#'i^ LI B RARY OF THE UN 1VLR.S1TY or ILLINOIS V.l ORCHARD DAMEREL. VOL. I. NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. JANET DELILLE. By E. N. Leigh Fry, author of 'A Scots Thistle,' &c. 2 voIb. IN CUPID'S COLLEGE. By Mabel Hakt, author of ' Two English Girls,' &c. 3 vols. HETTY'S HERITAGE. By Noel Dene, author of ' The Aftermath.' 2 vols. THE WHITE AIGRETTE. By Vin Vincent, author of ' Cathedral Bells,' ' Wrong on Both Sides,' &c. 3 vols. THE PRICE OF A PEARL. By Eleanor Holmes, author of 'Through Another Man's Eyes,' &c. 3 vols. LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LIMITED. ORCHARD DAMEREL BY ALAN ST. AUBYN AUTHOB OF A FELLOW OF TRINITY,' 'THE MASTER OF ST. BENEDICT'S, ' AN OLD MAID'S SWEETHEART,' ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1894. All Rights Reserved. ?a3 r^ ■I II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. ^ XII. ^XIII. XIV. ^ XV. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTEK I. The Curate of Stoke Lucy Joan Penrose's Good Fortune A Time of Roses . COOMBE DaMEREL A Wonderful Providence Wedding Bells . A Question of Conscience A Blue-beard Cupboard A Red-letter Day Lords and Ladies Robert Lyon Works Himself Up The Earl of Aylmerton's Heir Joan's Great-aunt Confidences The Earl of Aylmerton's Trustee PAGE 1 22 46 72 88 108 126 149 167 188 206 223 250 269 285 \0 ORCHARD DAMEREL. CHAPTER I. THE CURATE OF STOIvE LUCY. It is hard upon a man to make a choice between sisters, three sisters exactly ahke. It would be less difficult if one of the three were lame, or afflicted with a squint, and another had a mole on her cheek, an unpleasant mole, or bore the traces of small-j^ox; but when all three VOL. I. B 2 ORCHARD DAMEREL. sisters are equally fair and sweet and gracious, it is hard upon a man to have to choose between them. He has an excuse, at any rate, for not making up his mind in a hurry ; a quite sufficient excuse for any reasonable delay. The curate of Stoke Lucy has this ex- cuse, but it was not his only reason for delay. There were three Miss Penroses for him to choose from, and he fell in love with them all, one after the other. He fell in love with the eldest first. He fell in love with Bertha Penrose the moment he saw her. He saw her for the first time at a mothers'-meeting, and he told himself during that blissful half-hour he sat watching her cutting out pinafores and little shirts, that she was the woman THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 3 he had been looking for all his life. Per- haps she was. Bertha Penrose was very good at cut- tin 2: out shirts. She was verv o'ood at cutting out everything ; nothing came amiss to her that came within reach of her scissors. She would have been in- valuable in the Sandwich Islands, or in Central Africa, or anywhere where ward- robes are scarce and scanty. She would soon have clothed the whole population. She was not only good with her scissors at mothers'-meetings, but she was skilful with her paste-board and with her frying- pan at cookery-lectures. She taught the mothers of Stoke Lucy to mend and make their children's clothes, and cook their husbands' dinners ; and she did a good deal of district-visiting besides. b2 4 ORCHARD DAMEREL. She was exactly cut out for a curate's wife. It was no Avonder that Robert Lyon watched her snipping away at the calica for those little shirts. Bertha Penrose was worth watching. She had a kind, good face, which is better than beauty any day. Beauty is vain and deceitful, and soon wears off, like the bloom on a peach, but kindness and goodness are homely qualities and endure. They are among the few things that do not pass away in the using. But Bertha Penrose had beauty be- sides : she was one of the beauties of Stoke Lucy. A sound, healthy, active girl, with a dainty profile and lovely l)rown hair with red tints in it, and grey- blue eyes that looked straight at you be- THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 5 neath the most beautiful dark eyelashes in the world. Xature had been in a kindly mood when she mixed the colour on her palette for the Penrose girls. She had s^iven them all this beautiful brown hair with the red tints in it, that set off so well their fresh, healthy com- plexions ; she had pencilled with a cun- ning hand their brown, level brows, and she had bestowed on them this delightful gift of lovely dark eyelashes. If her mood had not been kindly, and she had given them sandy hair, and drab •eyebrows, and pale lashes, they would have been the most common-place girls in Stoke Lucy, and the curate would not have looked at Bertha twice, however deftly she snipped away at those little shirts. 6 OllCIIAED DAMEKEL. It was not the goodness, it was not the kindness in her sweet face as she bent over that homely work which touched the foolish, emotional curate, and set his- heart thumping in that ridiculous way, it was the rich, warm colouring that Dame Nature — who is always setting traps for men — had laid on Avith such a generous- hand. Beauty, like fortune, is merely the result of a happy accident. It is a dis- tinction — a delightful distinction — but it is not a merit. One is so apt to forget this. Robert Lyon forgot it, he overlooked it, at any rate, as he sat watching Bertha Penrose plying her scissors, and fixing and planning those little garments. He looked at her SAveet face and her lovely grey eyes, and he endowed her with all THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 7 tlie virtues in tlie world. There was a freckled, red-haired oirl, who wore glasses, and who was reading a goody-goody book to the mothers of Stoke Lucy while they Avorked, who really possessed most of the virtues he had credited Bertha with, but he did not look at her once durino- the o afternoon. He only remarked that she had a most unpleasant voice, and that the book she was reading was a great deal above the heads of the women who were yawning over their sewing. His allegiance to Bertha Penrose lasted until the following Sunday, when he saw her sister, Phyllis — the second Miss Pen- rose — in the Sunday School. He thought it was Bertha for a moment, but the grey blue eyes were softer ; there was a droop in the eyelids, and about the corners of 8 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the mouth, that he had not remarked in Bertha, and the lips had a quiver, a trem- ulous motion in them at times that he had not seen in the firm decided mouth of the young woman who handled the shears. Her voice was softer, like her eyes, and there was the least little bit of an Irish accent in it. He had not remarked it in Bertha, there was nothing timid, or shy, or nervous about her; it was with that tremulous quiver of the lips, and the shyness that the Irish accent came in. The curate of Stoke Lucy was des- perately in love for a whole week with the second Miss Penrose. His cheeks used to get quite hot when he recalled that delightful Irish voice, and his heart repeated that ridiculous thumping per- THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 9 formaiice, and lie told himself over again that he had found the woman he had been looking for all his life ! Xo doubt he had. If he had been wise he would have accepted his fate thankfully. He could not have done better if he had searched the world over. He would have had the tenderest and most loving wife in — well, in Stoke Lucy. But he was not wise. If he had been, if he had known what was good for him, this story would not have been written. He would have lived a blameless life, and not have made the many mistakes, the sad blun- ders that this veracious history has to recount for a warning and an example to all weak-minded emotional curates. The Reverend Robert Lyon was faithful in his allegiance to Phyllis Penrose until 10 ORCHARD DAMEREL the next mothers' meeting. It was not long to be faithful : it was exactly a week and three clays. He went to the meeting half-an-hour late : he had to pay some visits, and he could not get there before. He was quite ashamed of himself for going in so late ; he ought to have opened the meeting. He made up for it by climbing the stairs- two at a time, and arriving on the scene hot and breathless. He knew exactly what he should see : a row of colourless-looking women, with plain tired faces, seamed with sordid cares ^ sewing away at coarse homely garments ; and there would be a few babies squalling,, perhaps, and a young woman Avith red hair reading- at a table, — readino; in an unpleasant voice an impossible story — and THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 11 there would be a girl with grey eyes snip- ping away at little shirts. The curate of Stoke Lucy was wrong for once. The women were there, and the babies were there, and Bertha Penrose and her scissors were there, but the girl at the table, to be more accurate, the girl sitting on the table and swinoino; her leo's. had not red hair. Her voice was not the least unpleasant, there was just a suspicion, a soupcon of delightful Irish brogue in it, and the book she was reading Avas not a bit above the heads of the audience she was addressing. The faces of the women were no lono;er dull and vacuous, and nobody was yawning. A ripple of laughter had gone round the room and greeted the curate when he 12 ORCHARD DAMEREL. opened the door. He was so astonished that he left the door open, and when he had got half-way across the room, the girl sitting on the table called out to him : before all the mothers, ' Oh, would you shut the door, please !' And he went back humbly and shut it. She did not thank him for shutting it, and she did not look up from her book ; she went on reading and swinging her legs. It was the youngest Miss Penrose, and when the reading and the working were over, and he had closed the meeting with a short prayer. Bertha took him over to the table, and introduced the girl to him as her sister Joan. Joan was exactly like her sisters : that THE CURATE OF STOIvE LUCY. 13^ is, she liacl the same brown hair, and the same bright complexion, and the same dainty profile, and the same grey-blue eyes. The same, but not the same. No superficial observer could have told where the difference in the Penrose girls lay : whether in eyes or lips, or in the droop of the dark-fringed eyelids. There was a difiPerence ; nobody in the world would have mistaken Joan Penrose for either of her sisters, but she was exactly like both. It was the unlikeness rather than the likeness that finished the poor curate of Stoke Lucy. He had never been in love that he could remember before in his life, and now he had fallen in love three times in as many weeks. It was rapid work ; he could not keep on falling in love at 14 ORCHARD DAMEREL. that rate. It was clearly time to stop — he stopped with the youngest Miss Pen- rose. He Avas a superficial, unbalanced young man, not unlike most young fellows of the nineteenth century; he had no ballast whatever to speak of, but he had a genuine passion of admiration and rever- ence in his heart, which once awakened €ould never go to sleep again. The sight of Joan Penrose sitting on the table in that bare, whitewashed parish- room set the tremble in his heart a-going. He had no need to tell himself for the third time that he had found the woman he had been looking for all his life. He was only conscious that the woman had found him. He made up his mind at once, directly THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 15 lie saw her, that no other woman on earth should be the partner of his fate, and of that magnificent stipend of one hundred and fifty pounds a-year. He did not lay himself and his stipend at her feet, all at once, but he made up his mind, as he watched her swino^ino^ her leo\s on that deal table, that the very first moment he had a home to ofi'er her, he would lay himself and the dear little snug nest that was waiting for him somewhere, at her feet, and that he would fly away with her into some sweet sequestered spot, where they would live as happy as two doves for ever after. It was not the difiiculty of choosing be- tween the three Miss Penroses that kept him from declaring his passion for six whole months, after that dav when Joan 16 ORCHARD DAMEREL. had sent him back to shut the door ; he had no hesitation about his choice ; he was only waiting until the dear little nest was ready. It was ready sooner than he expected. Most men who enter the Church as a pro- fession have to wait years and years, if they have no private means, before they are in a position to keep a wife. Of course there are exceptions ; some men are born lucky, and fall naturally into good things. Doors fly open to them wherever they go : they have only to open their hands wide — very wide — and they are filled to overflowing. Fortune, good fortune, never does things by halves. It is all or nothing. Robert Lyon was born lucky ; he was certainly not born rich. His father, a THE CUKATE OF STOKE LUCY. 17 poor, country parson, had left little behind him, except a lot of musty old books, and a cupboard full of yellow, discoloured old sermons. Robert came across these old sermons on the day of the sale at the Rectory after his father's death, when the house was full of Jew brokers, pulling" about all the old familiar things, and mak- ing coarse jokes at the shabbiness and poverty of the dear old home, that was sacred to him — by oh ! so many tender associations — the most sacred place on earth. The brokers were kicking about those yellow, discoloured old manuscripts, that had just been unearthed from a locked cupboard, when he came across them. They had been written years and years ago; the ink was faded, and they were VOL. I. c 18 ORCHARD DAMEREL. covered with dust and cobwebs. They were fit for nothing but to light fires. They were scarcely fit for that ; they were damp and mildewed, and had a earthy smell, like papers have that have been locked up in a damp cupboard for half a century. They were only waste-paper ; they would not even sell for a song, the auctioneer's clerk said, as he kicked them over, and put them into a lot with a fire-guard, a foot-rest, and a waste-paper basket. Robert Lyon took up one of the old faded manuscripts, and the sight of the dear familiar hand-writing brought a rush of tears to his eyes. It would be a very sad song, he thought, and who so fit to sing it as he ? He bought the lot, — waste- paper basket, and foot-rest, and fire-guard. THE CURATE OF STOKE LUCY. 19 The auctioneer's clerk was right : he bought the sermons that had cost the old vicar hours and hours of toil — weary laborious hours, the best part of the best years of his life — for a song. He stuffed them into a carpet-bag, but he left the waste-paper basket and the fire-guard behind. And this was his fortune. Years after, when called upon suddenly to preach an Advent sermon for a college friend in a distant town, he had thrust his hand into the bag that was bulging out with those old manuscripts — he had never thought of them till that moment — and had drawn forth a yellow musty sermon that his father had written and preached twenty years before he was born. By a lucky accident — call it fate or c 2 20 ORCHARD DAMEREL. fortune — he drew forth an Advent sermon. He never stopped to read it ; he only read the superscription, ' Preached the second Sunday in Advent^ 1836, in my own church.^ He stuffed the yellow, musty manuscript into his pocket, and he went his way. He preached the musty old sermon the next day. It was dry and wordy and flavour- less, and was full of old-fashioned doc- trines about the Second Advent. It had been written when men saw things differ- ently, before the age of scepticism and doubt. There was no uncertainty about it, no vagueness. It was an old-fashioned discourse on the great truths of the gospel, the promises of God, the immortality of t\\Q soul. The man who had penned those faded characters on the yellow page had lived THE CUEATE OF STOKE LUCY. 21 and died in an obscure country parish. Xobody outside its narrow limits had ever heard of him, but he had done his little part faithfully. He had buoyed up men in his time by his own definite and un- conquerable faith in the immortality of the soul, and in God. That old musty sermon of his, that his son took hap-hazard out of the bag fifty 3^ears after, was like the blood of righteous Abel : being dead, it yet spoke. It spoke so well, it went so directly home to the heart of one member of the congregation to whom Robert Lyon preached it on that second Sunday in Advent, that six months after it brought him the offer of a living. It was the luckiest sermon he ever preached in his life. 22 CHAPTER II. JOAN Penrose's good fortune. The living came just in time. It came at a most opportune moment. A dreadful thing had happened to the Penrose girls. They had lost all their money ; they were plunged in the deepest despair, when, at the darkest moment, there came the timely offer of the living to Joan's lover, and lifted them out of their trouble, and gave them something to think about. Mrs. Penrose was the widow of an army JOAN Penrose's good fortune. 23 suro^eon, and she had the mao^nificent pension of seventy pounds a-year. She had, besides this fortune, several thousand pounds invested in a colonial bank, and she had in addition a large landed pro- perty of her own in Ireland. The property in Ireland had not brought her in anything for years, and the house that she had inherited from her forefathers was untenanted and falling into decay. Nobody who would pay any rent could be found to live in it, so it remained empty year after year, and fell to pieces bit by bit. If she had had any spirit, she would have gone back to Ireland, and lived in the house herself, and looked after her agent, who managed, or rather mismanaged, her estate. She had not the spirit of a mouse, she had her children to 24 ORCHARD DAMEREL. educate — two boys and three girls — and there were no orraminar-schools or hio^h- schools handy to Ballycoran. The boys would go back to Ireland by- and-by, when they were able to fight their own battles ; but the girls grew quite pale at the thought, and vowed they would never set foot in ' the horrid place.' So Mrs. Penrose lived on her pension, and the interest of her small capital at Stoke Lucy, where there was a good grammar- school for her boys, and her girls had the advantage of select (provincial) society. The blow had fallen on the Penrose household on the very day that Robert Lyon received that unexpected offer of a living. It had been a modest household, and the handsome pension and the small dividends had covered all its wants, quite JOAN PENROSE S GOOD FORTUNE. 25 covered them, but there had never been a penny to spare. Xow the little dividends were sone, and there would be nothino; but the pension left. The bank in which all Mrs. Penrose's money was invested had failed. It is no new thing for a bank to fail. Banks and companies are failing every day, and causing widespread ruin and desolation to hundreds of families. A bank failure is so common a thing that people soon cease to talk about it. It is only when the failure touches one's own immediate circle, and brings unexpected and quite unmerited suffering to helpless, innocent women and children, that one re- cognizes what an awful thing it is. Wrong and robbery and injustice are so common in the world. Somebody makes a blun- der, or a whole communitv go wrong and 26 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. get into a muddle, and confidence is shaken, and there is a run upon the banks, and a general scramble, each for his own, and the weak go to the wall. There had been a run upon the bank, a colonial bank, in which Mrs. Penrose's money was invested, and she had gone to the wall. The blow had fallen with dreadful sud- denness. She was not in the least pre- pared for it. A moment before she had been rich, comparatively rich, prosperous, and happy, — the girls had just been planning some new summer gowns — and now — in a mo- ment after the receipt of that wretched letter — the whole baseless fabric of pros- perity, like Alsnacher's vision, had melted quite away. JOAN Penrose's good fortune. 27 Mrs. Penrose's trustee had written to inform her of the failure of the bank. It was the time when he was in the habit of sending her half-yearly dividends ; instead of the usual cheque for her dividends, he sent her a formal announcement of the col- lapse of the concern in which the money was invested. The poor woman sat like one stunned, after reading that miserable letter. The girls came in half-an-hour after the post- man had brought it, and saw it still open in her hand. Something in her face struck them as they came towards her, in the sweet June sunset. It was a sweet, balmy June evening : it had been a perfect golden June day, and it was a perfect golden June evening. It 28 OPvCIIAED DAMEREL. was still only evening, a long, soft, rosy sunset slowly gilding the lilac bushes, and the tops of the tall rose-trees in the border, and the white jasmine on the Avail. The sunlight had already slipped off the grass, but it lingered on the tall climbing red rose over the window, and on the laburnum-tree that stood near, dropping its pale gold on the path. The two elder girls. Bertha and Phyllis, had been sitting out in the garden until now, planning those summer frocks. They had heard the postman come half- an-hour ago, but his knock did not quicken their pulses, or bring their hearts to their lips, as it is said to do to some young people of their age. They had no lovers to write to them like other girls. No hillet- deuxs ever fluttered in at the windows, or JOAN PENKOSe's good FORTUNE. 29 dropped prosaically into the letter-box of the Poplars. The dear little house that the widow Penrose occupied had three tall poplars quivering at the front gate ; there had once been a knot of poplars standing there, tall and bare in winter, grey and quivering in summer, and from these grim sentinels, or what remained of them, the house had taken its name. They were quivering in the still June air, and casting long shadows across the grass, when the girls ran up the steps of the silent house. Mrs. Penrose was sitting with that letter in her hands, beside the open window, when the girls entered the room. They had burst in, as girls do when they are hot and eager. They were very eager just now. 30 ORCHARD DAMEREL. They had settled a burning question. They had been considering it all day, not to say disputing it, and they had settled it at last. The beauty of the warm June sunset, the sweet, soft haze that was creep- ing up from the valley, the golden light that was lingering upon the hills, the fra- grance of that jasmine flower, the breath of the tall white lilies in the border did not touch them as they discussed that burning question. They did not heed the swallows circling overhead, or the twittering of the finches in the apple-trees, or the rooks cawing on their way to bed ; they were so full of that •question they had to settle before the Lon- don post went out that they did not notice ^ny of these familiar sights and sounds. One gets so used to Nature : the Pen- JOAN Penrose's good fortune. 31 rose girls liad lived in the midst of these sweet scents and sounds half their life ; they had grown accustomed to the quiver- ing of the poplars, and the sunlight slip- ping off the grass. They had watched it hundreds of time before ; there was no reason why they should look at it with different eyes to-night ; besides, they had the colour of those new Liberty silk dresses to settle before the post went out. '^Ye have quite made up our minds, mamma !' they exclaimed, in a breath, as they burst into the room where the poor woman was sitting with that wretched letter. ' It is to be old rose ' They stopped, with the door still open, and the words on their lips, and looked at the stricken face at the window. 32 . ORCHARD DAMEREL. Mrs. Penrose was sitting bolt upright, with her knitting in her lap, as she had dropped it when she opened that letter^ and she was looking straight before her, not at anything in particular, but some- thing a long way oiF. Whatever it was she was looking at, it had taken all the colour out of her cheeks, and drawn doAvn the corners of her mouth, and her jaw had fallen, and a hard, up- right line had come out on her forehead. She looked ten — twenty years — older. ' Oh ! mamma, mamma, what is the matter?' They were both by her side in a moment ; and Bertha had her arms around her, and Phyllis had sunk down at her feet, and was holding her cold hands within her own. They had forgotten all JOAN Penrose's good fortune. 33 about those ' old rose ' summer frocks. It ought to have been a relief to the stricken mother having those tender arms around her ; but she was not thinking about the girls. She was thinking only about her boys, about Clement and Chris, who were doing their ' home-work ' in an adjoining room. She was thinking of the future she had planned for them : the prosperous careers that she had mapped out for them — school scholarships, uni- versity successes, college fellowships — the Church, the Bar, opening their doors wide to receive them. A long, long vista of success and distinction that only a mother's fancy could create. Alsnacher's vision was all over now ; the stately edifice had toppled over. The poor woman was sitting in the midst of VOL. I. D 84 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the ruins when the girls came upon her with that open letter in her hand ; she was not thinking of them, she had not a thought for anyone but the dear boys scratching away with their pens in the next room. 'Is it all gone, mother, — all?' Bertha asked, when she had read the letter, and folded it up, and put it back into the envelope. She always did things method- ically. Phyllis did not say a word ; she only knelt on the ground, chafing the poor woman's cold hands ; she hardly dared to look up into her face. ' All, everything, except the pension.' ' Is there nothing else left, mother, — nothing?' ' Nothing !' JOAX Penrose's good fortune. 35 The hopelessness of that one word made the girl kneeling at her feet shiver. There was silence in the shaded room looking out into the green garden. The sun was slowly, very slowly sliding oiF the jasmine-bush and the laburnum ; it had reached already the topmost boughs of the cherry-tree in the kitchen garden below ; it would soon be climbing up the wall of the cottages in the lane, up the wall, and over the red roofs. Bertha, standing by her mother's side at the open window, saw the sunlight slipping oiF all these familiar things with a strange sense that it was slipping out of her life, and that the shadows were creeping in. The silence was broken by the sound of voices in the next room, fresh young voices D 2 36 ORCHARD DAMEREL. and laughter. Work was over, and the boys were putting away their books. They would be here in a moment — and they would know all. ' Oh, ray boys ! my poor boys !' the stricken mother moaned. Her stony calm- ness was shaken, and she broke down in a sudden passion of tears. The girls had never seen their mother so moved before, not in this way. It was no summer tempest ; it was a fierce, wild storm of wee]3ing, it was a passion of despair. Bertha let her weep her tears out on her bosom, but she could not shed a single tear herself. She could not understand her mother being so moved at the loss of money, mere money. If one of them had died suddenly, or had been injured, she JOAX Penrose's good fortune. 37 could have understood it, — but for mere money ! The boys were already in the passage outside, and one of them was turning the handle of the door, but Phyllis was before- hand with them. She had jumped up at the sound of their footsteps outside, and set her back against the door. ' Go away !' she cried, sharply, not in her usual voice, ' go away, — you can't come in !' ' Oh, can't we ? We'll see about that,' came a cheerful response from outside, and another young back was set against the other side of the door. It was a tussle between two strong young backs. Phyllis set her shoulders &mly, and her heels firmly, and the door creaked ominously with the weight of the 38 ORCHARD DAMEREL. heavy body on the other side ; but Phyllis did not give way, she did not budge an inch. ' Go away!' she said, between her teeth,. ' go away ! I'm ashamed of you. Mother s got a head-ache.' ' You should have said that before,' the boy said, sulkily, as he stumped down the passage. He did not seem to make much account of the maternal head-ache as he went whistling and stamping down the passage. He was strong and healthy and sixteen,, what should he know about head-aches — or heart-aches ? Phyllis locked the door when he wa& gone — at least, she slipped the latch ; there was no key in the lock — and then she came over and shut the window. The JOAN PENROSE S GOOD FORTUNE. 39 evening was growing chilly, she remarked, and the boys would hear the sound of her mother weeping outside. ' I don't think everything has gone, mother,' she said, speaking very slowly, and in a voice she made an effort to keep steady. ' It might have been worse. AYe are not gone — not any of us. AYe are all left — and we are all strong ; you don't know how strong we are.' She was thinking of that tussle at the door, and how hard Clem had pushed, and. what a difficulty she had to keej) her feet — but she had kept them. It seemed to her like the struo^crle she would have to go through. It quite braced her up for it. ' I don't see Avhy the boys shouldn't have come in ; they will have to know some 40 ORCHARD DAMEREL. time. You can't keep it from them,' Bertha said, drearily. ' They needn't know yet ; not till we've had time to think it over. Perhaps it won't look so bad, mother, when we've thought it over.' Mrs. Penrose could only moan and wring her hands. She refused to be comforted. ' It couldn't be worse !' she sobbed. ' Oh, yes, it could, mother ! It could be a great deal worse. The pension might have gone too. We are all big and grown up, all but the boys, and we are all strong and able to work, and if we all cling to- gether and help each other, it will not be so very bad.' No one to have seen Phyllis Penrose, with her soft eyes, and her shy, timid JOAN Penrose's good fortune. 41 manner, would have believed it of her. No one would have given her credit to have the courage of a mouse, and here she was the champion of the family, preaching hope, and faith, and courage ! Bertha kissed her mother, and soothed her with her soft, clinging arms around her neck, but her lips faltered, and she could not find a word of comfort to say to her. She was thinking of the butcher's book and the baker's book, w^hich she had added up that afternoon, and the boys' school bills, and the quarter's rent that was just due — she never gave a single thought to those ' old rose ' Liberty frocks. She thought of the trades-people, and the tax-collectors, and the midsummer bills that would all be coming in in a ^veek or two, — and that there would be 42 ORCHA-RD DAMEREL. nothing but that miserable pension to meet them. Phyllis was not so practical as her elder sister : — she could not have cut out a little shirt without a pattern if her life had de- pended upon it — she thought of nothing but comforting and sustaining her mother under the blow that had fallen upon her. ' If we all do our best, mother,' she said, almost cheerfully, choking down that foolish tremor in her voice, ' it will not be so bad as it seems. Perhaps it may be all for the best ; we don't know. Things, when you come to look at them, and get used to them, are never so bad as they seem.' Mrs. Penrose could only moan. She was not a philosopher like Phyllis. JOAN peneose's good foktune. 43 While they were still talking, or to be more accurate, while Phyllis was talk- ing, and her mother was moaning, some- body was coming up the path. Some- body with a quick eager, eager step r no one could mistake that footstep. Joy ! joy ! joy ! rang in every beat of it on the gravelled path, on the stones, on the passage outside. A quick, imperative step with a message going before it. The two girls looked at each other. They knew the footstep quite well : they had heard it every day since it iirst pat- tered over the floor eighteen years ago, but they did not know the message. ' Mamma ! mamma !' some one was call- ing outside. 44 ORCHARD DAMEREL. The voice was eager and imperative like the footstep. Phylhs unlocked the door of the room, and the youngest Miss Penrose burst in. She did not come in, she burst in. ' Oh ! mamma, — girls, — I am — going — ^— to be married !' The youngest Miss Penrose was so breathless that she had to make a pause between each word. Her heart was beat- ing so high that she could scarcely get the words out. Her eyes Avere shining, her cheeks were crimson, and she was quivering all over with this strange, delicious happiness. ' Going to be married !' Mrs. Penrose murmured faintly. ' Going to be married f echoed Bertha and Phyllis in a breath. JOAN PENEOSE's good FORTUNE. 45 ' Yes, — it is settled. — I am going — to — to marry — Robert Lyon, and he has got a living — a lovely living !' Mrs. Penrose wiped her tears away, and embraced her youngest daughter. ' Mother has got a head-ache,' the girls explained, when she feebly brandished that damp pocket-handkerchief. How could they mar the joy of that supreme moment with their miserable news ? 46 CHAPTER III. A TIME OF ROSES. ' It was the time of roses, We plucked them as we passed.' It was quite true. Joan Penrose was going to be married immediately. There was nothing to wait for. Robert Lyon had got a living, a good living, and a lovely rectory-house, and a fine glebe in the sweet, fruitful west country. A Avealthy old lady, who had the living in her gift, had been impressed on the A TIME OF ROSES. 47 one occasion that she had heard him preach Avith his beautiful sermon; with his doctrine, rather, — ' It was not often,' she remarked to her friends when they questioned her choice, ' that one heard such doctrine now-a-days.' This was quite true. The new rector remembered with a pang, when Lady Ayhnerton's words were repeated to him, that the sermon was fifty years old if it was a day. He had no qualms of conscience about accepting this great gift in those early days when the living of Coombe Damerel was offered to him. He had not the remotest idea why it had been offered to him. He could not think how the old lady had heard of him : he had forgotten all about that Advent sermon he had preached 48 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. months ago at a place a hundred miles away from Coombe. He only remembered at that happy time that he could offer the woman he loved a home. He would not have spoken to Joan of love for the world before that living fell into his lap. He would not have asked her for any consideration to share the lot of a poor curate. He shrank from the thought of bringing the woman he loved and reverenced, above every other woman in the world, down to that low level. He could not have borne to have dragged her down into poverty, to have seen her grow prematurely anxious, and careworn, and troubled, to have watched her beauty fade, and seen her strength and her heart failing as the sad burdened years wore on. A TIME OF ROSES. 4^ He would rather have been silent for ever. It was this that had kept him silent so long, not the difficulty of choos- ing. He had made his choice the first moment he saw her at that mothers' meet- ing. He had been led up to it by degrees, step by step ; first Bertha, then Phyllis, and last of all Joan. He came up to the Poplars the next day, and saw Mrs. Penrose and the orirls. He saw the mother first, and then he saw the o'irls.and received their conoTatulations. He told them all he knew, or as much as he knew, about his living. He was as happy and pleased as a schoolboy. ' There is a tennis-lawn,' he said, ' and you must, both of you, come down and play tennis ; and there is a big orchard — I believe there are three big orchards — the VOL. I. E 50 ORCHARD DAMEREL. boys must come down and pick the apples ; and there are a lot of old trees on the lawn, and no end of birds' nests ; and the place is overrun with rabbits and hares. Chris must bring his gun when he comes down in the Christmas holidays ; I dare- say we shall be able to borrow some ferrets.' ' You will never be able to take them all in,' Mrs. Penrose said, pleased and smiling. She had forgotten for the moment all about that wretched bank. ' Oh ! you don't know how big the house is. It is a great, old-fashioned, country house, with I'm afraid to say how many rooms. We shall not be able to occupy a quarter of it. There is stabling for a dozen horses, and a great coach-house, and barns.' A TIME OF ROSES. 51 Mrs. Penrose smiled and smoothed her silk gown. She had a habit of smoothing her gown when she was pleased. ' What will you do with so much stabling ?' ' Oh, we shall want a good deal of it. I shall keep a quiet mare for Joan to ride, and a hack that we can use in the carriage, and I should like Joan to have a pair of ponies to drive.' All this sounded delio'htful. A bio- country house that they could not fill ; orchards, and tennis-lawn, and ferreting for the boys, and a pair of ponies for Joan to drive. No wonder Mrs. Penrose smoothed her gown. They did not tell Joan anything about that bank failure. What was the use ? She would soon be married and away, and E 2 uSSn OF ILLINOIS 52 OliCHARD DAMEREL. it would be time enough then to begin to pare, and scrape, and live upon nothing. Why should they cloud the brightness of that glad, glad time with their sad tale of poverty and misfortune ? Joan would never have to bear it ; it was their own special trouble, not hers. She would be away in her own home, the big rectory with the orchards, and tennis-laAvn, and flower-gardens ; she would be driving that pair of ponies through the green lanes and over the lovely hills of the sweet west country, while they were pinching and scraping in a mean little house in a stifling street. Joan was to be married at once, as soon as her few^ frocks, her little humble trous- seau could be got ready. It would have been a thousand pities to have marred A TIME OF ROSES. 53 that glad, happy time with the story of the failure of that wretched bank. The glad, sunshiny June days passed as no other June days had passed since the world began — at least, Robert Lyon thought there never had been such a June — there never could be such a June again! And Joan — well, Joan trod on air. She was not alone in that delicious experience. Every engaged girl, who is going to marry the man she loves, goes through exactly the same amazing performance during the first weeks of her engagement. Joan's life had never been anything but a happy one ; everything and everybody had al- ways given way to her, but now — now — the happy, tranquil days that were past looked grey and colourless against the bright colours, the golden light of joy, the 54 ORCHARD DAMEREL. rosy lines of love and hope that had sud- denly come into her life. There was a flutter at her heart, and her cheeks were alive with blushes, and she could not keep the smiles and the dimples from breaking out on her face at all times and seasons. She could not keep the joy out of it. She was so brimming over with happiness that it yjould bubble to the surface. There was a great deal to be done be- fore putting up the banns, and ordering the bride-cake. There was that great country rectory to be furnished, and ser- vants to be engaged, and the ponies to be bought, the ponies and the low basket- carriage. It would take along time to get a perfectly matching pair ; they could not be bought in a hurry. A week after the A TIME OF EOSES. 00 engagement, Robert Lyon took his be- trothed down to Coombe Damerel. He had never seen this wonderful great fortune that Providence had bestowed upon him : the big roomy house, the wide lawns and orchards, the fields and gardens that were his for life. His freehold as much as if he had inherited them through a long line of descent. Xo one could ever take them away from him : they were his, his own freehold, as if they had been handed down from father to son since the Conquest. It was right that they should see this House Beautiful, this great estate together. They started for Carlingford in the early June morning, and came back in the dewy June night, and had six hours to wander over their new domain. 56 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. They did a good deal in that six hours, or rather four whole hours. The train put them down at Carlingford station, and they had one hour's drive through a lovely country in the blue June weather before they reached Coombe. They could have done the distance in half the time, but they would not let the driver hurry. They delayed their happi- ness ; they were not at all eager when it came to those last few miles ; they liked to dally with it, and put it off like children. They wanted to see all that lay between them and their future home ; they could not afford to miss anything. There was something at every turn to stop and won- der at : green, glowing valleys, and hills with a purple mantle of mist still about them. There never were such hills. A TIME OF ROSES. 57 Joan declared, they were like mountains ! There never were such rich orchards — apples and pears, plums and cherries — nothing came amiss in this fruitful land. And the flowers, — it was a world of colour and fragrance, and over all was an intense blue heaven, all melting into light. The hedgerows rose up tall on either side the road, banks of rosy-fingered honey- suckle, and trailing branches of wild roses, and flowering elder bushes, and foxgloves tall and dappled. It was June, the blossoming time of the year. The summer air was full of sweet scents and sweet sounds as they drove through the leafy green lanes to Coombe. A lark, a hundred larks, were singing over head, and there was a blackbird, or a chaffinch, or some other delightful crea- 58 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. ture singing in every busli, and a thrush was calling after them all the way, — of course he was addressing Joan, — ' Pretty dear ! pretty dear ! First the chimneys, then the gables, then the house itself came in view. A lovely mellow old house in the midst of wide lawns and stately trees. It was an old rectory-house built years, and years ago, in those good old days when tithes had suffered no depreciation, and the living had been Avorth twice, three times as much as it was worth now. The tithes had dwindled year by year, but the old house had stood unchanged. It had only grown mellower and statelier with the years. The ivy had grown around its walls, and moss and lichen had crept A TIME OF ROSES. 59* among the stones. It quite took Joan's breath away to see the rows and rows of tall, staring windows, and the stacks of chimneys, and the flower-gardens, and the green-houses, and the stabling and out- buildings. She did not see them all at once ; she saw enouo^h to brino- her heart into her mouth ; she could not find a single word to say as she drove up beneath the chest- nuts to the great gravelled sweep in front of the house. She had expected to see a big, rambling, roomy old house, but she had not expected this. The wide green- ness of the lawns, the giant trees that had seen so many rectors come and go, the shady drive beneath the chestnuts, the orchards spreading downward to the river ^ €0 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the gardens ablaze with flowers, had a great effect upon Joan. It was like being set down in an enchanted land. All hers; all, everything — lawns, gar- dens, orchards, conservatories — actually conservatories, — big house, giant trees, shady avenues, great wide stretches of tranquil greenness — it was all hers, every bit of it. It quite took her breath away. There was no one living in the house, no caretaker. It was not to let like an ordinary house ; there was no one to show people over it, and expatiate on its advan- tages. There were no men working in the gardens, no grooms in the stables : every- thing was deserted and standing still like the Sleeping Palace. It might have been standing still for a hundred years. Every- thing was in its place as it had been A TIME OF ROSES. 61 ordered ages since. Thought and tune might have stood still, too. Perhaps they had, and care and pleasure, hope and pain had brought the fated fairy prince — and princess — to awake them. It was no use hammering away at that closed door, and sending dreadful echoes on ghostly errands through all the silent house ; there was nothing to be done but to send the man, who had driven them over, into the village to iind out who had the key of the house, and to bring it back Avith him. While he was away on this errand, the lovers walked round the deserted house and saw all they could of it from the out- side. They were not content with the outside, though there was a good deal of it to see, and it took them a long time to 62 ORCHARD DAMEREL. go round it. They looked in at all the windows they could reach ; they flattened their noses against the panes in their eagerness to see what the rooms were like. They would have looked ridiculous objects inside, with their faces pressed tight against the glass, if there had been any- body there to see them. ' This must be your study, Robin,' Joan said, with her lips against the pane. She called him ' Robin ' already. It had been ^ Mr. Lyon ' a week ago, then, shyly, ' Robert.' Now it was ' Robin.' ' See ; there are the book-cases for your books ; I am so glad they have left the book-cases ; it would have pulled the walls about so to have taken them down ; and there is a big cupboard by the fireplace A TIME UF ROSES. 63 for your sermons. Do you see, the door is open ? it has got one, two, three shelves. Oh, it will hold such a lot of sermons !' The new rector of Coombe Damerel dutifully flattened his nose against the j)ane to get a view of that cupboard and its gaping shelves. He owned, with a sigh, it would take a lot of sermons. Joan did not waste much time over the study, she was burning to see the drawing- room. There was a wide bay window to the drawing-room that was as big as any ordinary room, and there was a door that opened into the conservatory. The bay window was rather high up above the steep bank of velvet lawn, that sloped away on the western side of the house, to the flower-gardens that spread 64 ORCHARD DAMEREL. out beneath. Joan ran up the bank and peeped in the window. ' Oh, Itobin !' she said. She had not heart left in her for another word. It was a long lofty room like a church, and it had a grand marble mantelpiece, and it was painted white and gold ; a big old-fashioned wainscotted room, with great white panels, with gilding round, and a beautiful ceiling with white moulded panels. It would take wagon loads of furniture to fill it. It ought to be lovely old furniture to match the lovely old room. The dining-room was nearly as large. A stately spacious room, that would ac- commodate twenty or thirty people and leave room to spare. They would be quite A TIME OF EOSES. 65 lost in it, Joan thought, as she stood at the window flattening her nose against the pane. It had been built in the old hospitable days when money was plentiful, and the owners of the house were not dependent on their tithes and glebe. The house had been built for, and occupied for genera- tions by the descendants of the great family at Orchard Damerel. It had been the younger brother's portion. It had been occupied by men who had large pri- vate incomes, rich squire-parsons, who en- joyed the best society in the county, and spent their days in hunting, shootings fishing, giving dinner-parties, and playing whist till midnight, and on Sundays donned a surplice and went into the pulpit. VOL. I. F 60 ORCHARD DAMEREL. There were no younger sons now at Orchard Damerel ; the old family had lan- guished out; there was no one left but that old woman who had listened to Robert Lyon's Advent sermon. When the happy, quite bewildered young people had seen all they could through the windows of the house, they -wandered oiF into the flower-garden. It was the time of roses, — the time of red geraniums, of scarlet poppies, of limp drooping laburnum, of heliotrope, mignon- ette, double stocks, of lilies tall and white — of every sweet blossoming thing. It was an old-fashioned garden, like the house, and it was full of old-fashioned flowers, the dear old favourites that every- body loves. The borders were full of perennials that A TIME OF ROSES. 67 had been there years and years, and their ancestors before them. They had gone down into the earth every winter and come up every spring, and blossomed every summer as they were blossoming now. The varying year had clothed and reclothed the thorns and ivies and wood- bines in the hedge, and the tall lilac-tree that nodded over the wall, and sent its new blood up into the old gnarled apple- trees that stood all aslant in the orchard below\ There had been little change here for generations ; the same old trees, the same flowers springing up in the borders ; only the hedge had grown into a little wood, close matted with thorn and wood- bine and briar. The briar roses were in bloom in the hedge now, and they covered it with their pink, starry blossoms. e2 68 ORCHARD DAMEREL. The lovers passed through the sweet- smelling flower-garden, where the colour and the light almost dazzled Joan. It seemed more than she could bear, this brimming over of the cup, these bubbles of delight breaking in the sunshine. They opened a gate in the rose-covered hedge and passed into the enclosure beyond, an enclosure sacred to vegetables. There was a great deal that was practical in Joan. The sight of those homely vegetables, the rows of peas and beans, the dear little potatoes, and the asparagus, the little green lettuces, and the slender young carrots all desiring to be pulled, or dug, or gathered, and to be boiled and eaten, or chopped up and consumed with a due pro- portion of oil and vinegar, touched her A TIME OF ROSES. 69 deeply, more than the flowers had done with all their sweetness. Everything was ready for them — ready and waiting. The lovely crinkly green cabbages were literally breaking their hearts in their desire to be prompt- ly cut, and boiled, and eaten. They had burst their tight outside leaves with the vehemence of their desire, and their beautiful white hearts were breaking to pieces. Joan felt quite sorry for them. She walked up and down the garden paths, making fresh discoveries every minute. There was a lovely bed of strawberries, and there was nobody to pick them. If only the boys had been there ! The kitchen-garden was as full of fruit as the flower-garden was full of flowers. The 70 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. wants of great families had been amply supplied from that old garden. Currants and raspberries, plums and peaches, pears and apricots, all ripening in their season. It made one's mouth water on that hot summer day to see the provision that the old dead and gone rectors had made for those that came after. Joan devoured the ripe, red straw- berries that her lover gathered for her — his hrst-fruits — but he could not swallow any himself. There was an unaccountable lump in his throat which he had not remarked before. There was a lump in his throat, and a mist before his eyes. He could not understand these things being his. ' What have I done ? What have I done ?' he asked himself a dozen times as A TIME OF ROSES. 71 he walked up and down between those homely bean-stalks and currant-bushes. Joan was much more practical. She was thinking what a quantity of jam she would make w^ith that fruit, and that she would feed the household, the maids, and the orrooms upon vegetables. She was feeling the white hearts of the cabbages, and remarking how hard and solid they were, when the driver came back with the key. 72 CHAPTER IV. COOMBE DAMEREL. It was more and more like a dream, a blissful unreality, unlocking that great hall door, and going together into the empty house. They went in hand-in-hand. There was something that even in the midst of their happiness struck them with something like awe as they went over the empty house. They began at the big rooms on the COOMBE DAMEREL. 73 basement, and went slowly through the place, floor after floor. Every room was sacred to some silent memories ; men and women had lived in them, and suflPered in them, and, let us hope, rejoiced in them, years before they were born. They passed through the empty, silent birth chambers and death chambers with hushed footsteps, and speaking involun- tarily in whispers. They went up into the garrets last of all, the dusty old gar- rets with the lean-to roof, where there was not room enough between floor and ceil- ing for a decent-sized ghost to stand upright. When they had been in every room, the}' came downstairs again into the hall. It was cjuite a relief to come down into the hall, where the door was open, and 74 OKCHARD DAMEREL. the beautiful green world could be seen outside, and the balmy June air was blowing in. They sat down on the stairs, there was no other place for them to sit down, and they talked over this great good fortune that had come to them. ' It will take a lot of furniture to fill all those rooms,' the new rector said, presently. His face was a little long, not to say grave ; he did not look nearly so bright and eager as when he was pacing up and down between the bean-stalks in the kitchen-garden, and he had left oiF murmuring to himself that ridiculous, unanswerable question, ' What have I done?' Perhaps he was tired, or it was the close air of the shut-up house. ' We needn't furnish them all at once,' COOMBE DAMEREL. 75 Joan said, sharply. ' We can furnisli a few at a time, as we want them. AVe must furnish all the downstair rooms, the drawino'-room and the dininD;-room, and you can't do without a library. We needn't furnish more rooms upstairs than Ave need. We can lock the doors, and nobody will know but what they are furnished.' ' I am afraid it will take a great deal to furnish those big rooms downstairs^ we shall have very little left for the — horses — and carriage, and we shall want a lot of servants, living in this great house.' He could not keep back a sigh, though he tried to cover it up. He did not see his way clear about these ponies for Joan on which he had set his heart. 76 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' How much will it take, Robin ? How much can we afford?' ' I have not got very much, dear, not quite two thousand pounds. I am afraid it will not go a very long way in furnish- ing this great house, and in buying car- riages and horses.' ' Two thousand pounds ! Why, that is quite a fortune, Robin. We shall be able to do a great deal with two thousand pounds. We will write to Maple's, and the Stores, and get catalogues, and pick out the things very carefully. We shall be able to furnish the house beautifully on a thousand pounds, and then you will have nearly another thousand left for the carriage and horses.' Robert Lyon looked into the clear eyes, so full of hope and courage, and took COOMBE DAMEKEL. 77 heart. Of course slie knew best. AVomen have so much better heads for business than men. He was quite angry with himself for being disheartened. When they had quite finished the house, they went over the stables. They were lovely stables, with accommodation for fifteen horses, and several loose boxes. They were exactly what the stables of a great country house should be ; there was every convenience, and they were in capi- tal order. To a man with a couple of thousands a year and a taste for hunting, they would have been delightful. One ought to have been able to keep at least half-a-dozen grooms washing carriages and rubbino^ down horses from mornina' till night in that capacious stable-yard. The new rector stifled another sisfh as 78 ORCHARD DAMEREL. he left tlie stables, and went across tlie paddock, and through one of the wide apple-orchards to the church. There was a path in the grass all the way that the grooms had worn in passing. He had for- gotten all about the church until he had quite finished with the stables. He felt himself so exactly like a country gentle- man who had succeeded to the paternal estate that he had quite overlooked the church. The driver had brought over the key of the church with the key of the house ; they were tied together on the same string — it was the rector's key to the little door in the chancel, and it went with the house. When Robert locked the hall-door he saw the other key, and then he suddenly re- COOMBE DAMEREL. 79 membered that he had got to see the church. Side by side they walked together through the apple-orchard. They had gone through so many experiences to- gether since the morning, that they felt like old married peoj^le. They were grave, almost silent, as they walked beneath the apple-trees in the orchard ; the weight of all this wealth and happiness seemed more than they could bear. The world was full of love and happiness, full, brimming over. The sunlight was dropping down on their path between the laden apple-boughs over- head, — Joan could not help remarking how laden they were as she looked up, — and the buttercups tall and golden were crowding up at their feet. The fields 80 ORCHARD DAMEREL. were quite ablaze like a dappled eloth of gold with yellow buttercups, and the mea- dow grasses were in bloom. The grass was quite ready for cutting ; there would be a heavy shear this year. There would be quite a respectable rick of hay with all these fields and orchards. The new rector was thinking of the hay when they reached the church-gate. They could not see the church till they came upon it. A little low-roofed country church, with an old grey tower, with a sharp-pointed shin- gled spire rising from it. The tower was centuries older than the spire, but they were both gre}^ and covered with lichens. The churchyard was full of graves and moss-covered tombstones. '■ What a dear little church !' Joan said, COOMBE DAMEEEL. 81 as they walked up througli the yard, but the new rector said nothing. His con- science rather pricked him for having thought so much about the hay, and the stables, and the furnishino^, and lea vino: such a small corner in his mind for the church. A dear old country churchyard full of green mounds, and tombstones all aslant. It must have been an old, old yard to be so full of old tombs and lichen-covered slabs. The grass grew tall and rank between the graves, and the old falling tombstones were green with moss, and yellow lichens had crept over the slabs, and obliterated the inscriptions. Robert paused as he walked up the path to read, or try to read, the records on the old worn stones. He could not but think, VOL. I. G S2 OKCHARD DAMEREL. -as he walked slowly up the path, over w^hich four centuries of men and women had passed, of his predecessors, who had come, as he had come, full of hope, and youth may be, and strength and courage, up that same path, and had grown grey and feeble as the years went on, and by- and-by were laid beneath the chancel stones, one after the other living and dy- ing amid his flock, yielding up his charge to another and going to his solemn account. He trod softly between the graves, and paused at the chancel door, and took off his hat. He did not know why he took off his hat in the yard, before he unlocked the door : the air was heavy with — he did not know what the air was heavy with. He turned the old key in the old door, COOMBE DAMEREL. 83 and went in with a strange feeling in his heart that he could not understand, and he stood bare-headed in the church that was his — his always, so long as God gave him life and strength to deliver his sacred message. A solemn charge ! It was rather a dark little church, with big round pillars supporting the arches of the roof, and there was an old painted screen across the chancel and the aisle, which though horribly mutilated was still beautiful. There were triple lancets in the east €nd, and some single lancets in the south wall, and a lovely decorated west window. It was difficult to determine the date of the various parts as scarcely one window remained in its original state, and g2 84 ORCHARD DAMEREL. plaster had at various times been liberally apj^lied to the walls and roof. Divided by a carved screen from the chancel was a north chapel, belonging to the noble family at the Court. It was more like a vault than a chapel ; it was so full of old tombs and brasses of dead and gone Damerels, that there was scarcely room for the living. Two seats with hi2:h carven backs were crowded into one corner of the chapel, for the use of the living representatives of the race, and the rest of the space was reserved for the dead. Joan shivered when she peeped into the chapel through the carved screen — she could not go in as the door was locked, she could only peep in between the rails. She would not have sat alone in that chill COOMBE DAMEREL. 85 ghostly place for the world, with all those effigies of dead and gone Damerels around her. It was a lovely church, and it was in lovely order. There was nothing want- ing — nothing — not even a cushion for the pulpit, or a book-marker for the lectern. The only Avay in which the new rector could show his gratitude for this great gift, this wonderful Providence that had fallen into his lap unasked, was to do his duty, his simple duty — nothing more — in that sacred j^lace unto which God had cer- tainly called him. Before Joan went away, she gathered some flowers in the rectory garden to take back with her. She was so full of her good fortune that she wanted to take back some of the fruits 86 ORCHARD DAMEREL. and flowers of this rich, fruitful land — this Canaan flowing with milk and honey in which her lot had fallen — to show her mother and the girls. They would not believe half of it if she did not take away with her, like the spies of old, an earnest of the exceeding richness of the land. She gathered a great armful of roses, a rich lovely bunch of foam and freshness, to take back with her ; she snipped oiF the sweet fragrant rose-buds with reckless wantonness. It would have gone to the heart of a rose-grower to have seen the havoc she made in that rectory garden. In the sweet summer dusk they drove back through the leafy lanes. Soft, blue mists were creeping up from the valleys, and purple tints were lingering on the hills ; the sun was setting in a ball of fire COOMBE DAMEREL. 87 betind tlie churcli and tlie village, gilding the tall shingled spire and the red roofs ; the blue smoke was curling up from the farm-house chimneys, and the dappled cows were grazing in the rich grass, and every- thing was golden, and peaceful, and prosperous. 88 CHAPTER V. A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. Robert Lyon never forgot as long as he lived — perhaps he will not forget it, when life is finished — this life — he will go on remembering it — the sweet-smelling gloaming of that June night, when he drove through the dusky lanes, with his heart full to bursting of the smell of the new-mown hay, and the honeysuckle in the hedge, and of the strange wonderful thing that had happened to him. A WOXDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 89 It did not occur to him then, it did not occur to him till long after, that this great gift which had fallen into his lap could be anything but an unmixed good. What man in his senses would question the wisdom and the goodness of the kind Providence that showered upon him such rich gifts ? A lovely old country house and grounds, a wide estate in the midst of the loveliest country in the world, and an income of nearly three hundred a- year ? To be more accurate, the rector of Coombe Damerel had a net income of exactly two hundred and seventy-eight pounds a-year, to keep up an establish- ment that might — well, that had indeed cost his predecessor one to two thousand a-year to keep up. The house was exactly 90 ORCHARD DAMEREL. fitted for a tenant with at least three times his income. There was extensive stab- linof, accommodation for numerous serv- ants, large reception-rooms, expensive flower-gardens and hot-houses ; what more could a man with large private means desire ? It showed exactly the extreme wisdom of the adage we all quote impatiently, and with a sense of injustice, 'Unto him that hath much shall much be given.' The rich man was precisely the right person to receive this rich gift. It was out of the question for a poor man ; it was like that unpleasant comparison people sometimes make when they see riches and beauty — female beauty — grossly misplaced. It did not occur to Joan for a single moment that this rich jewel which had A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 91 fallen to her lot was misplaced. She looked upon it as a wonderful dispensation of Providence ; a proof, if one were want- ing, of the wisdom and far-sightedness of the Great Dispenser, who had recognised Robert's great merits, and had rewarded them as was meet. She accepted her jewel of gold and wore it, not in her ear, but in her heart of hearts. It was nothing more than Robert deserved. If the two people most concerned did not question the wisdom of the gift and the prudence of accepting it, there Avas no one else to C|uestion it. Mrs. Penrose feebly remonstrated when Joan put down big sums in her store-list for the side- boards and couches she set her heart upon to furnish those great rooms. ' My dear,' her mother would say, with 92 ORCHARD DAMEREL. a weak smile, remembering what these big sums would represent in that bare house- hold, — boys' education, rent, wages, food, coals, — ' my dear,' she said, smothering a sigh, ' I don't think the sum you have set aside for furnishing will cover all those expensive items. You must recollect that there are other things besides furniture, chairs, and tables, and hangings. There is the linen. The linen, as you will have to buy all new, will be quite an expensive item. And then there will be the plate — ' ' Oh, we shall get a lot given us for wedding-presents, mamma. You must tell everybody to give us silver. We shan't buy any until we see what is given us. You might drop a hint to people, you know, of what things we want : spoons, and forks, and entree-dishes^ and tea-sets, A WONDERFUL PEOVIDEXCE. 93 silver tea-sets, and things for the table. I hope no one will work us anything. I da hate needlework presents. I like some- thing solid.' With all her frivolity, Joan was practical. ' Mamma doesn't think the two thousand pounds will last out, Robin,' she said to her betrothed, in her blunt way, as they were looking over the lists together. 'She thinks we ought to begin in a smaller way, and buy things as we can afford them.' Robert Lyon laughed, a low happy laugh. ' If we cannot aiford them now, we shall never be able to afford them,' he said, gaily ; ' my income is not likely to increase.' ' We don't want it to increase, Robin, It will be quite enough. We shall never 94 OKCHARD DAMEREL. be able to spend so much money. Think, nearly three hundred pounds a-year on only two people, — and no rent to pay, — and that great garden, that will supply us in vegetables and fruit — more than we can eat if we had nothing else — all the year round !' Robin had thought it over dozens of times. He thought, considering the gar- den, and no rent to pay, that it would be enough, quite enough — but there would not be anything to spare. They were as happy as Cock Robin and Jenny Wren in the old nursery rhyme. They Avere going to live on love and red currant wine. This source of income was never likely to fail, whatever else happened. The furnishing was a more serious A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 95 undertaking than Joan had anticipated. It is astonishino^ what a lot of thino^s a house of the most modest dimensions requires. Xot chairs and tables only, one can count these off on one's lingers, but odds and ends. There seemed to be no end to that long, long list that Joan made of odds and ends, and they seemed to swallow up most of the money. Mrs. Penrose went up to toAvn with the lovers to select the furniture and to buy the linen, and while she was there she bouo;ht the weddins^-sfown. Xo one had told Joan about that bank failure, but she understood, somehow, that great economy was needful, and that she would have to be content with very few frocks. She was so happy, so ridiculously happy, that she would have been content 96 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. with one. She would have been con- tent to have gone on wearing that wedding-gown till it dropped from her back. The wedding frocks were made up at home. A pale young woman used to come early every morning, and stay till late at night, sewing all day at those gowns ; and Joan was called away from her accounts and her store lists, a dozen times a day to try them on, a bit at a time, a sleeve, or a collar, or the lining of a bodice that was stuck so full of pins that it was a marvel how she ever got into it, or out of it, without being torn to pieces. Sometimes she used to come into the busy work-room, where the girls were stitching for their lives, to help a bit, to A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 97 run a seam, or hem a frill ; but she did not hem it very long, and she used generally to stop in the middle of the seam. Her hands would fall down softly into her lap, and a dreamy far-off smile would come over her face, as she looked beyond that tiresome work, out into the little green garden. PhylHs, stitching away for her life at those wedding garments, would watch her wdth her soft eves, and wonder at the strangeness of that smile. There was- nothing to make Joan blush, and look np surprised with such a depth of hap- piness in her absent eyes, when some one called across the table, ' I'll trouble you for the white cotton,' or, ' Pass the scissors, please.' Phyllis had never seen that blissful VOL. I. H 98 OECHAllD DAMEllEL. look on her sister's face before, or on any other girl's face, but then she had not seen much. She used to look in the glass sometimes, when she was doing her hair, to see if her own eyes had any blissful depths in them. They were very like Joan's eyes, only softer and sweeter; cahn, tranquil eyes, whose depths — if they had any — had never been disturbed. She could see nothing in the glass but her soft sad face, and her pretty brown hair, and the long lashes that cast such a dark shadow on her cheek. She had a little nervous trick of blinking those tremulous lids, and the corners of her mouth quivered when she was moved. They quivered now as she looked in the glass, and recalled Joan's strange look of happiness. It might have been hers, this A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 99 wonderful haj^piness, that had come to her younger sister : it would have been hers but for Joan. The wedding-gowns were made at last; there were not many new ones to make besides the wedding-gown, but there were a lot of old ones to freshen up, and with the addition of some frills and furbelows to look as good as new. There were three new ones, — hig-htum, tightum, and scrub as Joan called them. Scrub was an everyday sort of gown for home wear; tightum was a gown to return calls in, and to wear at church and garden- pai:ties ; and hightum was an evening- gown — a rosy Liberty silk — one of those gowns the girls had given up so bravely — it is not a small thing to give up a h2 100 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. Liberty frock when one's evening frocks are few and shabby. It meant a lot of pinching and scraping for another year, those few gowns, and the necessary additions to that little hum- ble trousseau that the girls worked so hard at from mornins^ till nio;ht, that Joan should not go to her new home naked and asham- ed. It was the first wedding in the family,, and they did their best. Never mind how poor it was, it was their best — their loving, generous best. Joan never knew what it cost them, or what pinching and paring it entailed. If she thought anything at all about it, she thought it was mean and stingy. The girls had never told her anything about the bank failure, and the loss of income, and that, as soon as she was mar- A WONDERFUL PROVIDEXCE. 101 ried and away, they would all go to live in a stuffy little house in a mean shabby street. It would be time enough for her to know it when she was married and settled in her beautiful home, and then she need not know the worst. Love is like a shel- tering tree. It would fain bear itself the sweeping storm of adversity, and shelter those it loved from the rude blast. The furnishing of the rectory went on apace. It is quite astonishing how quickly one can turn a dreary, empty barrack-like place into a delightful cosy dwelling, if one has a thousand pounds at hand to do it with. When Joan had completed her lists the upholsterers went down to Coombe Damerel and took the place in hand, and filled up the details that she had for- 102 ORCHAED DAMEREL. gotten. She had forgotten a good many. She had reckoned a good deal on the wedding presents. She knew so many people in Stoke Lucy, and this was the ■first wedding in the family, they had never been asked to give any presents before — and they might never be asked again. Only one of the girls left could marry in any case, the other would have to stay at home with her mother. Robert Lyon, until his engagement, had been the most popular curate that could be remembered in Stoke Lucy for years, judging by the number of slippers that were worked for him, and the lovely sermon-cases and book- markers, and the knitted vests and mufflers for his tender throat. They did not come in so freely after his A WOXDERFUL PEOVIDEXCE. 103 enofao^ement Avas made known, nor were the wedding presents exactly w^hat Joan had expected. They made up, however, for their other shortcomings in their number and variety. There was not much table silver among them, nothing like what Joan had counted upon. There was a lovely pair of old apostle spoons fit only for a cabinet, and a sweet little antique Queen Anne cream-jug with an unreliable handle, and a butter-knife. To be more accurate there were half-a- dozen butter-knives, but five of them were plated. The same defect applied to the butter-dishes and muffiners and pepper- pots and sugar-basins. But there was a lovely variety of other useful things. There were four smelling-bottles, a croco- 104 ORCHARD DAMEREL. dile brush-case, two walking-sticks, six cliina menu-holders, three pin-cushions, a silver cigarette-case, a pair of tall glass vases, a prayer-book, a point-de-gaze pocket-handkerchief, a glove-box, a sandal- wood card-case, a pair of brass scissors, a set of toilet-mats, a paper-cutter, a melo- deon gong, a silver hand-mirror, six photo- graph frames, a pickle fork, a tea-cosy, a shaving glass, and a pair of fire screens hand painted. ]S[obody could have desired a greater variety, and, as Joan remarked, they were all useful — very useful. The wedding was a very quiet one. It was not one of those old-fashioned showy affairs with a dozen carriaofes, and bio; white satin favours for the coachmen, and hundreds of guests, and a ridiculous wed- A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 105 ding-breakfast where tlie champagne flowed like water. It was a modest little wedding, with not more than a dozen people present beside the congregation, which overflowed the aisles, and allowed the little bridal party scarcely room enough to pass to the altar. There was no breakfast after. The present delightful two p.m. arrangement does not allow of formal sitting-down wedding-breakfasts. People who desired to ofl'er their con- gratulations called in the afternoon and sipped a cup of tea, and swallowed a few crumbs of cake, or a lump of sugar-icing, as the case might be. The little tearful bride — Joan was not at all a tearful bride — had stripped off her finery, and packed up her small trousseau, and started on her wedding journey before 106 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. these dear friends began to arrive. The world was before her, and like adventur- ous Eve she had stepped out of the calm Eden of her youth and ignorance, and an angel with a flaming sword barred the way of return. Perhaps she would never desire to return. Why should she ? She had Adam by her side, or his lineal descen- dant. The old tangled way was before them; the thorns and the briars, and the print of the old footsteps. Who can blame them if, in their youth and their ignorance, they repeated the old mistakes ; if they suffered the same failures and losses ; if they stumbled by the way, and got up again bruised, and torn, and wounded ? The world teaches now as it A WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE. 107 taught then, by experience. Schools change with the times, but there is only one schoolmaster. 108 CHAPTER YI. WEDDING BELLS. It is all very well for happy people to get married and go away, and leave the poor, dear, tearful people at home to cut up the wedding-cake, and pack it into nice little boxes — in clean-cut, wedge- shaped pieces, with a due proportion of icing — and tie it up with white satin ribbon in dear little true-lovers-knots. They should try what it is themselves to cut through the icing of a wedding- WEDDING BELLS. 109 cake, before they depute those i)ooy, clear, tearful things they have left behind, the unthankful task. Phylhs and Bertha Penrose spent the whole of the day after the wedding cut- ting up that wretched cake. It was not for its size, it was quite a modest little cake, but no amount of persuasion would induce the sharpest of knives to penetrate that awful sugary crust. They tried a hammer when everything else failed, and then the icing all broke to pieces, and the cake crumbled, and there was nothing left but a heap of powdered sugar and crumbs. It was the first time they had ever attempted to cut a wedding-cake, and Phyllis remarked, almost in tears, when she saw what a mess they had made 110 ORCHARD DAMEREL. of it, she hoped it would be the last ! When the cake was cut up and sent off, they had to begin about the moving. They had to move into a stuffy little house in a back street, and they had to send away the servants, and get rid of a lot of the furniture. Perhaps this was the hardest part of all, getting rid of the old familiar things they had known and loved all their lives. The old furniture, and the old china, and the old pictures. The pictures were so large that they were out of proportion to the little house they were moving into, they would have quite covered the walls, «nd made the rooms look smaller than they were. Mrs. Penrose thankfully accepted the offer of the man who moved the furniture WEDDING BELLS. Ill for a dozen of them ; they were only in the way, and she was glad of the small sum of money he oiFered. It was a very small sum for such a lot of big pictures, but it covered the cost of the moving, and left a little balance. She stopped one of the pictures as she saw it carried out of the house. It was a portrait of a woman, a girl rather, in an old-fashioned gown, who had been a beauty in her time. ' You must bring that back,' she said, ' it is a family picture. I cannot sell that. It is the portrait of my great-aunt.' The men grumbled and brought the ]3icturc back, and then the small amount had to be reduced smaller still. ' It is the portrait of my Aunt Joan,' she explained to the girls ; ' I don't think 112 OKCHARD DAMEREL. it ought to go out of the family. Joan was named after her. If no one else cares for it, I should like to give it to Joan. It is the only wedding present I can give her.' ' Let Joan have it by all means,' said the girls. ' It is a hideous old thing ; no one else would give it a place !' The despised portrait of her ancestress completed the list of Joan's wedding presents. It was a terrible affair going into that little house. It was not only a little house, but the street was wretchedly mean and narrow, and there were mean houses on either side and poor neighbours. It was not the poverty of the neighbourhood that tried the girls and their mother in the early days of their change of fortune, WEDDIIsG BELLS. 113 it was its unutterable shabbiness and dreariness that weighed upon them. ' I'm sure nobody will ever find us out here,' Bertha said, with tears in her eyes, as she looked round the dull rooms, and glanced hopelessly down the dull street. 'We can't expect people to call in this horrid place !' ' I don't see why they shouldn't call,^ Phyllis said, stoutly. ' I'm sure every- body we care about will call. We have done nothing. It is not our fault that that horrid bank has failed !' 'Ah, you don't know,' Bertha moaned, shaking her head with an air of superior wisdom ; ' how should you know ? People don't value you for what you are, but what you possess. If you are rich and prosperous, you will have plenty of friends VOL. I. I 114 ORCHAED DAMEREL. — everybody is glad to know you; but if you happen to be unfortunate, and have come down in the world, it doesn't matter by whose fault, it is astonishing how soon people forget you.' PhJ^llis gave a sniff of disapproval. ' I don't believe it,' she said, stoutly. 'We shall see if people forget us, people we've known and been brought up among all our lives. I wouldn't take such a mean view of human nature for all the world !' Phyllis saw that very afternoon. A frequent visitor at the Poplars in the days of their prosperity — the donor of one of those plated butter-knives — met Phylhs in the High Street, and looked the other way. She did not cut her, nobody cuts people in these days, but she did not see WEDDDsG BELLS. 115 her. She had grown suddenly short- sighted. Phyllis came home furious. It filled her with indignation that the world — her little world — should be so base and mean as to turn its back upon her because she was no longer rich and prosperous. It required all her courage to face the situa- tion and bear up under the change of fortune. Bertha did not attempt to bear up ; she broke down after the first day or two when the excitement of moving was over. She did not pretend to be cheerful or contented ; she went about in a sort of sullen despair chafing under the injustice of her lot, and planning futile schemes for retrieving their ruined fortunes. 'What have we done?' she was always asking Phyllis when they were alone and i2 116 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. out of reach of their mother's anxious ears and eyes. 'What have we done that this should happen to us?' ' I don't think it's for anything we've done, dear,' Phyllis would say, with her eyelids blinking in their nervous way, ' but I'm not sure it isn't a kind of dis- cipline, or something of the sort ' 'Discipline! What do you mean?' Bertha interrupted, in quite a shocked voice. ' What have we done that we should need discipline — this sort of discipline ?' She might well ask. ' I don't know, dear,' Phyllis said, humbly, ' I only thought ' ' Oh, you are always thinking foolish things. I daresay you think that it has happened for our good — that poverty and WEDDING BELLS. 117 misfortune were just the discipline we needed ; that prosperity and ease were spoiling us, and that we shall be ever so much better by and by for enduring these wretched shifts and humiliations. Oh, I have no patience with such notions!' Phyllis sighed. ' I don't know,' she said, hanging her head, and her eyelids quivering, ' nobody knows why such things happen. Why they are permitted to happen, why the world is so full of sorrow, and loss, and pain. There must be a reason for it. It can't be a matter of chance. I don't think I could go on living if I didn't believe that there is a Providence over all, shaping our lives, and sending us exactly the things that are best for us.' It was Bertha's turn to sniff now. 118 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. ' How about Joan, then ? Is prosperity — happiness — ease — love, the best kind of discipline for Joan ?' ' It may be,' Phyllis said, softly, ' who can say ?' ' I don't believe any such nonsense. Why should there be such distinctions ? What have we done that our lot should be different from hers?' It Avas the old question. It was a difficult question to answer. While Bertha brooded over her wrongs, Phyllis tucked up her sleeves, and set to work to get the little house in order, and put the best face on things. It did not look nearly so shabby after a week's rub- bing and scrubbing and polishing up. It is astonishing what a transformation will- ing hands can make in the dreariest dwell- WEDDING BELLS. 119 ing. Love and labour, a box of mignon- ette on the window ledge, a bowl of roses on the table, and white curtains, fluttering in the breeze that came in at the open window, looking out into the shabby street, quite transformed that little bare room, that was bare and mean no longer. Things did not look nearly so bad at the end of the week when the chairs and tables and the dainty knick-knacks were all put in their places, and the white curtains were up, and the dull windows were bright and shining. With great economy that seventy pounds a-year would cover the bare cost of living, and there was enough left from the sale of the furniture to pay for the boys' schooling for a year or two, and the rent of the shabby little house, and at the end of that 120 ORCHARD DAMEREL. time -who shall say what might not have happened? A fairy prince mi^ht have come and carried away another of the girls, or the bank might have recovered itself, and there might be a small dividend after all. ^ We can't wait for that,' Bertha said, impatiently, when Phyllis suggested those possibilities. ' What fairy prince would come to us now ? The very sight of the house would frighten him away. No one but a workman with a bag of tools over his back would ever seek for a wife in this wretched street. We shall have to go out in the world and look for the fairy prince, Phil, he will never come here to look for us.' Phyllis' face flushed, and her lips quiv- ered, and her long eyelashes drooped over her cheek. WEDDING BELLS. 121 ' Do you think mother would let us go out?' she said, with bated breath. 'Oh, do you think she would let me go out?' She was anxious to begin that search for the fairy prince at once. ' She must. She can't expect to keep two girls at home — on seventy pounds a- year.' ' Then I think we ought, one of us ought to go out at once. Oh, I wish she would let me go !' ' You ! What can you do ?' It was rather a cruel question, but Bertha was not considerate of the feelings of other people. She was sharp like her scissors. ' I ? Oh ! I could do something.' ' Something, yes, but you could do 122 ORCHARD DAMEREL. notliing well, not well enough to earn a living at it.' ' I could teach — a little/ This very humbly. ' Yes, you could teach a Sunday class, or you might teach the catechism in a school^ the commandments, and the " duties," which the children never remember, and learn them a few hymns. I don't think you can teach anything else. You don't know a single rule of English grammar, Phil ; you never could recollect dates ; and I don't believe you could repeat the counties of England. If you don't know things, you can't teach them.' ' No,' Phyllis said, despondently. ' I'm not clever like you. Bertha, I couldn't teach French and German. I always hated French ; I wish I had liked it better now. WEDDING BELLS. 123 You remember what dreadful trouble I had with those French verbs ?' ' I remember you were always a goose at school, Phil, a goose at everything. I never knew you do anything well. You were always at the bottom of the class ^ and your reports were shocking — and you talk about going out as a teacher!' Phyllis hung her head. The tears were gathering under her dark lashes, but she kept them back : she was not going to give in yet. ' There is something else I could do be- sides teaching. All girls do not go out as governesses. I could be a companion — a companion to a lady.' Bertha burst out into an unfeeling laugh. ' Nobody thought you could be a com- 124 ORCHARD DAMEREL. panion to a gentleman !' she said, and then Phyllis began to blush in the most ridic- ulous way. ' No, no, Phil, your duty is quite clear. You must stay at home and take care of mother, and let me go out. Perhaps I shall find the fairy prince ; who knows ? I shall never iind him if I stay here ; — never — never.' 125 CHAPTER VII. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. The village of Coombe Damerel was an out- of-the-way nook, hidden among the green hills of Devon. The nearest railway- station was five miles off by the high-road, though there was a nearer way of reaching it, if you cut across the fields and did not mind a few stiles and gates by the way. The village consisted of a single twist- ing street. A delightful, irregular old 126 ORCHARD DAMEREL. street, witli white-washed cottages on either side, with red roofs and quaint gable ■ends, and lattice panes glittering in the sun. The village led up to the great house, but it did not approach too near to it; it kept a respectful distance from the gates. If it had approached the gates, over which a hideous griffin, that frightened the village children iuto fits, kept watch and ward, it would still have been a mile and a half from the house. The carriage drive that led up to the house wound round the shrubberies and the home fields before it reached the park proper. Then, instead of the conventional wide stretch of tranquil greenness, with giant trees casting their great shadows on the grass, and looking as if they had pushed A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 127 the world aside to clear a wide breathing- space for their fortunate possessors, a lovely coombe ran through the grounds, and the thickly wooded deer park rose up on either side. The road wound round the coombe, and the gently sloping hills, and through a dense shrubbery that even at that late time in the year was ablaze with rhododendrons. At the end of the shrubbery one came upon the house. A beautiful old house amid shady glades, and with a wide stretch of tranquil greenness before it, and the hills rising up behind. It was like a house in a picture. Orchard Damerel, as the place was called, — it was one of the country-seats of the Earl of Aylmerton, — was an unpre- tendinsf house for such a o:reat estate. It 128 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. was a pleasant place enougli, — it had been a favourite residence of the late earl during the later years of his life, — but it had no pretension to dignity. A long, irregular picturesque old house with sunny windows opening out upon vel- vet lawns, and looking as little like the re- sidence of a belted earl as a rambling old red-brick country mansion could look. The Countess of Aylmerton had lived here ever since the late earl's death, some seven years before our story opens. She lived here to economise. Her income would not allow her to live at Aylmerton Court, the old family place of the Damerels. The earl had died in debt — up to his ears in debt — and the place was mortgaged to the chimneys. He was the last of his race, and he had A QUESTION OF COXSCIEXCE. 129 run tlirougli all the money. There was no one of his name to come after, no one to save up for, and the earl had spent his money in his lifetime like a lord — like an earl, rather. The only legacy he left behind him was a legacy of debt, some hundred thousand pounds. He had no heir to leave it to : the title died with him. He took some trouble during his last illness to iind out a distant — far distant — kinsman, who bore the name of Damerel ; and, having found one, in the most hand- some manner he bequeathed him this weighty legacy. Besides the legacy, he left him, at the decease of the countess, the family place of the Damerels in Nor- folk, and the beautiful old house of Orchard Damerel, with all their priceless VOL. I. K 130 ORCHARD DAMEREL. heirlooms. There was only one condition attached to the bequest, that the late earl's debts should be paid in full, every shil- ling of them, before the next owner en- tered into jDOSsession of the estates. Considering that there was the heavy interest of all those mortgages to be paid, and the place to be kept up, and the little that remained had to accumulate year by year, until it could pay off that hundred thousand pounds, the fortunate legatee was not likely to come into possession very soon. It would have been different, at any rate it would have altered the aspect of things, if any portion of the property, the outlying lands, the acres and acres of shooting, could have been sold, or the plate, or the pictures, or the china that A QUESTION OF COXSCIENCE. 131 ^vere locked up in the great empty house in Xorfolk. There was a special clause to provide against this : the great estate, and the heirlooms, were to descend in- tact to the legatee, or his heirs, when the debt was paid — and not before. It was not likely to be paid, with those slow accumulations year by year, for a gener- ation or two. It was not at all likely to be paid in the lifetime of Hugh Damerel, the fortunate legatee. The property was vested in the hands of trustees, and a small income was paid to Lady Aylmerton, which her marriage settlement had fortunately secured to her. It was a small settlement for a countess, but her ladyship was a second wife ; the earl had already run through his money k2 132 ORCHAED DAMEREL. when he married her. The bankrup earl was a very good match for the daugh- ter of a small country a,ttorney — her lady- ship's father had been the earl's legal adviser, and had assisted at those mort- gages. Maria Burrough had really done very well for herself when she married the earl : she had lived in some splendour during his lifetime, and she had been received at court. After his death, she had nothing to complain of. She had the beautiful old house of Orchard Damerel for her life, and she had an income that, considering her humble bringing-up, was not only ample, but liberal enough for her to put by a small sum yearly for those who came after. The countess lived at Orchard Damerel all the year, except when at rare intervals A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 13o she paid a visit to her married nephews and nieces. She was paying a visit to a married niece when she heard that Advent sermon of Robert Lyon's. She was looking out for a successor for the living of Coombe Damerel, the next presentation being in her gift. She had no nephews of her own to give it to, and there were no Damerels left, no second sons, or cousins, or nephews. There had not been a Damerel at the rectory within the memory of the present generation. Lady Aylmerton had decided views on religious matters — not very broad views — and she held rather unusual opinions on the Second Advent. She had never heard anyone in the pul- pit express those opinions of hers — she was a disciple of Dr. Gumming, she v/as more 134 ORCHARD DAMEREL. than a disciple, she was a worshipper of that great mistaken man — she had never heard anyone, except the great man him- self, express opinions on that all-absorbing subject that so exactly agreed with her own as Robert Lyon in that Advent sermora. She desired nothing better than to sit beneath such teaching for the rest of her life. It was exactly the teaching she had been thirsting for for years, nothing could have happened more providentially. She believed in Providence. It is an old- fashioned belief; it is o-oins: out fast like those old foolish notions about earthly millenniums. The Countess of Aylmerton was an old- fashioned person — she had not had much education — and she believed in both. She A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 135 found out all about Robert Lyon, after he had preached that sermon, and when the living of Coombe Danierel became vacant, she desired the earl's trustees, who acted for her in the matter, to offer it to him. He never knew until he was instituted in the living to what happy circumstances he owed that unlooked-for presentation. When the new rector of Coombe Dam- erel came back from his wedding-tour, and settled down in the near neighbourhood of his unknown patron, or rather patroness, it was his duty to call upon her without delay and express his gratitude. He called the day after he came back. He did not take Joan with him ; it was not a proper call, he explained to her ; it was not even a parochial visit, it was a call of duty, and, if the truth must be told, he 136 ORCHAED DAMEREL. would miicli rather ttiat his bride was not present while he expressed his gratitude to the great lady who had honoured him by her choice. He knew nothing about the settlement of the property, or the late earl's debts, or the antecedents of Lady Aylmerton. He only knew that the village and the land for miles around belonged to the Dam- erels, and that they had come in with the Conqueror, or thereabouts, and that so far as he was concerned they were, or rather the last representative of the noble line was, the greatest potentate on earth. All things are relative, and the little hill a mile off is bigger, much bigger, than the mountains on the horizon. Orchard Damerel was scarcely a mile away from the rector, if he took the short A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 137 path tlirougli the shrubbery, the path that had been worn in those old days when a Damerel held the family living, and the Countess of Avlmerton was a much o-reater person in Robert Lyon's eyes than Her Most Gracious Majesty herself, in her distant castle of Windsor. With his heart beating dreadfully, Robert walked throuo-h the blossomino* rhododendrons, and came out upon the head of the coombe and the wide tranquil greenness of the park. He had never seen an earl's house before, and he had expected to see a great gloomy castle frowning down upon him, or a big Tudor mansion at the least. The sight of the unpretentious red-brick house reassured him, and o-ave him courao^e to rino' the front door bell. 138 ORCHARD DAMEREL. The door was opened by an ancient butler of very solemn aspect, who led him through the wide roomy hall, into which the door opened, into the great drawing-room beyond. He had time, while he sat there waiting for the countess, to look round the great stately room. It really was a stately room, and it was furnished in the stiff conventional taste of the early years of the century. Everything was massive and gilt, and stiff and formal. The heavy old hangings were of rich brocade with great conventional flowers, and trophies,, and true-lovers' knots in the funny old taste of those un-^sthetic days. The chairs and couches were covered with old faded embroideries of the same out- A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 139 rageous pattern, and there were immense roses and carnations and fuschias spraw- ling over the carpet in the same old faded colours. The mantel-piece was a wonder- ful erection of pure white marble that the late earl had brought from Italy some years ago, and that alone must have cost a fortune ; and there were two big statuary marble figures, one at each end, in hideous gilt alcoves, lined with red velvet, and a great marble clock in the middle. It would have been quite an appalling room, with all that gilding and upholstery, and those marble busts and figures, if it had not been for the beautiful old pictures and the china. The pictures on the walls were family portraits, and had been all painted by 140 ORCHARD DAMEREL. great masters in their day. Whatever other gifts the Dainerels had lacked, they had never lacked beauty. A lovely portrait of Henrietta fifth Countess of Aylmerton, painted by Van Dyck,hung over the mantel-piece, between the hideous gilt alcoves and the classical statuary marble figures. A lovely Gains- borough, representing the beautiful coun- tess, wife of the eighth earl, hung opposite the big bay windoAV, the blue satin dress that Gainsborough was so fond of painting had faded in that strong light, and the roses in her bosom, and the paler roses in her cheeks, had faded too, but the soft dark eyes were as bright as ever, and the Vermillion of the thin red lips was un- touched, and time had only mellowed to a diviner tint the rich abundant auburn A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 141 hair, beneath the great hat and its droop- ing feathers. There were some delightful portraits by- Reynolds, and Lawrence, and Hoppner on the walls, but Robert Lyon could look at nothing but the Gainsborough. The gild- in o^, and the colourini^ of those wonderful floral devices on the carpets, and the cur- tains, and the presence of all those marble figures had dazzled and bewildered him. He had not any eyes for the priceless old china on the tables and in the cabinets ; he could do nothing but sit with his mouth open staring at that figure of a woman in a blue gown. He was still staring at her when the countess came into the room. He had ex- pected — well, he did not exactly know what he had expected a countess to be like. 142 ORCHARD DAMEREL. He had never seen a countess before, only those painted ones on the walls. He could not have expected an old woman over seventy to be like those sweet creatures that were looking down at him with their painted eyes, and their best company smiles. He could not have expected her to have come in, at that time of the day, in a pale-blue satin gown, with her poor old withered shoulders very much en evidence^ with a gauzy scarf about her, and a great hat with sweeping plumes nodding above her scanty locks. Whatever he expected a real live countess to look like, the old lady who came into the room Avas not the least like anything that he had expected. A large, stout, commonplace looking woman, with a florid face, and wearing a decidedly dowdy cap. A QUESTION OF CONSCIEXCE. 143 Robert got up awkwardly and set the countess a chair, and then he found him- self thanking her for having chosen him above all the world for this great gift — he called it a great gift — and saying some idiotic things about her confidence not being misplaced. ' Oh, I knew all about you before I wrote to Mr. Greatorex to offer you the living, Mr. Lyon,' her ladyship said. (Mr. Great- orex was one of the trustees of the Dam- erel estate.) ' I heard you preach a sermon on the millennium last Advent, when I was staying with my niece at Clifton, and your views exactly agreed with mine. I could wish nothing better than to sit under such teaching for the rest of my days.' This ought to have been very gratifying to the new rector ; it ought to have made 144 OKCHARD DAMEREL. him blusli with modest pride and satisfac- tion. He did blush to his fingers' ends, but, ah^s ! not by any means with pride or satisfaction. He had not written a word of that ser- mon ; and, so far as he coukl recall it, he did not agree with a single opinion that it expressed. He had never even read it over until he smoothed it out on the pul- pit cushion, and then he had to go on with it, whether he agreed witli it or not. His first thought as he sat there, amid the old faded roses and the gilding, crimson and ashamed, was to confess his fault — if fault it could be called — and own that the sermon was not his own. That he had, in fact, without knowing it, ob- tained a living by false pretences. First thoughts are always best. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 145 The countess had made the mistake, not he : it was too late for her to take back the gift she had bestowed on such shght provocation. He looked up at the picture of the lady in blue, and saw the soft, dark eyes fixed upon him, and then he remembered Joan, and her innocent joy in her new house and her beautiful grounds. He had a ridiculous notion that all this would slip out of his hands, and that he should have to give up the living and go away if he explained to the countess the mistake she had made. For Joan's sake — only for Joan's sake — he was silent. He was quite relieved when Lady Ayl- merton changed the hateful subject and asked after his wife. VOL. I. L 146 ORCHARD DAMEREL ' I must call and see Mrs. Lyon,' she said. ' I will bring my niece, I should like them to be friends. Cecilia is very dull living alone with me in this gloomy house, and seeing so few people. She will be very glad to know your wife.' As the rector walked back through the rhododendrons he was troubled with a great many qualms of conscience. He was sorry and sad and ashamed. He would have to go on living a lie ; he would never be able to preach any different doctrine. For the rest of his life he would be ham- pered by these old-fashioned exploded views which he did not hold, which he could never bring himself to hold ; he would have to lay aside the beautiful broad modern theology he had learnt in the schools, and on which he prided himself, A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE. 147 to pander to the narrow prejudices of a bigoted old woman. Oh, it was humiliating ! ' Should he tell Joan ?' he asked him- self. And then he found himself getting quite hot at the thought of confessing to his bride of a month that he had done this contemptible thing. ' It was for Joan's sake he had done it.' If it had not been for Joan, he would certainly have told the truth about that sermon, and Lady Aylmerton would have seen her mistake. If he had been a single man, and had no one dependent upon him, he would not have hesitated for a moment. Whatever happened, it was for Joan's sake that he had kept silence. l2 148 OECHAED DAMEREL. It was perhaps quite as Avell that he had paid that first visit to Orchard Damerel alone, that he had not taken his bride with him. 149 CHAPTER Vlir. A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOARD. Lady Aylmebton called on the rector's wife tlie next day. It was very early to call ; Joan had only arrived in her new home two days before, and the place was, if not exactly in con- fusion, not in that perfect order that Mrs. Robert Lyon would have desired it to be when she received so august a visitor. The carpets were down, of course, and there were some curtains before the 150 ORCHARD DAMEREL. windows, but the furniture was in that transition state common to new households and youthful housekeepers, Avho cannot make up their minds, without a great deal of moving about, where the things ought to stand. The things had been moving about Mrs. Robert Lyon's drawing-room ever since she came back. She could not make up her mind where the chairs and the tables and the cabinets ought to go. The piano, after a great deal of wandering, had settled down in a corner, Avith its face to the wall, and its ugly bare back exposed to view. It would be draped by-and-by, but it was ugly and bare now, and the chairs were heaped up in the middle of the room when the countess called. She did not call alone. She brought her A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOAKD. 151 niece with her, a pale, spiritless young woman with light ringlets, who followed the great lady like a shadow. They were shown into the drawing-room at once, where they found the rector in his shirt-sleeves, with his coat off, helping Joan to move a big cabinet across the floor. They had been so occupied coaxing that unwieldy piece of furniture back to the exact spot from which it had been three times ignobly removed, that they did not hear the sound of wheels on the gravel outside, or the front door bell ring. Joan stopped the cabinet half-way and shook hands with the countess, not exactly in that deferential way in which a rector's wife should greet the patroness of her husband's living. She could hardly believe that that fat^ 152 ORCHARD DAMEREL. dowdy old woman was a countess. She was not a bit afraid of her : she hardly thought it worth while to apologise for the con- fusion they were in. She had no patience with Robert blushing in that absurd way because an old woman had caught him in his shirt-sleeves. As for the countess's niece, Cecilia Burrough, Joan put her down as of very small account from the first. She had a rapid way of making up her mind about people the first time she saw them, and she seldom found reason to change it. ' I ought not to have called so soon,' the countess said, flopping down into a chair in the midst of the barricade, ' but I wanted to know your wife, Mr. Lyon. I could not wait till after Sunday.' A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOAHD. 153 This Ought to have propitiated Joan, but it did not. She had no patience with people calling at all sorts of hours, before lunch of all times in the day, as if she were a churchwarden, or a pew opener, or a sexton, anything but the wife of the rector of the parish. She did not think even an earl's coronet on the panels of the great yellow chariot on the gravel outside an excuse for such rudeness. Cecilia Burro ugh, her ladyship's niece, Avas not very young, nor very beautiful, perhaps this was why Joan took to her. She was soft-spoken, and commonplace like her noble relative, but she had a kind face which is better than beauty — per- haps it is beauty, the substance not the -shadow. ' It is my fault that my aunt came over 154 ORCHARD DAMEREL. SO early,' she explained shyly to Joan. ' I wanted to speak to you about the church ; there has been no one to play the harmon- ium, or to take the Sunday School, since Mr. Finch left,' — Mr. Finch was the late rector, — ' and I have helped a little. I have done what I could ' ' Cecilia has taken the Sunday School ever since the Finches went away,' Lady Aylmerton said, interrupting her niece with some asperity, ' and she has played the harmonium; now you're here, Mrs. Lyon, she will not be wanted any more. It i& very troublesome to have to give Cecilia up so much on Sundays.' ' I hope Miss Burrough will still help in the parish,' the rector said ; he could not think of anything else to say. M shall be very glad to help,' Lady A BLUE-BE AED CUPBOARD. 155 Aylmerton's niece said, eagerly; ' that is, if my aunt can spare me, — ' and then she stopped in her shy frightened way, and looked timidly at the countess. ' The Finches did not require any help when they were here,' her ladyship said, rather stiffly, ' they were quite able to manage the parish without help. Mr. Finch was everything that a parish clergy- man should be, and the schools were in excellent order. He managed the schools entirely. He gave religious instruction in them every day. He was very par- ticular about the religious education of the children.' The new rector winced ; the prospect that opened before him was not quite agreeable. He had not come down to Coombe Damerel as a schoolmaster, and he 156 ORCHARD DAMEREL. did not quite like being dictated to by an old woman. He felt it was dictation, that her lady- ship was trying it on, and that she would for ever be flinging the Finches in his face, if he did not make a stand at flrst, and let her understand that he was quite able to manage the parish without her assistance. ' Of course,' he said, gravely, ' the religi- ous training of the young is a very important feature of parish work. With such an energetic man as Mr. Finch, the Sunday Schools will be in excellent order.' ' I don't think you must expect too much, Mr. Lyon,' Cecilia said, blushing. * I have taken the Sunday School since Mrs. Finch went a^vay, and I'm afraid you will find the children very backward. A BLUE-BEAED CUPBOARD. 157 They are rather stupid children, and they don't seem to understand anything, but I daresay you will get on better with them than T did. The infant school teacher, who helps in the school, and plays the harmonium in church, has been away ill for a month, so I had to do it all myself. I'm afraid I did it very badly.' ' And is she away still?' Joan asked. ' Yes ; she was no better when my aunt last heard. I'm afraid she will not be back yet.' ' And what is to be done till she comes back?' Joan asked, quite breathlessly. She had never played the harmonium in her life. ' I'm afraid you will have to do the work yourself, unless my aunt will let me help you till Mary Bailey comes back. 158 ORCHARD DAMEREL. The Sunday School is not very large, and there are no big girls ; and the school- master takes the boys. There is no one else in the village to help.' ' But about the music in the church, — and training the choir — I never played a harmonium in my life !' Joan was quite pale. She had never reckoned upon this. There was always a proper organist at Stoke Lucy, and choir practices in the church. There were a dozen dear little boys in white surplices at St. Matthias, the girls had nothing to do with the singing. There was some more talk about parish matters, and then the countess rose to go, but she did not offer to let Cecilia play the harmonium the next day, before she went away. A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOARD. 159 ' You must come over to Orchard Damerel, Mrs. Lyon,' she said, very graciously before she went, ' we shall ex- pect to see a good deal of you.' When she had gone, Joan sat down in the midst of the furniture piled up in the middle of the room, and made her moan. She did not exactly burst into tears, but the tears were not very far off. ' Oh ! Robin,' she said, in her little exaggerated way. ' Oh ! Robin, what are we to do ? I can't play that horrid har- monium ! I can't train the choir — and — and I never took a Sunday School class in my life !' Clearly she had mistaken her vocation : she should not have married a clergyman if she could not do these things. 160 . ORCHARD DAMEREL. Robert Lyon comforted his tearful bride. He thought she had been rather hardly- dealt with ; and he thought his patroness was dictating to his wife, as she had dic- tated to him. He was very grateful to her for what she had done for him, but he was not so grateful as he would have been if the recollection of that Advent sermon had not been rankling in his mind. ' Darling,' he said, sitting down beside her, and getting his arm round her waist, — he was no longer in his shirt-sleeves, he had put his coat on, — ' there is nothing to be unhappy about. If we can't have any music in the church to-morrow, we must do without. I will find a person who can play the harmonium and take the choir, before next Sunday ; we must do what we can to-morroAv. It will be our first A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOARD. 161 Sunday ; people cannot expect everything to go right at first.' ' And about the Sunday School, Rob? Oh, I'm sure you ought to have married Phyllis ; she ^vould have been able to take the school beautifully. There is nothing she loves so much as a Sunday SchooL You have made a mistake, Rob ; you have married the wrong Miss Penrose. Is it quite too late to change?' Robert Lyon assured his bride that it was quite too late to change, that he had no desire to change, and that — this really was a stretcher — if she had been anybody else but the useless ignorant creature that she was — if she had been able to play the harmonium — if she had known anvthino: about Sunday Schools, he would not for any consideration have married her ! VOL. I. M 162 ORCHARD DAMEREL. Thus comforted, Joan plucked up heart afresh, and set about putting the furniture in order. Considering that the next day was Sunday, Robert Lyon's tirst Sunday in his new parish, he ought not to have been moving about that furniture. He ought by rights to have been preparing the sermon, or sermons rather, he had to preach the following day. He had thought a good deal about these sermons during the last few weeks ; he had gone so far as to decide upon the text for each, and he had made some notes of the headings of various parts of his discourse. He was very anxious to begin well. It is everything to begin well in a new position, it gives people confi- dence. The new rector was very anxious to win the confidence of his parishioners, A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOARD. 163 and he desired above all things to do his duty by them. It was not because the i^lace was small, and the duty was light, he was going to sit down and do nothing : on the contrary, he had quite made up his mind that the little he had to do he would do well, — he would do better than his predecessor — than Mr. Finch had done. He had settled all this in his mind before he came to Coombe Damerel, and then came the matter of that unhappy Advent sermon and upset it all. Robert Lyon did not go into his study until quite late in the day, until after dinner in fact. He put off that humiliating ordeal until he could put it off no longer. When he pulled himself together, and braced up his nerves for that miserable M 2 164 ORCHARD DAMEREL. task, lie went into his study alone and locked the door after him. He locked the door, he explained to Joan, while he was preparing his sermons, in order that he should have no interruption. It broke the thread of his reasoning, it interrupted the flow of his eloquence if any- one disturbed him. When he had locked the door behind him, he went at once to the big cupboard in the wall, that Joan had said would hold such a lot of sermons, and drew forth a bag. It was a shabby old carpet-bag, and the sides were bulging out as only the sides of a carpet-bag can bulge. It Av^as the bag that he had stuffed full of those old sermons that were put up at his father's sale with a waste-paper basket and a fire- guard. A BLUE-BEARD CUPBOARD. 165 His face grew pink as he drew forth the bag from its hiding-place, and it grew pinker and pinker as he thrust his hand into it, as he had thrust it in on the mem- orable day when he went to Clifton to take the duty for his friend. It was a wonderful bag, whatever he wanted seemed to come uppermost. The first sermons he took out were exactly the sermons that he wanted. If he had searched the bao; throug-h he could not have found any suited better for his purpose. They were dry and wordy and old-fash- ioned — and narrow ; he could not have be- lieved that his own father, that any reason- ing man, could have held such narrow views. It made him quite sick to copy them. He copied them religiously, word for word, 166 ORCHARD DAMEREL. and when lie had finished them he put the originals back in the bag, and restored the bag to the cupboard. He would not have had Joan come in and catch him copying them for the world. He would not have believed two days ago that he could have a Blue-beard cupboard in that delightful house, a cupboard of which he could never trust his wife with the key, — never — never. 167 CHAPTER IX. A RED-LETTER DAY. The first Sunday in his new paristi ought to have been the happiest day in the world to Robert Lyon. If it were not exactly the happiest day in his life, it ought to have been a red-letter day at the least. The preaching of that first sermon, care- fully thought out and prepared, as a sermon befitting such a solemn occasion should have been, ought to have afi*orded him both pride and satisfaction. 168 ORCHARD DAMEREL. Modest pride, that he should have been called upon to fill that responsible position, that he should have been thought worthy to have the souls of all these rustic people committed to his care, and satisfaction, not unmixed with gratitude, that the work was so easy — so pleasant — so exactly the work that he could do well, that he could do best. That first Sunday at Coombe Damerel was anything but a red-letter day to the new rector, and the preaching of those wretched sermons did not give him unal- loyed satisfaction. In the sweet summer weather, with all the brightness and warmth of the August sunshine about him, he Avalked up through the church-yard path, between the green graves and the slanting old tombstones, to A RED-LETTER DAY. 169 the vestry door. His bride of a month was by his side in the sweetest of summer costumes, (^ tightum,') and the little tink- ling church bell — his own church bell — was summoning his wide-spread flock with its insistent invitation : ' Come-to-church ! Come-to-church !' His heart ought to have burned within him at this supreme moment of his life, as he walked up the churchyard path on this first sweet Sabbath day, but it was as cold and unresponsive as the hearts of his dead and gone predecessors, whose graves he passed, as he walked over on his way to the vestry door. The church struck unaccountably chill too, on this warm August day, and he re- marked for the first time that it was not at all a good church to be heard in, and that 170 ORCHARD DAMEREL. in some places the plaster was peeling oif the walls. Several people came in late and forgot to close the door after them, and insisted upon walking up the church to the most distant seats, in their great hob-nailed boots, and disturbing the kneeling congregation. The music, too, went very badly. Lady Aylmerton had ungraciously consented at the last moment to let her niece play the harmonium for this Sunday, but there had been no choir practice, and the hymns had not been selected till just before the service. The children were shy and would not open their mouths, and there was no one to lead them. He could hear Joan's little flat voice sinoina almost alone all through the hymns. He ought not to have let these things- A RED-LETTER DAY. 171 irritate him; they were such very small worries, and they could all be altered, but they jarred through every nerve. He went home disappointed and sad. He had thought so much about this day ever since the living had been given to him ; and, now that it had come, all that he had pictured, — the dear little country church, — the rustic congregation, — the dearest voice in the world leading the choir, — and, in addition to all these things, a real countess sitting in solemn state in an adjoining chapel, drinking in every word of his eloquent discourse — it was all — everything — even the rapt attention of the countess — Dead Sea fruit. Il Avas dust and ashes to his taste. Lady Aylmerton met the new rector coming out of church ; she had stayed be- 172 ORCHARD DAMEREL. hind to speak to him, and he walked down the path beside her and put her in her carriage, which was waiting for her at the gate. ' I was much impressed by your sermon this morning, Mr. Lyon,' her ladyship said, 'I hope you will continue the subject this afternoon ; the arguments were exactly the ones I have always wanted to hear brought forward. I hope you will follow up the subject next Sunday.' Robert gave a gloomy assent, and then he put her ladyship in her carriage, and waited with the handle of the door in his hand, while Cecilia Burrough, who had lingered behind with Joan, came up. ' I am much obliged to you for allowing your niece to play for us to-day,' he said, ■ but we must not trespass upon her kind- A EED-LETTER DAY. 173 iiess too much. I will see about getting a person to play in church, and train the choir, before next Sunday, that is if you do not think the infant school teacher is like- ly to come back.' ' She is not at all likely to come back, at present,' Lady Aylmerton said, and then the carriage drove away. ' How gloomy you look, Rob,' his wife said to him as they walked back to the rectory ; ' has her ladyship been scolding you?' ' She has been praising my sermon.' Joan made a little moue. She had not listened very much, but what she had heard she could not make anything of, she could not understand in fact. It was not a bit like Robert's delightful little sermons at Stoke Lucy. 1 74 ORCHARD DAMEREL. He saw the cloud on his wife's bright face, and that made him more angry. Should he make a clean breast of it and tell her now that he had got the living by false pretences, and that, for the present, at least, he must continue the deception ? Surely there could be no better time. He put it off weakly, as he had put it off when he came back from Orchard Damerel. He could not bring himself to tell the woman he loved that he had done this meanness. He put away the thought of those wretched sermons for another week, he locked it up with them in that Blue- beard cupboard, and he tried to forget all about it till the following Sunday. He had a good deal to occupy his atten- tion meanwhile. Everybody within twenty miles around called upon his wife during A RED-LETTER DAY. 175 the next week, and he had to make the acquaintance of his brother clergy. Most of the people who called were much better off than he was, he remarked rather bitter- ly. He had come to the end of the thousand pounds he had set aside for fur- nishing that big rectory-house, and for preliminary expenses. The preliminary expenses had been much heavier than he had reckoned upon. The upholsterer's bill amounted to more than twice as much as Joan had cal- culated from those wonderful lists upon which she had spent so much time. The house was not completely furnished now ; there were only two spare bed-rooms furnished, and the walls were quite bare. There were miles and miles of walls, as Joan expressed it, to cover with plates and 176 ORCHARD DAMEREL. mirrors, and pictures and prints. They had bought nothing but useful things so far, furniture and linen and plate — they were obliged to buy some silver forks and spoons ; they could not eat with their fingers, as Joan put it in her exaggerated way. There were all these things still to buy, and the horses and carriage. They could not return any calls until they had a carriage. The people who came from a distance usually drove a pair. The roads Avere very hilly about Coombe Damerel, up and down every few hundred yards. A single horse would have no chance in a carriage, unless it were a dog-cart, over those hills. Robert Lyon told himself that he could not possibly take his wife to return calls in a dog-cart, and that his first duty A RED-LETTER DAY. 177 was to huj her a low carriage, and a pair of nicely matching-ponies that she could drive herself, and in which she could return the visits of her new friends. He bought the carriage and the ponies^ and the silver-plated harness, and a hand- some oppossum rug within the week — and a pretty penny he paid for them. It is astonishing what one can get for money. The old troublesome conjuring business of rubbing up old lamps has quite gone out. There is a greater conjurer now than that frightful Genii of the Lamp. The con- jurer did his work so well, he matched that pair of ponies for Joan so exactly, that Robert Lyon could do nothing less than commission him to provide another equipage. A gig this time — he called it VOL. I. N 178 OKCHAED DAMEREL. a gig — a brand-new dog-cart with a high- stepping mare. This was not a luxury, he assured himself, it was a necessary. He could not always be driven about by his wife in a low pony-carriage. He would have all his neighbours laughing at him. Besides, there were always things to be fetched from the station, or from Carling- ford, which was fifteen miles ofi^, groceries and all sorts of household things, and they could not be packed away in a pony- carriage. Having quite satisfied himself that the second carriage was a positive necessity, he lost no time in setting up the gig and the high-stepping mare. When the bill for these necessaries came in, he winced just a little ; he had no idea things cost so much money. There were A RED-LETTER DAY. 179 SO many details that he had never counted upon in setting up these vehicles, and the horse-flesh to draw them. The stable equipment was something tremendous : it embraced so many things he had never counted upon. In the old boyish days, at the old country vicarage, there had been a rough, shaggy Exmoor pony, and a gig, — and the stable equipment had been, to say the least of it, primitive. Robert had had these things in his mind, when he commissioned his smart groom to get such things as were necessary ; and then there was the livery. One can- not do these things by halves. When the carriages had come home, and the horses were in the stable, and the harness-room was duly furnished, and the stable equipment was complete, quite com- N 2 180 ORCHARD DAMEREL. plete, and the fodder had been brought in^ and the cornbins were overflowing — then, and not till then, Robert Lyon added up his money. It was a lovely August day, — a tine drying day, — and the extra woman who had come over to help in the laundry, was hanging out the clothes in the orchard be- hind the house, and Joan was eating, not exactly bread and honey, — honey is apt to be sticky for afternoon tea — she was in the drawing-room with her guests, at any rate, and a pair of prancing steeds were tearing up the gravel at the front door, and the Rector was in his study adding u^^ his bank- book. He was not quite literally counting out his money; he was doing the more prosaic thing, he was adding the figures up in his bank-book. A EED-LETTER DAY. 181 If there is one kind of literature that is of more absorbing interest than any other to a large class of readers, it is the perusal of a bank-book. The emotions that it excites are pleasingly varied. Satisfaction — surprise — disgust. Generally the two latter. . It was with both surprise and disgust that Robert Lyon compared the figures on the two opposite pages of that wretched book. No one could have been more sur- prised than he was at the way those horrible figures mounted up, nor more disgusted at the result. He went over them two or three times to make sure. He was quite certain that there was a mistake, that the figures were wrono:. He was still adding them up when Joan 182 OKCHAED DAMEREL. came in to the study. She had finished her bread and honey, and she had got rid of her visitors, and she came in to see what had become of Robert. ' Oh, why didn't you come in, Robert? It was Lady Alicia Mainwaring, and she stayed nearly half-an-hour on purpose to see you. Her husband wants to know you so much. He would have called with her^ but he was away on some election business. There's going to be a contest, and people want him to stand for the county — for the eastern division ' Joan stopped abruptly in the midst of her gay eager talk. Something in her husband's face stopped her, and she came over to his side and saw that wretched book opened before him. He covered it up guiltily ; why should A RED-LETTER DAY. 183 it worry her as it had worried Him ? ' Good gracious ! is anything the matter, Robin ?' she asked, anxiously. ' Are you ill ? Have you been catching something in the parish, measles or whooping-cough, or ' ' No, I've not caught either the measles or the whooping-cough,' he said, interrupting her with a weak attempt at a smile. ' I have been going through my accounts, and the result is not quite so satisfactory as I had expected.' ' You have not got through all that two thousand pounds yet, Robin?' ' No, dear, I haven't got through it all, thank God ! There is still a little left, enough to keep us going — till — till the tithes come in.' ' Then what are you worrying about ? 184 ORCHAED DAMEREL. They will be coming in soon, and then we shall be quite rich ; we shall have such a lot of money, we shall not know what to do with it.' Robert smiled. He did not tell her that tithes do not come in the very moment they fall due, that there is an interval — often a long interval — between the date when they are due, and the time they are paid. He got up from his seat and put his arm round her waist. ' I was not worrying,' he said, ' I was only thinking that, just at present, we shall not be able to afford another horse. Will you be much disappointed, dear, if you have to forego a horse to ride at present?' Joan's bright face clouded, and she made a little moue. She was very fond of purs- A RED-LETTER DAY. 185 ing up her lips and making provoking little mouths ! ' It will be rather horrid,' she said. * I — I have promised Lady Alicia to go to the meet. It would be so awfully jolly if I -could ride with you. You would ride, of course : you need not folloAv the hounds, but you could ride to the meet. 1 have never been to a meet in my life, and I should enjoy it awfully.' ' Would you ?' he said ; he rather winced as he said it; he had never denied her any- thing yet ; it was rather hard to begin now. ' I should, dearest ; indeed, I don't know how to get out of it. I've promised the Mainwarings I'll be there. I told Lady Alicia you were going to see about getting me a horse at once, and — ^I have ordered a habit.' 186 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' I didn't know you had ordered tlie habit,' Robert said, with a little catch in his voice. ' Wasn't it rather premature to order the habit before you got the horse? Something like that cookery-book mistake about cooking the hare before you caught it?' Joan laughed a gay little laugh. ' You silly old man!' she said, ' you have got hold of the wrong end of the story : but we shall catch the hare after all — you will be able to manage it, won't you, Robin ?' The new riding-habit came home the next day, and Joan tried it on. It fitted her to perfection. It fitted her so well, it was so perfectly irresistible, that if Robert had been wavering in the matter of that extra horse which he had decided he could A RED-LETTER DAY. 187 not afford, — or thought had decided, — the sight of Joan in that riding-habit left him in doubt no longer. Whatever else he did without, Joan must have the horse. What is the use of havins^ a smart ridino'-habit if one has not got a horse? 188 CHAPTER X. LORDS AND LADIES. Joan did not order that riding-liabit in vain. Robert Lyon had not the heart to tell his bride to fold up that beautifully fitting garment and put it away, with plenty of camphor between the folds, for use on some future day. The horse for Joan to ride to the first meet of the Wynnstay hounds was forth- coming when the day arrived. It was rather a costly affair, but then, as Robert reflected, LORDS AND LADIES. 189' he had his j^lace to keep up in the county^ and the world — represented by the county families of the eastern division — already regarded him as a rich man, he could not afford to let his wife ride a screw. She must have a good mount or none, so a good mount, at a fancy price, was forth- coming for Joan when the day arrived. Before the opening meet of the hunt, which was a memorable day in the eastern division of the county, Robert made the acquaintance of the Mainwarings. He drove over to Wytchanger, in his Avife's pony-carriage, to return Lady Alicia Mainwarino^'s call. The Mainwarings were thegreatpeople of the eastern division of the county ; — greater people and richer people than the Aylmer- tons. Wytchanger was a house of muck 190 ORCHARD DAMEREL. greater pretension than Orchard Damerel. It was a great big modern house : it had cost thousands to build ; it was complete with every convenience and improvement that money could command. The grounds were not so extensive as the grounds of the Damerels, but they were not encum- bered. There was not a mortgage on a single acre of the property. There was a wide park, not so wide as Orchard Damerel, but much more park-like in its way. It had been laid out a dozen years ago by an eminent landscape-gardener, with an eye to eiFect, and now that the little beeches had grown up, and the shrubberies had put on their beautiful summer green, the place was perfect, quite perfect. It was the gem of the county. The ancestors of the Mainwarings had LORDS AND LADIES. 191 made their money in trade, made it not so long ago. It was quite within memory when the place had another owner, when the father of the present squire bought the land, and pulled down the old house, which was nearly tumbling to pieces, and built up the present handsome modern mansion. His son had married the daughter of an earl, the Lady Alicia Fane Tempest, and brought her home to his spic-span new mansion a dozen years ago. It was the Lady Alicia who had employed the lands- cape gardener to lay out the shrubberies at Wytchanger, and plant those little beeches, and the avenues of chestnuts that were now the glories of the park. It was she who had raised those orchid-houses, the graperies, and pineries, and acres of 192 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. glass that were the wonder and admiration of the county. She had done a great deal for her hus- band besides sj^ending his money. She had given him a position in the county, and now she had set her heart upon giving him a seat in Parliament. There were not many things that Lady Alicia set her heart upon that she failed to get : she was not troubled with scruples, and if she could not get what she wanted by ' hook,' she generally got it by ' crook.' If she succeeded in getting the vacant seat for the eastern division for her husband, she would certainly have to get it by ' crook.' It was -a conservative seat, and Lady Alicia had been a conservative all her life. She had been born and brought up in the LORDS AXD LADIES. 19^ hot-bed of conservatism, and she had married a ^vhig. The distinctions of parties Avere more marked in the days to which our story belongs. There were not so many political ' blends.' A tory and a whig meant certain distinct things : they could not possibly amalgamate ; they could never become Unionists. The Aylmertoii interest in the late earl's days had always been sufficient to return one, sometimes two members for the eastern division of the county. The earl was dead now, and there was no one to take his place. Two out of the four executors in whom the control of the Damerel property was vested, were moderate whigs. They would not be likely to use any coercion to induce the tenants to vote for a conservative candidate. There could not have been a better time VOL. I. O 194 ORCHAED DAMEREL. for Lady Alicia's husband to have come forward to contest the county in the liberal interest. He was the richest commoner in the neighbourhood, and his wife was one of the most popular w^omen in that division of the county. Lady Aylmerton had little or nothing to do with the administration of the late earl's estate, and she took no interest in politics, and there was no other great landowner who could influence the election to any great extent. There was no reason why Mr. Thomas Mainwaring should not ride over the course easily. When Robert Lyon and his wife returned Lady Alicia's call, the conversation natur- ally turned upon politics, there was nothing else talked of just then. ' I hope you are on our side, Mr. Lyon,* LOEDS AND LADIES. 195 her ladyship had said, and Robert had answered that he had been so little time in the county that he did not know which was Lady Alicia's side. It was a safe thing to say, seeing she had come of an old tory family and had married a liberal lord. Then Lady Alicia laughed her rather loud harsh laugh — it would have been pronounced loud, distinctly loud, if it had proceeded from a less aristocratic throat. ' Oh, we are all in the same boat here,' she said : her voice was loud like her laugh, but it was not an unpleasant voice. * I am a feminine edition of the Vicar of Bray. I am a tory at home — and a liberal here. I hope your politics are equally elastic, and that you will help us in this election. I would not have Tom beaten for the world.' 2 196 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. Robert Lyon blushed and assured her ladyship that he was a staunch liberal, and that he would give her husband all the support that lay in his power. He would have returned exactly the same answer if she had asked him to sup- port a conservative candidate. His politics — if he had any — were rather more elastic than her ladyship's. He Avas so ridiculous- ly elated at being made much of by an earl's daughter, that he was ready to promise anything. He had not yet got accustomed to countesses and their de- scendants. And he could not receive overtures of friendship from these great people without feelings of considerable elation. An invitation to dinner followed that call at Wytchanger, and Joan found her- LORDS AND LADIES. 197 self among the great people of the county. Lady Aylmerton did not give dinner-parties. She had asked the rector's wife over to tea several times, and once she had pressed her to stay to lunch. This was the only hos- pitality she had ever received at Orchard Damerel. This dinner-party at the Mainwarings was really Joan's first introduction to the county. She had never met anybody at Lady Aylmerton's but Cecilia Burro ugh, and a few of her ladyship's pet old women ; nobody she would give a fig to know, or could talk to for live minutes without yawning. Here, at Wytchanger, every- thing was different ; there were no old women, and there were no bores. All the best people of the neighbourhood were here, and there were some great titled 198 ORCHARD DAMEREL. people staying in the house. Lord George Fane Tempest, Lady Alicia's brother, was there, and two or three members of the Upper House. Joan had never been among such great people in her life. It had cost a good deal to get there. A close carriage and pair had to be sent over from the post-town, fifteen miles away, the day before, and it could not return until the following day, after that long drive to Wytchanger. Of course Joan could not go out to dinner in a pony-car- riage or a gig. If she accepted the invi- tation, she must have a fly from Carling- ford, there was no alternative. To see her drive up through the great gateway, with the horses steaming, and the servants in their brand-new liveries, with shining gilt LOEDS AXD LADIES. 19^ buttons, and a frightful griffin sjorawling over every one of them, anyone would have taken her for the wife of one of the leading magnates of the county, instead of the wife of a country rector, with the ridiculous income of two hundred and seventy pounds a year. She was wearing for the first time that pretty pink evening gown, and there were flowers in her hair and roses on her cheeks, and she was by far the prettiest woman in the room. Nobody who saw her there for the first time could understand why she had married that beggarly country parson. With her sweet eyes, and her damask cheeks, and that lovely brown hair with the red lights in it, she might have married anybody. 200 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. Lady Alicia took her up at once, she always took up attractive people, and intro- duced her to her own set. They made so much of her that Joan's pretty head was turned. Her husband received a deal of attention, too, but in another way. There was nothing talked but politics among the men. It was the €ve of an election, and the subject was uppermost in everybody's mind. Mr. Mainwaring entertained his guests as befitted a man who was about to stand for the county. If he did not talk politics himself, his friends did for him. It was quite understood that all those who gathered round that hospitable board would support the liberal candidate. They were not exactly pledged to it, but they would not have been there, eating his venison LORDS AND LADIES. 201 unci drinking liis chamiDagne, if they Avere not prepared to give liim their support. ' How many votes have you got in your place?' Lord George asked Robert Lyon, ^s they sat over their wine after dinner. ' Votes ? I — Fm sure I don't know,' the rector said, with a little hesitation : he had an idea that he was getting on danger- ous ground. ' I am new to the place. I have only just settled down. I don't suppose that I have got a vote.' ' Xo, of course you haven't, you've got to be on the rates twelve months before you get a vote : but there are all the farmers and labourers on the estate. All the par- ish, I believe, belongs to the Damerels ?' Robert said that so he had heard, all but a spinney, and a few fields the other side of the coombe that belono-ed to his host. 202 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' Ah, I remember there was a dispute over that spinney,' said Lord George, with rather a knowing look ; ' perhaps you have not heard about it. The earl raised a stiffish sum on some land about there, and a portion of the property was sold to his neighbour, the old Tom Mainwaring. He was buying up every acre he could get hold of just then, and the spinney went with the rest. There was a dispute about it, and a lawsuit which was decided against the earl. There has been bad blood between the families ever since.' Robert was very sorry to hear this. He was not at all sure that his patroness would approve of his getting himself mixed up with this liberal set, with the late earl's enemies. He had a conviction that she could take things to heart, mundane things, LORDS AST) LADIES. 203 though she was daily expecting some kind of millennium. ' The old lady doesn't take any interest in politics, I hear,' Lord George said, in his ofF-hand way. ' She let everybody vote as they liked at the last election.' This was quite true, but his lordship did not say that there had been no opposi- tion, that the conservative candidate had been returned unopposed, It w^as always understood that the Damerels could return who they liked, and now there were no Damerels left, only that poor beggar of an heir, who had not a penny to spend on an election if he could get returned to-morrow. Lord George told Robert something of this while they lingered over their wine. There was no one, he assured him, that 204 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the countess could liave any interest in. All the old stock was gone, all, every one. They had to search the country over to find out a sixteenth cousin to take the property. It could not matter tuppence to Lady Aylmerton — his lordship said ' tup- pence ' — who was returned for the county. A great deal of this was true, a great deal, but not quite all. Before Robert left Wytchanger that night he had promised to do what he could among the tenants and the labourers in Coombe Damerel, and he had consented to let his name appear among the members of Mr. Mainwaring's committee. Joan was so elated as they drove back in the silence of the summer night that she did not know whether she were on her head or her heels. LORDS AND LADIES. 205 ' Lady Alicia is a duck !' she said, ' she has invited me to spend a week at Wytch- anger for the hunting. They are going to have a lot of grand people down, lords and ladies ; and the earl and countess will be there — and they have asked poor little me !' 206 CHAPTER XI. ROBERT LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. It must not be supposed that while Joan was in the midst of such grand doings, driving about in her carriage and pair, mid feasting with lords and ladies, that she had forgotten all about the dear people at home. ' The poor dearthings,' as she called them, wrote to her every week, sometimes they wrote twice a week, and she in her turn wrote pages and pages back. She was never ROBERT LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. 207 tired of telling them of lier gay doings, of the great people that she knew. Her letters quite bristled with titles. It is very wrong, no doubt, to like titles, and those who bear them. Joan did not like them ; she loved them. She positively revelled in them. Her letters for months after that dinner- party were full of Lady Alicia and Lord George, and the earl and countess. She was so full of her new friends and her gay doings that she had not time or thought to spare for ' the poor things ' living their dull lives in the mean little house in the shabby street. She remem- bered the street well. It quite shocked her at first to hear that her mother and sisters had gone to live there. Something dread- ful must have happened, she knew, to have brought about such a change ; but the ex- 208 ORCHARD DAMEREL. tent of the calamity she did not know. She certainly did not realize that her mother and sisters and the two boys had to live upon, year by year, the exact sum that Robert had spent upon the horse she rode to the meet. Not that the expense of that luxury, like the expenses of that bare household, stopped at the seventy pounds. There was a new lady's-saddle, and a silver-mounted riding-whip, and that becoming riding- habit and hat, and many other things. The actual cost of that whim of Joan's did not stop within a long way of seventy pounds. To be more accurate, it was onlv her mother and Phyllis and the two boys who had to live on that munificent sum. Bertha had gone out. That is to say, she had accepted a situation as governess to EGBERT LYOX WORKS HIMSELF UP. 209 teach little boys, and she had gone away from home. There was only Phyllis at home now, and she was rubbing and scrubbing, and cooking and mending, from morning till night. There was only a small servant kept in that poor establishment, and Phyllis with her soft eyes and her busy hands was working like a horse. While Phyllis was scrubbing, and Bertha teaching the Latin accidence to her unwill- ing scholars, Joan was driving her ponies through the sweet green country, and basking in the society of lords. There was one day in the week when she did not bask, when she felt the weight of her new position. On Sundays her hands were full. She had to sit in a stuffy room for an hour before the afternoon ser- VOL. I. p 210 ORCHARD DAMEREL. vice, hearing tlie infant population of Coombe Damerel stumbling through the Church catechism. Joan had never taken a Sunday School before in her life; she had not the gift of teaching that Phyllis had. The only thing in the way of parish work that she had ever done was to read to the women at the mothers' meeting. It was here that Robert had first met her : he never forgot that memorable day when he had seen her sitting on the table in the midst of the women, swinging her legs. Besides taking the Sunday-school, the rector's wife had to assist in the choir. It was not so easy a thing as Robert had thought to get a person to come over from Carlingford, fifteen miles every Sunday, to play the harmonium in church and train the choir. Her ladyship's niece still pre- ROBEET LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. 211 sided at the harmonium, and Joan's flat little voice led the choir. She hated sitting there in her husband's church, singing with the village children, when she ought to be sitting in state in the rector's pew in the chancel, behind the screen. Any stranger coming into the church might take her for the village school-mistress. A stranger sitting in the Aylmerton chapel, and looking out between the bars of the screen, did take her for the school- mistress on that Sunday after the dinner- party at Wytchanger. He thought, as he heard her flat voice leading the singing, and when his eyes wandered over to where she was sitting yawning during Robert's long, dreary discourse, that he had never seen so sweet a woman's face in his life. p2 212 ORCHARD DAMEREL. The rector canght lum looking across the pews two or three times during that long sermon. He was wondering all through the service who this gaunt, red- bearded man could be in the Aylmerton pew. He did not belong to the neigh- bourhood ; he was not the least like the country squires of the West-country. A big, broad-shouldered, gloomy-looking man, with a shaggy red beard, and gaunt, holloAV eyes. The countess was not at church that day ; it was the first Sunday she had been absent, and the gloomy stranger sat alone in the great family pew among the old stony monuments of the Damerels. The rector, looking over the top of his sermon-case, saw him staring about as strangers stare about in a church that is EOBEET LYOX AVOEKS HIMSELF UP. 213 not familiar to them. He had eyes for other things besides the school-mistress singing in the viHage choir — sad, hopeless, hollow eyes that took in every detail of the building, the painted hatchment on the walls, the old tombs of the Damerels in the chapel, the arms and escutcheons of the noble families who had inter-married with the Aylmertons in the windows. The strano'er, sittino- alone in that hi^'h seat. took in all these things ; all, everything, ^except the sermon. He was still lingering in the churchyard, looking at the graves and reading the in- scriptions on the old stones, when Robert and his wife left the church, and then Cecilia Burrough, who had come out with Joan, introduced him as ^Ir. Hugh Damerel. 214 ORCHARD DAMEREL. It was the Earl of Aylmerton's heir. Robert walked back with him through the village as far as the entrance to the park. He had only arrived the night before, he said; the countess had sent for him in haste. If he had known why she had sent for him he certainly would not have come, he told Robert. He laughed — a hollow, mirthless laugh — as he spoke of her ladyship's hasty sum- mons, but he did not say why she had sent for him. Robert learned why from the countess's own lips the next day. A messenger from Orchard Damerel came over the following morning while he was at breakfast, requesting him to call upon the countess without delay. He was going to ride with Joan after break- EGBERT LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. 215 fast, but he had to put off his ride and walk over to the great house instead. ' I hope you Avon't let Lady Aylmerton bully you, Rob,' the rector's wife said, while he was putting on his hat and brushing himself down in the hall ; he always gave himself an extra brush when he went over to Orchard Damerel. 'Why should she bully me, darling?' the rector asked. ' Oh, she'll have heard of your going over to Wytchanger. She hates the Mainwarings ; they had an old quarrel years ago, and she has never forgiven them.' ' How did you hear about the quarrel ?' ' Cecilia told me. They brought a law- suit, I believe, against the earl, and offended him dreadfully. When he lost 216 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the law-suit, they brought a man clown from London to oppose his candidate at the election. A radical, Cecilia said; a shocking radical, who would have turned the country upside down. The earl was furious : it was his own seat, it had never been out of the family. He spent so much money over the election that it ruined him : it was the last straw.' ' Cecilia seems to have told you a good deal. What made her tell you all this ?' Joan's face flushed, and just a little cloud passed over it. ' She knew we were going to Wytch- anger, I told her about the dinner-party — and — and I daresay she said it to warn us.' ' To warn us ? Why should we want warning ?' Robert said, impatiently. ' W^e ROBERT LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. 217 €an choose our own friends. Lady Aylmer- ton has no right to dictate to us. Her quarrels have nothing to do with us : her quarrels, or her prejudices, or her Avhims. I have given way enough already.' In this frame of mind the rector went across the lawn, and through the shrubbery, by way of the short cut, to see his patron- ess. He was anxious to get the interview over, and he went the short way. He had an idea that it would not be a pleasant interview. There had been differences between them of late, differences of opinion, and Robert would not give way if he thought he was right. He had given way in the matter of those wretched sermons, and it had rankled in his mind ever since ; it had become a burden on his conscience, and he would not give way again , if he 218 ORCHARD DAMEREL. felt he was right. If he allowed this old woman to dictate to him what he should do in his own parish, and what friends he should choose, he might as well be a toad under a pair of harrows. He told himself this as he walked through the shrubbery. It was disgrace- ful that a clergyman should be hampered in his work by the whims and fancies of an old woman. He knew what was best for the parish better than her ladyship did, who never came among the people except in her carriage. There had been a difference lately about the management of the school, and he had been obliged to tell her ladyship this truth, and it had made a breach between them. The infant school could not go on possi- ROBERT LYON WORKS HIMSELF UP. 219 bly any longer without a teacher. The school-master, a weak-minded, incapable young man, a protege of her ladyship's, had been taking it, or pretending to take it, during the absence of the female teacher who had gone away ill. His hands were quite full already, without the infants, and his own school had suffered. No vil- lage school could be in worse condition. There was no order, no discipline, and there was really nothing properly taught. When the inspector came round, the re- port would be shocking, and there would be no grant to augment the funds of the school. Under these circumstances, the rector had taken the matter in hand. He had expressed his determination to wait no longer for the school-mistress, who was still 220 ORCHARD DAMEREL. away ill, but to appoint another teacher. He had also expressed himself strongly about the school-master's inefficiency. Lady Aylmerton had chosen to take umbrage at his remarks. The school- master, and the young woman who had gone away ill, were her especial protegees. It was rumoured that they were engaged to be married, and that her ladyship had favoured the match. When she made up her mind to anything, she was accustomed to have it. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of her caprice. She had made up her mind that Albert Beckett, the school-master, should marry poor Mary Bailey, who was in an advanced stage of consumption, and she would not hear of her j^lace being filled up. The rector had already advertised for EGBERT LYOX WOKKS HIMSELF UP. 221 an infants'-scliool teacher, and that morn- ing's post had brought him a host of applications. He was quite prepared to fight the matter out with her ladyship. He was working himself up for the battle all the way through the shrubbery. He never noticed the sunlight dropping down on the j)ath before him, or the birds singing in the branches overhead ; the sweetness, the delightful dewy freshness of the morning did not move him the least. He was so engrossed with these petty parish squabbles that he had no eyes or ears for the loveliest sights or sounds in Nature. It was necessary to remind himself that Lady Aylmerton was in the wrong, and to work himself up, as he walked rapidly through the shrubbery in the morning 222 ORCHARD DAMEREL. sunshine. There was just a little linger- ing suspicion in his mind that he had been hasty, a little too hasty, in promising his support to Mr. Tom Mainwaring, and in allowing his name to appear among the members of his committee. He had a suspicion that his patroness would not be too well pleased when she heard of it, and so, to cover up his hesitation, weakness, doubt, and fear, he worked himself up before he presented himself at Orchard Damerel. 223 CHAPTER XII. THE EARL OF AYLMERTON's HEIR. Robert Lyon was not shown into the great drawing-room, where the family por- traits were ; he was taken upstairs to the countess's own private sanctum. Wilkins, her ladyship's maid, was cross- ing the hall Avhen he came in, and she took him up at once to her mistress's apartments. ' Dear my lady,' she explained by the way — she always spoke of the countess as 224 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' dear my lady ' — had not been well for several days ; she had caught a chill out driving, and was confined to her room. Robert had never been farther than the inner hall in his previous visits to the house, and he looked round with a certain feeling of awe as he followed Wilkin s up the wide staircase. Portraits of genera- tions of Damerels looked down upon him as he climbed the stairs with their dull painted eyes. There was a marble bust of the late earl, done in Italy, at the head of the stairs, and marble figures and busts on pedestals in the corridor, and trophies of armour on the walls, and big Oriental jars and vases on the high Chippendale cabinets between the windows, which were filled, he observed, with quite priceless old china. THE EAKL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 225 The sight of the old Worcester gleaming through the glazed doors of the cabinets, as Robert slowly followed her ladyship's maid down the long gallery, made his mouth water. Lovely blue-scale vases with long-tailed birds, sets of Oriental fan pattern and crisp, delightful turquoise cups and saucers : oh ! it was enough to make any- one's mouth water. He knew something about china. He had picked up a few bits, already in the village : an old delft plate or two, and some cracked tea-cups, and the possession of these treasures had whetted his appetite. Lady Aylmerton received him in her boudoir, a delightful little oriel chamber in the eastern wing of the building. No two rooms could be more unlike than the drawing-room and the countess's boudoir VOL. I. Q 226 ORCHARD DAMEREL. at Orchard Damerel. There was nothing crude or harsh or glaring here. The colouring of the walls was subdued, and the beautiful old furniture, which had all the dainty grace of a bygone time, was covered with delicate, faded embroideries. There was nothing new here. The pic- tures on the walls were lovely creations by Greuze, and Lancret, and Watteau. The curtains of the big oriel window, that looked out over the green park and the coombe, were embroidered in old faded crewels with flowers and quaint, long- tailed birds, worked by some noble ances- tress in bygone painstaking days. There was china on the walls, on the cabinets, on the high, beautiful Adams' mantelpiece. It quite took Robert's breath away to see that mantelpiece, with its graceful moulded THE EAEL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 227 urns and garlands, and the wealth of price- less china that it bore. He could not keep his eyes from wandering during that interview, from the old woman at the table, to the dainty shepherdesses in their rich bosquets, on that Adams' mantelpiece. The countess was wrapped up in a shawl, and she was looking decidedly glum. Robert thought he had never seen her look so coarse and vulgar before as she looked in that beautiful old room, amid all these treasures. Evidently she had not lived up to her surroundings. It takes generations of culture to fit an ignoble soul to noble surroundings. ' I sent for you, Mr. Lyon,' her ladyship q2 228 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. explained, ' to consult you about the election. You saw Mr. Damerel at church yesterday ?' Robert murmured that he had had that pleasure. He was rather afraid of her ladyship, if the truth must be told, in spite of the efforts he had made to work himself up. The sight of all that grand- eur, the painted Damerels on the staircase, the marble busts in the gallery, the armour on the walls, the beautiful china in the cabinets, the soft harmonious colouring of that delightful old room with its associa- tions of rank and wealth and culture, had affected him like the splendour of the great King had affected that poor-spirited Queen of Sheba. ' I brought him down here,' the countess continued, ' to induce him to stand for the THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 229 €Ounty. The eastern division has been in the family for years. It is the Damerels' seat. There is no one but Hugh Damerel left ; he is the heir to the property, though he is never likely to succeed to it. He is the right person to stand : he would be re- turned unopposed ; nobody in their senses would think of opposing a Damerel.' ' And is Mr. Hugh Damerel willing to stand ?' Robert asked. He felt he must say something. ' No : that is the difficulty : that is why I sent for you. Of course, the poor young man has not the money ; no one expected him to have the money. The expenses would not be much — not to a Damerel ; there would be no canvassing needed. He would ride over the course, as the rest have done, and what money was wanted 230 ORCHARD DAMEREL. would be forthcoming. The election would not cost him a penny.* Her ladyship was more eager that Robert had ever seen her. ' And knowing this, he refuses to stand ?' ' He refuses decidedly. He is angry at being sent for : he is an unreasonable young man. I didn't know whether you would have any influence with him. Per- haps if you talked to him, Mr. Lyon, and showed him it was his duty to his church,, and to his country, and to the name he bears to come forward, he might be per- suaded.' What could Robert say ? He should have to tell her that he had promised to support her enemy ; that his name was already down among his com- mittee. He ought to have told her at once ; THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 231 it would have been better to have got it over. He had not the spirit of a mouse, or he would have told the truth. ' I will speak to him if you wish, Lady Aylmerton,' he said, awkwardly; ' nothing I can say, will, I'm sure, have any weight with Mr. Damerel. We were strangers to each other until yesterday — and — and — ' He was just going to tell her his promise to Tom Mainwaring, but she interrupted him. ' It is your duty to speak to him,' she said, impatiently striking her shaky old stick on the floor. She could not under- stand his being so lukewarm. ' Show Mr. Damerel what will happen if the seat is sacrificed ; it will be a gain of two seats to the other side, and a radical government 232 ORCHARD DAMEREL. will get in ; you cannot put it too strongly, Mr. Lyon. For the sake of the Church, you must make an effort.' She ordered Robert about in her under- bred, domineering way. It made him quite hot to be treated like — well, not like a parish priest who had a right to have opinions of his own. Mr. Hugh Damerel was in the library, and Robert went down unwillingly to speak to him there. He felt dreadfully ashamed of himself as he went down the stairs on this errand with the eyes of all the Damerels watching him. He was ashamed of himself for being mean and cowardly, and afraid of telling the truth to an old woman. Hugh Damerel was turning over some prints when the rector went in. THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 233 The library was one of the largest rooms in the house : it occupied the ground-floor of the west wing, and looked out upon the rising ground and the heather-covered heights that rose up in gloomy grandeur behind the house. A library should look out upon a noble ■scene — it should not look out upon any- thing mean, or base, or trivial — the mind dwelling apart on noble themes is insen- sibly affected by external scenes. The student reading in the library of Orchard Damerel had nothing but noble things before his eyes when he raised them from the printed page. A wide uprising landscape lit up here and there with sunny gleams. The heather was purple now on the distant height, the gorse was golden, and the sunlight was shining upon the 234 ORCHARD DAMEREL. summit, and there were deep cool shadows at its base. It was a perpetual Mentor^ — a moral lesson of hope and aspiration. The great room was lined with book- shelves from floor to ceiling, and it had that delightful suggestive smell which a great library always has. The late earl must have been a solitary man ; for there were few tables or chairs in the room, and the books were all confined behind wire screens. There were hundreds, thousands of volumes on those well-filled shelves, but not one of them could be removed without the master-key. Hugh Damerel was not reading when Robert Lyon came in; he was turning over some prints at a table. An open portfolio was before him, and he was THE EARL OF AYLMERTOx's HEIR. 235 examining the contents with critical eyes and a lowering brow. He looked older standing there in the cool shade of that gloomy room, and with those hard lines on his forehead, and his bushy eyebrows drawn together, as he critically examined the pictures in the light. They were worth examining. It was a portfolio of engravings by Bartolozzi he was turning over, early first impressions, proofs before all letters, etchings fresh from the master's hand. He looked up when Robert came in, but his brow did not unbend, and those two upright lines on his forehead were as plain as ever. He could not think what that parson 236 ORCHARD DAMEREL. wanted disturbing him. Had Lady Aylmer- ton sent him to pry upon him, to see that he was not carrying off those prints — his own prints ? ' Lady Aylmerton tells me you have refused to stand for the county,' Robert began, awkwardly ; ' that the seat will go begging.' ' Hang the seat !' Mr. Damerel said, fiercely ; and Robert heard him muttering a naughty oath or two, as he turned over the prints before him. ' Her ladyship has asked me to beg you to reconsider it,' Robert said, but he could not put any heartiness into his voice. ^ She thinks it a pity the seat should go out of the family.' He did not say anything about his duty to the Church or the State, that THE EAKL OF AYLIMERTON's HEIR. 237 the countess had laid so much stress on. Hugh Damerel laughed a harsh, dis- cordant laugh. 'What is the family to me?' he de- manded, fiercely. ' I care as much for the family as I care for the seat. They are both a sham and a pretence. The seat will no doubt go to the best man, — the man who has most money to spend : — and the family may go to the devil !' the heir of the Damerels said, as he stood glaring angrily across the portfolio of prints at the countess's ambassador. ' I don't think money need be a con- sideration,' Robert said, feeling more and more ashamed of his errand. ' Lady Dam- erel assures me the money will be forth- coming. The election will not cost you a penny. You have only to consent to stand. 238 OECHAED DAMEEEL. I don't know anything about it, myself: I only give you her ladyship's message.' ' I have already told Lady Aylmerton I will not stand : I will not make myself the laughing-stock of the county. Everyone knows I am a beggar — a beggar, — and the heir to thirty thousand a-year ! No, I have been made fool enough of already, without being held up to the derision of the county!' Hugh Damerel was very much in earnest, and he began to walk up and down the room ; like Robert when he came through the shrubbery he was working himself up. ' Look here, Lyon,' he said, stopping be- fore Robert, ' did you ever hear of a man fooled as I have been ? I tell you, this cursed property has ruined my life ! I was a young man with the world before me, when that miserable old dotard found THE EARL OF AYLMERTON's HEIR. 239 me out; I had no claim upon him, but the claim to be let alone. He would not let me alone. He sent for me, when I had just settled down into a profession, and informed me he had made me his heir, that he had put down my name in his cursed will for the whole thing — this place is nothing to what the Damerels own in the north — that he had left it all, all to me, for the mere accident that I bore his name, Hugh Damerel. What man after having been told this, with the prospect of such a fortune before him, could settle down to work ? I did what every other man in my case would do, I threw up my profession — and ran into debt.' He walked twice the length of the room while he was talking to Robert, leaving him standing dumb and confounded by 240 ORCHARD DAMEREL. the table, looking down at the Bartolozzi prints. ' I had a right to run into debt,' he said, turning savagely on Robert, as if he had disputed this privilege. 'I, with my expectations, had a perfect right to run into debt. It was only anticipating my fortune — my great fortune. I availed myself of my right. I plunged into debt as if I had already the rent-roll of the Damerels at my back. The earl himself couldn't have spent money more freely than I did. I ran through every farthing I had ; I had nothing to save for ; and, when everything was gone, I raised money upon my expectations. Can you blame me? Some people are ready enough to blame me, and say things hard to bear. I swear to you, Lyon, that I did not know THE EARL OF AYL]VIEETON's HEIR. 241 how this cursed property was tied down when I raised money upon it !' His wrath and resentment against the man who had made him his heir was terrible. Robert had never seen a man so moved. ' Xo ; I cannot blame you,' he said, * no one can blame you.' ' I tell you,' he went on, speaking hur- riedly, and the perspiration standing out in great beads on his forehead, • that man has robbed me. He has robbed me of everything in life worth having — of my youth, my hope, my ambition. I had as- pirations and aims like other men. I had a future before me once, before he found me out, and blasted my life with his cursed gift. Look at me now, a ruined man, soured by poverty and hardship and dis- appointment ! Everything has gone from VOL. I. K 242 OECHARD DAMEREL. me ; my independence, my place in the world, my ambition, my hopes, aims, — everything has gone — and left me a pauper : — a puppet of a rich man's caprice !' He threw himself into a chair beside the table where the portfolio of prints was lying open, and covered his face with his hands. It was terrible to see a man so shaken with passion. Robert laid his hand on his shoulder. ' De mortuis nil nisi honum^ he said, gravely. He could not be silent in that house and hear the husband of his patroness spoken of in those terms. 'Ah!' Hugh Damerel said, fiercely, 'it is all very well for you to preach, who have not suffered. I have been a fool, and worse THE EARL OF AYLMERTON S HEIR. 243 than a fool, I know ; but I have been duped, cruelly duped as never man was. I knew, of course I knew, everyone knew, that the earl was over head and ears in debt. But think of the estate, — the acres and acres of land, the great mansion that no one has lived in for years, the treasures that are locked up in this place, and at Aylmer- ton. Why, the things that are locked up here, that no eye has ever seen, are worth a fortune. I tell you, Lyon, if these things were sold — things that would never be missed — the debt could be paid off at once.' Robert looked round the room as he spoke, but he did not see anything that looked like fetching a hundred thousand pounds. He saw shelves uj^on shelves of books in their fragrant Russia leather bind- r2 244 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ings, and a case, the door of which was open, where there were portfolios of prints instead of books — rows of bulky portfolios, one on top of the other, reaching up to the ceiling. There were no j)ictures on the walls, there was no room for pictures, but on the top the book-cases were big Oriental jars. He did not know anything about books, rare books, but he knew something about prints and china, and those old jars had caught his eye when he came into the room. He found himself wondering what that big yellow jar would fetch with the hideous green dragon sprawling over it, and the ruby jar — he never remembered having seen a ruby jar of that size before, — and the set of big turquoise blue enam- elled vases with fierce-looking vampires on the lids. They would fetch something THE EARL OF AYLJMERTON's HEIR. 245 at Christie's, he was sure, but they would not fetch a hundred thousand j^ounds. ' Have you seen the pictures in this house?' Hugh Damerel asked, speaking in his rapid way, ' the Gainsboroughs, and the Reynolds, and the Vandykes ? Why, the portraits of the women alone would nearly pay off that debt. The house is full, brimming over with works of art, every one of them a gem in itself. The earl knew what he was about, he bouo^ht nothino; 7 O but gems, and the treasures here have been accumulating generation after gener- ation. There has never been anything sold, everything has accumulated. The money has not been spent, it has been invested ; it could not have been invested better. Everything in this house is worth a hundred times its original cost. It has 246 ORCHARD DAMEREL been heaping up and heaping up. It has been kept quite intact, and now it is all mine — and I cannot touch a penny of it.' Robert remarked that he had noticed the beautiful old china, he could not help seeing the china, he had never seen any- thing like it in his life. Hugh Damerel laughed his hollow, mirthless laugh. ' The china is all very well,' he said. ' It is good of its kind ; but it is nothing to the other things there are in this house : the pictures, the books, the silver, — there is a service of silver here that was used at the Restoration, — great tankards and wine- cups in which the king's health was drunk, — and gold and silver bowls and dishes and fruit-baskets. There are dozens of old apostle spoons, and rat-tailed spoons, and THE EARL OF AYLMERTON's HEIR. 247 that sort of thing. I wonder the old wo- man isn't afraid to sleep in the house with all this valuable old plate. It was brought over here from Aylmerton for safety. If it were known to be here, all the thieves in London would be down after it, and she would be murdered in her bed.' ' Then I am sure that you ought to use great caution in speaking about it,' the rector said, gravely. ' It would never do for it to be known.' ' It isn't likely to be known. The people here are all blind and deaf, they don't see anything that is under their very nose. Nobody here dreams of the value of those old portraits on the walls, the miniatures, the enamels in the cases, the ivories that are lying about these rooms, the engravings locked up in these cases. I tell you, sir, 248 ORCHARD DAMEREL. some of tlie things in this house are price- less. Look at these engravings.' He turned over the beautiful red prints and etchings on the table as he spoke, with his eager, nervous hand. ' See these portraits fresh from the artist's hand, proofs before all letters, some with Bartolozzi's own touches upon them ! There are portfolios of his en- gravings in that case, all as fine as these. Every portfolio contains different subjects, — see ;' and he ran his finger down the gilt titles on the backs of the crimson leather cases. " Mythological Subjects," " Dra- matic and Poetical Subjects," " Portraits," " Vignettes," '' Allegorical Compositions," " Historical Subjects," " Marlborough Gems, Cameos," " Illustrations," " Reli- gious Subjects." There is not such an- THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's HEIR. 249 other collection of Bartolozzi prints in the world ! A man could carry away under his arm a fortune. I wonder the old woman trusted me with the key. All these things are mine, sir, mine ; and I can't lay a finger on a single one ! — No, thank you ; I will not accept the countess's munificent ofi'er. Let who will have the seat. Let it go with the rest.' 250 CHAPTER XIII. joan's great-aunt. Robert LyjON told his wife all about tliat interview with Hugh Damerel, and the failure of his errand. ' I think she is a very unreasonable old woman,' Joan said, referring to the count- ess ; ' how can she expect the poor young man to stand? Everyone would know that he was only a puppet. Cecilia tells me that he hasn't a penny in the world ; JOAN S GEE AT- AUNT. 251 that he ran through all his money — T^^hat little he had — before the earl's death. He thought he was coming into a great for- tune at once ; he never understood that there was to be this unreasonable delay.' ' He is very bitter about it ; I never saw a man so moved before. I am afraid he will do something rash — something he will be sorry for. He is so indignant at the injustice of the whole thing, particu- larly at the treatment of the trustees ; he thinks they are exceeding their authority. If he should do anything rash in his re- sentment, I don't think he would be quite answerable for it.' ' You don't mean, Rob, that the poor fellow is going out of his mind — that this disappointment has turned his head ? I thought I saw a wild look in his eyes yes- 252 ORCHARD DAMEREL. terclay. I never saw such an unhappy- looking man.' ' No, I don't think he is going out of his mind; but I think he is reckless. He believes that he has been ill-used ; that he is kept out of his property illegally. I shouldn't be surprised to hear that he had taken some hasty, ill-advised step to get possession of it.' ' I think he has been shamefully used ! He has been duped and deceived; the earl's ridiculous will was a mockery, no- thing short of a mockery. Fancy a man, the heir to all that place, the owner of all those lovely things, not having a penny in the world, being obliged to earn his living ' by painting pictures ! He painted a pic- ture of his own place when he was down Joan's great-aunt. 253 here last, and the countess actually bought it of him!' ' Perhaps he wouldn't take the money from her else ; it might be her only way of helping him. He wouldn't accept the ex- penses of the election at her hands.' Hugh Damerel left the neighbourhood the next day. Before he went, he came over to the rectory to see Robert. He was looking as gloomy and discontented as ever, but the excitement of that election proposal which had stirred his indignation was over, and he had cooled down. '• The countess has not given it up,' he explained, speaking of the election ; ' she has sent for one of the trustees, Greatorex^ a London lawyer; he is coming down 254 ORCHARD DAMEREL. to-day, and I have waited to see Mm.' ' I thought she had given up all idea of keeping the seat,' Robert said, with a sudden sinking of heart. He had hoped that there would be no opposition, and that that hasty promise of his to the enemy would never be known. ' No ; she is an obstinate old w^oman, she never gives up anything until she is obliged. She would stand for the seat herself if they would return her. I don't care a hang who gets the seat ! I'd as soon see Main waring in as anyone. I saw your name on his committee, Lyon. You can tell him from me that I wdsh him luck. I hope he will get the seat, with all my heart !' Then Robert had to explain that he had promised his support to his neighbour, JOAX'S GREAT-AUNT. 255 Mr. Mainwaring, before he knew that there was a probability of a candidate representing the Damerel interest coming forward. ' The Damerels have no interest here now,' the heir said, turning upon him savagely. He was a dreadfully touchy young man, he would go off in a rage at a moment's notice. 'There are no Damerels left, only trustees. You don't call that old woman a Damerel ! She was Maria Burro ugh, a pettifogging country attorney's daughter, the other day. Her father was the man who helped the earl on to his ruin, who made it easy for him to raise money on the place — money that I've got to pay. What was it to him ? Whenever the earl was more than usually hard up, he went to old Burrough, instead of 256 ORCIIAKD DAMEREL. going to his own lawyers, to honest men who would not have seen him robbed, and he got the money. It didn't matter to him how the estate suffered ; he raised the money. Oh, there is no greed like the greed of these low country attorneys who lend money on mortgage. He got his rascally fees, and he burdened the place with a debt that will take a lifetime, two or three lifetimes, to pay oif.' ' I didn't know that Lady Aylmerton's friends, relations, were such large creditors of the estate,' Robert said, in a tone of surprise ; he had always understood that her ladyship's relatives were quite humble people ; that her brother, Cecilia's father, was a small attorney, with a very second- rate, shady sort of clientele, practising in the adjoining town. JOAX'S GREAT-AUNT. 257 ' Oh, the old rascal overreached himself; he got mixed up with a bank that failed ^ and he came to grief, and the mortgages fell into other hands.' • And Cecilia Burrough ?' Joan asked, anxiously ; she was rather fond of Cecilia Burrough. ' Oh, Cecilia is very well. It is no fault of hers. We are not answerable for the sins of our grandfathers. I am always- sorry for Cecilia ; she has a hard life with that old woman, and she will get nothing when she dies. It is too bad to bring a girl up in luxury, as she is brought up in that house, and then to turn her penni- less upon the world. Cecilia is the only redeeming feature in Orchard Damerel.' ^ The countess will leave her something; she will not be quite unprovided for,' Joan VOL. I. s 258 ORCHARD DAMEREL. said, warmly. She was always ready to do battle for her friends. ' The countess has very little to leave,' Hugh Damerel said, with a laugh. ' She has to keep up her small state, and when she dies she will leave every penny she has got in the world for masses to be said for her soul, or whatever newer form that kind of spiritual legacy may take. She is not likely to leave anything to poor Cecilia.' ' It will be very horrid of her if she doesn't,' Joan said, warmly. ' To see what a slave she makes of that poor girl ! She never allows her to leave her side ; she keeps her shut up for hours and hours all through the bright, summer days, shut up in a stuffy room, reading those dreary, prophetic sermons. She was so tired and Joan's great-aunt. 259 hysterical from being shut up so long that she broke down the other night when I met her walking by the coomb e ; she said she wished Dr. Gumming had never been born !' ' A good thing the countess didn't hear her !' Mr. Damerel said, with his mirthless laugh. ' I got the poor girl into trouble the other day, — God knows, unwittingly. We had been walking in the grounds, and Gecilia had gone in to read the everlasting sermons to my lady, and I asked her to leave the door, the front door, unlocked — they always keep that cursed door locked when I am in the house — and I came in, unannounced, and without ringing, an hour or two later, and there was the devil to pay.' s2 260 ORCHARD DAMEREL* ' Why?' asked Robert. ' What was the difficulty?' ' Oh ! I am not allowed to go into my own house without knocking. I am only a guest under my own roof. I am not allowed to open the hall-door and walk in, lest I should treat the house as my own^ and take forced possession of it — and they might not be able to dislodge me, if they tried. I don't know that I shall not some day — some day — when the right time comes.' ' I should take possession of it to- morrow if it were mine,' Joan said, hotly. ' If they wouldn't let me in at the door, I should get in at the window. All the old women and all the trustees in the world shouldn't keep me out of my own ! ' She looked so delio:htful standino^ there Joan's great- aunt. 261 mth that bright colour in her cheeks, and her eyes shining, puckering up her pretty, white forehead and her red lips ; she looked so exactly a painter's ideal of warm, generous, impulsive womanhood, that the artist-heir sighed as he looked at her. ' If I had so warm and true a champion as your wife, Lyon,' he said to Robert, ' I Avould not be kept out of it another hour!' They had been talking in the library — to be more accurate, the study, the rector's study — and Mr. Damerel, as was his wont, had been pacing up and down the room rehearsing his wrongs, very much like a €aged bear. He was very fond of re- hearsing his wrongs, they were of para- mount interest to him — the most interest- ing theme in the world — and he thought 262 ORCHAED DAMEREL. they were of equal interest to others ; and he generally behaved like a bear while he was reciting them. He was behaving like a bear now. He was not exactly tearing up and down the room like a caged wild creature, but he was striding with his great steps up and down the study with his moody, dejected air, and running his long, lean fingers through his great, tawny beard. ' I tell you, sir,' he was saying to the rector, who had tried to get him into a chair, and to look at the situation calmly, ' I tell you there is not a tenant on the estate that is treated like I am. I am not allowed to walk in the grounds without permission of the trustees. I cannot throw a line into the river, or carry a gun in the Joan's great-aunt. 265 plantation, without being liable to be prosecuted as a trespasser, or thrown into prison as a poacher and a felon. The trustees have absolutely forbidden me to fish or shoot on my own place !' He was reciting his wrongs with great vehemence as he walked up and down that nondescript room that the rector called his study, and that the rector's wife dignified by the name of the library. ' Show the person into the library, Mary,' she used to say to the maid, with great dignity, when anyone came to see the rector on parish matters. It was not the least like the library at Orchard Damerel. There were Robert's few theological books partly occupying two or three of the long shelves of that 264 ORCHARD DAMEREL. big book-case. They did not nearly fill them up ; and there were some old school books of Joan's, and some yellow backs, and a litter of newspapers and magazines on the lower shelves. It was a most nnclerical collection for a rector's study ; it was a very poor stock-in-trade for a professional career. Perhaps the rector s real stock-in-trade was out of sight, behind the door of that locked cupboard. There was only that half-filled book- shelf to cover the library walls, so that there was plenty of room for other things. Robert had hunted out some old photo- graphs of his college clubs, and had them hung up to take ofi* the bareness of the walls : the crew of the May boat of St. Benedict's when he rowed in it ; the cricket eleven and the football team, in Joan's great- aunt. 265 each of which his pleasing countenance Avas portrayed at various stages of his University career. Hugh Damerel stopped before each of these interesting groups in turn, examining them with his unseeing eyes. Joan was hoping that he would remark how nice Robert looked in ' shorts ;' and how much more becoming the scanty dress of that May boat crew was than his clerical habiliments ; but Mr. Damerel made no such remark. He did remark one picture that hung on the wall, — a picture of a Avoman, in an old- fashioned dress, that hung in a dark corner. It was the picture of Joan's great-great- aunt, that had been sent to her with her wedding presents. She never could un- derstand why her mother had sent her 26(^ ORCHARD DAMEREL. the poor faded old thing in its shabby frame. She would not give it a place in any other room in the house — she would not have had it in her pretty gay drawing- room for the world. She had tried it in the dining-room, being a family portrait,, but it would not do, and she had banished it the next day. The only place in the house that could be found for it was a dark corner in Robert's study, behind the door. Hugh Damerel stopped in the midst of reciting his wrongs, and looked at the picture. Perhaps he was thinking of those old family portraits on the walls of Orchard Damerel that were his. ' It is my wife's great-aunt,' Robert said^ seeing he paused before it. ' My great-great-aunt, Rob,' Joan in- Joan's great- aunt. 267 terrupted, ^aily ; ' tlie dear old thing has been dead over a century.' ' Ah ! I see ; a family portrait. I could not think how it got here.' He continued his walk, and said no more about the picture. After he was gone, Joan suggested that it should be banished to one of the empty rooms upstairs. ' I don't wouder Mr. Damerel was sur- prised at seeing such a shabby old thing here,' she said ; ' it's only fit for a lumber- room.' Robert would not have the picture dis- placed. It was a family portrait, and it had been a wedding present. There was something, too, in the beautiful wilful face that reminded him of Joan, a likeness in the bright eyes and the red lips. He 268 ORCHARD DAMEREL. could not bear to think of the beautiful face looking out uj^on bare walls and an empty room. He had got used to the picture now, and the face looked down kindly upon him out of its shabby frame. 269 CHAPTER XIV. CONFIDENCES. Joan met Cecilia walking in the grounds the clay after Mr. Hugh Damerel returned to London. The countess kept her niece a close prisoner all day, but in the cool of the evening, just before dinner, she was allowed to walk in the grounds for half an hour. After dinner she had to read or play to the countess for the rest of the 270 ' ORCHARD DAMEREL. evening. She always walked in the direction of the rectory, and Joan, when- ever she had nothing else to do, would meet her half way. She was very anxious to meet her to- night : she wanted to hear the result of Mr. Greatorex's visit, and if the poor young man, — she always called the Earl of Ayl- merton's heir, ' the poor young man,' — had been able to come to any arrangement with him before he went away. Cecilia had a good deal to tell her. There had been a row-royal between the heir and the trustee, and Mr. Damerel had gone away in a rage. He had asked for permission to shoot in the Aylmerton covers ; the covers were full of game, and the place was strictly preserved. The trustees and their friends came down shoot- CONFIDENCES. 271 iiig in the season, and had capital sport ; but they would not give the heir permission for a single day. ' I think the trustees are behaving shame- fully !' Joan said, blazing up. ' I wonder j\[r. Damerel stands it. I wouldn't if I were a man. "What are they afraid of, that they will not let him shoot on his own j^lace ?' ' They are afraid of his claiming the right, I suppose,' Cecilia said, with the least possible flush creeping up under her white skin. ' I got into dreadful disgrace the other day for leaving the hall-door un- fastened for him to come in. They are so afraid of his making it a precedent, and claimino; it as a right. I don't see how they are to dislodge him if he once gets possession.' 272 ORCHAKD DAMEBEL. Joan saw that flush on Cecilia's white face, and she drew her own conclusions. Poor girl ! of course she was in love with him ; how could she help being in love with this ill-used hero? No hero of romance was ever more cruelly ill-used, and had a greater claim uj^on a woman's tender compassion ; and pity, we know, is akin to love. Joan was quite sure that if she had been in Cecilia's place she would have been desperately in love with the gloomy heir ; she would have been his champion, and stood up between him and those dreadful trustees. She would have left the hall-door open, she would have left every door in the house open, all hours of the day and night for him. ' I think you were quite right to leave that door open,' she said, warmly. ' Mr. CONFIDENCES. 273 Damerel says that you are tlie only friend that he has in the house.' Cecilia's face drooped rosily. ' There is the countess,' she said, with a little quiver in her voice. ^ I am sure my aunt is his friend. She would help him if she could, but she has no authority here ; everything is in the hands of the trustees.' • Will he ever come into the property ?* Joan asked, impatiently. She could not understand Cecilia taking it so quietly. She could not take things quietly if it were her lover. Cecilia shook her head. ' No,' she said, with the tell-tale blood in her face, and head drooping, * I don't think — I'm afraid he will never come into it. The late earl's debts are so large, it will take years and years to pay them. It VOL. I. T 274 ORCHARD DAMEREL. will take several lifetimes. There is sucli heavy interest to be paid, quite shocking in- terest to be paid on some of the mortgages.' Cecilia's head drooped lower as she spoke. She must have known that it was her own relative who had laid this heavy tribute on the estate. * It takes all the income to pay the interest only. When the countess dies her small jointure will fall in, and that will accumulate, and — and perhaps they will let the house.' ' And what will you do?' Joan asked. ' Will you go on living here if the house is not let ? There must be some one left here to take charge of all those valuable things.' ' Oh, no ; I should have to go away at once. I should not be allowed to stay here a single day.' CONFIDENCES. 275 ' What would you do ? The countess would have made some provision for you, surely ?' Joan was thinking of what Hugh Damerel said the day before about Cecilia being left unprovided for. The girl shook her head, and there was a little throaty quaver in her voice. ' No, Lady Aylmerton has left her money elsewhere — to the Jews, I believe. She has not much to leave, but she is very fond of the Jews. She is always asking me to read the jDrophecies about them. She thinks they are going back to their own land shortly, and everything she has got to leave she will leave to the Jews'~ society.' 'To take them back?' ' I suppose so. It will take a lot of T 2 276 ORCHARD DAMEREL. money to rebuild their cities and carry them all back,' Cecilia said, with a sigh. Joan gave a little impatient sniff. ' I thought Queens were going to be their nursing mothers, and carry them back,' she said, shortly. ' I'm sure they could do very well without Lady Aylmer- ton's help. Robert ought to speak to her, and tell her that charity begins at home. If she is so selfish and narrow-minded that she chooses to overlook the claims of her own people, and leave her money for that ridiculous object — ' Joan called it ' ridiculous,' she did not believe in that kind of millennium — ' she ought to be re- minded of her duty.' ' I wouldn't have Mr. Lyon speak to her about it, for the world !' Cecilia said, turn- ing quite pale. CONFIDENCES. 277 ' Why not ? She ought to be told her ■duty, if she doesn't know it. What's the use of a clergyman in a parish if he -doesn't tell people their duty?' ' Oh. pray, pray, don't ask him to speak to my aunt,' said her ladyship's niece, trembling, ' she would be sure to know that I had been complaining.' ' And why shouldn't you complain ? You have a right to complain.' ' No, I have no right. Lady Aylmerton has been very good to me. She took me away from a wretched home, and she brought me to this beautiful place, and she has surrounded me with every luxury. I have no right to expect any more.' ' Oh, you poor thing!' the rector's wife said, with a scorn she could not keep out of her voice. ' What do you intend to do 278 ORCHARD DAMEREL. when her ladyship dies ? You can't ex^^ect her to live for ever.' Cecilia Burrough was a poor-spirited little trembling thing ; she shook all over when the countess was in her tantrums — she used to have her tantrums like other people less distinguished — and she wept when she bullied her, but she had a little bit of spirit left. ' Do ?' she said, with a little throaty- quaver in her voice that Joan had re- marked before, ' do ? Why, I must get my own living. Thank heaven ! I need not be dependent upon anyone ; I can always get my own living. I shall go out as a governess.' ' A governess !' Joan repeated, in her mocking voice. ' Oh, you poor dear ! you don't know what you are talking about. CONFIDENCES. 279 Do you know what a governess's life is?' Cecilia admitted humbly that she did not, but that other girls went out as governesses. She was not less brave or more thin-skinned than other girls. What other girls had done, and were doing, she could do. ' Do you know what other girls are do- ing?' Joan said, eagerly, her cheeks flush- ing with excitement and her eyes shining. 'Would you like to hear what a girl brought up as you have been, and who was compelled by circumstances to go out in the world, and get her living as a governess, is now doing, now, at this very moment ? I have had a letter from one this morning : I have it with me now. It's from my own sister. She is as brave as a lion : she 280 ORCHARD DAMEREL. would suffer anything before she would complain, and this is what she writes.' Joan took a letter from her pocket, and spread it open, and laid it on Cecilia Bur- rough's knee. They were sitting on one of the rustic benches in the park,' and the twilight was falling. Cecilia read it as well as the failing light would allow. ' Darling,' — it began, — ' I promised to write and tell you exactly what my life is here, and about my work. ' How shall I begin ? ' Remember, this is under the seal of confidence, and the dear things at home are never to hear a word about it. ' In the first place, I made a mistake in coming here. I ought never, never, never CONFIDENCES. 281 to have gone into a private family ; I ought to have stuck to a school. ' This is the programme of my day: ' O.30, — awoke by children talking, two of them, — boys, — sleep in my room ; make them keep quiet if possible, and doze till 7. Get up, and dress two boys. 8, — break- fast. 9 to 12.30,— lessons. 12.30,— walk. 1.30, dinner. 2.30 to 4, — lessons. At 4, children go out for walk wdth maid, and I stay at home and mend their clothes. 5.30, — tea. 6.30, — start putting them to bed. 7.30 to 10, — my own time. ' I have all my meals in the nursery with the children. I never go downstairs by any chance. I am in the nursery all day. Mrs. Brown does not shake hands, if she happens to say good-morning ; and Mr. Brown actually tipped me a nod the 282 ORCHARD DAMEREL. first time I saw him out of the house ! He has realized at last that he ought to take his hat off to the governess ! The boys — my boys that I counted so much upon (four, seven, and eight) — are the naughtiest, rudest, most dreadfully spoilt children I ever met with. ' The loneliness of this wretched life is simply dreadful ! I never speak to anyone all day long but the children, and a Ger- man servant who cannot speak one word of English. At first it nearly drove me mad ; but I am getting used to it now. ' It is hard work, too, being on the " go " all day long ; the lesson hours are much too long for such small children. When I suggested less, Mrs. Brown politely said I was shirking the work ! If the children were the least lovable or nice, it wouldn't CONFIDENCES. 283 be so bad, but they are truly dreadful I ' I have said more than I ought to have said, but it is such a relief to pour it out. Remember, not a word of this is to reach Stoke Lucy. ' I shall certainly leave here as soon as I can hear of anything else. If I were a house- maid or a cook, I could get a situation at once. I could get a hundred situations — and I could get any salary I liked to ask. Mrs. Brown does not pay me a quarter the wages that she gives to her cook, who is quite a magnificent person, which perhaps accounts for the fact that she has alto- gether ceased to remember that I am a lady. ' Burn this horrid letter ; don't let any- one see it, I would not send it if I had time to write another. Darling, I am so thankful to hear of your happiness. I am 284 ORCHARD DAMEREL. a wretch to try to cloud it. Don't let this trouble you ; forget my complainings, and remember only with deep, deep thank- fulness, how good God has been to you in giving you such a beautiful home, and a loving husband, and everything to make your life happy ! Write me a long gossip- ing letter, it will do me so much good. Getting letters is my only pleasure. ' Always, darling, ' Your loving Bertha.' It was almost too dark to read the last lines, but dark as it was Joan saw tears in Cecilia's eyes as she handed the letter back. ' It is too horrid,' she said, huskily, ' it is much too horrid !' And^hen she had to hurry back to the house to be in time for dinner. 285 CHAPTER XV. THE EARL OF AYLMERTON's TRUSTEE. Cecilia was late for dinner after all. She had to dress when she got back, and she had stayed out longer than usual, and she had barely five minutes left to dress in. The countess always expected her niece to dress for dinner : she kept up very little state, but she still clung to the old form of putting on an evening gown and a French blonde cap with a flower in it, as she had been used to do when the earl was 286 ORCHARD DAMEREL. living, wlien slie came down to dinner. She had had no new evening gowns since the earl's death ; she was wearing out the faded grey and lavender satins and hrocades that used to make such a brave show in the old days of her magnificence. They made a brave show still when seen by candle-light, and veiled with French blondes and laces. Her ladyship had a weakness for blonde : the glistening sur- face and the large patterns suited her large person and her florid face. She was covered with blonde to-night, a little faded and yellow, and looking as if it had been lying by for years, and some ghosts of .artificial flowers were in her cap. She sat in great state at the head of the table, and Mr. Greatorex, the trustee of the Damerel estate, ought to have sat at the THE EAEL OF AYL]MERTON's TRUSTEE. 287 other end, where a cover was laid for him, but he chose to sit opposite Cecilia, where he could see her pretty meek face the other side of the table. It really was pretty to-night. The ex- citement of being late — she had never been late before in her life — had brought a colour into her white cheeks, and her eyes were shining. She was wearing one of the countess's old gowns. Her ladyship's gowns were so ample that they required consider- able reduction for her niece's slender figure — reduction and restoration. There was quite enough in one of Lady Aylmer- ton's gowns to make two frocks for Cecilia. There was no French blonde on the low neck of Cecilia's simple satin frock to hide her white bosom and her pretty bare arms. She wore no ornament but a coral 288 OKCHARD DAMEREL. necklace round her slender throat, but the Earl of Aylinerton's trustee, sitting opposite to her through that dreary dinner, thought he had never seen such a becoming orna- ment for a woman's throat before in all his life. Mr. Greatorex ought to have known better at his age, than to have stared at Cecilia's pretty face, and her white shoulders, and her lilac satin gown, and that red coral necklace, all the time he was eating his dinner. He was an elderly lawyer of grave as- pect, with keen grey eyes that looked across the table at her ladyship's niece from beneath immense bushy eyebrows. There was very little conversation at the dinner-table; the countess, in spite of her satins and her blondes, was not in the best THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's TRUSTEE. 28^ of tempers. She found fault with all the dishes, she snapped up Cecilia when she ventured to make a remark ; she had been quarrelling with the late earl's trustee all day, and she had not quite forgiven him yet. It took Lady Aylmerton a long time to forgive people. The old family lawyer had been per- suading her to put all this election nonsense out of her head. It would have been the height of folly, he exj^lained to her, for Mr. Hugh Damerel, whom everybody knew had not a penny in the world, to stand for this or any other seat. The earl's trustees would not have supported him : they would not spend a penny in supporting any candidate. The seat must go, as the title and every- thing else had gone ; there was nothing to be gained by keeping it in the family. VOL. I. u \290 . OECHARD DAMEREL. ( ' And that man at Wytchanger will go an unopposed !' her ladyship had said, bridling up. ' I hope so,' the lawyer had answered, ' the county couldn't return a better man.' ' Do you know that his father was the earl's enemy, that he brought an action — a lawsuit — against the earl, and robbed him of all the land on the other side of the rcoombe, the spinney that you can see from this window?' ' I know that Mr. Tom Main waring holds the largest mortgage on the Damerel property. The estate is virtually his. It ivould be madness to oppose him,' the earl's trustee had answered, and then her ladyship had gone oiF in a huff. When the solemn stately dinner was THE EAEL OF AYLMERTOx's TRUSTEE. 291 over, and the ladies had taken themselves to the drawing-room, Cecilia sat down to the grand piano at the end of the big dusky room to play to her aunt. She could not read Dr. Cumming's sermons to-night, as a visitor was staying in the house, so she sat down at the piano and played some gloomy old melodies instead. The Earl of Aylmerton's trustee came in while she was playing, but he did not go over to the piano ; he sat down at the farther end of the room, beside the chair where her ladyship was nodding after her dinner. The far end of the long drawing- room was in the shadow ; but he could see Cecilia's white arms gleaming at the piano, and the curve of her white throat against the great stiff brocaded curtains that swept from their ancient cornices behind her. u2 292 ORCHAKD DAMEREL. While they talked in low whispers, Cecilia played. She did not put much heart into her playing ; she was thinking all the time of that letter that she had read in the shrubbery. Should she go away from this place some day, away from the old-fash- ioned state and the dreary splendour, the lumbering old family chariot with an earl's coronet on the panels ? — should she ever go away from these things that had come to be part of her life, and go out into the world, as that other girl had gone, and pass her days in a bare school-room teaching rude, dreadful, troublesome little boys ? The grey black shadows of the stately room loomed around her as she asked her- self these questions ; she could see the countess's blonde cap nodding in her chair THE EAEL OF AYLMERTON's TRUSTEE. 293 by the fireplace, — they had already begun fires these chill autumn evenings, — and the eagle-like profile of the great London law- yer, with his immense eyebrows and his close-cut grey hair, as he leaned over her ladyship's chair. She did not know that they were talking about her ; she would not have taken any interest in their conver- sation if she had known. She was thinking about the letter that the rector's wife had shown her, and won- dered if her fate would be like Bertha's. Silent and dull and monotonous as this life was, she was used to it ; it seemed im- possible that it should ever cease, and that one day, perhaps at no distant day, she would have to go away. While Cecilia was playing a low melan- choly accompaniment to her gloomy 294 OKCHAKD DAMEREL. thoughts, the Earl of Aylmerton's trustee was asking the countess some questions about her niece's future. ' I hope your ladyship has made some provision for Miss Cecilia,' he was sayings as he watched the girl's white fingers straying over the keys. ' During all these years you have been able to lay aside a sufficient sum, I trust, to provide for her future.' ' I have done a great deal for Cecilia al- ready,' her ladyship said. ' I don't know what more she can expect.' ' I don't suppose she expects anything,* the lawyer answered, still watching the white fingers straying over the keys ; ' still, there is her future to consider. She can- not always go on living here : she has been. THE EAEL OF AYLMERTOn's TRUSTEE. 295' accustomed to a certain style of living — to ease, comfort, and luxury,' lie added, as he paused and looked round the stately room. It was all the more stately for the shadows ; the rich brocades, the beautiful old china, the white marble statuary, the old family portraits on the walls looking down out of their gilded frames in their faded beauty, the white figure playing in the dusky corner, and the great curtains sweeping behind her. It was a lovely room in that dim lamplight, and the old lawyer, sitting by the countess's chair, pic- tured to himself what the change would be to the girl playing in the shadows, when she would go back from this place to her father's house. 296 ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' Cecilia has had every comfort while she has been here,' the countess said, sharply. She objected to being called to account. * If she had been my own child, I could not have done more for her.' ' Exactly ; the fact of her having been brought up in all this luxury, amid these surroundings, will make the change greater when it comes. It will be cruel to send her back to her father's house ; there are seven others, I believe, all of them at home. And his practice cannot bring in very much. I know something of what a country attorney's practice is worth, and he has had losses, I hear, lately — considerable losses. I don't think it would be fair to send Cecilia back.' The countess sniffed in a peculiarly dis- agreeable way. She was only a ])arvenu THE EAEL OF AYLMEKTON's TRUSTEE. 297 countess, slie was not to the manner born, and she had a plebeian way of showing her displeasure ; her manners had none of the repose that marks the caste of Vere de Yere. ' I have done a great deal for my family,' she said, ' from first to last. I have let James haveagreat deal of money,' — James washer ladyship's brother, Cecilia's father, — ' and I shall never see any of it back. I have paid for the education of the boys, and I have given Cecilia a home here for I don't know how many years. I have done more than my duty, and I have a right to do what I like with the little money I have been able to put aside.' ' Your ladyship has a perfect right,' said the old lawyer, stiffly. Before breakfast the next morning, the 298 ORCHARD DAMEREL. Earl of Aylmerton's trustee took an early Avalk through the beautiful grounds of Orchard Damerel. It was a strange sight to him, after his dreary Temple chambers, to look out upon the purple hills and valleys of this sweet West-country. It was yet early autumn. The leaves had only just begun to change from green to gold, and from gold to russet. The hills were melting into delightful hues of morning mist and sunshine and shadow, and a thin purple haze, like a veil, hung about them. The dew was heavy on the grass, and hung like sparkling gems on the branches of the trees as he passed beneath them, — a shimmer of gold and green and amber light and russet leaves dropping down on to the path before him« It was quite worth while to get up an hour THE EARL OF AYLMERTOn's TRUSTEE. 299 or two earlier to see tlie lovely blaze and glitter of the woods and hedges on this glowing autumn morning. Mr. Greatorex walked slowly along the winding path that led beside the coombe ; he was an elderly gentleman, and he knew better than to take the short cut across the grass with the dew still heavy upon it. He would not have gained much if he had ; he would only have met Cecilia earlier. He met her coming across the fields, with her cheeks glowing, and a trail of rosy honeysuckle in her hand. The grave London lawyer watched her with a strange interest, perhaps with some admiration in his keen blue eyes. She was ever so much better worth looking at than those statuary marble figures upon which the earl had expended such fabu- 300 ORCHARD DAMEREL. lous sums. He liad been looking at those figures the night before, as he sat lis- tening to Cecilia playing her sad tunes, and wondering what they would fetch. He was thinking about them when he met her walking towards him with that branch of woodbine in her hand. ' You are out early,' he remarked, when he came up to her ; ' do you always take such an early walk ?' Cecilia blushed, she was not accustomed to go out before breakfast. She had passed a sleepless night, tossing about, dreaming that she was immured in a bare school-room with a dozen rude, dreadful boys, and that she could not teach them anything. They all knew a great deal more than she did, and they were laughing at her ignorance. She got up feeling miserable, and haunted THE EARL OF AYLMERTOx's TRUSTEE. 301 by that dreadful dream, and she had come out into the fresh morning air to shake it off. She did not tell the Earl of Aylmerton's trustee all this, but she told him some- thin o- of it. She had known him for vears and years, coming and going to and from Orchard Damerel, and sometimes staying weeks together in the house. She had long ceased to regard him as a stranger ; she looked upon him as a friend — an old friend. She did not hesitate to tell him what troubled her, and she told him some- thing of the letter Joan had given her to read in the shrubbery. ' And in the face of this,' he asked, when she had poured out her artless tale, ' do you still intend to go out as a governess — in a family?' 302 , ORCHARD DAMEREL. ' What else can I do ?' she asked hun, with her lips quivering, and the tears rush- ing to her eyes. 'There is nothing else a girl, brought up as I have been, can do. I can only teach children.' , The lawyer smiled. ' I thought the market was already over- stocked,' he said. ' So it is ; but perhaps room can be found for me. I don't expect so much as most people. I shall be content with very little. I am not clever ; I have no accom- plishments. There is so little that I can teach, but I would make myself useful. I shouldn't mind doing things.' She was thinking of Bertha's letter while she was speaking, of the little boys — the dreadful, naughty, rude, spoilt little boys — that Bertha Penrose had to dress and THE EARL OF AYLMERTON's TRUSTEE. 303 undress every night and morning, and how she was taking only a lady's wage, and doing a servant's work. The London lawyer looked at her with a strange pity in his eyes, as she spoke in her brave hopeful way of the hard life, and the hard uncongenial tasks that were awaiting her in the future. He said no more about the future as he walked back beside CeciHa to breakfast. He talked about the mists on the hills, and the violet shadows in the valleys, and the songs of the birds, and the shimmer of the dewy leaves. When he came near the house, he spoke about himself, and then Cecilia learnt for the first time that he was a lonely old man spending most of the day in chambers, and living in a big deso- late London house : that his wife had been 304 ORCHARD DAMEREL. dead years and years, and that he was living quite by himself, a lonely, cheerless bachelor life. He went away after breakfast, and Cecilia found herself thinking about him several times during that day, and pictur- ing him going back at night to his dreary, desolate house. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Frinted bij Duncan Macdonald, Blenheim House, London, W ^ UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOI9-URBANA 3 0112 051353974