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Fated to Be Free: A Novel, a novel by Jean Ingelow |
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Chapter 12. Valentine |
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_ CHAPTER XII. VALENTINE
But the next letter made matters in some degree easier, for it at least showed the direction that his family gave to the excuses they now offered for the behaviour of the young scapegrace. First, he had been very unwell in London--almost seriously unwell; and next, Lizzy said she had been quite right as to St. George's love for Dorothea, for he had made her an offer before she left the house. "In fact," continued Liz, "we have all decided, so far as we can, to overlook what Val has done, for he is deeply attached to the girl who, without any fault of her own, has supplanted Dorothea. He is already engaged to her, and if he is allowed to marry her early in the spring, and sail for New Zealand, he is not likely ever to return; at any rate, he will not for very many years. In that case, you know, Laura, we shall only be with him about six weeks longer; so I hope our friends will forgive us for forgiving him." "They are fond of him, that is the fact," observed Mrs. Melcombe; "and to be sure the other brother, wanting to marry Miss Graham, does seem to make some difference, some excuse; but as to his illness, I don't think much of that. I remember when his old father came here to the funeral, I remarked that Valentine looked overgrown, and not strong, and Mr. Mortimer said he had been very delicate himself all his youth, and often had a cough (far more delicate, in fact, than his son was); but he had outgrown it, and enjoyed very fair health for many years." Then Laura went on reading:-- "Besides, we think that, though Dorothea refused St. George point blank when he made her an offer, yet she would hardly write to him every week as she does, if she did not like him, and he would hardly be so very silent and reserved about her, and yet evidently in such good spirits, if he did not think that something in the end would come of it." "No," said Mrs. Melcombe, laughing in a cynical spirit, "the ridiculous scrape they are in does not end with Valentine. If he was really ill, there could be no thought of his marriage with this other girl; and, besides, Miss Graham (if this is true) will have far the best of the two brothers. _St. George_, as they are so fond of calling him (I suppose because Giles is such an ugly name), is far better off than Valentine, and has ten times more sense." "Dorothea is gone to the Isle of Wight," continued Laura, finishing the letter, "to live with some old friends. She has no relatives, poor girl, excepting a father, who is somewhere at the other end of the world, and he seems to take very little notice of her. There is, indeed, an old uncle, but he lives at sea; he is almost always at sea in his yacht, and her only brother sails with him; but nobody knows in the least where they are now. It is very sad for her, and she told St. George, and sister too, that she had only loved Val out of gratitude, because he seemed so much attached to her, and because she wanted somebody to devote herself to." In her next letter Liz told Laura that she herself was to be married shortly to Dick A'Court, "who says he fell in love with me when we two used to add up the coal-and-clothing cards." In these words, and in no more, the information was imparted, and the rest of the letter was so stiff and formal that Laura's pleasure in the correspondence ended with it. The realities of life were beginning to make her child-friend feel sober and reticent. Laura wrote a long effusive letter in reply, full of tender congratulations on the high lot that awaited Liz as the helpmeet of a devoted clergyman, also on the joys of happy lovers; but this composition did not touch the feelings of Liz in the right place. "Just as if I had not told her," she thought, "that Emily was come home from India, and that I had consented to accept Dick partly to please her, because she was sure I should be sorry for it afterwards if I didn't. So I dare say I should have been," she continued thoughtfully. "In fact, I am almost sure of it. But I know very well, whatever Emily may say, that Dick will make me do just as he likes. I am sure I shall have to practise those quire boys of his, and they will bawl in my ears and call me teacher." So thinking, Liz allowed herself to drift towards matrimony without enthusiasm, but with a general notion that, as most people were married sooner or later, no doubt matrimony was the proper thing and the best thing on the whole. "And I shall certainly go through with it, now I have promised," she further reflected, "for it would never do for another of us to behave badly just at the last." It was the last week in March, and Laura was loitering through the garden one morning before breakfast, when Mrs. Melcombe came out to her in some excitement with a note in her hand, which had been sent on from the inn, and which set forth that Mr. Brandon, having business in that immediate neighbourhood, would, if agreeable to her, do himself the pleasure of calling some time that morning. He added that he had brought a book for Miss Melcombe from his sister. "I have sent to the inn," said Mrs. Melcombe, "to beg that he will come on here to breakfast." Laura had been gathering a bunch of violets, and she rushed up-stairs and put them into her hair. Then in a great hurry she changed her toilette, and, after ascertaining that the guest had arrived, she came languidly into the breakfast-room, a straw-hat hanging by its strings from her arm, and filled with primroses and other flowers. She felt as she approached that all this looked quite romantic, but it did not look so real and so unpremeditated as might have been wished. Mrs. Melcombe had also changed her array. Little Peter, like most other children, was always the picture of cleanly neatness when first he left his nurse's hand in the morning, and his mother was much pleased at the evident interest with which their guest regarded him, asking him various questions about his lessons, his sports, and his pony. She had been deeply gratified at the kind way in which all the Mortimers and their connections had received her boy; none of them seemed at all jealous. Even Valentine had never hinted or even looked at her as if he felt that the property ought not to have gone to the younger branch. Peter, now ten years old, and but a small boy for his age, had an average degree of intelligence; and as he sat winking and blinking in the morning sunshine, he constantly shook back a lock of hair that fell over his forehead, till Brandon, quietly putting his hand to it, moved it away, and while the boy related some childish adventure that he had encouraged him to talk of, looked at him with scrutinizing and, as it seemed to his mother, with almost anxious attention. "Peter has been very poorly several times this winter," she remarked. "I mean shortly to take him out for change of air." "His forehead looks pale," said Brandon, withdrawing his hand, and for a minute or two he seemed lost in thought, till Mrs. Melcombe, expressing a hope that he would stay at her house as long as his affairs detained him in that neighbourhood, he accepted her invitation with great readiness. He would spend that day and the next with her, and, if she would permit it, he would walk with young hopeful to his tutor's house, and come back again in time for luncheon. "I declare, he scarcely spoke to me all breakfast-time," thought Laura. "I consider him decidedly a proud man, and any one might think he had come to see Peter rather than to see us." Brandon evidently did wish to walk with the boy, and accordingly rose as soon as he had finished his breakfast, Mrs. Melcombe giving him some directions, and a key to let himself in with by a side gate. All the intelligence Brandon possessed, and all his keenness of observation, he exercised during his walk with the little heir. He could generally attract children, and Peter was already well inclined toward him, for he had shown himself to be knowing about a country boy's pleasures; also he knew all about the little Mortimers and their doings. Brandon wished to see Melcombe, even to examine some parts of the house and grounds, and he wanted if possible to hear something more about the ghost story; but it did not suit him to betray any special interest. So he left it to work its way to the surface if it would. It was not the business he had come about, but he had undertaken to transact that, on purpose because it gave him a chance of looking at the place. This was the deep glen, then, that he had heard Valentine speak of? "Yes; and mother says the old uncle Mortimer (that one who lived at Wigfield) improved it so much; he had so many trees thinned out, and a pond dug where there used to be a swamp. We've got some carp in that pond. Do you think, if I fed them, they would get tame?" Brandon told some anecdote of certain carp that he had seen abroad, and then asked-- "Do you like the glen, my boy--is it a favourite place of yours?" "Pretty well," answered Peter. "There are not so many nests, though, as there used to be. It used to be quite dark with trees." "Did you like it then?" "Yes, it was jolly; but----" "But what?" asked Brandon carelessly. "Grandmother didn't like it," said the boy. Brandon longed to ask why. "She was very old, my grandmother." "Yes. And so she didn't like the glen?" "No; but the old uncle has had a walk, a sort of path, made through it; and mamma says I may like it as much as I please, so does aunt Laura." "You know," continued the child, in an argumentative tone, "there's no place in the world where somebody hasn't died." "Now, what does this mean?" thought Brandon. "I would fain raise the ghost if I could. Is he coming up now, or is he not?" Presently, however, Peter made some allusion to the family misfortune--the death of the eldest son, by which Brandon perceived that it had taken place in the glen. He then dropped the subject, nothing more that was said till a few minutes before they reached the tutor's lodgings being of the least interest. Then, as they turned the edge of a wood, Peter looked back. "You won't forget the turn of the lane you are to take, will you, Mr. Brandon? and you've got the key?" "Yes," said Brandon. "It's a green sort of door, in the park-paling. A new one has been made, because that one was so shabby. It's the one my uncles went through when they ran away, you know." "What uncles?" asked Brandon, not at all suspecting the truth, and not much interested. "Why, that one who belonged to you," said Peter, "and the other one who belongs to Bertie and Hugh. Didn't you know?" he exclaimed, having observed the momentary flash of surprise that Brandon made haste to conceal. "They ran away," he repeated, as Brandon walked beside him making no answer, "a very long time before my mamma was born, and they never came back any more till I was nearly six years old." "So that's your tutor's house, is it?" said Brandon, and thereupon he took leave of him. "Amazing!" he said to himself as he walked away. "What next, I wonder?" As he returned he revolved this information in his mind with increasing surprise. John Mortimer had a proud and confident way of talking about his father that did not sound as if he knew that he had begun life by running away from home. Valentine, he was well aware, knew nothing about it. Coming on, he turned aside to talk to some men who were digging a well. He knew how to talk to working people, and, what is more to the purpose, he knew how to make them talk; but though they proffered a good deal of information about the neighbourhood, nothing was said that gave him any of the knowledge he wanted. And shortly he went on, and let himself in at the little gate with his key. It was not yet eleven o'clock, and as he did not want to see the ladies of the family so soon, he determined to go down into the steep glen and look about him. He had no doubt now that to this place the superstitious story belonged. First, he skirted it all about. From above it was nearly as round as a cup, and as deep in proportion to its size. The large old trees had been left, and appeared almost to fill it up, their softly rounded heads coming to within three feet of the level where he stood. All the mother birds--rooks, jays, thrushes, and pigeons--were plainly in view under him, as they sat brooding on their nests among the topmost twigs, and there was a great cawing and crowing of the cock-birds while they flew about and fed their mates. The leaves were not out; their buds only looked like green eggs spotting the trees, excepting that here and there a horse-chestnut, forwarder than its brethren, was pushing its crumpled foliage out of the pale-pink sheath. Everywhere saplings had been cut down, and numbers of them strewed the damp mossy ground; but light penetrated, and water trinkled, there was a pleasant scent of herbs and flowers, and the whole place was cheerful with growth and spring. A set of winding steps cut in the soft, red rock led into the glen just where the side was steepest, and Brandon, intent on discovery, sprang lightly down them. He wandered almost everywhere about the place. It seemed to hold within itself a different climate from the world above, where keen spring air was stirring; here hardly a breath moved, and in the soft sheltered warmth the leaves appeared visibly to be expanding. He forgot his object, also another object that he had in view (the business, in fact, which had brought him), leaned against the trunk of a horse-chestnut, listened to the missel-thrushes, looked at a pine-tree a little way off, that was letting down a mist of golden dust, and presently lost himself in a reverie, finding, as is the way with a lover, that the scene present, whatever it may happen to be, was helping to master his everyday self, was indeed just the scene to send him plunging yet further down into the depths of his passionate dream. He had stood leaning against the tree, with his hat at his feet and his arms folded, for perhaps half an hour. He had inherited a world (with an ideal companion), had become absorbed into a lifetime of hope; and his love appeared to grow without let or hindrance in the growing freshness and glorious expansion of the spring. Half an hour of hope and joy consoles for much foregone trouble, and further satisfies the heart by making it an easier thing to believe in more yet to come. A sudden exclamation and a little crash roused him. Laura! She had come to visit her favourite tree, and lo! a man there at last, leaning against it lost in thought, and so absolutely still that she had not noticed him. She knew in an instant that this was not Joseph, and yet as the sight of him flashed on her sense before recognition, the nothingness she always found gave way to a feeling as of something real, that almost might have been the right thing. As for him, though he saw her flitting figure, she did not for the twinkling of an eye pass for the ghost he had come to look for. He roused himself up in an instant. "Whew!" was his inward thought, "she is alone; what could be so lucky! I'll do the business at once, and get it over." Picking up his hat, and sinking at every step into the soft cushions of moss, he accordingly approached her and said, but perhaps just a little coldly, "I did not expect to see you here, Miss Melcombe." Laura perceived this slight tinge of coldness as plainly as he did the improvement in her appearance since he had first seen her in the morning, for surprise at detecting him had overpowered her affectation. She had coloured from having been startled, and while she, from habit, moved on mechanically to the tree, she answered quite simply and naturally that she walked that way almost every day. Brandon turned and walked with her. Opposite to the said tree, and very near it, was another, under which stood a bench. Laura sat down, and while pointing out the spot where certain herons had built their platform-like nests, began to recover herself, or rather to put on the damaging affectation which in a moment of forgetfulness she had thrown off. Brandon did not sit beside her, but while she arranged her dress to her mind, threw her plaid shawl into becoming folds, and laying her hand on her bracelet, furtively drew the ornament upon it to the upper side, he looked at her and thought what a goose she was. She wore a straw hat with so wide a brim that as he stood before her he did not see her face, and he was not sorry for this; it was not his business to reprove her, but what he had to say would, he supposed, put her a good deal out of countenance. He was just about to speak, and Laura was in the full enjoyment of feeling how romantic it was to be there alone with a young man, was just wishing that some of her friends could be looking down from above to see this interesting picture, and draw certain conclusions, when a decidedly sharp voice called out from behind, "Laura! what can you be doing here? You know I don't like you to be for ever coming to that tree.--Laura!" "Yes, I'm here," said Laura, and Mrs. Melcombe, arrayed in blue poplin, stepped into view, and made Brandon feel very foolish and Laura very cross. "Oh! you've brought Mr. Brandon here to see the carp," said Amelia graciously, but she hardly knew what to think, and they all presently went to the pond, and watched the creatures flashing up their golden sides, each wondering all the time what the two others were thinking of. Then as it was nearly lunch time, Amelia and Laura proceeded to leave the dell, Brandon attending them and helping them up the steps. He was rather vexed that he had not been able to say his say and give Laura a certain packet that he had in his possession; and as the afternoon presently clouded over and it began to pour with rain, he hardly knew what to do with himself till the bright idea occurred to him that he would ask Mrs. Melcombe to show him the old house. Up and down stairs and into a good many rooms they all three proceeded together. Hardly any pictures to found a question or a theory on; no old china with a story belonging to it; no brown books that had been loved by dead Melcombes. This could not have been a studious race. Not a single anecdote was told of the dead all the time they went over the place, till at last Mrs. Melcombe unlocked the door of a dark, old-fashioned sitting-room upstairs, and going to the shutters opened one of them, saying, "This is the room in which the dear old grandmother spent the later years of her life." This really was an interesting old room. Laura and Amelia folded back the shutters with a genuine air of reverence and feeling. It was most evident that they had loved this woman whose son had forbidden her to leave her property to him. Two or three dark old pictures hung on the walls, and there was a cabinet on which Laura laying her hand, said-- "The dear grandmother kept all her letters here." "Indeed," Brandon answered; "it must have been very interesting to you to look them over. (And yet," he thought "you don't look as if you had found in them anything of much interest.") "We have never opened it," said Mrs. Melcombe. "Mr. Mortimer, when he was here, proposed to look over and sort all the letters for me, but I declined his offer." ("And no doubt made him miserable by so doing") was Brandon's next thought. "I shall keep the key for my dear boy," she continued, "and give it to him when he comes of age." ("To find out something that he will wish he didn't know.") thought Brandon again. ("That cabinet, as likely as not, contains the evidence of _it_, whatever _it_ is.") "And in this gallery outside," she proceeded, "the dear grandmother used to walk every day." Brandon perceived that he had got to the core and heart of the place at last. His interest was so intense that he failed to conceal it. He walked to the window and noticed the pouring rain that was streaming between the rustic pillars of the balustrades into the garden below. He examined the pictures; only two of them were portraits, but in the background of one was an undoubted representation of the house itself; the other was a portrait of a beautiful boy in a blue jacket and a shirt with a wide frill laid back and open at the neck. Under his arm appeared the head of a greyish dog. "That creature," Brandon thought, "is almost exactly like my old dog Smokey. I am very much mistaken if this is not the portrait of one of his ancestors." He turned to ask some question about it, and observed to his surprise that Mrs. Melcombe had left the room, and he was alone with Laura, who had seated herself on a sofa and taken a long piece of crochet-work from her pocket, which she was doing almost with the air of one who waits patiently till somebody else has finished his investigations. "I thought you would be interested in that picture," she said; "you recognise it, I suppose?" "No!" he exclaimed. "It used not to be here," said Laura; "the dear grandmother, as long as she lived, always had it in her bedroom. It's Mr. Mortimer, your stepfather, when he was a boy, and that was his dog, a great favourite; when he ran away the dog disappeared--it was always supposed that it ran after him. I suppose," continued Laura, impelled to say this to some one who was sure to be impressed by it--"I suppose nobody ever did mourn as my grandmother did over the loss of those two sons. Yet she never used to blame them." They did run away then, and they did keep away, and yet she did not blame them. How deeply pathetic these things seemed. Whatever it might be that had made his step-father write that letter, it appeared now to be thrown back to the time when he had divided himself thus from his family and taken his boy brother with him. "And that other portrait," said Laura, "we found up in one of the garrets, and hung here when the house was restored. It is the portrait of my grandmother's only brother, who was sixteen or eighteen years younger than she was. His name was Melcombe, which was her maiden name, but ours, you know, was really Mortimer. It is very much darkened by time and neglect, and never was of any particular value." "What has he got under his arm?" said Brandon. "I think it is a cocked hat or some kind of hat. I think they wore cocked hats then in the navy; he was a lieutenant in the navy. You see some sort of gold lace on it, and on the hilt of his sword." "Did he die at sea?" asked Brandon. "Yes. My great-grandfather left this place to his son, and as he died unmarried it was to come to our eldest uncle, and then to grandmother, as it did, you know." "'Its name was Melcombe, and it came from the sea,'" Brandon repeated inwardly, adding, "Well, the _ghost_ can have had nothing to do with this mystery. I shall trouble myself no more about him." "He was only about a year older than my oldest uncle," proceeded Laura, "for grandmother married at seventeen." Brandon looked again. Something in the two pictures reminded him of the portraits of the Flambourgh family. They had evidently been done by the same artist. Each youth had something under his left arm, each was turning his face slightly, and they both looked the same way. Young Daniel Mortimer was so placed that his quiet eyes seemed to be always regarding the hearth, now empty of warmth. The other, hung on the same wall, seemed to look out into the garden, and Laura said in a sentimental way that, considering the evident love she had borne her grandmother, was not at all out of place. "There is a bed of lilies that dear grandmother used to love to watch, and Amelia and I thought it interesting when we had had this picture put up to observe that its eyes seemed to fall on the same place. They were not friends, my grandmother and her brother, and no doubt after his death my grandmother laid their frequent quarrels to heart, for she could never bear to mention him, though she had a beautiful monument put up to his memory. You must go and see it, Mr. Brandon. We have lately had it cleaned, and dear grandmother's name added under his." "I will," said Brandon. _ |