Leal Souvenir

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_s. 6d. Crown 8vo. sj NOW READY. SHREDS AND PATCHES. By E. N. Leigh Fry. Illustrated, 5.. MADEMOISELLE. By Francis M. Peard. Crown 8vo. LITTLE PRINCESS ANGEL. By Stella Austin. Crown 8vo. sj. LEAL SOUVENIR. By Alice Weber. Crown 8vo. 5s. TRUTH WITH HONOUR. By C. R. Coleridge & M. Bramston BY ALICE WEBER, AUTHOR OF "AT SIXES AND SEVENS," "THE OLD HOUSE IN THE SQUARE," "WHEN I'M A MAN," "ANGELA," ETC. LONDON: WALTER SMITH AND INNES, 31 & 32, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C 1S9O. {All Rights reserved.} Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Eungay.

Part I. Chapter

I. " Tout vieut au temps a lui qui sait attendre." Two little girls stood on the platform of a small railway station, in the heart of the country, mounting guard over two neat portmanteaus, and apparently determined not to move until an ex pected " Somebody " should appear. A few yards off stood a boy who had arrived by the same train, but far from being on tenter-hooks of expectation, was calmly eating an apple, and evidently not going to move until it suited him. Two pairs of eyes grew rounder, and at last almost tearful from extreme tension ; and a hesitating whisper between two little heads was overheard by the compassionate and interested station-master, who had been a silent observer of the pair. This B was what the agitated and rather loud whisper said — " Oh 1 why does nobody come for us ?

" Answer : a shake of the head merely, because she was so terribly afraid she should cry. Up stepped the station-master to the boy. " Master Robinson," he said, " do you know who those two little ladies are ? There seems to be nobody to meet them. Perhaps you could accommodate them in your trap ? " The boy threw away his half-eaten apple, straightened himself, and went up to them. Gathering tears were winked away with a violent effort by one, but the other— not possessing such power of self-control — let her tears overflow, and they hung on her long, dark lashes, so that the boy's face looked blurred and rough through them. " I say," he began, " can I take you anywhere ? Our trap is outside, and I'm going home in it. Where do you want to go ? " Then Maud the strong, holding Clare the tearful by the hand, said, in what was meant to be a jovial tone — " We thought our aunt's maid would have been here.

Aunt Judith lives at Ivy Cottage, a little way out of Bricklebury, and Martha was coming to meet us. But she's not here — nobody's here." Maud's lip trembled, and Clare broke in with a fresh upwelling of tears — ■ "And we are very, very lonely — we've never been here before. We are twins, and father and mother went back to India yesterday." All this time the boy had stood with his hands in his pockets, listening and looking. Now he suddenly turned away from them and went outside the station ; coming back again directly, he said to the station-master — "It's all right, Brown; put their luggage on, will you ? " Then to the children, "Look here, I know Ivy Cottage as well as I know my own home, and I know Miss Brierly — and I call her Aunt Judith too ; and our trap passes her house on the way home, so I can take you there.

Come along." He may have been three years their senior, and a boy of twelve is often years older than a girl of nine ; to Maud and Clare he seemed a man and a father at that moment ; and he held each of them by the hand so kindly as they left the station, although Clare felt it to be rather embarrassing, for she could not get at her pocket-handkerchief, and therefore was conscious that the coachman saw her glazy cheeks and wet eyes, as he turned round and watched them being stowed into the wagonette. There were those on the platform who watched also : a man in a sun-hat, with sketching materials and an easel, stood at a little distance, with a quiet smile upon his face, looking after the children, until there was nothing to be seen but a cloud of dust following the departing wheels. "Mark my words, Mr. Sepia," then said the station-master emphatically ; " none would make a better master of Ellersleigh than that little chap. Why, bless you ! he's a heart as big as a house already !

Shoot ? didn't he bag a brace last 1st of September, the first day he was ever out ? — pretty well that for a boy of eleven. Generous? didn't you see him throw away his apple, and he'd only eaten half of it, as soon as he saw those little misses were in trouble ! " " That's man's nature," said the artist senten tiously ; " the boy's father to the man." " I tell you, sir," went on the zealous station master, unheeding marginal notes, " there's them as will wish to keep him amongst them when the master of Ellersleigh comes to take possession." " My dear Brown ! " exclaimed the artist in affected horror, " who could endure the idea of that ancient and time-honoured old property being in the hands of a John Robinson ! " John Robinson meanwhile and the two "little misses" were having a delightful time, as the carriage bowled them along the lane from the station.

Maud and Clare were not yet old enough to rhapsodize over the beauties of Nature. They were in a new world, and had made a new acquaint ance, and in their hearts they were swearing fealty to him for life — how then could they be expected to notice that the air was deliciously sweet and fresh after a heavy shower that had fallen half an hour ago, cooling the earth that was parched and dry from the heat of many July days? Over the hedgerows, on either side, were smiling pastures ; before them rose Cleeve Hill, like a small mountain range, with Ellersleigh Hall nestling against its side ; behind them, in soft and misty outline, lay th it superior range known as "the Hills," unto which, long ago, many a Master of Ellersleigh may have lifted up his eyes, whilst from that old window in the gallery that looks west, he watched the sun go down, upon the far expanse of country, and upon his hopes.

" Clare has had a headache all day," Maud said, as they sped along ; " and it made her feel very tired in the train." " Why did they let you come alone ? " demanded Jack ferociously. " There is no ' they ' now," replied Clare pathetic ally. '" They ' were father and mother, who went back to India yesterday. We were all at grandmama's together." " Yes ; you know we have had no real home for a long, long time," broke in Maud ; " not since we were all in India. We have been at grandmama's since we were four years old, till mother came home ill two years ago ; then we lived with her in lodgings in London till father came home last year, and he could not stand the cooking. Father is so very particular ! So we have lived sometimes at a hotel — -sometimes at grandmama's ; and now they are gone back, and our home is to be with Aunt Judith."

"She's not really our aunt," explained Clare; " she was an old friend of dear mother's." "Don't, Clare ! " said Maud vehemently. " What's the matter ? did she kick you ? " asked Jack. " No ; but I wish she wouldn't say ' dear mother.' A little girl we knew at the hotel always said that, and her mother was dead. I can't bear it!" " But how can I help it, if I feel it ? " complained poor Clare, tears rising again, upon which Maud laid her broad, protecting palm over the two agitated little hands, and so soothed her. "Why didn't your grandmama send some one with you ? " asked Jack. " I don't think she can be the right sort." " Grandmama is nearly always in bed, and can't think much about other people," explained Maud ; " and so, when father and mother said good-bye — afterwards we seemed to be rather in the way ; and so the housemaid took us to the station, and asked the guard to take care of us — and he was so kind."

" He was like pictures of Charles I.," said Clare. " Are you for the Stuarts ? " " I hate history! " said the boy bluntly. The little girls looked shocked. "But Aunt Judith loves Charles I.," went on Jack, " and I'm awfully fond of her." " And so you must love him because she does ! " cried Clare, clapping her hands ; then in lower tone, " I'm sorry to say Maud does not hate Oliver Cromwell." " I can't if I can't," said Maud ; then pointing with her finger towards Ellersleigh Hall she asked, " Who lives over there ? " " We do ; it's my home," said the boy. " And there are lots of rabbits on Cleeve Hill. I am to have a gun of my own in two years." " And what is your house called ? " asked Clare. " When we were at the seaside with father and mother, we stayed in rooms at a house that was called Ferryhurst Hall ;— but your house looks much, much larger than that, so I think it must be a palace.

It would look like one if it had candles in every window." " It is called Ellersleigh Hall," said Jack; "and here we are at Ivy Cottage." Some things there are which we never forget, especially if we live to be threescore years and ten, and the thing remembered lies back among the daisy and buttercup days. Clare and Maud say that they will remember for ever and ever how Ivy Cottage looked on that summer afternoon, when Jack jumped out of the wagonette and thundered on the green door with the bright little brass knocker. For there was nobody looking out of the windows, or waiting expectant at the door. To the children — to Clare especially, whose thoughts rather ran on palaces and enchanted ground — -it might have been a miniature palace of the Sleeping Beauty; all was so slumbrous — so sweet, so still.

Jack's knock instantly brought a middle-aged maiden to the door, very wide-awake and very demonstrative, clutching that portion of her clean sprigged muslin dress beneath which her heart was supposed to beat, as she gasped — " Master Jack ! you're enough to wake the dead ! And who have you got there ? Mercy on us ! the two dear little young ladies the mistress is expecting to-morrow ! " They had both jumped out of the wagonette, and were standing shyly, hand in hand, just within the gate, from which a slabbed pathway led up to the door. They had heard the last words — heard, too, Jack's hasty answer — " But Aunt Judith can't wait till to-morrow to have them, because they have come to-day, you see. Oh — here she is! Aunt Judith, I found Clare and Maud at the station, and so I brought them."

A delicate face and figure now swept into the foreground, behind whom Martha respectfully retired. There was a little cry from the children as they darted towards her — a little caressing cry from her, and all three were hugging one another. Jack thought it looked like a small scrimmage at football. "My darlings! your mother wrote and told me you were to come to-morrow ! " "Grandmama thought she must send us to day, but we didn't know why," replied Maud ; "only we are very glad to come." " And we remember that mother said," put in Clare the unreserved, " that you would never think us in the way. Grandmama says we are never going back to her — is it true ? " Again Aunt Judith kissed, and again she cooed, as she murmured — " Quite true, dear, quite true." Jack, who had been all this time intently observ ing a spider draining the last dregs of a bluebottle, in a marvellous web amongst the wistaria leaves against the porch, here asked — ■ " Doesn't your grandmama tell the truth then ?"

" Not always," replied the prompt Clare. " She says sometimes to visitors how glad she is to see them, and then we hear her say how glad she is when they are gone ; but she is very beautiful, and almost always ill." " My grandmother has quite an ugly face," said Jack, returning to his spider ; " but she always speaks the truth." Here Miss Brierly, who had stepped into the house for a moment's consultation with Martha, joined them again, and with an arm round both children, held out her other hand to Jack, with the words — "Jack, my boy, tea is all ready in the dining room ; but I mustn't ask you in, because I know your father and mother are anxiously waiting for you." It appeared that Jack had just come home for his holidays. " It was very kind of him to take such care of us, wasn't it ? " said Clare impressively.

Maud said nothing, but flushed up, as though she would say much, and then seized his hand and shook it, because she could find no words. " Very right, and what a man should do," said Aunt Judith, smiling and nodding. "Jack knows that men are meant to protect women." " Good-bye," said Jack, raising his hat in a way that excited Martha's distant admiration ; for her kitchen door at the end of the passage stood open, and as she dished up her hot tea-cakes from the oven, she could watch the group in the garden, and at this point ejaculated — " Well, I never did ! Quite the little gentle man ! " The children thought Jack's bow was delightful because it made them feel so old ; but Clare went up to him and lifted her sweet face for a kiss, the rosy lips pursed up in readiness. Boylike he blushed, but gave it her, so supplicated.

And Maud kissed her hand from the porch as the carriage drove away. " Who is that kind nice boy with the freckled face, Aunt Judith?" It was Maud asking the question as they sat at tea, cheerily and cosily, in a tiny dining-room that was shaded by outside Venetians and overhanging wistaria from the low level rays of western sunshine, and was not too small to be charming in delicacy of colouring and tasty arrangements. Across the door hung a heavy, striped curtain, shutting off the staircase just outside, and the drawing-room opposite, equally small, equally dainty. From time to time the curtain flapped gently, because the house door close by stood wide open, and with each flap there was a peep of a sunny flower-garden, and of the green garden gate. " That nice boy, my dear, is Jack Robinson, and he lives with his father and mother at the old Hall — Ellersleigh — on the hill.

And he has no brothers or sisters, and Mrs. Robinson hopes you will all be very good friends." " An only child is generally spoilt," observed Maud gravely, as she ate Martha's light and airy tea-cake. " Not always, dear ; some parents are wise, and some boys are too plain and sensible to be spoilt. And I mean by plain— not ugly, but what Jack Robinson has always been — downright." "It must be such a beautiful home," said Clare, almost in a whisper ; " have they had it since William the Conqueror ? " Miss Brierly, with a consideration that was half the secret of her charm, floated over the vague haziness of little Clare's question, and read it with her own interpretation ; she had herself, when a child, been so frequently laughed at for asking " foolish " questions that she had, from sheer timidity, shrunk into a shell of shyness, which even now she was not always able quite to cast off.

" No, Clare dear ; the Robinsons are not an old family," she said kindly. " Mr. Robinson came to live here sixteen years ago — the house had been to let for some time. The old family to whom it belongs are never here — the}' arc all gone. At least — nobody knows," added Miss Brierly hastily, catching herself up, as it were; "some day they may come back." " But who are they ? " asked Clare, who already thought she was on the track of a romance ; "is there a story about them, Aunt Judith ? Oh, do tell us ! " A light from some far-off memory shone in Aunt Judith's eyes, as she folded her hands on the Chinese tea-tray, and gazed out into the wistaria outside the window, and Maud felt by instinct that all hopes of more tea-cake, just then, on her empty plate were vain, for Aunt Judith's thoughts had gone far afield from the tea-table.

" Their name was — is — Harvey-Ellers, dear Clare," said Miss Brierly at last, with eyes half closed, as if she were looking at the family in the distance. " Hundreds of years ago they were Ella — then Filers — and at last there was only a daughter left in the family, and she married a Mr. Harvey, who added her name to his own. That was in George the Third's time ; but long before then there were Filers living at the old Hall in the wars between Cavaliers and Roundheads." It was just like Miss Brierly not to stop at this point and say, " You know your English history, I suppose." She did nothing of the kind, but went on calmly with her old-world dream. " And the Merry Monarch — that is, Charles the Second — was hidden once in a secret room behind one of the fire-places, and Mistress Maria Ellers, the eldest daughter, baffled all the inquiries of Cromwell's soldiers, when they came to look for him.

And they do say, that before the king took leave of the family who had sheltered him, he gave a locket, with his own miniature and a lock of his hair in it, to Mistress Maria. People used to say too, I remember, that the locket was stolen and buried with other lost treasure somewhere just outside the gates; but I never heard the whole of the story. The Ellers had to fly from the house themselves not long afterwards, and the Roundhead soldiers took possession of it, and then — ah, well ! the old house never held up its head after that. They were all scat tered abroad. Some were in the army and entered foreign service, and were never heard of again- Until at last, in Queen Anne's reign, a certain Judge Ellers arrived in Bricklebury with one of the old family portraits and coach-loads of beautiful things, and he settled down at the Hall, and his sons and sons' sons lived there after him."

" And did he find the locket ? " asked Clare eagerly. Aunt Judith quite started. She had been saying all this out into the wistaria, across the urn, and had entirely forgotten the little children. " My darling — no ! But you must be very tired. I have been rambling on like an old woman. Maud, dear, take some cake, and I'll give you both some nice hot tea, and then you will be ready for bed." Clare longed for more history of Ellersleigh, but was a little too shy to ask for it ; Maud preferred the cake. " How foolish ! how very foolish of me ! " murmured Miss Brierly to herself, as she poured out her tea, and reflected on her folly in attempting to reproduce those old traditions— sacred lore as they were, almost, to her. It was not for her to tell how that family de generated ; but she was thinking of it now, whilst the children prattled.

Could she not see a young girl who was taken by her father to a country house forty years ago ? Ah ! was it so long ago as that ? It was one Christmas — and the father and daughter were staying at Ellersleigh Hall. The young heir had just come of age, and all Bricklebury sang his praises. Then — were there not disquieting rumours about estates heavily in volved ? Did not the young heir's father die of a broken heart ? And by the following Christmas the old house stood empty again, to be let for a term of years What had become of the young master no one at Bricklebury knew then, or since. Many stories were told ; some believed, some doubted ; but so long as nothing definite was known to prove that no Harvey-Ellers were in existence, Bricklebury was liable to periodical rumours, reviving the possibility that the family might hold its own again.

The present tenants of Ellersleigh had been popular, and more than popular, with all the neighbourhood, ever since they settled down there ; but nevertheless there are some hearts, beating with such reverence for ancestry, such strong family seeling, that they defy death and circum stance in an extraordinary and unreasonable manner, and are loyal to traditions which the more reasonable and sober-minded have long ago proved to be baseless. Moreover, that respectable firm of lawyers, Messrs. Grimsby and Lowcock, advertised from time to time for " next of kin " ; but hitherto with no result beyond the buzz of local gossip, as old stories — with additions — were stirred into life once more, for the moment, by this reminder that some member of the family might still be living some where. When the children were tucked up between their lavender-scented sheets, and Miss Brierly had left them after much kissing, Clare made rather a startling remark.

It was this — " P'r'aps, Maud, in that old house there are skeletons!' Maud, very sleepy, said something to the effect that it was most improbable. " And p'r'aps," continued Clare, unheeding, "p'r'aps the family will come back one day, whilst we are here, and p'r'aps we shall have dug up the locket which we found buried, and can give C it him ; we shall have to go down on our knees and say, 'May it please your Royal Highness.'" " But he won't be a king," said Maud, " he will only be Mr. Somebody." " Oh ! but he will have had so many troubles," said Clare, most inconsequently, and by no means disconcerted ; " and the bells will ring, and the cannons will fire, and oh ! I hope we shall be here then ! " " But what will become of Jack Robinson, Clare ? You forget him," objected Maud. " He will have to go," said Clare decidedly.

A silence followed. Both little heads, lying still in the darkness, resolved hitherto undreamed of plans and schemes. Clare spoke again, this time in a loud whisper — " Maud ! shall we hunt for that locket ? Shall we make that the thing to do ? Maud ! you don't answer ! Say yes." A grunt came in reply from Maud, who was by this time far too sleepy to enter into the spirit of the thing. Then Clare crept out of bed, and, stealing towards the white curtained window, pushed the curtains back and looked out. Night had not yet come ; there was a light from the west still, and it lingered about the old Hall and on Cleeve Hill behind it ; the " neither light nor dark " of a sweet summer evening gave a touch of weird-like beauty to the scene, even to the still trees across the lane, and to the sleeping flowers in the garden below. Clare stole back into bed again, and thought it seemed very much as if they had got inside a book.

Chapter II

"A something so shy, it would shame it To make it a show, A something too vague, could I name it, For others to know ; As if I had lived it or dreamed it, As if I had acted or schemed it, Long ago." J. R. Lowell. Do little children draw comparisons between their yesterday and their to-day, I wonder ? Cer tainly these two grass-orphans might have contrasted time past and time present. Only a few hours back their mother, sobbing, had said her last good bye, and their father, with a strangely husky voice, had told them to "be good children." Then, with the strangeness of their mother's tears and their father's husky tones still about them, after the cab wheels had rattled from the door, tearful and frightened they had turned up-stairs hand-in-hand, saying one to another, " Let's go to grandmama— there isn't any one else now."

So they had opened her bedroom door cautiously, and peeped in, only to be greeted with the words — " If those are the children, I can't have them here. My heart is breaking, and my head is bursting, Jane !" " Go away, my dears, for the present," the lady's maid had said kindly to them ; " your grandma is more poorly than usual to-day." The children hastily retreated, feeling that if their grandmother's heart and head were in such sore straits, it would indeed be better not to go near her. A flighty, careless housemaid had given them their tea in the dining-room, hurrying them all the while, because " she wanted to go out, and so would put them to bed early." To go to bed at seven o'clock, an hour before their usual time, was the climax of their woes ; and nobody seemed to think of coming to say good-night to them.

It was all so strange and unusual, that Clare sobbed herself to asleep ; and Maud lay awake, dry-eyed, but more nearly broken-hearted than ever her grandmother had been. With morning came the news that they were to be packed off to Miss Brierly that very day. Whispers were heard amongst the servants of — " It's a shame, poor little dears ! " — "Well, it's to be hoped they'll be cared for there more than they ever would be here ! " Then again a cab was at the door, and the children went in on tiptoe to say good-bye to their grandmama, who told them not to forget her, and she hoped they would always behave like ladies ; she said they had better not kiss her, because her head still ached, and they were apt to be violent, but they might kiss her hand — which they did, very gently and very timidly.

After this, life at Ivy Cottage with Miss Brierly was like oil on troubled waters ; they might be too young to analyze the trouble, the soreness of heart, but they were old enough to be sensible of the balm. Two days after their arrival they went to spend the afternoon at Ellersleigh Hall. " I see you are Cockneys," Jack said most cour teously, and with a pleasant smile ; he was leading them round the flower-gardens, and marvelled at their ignorance, as he named one after the other of the garden beauties as glibly as if they had been his toys from babyhood. Clare and Maud were essentially London children—knowing little or nothing of birds and flowers and animals. The watering-place on the south coast, where they had spent last autumn with their father and mother, had taught them nothing of the coming and going of birds and insects, nor of the up-springing of flowers, and the waxing and waning of autumn fruits.

The seasons, to them, were marked by the changes rung on the different fruits at the greengrocer's — the first gooseberries, the first strawberries, the first apples, the first walnuts — and by the putting on of furs. They felt themselves, suddenly and for ever, cruelly con demned by the odious word " Cockney," courteous as the manner was, and pleasant though the smile that accompanied the word. Clare silently flushed up to the very roots of her hair ; Maud resented the affront openly. " We can't know everything yet," she said indignantly. "We are only nine and you are twelve ; we have always lived in town, and you have lived in the country. But I dare say YOU don't know what time the gates are shut in Kensington Gardens in the winter, and what time in the summer ; and do you know how long the old crossing-sweeper has stood at the Broad Walk gate ?

" Jack confessed his ignorance on both points, adding — ■ " I didn't mean to annoy you when I said you were Cockneys . . ." "Don't say it again !" they screamed, stopping their ears. "Of course I shouldn't have said it if I had thought that it would," he went on, his smile broad ening all over his freckled face ; "and look here, if you'd like to know about flowers and birds and all that, I can lend you books, and show you different things, you know." " Then do show us a bird's nest, please, before the eggs are hatched 1 Show us that first of all ! " implored Maud. It was Jack's turn to colour up now, with that best of all colouring — the sensitive blush for another's feelings ; for how could he prevent convinc ing these two little maidens of their arrant cockney ism, by even the gentlest intimation that birds do not, as a rule, build in July ?