Brave Heart and True. A novel

Front matter

BRAVE HEART AND TRUE. VOL. I. a BRAVE BEAUT AND TRUE. A j nWEL. BY FLORENCE MARRYAT, AUTHOR OF "LOVE'S CONFLICT," "MT SI8TEE THE ACTEESS," ETC, ETC, ETC. " ' The best hearts, Trim, are ever the bravest,' replied my Uncle Toby." — Sterne. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: F. V. WHITE & CO., 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. 18 90. EDINBURGH COLSTON AND COMPANY PRINTERS CONTENTS. CHAP. PACE I. The Village Doctor, ... 1 II. Lewis makes a Discovert, . . 20 III. The Pure-souled Charlotte, . . 45 IV. The Picnic, ..... 67 V. New Acquaintances, . . .89 VI. Cousin Denis, . . . .111 VII. Lewis's Confession, .... 131 VIII. A Terrible Disclosure, . . . 158 IX. The "Young Person," . . .187 X. In the Darkness, .... 208 XL A Mind diseased, .... DeMcatet) to my sister, CECIL NORRIS, IN remembrance of oue loving girlhood's days.

POPULAR NEW NOYELS. Now ready, in One Vol., the Eighth Edition of ARMY SOCIETY; or. Life in a Garrison Town. By Iohn Strange Winter. Author of ' Booties' Baby.' Cloth gilt, 6s. ; also, picture boards, 2s. Also now ready, in cloth gilt, zs. 6d. each. GARRISON GOSSIP, Gathered in Blankhampton. By John Strange Winter. Also, picture boards, 2s. A SIEGE BABY. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2s. BEAUTIFUL JIM. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2s. MRS BOB. By the same Author. BY WOMAN'S WIT. By Mrs Alexander. Author of 'The Wooing O't. Also, picture boards, 2S. MONA'S CHOICE. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2S. A LIFE INTEREST. By the same Author. KILLED IN THE OPEN. By Mrs Edward Kennard. Also, picture boards, 2s. THE GIRL IN THE BROWN HABIT. A Sporting Novel. By the same Author.

Also, picture boards. 2S. A REAL GOOD THING. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2S. A CRACK COUNTY. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2S. MATRON OR MAID. By the same Author. LANDING A PRIZE. By the same Author. STRAIGHT AS A DIE. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2S. TWILIGHT TALES. By the same Author. Illustrated. IN A GRASS COUNTRY. By Mrs Lovett-Cameron. Also, picture boards, 25. A DEVOUT LOVER By the same Author. Also, picture boards. 2S. THE COST OF A LIE. By the same Author. Also, picture boards, 2S. THIS WICKED WORLD. By the same Author. A LOST WIFE By the same Author. THE OUTSIDER. By Hawley Smart. THE MASTER OF RATHKELLY. By the same Author. LONG ODDS. By the same Author. MISS MEPHISTOPHELES. By Fergus Hume. Also, picture boards, 2s. SHE CAME BETWEEN. By Mrs Alexander Fraser.

Chapter I. The Village Doctor

Lewis Vangel is riding homewards, slowly and thoughtfully, at the close of a warm day in June. The dusk has scarcely fallen, but the peace and silence of approaching night have already descended upon nature, and the surrounding objects are seen through a veil of misty blue. The wild roses and the bindweed in the hedges have closed their leaves, and the birds have hushed their melody. Now and then a big bumblebee, laden with the day's spoils, flies across his path, or a night-moth flaps its snowy VOL. I. A wings against his face, but he is hardly conscious that they do so. He sits, in a slouching, careless attitude, on the back of his grey cob, with his eyes fixed upon space, wrapt in thought. Lewis Vangel is a very remarkable young man for the present century — a century of scepticism, irrever ence, and immorality.

He is the parish doctor of Withyslea— at least everybody calls him Doctor Vangel, though he has no real right to the title, never having had either the time or the money to take out his diploma of medicine. His story is com mon, his position humble, only his soul is greater and nobler than that of other men. He does not hate his work ; it is not in his loving, simple nature to hate any thing or anybody, still it is not congenial to him, and yet he is bound to it. Four years ago he was walking the hospitals in London, and thinking about changing a profession which he found uncongenial to his taste, when his father's sudden death threw his mother and sister Anna unexpectedly upon him for their support. There was no chance of changing then. All he could do was to pass his final examinations as quickly as possible, and take the first work that was offered to him.

Anna was a brave girl, energetic, and high couraged as himself, and refused for a moment to live upon her brother's labour. Through the influence of an old friend of their father, the orphans were quickly provided for, Anna becoming a nurse in a London hospital, and Lewis the parish drudge of Withyslea. He would have resented the epithet himself, but drudgery is the only term for the duties he had to perform in a circuit of thirty miles, for the miserable remuneration of a tumble-down cottage, with a dispensary attached to it, and a hundred and twenty pounds a year. It was all the harder to bear, also, since , his father had been a wealthy man, and his family were used to every luxury, until he speculated with his fortune, and died from the shock of losing it. But Lewis never breathes a word of complaint, and if Mrs Vangel does, he soothes her by every means in his power.

He is the very best of sons to his widowed mother — too good, almost, for his unselfishness makes her exacting, and apt to take as a right what she should be only grateful for. But he has an inex haustible store of comfort in himself, and his thoughts about the world and every thing he sees in it. Who can say where they are wandering on this particular even ing, as he rides back, dusty and tired, to his mother's side ? He has come from attending a painful surgical case in a village seven miles from Withyslea. A farm labourer has fallen on his scythe, and nearly severed his leg from his body. Lewis is both clever and skilful for his age, and the country people have the greatest faith in him, but it has been a terrible business, and he feels sick and weary after it. He is wondering now why the Creator of the universe permits such pain and distress ; why He scatters misfortune with such a lavish hand amongst his poor, suffering, patient, helpless creatures.

The vicar of Withyslea, and half-a-dozen other small parishes, the Reverend Andrew Crosbie (who is one of those parsons who reconcile it to their consciences to take Protestant wages whilst they are Romanists in every thing but name), would tell him that such things are permitted for the present purifi cation and ultimate glorification of the human species. But Lewis does not be lieve in parsons, unless they bring com mon sense to back their arguments, and his own common sense, not to say his exalted ideas of the Almighty, forbid his credence in a doctrine of blood and torture, only fit for a race of savages. For he has lived among these people now, night and day, for four years past, and he knows how submis sively they endure poverty and sickness, and a life of toil, stretching out to feeble old age, and never murmur, nor ask why it has been ordained so.

If he began by disliking his profession because it sickened him to inflict pain on his fellow-creatures, he thinks too much now of the relief he can give, and too little of the discomfort he experiences, to relin quish it at any price. He has grown to love Withyslea, too — to regard its flowery lanes and fertile fields as things that belong in some measure to himself, and its inhabi tants as dear and valued friends. He might not feel so were he more like the ordinary young man of the nineteenth century ; but he is widely different, both in thought and action. Neither circumstances nor educa tion have made him what he is. He was born good. He has never indulged in im pure thoughts or feelings, and he shrinks from every phase of coarseness, because his refined and sensitive nature can find no pleasure in such things.

I do not mean by this that Lewis Vangel is a purist or an effete. He is a healthy and vigorous man, and the temptations that assail all men have not passed him by ; but he has never dallied with them nor courted them, nor made them for himself. Neither is he given to discussing such subjects with others. His Teutonic origin (as evidenced by his name) has endowed him with a certain reserve and dignity of manner which suits the gravity of his calling, and makes him seem older than he is. He never speaks without consideration, and is there fore never compelled to lower himself by retracting hot and hasty speeches. This makes the ignorant vote Lewis Vangel cold. Never was a greater mistake. His calm exterior hides a wealth of love and tender ness. His affections lie too deep for utter ance. Even to his mother and sister (for whom he would make any sacrifice) he is not in the habit of using impetuous words and caresses, but lets his deeds speak for him instead.

But then, as yet, Lewis Vangel has never been in love. Passing fancies he has naturally conceived, but they have not gone beyond admiration for a pretty face or a taking manner, and he never mentions the probability of his marriage, even in the distant future. In truth, he is too poor to think of it. How can any man who has a mother to keep on a hundred and twenty pounds a year dream of a wife ? He may suffer and he may sin, but he must not marry. Society has said so ; society, with her festered body and her tainted gar ments, has raised up a barrier that defies our natural instincts, and renders our lives miserable, for the sake of outward show ! How wicked the unwritten law that fetters a young man's natural inclinations, and drives him to that which he abhors, because the world says he must not sink beneath the position to which he has been born !

Lewis looks enviously sometimes at the cottars' wives, with their new-born babies by their sides, and wonders why he too may not live a natural life in a cottage, and go forth to his daily toil and find his reward in the joys of a dual existence. But it is impossible. He has his mother to think of. So long as she lives, he must remain single. And, to remain single, means with Lewis Vangel to live a virtuous life. He has an immense veneration for women. He actually believes in them — in their innocence, their purity, their goodness. The name of "wife" is sacred to him. It means some thing to be hallowed — kept unpolluted, almost adored. And if he should ever be so happy as to possess a wife, he will bring her no stained record of a youth spent in low and vicious gratification, but a heart and spirit almost as pure as her own.

Am I not right to call him a remarkable young man, to live in this age of faithless husbands, youthful debauchees, and lying boasters of favours that have never been bestowed ? But he has seen so much more of the sin and suffering of this world than most men of eight-and-twenty. This insight renders some medical students reckless and dissi pated. It has made Lewis Vangel thought ful and introspective. As he draws nearer home, and passes the large and handsome grounds surrounding the Manor House, which is the property of Mr Moriaty, the most influential resident in Withyslea, Lewis pulls himself together a bit, and, sitting upright in his saddle, makes his little cob move on more briskly. It is nearly nine o'clock. His mother will be looking out for his return to supper. But as he rides past the iron gates of the Manor House drive, he catches sight of a female figure, with a white shawl thrown over her head, standing just within them.

" Is that you, Doctor Vangel ? " she ex claims. " Where have you been at this time Of night ? " Lewis pulls up at once. " Good evening, Mrs Moriaty. I have just come from Eastweir. One of Mr Crowe's men fell on his scythe and divided one of the arteries of the leg. He nearly bled to death before I got there." " How shocking. Is he all right now ? " " He is doing well, but I wish I had him nearer. Now, if we only had that long talked-of cottage hospital ; this is just the sort of case to benefit by it." "Ah! that reminds me. I'm afraid we shall have to put off the hospital bazaar for a few weeks, Doctor Vangel, for May won't be here to help us. She is going away." " Miss Moriaty going away ! " exclaims Lewis, evidently taken off his guard. " Yes, to London, and as soon as ever I can get her things ready.

Her aunt, Lady O'More, is spending the season there, and has invited May to join her. It is such a chance for the dear child, we hadn't the heart to refuse, and she is half off her head with delight." " I suppose so. It will be a great change for her. She must find Withyslea very dull," replies Lewis, in a low voice. " Oh, terribly ! What girl wouldn't ? But come in, Doctor Vangel, and have supper with us. It's on the table, and Mr Moriaty will be charmed to see you. May has a few friends in to-night, too, just to have a word before parting." At first he hesitates, glancing at his dusty and rough habiliments. " I think not, Mrs Moriaty, thank you. I am not presentable, and my mother will be expecting me." " Nonsense ! I will take no excuse. Mrs Vangel will think you are detained at Eastweir.

It's no party, only the Taylors and the Newham girls, and they were mak ing such a noise, I came out here to avoid it. Besides, Mr Moriaty wants to consult you about his cough. It has come on again, as if it were March instead of June." " In that case, I am bound to obey you," says Lewis laughing, as he dismounts and lays his hand upon the bridle rein. Mrs Moriaty opens the gate, and they walk up the drive together. She is a tall, majestic-looking woman, and at first sight Lewis Vangel appears almost small by her side. But that is only because he is so slight. He has a figure of average height — graceful, and fairly muscular, with a pair of good shoulders, which he carries well. His features are handsome, but not striking. You have to look into his face to see the beauty of his dark blue eyes, fringed with black lashes, and surmounted by well-marked brows — of his clean-shorn mouth, with its sensitive, passionate lips, which are yet firmly closed upon each other.

His brown hair is already touched here and there with grey, and, owing to his nervous temperament, his colour comes and goes in sudden flashes, that ostener leave him pale than not. On the whole, perhaps, he is more interesting in his appearance than handsome, but his is a face which, once known and loved, is loved for ever. As he passes the stables, he delivers over his patient horse to a groom, and Mrs Moriaty orders the man to put the animal up and give him a feed, as the doctor will not require him for an hour or more. Lewis smiles to himself as he hears her say so. It is pleasant to be taken prisoner by force in this way, and compelled to enjoy himself. The poor young fellow is both weary and hungry, and looks forward to the hospitable Manor House supper-table with anticipation. It is not the first time by many that he has tested its capabilities, for the Moriatys have been amongst his most intimate friends ever since his arrival in Withyslea.

Mr Moriaty was a brewer on a large scale, but has long since retired from business, and, from the style in which he keeps up his present establishment, it is a generally accepted fact in the village that his only child, Mary Moriaty (or May, as she is generally called), will be a great heiress. But there is nothing purse-proud or conde scending in father, mother or child on this account. They mix amongst their poorer neighbours in the most familiar manner, and are always ready to share their good things with others. The young doctor is an espe cial favourite with Mrs Moriaty, though she has never said so openly. But she knows how good he is, and both she and her hus band have encouraged him to come freely to the Manor House and make himself at home there. But Lewis Vangel is not the sort of man to take advantage of such a offer.

He is far too proud and too shy. He would be afraid of his intimacy being misconstrued into a desire to wheedle him self into the good graces of a man so much richer than he is. For all rich men wield a power unknown to genius or to worth. Do not the silver and nitrate kings of to-day teach us that gold is omnipotent, and art and talent and good birth are nowhere be side it ? When Lewis Vangel is rid of his horse, Mrs Moriaty slips her hand through his arm, and begins to confide in him. " I am glad Mary is to see something of the London season, of course, but it is rather galling to me to send her as visitor to a house where I have never been admitted myself. " " Is that the case, Mrs Moriaty ? " " It is indeed. Lady O'More never for gave her brother for marrying a Protestant, nor for being so lax as to allow his daughter to be brought up in the Protestant faith, so we have not met.

But I think it would be wrong to refuse her kind offices for May." " I should have taken a house in town for the season, and introduced Miss Morial y myself, had I been in your position," says Lewis, with the gravity of fifty. " So I should have done, Doctor Vangel, if my husband would have allowed me. But he hates London, and refuses to set his foot in it again. So what can I do ? " " Just what you have done ; you always do right," replies Lewis. " But I hope Lady O'More will not try to convert my girl to Romanism." " Is there any chance of it ? Surely Miss Moriaty has too much good sense." " I don't know. Girls are very silly and undecided, and she will be thrown a great deal with her cousin, I suppose." " A young lady ? " " No, a gentleman, Mr Denis O'More, and, I hear, quite a man about town.

But his mother thinks all the world of him." " Mothers generally do." " But I wish I felt quite sure about him. Ah ! Doctor Vangel, you are the sort of young man I would trust a daughter of mine with anywhere." He laughed in a constrained manner. " Don't be too sure, Mrs Moriaty. I may be a wolf in sheep's clothing." " Nothing of the sort. You're the very best fellow I ever met. I often say I wish I had a son like you." " You do me too much honour," says Lewis, as they step within the portico of the Manor House. As they cross the threshold, they are con fronted by the master of the establishment, a bluff, red-faced, good-tempered looking man. " Hullo ! " he says to his wife, " I was just coming to see after you. I thought you were lost. Who's this ? Vangel ? " " Yes. I saw him passing, and made him come in.

I was sure you would be glad to see him." " Of course, of course ; I always am. Come in, my dear boy, and have a chat with me in the smoking-room." vol. 1. b But at this juncture the door of the library, a noble room on the ground floor, is thrown open, and a youthful figure appears upon the threshold. " Nothing of the sort, papa. If that is Doctor Vangel, I claim him as my prize. Here we are, seven girls, and only one young man between us ! You could never have the heart to take number two away ! " " Nonsense, my dear. Doctor Vangel has something better to do than to join in your tomfoolery. It would only worry him." " Doctor Vangel, I appeal to you. Won't you come and play blind man's buff with us ? I am going away awfully soon, and it may be the last time I shall ever ask you. Do say yes."

The vivid colour has rushed to Lewis's cheeks. " I will do anything you ask me, Miss Moriaty," he stammered, " provided your father approves of it." " Then come along. Papa always approves of everything I like, and it only wants half-an-hour to supper time." She pulls him impatiently by the sleeve as she speaks, and he has no alternative but to follow her dictates, whilst her parents laugh and shrug their shoulders, and go on their way together, exclaiming, " Spoilt child ! "

Chapter II. Lewis Makes

A DISCOVERY. The young lady who has thus unceremoni ously taken possession of Lewis Vangel is a very fair type of early womanhood. Her age is eighteen. She was only a schoolgirl in short frocks when he came to the neigh bourhood, who used to put out her tongue at him if he ordered her to take any medicine, and run away and hide herself when he called to look at her teeth, and was generally regarded as an over-indulged and rather unpleasant child. But the four years from fourteen to eighteen make as much difference to a blooming girl as a week of sunshine to the trees in spring. You have hardly realised that they are budding, when, hey presto ! they are in leaf. May Moriaty is not yet full grown, but she is a woman. Her tall young figure has assumed all sorts of lovely, undulating curves. Her laughing, roguish eyes have a world of meaning in them, and her pouting, parted lips, though rather too yielding in character to denote self-control, form just such a mouth as a man loves to look upon, and longs to kiss.

She is very fair, with blue eyes and a white skin, and bright, sunny hair, and is the im personation of her pet name of May. She seizes the young doctor's hand in the most familiar manner, and draws him eagerly after her into the library. Like many older ladies, she associates the name of her medical attendant with nothing more romantic than pills and potions, and forgets altogether that he is a man with the same feelings and ideas as the rest of his sex. " Doctor Vangel's going to play with us," she exclaims gleefully, as she rejoins her companions ; " isn't that fun ? Now, Nelly, whose turn is to be blind man ? " " The doctor's, the doctor's ! " cry all the girls, as they press round him with the silken bandage. Lewis finds himself the centre of a group of excited and disorderly Bacchantes.

Fair girls and dark girls, and short girls and tall girls, close in upon him on all sides, shouting and laughing, whilst they tie the handkerchief firmly over his eyes. He begins to like it. He was tired and de pressed when he entered the Manor House, but he catches the spirit of their youthful enthusiasm, and feels quite eager to join the game. " You just wait till I catch you," he ex claims to the owners of the fingers that pull his hair and twitch his coat sleeve, and otherwise maltreat him, as soon as he is un able to detect the defender, " I'll make you pay for this, young ladies. You know what the penalty is when a gentleman catches a lady." "But you sha'n't catch us — you cant catch us," shriek the girls, as they fly all over the room in the most erratic manner, darting across his path, placing themselves almost within the circle of his arms, jeopar dising their safety in the most reckless fashion, and screaming with delight as he passes them by, and stretches out his hands to empty space.

At last he catches some one — a great stout girl, shaped like twenty farmers' daughters in the parish, and mis takes her identity. It is Annie Taylor, and he thinks it is Nelly Newham. A chorus of contemptuous epithets is showered upon him for the blunder, and incites him on to retrieve his error. He stands still for a few seconds, and lures his quarry on to feats of greater daring. Then, when they have reached the very height of impudence, and are pulling his ears and his nose, and slap ping his hands, he makes a sudden lunge and captures the ringleader. An awful hush immediately pervades the room. The girls scarcely breathe as Lewis's fingers com mence to trace the outline of his prisoner's features, in order to determine her name. He has caught her in such a manner that she is fast held in his arms.

He can feel the form of her rounded bosom as it rises and falls against his own. Her breath plays on his face. He knows that her lips are close to his. A sudden emotion seizes him. He feels that he can go no further. His arms drop to his side, as he says, in an altered voice, — "It is Miss Moriaty!" and pulls the bandage from his eyes. " But how could you tell ? How did you guess ? You never touched her," exclaimed the other girls, as they crowded round him. " I don't know, but you see I am right," replies Lewis Vangel. May still stands before him, but with a new concern pictured in her face. She had noted the change in his demeanour. " Doctor, are you not well ? " she asks hurriedly. " Quite well indeed, but a little overtired with my day's work. I have been very busy since the morning." He has sunk down into the nearest chair, and is looking pale and exhausted.

" And I was so disgustingly selfish as to drag you in here, instead of letting you rest with papa. Doctor Vangel, what do you think of me ? " She kneels down in an impulsive fashion by the side of his chair, and rests one hand upon his knee. Her pretty face, full of a self-reproachful anxiety, is raised to his own. " Nothing at all, Miss Moriaty ! I was delighted to join your game. Let us go on wdth it." He attempts to rise and evade her, but she will not permit him to do so. "No, no; we have had enough, and wdien you get up again it must be to go into supper. Run, Nelly, and see if it is ready. I daresay the dear old pater is fuming because we have not yet joined him. We can have another game after wards, if we think fit, but you shall not attempt it, Doctor, till you have had something to eat and drink."

" Why, you are the doctor now, Miss Moriaty, and I am the patient," says Lewis, with a faint smile. " Of course I am, and a much better doctor than you, any day," she answers brightly. " / cure my patients with roast beef and Romford ale, instead of nasty black draughts and pills. Acknowledge they are much nicer to take, at the least." " Indeed I will, and sometimes much more efficacious ! And so you are going to London, Miss Moriaty ? " " Yes ; isn't it delightful ? " she says, with a long - drawn breath and clasped bands. " I am so happy — I can't sleep for thinking of it. Fancy going to the opera, and the theatres, and real balls. I think Aunt Kathleen is the dearest thing in all the world to have invited me." " You are not acquainted with her yet ? " " No, but I love her already for being so kind to me, and I shall love her a thousand times more when I see her.

I know I shall." " And shall you be away long ? " " I hope so ! I hope we shall get on so well together that Aunt Kathleen will take me abroad with her at the close of the season. She might go to Paris. If she does, and without me, I shall just die of disappointment. " " But that would make your visit extend to months, Miss Moriaty ? " " All the better if it does ! I'm longing to leave this dull old hole. One might as well be an Egyptian mummy as cooped up in Withyslea." " You must not talk such treason. Withyslea is one of the loveliest villages in England. When you have endured a few weeks of London smut and smoke, you will be longing to come back to our flowers and sunshine, and fresh pure air." " Do you think so ? / don't ! I'm sick of the old place ! I've had enough flowers and fresh air to last me a lifetime.