Lady Hester; Or, Ursula's Narrative Read online

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE WHITE DOE'S WARNING.

  Here was Alured's eighth birthday, and he had never been ill at all,but was as fine-looking healthy a boy as could be seen.

  We took him to London, and showed him to Dr. Hart, and he said that theold tendency was entirely outgrown, and that Lord Trevorsham was aslikely to live and thrive as any child of his age in England.

  It really seemed the beginning of a new life, not to have that dreadfulfear hanging over us any longer! We felt settled, that was one thing;not as if we should do as Bertram expected, have to come off to NewZealand.

  The farm had just began to pay. Fulk's sales of cattle had been, forthe first time, more than enough to clear his rent. He had a great oxin the Smithfield Cattle Show, and met our Lupton uncles there not asan unsuccessful man.

  And I? I had a dim feeling that Alured would soon cease to need me,and Jaquetta would not be claimed for a long time; and if--

  But in the midst of that I saw a haggard face driving in the park bythe side of a little, over-dressed, faded woman.

  And Aunt Amelia told me how (in the rebound from my harshness, nodoubt) Mr. Decies had, as it were, dropped into the hands of a weak,extravagant girl, who had long been using all the intellect she had toattract him, and now led him a dreary life of perpetual dissipation.

  I don't know how much I had been to blame. I am sure he was meant forbetter things. Mine could never have been real love for him, and therefusal could not have been wrong. It must have been the pride andharshness that stung him!

  I was very sorry for him, though I could not think about it, of course,still less speak; but that was the beginning of my hating myself, and Ihave hated myself more and more ever since I have taken to write allthis down, and seen how hard and foolish I was, how very much the worstof the three.

  Even my care for Alured sprang out of exclusive passion, and so, thoughI do think that by Heaven's mercy I had a great share in cherishing himinto strength and health, I had managed him badly, I had indulged himover much, and was improperly resentful of any attempt of Jaquetta, oreven of Fulk, to interfere with him or restrain him.

  Thus, when the anxiety was over, and he was a strong boy, full ofhealth and activity, his will was entirely unrestrained, he had nonotion of minding any of us, still less of learning. Trevor Lea couldread, write, talk French, say a few Latin declensions, when Aluredcould not read a word of three letters, and would not try to learn.

  Oh! the antics he played when I tried to teach him! Then Fulk tried,and he was tame for three days, but then came idleness, wilfulness,anger, punishment, but he laughed to scorn all that we could find inour hearts to do to him.

  As to getting other help we were ashamed till he should be a littleless shamefully backward. The Cradocks offered to teach him, but then,unless he was elaborately put on honour, he played truant.

  He had plenty of honour, plenty of affection, but not the smallestconscience as to obedience; and Fulk would not have the other twomotives worked too hard, saying the one might break, the other give way.

  We had not taught obedience, so we had to take the consequences, and wewere the less able to enforce it that he had come to a knowledge of ourmutual relations much sooner than we intended, and in the worst mannerpossible.

  Of course he knew himself to be Lord Trevorsham, and owner of theproperty; but one day, when Fulk found him galloping his pony in thefield laid up for hay, and ordered him out, he retorted that "You ain'tmy proper brother, and you haven't any rights over me! It is my field;and I shall do as I like."

  Fulk got hold of the pony's bridle, and took Alured by the shoulderwithout one word, then took him into the little study, and had it outwith him.

  It was Hester who had told him. He had been at Spinney Lawn withTrevor all one afternoon, when we had thought him out with old Sisson.He had told no falsehood indeed, but Hester and her husband had madehim understand, so far as such a child could do, that there was somedisgrace connected with us; that Fulk had once been in his place, andonly wanted to get it back, and now had it all his own way with hisyoung lordship's property, and that he owed us neither duty noraffection, only to his true relative, Lady Hester Perrault.

  The dear boy had maintained stoutly that he did love Ursula andJacquey, and that Hester wasn't half so nice, and that he had ratherthey bullied him than that she coaxed him! But there was the poisonsown--to rankle and grow and burst out when he was opposed. He hadfull faith and trust in Fulk, and accepted his history, owning, indeed,from a boy, that he had been a horrid little wretch for saying what hedid, and asking whether it had not been a great bore; indeed, hebehaved all the better instead of the worse for some little time, dearfellow.

  But he was too big and strong to tie to one's apron-string, and hisgreatest pleasure was in being with Trevor. I think Trevor's owninfluence never did any harm. Poor Joel Lea had trained him well, andhe was a conscientious, good boy, who often hindered Alured frominsubordination; but the attraction to Spinney Lawn was a mischievousthing--for there was no doubt that the heads of the family would sethim against us if they could.

  So Fulk thought it wiser to send him to school, since he was learningnothing properly at home, and only getting more disobedient and unruly.

  Immediately Trevor Lea was sent to the same school, to the boys' greatdelight. They cared little that Trevor was placed nearly at the topand Trevorsham at the bottom of the little preparatory school. Theyheld together just as much, and Alured came home wonderfully improvedand delightfully good, but more than ever inseparable from Trevor.

  In the meantime Francis Dayman had come to pay his sister a visit. Hehad made some fortunate speculations, and had come on to be a merchantof considerable wealth and weight in the Hudson's Bay Company.

  A handsome man of a good deal of strength and force he seemed to be,and Perrault had certainly been wise in securing his prize beforeHester had such a guardian.

  He was an open, straight-forward man, with a fresh breath of the forestabout him; successful beyond all his hopes, and full of activity. Hetook to Fulk, and seemed to have a strong fellow-feeling for us.

  But little had Fulk expected to be made the confidant of his vehementadmiration for Emily Deerhurst. The gentle lady-like girl impressedthe backwoodsman in a wondrous manner. It seemed to him, as if hiswealth would have real value, if he could pour it all out on her.

  And her mother encouraged him. Emily was six years older than when shehad cast off Fulk, and there was a pale changed look about her; and therich Canadian, who could buy a baronetcy, and do anything she asked,tempted Mrs. Deerhurst.

  Though, as Fulk said bitterly, if the stain on his birth was all thecause of the utter withdrawal, was it not the same with Francis Dayman?Only in his case it was gilded!

  Dayman knew nothing of this former affair. The world was forgettingit, and if Hester knew it, she kept it from his knowledge, so he usedto consult Fulk as to what was to be done to please an English lady,and whether he was too rough for her; and Fulk stood it all. He evenknew when the young lady herself was brought forward--and refused,gently, sadly, courteously, but unmistakably; and then, when drivenhard by the eager wooing, owned to an old attachment, that never wouldpermit her to marry!

  What a light there was in Fulk's eyes when he whispered that into myears! And yet he had kept his counsel, even though Mr. Dayman told himthat the mother declared it to be a foolish romantic affair of veryearly girlhood, that no doubt his perseverance would overthrow.

  "And her persecution!" muttered poor Fulk. But he did enjoy theconfidences in a bitter-sweet fashion. It was justifiable to be a dogin the manger under the circumstances.

  Mr. Dayman went to London, and Hester was negotiating about a housewhere Mrs. Deerhurst and her daughters were to stay with her for a fewweeks. I fancy Mrs. Deerhurst thought that the chance of seeing FarmerTorwood ride by to market had a bad effect. It was the Easterholidays, and both boys were at home; always trying to be together, andwe not findin
g it easy to keep Alured from Spinney Lawn, without suchflat refusals as would have given his sister legitimate cause ofcomplaint and offence.

  One beautiful spring afternoon, when Alured, to my vexation and vagueuneasiness, had gone over there, I was sowing annuals in the garden andwatching for him at the same time, when, to my surprise, I saw, comingover the fields from the park, a lady with a quick, timid, yet weariedstep. Had she lost her way, I thought? There was something of thetame fawn in her movement; and then I remembered the white doe. Yes!it was Emily!

  The one haunting anxiety of my life broke out--"You haven't come to saythere's anything amiss with my boy?" I cried out.

  "No; oh no! I think he is safe now; but I wanted to tell you, I thinkyou ought to be warned."

  She was trembling so much that I wanted to bring her in and make herrest; but she would only sit down on the step of the stile, and thereshe whispered it, in this way.

  "You know there's a dreadful scarlet fever at old Brown's."

  "The old man that sells curiosities? No, I did not know it; I'll keepTrevorsham away," I said, wondering she had come all this way; and thenasking in a fright, "Surely he has not been there?"

  "No; I met him on the road with Lady Hester Perrault, and I told them.I walked back to Spinney Lawn with them. But," as I began to thankher, and her voice went lower still, "but--oh, Ursula, Lady Hester knewit!"

  "Knew it!"

  "Yes, knew it quite well."

  "She was doing it on purpose!"

  "Oh," Emily hid her face in her hands, "I pray God to forgive me if Iam doing a very cruel wicked wrong; but I can't help thinking it. I hadtold her only yesterday how bad the fever was in that street. She saidshe had forgotten it, and thanked me; but she had not her own boy,Trevor, with her."

  I was too much frozen with the horror of the thing to speak at first,and perhaps Emily thought I did not quite believe her, for she said,under her breath, "And I've heard her talk--talk to mamma--about herbeing so certain that Lord Trevorsham could not live, even when he waspast seven years old. They always have said that the first illnesswould go to his head and carry him off. And when people do wish thingsvery much--" And then she grew frightened at herself, and began blamingherself for the horrible fancy, but saying it haunted her every timeshe saw Lord Trevorsham in Lady Hester's sight. That old ballad, "Thewee grovelling doo," would come into her head, and she had felt as ifany harm happened to the child it would be her fault for not havingspoken a word of warning, and this had determined her.

  By this time I had taken it in, and then the first thing I did was tospring up and ask how she could leave the boy still in the woman'spower, to which she answered that she had walked them back to SpinneyLawn--a whole mile--and that Lady Hester could not set forth again, nowthat Alured had heard the conversation.

  He had been bent on going to buy a tame sea-gull there, as a birthdaypresent for Trevor; and Emily had lured him off from that, by a promiseof getting one from an old fisherman whom she knew. So there was notmuch fear of his running back into the danger, though I should not havea happy moment till he was in my sight again.

  Then Emily sprang up, saying, she must go. She had walked four miles,and she must get back as fast as she could. Most likely mamma wouldthink her at Spinney Lawn.

  But what must not it have cost that timid thing to venture here withher warning!

  It gave me a double sense of the reality of my boy's, peril, that shehad been excited to it, and she would not hear of coming in to rest;and when I entreated her to wait till I could get the gig to drive herpart of the way, she held me fast, and insisted, with all the terror ofwomanly shamefacedness, that, "he--that Tor--that Mr. Torwood--shouldnot know." And she sprang up to go home instantly, before he couldguess.

  "Oh, Emily, that is too bad, when nothing would make him so glad."

  "Oh! no, no! he has been used too ill; he can't care for me now, and asif I should--"

  I don't think poor Emily uttered anything half so coherent as this, atany rate I understood that she disclaimed the least possibility of hisaffection continuing, and felt it an outrage on herself to be where shecould even suppose herself to have voluntarily put herself in his way.

  I thought there was nothing for it but to let her start, hurry afterher with some vehicle, and then call and bring home my boy; but in themidst of my perplexity and her struggle with her tears, who shouldappear on the scene but Fulk himself, driving home the spring cartwherein, everybody being busy, he had conveyed a pig to a new home.

  I don't know how it was all done or said. My first notion was that heshould be warned of our dear boy's danger, and rescue him beforeanything else. I could not get into my head that there was no presentreason for dread, and yet when I had gasped out "Oh,Fulk--Alured--Fetch him home! Emily came to warn us!" the accusationbegan to seem so monstrous and horrible that I could not go on with itbefore Emily. She too, perhaps, found it harder to utter to a man thanto a woman, and between the strangeness of speaking to one anotheragain, and her shyness and his wonder and delight, it seemed to meunreasonable that poor little Alured's danger was counting for nothingbetween them, and I turned from the former reticence to the bereavedtigress style, and burst out, "And are we to stand talking here whileour boy is in these people's power?"

  Then Fulk did listen to what it was all about; but even then it seemedto me he would not think half so much of the peril as of what Emily haddone. In truth, I believe all they both wanted was to get out of myway; but they pacified me by Fulk's undertaking, if Emily did notobject to the cart, to drive her across the park where no one wouldmeet her, and she could get out only a mile from home, and to call atSpinney Lawn in returning by the road and take up Alured.

  What a drive that must have been! Fulk had the advantage over Emily inknowing what poor Mr. Dayman had told him, whereas she, poor child,only knew that he had been so vilely served that she thought hisaffection and esteem had been entirely killed.

  They had it all out in that tax cart, a vehicle Fulk now regards as aheavenly chariot, and I heard it all afterwards.

  Poor Emily! she had grown a great deal older in those six years. Ateighteen she had implicitly believed in her mother. Mrs. Deerhurst hadbeen so good all those years of striving not to frighten my father,that she had been perfection in her daughter's eyes. Emily hadbelieved with all her heart in her apparent disinterestedness, and herhopes and sympathy for us were real; and so, when the crash reallycame, and she told the poor girl with floods of tears that it wasimpossible, and a thing not to be thought of, for a right-minded womanto unite herself to a man of such birth. And poor Emily, with theconscious ignorance of eighteen, believed, and was the sort of gentlecreature who could easily be daunted by the terror that her generousimpulses to share the shame and namelessness were unfeminine and wrong.The utter silence had been the consequence of her mother assuring her,with authority, that the true kindness was to betray no token offeeling that could cherish hope where all was hopeless, and that hewould regret her less if she commanded herself and gave him no look.

  It had been terrible, calm self-command, and obedience to abused filialconfidence in her mother's infallibility.

  And then Mrs. Deerhurst had been sinking ever since in her daughter'sesteem, as Emily could not but rise higher from the conscientiousstruggle and self-denying submission, and besides grew older and hadmore experience; while Mrs. Deerhurst, no doubt, deteriorated in theforeign wandering life, and all her motives made themselves evidentwhen she married the younger daughter.

  Emily had thought for herself, and seen that advantage had been takenof her innocence, and that her betrothed had rights, which, if she hadbeen older, she would not have been persuaded to ignore. But cominghome, two years later, and meeting my cold eyes and Fulk's ceremoniousbow, and hearing on all parts that he had accepted his position and hada hard struggle to maintain his two sisters; she, knowing herself to beportionless, could but suffer, and be still.

  Of course every attempt of her moth
er's to get her to marryadvantageously, and, even more, Mrs. Deerhurst's devotion to LadyHester, tore away more and more of the veil she had tried to keep overher eyes; and as her youngest sister grew up into bloom, and into thewish for society, Emily had been allowed more and more to go her ownquiet way in the religious and charitable life of Shinglebay, where shehad peace, if not joy.

  And then came the Dayman affair, when all the old persecution revivedagain, and Emily's foremost defence against him, her blushing objectionto his birth, was set aside as a mere prudish fancy of a young girl.

  The gentle Emily had been irate then, and all the more when her mothertried to cover her inconsistency by alleging that everybody knew ofLord Torwood's fall, whereas no one knew or cared who Francis Daymanwas, or where he came from. Henceforth Emily's shame at the usage ofFulk had been double--or rather it turned into indignation. Reportsthat he was to marry a rich grazier's daughter had no effect in turningher in pique to Dayman. She had firmly told her mother that if it werewrong for her to take the one, it must be equally so to take the other.

  This Mrs. Deerhurst had concealed from poor Mr. Dayman; nor wouldEmily's modesty allow her to utter the objection to the man's own face.So Mrs. Deerhurst encouraged him, and trusted to London reports of thegrazier's daughter, and persevering appeals to that filial sense ofduty which had been strained so much too far.

  And now, how did it stand?

  When I, secure in knowing that Alured was safe at home, thinking itabominable nonsense in Miss Deerhurst to have bothered about scarletfever, Hester herself had said so. When I could hear Fulk's happiness,and try to analyse it, what did it amount to?

  Why, that they knew they loved one another still, and never meant tocease. And with what hopes? Alas! the hopes were all for some time orother. Emily would do nothing in flat disobedience, and there waslittle or no hope of her mother's consent to her marrying FarmerTorwood. She meant to tell her mother thus much, that she had seenhim, and that they loved each other as much as ever; and as Mrs.Deerhurst had waived the objection to Dayman, it could not hold in theother case. It would be, in fact, a tacit compact--scarcely anengagement--with what amount of meeting or correspondence must be leftfor duty and principle to decide, but the love that had existed withoutaliment for six years might trust now. And "hap what hap," there neverwas a happier man than my Fulk that evening.

  He was too joyous not to be universally charitable. Nay, he called ita blessed fancy of Emily's that brought her here, as it was Emily's,and had brought him such bliss he could not quite scorn it, but he didnot, _could_ not believe in it as we did. It was culpable carelessnessin Hester, but colonial people had been used to such health that theydid not care about infection. But it was a glorious act of Emily's!In fact the manly mind could believe nothing so horrible of any woman.