True-hearted. A book for girls

Front matter

TRUEHEARTED. ROTTEN* ROW P. 76. TRUEHEARTED. A BOOK FOR GIRLS. By CRONA TEMPLE, AUTHOR OF 'ROYAL CAPTIVES,' ' MILLICENT'S HOME,' 'LITTLE WAVIE,' ETC. etc. LONDON: HATCHARDS, PICCADILLY. 1874. LONDON Printed by John Strangeways, Castle St. Leicester Sq. Œ|)i0 Book 10 tn0crtbeti TO THE MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP, WHICH DEATH HAS BROKEN, BUT NOT WITHERED. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. JEANIE DURRANT I II. FUCHSIA BUDS 20 III. LORD WALLINGHAM'S DAUGHTER . . 33 IV. ' SIDE-DOORS ' 45 V. REDMOND'S OPINIONS 57 VI. GENERAL DURRANT . . . -71 VII. A TIGHTENED CURB-REIN ... 82 VIII. HESTER 96 IX. MISS MATHEWS' WASHING . . . IO7 X. NANCY DOONE 120 XI. THE EAST INDIA DOCKS . . . 136 XII. REDMOND'S PROPOSAL . . . 1 5 1 XIII. ' CHILDREN, OBEY ' Contents. VIII CHAPTER PAGE XIV. NANCY'S HOLIDAY 1 77 XV. THE BEVERLEYS 1 94 XVI.

AT CONYGREE VICARAGE . . . 212 XVII. ' LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION ' . 225 XVIII. 'OF WHAT AVAIL IS IT ?' . . . 239 XIX. ' FIREFLY ' 257 XX. SIR NOEL LONSFORD .... 269 XXI. FROM OVER THE SEA .... 285 XXII. THE THREADS FASTENED . . . TRUEHEARTED.

Chapter I. Jeanie Durrant

The great bell in the clock-tower at Westminster had struck four. The deep notes went booming out through the golden summer sunlight until their vibrations were lost amidst the roar of the London streets. Those streets were very full, for it was the early part of July, and thousands of people thronged the pavements, intent upon their pleasure or their business ; and endless strings of carriages, carts, and cabs, moved to the right and left, in what seemed to be dangerous confusion to a pair of country eyes which watched the scene wonderingly. At the corner of the railings surrounding Palace Yard stood Jeanie Durrant, her hand laid on her brother Redmond's arm with a detaining pressure, Truehearted. 2 for she wished to have time to take in each detail of a sight so new to her. The towers of the Abbey rose grey and quiet above all the noise and confusion, from their pave ment of gravestones : Jeanie had been spending two or three hours within its walls ; she had stepped from chapel to chapel in reverential silence, feeling as if she were touching for the first time actual evidences of those facts which had been to her formerly but dim threads of history.

Behind her was Westminster Hall — the scene of so many of the events which had grown familiar to her in the pages of the lesson books now reposing upon the shelves of the country boarding-school which she had left but a few days before. Across the open space at the right hand a few pigeons were nonchalantly pecking amongst the gravel, and lazily fluttering out of the way of the passing carriages, just as they might have done two hundred years ago, when King Charles was led back to St. James's after hearing his sentence of death. To those who from their earliest youth have been accustomed to live in places filled with associations of bygone days, or hallowed by their connexion with famous men and their famous deeds, it might have been but a trivial sensation to have stood, even for the first time, on the spot where Jeanie Durrant now lingered so long.

But to her it was an event in her life ; and her brother had infinite patience with her, although he, in the fading romance of his ma tures years, could hardly understand how deeply her feelings were stirred. 'Jeanie !' She turned to him, smiling. ' Must we be going ?' ' Not until you are tired of gazing about, dear, although we run the risk of arousing the suspicions of that policeman at the crossing. I fancy he already thinks we must have some unusual motive in remain ing here as stationary as the weathercock yonder.' ' Weathercocks are not usually selected as ex amples of steadiness,' she rejoined. ' No. But I did not say that we were steady, nor yet the weathercocks, but that we were " stationary," which is a very different thing. You have been turning that little head of yours slowly round and round very much after the manner of that vane.' ' You are very good to me, Redmond,' she re sponded, somewhat irrelevantly. ' Why do you think so ?

Because I like to see you enjoying yourself? Don't you believe that it gives me pleasure to please you ? And, viewing the subject Truehearted. 4 in that light, I am only selfish after all. But, my dear, your face has been so grave for the last ten minutes that I was beginning to doubt whether this long day's excitement is not rather too much for you. ' Oh, no, Redmond ! it is so very, very delightful ! ' They were walking towards the railway station at Westminster, and at this moment Mr. Durrant looked up with an exclamation, — 'There! a train has just gone off; there will not be another for a few minutes. Would you like to go on to the bridge ? I think one gets a better idea of London from this place than from any other spot. " It is so difficult to see the town because of the houses," as somebody once aptly remarked.' Jeanie's interest had been deeply excited for so long that she felt as though she scarcely cared to look at anything more — as if a pause, although it might only be in a crowded railway waiting-room, would be the best thing for her just then.

But she did not say so ; it was not her habit to talk much of herself. She walked by Redmond's side on to the bridge, and in the sight which met her there forgot all fatigue of mind and body. On the one side of the bridge lay the grand frontage of the Houses of Parliament ; the buildings of St. Thomas's Hospital; the old red towers of Lambeth Palace, with their quaint outlines amid the trees ; and the silver width of the river, glittering beneath the sunlight as if it were as fresh and pure as the clearest mountain-stream that ever brushed by the heather in its unnoticed course to the sea.

On the other side was the sweep of the em bankment, and gay flowers in the plots of garden ground ; the huge curve of glass and iron forming the Charing Cross Station ; the dome of St. Paul's, looking just as the great church of the great city might be expected to look — grey and mighty, dusky and ponderous ; and the many bridges spanning the river to the Surrey side, where the shapeless masses of warehouses and the great piles of the timber-stores looked almost picturesque in the strong lights and deep shadows cast by the brilliant sun. ' How can people say London is ugly !' exclaimed Jeanie, as she turned away after listening to Red mond's explanation of the scene. ' But London is the only great city you have seen, therefore the " people " of whose taste you complain would say your opinion was little worth having.' ' But you agree with me ?' He smiled, more at her inference than her words. ' Yes, I can see both the grandeur and the beauty Truehearted. of London,' he said. ' And do you know that a poet once stood where we are standing, gathering thoughts about this great city which afterwards found expression in one of the most beautiful of his many sonnets ?' ' Who was he ? ' Wordsworth.' ' But ' ' Wordsworth is not the fashion now, but he is a great poet for all that ; and the sonnet is his peculiar province.

No English sonnet-writer is his equal, in my opinion ; not even such great masters as Milton and Shakespeare. I must introduce you to him, Jeanie, and we will begin with his lines composed upon Westminster Bridge some sixty-five years ago.' ' I have his poems, and I have opened them some times, but they did not look very interesting, nor very ' Jeanie paused for a word : her thoughts ran too fast for her tongue, and her power of language often failed her at her greatest need. Redmond understood her. ' Ah, that is because you don't know him. I prophesy we two shall be able to work out a perfect gold mine between the covers of your copy of his poems ! But now we must for the present descend to prose and the Metropo litan Railway!' Jeanie settled herself down in her corner of the carriage. They were going to St. John's Wood, and would have to go quite a long way, round by Ken sington and back again by way of Baker Street, in that ' underground ' train, and she should have plenty of time to ' think over things,' as she phrased it.

It was a habit the girl had, that pondering upon and hunting out a thought, until she had seized it to her own satisfaction — a habit which is as useful as it is rare ; and it was this which had given much of the depth to her character and the lustrous beauty to her large brown eyes. Jeanie Durrant was just eighteen ; a slightly formed girl, with smooth dark hair parted above a brow which was pure, and sweet, and womanly. Her darkly marked eyebrows were perfect in their arch, and although her face might lose something of force by reason of their delicate lines, it certainly gained in beauty. Her mouth was too large to please an artist's taste, but it was expressive of so much sweet ness and charm, that none who loved Jeanie would have wished it altered. Had any one seen her face for the first time when she was sleeping, when the lids veiled the glorious eyes, and every feature was in repose, he would have pronounced ita pure, and good, and pleasing face ; but that would have been the extent of his praise.

Yet Jeanie was called ' pretty,' Truehearted. ' lovely,' even ' beautiful ' by many, but she had been hitherto so judiciously shielded that admiration or flattery had not marred her girlish simplicity. She had just left school, and was looking forward to the future with a pleasure in which no misgivings had as yet entered. Life looks often very radiant to the eyes of a girl of eighteen. Her father, Colonel Durrant, had been in India almost ever since she was born, and beyond a thick packet which lay in her desk, of letters written in a large manly hand upon foreign paper, she knew little or nothing of him. Mrs. Durrant, Jeanie's mother, was his second wife, and of her Jeanie had much clearer recollection. She had come to England with her boy Vere when her daughter was about twelve years old, and during the year of her stay had been more than once to the Yorkshire village where Jeanie's school days were passing.

The girl's remembrances of that time ought to have aroused some doubts in her heart as to whether the future was indeed to be brightness unalloyed. Mrs. Durrant was an invalid, languid and querulous, as ladies who have lived long in India are apt to become : but Jeanie only recollected her graceful figure and her gentle caresses, the soft folds of her Cashmere shawls, and the faint scent of attar of roses Jeanie Dtirrant. 9 which lingered about her. To be the helper and the companion of such a mother was a sweet anticipation to the school-girl who had hitherto known so little of the love of home and kindred. Colonel Durrant had two sons by his former marriage : the elder of these, Redmond, was in the Foreign Office ; whilst John had entered his father's profession, and was now a Lieutenant in India.

When Jeanie had been sent to England, a little frail child of six years old, Redmond had met her on board the ship, and escorted her to the ladies under whose care she was to live. Her beauty, her timid ways, and her utter friendlessness — at an age when children should be in their fathers' home, in the freedom and merriment of their own nursery — touched the young man's heart profoundly. From that day his little sister became his special charge. For her sake he would deny himself many things which his companions indulged in as a matter of course. To see her he would travel down to the remote village amongst the Yorkshire moors, and he delighted to spend a part of his yearly holiday in taking her for a week or ten days to some sea-side place, where he wished for no better amusement than to watch her pleasure and to minister to her comfort. rucheartcd. 10 It was no wonder that the love-bond grew very strong between Redmond and Jeanie Durrant.

She loved him because, as she said over and over again, ' he was so good to her ; ' and he loved her with the love that springs from that blessedness born rather of giving than of receiving. Twelve years had gone by since the day he saw her first on board the steamer in the Southampton Docks, and in that time Mrs. Durrant had come to England with Vere, a fine, sturdy little fellow, very unlike most English children born in India. She had placed him at school at Winchester, throwing all the spirit and interest of which her languid nature was capable into the most minute arrangements for his welfare ; and even after the term commenced, and lessons had been fairly begun, she lingered on in her lodg'ings, wrapt up in her darling, and feeling apparently but slight anxiety to see her daughter. Redmond was astonished, and a little hurt on Jeanie's account.

That Mrs. Durrant should love her son and be careful for his welfare was only right, but that she should coolly leave Jeanie to spend the vacation at school, instead of bidding her come to join them at Winchester, did surprise him. He said as much in a letter to his stepmother, urging her to reconsider her determination ; he reminded her how well it would be for Vere and his sister to know each other, and that it might be long before an opportunity for their meeting should again occur. He spoke of the child's impatience to see her mother, and said how much better it would be for her to come, if only for a week, under her mother's roof, and to experience the happiness of Home, although that home be but a temporary one. Mrs. Durrant took the remonstrance very sweetly, but her answer to his letter made Redmond more indignant than before. 'It would be very nice,' she wrote, 'to have dear Jeanie here, but I am so busy just now with the preparations for my boy's school life that I feel I should be doing her an injustice if she were with me, as I could not give her the time and attention which I should like.

I shall be in dear Old England for a whole year, most probably, and of course I shall be able to see a great deal of her during that time. One thing is a great disappointment, and I am sure you will sympathise with me when I tell you that I have promised to spend Christmas with my friends, the Ainsleys. It has been a long engagement, and as they will be an enormous party I should not feel justified in taking more than one child with me there : one will be an intrusion as it is. I have felt no Truehearted. 12 hesitation in deciding that Vere ought to accompany me, for he has never left me before, and he will be so lonely when I am gone that I feel I must make him all the compensation in my power. Jeanie has been so accustomed to remain in Yorkshire, that it will not be a trouble to her ; although I grieve very much not to have both my children with me once more.

It is this which makes the trial of Indian life ; to think that I must cross all those thousand of miles of land and sea, and leave my treasures behind — it is very hard, Redmond !' More she wrote in the same strain, and Redmond felt, as he folded the tinted sheets covered with the pretty delicate handwriting back into the envelope, that the sympathy which she asked for must flow rather to Jeanie, to whom this arrangement ' would not be a trouble,' than to the mother who could write with such sensitive feelings, but whose pity and whose love were for herself alone. That Christmas-time was spent as Mrs. Durrant had arranged. She and Vere went to the country-house of which she had spoken, joining the merry circle which it was Mr. Ainsley's delight to gather beneath his hospitable roof-tree. Jeanie sighed a little as she watched her school-fellows depart to their several homes, and thought longingly of the mother who had ■3 been to see her, and deplored so affectionately and with such fond embraces the impossibility of their meeting during the holidays.

She did not feel aggrieved : it never occurred to her to think Mrs. Durrant might have done otherwise : and yet that breaking-up day was ' a trouble,' the heaviest one she had yet known. Christmas Eve brought Redmond, and never before had she so eagerly welcomed his kind, grave face. He had a few minutes' conversation with her governess, and then bade her pack up her things, and make ready to start with him in two hours' time for York. ' It is too cold and stormy for the sea, Jeanie,' he said ; ' so we must try what we can find to amuse us in York. Do you think you and I can manage to make ourselves cosy together?' Before the short winter's day had ended the brother and sister were seated at tea in the hotel which Mr. Durrant had chosen : not the noisy and bustling one within sight and sound of the railway trains, but one much more old-fashioned, in the very centre of the city, and within two or three stones' throw of the Minster.

They had a spacious room, a cheery fire, and a little round table — ' the exact size for their two selves,' as Jeanie remarked, whilst she Trtiehearted. 14 busied herself in pouring out Redmond's second cup of tea, and in putting in sugar and cream with ela borate care. 'How nice it all is!' she said, contentedly. ' Redmond, if you are not married when I am grown up, I wish you would let me live with you and keep your house.' ' How long do you condemn me to bachelorhood, Jeanie?' he responded, smiling. 'How old are you ?' 'Thirteen and a half. But, Redmond, I did not mean to condemn you to anything ; only, if it should happen that you are not married then, I should so like to be with you always.' ' And I should like it too, dear. But who can say what may occur before you are grown up ? Why, our father may have come home by then !' ' But would that make any difference ?

I am sure I would rather ' But Jeanie did not complete her sentence : she stopped herself, feeling, guiltily, how unfilial she was. Her brother did not reply to the half-finished ques tion ; he was thinking that the separation— of which Mrs. Durrant had so pathetically complained— fell with worse effects on the children's pliant natures than it could do upon the parents, although the whole sorrow Jeanie Durratit. 15 of the trial might be theirs — -in most cases, at least. He knew how Colonel Durrant had grieved at being obliged to entrust his only daughter to others, and to relinquish all care and watchfulness over her; and Redmond was well aware that his stepmother also felt the parting with her children as keenly as her more shallow nature could feel anything. But in future years, when the reunion had come, the pain would be over for them ; yet no future could ever give back to the children the love and the training, the close and sacred ties, which those years should have brought.

Redmond had always been tender to his little sister, but Jeanie thought that she had never known him so ' good ' to her as he was that Christmas Day. They attended service in the Minster : it was the first cathedral Jeanie had ever entered, and she was deeply affected, child as she was, by the impressive ness of the sight which met her view as she passed through its western door. She slid her hand into Redmond's, and every now and then he felt her grasp tighten as she caught some new effect of light creeping from the painted windows through the cold grey nave, or streaming into the transepts from the mighty central tower. Truehearted. 16 The weather was bitingly cold, but in the three days which they spent in the old city they managed to see most of what was best worth seeing. The gates, or 'Bars,' pleased Jeanie very much — pleased her in the same way as Westminster was to do, five years afterwards, at the time when we first introduced her to our readers.

Her imagination was vivid, and she could picture to herself the irregular trains of travel stained knights slowly defiling beneath the archways ; or fancy how those peaceful spots must have appeared when the gates were shut against a besieging army, and thick flights of arrows went hurtling through the air, and the clash of steel and sound of blows mingled with the cries and groans of wounded men. Redmond found the trip to York most eminently successful. It quite effaced any lingering pain, on Jeanie's part, at not being permitted to spend her holidays with her mother, and left a memory so pleasant, that in some unaccountable way the pleasant ness reflected back upon Mrs. Durrant, and lent an additional charm to the 'year that mamma was in England.' Once or twice she was invited to spend some part of her vacations with her father's sister, Lady Wal lingham, in a many-gabled, picturesque old Hall in Hertfordshire.

Vere was asked to meet her there, and so Jeanie made acquaintance with her young brother. They had not much in common, and although she felt proud of the handsome, high-spirited boy, yet Jeanie felt rather sadly that she did not love him very much. She had not been accustomed to boys, and his thoughtlessness seemed to her to be heart lessness, his wild spirits to be boisterous, and his wil fulness to be overbearing and domineering. Her cousin, Charley Wallingham, was much more to her taste ; although he, too, was rough and unrea sonable at times, and did not hesitate to avow that he thought 'girls were a bore.' Mrs. Durrant had written once or twice to urge Jeanie's removal to some finishing-school in London, but her aunt, Lady Wallingham, and Redmond, both so strongly advised that she should remain where she was in the north, where she had the advantage of a sound English education, and escaped many of the dangers of a larger establishment, that it ended in her returning year by year to the quiet school where she had first been placed.

Her mother comforted herself by thinking that, when Colonel Durrant left India ' for good,' she should be able to superintend Jeanie's 'finishing' herself, and see that she had masters for painting and music, and that she should c Truehearted. go abroad to acquire something better than ' school girl French and German.' o The Colonel's retiring on pension was delayed longer than he had calculated on, and it was not until Jeanie was past eighteen that the letter came which fixed the date of her parents' arrival, and bade Red mond secure lodgings in town for them ; adding, that he and Jeanie had better take possession of the apart ments during the few days which might elapse between the end of Jeanie's last school-term and the actual arrival of the steamer. Thus it was that the brother and sister found themselves in London, realising for a brief space Jeanie's childish dream — that she should keep house for Redmond.

Very delightful she thought it ; and during the hours that he was at his office she occupied herself in dozens of energetic, and — if the truth must be told — useless arrangements for his comfort : forgetful, or ignorant of the fact, that life in lodgings is supposed to relieve a lady from all the fatigues and responsi bilities of housekeeping. Once or twice Redmond would take an afternoon's leave cf absence, and then he and Jeanie devoted themselves to sight-seeing. The girl reproached herself that, with all her anxiety to see her father and mother, she could not help being so perfectly happy during those few days, that she could have found it in her heart to wish that they might last on and on endlessly.

Chapter II. Fuchsia Buds

Those days in London alone with Redmond lasted longer than Jeanie had at first expected. Colonel and Mrs. Durrant halted at Winchester to see Vere, whose holidays did not begin until August ; and Jeanie had a letter from her father with the Win chester post-mark, looking strangely unlike his Indian epistles with its ' cream-laid ' stationery, and the or dinary penny stamp. She read it through many times, lingering over the closing sentence and the firm, strongly marked signature, — ' Believe me to be my dear daughter's ever affectionate father, Redmond V. Durrant.' The words were common-place, but they seemed filled with a peculiar significance to Jeanie. What would he be like ? Grave and silent as her brother was ? or would he be jovial, loud-voiced, and hearty like her uncle, Lord Wallingham ?

In any case he was ' ever her affectionate father,' and soon she should be in his arms. Would he love her when he really saw her ? would he be pleased with her, and approve of her ? Would he think she had done her best over her lesson-books ? Would he remark — as Miss Allen, her late governess, did twenty times a-week— how shockingly she stooped ? Would he think that simple Jeanie, fresh from the heather and bilberries of the moorlands, was fit to be ' Miss Durrant,' his grown-up daughter, his companion ? She said something of her doubts to Redmond, speaking timidly and with hesitation, as she always did when her words were of herself and her feelings. What he answered she did not remember, but the look on his face encouraged her as much as any spoken praise or approbation could do. If her father were like her brother she would have little cause for fear.

Of all the periods of a woman's life the step from girlhood, with its lingering childishness and faith, to womanhood's wider range of vision and more sober judgment, is the most important. It is at this time that real education commences, the education for which all the previous study has been but mere pre paration. Daily lectures on the many subjects con sidered desirable for a young lady to be conversant with — daily hours spent over music and drawing, ' deportment ' and languages — are now to give place Truehearted. 22 to an entirely different life. Home duties and 'time to oneself ' are the things which girls think of as taking the place of the routine of the school-room — those girls, at least, who stop to think at all ; and the vagueness satisfies them, and perhaps pleases them, as a grateful change from the certainty which has been.

The earnest-minded promise themselves to do great things with the leisure which is to be theirs : they lay plans, and build airy castles of a golden future ; they think much, and perhaps talk much, about a daughter's duties and a sister's influence ; they make lists of books which their friendly advisers recommend, and they honestly intend to read them. They stand upon the borders of an unknown land, and they are hopeful, for the landscape looks fair and smooth, the flowers appear bright and plentiful. Difficulties they are prepared for — thorns that will rend, and noxious weeds that will sting ; but they know that courage and forethought will find a way through these. They have yet to learn that it is neither nettles nor briers which form the chief danger to them, but the very smoothness of the way, the softness of the velvet turf, the brightness of the fragrant flowers, and the deep pitfalls which lie hidden beneath the surface of ease and beauty !

Jeanie Durrant was certainly 'earnest-minded.' She truly wished to be of use in the world, and intended trying to act up to the high standard of her ideal. But although her plans were many, the entering upon them was yet to come. She fancied that she must wait until her father and mother had really arrived, until the family were in some degree settled in their new home, before she could find oppor tunities of doing the many things which she hoped to accomplish. And in the meantime she would enjoy the present, with its rich store of happiness, her plea sant sense of being her own mistress, the London sightseeing, and, above all, the companionship of Redmond. Only the straight path as yet, the flowers and the smooth turf: difficulties and duties would come to gether presently. ' Good morning,' said Redmond, lifting his forehead for his sister's salute as he sat at the breakfast table ; ' you see I have not waited for you.