The Project Gutenberg EBook of Two Strangers, by Margaret Oliphant This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Two Strangers Author: Margaret Oliphant Release Date: October 21, 2017 [EBook #55784] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO STRANGERS *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) TWO STRANGERS BY MRS. OLIPHANT {3} {4} {5} NEW YORK R. F. FENNO AND COMPANY 112 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1895 R. F. FENNO AND COMPANY CHAPTER I., II., III., IV., V., VI., VII., VIII., IX. CHAPTER I. “And who is this young widow of yours whom I hear so much about? I understand Lucy’s rapture over any stranger; but you, too, mother—” “I too—well, there is no particular witchcraft about it; a nice young woman has as much chance with me as with any one, Ralph —” “Oh, if it’s only a nice young woman—” “It’s a great deal more,” said Lucy. “Why, Miss Jones at the school is a nice young woman—don’t you be taken in by mother’s old-fashioned stilts. She is a darling—she is as nice as nice can be. She’s pretty, and she’s good, and she’s clever. She has read a lot, and seen a lot, and been everywhere, and knows heaps and heaps of people, and yet just as simple and as nice as if she had never been married, never had a baby, and was just a girl like the rest of us—Mother! there is nothing wrong in what I said?” Lucy suddenly cried, stopping short and blushing all over with the innocent alarm of a youthfulness which had not been trained to modern modes of speech. “Nothing wrong, certainly,” said the mother, with a half smile; “but—there is no need for entering into all these details.” “They would have found out immediately, though,” said Lucy, with a lowered voice, “that there was—Tiny, you know.” The scene was a drawing-room in a country house looking out upon what was at this time of year the rather damp and depressing prospect of a park, with some fine trees and a great breadth of very green, very mossy, very wet grass. It was only October, though the end of the month; and in the middle of the day, in the sunshine, the trees, in all their varied colors, were a fine sight, cheerful and almost exhilarating, beguiling the eye; but now the sun was gone, the leaves were falling in little showers whenever the faintest breath of air arose, and where the green turf was not veiled by their many colored remnants, it was green with that emerald hue which means only wet; one knew as one gazed across it that one’s foot would sink in the spongy surface, and wet, wet would be the boot, the skirt which touched it; the men in their knickerbockers, or those carefully turned up trousers—which we hear are the fashion in the dryest streets of Paris and New York—suffered comparatively little. The brushwood was all wet, with blobs of moisture on the long brambles and drooping leaves. The park was considered a beautiful park, though not a very large one, but it was melancholy itself to look out for hours together upon that green expanse in such an evening. It was not a bad evening either. There was no rain; the clouds hung low, but as yet had given forth no shower. The air was damp but yet brisk. There was a faint yellow glimmer of what might have been sunset in the sky. The windows in the Wradisley drawing-rooms were large; one of them, a vast, shallow bow, which seemed to admit the outside into the interior, rather than to enlighten the interior with the view of what was outside. Mrs. Wradisley sat within reach of, but not too near, a large, very red fire—a fire which was like the turf outside, the growth of generations, or at least had not at all the air of having been lighted to-day or any recent day. It did not flame, but glowed steadily, adding something to the color of the room, but not much to the light. Later in the season, when larger parties assembled, there was tea in the hall for the sportsmen and the ladies who waited for them; but Mrs. Wradisley thought the hall draughty, and much preferred the drawing-room, which was over-furnished after the present mode of drawing-rooms, but at least warm, and free from draughts. She was working—knitting with white pins, or else making mysterious chains and bridges in white wool with a crochet-hook, her eyes being supposed to be not very strong, and this kind of industry the best adapted for them. As to what Lucy was doing, that defies description. She was doing everything and nothing. She had something of a modern young lady’s contempt for every kind of needlework, and, then, along with that, a great admiration for it as something still more superior than the superiority of idleness. A needle is one of the things that has this double effect. It is the scorn of a great number of highly advanced, very cultured and superior feminine people; but yet here and there will arise one, still more advanced and cultured, who loves the old-fashioned weapon, and speaks of it as a sacred implement of life. Lucy followed first one opinion and then another. She had half a dozen pieces of work about, begun under the influence of one class of her friends, abandoned under that of another. She had a little studio, too, where she painted and carved, and executed various of the humbler decorative arts, which, perhaps, to tell the truth, she enjoyed more than art proper; but these details of the young lady’s life may be left to show themselves where there is no need of such vanities. Lucy was, at all events, whatever her other qualities might be, a most enthusiastic friend. “Well, I suppose we shall see her, and find out, as Lucy says, for ourselves—not that it is of much importance,” the brother said, who had begun this conversation. “Oh! but it is of a great deal of importance,” cried Lucy. “Mrs. Nugent is my chief friend. She is mother’s prime favorite. She is the nicest person in the neighborhood. She is here constantly, or I am there. If you mean not to like her, you might as well, without making any fuss about it, go away.” “Lucy!” cried Mrs. Wradisley, moved to indignation, and dropping all the white fabric of wool on her knees, “your brother—and just come home after all these years!” {6} {7} {8} {9} {10} {11} {12} “What nonsense! Of course I don’t mean that in the least,” Lucy cried. “Ralph knows—of course, I would rather have him than —all the friends in the world.” There was a faltering note, however, in this profession. Why should she like Ralph better than all the friends in the world? He was her brother, that was true; but he knew very little of Lucy, and Lucy knew next to nothing of him; he had been gone since she was almost a child—he came back now with a big beard and a loud voice and a step which rang through the house. It was evident he thought her, if not a child, yet the most unimportant feminine person who did not count; and why should she prefer him to her own nice friends, who were soft of voice and soft of step, and made much of her, and thought as she did? It is acknowledged universally that in certain circumstances, when the man is her lover, a girl prefers that man to all the rest of the creation; but why, when it is only your brother Raaf, and it may really be said that you don’t know him—why should you prefer him to your own beloved friends? Lucy did not ask herself this question—she said what she knew it was the right thing to say, though with a faltering in her voice. And Ralph, who fortunately did not care in the least, took no notice of what Lucy said. He liked the little girl, his little sister, well enough; but it did not upset the equilibrium of the world in the very least whether she preferred him or not—if he had thought on the subject he would probably have said, “More shame to her, the little insensible thing!” but he did not take the trouble to give it a passing thought. “I’ve got to show Bertram the neighborhood,” he said; “let him see we’re not all muffs or clowns in the country. He has a kind of notion that is about what the English aborigines are—and I daresay it’s true, more or less.” “Oh, Raaf!” cried Lucy, raising her little smooth head. “Well, it’s natural enough. One doesn’t meet the cream of the cream in foreign parts; unless you’re nothing but a sportsman, or a great swell doing it as the right thing, the most of the fellows you meet out there are loafers or blackguards, more or less.” “It is a pity to form an estimate from blackguards,” said Mrs. Wradisley, with a smile; “but that, I suppose, I may take as an exaggeration too. We don’t see much of that kind here. Mr. Bertram is much mistaken if he thinks—” “Oh, don’t be too hasty, mother,” said Ralph. “We know the breed; our respectable family has paid toll to the devil like other folks since it began life, which is rather a long time ago. After a few hundred years you get rather proud of your black sheep. I’m something of the kind myself,” he added, in his big voice. Mrs. Wradisley once more let the knitting drop in her lap. “You do yourself very poor justice, Raaf—no justice at all, in fact. You are not spotless, perhaps, but I hope that black—” “Whitey-brown,” said her son. “I don’t care for the distinction; but one white flower is perhaps enough in a family that never went in for exaggerated virtue—eh? Ah, yes—I know.” These somewhat incoherent syllables attended the visible direction of Mrs. Wradisley’s eyes toward the door, with the faintest lifting of her eyelids. The door had opened and some one had come in. And yet it is quite inadequate to express the entrance of the master of the house by such an expression. His foot made very little sound, but this was from some quality of delicacy and refinement in his tread, not from any want of dignity or even impressiveness in the man. He was dressed just like the other men so far as appeared —in a grey morning suit, about which there was nothing remarkable. Indeed, it would have been against the perfection of the man had there been anything remarkable in his dress—but it was a faultless costume, whereas theirs were but common coats and waistcoats from the tailor’s, lined and creased by wear and with marks in them of personal habit, such, for instance, as that minute burnt spot on Raaf’s coat-pocket, which subtly announced, though it was a mere speck, the thrusting in of a pipe not entirely extinguished, to that receptacle. Mr. Wradisley, I need not say, did not smoke; he did not do anything to disturb the perfect outline of an accomplished gentleman, refined and fastidious, which was his natural aspect. To smell of tobacco, or indeed of anything, would have put all the fine machinery of his nature out of gear. He hated emotion as he hated—what shall I say?—musk or any such villainous smell; he was always point devise, body and soul. It is scarcely necessary to say that he was Mr. Wradisley and the head of the house. He had indeed a Christian name, by which he was called by his mother, brother, and sister, but not conceivably by any one else. Mr. Wradisley was as if you had said Lord, when used to him—nay, it was a little more, for lord is tant soit peu vulgar and common as a symbol of rank employed by many other people, whereas Mr., when thus elevated, is unique; the commonest of addresses, when thus sublimated and etherealized, is always the grandest of all. He was followed into the room by a very different person, a person of whom the Wradisley household did not quite know what to make—a friend of Ralph’s who had come home with him from the deserts and forests whence that big sportsman and virtuous prodigal had come. This stranger’s name was Bertram. He had not the air of the wilds about him as Ralph Wradisley had. He was said to be a bigger sportsman even than Ralph, and a more prodigious traveler; but this was only Ralph’s report, who was always favorable to his friends; and Mr. Bertram looked more like a man about town than an African traveler, except that he was burnt very brown by exposure, which made his complexion, once fair, produce a sort of false effect in contrast with his light hair, which the sun had rather diminished than increased in color. Almost any man would have looked noisy and rough who had the disadvantage to come into a room after Mr. Wradisley; but Bertram bore the comparison better than most. Ralph Wradisley had something of the aspect of a gamekeeper beside both of them, though I think the honest fellow would have been the first to whom a child or injured person would have turned. The ladies made involuntary mental comments upon them as the three stood together. “Oh, if Raaf were only a little less rough!” his mother breathed in her heart. Lucy, I think, was most critical of Bertram, finding in him, on the whole, something which neither of her brothers possessed, though he must have been forty at the very least, and therefore capable of exciting but little interest in a girl’s heart. “I have been showing your friend my treasures,” said Mr. Wradisley, with a slight turn of his head toward his brother, “and I am delighted to find we have a great many tastes in common. There is a charm in sympathy, especially when it is so rare, on these subjects.” “You could not expect Raaf to know about your casts and things, Reginald,” said Mrs. Wradisley, precipitately. “He has been living among such very different scenes.” “Raaf!” said Mr. Wradisley, slightly elevating his eyebrows. “My dear mother, could you imagine I was referring in any way to Raaf?” {13} {14} {15} {16} {17} {18} {19} “Never mind, Reg, I don’t take it amiss,” said the big sportsman, with a laugh out of his beard. There was, however, a faint color on his browned cheeks. It is well that a woman’s perceptions should be quick, no doubt, but if Mrs. Wradisley had not been jealous for her younger son this very small household jar need not have occurred. Mr. Wradisley put it right with his natural blandness. “We all have our pet subjects,” he said; “you too, mother, as much as the worst of us. Is the time of tea over, or may I have some?” “Mr. Wradisley’s casts are magnificent,” cried the stranger. “I should have known nothing about them but for a wild year or two I spent in Greece and the islands. A traveler gets a sniff of everything. Don’t you recollect, Wradisley, the Arabs and their images at—” The name was not to be spelt by mere British faculties, and I refrain. “Funny lot of notions,” said Raaf, “I remember; pretty little thing or two, however, I should like to have brought for Lucy—just the things a girl would like—but Bertram there snapped them all up before I had a chance—confounded knowing fellow, always got before me. You come down on him, Lucy; it’s his fault if I have so few pretty things for you.” “I am very well contented, Raaf,” said Lucy, prettily. As a matter of fact the curiosities Ralph had brought home had been chiefly hideous ivory carvings of truly African type, which Lucy, shuddering, had put away in a drawer, thanking him effusively, but with averted eyes. “There were two or three very pretty little Tanagra figurine among the notions,” said Bertram. “I am sorry Miss Wradisley had not her share of them—they’re buried in my collections in some warehouse or other, and probably will never see the light.” “Ah, Tanagra!” said Mr. Wradisley, with a momentary gleam of interest. He laid his hand not unkindly on his little sister’s shoulder, as she handed him, exactly as he liked it, his cup of tea. “It is the less matter, for Lucy would not have appreciated them,” he said. “When,” said Mrs. Wradisley, with a little gasp, “do you expect your friends, Reginald? October is getting on, and the ladies that belong to them will lie heavy on our hands if we have bad weather.” “Oh, the guns,” said Mr. Wradisley. “Don’t call them my friends, mother—friends of the house, friends of the covers, if you like. Not so great a nuisance as usual this year, since Raaf is here, but no intimates of mine.” “We needn’t stand upon words, Reginald. They are coming, anyhow, and I never remember dates.” “Useless to attempt it. You should make a memorandum of everything, which is much more sure. I can tell you at once.” He took a note-book from his pocket, unerringly, without the usual scuffle to discover in which pocket it was, and, drawing a chair near his mother, began to read out the names of the guests. Then there ensued a little discussion as to where they were to be placed; to Mrs. Wradisley proposing the yellow room for one couple who had already, in Mr. Wradisley’s mind, been settled in the green. It was not a very great difference, but the master of the house had his way. A similar little argument, growing fainter and fainter on the mother’s side, was carried on over the other names. In every case Mr. Wradisley had his way. “I am going to run down to the park gates—that is, to the village,—I mean I am going to see Mrs. Nugent,” said Lucy, “while mother and Reginald settle all these people. Raaf, will you come?” “And I, too?” said Bertram, with a pleasant smile. He had a pleasant smile, and he was such a gentleman, neither rough like Raaf, nor over-dainty like Reginald. Lucy was very well content he should come too. CHAPTER II. It was a lingering and pleasant walk with many little pauses in it and much conversation. Lucy was herself the cause of some of them, for it was quite necessary that here and there Mr. Bertram should be made to stop, turn round, and look at the view. I will not pretend that those views were any very great things. Bertram, who had seen all the most famous scenes of earth, was not much impressed by that point so dear to the souls of the Wradisbury people, where the church tower came in, or that other where the glimmer of the pond under the trees, reflecting all their red and gold, moved the natives to enthusiasm. It was a pretty, soft, kindly English landscape, like a good and gentle life, very reposeful and pleasant to see, but not dramatic or exciting. It was Ralph, though he was to the manner born, who was, or pretended to be, the most impatient of these tame but agreeable vistas. “It don’t say much, your landscape, Lucy,” he said. “Bertram’s seen everything there is to see. A stagnant pool and a church tower are not so grand to him as to—” Probably he intended to say us, with a little, after all, of the native’s proud depreciation of a scene which, though homely, appeals to himself so much; but he stopped, and wound up with “a little ignoramus like you.” “I am not so fastidious, I suppose. I think it’s delightful,” said Bertram. “After all the dissipations of fine scenery, there’s nothing like a home landscape. I’ve seen the day when we would have given all we possessed for a glimmer of a church tower, or, still better, a bit of water. In the desert only to think of that would be a good thing.” “Oh, in the desert,” said Ralph, with a sort of indulgent acknowledgment that in some points home did commend itself to the most impartial mind. But he too stopped and called upon his friend to observe where the copse spread dark into the sunset sky—the best covert within twenty miles—about which also Bertram was very civil, and received the information with great interest. “Plenty of wild duck round the corner of that hill in the marshy part,” said Ralph. “By Jove! we should have a heavy bag when we have it all to ourselves.” “Capital ground, and great luck to be the first,” said Mr. Bertram. He was certainly a nice man. He seemed to like to linger, to talk of the sunset, to enjoy himself in the fresh but slightly chill air of the October evening. Lucy’s observation of him was minute. A little wonder whether he might be the man—not necessarily her man, but the ideal man—blew like a quiet little breeze through her youthful spirit. It was a breeze which, like the actual breeze of the evening, carried dead leaves with it, the rags of past reputation and visions, for already Lucy had asked herself this question in respect to one or two other men who had not turned out exactly as at first they seemed. To be sure, this one was old—probably forty or so—and therefore was both better and worse than her previous studies; {20} {21} {22} {23} {24} {25} {26} {27} for at such an age he must of course have learnt everything that experience could teach, and on the other hand did not matter much, having attained to antiquity. Still, it certainly gave a greater interest to the walk that he was here. “After all,” said Ralph, “you gave us no light, Lucy, as to who this widow was.” “You speak as if she were like old Widow Thrapton in the village,” cried Lucy. “A widow!—she says it’s a term of reproach, as if a woman had tormented her husband to death.” “But she is a widow, for you said so—and who is she?” said the persistent Ralph. “He is like the little boy in ‘Helen’s Babies,’” said Lucy, turning to her other companion. “He always wants to see the wheels go round, whatever one may say.” “I feel an interest in this mysterious widow, too,” said Bertram, with a laugh. It was all from civility to keep Ralph in countenance, she felt sure. “Who is she?” said that obstinate person. “I can tell you what she is,” cried Lucy, with indignant warmth. “She must be older than I am, I suppose, for there’s Tiny, but she doesn’t look it. She has the most lovely complexion, and eyes like stars, and brown hair—none of your golden stuff, which always looks artificial now. Hers might be almost golden if she liked, but she is not one to show off. And she is the nicest neighbor that ever was—comes up to the house just when one is dull and wants stirring up, or sends a note or a book, or to ask for something. She likes to do all sorts of things for you, and she’s so generous and nice and natural that she likes you to do things for her, which is so much, much more uncommon! She says, thank heaven, she is not unselfish; and, though it sounds strange,” said Lucy, with vehemence, “I know exactly what she means.” “Not unselfish?” said Ralph. “By George! that’s a new quality. I thought it was always the right thing to say of a woman that she was unselfish; but all that doesn’t throw any light upon the lady. Isn’t she somebody’s sister or cousin or aunt? Had she a father, had she a mother?—that sort of thing, you know. A woman doesn’t come and settle herself in a neighborhood without some credentials— nor a man either, so far as I know.” “I don’t know what you mean by credentials. She was not introduced to us by any stupid people, if that is what you mean. We just found her out for ourselves.” Ralph gave a little whistle at this, which made Lucy very angry. “When you go out to Africa or—anywhere,” she cried, “do you take credentials? And who is to know whether you are what you call yourself? I suppose you say you’re a Wradisley of Wradisbury. Much the black kings must know about a little place in Hants!” “The black kings don’t stand on that sort of thing,” said Ralph, “but the mother does, or so I supposed.” “I ought to take the unknown lady’s part,” said Mr. Bertram. “You’ve all been very kind to me, and I’m not a Bertram of —anywhere in particular. I have not got a pedigree in my pocket. Perhaps I might have some difficulty in making out my family tree.” “Oh, Mr. Bertram!” cried Lucy, in deprecation, as if that were an impossible thing. “I might always call myself of the Ellangowan family, to be sure,” he said, with a laugh. Now Lucy did not at all know what he meant by the Ellangowan family. She was not so deeply learned in her Scott as I hope every other girl who reads this page is, and she was not very quick, and perhaps would not have caught the meaning if she had been ever so familiar with “Guy Mannering.” She thought Ellangowan a very pretty name, and laid it up in her memory, and was pleased to think that Mr. Bertram had thus, as it were, produced his credentials and named his race. I don’t know whether Ralph also was of the same opinion. At all events they went on without further remark on this subject. The village lay just outside the park gates on the right side of a pretty, triangular bit of common, which was almost like a bit of the park, with little hollows in it filled with a wild growth of furze and hawthorn and blackberry, the long brambles arching over and touching the level grass. There was a pretty bit of greensward good for cricket and football, and of much consequence in the village history. The stars had come out in the sky, though it was still twilight when they emerged from the shadow of the trees to this more open spot; and there were lights in the cottage windows and in the larger shadow of the rectory, which showed behind the tall, slim spire of the church. It was a cheerful little knot of human life and interest under the trees, Nature, kindly but damp, mantling everything with greenness up to the very steps of the cottage doors, some of which were on the road itself without any interval of garden; and little irregular gleams of light indicating the scarcely visible houses. Lucy, however, did not lead the way toward the village. She went along the other side of the common toward a house more important than the cottages, which stood upon a little elevation, with a grassy bank and a few moderate-sized trees. “Oh, she’s in Greenbank, this lady,” said Ralph. “I thought the old doctor was still there.” “He died last year, after Charlie died at sea—didn’t you know? He never held up his head, Raaf, after Charlie died.” “The more fool he; Charlie drained him of every penny, and was no credit to him in any way. He should have been sent about his business years ago. So far as concerned him, I always thought the doctor very weak.” “Oh, Raaf, he was his only son!” “What then? You think it’s only that sort of relationship that counts. The doctor knew as well as any one what a worthless fellow he was.” “But he never held up his head again,” said Lucy, “after Charlie died.” “That’s how nature confutes all your philosophy, Wradisley,” said the other man. “That is the true tragedy of it. Worthy or unworthy, what does it matter? Affection holds its own.” “Oh, I’ve no philosophy,” said Ralph, “only common sense. So they sold the house! and I suppose the poor old doctor’s library and his curiosities, and everything he cared for? I never liked Carry. She would have no feeling for what he liked, poor old fellow. Not worth much, that museum of his—good things and bad things, all pell-mell. Of course she sold them all?” “The most of them,” Lucy confessed. “What could she do otherwise, Raaf? They were of no use to her. She could not keep up the house, and she had no room for them in her own. Poor Carry, he left her very little; and her husband has a great struggle, and what {28} {29} {30} {31} {32} {33} could she do?” “I don’t suppose she wanted to do anything else,” said Ralph, in a surly tone. “Look here, I sha’n’t go in with you since it’s the doctor’s house. I had a liking for the old fellow—and Bertram and I are both smoking. We’ll easy on a bit till the end of the common, and wait for you coming back.” “If you prefer it, Raaf,” Lucy said, with a small tone of resignation. She stood for a moment in the faint twilight and starlight, holding her head a little on one side with a wistful, coaxing look. “I did wish you to see her,” she said. “Oh, I’ll see her some time, I suppose. Come, Bertram; see you’re ready, Lucy, by the time we get back.” Lucy still paused a moment as they swung on with the scent of their cigars sending a little warmth into the damp air. She thought Mr. Bertram swayed a little before he joined the other, as if he would have liked to stay. Undeniably he was more genial than Raaf, more ready to yield to what she wanted. And usually she was alone in her walks, just a small woman about the road by herself, so that the feeling of leading two men about with her was pleasant. She regretted they did not come in to show Mrs. Nugent how she had been accompanied. She went slowly up the grassy bank alone, thinking of this. She had wanted so much to show Raaf to Mrs. Nugent, not, she fancied, that it was at all likely they would take to each other. Nelly Nugent was so quick, she would see through him in a moment. She would perceive that there was not, perhaps, a great deal in him. He was not a reader, nor an artist, nor any of the things Nelly cared for—only a rough fellow, a sportsman, and rather commonplace in his mind. He was only Raaf, say what you would. Oh! he was not the one to talk like that of poor Charlie. If Charlie was only Charlie, Raaf was nothing but Raaf—only a man who belonged to you, not one to admire independent of that. But whatever Raaf might do it would never have made any difference, certainly not to his mother, she did not suppose to any one, any more than it mattered to the poor old doctor what Charlie did, seeing he was his father’s Charlie; and that nothing could change. She went along very slowly, thinking this to herself—not a very profound thought, but yet it filled her mind. The windows were already shining with firelight and lamplight, looking very bright. The drawing-room was not at all a large room. It was under the shade of a veranda and opened to the ground, which made it a better room for summer than for winter. Lucy woke up from her thoughts and wondered whether in the winter that was coming Mrs. Nugent would find it cold. The two men went on round the common in the soft, damp evening air. “That’s one of the things one meets with, when one is long away,” said Raaf, with a voice half confused in his beard and his cigar. “The old doctor was a landmark; fine old fellow, and knew a lot; never knew one like him for all the wild creatures—observing their ways, don’t you know. He’d bring home as much from a walk as you or I would from a voyage—more, I daresay. I buy a few hideous things, and poor little Lucy shudders at them” (he was not so slow to notice as they supposed), “but I haven’t got the head for much, while he—And all spoiled because of a fool of a boy not worth a thought.” “But his own, I suppose,” said the other. “Just that—his own—though why that should make such a difference. Now, Carry was worth a dozen of Charlie. Oh, I didn’t speak very well of Carry just now!—true. She married a fellow not worth his salt, when, perhaps—But there’s no answering for these things. Poor old doctor! There’s scarcely anybody here except my mother that I couldn’t have better spared.” “Let’s hope it’s a good thing for him,” said Bertram, not knowing what to say. “I can’t think dying’s better than living,” said Raaf. “Oh, you mean—that? Well, perhaps; though it’s hard to think of him,” he said, with a sudden laugh, “in his old shiny coat with his brown gaiters in—what one calls—a better world. No kind of place suited him as well as here—he was so used to it. Somehow, though, on a quiet night like this, there’s a kind of a feeling, oh! I can’t describe it in the least, as if—I say, you’ve been in many queer places, Bertram, and seen a lot?” “That is true.” “Did you ever see anything that made you—feel any sort of certainty, don’t you know? There’s these stars, they say they’re all worlds, globes, like this, and so forth. Who lives in them? That’s what I’ve always wanted to know.” “Well, men like us can’t live in them, for one thing, according to what the astronomers say.” “Men like us, ah! but then! We’ll not be fellows like us when we’re—the other thing, don’t you know. There!” said Ralph; “I could have sworn that was the old man coming along to meet us; cut of his coat, gaiters and everything.” “You can’t be well, old fellow, there is nobody.” “I know that as well as you,” said Ralph, with a nervous laugh. “Do you think I meant I saw anything? Not such a fool; no, dear old man, I didn’t see him; I wish I could, just to tell him one or two things about the beasts which he was keen about. I don’t think that old fellow would be happy, Bertram, in a fluid, a sort of a place like a star, for instance, where there were no beasts.” “There’s no reason to suppose they’re fluid. And for that matter there may be beasts, as some people think; only I don’t see, if you take in that, where you are to stop,” said Bertram. “We are drawing it too fine, Wradisley, don’t you think?” “Perhaps we are, it’s not my line of country. I wish you had known that old man. You’re a fellow that makes out things, Bertram. He was quite comfortable—lots of books, and that museum which wasn’t much of a museum, but he knew no better. Besides, there were a few good things in it. And enough of money to keep him all right. And then to think, Lord, that because of a fool of a fellow who was never out of hot water, always getting his father into hot water, never at peace, that good old man should go and break his heart, as they call it, and die.” “It may be very unreasonable, but it happens from time to time,” Bertram said. “By Jove, it is unreasonable! An old man that was really worth coming back to—and now he’s clean swept away, and some baggage of a woman, probably no good, in his place, to turn Lucy’s head, and perhaps bring us all to sixes and sevens, for anything I know.” “Why should you suppose so? There seems nothing but good in the lady, except that she is a stranger. So am I a stranger. You might as well believe that I should bring you to sixes and sevens. You’re not well to-night, old fellow. You have got too much nonsense in your head.” “I suppose that’s it—a touch of fever,” said the other. “I’ll take some quinine when I go home to-night.” And with that wise {34} {35} {36} {37} {38} {39} {40} {41} resolution he drew up, having come back to the point from which they started, to wait for his sister at Mrs. Nugent’s door. CHAPTER III. The door of the little house was standing open when they drew up at the gate. It was a door at the side round the corner from the veranda, but with a porch which seemed to continue it. It was full of light from within, against which Lucy’s figure stood dark. She was so much afraid to keep the gentlemen waiting that she had come out there to be ready, and was speaking her last words with her friend in the porch. Their voices sounded soft, almost musical, through the dusk and the fresh air; though, indeed, it was chiefly Lucy who was speaking. The men did not hear what she said, they even smiled a little, at least Bertram did, at the habit of the women who had always so much to say to each other about nothing; and who, though they had perhaps met before more than once that day, had still matter to murmur about down to the very last moment by the opening of the door. It went on indeed for two or three minutes while they stood there, notwithstanding that Lucy had cried, “Oh, there they are! I must go,” at the first appearance of the tall shadows on the road. She was pleading with her friend to come up to the hall next day, which was the reason of the delay. “Oh, Nelly, do come—to-morrow is an off day—they are not going to shoot. And I so want you to see Raaf; oh, I know he is not much to see—that’s him, the tallest one. He has a huge beard. You’ll perhaps think he’s not very intellectual or that sort of thing; but he’s our Raaf—he’s mother’s Raaf—and you’re so fond of mother. And if I brought him to see you he would be shy and gauche. Do come, do come, to-morrow, Nelly; mother is so anxious you should come in good time.” Then the gentlemen, though they did not hear this, were aware of a new voice breaking in—a small, sweet treble, a child’s voice —crying, “Me too, me too!” “Yes, you too, Tiny; we always want you. Won’t you come when Tiny wishes it, Nelly? You always give in to Tiny.” “Me come now,” shouted Tiny, “see gemplemans; me come now.” Then there was a little scuffle and laughing commotion at the open door; the little voice loud, then others hushing it, and suddenly there came flying down the bank something white, a little fluttering line of whiteness upon the dark. The child flew with childish delight making its escape, while there was first a startled cry from the doorway, and then Lucy followed in pursuit. But the little thing, shouting and laughing, with the rush of infantile velocity, short-lived but swift, got to the bottom of the bank in a rush, and would have tripped herself up in her speed upon the fastening of the gate had not Bertram, coming a step forward, quickly caught her in his arms. There was not much light to see the child by—the little face like a flower; the waving hair and shining eyes. The little thing was full of laughter and delight in her small escapade. “Me see gemplemans, me see gemplemans,” she said. Bertram lifted her up, holding her small waist firm in his two hands. And then there came a change over Tiny. She became silent all at once, though without shrinking from the dark face up to which she was lifted. She did not twist in his grasp as children do, or struggle to be put down. She became quite still, drew a long breath, and fixed her eyes upon him, her little lips apart, her face intent. It was only the effect of a shyness which from time to time crept over Tiny, who was not usually shy; but it impressed the man very much who held her, himself quite silent for a moment, which seemed long to both, though it was scarcely appreciable in time, until Lucy reached the group, and with a cry of “Oh, Tiny, you naughty little girl!” restored man and child to the commonplace. Then the little girl wriggled down out of the stranger’s grasp, and stole her hand into the more familiar one of Lucy. She kept her eyes, however, fixed upon her first captor. “Oh, Tiny,” cried Lucy, “what will the gentleman think of you—such a bold little girl—to run away from mamma, and get your death of cold, and give that kind gentleman the trouble of catching you. Oh, Tiny, Tiny!” “Me go back to mummie now,” Tiny said, turning her back upon them. It was unusual for this little thing, whom everybody petted, to be so subdued. “You have both beards,” cried Lucy, calling over her shoulder to her brother and his friend, as she led the child back. “She is frightened of you; but they are not bad gemplemans, Tiny, they are nice gemplemans. Oh, nurse, here she is, safe and sound.” “Me not frightened,” Tiny said, and she turned round in the grip of the nurse, who had now seized upon her, and kissed her little hand. “Dood-night, gemplemans,” Tiny cried. The little voice came shrill and clear through the night air, tinkling in the smallness of the sound, yet gracious as a princess; and the small incident was over. It was nothing at all; the simplest little incident in the world. And then Lucy took up her little strain, breathless with her rush, laughing and explaining. “Tiny dearly loves a little escapade; she is the liveliest little thing! She has no other children to play with, and she is not afraid of anybody. She is always with her mother, you know, and hears us talk of everything.” “Very bad training for a child,” said Ralph, “to hear all your scandal and gossip over your tea.” “Oh, Ralph, how common, how old fashioned you are!” cried Lucy, indignantly. “Do you think Mrs. Nugent talks scandal over her tea? or I—? I have been trying to make her promise to come up to lunch to-morrow, and then you shall see—that is, if she comes; for she was not at all sure whether she would come. She is not fond of strangers. She never will come to us when we have people— that is, not chance people—unless she knows them beforehand. Oh, you, of course, my brother, that’s a different thing. I am sure I beg your pardon, Mr. Bertram, for making you wait, and for seeming to imply—and then Tiny rushing at you in that way.” “Tiny made a very sweet little episode in our walk,” said Bertram. “Please don’t apologize. I am fond of children, and the little thing gave me a look; children are strange creatures, they’re only half of this world, I think. She looked—as if somehow she and I had met before.” “Have you, Mr. Bertram? did you perhaps know—her mother?” cried Lucy, in great surprise. “It is very unlikely; I knew some Nugents once, but they were old people without any children, at least—No, I’ve been too long in the waste places of the earth ever to have rubbed shoulders with this baby; besides,” he said, with a laugh, “if there was any recognition, it was she who recognized me.” “You are talking greater nonsense than I was doing, Bertram,” said Ralph. “We’re both out of sorts, I should think. These damp {41} {42} {43} {44} {45} {46} {47} {48} English nights take all the starch out of one. Come, let’s get home. You shan’t bring us out again after sunset, Lucy, I promise you that.” “Oh, sunset is not a bad time here,” cried Lucy; “it’s a beautiful time; it is only in your warm countries that it is bad. Besides, it’s long after sunset; it’s almost night and no moon for an hour yet. That’s the chief thing I like going to town for, that it is never dark like this at night. I love the lamps—don’t you, Mr. Bertram?—there is such company in them; even the cottage windows are nice, and that ‘Red Lion’—one wishes that a public-house was not such a very bad thing, for it looks so ruddy and so warm. I don’t wonder the men like it; I should myself, if—Oh, take care! there is a very wet corner there, just before you come to our gates. Why, there is some one coming out. Why—it’s Reginald, Raaf!” They were met, in the act of opening the gate, by Mr. Wradisley’s slim, unmistakable figure. He had an equally slim umbrella, beautifully rolled up, in his hand, and walked as if the damp country road were covered with velvet. “Oh, you are coming back,” he said; “it’s a fine night for a walk, don’t you think so?—well, not after Africa, perhaps; but we are used in England to like these soft, grey skies and the feeling of—well, of dew and coolness in the air.” “I call it damp and mud,” said Ralph, with an explosion of a laugh which seemed somehow to be an explosion manqué, as if the damp had got into that too. “Ah,” said his brother, reflectively. “Well it is rather a brutal way of judging, but perhaps you are right. I am going to take a giro round the common. We shall meet at dinner.” And then he took off his hat to Lucy, and with a nod to Bertram went on. There was an involuntary pause among the three to watch him walking along the damp road—in which they had themselves encountered occasional puddles—as if a carpet had been spread underneath his dainty feet. “Is this Rege’s way?” said Ralph. “It’s an odd thing for him surely—going out to walk now. He never would wet his feet any more than a cat. What is he doing out at night in the dark, a damp night, bad for his throat. Does my mother know?” “Oh,” said Lucy, with a curious confusion; “why shouldn’t he go now, if he likes! It isn’t cold, it’s not so very damp, and Reginald’s an Englishman, and isn’t afraid of a bit of damp or a wet road. You are so hard to please. You are finding fault with everybody, Raaf.” “Am I?” he said. “Perhaps I am. I’ve grown a brute, being so much away.” “Oh, Raaf, I didn’t mean that. Reginald has—his own ways. Don’t you know, we never ask what he means, mother and I. He always means just what’s the right thing, don’t you know. It is a very nice time to—to take a giro; look how the sky’s beginning to break there out of the clouds. I always like an evening walk; so did mother when she was strong enough. And then Reginald has such a feeling for art. He always says the village is so pretty with the lights in the windows, and the sweep of the fresh air on the common— and—and all that.” “Just so, Lucy,” said Ralph. She gave him a little anxious look, but she could not see the expression of his face in the darkness, any more than he could see what a wistful and wondering look was in her eyes. Bertram, looking on, formed his own conclusions, which were as little right as a stranger’s conclusions upon a drama of family life suddenly brought before his eyes generally are. He thought that this correct and immaculate Mr. Wradisley had tastes known to his family, or at least to the ladies of his family, which were not so spotless as he appeared to be; or that there was something going on at this particular moment which contradicted the law of propriety and good order which was his nature. Was it a village amour? Was it some secret hanging over the house? There was a little agitation, he thought, in Lucy, and surprise in the brother, who was a stranger to all the ways of his own family, and evidently had a half-hostile feeling toward his elder. But the conversation became more easy as they went along, emerging from under the shadow of the trees and crossing the openings of the park. The great house came in sight as they went on, a solid mass amid all its surrounding of shrubbery and flower gardens, with the distance stretching clear on one side, and lights in many windows. It looked a centre of life and substantial, steadfast security, as if it might last out all the changes of fortune, and could never be affected by those vicissitudes which pull down one and set up another. Bertram could fancy that it had stood like a rock while many tempests swept the country. The individual might come and go, but this habitation was that of the race. And it was absurd to think that the little surprise of meeting its master on his way into the village late on an October evening, could have anything to do with the happiness of the family or its security. Bertram said to himself that his nerves were a little shaken to-night, he could not tell how. It was perhaps because of something visionary in this way of walking about an unknown place in the dark, and hearing of so many people like shadows moving in a world undiscovered. The old doctor, for example, whose image was so clear before his companion, that he could almost think he saw him, so clear that even to himself, a stranger, that old man had almost appeared; but more than anything else because of the child who, caught in her most sportive mood, had suddenly grown quiet in his arms, and given him that look, with eyes unknown, which he too could have sworn he knew. There were strange things in his own life that gave him cause to think. Was it not this that made him conscious of mystery and some disturbing influence in the family which he did not know, but which had received him as if he had been an absent brother too? To see Mrs. Wradisley was, however, to send any thought of mystery or family trouble out of any one’s mind. The lamps were lit in the drawing-room when they all went in, a little dazzled by the illumination, from the soft dark of the night. She was sitting where they had left her, in the warmth of the home atmosphere, so softly lighted, so quietly bright. Her white knitting lay on her knee. She had the evening paper in her hand, which had just come in; for it was one of the advantages of Wradisbury that, though so completely in the country, they were near enough to town to have an evening post. Mrs. Wradisley liked her evening paper. It was, it is true, not a late edition, perhaps in point of fact not much later than the Times of the morning—but she preferred it. It was her little private pleasure in the evening, when Lucy was perhaps out, or occupied with her friends, and Mr. Wradisley in his library. She nodded at them over her paper, with a smile, as they came in. “I hope it is a fine night, and that you have had a pleasant walk, Mr. Bertram,” she said. “And is she coming, Lucy?” “I could not get her to promise, mother,” Lucy said. {49} {50} {51} {52} {53} {54} “Oh, well, we must not press her. If she were not a little willful perhaps we should not like her so much,” said Mrs. Wradisley, returning to her journal. And how warm it was! but not too warm. How light it was! but not too bright. “Come and sit here, Raaf. I like to see you and make sure that you are there; but you need not talk to me unless you wish to,” the mother said. She was not exacting. There was nothing wrong in the house, no anxiety nor alarm; nothing but family tranquility and peace. CHAPTER IV. The little house called Greenbank was like a hundred other little houses in the country, the superior houses of the village, the homes of small people with small incomes, who still are ladies and gentlemen, the equals of those in the hall, not those in the cottage. The drawing-room was darkened in the winter days by the veranda, which was very desirable and pleasant in the summer, and chilled a little by the windows which opened to the floor on a level with the little terrace on which the house stood. It looked most comfortable and bright in the evening when the lamps were lighted and there was a good fire and the curtains were drawn. Mrs. Nugent was considered to have made a great difference in the house since the doctor’s time. His heavy, old furniture was still in the dining-room, and indeed, more or less, throughout the rooms; but chintz or cretonne and appropriate draperies go a long way, according to the taste of the time. The new resident had been moderate and had not overdone it; she had not piled the stuffs and ornaments of Liberty into the old-fashioned house, but she had brightened the whole in a way which was less commonplace. Tiny was perhaps the great ornament of all—Tiny and indeed herself, a young woman not more than thirty, in the fulness of her best time, with a little dignity, which became her isolated position and her widowhood, and showed that, as the ladies in the neighborhood sai...