Under the Mendips Part 36

"No, oh no!" said poor Susan, struggling to restrain her convulsive sobs; "and I don't know what is to be done. Oh, dear, dear, madam!"

"We must leave it in G.o.d's hands, Susan."

"If he finds me out it will be so dreadful; but I don't think he will dare to do so."

"No," Joyce said; "he will hide away from us knowing that suspicion, at least, must have fastened on him."

"Dear madam, I wonder you have ever been able to bear to have me near you. His daughter!--_his_ daughter!"

"I thought we had settled long ago, Susan, that your services to me and mine, and your love for the children, must always win my grat.i.tude and----"

"Dear madam, I know how good you are. I know how you took me out of the lowest depths of misery, just as no one else would have done. But if I am to bring trouble on you by staying here, if he, my father, is to bring more trouble on you, I would rather run away and hide myself, and never look upon your face again."

"Do not say so, Susan; let us trust in G.o.d, and He will protect us. Your father, if he recognised me, which I doubt, is very unlikely to come forward when a serious charge might be brought against him. It was a great shock at first for me to see him; but let us dismiss it from our minds now, and do not let us speak of it to anyone but Mr. Arundel.

Certainly not to Mrs. Falconer."

"Very well, dear madam, I will do all you desire me," Susan said, and clasping little Joy in her arms, she turned away.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIII.

A LULL IN THE STORM.

There was a lull in the storm as soon as the two Whig candidates were elected to represent the city of Bristol, and Mr. Hart-Davis withdrew quietly from the contest. The undercurrent, it is true, was still muttering and murmuring of evil times to come, and all thinking men who looked below the surface knew that it would but need a spark to kindle a great fire in Bristol, and that much wisdom, firmness, and decision, would be needed amongst the rulers.

Joyce Arundel, in her happy home life, soon lost the sense of insecurity, which after that memorable drive from Fair Acres, had at first haunted her.

Falcon's lessons, and the interest she felt in his rapid advancement, engrossed her every morning when her household duties were over; and then she would pace up and down the garden overlooking the city, with her baby in her arms, while Lota and Lettice played on the wide expanse of even, if rather smoke-dried, turf, which sloped down from the terrace walk at the back of the house, and tell herself a hundred times that no wife or mother in England was happier than she was.

The early married life of a mother whose chief interests centre in her own home, and who knows no craving for anything that lies beyond, is happy indeed. As years pa.s.s and her children vanish, and the sweetness of entire dependence on her ceases of necessity with infancy and childhood, the mother, weary with the battle of life, encompa.s.sed with difficulties, and overburdened with requirements which the failing strength of advancing years makes it hard to fulfil, can turn back to that fair oasis in her pilgrimage, when the children were with her day and night, when her hand had power to soothe a childish trouble, and her voice charm away a little pain or disappointment, or add, by her sympathy in joys as well as in sorrows, zest to all those simple pleasures in which children delight.

Sometimes, even to the best mothers, I know, there comes a sudden, sharp awakening. The son of much love and many prayers goes far astray; the daughter, her pride and joy in her early childhood, is apparently cold and heartless. But as a rule, I think, in the retrospect the cry is forced from many a mother's sad heart: "If only I had been more to him in early boyhood; cared for his games, and interested myself in all his play as well as work, it _might_ have been different"; or, "If I had dealt more tenderly and patiently with her when she was standing on the threshold of womanhood, it might have been different!"

Vain regrets, vain laments for some of us; but the young mother, like Joyce Falconer, has the children and the father of the children still with her, and may, as Joyce did, sing to herself a sweet, low song of thanksgiving, which made Lettice stop in her play, and, running up to her side, say:

"What a pretty song mother is singing to baby!"

And now another voice was heard, rather a sad, querulous voice, which did not chime in well with the mother's song, or the baby's gentle coo of gladness, or the laughter of the two little sisters, as Falcon dashed out upon them from the open door of the hall with a big ball in his hand, which he threw down the gra.s.s with a merry "Halloo!"

Falcon's lessons, which his mother had left him to learn, were over, and he was free to run and jump to his heart's content.

"Joyce, are you not coming to get ready? Aunt Falconer never likes to be kept waiting."

"Oh! I beg your pardon, Charlotte; I had forgotten you and I were to spend the day with mother; I will be ready in a few minutes. I must just wait till Susan can take baby." Susan appeared at this moment, and Joyce went quickly into the hall.

Poor Charlotte's visions and dreams had never come to be anything but dreams. She was older than Joyce, and still had never found the language of the eyes come to a good honest declaration of love, still less to an offer of marriage. She was just now on a visit to her cousin, Miss Falconer being very ready to spare her, hoping that in Clifton or Bristol she might find a cure for her low spirits, and generally dejected air, which her aunt did not like to have remarked upon by the gossips of Wells, and which had certainly very much increased of late.

Joyce ran upstairs to prepare for her visit, and on the first floor found Mrs. Arundel.

"Mr. Bengough has been here, Joyce, with great news; the Bill was carried with a large majority in the Commons, and now there is only the Lords, and surely they will not turn it out."

Falcon, who had rushed up to the nursery to find his reins and whip, that he might make a pair of ponies of his little sisters, stopped as he heard his grandmother say:

"It is great news, and a great victory."

"What battle is it? Tell me, mother, who has been fighting?"

"It was not a battle with swords or guns, Falcon; but when you are a man you may remember that you heard, when you were a little boy, that on the nineteenth of September, eighteen hundred and thirty-one, the great Reform Bill was carried by a number of votes."

"Then will all those angry people we saw when we came home from Fair Acres be happy and good now. Susan says they shouted 'Reform, Reform,'

because they wanted bread; but I don't know what it means," said Falcon, thoughtfully. "If it's a good thing, it ought to make people better, oughn't it, Grannie?"

It was profound philosophy for six years old! The necessary consequence of good must be something _better_.

Joyce, thinking of those angry faces crowding round her and her babies, and of the one terrible face which conjured up such a host of dreadful memories, sighed.

"Ah! Falcon," she said, "good things cannot come all at once--good results, I mean; but give me a kiss and run away, and mind you give Grannie no trouble while I am gone." Then Joyce turned for a moment into the pretty sitting room which Mrs. Arundel occupied. Since Gratian's marriage she had lived with her son and his wife. She had separate rooms on the upper floor of the large house, and her own maid. The arrangement was perfectly harmonious, and the little household was very happy.

"You will not mind letting the children dine with you, dear Grannie?"

Joyce said.

"Mind! it will be a great treat; do not hasten back."

"I thought after dinner, if Piers liked, we would go and see Mrs. More; he does not get out enough."

"Take a carriage at my expense, dear, and drive to Windsor terrace, and then over the Downs. It will be a lovely afternoon, and your mother will enjoy it."

Joyce shook her head.

"I doubt if mother will come; but I will do my best, thank you. Gilbert will not come home till quite a late dinner--supper, as my mother calls all meals after six o'clock."

Joyce and Charlotte were soon walking quickly up Park Street, for their lungs were good and their limbs strong, and Charlotte forgot her complaints for the time, in the delight of looking in at several shop windows lately opened in Park Street.

There was no Triangle then. The Victoria Rooms were only a dream of some enterprising builder, and it was across a field that Joyce made her way, till she came to the sombre houses with dark, sunless frontage called Rodney Place, and, pa.s.sing them and the stately mansion, Manilla Hall, she turned towards some low grey-coloured houses, which rejoiced in the name of "Down Cottages."

It was impossible for Mrs. Falconer to live in any house without leaving her mark upon it, and the little dining and drawing rooms were as bright and fresh as she could make them, while Piers had the third sitting room for his "rubbish."

Piers had now a collection of birds and beasts which had grown into large proportions since the little sparrow-hawk had been "set up" by Mr.

Plume.

He had studied natural history in all its branches, and since he had lived in Clifton he had begun to be an earnest student of the great subject of geology, and his light figure, leaning on his crutches, and his pale, earnest face, were familiar to those who took their daily airing on the Observatory Hill. Piers had made friends with the stone cutters who spread out their stalls on Sion Hill and at the foot of the Observatory, and there was a continual interest in getting specimens from them.