A Man's Mistake

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BY MINNIE WORBOISE, Author of" A Summer's Madness," " A Missing Bridegroom," _.e., &c. 3LnnBDit : JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14. FLEET STREET. 1890. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I.— The Great-Aunts I II. — At Magnolia Lodge 13 III. —Sentence of Banishment 22 IV. — A Paiting and a Meeting 32 V. — Aunt Hephzibah's Cap ... ... ... ... ... 44 VI. — Sunday Morning 57 VII. — Sunday Afternoon ... ... ... ... ... 67 VIII.— A Box of China 77 IX.— At Abbeylands 86 X— Husband and Wife 96 XI.— Confidences 105 XII.— A Fateful Afternoon 115 XIII.— A Familiar Face 126 XIV.— What Mr. Armstrong Saw 137 XV.— By the Side of the Dead 148 XVI. — " Envy, Hatred, Malice, and all Uncharitableness " 160 XVII.— A Glimpse of Paradise 170 XVIII.— Storm Signals 180 XIX.— Under a Cloudy Sky 189 XX.— "Good-Bye ! Good-Bye " *99 XXI.— In Shelter 210 XXII.— Nothing but Mystery 222 XXIII.— Dead and Buried 233 XXIV.— Confidences 245 XXV.— The Missioner 257 XXVI.— Fresh Work for Silas 267 XXVII.— In Garnett's Buildings 277 XXVIII.— Last Hours 287 XXIX.— "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" 297 XXX. — Mrs. Pope's Arrangements 3°S XXXI.— Five Years Later 32o

Chapter I. The Great

-AUNTS. " "\7ES, it's an awful trial, Hephzibah ! I can call JL it nothing else, but it's an appointed trial, and we must bear it." The speaker Avas an old woman, very old indeed, and very grim of aspect, and her expression of re signation was accompanied by something between a sigh and a groan. It was rather a remarkable sound for a human being to produce ; it was akin to the noise that seals and sea-lions frequently make on emerging from the water ; but, queer as it was, it was echoed faithfully by another woman seated opposite. This person was old likewise, but she Avas so much younger than her companion that she was esteemed quite youthful by dint of contrast. In truth, Hephzibah Dell was "only" seventy-three, but her sister, Kezia Pope, Avas eighty-seven on her last birthday, and now well on her Avay to eighty-eight Nevertheless, Mrs. Pope was still vigorous ; her tall, spare figure Avas not so very much bent ; with the aid of spectacles she could still see to knit, read and write Avith tolerable comfort, and her hearing was nearly as sharp as it had been in the days of her youth.

She was knitting now ; swiftly and steadily the steel pins travelled along the rows of stitches, and the big grey stocking progressed with amazing rapidity. Hephzibah was seAving at some white calico, evidently making a garment of some description. By reason of her comparative youth, she was supposed to be equal to any amount of fine needlework ; but it must be owned that she was rather slow about it, her needle had a dreadful trick of unthreading itself, and she found the task of re-threading it was getting more and more troublesome, though she would not have confessed it on any account ; she, too, liked to pre serve the delusion of her juvenility. Repeating her sister's seal-like sigh and doleful shake of the head caused her to give her needle, on this occasion, a sudden jerk, and out came that provoking thread, of course !

She dropped her sewing then, and under cover of entering into conversation, put off the evil moment of resuming it. "Kezia," she said, solemnly, "it does seem to me sometimes that we are not called to take this fearful burden on ourselves. Richard is nearer of kin to this girl than we are ; she is his own sister's child. He ought to take her, and manage somehow." " Richard won't take her. You know what he said s well as I do when he was here last week." " But he ought." "Now, Hephzibah, don't talk rubbish, or I shall be very angry with you. You are old enough to know better than to waste time and breath in senseless remarks. Go on with your sewing. I am sick of seeing that nightgOAvn day after day in your hands." " There's a great deal of Avork in your nightgowns Kezia," grumbled poor Hephzibah, as she once more tried to bring her needle-eye and the end of her cotton into proper conjunction.

"And you've plenty of time to do it in," retorted her sister. " But don't talk nonsense about Richard. He can hardly get bread-andcheese for himself and his family ; how is he to feed and clothe a girl of sixteen in addition, and give her house-room ? — eh ? Tell me that." "Why, he can't, of course," replied Hephzibah feebly, collapsing before her sister's vigorous and scornful questioning. " It's a pity he keeps so poor," she added, as she at last succeeded in once more threading that tiresome needle ; "and I can't think how it is." " Can't you ? You must be short of brains, then, like Richard himself. He's a fool, that's why he's poor." " He's a clergyman of the Church," said Heph zibah, with an effort after dignity that would have been amusing to a chance bystander, had any such been present, but which caused Kezia to snort fiercely and contemptuously.

" I wish the Church joy of him ! " she said grimly. " If he had kept out of ' the Church,' as you call it, and stuck to his ironmongery, he would have made a decent tradesman. Nothing will ever make a decent parson of him. He has neither got learning, nor ability, nor common sense, and he's not a converted character." "Well, now, I wouldn't say that, Kezia, if I were you. It doesn't sound well." " But I do say it, and I say it again. I don't care about sound ; I like truth." " But you might be mistaken, Kezia, after all, in that. You cannot tell for certain." " I am not given to mistakes, Hephzibah," with a severe glance, that would almost have annihilated a less hardened individual than the one at Avhom it was directed ; but Miss Dell was thick-skinned mentally, and if she was meek she was persistent, and it was nearly impossible to quench her entirely, so after a slight pause she returned to her subject of conversation, and, resuming her first phase of it, said — " Well, any way, it would be much pleasanter for us if Richard could have had this girl in his house ; and I don't know whether it would not be wise of us to pay him a certain sum of money for her board and clothes, and all the rest of it, instead of having her ourselves.

Fancy a chit of sixteen coming here ! Why, what shall we do with her ? " " As I said, Hephzibah, it's an awful trial, but it's appointed ; and as to paying Richard, we couldn't afford it ; it's one thing to give a girl a place at your table and enough clothes to keep her tidy, and quite another to pay a lump sum down every quarter — and it would have to be a tolerable sum, too, to satisfy Richard. No, we must take the child, and try to train her up in the fear of the Lord, and make her useful." " She can help me with the sewing," remarked Miss Dell, with a spice of self-congratulation flavour ing her tone for the first time. " She can help generally," returned Mrs. Pope ; " Hannah says she is overworked, though I don't see it myself; but she is not so young as she was, certainly—she's sixty-five, I know.

No, it won't be a bad thing to have a young person in the house, in some ways ; you and I shall both want more waiting on as we grow older ; but still, it will be an awful trial, for she's sure to be little better than a heathen. There must be no dallying on our part with her evil ways or tendencies ; they must be repressed Avith a strong hand." "Oh, of course! " responded Hephzibah, fervently. " Dear me ! Kezia," she added, after a pause, and in a scared tone, " I hope she won't do anything to disgrace us." " She may, if she isn't kept well in hand. She must be put down — put down, I say, from the first — and kept under, and subdued," and the ancient woman put her own foot down on her footstool with a force that caused the wooden frame of that article to crack violently, and the solid old boards of the floor beneath to vibrate distinctly.

" I wonder if she is like her father as to looks ; he was very handsome," remarked Hephzibah, presently, when she had got over the start caused by her sister's vigorous and sudden stamping of the foot stool. " I hope to goodness she doesn't take after him in anything," replied Mrs. Pope, curtly ; " he was a disgrace to his family and all belonging to him. He squandered his substance in riotous living, and now that he's dead and gone his only child is a pauper, and there's nobody in the world to do anything for her but the old aunts he despised so much in his life." " It's very dreadful," groaned Hephzibah in dutiful chorus ; " and then his marriage was so objectionable," she added dolefully, shaking her head ; "running away in that mad fashion with a girl of seventeen, and a common country shopkeeper's daughter, too ! and she'd nothing in the world to recommend her but a pretty, dollish face."

" She was good enough for him, and too good," retorted Mrs. Pope, grimly; "she was a brainless, frivolous creature, full of worldly vanity and folly, but she was honest at least, and he Avasn't. Horace Dell was a born liar and cheat ! I never liked the Duftons — silly, stuck-up fools they were, too grand for the station in life to which it had pleased God to call them, ashamed of the trade that gave them bread and cheese, and always apeing their betters. Richard thinks it more genteel now to be a starving curate, than to wear an apron, serve behind a counter, and have enough food to eat every day. Cecilia thought it more genteel to marry a scamp of a gentleman than an honest shopkeeper — the Avhole family are crazed about gentility, but that's the worst you can say of them ; they are fools, but not rogues.

Now, our nephew was a rogue." " It's a terrible thing to have to say of one's own flesh and blood," sighed Hephzibah ; " but what a trouble that boy was to his own father ! Dear me ! and William was such a good man, too — it's very odd he should have had such a son." " Not odd at all," returned Mrs. Pope, Avho really seemed to find singular pleasure in flatly contradict ing her sister on every possible occasion ; " our brother was like Eli ; his son ' made himself vile, and he restrained him not' He was a converted man, was William, I verily believe, but he was weak and foolish about Horace ; he spoiled him as a boy, and so ruined him as a man. In fact, William was very much like you, Hephzibah ; you would have spoiled your children if you had ever had any ; they would all have turned out badly, and then you would have lifted up your hands in amazement, and lamented and maundered and wondered over it, till everybody Avas sick of the subject, and all the while lookers-on would have seen plainly enough that the mistake was your own, and the consequences only the most natural result."

Noav, in spite of Hephzibah's exceeding meekness, there were times and seasons when she resented the snubbings which her strong-minded sister bestOAved upon her, and the present occasion proved to be one of them. She laid down her sewing and stared angrily at the face opposite to her, with its small, fierce, dark eyes, its beaky nose, its thin, compressed lips, and long, obstinate-looking chin. She was a curious contrast herself, for she was short and stout, her countenance was large and fat, her nose insignifi cant, and her eyes big and round, suggesting a ludicrous likeness to those of a cat or owl. In fact, there Avere people who said that Avhen Miss Dell was "really enjoying herself" — or, in other words, when she was doing absolutely nothing, but basking before a noble fire and gazing contentedly at it with those same round unblinking orbs of hers — she bore a striking family resemblance to a large, well-fed, comfortable pussy-cat.

Just now, however, she looked more like the same animal when its temper has been decidedly ruffled. " Kezia," she said, " it seems to me you fancy that you are always right, and that everybody else is Avrong. You are very wise, I daresay, but I don't believe but that you make mistakes sometimes, like other people. No, I don't, and you needn't look at me like that ! And if I had married — as I might have done, remember — and had children, I should have done my duty by them ; and as to their turning out well, I don't believe parents can always control that. Perhaps if your boy had lived he wouldn't have been so wonderfully good and proper after all ! " Mrs. Pope had looked up from her stocking by this time, in order to glare more effectively through her spectacles, and as Hephzibah uttered her last remark the gleam in her sister's eyes was rather appalling to behold.

" I'll thank you to keep your suppositions about my son to yourself," said the ancient lady, in a kind of choked voice ; " if you had any sense of decency A MAWS MISTAKE. you Avould. He was a good boy Avhile he lived, and that's enough, I think." " Bless me, Kezia ! you needn't go in such a fury. I don't think it's becoming in a Christian woman at all." " Do you think it becoming to drag up the memory of my poor dear dead son from his grave after all these years, and say that if he had lived he Avould have been a bad man ? How dare you utter such Avicked calumny, Hephzibah ? " " I didn't say anything Avicked," retorted Miss Dell, sullenly ; " I didn't say he would have been a bad man ; I only said he mightn't have turned out a good one." " Hold your tongue ! " Avas the fierce rejoinder she got ; and Mrs. Pope resumed her stocking and knitted away as for dear life.

"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed Hephzibah, with a faint attempt at sarcasm; "well, I'm sure, you are polite, Kezia. You may say what you like to me it seems, but you won't hear a Avord yourself; but that's the way with you wonderfully good people. I only hope you will be able to manage this young lady Avho's coming to us, but with all your cleverness I don't fancy you will find the task an easy one." " I don't expect it to be easy — I declare, Hephzi bah, if you don't stop talking nonsense, I'll go out of the room ! I don't expect it to be easy, I say, to bring a wild, heathenish girl into the ways of a godly household, and make her conform to them, in out ward seeming at least ; but it must be done, and I'm not going to flinch from the work." " I daresay she's never sat under the preaching of the Gospel or read the Bible in her life, and I expect she regards the Sabbath as no holier than any other day of the week," remarked Hephzibah, who seemed to be forgetting her brief quarrel, in the delight of dAvelling on the numerous difficulties that would lie before her sister in attempting the conversion of their heathen grand-niece.

Mrs. Pope vouchsafed no reply ; she knitted on in silence. Presently Hephzibah began again. Not to talk, when there A\'as any one to talk to, was a sheer impossibility with her. " What shall we call her, Kezia ? " she asked. " Call her ? by her name of course." " But it is such a name. I never even heard of it before, did you ? " "I've heard the word a feAv scores of times, and I suppose you have, too? " " Yes, of course. I didn't mean that. But for a name ; the idea of calling a Avoman Hyacinth ! It sounds mad to me, simply mad ! " " It sounds foolish enough, but there's Violet Deverell and little Daisy Armstrong, you know, and there are the twins, Lily and Rose Adams. If you use one flower name, why not another ? I don't like any of them. I prefer plain sensible names, or Scripture ones like our own ; but the world is full of fools, and they like foolish things."

" Well, I suppose we must call her Hyacinth, then, unless she's got a second name ; she might have one that is more sensible." " She signed herself simply ' Hyacinth Dell ' in that queer letter she sent me the other day — here, look at it yourself ; " and Mrs. Pope took a folded sheet of notepaper out of a basket by her side, and handed it over to her sister. Hephzibah had been told of the purport of this letter, but hitherto she had not seen it ; now she opened it eagerly and read it. "Dear Madam, — I am told by my uncle, Mr. Dufton, that you are good enough to offer me a home at Rilmington, and the means of continuing my education for another year or so. Believe me that I am not ungrateful to you for thus opening your house to me ; but, madam, you know nothing of me, and I might not suit you at all.

Besides, you and Miss Dell are very aged people, I understand, so I do not think the presence of a young girl in your house would add to the comfort of either of you. I thank you for your offer, but I wish much that you would allow me to remain here. My kind friend, Madame St. Antoine, is very poor, but she would be happy to keep me, and give me board and lodging in return for services that I could render. Her pro fession of teacher of music and singing takes her away from her home a great deal, and she wants some one to look after her children and teach them a little. Soon she hopes to be able to give me a small salary, and meanwhile she would take care that I was supplied with everything really needful. Indeed, madam, she is very good and kind, and may be trusted, and I love her and the children very much.

I should be so glad not to be separated from them. I will never trouble you again, I promise you, if you will consent to my plan. I do not ask for any help from you. I am quite aware I have no right to do so, if I do not accept it in the way you propose to give it. I am used to Avork, and I do not care what I do, only I want to work among people who love me ; you and Miss Dell cannot care for me ; it is impossible. I pray you, madam, to allow me to go my own Avay, and believe me to remain, always yours respectfully, " Hyacinth Dell." "She's a proud, independent young puss," said Hephzibah, as she folded up the letter again ; " it would have served her right to have taken her at her word and left her to fight for herself." " It was not in the fitness of things to leave her in such a position.

She's too young to render this French madam any real service ; it would have been tantamount to leaving our own kith and kin to subsist on charity, not to be thought of for one moment. Besides, we have some regard for the girl's eternal welfare, I hope, though she has none herself, and we can rescue her from that pit of frivolity and folly and worldliness, and put her in a godly house hold, and in the way, at least, of getting her soul saved. If we did not snatch her ' as a brand from the burning' we should be downright guilty; she would perish body and soul, and her blood would be on our heads." " Richard didn't seem to think so badly of this Madame St. Antoine, though," remarked Hephzibah. " Much Richard knows about it ! " snorted Mrs. Pope contemptuously. " He talked with her for one hour, and he never sees beyond the end of his nose ; he has no more discernment than a mole !

He gathered that madame performed in public some times, that her pupils were all qualifying for the stage or concert halls, or some such haunts of the devil ; that her husband had been a Papist and Avas an infidel ; that she herself seemed to belong to no particular church or sect ; that she confessed to going to Westminster Abbey on Sundays for the sake of the music, and that she spoke of going to the theatre as a matter of course. Could anything be worse? " " Well, yes, I think it might have been worse ; though, of course, it is horrible to think of any one belonging to us being mixed up with such people ! But, still, the Avoman is quite respectable, you know, and that is something to be thankful for. Really, Horace was so wickedly careless, he would not have minded much where he put his daughter, so that he provided some kind of home for her during his absence."

" I don't know that, Hephzibah ! He had some sense of decency left — enough to induce him not to put his child in the care of any Avoman Avhom the Avorld does not class as respectable. / do not call such a creature as that respectable, mind you ! But the Avorld and I have long parted company, I am thankful to say." " Do you know, Kezia, I rather wonder the girl did give in and consent to come to us. You couldn't have made her, could you ? " " Don't ask silly questions, Hephzibah ! Look at the clock ; it's on the stroke of five. Why hasn't Hannah brought the tea? Go and see after her directly ; and haven't you finished that night-gown yet ? I wonder you are not ashamed to be seen with it in your hands."

Chapter II. At Magnolia Lodge

ON that same afternoon, when Kezia Pope and her sister had been discussing the coming advent of their grand-niece in their prim and rather dingy dining-room at Rilmington, that young lady herself had been talking the matter over at Magnolia Lodge, South Lambeth ; and talking about it, more over, in a style Avhich would have shocked the old ladies considerably, and with a companion of Avhom they would have strongly disapproved. The room she was sitting in Avas large, and quite as dingy as that other highly respectable one in the quiet, dull High Street of Rilmington, but its arrangements were anything but " prim." Its threadbare Brussels carpet was innocent of any trace of pattern, save under the great table and close round the walls. The furniture had a battered aspect ; the leather of the chairs Avas scratched and torn ; the arms of the big sofa betrayed that they were stuffed with wool and horsehair ; one of its soft old cushions was on the floor, and another had been put into a good-sized clothes-basket by the fire-place, and on it reposed a fine tabby cat and two bewitching kittens.

The chimney-piece of the apartment was clearly regarded as a shelf for the reception of odds and ends ; match-boxes, cigars, smelling-salts, a tea-caddy, and any number of old letters, circulars, &c, were mixed up with a time-piece, two odd spill-cups, a chipped china candlestick, and a cracked vase of imitation WedgAvood. The fire-irons seemed to have been engaged in a general battle, and to have suffered much in the fray ; there was half a poker, three parts of a shovel, and no tongs, while the fender had lost the greater portion of its steel ornamentations. But there was a warm, cheery fire burning merrily in the ashy grate ; and, in spite of dilapidations, that old sofa and those worn easy chairs were very comfortable things on which to rest weary, aching limbs. A strong perfume of tobacco smoke hung about the faded draperies of the windoAvs, and, indeed, pervaded the whole room ; but, then, no one dwelling in that house would have dreamed of objecting to the familiar odour.

Magnolia Lodge Avas not an abode of elegance, decidedly ; even its most sacred apartment, the drawing-room, was wofully shabby, and the grand piano was probably the only article in the whole house that did not need some degree of reparation or entire renovation. The outward aspect of the place was not attractive either — at least, not to eyes that looked for modern smartness, fresh paint, or even a tidy, gravelled drive. It was blackened with much smoke, and the garden surrounding it (for the house figured as a " detached residence " in the agent's list) Avas desperately Aveedy and neglected ; the grass-plot in front was rarely mown, and the magnolia that had once given the house its name had long ceased to bloom ; indeed, none but the hardiest and commonest flowers ever ventured to put in an appearance now, even during the summer months.

Yet to that young girl, sewing away at a nearly finished black dress in the dining-room, that chilly April afternoon, Magnolia Lodge was an abode of bliss, and South Lambeth the fairest locality on the face of the earth. The dilapidations within the house, the ugliness without it, the rows upon toavs of cheap, common dwellings opposite, around, and all AT MAGNOLIA LODGE. 15 about, were matters of total indifference to her. Was she not regarded with as much tenderness and affection as if she had been united by ties of kinship to that noisy, happy home circle ? Was she not free to do as she liked, and go where she would ? And Avas not that tall, black-eyed youth, now lounging on the biggest and most comfortable of the easy-chairs, her devoted slave, and ready to do her every bidding, possible and impossible ?

What more could she desire ? Certainly not to leave it all for the profound respectability, the monotonous propriety of her great aunts' abode. " It is jolly to get you all to myself like this, Hyacinth — never thought of such a piece of luck. Where's the missus and the kids, and Monsieur, and — everybody ? " " Madame is giving lessons, the children are gone for a walk on the Embankment with Nannette, and Monsieur is — I don't know where ; he's generally out of the house at this hour, but no one seems to be quite clear as to his whereabouts, and no one troubles to learn them. He's not a very important personage, somehow, though he is nominally the head of the house." " Madame's the better man of the two, isn't she ? there's no doubt about that ! All the same, I can't forgive her for packing you off to Rilmington."

" She does it for my sake, Silas ; she thinks it Avould be wrong to allow me to stay here when my aunts are so very urgent to have me with them. I must at least go and try to live at Rilmington, she says ; but if I am very unhappy, after a fair trial, I may give it up and return to her. She let me write that letter, you know, to Mrs. Pope, but when the old lady still declared that I must come, she in sisted on my obeying the order — they, my great aunts, were my own kith and kin, she urged, and I owed them a certain amount of deference and con sideration." " Oh, it's all right and proper, I know, and Madame's good as gold, but it's horrid to think of Magnolia Lodge without you, Hyacinth, and " " Ah ! don't talk about it," cried the girl, piteously ; " I can't bear it, Silas — the talking about it, I mean — I must bear the wrench and the parting, and it's no use saying ' can't ' to that ; but don't speak of it, don't discuss it, there's a dear boy."

" Very well, we won't then. But, Hyacinth, if I were only a little older and had a little more money, it shouldn't be at all, my dear — all the great-aunts in the world shouldn't claim you. I'd take you and keep you fast enough. You would come to me, my darling, wouldn't you ? " " Well — I don't knoAv," and Hyacinth's large brown eyes Avere raised to the handsome, eager face of the tall youth with an expression of innocent astonish ment that rather discomfited him ; " you are a capital companion, Silas, and very good fun, but I had rather live with Madame, I think. And besides, I don't believe your father would care to have me in his house at all. He doesn't want an everlasting model — he would tire of seeing me ' posing ' day after day." " My father's house ! Why, Hyacinth, when I marry, do you think I shall take my wife there just to serve as a model for him to paint from ?