Garnston; or a Life's Discipline ... With ... illustrations by W. Gunston

Front matter

GARNSTON; OR. A L I F E'S DISCIPLINE front. "'The DelforJ fly. where is it going'"'— p. iSi. GARNSTON; OR, A LIFE'S DISCIPLINE BY MRS. JEROME MERCIER. AUTHOR OF " CHRISTABEL HOPE," " CAMPANELLA," "ONLY A GIRL'S LIFE." In fancy, deemed fit guide to lead my way, And as I deemed I did pursue her track, Wit lost his aim and will was fancy's prey ; The rebel won, the ruler went to wrack. But now, sith fancy did with folly end, Wit bought with loss, will taught by wit will mend. Southwell, Davids Peccavi. WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. GUNSTON- LONDON : FREDERICK WARNE AND CO. BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD AND ARMSTRONG. TO THAT DEAR FRIEND WHO HAS BEEN TO ME A SECOND FATHER, THIS STORY JEg .SetJicatcli WITH LOVING GRATITUDE. CONTENTS. C"AP- PAGE I. THE OLD HOME t II.

THE NEW HOME l8 III. COMPANY 34 IV. THE ORDER OF RELEASE 56 V. HIC JACET 70 VI. RICHARD DAIR 88 VII. ARUM'S BOOKSHELVES 9S VIII. BEING A CHAPTER ON BUTTERFLIES IIO, IX. POMPS AND VANITIES -35 X. HOW CUPID BEGAN TO INTERFERE 146 XI. FLIES AND SPIDERS 160 XII. MRS. TORODE'f DRESSING-ROOM 182 XIII. A VICTORY 194 xiv. Laurence's wooing CONTENTS. VIII CHAP. I'ACE XV. MASTER AND PUPIL 227 XVI. "QUEM DEUS VULT PERDERE " 249 XVII. CLOUDS 265 XVIII. THE TAPPING SPECTRE AND A CLIMAX 273 XIX. THE BLOW FALLS 299 XX. MILLICENT'S

LETTER 308 XXI.

Chapter I. The Old Home

" Un rien peut aigrir la souffrance, Un rien l'adoucit de moitie'." HE rooms of Field's Place — those rooms formerly so tranquil, refined, and quaint — were all dismantled ; the Turkey carpet was rolled up into one gigantic sausage ; Flaxman's Euphro syne had a " Number 19" hanging about her neck, and the auctioneer's clerk was ticketing the rest of the furniture, while his master stood at the curtainless window, beating his hands together for warmth, and laying plans by which that house and its snow covered pleasure-grounds, on which he was gazing, might come ere] long into his own hands. He would be to them a more prudent master than Mr. Field, who, dying, had left his only child almost penniless. B GARNSTON. 2 " How shall I ticket this, sir ?" asked the clerk. " You oueht to know the lots," answered Mr. Smart, without turning round.

" But it's such a queer thing, sir." Mr. Smart condescended to look. It was a triptych, carved and gilded, old and very beautiful. " Oh ! that must go with the books or cabinets. It is a little cabinet, ain't it ?" " I think it's some Roman Catholic thing, sir," answered Graves, the clerk, displaying the Holy Family within. " So it is. I don't know, really. — Good morning, Miss." At the door stood a young girl dressed in deep mourning, with a face that was sweet and attractive, even through its traces of recent tears. She was so tall and stately that her father had dropped her name of Alice and called her " Arum," because, he said, she was like the lilies which bear that name. For his sake she would never be called by any other. She stood hesitating at the door, not liking to enter. She had not been in that room since the great change in her fortunes had taken place.

She had not been willing to leave the house while her father's dead body lay there, so her friend, Mrs. Elsworthy, had come and stayed with her until the funeral was over, when she had taken Arum to her own home till another should be found for her. That was now done. Mrs. Elsworthy waited for her in the carriage which was to take her to the railway station, while she bade good-bye to her beloved. Field's Place. It had been a sad, unsatisfactory visit. The rooms were changed and, as Arum thought, desecrated. Her own little sanctum had been rudely broken in upon, and only while leaning out into the frosty air, between the dead leaves of the vine which grew around her window, had she been able to realize that she was actually parting from the dear old place where she had spent twenty happy years.

Her father's creditors had been kind, allowing her to take away many a thing which time had endeared to her. Now she had suddenly recollected another, in search of which she was entering the library, although it cost her a pang to see that dearest room of all desecrated, not by mere confusion, but also by the alien presence of Mr. Smart and his apprentice. " Fine winter's day, Miss, for starting," said the auctioneer. Arum neither answered nor advanced. She pointed across the room and said : " Please, Mr. Smart, may I buy that triptych ?" " That how much ?" murmured Graves, and his master seemed to be equally puzzled. B GARNSTON. 4 "The fio-ure did you mean, Miss Field?" he asked, looking vaguely at Euphrosyne. "This," answered Arum, now advancing and laying her hand upon the triptych. " May I buy it ?

How much will it cost ?" "Oh, as to that, we wont talk of price, Miss. Field," replied the auctioneer, good naturedly. " If you want to take that trifle with you, do so by all means. I am sure no one will ask after it, or object to your having it if they do." " Thank you ; you are very kind," murmured Arum, takings the carved wood in her arms as tenderly as though it could feel. " We are very sorry to lose you, Miss, I'm sure •. you will be a loss to the town. Allow me to carry that article to the carriage for you." " No, thank you ; I would rather carry it myself. I am very much obliged to you. Good-bye." But Mr. Smart's politeness would not allow him to leave the girl until she was seated in her friend's carriage. He bowed to Mrs. Elsworthy, tucked in Miss Field's dress, and took off his hat as the vehicle rolled away.

Arum Field had really left her home ; seen the last of it, perhaps for ever. She longed to cry, but Mrs. Elsworthy did not like tears, so they were restrained for a time. The station was reached ; there was a bustle with luggage, final adieux and messages were exchanged, and at the last moment Mrs. Elsworthy put a packet, undeniably containing sandwiches, into her young friend's hands. " Mind, my dear, I beg as a personal favour that you eat them." " Dear Mrs. Elsworthy, how can I ?" " Nonsense, love ; be obedient and don't starve yourself. You are off ; good-bye. I will see to the piano." A clash, a shove, a waving flag, a parting nod, and Arum Field felt, with a strange tremor, that she was quite, quite alone ; that henceforth she had nothing to expect but uncongenial intercourse with strangers whom she must learn to endure as best she might, but from whom she could look for no sympathy, according to her definition of the word, and whom, truth to tell, she did not feel over willing to love.

The tears were free to come now, for her only com panion was an old lady hidden behind the Record. So long as the objects through which Arum flitted were familiar, she looked at them with swim ming eyes, but when she had passed all the country known to her, she drew a letter from her bosom and read and re-read the well-known characters. That it hung from her neck in a little bag was very characteristic of the tender sentimental heart of the girl. It would be a shame to laugh at her about it, for it was her father's writing ; the only letter she had ever received from him. It had reached her on GARNSTON. the first morninaafter her removal from home to a school whither, at Mrs. Elsworthy's entreaty, she had been sent five years before. By return of post she had answered it. " Father dearest, come and fetch me home, or I shall die.

I cannot be away from home and from you. If you do not come to-morrow, I shall run away." She went out alone and posted this missive, in defiance of the rules of the establish ment, but openly, for subterfuge was no part of Arum's character, and on the next day her father had come and fetched her away, and she never left home asrain Avhile he lived. Arum and her father had been the most congenial companions possible ; friends, as well as parent and child. He had formed her character in a great measure, but it was formed, like his own, for retire ment ; and now it was to meet with many shocks and bruises in contact with the noisy unsensitive world. Mr. Field had been a very learned man ; he lived among books — had always done so — and thus kept his heart singularly young. He was, however, utterly unversed in worldly knowledge ; even lavish and im prudent, as it appeared, when, on his death, it was found that he could bequeath to his daughter nothing but debts, and that the sole provision for her support was a very trifle of an income derived from the will of her maternal grandfather.

Let us hope that Lionel Field's extravagance proceeded rather from carelessness than from a selfish heart. He had never had a head for figures. At school they flogged him into hysterics because he could not find a cube root, and at Cambridge " He took no honours, yet was honourable.' So he went through the world as he had begun ; cleverer than any of the men with whom he came in contact, yet shamefully beaten by them at every turn where common sense was needed rather than learning. So one half of his money was wasted by mismanagement, the other half not by free living, but by costly chemical experiments and purchases of rare books and pictures, often at double their market able value. But his child saw none of his faults, and she adored him. In return he adored her, and would turn from his newest-oldest black-letter tome to watch her as she watered her flowers or sat at her books in the oriel window.

No more prosaic em ployments filled her time. She was at once very clever and wofully ignorant. She could read Cicero in the original, but I doubt whether she could hem a handkerchief decently. Her maid had done all her sewing. But now, the maid was gone. Arum could no longer afford such a luxury, and she was going to live with a common-place old aunt in the country. GARNSTON. Lionel Field had married a lovely country girl, whom he met during one long vacation at a quiet village whither he had gone to read. Instead of reading, he fell in love, wrote poems, wandered in woods and by streams, either with his lady-love or, in her absence, thinking of her, and no doubt all that had something to do with his being plucked at Cambridge. She was lovely as a Madonna stepped out of a canvas of Leonardo da Vinci's, and Nature had made her a lady, with grace in every action and a piquancy in her very rusticity.

During the whole of her short married life she had never once shocked her husband's exquisite refinement, yet it is doubtful whether she was happy, and perhaps it was the best thing which could have happened to her when she spent her last breath in a parting kiss to her little three-year-old daughter. Her innate good taste had gifted her to move in any sphere without awkwardness, but the freedom of her earlier life made the constraint of Mr. Field's home irksome to her. She was not an only child ; she had a brother and sister. The brother acted as bailiff or assent to a landowner in the country, and not far from him lived the sister, married early in life to one John Rich, a farmer honest and well-to-do, who had left her at the age of forty a buxom widow with a strong turn for management. On her husband's death she took the farm into her hands, disclaiming bailiffs, and even venturing, with no misgivings, to take one or two young men as agricultural pupils ; and certainly they all, as tenant farmers, had done full justice to her training.

No intercourse was kept up between Mrs. Field and her relations except such as could be maintained by writing, and as the whole family entertained an hereditary distaste for that accomplishment, scarcely any correspondence was kept up at all. Mrs. Field held her husband's wishes in great awe, and it was plain that they did not tend towards much family visiting ; the country people, too, had a certain pride which prevented any intrusion on their part where they were unwelcome. Thus it chanced that Arum Field had never seen her Aunt Rich but once, on the occasion of a solitary sojourn of two days which the latter had made at Field's Court, when business had brought her within three miles of it and she could not resist her desire to embrace her little motherless niece, then about seven years old.

Arum remembered a stout lady with yellow bonnet-strings, who had kissed her very much and cried over her ; had called her " her mother's own child," and at parting left with her a present of a doll. Arum's only dolls had hitherto been the few beautiful statuettes which her father had collected, and which were only to be consorted with GARNSTON 10 at a safe distance ; so she was amazed and a little frightened when her new toy was put into her hands. It was certainly a striking contrast to the statues ; a crude, unripe looking doll, made for use, not ornament, with red cheeks, staring round eyes, and painted lashes like the teeth of a black comb. But any little girl without a doll-ward instinct must be an inhuman little creature whom it would be one's duty to thrash. This instinct soon began to work in Arum's heart.

After a serious contemplation of some minutes, she solemnly kissed the red cheeks and told her aunt that she thought Britomart must have looked like that. Mrs. Rich, discovering on inquiry that Britomart was somebody in a book, exclaimed, with a tear in each eye : — " Bless the poor little darling ! I wish I had her at my farm to drink new milk and get some colour in her cheeks. It's enough to kill any child, so it is, burying her up in books that way." From this time nothing more had been seen of Mrs. Rich at Field Place, and finding; her annual hamper unacknowledged, she had at last ceased to send it. And thus it came to pass that when, after Mr. Field's death, Mrs. Elsworthy said, " Now, Arum dear, you must write to your mother's relations ; they are the only relatives you have left, poor girl !" — Arum, bewildered by her grief, replied that she did not know where they lived, and it was only after her friend had undertaken a long search in the family archives, that the address of Mrs. Rich was found and a letter despatched to her. , It was a sad time for Arum between the funeral and the arrival of her aunt's reply to that letter.

She felt herself such a stray waif, so thoroughly helpless. All her learning failed to fit her for a governess; she understood Greek better than French, and she had not a bit of method. She would have been afraid of her pupils. So her future was very cloudy. Yet it was hardly a relief when her aunt's kind letter came : — ■ " My dear Niece, — It grieved me very much to hear of your dear father's death, causing you, I am sure, a deal of trouble. Poor dear, I daresay you feel quite lost without him. Of course you are coming to live with old Auntie Rich. Do you remember how you and me played with a big doll once ? So now only say when you will like to come, and I will get your room ready, for if I put the sheets on now they would be damp when you got here. Shall I fetch you, or how ? Only say the word, my dear Alice, and I will do what you say.

So no more at present from " Your affectionate Aunt, "Jane Rich." GARNSTON. 12 Nothing could be more cordial than this, but o Arum had the bad taste to think that nothing could be more vulgar. " You and me played " and the reference to sheets jarred upon her. Her mind was in a weakly exotic state, and the chief article in her moral creed was, " I believe in refinement." All this was the necessary result of a life among books, with such a man as -Lionel Field for sole companion. We shall see what moral tonics at last brought Arum into a healthier state of mind. So now she was going alone to this unknown aunt, whom she still confusedly expected to see radiant in yellow ribbons. She had refused Mrs, Rich's offer of coming for her, partly because she did not like to give that extra trouble, partly because she would neither taint her recollection of her old home with any vulgar association, nor exhibit this plebeian relative to the Elsworthys.

There was in this a good deal of littleness, of course, but Arum was by no means perfect ; I do not desire to paint her other than she was. And we return to where she sits, secretly kissing her father's letter, and now folding it again and placing it in its little bag. For she was half way on her journey by this time, and a new passenger entered the carriage, a slight pale young man with light flowing hair. He flung himself down in his seat as one ex hausted, and, running his fingers through his curls, fixed his eyes on vacancy with a frown, and thought perceptibly. " What an interesting face !" said Arum to herself; " how delicate he looks, and how like a poet !" She saw no affectation in the man, though he wore a large Spanish cloak with tassels, which an ordinary mortal would have replaced by a greatcoat.

But her thoughts soon roamed away again to the dim future before her, and to the uncongenial com panionship she must anticipate with her Aunt Rich. Presently she felt, by that magnetism which tells at once when an eye is upon us, that her interesting companion was looking at her. She had not been crying enough to disfigure her pretty face, which looked very fair and sweet under the overhanging festoon of her crape veil. She drew the veil down, and now that she could not see the scenery through which she was passing, her thoughts went back to her father and the tears again fell slowly. She did not dare to look up, she was just hoping that her companions would not observe her, when the youth opposite startled her by bending forward and saying in a low and undeniably sweet tone, meant to be inaudible to the old lady in the corner — " Pardon me ; I can see that you are in trouble.

I can feel for you, for I too have known sorrow." " I beg your pardon," returned Arum, coldly, feeling that her own dignity must protect her. GARNSTON 14 " I have no wish to intrude on your grief," con tinued the young man. " Allow me only to offer you a few trifles which may, I hope, succeed in giving you some small comfort through the assurance of a poet's universal sympathy with distress." From some invisible hiding-place he drew a little volume, bound in green and gold, and offered it to Arum with the last sentence. At first she felt inclined to refuse any gift from a perfect stranger, but there was something in his manner which could only belong to a gentleman, and she rather admired his grandiloquence. So, after a moment's hesitation, she took the book, simply thanking the giver. But she had not yet done with him.

" Permit me one moment," added he, taking the gift back again and producing an exquisite gold pencil-case, the top engraved with a crest. He wrote a few words on the title-page and restored the book to Arum, who read, "In token of sympathy Avith a fellow-sufferer." She coloured slightly. She did not quite like this second reference to her distress ; it seemed to her, and truly, that grief is as sacred a thing as love, not to be lightly spoken of for any purpose. She did not, however, embody her thought in words, and the romance of the whole affair rather impressed her. A minute later the train stopped, and both her fellow-travellers left the carriage, the gentleman bowing with a deference which an empress might have appreciated. When they were gone Arum examined her present — a volume of poems, of course, entitled " Heart throbs ;" the author's name, Laurence Torode.

" Is that himself, I wonder ?" thought Arum. " Heart-throbs ! What a singular title for a book ! So suggestive !" She turned over a page or two, but could not settle to read, for a natural nervousness crept over her. The short winter twilight had closed in ; it would soon be night. What if her aunt should not meet her ! What if she passed the station ! A score of such apprehensions crossed her mind, and made her miserable. She felt cold and faint ; all within and without looked gloomy ; and Arum had fallen into a very despondent state when the train again slackened its pace and the porters shouted " Dilford." Her destination was at last attained. She collected her belongings, dismally wondering how she should find her luggage among such a rush and turmoil of strange people, but had scarcely stepped on to the platform when her two hands were warmly seized and a hearty kiss was glowing upon her cheek.

Her aunt stood before her. Arum's notions of refinement melted away at this kind welcome. She was very glad to meet her relative, and felt her heart warm towards her. GARNSTON. 16 " Come along, my dear ; I'm so glad to see you. We shall be such nice company. I've got the shay outside. We'll have the hood up and be as cosy as cosy. Your uncle is seeing to the luggage. It will be all right." Out in the dark road, beyond the ticket porter's little white gate, the chaise was dimly visible, with a man beside it hoisting up a box. The ladies ap proached, and immediately the man turned round and startled Arum by giving her a kiss twice as hearty as her aunt's had been. " My niece Alice, I declare !" he cried. " To think that I should have a niece as big as this ! Makes me look quite an old fogy, doesn't it, Jenny ?

Thank you, my man," to a porter bringing Arum's trunk. " Put it in there, atop of the others. Where's John with the lamps ? Oh, here ! Come, John, look alive ; we're all in want of our teas. Two boxes and a bag ; is that all, niece ? All right, then ; jump in and we'll tuck you and your aunt up as snug as beetles, as we say in our country. All right ; got the whip, Jenny ? Kek !" And they were off, rattling down the stony lanes at a sharp pace for the better part of an hour, then stopping somewhere within sound of household noises, of barking dogs, slamming doors, and heavy feet crunching on gravel, as a servant lad came to hold the horse with a broad " Woa, mare, woa !" Arum could see nothing but the strip of light from the chaise lamps. She was led through a gate and along a garden path, where a broad gleam suddenly flashing out told that the house door was opened.

Then, escaping from cold and rime and darkness, she stepped through a flagged hall into a low, large room, with dark old furniture, and a roaring wood fire brightening the tea-things set on the table. Here Mrs. Rich kissed her again, saying — " Welcome, dear child ! I hope you'll find this a happy home. We're rough, but hearty. Bless her ! how like she is to her darling mother !" c

Chapter II

the new home. " Ich weiss nicht was soil es bedenten, Dass ich so traurig bin." — Die Lorelei. i|||S|N the morning after her arrival at the farm — Æjjgj! the Hill Farm, as it had been called time out of mind — Arum awoke with an overpowering headache, an old enemy of hers, but now more severe than she had ever before felt it. Mrs. Rich, coming into her room at eight o'clock, found her lying down after a vain attempt at dressing, in sisted on her taking off again the few clothes she had managed to put on, and sent her up tea with brandy in it. Arum thought she had never tasted anything so nasty ; she fancied this was the usual way of making tea at the Hill Farm, and wondered whether they boiled it all at once in the kettle to make it taste so. She put the cup aside with the ham and egg, and when in ten minutes' time her aunt came up to ask if she would have any more, she found the breakfast untouched.

She intended. THE NE W HOME. 19 however, that Arum should drink her cupful, brandy and all. Tea laced with brandy was her panacea. She put the cup to her niece's lips and held her up with one strong arm, looking on her with satisfaction till the martyrdom was over. " There, love, now you'll be better. Whenever my John had a headache, I was always used to say, ' Now, John, a drop of brandy in your tea, and in half an hour you'll be as right as a trivet.' And so he was, poor soul." But the vaunted medicine did not have a like effect on Arum. Days and nights of watching during her father's illness had overtasked her strength, and the subsequent excitement of going amongst utter strangers had induced a degree of fever which kept her in bed for the first three weeks of her stay at the Hill Farm.

That three weeks' illness was a boon to her. It interposed a barrier between past and present, which could hardly have merged into each other, so widely diverse and irre concileable were they. She lay in no pain, but in a sleepy languor precluding the exertion of thought ; now idly watching the softly-falling snowflakes or the red, dropping ashes, now dozing off, to awake and find motherly Mrs. Rich, in her purple cotton gown and bright cap-ribands, hovering over her with some delicate temptation for an invalid's appetite. Queen of cooks was Mrs. Rich, and (scarcely c GARNSTON. 20 second to Miss Nightingale) queen of nurses too. She could lift her niece out of bed on one strong arm, if necessary, and then shake up the pillows and mattresses till it was a perfect luxury to lie upon them. Arum liked to watch her aunt's bright, cheerful face ; it seemed to carry off the hard, dark con sciousness of trouble which lay always coiled about her heart.

By-and-bye strength returned to her, and she began again to feel her misery, to toss and turn restlessly, and tire of lying still. Her aunt would come night and morning to read her a few verses of the Bible, and often in the course of the day looked in with broths and jellies, or a monthly rose just discovered, or a kind message from Uncle James, all lovingly meant, yet not enough to chase tedium from the sick-room ; for, as Hood tells us : — The careful Betty the pillows beats, And airs the blankets and smooths the sheets, And gives the mattress a shaking : But vainly Betty performs her part, If a ruffled head and a rumpled heart, As well as the couch, want making." Arum at last grew so heartily sick of the con finement, which, since Mrs. Rich's prudence hindered her rising from day to day, seemed doomed to last indefinitely, that she stole a march upon both aunt and doctor by getting up one afternoon while the former was absent farming.

The mistress of the Hill Farm rather piqued herself on her appearance at such times, and her costume was certainly unique. Between the invariable plum-coloured morning cotton and the equally unchangeable evening stuff, a transitional garb was assumed, of serge, once purple, now neutral with time and mud, as short as a dress skirt and far scantier. Above this came a rough jacket, with pockets and big buttons, and atop of all a broad beaver hat, below which, in windy weather, a spotted handkerchief was tied. In such attire, completed by a pair of hob-nail boots and a stout stick, and mounted on a useful shaggy little pony, was Mrs. Rich accustomed to ride round her farm directly after her one o'clock dinner. Men might go early if they liked, and take naps in the afternoon. Mrs. Rich had the advantage of being wide awake all day, and of using the same oppor tunity for seeing that her men had done a fair morning's work and for giving them directions for to-morrow.