Heriot's Choice Part 47

At least he should not go without bidding her good-bye. Ethel never thought of prudence in these moments of hot indignation. To Richard's dismay she caught her hand away from him and flung open the door.

'Why is Dr. Heriot going, papa?' she asked, walking up to them with a certain majesty of gait which she could a.s.sume at times. As she asked the question she flashed one of her keen, open-eyed looks on her father.

The Squire's olive complexion had turned sallow with suppressed wrath, the veins on his forehead were swollen like whipcord; as he answered her, the harshness of his voice grated roughly on her ear.

'You are not wanted, Ethel; go back to young Lambert. I cannot allow girls to interfere in my private business.'

'You have quarrelled with Dr. Heriot, papa,' returned Ethel, in her ringing tones, and keeping her ground unflinchingly, in spite of Richard's whispered remonstrance.

'Come away--you will only make it worse,' he whispered; but she had turned her face impatiently from him.

'Papa, it is not right--it is not fair. Dr. Heriot has done nothing to deserve such treatment; and you are sending him away in anger.'

'Ethel, how dare you!' returned the Squire. 'Go back into that room instantly. If you have no self-respect, and cannot control your feeling, it is my duty to protect you.'

'Will you protect me by quarrelling with all my friends?' returned Ethel, in her indignant young voice; her delicate nostrils quivered, the curve of her long neck was superb. 'Dr. Heriot has only told you the truth, as he always does.'

'Indeed, you must not judge your father--after all, he has a right to choose his own friends in his own house--you are very good, Miss Trelawny, to try and defend me, but it is your father's quarrel, not yours.'

'If you hold intercourse with my daughter after this, you are no man of honour----' began the Squire with rage, but Dr. Heriot quietly interrupted him.

'As far as I can I will respect your strange caprice, Mr. Trelawny; but I hope you do not mean to forbid my addressing a word to an old friend when we meet on neutral ground;' and the gentle dignity of his manner held Mr. Trelawny's wrath in abeyance, until Ethel's imprudence kindled it afresh.

'It is not fair--I protest against such injustice!' she exclaimed; but Dr. Heriot silenced her.

'Hush, it is not your affair, Miss Trelawny; you are so generous, but, indeed, your father and I are better apart for a little. When he retracts what he has said, he will not find me unforgiving. Now, good-bye.' The brief sternness vanished from his manner, and he held out his hand to her with his old kind smile, his eyes were full of benignant pity as he looked at her pale young face; it was so like her generosity to defend her friends, he thought.

Richard followed him down the long carriage road, and they stood for a while outside the lodge gates. If Dr. Heriot held the clue to this strange quarrel, he kept his own counsel.

'He is a narrow-minded man with warped views and strong pa.s.sions; he may cool down, and find out his mistake one day,' was all he said to Richard. 'I only pity his daughter for being his daughter.'

He might well pity her. Richard little thought, as he hurried after his friend, what an angry hurricane the imprudent girl had brought on herself; with all her courage, the Squire made her quail and tremble under his angry sneers.

'Papa! papa!' was all she could say, when the last bitter arrow was launched at her. 'Papa, say you do not mean it--that he cannot think that.'

'What else can a man think when a girl is fool enough to stand up for him? For once--yes, for once--I was ashamed of my daughter!'

'Ashamed of me?'--drawing herself up, but beginning to tremble from head to foot--that she, Ethel Trelawny, should be subjected to this insult!

'Yes, ashamed of you! that my daughter should be absolutely courting the notice of a beggarly surgeon--that----'

'Papa, I forbid you to say another word,'--in a voice that thrilled him--it was so like her mother's, when she had once--yes, only once--risen against the oppression of his injustice--'you have gone too far; I repel your insinuation with scorn. Dr. Heriot does not think this of me.'

'What else can he think?' but he blenched a little under those clear innocent eyes.

'He will think I am sorry to lose so good a friend,' she returned, and her breast heaved a little; 'he will think that Ethel Trelawny hates injustice even in her own father; he will think what is only true and kind,' her voice dropping into sadness; and with that she walked silently from the room.

She was hard hit, but she would not show it; her step was as proud as ever till she had left her father's presence, and then it faltered and slackened, and a great shock of pain came over her face.

She had denied the insinuation with scorn, but what if he really thought it? What if her imprudent generosity, always too p.r.o.ne to buckle on harness for another, were to be construed wrongly--what if in his eyes she should already have humiliated herself?

With what sternness he had rebuked her judgment of her father; with him, want of dutifulness and reverence were heinous sins that nothing could excuse; she remembered how he had ever praised meekness in women, and how, when she had laughingly denied all claim to that virtue, he had answered her half sadly, 'No, you are not meek, and never will be, until trouble has broken your spirit: you are too aggressive by nature to wear patiently the "ornament of a meek and quiet spirit;"' and she remembered how that half-jesting, half-serious speech had troubled her.

Ethel's feeling for Dr. Heriot had been the purest hero-wors.h.i.+p; she had been proud of his friends.h.i.+p, and the loss of it under any circ.u.mstances would have troubled her sadly; she had never blinded herself to the fact that more than this would be impossible.

Already her keen eyes had lighted on his probable choice, some one who should bring meekness in lieu of beauty, and fill his home with the suns.h.i.+ny sweetness of her smile. 'She will be a happy woman, whoever she is,' thought Ethel, with a sigh, not perfectly free from envy; there were so few men who were good as well as wise, 'and this was one,' she said to herself, and a flood of sadness came over her as she remembered that speech about her lack of meekness.

If he could only think well of her--if she had not lost caste in his eyes, she thought, it might still be well with her, and in a half-sad, half-jesting way she had pictured her life as Ethel Trelawny always, 'walking in maiden meditation fancy free,' a little solitary, perhaps, a trifle dull, but wiser and better when the troublesome garb of youth was laid aside, and she could--as in very honesty she longed to do now--call all men her brothers. But the proud maidenly reserve was stabbed at all points; true, or untrue, Ethel was writhing under those sneering words.

Richard found her, on his return, standing white and motionless by the window; her eyes had a plaintive look in them as of a wild animal too much hurt to defend itself; her pale cheeks alarmed him.

'Why do you agitate yourself so? there is no cause! Dr. Heriot has just told me it is a mere quarrel that may be healed any time.'

'It is not that--it is those bitter cruel words,' she returned, in a strange, far-away voice; 'that one's own father should say such things,'

and then her lip quivered, and two large tears welled slowly to her eyes. Ah, there was the secret stab--her own father!

'My dear Miss Trelawny--Ethel--I cannot bear to see you like this. You are overwrought--all this has upset you. Come into the air and let us talk a little.'

'What is there to talk about?' she returned dreamily.

He had called her Ethel for the first time since their old childish days, and she had not noticed it. She offered no resistance as he brought a soft fleecy shawl and wrapped it round her, and then gently removed the white motionless fingers that were clutching the window-frame; as they moved hand in hand over the gra.s.sy terrace, she was quite unconscious of the firm, warm pressure; somewhere far away she was thinking of a forlorn Ethel, whose father had spoken cruel words to her. Richard was always good to her--always; there was nothing new in that. Only once she turned and smiled at her favourite, with a smile so sad and sweet that it almost broke his heart.

'How kind you are; you always take such care of me, Richard.'

'I wish I could--I wish I dare try,' he returned, in an odd, choked voice. 'Let us go to your favourite seat, Ethel; the sun has not set yet.'

'It has set for me to-night,' she replied, mournfully.

The creeping mists winding round the blue bases of the far-off hills suited her better, she thought. She followed Richard mechanically into the quaint kitchen garden; there was a broad terrace-walk, with a seat placed so as to command the distant view; great bushes of cabbage-roses and southernwood scented the air; gilly-flowers, and sweet-williams, and old-fas.h.i.+oned stocks bloomed in the borders; below them the garden sloped steeply to the crofts, and beyond lay the circling hills. In the distance they could hear the faint pealing of the curfew bell, and the bleating of the flocks in the crofts.

Ethel drew a deep sigh; the sweet calmness of the scene seemed to soothe her.

'You were right to bring me here,' she said at last, gratefully.

'I have brought you here--because I want to speak to you,' returned Richard, with the same curious break in his voice.

His temples were beating still, but he was calm, strangely calm, he remembered afterwards. How did it happen? were the words his own or another's? How did it come that she was shrinking away from him with that startled look in her eyes, and that he was speaking in that low, pa.s.sionate voice? Was it this he meant when he called her Ethel?

'No, no! say you do not mean it, Richard! Oh, Richard, Richard!' her voice rising into a perfect cry of pain. What, must she lose him too?

'Dear, how can I say it? I have always meant to tell you--always; it is not my fault that I have loved you, Ethel; the love has grown up and become a part of myself ever since we were children together!'

'Does Mildred--does any one know?' she asked, and a vivid crimson mantled in her pale cheeks as she asked the question.

'Yes, my father knows--and Aunt Milly. I think they all guessed my secret long ago--all but you,' in a tenderly reproachful voice; 'why should they not know? I am not ashamed of it,' continued the young man, a little loftily.

Somehow they had changed characters. It was Ethel who was timid now.

'But--but--they could not have approved,' she faltered at last.