Works of Ellen Wood, page 948
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Nearly a year had gone by, and it was warm spring weather again. I sat in my brown-holland dress in the dingle amidst the wild flowers. A lot of cowslips lay about me; I had been picking the flowers from the stalks to make into a ball. The sunlight flickered through the trees, still in their tender green; the sky was blue and cloudless. My straw hat, with broad black ribbons, had fallen off; my white socks and shoes were stretched out before me. Fashion is always in extremes. Then it was the custom to dress a child simply up to quite an advanced age.
Why it should have been so, I know not; but while I sat, there came over me a sudden remembrance of the day when I had come to the dingle to pick those violets for mamma, and a rush of tears came on. Leah took good care of me, but she was not my mother. My father was good, and grave, and kind, but he did not give me the love that she had given. A mother’s love would never be mine again, and I knew it; and in that moment was bitterly feeling it.
One end of the string was held between my teeth, the other end in my left hand, and my eyes were wet with tears. I strung the cowslips as well as I could. But it was not easy, and I made little progress.
“S’all I hold it for oo?”
Lifting my eyes in surprise — for I had thought the movement in the dingle was only Leah, coming to see after me — there stood the sweetest fairy of a child before me. The sleeves of her cotton frock and white pinafore were tied up with black ribbons; her face was delicately fair, her eyes were blue as the sky, and her light curls fell low on her pretty neck. My child heart went out to her with a bound, then and there.
“What oo trying for, ‘ittle boy?”
“I was crying for mamma. She’s gone away from me to heaven.”
“S’all I tiss oo?”
And she put her little arms round my neck, without waiting for permission, and gave me a dozen kisses.
“Now we make the ball, ‘ittle boy. S’all oo dive it to me?”
“Yes, I will give it to you. What is your name?”
“Baby. What is oors?”
“Charles. Do you — —”
“You little toad of a monkey! — giving me this hunt! How came you to run away?”
The words were spoken by a tall, handsome boy, quite old compared with me, who had come dashing through the dingle. He caught up the child and began kissing her fondly. So the words were not meant to hurt her.
“It was oo ran away, Tom.”
“But I ordered you to stop where I left you — and to sit still till I came back again. If you run away by yourself in the wood, you’ll meet a great bear some day and he’ll eat you up. Mind that, Miss Blanche. The mamsie is in a fine way; thinks you’re lost, you silly little thing.”
“Dat ‘towslip ball for me, Tom.”
Master Tom condescended to turn his attention upon me and the ball. I guessed now who they were: a family named Heriot, who had recently come to live at the pretty white cottage on the other side the copse. Tom was looking at me with his fine dark eyes.
“You are the parson’s son, I take it, youngster. I saw you in the parson’s pew on Sunday with an old woman.”
“She is not an old woman,” I said, jealous for Leah.
“A young one, then. What’s your name?”
“Charles Strange.”
“He dot no mamma, he try for her,” put in the child. “Oo come to my mamma, ittle boy; she love oo and tiss oo.”
“When I have made your ball.”
“Oh, bother the ball!” put in Tom. “We can’t wait for that: the mamsie’s in a rare way already. You can come home with us if you like, youngster, and finish your ball afterwards.”
Leaving the cowslips, I caught up my hat and we started, Tom carrying the child. I was a timid, sensitive little fellow, but took courage to ask him a question.
“Is your name Tom Heriot?”
“Well, yes, it is Tom Heriot — if it does you any good to know it. And this is Miss Blanche Heriot. And I wish you were a bit bigger and older; I’d make you my playfellow.”
We were through the copse in a minute or two and in sight of the white cottage, over the field beyond it. Mrs. Heriot stood at the garden gate, looking out. She was a pretty little plump woman, with a soft voice, and wore a widow’s cap. A servant in a check apron was with her, and knew me. Mrs. Heriot scolded Blanche for running away from Tom while she caressed her, and turned to smile at me.
“It is little Master Strange,” I heard the maid say to her. “He lost his mother a year ago.”
“Oh, poor little fellow!” sighed Mrs. Heriot, as she held me before her and kissed me twice. “What a nice little lad it is! — what lovely eyes! My dear, you can come here whenever you like, and play with Tom and Blanche.”
Some few years before, this lady had married Colonel Heriot, a widower with one little boy — Thomas. After that, Blanche was born: so that she and Tom were, you see, only half-brother-and sister. When Blanche was two years old — she was three now — Colonel Heriot died, and Mrs. Heriot had come into the country to economize. She was not at all well off; had, indeed, little beyond what was allowed her with the two children: all their father’s fortune had lapsed to them, and she had no control over it. Tom had more than Blanche, and was to be brought up for a soldier.
As we stood in a group outside the gate, papa came by. Seeing me, he naturally stopped, took off his hat to Mrs. Heriot, and spoke. That is how the acquaintanceship began, without formal introduction on either side. Taking the pretty little girl in his arms, he began talking to her: for he was very fond of children. Mrs. Heriot said something to him in a low, feeling tone about his wife’s death.
“Yes,” he sighed in answer, as he put down the child: “I shall never recover her loss. I live only in the hope of rejoining her THERE.”
He glanced up at the blue sky: the pure, calm, peaceful canopy of heaven.
CHAPTER II.
CHANGES.
“I shall never recover her loss. I live only in the hope of rejoining her THERE.”
It has been said that the vows of lovers are ephemeral as characters written on the sand of the sea-shore. Surely may this also be said of the regrets mourners give to the departed! For time has a habit of soothing the deepest sorrow; and the remembrance which is piercing our hearts so poignantly to-day in a few short months will have lost its sting.
My father was quite sincere when speaking the above words: meant and believed them to the very letter. Yet before the spring and summer flowers had given place to those of autumn, he had taken unto himself another wife: Mrs. Heriot.
The first intimation of what was in contemplation came to me from Leah. I had offended her one day; done something wrong, or not done something right; and she fell upon me with a stern reproach, especially accusing me of ingratitude.
“After all my care of you, Master Charles — my anxiety and trouble to keep your clothes nice and make you good! What shall you do when I have gone away?”
“But you are not going away, Leah.”
“I don’t know that. We are to have changes here, it seems, and I’m not sure that they will suit me.”
“What changes?” I asked.
She sat at the nursery window, which had the same aspect as the drawing-room below, darning my socks; I knelt on a chair, looking out. It was a rainy day, and the drops pattered thickly against the panes.
“Well, there’s going to be — some company in the house,” said Leah, taking her own time to answer me. “A lot of them. And I think perhaps there’ll be no room for me.”
“Oh, yes there will. Who is it, Leah?”
“I shouldn’t wonder but it’s those people over yonder,” pointing her long darning-needle in the direction of the dingle.
“There’s nothing there but mosses and trees, Leah. No people.”
“There is a little farther off,” nodded Leah. “There’s Mrs. Heriot and her two children.”
“Oh, do you say they are coming here! — do you mean it?” I cried in ecstasy. “Are they coming for a long visit, Leah? — to have breakfast here, and dine and sleep? Oh, how glad I am!”
“Ah!” groaned Leah; “perhaps you may be glad just at first; you are but a little shallow-sensed boy, Charley: but it may turn out for better, or it may turn out for worse.”
To my intense astonishment, she dropped her work, burst into tears, and threw her hands up to her face. I felt very uncomfortable.
“What is it, Leah?”
“Well, it is that I’m a silly,” she answered, looking up and drying her eyes. “I got thinking of the past, Master Charley, of your dear mamma, and all that. It is solitary for you here, and perhaps you’ll be happier with some playfellows.”
I went on staring at her.
“And look here, Master Charles, don’t repeat what I’ve said; not to anybody, mind; or perhaps they won’t come at all,” concluded Leah, administering a slight shaking by way of enforcing her command.
There came a day — it was in that same week — when everything seemed to go wrong, as far as I was concerned. I had been at warfare with Leah in the morning, and was so inattentive (I suppose) at lessons in the afternoon that papa scolded me, and gave me an extra Latin exercise to do when they were over, and shut me up in the study until it was done. Then Leah refused jam for tea, which I wanted; saying that jam was meant for good boys, not for naughty ones. Altogether I was in anything but an enviable mood when I went out later into the garden. The most cruel item in the whole was that I could not see I had been to blame, but thought everyone else was. The sun had set behind the trees of the dingle in a red ball of fire as I climbed into my favourite seat — the fork of the pear-tree. Papa had gone to attend a vestry meeting; the little bell of the church was tinkling out, giving notice of the meeting to the parish.
Presently the bell ceased; solitary silence ensued both to eye and ear. The brightness of the atmosphere was giving place to the shades of approaching evening; the trees were putting on their melancholy. I have always thought — I always shall think — that nothing can be more depressing than the indescribable melancholy which trees in a solitary spot seem to put on after sunset. All people do not feel this; but to those who, like myself, see it, it brings a sensation of loneliness, nay, of awe, that is strangely painful.
“Ho-ho! So you are up there again, young Charley!”
The garden-gate had swung back to admit Tom Heriot. In hastening down from the tree — for he had a way of tormenting me when in it — I somehow lost my balance and fell on to the grass. Tom shrieked out with laughter, and made off again.
The fall was nothing — though my ankle ached; but at these untoward moments a little smart causes a great pain. It seemed to me that I was smarting all over, inside and out, mentally and bodily; and I sat down on the bench near the bed of shrubs, and burst into tears.
Sweet shrubs were they. Lavender and rosemary, old-man and sweet-briar, marjoram and lemon-thyme, musk and verbena; and others, no doubt. Mamma had had them all planted there. She would sit with me where I was now sitting alone, under the syringa trees, and revel in the perfume. In spring-time those sweet syringa blossoms would surround us; she loved their scent better than any other. Bitterly I cried, thinking of all this, and of her.
Again the gate opened, more gently this time, and Mrs. Heriot came in looking round. “Thomas,” she called out — and then she saw me. “Charley, dear, has Tom been here? He ran away from me. — Why, my dear little boy, what is the matter?” For she had seen the tears falling.
They fell faster than ever at the question. She came up, sat down on the bench, and drew my face lovingly to her. I thought then — I think still — that Mrs. Heriot was one of the kindest, gentlest women that ever breathed. I don’t believe she ever in her whole life said a sharp word to anyone.
Not liking to tell of my naughtiness — which I still attributed to others — or of the ignominious fall from the pear-tree, I sobbed forth something about mamma.
“If she had not gone away and left me alone,” I said, “I should never have been unhappy, or — or cried. People were not cross with me when she was here.”
“My darling, I know how lonely it is for you. Would you like me to come here and be your mamma?” she caressingly whispered.
“You could not be that,” I dissented. “Mamma’s up there.”
Mrs. Heriot glanced up at the evening sky. “Yes, Charley, she is up there, with God; and she looks down, I feel sure, at you, and at what is being done for you. If I came home here I should try to take care of you as she would have done. And oh, my child, I should love you dearly.”
“In her place?” I asked, feeling puzzled.
“In her place, Charley. For her.”
Tom burst in at the gate again. He began telling his stepmother of my fall as he danced a war-dance on the grass, and asked me how many of my legs and wings were broken.
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They came to the Rectory: Mrs. Heriot — she was Mrs. Strange then — and Tom and Baby. After all, Leah did not leave. She grew reconciled to the new state of things in no time, and became as fond of the children as she was of me. As fond, at least, of Tom. I don’t know that she ever cared heartily for Blanche: the little lady had a haughty face, and sometimes a haughty way with her.
We were all as happy as the day was long. Mrs. Strange indulged us all. Tom was a dreadful pickle — it was what the servants called him; but they all adored him. He was a handsome, generous, reckless boy, two years older than myself in years, twice two in height and advancement. He teased Leah’s life out of her; but the more he teased, the better she liked him. He teased Blanche, he teased me; though he would have gone through fire and water for either of us, ay, and laid down his life any moment to save ours. He was everlastingly in mischief indoors or out. He called papa “sir” to his face, “the parson” or “his reverence” behind his back. There was no taming Tom Heriot.
For a short time papa took Tom’s lessons with mine. But he found it would not answer. Tom’s guardians wrote to beg of the Rector to continue to undertake him for a year or two, offering a handsome recompense in return. But my father wrote word back that the lad needed the discipline of school and must have it. So to school Tom was sent. He came home in the holidays, reckless and random, generous and loving as ever, and we had fine times together, the three of us growing up like brothers and sister. Of course, I was not related to them at all: and they were only half related to each other.
Rather singularly, Thomas Heriot’s fortune was just as much as mine: six thousand pounds: and left in very much the same way. The interest, three hundred a year, was to maintain and educate him for the army; and he would come into the whole when he was twenty-one. Blanche had less: four thousand pounds only, and it was secured in the same way as Tom’s was until she should be twenty-one, or until she married.
And thus about a couple of years went on.
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No household was ever less given to superstition than ours at White Littleham Rectory. It never as much as entered the mind of any of its inmates, from its master downwards. And perhaps it was this complete indifference to and disbelief in the supernatural that caused the matter to be openly spoken of by the Rector. I have since thought so.
It was Christmas-tide, and Christmas weather. Frost and snow covered the ground. Icicles on the branches glittered in the sunshine like diamonds.
“It is the jolliest day!” exclaimed Tom, dashing into the breakfast-room from an early morning run half over the parish. “People are slipping about like mad, and the ice is inches thick on the ponds. Old Joe Styles went right down on his back.”
“I hope he was not hurt, Tom,” remarked papa, coming down from his chamber into the room in time to hear the last sentence. “Good-morning, my boys.”
“Oh, it was only a Christmas gambol, sir,” said Tom carelessly.
We sat down to breakfast. Leah came in to see to me and Tom. The Rector might be — and was — efficient in his parish and pulpit, but a more hopelessly incapable man in a domestic point of view the world never saw. Tom and I should have come badly off had we relied upon him to help us, and we might have gobbled up every earthly thing on the table without his saying yea or nay. Leah, knowing this, stood to pour out the coffee. Mrs. Strange had gone away to London on Wednesday (the day after Christmas Day) to see an old aunt who was ill, and had taken Blanche with her. This was Friday, and they were expected home again on the morrow.
Presently Tom, who was observant in his way, remarked that papa was taking nothing. His coffee stood before him untouched; some bacon lay neglected on his plate.
“Shall I cut you some thin bread and butter, sir?” asked Leah.
“Presently,” said he, and went on doing nothing as before.
“What are you thinking of, papa?”
“Well, Charley, I — I was thinking of my dream,” he answered. “I suppose it was a dream,” he went on, as if to himself. “But it was a curious one.”
“Oh, please tell it us!” I cried. “I dreamt on Christmas night that I had a splendid plum-cake, and was cutting it up into slices.”
“Well — it was towards morning,” he said, still speaking in a dreamy sort of way, his eyes looking straight out before him as if he were recalling it, yet evidently seeing nothing. “I awoke suddenly with the sound of a voice in my ear. It was your mamma’s voice, Charley; your own mother’s; and she seemed to be standing at my bedside. ‘I am coming for you,’ she said to me — or seemed to say. I was wide awake in a moment, and knew her voice perfectly. Curious, was it not, Leah?”
Leah, cutting bread and butter for Tom, had halted, loaf in one hand, knife in the other.
“Yes, sir,” she answered, gazing at the Rector. “Did you see anything, sir?”
“No; not exactly,” he returned. “I was conscious that whoever spoke to me, stood close to my bedside; and I was also conscious that the figure retreated across the room towards the window. I cannot say that I absolutely saw the movement; it was more like some unseen presence in the room. It was very odd. Somehow I can’t get it out of my head —— Why, here’s Mr. Penthorn!” he broke off to say.
