The Light of Scarthey Part 18

Over the chimney-piece, in the huge carved-oak frame (now already two centuries old), a common sailor, in the striped loose trousers, the blue jacket with red piping of a man-of-war's man, with pigtail and coa.r.s.e open s.h.i.+rt--stood boldly forth as the representative of the present owner of Pulwick.

Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than was pleasant.

It was, therefore, with no surprise that Miss Landale received an early order from her brother to have a fire lighted in the apartment sacred to the family honours, and the matutinal repast served there in due course.

Whether Mr. Landale was actuated by a regard for the rheumatism of his worthy relative, or merely a natural family pride, or by some other and less simple motive, he saw no necessity for informing his docile housewife on the matter.

As Sophia was accustomed to no such condescension on his part even in circ.u.mstances more extraordinary, she merely bundled out of bed unquestioningly in the darkness and cold of the morning to see his orders executed in the proper manner; which, indeed, to her credit was so successfully accomplished that Tanty and her charges, when they made their entry upon the scene, could not fail to be impressed with the comfortable aspect of the majestic old room.

Mr. Landale examined his two young uninvited guests with new keenness in the morning light. Molly was demure enough, though there was a lurking gleam in her dark eye which suggested rather armed truce than accepted peace. As for Madeleine, though to be serene was an actual necessity of her delicate nature, there was more than resignation in the blus.h.i.+ng radiance of her look and smile.

"Portraits of their mother," said Rupert, bringing his critical survey to a close, and stepping forward with a nice action of the legs to present his arm to his aunt. "Portraits of their mother both of them--I trust to that miniature which used to grace our collection in the drawing-room rather than to the treacherous memory of a school-boy for the impression--but portraits by different masters and in different moods."

There was something patronising in the tone from so young a man, which Molly resented on the spot.

"Oh, we should be as like as two peas, only that we are as different as day and night, as Tanty says," she retorted, tossing her white chin at her host, while Miss O'Donoghue laughed aloud at her favourite's sauciness.

"And after all," said Rupert, as he bestowed his venerable relative on her chair, with an ineffable air of politeness, contradicted, though only for an instant, by the look which he shot at Molly from the light hazel eyes, "Tanty is not so far wrong--the only difference between night and day is the difference between the _brunette_ and the _blonde_," with a little bow to each of the sisters, "an Irish bull, if one comes to a.n.a.lyse it, is but the expression of the too rapid working of quick wits."

"Faith, nephew," said Tanty, sitting down in high good humour to the innumerable good things in which her Epicurean old soul delighted, "that is about as true a thing as ever you said. Our Irish tongues are apt to get behind a thing before it is there, and they call that making a bull."

Rupert's sense of humour was as keen as most of his other faculties, and at the unconscious humour of this sally his laugh rang out frankly, while Molly and Madeleine giggled in their plates, and Miss O'Donoghue chuckled quietly to herself in the intervals of eating and drinking, content to have been witty, without troubling to discover how.

Sophia alone remained unmoved by mirth; indeed, as she raised her drooping head, amazed at the clamour, an unwary tear trickled down her long nose into her tea. She was given to revelling in anniversaries of dead and gone joys or sorrows; the one as melancholy to her to look back upon as the other; and upon this November day, now very many years ago, had the ardent, consumptive rector first hinted at his love.

"And now," said Miss O'Donoghue, who, having disposed of the most serious part of the breakfast, pushed away her plate with one hand while she stirred her second cup of well-creamed tea lazily with the other, "Now, Rupert, will you tell me the arrangements you propose to make to enable me to see your good brother?"

Rupert had antic.i.p.ated being attacked upon this subject, and had fully prepared himself to defend the peculiar position it was his interest to maintain. To encourage a meeting between his brother and the old lady (to whom the present position of affairs was a grievous offence) did not, certainly, enter into his plan of action; but Tanty had put the question in an unexpected and slightly awkward shape, and for a second or two he hesitated before replying.

"I fear," said he then, gliding into the subject with his usual easy fluency, "that you will be disappointed if you have been reckoning upon an interview with Adrian, my dear aunt. The hermit will not be drawn from his sh.e.l.l on any pretext."

"What," cried Tanty, while her withered cheek flushed, "do you mean to tell me that my nephew, Sir Adrian Landale, will decline to come a few hundred yards to see his old aunt--his mother's own sister--who has come three hundred miles, at seventy years of age, to see him in his own house--_in his own house_?" repeated the irate old lady, rattling the spoon with much emphasis against her cup. "If you _mean_ this, Rupert, it is an insult to me which I shall never forget--_never_."

She rose from her seat as she concluded, shaking with the tremulous anger of age.

"For G.o.d's sake, Tanty," cried Rupert, throwing into his voice all the generous warmth he was capable of simulating, "do not hold me responsible for Adrian in this matter. His strange vagaries are not of my suggesting, heaven knows."

"Well, nephew," said Miss O'Donoghue, loftily, "if you will kindly send the letter I am about to write to your brother, by a safe messenger, immediately, I shall believe that it is _your_ wish to treat me with proper respect, whatever may be Adrian's subsequent behaviour."

Mr. Landale's countenance a.s.sumed an expression of very genuine distress; this was just the one proof of dutiful attachment that he was loth to bestow upon his cherished aunt.

"I see how it is," he exclaimed earnestly, coming up to the old lady, and laying his hand gently upon her arm, "you entirely misunderstand the situation. I am not a free agent in this matter. I cannot do what you ask; I am bound by pledge. Adrian is, undoubtedly, more than--peculiar on certain points, and, really, I dare not, if I would, thwart him."

"Oh!" cried Tanty, shooting off the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as from a pop-gun.

Then, shaking herself free of Rupert's touch, she sat down abruptly in her chair again, and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. Not even in her interchange of amenities with Mrs. Hambledon, had Molly seen her display so much indignation.

"You want me to believe he is mad, I suppose?" she snapped, at last.

"Dear me! No, no, no!" responded the other, in his airy way. "I did not mean to go so far as that; but--well, there are very painful matters, and hitherto I have avoided all discussion upon them, even with Sophia. My affection for Adrian----"

"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted Tanty. "You meant something, I suppose; either the man's mad, or he is not. And I, for one, don't believe a word of it. The worst sign about him, that I can see, is the blind confidence the poor fellow seems to put in you."

Here Molly, who had been listening to the discussion "with all her ears"--anything connected with the mysterious personality of the absent head of the house was beginning to have a special fascination for her--gave an irrepressible little note of laughter.

Rupert looked up at her quickly, and their eyes met.

"Hold your tongue, Miss," cried Miss O'Donoghue, sharply; aware that she had gone too far in her last remark, and glad to relieve her oppression in another direction, "how dare you laugh? Sophia, this is a terrible thing your brother wants me to believe--may I ask what _your_ opinion is? Though I'll not deny I don't think that will be worth much."

Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarra.s.sment.

"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose--you are not absolutely a drivelling idiot--_all_ the Landales are not ripening for lunatic asylums--collect your wits, Sophia, I know you have not got any, but you have _enough_ to be able to give a plain answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad, child?"

"G.o.d forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not _mad_, of course, not in the least _mad_."

Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity had really fallen upon us--and of course there _are_ symptoms, no doubt there are symptoms...."

"What are his symptoms--has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"

"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."

"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill--and _he_ wasn't an O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this moment indite to him."

"Perhaps," said Rupert, "if you will only favour me with your attention for a few minutes first, aunt, and allow me to narrate to you the circ.u.mstances of my brother's return here, and of his subsequent self-exile, you will see fit to change your opinion, both as regards him and myself."

A self-controlled nature will in the long run, rightly or wrongly, always a.s.sume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty rapidly down from her pinnacle of pa.s.sion.

Certainly, she said, she was not only ready, but anxious to hear all that Rupert could have to say for himself; and, smoothing down her black satin ap.r.o.n with a shaking hand, the old lady prepared to listen with as much judicial dignity as her fl.u.s.tered state allowed her to a.s.sume. Rupert drew his chair opposite to hers and leant his elbow on the table, and fixed his bright, hard eyes upon her.

"You remember, of course," he began after a moment's pause, "how at the time of my poor father's death, Adrian was reported to have lost his life in the Vendee war--though without authoritative confirmation--at the same time as the fair and unhappy Countesse de Savenaye, to whose fortune he had so chivalrously devoted himself."

Tanty bowed her head in solemn a.s.sent; but Molly, watching with the most acute attention, felt her face blaze at the indefinable shade of mockery she thought to catch upon the speaker's curling lip.

"It was," continued he, "the constant strain, the long months of watching in vain for tidings, that told upon my father, rather than the actual grief of loss. When he died, the responsibilities of the heads.h.i.+p of the house devolved naturally upon me, the only male representative left, seemingly, to undertake them. The months went by; to the most sanguine the belief in Adrian's death became inevitable.

Our hopes died slowly, but they died at last; we mourned for him,"

here Rupert cast down his eyes till the thick black lashes which were one of his beauties swept his cheek; his tone was perfect in its simple gravity. "At length, urged thereto by all the family, if I remember rightly by yourself as well, dear aunt, I a.s.sumed the t.i.tle as well as the position which seemed mine by right. I was very young at the time, but I do not think that either then, or during the ten years that followed, I unworthily filled my brother's place."

There was a proud ring of sincerity in the last words, and the old lady knew that they were true; that during the years of his absolute power as well as of his present more restricted masters.h.i.+p, Rupert's management of the estate was unimpeachable.

"Certainly not, my dear Rupert," she said in softer tones than she had hitherto used to him, "no one would dream of suggesting such a thing--pray go on."

"And so," pursued the nephew, with a short laugh, relapsing into that light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression; "when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no doubt many took him for, as the rightful Sir Adrian, erroneously supposed defunct, I confess that it required a little persuasion to make me recognise my long-lost brother--and yet there could be no doubt of it. The missing heir had come to his own again; the dead had come back to life. Well, we killed the fatted calf, and all the rest of it--but I need not inflict upon you the narrative of our rejoicing."

"Faith, no," said Tanty, drily, "I can see it with half an eye."

"You know, too, I believe, the series of extraordinary adventures, or misadventures, which had kept him roaming on the high seas while we at home set up tablets to his memory and 'wore our blacks' as people here call it, and cultivated a chastened resignation. There was a good deal of correspondence going on at the time between Pulwick and Bunratty, if I remember aright, and you heard all about Adrian's divers attempts to land in England, about his fight with the King's men, his crack on the head and final impressment. At least you heard as much as we could gather ourselves. Adrian is not what one would call a garrulous person at the best of times. It was really with the greatest difficulty that we managed to extract enough out of him to piece together a coherent tale."

"Well, well," quoth Tanty, with impatience, "you are glib enough for two anyhow, my dear! All this does not tell me how Adrian came to live on a lighthouse, and why you put him down as a lunatic."