Heriot's Choice Part 43

'That dreadful money! There is one comfort--I believe she hates it as much as I do; but it is not entailed property--he can leave it all away from her.'

'Yes, if she displeases him. Mildred tells me he holds this threat perpetually over her; poor girl, he makes her a bad father.'

'His conduct is unjustifiable in every way,' returned Richard in a stifled voice; 'any one less n.o.ble would be tempted to make their escape at all hazards, but she endures her wretchedness so patiently. Sometimes I fancy, father, that when she can bear her loneliness no longer my time for speaking will come, and then----'

But Richard had no time to finish his sentence, for just then Dr.

Heriot's knock sounded at the door, and with a mute hand-shake of perfect confidence the father and son separated for the night.

This conversation had taken place nearly a year before, but from that time it had never been resumed; sacredly did Mr. Lambert guard his boy's confidence, and save that there was a deferential tenderness in his manner to Ethel Trelawny and a wistful pain in his eyes when he saw Richard beside her, no one would have guessed how heavily his son's future weighed on his heart. Richard's manner remained unchanged; it was a little graver, perhaps, and indicative of greater thoughtfulness, but there was nothing lover-like in his demeanour, nothing that would check or repel the warm sisterly affection that Ethel evidently cherished for him; only at times Ethel wondered why it was that Richard's opinions seemed to influence her more than they used, and to marvel at her vivid remembrance of past looks and speeches.

Somehow every time she saw him he seemed less like her old playmate, Coeur-de-Lion, and transformed into an older and graver Richard; perhaps it might be that the halo of the future priesthood already surrounded him; but for whatever reason it might be, Ethel was certainly less dictatorial and argumentative in her demeanour towards him, and that a very real friends.h.i.+p seemed growing up between them.

Richard was more than two-and-twenty now, and Roy just a year younger; in another eight months he would be ordained deacon; as yet he had made no sign, but as Mildred sat pondering over the retrospect of the three last years in the golden and dreamy afternoon, she was driven to confess that her boys were now men, doing men's work in the world, and to wonder, with womanly shrinkings of heart, what the future might hold out to them of good and evil.

CHAPTER XVIII

OLIVE'S WORK

'Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start;

'Who through long days of labour And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies.

'Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer.'--Longfellow.

'Aunt Milly, the book has come!'

Chriss's impetuous young voice roused Mildred from her reverie. Chriss's eager footsteps, her shrill tone, broke in upon the stillness, driving the gossamer threads of fancy hither and thither by the very impetus of youthful noise and movement. Mildred's folded hands dropped apart--she turned soft bewildered looks on the girl.

'What has come? I do not understand you,' she said, with a little laugh at her own bewilderment.

'Aunt Milly, what are you thinking about? are you asleep or dreaming?'

demanded Chriss, indignantly; 'why the book--Olive's book, to be sure.'

'Has it come? My dear Chriss, how you startled me; if you had knocked, it would have been different, but bursting in upon me like that.'

'One can't knock for ever,' grumbled Chriss, in an aggrieved voice. 'Of course I thought you were asleep this hot afternoon; but to see you sitting smiling to yourself, Aunt Milly, in that aggravating way and not understanding when one speaks.'

'Hus.h.!.+ I understand you now,' returned Mildred, colouring; 'one gets thinking sometimes, and----'

'Your thoughts must have been miles off, then,' retorted Chriss, with an inquisitive glance that seemed to embarra.s.s Mildred, 'if it took you all that time to travel to the surface. Polly told me to fetch you, because tea is ready, and then the books came--such a big parcel!--and Olive's hand shook so that she could not undo the knots, and so she cut the string, and Cardie scolded her.'

'It was not much of a scolding, I expect.'

'Quite enough to bring Mr. Marsden to the rescue. "How can you presume to reprimand a poetess," he said, quite seriously; you should have heard Dr. John laugh. Look here, he has sent you these roses, Aunt Milly,'

drawing from under her little silk ap.r.o.n a delicious bouquet of roses and maidenhair fern.

A pretty pink colour came into Mildred's cheeks.

'What beautiful roses! He must have remembered it was my birthday; how kind of him, Chriss. I must come down and thank him.'

'You must wear some in honour of the occasion--do, Aunt Milly; this deep crimson one will look so pretty on your gray silk dress; and you must put on the silver locket, with the blue velvet, that we all gave you.'

'Nonsense,' returned Mildred, blus.h.i.+ng; but Chriss was inexorable.

Dr. Heriot looked up for the minute fairly startled when Mildred came in with her pink cheeks and her roses. Chriss's artful fingers, bent on mischief, had introduced a bud among the thick braids; the pretty brown hair looked unusually soft and glossy; the rarely seen dimple was in full play.

'You have done honour to my roses, I see,' he said, as Mildred thanked him, somewhat shyly, and joined the group round Olive.

The drawing-room table was heaped over with the new-smelling, little green volumes. As Mildred approached, Olive held out one limp soft copy with a hand that shook perceptibly.

'It has come at last, and on your birthday too; I am so glad,' she whispered as Mildred kissed her.

A soft light was in the girl's eyes, two spots of colour burnt in her usually pale cheeks, her hand closed and unclosed nervously on the arm of her chair.

'There, even Marsden says they are beautiful, and he does not care much for poetry,' broke in Richard, triumphantly. 'Livy, it has come to this, that I am proud of my sister.'

'Hush, please don't talk so, Cardie,' remonstrated Olive with a look of distress.

The spots of colour were almost hectic now, the smooth forehead furrowed with anxiety; she looked ready to cry. This hour was full of sweet torment to her. She shrank from this home criticism, so precious yet so perilous: for the first time she felt afraid of the utterance of her own written voice: if she only could leave them all and make her escape. She looked up almost pleadingly at Hugh Marsden, whose broad shoulders were blocking up the window, but he misunderstood her.

'Yes, I think them beautiful; but your brother is right, and I am no judge of poetry: metrical thoughts always appear so strange, so puzzling to me--it seems to me like a prisoned bird, beating itself against the bars of measurement and metres, as though it tried to be free.'

'Why, you are talking poetry yourself,' returned Richard; 'that speech was worthy of Livy herself.'

Hugh burst into one of his great laughs; in her present mood it jarred on Olive. Aunt Milly had left her, and was talking to her father. Dr.

John was at the other end of the room, busy over his copy. Why would they talk about her so? it was cruel of Cardie, knowing her as he did.

She made a little gesture, almost of supplication, looking up into the curate's broad, radiant face, but the young man again misunderstood her.

'You must forgive me, I am sadly prosaic,' he returned, speaking now in a lower key; 'these things are beyond me. I do not pretend to understand them. That people should take the trouble to measure out their words and thoughts--so many feet, so many lines, a missed adjective, or a halting rhyme--it is that that puzzles me.'

'Fie, man, what heresy; I am ashamed of you!' broke in Richard, good-humouredly; 'you have forfeited Livy's good opinion for ever.'

'I should be sorry to do that,' returned Hugh, seriously, 'but I cannot help it if I am different from other people. When I was at college I used to take my sisters to the opera, poor Caroline especially was fond of it: do you know it gave me the oddest feeling. There was something almost ludicrous to me in hearing the heroine of the piece trilling out her woes with endless roulades; in real life people don't sing on their deathbeds.'

'Listen to him,' returned Richard, taking him by the shoulders; 'what is one to do with such a literal, matter-of-fact fellow? You ought to talk to him, Livy, and bring him to a better frame of mind.'

But Hugh was not to be silenced; he stood up manfully, with his great square shoulders blocking up the light, beaming down on Olive's shrinking gravity like a gentle-hearted giant; he was one to make himself heard, this big, clumsy young man. In spite of his boyish face and loud voice, people were beginning to speak well of Hugh Marsden; his youthful vigour and energy were waking up northern lethargy and fighting northern prejudice. Was not the surpliced choir owing mainly to his persevering efforts? and were not the ranks of the Dissenters already thinned by that loud-voiced but persuasive eloquence of his?

Olive absolutely cowered under it to-night. Hugh had no idea how his noisy vehemence was jarring on that desire for quiet, and a nice talk with Aunt Mildred, for which she was secretly longing; and yet she and Hugh were good friends.

'One can't help one's nature,' persisted Hugh, fumbling over the pages of one of the little green books with his big hands as he spoke. 'In the days of the primitive Church they had the gift of unknown tongues. I am sure much of our modern poetry needs interpretation.'

'Worse and worse. He will vote your "Songs of the Hearth" a ma.s.s of unintelligible rubbish directly.'