IT was June, the brightest weather, and everything at the Park was bright. A family of five children, of whom the eldest had just attained his majority, while the others were old enough to throw themselves into the festivities with devotion, is perhaps the best background that could be supposed for any rejoicing. They all enjoyed it, and the preparations for it, and the general commotion as much, nay more, than the boy himself, who was much troubled in his mind about the speech he was told he would have to make, and still more with a vague uneasiness about the position he was made to occupy. He was, it was true, the eldest son of the family which occupied the Park, the heir and representative of his own branch, but Duke had an uncomfortable feeling about all the “fuss,” as he called it, which was evidently too much. “It seems as if I were taking Mar’s place,” he said to his father. “Your mother thinks not,” said John; but John was a little cloudy too. For one thing, however, Duke had a certain right to the commotion made about his majority. He was not in the same position as the other young Parkes. Lord Frogmore had made special provision for him when it was known that he was no longer to be the heir. Greenpark and the little estate surrounding it had been settled upon Duke. He was a squire in his way, not merely the son of a younger son. Lord Frogmore had been exceedingly liberal to the boy who had irritated the old lord in spite of himself by his little childish brag about being the heir. These favors had been entirely for Mary’s sake, whose conscience had suffered so acutely in the prospect of displacing Duke. But no one knew of that in the strange imbroglio that followed. He went now to meet the ladies at the station, a fine young fellow, with a soldierly air, for he had got his commission a couple years before and now was quite a young man of the world, conversant with all the experiences which are so profound and varied, of military youth. Duke was not fond of Miss Hill, nor she, he was aware, of him; but he was really attached to Mary, who had been so tender to him in his childhood. He took charge of her in the most affectionate way, leaving the less important matters of the boxes, etc., to Agnes and the maid, while he took Lady Frogmore to the carriage which was waiting. “They are going to make a dreadful fuss about me,” he said. “I think a great deal too much.”
“How can that be, Duke, when you are the eldest son, the future head of the family?”
“Of the younger branch if you like, Aunt Mary—which doesn’t mean much. What I dislike is that it’s like putting me in Mar’s place.”
At this Mary said nothing, but the smile died off her face, and a cloud came over her eyes which was generally the effect of anything said on this subject.
“He’s pretty well,” said Duke, hastily, “and as much interested as anyone. You can’t think what a generous dear little fellow he is.”
“Ah!” said Lady Frogmore. She brightened up, however, and added immediately, “I hear there is to be a tenants’ dinner and a ball. It will be a strange thing to me to find myself at a ball.”
“No one there will look nicer,” said Duke, with filial flattery. “I don’t mind the ball,” he added. “That’s natural. Now that Letty’s out and me at home, and the others all old enough to like the fuss, a ball’s the best thing to have. It’s the tenants’ dinner that bothers me, Aunt Mary. Why should the tenants mind me? I’m nothing to them, only their landlord’s cousin. And I’m sure my father thinks so too, only he will not say.”
“It is quite right,” said Lady Frogmore.
“Oh, no, it is not quite right. I’m twenty-one and qualified to have an opinion. Oh, here’s Miss Hill. I hope you hadn’t any bother with the luggage, Miss Hill. I thought I’d better take care of Aunt Mary, and that you would rather the maid did it.”
“You are quite right,” said Agnes a little stiffly. “We have managed everything, and Mary always likes to have you to herself.”
“Dear Aunt Mary,” said Duke, squeezing her hand. “She has always been too good to me all my life.”
Agnes Hill had by this time got something of the grim aspect which procures for a woman even in these enlightened days the title of old maid. She was taller and thinner than her sister, less soft of aspect and of tone than Mary, as indeed she always had been: and the sense of wrong that had over-clouded her mind for so many years, the separation from the child to whom she had given all the love of her heart, and who needed her, she felt, as much as she longed for him, had given her a look of protest and almost defiance, as of a woman injured by the world, which is the aspect associated by a world full of levity with that title. “A sour old maid,” Duke thought her, and he liked to get what he called “a rise” out of old Agnes. What a rise is, is imperfectly known to the present writer, or the etymology of the phrase, but at least it was not anything respectful. So that in this trio who now drove off to the Park there were two who loved each other dearly, and two who loved each other so little that it might be said by a little strain that they hated each other—notwithstanding that they had between them one bond of sympathy, which was certainly wanting between Duke and the relation whom he loved.
The Park was looking its best, the fresh foliage heavy as midsummer, yet still retaining some tints of spring green in the brilliant afternoon sunshine which swept in low lines under the trees. And Duke, though he objected to the fuss, could not refrain from stopping the carriage to show the ladies the great marquee prepared for the dinner next day. The workmen were busy with it, but it was sufficiently advanced to be exhibited, and Duke could not but be a little proud of the great erection, and the way everything was being done. He dragged Lady Frogmore all over it, while Miss Hill stood with an unconcealed look of indifference, if not hostility, taking no notice of anything outside. “Old Agnes’” opposition almost reconciled Duke to the “fuss” he disliked, and cleared all his objections away.
They were received by Letitia at the door which was a great mark of honor to her sister-in-law: but she too gave Agnes the slightest of welcomes, letting her hand drop as soon as she had touched it, and turning away to conduct Lady Frogmore upstairs, as if she had no other guest. The whole family, indeed, clustered about Mary, conveying her in triumph to the room where tea awaited her, and leaving Miss Hill as if she had been the maid, in the hall, to follow at her leisure. Perhaps Duke, though he supposed himself to hate Agnes, was moved by a sense at least of the rudeness of his family, for he separated himself from the little crowd and hung about as if waiting for the unwelcome visitor who was left out.
“You don’t need,” he said, with an uneasy laugh, “to be shown the way?”
“No,” said Agnes. “I once knew it well enough: but a visitor whom nobody wants always requires to be shown the way. Oh never mind. I don’t care. Tell me where I shall find Mar?”
“He was not with the rest?” said Duke, uneasy still.
“No, he was not with the rest. Do you know,” said Agnes Hill, “it would be better taste in your position not to count him up with the rest, and to call him by his proper name—Frogmore.”
“He is one of the family,” said Duke, reddening. “We never think of him as anything else.”
“All the same,” said Miss Hill, “though he may be one of the family, he’s not the last or the youngest, but the chief person in the house: and his proper name is Frogmore.”
“I knew,” cried Duke, “as soon as I heard you were coming, that you’d try to sow discord between Mar and the rest! Not with me,” the young man added proudly. “Nobody could make Mar think that I didn’t give him his due. Thank heaven he knows me!”
Agnes’ grey eyes, which were full of fire, softened in spite of her. “I couldn’t do you wrong, Duke,” she said, “though you’re too much in my boy’s place to please me. I believe you’ve always been good to him. Yes, I do: though it was a bad day for him when he was left here.”
“You’ve no right to say so,” said Duke, who had been half softened too, and now flashed up again in wrath with the moisture still in his eyes.
“We needn’t quarrel,” said Miss Hill. “Can you tell me where I shall find him? Your mother’s tea would choke me. I want to see my boy.”
“I don’t know why he didn’t come,” said Duke, confused. “He will be in the old school-room as he wasn’t here.”
“Oh, I know very well why he didn’t come! It needs no wizard to tell that. Poor child, poor child! He will scarcely know even me,” said Agnes, as if that were the climax of all misery. She gave Duke a little nod, in which there was some anxiety, notwithstanding the opposition, and went hurriedly upstairs. The children’s apartments were on the second floor, and Agnes, who was spare and slight as a girl, ran up the long staircase as if she had been sixteen. The old schoolroom was at the end of the corridor, a long bright room which overlooked the park. Agnes knocked at the door, her heart beating with many emotions. “Come in,” said the broken voice, a little hoarse and uncertain, of a boy who had lost the angelical timbre of childhood. He was sitting, a long, slim figure, slight as could be, a mere sheath for the spirit, as some boys who grow very fast appear, huddled up in an easy chair, and bent over a table. A long window behind him made his form at first invisible to his anxious visitor; he was nothing but a dark silhouette against the light, and when he sprang up surprised to see a lady enter, the slightness and angularity of the long, straight, yet stooping figure without shape save that most undesirable one given by the contraction of the shoulders and the stoop of the head, made the heart of Agnes sink in her breast. He stood swaying from one foot to another, shy and doubtful. He did not know her at first, which she had anticipated, but which chilled her no less. “Mar!” she said, rushing forward. He stammered and hesitated, she did not know with what feeling—and looked behind as if expecting some one beside. It was not till long after that Agnes realized what the boy had thought. “Aunt Agnes!” he said with an almost shrill tone in his broken voice.
“Oh, Mar, you know me still, God be thanked for that. I thought you must have forgotten me altogether. But, dear, why are you up here, when everybody but you goes to welcome the guests? You are the head of the house, Mar. Nobody can be welcome here that is not welcome to you.”
“Do you think so?” he said with a laugh. “No, no, that would be foolish at my age. I have no visitors—they are all for the others; who should come to visit me?” he said again.
“Your mother, Mar,” said Miss Hill—“and an old aunt that perhaps you don’t make much account of, but who thinks constantly of you.”
“Oh, for you, Aunt Agnes!” cried the boy—“but my mother—what do I know of my mother?—will she look at me when she sees me?—I suppose she must see me while she is here?”
“Mar,” cried Agnes, “there is a change coming in your mother. I am sure of it. She is beginning to think of things. She knows now that there is something wrong. We must be patient, my dear, and keep on the watch. It has been a long, long time coming; but I am sure she begins to feel that something is wrong.”
“It is a long time coming, as you say; and it does not seem very much when it comes,” said the boy. “One only gets to understand the strangeness of it as one grows older; but never mind, I have got on very well without her hitherto, and I need not trouble myself about it, need I, now?”
“I don’t like you to say so, Mar.”
“I am sorry myself, but it can’t be helped,” said the boy. “I form very different ideas in myself now and then. But the philosophical thing is never to mind. It’s a little peculiar to be as I am, no one to care particularly about me, isn’t it? Generally a fellow at my age has rather too much caring for, to judge by Duke. But he’s exceptional. Oh, don’t think I’m not cared for; I am too much cared for—Uncle John is the kindest man in the world, and as for my aunt—she kills me with kindness. Yes, that’s what she does. She’s far more careful about me than about the rest. I wish sometimes that my health was of no importance, like Reggie’s. Well, that’s what she says—‘Oh, Reggie! He’s of no consequence; he has the health of a pig. But Mar!’ And then I have gruel, and my feet in hot water, and must not go out. It’s rather tiresome,” the boy said with a yawn. “I did want to go out to-day, to see all the things, how they are getting on. Did you think there was an east wind to-day?”
“East wind! and what would it matter if there were—in June?” said Agnes Hill.
“What a revolutionary you are!” said Mar. “But it’s a great refreshment to hear of someone who despises the east wind. I have to watch it; I can’t help myself. Do you see that weathercock, Aunt Agnes? I look at it the first thing in the morning, for I know if it turns to the east I mustn’t go out, even if the Queen were coming. It’s veering round, don’t you see? I’ve done nothing but watch it all day.”
“And what does she mean by that?” cried Agnes; “what does that matter in summer, the east wind!”
“Oh, my aunt means—only care and kindness—perhaps a little more; but this you must never repeat, for it sounds hard, and I don’t know whether I am right. She is dreadfully frightened lest something should happen to me in her house and she should be blamed——”
“In her house—it is your house!” said Agnes, vehemently.
“Oh, no; not while I am so young. Uncle John is my guardian, and lives here for me, and it is a great sacrifice to him. But, of course, while he is here, and I am under age, it is his house. I wish they would let me take my chance, though,” said Mar, “like the rest. Do you think it matters? If a fellow is going to die, he’ll die whatever you do, and in the meantime he might as well have some good of his life.”
“Do you mean yourself, Mar? Why should it be thought of, that a young creature is going to die? We must all die sometime. What you have to do is to live, and to grow up a very important man, with a great deal to do in the world.”
“Aunt Letitia does not think I shall ever do that. But she does not want anything to happen to me in her house. Don’t you know what that means? But don’t think I care,” said the boy with a pale smile. “I’ve thought it all over, and I believe in Christianity and I don’t mind dying a bit. I hate being ill, and I hate being kept in like this and made different from the rest; but why should one mind dying? One will get into a better place; one will be saved from all possibility of going to the bad. I don’t see why there should be any fuss about it, especially as there is nobody in particular to care—— Yes, I know there’s you; but you see so little of me. And the girls would be very sorry. Letty, I shouldn’t wonder if Letty—— But that’s a poor sort of talk to amuse you with.”
“Dear Mar, you break my heart.”
“Why,” said the boy, “I should think you would be glad to know that whatever happens I don’t mind. But Aunt Letitia,” he said with a laugh, “would be in a dreadful state of mind if anything should happen—in her house.”