feelings. She settled herself comfortably in her chair, and assumed a more confidential tone than was cus tomary in her intercourse with Mrs. Stepney. ' I never told any one but poor James,' con tinued Lady Grimshaw, ' that I had had a little plan about dear Emily. I used to think it would be so nice if she and John were to fancy each other. But of course poor John's unfortunate marriage — I don't mention it except to Mr. Step ney, and you're his wife, you know, so it's nearly the same thing — his unfortunate marriage has put an end to that.

Poor James and I had it all settled, before we knew it was too late, that I should try to bring it about ; but that's over ; and I must turn my mind to something else for the poor dear girl. And so I thought I would speak to you about your brother.' ' About my brother, Lady Grimshaw ?' 'Yes,' returned her ladyship, as placidly as before. 'He's a very nice young man, and I'm sure he won't find a nicer girl than Emily; no, not if he goes round all the Arctic Oceans and Pacific Islands in the world ! And you so fond of her too ! I have been thinking a great deal about it, Mrs. Stepney ; and if you hadn't come to see me to-day, I intended taking the dogs as far as the Parsonage to-morrow, and speaking to you on the subject. Don't you think, seriously now, it would be a capital plan ?' Geraldine was provoked; but she would not lose her temper with harmless Lady Grimshaw; though, like many other stupid persons, she did occasionally ' hit the right nail on the head' with aggravating exactness.

She replied briefly and un concernedly, that she thought such matters were better managed by the parties themselves ; and pleading another visit as an excuse, took her leave, much to the discomfiture of Lady Grim shaw. Mrs. Stepney left the Manor House in a per turbed state of mind ; but in the midst of her vexation she smiled at the whimsical turn of fate, which caused an almost portionless girl like Emily to be coveted by their respective relatives as a wife for the only sons of two men of fortune. She entered the Parsonage garden by the side gate, and glancing upwards towards the Red House, she saw her brother approaching her, with evident signs of discomposure in his face.

Chapter II. Harold's Trouble

Mrs. Stepney was not a nervous person, so she did not conjure up any frightful image of calamity ; she did not jump to the conclusion that Philip had been thrown from his horse and killed, or that the children had met with some terrible acci dent, or that something dreadful had occurred in the Squire's household in Yorkshire. ' Harold is in trouble,' she thought ; and went towards him, and said : ' What's the matter ?' Her brother looked at her with eyes in which it was impossible for her to avoid seeing reproach, as he answered her abruptly — ' Not much, you'll think, I daresay ; but some thing you might have spared me, Geraldine.' ' What in the world do you mean ?' asked his sister, as she passed her arm through his, and stood beside him on the garden walk. ' What have I done ?' ' Nothing,' he answered. ' You have done nothing, and said nothing.

But you must have seen, I think — I fancied you did see — Come, let us walk on, and I will tell you.' They walked on, up the quiet churchyard path, just as they had walked on that first day of his stay at the Parsonage, which had proved so im portant to Harold. ' I — I suppose I was a fool,' he began hesitatingly ; ' I suppose if I had known more of the ways of women, I should not have made such a blunder. I hope she will not set me down as a conceited ass ; but I have asked Emily Hargreaves to marry me, and she has said — no.' ' 0 Harold ! I'm so sorry.' ' So am I,' said Harold, with a manly sim plicity which touched his sister as no mani festations of a more emotional kind would have touched her. ' I am very, very sorry. I did think she cared a little for me, and — but what's the good of thinking, or at least of talking, of that now ?