"No, she"s busy; run away this moment. Judy, if you question me I shall have to appeal to your father. Now, my loves, go."
The little girls left the room, Babs complacently enough, Judy unwillingly. Babs was sleepy, and was very glad to lay her little head on her white pillow; but sleep was very far away from Judy"s eyes.
The little girls" bedroom was over a portion of the drawing room. They could hear the waves of the music and the light conversation and the gay laughter as they lay in their cots. The sounds soon mingled with Babs"
dreams, but Judy felt more restless and less sleepy each moment.
Miss Mills had entire care of the children. She dressed them and undressed them as well as taught them. She had left them now for the night. Miss Mills at this moment was writing an indignant letter in reply to the one which had so excited her feelings this morning. Her schoolroom was far away. Judy knew that she was safe. If she got out of bed, no one would hear her. In her little white night-dress she stole across the moonlit floor and crept up to the window. She softly unfastened the hasp and flung the window open. She could see down into the garden, and could almost hear the words spoken in the drawing room.
Two figures had stepped out of the conservatory and side by side were walking across the silvered lawn.
Judy"s heart beat with great thumps--one of these people was her sister Hilda, the other was Jasper Quentyns. They walked side by side, keeping close to one another. Their movements were very slow, they were talking almost in whispers. Hilda"s head only reached to Jasper"s shoulder; he was bending down over her. Presently he took her hand. Judy felt as if she should scream.
"He"s a horrid, horrid, wicked man," she said under her breath; "he"s a deceiver. "Men were deceivers ever." I know what he is. Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do? Oh, Hilda, oh, Hilda, darling, you shan"t go through the misery of being engaged and then being married. Oh, oh, what shall I do to save you, Hilda?"
Quentyns and Hilda were standing still. They had moved out of the line of light which streamed from the drawing room, and were standing under the shadow of a great beech tree. Judy felt that she could almost hear their words. From where she leant out of the window she could certainly see their actions. Quentyns stooped suddenly and kissed Hilda on her forehead; Hilda looked up at him and laid both her hands in his. He folded them in a firm pressure, and again stooping, kissed her twice.
Upstairs in the nursery, misery was filling one little heart to the brim. A sob caught Judy"s breath--she felt as if she should choke. She dared not look any more, but drawing down the blind, crept back into bed and covered her head with the bed-clothes.
In the drawing room the guests stopped on, and never missed the two who had stolen away across the moonlit lawn. One girl, it is true, might have been noticed to cast some anxious glances toward the open window, and the companion who talked to her could not help observing that she scarcely replied to his remarks, and was not fully alive to his witticisms; but the rest of the little world jogged on its way merrily enough, unconscious of the Paradise which was so close to them in the Rectory garden, and of the Purgatory which one little soul was enduring upstairs.
"Hilda," said Quentyns, when they had stood for some time under the beech tree, and had said many things each to the other, and felt a great deal more than could ever be put into words. "Hilda," said Quentyns, and all the poetry of the lovely summer evening seemed to have got into his eyes and filled his voice, "I give you all, remember, all that a man can give. I give you the love of my entire heart. My present is yours, my future is to be yours. I live for you, Hilda--I shall always live for you. Think what that means."
"I can quite understand it," replied Hilda, "for I also live for you. I am yours, Jasper, for now and always."
"And I am a very jealous man," said Quentyns. "When I give all, I like to get all."
Hilda laughed.
"How solemnly you speak," she said, stepping back a pace, and an almost imperceptible jar coming into her voice. Then she came close again. "The fault you will have to find with me is this, Jasper," she said, looking fully at him with her sweet eyes; "I shall love you, if anything, too well. No one can ever come between us, unless it is dear little Judy."
"Judy! Don"t you think you make too much fuss about that child? She is such a morbid little piece of humanity."
"Not a bit of it. You don"t quite understand her. She and I are much more than ordinary sisters to each other. I feel as if I were in a certain sense Judy"s mother. When mother died she left Judy to me.
Little darling! No one ever had a more faithful or a n.o.bler heart. You must get fond of her too, for my sake; won"t you, Jasper?"
"I"ll do anything for your sake, you know that, Hilda. But don"t let us talk of Judy any more just now--let us----"
"Mr. Quentyns, is that your voice I hear?" called Aunt Marjorie, from the drawing room. "And, Hilda, ought you to be out with the dew falling so heavily?"
CHAPTER IV.
CHANGES.
Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather Till one steps over the tiny strand, So narrow in sooth, that still together On either brink we go hand in hand.
The beck grows wider, the hands must sever, On either margin our songs all done; We move apart, while she singeth ever, Taking the course of the stooping sun.
--JEAN INGELOW.
About a week after Hilda Merton"s engagement, just when her friends were full of the event, and congratulations began to pour in on all sides, there came a very unexpected blow to the inmates of the peaceful and pretty Rectory.
The parish of Little Staunton was large and scattered; it stretched away at one side down to the sea, at another it communicated with great open moors and tracts of the outlying lands of the New Forest. It was but spa.r.s.ely peopled, and those parishioners who lived in small cottages by the sea, and who earned their living as fishermen, were most of them very poor. Mr. Merton, however, was one of the ideal sort of rectors, who helped his flock with temporal as well as spiritual benefits. The stipend which he received from the church was not a large one, and every penny of it was devoted to the necessities of his poor parishioners.
There came an awful morning, therefore, when a short announcement in the local paper, and a long letter from Mr. Merton"s lawyer, acquainted him with the fact that the Downshire County Bank had stopped payment. In plain language, Mr. Merton, from being a wealthy man, became suddenly a very poor one.
Aunt Marjorie cried when she heard the news; Hilda"s face turned very pale, and Judy and Babs, who were both in the room at the time, felt that sort of wonder and perplexity which children do experience when they know something is dreadfully wrong, but cannot in the least understand what it is.
In the course of the morning Hilda went to her father in his study.
Her face was very white as she opened the door, some of the young soft lines of her early youth seemed to have left it; her beautiful brown eyes looked in a heavy sort of fashion out at the world from their dark surroundings. She came up to her father, and put her hand on his shoulder. He was bending over his desk, busily writing.
"What is the matter, Hilda?" he asked, glancing up at her with a quick start, and an endeavor to make his voice sound as usual.
"I--I have come, father, to say that if you like, I--I will give up my engagement to Jasper Quentyns."
Mr. Merton rose from his seat and put his arm round her neck.
"My dear child," he said, "it is my comfort to-day to know that you, at least, are provided for. Quentyns is fairly well off. If he will take you without any fortune, there is certainly no reason why you should not go to him."
"Money can"t make any difference to Jasper," said Hilda, just a little proudly, although her lips trembled; "but I--it seems wrong that I should be so happy when the rest of you are so miserable."
"Tut, tut!" said the Rector. "I shall get over this in time. I own that just now the blow is so severe that I can scarcely quite realize it.
When I opened my eyes this morning, I was pleasantly conscious that I was the possessor of a private income of quite two thousand a year; I felt this fact in the comforts that surrounded me, and the ease which filled my life. Except that small stipend which is represented by my living, and which I have always. .h.i.therto devoted to the poor of the flock, I am now reduced to nothing a year. My poor must divide my money with me in future, that is all; I don"t intend to be miserable when I get accustomed to the change, Hilda. I must dismiss most of the servants, and give up the carriage and horses, and live as a poor man instead of a rich one; but I owe no man anything, my dear, and I have not the least doubt there is a certain zest in poverty which will make the new order of things agreeable enough when once I get used to it."
The tears gathered slowly in Hilda"s eyes.
"I don"t feel as if I could quite bear it," she said, with a sob.
The Rector, who was always rather absent-minded, and had a dreamy way of looking far ahead even when he was most roused, scarcely noticed Hilda"s tears. He talked on in a monotonous sort of voice:
"I have not the least doubt that poverty has its alleviations. I have heard it more than once remarked that the hand-to-mouth existence is the most stimulating in the world. I should not be surprised, Hilda, if my sermons took a turn for the better after this visitation. I have preached to my flock, year in, year out, that the mysterious ways of Providence are undoubtedly the best--I have got to act up to my preaching now, that is all."
The Rector sat down again and continued to write a very unbusiness-like letter to his lawyer; Hilda stood and looked at him with a frown between her brows, and then went slowly out of the room.
Aunt Marjorie, who had cried herself nearly sick, and whose eyes between their swollen lids were scarcely visible, came to meet her as she walked across the hall.
"Oh, my darling," she said, with a fresh sob, "how can I bear to look at you when I think of all your young life blighted in a moment! Oh, those wicked Bank Directors. They deserve hanging! yes, I should hang them one and all. And so you have been with my poor brother? I would not venture near him. How is he taking it, Hilda? Is he quite off his head, poor, dear man?"
"How do you think my father would take a blow of this kind?" said Hilda.
"Come into the drawing room, Auntie. Oh, Auntie dear, do try to stop crying. You don"t know what father is. Of course I can"t pretend to understand him, but he is quite n.o.ble--he is splendid; he makes me believe in religion. A man must be very, very good to talk as father has just done."
"Poor Samuel!" said Aunt Marjorie. "I knew that he would take this blow either as a saint or as an idiot--I don"t know which is the most trying.
You see, Hilda, my love, your father has never had anything to do with the petty details of housekeeping. This parish brings in exactly three hundred and fifty pounds a year; how are we to pay the wages of nine servants, and how are the gardeners to be paid, and the little girls"
governess, and--and how is this beautiful house to be kept up on a pittance of that sort? Oh, dear; oh, dear! Your father will just say to me, "I know, Marjorie, that you will do your best," and then he"ll forget that there is such a thing as money; but I shall never be able to forget it, Hilda. Oh, dear; oh, dear! I do think saintly men are awful trials."