It was not the first time Master Conrad had disparaged, by implication, his father"s great acquirements. To me it seemed scarcely graceful, and very far from dutiful, but many of my sentiments are dreadfully old-fashioned. An awkward pause ensued; how could I answer without condemning one or the other? Though I could not quite acquit Conrad, my heart was entirely with him, for I had long been aware that he was not happy at home. There he stood, with an angry countenance, having declined the chair I had offered him. Suddenly he took both my hands and looked me full in the face, though his eyes were glistening. I gazed full at him, with vague apprehensions rising. How or why, I know not, but at that very moment my hair, which is always a trouble to me, fell in a ma.s.s down my cheeks and neck. He started back, but still held my hands.
"I am made certain that I have seen you long ago. I will think, I will think."
I saw at once how it was, the fear on my face reminded him. I meant to tell him some day, but I never meant him to find out. Scorning myself for a hypocrite, I looked stedfastly at him and smiled.
"You will forgive me, Miss Valence, you know that I would not use a freedom."
He saw in my eyes that I knew it, and dropped my hands, and went on.
"You will think me the weakest in mind and most wicked, but I am most unhappy."
I started in turn, and how I longed to console him. What use is pride if it cannot even command one"s eyes?
"It is to me a disgrace to come to you with my troubles. But I do it from no unmanly temper. I do it alone for the sake of my precious sister Isola. I have no longer any one whom I dare to love but her, and now I am compelled to abandon her at the last."
"Do you mean to be long away?" This I managed to ask pretty well, though it was sore work.
"I shall not be away from London, but I shall be departed from Isola.
The house where she lives I am no more to visit. A long time I have gone there only a little, and alone to see her. She is ordered now to come no more to me. This day I spoke very violently. But I will not detain you with that. I will confess I did wrong; but I was richly provoked. My object in burdening you is double:--First to implore you, if I may without using liberty, to endure well with the Professor, lest she should be interdicted from coming to visit you, and then she would have no one remaining to love her. Second to ask, a thing that I hesitate because I cannot narrate to you all things, whether you would indulge me, if there is no wrong, to come now and then to see my own and my only sister."
"Of course you do not mean without her father"s knowledge."
"I would never insult you, Miss Valence, by asking a thing like that. I desire nothing of what you call clandestine. You are so free and open, you would never have to do with any sort of concealment. Neither am I in the habit to do anything like that. It has only been commanded that I may not go there, or invite her to come to my house. The Professor has great power in the present, but he does not pretend to interdict me from my sister."
His eyes flashed, as he spoke, with an expression quite unfilial.
Remembering how differently I had loved my own dear father, I felt disappointed and grieved, but had no right to show it.
"Only one more thing I will entreat of you, Miss Valence; poor Isola has never learned what means any grief. If she is vexed by this, I pray you to sustain and comfort her; for I shall never make a wrong advantage of your most kind permission, so as to see her very often."
He raised my hand to his lips in grat.i.tude for what he called a kindness beyond all value to him, and his voice was trembling as he turned away.
But I had done no kindness, I had given no permission; for I was not calm enough to distinguish right from wrong. Strange indeed it seemed to me that I, for the most part so decided, could not now determine, but was all perplexity. My great iceberg self-reliance, built in bleak and lonesome years, was now adrift and melting in the bright sun of friendship and the warm sea-depths of love.
CHAPTER XV.
Isola happened that day to leave me before the usual time, being afraid that her father, who was not in his sweetest mood, would be angry with her. She was grieved of course at the new dissension, and thought me (her ideas were of loose texture) somewhat to blame somehow.
Nevertheless she soon forgave me the crime I had not committed.
That day I could paint no more, but sat me down to meditate. Suddenly a loud ring and a louder knock echoed through the house. Quickly Mrs.
Shelfer"s little feet came pattering up the stairs, and her grey eyes actually seemed to come in first at the door. On the crown of her head her black cap hung, like the top of a chaise doubled back.
"Oh my good friend, look here! I was never so frightened in all my life."
She held as far from her as she could reach a closed envelope, addressed "Miss Clara Vaughan." I tore it open and read--"Mr. Vaughan is dying, come instantly. Sent by Mrs. Fletcher."
"Telegraph, my good soul," cried Mrs. Shelfer, "Electric Telegraph Company, all screams the wires red hot, and you must sign the message he says. And is there any answer? And they give him eighteen pence. Oh dear, I shall never get over it. Never had such a turn since my brother John went, and they tucked him up so bootiful, and I said to the clerk at Barbican--"
"Out of my way if you please. Let me sign the form, and leave me alone a minute. There is no answer."
Should I go or not? Bitterly as I disliked him, could I let him die among hirelings and strangers--I, his brother"s daughter! A year ago I would have done so and thought it the judgment of G.o.d. Now I remembered my dear mother"s death, and doubted about going only because I knew not how he would take it. My hesitation was very brief. A cab was ordered, Giudice entrusted to Mrs. Shelfer"s care, a short note left for Isola, a few things put together anyhow, and I was ready to start.
Even in this hurry a selfish terror smote me, and I cautioned Mrs.
Shelfer strictly to conceal both name and destination. She had only to say that some relative was suddenly taken ill, somewhere down in the country; the country being to her mind a desert marked with milestones, my description did not seem unreasonably vague.
As I stood in the pa.s.sage waiting for the cab, the poor dog, who had been quite flurried, and scented indefinite evil, commenced, prolonged, and would not conclude a howl of pa.s.sing sadness.
"Oh, my good friend," cried Mrs. Shelfer, "let me stop the cab. All waste of money to go. The good gentleman, whoever he is, is as dead as a crabsh.e.l.l now. There was a terrier with a split ear, next door but one, when my poor brother John was ill; his name was Jack, I think, no, Tom; bless me, no, what am I thinking of, Bob--Charley knows, I dare say--"
"Well, send me his name by telegraph. Here"s the cab, Mrs. Shelfer."
Heavy thumps of weary wambling feet, grating of wheels, a needless "whoa," and we open the door.
Giudice bolts first into the cab, and sitting upright with his tongue out and a sprightly pant, occupies the whole. It takes the united strength, address, and authority of cabman, landlady, and myself to get him out again. Then he coils his tail to his stomach, droops his ears and eyes, and receiving two hot tears and a kiss is sidled and deluded into the narrow pa.s.sage. The last thing I hear is a howl that winds far round the corner and beyond the square.
In an hour and a half from the delivery of the message, I was in a second-cla.s.s carriage, and we shrieked away from Paddington. The hurry and rush overcame me for a while. Soon the April evening was spread with shadowy gray, and we were rushing past the wooded waves of Pangbourne, and casting silver rings of steam on the many-fingered spruce, before I could collect and feel my thoughts again. As we glided through plantations and between the winding hills, with the partridge beginning his twilight call, the pheasants come out of the coppice to feed, and the late rook plying his dusky wings, at length the dust and city turmoil lagged round the corner miles away, and we sparkled in the dewy freshness of the silent moon. Though all alone in the carriage, I vainly tried for prudence" sake to creep into the cloak of sleep. Every vein and every pore was full of gushing thrilling electric life. The country, the country! the heavenly country"s glory! how had I breathed and groped in the city grave so long? For every thought that dribbled there and guttered in my brain, a hundred thousand now flow through me, not of brain, but soul. Thoughts I cannot call them, for there is no volition, neither have they sequence, impress, or seen image: only a broad stream gliding, whence and whither I know not. How can I describe to others what I cannot tell myself?
"Glost"! Glost"! change here for Chelt"m!" &c. broke my dreaming suddenly. It was eleven at night. I had come unwrapped; the heavenly country and nature"s tide forgot to keep me warm. Out I came upon the platform, and dreamily began to seek my carpet-bag, for I had no heavy luggage. The moon was struggling with the gas-lights, as nature in me fought with modern life.
"Fly, Miss, fly?" the lonely porter asked.
"Yes, please," said I.
"Where for, Miss?"
"Vaughan St. Mary."--At this part of my life, I dropped the grand "Vaughan Park;" it seemed too fine for me, and I was well content to be of Conrad"s cla.s.s in the world.
"Oh, there"s a carriage waiting at every train, if you please, Miss."
And with tenfold politeness the porter showed me across the square to one of the family hea.r.s.es, which my father and I so detested. It so happened that the driver and footman were taking some light refreshment at the bar of a neighbouring edifice, while the horses champed their bits and whinnied. The men came out against their will, and stared at me in the broad moonshine. I was very simply, plainly, and cheaply dressed, in deep mourning still for my darling mother; but no servant of even slight experience could take me, I think, for anything but a lady; little as it matters. The men were half-drunk, very surly at being disturbed, and inclined to form a low estimate of my dress and carpet-bag.
"You mean to say you be Miss Vaughan, young "ooman?" stuttered the reeling coachman, with his hands beneath his flaps and a short pipe in his mouth, "Now I tell you plainly, there"s no mistake about me mind, I can"t noway credit it. It don"t seem likely, do it, Bob?"
"Likely, Jacob? Yes, like enough to a fool; but nohow creditable to the like of us. Think I don"t know now? Perhaps the young "ooman will answer a few questions, Jacob."
"Ah, let you alone; let you alone, Bob! Specially for young women!"
"Porter, a cab at once, if you please; or a fly I think you call it here." Oh my London impudence!
"To be sure, Miss; the best in Gloucester directly. And, Miss"--confidentially, "if I was in your shoes, I"d walk them chaps about their business to-morrow. How they have been carrying on here, to be sure, ever since the six o"clock train come in. Why, in the time of the old Squire Vaughan--"
"Thank you, the fly, if you please."
In two minutes I was off for my father"s home with mighty rattle of gla.s.s, and many jerking noises. About three miles from Gloucester we were pa.s.sed by Jacob and Robert, who were sitting side by side and driving furiously. Convinced at last by the porter of my genuine Vaughanship, they had set off full speed to secure first audience.
At length we pa.s.sed the lodge, where the gates creaked as of yore, and dear old Whitehead trembled at my voice, and so along the great avenue where I had studied the manners and ways of every tree, and where Tulip (Nestor among deer) came to stare at us with his grey face silver in the moonlight. Poor old friend, he knew me as well as Giudice did, but I could not stop to talk to him. Soon as the bell was rung the broad bolt of the great lock, which I was once so proud to draw, flew back with suspicious prompt.i.tude.